Apparently people are being stricken with “text neck” and “text thumb injury”. OMG.

According to British health experts the strain injuries stem from long periods spent string at small screens and tapping at tiny keys. The injuries are becoming more common as hi-tech gadget proliferate.

Shockingly, Tim Hutchful from the British Chiropractic Association reported that he had a patient who “developed inflamed tendons in her thumb from using her phone and was unable to use her hand for weeks due to pain.” What an idiot his patient was. I have very good advice. Stop. Put down the phone. Find a life. (Sorry, being facetious again.)

Hutchful also reports that the human head (weighing about 5kg) is not suited to tipping forward to read small screens. “If the head is held forward to squint at the screen, then the unusual position makes the head feel up to four times heavier, increasing the strain across the whole body.” One worker in 50 suffers from “text neck” in the UK.

Yes, more truly serious first world problems identified and labelled. Take care now (especially if you are reading this on your smart phone).

A while back I wrote that I was getting one of those robot vacuum cleaner things. A few people have asked me what I think of it so here’s my review on my robo-vac (that’s his picture here).

• OK, we named it. Well my daughter named it Vinnie which I think makes it sound a bit gangsterish and doesn’t really suit it at all, but it’s stuck. I was after something a bit more The Bold and the Beautiful like Vance or Vaughn. But Vinnie it is.
• The dog hates it. He particularly hates that it makes quite a bit of noise. He really hates that I talk to it. Yes, I’m embarrassed to say I actually talk to the thing. I ask it what it’s doing in the the cupboard, tell it go and vacuum the hallway, say hello to it and tell it it’s time to go to bed. This morning I told it it was clever. The dog looked at me in disgust and went to his own bed. He’s still not talking to me.
• Robo-vac (aka Vinnnie) has a mind of it’s own. No matter that I lift it up and take it to where I want it to go, it makes it’s way back to where it wants to be. It is a defiant teenager of a vacuum cleaner.
• It is a really good topic of conversation. I had a houseful of people over on the weekend and every single one of them wanted to see the vacuum in action, stand in front of it to make it bounce off them, play with the remote and comment that it was the stupidest thing they’d ever seen. Jealousy among friends is a terrible thing.
• When it runs out of power (after 80 minutes) it docks itself for a recharge. I like to praise it for doing the cleaning and then putting itself to bed. So intelligent.
• The cleaning lady hates it too. She asks in her thick Italian accent, her tone hurt “why you want that thing for when you have me?” I spent a cup of coffee and half an hour reassuring her that I needed them both and like her much more. She spends a lot of time glaring at Vinnie the vac as she goes about her work.
• It cleans OK, but if the cleaning lady didn’t come once a week, then it wouldn’t be good enough. It keeps up with that little day to day dirt and dog hair so it saves me having to vacuum at all–so yes, I guess it is.

For the record Vinnie is a Clean-Mate 22QL. I paid $200 for it via a Scoopon voucher. That’s all it’s worth.

This is how this remarkable feat was accomplished. Nan Wise, a researcher, masturbated while in an MRI so that pictures of her brain could be taken. These were then spliced together to make the video. Now the truly remarkable thing about this entire exercise must be Ms Wise’s ability to bring herself to orgasm in an MRI. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in one but it’s akin to a metal sausage casing with Doctor Who show noises beamed in at intermittent times. This woman must have extraordinary focus.

So here’s the video. Think about it next time you’re coming to climax. That’ll put a dampner on it. Image

This is my Gen X Girl column for this week’s Savvy magazine published in The Townsville Bulletin.

I’m starting to think I might be quite old. I actually remember when the internet was discovered. OK, it wasn’t discovered like Captain Cook discovered Australia, but discovered like when it first came out. My first time was at work. We dialled up, the noisy modem made lots of Star Trek sounds and hey presto we were ON LINE.

There were four of us crowded round one computer when the boss asked what we wanted to look up using our Alta Vista search engine. “Porn” we all chorused and that’s what we did. Looked at porn for five minutes, with our boss. Sort of gross—yes. Kiddies, in the olden days you could do things like that without having a sexual harassment suit slapped on you.

