Bum Faced Nit
















I know this is hardly original, but checking up blog statistics is rather new to me, an oldish blogger. The numbers of new visitors versus regular visitors is interesting, but search words that lead strange lurkers to my site are fascinating.

In the past month, these following phrases have led a motley bunch of cyber sinners to Blurb from the Burbs:

• Bum Faced Nit - should I be offended or worried that this phrase led directly to me?
  
  
• Sharply angled bowel - mine is irritable (sometimes even extremely angry) yes, but I've never been keen enough to measure it for angles or geometric formulae



• Chloe Sauvignon naked - whoever this person or persons are; they search for her many, many times a week. My guess is they mean Chloe Sevigny, but either can't spell, or hope she likes a dry white wine.



• My physical rectum site - oooh er, that's bound to be hilarious



• Dangling Schlong Satisfy - is that really the official brand name of the product you're after?













• Jam Jar - No idea. None. And if it's connected to the two-girls-and-a-cup-video, I'd prefer to stay ignorant.



• Picture of Balfour's custard tart - Yep, one of my favourite naughty snacks.



• Volksie bonnet - fair enough, I did moan about my 'book fat' gain of twelve kilograms which I've nearly lost. Yanks tend to refer to this denim-clad fattie phenomenon as 'Camel Toe' but I prefer the Aussie term.



• Shetland Pony Fungal Infection - it is with a fair dollop of confidence that I can state that I have never included those four words in a sentence before. Not awake or sober, at least.



• Young sexy chicks denture wearer - sure, I wear a mouthguard to bed, but the rest?



• Nicole Richie disrespects nudists - why, because they tend to be the ugly, chubby kind that are best left covered up. And if so, this doesn't seem like a bad thing.



• Peter Hellier ugly - amongst other, greater shortcomings, like being chronically unfunny



• Wobbly Goolies 2008 - not sure if this is a band or a celebration



• Perth root canal forums - Woo hoo, that's right up there with the previously mentioned 'My Physical Rectum Site'



• Mouse erection - Yes, this one has been mentioned here. I remember this was mentioned by a commenter (Helen) who is a biology PhD student who had the good fortunen to know something about this particular topic. My blog article however, was referring to humans.



• How to de-fluff a towel - a common quandary yes, but not likely to score too highly on the devoted website-meter
  


• Cat shit and migraines - Absolutely I feel like shit when I have a migraine, but didn't realise I'd ever been pedantic enough to specify a particular variety of animal excrement to describe the feeling
  


• Mariah Carey farting in front of husband - Best Search Phrase Ever. I hope they found proof.

Please kind comrade - how do you de-fluff a towel?

Day Twenty Nine - Appreciative August

Magazines














Ever since I clapped eyes on my mother's 'Australian Women's Weekly' when it was still a weekly and not a monthly and the exploits of Delvene Delaney, Belinda Green and Ita 'At My Deskth' Buttrose ruled the ink, I have loved magazines.

The glossy paper; even glossier advertising; stories and photographs to pour over only to recall years later during trivia competitions and the feeling that you're intimately involved with whatever is designated as "in" at that precise moment. All that enjoyment at the flick of a wrist and yet it's forgotten and discarded the second it is read and consumed.

I first subscribed to the Offical Abba magazine back in 1977, begging my mum to fill in the form, pay by postal order (I handed over my savings in twenty cent pieces) and eagerly wait each month for thirty two pages of joy that were read over and over and over.....

On our 1979 Queensland holiday, we discovered the joys of the small town Book Exchanges, and in between some 10c Gnid Blytons, Trixie Beldons and Peanuts paperbacks, I found MAD magazines. Again, these were read and re-read until the fold in section at the back fell apart into three pieces.

A few months ago, out of a combined need to buy something at the school fundraiser and from sheer nostalgia I bought a pile of MADs from a year seven kid, who was happy with my offer of two bucks for the lot. To my utter disillusionment, I found that the the very same cartoons I'd enjoyed nearly thirty years earlier were still being recycled; even those tiny little ones hidden in the margins. Lazy, unoriginal bastards.

