Christians Against Dinosaurs

Poor T-Rex can’t catch a break. bastardised for his taste in food, given small, useless arms and now being attacked by Christianity.

Yep, this exists. There is also a Facebook page called ‘Christians Against Dinosaurs.’ I couldn’t help but laugh. Check this link too for a best-of collection. 🙂

Last night, my partner showed me a post from a concerned mother ranting about the impact dinosaurs are having on her children. Dinosaurs are evil, apparently.

So, true to Christian form, she burned her children’s dinosaur toys at the stake. Well, stake not included, but you get the idea. She burned them good and proper. Need to make sure they don’t come back to life right, a dinosaur zombie apocalypse is the last thing we need. Better pray on that tonight.

In all honesty, I apologise to any of you who are religious, I don’t mean to offend you. But seriously, what did dinosaurs ever do to Jesus? Or is ‘dinosaur’ really a codename for Jews?

Either way, wow, there are people out there who debate the existence of dinosaurs. Fuck man, to quote the late great Bill Hicks, ‘I think you were put here to test my faith dude.’

You may also be happy to know, like I was, that there is a somewhat dinosaur revolution going on against their oppressors. Another Facebook group exists, ‘Dinosaurs Against Christianity.’ I am now a member of it to show my support for the T-Rex’s noble cause. That is, the right to be recognised as a legitimate part of history… Just like Jesus is… Umm no, sorry bad joke.

To all the dinosaur skeptics out there, let me make one thing clear. There is NOTHING in the Bible that says Jesus WAS NOT a raptor. Nothing, not one piece of evidence. He may very well have been a raptor, or maybe a T-Rex. Or maybe just a religious allegory for the ‘sun’. Who knows. Just throwing it out there.

Viva La Dinosaur’!!!

The Book With No Pictures – Why So Serious?

‘It might seem like no fun to have someone read you a book with no pictures.’

My partner’s creative internet trolling has once again produced the goods. A while back, she showed me a YouTube clip about a kids book called ‘The Book With No Pictures.’ The clip shows the author BJ Novak (from The Office) reading the book to a large group of primary school kids. After watching it, we simply had to find this book.

About a week ago we stumbled upon it in a local store. Awesome, it was snaveled up quickly with excitement.

Our little man had his first taste that afternoon. We usually take turns reading to him, but mum has been the flavour of the month for a few months now so I have been sitting on the sidelines. So, she read it to him. And then, I read it to him. And then, she read it to him before bed. And then, nanny read it to him. And then, well, you get the idea.

This book is amazing. What a fantastic idea. Given, it does require a certain level of commitment by the reader so the words have full effect, but it is more than worth it. At one point in the book you ask, ‘Can I stop reading now?’, this is met with a resounding NO by the little man.

What makes that resounding NO so awesome is, the book actually anticipated, and printed ‘NO’ immediately after the question. The book has a unique way of engaging kids, although we have not yet seen the results, but I do think it is a good way to introduce reading words. NO he says, look dude, it says NO here too, and so on.

Critical analysis of children’s books is not really my thing, but I will frain a guess that by removing pictures for our little one tracked minded friends, the enjoyment of the actual ‘story’ is much more effective. Sure, we read kids novels to him at times, but they lack the simplistic humour that The Book with No Pictures has. truly brilliant.

If you have not already done so, please go check it out. 🙂

Hey guys, What is Fisting? – Cards Against Humanity with a Pre-Teen

We must be getting old, something I tell myself more and more in recent times. Last year, we went out for a few drinks, only to return home with some friends about half an hour later to play Monopoly instead.

I used to enjoy going out, when I was in my early twenties’ I was out most weekends, now I look around and think, damn, I am ten years older than the median age here…. Time to go.

On that note, my partner and I decided to start a monthly games night at our place. We both love our board games, card games and that sort of thing, and a few of our friends also do. What we all have in common is not having fun standing around a bunch of drunk teens at the pub. Times have changed.

