Joing the Army

As you can probably tell from the title of this entry, I'm in the process of enlisting in the army.

Actually, you probably didn't. The title implies that I have already enlisted. But I haven't. I've only made it past the first stage.

And what a stress that was!

Seriously!

I don't get stressed all that easily. I usually rock up to these kind of things all cool and collected. I don't even get concerned if there's some kind of nasty test involved. I breeze through it, and am like "whatever."

Not even the life/career forming year 12 exams fazed me ... except for the Indonesian bit.

But yesterday was different.

I was doing some serious freaking out about the tests. Even though I knew I could easily pass, I was still worrying. I've never had butterflies before an exam (except for the Indonesian oral exam, but that's understandable; I had to talk and get questioned in a foreign langauage for 20 minutes).

Butterflies before an exam are distracting. I don't know how people do it.

I must really want in the army more than I thought.

I also can't imagine that almost as soon as I signed in at the reception I was called into the nurses office. That was not something I was expecting. And it certainly didn't help my stress levels; my nervousness sky rocketed at that point.

But it was a none event. Just a colour perception test.

The maths test didn't help much either.

Maths isn't my friend.

Although at the beginning of the test, I thought that I might be able to bluff my way through it. But then my old enemy, triganometry, was introduced and my hopes were smashed. I have never been able to get my head around triganometry, and it's been five years since I even tried.

I had no hope of getting any answers correct.

I just wanted to run screaming from the testing room. It took all my self control not to do that. I was determined to finish that hellish test. Even if I was going to get everything wrong.

And finish it I did.

And the best thing is that I didn't have to wait long to find out how dismally I did.

Just a 20 minute wait.

And then a chat with my career counselor about my job preference and my test results. With above average results, I have a lot of possible job choices within the defence force, which includes my orginal prefence.

So, naturally, I'm very happy with that.

And now I just have a couple of things to do before I can go on through to the next stage of joing the army.

I'm sure that will be just as nerve racking as yesterday was.

2012

Well, here I am, talking (or writing really) about 2012 and the end of the world. Something that has been discussed to death already ... and I'm about to add to that.

But I've been watching a lot of docos pertaining to the end of the world, and I really don't like the direction my thoughts have been taking as a result.

Bleak. Very bleak.

And surprisingly more religious than expected, considering my lack of religious belief.

I'm sure you all know the story. It's familiar enough. 21st December 2012 the world is set to end. There's many different versions of this prophecy. But most of them seem to all say the same thing; the world as we know it will end (maybe not in as many words).

Like I said, we're all familiar with this prophecy ... so I apologize for repeating to you.

I was happy with that prophecy. "The world as we know it will end" is a pretty broad prophecy and could mean any number of things. And it doesn't necessarily have to be a negative end. It could be the dawn of a new age. And looking at how we've progressed age-wise, it will most likely be a positive end and an even better new age.

Scientists could crack the human genome, and completely eradicate all illnesses and diseases.

Scientists could make it to warp speed, and in our space travels come across Spock's relatives. New allies and mates!

Scientists could discover the lost city of Atlantis, and ... well, I'm not too familiar with the Atlantean myths. But from what I do know, cracking the human genome and getting to warp speed could definitely be possible.

There's any number of things that could happen that would end the world as we know it for the better.

But then I had to go and watch some religious based doco about the end of the world. That shook my nice warm and comforting beliefs about the 2012 apocolypse.

Suddenly I was thinking about 21st December 2012 in a religious context!

What would happen if Jesus did indeed come back to earth?

Would there be a rapture, followed by a war to end all wars for the poor souls left on earth?

If there was a war to end all wars, who would take on the role as evil?

Look, I know the rapture legend, ok. The truly Christain and righteous will get save and go to heaven, Jesus comes to earth and leads God's army against the army of the evil forces.

So it'd be natural for most people to say it'll be Lucifer leading the forces of evil.

But Lucifer probably knows about this apocolypse prophecy, and he's clearly not one to follow the rules. So why would he wait until most people have been taken to heaven before trying to harvest as many souls as possible?

