How About Incentive to Actually Get Work?

Yeah, so. I don't know if you're aware of this little fact or not, but I'm currently enrolled in a pre-employment program that lands me a guaranteed interview at the end of it.

So yay me for that little achievement.

But it's not in Ballarat.

I have to travel to Melbourne every day to get to class.

It's not too bad, even if it is a little costly for someone struggling to live off Centre Link.

But no worries, right? As part of my Centre Link conditions I now have a job employment agency to help me out. And as it turns out, job employment agencies supposedly help people with them with these costs.

So I took myself down to CVGT to see if they'll help me out with my train fares, because that extra $90 is everything when you're only form of income is the pittance Centre Link pays.

Turns out that my employment status isn't urgent enough for CVGT to be able to help me out. As a Stream one person, the government is more than happy to punish me for being unemployed, but won't help me with costs for finding work.

It's as though they secretly want people to remain unemployed for as long as possible. At the moment it feels as though I should just drop out of the course I'm currently in and wait until I'm in a higher stream and am guaranteed the financial assistance that I so desperately need.

The way things are currently, I really can't see any benefit to doing this course if I can't afford to buy food. I feel as though I should just wait until I'm in a more urgent stream before continuing with this course.

I thought the government wanted to lower unemployment, not encourage it.

If they were really serious about lowering it, they would have the lower streams getting the financial aid, instead of waiting for the doll bludgers to reach a really urgent stage of unemployment before handing out financial assistance.

They should be rewarding people who actually go out and actively do things that will help get them a job.

But this would, of course, mean that the government would actually be thinking about something and doing it effectively. And we all know that that's impossible.

At the Movies: Black Swan

After all of the hype surrounding Balck Swan, I was expecting it to be a bit of a let down.

Let's face it, much hyped popular movies are usually never very good and made for stupid, stupid people.

Not Black Swan.

In fact, the hype wasn't really adequate enough. I don't think there's enough hype in the world to adequately prepare a person for Black Swan. There's just so many twists and turns. So forget about trying to predict what's going to happen, because YOU WILL BE WRONG!

It was refreshing to see a movie that was completely unpredictable.

Although, I don't know why people were suggesting Lily (Mila Kunis)was a figment of Nina's (Natalie Portman) imagination.

Lily was real. Nina may have imagined a lot of things, but Lily was certainly not one of them.

But that being said, I think it's very possible that the darker, more twisted Lily who was out to get Nina was a figment of Nina's imagination. A manifestation of Nina's darker side and her desires ... though, Lily could well have been after Nina's role. I'm still unsure about that.

After many twists and turns, Black Swan appeared to be dark, sophisticated horror movie. It had me cringing in horror more than once, and by the end of it I felt much like Nina; unable to trust my own mind and unable trust what I saw.

Black Swan wonderfully portrayed the pyschological breakdown of a person. It had me appreciating my own sanity very early on.

But I'm glad I didn't end up deciding to watch Black Swan when I was home alone over the weekend. I'm pretty sure my housemates would've come home to find me hugging my kness, rocking back and forth on the couch.

Although I think that I need to watch it again and pick up some of the finer points that may have been during last night's viewing.

Damnit, Centre Link

I though that Centre Link was meant to help us poor, struggling, unemployed people.

Ok, ok, they say that. But everyone knows better. Centre Link doesn't help us. It just makes our lives harder, and they give us a pittance for selling our souls to them.

That's the reality.

But Centre Link has made a pretense of actually helping us in the form of advance payments.

However, these advance payments are not all that helpful!

For a start, you can only get one every 12 months. So if you're in a tight spot financially, that bonus $500 is a god send. But what about for the rest of the 12 months after that? What if you run into another tight spot financially?

Well, you can't turn to Centre Link for help if it's been less than 12 months. Even if you have already paid off your previous advance payment debt, which is ridiculous.

If Centre Link really wants to appear like they're helping people out, the advance payments should be available to people as soon as they're previous advance payment debt is paid off. Or at the very least, after six months.

Then maybe people (me included) wouldn't bitch so much about how much help Centre Link doesn't provide.

Routine

Today while walking out of Spencer St Gloria Jeans I was struck by the fact that this pre-employment training has only been happening for a week, and I already have a routine that I don't want to break.

Even if it means an earlier cold start in the mornings.

But it's relaxing get into Melbourne an hour before class starts and spending time in there sipping on my coffee and reading the paper. It's made even better by the fact that by the time I get in, a few people have usually left their papers behind and I get my choice.

I'm so settled in this routine that I was actually kind of lost over the weekend without my Gloria Jeans coffee and paper in the morning.

It's kind of worrying how quickly I settled into that routine.

I've always thought of myself as unpredictable and routineless, Guess I was wrong about that. I guess that everyone needs a routine to get through life.

How depressing.

But that's why people always baulk when there's change to be had. I guess human beings need routine to get through life.

Yeah, It's Definitely Time to be Concerned

I think I have figured out the earthworm's powers and how they're going to take over the land ... or Ballarat at the very least.

I'm pretty sure that these freakishly long earthworms have the ability to control the flow of time. It's important to bear in mind that this might be a power possessed by all earthworms. Not just the Ballarat ons.

I don't really know how they control the flow of time. I just know that they do control it.

Don't believe me?

Well, you're a fool ... but that being said, I'll explain the process behind the statement so that you don't judge me as a crazy person;

Last night (or this morning) I went to bed a couple of hours before sunrise. Being an insoniac who stupidly didn't do any physical activity to wear myself out, it took me a long time to go to sleep even though I was tired as. I was lying there for at least an hour and a half before I started thinking that I should start hearing that damned rooster crowing and seeing the beginnings of sunrise.

But the rooster never crowed (that's got to be a first), and the sun didn't rise.

