DAY 8 The Writing Inquisition - BBC at Namadji

Just a short, little blogget today. I'm a bit of  hiker. Dictionary.com defines 'hiking' as 'to move up or rise, as out of place or position (often followed by up), and that pretty sums up my life when I go hiking in Namadgi National Park, my favourite national park in the Australian Capital Territory region. My favourite trek doers a lot of up, up for seven kilometres and then you have to come back down again.

On one of my recent treks, I popped into the Namadji Visitor Centre om the way back down, because I wanted to ask the ranger on duty about a big black cat that I had seen a few months ago.  The visitor's centre is home to Spencer the python. I hadn't seen him for a while, so I said G'day to him as he was basking in the late afternoon winter sun and then noticed a film crew in the corner. It turned out to be the BBC filming, about Australian wildlife presumably.

The ranger said they were doing a story on the black and white dingoes in Namadji. I did not know that black and white dingoes were a thing, so I might watch their special when in comes on the teev!

Bit of a boring, vamilla post today but, oh well, that's lyf.

DAY 7 The Writing Inquisition - Koala Bae

A L O H A

Meet Koala Gary (KG). He has decided to move into my life and has been following me around all week. He was recently diskoalafied from climbing gum trees because of a little speeding fine, so I’ve decided to adopt him.

We have been spending some koalaty time together and he has been leafing an impression on my life. We have been going through some ground rules though.

The basic principles: I do what he wants – and I’ll tree my hardest to follow that rule - and his ground rule is that he doesn’t ever want to be on the ground, so that was easy.

Don't tree this at home.

KG was born on the wrong side of the tracks. Raised in a trashy souvenir store, he spent his days in a plastic bag, forced to be man-handled by excitable tourists hellbent on stroking his ears as if he was a real f**king koala bear.

Since escaping the shackles of souvenir lyf, KG shed his coat, literally, his I love Australia jacket, and has resolved to only put the stupid thing back on if he ever goes somewhere ridiculous like Bali, or represents Australia at the Koala Games.

KG ‘s hobbies include swimming in a glass of Coca-Koala©, getting caught in the gum leaves, he hates the rain, and he is a koalafied climbing instructor, although he has been diskoalafied for six months. I have been doing some koalatative research to get an understanding of his likes, dislikes, motivations and the simple bear necessities.

I’ve just sent off his passport application because we will soon be spending some koalaty time together in Hawaii. That’s right, KG is going abroad!

DAY 6 The Writing Inquisition - Operation Lash Extension

Given the nature of my July Writing Inquisition, I feel like I need to submit to the challenge and actually write something a bit challenging - push beyond the comfort zone -  because great things can happen when you step outside your zone.

This is someone.
But it's not me. Or my lashes. 

Unless you're in the military, where it's best to stay inside the green zone if you're not fortified with an armoured tank. So today I'm battle ready, safely ensconced in my steel-plated fighting vehicle, and will tackle a beauty post about my acquisition of some eyelash extensions.

The other day I went to the staging area called Brazillian Beauty on my lunchbreak. It's just outside the Green Zone, but still in the equally secure APS Zone. I was tactically and strategically well prepared, given my new predilection to FUBAR (f**ked up beyond all recognition) my appointment time.

The staff member on active duty  - call sign 'amazing lash arranger' - was ready for the assault, and greeted me with heavy friendly fire as I walked in the door. Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Hi! Its okay. I wasn't injured.

I was quickly and quietly shuffled off into a backroom where I was briefed on the mission ahead and then the tactical action commenced.

I was impressed with the logistics, particularly the actions of transporting individual lashes to the customer, using cutting edge tweezer technology. Reliable countermeasures were enabled to ensure that no lash be left behind.

The auxiliary division responsible for heating and assorted music systems were also highly commendable.

I have been advised that, with respect to Operation Lash Extension, acquiescence is the wisest course of action, so I'll go back for another appointment in about a month.

Status of lashes: On active duty.

