Right Royal Sneakers

Last year I went on a virtual quest, conducting an extensive search on my journey to find new white sneakers. White sneakers were and remain stylish and très chic but also they just go with all of the things. If you can’t colour match your ball gown or bridesmaid dress to the same shade of white as your sneakers you need some emergency stylin’ counsellin’ and perhaps also some holistic alternative fashun therapy.

So in the absence of a drive through carwash style arrangement for shoes in my city, I turned to Youtube to help me, sure that I was going to have to Do It Yourself, by myself.

During my deep dive, through the internet of shoe things, I noted the Duchess of Cambridge’s whitesneakers, that she wears to ramble through drenched paddocks in Kent in England to provide a social call to Girl Scouts, and on never-ending ramblings in the torrential rain on the hustings on golf courses in St Andrews – if there is even the hint of an involvement of walkies or amblings on her itinerary, she will throw on her white sneakers.

I thought surely they must be comfy little buggers, although probably also retail for as much as a small two bedroom apartment in Bondi. But crucially, they never seem to look tainted with dirt or stains, which is just a big positive in shoes and also in life.

So I googled ‘Kate’s white sneakers’ and was introduced to the idyllic world of Superga. And, as it turned out, Kate’s shoes were available at the shopping centre across the road from where I live, and were on jumbo sale, and only cost as much as a one bedroom apartment in Bondi. Half an hour later, I had Kate’s white Supergas. Life’s opportunities were about to go stratospheric! I tear up a bit every time I tell that beautiful, heart-warming story of when we first met.

Six months down the track, the Supergas have been an outstanding investment, apart from two of the key components of outstanding investments being earning me an income or appreciating in value. Look, they have intrinsic value.

They also recently needed a deep clean, sullied by their hard life on the streets. Like many owners of hardworking 4WD vehicles who live in the city, these sneakers have not seen a paddock in their whole life.

So unwisely overlooking the fact they were leather, I put them in the washing machine, where they astonishingly survived my unintentional attempt to cause them grievous bodily harm. I am out on bail, but am expecting to be charged with attempted murder, punishable by a life sentence of cleaning Supergas with a toothbrush.

As it turns out, I do not recommend putting white leather Supergas in the washing machine. While they had the ride of their life, one they will not forget, it really did not do the trick at all for spruiking them up. They were still scuffed, and the laces were still stained black from the metal eyelets. It turns out my Supergas are not like regal Supergas.

While Youtube can be weird for providing you with maintenance advice, Jiff and a toothbrush is the help I unequivocally decided to go with. As it turned out, I didn’t have any Jiff, so I went in with a multi-purpose cleaner and a suitcase of hope and dreams. And it worked!

But the cleaning process took just about all day, on and off, and then they had to air dry, because I put them in the dryer and that sounded like I had abducted a small person and jammed them in for a quick 30 minute spin cycle. If that ever transpires - just know - all my neighbours think I’m normal and quiet and they would “never have expected that she would put a small person in the dryer, let alone of a pair of leather Supergas”.

I’m now left to ponder whether the Duchess of Cambridge does not have an enviable mass of officers to tend to her every Supergas cleansing whim, punishable by an hour on spin cycle if they refuse the assignment.

 

Maniacal, murderous 'safety' pins

Safety pins. Bloody safety pins. Has a safety pin ever genuinely kept you safe? Ever delivered on the promise hidden in its name? Of course not. These spring-loaded metallic miscreants are chaos incarnate—tiny, twisted, pain-wielding demons masquerading as tools of convenience. Stupid little pricks. Literally.

In theory, the clasp exists to protect you from accidental stabbings. In practice, it’s about as effective as trying to stop a knife with a wet tissue. You’d get better results using barbed wire to hold your outfit together and just accepting the inevitable puncture wounds as part of the aesthetic.

I’ve been stabbed—repeatedly—by these so-called safety devices. I’ve bled. I’ve suffered. I’ve been left for dead on at least three separate occasions, betrayed by a bit of bent metal. Thankfully, I had a Band-Aid each time and a will to live.

And explain this: why do safety pins spontaneously explode open the moment you rummage through your handbag? You’re just looking for lip balm, and bam—sudden ambush. Blood. Swearing. Regret. Frankly, we should stop calling them safety pins and start calling them perilous pins, so newcomers to the planet know what they're really dealing with.

Let’s not pretend they save you from embarrassment either. Think you're cleverly hiding a wardrobe malfunction with a discreet pin? Think again. Everyone sees it. Everyone. And they’ll always announce it loudly, like they’ve just discovered a rare species in the wild:

 “Oh, is that a safety pin holding your hem up?”

Yes, Janet. Thank you. Kindly shut up now.

I’m sure the safety pin has a fascinating and noble history - something about the Bronze Age, Ancient Greece, and a bored guy without access to the internet—but honestly, who cares?

Their brief brush with fame? That was thanks to Liz Hurley using oversized ones to hold together a dress so tiny it defied physics. Iconic, yes. Practical? Questionable. Honestly, we should’ve renamed them tart pins then and there.

In the end, I think what really stings is this: I’m just bitter I didn’t invent them myself. 

Abandoned vegetales

According to an eyewitness account, someone has recklessly abandoned their health today, after vegetables (pictured) were found strewn on the side of a path.

Chucked in wild abandonment, until someone placed them neatly on a ledge, and bound and gagged them, like some sort of confused serial killer copycat deconstructing the scene of a crime. 

How did this all come about, I hear you cry out, desperate for more information. Was the planned meal abandoned due to poor cooking conditions? Was it lack of cooking ability? Was it forsaken, cast aside for a prepared meal from Uber Eats? Maybe the carry bag was sinking fast and the vegetables decided to jump ship? 

Or is because it’s celery, which deserves to be strewn on a street. We’ll just never know. Because the eyewitness wasn’t so witness-y after all. 

As an Enquiry and, more importantly, an Inquiry, is launched into why there has been a significant increase in vegetables being strewn all over the place on this path and how to prevent it in the future, the fate of the vegetables in question hangs in the balance, and their future is most certainly unclear.
 
What is known, however, is that they are currently wilting in the sun. If it’s any consolation, the vegetables had very few loved ones.

Why so Cirrus?

Local cloud, Gary Smith

A cloud has responded to reports that he doesn’t know what he’s doing when he forms and dissipates all day.

Local cloud, Gary Smith, says the public try and predict his behaviour all the time and whinge, sometimes even to his face, when he comes into view. But he says he is just misunderstood.

“We arrive, we rain on you, we disappear; that’s just we do. When I was growing up I wanted to be a thunderstorm, or I could have been a hurricane if I applied myself, but sometimes you just need to stick to a solid, steady income to make ends meet”, he said, as he struggled to stay in one spot without the wind blowing him away.

Cloud Gary reads reports and forecasts about his behaviour but says it’s mostly fake news, “I read an online weather report this morning that gave me a 95% chance of clouding over the sky, but I’m unpredictable, man. The weatherpeople on the media rarely know what they're talking about”, Gary said, before waving two fingers in front of his mouth to summons a pink fluffy cloud to prove his point, just like Monkey in the 1980s TV series Monkey.

He also questions the validity of people who make a living talking about weather all day. “I mean, I know I’m part of the natural phenomenon process, but don’t you think a weatherperson is a job created by media to give boring people something to talk about on camera”. 

Human Dick Jones doesn’t like clouds, saying “when they finally eff off, it’s a very nice day!” 

Cloud Gary agrees, saying “the feeling is mutual; this is something humans and clouds have in common”, adding that he’s not the biggest fan of humans either. “I always hear they want me to make them a silver lining or something, like I’ve nothing better to do all day than create some sort of positive aspect over their shitful existence”.

Feb(r)uary

Oh great, it's February again.  Who the hell can pronounce February?  I would like to stage an intervention to rid the western world of having to use the 'r' in February, or at the very least be able to ruthlessly mock extra ruddy consonants by enclosing them in a mocking-type set of brackets. I don't see the point of silent letters.  Empty letters.  I blame the French for this nonsense.

That crazed word fanatic, Shakespeare, has a pointless 'e' desperately clinging to the end of his name like some pathetic groupie.  And thanks to Willy Shakes and other overwordiness muppets, we have an abundance of words, which means simple folk are able to breathlessly talk and talk all day long, repeating words over and over again.

Fortunately some years ago - maybe like a decade ago or something - someone decided that February sucked and it deserved to have just 28 days, with an extended 29 days every fourth year.  Smart. I think we should also leap over Wednesdays, because no-one likes a week day with a silent 'd'.


 

I watched Home and Away.

Putting aside the piece of chocolate cake that I stole from colleagues last week at work, I'm a good person. And sometimes bad things happen to good people. For example, tonight I watched Home and Away. Here's proof.

Straight off the bat - mere minutes into the show - Number #1 girl uses a big word. I can't remember what it was but I was actually impressed.

Number #1 girl undoes all her good work during an argument by turning to her pantry and placing her face in such a distressed arrangement that made me think that someone ate her 12 pack of twisties. She must have been really sad or angry or frustrated or something.

Here's Number #2 girl. Another Oscar winner in the making. She's super sad or frustrated or depressed or something and I don't even know what she's going through because she also has no facial expression.

Now I feel like a bitch because expressionless lady actually lost her twin babies in her womb. But that doesn't change the fact that her only facial expression is expressionless. Who hires these people?

Watching teenagers sitting around in their lounge room watching AFL on television and drinking vodka cruisers and beer and making out and being bitchy to each and doing all the teenage angst things. I hate them all within seconds.

Spoiler: This guy doesn't do this show anymore.

Yay ad break. Head to the kitchen to make a cup of tea and find a hot poker that I can have on standby in case I need to gouge my eyes out.

Number #3 girl is concerned or angry or sad when she finds out her boyfriend of two weeks has "commitment issues". He's 20. His name is Tank.

The most concerning part of this scene is my realisation that those precious minutes it took me to watch it are lost to me forever. And now I have to live with that.

Number #3 girl gets home 18 seconds after her curfew.  The parents are waiting in the dark on the driveway with a location camera crew. Cue boring argument. Jesus, this show.

Whatever happened to Brax (pictured in the picture), the feared member of the River Boys? Just googled him. The car transferring him to jail ran off the road and plunged into a lake but HIS BODY WAS NEVER FOUND...

Ooooooh, ahhhh, ooooh, ahhh, the sun is rising over the ocean. That's a bit pretty.

Oh great, actors have just walked onto the beach and decide to speak. Sunset ruined. Oh great, here's more of them. It's a morning beach sunrise-ruining congregation. This scene would improve enormously if the actors went away so I could just watch the sunrise in peace.

More teenage angst. I feel like I'm not the target audience.

Thank the lord that's over.

I had a great thought the other day.

I had a great thought the other day.  It was pretty epic.

Not a Kim Kardashian inconsequential brainpop, but something great passed through my neural pathways.

Like something Einstein may have come up with if he hadn't spent all his time watching pink lady apples fall from trees. Where was that leisurely activity ever going to take him?

This shit happens to me often.  My brain did that thing where it cuts out like a hairdryer when you pull it away from the wall socket, sometimes mid-sentence. Actually more often that not mid-sentence.

Unfortunately the great thought eludes me to this day. Oh well. I might go and sit under my mum's lemon tree and see if the great thought returns.

Sequel to this post: Return of The Great Thought.

Tea Reheater.

I am a massive tea lover.  And I am also a massive tea reheater, much to the displeasure of some of my work colleagues. (But one of these aforementioned work colleagues is still into Garfield, so somebody's not in a position to judge.)  People mock what they don't understand.  It all tastes the same, you fools.  Well maybe not, but I like my tea HOT.

Thus, it has recently popped into my little brain that I would presumably benefit from an electronic tea cup warmer, just like the one in the picture.  A cup warmer that looks like an oreo cookie.  So clever and tacky in one little biccie. Wonderful. 

If you want to buy it for me for Christmas, cyber-bot friend, then do it.  Unless you are a weirdo.  For ease of placing yourself into my classification system, I define weirdo as somebody who keeps human body parts stored in a freezer in their basement or any other room.  I'm pretty cool with everyone else.

To summarise, tea is everything that is right and good with the world contained in one aromatic hot beverage.  When I say I'm not fussy when it comes to tea, I mean to say is that I only drink Twinings.  It's just how it is. Lapsang Souchong is my current favourite.  It smells like a bushfire.  So good.  How interesting is this blog post?  So interesting.

Apple Fools

Ah apples. They are so great, aren't they? I love apples.  If they and bananas and mangoes ever disappeared because of some post-apocalyptic nightmare scenario that only affects specific yellow and red and orange coloured fruit, I would be massively screwed because I just don't care for any other type of edible flowering plant except those ones.

So it's most fortuitous that I love pretty much every vegetable that's ever been born, except the ones that I loathe, most notably brussel sprouts. I mean, really.

Brussel sprouts are a member of the cabbage family, which certainly explains why they are so disgusting.  Worst family genes ever.  Anyway, back to apples.

I ate a royal gala for my post-lunch repast today.  It was really delicious and crunchy, except there were two stickers on my apple, and I don't really approve of my fruit being used as a platform for insidious promotion from fruit growers.

Individual stickers on apples are just annoying, because I just don't care where they come from and the sign above the fruit in the shop tells me what specific fruit I am purchasing.  Plus I have a brain and may be able to detect all by myself when a banana has accidently or deliberately been tossed into the royal galas.

Through the story of Adam and Eve, apples have become the symbol of knowledge, immortality, temptation and rampant advertising.  When Eve took the apple off the Forbidden Tree she probably had to peel off a fucking promotional sticker. I think I'm going to create tiny oval stickers of my face and put them all over Canberra.  Just because.

Liberté conditionnelle - fancy talk for parole

Liberté conditionnelle.  It's French for parole.  Everything in the world sounds more fancy when you speak it in French with a bad French accent.  Which is strange, because the French are muchos bastards in general.  I know; I've met at least 12 of them.

Speaking of parole - such a coinkydink - I’ve always thought an efficient way for the Government to generate some extra revenue for their kitty would be through the installation of grandstand seating at police stations and charge non-criminals for the privilege of watching life’s shitheads report for parole.  I’d watch the heck out of that.

And we could clap and woop woop as criminals are led down to the gallows or whatever in their chains and be forced to watch a live feed of Big Brother for three hours and eat a plate of peanut butter-encrusted brussell sprouts.  Gross.

As if that wasn’t enough excitement for you, then there’s the uniforms. Oh wait. I’m pretty sure no-one on the earth has ever shown any interest in men in police uniform, so that’s just not relevant.

In reality, no criminal activity of any sort will happen on the day you have your tickets and you will just have to watch police officers do boring paperwork and talk over-the-counter to little old ladies. Sort of like requesting to attend swimming in the Olympics lottery and getting tickets to the diving.

They could have icecream sellers and everything. But not the ones who block your view for ages during important bits just so some moron can change their mind 18 times about whether to purchase a cornetto or that other one that is exactly the same fucking thing as a cornetto but has a different name. And then we get marzipan to throw at the prisoners. Such fun.

So I’ve recently been walking home via my local police station. There is a good reason for this. I’m not actually on parole anymore, so that’s not the reason. I have recently moved to an apartment and the copshop is on my walking route. When I walk past in the afternoon there are always losers sitting waiting to sign in for parole. I know they are on parole because they have losers on parole written all over them.

My concern is that they will be so bored stiff waiting in the backlog of deadbeats that they will notice some blonde chick walking past and decide to follow her for some sinister purpose. I'm assuming none of them are murderers but you just never know; especially if you live in Victoria.

The Bubble Addiction

Addictions.  No-one wants them and certainly no-one wants to admit to them - least of all on a social networking site. Well, I have an addiction.  So there.  It can easily take over my life, and I can't function adequately without playing it at least once a day.

When I start bingeing, it alters the chemical makeup in my brain, and I can't stop without some serious intervention, like starvation, dehydration or a desperate need to go to the loo.  My problem is not booze, cigarettes, pornog, drugs, Wills and Kate fanaticism, pokies, shopping or exercise.  It is a recurring compulsion to play the bubbles game. 

I don't want to encourage others into my web of shame and illicitness, but here is the link to this massive waste of time. It's a dark, murky world, where bright little round balls prey on the vulnerable.   A few things you needs to know before entering the land of bubbles.  Don't let them build up, because they just keep coming at you, like rioting Syrians.  And then they'll shoot you in the head.

I always try to pop the red ones first. I don’t have a justifiable reason for this; perhaps it is because I'm anti-communist and wish them to be eradicated from the planet.  And I always seem to let the baby blue ones slide, as if they were harmless little puffy clouds that wouldn’t dream of messing with my batting average.  The yellow ones are rather insignificant to me; much like Kim Kardashian is to the human race.

I always feel a tad guilty when I’m playing my bubbles, as if I am denying myself my true purpose in life; like plotting a new peace roadmap for the Middle East, or even more meaningful tasks, like eradicating that which is useless and pointless from my wardrobe.  I guess what is most troubling about my indulgent, depraved pastime is my belief that it's worthy of a blog post.

Calculators - fast relief from adding shit

I’ve been reading up about internet usage in North Korea. We all have our hobbies). I’m thinking of starting a Facebook page called 'Kimmy John-un’s TicToc addiction is ruining people's lives and communism doesn't help either', and I wanted to know whether my disparaging remarks regarding the little sociopathic nutjob would put my life at risk.  Turns out it very possibly could.

According to Wikipedia, which can occasionally be more trustworthy that you think, hardly any communists in North Korea have access to Google but the ones who do spend their days surfing the net are high level government officials.  Henchmen.  And I don't want to be number 8,098 on their torture machine bucket list.

Plus, randomly, do they even have calculators in North Korea? Kimmy J-u is screwed up enough to ban the kiddies from using a contraption to solve math shit.  If Johnny has 6 apples and Susie has 3 apples then they're probably going to jail for stealing from the state-owned orchard anyway.

Would anyone like to know the story of the history of calculators?  I see someone at the back has their hand up.  Here we go then.  Once upon a time, someone invented a calculator.  The End.  This is a blog; I don't got no time for the history of a device that solves basic and complex math shit, friends.

Although I imagine the person who first operated such a machine was a bit like me - hated math.  Lots. When faced with a math equation of considerable proportion, or just an easy one, his brain likely threw up a gigantic anti-algebratic wall, as if to protect itself from the horrors of the apocalyptic nightmare that is any arithmetic problem that has the alphabet in it.  Because that's what menial silver-collar calculators are for.  Calculators live for this shit. 

Just say no to snow.

I've said it before and I imagine I'll bang on about it many times in the future - if I wanted to live in a place where the temperature regularly drops below zero for a bloody long period of time and it can't even be bothered to snow then I'd move to Antarctica.  Minus 3 degrees celsius and no snow?  Piss off. 

Shit just got real.  Tomorrow is the start of the ski season in my country, or at my local snowy mountains, or maybe someone just made that up.  I dont know.  I don't much care, because I don't do snow.  Snow is super pretty, but it's also super cold, and that just doesn't work for me.

Flashback Time.  *cue that zigzaggy pattern they show on Days of Our Lives when Hope has a flashback and laments ever meeting that Bo Brady, what with his cheesy bad boy one liners*  

I was first introduced to snow as a highschooler, and my foremost memory is of us all getting caught in a howling blizzard (as opposed to the calm and serene type of blizzards you usually get) and of me falling into a snow ditch with one ski wrapped around my neck.  That was some good times for sure.  I'm usually more outdoorsy, but snow drives a massive ice-cold wedge between me and nature.