A few weeks ago we had one such night. However, we also had my sister-in-laws son over for the night. He started high school this year, I for one think he is far too innocent to be in high school. Time for an education…

So the sister-in-law drops him off that afternoon, and we mention we are having some people over to play a ‘card game’. Said game is commonly known as ‘Cards Against Humanity‘. For those of you that know it, I hope you enjoy it as much as I do. For those that don’t, at this point in this post you need to answer the following questions:

1. Are you easily offended / do you take offence to bad, bad, humour? If so, please stop reading. Now.
2. Are you religious? If so, please stop reading. Now.

Well, we did the responsible thing and told her that we would be playing this game. My partner said something along the lines of, ‘we will put a movie on for the kids, he shouldn’t be playing this’….

Hah… I answer, ‘Nah, he will be fine’. On that note, sister-in-law gives the go ahead to let him play.

What a fucking night this was.

Our friends come around and we order pizza for dinner. Then, the game comes out. The pre-teen, currently in that point of life where he is torn between being a kid, and joining the adults, comes running over to sit next to me. Curious as to what this game was, and how to play it. We explain that the idea is to make the most offensive and / or rude statement you can from the cards you are given.

He opts to sit a few hands out. A few hands later, I am pretty sure he thought we were all speaking a different language. I finally get him confident to play, get him his hand of cards, and off we went.

In the next few hours, I couldn’t stop laughing. For a few reasons. Below are some of the questions to come from his mouth, all in a period of about ten minutes:

1. What is fisting?
2. What is incest?
3. What is double penetration?

At this point, please do not forward this post on to child protective services. Come on, he is in high school, if he does not know what fisting is, he will soon, and will know a lot worse than that. Can’t tell you how funny and awkward having to answer some of these questions was. Great times.

There is also another good reason to play Cards Against Humanity with a pre-teen. They manage to pick awesome cards, and read them out without actually understanding what they mean, or how funny they are.

Well yes, I may be going to hell now. I figure, if I am, I may as well stake a claim for the presidential suite. If you like a good laugh, and can take a joke, I recommend getting this game. It should also be reiterated, the goal is to offend, what comes out is not an accurate representation of anyone’s way of thinking. No burning crosses etc at our place.

Apparently, it’s on – Luke Simpkins to motion a Lib leadership spill on Tuesday

I won’t bother writing about it, here is a link to the good news. I am going to have a beer to celebrate.

Shit Tony Abbott Says #3

Leadership this, leadership that…. Who gives a shit? To me it matters not which Liberal asshole leads us, for more on that, try Google, any newspaper and/or radio station in Australia right now.

This weeks instalment is not exactly a quote as such, but it does come from a joint press release from Tony Abbott and Attorney General George (fuckwit) Brandis.

I mentioned in my rant about the Martin Place Incident that the government would use this as a catalyst for pushing it’s Orwellian Data Retention and so-called Anti-Terrorism laws. Guess what, I told you so. If you have not read that post, please keep in mind, data retention would have achieved nothing, the Police knew the gunman well, and let him walk on several occasions.

Anyway, Here is a list of dot points taken from the press release. A link to the full document here. Pretty scary shit. Remember, anything you’ve ever said, typed or browsed can and will be used against you.

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The legislative measures include:

• Broadening the listing criteria for terrorist organisations to ensure advocacy of terrorist acts is not limited to specific acts and that advocacy captures promotion and encouragement of terrorism;
• Making it easier to arrest terrorists by lowering the threshold for arrest without warrant for terrorism offences;
• Ensuring ASIO can access its questioning and detention powers beyond July 2016 (when they are scheduled to expire under current legislation) and that the AFP can continue to access control orders and preventative detention orders (powers which are scheduled to expire in December 2015);
• Extending AFP stop, search and seizure powers in relation to terrorist acts and offences beyond December 2015;
• Improving the ability of the AFP to seek control orders on returning foreign fighters;
• Making it easier to prosecute foreign fighters, including by making it an offence to travel to a designated area where terrorist organisations are conducting hostile activities unless there is a legitimate purpose;
• Clarifying that it is an offence to participate in any way in terrorist training; and
• Enabling ASIO to request suspension of an Australian passport (or foreign passport for a dual national) in appropriate circumstances.

