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Friday 24 September 2010

A brief selection of things that I love, in case you needed to know.

  • Rain on car windows
  • Flipflops/jandals/thongs; whatever you like to call them.  Though thongs still sounds wrong to me on a number of levels.  C'mon you guys, jandals = jelly sandals!  Even though jandals are closely related to a thing that I hate (toes.  They're so creepy and they remind me of some kind of Homerian cyclop-ish creature that pretty much just wants to kill you with a studded club, but hasn't got the strength or, possibly more importantly, the independent thought,or arms for that matter), they make my feet happy.
  • Mindy Kaling.  She's freaking awesome.  Funny as hell - she writes, produces, directs and stars in the American Office (I don't care what you say.  Yes, blah blah Ricky Gervais is a genius but somehow I prefer the American version.  Trust me, I didn't want it that way either).  And her favourite movie is You've Got Mail.  I probably turned people off me significantly with that, but oh well, if public approval was what I craved I wouldn't write a blog that no one reads...would I?
  • Sweatbands on men.  Michael Cera is wholly responsible for this. God only knows why I think a man wearing a sweatband is cool but I do.  Even when the odds that he's come from some squash match at the club with slightly-balding-Bertie and halitosis-Harry are significant, still love me a sweatbanded fella.
  • Hyperbole and a half.  Allie is hilarious with mad skillz on Word Paint of which I can only dream. 
  • Shoes made for total whore-bags.  Patent leather, peep toe, stiletto heeled visions of nastiness, I feel awesome when I wear these.  I had a gold, silver and bronze pair of peep-toe tranny shoes that made me feel not only like I'd performed some kind of clean sweep at the Olympics, but that I was the sexiest bitch on the planet (or the most good looking girl on the street, depending on the street - linking to another thing I love, Flight of the Conchords).
  • Potatoes.  The humble potato never lets me down.   Has downsides (see: my waist and ass) but generally totally worth it.
  • Wine.  See: Potatoes,
  • Gin.  See: Wine and Potatoes.
  • Olives.  See: Gin.
  • And now that I'm listing booze and food related items, best I stop while the going is good...

Wednesday 22 September 2010

Sometimes, I like to burn things

Is is just me or do matches have an intoxicating smell?  I used to chew them as a child, that sulfur-y smell was so attractive.  And a whiff of freshly struck match transports me to any number of childhood bonfires, perched on chainsawed logs, bending over a pile of flammable goodness stuffed with newspaper in the crevices, pondering where to place the first lick of flame.  Yes, I was a devil-child sporting, trackpants, red gumboots, a mullet given to me by Mum who decided to 'fix' my fringe and with creepily pointed eye teeth (yes, yes, I know there has been a resurgence in pointy-teeth cool thanks to sparkly vampires, but I'm still grateful those ones fell out).  It was probably lucky I grew up on lifestyle block pseudo-farms, where there was room to get a little pyro on it, but sadly this tendency has followed me to adulthood (term used in loosely, more choronological than literal).  We have just moved to the 'burbs following several years of innercity dwelling and I have to say that pretty much the only redeeming feature of living outside the hub of a city is the backyard and the ability to BBQ.  I want to light it every time!  More and more, I find excuses to use the BBQ as our own incendiary/secure document disposal device...the neighbours have been pretty good about this.  The house next door burns their recycling for some reason I can't fathom other than the joy of a good burn, so at least I'm not the only one smoking out the laundry in our block's radius.  So generally, "Caution: Flammable" is pretty much a red rag to a bull.

But I'm fairly low-key about fire compared to my mother.  I think it may have been lucky I only inherited half my DNA from her because the woman is a full blown firebug.  The move to a fully-fledged large-scale farm following getting rid of the offspring was probably orchestrated by Dad in order to satisfy himself that her all-too-frequent burn-offs were happening at a safe distance from the house.  I have only scorched the walls by accident; Mum has set fire to her driveway.

