This is from my weely Gen X Girl column that appears in the Townville Bulletin Savvy magazine.

So the most googled term in 2011—what is love? What a stupid search enquiry. Can you believe that we’ve turned into such an emotionally retarded society that we need to google one of our most base human emotions?

That’s not the only stupid thing I’ve observed this year. Start at the supermarket. Supermarkets have got so stupid that you now have to pay for the privilege of pushing dodgy trolleys around and then have the fun job of scanning and packing your own groceries all the while being bossed around by a voice from a box.

Add to that our limited supermarket choices. At my local supermarket there are only two types of diced tomatoes. Forgive me for sounding like an old person, but back in the day you could choose any number of tinned tomatoes, from fancy Italian ones that were actually grown in New Zealand to thick and rich ones with two generic brands thrown in for good measure. But now, so little choice amongst the canned goods.

Consider marshmallows? Bet that’s a situation that’s doesn’t regularly enter your thought processes, but this is my dilemma last week. I make this fancy little accompaniment to BBQ steak that is based on marshmallows (stop screwing up your face—it’s good). Anyway I like to make this dish from white marshmallows, but there is no longer such a thing as solo white marshmallows. They are mixed in with strawberry ones and peach flavoured ones. I can’t use the pink and orange ones as they make my fancy pants dish look like a bowl of vomit so I have to buy three packets just to get the white ones. And then I’m stuck with all these flavoured marshmallows. Who eats peach marshmallows?

Fixed light speed cameras are also stupid. Road toll statistics are at a record high in 2011. Coincidentally the Queensland Government has rolled out even more of these revenue-raising monstrosities. Simple math. More speed cameras does not equate to less road deaths. More speed cameras equates to more money in government coffers.

The passing of the carbon tax is stupid. Good old Australia is leading the way in stopping climate change by this year passing a tax that will make everyday necessities like power and food more expensive. We’re doing this because we need to make a stand. Never mind that that big polluters like the US, Russia and China aren’t doing anything at all, the Australian government is making a stand on behalf of the world. Oh and so is Finland and Costa Rica.

Actually the whole federal government is stupid. We have an elected government who is totally dominated by the minority party and independents that it needs to actually govern. Our prime minister by proxy Bob Browne gets kudos for the carbon tax, outing our real Prime Minister as a liar. Australia’s dominant legislation for 2011? Gay marriage and poker machine licences. Not the economy and asylum seekers.

These are just a few issues for stupid 2011. To be fair it didn’t look promising from the beginning with it being the year of the rabbit, the year of the flood and the year of the cyclone. But we did get some cool dates like 11/11/11. That was a highlight. Image

A few years ago I had to get a strappers licence. For those of you who do n’t know what a strapper is, I’ll explain. Strappers are the people who do the grunt work of looking after racehorses. They’re the people you see leading the horse around at the races. Not very glamorous, not well paid and I was only doing it to help out a family member.

So what’s that got to do with a prince and millions. Well doesn’t it seem a bit weird that I had to cough up for a police check to pick up horse shit, but New Zealander, Joel Barlow, claiming to be a South Pacific prince can waltz into Queensland Health and embezzle $16 million dollars? Where was his required police clearance. He had a criminal record but no one bothered to check, relying solely on the pseudo prince’s say so.

Actually the whole thing is comical, something like you’d see in an overacted movie of the week. Fake prince cons the big wigs of Brisbane society, spends money left right and centre, signs his name HRH, steals some money, gets investigated, is cleared of wrong doing, steals lots more money, has a big party and invite bosses, buys a kick arse unit, is discovered, disappears, gets caught after sneaking back into kick arse unit because someone forgot to change the locks, is found snoring (so unprincely) after a suspected drug overdose, faces charges.

Nah that wouldn’t float as a movie of the week. Too far fetched.

Anyway seems that our racehorses are better policed than the Queensland Health coffers. Image

This is from my weekly Gen X Girl column that appears in the Townsville Bulletin’s Savvy magazine.

Like a pre-teen girl to Justin Bieber, so is Julia Gillard to Barack Obama. That’s the only comparison I can make after last week’s touchy-feely visit from the most powerful leader in the world to our shores.

In fact I feel like chanting “Julia and Obama, sitting in the tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G”. And I wouldn’t be lying because that’s all they seemed to do. Get off the plane, double cheeked kiss. Official function. Kissy, kissy. Another function—pucker up. And if they weren’t all kissy, kissy they were all handsy, handsy.

There is one photograph of a back view of the couple where they have their arms around each other, with Julia’s hand drifting very close to the President’s behind. I may have just vomited in my mouth a little as I wrote that. It’s a bit like finding out that your parents have sex.

