Celebrity Endorsements

I have begun to notice that everything I buy, whether it be clothes, toothpaste, a car or toilet paper has some celebrity’s tick of approval. Retired basketball stars advertise carpet. Britney promotes Pepsi and gets herself into legal celebrity strife when spotted drinking Coke. MacGyver extols the virtues of MasterCard, all which is based purely on monetary remuneration rather than on the actual merits of the product. Do I really believe that Jackie Chan drinks Mountain Dew or that Justin Timberlake eats and enjoys McDonalds?

Even fictional characters have gotten in on the act. The Simpson’s swear by CC Lemon – a Japanese soft drink. Bugs Bunny really digs Nike shoes and USA War Bonds. And Kermit the frog, since he has the need to drive places all the time, wouldn’t go anywhere if it wasn’t in a Ford or BMW. What makes advertising executives think that I would allow the opinion of a Muppet to influence my car buying decision?

Even if they did actually believe in their products and wished to share their wonderment and awe with the rest of humanity. Even if Big Kev really did rejoice whilst using Shower Power in his spa bath, what possesses us to believe the recommendation of random famous people? Do Britney and Kate Moss have such great track records that I would want to believe what they say?

Some prominent individuals in the circle of household names have serious drug problems, anger issues or are inflicted with an addiction to one thing or another. Some celebrities get married eight times in the space of 3 and a half days. That should tell me that they may not be the greatest judge of character. And if they aren’t any good at picking their future partner, what makes us think that they would be any better at choosing a car or a skin care product? When I choose my household cleaning chemical should I trust the guidance of someone who is familiar with chemicals of the pill popping kind? I don’t wish to disparage those people who have achieved stardom, but wish to stress to people the fact that surely there is someone better than Tara Reid to plug the newest Kenwood Chef Mixmaster.

So who should the advertising companies use instead of the rich and famous? People who know their onions, I think. Someone I can trust to really know what they are talking about. Someone that I would bump into down at my local Chinese restaurant. I’d like to see my Nan advertising pasta sauce. A greasy mullet-possessing mechanic advertising my car. Somebody my size advertising my clothes. My friends Bernie and Andy advertising the latest movie. A highly-strung teenager advertising caffeinated soft drinks. A geeky IT guy advertising my iPod docking station.

I want no more good looking, rich, famous or skinny people with fake teeth trying to sell me stuff. If you were on a billboard I would smile and probably purchase whatever it was you were peddling. That’s because you are like me. I can relate to you. You are just like my brother, my mother, my aunty or my best friend. You have probably never been married more than 3 times and have probably even used Shower Power or Easy Off Bam. Even if you were selling tuna, I, as a vegetarian, in all probability would still acquire my fair share of “Chicken of the Sea”…but if Jessica Simpson were the spokesperson, it would be a completely different story.

I forgot my own mobile number today!

I have had my mobile phone number for the past 3478 days and about 3475 days ago I had my number memorised. So great is my freakingly good memory that even whilst drunk or recovering from the dramatic effects of a general anesthetic my mobile number slips off my tongue as if I had been born with it as an inbuilt piece of genetic information.

So to my great surprise and sickening shock, today whilst leaving a message on somebody's message bank, I had a mental blank and for the life of me could not remember this blasted number. I ended up leaving what I thought was my number all the while knowing in my heart of hearts that, that number was not mine.

To further disturb my otherwise cruisy day, involving not much more than sleep, food, Timezone and Ricky Gervais, I discovered that due to my decade of perfect remembrance of my number that I had no record anywhere of what my number actually is. It wasn't in my phone, it wasn't in my computer address book, it wasn't written on a tiny scrap of paper that was shoved at the back of a drawer along with my primary school graduation photo and half used tubes of hand cream. No, my trust in my memory to serve me to my death, was absolute and to write down my number anywhere was simply an insult to it.

I decided that my only option was to message a friend, admit to having a less than perfect memory and get my number off her. But before I did that I decided that I must record this monumental occasion on facebook. As I logged in and went to my profile, I was suddenly faced with my phone number. Plain as day it sat there on my profile and I realised that my sub conscious must have realised that somehow that I wasn't perfect and that there was a chance that one day I would forget my number. I guess my trust in my memory wasn't as absolute as I first suggested.

I took note of my number. I had given the wrong one to the person who I had called earlier. I am a failure.

South Street Vet

I was driving along South Street yesterday, and whilst concentrating dilligently on the road ahead I saw a sign. Not the spiritual awakening kind of sign, but a billboard for South Street Vet. I don't know what caught my attention, maybe my subconscious was looking for things to include in my blog, or maybe I just wasn't concentrating as dillegently on the road as I first suggested.