Not long after they moved into the farm, Mum told Dad that a broken down chicken coop had to go.  She wasn't going to get it fixed; she had been through a hen phase that lasted from the mid-80s to the early 90s fuelled by the desire for eggs, followed by a mid-90s dove phase because of their aesthetic value, both of which ended in "no more domesticated birds, they only shit on the doorstep".  Dad wasn't fast enough on tearing the coop down, so Mum took matters into her own hands, without telling him.  My sister was visiting at the time, and she hasn't escaped the genetic pre-disposition for a little burn off either so she watched carefully as Mum stashed a packet of matches in her pocket and followed her out to the coop.  When the scale of Mum's intended conflagration occurred to Sister, she asked whether Mum intended to take any precautionary measures, being that the coop was rather close to a wooden fence and giant stand of macrocarpa trees on the driveway.  Mum thought for a minute, then ran a garden hose around from the side of the house.  Surely sufficient?  Apparently not.  The scale of the fire quickly got away from them, jumping rapidly from the coop to fence, fence to trees.  It turned out the water pressure on the hose was roughly equivalent to a 60 year old with prostate issues, but without the ability to be solved by the addition of Flomax.  I wish I'd been there - Sister's description involved frantic trips back and forth with buckets, Dad discovering the mess (probably hear the roar) and swearing vociferously, Mum's yelps of terror and glee, followed by acceptance that the fence and trees would have to go.  As they sat on the hill watching the fire, having given in to the inevitable, Mum asked "if I'd thought of this earlier, I would have bought some marshmallows".

Tuesday 21 September 2010

I dropped my cellphone in the toilet

The definition of hopeless:

Walking into the bathroom, unbuckling the belt that's holding my jeans up because the top button broke (it did NOT pop because of the muffin top, if that's what you're thinking, really really I promise), turning around to lower myself onto the seat only to hear the ominous 'plop' of my cellphone dropping into the toilet.

Questions I would have asked had this been someone else:

1.  Were you drunk?
2.  If not, why on earth did you have your phone in your back pocket?  Why not somewhere reasonable, say, your handbag or on top of your dresser?
3.  Had you already peed?

In the interests of not turning you off me even further, let me answer the last question first.  I HAD NOT PEED.  Thank jeebers because without even thinking I plunged my hand in there to save that puppy and bad as plain toilet water is (well, not the toilet water itself per se, but I am responsible for the cleanliness of that particular lavatory and I have never been noted for my attention to domestic duties, especially that wee pearler of a job) it could have been a million times worse, had I not been able to hold the pee before saving the cell.

In answer to Question Number Two, I am desperate.  Not for attention, but for a job.   I'm currently out of work, having just completed a post-graduate degree and moved to a completely new country where, surprise surprise, all potential employers are worried about my lack of local experience.  Not even the dog walking agencies here want me (I'm pretty sure Dog is the same language around the world so I can communicate fine with the puppies, that and my first language is English and I'm living in England so I think even the English sheepdogs will understand when I say 'SIT' but you try telling potential employers that).  I don't know if this is common, but I find that when I'm job hunting or have applied for anything, I'm paranoid about the phone ringing while I'm not near it JUST IN CASE I miss that crucial call.  Is it logical to take your phone to the loo?  No.  I have the sound set to 'sonic boom' volume, but the paranoia won't let me let go of it.  So toilet, shower or otherwise, the phone comes with.

And that answers the third question; no, I was not drunk.  Oh, how I wish I had been.  Look, I know this is nothing earth shattering, I am not the first person to lose a phone in a toilet, but every other single story of phone-meets-porcelain I have heard involves alcohol consumption and did not happen at approximately 9am.  It's not for the lack of opportunity - I'm drunk fairly frequently and the phone could have immersed itself in the bowl then.  I don't know why being drunk would make it any better, but there you are.  Perhaps it just would have been more funny that way?  I would have felt part of the crowd?  Or is it that, now in my mid-to-late-twenties, I still crave the attention and praise of my parents and I know exactly what reaction this little story would inspire - the little sigh of resigned disappointment.

Yeah, yeah, a little maudlin I know over the loss of a £5 Nokia through sheer clumsiness, but there is just one word that sums this up.  Hopeless.