(Important point: I’ve been living in Ipswich a couple of years now, I’m known to most of the cabbies by now – a lot of them at least attempt to remember where I live)

Me: Evening!

Driver: Hi there!

Me: Oh, Madness!

Driver: *worried look*

Me: On the radio!

Driver: Ah. OK. *visibly relaxing* So, is it Charlie St?

Me: Nope, House of Fun.

Driver: *another worried look*

Me: Oh! No, NOT the House of Fun, wherever that is! That’s the name of the song on the radio. <home address> please.

Driver: Hard day, then?

When I breathe in cigarette smoke, my lungs go into spasms commonly known as ‘asthma’. This causes me to have trouble breathing for a couple of hours afterwards, which – thanks to the fact that only one of my lungs can actually provide oxygen to the rest of my body, stuffs things up even more than usual and makes me damn tired. Of course, I can take medication for the asthma, but that causes my heart to go a little nuts and – guess what? – that makes me even more tired.

Strangely enough, given this small health issue, hearing smokers bleating about their ‘right to smoke’ makes me want to scream abuse at them. No matter how much I try, I fail to see how a drug addiction makes a person’s rights more important than anyone else’s right to not be injured.

Wondering what brought on this rant? My local ‘mall’ (that’s a wide, paved pedestrian strip open to the sky with shops on either side, for my international friends) is being considered for a smoking ban. Well, halle-bloody-lujah, cos I hate having to hold my breath while walking to the supermarket just so that other people can have their right to smoke. Except people are fighting it, because it’s SO UNFAIR. You can probably guess what I think about that, right?

Get the hell over it already! Your right to smoke does not outweigh my right to breathe.

Ya know, I’m thinking about fighting for my right to have sex in the mall. After all, it’s far less dangerous to other people, promotes healthy exercise, and supports the government’s call to increase our population. Seems fair, doesn’t it?

So, I haven’t exactly been sharing much here lately.

Frankly, I’ve been working far too much and relaxing far too little… my weekdays recently have consisted of:

- get up
- drink coffee
- go to work
- work
- go home
- grump at hubby
- go to bed

And then my weekends have been dedicated to recovering from work. *sigh*

So, now that the projects (yes, multiple projects, cos I’m so special I can work on two projects at a time and, apparently, keep an eye on general quality being produced by the whole team at the same time) have wound down, and there are just bits of bugginess to fix up and small imperfections to carefully ignore lest they drive me mad, and the next two projects haven’t started yet… I’m in *cough* relaxation mode. Or, more realistically, slightly sane life mode.

*deep breath*

Where was I?

Oh yeah, explaining that life will get back to somewhat normal soon, and I’ll be picking up the balls I dropped, like this blog, and my twitter accounts, and stuff. I’m taking my time because I don’t want to end up in a shredded ball of stressiness, but @onlinefiction and @openebooks will be back online soon. And look, I’m actually writing a blog post instead of just posting some ridiculous lolcat or ranting at various government departments!

Thanks for the patience, anyone who’s still reading.

MWAH!

Safety Warning: Don’t read this while driving a train

Dear Queensland Rail,

May 1000 syphilitic, diarrhoeaic camels trample through your offices, dripping green pus and yellow poop over your pathetic paperwork. Or, worse, may you be consigned to an eternity of riding your own pathetic excuse for a public transport network. That’ll learn you! Or at least, it would if there were anything remotely capable of ‘learning’ in those empty spaces between your ears.

Yes, I am a tad disappointed in your service. It’s not the actual breakdowns. These things happen – even if it takes a klutzoid QR-approved contractor to break QR lines twice in as many weeks. But still, they happen. And most organisations of your type, recognising this simple fact, put Plans into place for dealing with possible issues. Like, cut power lines and live electrical wires falling on the track. Most organisations learn from experience and plan for fast-as-possible recovery. And hey, maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe there’s a Plan in your offices that says, “In case of service breakdown, dither. In case of major problems, organise buses, then stick head up arse”. Is there?

