Left Arm Training Academy

I've recently hurt my right shoulder in a way that is quite painful and exceedingly annoying.  A tear, bursitis, tendinitis, probably also appendicitis and definitely something else that I can't remember but causes me much crankiness and throbbiness.

I've been reluctant to take painkillers in case they do their job properly and kill the pain and I damage the stupid limb more than it already has been.  

In fact, I'm so hard core that I'm practically Jack Bauer, except without the annoyingly quiet whispery voice or the cool reputation.  And I don't generally pack heat when I go to my day job.

Although, as of the last few hours, I've been crunching down anti-inflammatories as if they were candy crush.

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I hurt my arm while out on a run up a mountain.  I slipped, fell on my arse and my stupid right limb pointlessly tried to save me from the mud and screwed itself in the process.  

So, in the absence of a working arm, I'm currently trying to train my left arm to take up some of the slack that my right arm usually has to put up.

Training The Left while The Right ventures reluctantly through the medical system has had its ups and downs.  Mostly downs.  The Left has no fucking idea what it's doing.  

It doesn't know how to open a door, drive a car by itself, open the fridge, a jar, type by itself, and it refuses to lean over and get a shopping centre ticket or swipe in my underground car park, so we all have to get out, much to the annoyance of the humanoids behind me.  I'm thinking of putting an L magnet on my car to indicate to morons that I'm a left-handed driver.

I try to stay away from writing about politics in my bloggeroonies, but, much like political leftists, my left arm is proving to be lazy and incompetent.  Like a leftwing Hollywood movie star, who have so much money they never have to mix with the proletariat scum they claim to champion, there is little point to my left arm.  

I really had no idea it was so damn useless.  It's toying with my will to live or, at the very least, my desire to do anything that requires upper limb activity.

On listening to me whinging about my left arm training academy today, a friend said this to me.  She actually said this: "I regularly train my left arm to do stuff in case I lose the ability in my right arm".  Seriously, what?

While I now sort of understand the plight of left-handers in Western society, fucking please, what is it with left-handers with their need for a special day - International Lefthanders Day?  

Here's an excerpt from Wiki on these oppressed people:

Thousands of left-handed people are discriminated in today's society, are forced to use right handed tools, drive on the right side of the road and even get harassed.  International Lefthanders Day is made to end this discrimination.

I suppose that's true.  But maybe they should regularly train their right arm to operate heavy machinery.  

London not all that old

I'm moving to London soon, because I fancy myself genteel. When I say I'm moving there I mean I am visiting it for a period of one week.

If only people knew how to use phone boxes.

London (or Lun-Den as I call it in a slightly pretentious Oxford accent) fancies itself as the capital of my mother country by another mother, and it is also very old.  That's how the story goes anyway.

If history is merely a cumulative account of all the ways a bunch of dead people have screwed up in the exactly the same ways living people are screwing up London right now, then it's also historical.

London has in fact confirmed that it is not really that old at all, it has just made all of its buildings look vintage and distressed to get a huge slice of the tourist market.

Thus, that whole story about London, or Londinium, being established around AD 43 is really just a bunch of hokum.

While there is much to admire about London during the day and also at night, a lot of it is not vastly improved by daylight.

In London everything is named something improbable or totally inappropriate in the way that only the English manage to get away with - Cockbush Avenue anyone - and the sky is all but permanently the colour of grey slate tiles.  That said, it is also full of delightfully british teatowels, tearooms and teapots, the ambience is mostly agreeable and I just love it to death.

Discontinued Things

Discontinued is one of my dislike words.  I wish people would discontinue using it all the time. Discontinue doesn't even end properly, it just keeps going until it runs out of vowels.  And that's just lazy.

Everyone knows the feeling when one's favourite consumer goods are so-called discontinued.  It feels personal.  As if the stupid big business involved sent their yellow cylindrical minions with their metal eye goggles into your home to trawl through your bathroom and kitchen cabinets looking for products that you clearly appreciate so they can condemn them to product pergatory just to piss you off.

If consumers buy a product by the bucketload apparently the obvious thing to do is discontinue the shit out of it and bring out a similar looking but otherwise inferior product just to screw with their heads. 

I've recently had two of my favourite products discontinued.  A lip gloss and some leg stocking type adornage, both of which I have been buying for years and years and both of which were always so darn popular that I could never find them on the shelves.

