On Your Marks

I didn't manage to get to the Melbourne Run on Sunday but I did manage the Melbourne Lie In. I did a personal best of 10 hours this year. I've been training long and hard for this one. It's all about having an ergonomically designed doona cover to get maximum results. I am looking forward to next year's Melbourne Couch Slump too.

If they ask what's for dinner I'll stab them

The weekend at last. The Friday lunchtime conversation when hopefully the footy talk has not turned you off your ham and cheese, is predominately the plans for the weekend question. The pressure is on to prepare a list of family friendly, socially engaging, environmentally accepting activities to send the conversation onwards. Having departed a recent female afternoon tea gathering on the basis of having to do my ironing, I felt the breeze of the raised eyebrows shooting skywards from the mothers who do ironing with one hand whilst at the same time bake a cake with the other. Should I feel guilty for answering the weekend question with a big fat nothing? Is it ok to do sweet FA on my days off? What's often provided is somehow a sense of I'm so busy, so therefore I am so important. It's the commitment to the 8 year old who is training for the Sydney to Hobart so therefore we get up a 4am on a Saturday to get to the boathouse or the compulsive dinner party provider who gets up at the crack of dawn to prepare the stock bones for the consomme and confit casual dinner for 17 at 7. Could there be a reverse of getting a life? Get a good lie down perhaps. A firm commitment to a nap on the coach or a promise of spending the entire morning in bed reading the paper until all the pages are stuck together with strawberry jam...watching the yachts sail past. Have fun darling.

Breaking News

Ute-gate. Why are the media so obsessed with this nothing story? It's clearly not of any interest to anyone, not even the most bored of poll watchers could be remotely excited by this. It's like being at a party where you don't know anyone and the only one who will talk to you can only speak Albanian. Are the viewing audience no longer regarded? Perhaps we should just leave the party, turn off the television and get on with the important stuff that we do everyday that the media and politicians seems to be completely unconcerned with. If we are going to get to the point where trivial muckraking like this becomes substituted for nightly news can I suggest a few more gates to add to the list:

• Admitted to not really liking Susan Boyle-gate
• Can't work out why Matt Preston has Marie Osmond's hairstyle-gate
• Think Gordon Ramsay could be sexy if you cut his head off-gate

And to think all you need to do is send an email. God help us when they discover texting!

The peace vote

Again this week the subject of children in the Senate is thrown up again like an overdose of sherbet bombs. Women's rights, equality in the workplace, children reduce greenhouse emissions so on and so forth. Now let's not get all hot under the child restraint collar here, don't forget we are talking about OTHER PEOPLE'S children. So should the child have been turfed out of the chamber like a drunk at a nightclub? If it was disturbing everyone else, then yes. Regardless of whether the child has the right to be there or not what really needs to be asked is, was the child's crying pissing everyone off? Take a vote, motion carried, child carried out. Next item.

Check your details and try again

Could you live without it? I gave this some serious thought as I found myself in a blind rage at the telephone company's anti service system yet again. I get charged if I get a paper copy of the bill, I get charged if I pay online with a credit card, I get charged if the day ends in 'y'. To pay online it takes my computer three days to download their homepage because it contains so much advertising you might as well download the entire program from Cannes one by one. With telephones it seems to be about everything you didn't know you wanted and how they can charge you more for the privilege. I don't want a phone that I can watch tv on, I don't want my phone to give me directions, footy scores or weather reports. I particularly won't take relationship advice from it or ask it if I have met my perfect match. I want my phone to be a phone. Can I have a discount now please? I'm loathed to call them because I know it will end in tears with at least ten minutes of call routing hell and recordings of ... your call is important to us, then to be followed by press one if you are pissed off with our service or press two if you are so pissed off with us only a few rounds with a taser gun will calm you down or press three if you are already looking up the Moran family guide book of problem solving. It's all too hard so I'll just forward the amount into their account to feed the hungry beast again until next month.

Super Everyday Man

How often does the subject come up about women having it all? I'm yet to work out what it all exactly is. If it's everything that your heart desires, don't men want it all too? Surely men are juggling people, job and deadlines as much as women with kids, the cleaning and taxi duties. Not to detract anything from the endless tasks of raising kids, occasionally we should hear about Dad who's juggling 30 people in a day most of which are behaving like toddlers, and he's keeping the inbox as organised as the toy box and moving several millions worth of goods around the country with another at the other end screaming, is it here yet? Super Dad's also have to wipe bottoms, be there at feeding time and deal with the tantrums, and this is just to get out of a boardroom meeting. So let's hear it for both parties in the my day is more shitty than your day debate. We all get there in the end, even superman started out as mediocre man before he got his flying pants.

Room with a flu

I had prospective buyers come through my apartment this week. I wasn't home but hopefully the pile of swine flu fact sheets on the bedside table with a bottle of cough syrup and the scrunched up tissues might have kept the inspection to a minimum. Next time perhaps a live pig in the kitchen might help.

Pink in Parliament

Queensland Premier (not pictured) Anna Bligh was criticised in today's paper for wearing hot pink into the office this week. Who cares. If she comes in dressed as Batman screaming holy pineapple every five minutes it doesn't matter so long as she's doing a good job, yes? Wearing pink to work shouldn't be criticised, nor should any woman who chooses to select a stylishly coloured suit in preference to black, black and more black. Male politicians appear to be able to throw on suits of various descriptions and somehow manage to go without notice and certainly no newspaper comment. The article asks if you or anyone you know has ever worn hot pink into the office and then states unless you are employed by one of the country's many houses of parliament, probably not because outside of government not very many women do. Gee I don't know, I've seen question time on the telly and I've not been distracted by the hot pink outfits. Are these women hiding behind the Speaker or something? Wear pink to the office, the brighter the better and hopefully send out a beacon of light to some very dull and not at all courageous suit wearers. And don't forget to match your accessories, with your permission of course Mr Speaker.

Low Fat Lard

It was all so easy before we had low carb, low GI, low joule and low self esteem according to this picture. There's no nano technology scaring these people off their tv dinners. Having scoffed the last chocolate chip cookie at work today with a flawed excuse to myself that because it's home made, it's not bad for me. It doesn't matter whose home so long as it's not a highly processed item and made by someone who cares, I believe I can eat guilt free. My theory is if you know what it was made from and it's all from natural ingredients ie., not something that was originated in a lab or was developed by NASA then by all means eat yourself silly. Mind you, if this blog lies silent all of a sudden you will know my theory didn't work and the lard got me in the end. But at least I died happy.

If my computer asks more of me than Next, Next, Finish, I will surely jump.

That's Entertainment

A day at home. What a nice thought. Switch on the telly. What could I be missing? Breakfast television gives me all the advice I could possible want including how to save money at home by making things. Today I built an outdoor pergola with environmentally friendly insulation using left over pie containers and old shoe laces, whilst at the same time strengthening my core abdominal muscles and mixing a cake using the new improved cardio egg beater. I turned over to view the View to find my view is very different from their view, Entertainment tonight just simply wasn't and why is it that every time you watch Parkinson he's always interviewing Cilla Black and Michael Crawford who I think died some time ago and he's just propping them up with sticks. I'll be glad to get back to work. I've just got to work out where in an apartment I can fit a pergola.