As puberty hit (during our year in Scotland, unfortunately), it was 'Blue Jeans' - a trashy, 'true confession' mag that every girl in my class read, complete with real life photos masquerading as boyfriend and girlfriend comics (Hugh Grant even earned his keep doing some of these at the time). Back at Murray Bridge High School it was Dolly magazine, with all photos of hunks - real, potential or imagined - carefully cut out and posted into my homework diary to assure others of my firm standing in the 'trendy' pecking order. Yeah, like C. Thomas Howell really stood the test of time.

At Uni it was Cleo and Cosmopolitan as well as the 'Buttocks People' strip on the back of OnDit. I'd like to say that I devoured each and every article on 'Ten Ways to Giving Him the Orgasm of his Life' in order to seek a brief respite from my fastidious studies on Major English Texts, Roman Art and Archaeology and The Pre-Scientific World View of History, but really it was to discover, 'Is He the Right Man for You?' and to make sure that any sealed section discoveries were learned by heart in case I happened to stumble across some bloke who insisted on my performing every single one of them.

Luckily, I discovered that blokes, by and large, don't require such attention to detail; they're merely grateful that you're there and seem to like them back. By the time Love Chunks arrived, such mags had no appeal. It was settled: he loved me, I loved him and there was no need to learn the techniques for 'How to Have Him Begging For More' because there were other articles, still not yet published that we needed instead. Ones such as 'How to Make Sure That Laughter During Sex Is Seen As A True Sign Of Desire And Affection And Is Not Intended To Hurt'; or 'Don't Expect Movie Star Sex When You Have a Crepe-paper, Post-Childbirth-Stomach And Just Ate Cabbage For Dinner' or the essential: Give Him The Sign By Shaving Your Legs Every Quarter'. These may finally be published one day, perhaps when Jackie Frank is tired of trying to convince her readers to pay $12,000 for a Chanel handbag on one page and then exhorting us to fight for Venezuelan victims of rape and poverty immediately overleaf.....

These days, my magazine subscriptions are pretty indicative of my current phase in life - suburban, nearly forty and unable to focus on anything beyond 500 words. My subscriptions to the funny movie mag Empire has petered out as it was a bit hard to read about a movie when it was unlikely that Love Chunks and I would ever be able to see one together; as did 'Who' when their celebrity factor began to out-dumb even No Idea and I was regularly mocked by Sapphire (who was then only six and a half) for reading it. "Mum, why do they always have to show famous people in their bathers?"

No, it's delicious for food (mostly for visual porn because I just can't be shagged trying to find Southern Highlands grain fed low-lactose wild camel carcasses, saffron threads or marinated goat lips); marieclaire (for fashion I love to laugh at and can't afford); Choice (so that I could read about what treadmill I should have bought instead of the one I did buy); and Home Beautiful and House & Garden so that I can assure myself that our renovations aren't too cringeworthy and can work myself up into a lather about how the word 'bespoke' is now trendier to home decorators 'minimalist' and 'global fusion' used to be.

And Men's Health; an occasional freebie that I like to read to see how blokes view women. It's quite honestly the funniest thing since MAD magazine circa 1979.

No, Men's Health, women hate it when you leave the loo seat up because it means that we have to put it down again, that's it. It's not because we ".....have a natural instinct to keep clean and protect their (our) womb and any unborn child they (we) might be carrying." We just don't want to have to touch the seat that might have had a few stray sprinkles on it, okay?

And no, MH - these here are NOT the top toys we want you to buy for us. Forget focussing on 'Sex Shop Etiquette', walk away from the red-light district and instead get us:
1) A cleaner
2) A good night's sleep
3) A minimum of an hour's gentle back-scratching or neck massages in front of the telly every night
4) A carton of milk that stays fresh in the fridge door and never runs out; and
5) Chocolate.

Not hard, is it, but if MH thought you knew that, you wouldn't buy their magazine, would you?












Oh and No. No cardigans. No. NO CARDIGANS. Not now, not ever. George Clooney, Jude Law and John Cusack could all be starkers, buffed, oiled and bronzed and waiting at my front door, wanting me, but if they dared wear one of these hideous items they'd be flung away from me further than a drug cheat's winning discuss throw.

And if Love Chunks came home wearing any of these three get ups, I'd laugh so hard that the afore-mentioned much-needed chocolate and milk would snort out of my nose as an instant thickshake smoothie requiring our newly-acquired cleaner to have to get the mop out again as my neck goes out with the strain of regurgitation via sinus so that I need an intense soft tissue massage and then a nice big sleep under the doona.....



















