Celebrity Sartorial Stuff-ups



Renee - we're just gingerly throwing out a wee hint here because we've always loved your work; your reluctance to court the paparazzo and we genuinely wish you well in your search for a committed partner. However even Beatrix Potter owned a hairbrush, OK, sweetie?

Let's not even pretend that I know which Olsen this is but instead we'll just focus on the overall look. Is she going for New Yawk Geisha? An anorexic cross between Marilyn Monroe and Marcia Brady? The natural, no-make-up look generally favoured by Christina Aguilera?

And why did she feel the need to kill the raccoon character from Over the Hedge to warm up her bony little back and then use Manny the mammoth from Ice Age 2's left scrotum as a handbag?

It has been a while since Liz Hurley has popped up in any online papparazzi pictures of late and it's not hard to see why (apart from a total lack of work that is)

She's still got a rather nice face but those boobs look as though they're just about ready to be flung up and over her shoulders for us as comfy-yet-practical back rests during the long limo drive home from whatever pointless launch it is that she's attending.

It would certainly be a pleasant surprise to see her embracing the hurtling ride towards her fifties wearing something that isn't slit up to the navel, cut down to her knees and flattening the funbags, wouldn't it? Does she own anything other than slapper dresses best left to English pub tarts?

The gossip jury is still out in terms of whether Leather Hockleer and David Splayed are an 'item' or just matching albino beef jerky slices and here they look how I'd imagine Britney Smear's parents would if we lived in a parallel universe.

Little, skinny and old, they are no longer able to pull off playing youthful and single TV characters, but sure as seagull s**t they would not want to hear that Liz Hurley is about to make her bid for Oscar-winning glory by playing the daughter of a brother-sister couple who are mildly retarded and has singled out them as ideal casting for her parents.... Or would they?

If not, we could always offer to pay Donatella Versace's nostril reconstruction fees by offering her the role of Grandmother in the afore-mentioned movie.

Or, if that proves a bit too stressful, a witty cameo as Heather's crocodile-skin luggage set in the background.



Shitney Beers is a 'feature' as always, but she's lifted her game here. That's right dear reader: she's remembered to put some underpants on (however brief) before going out and even got the hired help to wind a couple of rows of red tape around her hooters before slipping into her, er, slip.

An early New Year's Eve toast to you, Vita Brit: May the money you save on fabric be spent hiring a home schooler to help you remember the names of your sons.

We'll finish this last edition of 'Laugh at the Celebs' for 2006 with Paris - now found in the Oxford English Dictionary as the single word descriptor for the term: Plastic Preying Mantis: possessing hairpin legs in permanent Y-shaped pose, orange basted flesh and lice-sized brain.

Maybe the Harvard college application will come through for you next year Paris, and those shoes can be returned to Stupid Shoes Land where they belong. In the dark.

Sincerely hope you have a Superbly Sensational Silly Season


(if there are Aussies out there who remember the Leaf Plus advertisements starring Allan Seale, trying sssssaying the above title in hisssss rather loossssse denture voicccsssse)

Hi there regular reader (and Blurb From the Burbs virgins, straying in from cyberspace and blog point logging),

It's time for my yearly MEME thingy - All you have to do afterwards (if you have a blog, that is) - is cut and paste these into your blog post, email, whichever way you choose. The blue ones I've done, the red ones I haven't.

Don't send this back to me, but please give me a comment so that I'll be able to find yours at your blog) I think it's easy enough - If you have done it, put in bold and/or bright print. Enjoy. (P.S. I got this over at Jan's blog http://caffinnascreations.blogspot.com/ )

