The Hybrid

On my recent trip to New Zealand we were accidently given a Toyota Camry Hybrid hire car to speed around at or under the speed limit in.  Drive responsibly, kids.

The securing of The Hybrid must have been the result of a processing error or a shortage of normal cars or something because I didn’t ask for it and I didn’t want it, because hybrid cars are for self-righteous eco hippies and I didn’t want to be put into that whacky hemp basket.  I mean, if you’re that concerned about the environment, then walk.

It's just like your car.

As it turns out, I loved driving the Labradoodle crossbred vehicle.  It was quiet, economical, loved meeting new cars, didn’t bark once, often retrieved lunch and roadkill hedgehogs for us, and wore a big pink pom-pom on its boot.  Cute. 

The jury is still out for me on whether it was a crossbreed, a product of human intervention, or a mongrel that came into the world when its mummy and daddy met on a dark highway in remote New Zealand, sans human mediation.  It’s a big mystery for sure.

One of the key issues with driving around in a car that is a novelty item is you have to deal with endless man ‘me sees car, me likes car’ questions, because males like talking about cars and they apparently love talking about hybrids, because they are just so interesting to talk about.

What I had to deal with on one occasion:

How does the car handle?                 

Well, it has wheels and they drive on the road.

Is it economic?                                   

Well, it's probably a false economy.

It sure has nice lines.

I don't even know what that means. I certainly don't know why it matters.

How does it reverse?

I call on the little elf who lives in the place where there should be an engine or whatever and he reverses for me.

Tennii business

It's Australian Open time again!  How is it here again already?  Like moths through the hourglass, so are the lights on Rod Laver Arena.  I don't know if that makes any sense, I just write down whatever crap is emitted from my brain.  Anyway, it seems like it's always January.

And I'm sick and tired of you hanging on me, January. You make me sad with your eyes and you're telling me lies.  And stuff.  If you're not familiar with Day 70's pop music then this post has presumably gotten off to a shaky start.

One of my favourite things about tennis at this time of year is watching from my air conditioned lounge room as crowds in Centre Court sweat bucketloads of beer and champagne out of their pores.  As much as I'd love to go down to Melbournio one year, it is just so much more palatable watching in front of the flatscreen box.

I also like the order at the tennis and the fact that people don't generally get about with slimy fried chicken containers on their head as per any Australian cricket game.

And the Ball Children are pretty impressive. And scary.  They get smashed in the face by a Federer ace and just stand there.

You'll probably need a longer cord.

I'm pretty sure those ballbots are Trons, because when they get their rare glamourous closeup you can see an input/output junction on the backs of their necks.

And in the tradition of anything Apple or Samsung, you have to go out into the world of shops searching for the 2 km ballbot USB cord yourself. And then you have to make sure they are in range. It's hit and miss really; a bit like Federer's game these days.

In 2010 a ballboy unfortunately peed his pants during a game.  It happens.  But usually not with an audience of millions of judgemental home viewers.

They had to replace the ballbot and put sawdust down, or whatever you put down when somebody throws up. Then they had use the blower to dry the court but the blower had no gas in it so it took forever.  I know this because a player TALKED ABOUT IT IN THE PRESS CONFERENCE.  Yep, therapy for life for that little ballbot.

Journey to Middle Earth

The Magic of Mordor
I’ve just returned from a splendid journey to the south island of New Zealand, or Mordor in Middle Earth as cyberhobbits may prefer it. New Zealand is banging, as the kids say these days.  Though given I do not fully understand their interpretation of banging - I’m reasonably sure it has nothing to do with carpentry - I will just call New Zealand out as ludicrously amazing. Breathe taken away, etc etc.

You know when people tell you “you have to go to *insert any country that is not in the middle east*, it is amazing"? Well, you have to go to New Zealand. I am not kidding around; if you are into babbling brooks, alps, glaciers and hobbitses, you MUST go.

Since that Tolkien dragon fantasy book series, Bossman of the Bracelets or whatever, was turned into a movie trilogy and filmed in the NZ alps, the poor country has really struggled with being typecast as a land of jaw-dropping, breathtaking scenery.  While New Zealand laps up the attention, their rightful punishment is bothersome holiday-makers and day-trippers by the fast and furious busload.

