Some dude down south was charged with (and I shit you not) discharging a missile after throwing a computer hard drive at a bouncer's head. WTF?

A computer hard drive is hardly the stuff that the military are going to pack into their guns and shoot enemies with. Bullets are still cheaper than hard drives in bulk quantities, although I suppose if you're going to shoot someone, shooting them with a hard drive with a guns usual projectory force is going to do quite a bit of damage and they're a bit bigger than a bullet so the chances of missing someone are substantially reduced.

So charging him with discharging a missile strikes me as being incredibly humorous. He was charged with assault too; you'd think just being charged with assault would be enough, given that he actually did assault the guy, but apparently whoever wrote up the charges had PMS in a big way. It seems kind of stupid to me that if they're charging a dude who lobs some hardware at someones head with this, it would make sense to charge people who shoot and kill people with both murder and discharging a missile.

Anyway, I think I'm missing the most important issue here.....

Where the hell did a guy get a computer hard drive from in the middle of the night, in the middle of town, to throw at a guys head?

Earlier today a friend of mine mentioned that she had been introduced to fmylife - a collection of short little snippets of how much peoples lives suck. The jury is out of course on how many of them are actually true, but for the most part they're pretty funny so I tend to overlook that. I hadn't checked the site for a while and just spent the last few hours reading 42 pages worth of interesting things, some of which I may even use as plot devices in a book, they're just that good.

As I was reading, I started wondering what my classic 'bad day' story is. I actually have several of them truth be told, because A) I'm the kind of person that random crazy shit happens to, and B) I have 'interesting' (read: dubious) friends around whom all sorts of shenannigans occur. The best one however must be from about 4-5 years ago and was the first one I thought of when I thought of having a really bad day.

Once upon a time I wasn't feeling very well, I was very tired and I had to go to work very early. I got dressed, got in the car and headed off to work which was very conveniently quite a long distance away from my house. About halfway there I realised I wasn't wearing any shoes. PANIC! I immediately turn off the main road onto a side road and then onto another side road where it was safe to park.

I popped the boot to my car. As anyone could tell you, I'm famous for leaving my shoes in the car. I had just cleaned out the car but I remembered seeing a pair in the boot. So out I hop, shutting the door behind me so an oncoming car doesn't hit it, and I check out the boot. Shit. I'd taken them out. Oh well, looks like I'll have to go back home and get them I think to myself as I slam the boot shut and open the door. Fuck. It's locked. I've accidentally pressed the lock when I've gotten out of the car and because the keys are still in the ignition (!!) it's locked all the doors, which it doesn't do normally because it won't lock unless all the doors are closed - except if the ignition is on!

Panic stations again. It's about 6 in the morning, there is nobody around, I'm locked out of my still running car and my phone is on the passenger seat. What do I do? Something terribly clever of course, I cry. I still can't think of what to do and a random passer-by walking home from work asks if I'm ok and after relating the sordid story she lets me borrow her mobile phone and I call and wake up my still sleeping boyfriend (who was pretty grumpy) and asked him to come and bring me some shoes and his phone so I can call RACQ. For the record - I didn't know the RACQ number so I would have had to fart arse around trying to get it so I figured it would be easier to let the kind lady go on her way and not wrack up her phone bill by calling people to see if they knew what it was. The RACQ number was on the back of my RACQ card, tucked inside my purse, inside my still running car.

Ben showed up eventually, I had no idea where I actually was and didn't see any street signs when I called him to tell him where I was, so it's amazing he even found me at all. He brought me shoes. Yay. One problem solved.

Then I grabbed his phone and rang my dad. Dad knows everything. I asked him if he knew the RACQ number. He said to look on the back of my card. I screamed down the phone at him my situation and he laughed and then told me. Bastard knew it off the top of his head. Why couldn't he have just said that instead of being a smartarse?

I hung up on dad and called RACQ. Ben's phone went flat. Fuckity fuck. Now what do I do? Meanwhile, at least 40 minutes has gone by and my car is still happily idling away. Ben kept change in the front of his car (thankfully) so I grabbed some change and said I'd go find a payphone. I was parallel to a main road and I knew there were payphones scattered along it close to where a friend lived. I instructed Ben not to let anyone steal my car and off I trotted (wearing shoes) and eventually found a payphone a few blocks away.