I remember when mobile phones came out. Well they more resembled a tackle box with a phone in it. Very big, quite inconvenient and majorly wanky. “Can’t see those taking off,” I thought to myself. Major fail.

However some really cool things have come out just recently and quite frankly I don’t know how we ever survived without them.

1. Group discount coupons. My inbox is full of group discount coupons offering me all sorts of incentives from facials to Thai holidays to golf games. There’s nothing like getting a facial for $25. Reminds me of what things cost in the 80s. My most recent purchase—one of those robot vacuum cleaners. Only $200—what a bargain. Works OK, but the real fun is watching the dog freak out.
2. Online shopping. “They’ll steal all the money from your bank account”, Nana cautioned but the rest of world and I embraced internet shopping with gusto. I buy clothes from the US and UK and have them delivered to my house for free. I think of the deliveryman as Santa bringing me lovely gifts once a week. I buy my makeup from Hong Kong where I pay half the price, get a 10% and more free delivery. God bless you strong Aussie dollar.
3. DIY Travel. I make all my own travel arrangements when I fly overseas. I do lots of research and find good stuff for cheap. I pick my airplane seats online. I don’t use travel agents anymore. The last time I used one resulted in a very dodgy hotel in a male enclave of Dubai. Blonde female? Muslim? Attention for all the wrong reasons.
4. Smart phones. Do you remember when a Filofax was the in-thing for any businessperson? You put your contacts, appointments into a hideously expensive organiser, which resulted in RSI as you lugged it around. Now it all goes on to the phone. The internet is there too. Genius. Now you can look up porn on the bus.
5. E-books. I love a good read but have you seen how much books cost? And then you’ve got to find somewhere to store them which is fine if you have a shelf of Shakespearean works which make you look smart. Fantasy romances not so much. But books can be downloaded for a fraction of the price and stored the e-reader. Money and storage problems sorted. You can even read romance novels on the bus. No one need know you’re reading vapid crap because you look so clever with your fancy e-reader.  Image

This is my column for this week’s Gen X Girl weekly column published in Savvy Magazine in the Townsville Bulletin

I’m in the midst of a relationship breakup. Well, we haven’t broken up yet, but I’m thinking all the signs are there. Neglect, indifference, lack of regard for welfare—classic signs of a relationship on the brink.

Actually now I’ve got all that off my chest I think it’s fairly clear. There is no future for this relationship so Facebook, I’m breaking up with you.

I will accept a bit of the blame for the failure of our relationship by admitting that my intentions for joining Facebook were not entirely in the spirit of social networking. I just wanted to connect with my daughter while she was overseas for six months.

It worked just fine for that, lots of tame scenery photos. You’d think that she was quite boring but I could only friend her on her fake Facebook page. Apparently the real one has too much information for my delicate senses. More likely she didn’t want me to know what she was up to. I respect that. I don’t want to know either.

Along the way I picked up lots of friends of my own. The only problem is that I don’t have any real interest in knowing what they are doing. I don’t have the time to check out their pages when I accept their friend requests. I don’t know whether they are married, have kids or where they work. This makes me a very bad and selfish Facebook user.

In the beginning though I did try to give it a go. I’d try to make witty comments on posts, say nice things about people’s photos, the usual and then, well let’s say I couldn’t be bothered. I think I might be too self-centred for Facebook. Or too busy having real relationships with family and friends.

The email account that is attached to my Facebook page hasn’t been opened for three months—that’s how long it is since I’ve accessed Facebook. I just know there will be hundreds of email alerts with things like friend requests, birthdays, comments on my page and I just can’t face it. The thought of seeing all those emails and knowing that I should deal with them sends fear into my soul. Really a breakup is the only option. The relationship has turned me into a procrastinator.

Anyway I’m not alone. People all over the globe are abandoning Facebook. This year has seen the takeup rate for first-time Facebook users drop. In the UK more than 100,000 Facebook users deactivate their accounts in May. In the US an estimated 6 million users did the same thing.

This disenchantment with Facebook even has a fancy name—Facebook fatigue. Dr Larry Neal, QUT Facebook expert (how on earth did he get that job?), says that the slump in usage is a “natural progression for any new technology or form of entertainment”.

“People are legitimately exhausted with it and the idea of having to maintain it and keep up with event invitations and the games that keep popping up in the feed,” he said. I hear you Dr Neal.