DAY 5 The Writing Inquisition - 40% off S W A G

High fashion. Why. Other than people in the industry, I sometimes feel like it's one of those things that a total of 10 people have time to follow. 

Which is probably the reason why we keep seeing runway models wearing some of the weirdest crap in the world. Today's blog is brought to you by a guest blogger, who off loaded their views to me on this Dotti mesh dress thing (pictured). Thankyou, guest blogger:

Why is she wearing John Denver sunglasses???

And apparently, the tulle thing is to give you a cool, off-duty style. I’d describe it more as a weirdo, fashion-victim off-duty style, but whatevs.

My off-duty style involves ugg boots and polar fleece but I live in non-cool Canberra, aka the Daggy Capital, so if I wore a black tulle mesh midi dress, I might stand out a bit in the Horror Dome.

Also, I don’t own any ripped denim or a band tee, because they were cool in the 80s and the 70s. Now, they’re just “fashion” and it’s pretentious.  If you don’t know who the Ramones were, or why their music was “important”, and aren’t old enough to have gone to their live concerts, then you shouldn’t be allowed to wear a rip-off Ramones t-shirt. 

Also I don’t like the Ramones. Their music sucked in the 70s when they wrote it.  It sucked in the 80s when I first heard it. And it still sucks now.  I hate punk.

Why am I talking about the Ramones? I think she might be wearing an Aerosmith tshirt? It’s hard to tell.

I don’t like Aerosmith’s music much either.

DAY 4 The Writing Inquisition - We all have a Roswell

Earlier today, as I was walking home from work, minding my own business, as much as I ever mind my own business, I encountered a field of strange markings on the ground made from materials that glowed eerily on their own. It was Scooby-Doo spooky. The photographic evidence I compiled is below. It might be wise to delete all evidence of your eyes after viewing.

I'm not much of a fangirl of conspiracy theories, but this was probably not unlike how the first responders felt at Roswell. Roswell is one of my favourite conspiracies. It's just so great.

The theory holds that, in 1947, a UFO crashed at Roswell in New Mexico. Technology and alien bodies were recovered, and the U.S. military has been covering it up ever since, preferring to study alien technology and biology in secret squirrel mode. Some authorities reported the field of debris contained metals unknown to science.

The official line is that a balloon from a top secret research programme crashed.

It's a good yarn anyway.

So back to my Roswell.

I dont want to jump to conclusions, but in the absence of a really solid conspiracy theory that may dawn on me at 2am, I can only assume that the materisls I saw were obtained from Officeworks. Someone in the ACT Government has raided all of Canberra's Officeworks stores and stocked up on a ramge of markers and highlighters to suit all projects and budgets.

What if I wanted to buy a highlighter? I guess no-one in Canberra gets to make anything glow all by itself until more stock arrives from Stabilo. Lock up your highlighters!

DAY 3 The Writing Inquisition - Man-made snowy snowcaps

I've long held the view that weather is a natural phenomenon created to give boring people something to talk about. Obviously I am excluding myself from that socio group.

My very own Canberra, home of Australia's cold hearted alpine fairies, is regularly hitting -10 celsius at night. The bowl of H2O I leave out for the magpies freezes by a few centimetres every night. Science says water freezes at zero. Science says Canberra is cold. I'm not feeling like this is the way I want to spend my life.

I whinge about the cold fairly regularly. I think it's an unofficial hobby now. And like any self-respecting hobby or thing you love to do, it doesn't pay crap.

One of my top 50 complaints about the weather here relates to the fact there is no snow to show for all the suffering endured. I walk to work through a glacial cloud, through air that has literally frozen in time, and there is no snow. The urban myth is that it's too cold to snow here. There might be some so-called science in that too, but I reserve my judgement until Kim Kardashian tweets about it.

But I have a solution to this.  Hard research shows that tourists flock like seagulls on a chippy to places that have snow-capped mountains. I get it. There are pretty. It's like living in the Disney movie Frozen, or Lord of the Rings, or when the cast of Home and Away go on a school trip to Thredbo.

