Sunday, August 28, 2011

What I’ve learned in the two weeks I’ve owned a smart phone

1. Smudgy fingerprinty touch screens are not made for people with obsessive compulsive tendencies. I spend more time trying to clean the screen than actually using the phone and have, on more than one occasion, used my knuckle instead of my fingertip to avoid smudges.

2. People who get out of bed at 4am do not benefit from being able to access the current temperature. You would think I’d learn from my mistakes, but I am a curious bastard.

3. Words with Friends should come with a warning about its addictiveness.

4. Words with Friends should come with a warning about its ability to make you want to want to stab a stranger in the face.

5. Words with Friends makes my phone do a vibratey alerty thingy when it’s my turn, and yes, I will wake up and deal with it in the middle of the night.

6. Getting a HTC instead of an iPhone makes nerds think I’m the shizz.

7. Auto correct makes your friends think you're rather odd, and is truly the devil.

8. It’s scary that Google knows where I am at all times. I was already paranoid, I don’t need this.

9. Having access to a decent camera means I will photograph all kinds of pointless crap then put it on Facebook and make my friends look at it.

10. I can’t delete the racist jokes my slightly racist friend sends me on occasion.

11. I can Google things to prove to people that no matter what we’re arguing about, I’m always right. Always.

12. I found out yesterday there are books on there. Actual books. And I’ve even heard of most of them.

13. I don’t care what anyone says, the game Teeter is impossible past level 29.

14. Despite having an addictive personality and zero willpower, I somehow managed to avoid downloading Angry Birds. For now.

15. People make fun of me less now (about my phone, anyway).

16. Seriously. The fingerprints. I’m not coping.

17. I still don’t really know how to use a smart phone.

Thursday, August 25, 2011

Now you’re just somebody that I used to know

If you haven’t read last week’s blog, go do that now, because this here be a sequel!

After last week’s blog, a certain someone decided to break his vow of silence towards me and said he’d be happy to talk if I wanted to. There was a lot of stuff I was confused about, and I needed some kind of reassurance that he was a good guy who just made some mistakes, something along the lines of ‘Sorry I lied to you and treated you like you were something I stepped in. I handled the whole thing really badly, and you didn’t deserve that.’ Sadly, this was not the result I got. Sorry? No, just selfish and capable of mass dickheadery (you’ve been using that word this week, haven’t you? Of course you have!). It turned out that ‘I’m happy to talk to you’ meant ‘I’m happy to talk to you on Facebook chat as long as you agree with everything I say and as soon as you start asking questions that I don’t have a pre-prepared bullshit answer to, I’m going to tell you I have to leave and delete you from Facebook. Because I’m classy like that.’ So those questions I said I was never going to get an answer to will forever remain unanswered. But the good news is I can listen to Adele again. I realised that Someone Like You doesn’t relate to my situation at all, not unless you replace the line ‘I wish nothing but the best for you’ with ‘I hope you get VD.’ Good luck to him. As if he’s ever going to find another girl with my wicked drawing talents. My manager, who gave me the lovely piece of advice about having pizzas delivered to his house, informed me that if you order from the Dominos website they will let you pay cash upon delivery. I think the ultimate revenge there would be the fact that Dominos pizza tastes like balls. Here’s how our Monday morning shift panned out: I can get pretty revenge-y, but never the ‘I can’t find a pulse’ kind of revenge-y. Also, I’m gonna be sOOper nice to that chick from now on.

This afternoon I was stuck at the traffic lights belting out the words to Alanis Morissette’s You Oughta Know, from her greatest hits CD that I felt the need to purchase on Sunday and take everywhere with me ever since, when I decided that she was truly one of the great poets of our generation. Then I decided my brain had officially given up on me and I needed to seek help immediately. I found this help at the bottom of a bag of potato chips.
What have we learned? Some people suck. Some people can’t admit when they’ve done something wrong. Some people don’t care if they hurt someone else as long as it means they get what they want. But we’ve also learned that some people are none of those things. Good friends, good chips, and Alanis Morisstte compilation CDs can lift anyone’s mood. And I have a lollipop in my mouth right now, so life is good. Gosh darn it.

Thursday, August 18, 2011

Modern Romance

(100 points to anyone who got the Yeah Yeah Yeahs reference. You can have those points. They're yours to do with what you wish. High five!)

Apologies for the lack of blog last week. I was planning to do it Friday afternoon, but on Thursday night, much to my surprise, I got my heart smashed into a million pieces by the only guy I’ve ever really loved. Needless to say I was struggling a tad on Friday. To add insult to injury, he chose to do this on a night when I had to get up for work at 4:00 the next morning. Via Skype. Because some people are classy like that.

Here’s how my sleepless night panned out:
10:00pm

1:00am
4:00am (aka ‘time to get up, fool’)

I got to work just before 6:00 with glazed and bloodshot eyes, looking like somewhat of a stoner, and told my manager what had happened, so she wouldn’t think I was a stoner. It was at this point I started to tear up again and had to go hide in the toilets for a while. When I came back I said that I’d be fine as long as we didn’t talk about it or play anything by Adele. She offered up this mature piece of advice:
Her: ‘Get a bunch of pizzas delivered to his house.’
Me: ‘But he’s in Sydney.’
Her: ‘So call a pizza shop in Sydney.’
So much wisdom.

My customer service skills were somewhat below average that morning. Don’t get me wrong, they’re not amazing at the best of times, but I can usually keep my fake smile on. Last Friday, I had absolutely no tolerance whatsoever for what I like to call ‘dickheadery’ (meaning: the act of being a dickhead).



Yeah. Inanimate objects can be dickheads too.

So that sucked balls. And it still sucks balls. I’ve got questions that I know I’ll never get an answer to, but on Tuesday, I woke up and I didn’t feel sick anymore. The whole experience has just reminded me that I’ve got an amazing family, wonderful friends, and a great ass. And isn’t that all a girl really needs in life?

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Ideas for short stories

Being a writing student is hard. Not because writing is hard, obviously I’ve got skills like a champ, but it’s the time management issue that’s holding me down. Coming up with ideas is the easy part. Like, really easy. My imagination is a smorgasbord of brilliance.

Here’s some of the genius that I have yet to pen. And no, you can’t have them. Intellectual property and copyright and whatnot says they’re mine.

IDEAS
Every time the protagonist does a good deed, he is hit by a wave of bad luck. He must decide whether to keep helping others and live with his curse, or turn to a life of selfishness and good luck. The decision is made for him when aliens invade and one of them eats him and he dies. The end.

A woman goes to the supermarket. She gets lost in the aisles and has to start living there. Then a steak that has passed its use by date becomes so rancid that it comes to life and it eats her and she dies. The end.

An old man gets out of bed on his first day of retirement and realises he doesn’t know what to do with all his free time. He wanders the house all day looking for small jobs to do. Then a grizzly bear that was living in his garage eats him and he dies. The end.

A young woman, who looks suspiciously like me, can’t stop buying books online. Her credit card comes to life and warns her against making another purchase, but she ignores it. The light fixture unexpectedly falls from the ceiling, pinning her underneath. Then some coyotes work out how to come to Australia and they hire a locksmith to unlock her front door and they break into her house and they eat her and she dies. The end.

Satan is bored in hell, so he gets a pet monkey. Then he eats it and it dies. The end.

Mr Potato Head is backpacking through Asia, hoping to ‘find’ himself. I find him instead and I eat him and he dies. He tastes like plastic. The end.

A weary traveller is shipwrecked and finds himself washed up on the beach of an island inhabited by a tribe of cannibals. They capture him and bring him to a big bonfire where they make him their god and he lives happily ever after. The end.