The sign had the simple words 'South St Vet' on it. No surprises there considering it was the South St Vet. But now, what kind of picture would you expect to be on said sign? A dog, cat, rabbit, maybe even something as exotic as a ferret or guinea pig, some kind of animal that you would normally see frequenting the local vet.

But the South St Vet decided to use as their mascot and billboard hero, a dolphin! Yes, a dolphin! I didn't know that many people owned dolphins! Or that they even made cages big enough to secure the family 'mammal of the sea'. Even if I owned a dolphin and poor Flicka got sick, would I take him to the local vet clinic? Would South St Vet have the facilities to treat my poor ailing aquatic creature?? I just hope that one day someone doesn't take their dolphin to South St Vet, only to find out that they don't actually treat dolphins, or any other sea life for that matter, and find themselves swiftly running out of options.

"We used a dolphin on our sign because they are cute and his tail curled nicely around the lettering" I can hear the manager saying whilst little Timmy is heard crying in the background "Don't die Flicka, you complete me!"

It's a law suit and many broken kiddy hearts waiting to happen.

I think I might open my own vet, "Kacy's Kreatures" and on my sign will be beaver, as I have heard that beavers are increasing in population in Fremantle pet owning society. Or maybe a goat. I haven't decided.

Gym? What's a gym? ......... Oh, a gym!

(Yes, to all you Simpson's fans out there, I realise that without hearing it, that title makes no sense and for those who have no idea why the title is, in fact hilarious, please check out this video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4i8SpNgzA4)


It all became clear one unseasonably rainy summer afternoon. Dressed in my usual summer attire of shorts and a singlet, I lounged sluggardly, being efficient only in my tactics to avoid my uni readings. Yes, it was only Week One, hardly enough time to manage to fall behind but I knew the minute I pushed aside “America Since 1900” in favour of something a little lighter and more fantasy based, that I would end up in Week 14 with only a knowledge of Elven High Magic practices and nothing else in the slightest that would be helpful come exams. Visions of essays containing intriguing propositions such as “Although the United States was, until the turn of the 20th Century, mainly a rural nation, it was not seen in any of the scenes in Lord Of The Rings. Rather the location of Middle Earth was deemed to be far more appropriate to support the ‘hero’s journey’.” Although I am sure that it would be found to be highly amusing by both lecturers and the guy’s who run the “Stupid Essays Written By Unfocussed Students” website, I knew that it would not give me the HD that I sought.

Alas, I digress. This one afternoon, wind whipping violently against my windows, thoughts akin to those above yet to surface in my mind, I lay downstairs on the couch watching a DVD. Red Vs Blue to be exact, as ever since a part of it got played in one of my lectures last year, I have quite easily been able to convince my wayward mind, that not only is watching it helpful to my education, but that it is sure to make me more attractive to the opposite sex as well. As the wind picked up and the sky became muddied by cloud, the temperature began to drop. Indiscernible at first but as Church revealed that Tex was not only female, but also his former girlfriend, I found myself in the foetal position, muscles twitching in an attempt to keep me warm. As I live in a house that not only contains blankets of varying sizes but also electric heating devices, a plethora of solutions to my chilling problem presented themselves. It was when I decided to take none of these choices but instead remain cold, shivering on the couch, lest I have to actually get up and walk up a flight of stairs, that I knew I had a problem.

I was unfit.

So unfit that not only did I choose to freeze as opposed to getting off the couch and doing something about it, but walking up the gentle incline from the car park to the Hill Lecture Theatre, left me puffing and red in the face. I had many excuses for my lackadaisical nature. “I am too intelligent to concern myself with the worries of the physical realm. I shall overcome all obstacles using my superior power of mind alone,” was a common one. “I’m too poor to have a gym membership and fresh air is bad for my constitution,” was another. But the signs for the Murdoch University Gym not only showed pictures of happy skinny people, visually promising me that if I join I would be popular and have straight teeth, but also showed a price that I could afford. So I joined.

To be continued.....(once I finish those readings that I still haven’t done from Week One)

I'm still here, I'm still alive, I'm still writing. Welcome to Second Year.

So I passed first year. I wasn't turned off by the lengthy essays or the expensive food in the ref. I felt somewhat more knowledgeable when I enrolled in units that didn't begin with "Introduction to...". I saw people who looked more lost than I did. I knew then that second year had begun and with it comes a whole new year of posts from me.

