I’m awesome!

And I’m awesome because Threadless told me so when my tshirt order arrived this morning.

I kinda bought 5 tshirts, but with the exchange rate, it worked out about $20 a tshirt. Bargain!

This is the one I’m wearing atm:

“Fail” cow not jumping over the moon

It’s going to take me 3 weekends to give all the shirts their proper induction. Never had such exciting variety in my tshirts!

The spirit of an emergency

So now a second Qantas plane has had to make an emergency landing this week – this time in Adelaide.

Why haven’t I heard anyone ask if these critical incidents (if I use the language we use at work) are linked to the offshoring of Qantas engineering teams? Seems a bit suss if you ask me.

(I promise to go back to pictures of cupcakes and stupid posts soon – something about this week is getting me all ranty and in the mood for heavier posts)

Everyone you see, everyone you know is gonna…

I have a long personal history of disliking Hillsong, partially for what I’ve read about them in newspaper articles and whatnot, but also from the few stories I hear from a family member who attends as often as possible. I put them in the same basket of nutbags as Scientologists and shudder every time I learn something new about them, because it usually isn’t good.

I was listening to AM radio (again) on the way home tonight and heard talk of the Shine Program, which is part of Hillsong. It’s taught at schools as an extra-curricular subject ( I assume, since it wouldn’t contribute to your end-of-year results… surely?) for girls only, and from what someone said when they called in on the radio this arve, it teaches girls “how to order a meal at a restaurant” and “how to get the attention of the waiter” – so stuff that your parents could probably teach you, or you just pick it up when you’re, you know, existing in the world. I sure as shit wasn’t taught this stuff. One girl who’s finished the program said that they’d taught the girls how to apply the type of makeup she wouldn’t normally want to wear anyway.

Huh? Makeup classes? How to look like a tart 101.

I think it was this same girl who said she went to these Shine classes once a fortnight during her science lesson. SCIENCE LESSON?! Bells have gone off in my head – why is this program, run and taught by an evangelical Christian organisation (I dare not call them a “church”) DURING A FREAKING SCIENCE LESSON? I couldn’t help but think how the Hillsongers would be rubbing their hands with glee, thinking they’re getting away with girls missing out on lessons about EVOLUTION and DARWIN and BIG BANG THEORY. Y’know, things that’re against Teh Bible.

And I’m sorry, but for any organisation to get its foot in the door in any educational institution, shouldn’t it be investigated why they are so interested in teaching their ideals at schools? I don’t know why it hasn’t been brought up but wouldn’t a religious organisation want to at least subliminally promote themselves during the program? While schools are paying them to deliver these programs in their school? Hey, here’s how you put on eyeshadow, by the way come to church on Sunday, it really rocks, kthnxbai.

From what I’ve read since getting home tonight, it would seem that:

• Hillsong has inappropriately used Chaplaincy Program Grants to fund Shine. Why hasn’t Hillsong been questioned about the misuse of taxpayers’ money?
  
• One student disputed on radio that it’s revealed to be a Hillsong program and that parents are required to give permission for students to attend. How is a student able to skip class/es without parental consent?
• “Most of the facilitators who deliver Shine in Sydney classrooms have no university counselling qualifications”. How can the Department of Education allow unqualified people to give lessons on school sites?
• Turns out that “the Department of Education has no role in approving the program”. Um, WTF? As in, seriously, what the fuck?!
  

Hillsong has a bit of a history of dodgy requests for government funding, amongst other things. I read an article years ago where Bobbie and Brian, the founders of Hillsong said that overweight people are frowned upon at Hillsong. Sweet jeebus.

Learning these things about what I believe is a cult just leaves me lost for words. And you know how hard it is to do that.

Anyone got any Hillsong or Shine experiences to share?

Cupcakes!

So after finally getting the right tip to pipe cupcakes the way I imagine them, I gave myself another go at another batch tonight.

These cupcakes will go to work tomorrow – themed in the WYD08 colours to celebrate surviving the ordeal.

The cats decided they couldn’t help themselves (again) by breaking through my well-prepared barriers and nomming 2 cupcakes off the counter while they were cooling (again). I decided to play their game and iced their 2 cupcakes and left them in their bowls to nom. All they really did was lick the icing off. But I feel like the winner in any case.

AND! I finally remembered to try out one of the cupcake trees I was given for my 30th last month. Didn’t think much of them, but after putting these babies on the mini-tree, I’ve changed my mind.

What a Twit

I’m sure for the most part, the people I will refer to in this post are innocent Twitterers. As frequently happens on Twitters as soon as someone follows a user on Twitter, they reciprocate the gesture – out of courtesy, to improve their friendcount whatevs.

But I think it pays to watch who adds you on Twitter, especially now that there are more and more spammers running their spam bots all over the place. But obviously not everyone is on the same page as me (“Why the hell not?” is a pretty good question at this point).

Just now, I got an email saying “osbournehsona39″ is now following me on Twitter. Yay! I go off and check out the profile of this intelligent person who’s decided to follow my thrilling accounts of making cupcakes, housework and bitching about His Popiness. While I’m sure “osbournehsona39″ is a “lovely person”, seeing that they are following 2000 Twitter users and their one and only Twitter is “i am bored and horny. wanna watch me on cam? cc req 4 age verification” doesn’t exactly make me want to stop from blocking them RIGHT THIS SECOND.

While I type this, “osbourneshona39″ has ELEVEN TWITTER USERS FOLLOWING HER/IT. ELEVEN. Some look like users where they have bots set up to auto-add new followers, but sheesh. I think some of these users really think they will get something out of this. Apart from the need to fill out a credit card fraud claim.

I also can’t help but wonder if who/whatever set this Twitter account up even knows the person in the photo they’ve used. Suddenly reminds me why I need to get scared of the internets every now and again.

Needless to say, “osbournehsona39″ has been duly blocked on my account, with hopes that she is eventually successful in the porn or piracy industry.