First I called work and told them I would be late. Not good enough. I had to tell Jon exactly what was going on. I was treated to even more laughter. Then I called RACQ to ask for assistance. Turns out that my membership had expired the week before and I hadn't paid it (the bill was sent to my old address and good old Australia Post decided not to forward it even though I'd paid for redirection). The very helpful operator told me that I could renew my membership over the phone with my credit card and then they could send a car out to help me. I explained that my credit card was three blocks away in my still running car that I was locked out of. She had to discuss it with her supervisor because their policy is not to send cars out to assist people who aren't current members. Eventually they decided they would help me. Great.

I ran back to my car thinking that the day's troubles were going to be over finally. We sat down to wait since we were told it would be at least half an hour. As we were waiting a car pulled into the street and decided to park behind my car. The driver noticed she was blocking a driveway and decided that instead of moving up the street in front of my car she'd park as close as humanly possible to the back of my car and hit it. She got out, looked, shrugged her shoulders and walked off. Normally I'd be screaming blue murder at the bitch but I was just so gobsmacked I was actually lost for words.  The only saving grace of the whole incident was that I had been too lazy to take the bike rack off the back of my car after BMX the night before so she dented the bike rack and not my actual car.

Eventually the RACQ man showed up, let me back into my car and I went to work. Upon my arrival I found that Jon had told everyone in the building what had happened so the rest of the day was a universal 'pick on Kaitee' day.

Now how's that for a bad day? :p

166 pages of spam comments to delete?

Fuck off arseholes!

I make no secret of the fact that I hate birds. Birds are evil and should all be put to death. No amount of environmental activists wanting to preserve the species or idiot people telling me they are cute and harmless will EVER change my mind.

As far back as I can ever remember, I have hated birds. I don't remember where my hatred began or if it even began, I have a suspicion my hatred is inherent and passed on to me through my genetic code via my mother who hates everything (especially animals).

My brother had a bird once. He was just a kid and wasn't really good with the concept of regular feeding patterns and it died. It was noisy and irritating.  I wasn't sad.

My grandparents had a bird for a million years, since even my dad was a kid. It died too. It used to bite me. I wasn't sad.

Every single person I have ever lived with had a bird. All of them, except Jacqui god bless her wonderful soul, would let the vile creatures out of their cages and let them have the run of the house. Feathers would be everywhere. The little fuckers would shit all over my possessions. They would land in my hair and pee on me. They would swoop in and bath in my dinner before I could eat it. I can't even begin to describe the amount of self control I had to conjure up not to feed them rat poison or leave a window open. Someone (not me) decided to put one of them in the microwave as a joke. Whoops. He turned it on and fried it's brain. Then I had a zombie bird to contend with because it just wouldn't die. It kept on going for years and years and as far as I know it's still hanging around doing the zombie shuffle with a giant tumour on its eye (as a result of the microwave incident).

Today, leaving work: It's Friday. I'm happy. Yay, it's the weekend! I'm walking along the street in front of a large hotel chain listening to my ipod merrily skipping back to my car. Next thing I know my head is on fire because some fucking bird just swooped me and pecked my head. Then it turns around and dive bombs me again. I shriek and throw my hands up to cover my head. It dives again. And again. Four times. And the people parked out the front of the hotel are in their cars LAUGHING at me.

I HATE BIRDS!

Then some wankers on scooters nearly crashed into my car because they were riding next to each other, looking at each other and chatting away, zoomed around the corner and didn't notice my giant blue car STOPPED 50m in front of them.

It's all the bird's fault. I don't care if it's irrational or makes no sense. Birds are evil and will bring death, destruction and mayhem upon all who come across them. If that doesn't convince you, I was reading a book today called 'A Time of Justice'. In the book, an evil sorceress turns herself into a RAVEN and starts killing people.

Harbingers of DOOM!

Correct me if I am wrong, but Australia is a mostly democratic society. Sure we're technically held in thrall to that Queen chicky over in England, but it's not like she actually really governs us, except as a figurehead only. The question I've been asking myself lately however, is why is my government beginning to treat me as though my opinions don't matter and that my ability to choose my own actions is questionable and hiding it behind a facade of "protection"?

Firstly, Belgian Gardens State School in Townsville has banned children from doing cartwheels, handstands or basically anything that could be considered to be of a 'gymnastic' origin. Education Queensland, naturally run by the government, has defended the principal's decision. What a crock of shit.

