This is the blog of a Norwegian (Marianne, aka 'M') who moved to Australia in 2007 to be with Roger (aka R) and feels lucky to have escaped a comparatively communistic country with ridiculous weather!

Earlier today we got back from camping for a couple of days down in Yamba, a 4 hour drive south of here.

It wasn't technically camping, as we had our own bathroom and ate out, but having a bathroom where they don't provide towels or soap is roughing it as far as I'm concerned.

The photos are here.

It's world animal week, dedicated to orangutans. So go do something special for animals, for example by clicking here:

Go Bananas for Orangutans

AUSTRALIA is the second best country to live in, according to a measure of global living standards. Norway retained its status as the world's most desirable country, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) index released today, followed by Australia and then Iceland.

So if you don't like the cold, Australia is the place to be.

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On Wednesday night R and I watched the reunion of "Hey Hey it's Saturday", which R grew up with and he wanted me to see what it was all about.

Towards the end of the show the segment 'Red faces' came on, where regular people perform and are judged, just for fun, and Wednesday's guest judge was Harry Connick jr. One performance was by 'Jackson Jive', where a group of men repeated their performance from 20 years ago.

Here it is, and following it is Harry's reaction to it:

Most people seem to like lolcats, but I find them stupid, with their deliberately bad grammar just for the sake of bad grammar, thinking that it looks cool; and most of the comments are quite silly.

Which is why I like average cats.

”I, like every other stupid American, assumed the kangaroos would meet us at the airport and they would want to hug us as much as we wanted to hug them,” Bell said in an interview in Los Angeles.

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I have previously mentioned getting in a stupid argument with the moderators at Aquatic Community, which was basically all about them being on their own personal powertrip and couldn't handle any decision they make being questioned.

It has now happened again, but I have now been banned for something even stupider.

Someone posted a logo they had done in the forum, which look really bad, and they asked if someone could fix it up for them. Someone else then posted and made a suggestion about how it could be made better, and the thread starter replied 'yeah that's what I had in mind but I didn't wanna put hours of work into it' and the other person then replied 'so you wanna make someone else put hours into it because you can't be bothered?'

And I thought that was a good point, so I replied and said that the logo was indeed a bit amateurish and I also suggested they put the time into it themselves rather than asking someone else to do it, that way they would get the practice and would also get the satisfaction of doing it all themselves.

I also said I had considered having a play around with it, but seeing as the only reason they asked was because they couldn't be bothered, I couldn't be bothered with it either.

And for that I got a warning, saying that my response was 'uncalled for', which I assume is because I called their logo amateurish, but they already knew that because that's why they posted it; because they knew it needed to be made better.

So I pointed this out to the moderator, and then went back to the site today and found that I had been banned.



Not getting what? He never mentioned which rule I actually broke, so I am supposed to guess at which imaginary rule I broke this time? They never tell you what rule you have broken, they just say "you can't do that", which makes it seem like they make things up as they go, depending on what they feel like.

That's what happens when you give any kind of power to a Usatian person, they go on a powertrip because they feel all important and powerful and think they have become a godlike creature, and how dare you question anything they do.

Well, I have had it with the bigheaded moderators of that forum, when it gets to the point when you can't call someone out when they are being silly, and you have to walk on eggshells around people for fear of hurting their itty bitty ego, then I no longer see the point.

It's a forum, you are supposed to express your opinions and have discussions about things, not just sit around and pat each other on the back all the time. So I think I will spend my time on forums that are actually worth the effort from now on.