01. Bought everyone in the bar a drink
02. Swam with wild dolphins
03. Climbed a mountain
04. Taken a Ferrari for a test drive - and couldn't care less
05. Been inside the Great Pyramid
06. Held a tarantula - you'd have to pay me at least a million bucks to do that!
07. Taken a candlelit bath with someone - um, I think we've had candles...
08. Said "I love you" and meant it
9. Hugged a tree
10. Bungee jumped - dived in face first, baby
11. Visited Paris
12. Watched a lightning storm at sea
13. Stayed up all night long and saw the sun rise
14. Seen the Northern Lights
15. Gone to a huge sports game - two years of Wimbledon, and two years of the Adelaide Crows beating the Bulldogs in the preliminary finals ('97, '98)
16. Walked the stairs to the top of the leaning Tower of Pisa - been to Italy but it was the one place I didn't see!
17. Grown and eaten your own vegetables
18. Touched an iceberg - not a lot of these to be found in South Australia
19. Slept under the stars
20. Changed a baby's nappy
21. Taken a trip in a hot air balloon - had a trip booked with my buddy Jill, until we saw the huge disaster in central Oz that killed about 20 people, and she got to see the pictures due to working on the subsequent court case. Couldn't convince her to go with me!
22. Watched a meteor shower - I think - unless there were a heap of busy satellites in the sky that night
23. Gotten drunk on champagne
24. Given more than you can afford to charity
25. Looked up at the night sky through a telescope
26. Had an uncontrollable giggling fit at the worst possible moment - too many to count, especially if there were in the classroom or now, if I see someone trip over
27. Had a food fight
28. Bet on a winning horse
29. Asked out a stranger
30. Had a snowball fight
31. Screamed as loudly as you possibly can
32. Held a lamb
33. Seen a total eclipse
34. Ridden a roller coaster
35. Hit a home run - yes, on a beach, believe it or not. As an uncoordinated gal, it was a supreme sporting moment that shocked everyone who witnessed it.
36. Danced like a fool and not cared who was looking - I make Elaine from Seinfeld look like Ginger Rogers
37. Adopted an accent for an entire day - at high-school we'd speak like Fat Albert all day ("Hiba Howba Areba Youba Toba Dayba?) and Sapphire and I often pretend we're speaking another language as we walk to school
38. Actually felt happy about your life, even for just a moment
39. Had two hard drives for your computer
40. Visited all 50 states - nup, not even one
41. Taken care of someone who was drunk
42. Had amazing friends - absolutely
43. Danced with a stranger in a foreign country
44. Watched wild whales - right in front of my brother's house
45. Stolen a sign (but it wasn't a street sign)
46. Backpacked in Europe
47. Taken a road-trip - essentially every single one of my childhood family holidays were roadtrips - the fight for back seat territory, sick cartons sloshing over, warm red cordial and yo-yo biscuits.....
48. Gone rock climbing and hated it - I am NOT a climber - flat surfaces and long distances yes, uphill NO
49. Midnight walk on the beach
50. Gone sky diving - head first too, I might add
51. Visited Ireland
52. Been heartbroken longer than you were actually in love
53. In a restaurant, sat at a stranger's table and had a meal with them
54. Visited Japan - sigh, one day....
55. Milked a cow
56. Alphabetized your CDs
57. Pretended to be a superhero - does Wedgie Woman count?
58. Sung karaoke
59. Lounged around in bed all day - when Mr Migraine visits
60. Played touch football
61. Gone scuba diving
62. Kissed in the rain
63. Played in the mud
64. Played in the rain
65. Gone to a drive-in theater
66. Visited the Great Wall of China - *sigh*, one day.....
67. Started a business
68. Fallen in love and not had your heart broken
69. Toured ancient sites
70. Taken a martial arts class
71. Played D&D for more than 6 hours straight - three hours of any LOTR movie is about all my concentration span and bladder can take
72. Gotten married - waaaay back in Feb 1995 to Love Chunks
73. Been in a movie - nah, just a couple of TV quiz shows and the clapper slapper for a mate's first short film
74. Crashed a party
75. Gotten divorced
76. Gone without food for 5 days - you don't know me at all, do you?!
77. Made cookies from scratch
78. Won first prize in a costume contest - 1979. First prize in a 'dress like 1879 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the bridge over the Murray River.' Held in my home town which is imaginatively called 'Murray Bridge'. The prize was a most disappointly large box of matches and glue with which to make really un-fun stuff like straw houses and picture frames.
79. Ridden a gondola in Venice
80. Gotten a tattoo
81. Rafted the Snake River
82. Been on television news programs as an "expert"- still waiting for that phone call from a channel asking for comment on Lindt, Dove, Cadburys, Haighs, Nestle
83. Got flowers for no reason
84. Performed on stage
85. Been to Las Vegas
86. Recorded music
87. Eaten shark - it's what our local fish and chip shops call 'butter fish' or 'flake'
88. Kissed on the first date
89. Gone to Thailand
90. Bought a house
91. Been in a combat zone - yes, if you count London in 1992 when a car bomb went off in my street
92. Buried one/both of your parents
93. Been on a cruise ship
94. Spoken more than one language fluently
95. Performed in Rocky Horror
96. Raised children
97. Followed your favorite band/singer on tour
99. Taken an exotic bicycle tour in a foreign country - this year I'm just glad to have learned how to ride a grown-up bicycle having last owned a kids' Malvern star in 1980!
100. Picked up and moved to another city to just start over
101. Walked the Golden Gate Bridge
102. Sang loudly in the car, and didn't stop when you knew someone was looking
103. Had plastic surgery - no, but should
104. Survived an accident that you shouldn't have survived
105. Wrote articles for a large publication - no, but would love to
106. Lost over 100 pounds
107. Held someone while they were having a flashback
108. Piloted an airplane
109. Touched a stingray
110. Broken someone's heart
111. Helped an animal give birth - well, just myself and with the help of three shifts of midwives, the doctors who gave me three epidurals and of course the supportive Love Chunks
112. Won money on a T.V. game show - some very crappy prizes (spa bath for normal bath, cosmetics, mag wheels, cast iron cooking pots) won as a student that were then sold for money from 'Wheel of Fortune' and some even worse leather handbags and scarves from 'Sale of the Century'
113. Broken a bone
114. Gone on an African photo safari
115. Had a facial part pierced other than your ears - nah. Far too frightened of getting something snagged
116. Fired a rifle, shotgun, or pistol
117. Eaten mushrooms that were gathered in the wild
118. Ridden a horse
119. Had major surgery
120. Had a snake as a pet
121. Hiked to the bottom of the Grand Canyon - does climbing Ayers Rock (the Aussie equivalent) count?
122. Slept for more than 30 hours over the course of 48 hours
123. Visited more foreign countries than U.S. states
124. Visited all 7 continents
125. Taken a canoe trip that lasted more than 2 days
126. Eaten kangaroo meat - too right. No fat, no cholesterol and even actually edible if marinated in red wine for a day
127. Eaten sushi
128. Had your picture in the newspaper
129. Changed someone's mind about something you care deeply about - I think so. I hope so.
130. Gone back to school - in 1993 at the 'mature student' age of 25. Grad Dip Ed - am a qualified high school teacher but would rather chew my own leg off than do that for a living.
131. Parasailed
132. Touched a cockroach - unavoidable if you've ever lived in Darwin
133. Eaten fried green tomatoes
134. Read The Iliad - and the Odyssey - big chunk of first year uni I'll never get back
135. Selected one "important" author who you missed in school, and read
136. Killed and prepared an animal for eating - yes if you count fish
137. Skipped all your school reunions but have only been to one and that was eighteen years ago (shudder)
138. Communicated with someone without sharing a common spoken language
139. Been elected to public office - does being an SRC rep in high school count?
140. Written your own computer language
141. Thought to yourself that you're living your dream
142. Had to put someone you love into hospice care
143. Built your own PC from parts
144. Sold your own artwork to someone who didn't know you (hand made cards, jewellery, tiny pictures)
145. Had a booth at a street fair
146. Dyed your hair
147. Been a DJ - ala Rob Gordon from 'High Fidelity' mix tapes at 21sts
148. Shaved your head - number four around the back and sides - very low maintenance
149. Caused a car accident - turned right without looking smacked and Dad's landcruiser into a white minivan. Lucky for me the owner wasn't fazed - it was one of many dents to add to his collection and I blamed my younger brother and his mate for making too much noise from the back seat that distracted me - whew
150. Saved someone's life - No, but as a First Aid officer, I've put a few broken collar bones into nervously-made slings though

Alternative sources to energy rather than nuclear

Here in Australia we've had heaps of debate and political wah-wahing about how the natural energy reserves (ie coal and gas) are running out; our water is rarer than a Paris Hilton turtle-neck and petrol prices now mean that we are forced to stop and seriously re-think whether we're going to refill the tank or eat.

Of course this is all very serious, but as you know, regular reader, serious is not what you're going to get here. There's enough of it in the world. No, what you'll get here are some of my own little ideas that, maybe, just maybe, might inspire the blog-surfing brainiac egg-head who has just won a ten million dollar grant to determine that yes, flies do bash their heads against window panes 457 times before they give up an die - and, could instead, be inspired take some of these and develop them into something that will save the planet. Or, if that sounds a tad egotistical, at least save us from having to live a Mad Max or WaterWorld lifestyle and have either Mel Gibson or Kevin Costner as our crazy neighbours.

Firstly, the above picture is from early last century and is something that I too have often thought was vastly under-used. Animal power. There are treadmills for guinea pigs (that's 'hamsters' to you yankees) - why not just enlarge the structure and put an overactive kelpie, blue-heeler or even a jack russell inside of it? Hang a juicy little chop on the outside and - voila - they'll be generating enough energy to power up your home entertainment system.

What about our children? Most parents end up regretting their first glow of pride and joy when their child starts to walk because they soon spend all of their time running after that child to stop it from licking the powerpoints, sticking pencils up the cat's bottom or eating snail shells off the back fence. Why not pop them inside a brightly coloured, well-padded kiddie wheel? Add an inbuilt sound-system playing the Wiggles entire back catalogue and string up three chup-a-chups via fishing line on the outside. The pleasant result will be an active little, dribbly, inquisitive two year old trotting along happily with chubby arms outstretched towards the lollypops and contributing to the energy required to fire up your hot water system.

If you're still along for this wild and crazy mental ride, you'll be able to guess my next suggestion - treadmills in gymnasiums. What a complete waste of good kinetic power going to waste. All those roads going nowhere, powering nothing other than a puddle of sweat on the floor and a pong in the work out room. Why hasn't a scientist invented a gadget to capture and house those kilometres run and spent calories to light up our homes and keep our fridges working?

