The Y (shaped coffin) Gen

Have you ever wondered who would actually send in a letter to a magazine or newspaper asking for advice about relationships? I used to think that the editors made them up until today when I came across this..."My boyfriend and I have an awesome sex life, but I'm a bit worried that I'm not fully normal..." No shit Sherlock. How old are you, twelve? You can't construct a sentence and you are worried about finding your G spot? The response is as usual a guarded generalist construction of kind words and technical terms that our dear letter writer either can't spell or is not old enough to know she has one. Recently I had the unfortunate opportunity to peruse a copy of Cosmopolitan at a recent hairdressing appointment. Given that the content was enough to make your hair not only curl but stand on end and then fall out and without sounding all Tony Abbott, a bit of centrefold action with a sufficiently wide stable was always a bit of fun under the lid of the school desk but now it's all so serious and not even particularly good advice. I long for a columnist to really provide some healthy and useful tips like "Dear Miss Awesome, stop obsessing about this shit and get out and have a life. Just because you saw it on television doesn't mean it happens. And get some English Grammar tutoring for fuck sake". Sick!

This Sportless Life

I've tried. I've tried to watch the tennis but I don't really understand it. I don't understand the rules and don't like that grunting noise they make. I don't have the gene that allows the brain receptors to understand anything relating to sport in any way. It's like an uncontrollable shutdown of all senses the minute someone starts talking about sport. I've often envied the idea of spending an afternoon relaxing in front of the telly watching mindless sport to forget the woes of the day. Cricket looked like a relaxing thing to watch, I gave that a go for at least 3 minutes and then wondered why the only man without safety head gear was the old guy standing in front of a speeding ball that only required a man with a small bat to move slightly to the left or right and he would be knocked senseless, not my idea of fun. I tried the winter games as a relaxing visual exercise until the figure skater went you know what over you know where and gashed her knee leaving blood and knee cartilage all over the ice. I nearly threw up and vowed never to watch it again. So as much as I'd like to get into the finals and semi finals of anything, there is no point fighting it, no remedial class or Ipod App will help me with this one.

Hotel luxury at your Beckham call

"VICTORIA Beckham has been offered £25 million to design a luxury hotel in Dubai" according to today's Herald Sun. Such talents this girl. After a hard day doing....gee I'm not really sure, then a quick trip across to the middle east where she can pop open her Gucci pencil case and voila she's an architect. Apparently all you need is as much warmth and personality as a compass set and a body no wider than a set square, and you're off. What surprise awaits us in the Posh Palace, lots of mirrors, a mini bar full of bird seed and loose covers for all the couches so you don't slip down the back when you sit down. For twenty five million pounds I think I could whip up something a bit posh. I might even throw in a packet of peanuts. Just don't feed them to the celebrities.

Like an extra virgin

God bless politicians that tell women to save themselves for marriage. Because that's exactly who we should turn to for moral advice!! In today's Age we read that Tony Abbott believes that women should remain virgins until they are married. Not men and women. Just women. Men can shag themselves senseless but women need to stay at home and do cross stitch or something. Asked what advice he gives his own daughters on sex dear Tony tells us it should be treated as ''a gift''. A gift like a house brick that should be wrapped up in pretty paper and hurled through his window for saying something so stupid. He should be forced to sit through an entire season of Sex And The City until he gets it. Saving 'it' for marriage is as outdated and irrelevant as a glory box and not going on a pre-wedding diet. So sorry to bust your little fantasy Tony but the only virgin required in any home is the olive oil on the kitchen bench, or the bedroom depending on your fancy.

Qwerty throws a wobbly

I turned on my computer today and an error message appeared telling me that a "major" error had occurred on my system and that I should report it. Rather than appear a complete dobber I declined the offer of "send report" and selected the other option which means I don't really care and just want to get onto my computer as quickly as possible. What my computer gets up to during the day whilst I am at work is of no concern of mine and provided it goes on when I push the on button, all is good in the garden of good and evil (that's computer speak). I suspect my computer's attempt to attract my attention is based on the fact that on Sunday I purchased a phone thing that enables me to read my emails and poor old computer is feeling a little used and abused. With fear of being replaced by a shiny black gadget the size of a cigarette case and just as healthy, poor old computer stares back up at me looking more dust top than desk top. I'm pleased to say that the major error has caused no prblm *kOS B( w /;1jd iubsb k dii888asmxm! Shit.

Throw another aussie on the barbie

I fail all things Australian according to the listed Aussie icons in today's papers. I don't like sport so therefore I am unaustralian or should I say austrayan because that's how it's now pronounced. I don't drive a ute, don't drink beer, don't like shorts and thongs, I think barbecued food tastes like the inside of my shoe and "Aussie Aussie Aussie" makes me want to reach for a baseball bat. Is it just me or is there not much on offer for Aussie women here? Getting back to the great Aussie barbecue, what is the male obsession with them? It's all about granite versus stainless steel and I've got more burners than you. Size does matter and she will want me even more for my big rotisserie. It's never about actually preparing a meal, it's more about landing the space shuttle in the backyard. No matter how big the outdoor kitchen appears and no matter how many wok burners you have if you can't cook in the kitchen, throwing food on a hot plate outside doesn't make it any tastier. Maybe that's where the beer comes in! Oi, Oi, Oi...whack!

The Invasion of the Cane Toes

How many is too many pairs of shoes? Clearly, shoes for casual, shoes for work, shoes for dinner and shoes for walking. When it is so easy for men to get away with three pairs of shoes why do women feel the need to buy more? At the demise of the pointy toe my mangled toes all breathed a collective sigh of relief. As they are now all leaning into each other at such an angle, they have formed a very close relationship from years of being bound into points so sharp you could slice tomatoes with them. The welcomed return of the round toe was short lived to the current trend of heels so high they require a planning permit. When will we learn! Stripper heals as they are so affectionately called may be the personal protective equipment of the exotic dancing industry but there seems to be no fireman's poles I feel the need to dance with. So therefore the rows of chiropractic superannuation shoes leave me left with the granny flats and shoes with Velcros straps that can only be described as vegetarian. Australian made stylish court shoes are a rarity and the rubber thong continues it march southward through the wardrobes of Australia like the cane toad. And probably just as toxic. Apparently if you lick them you can hallucinate!!

Windsor or Wanker?

I was disappointed the day I was born to find out I wasn't a member of the royal family. Any royal family for that matter, Danish, British, Upper Mongolian, didn't matter really. I'm all in favour of everything royal. Royal Doulton, Royal Selangor, Royal Childrens Hospital, Chocolate Royals (biscuits, where have you been??). Don't bore me with the tax payer expenses crap when superstar nobodies are paid to come out here and prop up local events even though they have no idea where they are and only came for the free booze and a suite to stash the blondes. Be thankful the Royal visit doesn't include a press conference with a slumped over RayBan wearing prince reaching for the water bottle and responding to the usual questions about first impressions of Australia as "yeah, it's great being here" and the next question about first impressions of Australian women (insert country) giving them a run for their money. No I'm happy that they don't sing, they don't shave their heads and tell everyone they're going to rehab, they don't have award ceremonies and they don't have comebacks. They just like dogs and horses and that's ok with me.

Ladies and Gentleman welcome onboard flight dazed and confused

I had the joy of experiencing domestic air travel over the weekend. I began dieting in advance for my nude photo shoot at security but am still to see the proofs. Under the guise of customer service, the chumps that we are go along with the do it yourself (yes, this one again!!) print your own boarding pass and save you the time blah, blah, blah, fairytale. The reality is that those who have saved the airline the cost of printing paper are in a queue five times longer than the technology deniers who only have three people until they reach the check in counter. And as luck would have it when you do inch your way to the counter the person before you wants to check in a horse or something and this requires consultation with airline personnel that have not only left the building but are probably home tucked up in front of the telly with a mug of tea watching Air Crash Investigations. When finally I pass cattle muster and am fed through the gates towards the holding kennels for the great unwashed ie., economy passengers, I await the boarding call from the voice of the deep. Unfortunately the voice of the deep was retrenched and is replaced by yet another airline representative called "Bree" whose bubbly announcements leave you even more confused and you begin to wonder if your spoken language option was somewhere missed from the sheet. Bree excitedly tells me that a flight (number incomprehensible) has been rescheduled to board from gate ... silence, flick, flick, flick and then she pisses herself laughing. Dear Airline People, please don't put the Bree's on the loudspeakers if they can't read simple instructions. As it turns out it wasn't my flight and I was able to board my plane to Sydney in relative ease. I sat in my seat, fastened my seat belt and listened for the announcement from another voice from the deep. "Ladies and Gentleman welcome aboard flight 854 to....silence, flick, flick, flick, sound of pissing oneself with laughter...Sydney. My name is Bree and I'm your flight attendant this evening". My only hope is that the captain either is a) called Roger or something a bit more Skyways International and b) hope that his sheet contains more information than hers.

It's all just hot air

Why do men get so excited about cars? I know as much about the maintenance of my car as the average man knows about eyelash curlers. And what's more, I resent that I'm expected to. Today it was pointed out to me that my tyres were near flat and they needed attending to. Sensing a major lack of interest and knowledge on my part my automotive adviser went on to describe compression, loosening and tightening of valves and I'm sure much more but my mind wandered off into a blank abyss (without might I add offering to fix them). I have no interest in cars, ever. I purchase cars like I buy nail polish, "Gee I like the colour, I'll take it, thanks bye now". The car could have nothing under the bonnet for all I care so long as it goes. So now I have to resort to "getting in a man" to do something about the car and no doubt he'll want to show me how to help myself to fix my car problem. This is the problem. The day we let petrol stations do away with attendants was the day it all went wrong. And as we know the man behind the counter in the service station whilst probably studying a double degree in science and law is only able to offer me a chocolate bar and take my money. We've been conned into believing that self service is good for us. The much offered 'Do it yourself' and 'self installs' are a nothing more than the opportunity to remove jobs for people along with their salaries. The guy behind the servo counter could probably hook up his laptop to your car and re tune the engine to last you another 50 years but in the name of profits he needs to stay behind the counter with his feet nailed to the floor and be paid no more than the cost of a carton of cigarettes.
So whenever I'm offered the opportunity to do it myself the answer is no. That's not my job and you should thank me that I'm thinking about trying to save yours. And no I don't want a buy two chump bars and get fat free deal.

Climate change in the corner of the room

Yes it's hot. It's 42 degrees. I have insects crawling on the outside of my window trying to get in because they know I have air conditioning on (note to self, must get out window cleaner to removed deep fried stick insects from window ledge). "Catastrophic" I'm hearing over and over again, fire danger, danger Will Robinson, be alert, alarmed and have your fire plan ready. When did summer become so dramatic? As kids we had hot days. Your parents put the pool up in the backyard and in the middle of the day you stayed in the pool until you were three sizes smaller or until you were called for dinner. My mother hated the hot weather. She wasn't one to suffer in silence. If you attempted to be upbeat about the sunshine she would threaten to set fire to you. Few had air conditioners in the homes of the 70's era and a ceiling fan was as good as it got. My mother would sit around the house with a wringing wet beach towel around her neck looking like a heavy weight prize fighter and if you mentioned the weather, she behaved like one. Eventually we got our very own unit. My father installed it himself in the corner window of the lounge room which didn't really fit the window space so it was patched up with dark green bubble glass and it meant that the venetian blinds could never be pulled down, that was pretty dramatic. From then on everything was secured in that room. Doors were to stay shut, beds were set up, the cat, the dog and the caged canary were all shuffled into the cool room. With the temperature set to minus five the pets huddled together and the bird hung on tight to his perch and ducked the hurricane birdseed storm as the humming machine belted out a wind chill factor so cool it caused the vinyl couch to crack. But as far as drama went, there were no warnings, no protection and no advice. I don't doubt the consequences were severe but somehow summer just seemed a little more relaxed back then and you expected to get your big toe stuck in melting tar when crossing the road from the beach and third degree burns branded into shoulder strap marks were the tattoos of a summer well spent. We adapted. I'm not sure about the canary, but we adapted.

And here is not the news

Fada "Bullet" Radio model 1000, 1946
Originally uploaded by galessa's plastics

It's going to be a hot one on Monday. Predictably the news headlines will read "41 degrees Scorcher" or "Melbourne Swelters" alongside the standard crowded beach photograph with a token toddler wading in the water dressed in swimming attire and blockout so bright you could see them from space. One thing I don't want to see in tomorrow's news is anything to do with an elephant giving birth. IT'S NOT NEWS! Sometimes it seems that the world of nature cannot exist without us. We are yet to understand why whales beach themselves but we keep insisting on trying to undo whatever it is that they are wanting to achieve. If only we could understand whale speak it would be something like "bugger off you useless two legged morons and let me die in peace". It's a bit like strangers turning up in an intensive care unit and poking at the people on the critical list and piling blankets on them to keep them warm. Very annoying I would think. And still not news.

Bananas without pyjamas

United Fruit Company (1959)
Originally uploaded by el estratografico

What bollocks. Consumers are being blamed for supermarkets rejecting bananas based on perceived needs for perfection. Supermarkets that purchase 70% of the Queensland supply are forcing producers to go with open wallets to the lab men to provide agricultural trickery that is purely designed to increase the bottom line. Meanwhile we end up with fruit that tastes like packing foam. We should have choice in our supermarkets. Choice of bananas that haven't had a shot of botox, haven't been grown for the cover of Vogue and haven't got the genetic makeup of part fish part nuclear spent fuel rod. So instead these so called imperfect bananas are being mashed up into baby food and fed to the plants and animals. We're slowly dying from chemical poisoning but gee, don't the garden look great. Maybe if Jennifer whatsherface appears naked on a magazine holding a slightly blackened, not very big, a little bit wrinkled banana we might change perceptions, but I doubt it. Looks like we might be eating mulch for breakfast before long.

Older and Wii ser

The beauty of getting older is the ability to care even less. I don't mean knocking over prams in the street and running off laughing, I mean caring about the need to compete with other people. Keeping up with Jones's, Hiltons, Spears and Holmes's. When I sit in the hairdresser's chair with the trash mags piled high I enjoy flicking through page after page of people whom I have no idea of who they are or what they are famous for and that makes me feel all smug and warm. It's a sense of empowerment in being out of touch. A bit like letting technology passing you by. I'm clueless about Wii things, wireless and why I'm the only person who uses punctuation in text messages. Happily ignorant becomes a right of passage similar to the right to say "you would be too young to remember this but...". It seems not long ago a spinach decorated tooth or the open shirt button exposing wobbly white flesh and frayed grey bra would have sent me into a decline of mortification but now it's a minor technicality and I've moved on faster than a ghetto blaster with twin cassette decks. So being the only grey in the village who doesn't have a DVD player, I'll just have to download another cup tea and sit back and watch the iphones pass me by.

Warning, pencils are a health hazard

Imagine if you could sue for every stupid thing you did when you were young? This thought came to me as I read in the Australian today that "The Lutheran Church is being sued for almost $100,000 after a girl's finger was pierced by a pencil at one of its schools more than a decade ago." It goes on to tell us that ".... she was sitting on the floor of a classroom holding a pencil when a fellow student fell on her after being pushed by another child". Pain and suffering, loss of income, blah, blah, blah you know the rest. If I had come home from school at the age of 12 and told my mother that I was aggrieved due to a pencil piercing my finger the response would have been something along the lines of how fortunate I was that it wasn't my arse that was pierced and if I didn't shut up and do my homework it soon would be. At 12 years of age I can honestly say I would have pursued claims of negligence for bad hair days, my toast points being too sharp and Split Enz being number one again on Countdown which would have caused clinical depression followed by frequent attacks of anxiety and sleeplessness.

