Drought-Affected

You know that the government’s water saving message is getting through to you when you’re watching the shower scene from Psycho and your first reaction is annoyance that the shower is left running after she’s dead.

DNA

Apparently it’s now possible to live in a CSI-themed house by having your DNA sampled and printed onto a canvas. They’re pretty cool looking, and I’d almost considering hanging a canvas like that in my house, but there’s just the tiniest little voice deep inside me that has watched too many sci-fi shows and is whispering in my ear about government conspiracies and how I should never lick envelopes if they have my return address on them.
It would probably make dating a lot easier too - just take a quick look at your date's DNA and if you don't like what you see, just make a hasty exit.

I quite like the fingerprint art too – it would make it nice and easy if a crime was committed in your house for the detectives to separate your fingerprints from those of the criminal, because it would be magnified right there for anyone to see(can you tell I watch too much crime TV?).

The lip print art I'm not so sure about, because really - no one has lips that look like that. At least, not without the kind of surgery that involves injecting your butt into your face.

Random Facts as Promised

Yesterday I said that I would share something random about myself that most people wouldn’t know. At the time, I hadn’t really thought of anything, but thought to myself - really, how hard can it be to admit that I’m a weirdo? Apparently not that hard at all, because it turns out that I’ve already shared most of the random things about myself that other people might find odd, such as:

• My freakish and totally inexplicable love of Eurovision
• My embarrassing inability to wink
• My extreme dislike of exercise (yes, apparently that makes me weird, although I’m still not sure why)
• The fact that I might possibly be the only person ever to admit that they enjoy painting their house
• My high level of social retardation and the fact that I’m incapable of making small talk

But I did manage to think up another couple of things that I’m willing to confess to that might make you laugh (at me, of course – not with me). I can’t, however, make any guarantees that they’ll be any more interesting than my previously confessed random facts. But then again, I never promised anything interesting, only truthful, so here we go.

Random Fact #1
I don’t wear socks. Ever. In fact, I rarely ever even wear shoes that require socks – if you don’t do any exercise you never need to wear runners, so it’s not really an issue. I’m not even sure if I own a pair of socks at all.

Random Fact #2
I am hopeless at learning song lyrics. For a period of about three years I sang loudly along to ‘April Sun in Cuba’ with absolutely no idea what the words or the title of the song were. Since ‘April Sun in Cuba’ doesn’t actually sound like any other sentence, I just sang nonsense words. I was actually a little disappointed to find out what the lyrics were in the end.

Random Fact #3
I can fold an origami paper crane without any instructions. Also an origami hat, but that’s not quite as impressive. It’s as a result of reading ‘Sadako & the Thousand Paper Cranes’ when I was about 7 years old. I remember that reading the book made me immensely sad in a very un-7-year-old kind of way, and to this day whenever I fold one I still get a little teary.


There, now don’t you feel like you know me a little better and like you might want to confess to a few random facts of your own?

Coincidence & Sharing

Coincidence is a weird thing. How weird is it that of all the blogs that I could be reading worldwide, one that I read regularly and happened to be reading on the weekend is about the same totally random TV series that I had just started watching that exact same weekend? Freaky. Ok, maybe not that freaky, but it was still kind of surprising to me to see someone else talking about an almost 20 year old TV series that I thought everyone except me had forgotten. You have to admit that’s kind of a weird coincidence.


Life is full of odd little coincidences like this, where you discover that some completely random thing that you like and think that no one else could possibly like too is an interest shared by someone you never would have expected.

I recently discovered that an acquaintance of mine shares a similar and equally sad passion for Arnie Movies - in particular ‘True Lies’, which I have seen a very embarrassing number of times. This led to him lending me ‘Pumping Iron’ which I had never seen before. And despite the fact that I probably won't ever watch it again, if we hadn't discovered a common interest i would never have even known it existed. Body building is a sport that no matter how frequently and fondly I hear it described in that fantastic Austrian accent, I will never understand.


Maybe these kinds of things happen more often than we realise. Maybe secretly, everyone is a big Arnie fan or loves watching Northern Exposure but everyone is just too embarrassed to talk about it, because they think they’re alone in the world. We might be missing out on all sorts of cool stuff because we never told anyone that we liked out-of-the-ordinary things.

Having said that, I’d like to encourage everyone to share a random interest this week on their blogs or maybe in their everyday lives, because you might find out something interesting about someone you know. Tomorrow I’ll share something completely random about myself. That’s not a promise that it will be very interesting, of course, but it will most definitely be random.
And possibly embarrassing.

Premature Congratulations

Someone from an opposition company just rang up to congratulate me because he heard 'on the grapevine' that I'm pregnant and about to give birth!!!! What the...?! This is news to me since I'm not pregnant and as such NOT ABOUT TO GIVE BIRTH!

I didn't speak to him directly, so I'm not sure what kind of messed up grapevine he got this info from, but I'm very tempted to call him back and yell down the phone 'Are you calling me fat?!!!' Just to see what reaction I get. I think he would be so horrified that he would forget that we've never actually met in person so there's no way he could possibly have anything to say about how I look.

V8 Longing

I miss my V8. Even though I know that saying that probably makes me seem like a bit of a Bogan, I’m willing to accept that, because my car was like a member of the family. I still have the old car, but recently I upgraded to a new one – a little 4 cylinder i30. It was the sensible, grown up thing to do, but all the same, I can’t help but miss driving my old car. It was a beautiful 1977 Aussie muscle car with all sorts of completely endearing old-car faults that were all over-ridden by the joy you get from driving a classic car with a whopping big V8 motor.