So Facebook, sayonara. And if anyone I know out there has sent me a friend request—I’m not ignoring you—I’d just prefer it if you gave me a call. Oh and happy birthday to anyone who’s had a birthday in the last three months. Image

Last night for instance.  He was complaining that the same stories were on the current affairs shows, complaining mind you, not finding something else to watch.  I asked for the remote which he passed to me, but not before he flicked to another channel. 

Now those of you who are more socially developed than me, or have not been married to a remote abuser for 500 years, may not see the big deal, but his version of the last word in his channel flick really gives me the shits.  Right then I wanted to belt him with the remote just like Rita Sharon Counts, the woman arrested for assault and battery with a remote control.

Anyway I’ve compiled a list of remote control belting offences which I’ve called the Rita Remote Act.

• Channel flickers who go through the whole gamut of channels without finding anything  and then start again deserved to be remotely belted.
• Having the last channel flick deserves a remote belting.
• Carelessly discarding the remote in, among, between or under the lounge chair cushions making it almost impossible to find is a remote belting offence.
• Removing the remote from the room where the TV is a serious remote belting felony.
• Hogging the remote when you don’t know how to connect it to the DVD, cable, change screen view etc deserves 10 lashings around the head with the remote.

What remote control offences do you think deserve a flogging? Image

But this time, they have surpassed themselves.  For a clever clogs Frenchman has designed the portable toilet.  Laurent Helewa designed the toilet in response to the Hurricane Katrina disaster where the aftermath left  toilets  a scarce commodity.

That’s very noble and all, but I can see a far more everyday use for them.  Take for instance, a music festival.  No more queueing in portaloos, you can just find the nearest tree, whip out your portable dunny and away you go.

What about a day at the races? Put a little fascinator in your hair, your nicest heels and coordinate the whole look with your own personal loo.  No more having to line up for hours only to find that there’s no loo paper left and someone’s peed all over the seat.

Since the French invented the portable toilet, I fully expect them to accessorise it—tastefully.  We’ve got iPad covers to suit any occasion.  Surely someone will invent some nifty little portable toilet covers that will go with any outfit.  I think the addition of a makeup mirror could be useful, as would some matching toilet paper and scented hand wash.

You just see.  It’ll revolutionise our lives. Image

My first response. God that’s a hard one. My second response. Your boss is an arsehole.

Do you think that Mark Zuckerberg or those rowing twins or whoever it was that invented Facebook realised what a can of worms they’d opened up? Probably not, because no one could really have predicted what a massive instrument for social interaction Facebook would become. And with that comes a series of massive problems.

Did you see that Australian government departments are considering banning Facebook at work due to the possibility of a Wikileaks problems? Or that the Australian defence force might ban Diggers from using Facebook because some soldiers have posted racist comments about Afghanis? Personally I think that’s quite a mixed message. It’s ok to go over there and shoot them, just don’t call them names.

Schools have placed student-teacher Facebook interaction on their code of ethics (don’t do it). That’s sensible. What right minded teacher would want the little blighters knowing what they were up to on the weekend?

Which takes me back to the original dilemma. Who wants there boss to know what they got up to on the weekend or at anytime for that matter? Think of the potential problems.

• your boss will know you’re not sick, just hungover
• your boss may see pictures of you drunk/throwing up/macking on with a random stranger
• your boss will know who your seeing
• your boss will know if you’re venting online
• your boss will know that your not really doing monthly reports as they can see you are actually on Facebook
• your boss will no longer have any modicum of respect for you

However if you don’t friend your boss you risk upsetting them and hurting their feelings which can lead to no long term good for the employee. Bad, bad boss for putting an employee in that position.

So said employee will find themselves having to do the following

• purge any incriminatory photos
• contact friends with tagged photos and ask them to purge
• defriend any questionable friends (ie criminals, drug dealer, company rivals, etc)
• only write happy and wonderful things about their employer
• never use Facebook in company time–ever, not ever again

I reckon the best solution is to ignore the boss’s friend request. Hope it goes away. And if you’re pushed just decline it. Your buggered either way. And do you really want to work for such a socially incompetent idiot? Image