Anyway, it’s all terribly inappropriate. They’re world leaders not dizzy teenagers.

Julia behaved like the nerdy high school girl who scored a date with the captain of the football team. She’s all blushing and batting her eyelashes and setting the women’s cause back forty years. And Obama isn’t setting any kind of example either, constantly putting his arm around the Prime Minister. If this were the real world he’d be up on a sexual harassment case.

We couldn’t even count on Quentin Bryce to behave herself either. She looked for all purposes like a proud mother of the bride watching Jules pecking away at Obama’s cheek. But then I realised that she was just waiting for her turn to grope the President with the longest handshake in history—even longer than her Melbourne Cup presentation speech.

Quentin further brought into the hoopla by dashing home and changing from the lemon-coloured suit and emerging in an orange affair half an hour later. She was a veritable bowl of citrus. Is our Governor General a head of state or an Academy Award presenter?

To Obama’s credit though, he has made Jules glow like a giddy schoolgirl and heaven knows she needs a bit of fun with her opinion poll numbers. His aren’t that flash either.

Just an aside: did you know that they were both born in 1961? And that they send each other birthday cards? I’ll bet Julia actually goes out to the newsagent and chooses the cleverest Hallmark card she can find, writes a personal message, seals it with a kiss and sends it off. I think Obama gets his secretary to do his.

Back to the visit though. The first bloke, Tim Whathisname, knew that he was beaten. He didn’t even hang around to wait for a car to take him to The Lodge. He hot-footed it out of the lovefest with a comment that Obama was a good bloke. Smart man. Who wants to be Kevin Dillon when George Clooney’s in town?

Benneton have just had to pull an ad campaign that featured Obama kissing the Chinese president and the leader of Venezuela. Those images were photo-shopped and condemned by the US Government.

Silly Benneton, they just had to wait around till Obama visited with Julia. Kissing everywhere. No photoshopping necessary. Image

Not that I’m cranky about that–you know with people having to be really bad to be facing death and all. The concerned senator points out in his letter that the victims were never given a chance for a last meal so why should the murdering so and so be given the privelege. Fair.

Anyway this is what Brewer requested.

• Two chicken-fried steaks with gravy and sliced onions
• a triple-patty bacon cheeseburger
• a cheese omelet with ground beef, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and jalapeños
• a bowl of fried okra with ketchup
• one pound of barbecued meat with half a loaf of white bread
• three fajitas
• a meat-lover’s pizza
• one pint of Blue Bell Ice Cream
• a slab of peanut-butter fudge with crushed peanuts
• three root beers

Sounds like the sort of meal that a person convicted of a racist murder might order. But here’s the rub–he didn’t even have the manners to eat it. Perhaps it was remorse eating him up. Image

My own pregnancy ranks right up with the most horrible things that has ever happened to me. Nine months of all day sickness that saw me bedridden for a month and the short term ability to throw up in a rubbish bin or gutter without qualm. I can’t say I missed the smoking (because I don’t smoke) or the drinking (because I honestly thought that I had a very long hangover for the first week I was pregnant and never wanted to look at alcohol again) but I really missed the coffee. It wasn’t that I was even thinking about the effects of caffeine on my unborn baby–nope it made me throw up too.

Anyway 43 year old Carla is totally “fed up” while waiting for the birth of her second child. Actually I’d be pretty fed up with being called an elderly primagravida. It makes her sound like she’s ready for a bed in the local nursing home.

“The baby will be viable at any time from October 1,” the former model told French newspaper Le Parisien. Aurelien arrived on time, which means this could be a long wait, but I really do want this child so much.”

Okey dokey then.

I have visions of an induced labour on October 1, a packet of Marlboro Lights waiting by the bedside alongside a bottle of Moet et Chandon, a nanny and a night nurse.

There won’t be any photos though as Carla says that the birth of her child is “a totally private event.” But she may just have to trot out Sarkozy Jnr to give her husband’s French presidential  re-election campaign a boost. Image

I was in the bottle shop the other day when I watched a girl being chastised by the bottle shop attendant for passing her father a bottle of wine to put in a box. She just passed it to him mind, she was being helpful. She wasn’t drinking it, she wasn’t taking it away, she showed no interest in it other than to be of assistance to her father, like she would in say the supermarket or unpacking the dishwasher. The bottle shop attendant should have been packing the box, but she wasn’t because people were being helpful.

Why shouldn’t a child, in the company of her parent, not be allowed to assist that parent? As a society we like to sit back and say that parents aren’t parenting their children any more, but we have all these rules that remove those rights and responsibilities from those parents. She wasn’t drinking it, removing it from the premises, in fact doing nothing other than being helpful. And she got in trouble for it. Dad didn’t have a problem with it.