I'm thinking about driving down the alpine way this year and picketing the ski fields.  Say no to snow, say no to snow!  Snow has to go!  Go home snow, go home snow!  The summer, united, will never be defeated!  Snow kills baby ducks!  And stuff like that. No-one ever pickets summer, because everyone likes a bit of warm weather.  Ask everyone.

Snowboarders, I like. I'm okay with snowboarders.  And lots of skiers I have also found to be decent folk, despite their horribly soggy hobby and their endless conversation icebreakers (boom, boom) regarding powder runs and other tedious snow-type lingo.

But over the years I have learnt that the more some people bang on about how great snow is, the more likely they are merely rich, pretentious twats who ride up and down chair lifts by day and toast each other over Bordeaux in their chateau over an open fire by night with a skewer stuck firmly up their marshmellows.

RANT OF THE DAY - Recorder Distorters

Everywhere I go there are annoying little people - I think they may be called children - learning how to play the recorder.  Badly.  They do it very, very badly.  Why is this happening, you ask.  Nobody knows.

Learning how to play a musical instrument when you are a snotty, little ratbag serves no useful, practical purpose whatsoever, unless you want to be in a jazz band (fair call) or a busker (not the best career choice but inevitable for some) when you grow up, although it is also a very useful method of irritating this shit out of everyone within a one mile radius.

For the uneducated and uninterested, a recorder is a musical instrument of ear death.  A flute-like eardrum-bleeding torture machine.  A wooden tube that needs to be snapped into little pieces as soon as the user blows that hideous squeaking racket out of its little holes.

Rant of the day.  Thank you and good day.

Caffeine: How much is too little?

NEW BLOG POST!  OMG OMGOMGOMGOMG I'M SO EXCITED. I'M SO EXCITED I THINK I'LL WRITE THIS POST ENTIRELY IN HIGHLY ANNOYING SHOUTY CAPSLOCK LETTERS.  My goodness everyone, just calm the heck down.  Me, particularly.

My current spate of mass hysteria is primarily driven by the fact that I've sort of mostly kind of quit most sugar and I've found something new to replace it with.  Great success.  CAFFEINE!  Yes, caffeine!!!  CAFFEINE!!!  It's probably not immediately obviously to the layman that I've consumed any caffeine at all today, but I have.  

They do say you should replace one dubious habit with another.  It's true; I read that on the back of a KFC (yum, so good, stop judging me, I'll do what I want, you're not the boss of me) bathroom door somewhere.

I probably could have turned to water in my hour of need but it's a clear, pompous little fluid, what with its sanctimonious health properties and its dirty detoxy ways.  No wonder all the other beverages despise it.  Except for when it freezes itself - then it'll go after any drink, the little tramp.

I criticise its shady methods, but I am actually also abusing the watery substance in its natural form right now as well - in the manner of about four litres a day - which is fortunate because I am also drinking about half that in caffeine.  It's like the lack of sugar has sent me completely bonkers.  And sleep... what's that?... is that some weirdo dodgy pastime you people do at night or something?...oh, you crazy kids and your shenanigans.

Attention Seeking Water

Canberra Water has announced it will go on strike, claiming no-one pays it any attention anymore now that it occasionally rains a bit.  Water is hoping to enlist the support of fellow elements Earth, Air and Fire so it doesn't look like a total, inconsiderate douche bag.

The strike comes as Canberra water company Actew fights to block the release of an independent review into managing director Mark Sullivan's pay, just weeks after fellow utility ActewAGL refused to disclose the wages of its top executives.

"Every weekend that twat, Mark Sullivan, comes to the Cotter to try and part me like I'm the fucking Red Sea. The stupid knobhead doesn't know I've already been parted. I mean, I'm a fucking dam", said the slightly unhinged Water, splashing itself down with a bucket and pale so as not to evaporate. 

