Orthopaedic shoe inserts are potentially the biggest scam of the twenty-first century.

Introduced at the beginning of the new millennium and hailed as the western-world’s answer to childhood obesity, impotence, and red licorice, orthopaedic shoe inserts cost $4,000 each and can result in death.

You should not use orthopaedic shoe inserts if you are French or pregnant.

This is why:

BEFORE

AFTER

AFTER A LOT

GOOD GOD, THERE ARE CHILDREN IN THE AUDIENCE

Hi Cassie,

I have been to Thailand, Malaysia, South Africa, France, Spain, England, Italy, and Greece. During those journeys, I worked in orphanages, AIDS homes, and boarding schools, and gained a pretty thorough understanding and appreciation for other cultures. If you had bothered to click on the tag that says “travel” before you commented, you would have been able to answer your own question and save yourself from getting so upset.

I work full-time and pay my own bills, but yes, I do live with my parents at the moment if you count that as being “dependent.” The reason I never finished uni is because I didn’t want to, and my degree was useless for the industry that I am now working in. Also, feel free to call me a hippie, but I don’t think that a tertiary education based on an outdated syllabus is the only way to educate one’s self.

As far as friends who love me are concerned, just read all the comments above yours and tell me the ratio of negative to positive ones. I think you’ll find you were the only person who failed to understand that it was a tongue-in-cheek story, not to be taken overly seriously.

Here’s an idea – if you’re going to get all hot and bothered by random blog posts on the internet, just don’t read them. And if you can relax your sphincter enough to remove the giant pole that is currently lodged inside your anal cavity, learn how to take a joke and do your research before you have a meltdown and humiliate yourself online.

Cheers,

Annik

All aboard!

Not only was I unfortunate enough to be born with scoliosis and eyes which look in different directions when I am over-relaxed, but I also belong to a set of parents who insist on living in the Hills.

For those unfamiliar with Sydney, the Hills is an entirely stagnant and insular area north-west of the city where people are born, educated, employed and married all on the same block. People who live in the Hills go to school, church, soccer practice, work, the pub, and the movies all with the same group of friends they have had since pre-school, and they will continue to do so until they all rot beside their colostomy bags at the Anglican Retirement Village on Old Northern Road. If you suggest a visit to a city club or a day trip up the coast, Hills residents will smile and shake their head at you as if you are retarded. “Why would we trek all the way over there when we have everything we need right here?!” In this way, the Hills is exactly like America, but thinner.

The only way to get out of the Hills is to go to uni so you can secure a high-paying job and afford to move somewhere less conservative and tainted by Christians. But if you failed uni, like me, then you have to catch Hillsbus everywhere.

Hillsbus is the only way to get from the Hills to the city without paying $40 in tolls or trawling through three different forms of public transport. It is a privately owned company, which means they have a total monopoly on the norwest city-workers’ commute and can bump up their prices at will. The result is 60,000 passengers who fork over $50 each week for the privilege of spending 2 hours every day standing on a crowded, stuffy, perpetually late piece-of-shit vomit yellow bus. It is inevitable, like the tides – anyone who catches Hillsbus is a cunt.

“Umm Neek,” I can hear you say, “You catch Hillsbus. Does that make you a cunt too?”

Well yes, it does, to be honest. I live my life in a cranky state of constant exhaustion because my commute is so fucking long and tedious, I have considered simply sleeping on a yoga mat under my desk at work and giving myself sponge baths using the office water cooler. I also catch approximately six colds every winter because Hillsbus is so crowded that you will perform fellatio, on average, every three weeks simply by sitting in the aisle seat. I hate everyone on Hillsbus and all the filthy diseases they carry and sneeze on me. I never give up my seat for pregnant people or old women because the ride is so long and expensive that on the rare occasions you can get a seat, you hold onto that fucker like it’s going out of fashion. If someone wants to carry another human inside them for 9 months or commute long distances once they’re past the age of sixty then that’s their business, not mine. You should have thought about how you were going to work that into your life without counting on the generosity and kindness of strangers because really, the average person is fairly shit.