Let me be more specific. In the first incident two weeks ago, QR repeatedly assured me that a train would be along in 30-40 minutes. Three and a half hours after my train was due, I got to work. In the second incident less than a week later, to be fair, I didn’t stick around after I heard, “at least an hour delay” and “organising buses”. Fuck, I thought, QR would have trouble organising an arse-wiping. So I hitched a lift with a complete stranger. Yes, that’s right. I have more trust in a complete stranger than in QR to get me home unharmed. The third incident? Boy am I glad you asked. Last night I heard before leaving the office that the trains were out but buses had been organised. Right, I planned ahead (food, extra clothes, pillow). I arrived at Milton station at least an hour after the first warning went out. No signage informing potential passengers of a) any problem with the trains or b) where the hell to catch a rail bus. Sigh. So I went to what I considered the most likely location for a rail bus to turn up. Was I correct? No idea. A 470 came along and I leapt at the chance to get to Toowong, where I wouldn’t need signage to know where the rail buses would be (and no, there wasn’t any) and also had businesses open in case I needed to spend the night. I got to Toowong and lo and behold, found a rail bus. Eventually. Hopped on. We trundled along, stopping at Sherwood to ponder how the hell to get to Ipswich when the boom gates at Sherwood were stuck in the ‘down’ position. That small, completely unforeseeable (*cough*) problem eventually navigated, we trundled to Darra. Where we were informed that a train for Ipswich had just left. Dear God, what person in their right mind would expect QR to use the ‘connecting service’ concept for its rail buses??? With many cries of “You’re kidding me!” and “QR are a pack of incompetent dickheads!”, we sat down to wait. And wait. And… you guessed it, wait some more. The news that a train for us had just left Ipswich did not, believe it or not, fill us with joy or gratitude. Especially when the statement ’stopping at the platform over there to drop off passengers’ was mentioned. WHAT? You sent the effing thing all stations??? You utter, utter bastards. That surely takes incompetence into ‘malevolent’ territory. Let me summarise the rest of the misery by saying that three and a half hours after arriving at Milton station, I finally got home.

In closing, may I just reiterate how much I appreciate QR’s willingness to stick its collective head up its collective arse and scream, “I don’t see how it’s my fault!”? Not at all, that is. In fact, I’m a little fucking annoyed.

____________________

Dear Reader,
Feel free to copy this and post it on your own blog, website, newspaper article, email it to all your associates, whatever.

Those who can laugh without cause have either found the true meaning of happiness or have gone stark raving mad.

Norm Papernick

Some day, I’ll find the time and energy to actually write posts.

Until then, it’s pretty much lolcats and ranting. And occasional boasting.

Speaking of boasting! My blurb for DEAD(ish) got the thumbs up over at the e-Fiction Book Club. They’re talking about blurbs – that paragraph or two which, on a paper book, would be on the back cover – and what to put in one.

I just got this from Target:

Holy crap, those are some of the most hideous clothes I’ve seen in decades. The best of the bunch looks like a cut-down muu-muu.

I must admit, though, that Target’s decision to add horizontal stripes and floppy bits to plus-size clothing is inspired!

By Satan.

Let’s not even get into the blue eyeshadow and circles-of-blush cheeks.

Clearly, Target’s new range is all about encouraging women to lose weight fast so they can fit into clothes that DON’T scare small children.

I’m grumpy.

Not that I’m THAT keen to actually sell (as opposed to give away) DEAD(ish), since I honestly don’t think my writing’s at the stage where it’s worth paying for… but FFS, what’s with the American-centric attitudes in the companies out there? Amazon is US-authors-only. Scribd is free for anyone, but if you want to sell stuff? You guessed it, US-authors-only. Although to give Scribd credit, they’re only in beta.

This is really a whine, as opposed to anything vaguely useful. I’m proudly Aussie, my writing is proudly Aussie (although not lousy with kangaroos and koalas and “G’day mate”s), right down to the odd spelling and weird names for stuff. I don’t wanna be American. I’m sick of companies wanting to be ‘global’ and yet demanding I be American to get involved. Stick it up ya pipes!

This describes me perfectly today: