Don't Fold The 'Folds'

Censorship.  It's a blight.  It's an insult to our common sense.  It is, apocryphally attributed to Mark Twain, telling a grown man he cannot eat a steak because a child might choke.  It is also a law in Australia that dictates the vulva of women portrayed in porn magazines be photoshopped, airbrushed, whatever so the lady-folds don't show too much, and what is shown looks like a slot on a kid's piggy bank.  It is, in my submission, the reason some women fear they are abnormal and feel it is necessary to undergo labioplasty, which in one of my other submissions, is a form of genital mutilation.  I am not talking if someone has disproportionately large labia that causes them discomfort, and the owner of such labia undergoes 'corrective' surgery.  I'm talking about I'm-Gonna-Cut-My-Flaps-'Cause-I'm-A-Product-Of-A-Society-That-Sees-Incorrect-Vulvas-Because-Some-Stuffed-Shirt-Thinks-'Oh-No-Normal-Woman's-Sex-Parts-=Bad!'.  By the way, did you like my term 'lady-folds'?  I made it up.  Isn't it great?  And it's used (WARNING: GRATUITOUS PLUG FOR NEW BOOK ALERT!) in my novel 'Silver Studs and Sabre Teeth', due out at the end of February 2014.

So I had a look at 'The Vagina Diaries' on ABC2 the other night.  It was riveting, but disturbing, stuff.  Disturbing because a young woman underwent labioplasty in what was likely an unnecessary operation.  Now, I'm resilient about many things.  I grew up on a farm.  I loved to watch my father kill sheep and my favourite part was when he hung the carcass and pulled out its guts.  True.  But the other night, when I saw the surgeon making for that delicate fold (I'm not going to use floral metaphors as they annoy me) I shrieked, 'Eeeeuuuuw!' and looked away, with a hand clapped over my eyes for good measure.  And my legs involuntarily crossed themselves.  I looked back just in time to see a blackened piece of cauterized labia on a white cloth.  Aarrrgghhhhh!   It looked like - so help me, God, - overdone pork crackling, or a piece of over-cooked gristle from a chop.  I slapped my hands over my face again.  This is one of the few times I have ever looked away from a screen.  I couldn't watch during the aversion therapy scene in 'A Clockwork Orange' because I'm a little bit squeamish about eyes.  Watching my cousin put in contact lenses one day made me feel a little ill at ease.  If I'm watching a nature program and there's a frog, I also have to look away because I hate those slimy, jumping, green fuckers.  My equally amphibi-phobic bestie and I tried to watch the mockumentary 'Cane Toads - An Unnatural History' for therapy, and we kept cringing and looking away from the screen, and we are both still terrified of frogs and toads.  But none of it held a candle to the revulsion and horror I felt watching someone undergo a needless mutilation the other night.

Some guys in the street were vox-popped for the show, and you know what, ladies?  They don't mind what the lady-folds look like.  They love you for you.  So please, can the Censorship Board stop being numpties and metaphorically mutilating the womanly parts of our bodies that lead to the portal through which our children are often brought into the world?  That would really be nice.

Know what else would be nice?  If I became a best selling author.  Check out the links on my page to my other novels.

Well, to use a poker metaphor that suits this post: I fold.

The Sledge Sludge

Oh dear, fuss and kapooha over the cricket.  Or in particular, the on-field verbal exchanges between the cricketers.  Many commentators are saying sledging is a part of the game, and all you sooky-lala-pants should either deal with it or skulk back off to Dear Old Blighty.  I think the stoush with Clark, and whoever that Pommy bloke is, is probably a textbook example of a storm in a teacup.  What I would like cricketers to remember is that they are playing cricket, not doing a job like a doctor or nurse or ambulance officer.  Cricket, in my humble opinion, is a game almost guaranteed to bring on catatonia.  It. Is. So. Fucking. Boring. As for the sledging, part of me wonders is it bad sportsmanship.  However, I don't really mind it so long as the sledger actually says something witty, and not racist or homophobic etc.  I've never been a huge one to sledge myself.  Indeed, the extent of my sledging career has probably been limited to an inter-school basketball match where I asked the captain of the visiting team was that her head or had someone crapped on her shoulders.  I then ran for cover.  One of my favourite sledges involved an interchange between Glenn McGrath and Zimbabwean Eddo Brandes.  McGrath had been trying to get at him, and asked Brandes why he was so fat.  Memo to McGrath and all other prospective sledgers: jibes about a person's weight are not clever, and will not escalate you the heights of Wildean wit.  However, Brandes replied, 'Because every time I fuck your wife, she gives me a biscuit.' Yowzah and Ka-ZIINNNNGGG!!  Love it.  And it would appear McGrath was stunned, and the rest of the Aussie team were falling about laughing (as would I, with no loyalty to my captain whatsoever!).