The Evidence

Last week, I was waiting at the Hillsbus bus stop after a few post-work beverages, when I became aware of some crazy bitch screaming up the road. Naturally, I turned to look, but my alcohol-riddled brain was too slow to look away before I had accidentally made eye contact with this raging meth head. I turned away anyway, hoping she would let it go, but ten seconds later I was grabbed around the head and dragged 3 metres by my hair. At this point, my brain cut out and I could not feel any pain or really register what was going on. I assume this is the same protective mental mechanism that shields me during sermons, conferences, and twenty minutes into any family dinner. Also, I was too smashed to know quite what was happening. However, I was aware of being slammed up against a wall and thrown to the ground, while being screamed at and called a cunt, a bitch, a whore, whatever else. I wasn’t sure what to do, so I assumed the fetal position and tried to cover my head. My friend Julia was on the scene fast, and yelled obscene threats until the ice junkie retreated, then she helped me to my feet.

“Are you okay?” Julia said.

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to sit down?”

“No.”

“Do you want some water?”

“No.”

“Do you want a cigarette?”

“Give me three.”

As we stood back in the bus line, because there seemed little else to do, I became aware that every other person waiting in the queue – all thirty or so of them – had simply watched me get bashed by an ice addict and decided that being a witness was the best civic duty they could provide in this particular situation. One lady (who was not a cunt) phoned the police to let them know what had happened, but everybody else just stood there guarding their place in line and staring at me. I knew they wanted tears. They wanted hysterics. They wanted blood. Instead, I held my cigarette at a jaunty angle and immediately pulled out my iPhone to tweet about the experience. I tossed my hair and LOLed. “Can you believe that just happened?” I asked Julia, who had not blinked or exhaled since the junkie first approached us. As soon as I know somebody wants something from me, I do everything within my power to prevent them from getting it, simply because I can, and I am selfish at heart. So these Hillsbus cunts could have their bus seat, but they wouldn’t get a show out of me.

When I got home, I took three valium and had a bath. Then I stood in front of the television and told my mother I had been attacked by a meth addict at the bus stop.

“That’s awful!” she said, putting down her crossword puzzle book. “Was anyone there?”

“Yeah, but nobody did anything. They didn’t even ask if I was okay. Those arseholes just stood in line watching. Like it was fucking street theatre.”

“Well I probably would have done the same,” Mum said, picking up her book again. “You don’t want to mess with an ice junkie. Besides, you’d never risk losing your place in the Hillsbus line. Those bastards will sidle up like you were never even there.”

The above image was brought to you by the genius man that is @bobearth and my power to persuade people to photoshop genitals into ordinary pictures.

Most of my relatives live interstate or in France and the Sydney ones don’t like us, so my family usually spends Christmas day getting drunk in our living room and letting out all the pent-up rage that has accumulated over the year.

“Why should you get to park in the driveway while my car sits out on the street like a whore?” I snap at my brother, tearing open a carefully wrapped gift from my mother. “Oh look, more Bryce Fucking Courtenay. You know he hasn’t written anything good since Four Fires. Buy me some Tim Winton or something. Goddamn it.”

“I’m the oldest,” my brother says, slurring slightly, “I get to park where ever the hell I want.”

“You’re the ugliest,” I retort. “Besides, you sell cleaning products, you’re going nowhere in life. At least I went to uni. I tried to make something of myself.”

“Yeah, tried being the operative word. Unlucky for you, there isn’t much demand for ice-queen bitch accountants with half a degree under their belt and a drinking problem. Face it, Neek, you’re a fucking failure. You have no career prospects, and no man will ever marry you because you have terrible genes. No offence, Mum.”

“You cunt, I’ll kill you,” I say, smacking his beer off the coffee table and reaching for his eyes, which were recently operated on and cost him $9,000 in medical bills.

