What? I've literally never even heard of this...

Guess I took the day off when heart drawing day came around.

At the moment it's "piano man" by Billy Joel.

1.OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) and liking things to be tidy are not the same thing. Just because someone likes to be organised doesn't mean they have OCD. Similarly just because someone has OCD doesn't mean they want everything to be perfectly neat. Although Extreme organisation is a known symptom of OCD, it's not the core element of the condition and does not affect all people with OCD. True OCD is defined as Excessive thoughts (obsessions) that lead to repetitive behaviours (compulsions). Obsessive-compulsive disorder is characterised by unreasonable thoughts and fears (obsessions) that lead to compulsive behaviours.

2.The "Autistic Savant" stereotype is something I think gets pushed a little too much in the media. The majority of portrayals I've seen of people on the spectrum are "good at math and science but bad at social interaction". This is accurate for some people on the spectrum but I want people to understand that it is a SPECTRUM that affects each person differently and to different degrees. I for instance have ASD (autistic spectrum disorder, previously known as aspergers) and can understand and replicate social interactions fairly well (however this is extremely exhausting), yet struggle with the academic side of things. There is no 1 set list of symptoms for people on the spectrum, there is a huge list of symptoms that may or may not manifest in the individual.

1. A lot of people think ADHD means that I am incapable of being focused. This couldn't be further from the truth. I regularly fall into spells of Focus so intense that the world around me completely disappears and all that is left is what's currently capturing my attention. The problem lies with my incapability of choosing what I focus on. I can try and focus on one thing but then that topic leads to a different topic which then leads to a different topic and so on. Where as most people can regulate where their attention lies, my attention takes me down a rabbit hole of different thoughts and topics until I eventually snap out of my trance, only to discover that 45 minutes have passed and I never got around to finishing whatever I was trying to focus on.

Fuck man this hit me.

I've spent so long trying to fit in that I have absolutely no idea who the real me is.

Eh, the animal thing really isn't as bad as most people think it is.

I mean we do have some dangerous animals but we very rarely ever see them. It's way more of a funny stereotype than the truth.

•Seeing a song about some random hobo who stole a sheep and killed himself as a national icon and teaching young children to sing it at school assembly's.

•Drinking beer from your own stanky shoe.

•Clinging a bag of cask wine to the rotating clothesline and trying to catch it in your mouth as it rotates.

•Taking the leftover Brewer's yeast from all the beer we make and turning it into a salty, black, tar like paste before eating it on toast.

•Buying sausages in bread from the local hardware store on a Saturday mornings.

•Wearing shoes inside and going barefoot outside.

•Attaching zip ties to your helmet and painting eyes on the back to ward off territorial birds from attacking you in the spring.

•Christmas in the middle of summer.

Australia's a wild place.

"Thongs" is the Australian word for "flip flops". We don't wear underwear on our feet lmao.

Horses, cows and dogs.

Horses, cows and dogs (in that order) are the top 3 biggest contributors to animal related deaths in Australia.

Far Cry 3.

Just a solid video game.

Mary and Max. It's an indie claymation movie about 2 pen pals. Mary, an 8 year old Australian girl with a dysfunctional home life, and Max, a middle-aged New Yorker with Asperger's syndrome. An unlikely friendship based on a true story.

As an Australian with Asperger's, I'd have to say it's the most accurate movie I've seen in both regards, although Max's character is very textbook.

The movie has a very unique style of animation and an extremely dry, somewhat dark sense of humour but it remains a very wholesome little movie.

10/10 would recommend.

Not so fun fact:

Cows are the second highest contributor to animal caused deaths in Australia.

You'd think it would be snakes or spiders but they don't even come close.

Cone snails.

They look like empty shells on the beach. Then they spear you with a venomous barb when you pick them up.

Ice cream sprinkles on buttered white bread. It's called fairy bread and it's a popular kids snack here in Australia.

Heath Ledger.

Tiny angel by 3ree6ixty.

Tribute by tenacious D.

At the moment it's my country's cinnamon toast crunch knockoff. I would buy the real cinnamon toast crunch but it's $15 a box in Australia and I'm not made of dollarydoos.

Faking mental illnesses

As someone with officially diagnosed mental illnesses/disorders, this one really fucking irks me.

When people who don't have disorders claim to have disorders in order to make themselves look unique or quirky, they completely demean and undermine People who really have those disorders.

Not only is it a slap In the face to see your condition used for clout, it also spreads misinformation about what said disorder actually is as fakers usually only use the most stereotypical aspects of any given disorder. Worst of all is when fakers use their "mental illness" as a personality trait, the general public falls under the impression that those disorders are not as serious as they actually are.

Mental illnesses/disorders are crippling burdens to all they affect. They are NOT quirky personality traits to assign yourself in order to seem more interesting. If you really want to seem more interesting then get a fucking hobby.

Americans portray Australia as the most dangerous place on earth in regards to dangerous animals. The animals are not even a fraction as much of the issue as everyone thinks they are.

