My Inner Brockovich & Lycanthropy

Years ago, I had a little boy who would spring up from the mat at preschool and run across the room with his arms outstretched, calling in delight, 'Mum-meeee!' when it was time to collect him.  Today I heard that little boy discussing an x-box strategy with one of his best mates.  He said, 'No, that idea sucks penis holes!'  This must be sign #15 that My Little Boy Is Growing Up.  I also issued a warning against that terminology in the house.

Not much happening in the world according to Bingells.  I have to study a chapter on disabled care.  I am also awaiting the cover art for my next book 'Silver Studs & Sabre Teeth', which I anticipate receiving early in the new year.  Once the art is approved, the book goes to print, and I go on the PR offensive.  Who likes social issues such as same sex marriage, male depression, and the right to listen to whatever one chooses in the privacy of one's own home?  Who likes glam rock?  Well, blog-browsers, you can read all about it in the upcoming novel. 

I have also been doing a little agitating on the community FB page because I was so annoyed at the refusal of a DA for a brothel in the main street at the end of town.  Why?  Well, may you ask given I have no vested interested in the proposed business.  From my last post, you will see I find the ignorance and NIMBY-ism just plain offensive.  The business will have a flow on effect in town, after all, the ladies and management have to buy lunches and shop for groceries SOMEWHERE, don't they?  At the councillor's suggestion, I read the objections and minutes of council meeting, whereupon I went straight back to my thread and said that my opinion hasn't change and I stand by my original comments.  Hizzoner has weighed in, and by God, I am feeling alive!  I will admit I am not a councillor, but the grounds for refusal do like a hotchpotch of spurious rhetoric.  Why are nearby businesses worried about a downturn in custom?  ('I need to buy a new air conditioner.  Maybe I'll get a better deal on air conditioners at the brothel.'  Pfffft, gimme a break!).  Meanwhile, I am really liking this rebellious streak in me.  I said to my husband, 'I don't understand why I'm like this.  Well, I kind of do because this NIMBY-ism is stupid, and the developers appear to be doing the right thing and not getting a fair go.  I have no vested interest in the proposed brothel, and I seem to be coming over all Erin Brockovich.  But I think I know what I MIGHT be getting out of this; the plot for my next book!'

Last night 'Teen Wolf' was screened on television, starring the ubiquitous feature of the Eighties, Michael J Fox.  If you've seen it, you will know there is a scene were he morphs into a werewolf on the basketball court.  I do not know what is more ludicrous a scenario: lycanthropy, or someone of Fox's stature playing basketball.

Happy New Year.

Insular NIMBY-ism

Do I play Devil's Advocate?  Possibly, subconsciously, I just do. The other day I found an article on the FB site of The Australian Sex Party which dispelled some myths about having a brothel in the neighbourhood, and I posted it onto my local community page.  There has recently been a DA application for sex services premises, and the DA has just been rejected.  As far as I can tell, the developer has complied with every regulation, crossed every 't' and dotted every 'i', but the application has still been rejected.  In the ensuing comment thread, I expressed the view that this article might allay some of the fears raised by locals when the DA was first lodged, and that it was going to be interesting from a legal standpoint (I am a former law clerk), and it was always interesting to watch people twisting their pearls and weeping about the decline of Western civilisation.  Anyhoo, a councillor for the local shire commented that although the article I had shared was interesting, it did not correspond with the objections raised by locals, and that he believed Council had been fair in their processing of the DA and the objections.  He said the objections did not decry the lack of social values, and that before I pass judgement I should look at the letters, which were accessible via Council's website.  I said I was referring to the general comments from the general public when the application was first lodged, but certainly I would check out Council's website.