Stickin’ it to The Man

In a previous post, I mentioned how I was feeling about my current work situation. Suffice to say, I was/am well over it.

After a lot of thinking, I decided to apply for enrolment back into University. It has been many years since I have studied, so this was a big decision. Not to mention the financial aspect, we will all have to tighten the belt just a little bit.

I handed in my resignation today. Feels so good. See, I lost my passion for my line of work some time ago. To be honest, I really don’t see any value in it anymore other than the money. Hence, a change in direction was required.

In two weeks time I begin my journey to become a High School teacher for English and History. Pretty excited I must say. Teaching is something I had always considered, but have never had the balls to jump in the deep end and get on with it. The time has come.

That’s it for now. My apologies to you all as I have been busy with real life, I have not been giving much love to the blog over the last few weeks. Stay tuned for more. 🙂

Bed Time – Scurge of the Toddler World

A question for the ages. How do you get your toddler to go to sleep?

To be honest, if I had THE answer, I’d be a millionaire by now. As most, if not all parents out there will know, getting your little one to bed can be quite a task. They can be a manipulative bunch, and will try anything to stall, or avoid going to bed at any cost. At least ours does.

Can you blame him though? He does not want to miss all the fun of dishwashing and bad TV, if only I could explain that is what we really do when he sleeps. Nothing too exciting.

We have been battling with this issue for a long, long time. Our Google search history is dominated by it. We had just about given up on tricks and tips for bed time, and moved to the more generally accepted method of, just fucking deal with it.

This was working for a while, to be honest, he was only up out of bed two or three times before finally crashing out. I think at that point, he had worked out that we had an answer for every excuse in his playbook. Then it all changed, something new, that we couldn’t really deny him had become a reason to get out of bed.

He is now potty trained.

I was so happy when he was finally potty trained, what an ordeal. Denis the Menace had other ideas, a bed time plot ticking over in his three year old brain. It would rely on our meagre understanding of his bladder control, and our empathy for him and his decision not to wet the bed. A perfect idea. And it worked.

For the last few months he has been in and out of bed every ten minutes for three to four hours. GO THE FUCK TO SLEEP.

This change in toddler bed time strategy required action. We had had enough. But really, what could be done?

Here is the checklist we started running through

1. Go to the toilet before bed.
2. Go to the toilet before bed. (he always needs to go twice)
3. While he is on the toilet, get his drink (water) for bed.
4. Move the plastic blanket of toys accumulated on his bed from the previous night.
5. Allow him to choose ONE toy for bed. Ok, sometimes two, if he has been good.
6. Offer a bedtime story. (we take turns)
7. Put him to bed.
8. Sit on the couch, wait for five minutes until the first toilet break.
9. Sit on the couch, wait for the second toilet break.
10. Try to enjoy some adult time while constantly looking at the dog to make a move, indicating he was up, again…

Suffice to say, I have never been a fan of ten step programs, and this one was not working. At all.

Back to Google….

Once again, we turned to the internet. We spent our time trolling through different approaches that we hadn’t already tried. Keeping in mind you have to take these with a grain of salt, and try to apply bits and pieces that fit for you. Well, that is our approach anyway.

She found it!

My partner’s love affair with Pinterest had paid off, again. I got home from work one day and she proposed an idea, we both agreed it just may work. He is at a stage where he will understand the concept, fingers crossed he sticks by the new rule.

That Saturday morning, we began phase one of our scheme. We would have some art and craft time. With a twist.

We all worked on a card, a very special card which is now known as ‘The Bed Time Pass’. We all took turns adorning it with colourful pictures, stickers and whatever else we could find in the box. It was really great family time to boot.