The scenery is nauseating - pass me a bucket - and if you stare at it long enough it will ruin any other scenery you will ever see in your life in other countries that aren’t as pretty. Thanks a bunch, New Zealand.  But it’s true; I now can’t look at a mountain without comparing it to NZ’s remarkable alps. The alps are actually called The Remarkables, and it really is a toss-up between Switzerland and this place in my humble opinion.

I can’t stand Lorraine
As beautiful as New Zealand is, it didn’t stop fucking raining for the eight days I was there. When it wasn’t raining torrentially, it was sprinkling annoying drizzle into one's face. However, it just meant that I had the Mordor experience rather than the Hobbiton experience, which was just a little bit more amazing.

I’ve never had the best relationship with rain. As an Aussie I’m supposed to get all excited whenever it pelts down because of our droughts and bushfires and other annoying factors that come into play when you live in a fucking desert, but I really don’t care for rain.

And when you hate on the rain those people who own “gardens” that they have to “water” “every day” get all cranky. Never mind that rain literally falls from the sky, these people think Australia is going to plunge into a psychotic apocalyptic nightmare where rogue water bands will kill us all just for a drop of it.

So when you go to NZ, you’ll need to get yourself some type of self-contained breathing apparatus – yes, SCUBA gear. Because it rains lots.

I haven’t even started my tour debrief of Cardrona, Wanaka, Queenstown, Franz Josef, Fox Glacier and Hamner Springs, so I'll have to capture all that in another post.

Christchurch UnZud, Interrupted

I've just returned from a whistle stop tour of New Zealand, which involved making a bunch of brief appearances and interesting yet random speeches about the botched evolution of New Zealand's famed tectonic plates in various cities, town and small remote villages of the South Island.

I was enormously well received, except where I wasn't. Like that one time in Queenstown, but I probably won't go into that in any great detail. One travelled with one’s old school friend, who is not old at all but quite youngish like oneself.

We began our journey through Middle Earth in the beautiful city of Christchurch, that place that decided to build itself directly on top of the Pacific and the Endo-Australian tectonic plates. That crazy town town straddles both dem plates, a planning strategy that straddles the boundaries of completely nuts and the worst idea ever. We did a little tour of the city of Christchurch, which was devastated in the 2011 earthquake.

This:

About 30% of the city's buildings are still standing and operational, while the rest have either been razed or are being held up with all manner of scaffolding. It seems most businesses have either relocated to other premises outside the city or have moved on from Christchurch altogether.

Although, as if often the case in cities devastated by hardship, innovation and industriousness have fashioned a new settlement.

The brains trust of the Christchurch city Re:START project have developed a village of funky, colourful shipping containers that will temporarily house a multitude of businesses, including designer shops and coffee shops, until those businesses decide on more permanent dwellings. It looks pretty impressive and adds much needed colour to a once beautiful city that is recovering from immense loss.

I seem to be out of blog practice, which will make charting the other eight days interesting.

English invented rain.

In the time-honoured tradition of whinging and whining via blogpost when life becomes exasperating, I present this.

Presumably I wouldn't even have a blog if so many darn people and various life situations weren't so massively annoying.

'Tis the Ashes cricket which vexes me today.  We all know that the English invented rain to give the Poms something to talk about.

And I would not be surprised if the 16th century Englishmen invented the rain at the exact same time they invented cricket.  How often does a rain-soaked wicket at dark and depressing Old Trafford benefit them?  Um, every single Ashes.

I don't understand why sookie lala cricketers can't play in the rain.  Why does rain stop play?  Maybe because they'll get their hair wet?  That's why I avoid rain, drizzle, mist and wet air, but I'm a namby pamby girl who cries her eyes out when her locks get unexpectedly wet.  I hate my hair getting wet.

Hates it lots.  However, if winning or losing an Ashes Test rested on my venturing out into rain, I would go out into the fucking rain and do my job.
 
I could certainly understand cricketers reluctance to play in the rain wearing white t-shirts if one were a girl.  But they are boys, and they certainly do not seem to have any issue at all with drawing international televisual attention to their nether regions, what with their endless fiddling between balls, so to speak.

Although I guess you can't begrudge the English their wet weather wins.  Inventing rain was smart, because it gives them a 50:50 chance of nailing home games.

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.

Christmas Burglars.

It's beginning to look a lot like I really need something fascinating to happen in my life.  Something infinitely fascinating.

In lieu of something infinitely fascinating to blog about, however, I'm going to write about one of the great loves of my life, Christmas, which is infinitely fascinating to me, but maybe not to you.  But guess what?  This is my blog.  What's not to love about Christmas anyway?

I have a strong and grim foreboding feeling that a burlgar donned in gay apparel is going to break into my house this week and put up my Christmas tree.  And probably also decks the halls with bells of holly.  Sure, it's too early, but you try telling that to a burglar who is high on the festive spirit.  Sometimes they just love Christmas too much.  You would even say they glow.

And sometimes things are just out of our control so you can't stress about them, you just have to go with the flow and leave the front door open and decorations in an accessible place so they don't trash the joint.  I hope Scrooge doesn't come here.  He is a mean, bitter old man.  Or a jerk, as Charles Dickens would presumably so eloquently put it.

It would also be good if they would BYO wreath for my door, because I don't have one.

Warning: Cuteness Overload.

I did warn you.

Gravity (and Spoilers)

I ventured out today to the filmed entertainment place to see Sandra Bullock and that delectable George Clooney man in the outer space thriller, Gravity.  Might be some spoilers here - although if you haven't seen Gravity yet you need to get your shites together.

This movie is about a medical engineer and an astronaut who survive the mid-orbit destruction of their space shuttle and a return to Earth. I enjoyed this flick, but it also reminded me of why I decided to give up my career as a Hollywood movie star.  

You get to the top of your game and are so good at what you do that the only job you get offered involves sitting in a dark studio for three months breathing heavily into a fake space helmut while using your God-given Oscar winning facial expressions to make your eyes look anguished and distressed.  Poor Sandy Bullock.  

Clooney was fortunate enough to die at the start of the movie, and thus avoid having to look perma-traumatised for the duration of the movie-making process, which allowed him to return to his luxurious pad in *insert country*.

I'm pretty sure this pic is not from Gravity. 
But who cares.

In Gravity, Clooney plays a supremely confident and smooth astronaut commander; one of those men who are so annoyingly self-assured that they are just asking for a punch in the damn face.  Oops, not meant to punch people in the face or encourage such activities.  My bad then.

Despite his character’s constant sureties to the contrary, I imagine there is nothing peachy at all about being marooned in the earth’s orbit with a busted space ship.  Even if Clooney was there.

His character is on his last mission before retirement, and was entrusted with ensuring the crew didn’t plummet to their deaths, so things looked just bloody marvellous when he drifted off into the abyss. This movie is exactly why NASA does not let normal people into their space ships.  Because they ruin them with their averageness.  

Nevertheless, despite the extraordinarily bad odds and the fact that her character's not an astronaut but a medical engineer or some other job equally useless in an outer space workplace, Sandy somehow miraculously survives by space shuttlejacking an American, Russian and then a Chinese space ship.  Sounds reasonable.    

I’m pretty sure that Sandy has a few quid, so I don’t know why these powerful acting women let their directors sway them into doing gratuitous skimpy clothed shots just to satisfy the male viewers.  Having said that, the bitch has great legs, so why wouldn't you flash the universe the hot pants you're wearing under your spacesuit?

NaNoWriMo

It's NaNoWriMo time again! And I have zero good ideas.  So that's a bit of a pickle.  50,000 words of nothingness.  Can't wait to read it...

Traffic Light Plus Red Means Stop

It's been a while since I checked the ACT road rules.  I do this from time to time to make sure crazy stuff isn't going down that I should know about, like it's suddenly law to rotate anti-clockwise on a roundabout.  These types of rule changes probably happen all the time.

The last time I visited the ACT Government's heaving, bossy pdf on the laws of the road was when I was querying a ticket that I received due to illegal parking in a parking bay.  They were right so I didn't fight.  Ooh, that rhymes.  But like so many other epic poets, I am in no mood to rhyme.

Has anyone noticed the great abundance of douchebags in Canberra who think the process of stopping at a red traffic light has somehow morphed into an option, rather than a specific fucking directive?  Last weekend I nearly got wiped out at an intersection because some loser in a green Ford couldn't be bothered waiting his turn.  Fair dinkum, I am so over dickheads.

