Bewitched by an email

I just got an email from a guy whose name is Darren Stevens. This made me giggle, so I told some other people at work. None of them understood why it was amusing. Suddenly I feel quite old.

Also, I can't get the theme song from 'Bewitched' out of my head now.

Home Alone

KJ is interstate again tonight, as he quite often is. Usually being alone in the house doesn't bother me at all - in fact I usually enjoy having the time to myself. And I've never been one to get scared just by being alone.

But tonight, for some stupid reason, I decided it would be a perfect night to get a start on watching season one of Dexter. And I have to admit that I've managed to freak myself out a little bit. Home alone at night is not the best time to watch a TV show about a serial killer that breaks into peoples houses and chops them into little pieces.

It's just that little bit creepy, and while horror stuff doesn't freak me out, creepy stuff does a bit.

Probably should have watched something else instead.

If I don't ever blog again, look for me in a garbage bag (or two) at the bottom of the ocean somewhere.

Man vs Food

After a month of non-stop writing, I feel a bit guilty for not having written anything since Monday. But it’s been one of those weeks where my brain just hasn’t wanted to work in a way that is capable of stringing whole sentences together that are worth reading. I think I need a holiday.


Last night I was introduced to the wondrous TV show that is ‘Man vs. Food’. Basically a guy travels around the USA finding the massivest meals he can, and taking on restaurant challenges to eat them. I watched him attempt to eat a 7 ½ pound hamburger in under an hour. Having just eaten dinner myself, it seemed even more sickening, because with a full stomach I couldn’t even contemplate the idea of someone attempting to eat a burger that big. The fact that we had a Greek food banquet for dinner and probably ate a couple of pounds of food ourselves seemed insignificant compared to this burger.


What really got me about the show was the part of the episode that introduced me to a dish I had never heard of before, and something that convinced me that the higher the population gets in a country, the more willing the people become to eat anything they can dream up, no matter how bizarre or sickeningly fatty.

That dish was ‘Chicken Fried Steak’.
Someone takes a piece of steak, coats it in flour and deep fries the sucker until it’s crispy. Then it gets slathered with gravy and voila - your deep fried dinner is complete.

I can’t believe someone came up with a dish like that. Who in the world decided that steak was something that could do with deep frying? Of course, I would definitely eat it – how could I not when my love of unhealthy food is so great? It’s still pretty gross though.


The fact that the guy on this TV show is able to find so many enormous meals is amazing. I don’t think food like that exists here in Australia. Sure, we have restaurants that advertise that they serve extra-large meal sizes, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so fantastically huge as some of the things he eats. The only thing I can ever recall coming across that was big enough to rate as a dish on that show was served at 'The Great Australian Ice-Creamery'. It was called ‘the kitchen sink’ and was basically a 9 litre ice cream sundae. It had every flavour and every topping, and they served it in a mini sink-shaped dish.
Now that is a challenge that I definitely couldn’t do – I struggle to eat a regular serve of ice-cream, so 9 litres would never, ever happen.



I may have to rethink my idea of a trip to the US, because there's a very good chance that with junk food available to me in sizes like that, my trip could end with a heart attack rather than a flight home.

I think I’ll just have to watch the rest of the Man vs Food series so I can enjoy my love of junk food vicariously while it clogs someone else’s arteries instead of my own.

Glenn Ford

I'm watching an old old movie on late night tv - 'Gilda', with Rita Hayworth and Glenn Ford and I've just realized that Glenn Ford is an absolute dead-ringer for a guy I used to date.
Now I can't look at him the same way anymore. Instead of a suave 1940's movie star, I can only see a sneaky Butcher.

Survival Skills

Yesterday we went bed shopping. Bed shopping would have to be the greatest form of shopping possible. I say this because it is the laziest form of shopping possible, and I’m all about maximum laziness.

Basically, bed shopping involves sitting in the car until you get to the bed shop, then lying down on lots of super comfy beds for extended periods of time. Finally, after lying down all day, you pick whichever bed was the comfiest, and then you go home where you either sit down on the couch, or go to bed. In my case I decided to nap on the couch, because it’s way comfier than our bed, which is completely stuffed. Stuffed in the broken sense, that is – not in the full of stuffing sense.

Can shopping really get much lazier than that?

The worst part is that after picking the most comfortable mattress our budget would allow for, we had to come home to our crappy mattress with all of its lumps and dents. The new mattress won’t arrive for about 4-6 weeks. So last night my body threw a tantrum at having to sleep on the crap mattress after spending all day on something that is so much better. It knows that something more comfortable is coming along.


The sales guy that helped us pick out the bed was a mattress guru. He knew everything about mattresses. I always wonder about people who have become experts in their field, especially when it’s something so specific. I mean, this guy knew everything possible about mattresses, posture, spinal alignment. He could also tell how much we both weighed by looking at us - but that’s a whole other story (suffice to say that as far as women are concerned, this is not a desirable skill for a man to possess).

