Agony Adam

I've got a couple of friends who don't have a blog, or used to have a blog or otherwise need a space to rant ahoy. Being quite crap at rants myself, I'm more than happy to play host...

Dear Letting Me Rant Adam,

I work on a reception desk with another girl, we share a desk about a metre and a half long and things have gotten so bad that we can't even talk to each other anymore.
She's such a fn idiot! She keeps people on hold while she types out her personal e-mails, she always sends faxes the wrong way so that the receiving party finds a blank page, she giggles and snorts on the phone to the girls upstairs while account managers and sales reps are waiting in our foyer. She says things like "I have no idea what she's doing." to our boss, she always writes that items cost more and then keeps the change from petty cash. She's super nice to everyone until they ask her to do something that she doesn't want to do, then she's a pain to be around. She's downright repulsive. I know I can be stubborn and cross sometimes, but she makes me out to be a massive witch to everyone. Seriously, she's not in on Wednesdays and so I spring out of bed. Every other day I dread going in. I so want to quit, but then she'll win. God, I hate her so much.


Dear Agony Adam,

I heard you were opening your blog up for people who were unable to rant so I've got a rant here for you.

I have a friend who has a friend who I can't vent about because she reads the blog (thought promised she doesn't anymore - ISP tracker states otherwsise) so nothing can be said there (any more).

This friend is in a toxic relationship and refuses to acknowledge it - as clear as it is to everyone other than her. There are many, Many, MANY examples of this, but here's two quite recent ones.

It was the night before she (girl) was to leave for an international holiday with the other half of her toxic relationship (boy) and girl's housemate arrived home to find girl bawling on the couch. This was particularly unusual as girl has been taking extreme steps to ensure that only the good side of her relationship is made public - everything else happens in the privacy of her bedroom, the privacy of boys parents house or the privacy of girls group of pro-marriage friends that refuse to see anything 'unhealthy' about the relationship as their entire existence is built around marrying their first boyfriends, kitchen teas and living their lives as kept women.

Anyway, girl is on the couch bawling. Girls housemate remembers that after all the other fights they've had about this toxic relationship she vowed to NEVER get involved again. Girls housemate heads upstairs to her room and then sneaks down to the loungeroom almost an hour later to find girl still bawling on couch. The story eventually unfolds: It was boys turn to cook dinner (at his parents house because even though he lives at home and girl lives in her own place, they predominantly hang out in boy's bedroom at his parents house) and she arrived to find that it wasn't ready. She sat in boys bedroom for an hour and he wasn't ready, so she decided to storm home in a flurry of tears. Not much of a story, right? Right! BUT this sort of bizaarre to-and-fro, one-extreme-to-another thing occurs AT LEAST once a week.

So, the fact that we only ever hear about the awesome perfectness that is the union of these two is annoying. Particularly when we hear (through other sources) about this sort of craziness just as often. If she could just be normal, realise that every relationship has issues and that people have faults, and stop allowing herself to be brainwashed by her enabler friends who only encourage her to 'try harder', my life would be so much easier.

But instead? Instead I hear about how they spent the drive to the airport 'practising' how they will spend time together if they feel they need 'a time out'. This is AFTER hearing about how girl spends a few nights a week at boys parents house sleeping over (against boys parents conservative wishes) so that they can 'practice' cohabiting... Girl has her own house, but boy will only stay there one night a week on the night that he chooses as some sort of bizaare power play. But that's another rant for another time.

While just thinking and writing about this is making me angry again, I do feel a little better!

Yours in anger, ~Anon.

Just like every single other person in the world, I like nothing better than to jump into a reclining armchair with a snifter of brandy and read up on common law cases. I personally like to try and figure out exactly how far I could push the law in any given situation.

Higgins vs Higgins.

Higgins was suing Higgins because Higgins wrote details about Higgins on the internet. For 35 days, the court heard the pros and cons of detailing ones partner's pros and cons on a public forum and afterwards the judge ruled...

"Dudes, it's the internet, you can totally go hack!"

Ha ha ha - sweet!

Pros and Cons of the Little Red Rockstar:

Pros:
Has a cute smile, purdy eyes, makes me laugh, seems intelligent, excellent at pashing/snogging/kissing, good at screwing (in lightbulbs), good at pumping (water from a well), good at (de)sexing (cats), finds me amusing, provides opportunities to work on my lugging muscles, looks cute and/or hot, works well with others, is good at spelling, doesn't feel the need to solve all problems with maths, is cute and pathetic when sick, is all nursey when I'm sick, outrageously passionate, good taste in music, writes well, can rollerblade, talks good, talks plenty and has nice hair.