Pointless Remake Of The Day: 'I Think I Love You' by Voice of the Beehive.  As you can guess, this is a remake of the old Partridge Family number.  And it is pointless to the brink of tedium and misery.  The original is a nicely constructed pop song, and delivered with a wistful yearning as the narrator tells of being a bit scared of his feelings. There is an almost bittersweet feeling of whimsy in that song.  The remake, it must be said, sucks donkey's balls.  It is just .... shit.  There is none of the emotion in the original; it's all funk and bop and Look-At-My-Techno-Coloured-Hair.  They lose points for not having a deadest spunk like David Cassidy, as well. Just a collection of plunking notes and chirping voices.  Voice of the Beehive?  Nay, it is voices of the Aviary of Coked-Up Budgerigars. 

Proud Parent Moment Of The Day: Last night when my 9yo took to the stage to perform 'Balloons' on the piano.  He knows he is not yet the most accomplished musician of the children performing.  What he does know is how to make an entrance and exit.  He mounted the stage, waved to the audience as though he were headlining act, played 'Balloons' note-perfect, and during the applause, executed two campy, Liberace-inspired bows that had the audience chuckling away.  'Is that your little boy?' asked the old dude to my left (my husband sat at my right, laughing with amusement and pride at our little 'star').  When I nodded, he said, 'He's a character!'

Happy Anniversary, Dr Who

What I learned today: the theme song to 'Dr Who' was composed by an Aussie. ( What I have forgotten today: the composer's name!).  How awesome is that theme?  The opening bass, the synth, it's so atmospheric and creepy, and I love it.  I used to watch when I was a kid, all those years ago, and I remember the then incarnation of the Doctor's face would appear, as portrayed by actor Jon Pertwee.  And it was a creepy as.  It made my blood go cold.  It was on every day in the school holidays at about two o'clock.  My uncle, a school teacher, would visit my home town with his brood of four (to whom I'm quite close),  They would all be staying at another relative's house, where there was a large paddock.  Someone excavated a trench in that paddock, and we would play soldiers in the war, or else hide and seek (we always hid in the trench).  An older cousin (my rellies are legion) would sometimes double us around on his Yamaha motorbike, and I swear the bugger deliberately rode us through long thistles.

But what I mainly remember is we would be hanging out for 'Dr Who' to come on.  And we drove my grandmother absolutely batshit with the repeated cry of, 'Is it time for 'Dr Who' yet, Nanny?'  When it was finally time, we all huddled on the floor in front of the old black and white television (this was prior to 1975), and watched in fear.  Yes, fear.  We all loved a scare.  Most children do enjoy ghost stories around the campfire, or in the darkened room with the blinds drawn.  (I used to do that with some other kids until the blind inexplicably went up, and we all screamed).  I remember a cloud of evil looking fog, and some seriously scary-looking cyber-fucker (whatever he was) appearing and sending a ray from his forehead  to Dr Who, and knocking him unconscious.  We thought he had killed the Time Lord.  We ran out to the back yard, where my uncle was attending a bonfire, and my cousin cried, 'Daddy, there was a lot of smoke, and this monster came out and killed Dr Who!'  My uncle gestured to the fire and said, 'There's a lot of smoke here, so I hope some strange monster doesn't come out and kill me.'

One day, when we asked for the umpteenth time was it time for Dr Who yet, my grandmother finally blew her springs and shouted, 'No! No! NO!'  Karmic retribution is a funny thing.  I have echoed this cry many a time to my own children, when they have driven me absolutely insane with the same question or request, over and over and over.

Nathan's Naughtiness & Kanye's Krap

There are a couple of things I am truly nonplussed about today.  One is the revelation that former Premier Nathan Rees has admitted to an affair with a constituent.  Now I am really going to have to file this in the drawer labelled 'Who Frickin' Cares?'  Affairs happen.  I'm not saying they are an ideal thing to happen, and there will often be a hurt party at the end of it.  But you know something?  Both parties were consenting adults.  In this fine land of ours (unless Fred Nile gets his way, or Queensland Premier Campbell Newman decides he Just. Doesn't. Like. It and decides to lean on his Canberra mates), sex between consenting adults is perfectly legal.  My care factor that Nathan Rees has engaged in sex with another adult is Zero.  My desire to think about Nathan Rees in sexual congress is Zero.  My desire for Nathan Rees in 'that way' is Even Less Than Zero.  What really ground my gears today is the headline in The Daily Telegraph referring to him as Nathan Sleaze.  Seriously, DT?  A paper run by a man who thinks it's actually okay to hack private telephone calls in the name of a story feels it is entitled to take some high moral ground?  Put some crampons, rope, and a pickaxe on the expenses sheet to submit to accounts, did you?

Anybody who knows me well knows I like music.  Most kinds.  Not overly fond of country music (whiny, self-serving dung in most cases), and I detest (c)rap.  Now I have even more reason to do so.  I have just viewed a couple of minutes of the video from Kanye West's latest offering, 'Bound 2'.  Is the reason rappers rap because they cannot sing?  This piece of poop isn't even rhythmic.  The lyrics are banal in the extreme, and the fact that it is brought to us by one half of the most narcissistic couple to strut the Earth makes it all the more awful.  It is truly an aural manifestation of the smegma scraped from beneath Satan's foreskin (this is a favoured metaphor of mine when it comes to shit songs).  There is a hideous caterwauling in the background, which sounds like a bunch of cats sucking helium.  The video features his fiancée Kim Kardashian, who is the sort of person that makes me want to shout, 'Stop the world so I can get off!'  Seriously, why do people have to make these vacuous imbeciles who are devoid of any discernible talent famous? 

Today's Vagaries

The vagaries of my mind toss and twirl like clothes flapping in a tumble dryer.  I have today off because my father has an appointment near John Hunter Hospital with a rheumatologist.  As it happened, my husband ended up driving him and I'm enjoying a few hours of peach and quiet.  So I sat watching breakfast television, and all it seems to be is sap and sugar, and pointlessness.  For some reason, fawning articles on the merits of models, both super and ordinary classification, really grind my gears.  And because I am female, I will no doubt be accused of jealousy, but I can assure you it's not the case.  I just get irritated when the media seems to lose its shit because someone's lost a contract with Victoria's Secret (which I'm sure must be such a great aspiration to wander up and down with ludicrous wings on that must upset the equilibrium, as well as a stringy undergarment that travels northward up your date).  My internal irritation factor is also triggered when there is an article about how someone's getting their figure back within weeks after giving birth.  How can I put this delicately?  Oh, dear, I can't.  I shall type it slowly.  Who. Fucking. CARES?  I don't.  My figure returned in due course, and then went for a wander again not due to a pregnancy but a laziness and gluttony that I have succumbed to of late.  I'm working on getting fit and healthy again.  I don't care, but it worries me that some other women will feel pressured to look like they weigh six stone within a month of going through an incredible, life-changing experience instead of focusing on someone little and helpless, who really needs you.

The UK is talking of lowering the age of consent to 15, and there is talk of whether we should follow suit.  Quite possibly, given our laws very closely mirror the UK's.  I'm not sure if this is necessarily just a band aid solution.  Kids under the age of 16 are already having sex, some at the rate of satyriasis-stricken rabbits.  Maybe some very, very in-depth education about STDs, pregnancies, and emotional consequences might be a good idea.  Certainly better than the education I was given in high school.  The school assigned a rather pious teacher who didn't believe sex ed was the school's responsibility to teach such subject.  Who can tell me what's wrong with this picture?  I remember viewing a film called 'Are We Still Going To The Movies Tonight?'  A girl rejected her boyfriend's sexual advances and he got the shits, and she timidly asked, 'Are we still going to the movies tonight?'  Maybe 'Eve: Portrait Of A Teenage Runaway' might have been better, although it might have scarred us looking at Jan Brady turning tricks. I do like the way the film showed the girl should have autonomy over her own body and not feel pressured into activity she does not wish to engage in.  I think the only thing the teacher really tried to hammer home to us was for girls to always say no because guys preferred to marry virgins.  You know, when I met my husband I wasn't a virgin.  Many times over.  Neither was he.  We didn't give a shit.  Twenty years later, we still don't give a shit about each other's past.  And it helps to have someone with artistic ability to draw diagrams of the reproductive systems, too.  This teacher's depiction of the ovaries, fallopian tubes and uterus looked like a front view of the skull of a cow, like what you see in the desert.

For some unknown reasons, bacteriologists and toxicologists in Antwerp decided to check library books for bugs and germs.  The most nasties were found on 'Fifty Shades of Grey'.  They apparently found the herpes virus on there.  What the what?  What I'm positive they did not find was any literary merit whatsoever.  There was definitely none visible to the naked eye, and in my case, none visible to the reading-spectacled eye, either.

I Saw The Signs....

Sign My Little Boy Is No Longer My Little Boy #13: Took him to a local store to by a few items for his high school uniform next year, just a few polo shirts and a sports shirt.  They were a size 14.  Got him home and got him to model one for his dad.  I just looked at him.  He's a handsome lad, and filling out from the weedy stringbean he used to be.  He is only a couple of inches shorter than me, and I am actually rather tall for a woman.  His dad and I just looked at him, standing tall and confident in his high school shirt.  I felt my eyes prickle.  I remembered a tiny, slippery individual with messy, sticky black hair, a coating of vernix (from being a couple of weeks early), and an incredibly worried look on his face when he was handed to me by a midwife.  Now he's been nominated as Dux for his school this year, and due to start secondary school.  Where have all the years gone?  Don't worry, I'm not about to break into, 'Sunrise, Sunset'.

Sign My Little Boy Is No Longer My Little Boy #14: Drove him to a local store to buy some clothing for his school graduation party.  He chose a black shirt, but there were no slacks at Best & Less - oddly enough.  As we were leaving the car park, Adele came on the radio: 'There's a fire in my heart...' whatever the lyrics are.  I commented I liked her.  He pondered the physiological impossibility of starting a fire in your heart.  (I did wonder whether to tell him his grandmother's pea-and-ham soup gave me frightful heartburn when I was pregnant with his little brother).  He then said, 'I heard at school that there was this girl and she got really drunk and she poured kerosene down her throat and threw a match in - oh wait, it was her vagina.  Uh, never mind, Mum!'  I almost crashed the car.

Sign I'm Always Going To Be His Mum #4: He likes to play x-box live online.  He has online friends, some from school, with whom he communicates verbally through the television.  What an amazing technological age we live in.  Sometimes random gamers enter into the game, and you can hear them talking to each other.  My son won a game.  I heard an older sounding person ask his age.  Twelve was his reply, because he is twelve.  Then through my television speaker directed at my son, I kid you not, came the word, 'Cunt!'  I was in the lounge room in a micro-second, and shouted at the television, 'And how old are YOU?'  A faltering voice replied, 'Nineteen.'  I then roared, 'You are old enough to know better than to speak like that to someone, you foul-mouthed little son-of-a-bitch!' and switched off the x-box, and told my son I would not have him subjected to vicious abuse like that.  I do believe nothing would have given me greater pleasure than to have been able to confront the monstrous troll face to face.  I imagine this guy as an overweight, greasy haired git; perhaps a scrawny, greasy-haired git.  Regardless of his size, he is no doubt unemployed and sponging off his parents, and unlikely to lose his virginity before age twenty-six, an encounter he will have to pay for.  And when I confronted the virginal, socially inept jerk, I would peel the skin (after donning gloves because he's probably covered in zits all over, and dried jizz from his constant masturbation to Miley Cyrus videos) from his miserable carcass, and then stuff the pointless cretin into a barrel of salt. 

There is no bitch like the one whose child has been threatened.

Welcome Aboard, It's .... Icky

I will crouch like a vulture and admit I don't mind some Seventies pure cheese.  There are times when I feel I should confess to a priest some of the cheese I like.  For some reason, the other day I got to thinking about the good old Pacific Princess - yes, 'The Love Boat'.  It was kitch.  It was twee.  It was as daggy as an unattended sheep's butt.  But I used to watch it.  Mainly to see who the guest stars were going to be.  This show as a great platform for actors whose stars were on the wane.  Seriously, did Ron Pallilo get much work outside 'Welcome Back, Kotter'? 