Whilst the earth's global temperatures may be warming, there still are areas on our planet that need warmth during the cold and bitter winter months. Families that choose to skip manically from toilet-to-bathroom-and-bedroom and then zoom back into the only heated room - normally the living room - like cats on an (ironically) hot tin roof can only dream of having an entire home that is warm and hospitable. Here I issue a challenge: how can we harness the hot air that is produced so prolifically during the oversinging and strangulation of middling old standards on TV shows like American Idol, So You Think You Can Sing and any interview segment showing a politician. Not to mention the daytime soap operas (where actors are contracturally obliged to face the other way when they say stuff like, "Thorn, I have to tell you - this may not be your baby"), aerobic shows and the heat generated from show offs on Big Brother series?

The list is endless and it's a damn shame that those furry microphones don't also have the capacity to capture and store the hot air directed at them. We may not be able to have a sober Miss America or public toilets that don't disguise drop and plop noises but come on...! Surely we should be able to harness so many forms of unused and unrecognised forms of energy being ignored and wasted?

HAH!
(this photo is a hopefully exagerrated imagining of what I look like when eating a Lindt ball or three)

Some of my gorgeous regular readers will have remembered that I recently got a parking ticket from those Stinking Zombies With Hearts Like Shrivelled Currants at uni a few weeks ago. (If not, check it out here: http://blurbfromtheburbs.blogspot.com/2006/11/im-angry-really-angry-i-got-parking.html)

The universal truth of the old adage, 'Small things amuse small minds' can also apply to petty revenges. No half million person rallies against the car parking nazis have yet occurred; nor have they begun to chase me for non-payment of fine or had my visage, Che Guevara-like emblazoned onto students' t-shirts, but a tiny victory occurred this morning.

Maybe 'tiny' is being a bit on the exaggerated side - perhaps miniscule or sub-cellular is more honest but it cheered me up nevertheless and stirs vague feelings of future outcomes (or that could be the iced coffee wrestling with the bunch of grapes I had for breakfast, but let's go with the more symbolic theme for today).

Most begrudgingly, I parked the Womanly Wagon in a designated paid parking spot. One buck for ten hours. A bargain in city parking terms, but a shameful rip-off out here in the 'burbs. As I was standing there contemplating that not only did I disagree with the additional money making of car-parks originally installed for the clapped-out 70s Corollas of students or dented station wagons of workers, but also that the ticket buyer had to then insert their thumb and forefinger up inside the machine in a macabre, mechanistic gesture of foreplay in order to retrieve the sodding ticket.

God, or one of his apprentices, must have been smiling in my general direction just then, because the Putrid little Parking Pole threw out a techno burp and my one dollar coin. "Use Another Machine", its unfriendly little digi-screen told me and as I was about to flounce off to find another Ticket Tool, it burped again. Clink clink - out came two twenty cent pieces! You could have strapped my face to the side of a termite mound and smeared my face in honey I was that surprised.

Bonus! After several seconds of intense deliberation, I have since decided that this revered forty cent gift will be carefully stored for any future action - or equipment - needed to fight the good fight against the inappropriately named 'Tenix Solutions'. Bring it ON baby.

Christmas is over already

By Friday evening, my eyeballs were staying in their sockets by sheer habit and through my accidental blast in the face with loo freshener instead of in the direction of the particular loo that needed the freshening.

The weekend had not even started, and already my body and brain was 'over' the whole Christmas celebration thing. The two days looming ahead filled me with about as much excitement and anticipation as a yearly pap-smear appointment full of student doctor onlookers.

And yet, somehow, by 4pm, the little kid in me started to emerge. I started to feel, well, kind of excited. No, not in a naughty "Oh err, how's your mother, Vicar" way, but in a "Goody goody gumdrops, it's going to be fun tonight and there's not too many sleeps to go until the big day...."

Naturally, when Sapphire (aged 7) and Love Chunks (39) arrived at our be-decked workplace a couple of hours later, the party was in almost full swing. Food, kids, decorations, drinks, adults and the conversation was changing from shy pleasantries to good old Aussie shit-slinging which serves for familiarity and respect.

By 10:30pm, the decorations were being worn around necks like feather boas, the ground was covered in chalk drawings and guacamole had been trowelled on as an experimental cement under the kitchen counter. But enough of the children - the adults were either busy cleaning up (god bless that particular breed of party guest who, no longer eighteen and eager to drink themselves into bush-puking stage, instead gather and clean up bottles and glasses like locusts on tour) or the adults were becoming rosier cheeked, more willing to put their arms around previously un-met partners of work buddies and pose for photographs with their tongues out and eyes partly closed.

It was time for us three to leave, but only because we were due at Sapphire's tennis coaching park at 7am in the morning to BBQ bacon and egg muffins for the rest of the parents and kids we had befriended there. Beautiful, organised, gorgeous, culinary, talented Love Chunks did the lot - the planning, buying, packing, unpacking and cooking. All I was required to do was drive the two minutes back home to fetch a couple of forgotten sharp knives, praying all the way that the police wouldn't pick me up and, if they did, NOT be concerned about my nervous tic and my honest statement that "I want to go and be with the children..." whilst the Wiltshire Stay Sharps were glinting in full display on the passenger seat.

Food galore - Rocky and Ali brought along their special Columbian coffee blend and home-made chocolate mousses; Grant made pancakes and sloshed a bit of champers about; Trish and Rob did the obligatory sausages, sauce and bread, and Father of Four (as at only two days ago for the fourth one) found some Christmas tree-shaped Corn chips to share around. This breakfast naturally segued into lunch....

After which, I took Sapphire to her friend Selene's birthday party at the local pool for three hours. Her mother, Rachel, is committed to promoting organic foods, so the party fare was popcorn, fresh cherries, organic liquorice and pretzels. The kids loved it - mostly because they were in the water the entire time and not about to waste precious dunking, arm-farting and water spitting time eating. They only surfaced to grab their take home party bags - also laden with PC foodstuffs and hand-made Indian glass marbles.

Two of Sapphire's little mates Margot and Lucinda were also under my care, poor things. As a 'Helper Mum' my role was to regularly patrol the middle-sized and big pools to make sure that all 21 guests (ie the entire year one class) were having fun or at the very least, still breathing. Let's just say that I chattered away to fellow parents until I lost my voice and then praised God under my breath that all three girls miraculously appeared at my side when it was 6pm and home time.

Saturday night was spent in front of a DVD of 'Black Books' with a glass of Baileys and Love Chunks. Perfect.

Sunday was time to be up and ON again - a run with Dogadoo at 7am and the annual family get together for lunch. This event is now designed so that we cousins, aunts, uncles, new partners and various children and grand children are forced to remember that we are related to each other. Friendly canines were invited as well, so Dogadoo got to play with Robbie the exuberant kelpie who liked to bark at birds in the trees, and Katie, the shy ugg-boot with a tongue.

Sapph busied herself with her second cousins, Love Chunks played cricket under the gum trees with the rest of the males aged from 2 to 65 and us mothers glued ourselves to the deckchairs with food and drink only an arm's reach or a sharp order to a child away. A rather nice way to do things - bring your own lunch so that no-one had to sit starving and resentfully waiting for cousin Eff and Fred to rock up with the entrees two hours late or have to debate what bowls to serve the warmed pudding in or whose turn it was to dry the dishes before offering to make cups of tea. A sunburned neck at the end of the day wasn't too much of a price to pay.