"I am so sick of this ACTEW pay scale palaver.  What about me?  Don't the big Water cheeses know who I am?  I can make myself fucking scarce anytime I want and put them out of a job", said a flushed and angry Water.


The planned strike will be the first time since it last stopped raining that local environmentalist's heads will spin on their axis' and explode in a fit of self-righteous indignation, which will come as a relief to the other 99.9999% of the population who think they're complete raging twats.

But it can't be all that bad, as it means ACT Greens MLA, Shane Rattenbury, will stop walking into my shower at the 38 seconds mark, screaming that I'm personally responsible for ruining the whole earth through my water usage.

Despite repeated attempts to resolve the issue behind closed doors, the belligerent Water refuses to waiver in its bid to be the centre of attention.

"One day the world will be plunged into an apocalyse-type nightmare and psychotics will kill just for a drop of me", said H20, as it asked for a glass of itself.





An angry local body of water

 

Sight for Blind Eyes

I've realised in the past year or so that university has completely ruined my eyesight.  It can't possibly have anything to do with the fact that I am getting older, because I am barely out of my teens.

All I know is about ten years ago my sight was not too bad at all, now I'm lucky if I can recognise someone I know from 20 metres away.  What the hell happened here? Uni happened, that's what.  I think all those years of reading lecture notes and textbooks by flickering campfire has stuffed them good.  Actually that's an outrageous lie, because I wouldn't go camping if my life depended on it.  Or yours.  Probably especially yours. No offence, cyberbots.

I've been wearing glasses for years for reading, especially when my eyes get tired.  But my main sight issue comes courtesy of my nan's genes.  Bless her, she gave me one long-sighted eye and one short-sighted eye, so my poor depth perception has been a handy life-long excuse for why I constantly walk into and sideswipe cars, walls, doorframes, doors, power poles, pillars, concrete barriers, and the occasional unfortunate person.

I have also been known to flatten side mirrors as I walk through carparks.  And it was a running joke when I was a child how I would manage to walk into a doorframe with my right shoulder and bruise my left inside ankle.

I'm very, very familiar with that instant nauseating pain you get when you hit your funny bone.  Actually none of my bones are off limits.  I often slip on escalators and I don't really care for the gap in elevators that normal people don't seem to think about.

I absolutely hate getting on or off a treadmill while it's vaguely moving, which is just stupid anyway, but I watch people do it at my gym all the time.  And last year at Disney in Florida I spent a lot of time willing myself not to misjudge my step when I had to get on rides that just don't stop. Stress, man.

Driving on roads that are squished between rock faces is a right nightmare and fills me with anxiety.  Ironically, I was pitcher for my high school softball team.  I imagine a lot of my issues could be mediated if I wore my glasses, but I've never been one to do what I'm told.  Plus poor depth perception makes one's life more exciting.

Why I hate Sudoku

10,000 years ago - which is just a few years before Rolf Harris learnt how to manouvre a piece of butcher's paper to elicit noise because he couldn't play a guitar - a Chinaman sat alone on a hill, probably somewhere in the hills in China, and wondered what to do with his day. 

He was bored, you see, kind of how Westerners feel when an inconsiderate thunderstorm screws with their internet reception and they can't spend the afternoon LOLing at I Can Haz Cheeseburger cats. Except the Chinaman didn't have electricity or Google, he barely had dial-up internet access, so he was really bloody bored as shit.  

So what did he do?  The little bastard decided to invent Sudoku, didn't he.  Nothing to do, so let's create a monstrosity of a cryptic puzzle that no-one can ever solve because they aren't friggin' mindreaders, they don't have a spare 53 days to complete a stupid brainteaser and they aren't blessed with the patience of a Buddhist. 

Only someone who can focus the mind on meditating for hours and hours and hours has the patience for this shit.  Humour me while I curse some more - I FUCKING HATE THIS GAME. (Disclaimer: Probably because I am really shite at it)

I first discovered Sudoku last year, when I was stranded in an airport in Florida as a ferocious hurricane threatened to blow the state away.  Apparently planes don't do hurricanes.  My internet refused to work, so I resorted to the delightfully quaint and old-fashioned pen and paper to entertain me. 

