OMG! WTF! she whimpers bravely ...

... have just realised that Sunday morning soccer is on at the same time as Insiders.

Dammit.

First pre-season game Sunday. Training sessions attended: 0 Impeccable excuses (really, seriously impeccable): 3


Feel the fear, and do it anyway.

Go Strikers!

Thrills, Kills and People on the Organising Committee who didn't Think Things Through

I liked the flaming air guitarist, and I can even cop ballerinas in AFL themed tutus.

But it's wrong that Grinspoon, the poor man's Powderfinger and possibly Australia's most overrated band*, opened The Show at the Commonwealth Games closing ceremoany.

And did they have to be singing "Hard Act to Follow"? This is not only a Very Bad Song, but wildy inappropriate in every respect. The title is a lie, and as for the lyrics:

You're a hard act to follow,
Such a fine looking fellow.
I hear your belly is yellow,
You're a hard act to swallow.

It kinda makes me sick,
The way you turn those tricks.
C'mon and light it up,
I wanna feel the rush.

I'll be shooting for thrills when I walk out that door,
You say it's hard to care anymore.

Kills, thrills and Sunday pills woah,
I'm on a mission to kill, still, coz nothing thrills, no.

You're hooked on coke and hoochie,
I want my milk and cookies.
You know your wife looks pretty,
I think your wife looks pretty.

I'll be shooting for thrills when I walk out that door,
You say it's hard to care anymore.

Kills, thrills and Sunday pills woah,
I'm on a mission to kill, still, coz nothing thrills, no.

I'll be shooting for thrills when I walk out that door,
Don't turn around and say you need me anymore.
Popping pieces of pills up off the lounge room floor,
You say its hard to care anymore.

Kills, thrills and Sunday pills woah,
I'm on a mission to kill, still, coz nothing thrills, no.

In happier news, apparently Australia won lots of shiny things, so yay us. Heaps more than New Zealand, but that's certainly not news.


* Killing Heidi also a contender.

Nobody likes me, everybody hates me, but at least I do not have worms

I opened my email this morning to a message from a new friend:

Oh my God! You are the first Blog site person whose 'stuff' I have read- only because your site entry came up when I was searching for something entirely unrelated to you- threadworms in fact and I'll come back to that later.

And how it has opened my eyes! Are you serious? Do you think that anyone gives a shit about your 'stuff'? Do you not have a life? Well, I guess not as you think you look like Sade (yeah, right, if your thumbnail is you- my colleague thinks you are a guy in a dress, but I'm not that rude, there is a line) and of course you are Australian- take it from a Kiwi- being you and being Australian does not actually qualify you as anyone worth reading about and I am just so amazed (well not really as I always knew blogs/bloggers were totally anal (sorry, threadworm connection)) that you obviously think differently.

Dear me, I have never been so bored in my entire life. I would love to devote my entire lunch time to analysing your site, your pretentious use of English and your pseudocomedic sytle, but I feel that your egomaniacal and narcissistic tendencies would, to use more commas, find you, as a blogger, indifferent to such criticism and I'm fed up typing with a sandwich lodged in my mouth.

Getting back to the poor old threadworm- I fear that your life is less interesting than that of the average bottom dweller, so please, for the sake of Humanity, give up this quest to flood this World with your drivel and move on.

Please.

Pretty please.

Rigor (not my real name, but hey, I'm not a pretentious Blogperson)

This is probably a knee-jerk reaction to you bloody Aussies beating us in the pool/velodrome/games/ohshiteverything- don't worry, we like Bronze (and 4th...)


You know, I had guessed his name wasn't Rigor. It's a pretty brutal name to give a kid, and anyway the email said it was from "Peter Rees". As Peter said, he found me doing a search for "threadworm infestations new zealand". The 7th result google turned up is:

crazybrave: February 2006 I totally started masturbating as a result of a threadworm infestation - but let's ... and recent New Zealand research which he says "indicates there are ...

I hope he isn't touching his mouth after he's touched his bottom.

You'll never get rid of them that way, Peter.

In case you wondered what I actually look like ...

