if u write like this i probably dont like u.

Why don't people value proper grammar and spelling anymore?

Nothing bothers me more than a text that is missing apostrophes, contains copious spelling errors and lacks capitalisation at the start of each sentence. We all make mistakes, but some people send texts that are barely written in English. It's like a competition to see who can make themselves look like the biggest retard.

Here's a recent text message I received from an ex work colleague:

'wot u doin babe'

Is it hard to spell 'what' correctly?
Is it hard to capitalise the first letter in the sentence?
Is it hard to write the word 'you' instead of the letter 'u'?
Is it hard to add a 'g' on the end of 'doin', or at least put an apostrophe in place of the missing 'g'?
Is it hard to put a question mark on the end of the sentence?

And don't fucking call me babe, I hate it.

People can't help but get a bad impression of someone who appears almost illiterate. If you went to school, why not show it?

Whale or Mermaid?

Every now and again a picture of a naked, overweight plus-sized model appears on my Facebook newsfeed, accompanied by a story about how wonderful it is to be a whale rather than a mermaid.

Here’s the full story, in case you haven’t seen it: 

A while back, at the entrance of a gym, there was a picture of a very thin and beautiful woman. The caption was "This summer, do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?"

The story goes, a woman (of clothing size unknown) answered the following way:
 
"Dear people, whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, seals, curious humans), they are sexually active and raise their children with great tenderness.

They entertain like crazy with dolphins and eat lots of prawns. They swim all day and travel to fantastic places like Patagonia, the Barents Sea or the coral reefs of Polynesia. They sing incredibly well and sometimes even are on CD's. They are impressive and dearly loved animals, which everyone defend and admires. 

Mermaids do not exist.

But if they existed, they would line up to see a psychologist because of a problem of split personality: woman or fish? They would have no sex life and could not bear children.

Yes, they would be lovely, but lonely and sad. And, who wants a girl that smells like fish by his side?

Without a doubt, I'd rather be a whale.At a time when the media tells us that only thin is beautiful, I prefer to eat ice cream with my kids, to have dinner with my husband, to eat and drink and have fun with my friends. 

We women, we gain weight because we accumulate so much wisdom and knowledge that there isn't enough space in our heads, and it spreads all over our bodies. We are not fat, we are greatly cultivated.

Every time I see my curves in the mirror, I tell myself: "How amazing am I?! "


Assuming the story is true, perhaps the gym was wrong to use the ‘whale vs. mermaid’ analogy. In doing that they were solely focusing on physical attributes rather than health. Regardless of the gym’s intention, the person who wrote this response is clearly delusional.

It’s a simple yet often ignored fact that being overweight isn’t healthy. The risk of many health problems increases dramatically with weight increases. The correlation isn't a coincidence, it's a proven fact. If you are overweight, you have a higher risk of:

·         type 2 diabetes

·         coronary heart disease

·         stroke

·         metabolic syndrome

·         certain types of cancer

·         sleep apnea

·         osteoarthritis

·         gallbladder disease

·         fatty liver disease

·         pregnancy complications

The common response to this information is for people to point out that ‘skinny people can be unhealthy too!’ Well that’s a given, but a much higher proportion of Australian’s are overweight rather than underweight, so it's not really an issue. According to the Australian bureau of statistics, in 2008 a massive 62% of people were overweight or obese, while only 2% were underweight. 2% is hardly an epidemic.

Even if we ignore the health issues and focus solely on appearance, who in all honesty would prefer to be fat rather than fit? No-one. We can pretend as much as we like that we are comfortable with our bodies when we are overweight, but in reality it’s just a lie that people tell themselves to avoid making changes.

The first paragraph talks about whales always being surrounded by friends and being sexually active. Everyone I know who puts on a bit more weight than what they feel comfortable with (including myself) avoids social situations like the plague. For starters, you can’t find anything flattering to wear. Secondly, even if you do find something to wear, you feel too gross to enjoy yourself. And sex? Pfft. Forget it.

I am particularly amused by the paragraph which states ‘I’d prefer to eat ice-cream with my kids, have dinner with my husband, to eat and drink and have fun with my friends’. To me it implies that she’s a better parent, wife and friend for pigging out with her family. I must be a shit parent...I don’t even like ice-cream.

I was also interested to learn that fat people actually just have a whole lot of accumulated knowledge; too much to store in their heads. Skinny people must be heaps dumb.

This story sends the wrong message. While it’s great to have confidence, being overweight is really something we should all try and avoid. Not just for the physical reasons (which we all know are real), but mainly so that we enjoy a good quality of life and stay alive as long as possible.

No offense, but...

It never ceases to amuse me when someone says something completely offensive, but starts with the words ‘No offense, but...’

It happened to me recently when I was having lunch with friends (more correctly; a friend and an acquaintance). The topic of discussion was one of my favourite ‘rant worthy’ subjects: The quality of teachers in public schools. We agreed that the majority of teachers in the public school system had become apathetic. We went on to tell various stories of our experiences with uninterested teachers and the effect their attitudes had on the children.

I then brought up that I was thinking about becoming a teacher myself. I mentioned that because of my accounting degree, I’d only have to do 1.5 years full time study to be fully qualified to teach business studies to high school students.

