The USS Quad Damage

I usually like Triple J’s hack, and expect it to be of a higher calibre than ordinary news programs. They did a report on the recent rumblings in League on an episode of JTV I happened to watch. I was disappointed in how quickly they went from the subject of rape to alcohol abuse, without any real evidence as to the link between them.

It irritates me that “The alcohol made me do it” is a fair and reasonable excuse in today’s society. As far as I can tell, Alcohol has no ability to actually make you do anything. I don’t remember ever having had a few to think “Hey, now that I’m drunk, I think I want to rape someone, or murder them, or defecate on some fine art”. Maybe it’s just me. Or maybe I haven’t been drunk enough… or for enough time. How people can make the quantum leap it takes to go from fairly repugnant behaviour to blaming drunkedness as the cause is beyond me. The fact that it’s not just crack jocks like John Laws doing this shit and it’s actually reputable (often critical and thoughtful) sources is astonishing to me.

Even if alcohol was the magical pixie dust which made you do bad things, drinking also doesn’t absolve you of your responsibilities, because you ought to know it’s magic pixie dust that makes you do bad things. It’s like they say “people don’t kill people, guns kill people” (OK no one says that, but the fact is, you need both a gun and someone to shoot it in order to have a working murder system going). In short, if you knew drinking would make you do irresponsible things, maybe you should just stay the fuck away from alcohol.

Note that I’m not letting the girls in these cases off here. They’re as guilty as the men, but the men are perceived role models in society, and the women are really just poisoning the stereotype. I have a very simple logic equation here:

dick_in_mouth && ^gun_to_head → ^rape

Did you catch that? If you’re a girl who is currently having sex with a bunch of footy players (and also reading this article, in which case, go multitasking!), I’m talking to you! Have some self-respect, and respect for all women, and walk the fuck out of that room, because it’s only rape if someone forces you.

I think I’ve made my case. Now if you’ll excuse me I have to go to the Guggenheim and shit on the Mona Lisa.

I’ve had a long and interesting history with alarm clocks. Every new solution has caused bigger and worse problems. I am now like an old lady who originally swallowed a fly, and has now moved onto a horse.

Back when I was in primary and high school, I had an infallible alarm clock. It was my mum. She’d wake me before I had to go to school every day. She’d even prepare breakfast, and I would often be woken up by the sound of sizzling and the smell of pure deliciousness before the ear-splitting yelling of “Sunny… wake up!”. The nicest thing about it was, no matter what I did, I’d eventually be out of bed, whether it was from the initial yelling, walking into my room (bright), and eventually by force.

At uni, I used to have to go to uni at all hours, and I couldn’t rely on my mum to wake me up. I bought an alarm clock for that reason. It was the cheapest, crappiest alarm clock on the planet. It wasn’t long before the alarm on/off switch broke (at least, I assume it was what broke) and occasionally I wouldn’t get woken up in the morning.

I probably need to take an aside here to tell people I sleep very deeply.

I wasn’t sure if it was me sleeping through the (one-hour) alarm or if it was the alarm clock not buzzing. It wasn’t until I actually woke up around half an hour into when the alarm should have been going on that I realised that something was broken. It took me a while to replace it. Needless to say I missed a couple of lectures.

To make matters worse, it was fast. Really fast. It was so fast I wouldn’t need to adjust it forward an hour for daylight savings, it would have already drifted that far (actually, it would drift further, but some time during the year I would shift it back again after a bad day caused by the alarm clock). Instead of fixing it constantly, I would usually sleep in a little more each day. I kind of got used to the snooze button.

Either late into uni or when I started working, I got sick of the old alarm clock and got a new one (more likely, one of the friends I’ve told this story to got sick of me being late for stuff and got me a fancy-arse alarm clock). It was a lot better. The buttons clicked a lot more re-assuringly, and I kept getting alarms. The only downside was that it was still fast. I later found out it was only fast under certain circumstances, like if I lost power and the battery had to take over, but I was kind of really angry at alarm clocks by this time.

For this reason, and my fetish for technology, I dropped $300 (or more likely got a present) on a chumby. It had internet time, an alarm I could set over the internet. Basically this thing was most likely going to wake me up, and not screw over the time. All I needed was a wireless connection. Everyone’s got a wireless connection, right?

That was true, until I lost my internet to the Telstra saga (which I will have to regale you with some day). Weeks later (and no alarm clock during this time) I got my internet back, but as I turned on the modem, it died. This meant still no wireless. I had been using my mobile phone as a stop-gap solution in the meantime, and I thought I could keep using it (it actually worked pretty well. Kept time, and alarm rang, and it’s loud).

Until this Monday, when for no reason at all, it didn’t work. I woke up at 10, so I thought “oh, maybe I slept through it” (rational, even though it’s insanely loud, I sleep deeply). Checked that the alarm was still set and went off to work. Tuesday comes, and no alarm. After swearing at it a bit, I go to work. At work, I try and set the alarm (this is my mobile, remember) for 5 minutes from now . It tells me to stop snoozing (?), so I do, and re-set it for a little after that. It works, but no sound. I check that I’m not on silent, no dice. Shut down the phone, restart, and it starts working.

So anyway, I’m basically like Captain hook.