However - and this is where my Bah HumBug emerges and the little excited girl is stabbed to death in an Anti-Christmas frenzy - I've now had enough. ENOUGH.
So far:

• We've been to Sapphire's school concert
• Run an end-of-year Christmas fund-raising stall
• Attended the Steiner Summer Celebration lunch run by Sapph's class
• Coordinated fresh picked cherry orders as an additional fund-raiser for the school
• Supplied three different plates of party food for Sapphire for three separate occasions
• Decorated the office
• Scrubbed the years of bird turds from the outdoor chairs outside of the office
• Somehow successfully dressed her as a sailor and the Moon In the Night Sky for two different concerts
• Done pizzas for karate's end of 2006 classes....

But wait, that's not all, there is still:

• Wrapping presents;
• Dinner or lunch with the Gregory Five (who we love love love);
• Getting our new shed built and up before Christmas;
• Discovering (only yesterday) that what Sapphire really, truly only wants is a turbo-charged water gun like the one she saw cousin Jack blasting at Grandpa and finding out that K-Mart, BigW, Toy World and Myer are all sold out of them;
• Catching up with Love Chunks' side of the family;
• Planning Christmas lunch and dinner (at our place);
• Running the Boxing Day catch up (our place, with family members committed to their spouses's families on the 25th);
• Being in Victor Harbor when the older brother and spouse arrive for NYE....

And we only have the one child. Maybe Christmas 2007 we three will go to outer-Afghanistan with an empty diary and no commitments. Yeah and Paris Hilton will win the Nobel Peace Prize and John Howard will be forced to resign over a sordid sex scandal......

Simple snaps to make you feel superior Yep, it's Monday again and I've decided to ignore the increasing cheer and goodwill that's spreading about the place as the 25th gets closer and continue to mock the overpaid and clueless.. I just don't understand the fascination or admiration for 'ol Lolly Legs, Lindsay Lohan. The turban, dyed brown hair (as if she can ever escape the Fire Crotch christening), stripey pajama t-shirt, evian bottle full of vodka, a weird half-glove on her right hand and boots normally worn by the sheltered workshop employees. Nup. No Beauty, No Innate Sense of Style, No Outward Signs of Intelligence. LL's not exactly known for adopting orphans, throwing away chunks of cash to the less fortunate (unless you count the red bulls her one-night stands get) or furthering her education. May we one day get sick of seeing her in stupid get-ups and put her back on the K-Mart check out where she belongs. Good 'ol UFO-face is about to go to Yoga-Kabbalah-Book Reading-Non Orphan Adoption-Macro Biotic food shopping here and this is about as normal as we get from Mads these days. The pale, pointy face is still a puzzle though, especially if we're still meant to believe that it's all thanks to Mother Nature, Excessive Exercise and the ability to Bend Back And Gaze Up at One's Own Arsehole. Methinks her Life Coach (plastic surgeon and scratch'n'dent buffer) has inserted a tiny screw right under her chin that he periodically tightens whenever a wrinkle or emotion threatens to appear. Otherwise, her three kids won't recognise her during her fortnightly visits. Heaven help the luvvie on the left if she dares to let her right arm slip from her hip and the over-eager mammary pops out..... Why does Beyonce remind me of those kewpie dolls that old ladies crochet onto toilet roll covers? Our local lawn bowls club still sell them every year during their annual fete, but at least theirs are silent. Beyonce's singing (I'm trying to be kind) just sounds like the muted tantrum of a three year who was sent to bed an hour ago and is now starting to whine quietly out of sheer exhaustion instead of rage. Hell for me would involve being trapped in a lift with Beyonce on loudspeaker and having to share that tiny space with Nicolas Cage, Adam Sandler and Chevy Chase. All of whom are also force-feeding me offal, pumpkin and broad beans. And would the week be complete without examining at least one of Britney's stylishly timeless and classic wardrobe offerings? Having drop-kicked her kids - erm, what are their names again - Warning Lesson and Faded Jeans - straight into their velcroed straitjackets, she's decided to go for the see-through white top and hack off a foot of her skirt to try and divert attention from the wee stain to be found there. Nothing says, "Elegance" like a pair of overripe-yet-unused maternity knockers squished under a braless, lacy top that forces the nipples unflatteringly southward like a pair of depressed basset hounds. Ten bucks says she ends up with another guy who makes FedEx look like Hugh Jackman with a doctorate..... "Parishhh?, Hey, Parissh, will you look at me instead of waggling your bony little shoulder bladesh in my facesh? We haven't finished our discusshion on why the liberal leftist side of the socio-political ssshpectrum need to more fully embracshe the global warming issshues that truly conshern our generation...." Finally we have some truly good news; the stuff that really warms the heart of my bottom. As you can clearly see here, LaToya/Janet/Michael (who the hell really knows) has sworn off all forms of surgery and is now just taking a really 'well earned break'. There's a lesson in there for all of us.

Sapphire's Venal Vocabulary

For those of you unable to read Seven Year Old Supertext, the message on the left reads:
'Hey Helen,
Adam is a crude, piggish, mean-hearted, brutal, selfish cockroach!
We'll get the sound tape.
Love, (Rose)'

The picture on the upper right is a fly-swatter about to thud down shudderingly hard on the cockroach and, fairly obviously, she's added a pig on the bottom left as a fetching kind of letterhead logo.

'Rose' is her character's film name, for which our mate Helen knows her best. You see Helen is a good mate of ours, and has just made her very first film as a director. All of the actors (a Mum, Dad, older brother and our Sapphire as the younger sister) did it for free, as did the crew. If you refer to my blog 'Slapper with the Clapper' you'll get a clearer idea as to what today's wordy waffle is about.

Unfortunately, Helen's 'Executive Producer' has since thrown several hissy fits and refuses to return the sound tape to the film. All that Sapphire knows is that her Mum and Dad think it is very unfair and would do anything to help out Helen if they could (even though she reacted rather unenthusiastically to my helpful suggestion that we drive over to his place and staple gun his loose testicle and elbow skin to the living room wall) and she wrote the above note unaided and unrequested.

Call me twisted, but I'm pretty heck-darn-gosh-golly-hooly-dooly-whackadoo proud of my little child. Sure, it 'aint going to give Shaky or Byron any sleepless nights on the romantic prose front but she's adopting a lesson that my father taught me years ago: Don't use swear words if you can help it. Swearing shows that you don't have the imagination to think of a better way to retort or express yourself. Sure, these words of wisdom come from a man who once said (out loud) that he wanted to die with his mouth open under the chocolate mousse tap at Sizzler's, but it's still a very valid piece of advice.

Yes, she knows we don't live in a sanitised 1950s world (despite John Howard's best efforts) and that yes, occasionally Mum or Dad will let slip with a profanity or three when we are under pressure. Occasions she's witnessed so far include the time when Love Chunks was trying to put together a flat-pack desk from OfficeWorks; when someone swerved suddenly in front of Mum's car in peak-hour traffic; when birds' crap turned our freshly-washed sheets into a Jackson Pollock painting; and when I or LC step on the scales and see where the needle really lands.

