Title from "Long Way to Happy" by Pink. Here's hoping that bad feeling is just paranoia on my part.
So in honour of the US election today, some people have been posting about what they would do if they were dictator. One of my favourites is up over at FHotD. This was originally posted in the comments there. For the record, I'm Australian, not American--these are my opinions only.
1. Legalise illegal drugs. People are gonna take them anyway, and a lot of them are no worse for someone than smoking. Plus, this way, the addicts who want help can seek it without having to worry about being arrested for drug possession or use (this happens a lot more than you think...) As well as that, most of the deaths and health issues caused by drugs like heroin, ecstacy, and crystal meth don't come from the drugs themselves; they come from the drugs being cut with all kinds of crap, from something as innocuous as flour to something like Ajax or oven cleaner. If the drugs are produced legally, quality control can be introduced, and suddenly we will have a lot fewer druggies in emergency rooms.
2. Legalise prostitution! It's legal here, recognised as an actual profession (you need a licence to own a brothel, but anyone over the age of 18 can become a sex worker if they want to--they just have to register as one.) This makes it a lot harder for people to be forced into prostitution, because of the regulations, stops people from cheating on welfare by making extra income through prostitution, and makes prostitutes do things like pay income tax.
3. Scrap the death penalty. It doesn't do shit, and if someone is wrongly convicted, it's just a little bit of a problem... Life in prison with hard labour, though, that I am all fuckin' for.
4. More stuff for prisoners to do in prison. Even if it's just TV. Seriously. I'm starting to apply for jobs in state facilities like prisons, I visited a prison yesterday, and things like that are godsends. Guards are outnumbered in prisons, frequently a hundred to one. The more time prisoners spend rotting their brains watching The Bold and the Beautiful or whatever, the less time they have to test their boundaries and make life difficult for everyone working with them. It's a great tool. Anything that lets the guards and other staff go home at the end of the day without some kind of injury is a fantastic tool.
5. Castration for ALL sex offenders, be they male or female, the first time they are convicted for sexual assault. (It can be chemical, if they'd prefer.) People (usually men--no offence, guys, I know most of your rock) frequently argue that rapists 'just can't control themselves' or some other bullshit. I say if that's the case, the only logical way to deal with rapists is to take away their ability to rape.
6. Before you sue someone--before you even see a lawyer--you must present yourself before a board of people deemed to be sensible, sane, and representative of the population, and explain who you are suing for what. They will then either approve or deny your suit. That burglar who tripped on some loose carpet while trying to break into a house and then sued the home owners, for instance--he'd be told to fuck off. Same as that person who's responsible for the 'CAUTION: CONTENTS IS HOT' labels seen on coffee cups.
7. Abstinence-only sex education is banned. Education on sex, including STDs and contraceptive methods, will be mandatory and will begin for all children at age 12. This way, people might stop breeding!
8. If you are caught protesting abortion at a clinic, you will be forced to pay what it costs to raise the average child to age 18--this is about $3.5 million. The money will be used by the government to fund the sterilisations of those deemed unfit to breed. You will also be sentenced to community service, in the form of handing out condoms on street corners. This will be a much more effective method of lowering the rate of abortion.
9. If you want to move overseas on a long-term or permanent basis, you have to learn some of their language. If you want to move to Australia or England or America from a non-English speaking country, you must learn enough English to get by either before getting here or shortly afterwards. Same deal for people in English-speaking countries who want to move away; you must learn to speak French or Japanese or German or whatever the language of the coutry you are moving to speaks before you go there or very quickly after you arrive. I'd say the same for travel, too, but that might be a bit much.
10. I don't know enough about American gun control laws or gun culture to speak much about it... but frankly, it seems like the people most likely to own a gun are the people who don't have the maturity or intelligence to safely use a microwave, much less a firearm. Something will be done about them when I am dictator.
Showing posts with label daily dilemmas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label daily dilemmas. Show all posts
Wednesday, 5 November 2008
Tuesday, 14 October 2008
i do so love a nicely bandied word
Title quote from the 'A Song of Ice and Fire' novels by George R. R. Martin. If you haven't read them, you really should.