Cons:
Not my cousin.

Questions people are asking this week.

Which supermodel's appearance in a perfume advert needed body doubles for her hands, shoulders, legs, hips and stomach, including one 14 year-old girl?

Is it possible to cut yourself with soap?

Which two bloggers drank 3 bottles of wine, 3 bottles of bacardi, a bottle of gin and 6 strongbows and then spent all night pashing?

Who named Wrigley's Eclipse Mints? What does spearminty fresh breath have to do with blocking out the sun momentarily thus providing religious zealots the signal they need?

Is it a little bit weird that shop people call their customers 'darling'?

Will Nat forgive Adam for not wanting to be a feature of Hotness of the Week?

Is a smoking city motorbike courier destined to live forever?

Run like fun.

This new Embarkment of Exercise has required some cardio every second day. To tell you the truth, I'm totally struggling with it, I'm just really totally uncomfortable with jogging, it totally goes against The Perfection Of Slothly Sitting I've been training for the last ten years.

But this wasn't always the case..

[CUE MOTHERFREAKIN' REMEMBERING FADEOUT BLACK AND WHITE BIT NOW]

My mates and I spent our entire before school, little lunch, lunch, after school playing games and generally outdoing each other in all things. I spent pretty much the last three years completely caked in dirt and grass stainy.

On this particular lunchtime that the motherfreakin' remembering fadeout bit landed on, we were playing cricket. We only had a tennis ball so to get the dude out you had to catch the ball and then chock the batter dude in the back of the neck with the ball before he made it back to home. The batsman would therefore aim to slog the ball into the trees. If the batsman got it past the trees and over the barb-wire fence onto the neighbouring sportsground then he was out because we weren't allowed out of schoolgrounds.

When it did go over the fence, I'd always volunteer to go fetch. Our grounds were higher than next doors and so it was heaps easy to get over. There was even a poorly mended section that I could run and jump over. Getting back was much much harder and required some tree climbing and massive leaping.

There were big bushes next door and so I was struggling to find our ball. Alex climbed over to help and looked in a whole different section, but it wasn't long before he sprinted way past me, closely followed by some dudes in our year level chasing him on the other side of the fence throwing rocks and sticks. Alex was going to have a tough time of it, he was heading for a sparce part of the grounds with only one good tree, he was going to need a totally big headstart.
I had been behind some bushes looking for the ball and so did some mighty fine crouching while I figured out what to do. Unfortunately, sticks and stones to break my bones landed all round me. Damn.

Bullying wasn't really a problem at our school, but these dudes got all Lord of the Flies on us this one time. I started running the opposite direction from Alex, hoping to split them up and bore them with the running and chasing.

They did not get bored.

I was in a tight spot.

Being outside the school grounds was big trouble and my chances of being busted by a patrolling teacher too freakin' good.

Everytime I paused, projectiles of all sorts were launched at me and soon I was running out of grounds. I decided to exit the next door sports grounds and cross the road to the park opposite. I had run out of good trees to climb back over and so my only option was the main gates. The main gates were for cars, so they could drive for a kilometre or so, go round the roundabout drive a bit more and park near the offices.

I was hiding around some bushes in the park opposite, I was across a big main road so I didn't have to worry about rocks, but being busted this far from the school would have sucked. Also lunchtime was nearly over, I was pretty well screwed. There were 6 dudes all yelling and looking for me, but they didn't leave the school boundaries.

I popped out of the bushes across the road from the main gate and they saw me and sprinted to intercept. I had to cross a big road, a hilly grassy median strip and another road and only just beat them to the gate.

I was heaps tired, I had run much further than these footy and soccer stars and had to dodge a whole heap of rocks when I came through the gate. We were all now two full football ovals away from our classroom and the first bell had sounded. The chase was on.

I was always superquick at sprinting but distance I had no interest in. I didn't know what these dudes were going to do, but I was pretty sure it wasn't going to be good. Not one to let myself get bullied, I wasn't going to make it easy.

They all gave chase. One dude caught up right beside me. He didn't try and grab me but was looking at my feet. I had no clues until he tried to soccer slide at me to trip me up. Since he projected so damn much I just jumped over and kept running.