But this show did have its bad points, aside from the cheesy qualities.  Often, one would have to check credibility and belief at the door before a viewing.  Here's why.

1.  The ep with Sonny Bono as a hardened, heavy metal type rocker.  C'mon, why did the producers think we'd believe this?  Bono is no Marlon Brando.  I actually decided to You Tube it, and see if I could locate footage.  I did.  It was just as awful - no, MORE awful than I remembered.  He played someone called Deacon Dark, and came on stage in Kiss type make up (more Eric Carr than Gene Simmons), with flaming torches on stage, and sang (hah!) some truly godawful song called 'Smash It'.  The lyrics went something like 'Smash it/Crash it/Hit it with a hammer and bash it'.  From memory, the character falls in love with a deaf girl (oh, WHY do I know this?).  Not surprising.  No hearing person could stand to be subjected to his nasally, adenoidal singing.  This awful clip is probably used to 'cure' teenagers whose parents are worried about their heavy metal tastes, like the aversion therapy in 'A Clockwork Orange'.

2.  Doc Bricker.  Why was this guy allowed to practise?  He sleazed and slimed and slutted his way around every deck of that cruise liner.  Truly, if a patient presented with a sprained ankle, he'd have her undress.  This guy should have been struck off the medical register.

3.  The episodes set in Australia.  Warning: if a US dram-edy has a special suffixed with the words 'Down Under' - RUN!  And memo to all American screen writers - most Australians do not pepper every day speech with rhyming slang as every second phrase and idiom, okay?

4.  Billy Crystal as The Kissing Bandit.  This shy bloke would get dressed up in a mask and cape, Zorro-style, and kiss unsuspecting women.  The women were thrilled, and some were waiting on the moonlit deck in gowns and applying perfume waiting for a smooch from this Lothario.  I'm calling total BS on this - most women would have reported him, and kicked his nuts up into his throat if practicable.

I don't know whether to conclude with this as point 5, or as something I think is worth commenting on.  It is icky to think about now, and I doubt it would be filmed now.  There was an episode where Gopher hit on what he perceived to be an attractive young woman. This enchanting creature was a 13yo on holiday with her dad, dressing up with older clothes and experimenting with make-up.  This was at a time when it was de rigeur for fashion houses to use teenagers painted up to look older in the fashion shoots, as the teenagers probably had unlined complexions (until acne hit and rendered them useless).  Nowadays they use air brushing and this is a different can of worms.  I guess the producers thought it would make a good story line.  It made for a rather uncomfortable one, that was for sure.

A List For Today

So I sat down and decided to compile a list of things that suck a bit somewhat lately.  I'll try not to be too much of an Eeyore from 100 Acre Wood about these things.  I didn't like Eeyore as a kid - the dude was total negativity and sucked all the joy out of a room like an imploding black hole.  Didn't like Winnie the Pooh much, either - gluttonous fat fuck he was.

1.  The annoyance I felt at the relevant government whilst watching the David Hicks interview this morning.  (Did someone say John Howard?).  It doesn't matter what they THINK HE DID, the fact was he was locked away without consular access for five years, and charged with a crime that legally didn't exist at the salient time of the alleged offence.  This, in law and in life, sucks donkeys' balls.  You cannot just say, 'I don't like what I think you might have done, so I'm going to enact a law NOW and charge you.'

2.  The fury I felt when I saw Tony Abbott on television this morning, talking about boat illegals.  'They bloody are not!' I snapped at the television.  My 12yo asked me what ailed me, and I explained, jabbing a finger toward the television like a Grimm Brothers fairy tale crone, 'That man there!  He's the Prime Minister, and he's talking utter crap!'

3.  That song 'Jack and Jill' by Raydio.  Now some of you probably haven't thought of this melodic silliness since it was inflicted upon us in 1978.  Perhaps some of you had it buried like a suppressed traumatic memory.  I was goofing around on the Internet and looked up some Billboard Top 100 charts.  This silly song actually is here.  Don't get me wrong, the blokes performing can carry a tune, but this offering and interpretation of a children's nursery rhyme is so farty and pointless.  So farty and pointless, I suspect they might have inspired some of Coldplay's latter day material ('Paradise', anyone?).  They asked us why do we think Jack snuck down the hill.  Well, I didn't want to know, but they go on to explain he needed 'love he couldn't get from Jill.'  Either Jill refused to put out, or she was a bloke in drag.  I don't care.  But why record such a pissy song?