My acquaintance’s response was to scoff "No offense, but I think that’s the reason why teachers are so crap these days. It’s because people like you can go in there and do just half a degree”.

Not only was her comment extremely rude, it was also completely ignorant. The only reason I can do ‘half a degree’ is because I’ve already covered the knowledge based subjects for my teaching area in the degree I already have. It would be completely redundant for me to do a full length degree and do the exact same subjects all over again. Naturally, if I wanted to teach something completely different like English or Science, I would have to do the full length degree.  

My acquaintance then went on to say that she was a successful business owner without having a degree, and in her opinion most people who went to university don’t know anything anyway. So on one hand, the quality of teachers has declined because some of them have only done half a degree; and on the other hand, people who go to university don’t know anything. Not really a consistent argument.

Her attempt at putting me down for no apparent reason other than the fact that I am attempting to better myself was both nasty and unnecessary. Furthermore, starting a sentence with ‘no offense but...’ does not excuse the stupidity and bitchiness of the comments that follow.

No offense, but you’re a cunt.

Angry Mum on Breast Cancer Awareness.

I’m really sick of these attention seeking facebook messages doing the rounds that claim to be about breast cancer awareness. They contain no information about breast cancer and seem to be nothing more than a poor attempt to get male attention.

There are several versions of this message, all requiring us to update our facebook status. The first one asked us to post the colour of our bra, the second wanted us to post where we like to keep our handbags. A few more have followed with things like how long it takes us to do our hair and our shoe size. The one thing that is consistent with these messages is the part that requires us to ‘not tell any males what the status updates mean, keep them guessing!’

I actually lost a friend (well an acquaintance) due to my dislike of these messages.  I updated my facebook status with something to the effect of ‘I don’t see how writing the colour of my bra on my facebook status will do anything for breast cancer awareness’. This girl emailed me straight away, and begged me to take it down. I was ruining it for everyone!! Several nasty emails followed, with me finally telling this woman to please just fuck off. My status update that caused such a fuss with this girl would have created more ‘awareness’ than any of her statuses about bras or handbags. Purely because it actually contained the words ‘breast cancer’.  

5 Quick Facts about Breast Cancer:

1.      1 in 8 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer.
2.      Each year, a small number of men are also diagnosed with or die from breast cancer.
3.      85% of all diagnoses have no family history.
4.      Breast cancer is the leading cause of death in women between ages 40 and 55.
5.      Any change needs to be looked at. In fact, for women below 40, it is actually more common for the cancer to present itself in the form of dimpling or thickened skin rather than a lump.

Feel free to pass this information on to anyone. It’s not about playing games with men; it’s about keeping people alive.

 

 

...On Music.

After listening to the same shitty song on my workmate’s radio for the third time today (a song I like to call 'the strangled cat song’) I couldn’t help but wonder how we got to a point where good music is no longer something valued or appreciated.

Most of today’s pop music has the following attributes:

1. A singer
2. A beat
3. A gimmick.

Katy Perry’s gimmick is ‘good girl gone bad’. She came straight from Hillsong to kissing a girl and liking it. Does anyone care? Apparently, yes.

Lady Gaga has the ‘I don’t give a shit, I’m just me’ gimmick. Anyone who goes to the effort of wearing coke cans in their hair and putting on a meat dress is hardly just being themselves.  The whole ‘I’m so freaking controversial’ thing has been done before. Bugger off.

The thing that pisses me off most about the music of today (I'm so elderly) is that just the singer is given all the focus. We don't appreciate proper bands anymore.

Real music has the following attributes:

1. Musicians (more than one),
2. Talent, and
3. Passion.

Real music comes from a collaboration of talented artists doing what they do best. The meaningless drivel coming from the likes of singers such as Katy Perry and Lady Gaga isn’t music; It’s a marketing ploy. The fact that this crap is pumped out by the radio stations on a daily basis is a sad sign of modern society’s lack of appreciation for skill and talent.

No, I don’t want to buy your shitty pin, pen or ribbon.

I often get some strange looks in the office when I’m the only person who doesn’t rush to my wallet when someone wants to sell a pin, pen, ribbon or whatever else they are selling to donate towards  a ‘good cause’.  On some occasions, a workmate will even buy one of these items on my behalf and leave it on my desk, because surely I couldn’t be that big of a bitch, right?

Well, actually I am.

I donate regularly to the charities that I feel need the money. I treat it like a bill; it has to be paid and automatically comes out of my account. Heaps of people do this, I’m not pretending it’s anything special. But my point is, if you really give a shit about something, wouldn’t you donate a little bit of time or money (if you could afford it) without needing to have something to show for it? I’d rather not have the tacky ribbon, and donate directly to cause. That way the money isn’t partially being absorbed by the costs in making the shitty merchandise.

A lot of people will say ‘Oh, but it’s about showing support’. What good does that do? Who is this ‘support’ actually helping?

I realise a lot of lovely, generous, kind-hearted people will buy these things without a second thought, and are probably doing it for all the right reasons. But please don’t think I’m a cunty mctwat for not getting involved. Different people see things very differently, and it doesn’t mean they don’t care.

Cheers,
Angry Mum.