Voodoo toads

After this week, a little retail therapy was in order.

Give me something shiny and I'm a happy girl for at least a few hours, obviously. Particularly if that something shiny is a CD that I've wanted for ages and finally find and buy (after doing a mini-happy-dance in the store about it). If there were such a thing as past lives, I think I would have been a crow. Which would explain the love of wearing black and shiny things. Unless I'm a Greek grandmother in disguise. Hmm.


Also, I saw tonnes of new graffiti while out and about, which just goes to prove how well those new draconian "anti"-graffiti laws the state government passed are working out. To me, they seem ridiculous (not only from the perspective that I find quite a lot of graffiti quite artistic).

Why not make a law that if caught, they have to scrub it off with a toothbrush or something? If councils are going to bang on about how much it costs them to clean it up every year, why not involve the people making the "mess" with the cleanup? Also, the $550 fine to anyone carrying spraypaint and unable to "prove" it's for work-related purpsoses? Que le eff? And anything can be a graffiti "implement." Most of the graffiti I've seen on the trains is the stuff scratched into the windows.


What about introducing more legal walls or spending money to address the root of the problem? Oh wait, I forget. It's a government. That sort of thing rarely happens. Instead, laws are created that seem disproportionate to the "crime," while if police want to deal with issues like stalking, then there's not a whole lot there in the laws to help them do so.

As for graffiti being a "blight" on our society, what about domestic violence? Poverty, homelessness and the increasing gap between rich and poor? Centrelink? The problems of educational disadvantages that result from schools not receiving enough funding to help students who genuinely need it? Overconsumption of finite resources? The abuse and destruction of land that can be used for farming to build more suburbs where all the houses look the same? Racism (I saw white power stickers while out and about today - that was deeply scary!)? Sexism/misogyny/misandry?

Hell no. It's those people with spray cans and fat black textas who are the REAL problem with our society. Along with bad shoes. And those frightening bogan-tastic plaid shirts/jackets/etc that a lot of people sport.

In other thoughts, I now have a rather cute hot water bottle arrangement, thanks to more retail therapy at Spotlight.


It's rather cute. Or at least I think so. Provided it doesn't leak, in which case it will be deeply unpopular. But it reminded me of the dream I had last night of running through the streets of Paris, looking for my dog who had run away, and asking people in French whether they'd seen him. Unusual.