How am I supposed to push against my boundaries if I don't have any? Where's the challenge?...

"How am I supposed to push against my boundaries if I don't have any? Where's the challenge? It's like I'm Steve McQueen in "The Great Escape", except the Germans have let me out, given me a motorbike and an A-Z of Hamburg. " <-This sort of thing is why everyone should watch the show "My Family": it's British and cool.

So: it seems that I am completely unable to get up when my alarm goes off these days. Why is it so? I hear the alarm, I wake up, I know I should get up, but am completely unable to do so.

Possibly I ought to get to sleep earlier? Or even, I dread to even think it, cut down my caffeine intake? Hmmm...

In other news, Michael Jackson was today found Not Guilty of child abuse. I don't know about you, (since first of all, who knows who's reading this at any given time? You could be anybody... creepy, and second of all, lots of people disagree with me on this), but I kind of think that this is a Good Thing. Strikes me that the poor guy's just sort of strange and likes kids, (probably something to do with the whole Jackson 5, no real childhood thing, who knows) and that those parents have just gone "lets make a quick buck here".
I've certainly not heard anything that suggests otherwise.

And really, Innocent until Proven Guilty is one of legal axioms that I'm rather fond of. Truth, Justice and the not-exclusively-American-you-egocentric-bastards-way and so on, yes?

So it struck me that he was going to have difficulty getting a fair trial, everyone was going to have preconceived "Wacko Jacko" ideas, so you can't help feeling for him.

Thinking of celebrity scandal, What was with that Kylie Minogue breast cancer thing? No objection to her getting breast cancer, you understand, sort of thing that might happen to anyone, very probably happen to me one day, but really, all those people who "came out in support of her". Particularly the ones who, with uninformed and blase confidence, said things like "Kylie will beat this, she's tough and strong minded" and so on.

What? Are those people (men as well as women) who "succumb" to cancer just weak-willed and not trying hard enough? Completely out of line and meaningless guff, I rather thought.

Obviously that wasn't what they meant, but honestly. How would you feel if you'd just been told that your breast cancer was going to kill you within the month, and you heard people on the radio saying that Kylie would never stoop so low as to die of it? People really ought to think about the implications of their placatory press statements.

I think possibly I may have thought about this too much. Ahh... sweet Stuvac. Actually, I'm at work at the moment, so I can't study, so this is completely guilt-free. Apart from the being a Bad Employee thing, obviously, but bah! I care not for such trivial matters.

As of next year, it will be illegal to have no smoke alarms in your house. Feel that this will impact negatively in Newtown and Glebe, where incense burning is so popular. Also, worry about one in our kitchen: what about when we (reasonably regularly) fill our kitchen with smoke by making papodums or something? Our whole street will panic and fear for their safety and houses. That's the thing with terraces; one goes, they all do.

Conversely, now we're marginally less likely to die horribly as our house burns down for that very reason, so that's pretty much a plus.

Grrrr... Why is it that at work, the phones won't ring for half an hour at all, and then for the next half hour, there will be not less than 2 lines ringing? One of life's little cruelties. Big believers in the 'kick them when they're down' philosophy, the phone gods. Someone said to me just yesterday "call me if you get bored at work". How optomistic. The whole appeal of the blog is I can leave a sentence hanging for hours if necessary. I never have the chance to call someone and chat. You'd spend half the conversation on hold, and no-one enjoys that. Also, friends never appreciate it when you pick up the line that they were patiently (geddit?) waiting on, and say stressedly "sorry, what was your name again?" or "and what time was your appointment?".

My job is pleasantry exchange, but it's highly intensive pleasantry exchange. Not for the faint of charm. Or, you know, short tempered. Which might explain why evry time in recent memory that I've been really irritated has been a Tuesday. All my patience gets used up on people who ring up and ask stupid questions, or questions to which I couldn't possibly know the answer, like "how much will the anaesthetist cost?" (and don't even get me started on people who pronounce it "anaethetist". There's an s in it. There's a reason for that s. Anaethetist is not a word. It's very simple, practice with me: "An. ees. thet. ist." 4 simple syllables.) and "I just had a blood test 2 minutes ago: what was my result?".

The most classic of these examples was this one woman who called and asked dim questions, which I answered, than called back later, and even though I had told her who I was, said "Could you please answer these questions? I think the young girl I was speaking to before was confused." And I was like "riiiight. Hang on for a second, I'll just put you on hold."

Silly bint. If you're going to backstab someone, at least make sure you aren't actually addressing them.

I really do like the expression 'silly bint', though. Rather nifty, and with bonus overtones of britishness.

Also: Yay for Nudie juices. (a) they're yummy, and (b) afer they burned down last year, no-one was hurt, and so in gratitude, any firefighter who shows up in uniform to Nudie headquarters gets 2 free nudies. I think that's kind of cool.

Yay also for the emergency services, bless their little flame-retardent cotton socks.

Hmmm. the word "cotton" looks all wrong, suddenly. Strange...

This post looks worryingly rant-y. I don't mean it as a rant. I just had a series of loosely related thoughts, that's all, honest.