I have checked Council's website.  I have looked at the minutes of the meeting, and the notes re the DA, and the letters submitted in objection to the proposed business.  And you know what?  All I can say is a big, fat, fucking Pffffffft!  You will correctly glean from that last sentence I have not changed my views, and stand by my original comments.  People with businesses that neighbour the premises who feel they have genuine worries, are entitled to raise those concerns.  I still think their concerns are groundless.  Some worry about drunken patrons.  Hello?  The premises are right near a fucking pub!  Are people only now worried about drunken patrons?  People don't want their children to see it.  Too bad, I say.  People are concerned that it is not a good look for the town as you drive in from the northern end of the main street, to have a brothel.  Uh, a brothel does not have glaring signage saying, 'Roots 'R' Us', or some such similar.  It must be pointed out that the proposed premises are kind of diagonally opposite the club house of the local chapter of a motor cycle gang.  I think that this might be just a tad more scary.  Also, when one drives into town from the southern end, there is a pub advertising lingerie waitresses.  As one continues driving, there are more pubs advertising lingerie waitresses.  I personally find this tawdry, but I know it is also legal and I therefore merely do not frequent those premises.  Which is the choice people have, ie stay the hell away from the place, if they do not approve of a proposed brothel.  But the signs for the lingerie girls are 'out there', and a brothel is a discreet building.  The pub nearest the proposed site does try to attract families, but the thing is, it's a pub.  It's not a hospital, a school, a church, or a childcare centre.  Some of these letters have comments about the owner not even being from town.  Well, what in the blue fuck does this have to do with anything at all?  It's insular NIMBY-ism at its most insidious.  I really do stand by my original views, which is that people hear about consenting adults having sex, and just because there is a monetary transaction, dance on the table, holding up their skirts and shrieking, 'Eeeeeek!'

Christmas Ham, Mariah, and Movies

It's done and dusted, as they are no doubt saying in countless households nationwide, for another year.  I like Christmas, but I'm glad it's over.  I do the same thing most years, ie, stuff myself silly.  I was pretty good this year, but I did fold and have a slice of cheesecake at dessert.  It was the in-laws' turn this year, and Mr Bingells together with Messrs 12 and 9, are still at my mother-in-law's house.  I have returned home today because I am rostered to work tomorrow.  I did score some good presents.  The reason I scored the good presents is because I went out and bought them myself, wrapped them, and wrote 'To Simone' or 'To Mum'.  Books.  Give a person a book, and you are giving them a whole new world.  There are certain things I don't like about Christmas.  I know it's like saying, 'Hey, look at the elephant in the room' to admit you're not always fond of the whole shebang, but I'm going to tell the truth and shame the pachyderm.

1.  Christmas ham.  It shits me.  Yes, I know, first world problem and people are starving in Africa.  I know ALL this.  But employers everywhere think a ham will be a great gift, even for a single person household, and these hams are monstrous in size, akin to the hindquarters of a Clydesdale.  My husband bought one the other week because our kids had friends over.  It's still taking up considerable space in the fridge.  It's going to dry out like a neglected houseplant or forgotten lamb roast before any noticeable inroads are made into the flesh of the thing.  I hardly ever eat ham at any other time of the year, and it's mainly due to the glut we suffer at Christmas.  Really, there's only so much you can do with ham before you succumb to an attack of the screaming meemies and run up and down in the street, naked, screaming, 'Oh God, make it STOOOOPP!'  I am actually considering becoming piscetarian, or fish-and-chipocrite, and giving up most meat altogether, with the exception of sea food. 

2.  Mariah Carey.  Yes, she's talented.  I know all this, too.  But I feel so sorry for shop assistants at this time of year.  Not only are they rushed off their feet with the Christmas stampede, they are subjected to 'All I Want For Christmas Is You' played continuously on a loop.  I would be beyond postal at this.

3.  Christmas movies - this can be good or bad.  Interesting, I saw one on the ABC last night called 'Nativity!', a British one which my husband, my mother-in-law, and myself found absolutely delightful.  It starred Martin Freeman as a failed actor turned primary school teacher, who is charged with devising the school's nativity play.  Okay, I'll admit to finding Freeman cute in a geeky way. Interestingly, he is also in another, but better known, Christmas movie, and that movie is the schmaltz-fest known as "Love, Actually".  He plays the stand-in on the adult movie set.  Know something?  I didn't mind that movie when I first watched it.  I decided to buy a copy, and have grown to find it really, really annoying.  I liked that it had bittersweetness to it (the Emma Thompson character).  But most of the other characters now just shit me to tears.  That foul-mouthed secretary the British PM falls for just makes me want to take her aside and rub a cheese grater down her face.  Seriously, bitch, stop swearing all the time!  Whilst the Laura Linney character didn't annoy me (indeed I found her compassion for her mentally disabled brother inspiring), I did yell at the screen when she was finally with that bloke she'd fancied for ages and the brother rang the mobile, 'Cut the call short!  Turn off the phone!  Chuck the phone down the dunny!  Do anything, but for God's sake put the phone out of the way and just do that hot guy, will you!'  I got dizzy from rolling my eyes when that twerpy guy got off the plane in the US and nailed three hot chicks he met in the bar shortly thereafter.  I mean,  COME. ON!