It strikes me often how random it is to be such a specialist at something that is so entirely non-essential. I’m exactly the same - I know bucket loads about playgrounds and playground equipment. I know about standards in different countries, entrapments and safety surfaces. I know about materials and UV ratings of plastics and all sorts of completely random junk that is specific to one tiny industry. What I’m getting at here is hard to explain, but I guess it just seems kind of odd that such a level of expertise can exist entirely as a result of consumerism.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that we suddenly found ourselves in a ‘Tomorrow When The War Began’ kind of situation, and the country was taken over by some nameless foreign army. Everyone had to stop working and our lives just became all about surviving. If we had to rate the usefulness of each person’s skill set in a survival situation like that, I’m guessing that skills like ‘supreme playground knowledge’ and ‘mattress guru’ are probably going to be pretty low on the list.

If we were in a ‘Lost’ kind of situation and skills like medical training and weapons use became essential, a computer nerd like me would probably be one of the first to die a horrible death in aid of setting up the story.
Although, I guess to be fair I would kick arse at the whole computer/button pushing thing. But after that my days would be numbered.

I guess what I find the weirdest is that there are so many people who are exactly like me – and we far outweigh the people with the essential survival skills. Maybe I need to learn some kind of useful survival skill that would make me indispensable in an emergency. But what would that skill be? Is one useful skill enough to override a plethora of absolutely pointless knowledge? And most importantly, can I learn this new skill without compromising my supreme laziness?

Crazy Over CCTV

A week or so ago, this horrible and kind of odd thing happened here in Australia where a woman on a train platform got distracted for a second, and the pram with her 6 month old baby in it rolled onto the train tracks just as the train came into the station – and the baby survived without barely a scratch on it.

Yesterday I finally saw the CCTV footage of it happening and I must be going crazy because I had nightmares about it all last night. I’m not sure what it is about it that bothers me so much given that the baby survived – I think it’s the fact that I’m a bit weird-ed out by babies and their fragility. Maybe it was watching the mother freak the fuck out after it happens (understandably). Or possibly it’s because of that hopeless feeling you get when you’re watching something horrible about to happen and knowing that you can’t stop it. Either way, who wants to see that happening no matter how fortunate the outcome was?

I’m pretty sure that what makes me even crazier than having nightmares is that my other thought on seeing the footage was ‘Damn that must have been a super strong pram, I wonder what brand it was?’

Inspired by Maurice

Recently I watched an episode of Northern Exposure in which Maurice’s brother dies, and he begins to worry about who will become heir to the Minnifield empire. He tries having Chris as his new ‘son’, but it doesn’t work out. Later in the episode, he has a conversation with Joel that really stuck in my mind:

MAURICE: The Minnifield empire will not bear fruit in one man's lifetime.
JOEL: Yeah. I heard it didn't work out with you and Chris.
MAURICE: Yeah.
JOEL: I'm sorry. You know, maybe you can start a trust. The Minnifield foundation. It worked for the Rockefellers and the Gettys.
MAURICE: No. I've come up with something else, Joel.
JOEL: Really, what's that?
MAURICE (deadly serious) : I've decided to live forever.

I was thinking about this last night and it struck me that Maurice might be on to something. Like Maurice, I could protect my empire simply by living forever. Ok, so I don’t have an empire yet – but when I do, it will need protecting, and eternal life seems the easiest way to go about this.

Let me tell you why this is going to work.

Firstly, it’s a well documented fact that I am inherently lazy. I don’t exercise unless forced to for some reason. The most amount of voluntary exercise I like to do is to walk from my car to my office and back again. While this might seem like a lifestyle choice, I maintain that it is, in fact, my body’s innate nature. In fact, it’s entirely possible that my body is so lazy that it will never develop a deadly illness, never be bothered to age, never muster up enough energy to cause me to do any of the things that lead to a body’s death. So as long as I don’t get hit by a bus, I should be fine.

Secondly, I eat a lot of foods with preservatives in them. Surely this can only help to stem the flow of old age and prevent my body from decaying. If it doesn’t work quite like that, at the very least I’ll be the best preserved corpse around.

Thirdly...ok, so I can’t think of a third reason why. But no one said that explaining immortality was easy, so I guess two will have to be enough. Now all I need is my empire and I’ll be set. Although if I can’t manage to come up with an empire I guess I’ll just have to settle for living to a normal age like everyone else.

Embarrassing Illnesses (not mine, luckily)

Because, thanks to the magic of Foxtel, we have a hundred and something TV channels, last night I was able to watch a lovely show called “Embarrassing Illnesses”.

The gist of the show was that people who had what would be considered embarrassing illnesses went to see doctors who helped them out while explaining how they shouldn’t be embarrassed because these sorts of things are so common. I got to see wonderful things like bad breath, ingrown foot warts, a penis with an almost 45 degree bend (!!), a woman with a prolapse (yet another possible joy to having a baby that I didn’t need to know about) and a man with a third nipple.

Obviously the people on the show can’t have been too embarrassed by their illnesses, because they allowed themselves to be filmed and broadcast worldwide – and in particular the woman with the prolapse showed waaaaay more of her problem than I wanted to see. And yet, the man with the wonky what-not had his bits pixellated out. Odd. Maybe it was personal patient choice.

You have to wonder what kind of TV producer comes up with this stuff. Was he a man with an embarrassing illness of his own? Perhaps the entire show was an elaborate way for him to find out about his illness without actually having to see a doctor himself. And what kind of audience were they trying to cater to? It can’t just be people like me who are channel hopping and left it on while waiting for something good to start. Surely that isn’t a valid category of viewers that people try to cater to.

Perhaps I shouldn’t try to think too far into the reasoning behind it – after all, I think the quality of the program is summed up by the point where the buff and bronzed ‘Dr Christian’ took it upon himself to inform beach-goers about the risk of skin cancer and proceeded to slather sunscreen all over two young bikini clad girls.

Quality programming.

Sick

I have a cold. All I really want to do is crawl into bed and sleep until I’m better, but unfortunately it’s a proven fact that the second you start to feel even the tiniest bit sick, work suddenly gets ridiculously busy and you don’t even have time to think about sleeping, let alone do it.

I’m losing my voice too. It’s not so bad, because luckily I’m a huge computer nerd and can just chat to everyone online or via text message. In fact, if KJ was away on business, I think I could probably go a good two days without actually talking to anyone if I really tried. Although it would probably involve a lot of avoiding phone calls and hiding when the doorbell rings, so instead I think I’ll go with the ‘dope-myself-up-on-drugs’ approach and spend the weekend in bed watching more Northern Exposure and trying to signal KJ to bring me more orange juice without actually having to speak.

Actually, I heard somewhere that drinking whiskey or bourbon is supposed to help get rid of a cold, so maybe I'll ditch the OJ for some JD or JB and see how that goes. If nothing else it should definitely help me sleep!

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.

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.

Silent Movie

I’m watching the TV with the sound off and making up my own story. It’s a lot more interesting than the actual story. I have no way of backing up this claim, of course, because I can’t hear what’s going on, but the characters in the show tell me that my version is much better, so I can only assume that they’re right.

I’m not crazy and hearing voices or anything, I just put the TV on mute by accident and now I can’t see where I put the remote and I’m too tired to get up and look. It’s better this way, I think, because I get to have a happy ending whenever I want and if I don’t want a happy ending I can turn it into a heartbreaking melodrama in the blink of an eye.

The only real problem with this is that I’m watching one of the Law and Order shows, so it becomes hard to explain all the sudden deaths and violent crimes when you’re making up a love story. I guess it’s more of a tragic love story.

Two Things I Noticed Today

Two things I noticed today:

1. I am becoming way too desensitised to violence on TV.
   
   
2. I am very quickly turning into a boring housewife.

I was watching law and order re-runs on TV1 tonight (I watch a disgustingly large amount of TV) and a very dodgy looking man was pouring ball bearings, nails and screws into a glass dish - obviously on the pretext that he was making some kind of shrapnel bomb. I watched him do this and took it in without thinking twice. I knew what he was up to before any explanation had been made - a sign of watching too many cop/detective shows.
The saddest part is that while watching him pour these ball bearings into the glass dish, I looked at it and thought to myself 'that is a really good sized Pyrex baking dish. I could make a really great lasagne in that dish.

Wrong or what?!

Tea for Two (Thousand)

Tonight I'm watching elderly British ladies pretending not to be ecstatic that their mother's mother's grandfather's brother's kitschy tea pot is worth 2000 pounds. I love the guilty look that they give when the valuer says 'unfortunately it seems to have been scoured with steel wool at some point which has faded the pattern and halved the value' and you know that they were the ones who did it an hour earlier in an attempt to clean it up before bringing it on to the Antiques Roadshow.

I've always wondered, what does one do with a 2000 pound teapot? Once they tell you that your ugly old china is worth a mint, do you immediately sell it? Or do you put it back into the cupboard where it has always lived because it was too ugly to have out in public and forget about it? More importantly, if you did try to sell it, would there actually be anyone out there who would want to purchase it? Surely there has to be some kind of limit to the market for crusty old tea pots with satanic looking clowns painted on the side.

Collecting things seems to be a hobby of choice. I'm thinking i might take up collecting something, just as soon as I can think of something worth collecting. Thoughts so far include stubby holders (very useful), spoons (will be the envy of my nursing home when I'm 90) or toenails (seem suitably disgusting). I've excluded newspapers (fire hazard) and empty bottles/cans (stupid and pointless). Any suggestions?