Here I am:

















I look very slightly more like this picture than the one below:




















But this one is more accurate for seances.

Via TJ , aka Ms Carmen Electra, and this joint. You have to register first, but feel free to make that bit up like I did. A prize if you can guess who I got third.

Kiss you, Kate

"It was a little death, not being able to make a tale out of the small moments of life and share them with someone for whom they were new."

Kate Grenville wins the Commonwealth Writer's Prize for fiction. The quote above is from her most recent novel, The Secret River, which you should just go out and buy and read immediately.

It appears that my ancient neighbour Kev is celebrating her win with some rousing John Denver tapes.

Suspicions of Corporate Idiocy Confirmed

From last week's AFR "Boss" magazine, in an article talking about the appointment of a person to the role of "Head of Manufacturing" for the Customer Service and Operations division of the NAB:

"Adams says managers in particular were very accepting of the new program. Having already slashed staff and automated systems, they were "at their wit's end" when searching for new productivity gains, he says"

Oh dearie me

Does anyone have a copy of "Football for Dummies" just sitting around? In a moment of foolish excitement, I appear to have joined a soccer team.

I am now thinking this may have been a mistake, mainly because:

I have never played soccer in my life.

I have no idea how to play soccer. I did play hockey for several years, but I was the goalie and as long as I kept the goals out no-one required me to know what else was happening.

I am quite unfit, and in general prefer this kind of thing to running about with a bunch of shouting women with spiky shoes on.

Aren't they scary?

I am looking on the bright side, reminding myself that there will be some quite excellent things about this whole plan, including changing that last point and being able to announce that I'm just popping up to the park for a round of keepy-uppy.

Excellent things my mum says:

No. 1: "You can't shoot a man who was born to hang."



and how 'bout them pineapples, ay?

Sentence(s) of the Day

The fact that I have recently read two really quite dreadful detective stories by Donna Leon* has made me hungry for a decent read. I found it at adelaide writer, where thirdcat says:

It wasn’t a lie. It wasn’t one of those things she just made up so that she could talk to someone she liked, but didn’t know. What Adelaide said was true.

Isn't that just beautiful? Such grace and economy in expressing that observation, and such nuance in the observation itself. Not just how we (mothers of young children, prowling public spaces) sometimes search for another grown-up to talk to, but also that instant attraction to someone - I'd like to know more about you. There's a new woman in my mother's group that I'm drawn to that way.


* Worse than dreadful. Duck loaned them to me to read through the post-op drug fog, but sheesh. Lazy books. You couldn't make a movie out of them, because they don't even have a sub-plot. In a detective story! The only bloody red herring's for lunch, after risotto and before the stewed pears. But thanks, Duck. It's the thought that counts and all that. Still read all of both of them.

What? When? Where? Why? Who could possibly think so?

Dr David Conley is a University of Queensland journalism teacher. "Journalism courses force-feed a shrinking market", his article in yesterday's media supplement in The Australian (not online), contained some mildly interesting stuff about media companies hiring cadets with a degree, but not necessarily one in journalism or communications.

But it also contained some real idiocy:

"After all, doctors and lawyers need certification to prowl someone's biological or legal innards. Anyone, in contrast, can declare themselves a journalist. The internet has accentuated this anomaly, with countless bloggers becoming instant reporters and publishers.

Anomaly? Perhaps they're busy being bloody bloggers and not everyone in the world wants to be a journalist? Not to mention there is a difference between declaring yourself to be something, and having that declaration accepted, said the Queen of Sheba in Canberra late yesterday afternoon.

But even better, was this next bit, utterly without trace of a supporting argument:

If it's important for medicine to be practiced only by professionals then it's even more important that journalism be held to similar standards," said Kerry Green, former president of the Journalism Educaiton Association and ahead of the University of South Australia's school of communication, information and new media.

Now of course journalists and media outlets can significantly affect people's rights - which is why there are defamation laws and conventions about what matters fall within the public domain - but this argument is so stupidly overstated it makes me think those media companies might be onto something in not requiring that their cadets have been trained by Dr Conley and his colleagues.

If you can't say anything nice ...