You had to be at the right Woolies at the right time to hook in that hosiery in the right size and colour.  A whole lot of star alignment involved. Have you ever tried to wrangle stars?  They just do their own gravity thing.  It's just impossible.

Revlon
Stupid Revlon have relieved me of the burden of having to buy my favourite lip garnish.  Back in the day, before it was discontinued, I liked this smacker so much that I bought five of them in Hawaii a few years ago because the price was a fifth of what they charge in Australia.  Revlon won't ever be anyone anyway.  Not with that attitude.

Wicked
Stockings, hosiery, pantyhose are a constant source of annoyance for all women.  And it's just getting worse because it seems women have lost the attention of manufacturers to the male market.

NFL football players, hunters, men with varicose veins, horseback riders and soldiers have been hogging the attention of manufacturers for years now. Apparently.  I don't have any empirical evidence to back up this claim, I just know it to be true because this person I know has a sister who knows someone who knows Wikipedia.

Speaking of stockings, my favourite brand, Wicked, has been discontinued.  I contacted their parent company, big mumma Pacific Brands, to get the lowdown on why they want to grind the hopes and dreams of my legs into the dirt and almost immediately regretted it.  I spoke to a lady - let's call her Apathy - who appeared quite bored with my annoying customer service dramas.  After enquiring if there was anything else she could do to make my life more wretched she popped me through to Sales.

As expected, Sales were super happy to speak to the general public.  After toying with my will to live Sales advised me to stock up at wholesale prices at voodoofactoryoutlet.com.au.  So I did.  I bought 46 pairs of stockings at wholesale prices.  Thanks Apathy.

A guide to Royal Stalking

Last week I went royal stalking on Prince Will and Duchess Kate's first proper day of being publicly viewed in Canberra, under the guise of being a monarchist.  This is apparently what we people do when there is monarchy in town.

Royal stalking, like any stalking, is really quite hard work.  It requires stamina, persistence, a continued elevated level of interest and lots of elbowing of little old ladies.  I just don't think I'm committed enough to care that much, so it was a lot of hard yakka.

Elbowing little old ladies may seem rather mean spirited to you, but most of them are not really as fragile as they claim to be.  When it comes to the royals, most of these women turn into menacing witches who will dupe you out of a premium spot at any opportunity.  They are tough as nails and know exactly how to worm their way to the front of the crowd by dropping a series of phrases that make you feel like a monster for being younger than them.

It's not my fault that I'm not 862 years old.  I'm so sorry that I wasn't born in the 12th century, but being old doesn't give you a front row seat.  You should have arrived earlier.

I "caught up with" the royals at Canberra's Portrait Gallery, the only place I could be bothered going to.  See, no commitment.  When they did eventually come out of the painted faces place they were greeted by lots of flashing cameras, baby girls with flower posies, big burly security men and the assorted other interesting/uninteresting folk that travel in and/or stalk a royal motorcade.

Kate was wearing a lovely shade of Kermit the Frog green so bright I had to wear my shades.  Fortunately she decided against wearing the bright yellow number she donned on her arrival in Australia that meant everyone had to look directly at the sun.  Bit of a public health nuisance, is the duchess.  I've still got white spots on my eyeballs.  I guess it was fortunate that she didn't wear it in England - it would confuse the hell outta the British.

Top Gun pilot shit

Yesterday I watched some Top Gun, a little known independent flick from the 80s that no-one watched or cared about.  The End.

And after that happened, I watched The Making of Top Gun and I thought to myself, "oh, THAT Top Gun.  I thought they meant the other Top Gun that crashed and burned the first time", or whatever.

Top Gun made Tom Cruise the weirdo he is today.  I suppose his perplexing Scientology interests and holy matrimony to Joey from Dawson's Creek and Nicole Kidman from Australia didn't help much.  Neither did any of the movies he's made since Top Gun.  Days of Thunder was satisfactory I suppose, but only because I feel the need the need for speed.

So The Making of Top Gun was damn fascinating and all, but it was kind of a buzz kill.  It's all aerodynamical nerds with their paper fighter jets and remote control planes.  Since watching it I've figured out that I don't even know what is real anymore.  I mean, does Australia even have a RAAF?

I certainly hope so, because we've coughed up over $12 billion for 72 Joint Strike Fighters.  I don't know all the details, but I believe they will be made of strong cardboard, because we Aussies like to get bang for our buck.