izmeina | Snakes, freaks and sewer rats

Pssssssssssssst. Like to buy some Telstra shares? Very cheap. Special rates for mates.

After a most magical day, the Iz slinks into yet another nasty netcafe - this one with the very strange and most welcome quirk that some of the computers don't dump you into the black hole of oblivion when your time is up. Most peculiar indeed. So maybe the Iz will get lucky and get 90 minutes while paying for only 60.

So what's new in Izzieland? A gorgeous sunny day. Perfect for tiptoeing through the tulips. Or so the Izzie hoped. Silly Buggers have adverts in the paper just about every day and anouncing that there are courtesy buses going to and from a particular train station. But of course - it would have been too easy and simple to mention the times that these buses run in the advertisements. So the Iz arrives there around 12.30 and looks around in vain for signs of a pick up point or information of any sort. Zilch. After pottering off to the loo and back and wandering around the train station - finally finds an itsy bitsy picture of tulips announcing that the courtesy busses run Mondays to Fridays only going to Araluen at 10 and 11 am and returning at 1 and 2pm. Waste of time that was. It certainly ain't walking distance so we did what we should have done in the first place and got the train back to Cottesloe Station to visit the Capuccino strip on Napoleon Street followed by the absolutely gorgeous civic centre and sunset on the beach.

But nothing lost. Can try again next Thursday if the sun is shining and at least this time will know when the stupid tulip buses leave and return. Such a pity that no longer being a student means that we pay more than twice as much for an all day bus/train ticket and cannot buy one before 9am.

So, we spend a good two hours sunning ourselves sitting outside on the Napoleon St coffee strip and catching up on all the gossip. Oh and there was lots of it too. The one time contender who ran agains the Lying Rodent in last October's federal election has published his not so secret diary and is spilling more than beans. Nice nice man indeed. Lots of folks did not vote for Labour because they thought he was a flaky fruitcake and turns out they were most right indeed. Mr Latham is most entertaining and has a way with words - Izzie's favorite being the conga line of suck holes. But he has proved beyond all possible doubt that he is a low life guttersnipe with no class at all and while he is not as cunning as Izzie's favorite shit house rat - he does share one characteristic of never accepting responsibility for anything . The Prime Mendacious is a cunning little sneak but at least would have the class to never ever spread nasty paranoid stories about other members of his party. Or at least not to do it in such a way as to be directly attributable to him.
The guy had to give up his leadership position due to his own stupidity but spends his time blaming everyone and anyone for his demise and of course is totally blameless. It's kind of like reading bedtime stories by Paris Hilton.
Oh Iz so so loved the latest cartoon which shows him reading a story to his kids at bedtime "And they all lived unhappily ever after"

And then there was the delicious story on the radio about a certain very dangerous American subversive by the name of Scott Parkin who terrorizes and traumatizes innocent civilians by dressing up in a pig suit and calling himself Hallibacon or even worse a Cash Cow and allowing himself to be milked by one Dick Cheney. The mind boggles at such perversions. So disgustingly corrupt was this creature that he had to be deported from Australia and gets the privilege of paying for not just his detention but 3 air fares back to the States - his and that of two minders - probably from the SAS

Yesss. It's the ancient trick - be alert and very alarmed. Scare the citizens shitless and they'll accept any old crock of shit that you throw at them. Even in dullest Dursleyville there are posters everywhere on the buses and trains telling us "If you see something, say something" along with those ubiquitous "Be alert but not alarmed - dob in a deviant today" national security hotline adverts.

Like that resume that we keep saving for an rainy day, it just may be time for the Iz to dust off that application form and bite her lips while forking out a most precious 150 silver sickles for an emerald green passport. Even the state governments are jumping on this terrorism bandwagon and the police are granting themselves search and detain warrants that would be worthy of the 1930's. Izzie wonders how long it will be before we have ourselves a fire in the Reichst...oops Parliament House.
Oh and today on Australia Talks Back - the topic of the day was Stress in the Workplace. But that's a whole bunch of posts worth. Izzie is off to the union tomorrow with her photocopies of that infamous FLAME memo and the next roster. Izzie copped four night shifts with no consultation whatsoever as well as a 7-4pm shift on Friday 7 October. Most peeved indeed as we have had Thursdays and Fridays off for the last ten years and the Penguin knows that Izzie is not available that day - not to mention being rostered on to do night shift on a Friday where we accepted an invitation to a 50th birthday party about four weeks ago.
But another house elf - she is a single mother with a 13 year old daughter and the filthy scum have dumped her with SEVEN night shifts because she is a doormat and puts up with all sorts of shit because she is too scared to stand her ground. And they know she has a daughter but do you think they care? Whatever it takes to fill the roster and bugger the consequences.