So why don't we create our own snow-capped mountains? All of the alpine regions make their own snow when mother nature isn't playing ball. Little itsy bitsy Corin Forest have three snowmaking machines.

According to the interweb machine, there are two important components to snowmaking and Canberra has them in abundance; water and cold air. And we're talking below 0 type of cold air. And it gets better. The colder the air, the better the quality and higher the quantity of snow. Which means it'll hang around for months and pay for itself through the tourist dollars.

It's easy to get carried away when
you start with the snowmaking.

It's not that far fetched an idea. Governments regularly control and influence natural resources. Water management of dams, rivers and lakes, windmills, biodiversity conservation, agriculture, fisheries. The while point of managing natural resources is to manage the way in which we interact with natural landscapes. And I want my eyes to interact with some snowcaps on my walk to work. It's really just repurposing water. Sort of.

My local Government loves to commission public art that is dangerously ugly and endlessly disappointing. And I'm fairly sure there isn't a tourist in the universe who would come here to see our bright orange bogong moth behemoth in Tuggeranong. And what do we pay for these public art pieces?

$421,000 - Moth ascending the Capital
$400,000 - Owl
$125,000 - Dinomis Maximus (the orange rotating sculpture in Woden that is moved by the wind)

Since 2006, the Perisher ski resort in the New South Wales alpine region has spent about $22 million improving and expanding their snowmaking system.

It figures that recreating a natural phenomenon don't come cheap. Maybe I'll just have to do it myself. Act locally and all that. Online companies advertise their wares, boasting machines that produce a blizzard of snow just like the snowmakers at ski resorts. I think I've found a new winter hobby.

DAY 2 The Writing Inquisition - S C R A M B L E

Today is Day Two of my new Writing Inquisition. Day Two went like Day Two does in any type of challenge. It's a battle of wills. I was pitted against myself in a fight to the death, with the one willing to work the hardest, sacrifice the most, rising to be the winner and be rendered with a rewarding, stimulating blog post. I guess I didn't win. Thoughts I had tonight when I remembered the writing needed to happen:

Why am I doing this again?
I want a return ticket.
Yeah, I'm done with this.
I didn't do anything nearly vaguely interesting today.
I haven't tried something new like I said I would.

Oh the burden of blog responsibility.

Come to think of it, I did go to visit White Stuff today. There is a place in a national park, about half an hour's drive from where I live, that houses snow! I don't like the cold one tiny bit, as documented about 1,253 times throughout my blog, but I love the pretty white snow, particularly but not limited to the icing features it provides on mountain rooftops.

So without further ado, today's blog is called SCRAMBLE, because scrambling words together, while wading through heavy snow to provide immediate air support, is what I've done here.

DAY 1 The Writing Inquisition - Starting the life hack

Once you've waded through all the 'I can haz cheeseburger' cat youtubes one can possibly stand, there's all the advice in the world on the world wide web about how to get the best out of life.

How to get more hours in the day, how to worry more about all the things you worry you're not worried enough about, how to think big by starting small, how to live richly but minimally, how to roar and avoid being taken like a poor little gazelle in a ponzi scheme, how to do the crime and avoid the time, how to run wild and walk cautiously, how to shoot for the stars, and the importance of watching out for life's bindies.

19th century life hack. 
Now I can shortcut 
the time I spend on 
drawing ducks.

For international readers unfamiliar with the ways of Australiana, bindis are a prickly lawn weed found here during the summer months. Step on them and you'll pay for it. It's not whacking your thumb with a hammer type pain; they  sting, bite, and then rip your foot off like a shark (just kidding, Tourism Australia), but we step on them all the time, in lawns throughout the land, millions of us, every year. 

Someone needs to invent a rubber type shoe in a variety of colours and styles we can just slip on easily and quickly. Fine, I'll do it. I'll call them thongos. Tell your friends. They'll be available Summer 2020.

I'm not here to tell you how to avoid bindi type situations in your life garden, however, listen up, and listen up carefully or you'll miss the complexities. The world wide web doesn't just hand out bindi advice everyday. 

