New Rules at St Kilda Junction

While it was not designed for pedestrians to walk along the narrow raised concrete area and cross over into St Kilda Road, who could blame them when the alternative is to walk back, use the underpass and walk back along St Kilda Road. It would take four times as long at least to get to the west side of St Kilda Road and god knows how long to get to the eastern side.

St Kilda Junction is an abortion for pedestrians, hence few do what they are supposed to. With the Commonwealth Games starting soon, someone has decided that pedestrains at St Kilda Junction need to be controlled. Do they really think putting up a couple of signs is going to make a difference? I am fairly law abiding, but here is no way I would take any notice of these ridiculous signs.

Good luck to whoever is going to try and enforce this. You weren't the idiot who designed St Kilda Junction or put up the stupid signs. As usual, click the pic for a proper view.

Train to Donny

From today's Age. Is it time to get excited?

It is believed the Government is considering building a rail line to Doncaster along the Eastern Freeway median strip, at an estimated cost of $400 million. But it is likely to be a long-term project.

Deadly place

I have been meaning to visit Brighton Cemetery for a while to take some pics. The grave is that of my maternal great grandparents. William was a nice and kind gentle man who lived his last at my grandmother's house in Clarinda. Rose was an absolute tyrant and treated my grandmother very badly and my mother was terrified of her. On her deathbed she was still issuing orders and threats. My grandmother was a slave for her parents and brothers.

Daisy, great grand parents' daughter died only a few months old and I have forgotten the cause now. She was one of thirteen children. My late grandmother was somewhere in the middle. Two of her sisters survive. One is over ninety and has dementia and is well looked after in a nursing home in Roweville. The other, the youngest has a very nice house high on the hill in Berwick.

The great grand parents home and land was bought by the government to build Monash University. An area next to Dandenong Road was excised and sold to the husband of the daughter who now lives in Berwick. It was a beautiful four bedroom triple fronted cream brick veneer built on the hill just west of Wellington Road. He subsequently subdivided the land.

Note in pic some dead flower stems in the flower receptacle. I expect they were put there by my great aunt from Berwick .

New blogger link

I have added Connex Whinger to blogs I alwasy read with some caution. It is true, I do always read his blog. I realise that some people have issues with him, I think centred on his past lack of understanding how, along with him, staff are also kept in the dark and there are many things out of their control.

I know a bit about behind the scenes stuff with public transport and there is considerable incompetence for sure, behind the scenes and on the frontline too. But no one wants things to go wrong. Down to the last person pretty well, all try hard. Systems and processes are where it all goes wrong.

As in my previous post, there are statistics. So far as train and tram service go, they don't reflect reality. In fact I will go so far as saying tram statistics are doctored intentionally by lower middle management, probably trains too.

Connex Whinger is documenting, hopefully accurately although also questioned, where reality does not match the official version. It is only his version after all. But as a regular train user without any inside knowledge, he gives a run of the mill observant user's view. I just wish their was a bit more of this sort of thing published.

So, Connex Whinger is added.

Not the pink bits

The green bits. The green bits on a map. Parkland. Good thing they are. We have quite a lot in Melbourne, some areas more than others.

Where in our larger fair city don't we have much in the way of green bits? I would have guessed the City of Yarra. But no, the local government area in Melbourne with the least green bits is City of Glen Eira.

So in spite of the lovely Caulfield Park where we used to walk our dogs, City of Glen Eira lacking is parks.

Statistics, bah.

Measuring up and some relief

So you have never measured it? I can believe that there may be a small percentage of males who have not measured themselves when errect. I don't believe the ones who say they never indulge in onanism.

The other day I heard a statistic that there is only one inch difference between the largest and smallest penis when they are errect AND that the average woman is only five inches deep anyway, so anything more than a five inch penis is useless. Some people really need to get out more, especially researchers.

Another study indicated that the largest hung men in the world are Sri Lankan. A survey of Americans informed us that they thought that white Americans are the largest hung in the world. This one is no suprise really.

