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When I was in high school, I had a part-time job in the children's wear department of a certain well-known department store that shall remain nameless.

I can remember being truly disgusted one Saturday morning, when I opened up a new box of stock and was faced with mountains of diamonte-studded padded-bra and brief sets for the girls 12-and-under section. Seriously, it was lingerie for preschoolers. I can't say I was surprised by how totally inappropriate this was - we had also recently started stocking those vile Bratz dolls and I had ranted at my manager about that too (why is it that the boys' toys are things like science kits, Meccano and sports equipment while the girls are encouraged to play with tarted-up bimbos who promote inanity, blue eyeshadow and skanky clothes?).

Anyway, I know it's an issue that has been brought up on YEN before, but hey, you know, maintain the rage and all. I think Phillip Adams was the first to call it "corporate paedophilia" - he wrote an interesting article a few years ago which you can find here. There's also the 2006 TAI report "Letting Children Be Children: Stopping the sexualisation of children in Australia" by Emma Rush and Andrea La Nauze. And there's a more recent article here for those of you who are bothered by this sort of thing.

"By denying the responsibility of man in global warming, by advocating gun rights and making statements that are disconcertingly stupid, you are a disgrace to women and you alone represent a terrible threat, a true environmental catastrophe".

The always outspoken Brigette Bardot on Vice presidential candidate Crazy Palin

I would like to thank everyone who participated in the Art Exposing Eating Disorders exhibition at the Mori Gallery in July/August this year. I am pleased to report that the final figures are in and the exhibition raised twelve hundred dollars for the Butterfly Foundation National Research Fund. There was some amazing talent and beautiful honest expressions on those walls and any that were not sold have been donated to the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in NSW. Keep your eyes peeled for news of next year’s Art Exposing Eating disorders event because it’s going to be bigger and better! Start getting your artistic ideas together now. Looking forward to it and thanks again to everyone who supported it.

Yes, I've been taking a political dilettante's interest in the upcoming US Presidential Election. (Yes, I stayed in last Friday night to watch the Obama-McCain debate... and was sorely disappointed - nowhere near as much bite as there should have been. Reckon I was sharper as third speaker for the affirmative "Tazos should be banned from school" in my Grade 7 inter-house championship).

Yes, this really is John McCain's running mate, and if the Republicans win, she will be (as Jack Cafferty so harrowingly puts it) "one 72-year-old's heart beat away from being President of the United States".

I'd read plenty about Sarah Palin's encounters with the media, and honestly didn't believe it could possibly be as bad as it sounded. But then I watched her interviews.

I actually want to cry. Now surely, no matter what your political persuasion or level of interest in world affairs might be, you will be equally disturbed to see (a) that somebody so far out of their intellectual depth could actually be a serious contender for one of the most powerful positions in the world, and (b) this shower of verbal diarrhea being sprayed in the face of a journalist who asked a highly relevant question about the US economic crisis.

Sadly, these aren't one-off gaffes. No wonder they're now only letting her out in public under the strict supervision of McCain or teleprompters.

At the moment she's at "debate bootcamp" in preparation for Thursday's Vice-Presidential debate with Joe Biden (Obama's guy). If they can turn her into something semi-coherent by then I'll eat my hat, but me thinks we're all about to be treated to a good ol' fashioned trainwreck.

Aside from Monday morning at 3am after gallivanting about all day at Parklife, I hadn’t had two minute noodles since my short lived Maggi two-minute noodle obsession in year eight, which begun when my friend showed me how you mix in the flavour sachet with boiling water before adding it to the noodles (which was a revelation to my sprinkle-flavour-sachet-on-after-adding-water world). So when I reached for the faithful yellow Maggi packet from the back of the pantry the other night, you can imagine the sense of nostalgia I felt after a seven-year hiatus. But something was different. This time two sachets fell out of the packet. TWO SACHETS. For a moment I thought I had got lucky and got two packets of flavouring as a mistake. But I was wrong. It was a sachet of vegetables. Or little orange things that resembled carrot and one pea cut into about sixteen slithers. Seriously! Vegetables in two-minute noodles… If there was one recipe I thought would be guaranteed to never change – it’d be two minute noodles. How long has this been happening? And since when were they baked not fried? Is it acceptable to admit you eat two-minute noodles these days?

Why is society trying to attain a nirvana-like state of political correctness? It has reached a point where ‘ladies’ and’ mens’ are no longer considered politically correct labels for public toilets!
A university in the UK has temporarily replaced WC signs with PC signs in a bid to make transgender students feel comfortable in the community. The ‘gents’ has been replaced with “toilets with urinals” and the’ ladies’ is now known as “toilets”.

I tend to write a few stories on the colourful neighborhoods I frequent - the last being about the dude that tried to climb in my bf's window at 10 on a monday night . Well, that was in Surry Hills; a relative gated community compared to where I live. My house is on a busy restaurant/ bar strip in Darlinghurst and I challenge you to find a more junk-tastic area. Aforementioned boyfriend actually hates staying here because my room (on streetlevel) is privvy to so much late-night screeching, I also frequently find ciggie butts and half eaten slices of pizza on my windowsill and I LOVE IT! Well, I did. Yesterday I found a dead body on my doorstep. The police were already arriving as I was thowing up in my mouth a little; I had never seen a dead body in my life until then and that of a local junkie isn't a good place to start. The barbershop/art gallery next to my place made him a memorial that you can see in the photo. It's right beneath my window.