Have you noticed that life is full of bindies? It is commonly known that you really need to take a long term approach to rid your life of them. They colonise your garden, your space, and you have to tackle that infestation situation before the plant develops. 

You can manually remove each one or you can spray the suckers with weed killer. And make sure you do regular bindi patrols so they don't take over your life. This is great life advice. What a great life hack.

I've noted the new, hip, fashionably jargonistic term called life hacks. At first I thought they sounded very Jack the Ripperesque, but then I found our life hacks refer to "any trick, shortcut, skill or novelty method that increase productivity and efficiency, in all walks of life". And I think we're all going to put our hands up for that. 

So my life hack - for the month of July - is to write more. On here. Every day. About anything. All the things. To encourage me to write more. Life hack month. I'm going to try and do something different, or something a little differently, every day, to get some inspiration, motivation. Let the life hack commence forthwith.

Gold Coast road trip

I live in a cold place. It's called Canberra, colloquially known as can't-really-be-bothered-being-vaguely-warm-in-winter. It’s not the same level of cold negativity that annually transcends the lands of Canada or Russia, but it’s bloody cold enough for me in this part of Australia through the mid-year J months.

It’s actually colder than a bucket of snowman’s piss. Put your hand up if you like your daily temperature being colder than a bucket of snowman’s piss. Nope, I’m not seeing any hands.

Recently, in a desperate attempt to escape the absolute catastrophe of glaciality and cold weather sass I get from this place, I undertook a driving holiday with a friend, with the destination 'warm sunny place' plugged into Ailish (the Irish satnavigator).

A holiday north was on the cards, with the promise of sunshiney goodness and the wonderful, warm and fuzzy feeling that comes with vacations from life, with the added benefit of making a lot of people who do not feel that way - because they are not on holidays - a bit annoyed and potentially prone to giving you a well deserved clip around the ear.

Ailish took us all the way to the Gold Coast - bless her electronic heart - the jewel in Queensland's crown. Sure, the jewel is a cheap costume bling number available in bulk at discount prices, but it's still part of the symbolic headwear representing solar power, people who say 'ay' to end every sentence, sun and balmy beautiful weather, and what's not to love about all those things.

The Gold Coast is about two days worth of driving up Australia's east coast from Canberra. That's two days to think long and hard about what the hell is wrong with you to think driving it was a good idea.

I haven’t been to the Gold Coast for many years, but before I went I was reliably informed by a multitude of all types that it was trashbag central; a dumpster’s paradise, a dustbin of deplorables, a compost heap of reprobates, a gigantic tramp and sleaze rubbish tip. As it turns out, it really isn’t half as bad as any of that. It's more of a shiny, new dumpster out the back of a hipster cafe.

The drive up north is endless, but Day One was pleasant enough. It was a quickie overnighter in Port Macquarie, with a fish and chips dindins and visit to the flicks to watch Wonder Woman, which isn’t the best choice of evening activity when you’ve been driving for seven hours on a highway.

Cruising the motorway for hours on end puts you in a semi-hypnotic state with an inability to respond to any other stimuli except cars braking hard in front of you. So I walked around Port in a zombie type stupor, ignoring anything that was devoid of bright red tail lights. It's just fortuitous that the city doesn’t have a red light district.

Day Two was treacherous, with floods and driving rains, pot holes the size of large pot holes, trucks spewing tonnes of filthy truck water in all directions, the Grafton experience, and Jake Gyllenhaal offering poor road safety advice from the backseat, circa 2012 all over again. It's from a movie - keep up.

Once on the Goldy, it rained a lot, but it was still never really that cold. Bless your heart Queensland, you sly, old, warm dog.

In lieu of more words right now - here are some pictures to distract you from the fact there are no more words coming at this point in time.

North Polar lighting.

I like to conceal myself against my
 background to confuse my enemies.

Nailing life, at 
Gold Coast Sea World.

Players.

I'm gonna get you.

Creeper.

Bundy Rum buoyancy.

...Yeah I've got nothing. 

