The school yard bully has been sent home with a bloody nose. They’ve been completely kicked out of the NBN bidding process because they didn’t comply with the rules. To be fair, they’re Telstra and have never had to play by the rules. How were they to know this was going to be different?

They were meant to submit a bid to build a broadband network in Australia that has some criteria. Not a big deal. Everyone else managed to do it. 15 minutes before the deadline, they submitted something they referred to as a proposal… “Uh, we wanted a bid”. Telstra was like “Nah, just take this. I think you’ll find it will do. When do we start?”

Instead the Government said, no way buddy, in a move that has just about everyone else laughing at Telstra who now have some hideous PR nightmare on their hands and their shares losing a collective 6 billion. Sheesh.

Wouldn’t you hate to be over there?

At the same time, they have employees striking compounding their already terrible record for customer service and we have the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman telling them that they’ve had the worse level of complaints in 10 years with a 300% increase this year. Things aren’t looking good.

I’m finding the whole thing kind of hilarious, and I am relating this to you as something you have to think about in Online Marketing, a company does have a personality. It’s a combination of its decisions, its policy and PR. Once you assign a reputation and personality to a company it’s hard to break.

If you’re fairly neutral in the market you have a great opportunity to stand for something. As the failed social marketing project “Now We Are Talking” demonstrated, you actually can’t lie about your personality, it has to be real or people won’t buy it.
If you want to lie, go do advertising, if you want to bring about change internally so you can stand by your slogans, then get into marketing. Much harder, but much more rewarding.

WRONG

Apparently, the powder I have been taking for the last three months adds fat to your body. Why on earth would anyone be adding fat? Who knows. Anyway, I have been exercising rather frequently and taking these shakes and have notices that instead of getting muscles I have been getting fat. So on my back, where is should be defined, it’s getting flabby. Where I should have pecs, I have tits.

So. Word from learned. Not all powders are the same. And chatting up guys in health food shops pays off.

When you work from your home
and johns call on the phone
you’re a call girl.
When you walk til you limp
and give a cut to a pimp
you’re a street whore.
When they’re beggin’ you “please”
to get down on your knees
near their groinage
Excusa me,
but you see,
don’t you touch
where they pee
without coinage
When I straddle and squat
to show you my twat. . .

Poem ends…

It ends abruptly because the school bell rings and Jerri has to shut up. Brilliant.

It’s more annoying than anything else. I go to plan something and I get sick. Or I need to, I don’t know, hold down a job and I get sick.

The silver lining (and you know I’m into those) is that I imagine a flu pandemic breaks out and people are getting sick all over the place, and hospitals are filling up, and food is getter scarce, and slowly anarchy is breaking out in pockets, and the police can’t control essential services like water supply or waste disposal. Before all of this happened, back on day one of the disease – I would have died. My weak immune system would have adopted that disease like Angelina Jolie on a Thai baby.

If you are also sick a lot, please email me. I want to know if there is a supplement I should be taking.

I have never seen a more baseless argument for preventing a minority from accessing equal rights than the gay marriage debate. We’re told that you can’t have gay marriage because it will undermine the sacred institution of marriage. What is that? So sacred that marriage and divorce rates are equal, so sacred that it can happen because a woman is pregnant, so sacred that more planning goes into the wedding than into the couple having a life together.

To be honest, if you want marriage to be more sacred ban divorce, or prevent straight people marrying (if history is anything to go by). I think if Liza Minelli can marry a gay man, I should be able to as well.

So I’m all for gay marriage now and I’m all for the emotion behind it. I like the idea of a couple (any couple) publicly saying to the world “This is person I love. I’m going to commit, in public, to building a life with them”. That in essence is what marriage should be, and no human being on the planet should be denied that sentiment.

One of my friends works at a make up artist for the show and I didn’t realise that another friend was actually in the show.

It was pretty brilliant to be honest. Then one of my mum’s friends was in the audience, she works for channel 10 and was escorting Nigel Lythgoe and Bonnie Lythgoe from So You Think You Can Dance. Pictured…

During half time, I was having a chat to Bonnie and Nigel. The only intelligent thing I could think of to say was “Gee, I wish we had presented gay marriage like that [like the musical], we might have got it”. Bonnie went on to give me her sympathies about how it had been handled in the US. Amen sister.

All in all, a great show. It didn’t make me want to be on stage again, like these things tend to do, but it did make me want to date a dancer.

J.

Today, I wore what I considered to be a professional outfit to our mufty day at work. I had a collared shirt (tucked in), a nice belt, shoes and canvas shorts in white. Apparently though, we have a dress code. A code that prevents the wearing of shorts. What is on the list though of acceptable items are skirts, pants, t-shirts and so on.

Of course my direct boss was quite supportive, she said how silly it was that a woman can walk around with the fabric equivalent of a hanky covering her legs, a guy can be wearing a t-shirt and jeans and looking like the sleepy end of Field Day and meanwhile I got comments.

Since I’m not quite out of my probation period yet, I’m keeping quiet about the whole thing. As quiet as I can possibly be. So that involved telling them I was sexist and asking if next mufty it would be ok if I wore a skirt (as per the guidelines) and that I didn’t think the sky would fall if a customer did see my knee.

As usual, I’m tired. So maybe I’m overreacting. I’m also itchy. I better go. I’m right, right?