For once in my life I'm actually ahead of schedule--statistics assignment is finished, two of the fiction pieces I'm writing are finished (one is an assessment piece, so I won't post it here in case it comes up as plagiarised, but I may post the other) and I have an actual cohesive plot for my NaNoWriMo novel. So here is the Pit Bull Rant, Part Two. Part One is here.
When we left off, I was mentioning that pit bulls are actually small dogs, and most so-called 'pit bulls' are mutts. The next part of this rant is that pit bulls, as most dogs, are not actually aggressive by nature. The reason pit bulls have a bad reputaton is actually the media. Now I know people are disinclined to believe that--after all, the media hype has to have some grain of truth somewhere--but bear with me...
Once upon a time, some idiot bought a spiffy new rottweiller puppy, because they were famed as a great guard dog. The idiot neglected or abused the dog, and the poor dog became vicious, and the dog attacked someone. Suddenly the papers were absolutely flooded with "ROTTWIEILLER MAULS CHILD", "ROTTWEILLER KILLS MAN", and so on, and so forth. While it's very likely that more than half these 'rottweiller' attacks were large mutts with black and brown colouring and possibly a docked tail, we'll ignore that for now. The important thing is, the scum of the earth--drug dealers, dog fighters, and the like--saw this, and ran out and bought rottweillers. Suddenly rottweillers were actively being trained to be vicious, and things got worse.
Breed-specific legislation was introduced to make it hard for rottweiller owners to do things like find houses or get property insurance, and the tide of vicious rottweillers slowed. Then someone's neglected German shepherd bit a person, and the cycle started all over again.
This has happened to rottweillers, German shepherds, dobermann pinschers, akita inus, chow chows, boxers, Rhodesian and Thai ridgebacks, Irish wolfhounds--in fact, just about every dog that's either large or known as a good guard dog has had this happen. And now it's the turn of the pit bull--who used to be known as a great dog to protect your kids while you were out.
Pit bulls are territorial, though--that I will never deny. If someone goes breaking into your property at night, they will happily chow down on the intruder. They will not, however, go seeking trouble--unless they're abused or totally neglected, which tragically is most often the case. Moreover, pit bulls need to be trained, as much as any other breed of dog and often more than any other breed of dog, because if you're buying a pittie from anyone other than a first class breeder who consistently shows and wins with their dogs, they've probably been bred for viciousness and/or had some mutts with totally unpredictable personalities put into their bloodline.
Recently I've also noticed an increasing number of people wanting to let pit bulls go quietly extinct, which I think would be a horrible shame, and also be like letting quarter horses go extinct because some of them have a genetic defect that causes them to keel over and die on occasion. Not all of them are bad--in fact, some are pretty damn good, and moreover will never spontaneously keel over before the age of 25. Same deal with pit bulls. Most of the good ones will go their whole life without so much as nipping a human, or another dog, for that matter.
I think that's all I wanted to cover. There may be a Part Three eventually, but I'm not sure--it depends if something else sets me off about pit bulls.
For once in my life I'm actually ahead of schedule--statistics assignment is finished, two of the fiction pieces I'm writing are finished (one is an assessment piece, so I won't post it here in case it comes up as plagiarised, but I may post the other) and I have an actual cohesive plot for my NaNoWriMo novel. So here is the Pit Bull Rant, Part Two. Part One is here.
When we left off, I was mentioning that pit bulls are actually small dogs, and most so-called 'pit bulls' are mutts. The next part of this rant is that pit bulls, as most dogs, are not actually aggressive by nature. The reason pit bulls have a bad reputaton is actually the media. Now I know people are disinclined to believe that--after all, the media hype has to have some grain of truth somewhere--but bear with me...
Once upon a time, some idiot bought a spiffy new rottweiller puppy, because they were famed as a great guard dog. The idiot neglected or abused the dog, and the poor dog became vicious, and the dog attacked someone. Suddenly the papers were absolutely flooded with "ROTTWIEILLER MAULS CHILD", "ROTTWEILLER KILLS MAN", and so on, and so forth. While it's very likely that more than half these 'rottweiller' attacks were large mutts with black and brown colouring and possibly a docked tail, we'll ignore that for now. The important thing is, the scum of the earth--drug dealers, dog fighters, and the like--saw this, and ran out and bought rottweillers. Suddenly rottweillers were actively being trained to be vicious, and things got worse.