And I had to laugh (and secretly feel very, very proud) when Sapphire noted Scarlett Johanssen's quote on the front of marieclaire and said in her best, breathy game-show informercial hostess' voice, "Oh Mum look - Scarlett's Proud Of Her Sexual Energy...."

Day Twenty Eight - Appreciative August

Three

We all have our own weird habits. Some we have in common with a lot of other people but don't generally talk about (having the odd wee or nose pick in the shower, for example) and there are other habits that we suspect are pretty well our own to own, if you get my drift. For me, my most longstanding odd habit - which I'm peculiarly grateful for - is my obsession with threes.

My birthday is the 3rd of November, and for all of my active memory I have searched for groups of threes and counted them out like the demented girlfriend of RainMan.

For instance, I'm disappointed that the ceiling tiles in my dentist's surgery are divided into 29 squares across and down - no divisions of three, and it perhaps goes some way to explaining the pain, discomfort and embarassment I've endured there on far too many occasions. Fortunately the wall vents at home are configured as rows of squares by six, so the dental nightmare is somewhat negated.

My daughter's name is a division of three, as is my own. Love Chunks' and my names, separately, are not, but together, they are. I've been obsessed (or was it bored?) enough to mentally count the CDs on the rack and the books on the shelf to see if they fit the numerical formula. The diamond patterns on our living room rug do not. You'd think I'd only need to count them once to work that out, but it's something that I find myself doing every single day I sit down and clap eyes on the damn pattern. This same obsession goes for the number of floorboards in the dining room; the number of knobs on all cupboards, drawers and doors in our bedroom; the shower curtain rings in the bathroom; bottles of wine in the racks; undies on the clothesline and petunias flowering in their pots..... I'm a lunatic!

There are three gold bangles on my wrist that never come off - not for sport or showering and, even though it wasn't planned as such, there are three human beings that make up the little Lockett family.

Threes too (see what I did there), give me many options to 'find' a multiple when one doesn't immediately appear. For instance my birth year is 1968 which is divisible by three, but Love Chunks (1967) and Sapphire's (1999) are not. All I need to do is add them together (3966) and my autistic equilibrium is again in order. Sad, isn't it, that my mind is being wasted on something so futile instead of trying to figure out a cure for Andrew Bolt's existence, tax-free dodges for the super rich or permanently eradicating the next instalment of Australian Idol. *sigh*

More recently I've realised that the number three can in fact help me. Three goodies can cancel out one baddie. Bulldog, for example, has a very common Baby-Boomer name that, until a couple of months ago, caused me to shudder, find a corner, curl up into the foetal position and snart snivelling. Luckily I met Bulldog Nomenclature A, who, under the different name of DMC Confectionery, makes the most exquisite delicacies from Belgian chocolate, South Australian red wines, natural rosewater, local almonds and fruit pectins. She and I met to discuss her product range and ended up spending hours together laughing, talking about our upbringings, families, pets (Jorgi for me, Daschunds for her) and our interests.

Bulldog B made me feel welcome the second I shyly stepped into the SA Writer's Centre. I stood there, blushingly holding my Dummies book, gazing at the shelves of published poetry and serious literature and thought I'd better leave before any contemptuous laughter rang out in my direction. Not so. Bulldog B was thrilled to make my acquaintance: offered me a coffee, brought out heaps of useful material and was most generous with her time and advice.

Bulldog C was a real surprise. Sapphire and I were busy getting dinner ready (a fairly rare occurrence in our home as Love Chunks is the KING of cooking, thank Choc), singing Abba's 'Voulez Vous' but changing the lyrics to suit the dog - "MillyMooo aha, take it now or leave it, now is all we get, La question c'est MillyMoooo" when the door rang.

It was Bulldog C, apologising profusely for disturbing us, but confessing that she'd driven past our house a couple of times over the past week, debating whether to come in and introduce herself. I'm glad she did. Her parents bought this house in 1939, and she was born straight after the war. "I've lived in Queensland since I got married in 1960, and have been down to visit family and just wondered if...."

