Let me at ‘em

This post contains a vast amount of profanity. Read on at your discretion.

Funny how things go, isn’t it. I had to reboot my laptop today and when it restarted, it brought up the Yahoo homepage for me so I could log into my e-mail. Yahoo shows some news headlines, and one in particular caught my eye:

Girl allegedly run to death had a tumultuous life

In a nutshell, a nine year old girl from Alabama who lied about some candy that she ate was made to run by her grandmother. She ran for three hours while her stepmother also watched on and did nothing. Eventually, the poor girl collapsed and died.

In my most sarcastic voice, I exclaimed “Yay legal system. The grandmother and stepmother are being charged with murder”.

And as I read that story, I came across this story as well:

Boy ‘punished for wetting bed’ dies of dehydration

In this story, a 10 year old boy from Dallas who wet his bed, was punished by his parents who denied him water for 5 fucking days. He eventually died when he got peanut butter stuck in his throat, his parents refused to let him have water to wash it down, and his brothers were too scared to help in case THEY got a similar punishment.

He choked on the peanut butter, fell down and hit his head on the floor. And the parents are being charged with “bodily harm”, not with killing their son.

So as the title says, let me at ‘em. These people are the lowest fucking form of scum on the planet. They pick on their kids because they are fucking cowards who get no respect from other adults. They’re usually poorly educated people who focus their life on drugs or alcohol and don’t care about their families.

I’d like to say: give me five minutes with these arseholes, but the reality is that I’d need longer that. Putting a bullet in their head wouldn’t satisfy me one little bit. I’d need a good five DAYS with these people to show THEM what punishment and torture is all about. I know that there are plenty of things I could do to these people to have them BEGGING for a bullet in the head.

If you want some ideas of what I’d do to these fuckers, then by all means leave me a comment, but if you’ve seen any horror movies in the last 10 years, then just use your imagination. If you’re pathetic enough to torture a child, then you deserve worse done to yourself.

So let that be a warning to you fucking scum out there. If anyone ever hurt my kids, then I’d make the torture scenes in Hostel look like a quick, merciful death. I have no problem going to prison, especially if it’s for exacting revenge on some arsehole who touched my kids.

I’ve always believed that the law is supposed to represent the values of society. But they don’t, do they? Our bullshit legal system, presided over by our pathetic excuse for judges, let child molesters out of prison and think that sending someone away for five years for killing someone while being drunk behind the wheel is justice.

If the legal system ever failed me, and I mean EVER, then I have absolutely no hesitation in taking matters into my own hands. And as I’ve hinted at above, you’d wish you were dealt with by a court, rather than being dealt with by me. And not just for hurting MY kids, either. If you’re out walking the streets, after beating some kind of offence for harming a child, you’re on my list.

I’m an AFOL

That’s right, I’m finally prepared to come out of the closet and announce to the world that I’m an AFOL. If you’ve never heard that term before, it stands for Adult Fan Of Lego. I’m thirty-mmblblglbg, and I’m an AFOL.

But my problem is that I live in Australia, where it’s cheaper to buy a car than a new Lego set. If you don’t believe me, jump onto www.lego.com and change your region to Australia. Suddenly, sets that cost you $100 in the USA can hit as high as $200 in Australia. And then you have to add around $40 delivery. $240 for a $100 set? I don’t think so.

I’ve been playing with Lego for almost 35 years I’d guess. I remember saving up my pocket money to buy a new set and would spend hours putting it together and playing with it. As the years have gone on, I have my own kids who love Lego as well. So I buy sets for them and we play together.

I’m a member of the Lego club on their official website. I’m also a VIP member. Now, I save up my pocket money and buy the bigger, more intricate sets. But of course, they cost a fortune. The big Death Star that was released in 2011 is $699 on the Lego website. BUT, I now have my fairy godmother.

Amazon is the most amazing shopping website on the planet, if you’re an Aussie looking for cheap Lego. And not just good ol’ amazon.com either. I recently found a blog from an Aussie mum, where she has been posting info about Lego deals and places to buy cheap Lego. Sadly, these blogs are more important than oxygen in Australia.

I’d used amazon.com before and found some great prices on great sets. But the problem is always delivery cost, and the fact that a lot of stores on amazon.com don’t ship the big sets to Australia. And that’s annoying, because that’s where the big savings are.

For instance, I mentioned that the Death Star set (10188) is $699 on Lego’s website – and that doesn’t include delivery. But if I go through amazon.com, I can get it for $399 – but they won’t ship it to Australia – which is frustrating. When you save $300 on a single set, it’s worth paying almost $100 to get it delivered. After all, I’d still have $200 in my pocket to buy something else.

For instance the Imperial Shuttle set (10212). It retails on Lego’s website for $449, but is available through amazon.com for under $220. So to buy both of those sets in Australia would set me back OVER $1,000. Can you believe that shit? Yet I can get them from amazon.com for $620. So even if I paid $300 delivery, I’d still be saving money! But again, the problem is amazon.com won’t ship those two sets to Australia.

Enter amazon France (www.amazon.fr). I can get those two sets for $451 and $317 respectively. Slightly more than the US site, but still around $250 cheaper than Australia. I should point out that they won’t deliver the Shuttle to Australia, but they WILL deliver the Death Star for around $560 delivered. A saving of $140, which buys a second, decent sized set.

I’ve recently scoured amazon.fr and found some prices that can only be described as ludicrous. The red train set (7938) sells here for around $240, but I have bought it from amazon.fr for around $120 delivered. I also bought the Tie Fighter set (9492) – selling for $90 in Australia, or around $60 delivered from amazon.fr.

So if you’re an AFOL like me – or just an Aussie fed up with paying abhorent prices for Lego, get yourself onto amazon US and France NOW and bag yourself some bargains.

Incidentally, I e-mailled Lego a while back, having a bit of a dig at them for their pathetic prices here in Australia. They replied to me quite quickly, blaming their high prices on the cost of doing business in Australia. And sadly, I can’t argue with that. I know that it costs a fortune to send large shipments out here, and our minimum wage is so high you can actually make a career out of being a waiter or a service station attendant.

But if I can get a set delivered through amazon.fr for $20, why does buying it from Lego.com double the price? It still doesn’t make sense, and it still doesn’t make it easy for Australians to get their hands on some quality presents for their kids.

So I’m going to ask you to do a couple of things for me:

1: STOP buying Lego at retail stores in Australia. Prices are dictated by demand, so if we reduce the demand, the prices will go down;

2: START looking at amazon US and France. You really will be surprised at how cheap everything is; and

3: Leave a comment telling me what you think of our Lego prices in Australia, and if you buy something from amazon, come back and leave a message telling me what set/s you bought and how much you saved.