Never mind the actual road rules; the last time I checked my common sense rule book of stuff-morons-don't-know, the signal denoting a red light meant stop. Just STOP. It wasn't a guideline. It wasn't a suggestion. It meant stop your fucking car in a fully halted fashion. Has this fairly logical rule changed?

I suppose learning how to drive a car on a road without causing minor/major collateral damage and killing yourself/everyone else can be quite a challenge for Canberra's wannabe Michael Schumachers, who are blissfully unaware that they are without the flashy, curvy Red Ferrari (Red Ferrari always gets capitalised in my world), any hint of skill or talent, and that actions have consequences.

I guess I can see the ambiguities in the regulations surrounding the mysterious red traffic lights.  I mean red is fairly open to interpretation.  It's just such a wishy washy colour, isn't it?  Does it mean stop, does it mean go?  It's all so confusing.  For stupid people.

Now while I like to believe that I have my vehicular basics down pat, I still don't know who goes first in an intersection with two oncoming cars when you both want to turn right.

Dragons!

In the spirit of blogging about everything except what I had for dinner last night (pumpkin soup), here's another exciting entree to my blogpost platter.

Let's talk about dragons.  Apart from the fact that they are just flying lizards who more often that not breathe heat, fire and possibly volcanic lava, what's not to love about dragons?  Who doesn't love a mobile oven that's on the blink?

I'm personally not a fan of dragons, but that's because they usually arise in those long tedious sci-fi books involving epic journeys with rings and wizards.  Life hard's enough without going on a fictitious, suicidal mission with a bunch of hobbits and Orlando Bloom. 

The hobbits have given me a terrible headache.

Popping a dragon in your storyline seems like an easy out to me.  Oh no, how is the hero going to escape? Oh, it's okay, he has a fire-breathing dragon buddy that conveniently negates every other problem that he comes across.

I write of dragons today because I just went on one last week.  A dragon boat actually.  I was a little disappointed that my dragon boat didn't look anything like a dragon, rather an elongated canoe, but no matter.

It was a first training session for a corporate charity challenge, raising money for a breast cancer initiative called Dragons Abreast, and and it was so fun.  Dragon boating is fairly technical, and you get completely saturated with blue-green algae bloom-infused Lake Burley Griffin water, but it's all fun.  So fun. That is all for now.

So I accidently drugged myself...

Oh, birthdays. Milestone birthdays. How fun are they? So fun. I’ve just hit one. I’m not going to say which one and you’re not going to ask me. Actually I’d like to hit this birthday milestone in the face.

Your birthday is the one day of the year when you gratefully receive a card from a person professing to be your friend that includes a so-called humourous reference to how freakin’ old you are. This can go on for days and days. Such fun for everyone except the birthday man.

For my birthday this year I popped down to my local beach, that place where water and sand are magically transformed into a petri dish of potential staph infections. Oh, and I also accidently drugged myself.

I was going to be sharing the driving, but for half of the trip I would play passenger, which is often a problem because I get carsick. Not vomiting carsick, thank goodness, but awfully nauseous nonetheless. Some people have real problems in their life; this is mine.

I feel for those people I see on the side of the road throwing up, but they perhaps shouldn’t have eaten that slice of pepperoni pizza or drank that can of coke before their journey. One has to prepare when one gets carsick. Before I go on a long drive I prep myself just like a heavy weight boxer, except without all the carbs and starving and skipping and whatever. So possibly nothing like that.

I usually take Travelcalm before I depart for the open roads, which is super-duper at kicking carsickness in the bum. When I say I usually take it, I mean I generally forget a lot, which is why I don’t ingest sugar, fat,  milk or anything else that will ride my stomach like a roller coaster beforehand. I bet you’re saying to yourself, “hey idiot, why don’t you leave the Travelcalm in the glove compartment of your car?”, and to that I say, “that’s probably a good idea. Thanks!”

So on this occasion, I get to my travel buddy's house and realise I am devoid of any type of nausea killers. I wasn’t about to be nauseous on my birthday, damn it, so I went to the local drug store to purchase some of the good stuff.

Travelcalm wasn’t available, so I just grabbed some different ones. They’re all the same, aren’t they? No, no they’re not.