Sigh.  Sigh.  Sigh.  So I am home, feeling like a punctured whoopee cushion, and after a nice cool break in the weather yesterday, am wrapped in a film of moisture from the current humidity.  Our adopted fox-terrier is barking like a lunatic at shadows, and driving me spare.  What is almost as bad, he has eaten something that does not agree with him, and his resulting flatulence is like opening the door to the old outdoor dunny in Satan's backyard.

Merry Christmas, to all who take the time to read.

Nineties Nostalgia

'Mum, you seriously cannot be watching this!'  These words were cried in derision to me by my 12yo son this evening.  'Yes, I am watching this, ' I told him, 'And I enjoyed it when I was a younger woman.  In fact, I was HOOKED!'

The object of my son's scorn was the old Nineties serial 'Beverley Hills, 90210' (commonly referred to among hipsters as just '90210').  And yeah, I must admit, I was totally bloody hooked on it years ago.  I could never identify with it because I didn't attend a California high school for the rich and elite.  Nay, I attended a rural high school in New South Wales for anybody who lived in town.  It was a public school.  I did attend a private Catholic school in my tender years, but that's another box of neuroses for other posts.  There were no boys at my school (at least none I can remember) that in any way resembled Dylan Mackay.  Probably because the boys at my school were not obviously about twenty-eight years old.  But yeah, I used to watch it religiously.  Had no crushes on anybody, or anything like that.  My husband has admitted to having had a crush on the studious and humourless Andrea Zuckerman, but he has always had a thing for the librarian type, particularly ones with red hair.

Watching it has made me feel a tad nostalgic for the Nineties.  I was in my twenties for much of the decade.  I watch it and feel a wistful longing for the days when I could actually were Levis 501s that were smaller in size than the ones I currently wear.  The jeans I wear are okay.  I do not wear the ones my mother-in-law gave me from her wardrobe (she lost a lot of weight after a diabetes diagnosis) and as much as I hold her in high regard, she does wear 'mum jeans'.  I don't place all that much stock on clothes normally, but I will not wear 'mum jeans'.  I had some sweet blouses back then, nipped in at the waist and floral patterned.  I cooked much spaghetti Neapolitana for my friends, and we went out and watched bands.  Often tribute bands; it was very much de rigeur those days.  We saw The Australian Doors Show, Sons of Beaches (Australian Crawl tribute act), the Australian John Cougar show, a Kiss tribute act, and even Bjorn Again before they got really big.  We went to many parties with themes.  I still recall the back to school one, and I had to borrow my cousin's old sports uniform.  We posed for a photo, and a few years later when visiting my cousin, she pointed out the photo of us in school uniforms.  My husband's eyes popped a little, and he looked like he was on the verge of a bodacious boner.  That was an okay party.  I remember everyone dancing in a circle, doing various swimming strokes.  'Do backstroke!' someone cried; we did backstroke.  'Freestyle!' someone cried; and this is what we did.  My cousin, one of the funniest people I know, cried, 'Do the safety jump!' and executed this manoeuvre from life saving classes, doing a jump with her arm spread, into the centre of the circle.  It has been almost twenty-four years since this party (and at the moment I fear almost as many kilos), but we still occasionally laugh  about it.

At the moment, I am sweltering through a true Aussie Christmas, and I understand there is a cool change a-comin'.  BRING IT ON!

Today I have been listening to Garry Puckett and the Union Gap, particularly 'Lady Willpower'.  Love that song.  Hell, I love that dude's voice.  How amazing was it?  He still sounds pretty good, too, as I understand.

What will the kids leave out for Santa this year?  Probably some cake and a beer.  When I was little, I bit the corners of a Sao biscuit to give it a skull like shape, and squashed apricots on it for eye sockets.  No, I shit you not.  But if you know me, and follow my posts, you will know I have always had a 'thing' for skulls.  I left this biscuit out for Santa.  He did not eat it.  I was disappointed and thought him an incredibly ungrateful fuck (but liked the present he left), and a Philistine for not appreciating the art and design that went into that Skeleton Biscuit.  We fed it to the dog.

