Kids write the darndest things

Yesterday I was rummaging around in the garage for my birth certificate. I didn't find the certificate, however I did stumble upon this little comedy goldmine:


Yeah, I was part of a large family that was too pov to buy nice contact paper for the children's school books. Brown paper all the way for us.

It starts out innocently enough, with a movie review of Batman Returns:


But the signs of a socially retarded middle child who is desperate for attention are revealed soon enough:


Can't take me anywhere.

Of course, there is some negligent parenting and endorsement of illegal activities thrown in the mix...


... not to mention a little dabbling in the occult:

After my aunt scared the hell out of us by pretending to be malevolent spirits coming through on our makeshift ouija board, we watched her make prank phone calls. The same aunt also made car rides more interesting by winding down her window and heckling innocent pedestrians. She was our favourite aunt.

Let's not forget the visit from the fuzz:

I can't exactly remember what the police visit was about. Presumably they were there to arrest my parents for inflicting bingo on their children during the school holidays.

I wonder what was running through my teacher's head when she graded my 'jornaul' week after week. Did she even have the slightest inclination to make further enquiries or perhaps call the authorities? Lord knows I could have benefitted from psychological intervention at age seven. Sheesh.

If I have kids, I'm making them sign a non-disclosure agreement. Their weird family life is going to stay in the vault.

Hot tips for job lookers

Since I got back I've been supporting my crack habit supplementing my income by temping at a recruitment agency. It's easy enough work, mainly typing job applications into the agency's database. I've been there a week, and based on my experiences so far, I have a couple of sizzling hot tips for all you job seekers out there:

1. Learn how to spell 'résumé'. Don't even worry about getting the fancy accents on the e's, just get the spelling right. WTF is a "resumay"?

2. Get a professional e-mail address. A throwaway one with a free provider like Hotmail is fine, but choose an address that is totally vanilla. It should not have any references to sex or zombies, contain the word 'lazy' followed by your first name, invite me to "rub your coconuts", or be an homage to your love of dead dogs.

3. Choose your work referees carefully. Why on earth would you provide a reference from a former job where you: were fired/never showed up/have a multi-million dollar worker's compensation claim currently pending against the company? Privacy legislation be damned, employers love giving the DL on their former employees. Especially the bad ones.

What? You mean this is all common sense?

Fine. I'm in a hurry anyway. I've got an interview for a real job on Monday, and I need to go print my resumay.

I think you're overthinking this

Quick quiz question: Who is the biggest dorkus malorkus in all the land?

Pencils down. Did you guess me? Well, it's true. I feel like the biggest loser, and not in the "I just went on a reality TV show and lost 200 pounds" kind of way.

See, I had an assignment due last week, but our printer wasn't working. I sent the file in an email to my mum's work address, asking her to print it out for me there. She did, I handed it in on time and all was good.

Today, I got the assignment back. I was flicking through to see what my grade was and I noticed that not only had my mum printed the assignment, but also the email exchange between us (WHY, MOTHER?). Of COURSE, I had stapled the printout of the email to the back of the assignment. It wouldn't be so bad if the email was just like, "Hey mum, print this for me". But of course it wasn't. It was a freakin' novel, complete with lame subject line, a tidbit of salacious gossip and hefty sprinklings of me and mum's pet names for each other throughout.

I'm sure my teacher got a good chuckle out of it and has since moved on, but this is going to haunt me forever. It's going to bother me for about a week to the extent where it's the first thing I think about in the morning. Then it will fade away, but not disappear completely.

I guarantee you that I will still be cringing about this when I'm sixty. If not this, then something else. I have a million of these things I don't want to remember, buried in my head just waiting to pop out at any given time. And who cares if other people remember them, because usually friends are tactful enough not to go around reminding you about things you don't want to think about. My mind, on the other hand, has no tact and wants me to think about it all the time!

Quiet, brain, or I'll stab you with a q-tip.

Lola goes to jail

Candy has several connections with the county jail. Her son did a year there for robbery, and then another year for parole violation. During that time, Candy volunteered to teach a life skills class to a small group of the jail's more trusted inmates (I presume that cleaning and housekeeping were not included in the syllabus. Ooh, burn). Also, as a journalist, Candy often visits the jail and courthouse complex to stickybeak through other peoples' arrest records for the edification of the newspaper reading public. As a result, she's pretty tight with the warden of the jail.

One of Candy's life skills class students, Christina, was due to be released from jail on March 3, and was having a little difficulty finding a car to use immediately on her release date. Apparently, it's tough to find anyone to sell a car to you when the transaction begins with a collect call from the local slammer. Hearing about Christina's troubles, Candy immediately volunteered that I would sell my car to her, and set up a date for a test drive with the warden.

Candy and I drove my little car to the jail where Christina and the warden were waiting for us in the parking lot. Candy and I climbed in the back, Christina got in the drivers seat and the warden in the passengers seat next to her. We did a few laps of the parking lot, then the warden told Christina to exit the lot and take the car onto the road.

Christina hadn't driven for a while, but she still had a valid drivers licence and her driving skills seemed fine. During the drive, it occured to me that I should have brought my headscarf and oversized sunglasses (I wanted to look the part if we got into a Thelma & Louise situation). After about 15 minutes of driving the car around Gallatin, the warden told Christina to head back to the jail, which she did. Naturally, I was a little disappointed that the test drive didn't escalate into a wild cross-country crime spree.

When we got back, two great things happened. Christina agreed to buy the car, and the warden gave Candy and I a tour of the jail. You guys, I was so excited. Jails intrigue me. When I was 10, my mum's police sergeant friend gave my sister and I a tour of the North Sydney police station lockup, and I've been hooked ever since. I've been to plenty of decomissioned jails - Mansfield Reformatory, Moundsville Penitentiary and Alcatraz to name a few, but this was my first time inside an actual working jail.

The jail is a three storey building, with each storey split into four quadrants. There is an indoor observation tower at the centre of the four quadrants, spanning the three levels. Candy and I got to go inside the observation tower, which is fronted by two-way mirrors. It was totally voyeuristic and I loved it. My observations from the tower lead me to conclude that the favoured leisure activity for male inmates is playing cards; for female inmates, doing each other's hair.

We then went inside one of the female inmate pods to see the exercise yard. I felt really awkward because this involved walking right by some of the female inmates. Luckily, I wasn't heckled - they just looked up and then went back to doing eachother's hair. One girl recognised Candy from the life skills class, and they had a little reunion.

The exercise yard was depressing. It was a concrete room with no natural light, and a small vent on the wall. In fact, the inmates do not get to see natural light for the duration of their incarceration (with the exception of inmates on work release, like Christina). The warden pointed out a crumpled up piece of paper in the exercise yard, which she told us the inmates used to play ball games.

We then went on to the kitchen, where several inmates were running the trays from lunch through the dishwasher. Candy commented that the food smelled great, and the warden offered to get her a tray. I am positive that Candy would have accepted the offer if I had not shot her my patented withering look.

At the conclusion of the tour, I was ready to buy a magnet to commerate my visit (I collect them), and I was a little disappointed to find that the prison did not sell any. In fact, if I have any criticisms about the county jail, it's that the facility completely lacks a store for visitors to purchase tchotkes and other trinkets. What's with that?

I couldn't leave without a souvenir though, so the warden was kind enough to give me a copy of the jail's commissary order form. Inmates can buy a really weird selection of items -- like individual sachets of mayonnaise. Or something called a "Nutrageous" (offered at the very sensible price of 82c). I am going to scan the list in when I get home from uni tonight so we can discuss.