 Renowned Sharkgirl.

Dolphin Nursery.

This lady is on the
"Dolphin Enrichment"shift, 
which seems to mainly 
involve playing with dolphins.

Gold Coast after an 
East Coast low.

Gold Coast beach. A petri dish 

of potential staph infections. 

Also, closed.

Hashtag expletitively
 beautiful.

Can you please not shit here?

I love magpies. They are very pretty and have a deeply melodic sing-song that is prettier than Adele warbling Skyfall. But I must have asked them a thousand times to not bloody sit and shit on my balcony, and I don't believe they are sorry at all for all the shits they have done. So today I'm training them to not do that any more. They can come and drink the water out of the used chinese food container (First mistake. I know. I KNOW) but then they must not loiter, gasbagging with their mates.

It turns out talking reason to a magpie doesn't really work. They just squawk at you. Or start singing. I might start doing that in heated embattled conversations. Just start fucking warbling. It's the magpies version of putting your fingers in your ears and yelling blah blah blah.

Second mistake: I'm not trying to be mean and bossy about it. I'm a Caramello when it comes to the animal kingdom, but it's about to get feisty in the jungle because they keep on coming like a bunch of Angry Birds and don't seem to be listening to my very, very sound words of wisdom. Apart from anything else, it's just common courtesy to not shit on someone's balcony, unless they deserve it. It's almost like they don't know right from wrong. I blame their parents.

Like all good community service messages, I think a sign needs to be erected depicting a bird on a toilet and a big red "no-no" line through it. Signs always stop criminals. And I'll make it all official with a replica Australian Government coat-of-arms, so they can have it out. Bird-to-bird.

Sharknado hits Bruce Stadium

Last night a freak storm hit Bruce Stadium in Canberra. It was so stormy that it caused a football team amount of sharks to be scooped up in water spouts and flood the place with shark-infested water, as often happens when sharks infest waters. We in the movie industry call that a sharknado.

Like all great cinematic disaster films, only the shit people drowned. Unfortunately, as has been the case with all the sharknados I have survived, it's nearly always the vulnerable and the people I push into the eye of the storm that are the first to go. It's very sad, but you can't fight nature.

While most people survived the flood, you'll be very pleased to know that many of them got eaten by sharks in a dramatic, cinematic fashion. I suppose that was sad in a way, for them. But worse was to come. 

Tragically, my team, the home team, the team that didn't cause the sharknado, lost the game in a deeply traumatic way and now I have all the sad feelings. I shall seek therapy to cope with it all.

I went onto the Sharknado's website to see where in the world they are from. Turns out it's somewhere in South Africa. I would do better research if I cared. 

Their cheerleaders, as is often the way with the cheerleaders, are dressed in blah fashioned into blah blah blah with their deep neckline fashioned into a sharkbite. It's technically really hard to explain, but I could probably do it justice by describing it as Skanknado chic.   

SHUGGAH LOG: Warning not even trace amounts of the delicious sweet stuff.

On 31 December 2016, in a moment one can only describe as complete, utter irrationality, I decided to stop eating sugar for an undefined period of time, or until your head exploded from hearing about it. I started with refined but have kind of gone hardcore with it all.

I've always appreciated sugarific treats, for example delicious, delicious donuts. There's something that just makes sense about selling a product that has 20 grams of sugar in a pack of ten.

I figured out pretty early on that the shuggah desertation process was going to be a psychological battle of wills with the sweet stuff. The first two days were a bloody treat I tell ya, but I woke up on day three with an iron will sort of situation and figured I could live this sugarfree life until February. Oh how young and naive Liz was. I've captured some of my thoughts throughout this long, arduous process.

SHUGGAH LOG DAY 6:

During a work afternoon tea, while everyone was enjoying glorious chocolate cupcakes, I spent my time alternating between some crackers and hommus and snorting an empty paper donut bag for a gram of sugar. I was also alternating between the inhale and exhale of a plastic bag that formerly contained Haigh's Berry Choc chocolates. 