Breed-specific legislation was introduced to make it hard for rottweiller owners to do things like find houses or get property insurance, and the tide of vicious rottweillers slowed. Then someone's neglected German shepherd bit a person, and the cycle started all over again.
This has happened to rottweillers, German shepherds, dobermann pinschers, akita inus, chow chows, boxers, Rhodesian and Thai ridgebacks, Irish wolfhounds--in fact, just about every dog that's either large or known as a good guard dog has had this happen. And now it's the turn of the pit bull--who used to be known as a great dog to protect your kids while you were out.
Pit bulls are territorial, though--that I will never deny. If someone goes breaking into your property at night, they will happily chow down on the intruder. They will not, however, go seeking trouble--unless they're abused or totally neglected, which tragically is most often the case. Moreover, pit bulls need to be trained, as much as any other breed of dog and often more than any other breed of dog, because if you're buying a pittie from anyone other than a first class breeder who consistently shows and wins with their dogs, they've probably been bred for viciousness and/or had some mutts with totally unpredictable personalities put into their bloodline.
Recently I've also noticed an increasing number of people wanting to let pit bulls go quietly extinct, which I think would be a horrible shame, and also be like letting quarter horses go extinct because some of them have a genetic defect that causes them to keel over and die on occasion. Not all of them are bad--in fact, some are pretty damn good, and moreover will never spontaneously keel over before the age of 25. Same deal with pit bulls. Most of the good ones will go their whole life without so much as nipping a human, or another dog, for that matter.
I think that's all I wanted to cover. There may be a Part Three eventually, but I'm not sure--it depends if something else sets me off about pit bulls.
Monday, 6 October 2008
My hair is orange.
No, I'm not kidding. My hair is orange. It was black, but now... it's orange. Huh. There you go, then, lesson learned--if I'm going to bleach black hair, I can't do it half-assed. At least it looks all right--in most lights it comes out fluro red, so it's more Blood Rayne than Stephanie Plum.
No lyrical title today because my iPod has been critically wounded. Usually I'd just pull a line from whatever song I'm listening to at the time (bonus points it it's vaguely relevent) but I have no music. Plus... my hair's orange. What more can I say?
No lyrical title today because my iPod has been critically wounded. Usually I'd just pull a line from whatever song I'm listening to at the time (bonus points it it's vaguely relevent) but I have no music. Plus... my hair's orange. What more can I say?
Saturday, 4 October 2008
after this the rest is all bullshit
'Bullshit' by Mindless Self Indulgence for the title.
Another plug; Kate Harding's Shapely Prose. It's been slow there recently, but it's a generally awesome blog, and reading through the archives is well worth the time. As a plus-size lady with some pretty serious body-image issues I find it invaluable.
Still haven't gotten seriously started on that damn statistics assignment, nor the two writing assignments I also have due that week. Hmm. Tomorrow is going to be a long, dull day.
Oh, and psst--if you haven't download the very cheap, very awesome Repo! The Genetic Opera soundtrack yet, you really really should. It's already made its way into my Most Played list, and there are songs I've been listening to for years on there.
Another plug; Kate Harding's Shapely Prose. It's been slow there recently, but it's a generally awesome blog, and reading through the archives is well worth the time. As a plus-size lady with some pretty serious body-image issues I find it invaluable.
Still haven't gotten seriously started on that damn statistics assignment, nor the two writing assignments I also have due that week. Hmm. Tomorrow is going to be a long, dull day.
Oh, and psst--if you haven't download the very cheap, very awesome Repo! The Genetic Opera soundtrack yet, you really really should. It's already made its way into my Most Played list, and there are songs I've been listening to for years on there.
Thursday, 2 October 2008
this is the new shit
Title is the titular lyric from 'This Is The New Shit' by Marilyn Manson.
I'm a bit too wasted to post properly just now, so here we go. Wallaby linked me to this little piece of wtf. As she said, "Starts out funny, then gets scarily realistic."
The author there is right--trying to work out how some of these people think is quite frightening.
In other news:
I'm a bit too wasted to post properly just now, so here we go. Wallaby linked me to this little piece of wtf. As she said, "Starts out funny, then gets scarily realistic."