Sapphire also appreciates that there are some non-swear words that fit within the unacceptable category. These include

• Stupid - only to be used if a toe is stubbed on an inanimate object or if the aforementioned John Howard is sighted on the TV;
• Dumb or Idiot - again, only to be used if some particularly tragic or hilarious fashion victim sashays past whilst we're having coffee or if John Howard opens his mouth;
• FAT - the biggest F word of them all, bar the classic one that tends to be used with 'you' or 'off'. No-one is ever to be described, depicted or called FAT. This word has the power to hurt someone forever. Instead, a person may be described as big, jolly, stocky or nuggety, or - if desperate - via their hair colour, model of car owned or sexual orientation.
• Smelly, Stinky, Pongy - also on the taboo list. There are simply too many folk out there with irritable bowels, dodgy pelvic walls, glued to their birkenstocks or bending over far too quickly in yoga classes for this word to be adopted. The only exception to this rule is when Mum/MillyMoo needs to persuade Sapphire to jump into the shower or put her socks into the dirty clothes basket; give Dogadoo her weekly bath; or when faced with morning breath from any member of the family.
• Old, wrinkly and What are those Lines on your Forehead- Sapphire realises now that these ones have the ability to make Mummy cry, so they're best left alone.

Never fear, that still leaves several million words available for use to describe any cardigan, dim-wit, bureaucratic boob or fool that enters your life, however briefly. Use them wisely.

Have a heart and please adopt one of these idiots for your village


Celebrity Idiot adoptee number 1: Courtney Love.
We've chosen a flattering portrait of her here - her mammaries are safely secured in leather lockers ready for her flight to your place.

Indeed our surgeon has even tightened the screw hidden in the back of her head so, currently, she has no facial folds to accidentally lose her pills in. We're not quite sure where she's hidden her smokes, vodka or daughter however, so she's a case of "Wait - there's more!" bonuses - a child, several nannies, a sympathetic lawyer, ceiling plasterer/make-up artist and forklift driver to pick her out of the gutter and take her home. To your place perhaps?





Celebrity Idiot adoptee number 2: Matthew McConaughey.
Freshly rotisseried from a hot, sunny month in Australia, he actually comes complete with clothing (which may disappoint some potential adoptees).

Despite his unfortunate attire, old Bongo Bollocks does have some musical skill, as evidenced by the didgeridoo hanging over his shoulder. So if you're prepared to be serenaded at all hours of the night by an oiled, naked, and - frankly - insane man puffing through a hollow log making a sound like a distressed sea-lion, then this guy is just right for hanging outside the Coles Supermarket bench seats of your village!



Celebrity Idiot adoptee number 3: Janet/LaToya/Michael Jackson, we're not exactly certain who this one is, but it needs a good home and fast.

With a body shape that expands and contracts as easily as a shaken condom filled with detergent this interesting creature would make a fine museum attendant, chi-chi boutique worker or be just as happy rocking back and forth outside Centrelink, slapping a benefits book rhythmically against its forehead and squeaking to itself.

Just don't ask it to speak or give advice about sex or parenting as it has often scared away potential adopters in the past.



Celebrity Idiot adoptee number 4: Britney Spears.

She's had a troubled past couple of years and, as you can see, it's been a real trial getting her to submit to a weekly urine test. Sure, we've made it easier by relaxing the rules about having to wear and take off underwear before filling up the bottles, but it's either Do The Test, or Stay Home And Look After Your Children. Both choices are about as popular with her as a job interview with Naomi Campbell.

Despite these setbacks, she's got loads of cash, heaps of home help and enough bags of Doritos to feed Somalia. If you can spare the time convincing her that a comeback CD is not required, she might reward you by remaining house-broken, cheerful and ready to learn how to do stuff like, um, hold a kid, or,like, feed it something other than KFC or, like marshmallows.



Celebrity Idiot adoptee number 5: Pete Dougherty, also known as New Dad of the Year.

He's a slippery little sozzled-out sausage this one. As such it's difficult to know when his adoption portrait was taken: on his way to rehab; leaving rehab; off to see Kate/his drug dealer/a BabyShambles gig/the shops; overdue for a court appearance; or off to the bank to pay a fine or seven?

And no, we don't know if they are stitches on his right cheek or pen marks scrawled on by his wife-to-be's other kid reminding him to collect some groceries on his way home. His eyes do occasionally open, but please be patient with him - it may take several years for him to recognise you and his new home.

NB - there may be an opportunity to arrange a double-adoption with him and Britney Spears - their parenting skills and clear thinking make them an ideal pair to live next door to you in your village.


Celebrity Idiot adoptee number 6: Gwen Stefani.

We're predicting that this one will be popular, so put in your adoption papers NOW. Not only is she very wealthy and a reasonable mother, but she has a very special ability to turn herself into a walking cartoon. This comes in very handy when you are feeling a bit down in the mouth or the power goes out at school and the kids need some entertainment.

She can also sing a bit - but please be sure not to request Hollaback Girl or you will end up with bleeding earholes and begging her to stop and instead use her voice to give you fashion advice. Neither outcome is a good one, so beware.



Celebrity Idiot adoptee number 7: Paris Hilton.

This Self-Basting, Human Hairpin is a particularly tragic case and we've broken our backs trying to get a determined adoptee village to re-position her legs back to a parallel position (instead of Y-shaped) and into the fields where she belongs - replacing the worn-out oxen ploughing the potato furrows.

Due to having the concentration span - and reliability - of a tsetse fly, she needs to be able to trust you and rely on you. Otherwise, who will remind her to breathe, eat or - god forbid - remember the name of the village himbo she's currently making a porno video with?

Be brave and do your glowing good conscience and the world a favour - take her back to your old home town and leave her there.

Domestically Challenged (to put an optimistic spin on it)

Look at the sad little batch of cookies I made with Sapphire on the weekend. Could they be any more retarded - and the recipe was from her school's 'beginner book' which was sold as a fundraiser this year!

Somehow we must have got the proportion of butter to flour a bit mixed up because they started out as rather rock-like spoonfuls barely touching the tray to a colony of pizza-for-one shaped bathroom tiles that scared us when they emerged from the oven. The photo on the left shows them separated, but, together they were not unlike the pebble-dashed cement render of my old 1970s classroom walls.

Oh well, at least they tasted OK - if you kept your eyes closed - and even my mates at Saturday's quiz night politely took a mouthful, chewed thoughtfully for an agonized second or two before washing it down with a mug of shiraz.

This orange square on the left is - if you squint - a rather intimate study of Dogadoo's footprints, planted onto the verandah exactly three minutes after Love Chunks had just finished painting.

He had been so proud of his work - the floor did look splendid with the glossy, rust-coloured lacquer until..... Sapphire opened the front door and Dogadoo automatically ran up to greet her; running in happy little circles, tail wagging frantically and unwittinglt decorating the sticky paint with her paw prints. Uncharacteristically, I remained silent, too afraid to see if LC was angry, furious or just plain cross.

Luckily, he was amused. "That's what she's all about - love. If Sapphire appears, she'll immediately rush over. Serves me right for calling you round to have a look and expecting Dogadoo to read the 'Wet Paint' sign.

Despite this, our furry faced friend was still perceptive enough to get the impression that she wasn't exactly flavour of the month around our house that day, and retreated to the serenity of her doghouse. Well, for five minutes at most, because she's utterly incapable of sulking when there's people coming and going; ripe plums falling off the tree to throw, chase and chew; birds to scare off and a trampoline to sunbake on.

On to less furry family members. Here we have a rare picture of Sapphire, looking rather uncertain that her brand new karate gi was the right fit. They tend to come in a 'one size fits all' variety which is fantastic for adults because we all tend to look like sugar bags with belts, but for kids it requires........ sewing.