Other dudes came close but all those Saturday mornings of weaving around the Queens Victoria market crowds provided the mad skillz to get around little kids quicker.

Eventually I made it to the main school bit before the second bell. I was wreaked and slowed to a walk. Before I got too far, one of the dudes, grabbed me and held me. I asked him what he was doing and he just ignored me and looked back the way we came. Soon all the other dudes rocked up and surrounded me.

"Why run away?"
"'Cos you were chucking rocks."
"Yeah, that's 'cos you were running."

The second bell rang and we all had to go to class. They let go and with all the menacing their exhausted bodies could muster left me with chilling murmurs of 'don't run next time.'

That second bell changed everything, the UN really should just get some school bells all over the shop and tell conflicting countries to get to class.

My next subject was with the soccer dude and I was all like 'haha dude, you missed' and he was all 'yeah mate, I tried to chop you and you bounced away like a bunny rabbit.' Thinking about it later I was impressed at his quickness of reducing my supreme athletic evasion to something cute and fluffy.

Alex told me what happened to him but I don't remember. I do remember that we never found that tennis ball.

The deadliest of all shoe securing systems.

If there is any one type of person who is totally ruining the whole world completely singlehandedly, it's people who put effort into things.

If people didn't get all crazy and accomplishary, we could all just lie around getting drunk and reading half written trashy novels. Guilt of winning the rat race would be banished to the past and the world would be super good full of rainbows and deep fried cheese sandwiches.

Since I like to declare war on familes/individuals of effort, the first on my hit list for people I'd push to the ground if they were standing right in front of me kind of already leaning forward is Ian.

Reading this website soon left me as dead as a door. The autopsy found the cause down to an overdose on shoelaces with suspect traces of knots. My corpse was in need of a massive massage bigtime.

Ian, dude, just so you know, that's a lot of effort in website designs and also graphics just to achieve your lifelong dream of hanging out with that quite replaced Superman actor to see if we believe it or not. I'd just put scorpions in my mouth and call it a day.

Additionally, if there is one thing I just won't stand for is people using maths. If the Brothers Grimm taught us anything it's that heroic characters scoff at dudes who count the total number of variations of tying one shoe.

Feet Escapees : 0. Shoe Prison : 2 Trillion.

War and rising from the dead has given me a pain in the head, time to ingest a heron.

How many nerds can a nerd nerd nerd if a nerd could nerd nerd nerd

Those who know me better than I know myself (ie, so many people) will have guessed that lately I've been thinking a lot about nerds.


In the olden days nerds were dudes who liked computers and hated sports and were no good with the ladies. Now, the term 'nerd' seems to have been expanded to any action that someone is overly enthusiastic or passionate about. 'Like, whoa, I love footy and chicks but I'm such a computer games nerd' or 'I totally did a triple back flip through a ring of fire on a bike, sexed some hoochies and read about science. I'm such a nerd.'

So I think anyone who isn't a total bogan has noticed they might have a nerdish tendency here or there, which makes me wonder if the whole term needs to be revisited. What if the dudes loved computers and hated sports and are crap with girls feel like they have no place in the world? No label to call their very own? This is probably the world's greatest current concern.. who can we turn to?

Anywho,
Do you have a favourite type of nerd?
Do you have a least favourite?

My least favourite nerd is dudes with beards and long hair in pony tails who place emphasis on too many words in their sentences and tend to use sound effects and hand movements in their jokes. My favourite nerds are TV nerds (Hi Bevis) who can tell you interesting tidbits that might be useful at Trivia nights but whom you can lock in a box if they start to share too much of their obsession. My sister is definitely one of these.

I'm getting more comfortable with music nerds. I didn't even use to know anything to even ask any questions about anything, but I'm picking up tidbits here and there so I've finally replaced my usual response of 'Gaaah.' with 'Oh Yeah, so what's that thingy for?'.

Writing nerds are pretty awes and computer game nerds aren't at all fun because they beat me in everything.

I've met a heap of footy nerds; dudes who can reel off player statistics and number of championships per team. I've met one dude who was a massive sports nerd, who could tell you every horse that won the Melbourne Cup or similar.
Could we call a player a chick nerd? Is that no good?
Is a fashionista a labels nerd? A fashion nerd? Is nerd purely the term we give something that doesn't have a cooler name, like movie buff, sports fan, fashionista, rock guru, etc?