What good would waiting until after 21 December 2012 do Lucifer?

And if he's planning an attack why wait? Wouldn't it be better to attack early and catch the forces of good by surprise. A sneak attack, if you will. It's right up Lucifer's alley.

So it can't be against Lucifer that Jesus' army will be fighting against. So who will they be fighting against?

I'm guessing the army of evil will comprise of every non-christain person left on earth. So I'm guessing it'll be quite a large army, (which is why Jesus' army will be facing such a bleak outlook.

Jesus will be leading a war to end all wars that will pit man against fellow man. Unless David and The Prophet Muhammad come back with Jesus and also preach the purest form of religion to those left behind; love. Not hate.

I'd like to say that these new fears of mine are baseless. But I can't. I can only hope that they are, and that my original thoughts about 2012 are correct.

And the worst part is that I have to wait and see.

I don't like waiting!

And I have 21 months of waiting ahead of me.

I'm just going to have to try and curb my imagination and stop thinking about 2012.

Josie's Day

Yeah, so my day was so uneventful that I have decided to write about my cat's day.

Another small step to dying alone and having my thousands of cats eating my corpse.

But, whatever. I'm still going to take that step anyways, because I'm crazy that way.

Josie's day (ha! Title drop), started off boring enough. Watching TV on the futon with me. Well, truth be told, I think she was sleeping most of the time ... and I think she was a little put out by the fact that I didn't go to bed.

She was eventually let outside, much to her delight. Although, she wanted to be let out at five am instead of 10 am.

Ok, I must admit that what she did while outside is a mystery to me. I didn't exactly follow her around. That would be truly sad. I have to assume that she went next door to do some hunting.

That's where she goes whenever she hunts.

And she came home with a not quite dead starling in her mouth.

And she was insanely proud of herself, and wanted me to tell her how clever she was and all that (but she already knew that). She kept prancing back and forth with the bird in her mouth, and letting it escape so that she could catch it again, thus proving just how clever she really is.

But then she somehow lost the bird.

I don't know how. It might have something to do with the fact that the starling wasn't quite as dead as it was letting on, nor was its wing broken like it was pretending.

All I know is that when I went back outside half an hour later, the bird was nowhere to be seen and Josie was sulking in the freshly mown grass.

I know, I know, it was a bird and Josie is a cat. Naturally the bird was eaten by Josie.

Let me tell you something, Josie plays with her prey for at least 40 minutes. And she has some kind of problem eating birds; if she eats them at all, she only eats the head and leaves the rest on the doormat.

So, no. The starling was not eaten by Josie. It escaped. Somehow. It possibly died a short time later.

Then, after a strenuous morning hunting and then losing her prey, Josie spent the rest of the day sleeping in them middle of the side yard, away from the dogs. She was only disturbed once, by a young family walking down the street.

Tough day at work for Josie.

When I went out to bring her inside, she wriggled up to me on her back, quite pleased with her efforts for the day.

Our House; The Haunted House

Yeah, so I'm beginning to get worried about this house. It's getting a little hinky here, I think. The two or more ghosts haunting the place are seeing to that.

I just don't know how long it has been haunted.

Weird things were happening here before I moved in. Those same weird things also stopped just before I moved in. Nothing weird happened again here until after Halloween 2008.

Our 2008 Halloween party included an excursion to the old Ballarat cemetary, where a very drunk attempt at calling up the dead took place. Since nothing actually happened, we poured some punch onto the grave as an apology for disturbing the deseased's peace.

Our peace offering wasn't accepted. Maybe we should've used something better than the very strong Res style punch we were drinking at the time.

But after the 2008 Halloween party weird things started happening in the house again. Nothing concerning. Just the TV or radio just randomly turning on in the middle of the night, and a door occassionally opening or closing for no apparent reason.

Pretty average stuff. Nothing that spooked us. But these events did make us aware that Horry had followed us home from the cemetary.