Fortunately nobody listened and my hair caused me no financial loss that I know of, the toast slice never caused gangrene and Split Enz eventually went to number two and I was able to live a virtually normal life. Even if it had have occurred to me to sue anybody, I don't think it would have stopped me from doing half the stupid stuff I did. And I'm really glad about that. I just hope that we don't have to have new labelling laws put on pencils with graphic images showing infected fingers turning purple from lead poisoning, I really couldn't cope with that.

Airbrushed Philosophy

Apparently it takes a picture of a naked model on a magazine for us to be inspired to feel good about our bodies. Jennifer Hawkins doesn't inspire me clothed or unclothed in fact I can't think of one thing she has said that I can even remember. She's a model. She's paid to hang clothes on. She's paid to walk along a runway, turnaround and not fall off the end. She's paid to be photographed. Whether her picture has been airbrushed or not is not the issue, it's whether as women we care. When I hear about women getting botox for Christmas and I see television newsreaders with so much foreign matter injected into their faces they look like a shiny letter box I think we've got a long way to go before we can feel anything at all let alone feeling good about ourselves. I've posted a very famous photograph of Simone de Beauvoir whose birthday it is tomorrow, as someone who did and still does inspire. She lived her life by her own thought out principles. She questioned things that were not as they seemed and refused to follow. I question whether this is just a way to advertise a magazine?

Retail Rehab

Gosh, the year is going by so quickly. Apparently there are Easter Eggs in the supermarkets already. According to today's online Age report about a UK supermarket chain "Customers furious at seeing egg promotions so far ahead of Easter Sunday on April 4 have launched a series of online attacks. One raged: "We celebrated Jesus being born on December 25 and just days later we're being sold chocolate to celebrate Easter." As it stands he only gets 4 months to live but even this seems a little premature. A Tesco spokesman said: "A small selection of Easter eggs are on sale in response to customer demand."

Personally I'd like to meet the customer who is actually demanding this and why he or she wants to give 4 month old chocolate. As we know supermarket Easter eggs are mostly made of cheap compound chocolate that is made from heavily processed vegetable fats so it can last all year round. It sounds as inviting as buying the prawns for next year's Christmas bbq at the same time. Supermarkets are like drug pushers waving the consumerism hit under our noses every time we think we are going clean. After throwing our money at Christmas presents like crazed junkies, the shops are calling us back with 30% off to keep us high. As the credit card bills start to come in we begin to think about rehabilitation and whether it was worth it but before we've stuck on the patches they're putting out the hot cross buns before the kids are even back at school. So if you are walking passed the confectionery aisle and you get a glimpse of something shiny and egg shaped, avert your eyes and walk away, and remember it's probably been there since last year but we didn't even notice.

Start the year with a bang not a beep

And a happy new year to you too. A phone call is a nice way to wish someone well for the season. A text message from someone three sheets to the wind at 12:44am is as welcome as having someone scream happy new year in your face and then throw up on your new shoes. Hence to say I did not feel compelled to reply and pretended that I slept through the festivities. I usually bother very little with New Year's forced upon celebrations. However I did manage to stay awake long enough to see the spectacular display in the night sky, the weather I mean. The thunder and lightening over the bay provided an exciting show and didn't cost a cent. The news programs of the morning do their whip around the world to show various fireworks displays over the predictable national monuments. In the lead up to the European new year there was the story of the Italians who go out and buy their own fireworks by the truck load. There must be something quite satisfying about doing your own fireworks display as opposed to standing around waiting for someone else's (sorry make that tax payer funded) pyrotechnically managed, same as every year, new year event. Health and safety and so on but the joy of buying it, setting fire to it and watching it go bang was probably the whole point of the fire cracker game in the first place give or take a few lost eyes, limbs etc. So my predictions for the year is that 2010 will be a year of much joy and sadness, increased ageing for everyone and a variety of weather conditions for all hemispheres. Bonne Annee but just don't text me.