I tried to read about nerds on Wikipedia but it got so boring that I was forced to go and stare out the window. Am I a windows nerd?

Airing the dirty laundry

When I get back to Melbourne, we've decided that we'd like to move into a bigger house. We've got plans and dreams and hopes and lice and our little place is feeling a bit crowded.We want a place that's fairly big but close to the city that isn't too expensive. I've been wondering if anything big enough for us will be crazy expensive so my thoughts have started to turn towards building a place that is perfect for our current and future wants and needs.

Architectual Floorplan

Cara was massively excited about the plans and so we were discussing it in detail:

Adam the adventurous: "... and here's a plus, we can hire monkeys to build it for us."

Cara the concerned: "Con! You can't motorbike up a branch."

Adam the awesome: "Pro! Can throw stones at our neighours, if we get their help getting them into the massive treehouse. Stones are heavy."

Cara the country girl: "Con! I can't lift my equipment up into a treehouse."

Adam the amazing:" "Pro! If we want fruit, we can just reach out the window and grab a peach or an apple. If it's a fruit tree."

Cara the curr: "Con! Builder Monkeys?"

Adam the adamant: "Pro! Wombats can do our chores and Possums can magic our errands."

Cara the complainy: "Con! We'll be blown down in the first gust of wind."

Adam the articulate: "Pro! We can poo in a bucket and pulley it down, then collect fresh water from a nearby lake or swimming pool. Efficient!"

Even though we were both very fierce in our ideals, we're a totally strong and loving couple and so eventually decided on a compromise of doing exactly everything that I wanted.

You're all massively invited to our housewarming. BYO beers/bonfires.

It's a great day for people/treehouse relations.

Monday, I got game, my words aren't lame.

Got into work early this morning to do some urgent work that wasn't actually ready for me... so I went for a bit of a walk around the floor. There was a smattering of earlys here, but not a single one was actually doing any work, every single one was playing with the internet or photos or otherwise mucking around. That's so the last time I let anyone get away with the ol' 'yeah, well I've been in since 7'.

In other news, Blogger beta has finally caught up with me. Try as I might I wasn't able to log in without converting. The stupid thing is, when I tried to post this earlier, it broke.

In other other news, do men trim down there? Should men trim down there? It's never occurred to me until Jac's post about accidentally seeing her housemates boyfriend. Instead of saying anything like 'whoa, he's a monster' or 'whoa, how does she find that in the dark' her only comment was that he needed a trim. Is everyone taking up some scissors except me? Is this service only available in barbers if you ask? Is there a codeword?

I haven't been in a public changing room for some time, but I've never noticed anyone looking particularly tidy. The only thing I've noticed about change rooms is that the really old men don't mind a bit of convo while their all standing around starkers. I have noticed that these same old men seem to be on quite smaller side, Oh My God, does it shrink as you age?!? I'm so hoping it's some kind of optical illusion as the gut gets bigger.

Does anyone have any answers for me on this bright cheery monday morn?

Joining the gang of 5

Some time ago I was tagged by D'Jen... which I promptly forgot about, but then I noticed that almost every single blog dude and chick have had a shot, so who am I to be way too cool to play?


5 things that you don't know about me.

1.) I don't tell people things. I don't know whether I'm shy, or uninterested, but I tend not to tell people stuff about me. I'm pretty sure you, the internet, knows more about me than most of my friends. It took me 2 years to tell the mates I was hanging out with that my parents were divorced, I wasn't embarrassed, it just never occurred to me to tell them. All week I've been in crazy pains of back and skipping out to see doctors and I forgot to mention it to anyone at work.

2.) I didn't know until recently that you put cordial and then add water. I always thought it was cool to watch the colours filter and flow through the clear liquid. Who knew that everyone else on the planet chooses taste mixation over pretty flowingness?

3.) There are no weird things about me. I'm totally struggling to get to five. As far as I can tell I'm awesome in every way. I just don't have any quirks.

4.) I secretly work on plans to end 95% of all human life without getting caught. Nothing personal, I'm just constantly impressed and disgusted by everything we've built and done. It's amazing to think of the difference from cavemen to now and our complete taking overness of our environments. I'll be walking through the city smiling at people thinking "so if everyone was wiped out in a flash, we might need some people to turn factories and stuff off, I don't want there to be too many fires, hmmm, there is a lot of concrete around, what should I do about that? Are there any bugs that eat concrete?" I call this condition nintyfivepercentacide. How much fun is that to say?

