Surf Report

While I await news of a couple of people who were in the areas hit by the tsunami, here's a couple of links.

The South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami
Created by South-East Asian bloggers and featuring the latest news and information about the tsunami, agencies supporting the victims and involved in relief, places where donations can be made, volunteering information and much more. News from on the ground.

Ways for Australians to help out

...and opportunities for the rest of you.

Open your wallets, people!

You think I don't notice your eyes glaze over when I talk about my trip. I notice. I notice alright.

...and you needn't think you're getting a postcard, either.

Oh joy...

Yet another reason why it's just so goddamn great to work for an under-funded community health organisation: one of our airconditioning units fell through the flimsy ceiling today. Only the heroism of a two-inch PVC pipe prevented it hitting the floor. Had it hit the ground, it would have come down right next to the pool table where a crowd of people had been enjoying a game a couple of nights before.

*sigh*

Listless Christmas

Like the sucker I am, I volunteered yesterday to brave the crowds and finish up the Christmas shopping on behalf of the Family Suzette. Friends, if the Christian ideas on the afterlife are true, then you'd be well advised to amend your ways immediately. Those souls bound for eternal damnation will spend the hereafter in a crowded department store jostling with cranky shoppers, spoilt and fractious children, stomach-churningly schmaltzy plastic crap, obscene displays of frenzied consumption and inane Christmas carols. Hear me when I say to you that you really don't want to spend eternity this way.

Anyway... like the dutiful aunty I try so hard to be, I clenched my teeth and headed for our local shopping centre, Garden City. The person responsible for naming Garden City was clearly possessed of a mind marinated in a tart vinaigrette of irony: the only association with gardening I can make out is the notion that money grows on trees. Or perhaps it's that time spent there cultivates poor manners, aggression and an appetite for polyester clothing and acrylic fingernails.

Santa, darling that he is, had promised Miss 6 a Bratz doll - the Rubber Ho's, as my sister would have it. (Just quietly, I think she's on the money.) For the uninitiated, Bratz are ten inches of surly, heavily made-up harlotry. If they could talk - and even if they were made flesh I'm not convinced they could form coherent sentences - their vapid conversation would be heavily peppered with, "Like, y'know, what-EVERRRRR." You even have the opportunity to buy a Bratz sushi bar for them to, like, y'know, hang out in, dude. They have had a significant impact on me in that I now realise Barbie ain't so bad after all. But Santa said yes, so who the hell am I to argue with that kind of authority? So off shopping I went.


Coming soon: Bratz Botox Salon

In the not-too-distant past, public groupings of half a dozen or so were considered a Public Gathering in this state, and were illegal without a permit. Were that still the case the air would have been humming with riot police batons at the checkout yesterday. Soon-to-be-landfill bounty successfully located, I joined the snaking queues/scrums and passed the time waiting by watching my fellow shoppers shove, ram, push, grab, elbow, snap, frown, complain, bitch and spend, spend, spend. That the scene was dominated by instructions to Have a Merry Christmas almost made me smile.

The truth comes out.

It's no laughing matter.

Witness the magnitude of ferret oppression in Queensland. I urge you to write to Amnesty for the sake of decency.

History in the Making

When future generations reflect upon these troubled times of ours, they will speak the word ferret in hushed and reverent tones and they will envy us... for we were there to witness it.

Comrades, this car boasted five - yes, five! - of these glorious statements of wild-eyed revolutionary fervour.