By my limited knowledge, Sri Lankans are not the biggest. I would opt for black American or Eastern European.

There must be various ways of measuring yourself. Some must measure from between their legs to the tip. This is wrong and leads to un-necessary excitement in others. Here are my rules. Of course you need to get yourself errect, then measure along the TOP of your organ from base to tip. If you have it, make sure the skin is pulled back. No stretching it out. Do not round to the next inch. You may feel disappointed in the result. Do not worry. Once this measuring method is standardized, I am sure you will be in a very competitive postion.

As for me, well of course I masturbate and yes I have measured it but not since I was a teen I think. I don't suppose it changes much. Size, not telling but I am now going to shower and get dressed now and put on my large shoes. (What made me think lustfully of Ian Thorpe at this point?)

Am I a size queen? Of course. Do I really care, no. But I do like them to get rock hard and often the smaller they are, the harder they get.

More on rss

At the Governer General's suggestion and confirmed by M!key, I am now using Bloglines. Thanks to both of you and anon as well.

It is exactly what I wanted and I will probably start reading more blogs now. I will still look at all your basic blog pages sometimes though.

Becks is a hunk

Ok, I confess to finding David Beckham pretty hot. Pretty very hot. I read that dykes are copying his latest hairstyle. I recall being terribly disappointed when I saw him interviewed on tv. What an awful voice with an awful accent.

But as R succinctly put it, he is not the brightest spark in the fire. You may have seen the report from London's Daily Mail and we all know what a trustworthy paper that is, but if true, oh dear, the poor love. Here is an extract.

"Their homework is so hard these days. I sat down with Brooklyn the other day - and I was like, 'Victoria, maybe you should do the homework tonight'," Beckham told the Mail on Sunday newspaper.

"I think it was maths, actually. It's done totally differently to what I was teached when I was at school, and you know, I was like, 'Oh my God, I can't do this'.

Oh Dave, what I could have teached you.

But seriously, I don't like the mickey taken out of people for their lack of education. Pity I just did in a way.

Pretty on the water

Maybe it was the Volvo ocean yacht race cruise around the bay. Whatever, I just remembered I took a couple of pics. The boats looked great. Click the pic for a better view.

Road rage

I don't indulge in it and never been a victim of it if it means someone gets out of the car. The worst I have suffered is glares from a car behind when I have been in a correct lane and I am not going faster than the speed limit.

I did revently have a word to the passenger of a car when I was next to her at traffic lights. It was in reference to her female P plate friend's driving. She was preocupied with arranging her hair, checking herself in the mirror, smoking and doing something with her mobile phone. She drifted over lane lines. She stopped several cars short of the car in front at traffic lights and still sat there when everyone moved off. I suggested she tell her friend that driving was a serious business and she needed to concentrate. She acclerated hard and swung directly in front of me, but missed my corner panel as I was very alert. She then slowed and I patiently followed behind. She stuck a single finger and accelerated away in a cloud of blue smoke. Silly girl.

It stikes me as very odd that you can put a few hundred people on a train, crammed up together, invading each other's personal space and it is rarely a problem. Put the same number of people in individually chosen and individual motorised metal boxes, and they go beserk.

Perhaps it is that the crammed train passengers have a common but absent enemy who they can't attack. The CaR DriVER can SIGHT HIs/heR enEMY and RAM THE C***** CAR or STAB or SHOOT the A**HOLE.

I think it may be very satisfying at times.

RSS

I kinda know what RSS is. The time has arrived that I have decided I think I need to use it. Firstly I need to find out what it really is. I did some looking and I have a good idea now. I need to download a program. But there are a few to choose from and I really have no idea. I have looked at newsgator and newsmonster. Both look overly complicated with far more features than what I want. I think I will just put it in the too hard basket for a while. Rephrased, I will research for quite a while without focusing on it too much. My usual MO, perhaps.

