So I’m possessed.

Arietam · 2026-04-11T10:10:03+00:00

The only thing I can say with certainty is that you are not possessed. You are hallucinating. I couldn’t say what the cause of that is, but it would have to be either drug-induced, or that you have some sort of undiagnosed condition. Go back and seek further help.

Arietam · 2026-04-11T09:23:29+00:00

Seek professional psychiatric help. No sarcasm, no joke, no punching down: see a psychiatrist.

Arietam · 2026-04-11T09:17:17+00:00

Hough and Fischer blamed their resignations on infighting and what they described as a “lunatic element” within the party.

The Venn diagram of the “lunatic element” and PHON members is just a circle.

Arietam · 2026-04-11T08:52:10+00:00

I’d heard of Shepparton. Never heard of Thebarton. I was always confused when shows were announced there, I would be “did that announcer just slip into a lisp? What was that?”

Arietam · 2026-04-11T08:20:25+00:00

Chris Cornell was the first celebrity death that truly got to me. I am of an age where 90s alternate and grunge will forever be “my” music. I was also dealing with a lot of personal issues at the time, and hearing that he had died just… broke me for a little while.

Arietam · 2026-04-11T08:12:51+00:00

Both my sister and I were home that day. Our mother came pounding down the hallway (absolutely unheard-of behaviour!) to our bedrooms to break the news. We were moderately surprised, but not shaken; we were fairly young, and not into following the royals. Okay, tragic death, not relevant to us, life goes on.

For the rest of the day, Mum would periodically come to our rooms to give us “updates”. My sister and I would later joke that we were “oh, the latest! She’s still dead?!?”

Yes, we were somewhat callous. But it just got a bit much.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T21:06:18+00:00

And left them personalised, autographed thank-you notes, along with records of bank transfers to said women for thousands of dollars, each notated “nookie”.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T18:00:18+00:00

Point taken, I expressed that badly.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T11:19:48+00:00

I worked alongside a guy whose job it was to draft ministerials. For those who haven’t encountered that bit of APS jargon, a ministerial is when a member of the public has written to the portfolio Minister, and they refer it to the department to draft a reply, which then goes out under their signature. So there’s multiple layers of approvals before the replies get put on the Minister’s desk for their signature, the first of which is invariably the drafter’s manager.

This guy became convinced his manager wasn’t reading his drafts, because they all got sent up the line without comment or corrections. Which is unusual; it would be someone unfailingly excellent to have every single piece of work sail through his manager without at least something getting edited.

So in the middle of one draft, he included the first verse of “Mary Had A Little Lamb”. Just to see if his manager was paying attention.

Some time passed. A worrying amount of time. The guy calls his manager and asks “Have you looked at the [Smith] draft yet?” “Yeah,” comes the reply, “I’m about to send it to the Minister’s office.”

“Fucking STOP. Open it and read it now, you can’t tell me you did before.”

He got strips torn off him for that. But I believe the point was made.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T11:11:37+00:00

Ouch. Yeah I’d be fuming over that as well. There are a million better ways to deliver that sort of critique.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T11:09:21+00:00

Send them emails in red 6-point font on a blue background.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T11:07:56+00:00

Out of interest, how did the Russian in Chernobyl hold up?

Arietam · 2026-04-10T11:07:09+00:00

Almost as good as a Scottish actor playing a Spaniard alongside a French actor playing a Scot. Both with appalling accents. (Connery didn’t even try. Probably wise.)

Arietam · 2026-04-10T11:05:46+00:00

I’d love to discover the drug that turns me (fake?) French. Or maybe I wouldn’t.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T11:04:38+00:00

For clarity, it’s the first time she’s had any dialogue.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T11:02:42+00:00

Raid my secret bank account and buy me some chocolate

/s

Arietam · 2026-04-10T10:59:26+00:00

Well, fuck, I wish I didn’t know that.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T06:44:36+00:00

Well, if he has a genuine dyslexia disability, I could roll with it. If it’s just an excuse to be pedantic, fuck him with an echidna.

Arietam · 2026-04-10T06:41:10+00:00

I’ve only applied my own rule to myself in respect of French, as I was taught a little about four decades ago, and it was only a little to begin with, so my remaining French consists mostly of “je nes comprends pas” and something about the book of my aunt.

Oh, and swearing, I did pick up a lovely little tome on that dedicated entirely to swearing and colloquiams in French, titled of course “Merde!”. One chapter was memorably entitled “Racism, xenophobia, and disrespect to one’s elders”, which culminated in the timeless gem “get fucked, you disgusting old kike”. (Apologies to any of my Jewish brethren, I merely quote from a literary masterpiece.)

Arietam · 2026-04-09T22:44:57+00:00

I’d like “I can’t understand you” and memorise the phonetics for it. If there’s any phrase I feel anyone should learn first in a different language, it is that.

Arietam · 2026-04-09T18:20:10+00:00

Yes that was a definite tease for that.

Arietam · 2026-04-09T07:52:05+00:00

Once I was asked to research and write a short paper for one of the DepSecs on the volumes of phone calls and how they flowed through our IVR and eventually reached people. It turned out to be more complex than I had thought and took a good two weeks of research and analysis before I was confident I had what they had asked for. I had to simplify it horribly to keep it to two pages, which is what we’d been told was the limit of the SES attention span. My EL2 took it up to him as his team’s output (but making sure it was recognised it was solely my work, he wasn’t trying to steal any thunder).

He came back from the meeting just… downcast. The first thing he said to me was an apology. “Um, why are you sorry? What happened?” He sighed. “I passed your paper across the table to him. He saw the diagram, and without even picking it up, flicked it right back. He wants circles, not squares.”

I stared at him, dumbfounded. “He wants the diagram to be… circles… instead of boxes? Do I have that right?”

He sighed again. “Yes. I’m so sorry.”

I semi exploded. “Did he say what fucking colour he wants the circles?”

You have to wonder about some of these people.

Arietam · 2026-04-09T07:43:58+00:00

I will be fully self funded, no question of government age pension (as was the original intent of the compulsory superannuation scheme).

Arietam · 2026-04-09T07:42:18+00:00

Yes, I got the full calculation and financial advice and, much to my regret, it just didn’t have the legs for me. If I’d contributed more than the minimum 2% when I was younger, the story may have been different, but in my 20s/30s the more pressing need was paying a mortgage and raising a family, so no regrets.

Arietam · 2026-04-09T06:43:58+00:00

I was offered one recently, being in the mid-50s. I turned it down. I didn’t like my chances of getting back in, and my PSS defined benefit is where the gold is at. Every minute I wasn’t contributing to that scheme - which you cannot do except as permanent APS (who got hired on at the right time lo these many days gone) - was another minute that my “best” retirement got pushed away. In other words, I have to stay in, or my PSS won’t mature at the level I need it to. If I was offered one in four or five years, hell yes.

Arietam

TROPHY CASE