4.  The Channel 7 news crew that waylaid Simon Gittany on his way to court and asked inappropriate questions, thus earning themselves a little summons to the court from the presiding judge.  Are you clowns trying to cause a mistrial?  Do you clowns not realise that regardless of how heinous an offence with which a person is charged is, the charged person is entitled to a presumption of innocence until otherwise proven in a COURT OF LAW, and not a court of tabloid journalism.  So what will happen should the case be aborted, one would imagine, is that these tabloid television shows will screen an ex-pos-zaaaay about tax payers' money funding criminal trials.  Which, incidentally, I'm more than happy for my tax dollars to do.  I'd much rather this to funding some rorting politician attending a wedding and claiming it as expenses, let's just say.

Here Come De Fuzz!

It has been a fiendishly sweltering day today, and when I stepped from the air conditioned house of a friend this afternoon after dropping The Great Gutsby there for a sleep-over, the heat that assailed my face was like a physical slap.  It has been a bit of a crap day.  My other half visited his specialist only to be referred for an MRI.  I received a text advising a gentleman, who was one of the elderly I do paid care for in town, has passed away.  I got in to my car and Michael Jackson's 'Man In The Mirror' was spewing - yes, spewing - through the speakers.  I hate this song - it's like hearing an anaemic fairy urinate.

Stupid things are making headlines.  Things like a Brazilian woman has filmed Justin Beiber sleeping.  What?  Justin Beiber sleeps?  The Devil you say.  I'd be sorry for the Beib if he had not also been photographed fetching a slag up his throat to spit with a ptoot! on the heads of unsuspecting fans below a balcony.  But truly, filming somebody sleeping?  Why would you do this?  Is it to prove he is not a vampire?

Speaking of Brazilians, in this case the hair removal treatment and not the race, today I read an article that suggested good on 70s pubic hair is making a comeback.  Yes, the bush is enjoying a revival.  A renaissance, if you will.  The bush is back!  This just goes to prove if you hang onto something long enough, it will come back in fashion.  Personally, I do not get the appeal of lying on a kitchen-papered table with my loins exposed and my legs spread like a contortionist's while some person I don't know well pours hot wax on my most sensitive areas and rips out hair by the roots.  My eyes are watering as I type.  Thankfully I can touch type, and therefore don't have to look at the keyboard.  The concept of then rolling onto my stomach and spreading my cheeks for further possible waxing, as I have heard some women do, makes me clench my fists and raise my eyes Heavenward and wail and keen, 'WHYYYYYY?'  Anyway, ladies who have kept their pubic hair intact can no longer worry about pressure to have it all ripped out, and get around with a pudenda like a cloven billiard ball now.  As they say in the classics, 'Here come de fuzz!'

And They're Off!

Okay, I succumbed,  I watched breakfast television for tips, and armed with a few names, attended the local TAB and got the kindly officer with a green shirt on reading 'ASK ME HOW' to help me place a few each-way bets.  The country tends to lose its collective shit on Melbourne Cup Day, doesn't it?  Horse racing interests me only slightly more than the bowel habits of turtles, as a rule.  Yet, along with everyone else it would appear, I get just a little bit interested on Cup Day and have a flutter on the GGs.  I have only ever attended three race meetings in my life.  The first was in 1993 when I first stated dating my now-husband.  It was in my home town and my father was clerk of the course.  I didn't even think to wear a hat.  The second time I went was as a hospitality student at the Scone Cup, and I was actually working, ie, passing around plates of sangers to the socialites.  I did very good silver service at the buffet, doling out the boiled spuds to the punters as they passed by with their plates.  I also almost had my head bitten off by a very well known socialite who often graced the relevant pages of the Sunday papers.  I offered to clear her coffee cup, which had dregs and more foggy cloud than Canberra airport on a winter morning.  'I haven't finished!' she barked, in the manner of a demented Chihuahua.  I felt like saying, 'One more facelift, lady, and you'll have a beard!'  The third time I attended was at a local meet about a year ago with a friend who, as a horse trainer, had credentials which enabled me to enter the private bar and use the ladies room there.  I am normally more than happy to use the same facilities as the hoi polloi, but the public loos were infested with big, horrible, slimy, green frogs ,and I am highly amphibiphobic.  I don't know why; I just hate the slimy jumping fuckers, that's all.  Anyway, go Fiorente, or Mount Athos, or Dandino!