I failed sewing at school. Me, a class goody goody, hated sewing and I delayed, chattered, goofed off and lingered over the materials long enough for an entire term of Home Economics to avoid even having to thread a bobbin. What is a bobbin anyway? This scored me a 'F' for that term, yet somehow I ended up with a 'B' for the year - my charcoaled chook leg with vegemite coated vegetables (as my creative substitute for soy sauce) must have really wowed them, as did my currant buns that had inflated to the size of party balloons.

Back to the sewing issue - this outfit was going to need some serious work on the hems and my mother (sewing goddess, wardrobe mistress for local musicals, made all of my party dresses growing up and capable of stitching on several hundred sequins quicker than typing it out) was not around before our next karate class. I was seriously entertaining the idea of just stapling up the legs and arms, but realised that rust marks would eventually show when the hem needed to be lowered. Damn.

Several hours later, the hems were done. Sure, they might look as though I did them whilst trapped on the top loop of the Mad Mouse rollercoaster ride, but at least Sapphire can now do a roundhouse kick without catching her foot in her trousers and flipping herself over like a beetle on the floor.

So, is there anything domestic I can do properly? **Sigh**, the washing. Six loads (for only a three person household) seem to magically make their way from the hamper, to the machine, the clothesline before being mysteriously folded, ironed and put back into their place of origin. It seems to take me all bloody weekend to do, but sadly, no-one tends to fling open their top drawer and yell out excitedly, "Woo Hoo! Clean jocks - you are FABULOUS, MillyMoo, just amazing!" Nor does anyone kneel at my feet in gratitude for remembering to take tissues out of trouser pockets before doing a dark load or my ability to hang up the loads according to family member or location (ie sports gear here, Sapphire's stuff over here, LC's gardening clothes up this end....') Yes, I do recognise how pathetic this skill is, especially when I am still incapable of being able to turn the key into the front door lock without trying both directions at least twice, and having to ask LC to help me use the kick-stand on my bicycle.....

Naturally, there's about a 20-part series of blogs about how wonderful LC is with cooking, cleaning, gardening, parenting and helping when I'm ill, but they're for another day and would be completely out of place here today. **Sigh**

Give me half an hour, smarty pants, half an hour!


Like most people in life, there are so many times when a mean comment, yelled-out insult or snide remark is thrown at you and it is impossible to think of anything remotely witty to fling right back at them.

I have tended to blush, or back away, feeling as though I'd deserved it. It would only be a few minutes/hours/days/weeks/months/years later that it would finally dawn on me that the best form of revenge is/was to serve a clever-but-cutting comment straight back; leaving my mean-spirited foe on their back foot and looking rather foolish.

However, as I've got older - as in had a child and embraced being in my late thirties; turning the radio off instead of on and accepting that flopped on our sofa with Love Chunks is my favourite nightspot, I sometimes manage to strike back in time.

This morning was one of those miracle occasions. It was forecast to be a 36C day here in Adelaide and was already pretty damn hot as I huffed and puffed my 3km on my bike uphill to work. Halfway through, my side-street route is forced to cross a very busy main road, and I always wait for ages on the median strip until it's really, truly, utterly safe for me to cross.

Whilst leaning on the curb with my left foot on the ground (I'm far too nervous and inexperienced to balance like the cool fitness freaks do), a chunky oldish bloke in a white van pulled up alongside me. He wound down his window and called out snidely, "Nice arse, darlin'." No, it wasn't meant in a 'Whip Wheel - you're HOT' kind of way: I'm smart enough to have realised that those sort of Razza Matazz moments don't happen once you've entered your fourth decade. Sadly, it was a 'Let's knock that smug sheila off her high horse so that I can feel good about myself' kind of comment. Sure, my backside isn't the smallest in town, but hey, at least I was out there trying to get fit.....

Little did this clueless cretin realise that my brain had already been busily buzzing with ideas for today's blog - what to write, what to write - why we always tell those who compliment us about our outfits that it was a bargain from K-Mart, and only mutter 'oh, thanks' when it came from somewhere posh? Or, how come I'd never heard the alterna-phrase for 'Old Boys' Club' until yesterday - Dick Links? Was there an opportunity to have a light-hearted discussion about the proliferation of strangers being really friendly to me until they realise I am not who they thought I was - my doppel-ganger must be from around here also.

My wee digression there was to set the scene - I was ready for this jerk, really ready. One nano-second after his oh-so-funny "Nice arse, darlin," I shot back angrily with, "Nice gut rolls, Butter Boy."

His response was to give me the finger (the bird, unfortunately, not a chunky Kit Kat), wind up his window and look pointedly at the traffic until he could escape my now angry face with a mouth so thin it could have been drawn on with a ball point pen. The remaining half of my bike ride was just as physically draining as the first half, but my spirits carried me along like a herd of John Cusacks tenderly supporting me on a cloud-lined stage dive. I had scored a victory for all women - and men - out there who are innocently walking along the street and get stuff like "Show us yer tits," or "Look over here if you're a poofta" thrust upon them. The very same people who then feel dirty and ashamed, and slink off as though it was their fault that they were so crudely insulted.

If only I could travel back in time to Phys Ed in 1983, when Melissa called me a brown-noser for daring to speak to our teacher, Mr C. At 14, I went red and dropped to the back of the class, to her nasty laughter. What would I give now to have said, "Oh, what's that huge thing hanging off your arse, Melissa?....(pause)... Oh, sorry, it is your arse." At the ripe old age of 38, a slap-fight in the girls' toilets at recess time would have been worth it....

Perhaps flick the time-travel dial to 1988 when some sad man decided to 'flash me' his dangly bits whilst I was walking to uni through the Botanic Gardens. My reaction was exactly what he was looking for: a shocked intake of breath, and a hasty retreat, again to the sound of nasty laughter. If only I could have borrowed my flat mate Fiona's comment to a bus-shelter loser, "I want a meal, not a snack." As you can imagine, he zipped up and got the hell out of there to her amused, victorious laughter.

Maybe the machine could be set at full-throttle to 1977, when the snobby-and-bored Mrs D said to me, a 9 year old, "You know, you mum should buy you nicer clothes, none of my kids would ever wear hand-me-downs." The puzzled and hurt little girl would now be able to sting back with, "You know, you should finish school, learn some manners and help out people less fortunate than yourself - none of my family would be caught dead getting their jollies from insulting children."

Ah, if only. Still, to even land one in one hundred makes a fantastic start to the day.

Meanie Mondays

This is hard for an Aussie to understand, but it was more difficult than usual trying to find celebrity fashion funnies. Something to do with Thanksgiving and yanks being forced to eat entire roast turkeys and wah on about the Mayflower or the like. Despite having to spend five minutes longer than usual, our favourite sartorial suckers were still about and didn't disappoint.

The tabloid presses have all been salivating over the new best friends, Paris and Britney. Since this photograph was taken, Sh**ney has apparently 'done a Lindsay' and been caught on camera without knickers which only adds to the classy look she's clearly going for in the picture on our left.

Let's forget Paris for a moment (who'd have thought that that sentence would be written in terms of ridicule) and focus on Courtney Love's younger sister on her right. Drunken straps, breasts about as under control as a sackful of puppies, her map of Tassie mercifully hidden by a satin coat (not matching) and white vinyl K-mart shoes. The look is completed with extensions that have left an innocent shetland pony with it's arse exposed to the blowflies and a baby belly that's not exactly flattered by the leopard skin print covering it...