I don't even like Haigh's chocolates but it smelt like my sweet, sweet sugar so who cares. Apparently I didn't get the suffocation memo. If there are any two-year-olds reading this - only inhale/exhale plastic bags when you need a sugar hit, kids. 

In summation, the cravings are driving me crazy. I made zucchini cheesecake yesterday, except halved the truckload of ricotta and feta it asked for. It is delicious and nutritious but clearly NOT SUGAR because zucchini.

10 MINUTES LATER AND EVERY 10 MINUTES...

I am desperate for sugar. 

SUGAR LOG DAY 10:

I am no longer viewing people’s heads as donuts that need to be consumed, but rather as balls of skin and skull that contain nothing but crumbs and candy wrappers; nothing that I can really work with. Your head is now safe from friendly fire, but this most definitely will not last.

For the most part, I have a sugar force field that gives me superpowers against the biggest, baddest, dirtiest carbohydrate. Although at various times of the day a hole appears in my sugar ozone layer, so to speak, and I'm completely vulnerable to any unexposed sugar kryptonite, and that's when I have to break out the almonds! I hate almonds.

Don't have that 3pm slump anymore. I like this new ruling. No slumptime. Now that I'm not slumpy, then high, then slumpy again I realise how sugar controls my mood and emotions. It really takes the reins some days.

10 MINUTES LATER AND EVERY 10 MINUTES...

I am desperate for sugar. 

SUGAR LOG DAY 19:

I don't know how I have gotten this far, but I'm just rolling with the punches at this stage. And sugar certainly packs a punch. It's like Rhonda Rousey. It does not let you go without a fight. And then it'll KO you with a knee to the body. 

Sometimes the iron will that I developed on DAY 2 slips up and I have to shoot down those rogue donuts that fly at my head, so I still have to wear my anti-sugar shield strapped to my back like a backpack every day. But, for the most part, not having sugar has mostly become mainstream for me. 

10 MINUTES LATER AND EVERY 10 MINUTES...

I am desperate for sugar. 

SUGAR LOG DAY 25:

I'm at a point where I've formed a new habit of not turning to sugar in my time of need. But, alas, the old brain is still craving sugar, although it doesn't really know what it wants or how to go about getting it because it's not habit anymore to eat it, so confusing.

10 MINUTES LATER AND EVERY 10 MINUTES...

I am desperate for sugar. 

New Year's Resolution #1 - Quit sugar until your head explodes

There’s a first time for everything. So, in the spirit of ‘trying new things’, I’m going to give 2017 a shot and see how it pans out.

I never do new year’s resolutions, but this year I’ve inanely decided to quit sugar. When I say quit I mean lower intake, because what sort of monster desserts (I can haz LOLs) sugar? I believe I have exactly two resolutions, but I can’t quite remember the other one. Probably because my brain refuses to move a muscle without sugar. I hope I’ve started my back-up resolution though.

I’m fully aware that no-one cares about my new year’s resolutions and even less so about my sugar intake but, like I have mentioned many, many times on here, this is my blog, and I’ll cry about sugar whenever I want to. 

Part of my problem, I'm sure, is those jerks at Krispy Kreme. They base their business model on the notion that if something has 400 calories then it should be made available in a box of 12. That's just really offensive and delicious.

I know my quittingness will last for exactly a period of time that will promptly end when I slay another human being for their donut. What I have recently learnt - but always knew - is that, without sugar, I turn into a Neanderthal.

We know that early humans lived in caves and drew on walls, similar to the wall on your Facebook page.  The only difference being there was no function to ‘like’ pages, so they were in the dark about whether anyone actually read their cave messages. They were also in the dark in general. With no likes. Just a terribly sad situation for everybody involved.

Like me, cavemen were fine until about 3 or 4pm, when they ignored their smart watch telling them to refuel on animal carcass and their desire for sugar became otherworldly, and you better have stayed out of their way. Unfortunately, ice-cream grew on trees back then so they had no chance to keep that pesky sugar out of their diet. 