He loved it, albeit still not fully aware of its purpose. We both sat with him after it was finished and explained how it worked.

‘This is your bedtime pass, if you jump out of bed you need to hand it over to us. It can only be used once a night.’

To be honest, the first night was a fucking nightmare.

He was in shock. He was allowed out once, then he came out again. Met with no contact, just a held hand and a directive back to his bed. Every time, for about three hours. ‘Stick with it, we have to give it time’ we kept telling ourselves.

Then, the magic started to happen.

The second night, there was a little drama, but nothing major. From there on in, it has been working a treat.

He now saves it, holds on to it, ‘in case’ he needs to come out. The game has been flipped on its head. He no longer comes out of bed every ten minutes, he understands he is ALLOWED to come out of bed, ONCE. So, that is indeed what he does. No requirement to tell him it needs to be a good reason, he worked that out for himself.

Back to quiet nights, for now. Maybe we can get some reading done. I haven’t finished a book in months.

No doubt this will not last forever. But for now at least, i owe my sanity to ‘The Bed Time Pass’.

How do you get your kids to bed? I am sure we would all love to hear some ideas, please feel free to share. 🙂

SHIT TONY ABBOTT SAYS #2

For the Australian’s, you all know there has been a Smörgåsbord of Abbottism’s to choose from this week. In light of that, I think it is just too predictable for episode 2 to use the Knightmare, or Credlin.

That is just too easy, and no fun. Google will find you that.

So I went into Tony’s best-of album. Malcolm Turnbull may just be the pawn that leads the libs into the next federal election. So we ask, what does Tony think about Mr Turnbull?

“We have a strong and credible broadband policy because the man who has devised it, the man who will implement it virtually invented the internet in this country.”

What an honour it would be to have the man who invented the interwebz as PM….. What a fucking moron.

All things considered, Turnbull does dominate the political centre in Australia, and could get votes from swingers. I brought this up because you shouldn’t be fooled, look what he has done (or has not done) with the NBN. I for one am fed up with my ADSL1 connection.

Next week, who knows, stay tuned.

Am I a Murderer?

Odd thing to have to ask yourself isn’t it? Am i a murderer?

It’s a question i have asked myself many times over. It’s a question that nearly drove me to madness. It’s a question that i still can’t answer.

Once again, the ever inspirational blog, A Momma’s View, has prompted me to rant.

I left a my home, my state, my friends, my now so-called friends, my job, my life. Why? For many reasons. But there is one that gets to me.

Am i a murderer?

To be honest, some people look / looked at me like i am / was. It is a strange look, a hollow look. Like the blood has left all the layers of skin on their face, like they are a shell. The eye’s seem to be void of colour to me. They can talk, but i read between the lines.

“You asshole, you killed him.”

Perhaps it is just the guilt.

A man i considered my best friend for a time, my mentor. A man 30 years my senior, will now no longer talk to me. He thinks i am a murderer.

For those unsure as to where this all came about, here is an old post about it.

Honestly, it is starting to get to me again. The dreams are making a return. Which does not bother me that much, but bothers my partner. She does not know what to do sometimes when i am thrashing, sweating, screaming in a sleep so deep she can’t wake me from it. My bigger fear there is my little boy seeing that.

No doubt one day, i will have to explain it to him. I dread that day, what i will say plagues my mind.

I am ok though. Am i a murderer? Well, no, i’m not.

Am i responsible for his death? Well, no, but at least in part i am. It was my idea.

He was a better man than me. Sometimes i wish it was me. Honestly, i had a childhood of surfing, and being a stronger swimmer than him was all that mattered in the end.

It is such a hard thing to describe, the look. For your sake, i hope you never have to experience it.

Happy Straya Day

It was my birthday yesterday, more on that another time. For now, please enjoy this link to a Rap News video. The Juice Media team have become close to my heart over the last few years. If you enjoy political humour, and don’t mind hip hop, check it out. Happy Straya’ Day.