Paris looks almost reasonable if you discount the fleecy split ends and the fact that she needs to put a sticker on her leg reminding her to breathe every thirty seconds.



Ah Mads, you're looking more and more like the ageing tranny in 'Priscilla' every day, aren't you?
If the eyebrows get any higher they'll end up at the back of your neck looking like a hairy advertisment for McDonald's.

The horizontally stretched face up close looks too much Betty Davis in her latter years - it's time to tone down the makeup instead of spakfilling in the gaps, love. And remember - and this is to all gals out there who like to colour their mouths - lipstick should stay on just the lips - any painting done around the outside looks misguided, envious and, frankly, insane.

Her skin appears to have been dermabrasioned, hermetically sealed, steamed and stretched to albino-snakeskin perfection and yet..... she's the scary clown from Poltergeist. Heaven help me if I found that smiling at me from under my bed, let alone writhing on the floor telling me 'I'm hung up, I've got a crush on you-oo-hoooo..."



J-Ho actually looks quite good, in a triangular, alien-faced, wax doll kind of way. I wonder how long it took the museum curator to bend her arms, hips and legs into that pose and how much longer it took to get to the diva display mannekin to maintain a posture like a normal human being after the photographers moved on to chase Paris.

It's the face - much more so than the the re-use of grandma's chenille bedspread as the dress fabric, the purse earrings or Jaclyn Smith hair.
Too bad if she feels surprised, annoyed, delighted or just had the holy crap frightened out of her, because our buddy Mr Botox has reduced her acting range to the gamut of emotions from A to A - one disdainful mask. At least it might finally hamper her efforts to sing for us again.








We've all seen Val Kilmer's infamous beer gut down at his local beach a few months ago but the caption under this image on our left was gushing about how well he's scrubbed up since then.

Hmmmm, maybe. If he's prepared to change his last name to Kipfler. As is potato, that is. Then yes, he's scrubbed up well (har hardy har har).

He'd better stay clean shaven, or some cafeteria dishwasher is going to go at him with a sharp knife to cut out those annoying little eyes that keep springing out of spuds that are too old to eat.









As the Kingston Trio once sang, "...and they called the wind Mariah..."

How prophetic they were. Either Mariah's lyrca's been inflated with a few farts she's let slip at the latest Disney launch or she's late for Halloween and dressed up as a bunch of overripe cherries.

Those thighs, lovingly roasted, could feed all of the orphans that Brad'n'Ange didn't adopt in Malawi.












We end with the only contender against Kate Moss for Celebrity Mother of the Year, Courtney Love. The topless here pic is the cleanest one of the session.

In those photos, it's painfully clear that she's had a brazilian, found an onion string bag she'd like to wear, had a bit of an overhaul done on the rack and wants to show us all. Why we'd want to see it all, I'm not sure, but at least she's not pregnant to a bloke who's in rehab more often than he's in his wife-to-be.

On a serious note, let's hope that Courtney has given poor little Frances a pep talk on how to respond to, "Hey Beanz Meanz Fartz, your mum's got her mammaries and muff out again," with something other than "but it paid the rent and my nanny fees this month."

You might have guessed that I like a bit of chocolate every now and then...

...which is a tiny bit like stating that Kate Moss likes her men a bit on the naughty side or that Paris Hilton just might be running the risk of ending up more bow-legged than an 1880s cowboy.

On a lazy morning a couple of days ago, I was chugging up the hill in my pro-magnon magna and was kind of listening in to SAFM's 'hilarious' morning show. The usual stuff - 'kooky' crew + hard-working un-credited straight man who has to push all of the buttons, remind us of the news, weather, traffic-jams, program in the crap music and shove in the taped advertisements that sound about as professional as Mr Cunno's out-takes.

Seeing as we're about one week away from the non-ratings season, and said 'hilariously kooky morning crew' will then get until February off as a 'well-earned break' but their straight man will still have to get up at 4.00am to look after the fill-in fools, they were clearly struggling for comedic talk-back matter. Hence, the most obvious subject of all - how many listeners out there like chocolate?

All of the callers were female which wasn't a huge surprise to anybody. All of them professed a love for Tim Tams, fruchocs and Cadbury's - especially at a certain time of the month, or if home alone with a decent chick-flick DVD. Amateurs, I snorted to myself. Fools! A true chocolate addict doesn't need to jam up a switchboard in the hopes of scoring a Robbie Williams CD.

No, a true addict hides their addiction. A true chocoholic realises they're addicted; that it is unhealthy, expensive and unflattering for the figure, yet they don't care. They (we, I) embrace this. Why the hell do I run 6 kilometres three mornings a week, ride my bike to work twice and week and do karate? To get fit and be strong? Well, yeah, but mostly so that I can EAT MORE CHOCOLATE. ALL THE TIME.
My love of chocolate has driven me to extreme and dedicated levels of exercise and fitness. With the amount of physical activity my body is subjected to, I should resemble a marathon runner who's lost weight after a gastro attack. A thin strip of beef jerky with ropey veins winding their way up my arms, veins that are thicker than the arm bones themselves....

Instead, a recent in-house university fat'n'fitness test (thankfully I fell into the 'normal, control group' category and not the OMIGOD - she's bloody HUGE group) showed that I was way waaay fitter than the average woman my age or younger, but had a body fat content of 26%. Yes, you obsessed, calorie counters, it should be between 20-25%. Fit but Fat, that's me. So why the hell should I give up being a chocoholic? I should have a body fat content of 43% which is average cocoa butter standard for decent chocolate, so I'm way ahead baby, way ahead.

In my stress-a-holic days at my previous employer, I'd kick off my 7.30am start with a King-sized Caramel Kit Kat, followed by a Wagon Wheel (full size, not those kiddy pack ones) and wash it down with 600ml of the finest drink in the world, Farmers' Union Iced Coffee. These days, I might not do that every single morning, but boy-oh-boy, is the Choccie Monster screaming out my name by 10.00am...!

Having the university cafe directly underneath our office is either a good or a bad thing, depending on your situation. Before John Howard decided to remove compulsory student unionism, the shop was subsidised, meaning - oh glory of glories - chocolate bars were cheaper there than even the supermarket. Now, they're supermarket prices, so I don't have to dash up to Foodland and snatch up 10 crunchies and 5 dove family blocks when they're on sale.

Winter makes things worse. One day (this is true, my darling Love Chunks, I'm ashamed to say), I was up at Foodland getting sensible stuff for work (dishwashing liquid, notepads, teabags) and spied those 135g 'gift boxes' of Lindt balls for only $5.99. They are normally $9.99, and rarely have the dark blue boxes containing the dark ones. BARGAIN, I thought, snatching up three boxes - I'll take them home to share with Love Chunks in front of the telly and....

.... they didn't even make it out of my office. I'd absent-mindedly open one box, swear I was only going to suck one and keep on proof reading, typing or working away at the keyboard. Less than thirty minutes later, my jiggling leg, sticky face and bloated stomach would reveal that I had in fact inhaled all twelve. Three days in a row.

On those very same evenings, after Sapphire was in bed, Dogadoo asleep in her bean bag and a DVD on the telly, Love Chunks would ask, "Fancy a choccy square or two?" and immediately duck into the kitchen. He didn't even have to wait for my answer, and would return with a large tupperware container in which he'd thoughtfully already broken up four family blocks of chocolate into convenient, mouth-sized squares of two. That's the kind of man he is, dear readers - caring, sensitive, considerate and possessing the rare skill of being able to do all this without scoffing half of it halfway during the task.

