Bad Genes

I once read that people are more attracted to people that look like themselves. As a results of this, folks who are adopted have an increased risk of accidentally falling in love with someone who is related to them by blood. In fact, there has been occurrences in which couples have found out that they were as closely related as brother and sister. I don’t think this will ever be a problem for me. Because today I was looking at photographs of my ancestors and they were horrifying. I apologise to anyone in my family that may take offense to this, but holy shit, have you SEEN what great great grandad and co. looked like? We have some seriously questionable genetics going on here!

Great, great, great, great grandad Johan. What a catch!

While I’m on the subject of old photographs, I’m wondering why they all had to look so miserable? You know the pictures I mean – a family all dressed up in their Sunday best, standing around looking like someone just shot their beloved dog. Maybe smiling just wasn’t cool back then, kind of like how emo kids don’t like smiling today. It must have been quite a feat, to get all of the children, even the smallest of the lot, to look completely brain dead for one photo.

It takes special skill to raise children to be joyless cyborgs.

I have to use the burst setting on my camera to even have a small chance of getting a photo of my children looking somewhat normal. If I want a photo of both of them together, I pretty much have to accept, that someone is either going to be pulling a face, or looking like they have a congenital disorder. Looking at the lineage, perhaps they do.

She may be a rich little brat, but even she knows that giant rocking horse is a bit fucking excessive.

P.S. Please email in pictures of your most awful old family photos, I’ll post them on here so we can all laugh at dead people together Send to jsangster34@gmail.com, subject: BAD GENES.

Pollo del Amor

Perhaps I’m being a little arrogant, but I am stunned to have been rejected for a job at KFC. It’s not that i think the job is easy, or that it’s just “flipping burgers”, it’s just, that I’ve worked there before. Not at this particular franchise, but I could still do the job in my sleep. In fact, sometimes I do. Even after 14 years, I still often dream about working at K-Fried.

It was my first job out of school, but I swear to the Colonel, I know my chicken combinations like a motherfucker. Every time I go through the drive thru it bothers me when they give me inaccurate combinations. I mean, come on guys, how hard is it to remember: wing and thigh, rib and drum? If I get another two piece pack with a wing and drum together one more fucking time, Imma get out of my car, climb through that window and shove that quarter pack……. uh, anyway, you get the idea.

The point is, if you stick to your correct combos, you don’t get a surplus of wings.

I guess some folks appreciate wings more than I do. (Click image for source article at stuff.co.nz)

Wait, no, that’s not the point. I’m getting side-tracked. The point is, I should be running the place! I’ll sort out your combo issues and your watery gravy in no time. No staff member of mine will be putting cold coleslaw in the same bag as hot chicken. And no one, NO ONE, needs 25 spoons with their 10 piece family meal.

I’d have that place running so smooth, Don Juan would be envious. Fuck it, I’ll start my own chicken chain. I’ll call it, Pollo del Amor and Don Juan will be our patron saint. Every meal will be served on a bear skin rug in front of an open fire, and our chicken combinations will be accurate every goddamn time. Suck on that KFC.

But just in case things don’t pan out, I’ll send in another application next week, if you could take a look at it, that would be super.

F**K BEAUTY

Yes yes and yes. This puts our obsession with beauty in to perspective perfectly. I loved the sentiment – all people, men and women should read this. Beautifully written too.

chanyado

When you can’t write what you need to write, you write what you can. I want to write about…

That new Dove ad is absurdly symbolic. Women in five cities around the world are made to choose one of two doors in order to enter a space. The entries are labelled ‘Beautiful’ or ‘Average’. There seems to be no other way to gain access to the building. Your physical appearance is your only admission. Choose beautiful Dove says. F**K that.

My sister looked radiant tonight. I don’t know if I have ever seen her glow like this. When she made her entrance into the hall, mischief captured her and she threw her hennaed hands up in the air, her intricately brown laced hands swirling through the air as she danced. Little dried flecks sprinkled off her hands like black confetti. Later my father, handsome in his turquoise blue sherwani interrupted…

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The Slow Demise of Patricia Bateman

I always imagined myself as a childless professional, flitting from affair to affair as I pleased. While my friends looked forward to meeting rich husbands, then shooting babies from their vaginas (their own, not their husbands, that wouldn’t work) while languishing poolside at home like docile bovine, I dreamed of being a corporate lawyer. Money hungry and devoid of meaningful relationships. A simple parade of willing and attractive young men, who I could enjoy for micro-flings as i saw fit. My bizarre child self had American Psycho ambitions – a female Patrick Bateman, but perhaps a little less homicidal. Unfortunately, I was wracked with a nervous disposition that would trample these sociopathic dreams in to the mud.

Instead, the strangest series of events happened. I dropped out of school due to crippling near-suicidal depression and got a job at a fast food restaurant . At 19, after several years of fun and self-destructiveness, I met an older man. He was funny, smart, opinionated and financially secure. We quickly moved in together and married shortly after my 21st birthday. This isn’t going to be one of those “I married too young and it was a mistake” stories – I regret nothing. We had epic fights, but we also had a shit ton of fun in those early years.

Eventually I decided it was time to get qualified, I was never short on brains, and I still had dreams. Husband however, wasn’t prepared to make the sacrifices that I needed him to make in order for me to achieve them. I don’t hold this against him, they were huge sacrifices involving leaving his job and everyone he knew in order to live in a town best described as Jack Frost’s arsehole, all while financially supporting my full-time study.

Husband, had dreams of his own. He wanted children before he was 40, and time was ticking.

Kid’s had never been on my radar before, in fact, they terrified me. Now here I am, eight years later, on the brink of divorce (all the cool kids are doing it, you know) with two weird and wonderful children. Life would be a lot more secure if I had some kind of career, but I’m glad that I took the road I did. It wasn’t the plan, but sometime the universe knows best. I’m lucky to have been able to spend the last seven years as a Stay-at-Home-Mum. My kids have needed me at home, particularly my daughter who has ADHD and High Functioning Autism. But she’s in school now, and my son starts school in November, and I’m staring down the barrel of single-parenthood, so I have to start looking for work.

Kids still kind of terrify me though. I’ve seen Children of the Corn.

Let’s get it on Motherfuckers!

This is my blog about how sometimes life is there simply to punch you firmly in the face. Everything you had planned, everything you thought to be true, was gone. In my experience, this is not a one off event, it’s something that happens over and over again as you try to navigate your way though your existence. And there is jack-shit you can do about it. The only thing left is to pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start again.

So here I am. Starting again. The first day of the rest of my life and all those annoying inspirational quotes that secretly miserable people share on Facebook (don’t you fucking hate those?). Only this time, I’m starting again with two little human beings, two cats and a bird in tow.

Oh, and no job.

But, one always finds a way. In hardship, there is often much ridiculousness to be found. Finding the humour in any situation is the key to hanging on to the last little remnants of sanity. I have no doubt that i will have many hilarious and bumbling lessons to learn along the way. If I can keep laughing at the ludicrousness of my chaos, perhaps, just maybe, I can pull this off.

Let the adventures begin!