The author there is right--trying to work out how some of these people think is quite frightening.
In other news:
- The job market here is so poor I'm starting to seriously consider prostitution. Something like 40% of female students in Melbourne do it, apparently, although that may well be overly sensationalistic. Alternately I guess I could put an ad in the local paper as a dog walker/stablehand, but I really wish Starbucks or something was hiring so I could just drop off a resume and hope for the best. Bah.
- I am doing NaNoWriMo this year. (Haven't heard of it? Here.) Would anyone be interested in seeing my progress posted here? I'll probably put at least the first 1700-ish words up. So far, my main idea is a shameless rip-off of at least one Shakespearean play.
- I haven't started my statistics assignment yet. It's due on Tuesday. But that's okay, because it's only 1200 words. I can write 300 words a day on Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. Sound good? Not to me. Statistics classes and assignments are, for me, one huge long hooker moment.
Friday, 26 September 2008
sitting on my roof in the land of the forgotten
So here I sit, sifting through the mass of emails that have accumulated in the two days since I bothered to check my accounts. In total 96 message, 22 of those junk, 5 of those eBay-related, 18 pertaining to university.
Some of the rest--about twenty or so--have come from a rather creepy person who, in the same two days, has also left twelve messages on my answering machine. I'd consider a restraining order, but knowing this rather creepy person, I believe it would do more harm than good--and besides, it's very easy for me to add him to my spam filter and delete his messages.
Which still leaves about thirty emails just from friends and family, of course... but as you probably know if you're reading this, I am a writer, and I come from a family of very prolific writers--not novels, but rather letters and emails. Most of my writerly friends are much the same. So whenever I actually remember to check my inbox, I spend a good hour or two catching up on everything I've missed.
In this case I am particularly relieved, because my aunt, uncle, and cousins in New Orleans have just checked in to say they're safe and staying with frends in Seattle. As most of you will know, a couple of very large hurricanes have been hitting America recently. The news in Australia hasn't covered it much, and even if it had I don't watch a huge amount of TV, but my family has had to evacuate from first Gustav, then from Ike when it hit... was it Texas? Either way, they've ended up in Washington, preparing to rebuild their house for the second time in a handful of years--Katrina hit them pretty hard, too.
I don't mean to imply anything--oh hell, what am I saying, of course I mean to imply things, but other people have already done it better. Go listen to "The Gov Did Nothing" by John Butler Trio. That's the song this blog's title comes from. I'm not hugely into politics; as long as I can afford to fill up my car with petrol and buy me some Cadbury Hazelnut now and then--and presumeably World War Three isn't being started--I can't say I give much of a damn about the political scene at all. But sometimes things get to be quite frankly ridiculous, as I feel they are in this case.
On a side note--the new airport security sucks, by the way. The last time I went to the airport it was the domestic one, where it isn't so bad, but I went with two of my friends to pick someone up from the international airport, and even though we weren't actually getting on a plane, it was still ridiculous. Between us, we got a lighter and a nail file through the security gates--they simply weren't picked up by the checks. Supposedly we could each hijack a plane with those. My friend's sister (who, not-so-coincidentally, happens to be the image of blonde-haired blue-eyed big-breasted beauty,) got pulled for a random stripsearch by a male guard. I will probably rant about this again some other time, because it really annoyed me, but right now I'm going to go bake a birthday cake.
Some of the rest--about twenty or so--have come from a rather creepy person who, in the same two days, has also left twelve messages on my answering machine. I'd consider a restraining order, but knowing this rather creepy person, I believe it would do more harm than good--and besides, it's very easy for me to add him to my spam filter and delete his messages.
Which still leaves about thirty emails just from friends and family, of course... but as you probably know if you're reading this, I am a writer, and I come from a family of very prolific writers--not novels, but rather letters and emails. Most of my writerly friends are much the same. So whenever I actually remember to check my inbox, I spend a good hour or two catching up on everything I've missed.
In this case I am particularly relieved, because my aunt, uncle, and cousins in New Orleans have just checked in to say they're safe and staying with frends in Seattle. As most of you will know, a couple of very large hurricanes have been hitting America recently. The news in Australia hasn't covered it much, and even if it had I don't watch a huge amount of TV, but my family has had to evacuate from first Gustav, then from Ike when it hit... was it Texas? Either way, they've ended up in Washington, preparing to rebuild their house for the second time in a handful of years--Katrina hit them pretty hard, too.