Last night I was driving home in my i30 (wondering if it was still running because it’s so incredibly quiet) when I came up behind a slow moving van. As I put my foot down to overtake, I was suddenly struck by an incredible sadness and longing for my old car. In a 4-cylinder, overtaking is a chore. In my V8, it was fun. Every drive was a joy because you could feel the car sticking to the road. You felt every bump, every curve and you didn’t have the luxury of sticking on the cruise control and zoning out completely.
On a hot day, you would wind down the windows and drive as fast as you dared because there was no air conditioning. On cold days you would have to wipe down the windscreen every time you stopped at a light so you could see out because there were no demisters.

I guess it sounds like a bit of a pain, but I was very attached to that car, and I guess that’s the reason it’s still living in my garage instead of being sold off.


I wonder if I could fit a V8 into the i30?

The Soppiness Machine

Super-Facebook-Soppiness makes me want to vomit into my handbag and mail it to the guilty party with a note that says “since we’re sharing...”

How do people not understand that Facebook is a public space, not a private place for them to spew fountains of gushiness at their loved one?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not anti-affection – everyone gets a little gooey like that on occasion (whether they’ll admit it or not). It’s just that I very firmly believe that it’s a private thing between you and the one you love – not you and the 400 people you’ve added as friends because you might have brushed past them in the hallway of a random building somewhere once back in 1972.

I have one particular friend whose girlfriend churns this stuff out as if she were a purpose built sop-machine. No matter how obscure and unrelated to her my friends status updates may be, she invariably comments in some way about how much she loves him and misses him and wants to kiss him.
If he comments on the football, she tells him she loves football as much as she loves him. If he comments about being tired, she gives a long winded speech about how she hates it when he leaves her in bed and that she’s cold and lonely and wants him to come back and hug her. And everything is followed by xxxooo – as if she can’t string a sentence together if it doesn’t have a big line of hugs and kisses trailing off the end.

Someone really needs to explain to her that Facebook’s real purpose is to keep you amused and distracted when you should be working and to give you the tiniest sense of satisfaction when you ignore a friend request from some girl who was an evil bitch to you in high school.

I'm Not Alone

So a while back I blogged about how I had no idea what any hand signals meant, and how if I was in the army, I would probably get shot pretty early on because I have no idea what all that hand signalling rubbish that you see in movies is all about.

Well according to my site stats, my page was recently found by someone from a US Armed Forces computer who was searching for ‘army hand signals’. Turns out even the people who use them have no idea what they mean. That, or there’s some person in the Army out there who, like me, is concerned that understanding hand signals might be important at some point. Good luck with that, Army person. Let me know if you work out what the hell all those weird gestures mean.

Some excuses to start the week

So you’ll have to forgive me for being slack about posting last week, but it’s been quite a busy one. It was my mother-in-law’s wedding and a friend’s 30th birthday - and to top it all off, I got a fantastic almost-migraine that had me in bed all through Friday and Saturday and left me feeling ill all weekend. Fun times.

Ahhh, there’s nothing like starting the week with excuses. But I’m trying to make up for it by posting twice today. Does it count as twice if one of those posts was supposed to be Saturday’s?

The wedding was a Sunday night thing, which is fine, but in all honesty, I am absolutely stuffed this morning. It finished up early – about 10:30 – but a wedding is still a long day, even when it’s shorter than average. And because I’m still not well, I was kept up all night by these crazy dreams about running around the airport about to miss my flight because I’d lost my bag with my ticket in it. Perhaps the headaches mean that I’m going nuts.

After thinking the dress dilemma through on Friday/Saturday, I decided on the pretty one rather than the sexy one and it was definitely the right choice. I had a whole lot of strangers tell me that it looked really nice, so that’s got to be a good sign. Actually, they weren’t strangers; they were relatives-in-law. I think. To be honest, I have no idea. They’re the kind of people you see maybe once a year, and when you do, you can’t ask their names because they all remember your name and you’re stuck in that kind of awkward conversation that goes exactly like this with every single person:

Them: Hi Torrygirl!
Me: Oh, hi....er, ah...(giving up on trying to remember their name) How are you?
Them: (as if we’re long time friends) I’m great! How have you been, I haven’t seen you in quite a while!
Me: (not quite believing we’ve ever met before) Er, yeah, it’s been ages hasn’t it?
Them: How are your parents? And your brother and sister? And that cute little niece and nephew?

And that’s about where I give up and try to sneak away from the conversation without them noticing - which mostly ends up with them thinking I’m really rude, but since I only ever see them once a year, I’m not that fussed about what they think.

Except, of course, for the bit where they tell me I look nice ;)

I Missed It!

Oh No! In the chaos of the wedding weekend, I didn’t get around to blogging on my absolute favourite holiday of the year!!!! Saturday was International Talk Like A Pirate Day and I missed it!!!

I was going to blog like a pirate today using this tool

and Google stuff in pirate speak here

But instead we ran around all day preparing for the wedding and going to a 30th that got rained out (actually hailed out to be more precise).


What I had been hoping to share with you on International Talk like a Pirate Day is a little insight into accents that I had. Despite the fact that I missed the day, I’ll share it with you anyway, because let’s be honest, Pirate stuff is interesting every day.

Whenever you watch documentaries about movies and stuff, Actors are always saying how an Australian accent is one of the hardest for them to imitate. In fact, I have yet to hear a convincing Aussie accent from anyone in Hollywood. Thinking about talk like a pirate day, it struck me that the American accent is a lot like a pirate accent. All of the ‘r’ sounds are pronounced like a pirate style ‘arhh’, whereas an Australian ‘r’, on the other hand, is pronounced more like a terrified yelp - ‘ahhh!’

So basically, if you’re an Aussie who wants to sound American, try a bit of a pirate accent and if you’re an American who wants to sound like an Aussie, just sound a bit terrified when you speak and that should do the trick!

Happy belated Talk Like A Pirate Day everyone!