5.) I'm currently teaching myself photoshop so that I can take photos of my friends and then trace them and paint them into way cool pictures. For example, I might take a photo of a friend at a BBQ and with that, paint a picture of them in a snowboard race with an avalanche. Currently it's going terribly, but in all honestiness I've only put in 2 hours since starting from scratch.



In other news: Who wants to see this with me? http://www.hyperborea.org/flash/movie.html
In other, other, other news; my rant about my workplace is killing my blogation. I like, need to get it out of my system before writing much else, but I'm pretty sure workpeeps have worked out that I read blogs all day and they're all smart and bored enough to try and track mine down. Freakin'! You'll get it but I can't promise it'll be before late March.

Mixed interviewness

Yeah, cross bloggage event, check out Meva's blog for some more of the questions of ace.

Dear Meva, have you ever jumped into a convertible with sunglasses, a headscarf and another chick or otherwise entertainingly roadtripped up?

Much as I want to be Susan Sarandon when I grow up, I'm afraid that the headscarf just ain't my style. And I've NEVER been in a convertible! How did this happen? I was born to drive down the Great Ocean Road in a convertible looking like a goddess (from a distance!). I have ridden pillion on a bike with my second boyfriend, though. And I've been on a girly roadtrip across the Nullabor in an 80's campervan. Now that was FUN. And no truck drivers were killed in the making of those memories. I'll post some pics one day.

Okey-dokey. Your turn! And my question might be because I'm stuck with drudgery in a windowless office.


Young Adam: What's the very best holiday you've ever been on?

Well, I've actually been on very few holidays. I've always been one to offer to owrk over the Christmas break, because traffic is super quite, no one is using public transport, people are happier, foodcourts are less frantic and it is, by all accounts, the very best time to be not be tackling any crowded beaches or supposedly serene countries. Every year, my plan was to work during Christmas and then take time off during ski season or whatnot, and every year work was too frantic to let me go... so I accidentally went 7 years without taking any time longer than a week off. So, my bestest funnest holiday was exactly this time last year, when four of us took on Japan and Central America. We totally took on Volcanoes and Mammothly lighty department stores and hot springs and kareoke and winter and summer and the nicest people in the world and the craziest people in the world.

One of my favourite bits was trying snorkling for the very first time ever in a massive dolphin enclosure. Cara was totally looking after me and I was only massively freaking out slightly, it was crazy deep and when I needed a rest all these dophlins came to check that I was okay and finding that I was demanded we all play fetch. I like playing fetch. I'm surprised the WII hasn't caught up with that one.

Ms Meva, apart from these questions of awesomeness, what was the last thing to totally make you smile all chesirely?

Well, it certainly isn't this new haircut I've just got! Paperbag territory, definitely!

I'm actually a BIG smiler (but usually my body is still visible around the smile). The last time I couldn't stop grinning for absolute days and days and days would have been last Christmas/New Year. Big smiler and big family girl, me. We had fam who moved interstate last year and came stay for the best 10 days ever.

Adam, if you could invite any 6 people to dinner, living or dead, who would they be?

Whoa!

As a question that seems to be asked of people a lot, I don't think I've ever answered this one ever. Whoa! You are a good cross-interviewer.

Um, okay. 6 people over dinner.

Hmmm, I'd like to see Caras there so that we can lie in bed for evermore starting sentences like 'whoa, how funny was it when...'

The dude who invented the hoverboard that Marty used in Back to the Future 2, it shouldn't be too far away now. I have some ideas I'd like to discuss with that guy, and I'd like to treat him sweet early.

Bill Phillips who does a lot of exercise programs, there are some gaps that I'd like to get some answers on.

Any of Charlie's angels.

A Templar Knight, dudes, what was it that you were up to? Also, bummer about the whole Friday the 13th thing, but good sword work by the way.

Our friend Sophie who we require many good stories from since she moved back to England and whom I would pay many pounds to see her attempt a hoverboarding.

Young Meva, have you ever been in a scrag fight over a carpark in Altona Gate shopping centre?

You were there? You saw it? Then, OMG, you KNOW I was sooooooo there first! Stupid bloody fool thought she could take me on, eh? NO ONE GETS MY PARK, BITCH! Thank god I had the crowbar handy. Thought she was safe just 'cos she's 85? Ha! Sucker!