Merry Christmas - I will probably post again on Boxing Day.

Oh, Joe (Jackson and Hockey)

I read today that hearing just a few bars of one song can evoke a thousand memories.  I don't know about a thousand, but yesterday when I was driving around I did hear a song that evoked a few less than pleasant ones.  That song, my friends, was 'Is She Really Going Out With Him?' by Joe Jackson.  I love Joe Jackson's singing voice; hell, the bloke could sing the contents of the phone book and I'd be in rapture.  I love the way the song mentions staring in disbelief at some women's choices 'while my coffee grows cold'.  It's a great image and seems to sum up despair and hopelessness.  I remember hearing that song at a school dance.  It was straight after the boy I liked asked another girl to go with him.  I remember feeling disbelief because it had been my firm stance this boy liked me.  ME!  For a few months, he had been shooting me glances across the playground.  When he started at our school, I was strolling o'er the quadrangle and my class wag called out, 'Hey, Simone!  He likes you!'  He was pointing to the young stud-muffin who had recently started to sprout underarm hair.  I noticed his underarm hair at the swimming pool and almost swooned because it meant he was growing up, and I didn't have to consider myself a pathetic cougar type (I was a little older than he).  I actually don't think cougars are pathetic at all, but I didn't want to think I was desperate going for a boy who hadn't opened the door to puberty just yet.  But then, one night at a school dance, he asked another girl to go with him.  I sat across the dance floor on one of those uncomfortable molded plastic seats, just wondering what the total fuck.  Up to then, the signs had been pretty strong that it was me he fancied.  Jesus, I had even gone so far as to fashion the letters of his name in that glow-in-the-dark glow putty and stick them onto my dressing table mirror.  I believed this action would have some talismanic effect.  Ladies, if you're thinking of trying this, don't bother.  Use the glow-putty for another, more useful activity.  Maybe to stop a draft or plug up a mouse hole.  And in the midst of my misery that night at the dance, the record (yes, it was records back then) given a spin was Joe Jackson's 'Is She Really Going Out With Him'.  So glum was my 14yo self, I couldn't ruefully chuckle at the Universe's totally fucked up sense of humour and timing.

Tony (Sc)Abbott has cut funding to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Aid.  How bloody wonderful - NOT!  And in the meantime, there is apparently to be a visit from the Cambridges.  This Royal visit costs the taxpayer money in sundry items such as security.  I have nothing against the young couple at all; indeed, I rather like them.  But when Abbott and Hockey are going on a slash and burn operation like some rabid psychos trying to get snakes out of a cane field, surely there is a better way to spend money that would normally go to the royal visit?  Particularly when a quoted ballpark figure I heard was one million dollars.

Just Desserts

I loved Christmas when I was a kid.  Usually.  I quite like it as an adult.  But this year I feel I am buried in a quagmire of ennui and blandness.  I have a fair idea what it is: exhaustion.  It has been non-stop for the past almost week.  I've been baking and icing cupcakes for the Year 6 graduation, helping to set up the hall for the dance (and crying like a sook), worked quite a few hours on Saturday, and had to take the youngest for swimming lessons and a birthday pool party on Sunday.  Yesterday we attended the high school library for an information about the teachers and lessons our oldest can expect when he starts high school next year, where he is in the opportunity class (he is one bright little biscuit!).  And I still have to wrap Christmas presents, write Christmas cards, and run the house because my husband is still a bit incapacitated.  And to crown it all, it's been seriously, revoltingly, can't-stand-it-anymore HOT.  My husband told me he would love to have the neighbours over for a BBQ on Saturday, along with a friend of ours and her kids, and I am seriously not wanting to partake in this.  I am too. Bloody. Exhausted.  I just want to cry a lot of the time these past few days.

It's too hot to hang the Christmas lights and angels outside - bah, humbug!

It's so hot the cockroaches are out in force - we are not dirty, but they hang out around our dishwasher when it's hot weather.  Hate 'em all!