I know, I know. You're probably thinking that I drifted off to sleepy land at that point.

Well, I didn't.

I don't go to sleep that easily.

I actually lay there for a long time in the dark, hearing no rooster crow, nor any sign of the beginnings of sunrise.

Somehow the earthworms had slowed the flow of time around me!

I don't know why or how.

Although I suspect they have little miny ray guns that they point towards a target. Nor do I know why they would want to slow down the flow of time, unless it were to speed themselves up for an attack on us ...

Oh!

Maybe they were testing out their time ray guns on me to make sure that there were no ill effects to suffer!

Those bastards!

Even though I know it was built out of hate blinded by fear, I think I need to start working on my own version of a Master Mold to deal with these slimey creepy crawlies. That will send them a very clear message that I'm (by which I mean humanity) not to be trifled with

Here's Another Reason

Ok, so after my last blog entry, I have been doing some reading up on earthworms. Mainly because of the blue earthworm picture Google presented to me. And I have decided that there's another reason why we should be worried about the earthworm threat; there's 650 species of earthworms native to Australia. Who knows how many more that have been introduced (I'm sure I could find that out if I bothered researching further).

I don't need to tell you, that's a shit load of earthworms crawling around under our feet.

And yet, no one seems to be worried about them.

Although, I must admit, I'm not sure if I scared of or just intrigued by the Terriswalkeris terraereginae species. They are blue and quite large. And I won't deny that I want to see a real one instead of just a picture of one. But when I see it, I'll probably want to kill the damn thing before it gets me ... something that colour just has to be poisonous.

But after seeing the picture of the blue earthworm, I could help but remember an incident when I was a kid;

I was in the sandpit, digging a whole with the family dog, Minnie. All of a sudden, Minnie froze and stared at something in the whole. Naturally, this piqued my curiosity (and it would probably have the same effect on me now), and I had a look myself.

Inside the whole was a whole lot of brightly coloured earthworms. Not your average, run of the mill pinkish ones. But bright green, and blue and orange ... I'm sure there were a couple of other colours but I can't remember what.

Now, seeing these brightly coloured worms in the sand I did what any kid would do in that situation; I picked them up and put them in the tray of my small trike to keep them safe.

By the time I thought of showing them to mum and dad a couple of days later, they were all dead and tried up (I didn't give them any sand or dirt to live in and it was late spring). Neither mum or dad believed me about the worms colours and I was smart enough to know that the dried up worm carcesses wouldn't prove anything to them (at least I hope I was smart enough to realize that).

All these years whenever I've thought about that little discovery, I always thought that I had imagined it. I mean, I can't even say for sure whether or not I had a sandpit at the farm.

But now, after seeing the Terriswalkeris terraereginae picture, I'm not so sure that the brightly coloured earthworm discovery was imagined. I mean, blue earthworms clearly do exist!

But then the thought of me picking up such brightly coloured things fills me with horror; as I mentioned earlier; something that bright and colourful has to be poisonous. And I touched them!

So, that's just one more reason why earthworms should be feared; they have the ability to mess with a person's mind, and maybe even the ability to poison a person.

A Master Mold to deal with the earthworm problem is looking better and better with each passing minute. Master Mold would teach them to go against the natural order.



Sources
http://scienceblogs.com/zooillogix/2008/05/giant_blue_earthworms_and_frie.php
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earthworm#Australia

Earthworms

I know I've been banged on in the past about how we should fear the inter-dimensional travelling

bunnies, the squid and the monster under the bed, but I think I may have been wrong about them.

Well, actually, maybe not the inter-dimensional travelling bunnies and the squid; they could still pose a significant threat to us. However, I doubt that the monster under the bed is much of a threat to us.

But anyway ...

All of the above pose a threat to a certain degree. But there's something else that could pose a threat to us; earthworms!

Yeah, that's right. Earthworms. Or more precisely, the earthworms indigenous to the Ballarat area ... I don't actually know if it's just a Ballarat earthworm thing or just an earthworm thing in general. All I know is that the Ballarat earthworms seem to be going against the natural order (although that's how I feel about all earthworms).

I just went outside to throw out some trash, and was greeted by the sight of the largest earthworm I've ever seen. It was massive. Not quite Gippsland earthworm size. But it was up there.

Now some of you might be thinking that I may be over reacting to the sight of the massive earthworm at the front door. But you weren't there! You don't know what it's like. You didn't hear it.

Yeah, I could hear it.

I could hear this weird sound as it moved, trying to escape from sight and hide. It made this weird rattling sound each time it pulled its body along the cement ... and to confirm this I actually stayed and watched and listened to it for a few minutes. I wasn't imagining the sound. It was real!

Once I confirmed I wasn't imagining things, this got me to wondering. Mainly what was the earthworm doing at the front door so far from the dirt it's supposed to call home?

My only conclusion: it was trying to get inside the house! And that it heard me coming to the front door and decided to try and hide.

I don't know why it was trying to get inside the house. I can only assume that it wanted to kill every single living thing inside.

Why would it want to do that?

I don't know.

But I think it's time that people took the earthworm threat seriously ... especially so for the good people of Ballarat; the earthworms in Ballarat are definitely larger than your average, and actually makes an audible noise.

It's time people did something about these unnatural beings, just like Senater Kelly and Warren Worthington when they felt threatened by the mutants. I'm not suggesting that we build an AI unit like Master Mold (two simple reasons for that; building AI always backfires when the unit gets smart enough and Master Mold destroyed humanity in its bid to destroy the mutants).

But it's only a matter of time before the earthworms rise en mass and take Ballarat for themselves. Something needs to be done, and soon, or else Ballarat (and quite possibly the rest of Australia) will become the new domain of the earthworm.