Will I pass?

Will I make new friends?

Will I learn anything at all besides the price of Bubble O Bills?

To be cliched, only time will tell.

Pearl of Advice No. 1 - Study something you are actually interested in.

**DODLEDOTDOODLEDORT (time travelling noises)**


The year is 2000. We had just conquered Y2K with little more than a few bumps and bruises brought on by hiding under a makeshift shelter (a tarp thrown carefully over the Hills Hoist) to protect ourselves from planes that were sure to fall out of the sky on the stroke of midnight. We were yet to experience the devestation of the SARS outbreak in 2003 and we were still a year away from discovering the wonders of the iPod.

I wandered onto my first university campus, my Sony Discman bulging out of the pocket of my cargo shorts, threatening to pull them down with each step, as I went to sign up for my first degree. In these days, before everything was done online, you had to actually wait for your acceptance letter to come in the mail and then make the trip over to the campus to accept and choose your units, then you had to hang around while the lecturers posted sign up sheets on the doors of the lecture halls. As I entered some room that had been transformed into the enrollment room a pile of forms was thrust in my face , each one demanding the same information as the last. Name. Date of Birth. TER. A blur of forms later I was handed my enrollment card. As I looked at it, I was momentarily confused. Next to my name was "Bachelor of Business/Bachelor of Science" and as I had little interest in both science and business, I couldn't figure out why it would be right there on my form. But then I remembered. I had enrolled in that degree for every other reason than that it would interest me.

"It will get you a good job", says Mum.

"Arts students are all hippies who go on to make a living off pot smoking and abstact paintings made with macaroni", says Dad.

"If you don't go to uni and get a good sensible degree you will never succeed in life", says the misguided Guidance Counsellor.

So that was how I found myself with a Billabong bag full of Advanced Calculus and Accounting books and a penchant for sleeping in lectures. I hated uni. I hated my Mathematics for Computer Sciences Lecturer who spoke too fast. I hated my Accounting tutor who made jokes that nobody laughed at. I hated that I was forced to study something that made me want to vomit. I hated that I was the only girl in one of my units and therefore was regarded as some kind of alien. So after one semester I left.


**DODLEDOTDOODLEDORT (time travelling noises)**

So fast forwarding past 7 years of travel, playing computer games and regularly changing jobs I found myself again ready to enrol in uni. This time as I sat in front of my computer enrolling in units I was excited. I eagerly read the description of each unit, bought my books early and even started reading them. I went to lectures and didn't sleep. I researched more than was neccessary. I read more than was neccessary. I contributed to discussions and passed my exams with flying colours.

The difference? This time I was studying something I loved. Something that I found interesting and inspiring. And although I still found myself often being the only girl, the strange staring no longer bothered me.

Pearl of Advice No. 1
Study something that won't make you want to vomit because in the end, regardless of the pressures you have to study something else, if you love what you study, your uni life will not only be much easier, it will also be enjoyable.

I'll see you anon.

End of the year.
It came as it always does, but the difference this year is that I can say that I am a third of the way through a degree. Most years, the later months brought about the realisation that although I am a year older, approaching thirty far more quickly that I ever thought possible, I still laugh at people when they trip over. I hoped a partially completed degree would get me respect and admiration from all those I passed, but it mostly got me addicted to 2 minute noodles and the phrase "I'll do it after I watch this episode of Star Trek".

There have been many changes. Mostly I find myself using words like sedulous, contumacious and even dude, whilst taking out pretentious books from the library. I've contemplated the idea of smoking a pipe on campus and searched for tweed jackets on eBay. I've spent a great portion of time sitting in the sun on Bush Court, eating Bubble O Bill's and laughing at my own jokes. I've received a decent amount of inquiring stares from the multitude of 18 year olds in my tutorials, who never thought that 25 year olds would ever wear bright yellow M&M's t-shirts.

Although I enjoyed my year, there are things that I would have liked to have changed, and maybe some stuff that I would have done. I would have spent more time in the library. I would have talked to many more people. I would have listened to my iPod less and smiled more. I would be more prepared but less worried. I would sleep more and be nicer. I guess that's why they give you three or so years to figure it out. 2010 will bring with it a smiling, studying, successful uber graduate. That's me.

Although this year is over and this blog was started with the intention to give others thinking of returning to study an idea of one person's first year experience, I shall continue on until I feel I am no longer humorous (and yes that means I think I am damn funny right now).

Writing is like free therapy. I get to be less insane and you get to laugh at me. It's a symbiotic relationship.