I don't mean to imply anything--oh hell, what am I saying, of course I mean to imply things, but other people have already done it better. Go listen to "The Gov Did Nothing" by John Butler Trio. That's the song this blog's title comes from. I'm not hugely into politics; as long as I can afford to fill up my car with petrol and buy me some Cadbury Hazelnut now and then--and presumeably World War Three isn't being started--I can't say I give much of a damn about the political scene at all. But sometimes things get to be quite frankly ridiculous, as I feel they are in this case.
On a side note--the new airport security sucks, by the way. The last time I went to the airport it was the domestic one, where it isn't so bad, but I went with two of my friends to pick someone up from the international airport, and even though we weren't actually getting on a plane, it was still ridiculous. Between us, we got a lighter and a nail file through the security gates--they simply weren't picked up by the checks. Supposedly we could each hijack a plane with those. My friend's sister (who, not-so-coincidentally, happens to be the image of blonde-haired blue-eyed big-breasted beauty,) got pulled for a random stripsearch by a male guard. I will probably rant about this again some other time, because it really annoyed me, but right now I'm going to go bake a birthday cake.
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
it's coming into summer and the weather's fuckin' wicked
Today's song title comes from "Fig Jam", by Butterfingers. It's the companion song to "I Love Work", also by them--listen to that first, if you have a chance. They do have swearing and sexual references, but frankly if you're reading my blog, I'd advice you to become inured to those quickly.
You'd think, given some of the fabulous people I know, I'd get up to all sorts of exciting things, but that's really not true. The main reason for that is because all the fabulous people I know have the same sort of schedule I do; i.e., batshit insane.
As an example, yesterday.
I got up at about five in the morning to the sounds of my dog freaking out and the cockatoos in the tree outside mocking her. Those birds are wicked; they like to eat the grass seeds on our lawn, then, when my dog comes out to chase them, perch on a tree exactly half an inch out of reach of her jaw when she's in full spring. I believe this is conclusive proof that birds and reptiles are related; the lace monitors, goannas that grow up to two metres long and usually only appear in hottest parts summer, do exactly the same thing. My dog is apparently fun to torment.
I had to work that morning. This wasn't great, because as far as I'm concerned, the mornings are for sleeping in after pulling an all-nighter on the lab report I totally forgot was due in two days. Fortunately I had finished the damn thing by around one, so I was operating on four hours of sleep instead of none. Equally fortunately, my current job is pretty cushy, and I decided that calling in sick wasn't worth it, because I could probably sneak in a nap on the desk at some point.
So I printed my lab report, ate breakfast (some leftover roast chicken and two cupcakes--very nutritious, I know,) got my shit together, and headed to work at about 7:30. I work for a friend of a friend of one of my professor's, and the job won't last much longer because I'm just a temporary fix--the woman who'd usually be there broke her leg in three places getting hit by a car, so, until she's ready to work again by midway through October, I'm filling in. All I do is answer the phone and fill out paperwork. The place itself is fascinating--a laboratory at a university dedicated to cutting up post-mortem human brains for various research purposes. My job there, however, is dull enough that they can't find someone to do it full time. There's at least two other girls who take the morning shifts, and one other girl who works afternoons when I don't.
I arrived at work at about eight, clocked in, answered the phone twice, and promptly fell asleep on the desk. As I've said, it was dull, so suffice to say I left at 12:30 when the other girl arrived and went to uni.
I handed in my assignment, booted up my laptop, and logged into the Repo chatroom (have you heard about Repo? No? If you like Saw, Rocky Horror, Sarah Brightman, Anthony Stewart Head, Bill Mosely, Skinny Puppy, Paris Hilton, or horrible things happening to Paris Hilton... you may like Repo. Here.) Just as I came in, one of the writers, the director, the music producer, and Bill Mosely signed in. I have excellent timing sometimes.