Of course. I bustled her inside, forced a cup of tea on her and let her wander through each room. Sapphire's bedroom had been hers and her sisters, with the same in-built cupboards in use. Her father worked for Woodies soft drinks until his retirement and earned the admiration of all the kids in the neighbourhood when he played Laurel & Hardy and Three Stooges movies and used the back of the front door as the screen: "We sat in cross-legged rows on the floor of the hallway.... and look, you still have the same doorknobs, doors and ceiling roses!" She told us how the neighbour's horse had got loose one time and stuck its head through the kitchen window to say hello and how she ran away from home and hid up the almond tree wondering why her mother wasn't out frantically looking for her, "I didn't realise that she could see me quite clearly there from the sink."

Even Skeletor, Bulldog's dim-witted but evil assistant has been cancelled out by three nicer individuals who share her name. Sapphire's class teacher, for one. She has somehow managed to tame a room full of cynical 8-10 year olds who can now sing in four harmonies; play violins, grow enough produce to make an arse-kicking vegetable soup and have them feel real disappointment when it's a pupil-free school day. She's earned Sapphire's loyalty and devotion and we often have mealtimes that begin with "My teacher told us that....."

Skeletor 2 couldn't be less like the evil original. She is beautiful and elegant in that infuriatingly natural and unconscious way and her home looks like something out of House and Garden. She's incredibly kind, intelligent and is raising a child on her own with more energy, dignity and commitment than a truckload of Backyard Blitzers with childcare certificates. She has seen me through some very low times and shares my love for cheesy eighties movies. "My hand is resting between two soft, warm pillows."

Skeletor 3 has been a mate since university, when I envied her Datsun and saw tears roll down her face when Glenelg were unequivocally murdered by North Adelaide in the SANFL grand final fiasco of 1987. She lives in France now, with her lovely hubby Ronan and two adorable sons Yann and Etienne and, over twenty years on, looks exactly the same. No lines, no greys, no age - just her usual happy, bright face and sparkly, witty eyes. Regrettez que vous n'ayez pas vécu ici mon ami.

Day Twenty Seven - Appreciative August

People

Alright, alright, before any of you start, I know. Opting to write about people as one of my Appreciative August topics is about as vague as 'earth' or 'air' or 'life' but it's so much more than that.

You know how someone will say, "Oh he's a real character" and you'll invariably think, "Hmm, so he's definitely not the full can of Fanta and I should avoid eye contact at all costs," right? Well I'm here to tell you, in today's modern equivalent of you sitting down and me waggling my pointer finger at you, that there are people out there who are genuine characters. Folk to enjoy; to get to know; to appreciate.

This year, as part of my personal quest in the 'Year of Yes', I've also been trying to create opportunities as well as say 'yes' to any that get thrown my way. One of those was to attempt to get the city paper to publish articles on non-celebrities. You know, people who haven't appeared on Big Brother, weren't invited to Bec and Lleyton's wedding and wouldn't know what an IT girl was unless she was good at killing off Trojan viruses. Folk that aren't dating AFL footballers, or own shoe stores at the age of 24 funded by their wealthy parents, or trucked over as 'interstate talent' based on other equally dubious claims to fame.

I wanted to develop a no-name regular column on local South Australians. By 'locals' I mean those who don't already feature in the news. Not the puzzled-but-later-found-to-be-drug-dealing victims of 'unprovoked' home invasions, meth-heads who lead police on 200km car chases along Port Road at 3am, or the owners of back yard amphetamine laboratories destined to shove a Today Tonight cameraman into the gutter. I mean the friendly bloke who runs the coffee shop; the old lady with the zimmer frame and wicked laugh or the taxi driver who only takes his beloved Bentley out for a spin in the middle of the day when the rush hour has ended.

So far, I've managed to persuade about twenty South Australians aged from 20 to 85 (with perhaps a seventeen year old and a ninety-five year old to extend the range when they finish considering my request for an interview), to answer the same set of questions. The questions are:

• Name / Age / Suburb or town / Job
• The best time I ever had that didn't cost a cent was ....
• The worst job I ever had was ...
• You know what irritates me?
• If my partner was the forgive-and-forget type, I'd love to spend the night with .... because .....
• The last time I laughed was ...
• If I could invent anything it would be ...
• ___ deserves a kick in the backside because ....
• ___ deserves a pat on the back because ....
• The one thing I've learned is ...
• My favourite spot in South Australia is ....