Think about all the bloody rules that exist or are desperate to.

There is a law being touted about identity cards for gambling (introduced by independent Andrew Wilkie as a payback for helping the ALP form a government). I am over 18. I am allowed to gamble by law and choice. But the government wants me to sign up for it. Why? I appreciate that there a problem gamblers out there but I am not one of them. I have actually never in my life played poker machines, but I should be able to if I want to. Why should I, and other responsible gamblers, be forced into using an identity card because some people can’t control themselves. Anyone over 18 is allowed to gamble by law. Why are the rest of us punished because some people can’t control themselves? What’s happened to personal responsibility.

It’s the same with plain packet tobacco products. What a stupid bloody idea. I am the government and I am going to take away all your brightly coloured toys–well that’s how it seems. Now I hate smoking, another vice I do not partake in. But if people want to risk lung cancer and stand out in a group in front of buildings like social pariahs then let them. Taking away coloured packaging implies that they are only attracted by bright and shiny things. As I said I’m not a smoker but I’m guessing that it’s more about the addictive properties of nicotine than having the most pimped up ciggie packet around. There’s a good piece of legislation. Have the cigarette companies reduce the amount of nicotine in cigarettes.

I’ve also had enough of that Carbon Tax. I didn’t vote for a carbon tax. None of us did. In fact Kevin Rudd got kicked out of the top job for that same tax. As in the gambling tax it was a priviso of the Greens support for the ALP forming government that a carbon tax. Never mind the stupid voters who apparently can’t think for themselves, can’t control themselves and are attracted by bright shiny things.

How come little bitty Australia down the bottom of the world is responsible for all the carbon? I am doing a fabulous job of reducing carbon already. I’m freezing my arse off in this chilly winter because I can’t afford the electricity bill to heat my home. Surely that’s got to count for something. I should be exempt from a carbon tax. I’ve done my bit. But no for my efforts my electricity bill will be further slugged when the energy companies hit me with their carbon tax contribution.

Australia and that economic giant Costa Rica will have a carbon tax. The US, no. Canada, no. China, no. They mustn’t emit as much carbon as we do. Or maybe they don’t have a minority party (that most of us did not vote for) dictating their government policy. Maybe Chile and Iceland need to have a carbon tax due to those erupting volcanoes. But you can’t tax a volcano can you? 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

You know that awkward time when, as a teenager, you realise that your parents still have sex? Well imagine how former British PM’s Tony Blair’s children must feel.

You could dismiss that a cruel, unfounded teasing, but it’s not. Tony Blair publicly made that claim. God, politician are such liars.

He wrote in his book, which was nominated for a prize for a Bad Sex Literary Award, the following about his relationship with his wife before the Labour leadership bid in 1994:

I needed that love Cherie gave me, selfishly. I devoured it to give me strength. I was an animal following my instinct, knowing I would need every ounce of emotional power to cope with what lay ahead.

Ewwww. Didn’t he realise that not only was the world reading it, judging him and pronouncing him a wanker, that his parents, in-laws and own children would be doing the same. How did they ever look each other in the eye over Christmas dinner?

Anyway Cherie’s into oversharing if this week’s statement is any indication.

Tony and I have been married 31 years and known each other more like 35 and even after 35 years he still excites me in all possible ways.

Still think you parents are embarrassing? Image

Anyway they do the trick, but imagine how insanely happy I’d be with Governor General, Quentin Bryce’s flower budget. Because the office of the GG spent $109,000 on flowers in 18 months and that’s just for home decorating. That’s a lot, isn’t it? But good on her for this year she’s cut the budget by 25% and is only spending $800 a week in the interests of economy.

She’s not stopping there however. She’s reduced the costs of wining and dining guests as well. The average cost of wine to the thousands of visitors that she entertains is $2.75 per head. See I don’t get that. I’d never pick flowers over booze. What on earth wine is she serving her guests? Chateau de cask? Actually that would make sense. She’s all about the aesthetic our GG. So I’m guessing that food and wine for the masses are not big on her agenda.

Travel is though. She likes a bit of international travel does Mrs Bryce. It’s really important that she get her face out there to promote Australia. Such a good job being done too. Wasn’t it only last year that Prime Minister Gillard had a doll dressed in the national costume of Austria. Good to see that international presence is so informative. Anyway GG has spent over half a million dollars in international travel. Good god, think of all those carbon miles. I hope faux PM Bob Green puts a stop to that. That is so bad for the environment.

Anyway stingy food and bevvie bills don’t apply to GG whilst travelling. Sh racked up a $90,000 bill for a three day visit to France. That’s right–three days. I could travel for a year on that. Still it’s not as much as the flower bill. Image