Today I got into my car, and what should be coming through the speakers but Jim Diamond singing 'I Should Have Known Better'.  Oh, this song is direct from Satan's backside.  Hate it so much, especially that loathsome 'I-Yi-Yi-Yi-Yiiiiii!' chorus.

Got work Christmas luncheon tomorrow, and my team is in charge of desserts.  Two of the women will be preparing them, with the rest of us contributing.  I don't mind, and won't fuss too much.  Kitties work.  They are good.  Have been in enough share house accommodations to know there's no point splitting hairs about them because you were away over the weekend and therefore didn't get to eat two days' worth of food etc.  My point is, I will not be eating any of the desserts offered.  First of all, I am trying to lose a bit of weight.  Second of all, I don't like many desserts and the ones being done are the desserts I detest the most.  Trifle because it consists of everything I hate: soggy, sherry-loaded cake, custard (I just hate the texture of this), jelly (see custard for explanation); and cream (I have hated cream mightily, ever since I was a little tacker).  The end result of trifle looks and smells like a bowl of freshly-parked vomit.  Pavlova: a true yuck-fest of sickly meringue and cream.  The final dessert, as the cook doesn't want to waste the egg yolks after she has made the meringue for the Pav, will be - wait for it, are you sitting down? - lemon meringue pie.  Seriously, how can anyone stand to eat lemon meringue pie?  Yet another offering from Satan's kitchen.  My stomach is churning and my face is screwing up just at the thought of it.

Anyway, better stop bitching, and get tidying in the kitchen. 

Today's Folly

Not sure what the fuck is going on with the computer/blog site tonight.  I hope it's not going to mess up on me.  This is more or less a test post.  I'm kind of sleepy tonight, and I don't want to write too long.  I have had a rather unpleasant epiphany of a Damascene proportion; I am not as young as I used to be.  I am, however, still as clumsy as I always was.  I attended a pool party with my 9yo, being a birthday party for one of his little friends.  His parents hired the inflatable obstacle course.  I looked at it and thought, 'Hot damn, that looks fun!'  So, I queued with the children and waited my turn.  I stepped on, with all the grace of a spastic elephant on a skateboard.  I skidded and flopped onto the flat area of the inflatable, banging the top of my right foot on the edge of the pool, whilst simultaneously twisting my left knee a little.  Undaunted (and not wanting to incur the wrath of sugared-up kids waiting behind me), I valiantly negotiated the course, all the while thinking perhaps this had not been such a good idea, after all.  I became sort of stuck in the section with the big white rollers, feeling a little like that ursine honey thief, Winnie the Pooh (a character I have always detested, by the way) after he pigged into a shitload of honey at (I think) Rabbit's house and got stuck in the window, which served the break-and-entering gluttonous fuck right.  I wobbled and wriggled, and burned with humiliation when overtaken by one of the littler kids.  I was then faced with what really, to me, looked like Mt Everest; it was only a vulcanised peak with grips and steps to be climbed over, but I was seriously considering bailing into the water at that stage. But I got over it.  And finally went down the slope and bum-first into the pool, which felt as crisp, pure and sweet as the first bite of a delicious nashi pear.

But oh God, how I am suffering for my folly now.

Today's Vagaries

So many vagaries in my mind, a mind I must shortly take off to the boudoir.  I have just read Troy Cassar-Daly and Adam Harvey have quit or disassociated or something from the Country Music Awards because John Williamson has criticised their duets album as sounding too American.  I don't care if it sounds too 'American', or too 'Australian', or too 'outer-edge-of-Uzbekistani', and what is 'too American', anyway?  Is it a shortening of the vowels so the word 'pass' sounds like 'gas' (hey, pass gas - bahahahahaha!), instead of the broad sound Australians use, so it's a bit more like 'pahss'?  No matter the diction or delivery, most country music to me sounds like whiney, self-serving, shitty drivel delivered through the nasal passages.  Or pahssages, if you want to be reeeaaaallly broad with the 'a' vowel.  I live within a two hour drive from Tamworth, and when asked do I intend to visit for the Country Music Festival my answer is invariably, 'Probably not.  You see, most country music makes me want to pull a Chopper Read and hack off my ears.'  Does John Williamson think Troy Cassar-Daly and Adam Harvey should sound like him?  IMHO, he sounds really fucking awful.  I cringe when the rugby is on, and the All Blacks perform a blood-chilling haka because what do we have to offer?  'Waltzing Matilda' sounding like it is being sung by an adenoidal camel. 