I'm a firm believer that everyone has a story and has something interesting to tell. They may not necessarily believe it, but the above questions, whilst seeming annoyingly cliched and generic, have allowed me to participate in some of the most touching, hilarious and fascinating discussions I've ever had.

There's too much to reveal here, but I'll share some of the answers to the 'If my partner was the forgive and forget type, I'd spend the night with....' question. These reveal only a tiny glimpse of the fun I've had in gaining them:

"Forget having sex with someone else, unless it's Diana Krall for her musical talent and visual appeal. I'd rather have an evening with Johanne Sebastian Bach to hear him play and find out how his brilliant mind worked." (Dan, 46, music teacher and sustainable farmer)

"My wife, no question. I'd hang out with her any time (pause). Although, if I must, I'd say Catriona Rowntree (pause) but only because she enunciates well." (Roc, 47, actor)

"I'm not the forgive and forget type but I'd bend the rules for Johnny Depp. He's a bit of everything, so imagine what he could do...." (Salome, 30, receptionist)

"On looks and strength alone, Andrew McLeod." (Melissa, 26, shop owner). I wonder if my own beloved partner, Love Chunks, would answer the same, but haven't yet asked him.

"Well, obviously Brad Pitt, but then I'd shove him out the door and invite Tim Flannery in for a chat." (Ian, 43, public servant)

"Delta Goodrem, she's hot. I can do without the singing though." (Shane, 30, houseboat operator)

"Daniel Day-Lewis. In any of his weird method acting phases. All the way from Last of the Mohicans to My Left Foot." (Bernadette, 41, Cappuccino Queen)

"My girlfriend I had just before World War II started. (Laughs) Not necessarily for anything naughty, but just to see how everything turned out for her." (Jack, 85, retired mariner)

"Jillian Michaels, the personal trainer from the US Biggest Loser, but I'd like to train with her for the day first. Then Angelina Jolie - I reckon even my wife would let me have that one." (Damien, 34, engineer)

"ALL of my ex-boyfriends - if only to apologise for treating them so badly." (Pauline, 67, retired)

Some of the stories that have been discussed around the questions have been inspirational and extended what I promised was only going to take ten minutes of their time into a fun couple of hours instead over more coffee and even more chocolate. Tidbits have been revealed such as having to fish out dead bodies from the ocean during the war; having a dog become addicted to picking passionfruit off the vine and eating it; noting that a shelf-stacker at Foodland had farted and quipping, "Clean up in Aisle Nine"; being the secretive 'neighborhood ninja' with a slug gun ready to knock off annoying pigeons who crap on washing lines; beating cancer twice before the age of 24; admiring Rove McManus for insisting that tomato sauce be provided at cafes for free......

Sadly, the paper doesn't seem to be interested. I am though, and always will be.

....one of my new best friends, Thomas Schnitzler, the Australian Maitre-Chocolatier for Lindt. He invited me to some Lindt cooking demos, gave me the only Aussie copy of the official Lindt chocolate cookbook and let me kiss him. And yes, he smells like a Lindt ball!

Day Twenty Two - Appreciative August

The telly

I'll be honest. I love television. More accurately, I love watching a great television show; one that you make sure your arse is on the couch for. "Is Sapphire in bed yet? Spicks and Specks is about to start."

As new parents, Love Chunks and I ventured into the DVD, widescreen, cinema-surround sound game relatively early in its availability because we knew that it would form the bulk of our audio/visual entertainment. We are not normally the must-rush-out-and-get-the-latest-electronic-doodaddery kind of people, but we realised that the likelihood of us being able to see something together outside of the home was non-existent, so why not make the experience of seeing things at home a much better one.

Besides, the pain of slowly limping to the Northland Hoyts eleven days after Sapphire's birth, to see the very ordinary 'The Phantom Menace', then come home, stay silent and wait for Love Chunks to see the evening session before we could talk about it was tragic to say the least. I'd been stitched 'the from the nave to the chaps' as Shakespeare described in 'Macbeth' and had to take in a cushion to stay the full course of the movie.

Enough digression, back to the joys of television. Ironically, weeks can go by and the remote control would be lucky if it was troubled by me more than twice a week due to the utter lack of anything appealing to slump in front of. As a kid and teenager, if this was the case I'd still put something on and endure it, but these days I'd rather reach for a book, a DVD or rehash a series that I really did love. Such as.....