I started about 24 easy games of Sudoku, and felt a vague sense of achievement and satisfaction each time I gave up and looked at the answers.  Sometimes you just gotta keep your expectations low.  Plus shit gets done a whole lot quicker with this approach.

I'm currently trying to complete a hard Sudoku.  I don't know why - but I did emerge from a Coles supermarket today with a touch of a headache, so maybe I was abducted by fresh food aliens in the fruit and veggie patch, curious at why anyone would ever voluntarily eat celery.  I'm also trying to complete the cryptothon without cheating.  I honestly don't know what's come over me.  Maybe the Sudoku's inherent Buddhist teachings are rubbing off.



Can this game possibly get any more annoying? I need a game plan.  Would butcher's paper help?  It's got Rolf out of many a sticky situation.  What would Jack Bauer do? He'd glue some C4 to the page and blow it all the way back to Beijing.  Alternatively, I could just watch some telly.



Too much Sudoku



Rockets and Oranges

I live in a first world country, which means I don't have to worry about food, water or sanitation, at least until I go to an open air loo in a hick country town.

So basically, for the most part, my mind is free to concern itself with such pointless matters as the vagaries of my mood on any given day (usually Monday to Friday, funnily enough), the hideousness of the shock frocks at the Golden Globes, or, tonight, the outrageous bright orangeness of the outfits of the linepeoples at the Australian Open tennis in Melbourne. 

Think of the most radiant orange day-glo neon hue you can possibly imagine and then go ten times brighter, shine 18 big arse sporting lights on it and stick a couple of high-voltage neon lamps down their pants for that blinding effect.

I guess if Mothership Earth has a power outage we'll at least have Rod Laver Arena to guide us back to orbit or whatever happens when we turn the lights out at night.  I don't know, I'm not an astronauteer.  Plus I don't need to know about science; that's what Sheldon and The Big Bang Theory are for.

Despite the fact that I've almost mastered a high-level (see: very basic) understanding of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics - which is in fact a true story - my grasp of anything else related to science or math is akin to that of a kindergartener, perhaps even leaning toward advanced preschool level.

My brain just refuses to acknowledge that science and math make any sense whatsoever.  The other day my sister and I watched one of those disastrous disaster movies made by the special effects trainees at Universal Studios.  My sister possesses a university degree in some brain debilitatingly boring science shit and found it necessary to laugh raucously throughout at the actors lack of understanding of the basics of physics as they tossed out lines like "magnetic activity is unpredictable". 

Okay, given, magnets don't really surprise you that often with their behaviour, but which science is phsyics again?  I know; embarrassing.  Science actually hurts my brain and math leaves even more collateral damage.

Stupid Clock Face

I was at the gym the other day and something happened that left me completely dejected, as opposed to the usual depression slash melancholy of having to watch 20-year-old girls getting more lithe and more fitter than anyone needs to be. 

Note to self: you are probably at the age when it is probably best to not compare your body shape with 20-year-olds.  But, hey, I'm a chick and that's what we do, to our detriment of course.

Anyway, blah, blah, blah, that wasn't the main source of my deflation.  I was finishing up stretching and I leant on the wall and came face to face with a ticking timebomb.  Well it was a ticking clock, but it was one of those ticking clocks with moving hands that provide an annoying continuous sweep for the minute hand rather than the much slower and less stressful tick, tick, tick.

There's nothing like a minute hand flying at a breakneck pace to let you know that time is running out.  Just, you know, in general.  Now these clocks have me completely psyched out, as if I'll look over and they'll have unexpectedly bent the space time continuum and I'll be trapped in a timewarp circa June 2028.  I hope they don't wear 80's fashion in 2028.  It sucked the first time around.

That out of control minute hand caused me some fleeting widespread panic and alarm, and then I went home.

I know; blog post fail.  It really is quite mind-boggling the things I find worthy of words in blog posts.