It's a ridiculous decision for the principal to have made and I most certainly violently oppose it. What gives us the right to stop kids playing at being kids? Oh that's right. We're a litigation happy culture, that's why people are making stupid decisions like this, all because some stupid bitch got her knickers in a knot because her kid fell over playing tiggy or hurt themselves in an athletics carnival. It's all part of being a kid and growing up! Shit, if I had to count the number of times I'd hurt myself playing tiggy, in an athletics carnival, being naughty when nobody was looking or just being a kid it would be an integer of monumental proportions. I think I sprained/twisted ankles and wrists on average about once a month, broke a few bones here and there and fell over, cut myself and got covered in bruises somehow just about every other day. If I sued Education Queensland or my gymnastics coach every time I hurt myself I'd have single handedly bankrupted the state. And that's just me! If my brother Connor had done it he'd have bankrupted the entire country, that kid is made of stitches I swear.

Kids are kids and I reckon half the reason that teenagers today are such useless little fuckwits is because years ago the Government decided that mummy and daddy are no longer allowed to smack them when they're being shits because that's "child abuse" so we've got all these apathetic little twits running around with God complexes because nobody has been able to take them down a peg or two and properly discipline them. We all got smacked as kids, it sure as hell didn't do us any harm. It's how we train animals for God's sake - what dog or horse hasn't got a whack around the nose when they did something wrong?

So basically  we've taken away childrens rights to be children, and the parents rights to discipline them. I don't really want to contemplate what kind of monsters this is going to produce in the years to come.

Secondly, so-called 'experts' are all up in arms because Hungry Jacks have decided to sell a burger titled the 'Quad Stack'. Basically it's four meat patties, four bits of cheese, apparently only two bits of bacon (which kind of ruins the whole quad theme), BBQ sauce and a bun. No salad. That sounds fucking awesome to me, who routinely chomps a double bacon cheeseburger as a hangover cure with lots of refill post-mix coke. Oh yeah, I hate salad so I always make them take if off the burger and get rid of the tomato sauce and mayo because that's gross too. So people are now saying HJs are 'irresponsible' for bringing out an approximately 1100 calorie burger and that it's promoting obesity, blah blah blah. I call bullshit.

HJs are not saying "Everyone must eat this for dinner, every night of every day" are they? No. Is anyone attempting to force people to eat this burger? No. If you don't want to eat it, then don't fucking eat it! Go much on a carrot stick you miserable, calorie counting, shit-brained, do-gooders!

Thirdly, along a very similar line actually, I noticed today that for some fucked up reason the hospital I work for has decided to remove all their vending machines. One coke machine got replaced with one that stocks only bottled water in a variety of flavours. We don't even sell Red Bull or V in the cafe. Where the fuck am I supposed to get my caffeine fix from now? Coffee tastes like shit and if I want a pep-me-up I'll go a coke or Red Bull and a chocolate. But apparently the hospital is on this crazy "healthy initiatives" scheme and had decided to be a complete fucking nazi about selling anything remotely tasty. The staff kitchen has gone health mad and the public cafe has stopped stocking chocolate and has downsized it's softdrink collection. Where the hell has my freedom of choice gone? Oh yeah, it's a PUBLIC hospital, which means it's owned by the government who've taken it upon themselves to fuck up my life even more.

Seriously, I have the right to choose what the fuck I eat. I do believe I may have scared a few people at work when I loudly exclaimed that while stamping my foot in protest today. Luckily we've got a box of fundraising chocolates on the front desk, but apparently even that has been threatened with removal. If people choose to eat nothing but HJs quad burgers and die from heart attacks or obesity-related illnesses, so be it. If people want to eat nothing but rabbit food all day and make snarky comments at everyone who even looks at anything above 2 calories, so be it. And if you're like me and are somewhere in the middle, so be it. Allow us the choice at least and don't hide it behind the smokescreen of "acting in my best interests", because that's my job, not anyone elses.

Every time I read another story about some new restriction or new 'safety measures' or similar removals of freedom with a ridiculous politically correct sounding name I cringe in horror because the more I think about it, the more I realise that we really are going to turn into the society that Aldous Huxley envisioned. Technology will advance, everyone will be happy and healthy because that's what they're told to be and slowly any traces of freedom, creativity, innovation and individuality will die a long, painfully agonizing death. Huxley wrote Brave New World way back in 1932 and set the story in 2540, but I don't think it's going to be another 500+ years before we see his nightmare become reality if things continue as they do.

Imagine if you will a very busy main street in a metropolitan area or at the very least in the centre of what passes to be a city wherever you live.

Now picture lots of cars zooming down the street. There are no traffic lights on this section of the road so the flow of traffic is highly unlikely to cease any time soon.

Now picture a pedestrian crossing about 10m away from where you are standing.

Now think about crossing from one side of the road to the other.

Do you: