Fine Insurance

Here is interesting concept I believe in, unfortunately it is only a small percentage of my friends who seem to understand my logic. Most just call me an idiot. I expect a large portion of the comments will too :P

I'm gonna have to explain myself first, I expect to be judged for this so might as well lay down my whole argument now. I get lots of fines. I have been fined for just about everything that you can be fined for relating to transport. Speeding fines, unlicensed driving, no seat belt, unlawful use of registration plates (or whatever it is) also fined for lending them, driving unregistered, driving uninsured, running stop signs/red lights, driving defective vehicle, reckless driving, parking fines, unlawful use of a motor vehicle etc. etc. I'm sure you get the picture. It might be worth adding I have no criminal convictions on my adult record.
It's not that I am a bad person/driver *pause for laughter* I never break any of these laws maliciously, nor am I an idiot on the road. I just have open mind as to how the law should be interpreted, and common sense should come into consideration.
For example, I never speed in traffic or closed in roads. During the day I drive like most other people. At night I'm a 5%er, when no one is around and most of my speeding fines have been on empty open roads, usually late at night (I like to cruise and listen to music) and usually by parked cameras. Stop signs same sort of thing, not coming to a COMPLETE stop late at night and an unfortunate police car parked up saw me. You would think they have nothing better to do.
As to the driving unregistered/uninsured, I'm a poorfag student and I can't always pay that shit right when its due. Sometimes i drive around for a few weeks 'unregistered' but i always pay it. Any check on my record can see my cars never missed a rego period. Unfortunately I always seem to get pulled over in those few weeks. Sometimes officers are understanding, most of the time they are not.
I'm not gonna explain my every misdeed here, though if anybody is curious about anything feel free to post it and I shall answer. But you get the idea, LOTS of fines.

Fine Insurance
Being the poorfag I am, I obviously cant afford all of these fines. There have been times in my life where i could but at the beginning i couldn't and now I can't and that's all that's relevant to this story. In comes fine insurance aka S.P.E.R.
State Penalties Enforcement Registry
If you can't afford to pay your fine in it's entirety then you can opt for an instalment plan with SPER. The minimum repayment is $40 a month or $20 a fortnight. If you get more fines while you are with SPER then you can add them to your existing balance. Sometimes for a fee depending on the type and size of the fine.

Now when you get fines like I do then $20 a fortnight is a pretty damn good deal. I like to think of it as my 'insurance premium' and I quite happily pay it so that I don't have to worry about unexpected expenses in that area. When i get a new fine, a quick phone call and my 'insurance company' solves the problem for me. Hell even if i don't do a thing, if I destroy the fine immediately upon receiving it (which I have done, different story) it will still get automatically added to my balance for a small fee. And I just keep on paying my bare minimum of $20 a fortnight.
To give you an idea of how many fines i get, I have been on SPER since i was 16, I am now 23 turning 24. I have only completely cleared my SPER account once, for less than 3 weeks before it was back in use. The highest balance was around $3500. Right now its around $2100.

At this stage of my life I am entirely happy to pay my 'premium' to live my life fine free. Of course I will pay for it all in the end, more even including add-on fees depending how smart/lazy I am about it. I'm not THAT stupid :P. But right now, with my lifestyle it is a hell of a lot more convenient to NOT pay them. Maybe fines aren't as much of a deterrent as they believe, I mean, if it doesn't inconvenience me how is it a punishment?

It makes me feel good to happily toss a freshly issued fine for some ridiculous minor infringement to floor of my car and say 'my fine insurance will cover that'.

Rapebook, whoops I mean Facebook

I use Facebook, I won't deny it. When most of the people i know use it, and alot as their preferred contact method, how can i not use it. When i use FB though i remember what it is and follow a few simple rules...

1. If I wouldnt say something to somebody with 100 people listening in, then I DON'T post it on their wall. Use PM

2. If I dont know somebody or 'actually' talk to them, then I DON'T accept their friend request.
'Sure we might bump into eachother once in awhile but seriously, I have no idea about you nor do i want one, why would i give you access to part of my life?'

3. Remember Facebook is a place to communicate with friends, NOT a fucking diary.

I find that these rules accompanied by the privacy features on FB make it a relatively safe and enjoyable service to use. I have 151 friends and 47 friend requests at the time of writing this. According to my own rules my friend list could be a little shorter but I accepted some people that i shouldn't have early in my FB time, and there are possible social consequences if i remove them now. Good friends of friends etc. I can live with it for the moment.
I leave pending, people that I possibly might need to add in future. For example somebody I know is friends with someone but i havn't met them before. They don't belong on my friend list, but they very well could end up there and nobody wants the awkward moment a second time the friend request was sent...

The reason I'm saying all of this is because I, most likely you as well, have an alarming number of 'socialite' friends who are either stupid as hell or have no regard for their personal safety.
Most of them are pretty girls, with 1000's of photos posted online often in bikinis, photos shoots, drunk town pics...
They have 2000+ friends and generally accept any request that comes regardless of who. They will also invite just about anybody that facebook suggests as well, provided they know at least one of their existing 'friends'
They regularly keep all of those 1000's of friends updated throughout the day with where they are, what they are doing, who they are mad at, who they are in love with, how lonely they are are, their insecurities blah blah blah...
Facebook also now lets you 'check in' to locations from your mobile when posting so you can get convenient maps and directions to wherever they are.
Every night before they go to bed they will post they are going to sleep and 'check in' to a place called something like 'home sweet home' or 'the crib' or 'bed :)' and provide a another convenient map to their home.
All that for those thousands of people they don't know.
Add to that the fact you can get a very good profile on someones personality from their facebook, especially if they are into all those gay 'like' pages and fan sites.

Are these girls asking to be raped? The way they treat facebook is not much different from standing in the street, yelling out how sad and lonely they are, and handing out photos of them in bikinis. With their name and address printed on the back accompanied by a convenient map.
You wouldn't do that because we know and understand there are some fucked up people in this world and that's just asking for trouble.
How is FB any different when there are 2000+ strangers in somebodys friend list. 

I have brought the subject up with girls before but say that I'm being 'silly', I posted part of the above on FB and i got hate. 
Am I really the only person who thinks this?

University Lecturer - I could do that

I try to make the effort and turn up to most of my classes. I work on the assumption that if somebody is 'teaching' me a subject, then they know their stuff and it can only benifit me to hear them explain things.

This semester though, i have a lecturer that does nothing but read DIRECTLY from my textbook, accompanied by a powerpoint listing the SAME HEADINGS as my textbook pages.

What i would like to know is first, why should I even bother to turn up? I can achieve the same if not better end result if i spend that 2 hours at home reading it myself. And secondly, how on earth did this person become a lecturer? Are the only pre-requisites being able to read to a group and click 'next slide'? A loose understanding of the subject a plus? how much do they get paid anyways..

PJ Time

I was staring at my computer screen trying to decide what to write about when the ever-occuring thought of 'I'll have a cigerette and think on it' once again presented itself. And as I enjoyed that first surge of nicotine i found my topic. This was followed shortly after by a wave of shame as the reality of my addiction once again came to the front of my mind.

I was an anti-smoker in highschool. I was disgusted by people who were 'addicted' to smoking. Come on, how hard is it to just NOT SMOKE, bloody retards. Why keep doing something that is killing you? I simply couldnt understand it.

Fast-forward a year or two after high school, i was 17 (I left early, a story for another time) and my attitudes towards well, everything had become alot more open. I wasn't anti-smoking but i still thought i was ridiculous and still didnt understand addiction. From that point on I was going to recieve multiple lessons. I tried a cigerette at a party, mostly because i was hammered and wanted to blow smoke rings. Once i inhaled a few times i had the craziest headspin ever, it lasted a minute or more and was renewed with each draw of smoke... I liked it.

From then on i would smoke every now and then, smokes bummed off mates etc. and all the time having these mad headspins as smokes were days apart. I was ignorant of the fact the days got closer and closer together.

I honestly cant remember where I went from a casual smoker to an addict. One day i just realised that the headspins were gone, but i was still smoking. I couldnt stop smoking, it made me feel so good. It actually took a long time between me realizing I'm addicted and realizing what that actually means.

Even now i find it impossible to explain to somebody who hasnt smoked what it feels like to be addicted. It messes with my mind in strange ways. Even the way i describe it would differ depending how long since my last smoke. Ive tried to quit many times, many ways. I feel so weak when i don't succeed and it is so easy to judge myself when I'm safely dosed up on nicotine. But when I'm deprived, It's like my personality splits and i argue and reason with myself. My mind plays tricks on me and convinces me of ridiculous things. And it doesn't just 'happen'. Over the space of hours and days my mind will slowly work me over and wear me down and at the end, a thought which i easily dismissed as ridiculous at the beginning somehow becomes reasonable. And at the very moment when i have nicotine again, my thoughts crystallize and that second malicious me vanishes. Suddenly i can see what a fool I am and how i have been deceived, the shame sets in. Even having been through the process many times i still find it difficult to understand, alot of it makes no sense, especially from a memory point of view. Memories of the time before i break make no sense to me when i pore over them with a clear mind. This is only a very loose sort of description, there isnt any words to really describe it and only another addict will fully understand what someone means when talking about addiction. But hell, it was amusing to try :P

It begins...

Aha, so into my hands has been given the ability to share my opinions with the world... you poor bastards.

The thing with opinions is, there are so damn many of them. Maybe if there were less opinions they would have more value. Either way, there is now nothing stopping me from imposing my equally valueless opinion on you all.
To follow will be.. whatever happens to be on my mind, more often than not something that has pissed me off.
Maybe you will laugh, maybe you will rage, i welcome it all. Let it begin, that is all.