We've been ignoring his attempts to spook us since then. He's been about effect at that as the ghost in the toilet was until Pete Twist gave him a pep talk.

But now it seems that Horry is stepping up in the world of haunting; he can now flush the downstairs toilet ... don't know why he doesn't flush the upstairs one instead, though. However, this is more of an annoyance than spooky. It costs us money every time he flushes. Not to mention the water he's wasting.

Although the random downstairs toilet flushing can be ignored. What is really giving me cause for concern is that Horry seems to have brought back a few of his wee lil' ghostie mates with him from wherever he's learning to be a more effective ghost.

At first I thought I was imagining these spectres. I seem to be the only one noticing them, if the complete lack of my housemates saying anything about seeing them is anything to go by.

But then Tomas saw something. I don't think he's quite aware of what he saw, since he thought it was his cat Shego, until I pointed out that she was behind him, and not in my bedroom.

Yeah, the latest ghost sighting is in my room. So unbelievably not cool.

Last night, I kept seeing the top of the head of something pacing beside my bed under the window. Since I was half asleep whenever I saw it, I told myself that it was a sleep muddled figment of my imagination, and that was that.

Then, this morning Tomas was trying to get Shego out of my room. He apparently saw her moving in there, and told her so. Just after he said that, Shego emerged from under the couch in the lounge room.

So I have no idea what he saw in my room. Probably the same thing I was watching last night.

Needless to say, I have some concerns about going to sleep in there tonight now.

Centrelink. Again

As a Centrelink job seeker, I basically have to seek jobs, and accept any job that gets offered to me.

But if Centrelink themselves offered me a job in one of their offices, I think I'd have to risk losing my New Start Allowance and turn down the job.

Centrelink offices drain the spirit and soul of the will to live. It doesn't matter if you're a Centrelink employee or someone recieving Centrelink, you go in there and immediately become depressed ... not to mention the massive risk of contracting lung cancer from one of the many chain smoking dole bus.

Not even the flies have enough spirit to buzz around people's heads and annoy the waiting masses. Once they're in a Centrelink office, flies just drop to the floor or desk and just lie there until they die.

The government have tried to reverse the effects of the Centrelink offices (probably for the sake of the people working there) by adding some colour and funky posters. But that hasn't changed the fact that Centrelink offices are just massive grey holes. The new paint job the Centrelink offices have gone under have not worked.

Centrelink offices truly are the graveyard of of hope and the breeding ground for despair and depression.

The Octopus and Us

Hollywood was right!

Although not the reasoning. The reasoning was completely flawed. But that's not really important.

What the important thing is that Hollywood was correct when it first started to assert that we, the human race, should fear the octopus.

Yeah, that's right.

The octopus depicted by Hollywood we need not fear. The Hollywood octopus is nothing more than an oversized mindless beast of destruction. The exact opposite of the real world octopus.

Well, maybe not the oversized bit. I'm not entirely sure just how big Octopie can get ... I'm sure Hollywood is onto something with the massive size of their octopie.

But I'm rambling now.

We are right to fear the octopus.

And fear it we must!

Fear it!

I don't know if you know this or not, but octopie (that's correct, isn't it? Too bad if it's not, I guess) have nine brains. Nine! That's eight more than you and me combined!

(An octopus wouldn't have needed me to point that out.)

And you know that anything with that many brains has to be way, way, waaaaay smart.

An octopus has no trouble opening jam jars.

Jam jars are not something that naturally occur in the wild depths of the ocean!

Well, maybe in rock pools but not the wild depths of the ocean.

Octopie should not be able to learn how to open jam jars so easily. Jam jars should completely perplex octopie and leave them scratching their little octopie heads.

But even if a problem does happen to stump one octopus, all it needs is for one of its little (or not so) mates to know how to overcome the problem. Then it just has to watch and it'll learn just by watching its mate.

Yes. Octopie can learn by watching!

This leads to the question, just what are they learning about us right now?