Did the pharmacist tell me that they are ideally ingested the night before, may cause stupidly intense drowsiness, and that it is best to stay out of strong sunlight? I don’t believe that happened at all. Given I was going to the beach that day and hanging out in the sun, that information would have been helpful.

She didn’t say any of that. She asked me if I had taken it before and I said I had taken Travelcalm. End of conversation. This little tablet was nothing like Travelcalm. The one time I don’t read the instructions for use is my bloody birthday.

You know the rest. After an hour I could barely keep my eyes open, so no driving for me. About four hours after I swallowed that thing I was practically crawling on my hands and knees at the beach, unable to walk any further or keep my eyes open because of the light. What the fuck is in those things? On the plus side, I was too drugged to feel queasy.

1812 Overture Adventures

I headed to the Australian National University’s Llewellyn Hall this afternoon for Strike Up The Band!, a harmony of pretty noises brought to me by the temporary convergence of the Canberra Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Military College (RMC) Band.

While orchestras and bands are not usually my piccolo - I’m more of a Bon Jovi circa 1980's type of gal - I was well impressed with their big band contraptions.

I ventured to this brassy shindig to fill the seat of my season-ticket holding mother, who was unable to make it on this occasion. There are so many rules at the symphony. There are the usual ones, like must wear clothes, no phone calls during the 1812 Overture, no getting up on stage to join the orchestra, blah, blah, blah.

But there are also big mobs of implicit rules. Non-negotiable implicit rule #1. Everyone must applaud incessantly throughout the performance, but must clap particularly gratuitously when the conductor enters stage left. And when he walks off the stage. And when he raises his hands. And when he scratches his arse. Some people need a Standing-O and a 21-gun salute just for turning up to work. Sheesh.

I do not know why this relentless applauding needs to happen, seeing as his presence and energetic hand waving seem largely symbolic. I’ll eat my trombone if the orchestra do not know their shit backwards.

Speaking of trombones, I used to play that apparatus in high school for lame music appreciation class. I guess all that appreciatin’ didn’t rub off on me, because I quite liked Atomic Kitten in their heyday. Playing the trombone is like trying to blow through the exhaust pipe of a small car while balancing it on your thigh.

But my sister told me she remembers my home practice sessions very, very well so I must have been quite marvellous at it. All I remember is being the last person to pick an instrument for the school term and spending the whole class every week trying to find new places to put all the spittle.

My favourite bit of today's performance came with the 1812 Overture, with a gigantic cannon firing blanks into the crowd. It was incredible. At least it would have been had it happened. In reality, they engaged the services of a cannon sound machine. How cool is that?  Overall, I did not fall asleep even once, and that is impressive.

#annoyingasfek

What’s up with the popularity of Instagram?  I understand that people want to flaunt pictures of their cat's poo or their tasty spaghetti bolognese dinner to the world; really I do.  I adore cat poo and I’ve eaten food on at least one occasion.  But what’s with the hashtags?  This is exactly the type of thing that's wrong with the Western world.  Not the main thing wrong with the West – that’s undoubtedly the Kardashian clan – but one more fucking thing.

Excessive, pompous, narcissism disguised as sarcasm hashtagging is fucking annoying.  In fact it's so fucking annoying it's #fuckingannoying.  I get it - people are trying to be clever.  And sometimes it is, but mostly it's not.  Why do people hashtag their cat so other users can see their picture of a #cutecat amongst millions of other #cutecats? I don't know either, friend, I just don't know.

If you want to keep a log of your lives, write a sentence about it.  A beautifully constructed sentence conveys more meaning and evokes more memories than a single word ever could.  That's what me thinks anyways.  Here's why I hate on hashtags.

I've been a prolific writer since the day I was borned.  It was a bit difficult to lift a pen in those first few hours, but where there's a will there's a Middleton, and all that.  Sentences are my friend.  We is like best buds.

And I just think if you have time to put twenty hashtags on a photo to describe what you think other people are too fucking stupid to see for themselves, then you have time to construct a bewitching, lingering sentence.  I love words as well, but generally without hashtags interrupting my flow, man.  I find that where there are sentences on Instagram, there are no spaces between the words.  This shit is messing with my head.

The hashtag craze was presumably invented by someone who didn’t learn how to construct a sentence in school and still can't figure it out.  Maybe it's just my personal preference, but I don't want to live in a dumbed down world of hashtags.