My sugar situation is going fine, thankyou. I appreciate you asking. Except for the pile up of bodies behind me, but that is the past and I'm looking to the future. 

2016 Edinburgh Military Tattoo

I'm watching the Edinburgh Military Tattoo, being held in Australia. It's kind of a cross between a mardi gras, a proper military band ceremony and that elusive something else that I can’t quite put my finger on. But let’s not to be so quick to label it the X Factor.

Proceed, proceedings:

Oh good. Straight off the bat is a lady I can’t understand. These people are from Shetland. A whole island of people whose accent is completely incomprehensible to the average western ear.  Where are the damn subtitles. All these ladies who are saying sentences I can’t understand are fiddlers from the isle of Shetland. They call themselves The Shetland Fiddlers. Makes sense. Darn it, I can’t dis them because they are quite clever and play catchy tunes. The crowd goes wild.

Ooh a toaster ad or something, which reminds me that I don’t need one of those. Another ad for a guy who pins a donut against a pole with a bow an arrow. What fresh hell parallel advertising universe have we entered.

Next up is the Highland Dancers.  A whole lot of girls dressed in kilts and long socks fashioned out of six different coloured types of tartan tea towels. I’m sure one of them just did a blue steel down the camera.

The South Australian Police Band. They walk in all sorts of patterns while playing some cliched but great Australian classics. Locomotion. When my baby goes to Rio. I come from the land Down Under. I’m liking it.

Damn it. I’m liking the bloody Military Tattoo.

I watched a bit of Top Gun

Top Gun is on the televisual device tonight so I obviously had to watch it, obviously, and, hence, blog about it because, obviously. I’ve seen this movie half a billion times if not more - that's about 83 times a day since I was born - because it's in my top 10 favourite movies about groups-of-unrealistically-good-looking-but-highly-egotistical-men-who-fly-planes-very-rapidly.  

I only blogged the first half hour, people, because I basically forgot to continue. After Ghost Rider buzzed the tower I went to buzz my kitchen during the ad break - even though the pattern was full - and made myself a cup of Irish Breakfast and I can't specifically remember where this story could possibly be heading that would be even vaguely interesting so let's begin.

Action!

• Opening credits: This cheesy melted cheese and sausage sandwich is based on a true story of the U.S. Navy’s fighter pilot kindergarten.

Goose lives! No people, 
they are acting. He is dead.

• Cut to the aircraft carrier with the ground crew. Their chosen occupation reminds me a bit of my morning walk to work across a busy road that hosts scores of public servants who drive like naval aviators, except without the talent or skill. These crew continue to confuse me with their utterly confusing and inconsistent hand signals. It’s any wonder Maverick doesn’t land on their heads.

• Now here we are in the sky. I often wonder how much artistic licence is taken when real occupations are portrayed in film. The first time we meet Maverick and Goose and co they have their masks hanging off their faces so we can helpfully identify one actor from another, like anyone cared who anyone was other than Tom Cruise. I’m sure proper pilots constantly detach their masks during flight to chat to each other.

• Goose takes a photo of the 4G inverted dive with the fictional MiG with a POLAROID CAMERA, which I believe dates this movie back to the 18th century. Given the whole mask fiasco I’ve just witnessed, if it had been around in the 18th century Goose would have also probably Instagrammed that shit using the Earlybird filter to bring out the rich blues of the Indian Ocean.  Just going to quickly post this before we plummet to our death. No need to focus on what you're doing when flying at 2,500km/h. Awkwardly, Goose later does plummet to his death, so now I feel like a monster.

• Also, spoiler, sorry, Goose doesn’t make it to the end of this 200-year-old blockbuster. More to the point, why haven’t you seen Top Gun yet - did you have something more important to do in the 18th century? How did you possibly find enlightenment without the aid of Top Gun?

• After receiving a military style whoop-assing from his boss befitting a public servant who naughtily buzzed the tower and broke various other rules of engagement, and being threatened with a future of flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong, Maverick is totally nailing this movie so far because HE’S GOING TO TOP GUN!