At this point, my father rises from his cane chair and sighs. He walks over to his new electric piano and plugs in his headphones. Then he sits and plays Gershwin for three hours, until we have all passed out or gone to our bedrooms. The piano is my father’s happy place. He is an amazing musician, and people often go to my parents’ church just to hear my dad play. But at home, he plays to himself through headphones while the rest of us sit on the couch and watch television. Eventually, my mother falls asleep on the lounge and my brother goes to the garage to work on his motorbike. I walk down the road to the park with play equipment and sit at the top of the slippery-dip. I smoke cigarettes and ash onto the slide, thinking about all the local children who will now go home to their mothers with ashy, smelly pants. I think about how much I hate my family. I think about how much I hate Christmas. I think about the arbitrary cruelty of having a designated day of the year where I am forced to spend 24 hours with my family, regardless of whether I am in a good mood or have a sufficient supply of valium to see me through the holiday.

It wasn’t always like this. We used to have guests over for Christmas. Not traditional guests (ie friends and family) but random people my mother had met throughout the year who didn’t have anything better to do on Christmas day, because they were so scummy that they had failed to achieve basic relationships in life and had nobody to hang out with on the most important holiday of the year.

First there was Warwick, a thirty-something IT professional who lurked around my parents’ church and rode his bicycle everywhere. He came over for Christmas each year, and I hated him passionately.

“I think he’s a pedophile,” I told my mother as we stood at the kitchen window, looking out at  Warwick in the backyard. He was sitting by the pool, supervising the neighbour’s children as they swam.

“Do any of you kids know what skinny dipping means?” he asked them, trailing his big toe through the water. “I like to skinny dip.”

Then there were the pregnant bikie trashbags. They only came once – the last year we had guests. My mum had invited Gail, a crusty woman she met at TAFE, and her daughters. They showed up for lunch at 4pm and were all wearing leather jackets.

“Sorry we’re so late,” Gail said, picking something out of her teeth. “Young Natalie here had to stop every five minutes to take a piss.”

“I’m pregnant,” Natalie explained.

“Cool,” I said, draining my wine glass.

“Not cool!” Gail shouted. “Do you know how many times I’ve driven her to the abortion clinic? She pussies out at the last minute every time and decides to ruin her life instead.”

“How old were you when you had Natalie?” I asked pleasantly.

“She was sixteen,” Natalie replied, “Just a year older than me now.”

“What a charming family tradition,” I smiled, pouring myself a gin and tonic. “I recently turned sixteen myself.”

“If that’s the case,” Gail interrupted, “Should you really be drinking, young lady?”

“Well I’m not pregnant,” I replied.

Just then Warwick entered the house, holding a dripping child under each arm. “Did somebody say something about babies?” he gasped.

“Yeah,” I said, “This is Natalie. She’s pregnant, but she’s still trying to work up the guts to have an abortion.”

“I beg your pardon!” Gail spluttered.

“I like babies,” Warwick said.

“Oh my god, we’re out of wine,” Mum whispered to me.

“I’ll get some more,” I offered. I caught a bus to the local shopping centre and smoked a joint on the loading dock. Then I watched The Ring three times because nothing short of the apocalypse would cause Greater Union to close their doors. By the time I got home, Mum was asleep on the lounge, Dad was playing the piano, and my brother had disappeared to the garage.

The scene: my family is out for dinner at a cosy Italian restaurant for my brother’s 25th birthday. His new girlfriend is present. I have been forced to cancel my plans to watch Weeds under my doona in order to attend. I am bored. I have had 3 glasses of wine and I want to stir somebody’s pot. I actually like my brother’s new girlfriend, so I refrain from picking on her as I normally would. I know that I should also be nice to my brother, seeing as it is his birthday and I did not get him a present. And I leave my father alone, because he is my favourite person in the world. That leaves my mother.

Mum: So has anybody seen much of the Walkers lately?

Me: Yeah, I see Tim around the city every now and then, when he’s not hiding in his closet.

Mum: Oh, Annik...