A friend of mine, Genet, told me she'd be coming in to drop off her report before four, so I decided to sit around for a while. When she didn't show up by 4:15 (and the temperature started to drop rapidly) I gave up, packed up my laptop, and headed for my car. Lucky for Genet, I stopped to get petrol not more than five minutes away from uni, because she called me as I was about to pull out of the petrol station saying she'd just arrived. I went back, had a very late lunch with her and Labrador (fish and chips and a tub of Greek yoghurt from the affectionately named 'Sewery') and gossiped relentlessly about the behaviour of certain people at a social event we both attended. I went home not long after that to feed my dog and prepare myself for today.
Today, just in case you're interested, was just as dull as yesterday; the most interesting part was attending a class about the pros and cons of various psychiatric drugs and the subjectivity of treatment.
Now that I, Genet, Coyote, Labrador, Finch, and most of my other university-going friends have a week's break coming up, we may actually do something interesting--but honestly, I wouldn't hold your breath. After the semester we've had thus far, most of us will be catching up on sleep.
You'd think, given some of the fabulous people I know, I'd get up to all sorts of exciting things, but that's really not true. The main reason for that is because all the fabulous people I know have the same sort of schedule I do; i.e., batshit insane.
As an example, yesterday.
I got up at about five in the morning to the sounds of my dog freaking out and the cockatoos in the tree outside mocking her. Those birds are wicked; they like to eat the grass seeds on our lawn, then, when my dog comes out to chase them, perch on a tree exactly half an inch out of reach of her jaw when she's in full spring. I believe this is conclusive proof that birds and reptiles are related; the lace monitors, goannas that grow up to two metres long and usually only appear in hottest parts summer, do exactly the same thing. My dog is apparently fun to torment.
I had to work that morning. This wasn't great, because as far as I'm concerned, the mornings are for sleeping in after pulling an all-nighter on the lab report I totally forgot was due in two days. Fortunately I had finished the damn thing by around one, so I was operating on four hours of sleep instead of none. Equally fortunately, my current job is pretty cushy, and I decided that calling in sick wasn't worth it, because I could probably sneak in a nap on the desk at some point.
So I printed my lab report, ate breakfast (some leftover roast chicken and two cupcakes--very nutritious, I know,) got my shit together, and headed to work at about 7:30. I work for a friend of a friend of one of my professor's, and the job won't last much longer because I'm just a temporary fix--the woman who'd usually be there broke her leg in three places getting hit by a car, so, until she's ready to work again by midway through October, I'm filling in. All I do is answer the phone and fill out paperwork. The place itself is fascinating--a laboratory at a university dedicated to cutting up post-mortem human brains for various research purposes. My job there, however, is dull enough that they can't find someone to do it full time. There's at least two other girls who take the morning shifts, and one other girl who works afternoons when I don't.
I arrived at work at about eight, clocked in, answered the phone twice, and promptly fell asleep on the desk. As I've said, it was dull, so suffice to say I left at 12:30 when the other girl arrived and went to uni.
I handed in my assignment, booted up my laptop, and logged into the Repo chatroom (have you heard about Repo? No? If you like Saw, Rocky Horror, Sarah Brightman, Anthony Stewart Head, Bill Mosely, Skinny Puppy, Paris Hilton, or horrible things happening to Paris Hilton... you may like Repo. Here.) Just as I came in, one of the writers, the director, the music producer, and Bill Mosely signed in. I have excellent timing sometimes.
A friend of mine, Genet, told me she'd be coming in to drop off her report before four, so I decided to sit around for a while. When she didn't show up by 4:15 (and the temperature started to drop rapidly) I gave up, packed up my laptop, and headed for my car. Lucky for Genet, I stopped to get petrol not more than five minutes away from uni, because she called me as I was about to pull out of the petrol station saying she'd just arrived. I went back, had a very late lunch with her and Labrador (fish and chips and a tub of Greek yoghurt from the affectionately named 'Sewery') and gossiped relentlessly about the behaviour of certain people at a social event we both attended. I went home not long after that to feed my dog and prepare myself for today.
Today, just in case you're interested, was just as dull as yesterday; the most interesting part was attending a class about the pros and cons of various psychiatric drugs and the subjectivity of treatment.
Now that I, Genet, Coyote, Labrador, Finch, and most of my other university-going friends have a week's break coming up, we may actually do something interesting--but honestly, I wouldn't hold your breath. After the semester we've had thus far, most of us will be catching up on sleep.
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