Actually I wonder if it is a good idea for me? It can be frustrating at times when you click on someone's blog day after day and they have written nothing, but you know when they do, it will be a gem. You think, well they must be very busy. There are the totally dependable blogs, guaranteed to have something new and fresh to say.

Then there are ones with very long posts. I must try not to slip into that. No matter how worthy the topic and although I am far from young, I have the attention span of a modern young person and I really can't be bothered reading long posts, with some personal exceptions, especially when they are very personal posts.

Nah, I won't do this rss feed for a while. I like clicking on people's blogs, whether they have posted or not. Call it a 21st century personal connection. You are not just fed into my computer for me to quickly scan and delete. I make an effort and read your blog and get to know you up to a point. I go to your blog and read what you write. It stays in context. Sometimes I may look at your links, photos, profile, blogger mates.

But I am not being critical of people who use rss feeds. I expect they have many blogs to keep up with. Just not my thing.

So what are your leanings?

I found this link at someone's blog and it looked quick to fill in and get a result that indicates your political leanings. I never take these things seriously. Just as a bit of fun. Have a go yourself.

http://www.ozpolitics.info/blog/?page_id=206

My result is fairly predictable although I don't know what to make of me supporting One Nation more than the Libs or Nats. Thinking back, they did have some good ideas. But I could never forgive them the distress and disruption, hurt and pain that they caused and although they are powerless now, some of their policies live on with the Howard Liberal government. As for Family First.....I just don't know.

Exercise and the gestapo

Often after work, I ache to walk. I need to free my joints and breath almost fresh air. In that mood, I could walk long and fast. But today I did not walk far. There is some tram track works happening near us so I though I would just have a squiz at what they were doing. I also wanted to photograph some detail on the Royce Hotel. R came with me and while we were on the correct side of the tape where the major works were happening, we were in an area that pedestrians would not normally be.

Oh, oh. Here comes security/traffic controller. I will stand my ground. R will get angry, storm off and lecture me afterwards.

'Would you like to get closer and take some photos?' she called out, having noticed the camera in my hand.

'Um, no, not really here to take photos. Just for a look at what the work is.'

'Well, come in closer and have a proper look', she insisted. So we did. It wasn't very interesting, just some boring concrete, steel rail and some holes, but it was nice to be invited.

And here I was thinking that I being a threat to national security. We thanked her and left.

Nice bit of architectural work though hey? Can't say quite the same about the photographer's skill though.

Frog Roo

What an odd tale.

SOMETHING is puzzling the great insurance companies of France.

Every few months or so, a French provincial motorist submits a claim for damage to a vehicle with a wild attendant story about hitting a kangaroo deep in the ancient forest of Rambouillet.

The funny thing is, it's not made up.

It was in December, just before Christmas, recalls Brigitte Perrin, 56, who lives in the tiny forest township of Emance.

"My husband and I were driving home, and it was very cold and dark," she said. "Suddenly a kangaroo jumped in front of the car. It was like a deer, but a deer bounds away. This creature just sat there.

"Even though I was driving slowly, I couldn't avoid it, it was the same colour as the trees, very hard to see."

Renault: 1. Kangaroo: Nil.

But when Mme Perrin contacted her insurance company to claim for repairs to her vehicle, she hit a snag; the company raised a corporate eyebrow at her tale of the marauding moonlight macropod.

And fair enough; who would expect to find a kangaroo sniffing about just an hour from Paris? Emance Mayor Francoise Grangeon is now a regular correspondent with French insurance companies.

She has written numerous letters vouching for the presence of kangaroos - wallabies, actually - roaming wild in the Rambouillet Forest.

They have bred in the wild there for about 30 years, having escaped long ago from the local Parc de Sauvage wildlife park. And despite a long period of expatriate life, they have evidently not yet learned to look before they cross French roads.

In the meantime, the municipality of Emance has reached a truce of sorts with the insurance industry.

Emance grants residency status to the roos, and the insurers pay up.

Now to introduce the saltwater crocodile.