The animals don't come near the cities and although it's more common to see them in country towns they're still not as common as you would think. Even then most of the bizarre and terrifying looking animals you'll see on the internet live far away from humans and are just as exotic to us as they are to you.

We have an average snake bite death rate of only 2 people per year and we haven't had a spider bite death in over 40 years. The animals with the highest death tolls are actually horses and cows, with some of the other deadliest animals being dogs and bees (all animals that you probably have in your country)

Yes we do have animals that can kill you but so does literally every other country on Earth. And you know what? I would gladly pick a fight with a snake or spider over a fight with a lion, tiger or bear (oh my) any day of the week!

I've seen way too many people online swear up and down that they'll never come to Australia because they're afraid of being attacked by a giant spider or some shit. The jokes about Australia are pretty funny but that's all they are, JOKES.

Just "getting over" or ignoring a mental illness/disability.

There are some things I simply cannot do, not because I don't care or because I don't try hard enough, it's simply because my brain is wired differently. I literally cannot help this.

Throughout school I struggled to get teachers to understand why I am the way I am. Every time I tried to educate them about my conditions they would accuse me of being lazy or making excuses and they would basically tell me to just get my shit together because "you're a smart kid so I know you can do it". That's not how it works.

It's so incredibly frustrating to hear such bullshit as "don't worry about it", "just focus" and "cheer up". If it were that fucking simple then it wouldn't be a problem in the fucking first place, would it?

It's weird because people will accept some conditions but not others. A disability is a disability, every condition is valid. If I tell you that I can't do something, don't spit back some condescending, know-it-all reply about trying harder and expect me to magically be free of my conditions.

Here before the obligatory Emu war post gets made. I would just like to say that although the event was real, it was not an actual 'war' and it really isn't as interesting as reddit makes it out to be.

Here's what happened: in 1932, West Australian farmers were struggling to meet crop expectations. This is partly because the emus were trampling and eating at their crops. The government pulled three World war 1 veterans aside, gave them a gun and a humvee and basically said "go ham". The 3 men rode off, killed a bunch of emus (although not nearly as many as planned), ran out of bullets and came back. That's it. That's the "Great War" Reddit is so obsessed with. Really quite underwhelming.

If you're looking for an interesting fact about Australia I would suggest that time we lost a prime minister. Not lost as in "he died", lost as in we can't fucking find him. He went for a swim in the ocean one day and just never came back.

We also had a prime minister who was at one point a world record holder for chugging beer.

We also had a prime minister eat a raw onion like an apple on TV.

We also have a prime minister who supposedly shat himself at McDonald's in 1997.

The invention of lying.

Really awesome concept but poor execution.

The movie is set in a world where lying does not exist. Everyone just always tells the truth constantly, no matter what sort of trouble it will get them into. At some point the main character (played by Ricky Gervais, who was also the writer and director) has an incredible epiphany! He begins telling people things that are not true for the purpose of his own personal gain. At some point in the movie Ricky (can't remember what the character's name was) visits his mother in hospital as she is about to die. After Ricky's mum tells him she is afraid of dying, Ricky invents a story about the afterlife and how beautiful it is to ease his mother's worry. Astounded, the doctors and nurses ask Ricky more about the afterlife. The more things Ricky explains the more questions pop-up and the more people come to listen to him speak. Eventually, after many questions and much lying, Ricky has invented Christianity. As you can probably imagine society begins viewing Ricky as some sort of prophet and he uses his new found fame for even more personal gain.

There's more to the plot but I'm going to stop there as this is the point where the movie takes a nosedive in quality. At first you have a really cool concept with many intriguing instances of worldbuilding and idea exploration. Then you get a religion joke that, while initially rather interesting, gets way too big for its own boots. After that the movie loses all sight of what made it good in the first place and becomes a shity rom com about loving people for who they are and not thinking about status. Lying is not even really a part of it by the end of the movie.

I would love to see a remake in which there is more world building and more intricate aspects of a non lying society. I think the whole religion thing could still be alright if it were handled better but the whole "learn to love people for who they are" thing has no place in this movie.

TL,DR: remake this Ricky Gervais movie without letting Ricky Gervais... Gervais-ify it.

Australia has a bunch. There are too many good ones to list all of them so I'll list a few and maybe I'll add a few more if people take interest.

Somebody that I used to know by Gotye: https://youtu.be/8UVNT4wvIGY

Thunderstruck by AC/DC: https://youtu.be/v2AC41dglnM

Solid rock by Goanna. https://youtu.be/tSNxFGW09Mo

Treaty by Yothu Yindi: https://youtu.be/Jf-jHCdafZY

A walk in the light green (aka I was only 19) by Redgum: https://youtu.be/mGDhzVi1bqU

Working class man by Jimmy Barnes: https://youtu.be/8lmWedV9b1Y

Zombie by wombat.

https://youtu.be/wOv9lnW1L1s