Me: What? That kid’s more camp than a row of tents. Last week I saw two guys having sex in Hyde Park, and that was less gay than Tim Walker’s haircut.

Mum: The problem for Tim and other boys like him is that their faith is so important to them. They want to get married and have families like everyone else at church. But that conflicts with their involuntary desires to, you know…

Me: Fuck other men?

Mum: Yes.

Me: So if God intended for Man to be with Woman, and the Bible specifically states that homosexual practice is a sin, and the church frowns upon gays, then why did God create particular humans with these same-sex desires?

Mum: That’s one of the great mysteries of the Christian faith.

Me: No it’s not. It’s proof that the Bible is a load of horse shit, and every time you people can’t explain something properly, you just use some wanky cop-out excuse like “we can’t understand heavenly matters.” How can you add disclaimers to the entire human race’s ability to differentiate between possibility and impossibility like that? It’s a complete crock. You all disgust me.

Dad: Does anybody want dessert?

My brother has been dead for nearly 4 years now. This is how it happened…

It was a dark and stormy night during my first year of uni. But I didn’t know that, because I was drunk off my guts at some underground club in King’s Cross. As is usually the way that these things happen, I found myself staring into the mirror in a bathroom at the Moulin Rouge and wondering who had smeared all my eye make up onto my cheeks.

You’re drunk, my reflection said, Go home.

And so I stumbled up the stairs, out onto the street, and realised that it was 3am (the witching hour, and also taxi change-over time), pissing down with rain, and I had lost my friends at some stage of the night. Unphased, I wandered up and down Darlinghurst Road a few times looking for a cab or similar form of transport, and trying to stay under shelter. Suddenly it began to pour. There was hail and thunder and strong winds. I realised, very abruptly, that my feet were in the worst pain they had ever experienced. I had roughly $7 in my purse, I was too drunk to write a text message without keeping one eye closed, and I was getting yelled at for loitering outside clubs.

Eventually I found a bus stop and sat inside it, in the weak hope that a bus might arrive and take me somewhere dry. Sheets of rain blew inside and soaked me as I methodically rang everyone in my phone book. All my friends were either asleep or too drunk to drive, and none of my acquaintances owed me any favours. I left a series of slurred, abusive voice mail messages, then apologised and begged people to call me back. My parents were out of town and I didn’t have any other relatives’ phone numbers handy. I considered committing some sort of crime so that I could catch a ride with the police, or throwing myself in front of a car in order to get taken to hospital in an ambulance and then tucked into a warm bed by nurses. I suddenly felt very young and small and officially fucked.

As I sat in the bus stop on Macleay Street in the pouring rain and tried not to cry, a transvestite hooker came and sat next to me.

“I’m Jean,” it said, as I shifted away on the seat.

“I make jewellery,” it added, holding out an arm full of bangles and track marks.

“Maybe I can help you get home?” it offered with a wink as I turned away and frantically dialled my brother’s number.

“What?” he answered, awake and sober.

“Chris, I’m stranded in the cross in a thunderstorm in a bus shelter with some junkie jewellery-making eternal question and there are no cabs. Please come and get me. You’re my big brother – you have to do this.”

“What’s an eternal question?” he asked.

“It’s when you can’t tell whether a person is male or female,” I explained, “Will you pick me up?”

“Nah…” he said, “I think I’m just gonna go to bed, I’m pretty tired.” And he hung up.

As I stared at my phone in disbelief, the hooker asked me whether my brother was coming to pick us up.

“I have no brother,” I corrected it, and walked out into the rain.

My mother has this tendency to try and talk to me whenever I am walking out the door, blow-drying my hair, on the toilet, asleep in bed or otherwise engaged.

Last Monday night, she waited until I was brushing my teeth before asking me if I had a good physio appointment. I gave a thumbs up.

“And did Elizabeth get my message?”

I shrugged.

“Did you have some dinner?”

I shook my head.

“Are you going to work tomorrow?”

I nodded.

“Well you’re just full of information tonight, aren’t you?”

“Woman,” I spat in the sink, “I am brushing my teeth.”