Knowing that I'd already inhaled twelve Lindt balls, my chocoholism would still permit me to reply in a 'Oh, how lovely, how kind, how nice' kind of voice, "Oh, that'd be great", as though I'd spent the day eating only carrot sticks and mung beans. Twenty five handfuls of LC's squares later and my day was complete.

Multiply that by at least 200 and you have my average year. Bring on 2007!

I'm angry, really angry!

I got a parking ticket today and I am taking a stand. I am NOT going to pay it. Ever. What 'contracted, external parking provider' (ie not my employer, the university) is going to jail me for non-payment of $25?

Perhaps a better question is - why are universities charging for parking in the first place? The poor students are already paying HECS, books and other stuff that's on the increase year after year and it's not as though we are crammed in the CBD - we're out in the burbs here. As 'My Little Zombie Finger' (google her blog) has remarked to me, "If they insist on making a few bucks out of us all, why not at least do it via salary scale? Nothing for students, a tiny bit for PhDs and admin and heaps more for professors?" Why not indeed.

Instead, the uni has out-sourced the patrolling of the carparks to some external bunch of buzzards who I have yet to see in person. Perhaps they can shape-shift like the baddie in Terminator 2 or can not survive out in full sunlight for more than a minute. Whoever these little maggots are, they clearly have their beady, greedy little eyes fixed on each of the reserved 200 parking spaces and catapult themselves with glee over to the offending vehicle to sticky-tape a ticket onto their windscreen and then spring back into their coffins. What a fulfilling career choice that must be.

My boss, Queen B, has a permanent parking space that she pays for out of a salary sacrifice scheme every fortnight. Her spot is the pick of the bunch - right outside of our building. My compadres tend to try their luck and plonk their cars in the paid car park at the staggering sum of $1 per day. This can tend to be a bit more challenging when it's compulsory tutorial time and not swotvac.

I, on the other hand, have been proudly embracing my Scottish heritage and long-forgotten urge for extreme thrift, because - on the one or two days per week I drive instead of bike to work - I park about a kilometre away. It's the only free spot within 2km of the campus that's not paid or signed: 'Max 3 hours during university term days'. This secret little gem is tucked in behind the local Italian cafe and independent cinema, and my 'reward' for parking gratis is to find my 10 year old station wagon splattered with bird turds that could only have been dropped by freakishly large kookaburras.

Anyhow, this morning was different. I had stopped by our local shopping mecca, the Mart of 'K' to get some gear for work. Queen B is on leave this week and had said that any of us could use her park whilst she is away. Today was my turn, I decided, heartily sick of having to lug heavy stuff like stationery, glasses, boxes and kitchen gear one kilometre and then up two flights of stairs from my birdy poo poo car park. It saved me about quarter of an hour of having my fingers nearly cut off by plastic bag handles, oodles of sweat and my knuckles weren't dragging on the floor after being stretched too far. Good.

At lunchtime I hopped in the car with three work buddies, off to an even more important mecca - The Robern Menz Fruchoc Factory. It was my professional - nay, cultural duty to ensure that our visiting Japanese scholar had tried our local delicacy, the dried apricot and peach ball rolled in chocolate. The Fruchoc. Second only to Haigh's in the South Australians' chocolate-chomping hearts.

There the little bastard was - no, not the Japanese scholar - the parking ticket. How dare they? $25 for the 'offence' of 'parking without a valid permit displayed.' Surely my hand-written post it note saying 'MG-102 - Queen B' was acceptable? But no. Zombie Finger, Catherine-the-Great and Dr Nakazato just laughed. They had all been ticketed, tried to fight against the ruling and struck nothing but rudeness, hostility and threats. "They told me 'What Planet Do You Live On, Our Rules Are for Everyone'," Dr N said haltingly. To quote Jar Jar Binks, "How rude!"

Well, BRING IT ON. I've fought more officious little companies than you, oh 'Tenix Solutions Pty Ltd'. How dare you add the word 'solutions' to your name, when you specialise in greed, frustration, deprivation and despair. May your farts colour the air and follow you around (like a bad smell, heh heh) permanently!

Stay tuned..........

My ten cent prediction

Australia's most successful and beloved swimmer, Ian Thorpe, has decided to shimmy out of his skin-tight black adidas bodysuit and bow out of professional and olympic swimming.


It appears that the sports loving public here are in an uproar - how dare Thorpey, at the relatively tender age of twenty four, think only of himself and what he would like to do beyond inhaling a litre of chlorinated water during hours of regimented swimming and gym work that commenced every single day from 4am? What kind of an Aussie icon and all-round good bloke lets us down like that?! At least Steve Irwin died in the line of duty. Who the hell does Ian think he is - a free citizen?

This rage really stems from fear. No, no of Thorpey's 'Official Ambassador' status for Paspaley Pearls (hello, we'll get to that later) but the frightening realisation that he will reduce Oz's olympic medal tally by about 70%. You see, here in Aust-ray-yia we value our sporting heroes above all else. We take medal tallies, ashes urns, sailing cups, crystal bowls etc very, very seriously . Cancer cure - pretty good. Dedicated HIV carers - not bad. Shane Warne - bloody legend mate, a legend!

Not that I'm saying that Ian isn't extremely talented in the water and that we won't miss him because we will, but he's been in the public eye for over ten years. From the age of fourteen he was propelled onto the back page of every newspaper and proclaimed as the 'Big Feet, Big Heart, Big Winner' for the future of swimming. Bless him, he would have to be the only tweenie/young teen to be glad to have size 24 feet: with those buggers he could out-paddle an angry dolphin, let alone a Popov, cranky Yank or a cheeky Peter van den Hoogenband.

Here is where I'll chuck in my ten cents' worth, just to add a bit more to the kilometres of smudgy newsprint and inane anchorman opinions already out there. Thorpey will be offered a modelling contract for a swanky, chi-chi designer label for a year or two, giving him the opportunity to travel the world, suck down a few champagnes and occasionally witter on about how 'Fashion is his passion' and how he'd eventually like to design some stuff on his own....

Fast forward a couple more years and he'll be releasing an autobiography - ghost written of course. In perfect, PA-driven timing, he will also officially come out of his perfumed, velvet-lined, 10 metre by 20 metre closet and tearfully announce that he's gay. No real surprise there, except to Aussie folk aged over 60 who secretly harboured fantasies that he'd marry one of their more homely looking grand daughters. The only chapter that will be purchased and printed as an excerpt in magazines will be the one detailing his other, more nocturnal and private uses for his black bodysuit.

The book will sell like wildfire, and he'll then be a permanent fixture at Elton John's post-Academy Awards parties, be asked to write a guest column in Vogue and move to the UK so that he can be "among his dearest friends and supporters, Kylie Minogue, George Michael and Alexander McQueen."

He will then lay low for a while, only occasionally being photographed in the Daily Telegraph's social pages or by No Idea magazine if his weight increases by 3 kilograms and he's snapped eating a bacon buttie.

Just when he's almost disappeared from the Australian landscape and sporting/social consciousness, he'll find his life partner, marry him and move permanently to Switzerland. He will, naturally, "Still call Australia my home", but never set foot on our dry, brown soil again.

Mark my words.