Blackadder (esp series 2) - my family first discovered this series when channel seven in its wisdom decided to play it over the non-ratings summer holidays of 86-87. I taped each episode, lent the tape to my apricot-cutting mates and we survived the monotonous ordeal of holiday labouring work by quoting silly lines at each other. Even twenty years since the show, whenever I see Tony Robinson talking with archaelogists on BBC's 'The Time Team' or living out 'The Worst Jobs in History,' I still think, "There's Baldrick!"

Scrubs - like low rise jeans and Nirvana, I was a late-comer to this show and discovered it only in the $10 bargain DVD bin. JD (Zach Braff) is brilliantly funny and prepared to get dressed up, sing, humiliate himself and let us question his sexuality in this ridiculously joyous show. For example:

Janitor: Some hooligan keeps disconnecting the alarm. I told Security to look into it. But no, no, they'd rather catch the guy who's stealing organs from the transplant ward.

Turk: This is the reason why your headache didn't go away: That's actually pronounced analgesic, not anal-gesic. Sir, the pills go in your mouth.

J.D.: (voiceover) I guess what they say is true the people you work with really do become your family. Like your brother, and your sister in law, (shot of Turk and Carla)

......or that cousin you have funny feelings for (shot of Elliot)

......and the crazy angry uncle everyone sort of hopes isn't coming this year (shot of Dr Cox).

J.D.: Dr. Cox, If you want you can come down here and hang out with...

Dr. Cox: Nobody talk, just drink.

J.D.: (voiceover) Ah uncomfortable silences and alcohol... just like Thanksgiving at home.

Seinfeld - when we lived in Darwin, poor old Love Chunks was doing the night shift at the weather bureau and I was working normal hours at the Dept of Education and Employment. The car would literally pull up in the driveway at 6:30am on his return, and I'd get in it at 7:30am to drive back into town. Anyhow, one Saturday afternoon I was watching an episode of Seinfeld I'd taped earlier in the week, and LC was sleeping (the way the shifts were figured out, he only got one weekend off in every six). He came stomping angrily out of the bedroom and told me off: "You're laughing too loudly!". That was Seinfeld. Then and still now.

The Office (UK version). When we first saw this mockumentary, we marvelled at the brilliance of Ricky Gervais as David Brent - he played him exaggerated enough for us to laugh and yet realistic enough for us to squirm, wondering if we ourselves had ever behaved like that and were unknowingly despised for it. My favourite character was the perpetually bemused Tim, madly in love with Dawn the receptionist, and battling it out every day with second-in-command (in the army reserves if not at Wernham Hogg Paper Products.

David Brent: Look at this - "Dutch girls must be punished for having big boobs". Now you do not punish a girl, Dutch or otherwise, for having big boobs.

Gareth: If anything they should be rewarded.

David Brent: No, they should be equal.

Entourage - I'm not the demograph for this US show (being the wrong gender and age) about a spoiled A-list actor with his hangers on. It's rude, the women are most definitely only decorative plot devices and there's a helluva lot of rap music as the soundtrack but it's hilarious. Crackingly fast dialogue with four characters that are essentially selfish and immature but I love them anyway. Johnny Drama (Kevin Dillon) is especially hilarious. "I'm actually a green belt in karate but I'm wearing yellow because it makes my eyes pop."

Flight of the Conchords - their realistically tiny New York apartment; Brett's impeccable taste in home made windcheater designs; their deadpan comments; the spunktastic New Zealand tourism office; and for their songs 'Business Time', 'Sello Tape' and of course, Brett's Footloose-fantastic Angry Dance...... Great lyrics "There's people on the streets getting diseases from monkeys; yeah that's what I said, junkies with monkeys...."

Friends - it's rather dated now, but I'll admit that I eagerly devoured each episode when it was played on prime time Monday nights. I even surfed the web to read the scripts of episodes already played in America, but wasn't interested in reading about Courtney's struggle to have a baby; Jennifer's marriage woes, Matthew's drug addiction or Joey's unfaithfulness. Still aren't.

Wallace and Gromit (the first three shorts) - I loved these when they first debuted and it's a double pleasure to see Sapphire enjoying them now. I'm even prouder to hear her spot-on version of Wallace's Northern English accent when the peanut butter and vegemite is slid over to her for breakfast before school: "Crackin' toast, Gromit."