Anyway, I will try and get a little bit of writing done before I lie down.  It is my day off today, and I am suffering a head cold that is fast travelling down the chest.  I would like a little snooze-a-roo before the kids get home.  Whether I watch the race or not, is not decided.  Watching it will not make 'my' horse win, so I don't care too much if I miss it - although I do get a chuckle at the frenetic ranting of the race callers, who always sound as though they are about to simultaneously blow the springs in their heads, and evacuate their bowels.

Of First Aid, Russkis, And Bullies

Am stoked beyond repair to advise I passed my First Aid renewal yesterday.  So many things change over the years.  Instead of shaking a casualty and asking if he/she is okay, it's now squeeze the shoulders etc.  If someone feels faint, we no longer sit them on a chair and have them place their head between their knees (makes sense because if they do become unconscious we don't want them falling to the floor and clobbering their noggins now, do we?).  I paid particular attention on the choking first aid, having a gluttonous son who shovels in his food like a threshing machine.  And having only last week completed mental health first aid, I was able to answer the question about how to deal with a casualty in the throes of an anxiety attack before anyone else put up their hand.  Yay, me.

But I almost needed first aid last night.  I almost went into shock.  What happened?  Well, I had a spare ticket for the local theatrical society's production of 'The Narcissist'.  My husband didn't feel up to coming along, and I rang around various friends and 'L' was available.  She wasn't going to come out because of her impecuniosity, but I just figured it's better than the seat being spare, so I offered to spring her the cost.  She said she had a couple of bucks she could give me, and I said to just buy me a drink at the venue, being one of the local clubs.  Being a sensible driver, I ordered a middy of light beer.  She handed over her money, and I was aghast when I realised she had none for herself, so I said, 'Right, let me buy YOU a drink.'  She ordered a lemon russki.  I don't like these drinks much; they're a bit sickly for my more dry tastes. I didn't mind them when they first came out, but I could not drink more than two at any given time, and they were rather flash and more costly than other mixers.  I actually took a six-pack to my cousin's hens' night, and her sister-in-law, who I had not met before, asked me did I want to swap a drink from her six-pack, being VB.  Being a social type, I did.  She then asked did I want to swap another drink, and I declined.  She snottily asked was I precious over my Russkis.  I said no, but had I wanted to drink VB (which I generally fucking hate, anyway), I would have brought along a six-pack of VB.  She flounced off.  Stupid girl.  But last night, the bar tender cracked open the bottle for my friend, and told me I owed $9.00-something.  I almost fell and had to hang grip the bar for support.  What the total fuck?  Is this due to Kevin Rudd's tax-hike on alcopops to stop the young binge drinking so much?  They're just going to drink something else, if that's the case.  And my friend isn't a young binge-drinker.  She rarely drinks at all and is thirty-two years old.  Anyway, we really enjoyed the play, which was 'The Narcissist'.  It's different to what the local theatrical society normally does, and this play carried an MA15+ rating.  Great dialogue in it, and I argued hard to NOT have the play toned down for local sensibilities.  Hell, the town I live in is peppered with lingerie bars, so can't we have something that might be salty but witty?  I actually auditioned for the lead female role, but obviously didn't win it. 

Does anyone ever comment in online forums?  There's one I read, but because I can't be bothered signing up for membership, I don't get to comment.  I was almost tempted to this morning.  I read an article about bullying, and one of the commenters said she used to be a high school bully, and she did it because she could get away with it.  It's one of my theories.  Yes, I know some bullies are cowed and abused at home, but the ones at my school weren't.  They were vicious little bitches who knew they could get away with it, and who enjoyed inflicting misery on others.  This poster wrote about having obtained a pleasure in her activities, and it was only the disappointment on the faces of her parents that made her stop.  I actually felt like typing, 'You were clearly a complete little c**t, from the sounds of it.'  I wonder has she grown out of it?  I occasionally see my old school bully around, and avoid her.  She's still as toxic as a bilious toad, and although I'm no longer scared of her, I just downright don't wish to have my normally passable, if not pleasant, day ruined by an encounter with her.