It can't be too hard for them to watch us. We're not exactly very secretive when

we're at the beach or diving in the middle of the ocean. We're probably making it very easy for the octopie to observe us and learn our strengths and weaknesses. But not only that, but also how our technology works.

The only thing that's preventing an octopie invasion of the land is the fact that they clearly can't breath out of water.

Yet.

But it's only a matter of time before they figure out a way around this.

And then we're screwed.

So, yeah. Hollywood was right with their "Octopie are scary! Fear them!" assertions. Even if Hollywood's reasoning behind this is completely wrong, they're still correct.

Video Logs

I was thinking how much cooler would it be if I did video logs instead of these blogs?

I'd have to say pretty damn cool ... I was answering my own question just in case you were wondering.

But then I realized that these video logs, vlogs (what an ugly word) if you will, would get pretty boring if my vlogs were all in the same place (my lounge room) with me just prattling on about sweet fuck all.

I don't think I need to say it, but I will; LLLAAAAAAAAAME! (said in Shego's voice).

Yeah, no vlogging for me.

At least not yet.

I might just still do some vlogs in the future.

But only for something special, like road trips (or further). Then my vlogs might be more interesting. I'd at least have souveneers (I know that's spelt incorrectly!) to show the camera.

Sooo, until the future, my friends, keep on reading!

Writing About Not Writing

Grrr!

I am so frustrated at the moment.

I want to write. I even have some vague idea about what to write about. But as soon as I sit down to write and give some form to the vague ideas floating around in my head, I have no inclination to write.

I just procrastinate and end up just shutting my computer and watching TV ... a problem that I only really ever face when I have Austar.

I'm sick of this.

I want to write.

I probably should be writing.

Instead, I just surf the internet and then play solitaire. That is it. Nothing more.

I might actually open up Word and set things up there.

But that rarely happens. Even less so these days since I know it's a waste of effort (not time given that all I do is watch TV) to do so.

Now I don't even bother trying to pretend that I have every intention of writing something.

It's actually quite depressing, really.

I want to base my entire life and career on writing, and yet, I'm too lazy to actually do what I want to do.

I guess I've just got into the very bad habit of not writing when I'm on the computer. Probably should do something about that.

Hopefully this is a start.

High School Graduation

It feels like only yesterday that I graduated from high school. And I'm still pretty much doing the same thing now that I was doing then. But minus the studying at Uni part. I've come to terms with the fact that I ain't no academic.

I was kind of dreading the 10 year reunion, because of this complete lack of progress in my life. But I had plenty of time to change that and become some kind of rockin' super star and impress all the peeps in my graduating year.

Now I'm freaking out about that little.

I'm now on the wrong side of the five year mark to feel much confidence in this plan.

Yeah, it's been almost five years since I graduated from high school and kissed that part of my life farewell.

Really scary how time flies.

I'm just going to blink and the next thing I know, it's been another five years, and I'm facing the 10 year high school reunion. With nothing to show or, more importantly, brag about.

I'll just be some lame loser who hasn't done anything since high school.

That really scares me.

And I don't want to be one of those sad people who peaked in high school, because that's just sad. And I know I can peak higher than that. I didn't peak in high school.

I just can't have peaked in high school.

Maybe I can just rock up to the reunion and claim that I invented something mundane. Like post its! But something a little more recent.

Job Hunting

I don't know which is better for the hopeful job hunter; actually handing resumes to a potential boss in person, or applying online.

Both have their benefits.

I mean, actually going into a business and handing in your resume looks really good. It shows your keen and willing to do what it takes on the job. Real character building stuff.

But on the downside, applying in person means you have to look decent not only at the interview, but also when applying for the job. This isn't always so easy.

Where as, applying online you can just be doing so in your three day old undies, and your would be boss neither knows nor cares about your appearance.

You can also apply for a lot more jobs online than you can in person. But there's none of that face to face contact that proves just how much you want the job.



Oh, and also, you shouldn't be wearing three day old undies. You should wear a clean pair each day. It's basic hygene.