BBC's version of Pride and Prejudice (1996) - the only one of my two shows that are non comedy. I've always been a huge Jane Austen fan and think that this series started the era of more Austen TV and films that really did their best to respect and complemented her writing and daring world view (for her time, anyway). Witty, wordy and delicious. And yes, Colin Firth. One dark look, that dip in the pond, his perfectly pompous first proposal.....

Survivor (any series). My reality weakness. Yes, the premise is the same in every series - mostly attractive, overly-confident and painful Yanks forced to fight, back stab, win ridiculous events and scheme to get rid of each other. Like Abba, the Cadbury Crunchie and tinned spaghetti on toast, I love it. Seeing models shrink to slices of beef jerky whilst still owning a set of grapefruit-sized knockers is visual comedy at its finest.

Frasier - This show was treated so shabbily by Channel No-Nuts Nine and the repartee between pompous psychiatrist Frasier and his brother Niles was so much fun to hear. I'm just waiting for their season DVDs to go down in price.

(Frasier and Nile's father) Martin: You listen to Bulldog's program?

Niles: Yes, Dad, I can't sleep nights till I find out who hurled what ball through what apparatus.

Niles: Frasier, do you remember the time the Kreizel brothers tied me to their Great Dane and lobbed meatballs down their gravel driveway?

Frasier: I told you Niles, I would have helped you, but their sister was holding me down.

Niles: How could I have missed something so obvious?Frasier: Well, it's not so hard to believe. You were fifteen before you discovered there was a correlation between being beaten up every day and going to school in a Panama hat.

Other shows that I'd love to re-watch (if only to show me that their humor is now out of date, or irrelevant) include:

• The Two Ronnies (some kind of 'best bits' selection)
• Red Dwarf (as with Messrs Corbett and Barker)
• That 70s Show
• Black Books - Dylan Moran and Bill Bailey - heavenly humour!
• Hollow men (getting better with each episode, especially Merrick's character)
• Cheers
• Arrested Development

Shazzbutt!

Impossible to look away....

It's all my own fault. I like to hoik my heaving bulk up onto my hobby High Horse and pontificate to Love Chunks about the crass and clueless celebrities of today.

He always manages to prick my pomposity to a whirring, rapidly deflating balloon when he counters with, "Well you READ the stuff, so they're making money because of you."
"Oh no they're not - I read it online, I don't buy those ~ pause to add a snobby-but-dramatic shudder ~ magazines."

His look of contempt was withering enough to singe my eyebrows. "Haven't you noticed the advertising and pop-ups on every page? They love faux intellectuals like you!"

Humph. Yeah, well.... Take yesterday for example. Richard - I still wear those stupid chunky jumpers from airport souvenir shops - Branson has obviously felt the need to show off more than he usually does. His normal modus operandi is throw around millions of dollars that would be better spent providing malaria tablets and AIDS education to needy communities, to instead ponce about in hot air balloons trying to break records that generate about as much excitement as scum build-up on bathroom tiles.

So very clearly a bloke trapped in a mid-life crisis, he revealed yesterday that he was definitely NOT a Mile High Club virgin and had left his finger prints on a toilet mirror or two. He then 'treated' us to an anecdote about his first experience with Viagra, concluding that "I had to tie something around my trousers the next day to make sure nothing showed." Rest assured, Dicky dear, no-one was looking.

And why oh why did I happen to come across an old Oprah repeat where the clearly deranged Janet Jackson (in a thin phase, so it must have been Michael was still white) tell Oprah that her numerous below the neck piercings left her feeling aroused. All the time. If I'm not mistaken, her current Rump-pumpy partner is a dead ringer for a fresh stack of camel crap, so maybe she needs all the metallic help she can get.

Despite my horror, I remain fascinated. And ashamed of my fascination. I have a book to write, a family to care for, a child to inspire, washing to fold! ...........To read recently that Geri Slapper Spice Halliwell had dated Little Britain's David Walliams....! She had confided to one of those slippery little close insiders that it was the ~*cough*~ size of his wand as well as the magic he could wring from it that made him the Geri-jammin' stud muffin of her dreams. I'm still struggling to work out what is more repulsive: he being attracted to Geri or she deciding that his love muscle was the best thing about him. Pity her daugher, poor little BlueBell Clueless Prancy Unicorny kiddie whatshername thingy.

