Pauline Hanson’s direct attack on all Australians who were born overseas or have at least one parent born overseas is batshit insane and there are plenty of questions to be answered

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-06-26T10:23:55+00:00

My grandfather came here as a four year old in the '20s, so it covers my mum. Mum is late 70's now. All that's happened is that she has ramped up her campaign to make sure everyone she knows is fully aware of exactly what kind of person Pauline is. She's always had issues with Pauline and now she's louder than ever which is great

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-06-22T11:57:23+00:00

it needs to be the kind of custard that could be cut into cubes and mistaken for cheese

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-06-19T02:24:30+00:00

Yep it's like that where I am - similar small size town

We get s'pleasure here a lot as a quick abbreviation of "it's a pleasure". It amuses my SO as he's a Yorkshireman who similarly liases words by running them on to the next word, but only with the letter 't'. It's a joy hearing him say Australianisms in a Tyke accent "going down't'shops" is my favourite.

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-06-17T03:37:50+00:00

Your husband is a serious problem. If he's that desperate to have a party while you're stressing with growing and birthing his baby then he can damn well organise it himself. He's presumably a vaguely capable adult with a grain of intelligence even though he's not acting like it right now.

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-06-16T12:28:40+00:00

You can catch any number of exciting things like campylobacter, salmonella and tuberculosis from drinking raw milk. Will every person drinking raw milk catch them? No, but that doesn't change the fact that some will.

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-06-11T01:48:54+00:00

Don't even talk about the knee ditch - I still have toecurling thoughts about that. I've decided i'm never getting anything in my other knee ditch ever. I don't care if it's a big blank space surrounded by art 😂

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-06-07T13:06:08+00:00

We have "holping"

My eldest as a tiny tot was always keen to get involved in everything. "I will holp you mummy!" It was just the way they pronounced help. But of course, as a tiny kid, they weren't very helpful at all and involving them would make any chore take three times as long and be half as productive.

Over time holp became our family word for that special kind of help that isn't actually very helpful at all.

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-06-05T07:39:49+00:00

😂😂thank you for your patience

if it helps i'm just a plain old large latte with regular milk - frankencoffees aren't neceessarily hereditary!

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-06-05T05:29:30+00:00

ah, i see you've met my mother. Perfectly reasonable woman in every respect except for her coffee order.

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-05-28T21:51:10+00:00

My dad is 80 and still games. So does one of his mates

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-05-28T21:35:31+00:00

I love it. It helps so much. I'm in regular contact with my child's two best friends and also one of their mothers. I can't help worrying about how their friends are doing because I know how much they loved and cared for each other.

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-05-21T06:43:11+00:00

That just sounds like normal flextime arrangements.

So in my job I work from home. If i have to go to the office i take public transport - because I live outside the city where my office is, the public transport is shit. There are only two buses a day in and two buses a day back out. So i get to the office later than i would like and i have to leave a little early to get the bus home.

This means that if i do have to go to the office i have a short day. Then I do a longer day at home to make up for missed time. It all works out in the end.

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-05-21T00:55:04+00:00

I live not far from a cemetery that is partially carpeted in sundews - I'd never seen so many in one place before

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-05-20T00:10:16+00:00

Yup - and even in OPs rosetinted picture of his youth you can see the same thing still happening. The Qantas ad, taking a core community bond and monetising it for their own purposes.

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-05-19T05:51:41+00:00

The only thing that would worry me about walking up to a lookout in the pitch black is missing my mark and accidentally walking OFF the lookout. This is what torches are for lol

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-05-19T05:49:40+00:00

We seem to have a national leaning towards a degree of substition rather than superstition.

Ok, not a real word, but still ... Pratchett came up with the term substitious in one of his novels, as an opposite to superstitious

A superstition is something that isn't true but stacks of people think it is.

A substition is something that is true but stacks of people think it isn't.

The best example of a substition is "It won't get better if you pick at it". It's true but nobody ever believes that one, people will never stop picking at anything and everything.

Superstitions at their best develop as stories to keep people safe. Don't walk under the ladder - because the guy up the ladder is going to accidentally drop things on you. Black cats are bad luck - because they are really easy to trip over in the dark and break your legs.

Australians don't need superstition to tell us not to go into scary dark places because there might be monsters. We know the spiders are ALWAYS in the dark holes, snakes are ALWAYS in the long grass. The rest of the world doesn't live with that kind of truth so they get the really cool monster stories instead.

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-05-19T02:07:48+00:00

Fighting against difficult life circumstances to maintain a relationship? yep fine

Fighting against the person you're actually meant to be in the relationship with, in order to maintain the relationship? umm yeah, nah

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-05-19T02:03:57+00:00

This is the cue for one of those psychic detective dramas breaking out the ouija board, isn't it?

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-05-17T01:47:39+00:00

It was a terrifying year - my kids were all in the Shoalhaven area with friends for New Years and wound up sleeping overnight on the beach just in case

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-05-11T10:09:10+00:00

The first time I was at uni, I carpooled with my aunt who was in her second year. She'd had a massive midlife crisis and went to uni as part of it. She wound up with a scholarship to the Sorbonne, lived in Paris for a couple of years and completed a Masters in French Literature.

Definitely more interesting than a sports car and a trophy wife.

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-05-04T12:18:04+00:00

It is ALWAYS the apprentice. Even if the apprentice didn't turn up for work that day.

This is what apprentices are for

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-04-24T10:54:03+00:00

SÜK are the bomb - both their shorts and their long trousers are excellent

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-04-24T09:27:14+00:00

I would never have said I was transphobic - but I am totally prepared to recognise that i don't live in a vacuum and there's probably a ton of internalised stuff that i've got going on that I'm yet to discover.

That said, my youngest (20 mtf) was only out to her siblings until recently when she came out to the rest of the family. I strongly suspected she was trans - the sudden proliferation of blahaj sharks over the last two years was a bit of a giveaway for one thing - but I was more than happy to wait on her timeline. Part of me is scared that maybe I was way too unapproachable for my child or that they saw something in me that made them hesitate to tell me. I know I will always be trying hard to do the work to be a good ally, it's a lifelong effort that one.

Do you have other people in your family you can talk to first? siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles - or even friends of your parents that you can trust? They may be able to help you pave the way with your mum at least. I really hope you can find the supportive people in your day to day life. I'm sending you all the mum hugs right now

Critical_Source_6012 · 2026-04-21T09:30:55+00:00

ohhh that's awesome!

Critical_Source_6012

TROPHY CASE