Good Food and Swine Show

'Victoria On Swine Flu Alarm List' reads today's headlines. Avoid non-essential travel to Victoria it goes on to read. Perhaps we should all be shipped off to an island somewhere so as not to cause mass pandemic, a bit like they used to do with lepers etc. Welcome to the scabby state of Victoria. Well one who was brave enough to join the southern swine population was Gordon Ramsay to flog himself for the Good Food and Wine Show. With the show title bearing little resemblance to the mostly mass produced, flavour and colour enhanced 'easy' food options and magic kitchen gadgets guaranteed to lie idle in the third kitchen drawer, Gordon was a light at the end of the exhibition tunnel. His audience was a mix of reality tv watchers hoping to hear a few words of bother and damnation, there were a few rows of Shazzers who think he's a bit of alright and one or two who probably just like his food. As for a chef on a stage, he cooked beautiful food, a ratatouille with poached fish fillets in the soup which made you want to rush out to the nearest fish monger, go home and fire up the stove. And then as an entertainer...well let's say the cooking was great. His jokes were mostly dick based and lame to say the least but who gives a toss when you can cook as well as he does. At least when they load us all onto the old typhoid ship to be quarantined at least one amongst us will be able to cook. But if he starts with more of the nob jokes... just tell him to shut the fuck up.

Thank heaven for little girls

An advertisement for an expensive private school in a local magazine comes with a close up photograph of a young girl appearing to be pondering life's mysteries over her boiled egg breakfast and states 'she will discover the answer through inquiry-based learning'.

What other type of learning is there? The take it or leave it kind perhaps? The, this is what I was taught so suck it up learning or the much more hoped for, my kid is going to be so smart your kid will increase its IQ just by sniffing my kid's lunch box. Schools, particularly girls schools seem to advertise around the nurturing, caring, young lady embarking on womanhood concept which is all very fine until she comes home and tells you one of her classmates reckons she's done a porn film on utube. Enough to put you off your boiled egg I suspect. Selecting the right school should be based on specific criteria such as how many girls were admitted into rehab at the end of last year, how many have appeared on the cover of Zoo magazine and were there any unlicensed firearms or nuclear devices found hidden in lockers.

The Battle of the Bathroom

With the joy of a long weekend looming, the list of put offs until then begins to grow. Buy food, exercise something that will hurt the next day and last and always least, clean the house. With modern living providing us music devices so small they fit in the palm of your hand, televisions so big you need an extension for a bigger wall and communication so fast you've already read this blog before I've finished typing it - why the hell am I still mopping floors and ironing shirts? And always, always the shower the crappiest job on the housework list stares back in its scale lined glory knowing precious long weekend time will need to be sacrificed scrubbing those tiles with the point of no return soap scum displayed along the shower glass door. I find the only way to tackle it is to put on music as loud as your palm held barbie sized music device will allow and go in with trigger nozzles blazing. Don't come out at least until Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood have finished the Summer Wine, or the chemical fumes have got to you and you've passed out face down in draino. Onward Windex Soldiers...

You are what you eat

Another weekend passes and more leftover newspapers with endless misguided advice about how to live our lives. It took only to page 5 of the Sunday Age to tell us that a burger meal at a well known fast food joint contains less kilojoules than a beef sandwich with potatoes, some fresh fruit, yoghurt and orange juice. Whilst saturated fats win the prize for most likely to make you look like saturated fat, I dare to ask the question of what about the other unknowns that are placed into the food production process that don't fall into these categories? You know the stuff? Looks like food, tastes like food but somehow there's something not quite right. I don't mind buying a product if I know what it is but sometimes when I look at the list of ingredients, well gosh I'm real confused. If I don't know what the hell preservatives 282, 200, raising agents 500 and 450 are then how the hell does my digestive system know what they are? And as far as I know it can't read. And I'm not real sure I want my vegetables put through ionising electromagnetic radiation therapy before they hit my shopping basket because that sounds like something you have to do when you are sick and who wants sick veggies. When you take the time to read the list of ingredients in the supermarket you can begin to think living an Amish life might not be such a bad thing. Some product ingredients look as palatable as eating the radiator from your car. I suspect there are some snack foods out there that would contain equal the nutritional value of eating your couch. My advice is read the labels and if the ingredients look anything like someone's mobile telephone number, step away from the shelf immediately or risk a major service at your next GP visit.