“Okay, no need to be such a cow. Did you know I gave birth to you without any anesthetic? I pushed out your selfish head without so much as a goddamn epidural. And this is the thanks I get.”

After a morning of intense shopping at KLCC Centre in Kuala Lumpur, my friend Niki and I retreated to a nearby park to rest our legs and eat some lunch. We had already attracted stares everywhere in KL – mostly from the Indian men – but now we really seemed to be the main focal point in the park. Every few minutes, we were approached by somebody wanting to take our picture. Others simply took sneaky shots of us when they thought we weren’t looking, or pretended to take photos of their friends while clearly pointing their camera lens at us.

“This is great!” I told Niki as I struck a pose and smiled winningly while a Chinese girl photographed me. “I’ve never been to a country where everyone thinks I’m so hot!”

“They don’t think you’re hot,” Niki explained, “They think you’re a whore. A white western whore who will spread her legs after three margaritas by a cheap motel pool.”

“Oh.” I said.

After that, I scowled whenever anyone asked to take my picture. And if I noticed somebody photographing me without my permission, I twisted my face into a snarl and raised both my middle fingers towards the camera. If I was going to be uploaded to some seedy Indian guy’s Facebook album and tagged as his girlfriend, framed and placed on somebody’s bedside table, or possibly even masturbated over, I sure as hell wasn’t going to do it smiling.

I have always hated flying. Not out of fear (the statistics of fatal plane crashes puts me completely at ease) but out of my general distaste for humans. The idea of being forcibly seated amongst people not of my choosing for 9 consecutive hours gives me heart palpitations.

So my friend Niki and I were stoked when we boarded our flight to Kuala Lumpur and saw that there weren’t any other passengers seated within five rows of us. The morning had already been stressful enough – we’d gotten up at 4:30am after going to bed at midnight, and had been forced to stop several times on the drive from Brisbane to Coolangatta so that I could be violently sick in filthy service station bathrooms. The attendants all gave me dirty looks as I exited the bathrooms, pale and sweaty and looking every part the junkie.

Therefore it was a relief to get to the airport on time and know that we’d be able to spend our flight stretched out across three seats – a whole row each – and catch up on sleep. But then, 20 minutes before we were due to depart, 300 Malaysians suddenly boarded the plane and filled all the available seats around us. Worse, these people all had kids. Obnoxious, bratty, whiney kids, who took turns losing their shit and hollering like psych patients throughout the entire 9 hour flight. The worst of these children, a little Malaysian Dennis the Menace in denim overalls who looked about 2 years old, sat directly behind me. He immediately proceeded to wail, thrashing under his seatbelt and kicking the back of my seat. I allowed 10 minues of this – ample time for parental administration of corporal punishment – then I stood up and faced his grandmother, who stared back at me impassively. I looked pointedly at her horrid rat-baby and then back at her. Control your spawn, I told her with my eyes, Make it quiet, or kill it. Then I sat back down and took 3 valium.

An hour later, I awoke to the same screeching and seat-kicking. Full of buzz and lacking my usual sober inhibitions, I stood up and went to the child. “Please stop kicking my seat, sweetheart,” I said, “Or I will kick you.” And he stopped after that.

I spent the remainder of the flight drifting in and our of a valium-induced slumber and calling the flight attendants every time I woke up. It was impossible to attract their attention as they walked throughout the cabin, but if I pushed a small orange button above my seat, I was attended to within seconds. Perhaps this magical orange button was intended for medical emergencies or similar. Whatever. I would press it without hesitation whenever I needed some water, another blanket, or a hot Milo. The flight attendant would drop whatever she was doing and come running over. “What is the matter?” she would ask breathlessly, and I would hold out my Air Asia neck pillow. “I can’t blow this up,” I would explain, and she would stare for a moment before realising I was serious and demonstrating how to blow-up the pillow. “Maybe instead of showing me,”  I suggested, “You could just do it for me?”

“Oh. Ha ha. No.” Their English was limited.