There are some good sides to being a secret celebrity vomit voyeur however - their pathetic escapades, Brazilian-exposes and faulty fashion choices make me - slightly less sylph-like and moneyed - feel rather good about myself. As such, it's time for some more Self Esteem Boosters!

Kirsten Dunst. She may be only 25, earn millions for her 'acting skills' in Spiderman but even a size zero needs a bra to re-lift and rectify the 'ol rack droop. What's her shirt made out of - my grandma's bathroom curtain?


Steve Martin, 61, married Anne Whatsit, 35 on the weekend. I'm not sure which one to pity the most. (They make *me* look addicted to permatan and people don't call me Fluoro Legs without good reason.)

Poor old boofhead Britney is really just saving reality TV companies a fortune by living out her own trash tube show, isn't she? Not a day goes past that she's not wearing a G-string to the kindergym or driving back from a nightclub with a newly-bought baby harp seal shoved in her naval ring and her two sons occy-strapped to the SUV's bullbar...

This shot is apparently from her latest single and reveals her continued determination to remain a powerful role model to the tweens and has-beens. It's such a comfort to know she was awarded dual custody when her divorce to Devon Spermline was finalised yesterday.

Could this be the face and fate of our dear, sweet, sensitive Britney in 20 years' time? Thanks to drugs, surgery and botox, Courtney now has a mummified mouth that could suck the seeds of a lemon a mile away and has to pluck her bikini line which has moved up under her chin.

When the research laboratory runs out of beagles for experiments, they call on Clinically-Dead Courtney instead. She doesn't feel a thing: she thinks it's Frances looking for the keys to the liquor cabinet.

I'll conclude this post with a picture of horror that is still allowed to roam freely and relatively undisturbed. That's right, Madonna's arms. Do they even have skin covering them any more or does she directly spray paint the sinews and muscles white before she goes out? And is it just me, but is she getting face lifts downwards instead of sideways like Courtney? Is a horse the look she's going for?

* thanks to the Superficial, eonline and go fug yourself for the photos

In the dog house?




































Darling husband, Love Chunks, and a journalist I really respect have both expressed concerns about the photos I've been using on this blog.


Y'see when this little creature was first born a couple of years ago, it was with the simple intention of keeping my 'writing fitness' up in a format that allowed me to rant, mock, rave and prattle on at will, pretty much without fear or favour.


Soon, my other sordid love came to the forefront - trashy tabloid photographs of the rich and the clueless wearing catastrophic clothing choices. These pictures were eagerly 'saved as' by me from the following websites:

http://www.thesuperficial.com/ - funny celebrity faux pas that frequently make me grateful that my budget only extends to a frenzied five minute sprint around K-Mart on a Saturday morning;
http://www.perezhilton.com/ - I've only used one picture from his site (Kylie Minogue, post surgical face stretch) because he scribbles all over his photos and can tend to be more nasty than amusing;
http://www.people.com/people/0,,,00.html - the US 'mother' of our inferior 'Who' magazine and a good source of celebrity pictures;
http://gofugyourself.typepad.com/ - hilariously funny and scathing attacks on starlets with stylists who are even more stupid than they are;
http://thegildedmoose.blogspot.com/ - funny captions to photos, but their standards have slipped of late; and
http://www.eonline.com/ - like People, they are a huge source of tabloidy photos without the bitchiness.


So there you go. I swear, from this day forward, that if I use any image from the above websites or any others (my daily addiction - non-chocolate, I mean - is www.cuteoverload.com, destined to win over even the most avid animal hater), will be to seek permission and/or write and acknowledge who owns the picture.

Truly. And I mean that from the heart of my bottom.



PS - both these photos are mine, unfortunately. The first one I took of Dogadoo, sulking in her kennel after being caught laying a Chum Cable in Sapphire's bedroom, and the second one Sapph took of me - feel free to use this one as a 'before' picture before advertising whatever improvement / face welding / fat blasting technique you like.


So if you live in Adelaide, be prepared for a slightly plumpish and slightly more than insane woman in her late thirties brandishing a camera taking photographs of everything from hoons' rubber skid marks on the local roundabout to close ups of fruchocs......