The High Court of Australia have overturned the ACT's same sex marriage laws.  I thought this would happen because I was pretty sure marriage is under the umbrella of Commonwealth law, not State or Territory law.  This decision has voided the marriages of those people who took part in the same sex marriages the other day.  They must be gutted.  They must be proud.  They must be so many things.  I just wish they could be happy.  Is it not time to change the wording of the Act, and to enable a law to be passed allowing same-sex couples to marry?  New Zealand did it, and the world hasn't spun off its axis and disintegrated yet.  Come on, as pointed out above, they have this funky cultural haka and we have a jingoistic cringe for sports matches, let's prove we can be just as considerate of people's human rights as our friends across the Tasman.

I must sign off now, and put the cup cakes I have baked into a container, ready for icing tomorrow morning.  It is my 12yo's Year 6 Graduation tomorrow morning, and I am one of the mums who volunteered to bake cup cakes (as well as make a cobb loaf dip) for the party.  It was an emotional day today, being the Presentation Day.  I sat on the stage with some other people (I presented a drama award), and his name was called out for his class Academic Achievement award; I was able to get a good picture of him getting his certificate and medal.  Although nominated and having participated in the tests, he was not named Dux.  But you know what?  He has attended seven end of year presentations, and collected six (count 'em - SIX!) awards for Academic Achievement.  I have pushed through my loins one smart kid.  In any event, I was glad I ironed his shorts last night.  The last time I ironed his school uniform at all was a few days before he started kindergarten.  However, when I went to inspect him before he left for the bus this morning, I discovered there will still a drawing adorning his lower arm.  This was a sketch he did yesterday, and it looked horribly like an erect penis flanked by two testicles.  It looked like a crude prison tattoo.  Naturally I yelled, and grabbed the washcloth whereupon I scrubbed so hard, I almost fileted his arm.  If he was going to win Dux, he was not going to do it with a vulgar drawing on his arm.  Oh well.  Maybe I should have left it there.

Got other things on my mind, but they will have to wait for the next post.

Today's List

Might just do a little list of things that are sucking in the world according to Bingells of late.  Do you all care?  Maybe, maybe not.  In any event, enjoy the following post:

1.  That disgusting cow head skull that has made its way (probably via the dog next door) to the stretch of yard at the side of my house.  Don't get me wrong.  I LOVE skulls!  I do.  As an artistic motif, I think they're awesome.  Friends buy me skull mugs as souvenirs when they are on their travels, such is my fetish.  I'm as weird as you can get without actually carving a skull into my bicep and filling it in with ink from a leaky pen.  I first noticed this monstrosity on the nature strip at the front of my neighbour's house.  My 9yo was playing on his scooter, and their 3yo was playing on his bicycle.  'Yuck!' cried I, 'Where did this disgusting thing come from?'  The 3yo looked at me, all innocence and purity, and said, 'It felled-ed out of the sky.'  (Oh, bless).  I sneakily thought, 'Not my nature strip; not my problem'.  Well, it has become my problem because the horrid thing is now in my yard.  I don't know if it was the dog next door, or if the thing is cursed like something in a Wes Craven film, but it's in my yard.  And my dogs have been having a good old chomp.  My miniature foxy's breath is now reminiscent of a charnel pit in Hell.

2.  Drawing the bowser at my local petrol station with the bung hose.  Seriously, it trickles and dribbles like the cock of an ejaculating nonagenarian.  Sorry for the image you probably have in your head, but this is how it is.

3.  Being abused online because I cracked a tasteless joke.  I will not go into too much detail about the joke, but it involved cigarettes, Liberace, and the 'fag' word.  Someone called me a homophobe.  I am a person who actively supports same sex marriage.  I am a person who tells off my children the moment I hear one of them use a homophobic slur as an insult.  I am also a person who, if a bit miffed about a comment, will point it out to the poster without becoming abusive (all the while respecting their right to an opinion).  I would not fire off abuse and then unfriend somebody, or leave an online group after a bunch of abuse without giving my victims a chance to respond or defend themselves.  I do not particularly care to have my picture in the dictionary next to the words 'Craven Chickenshit', because I really do think this would be the definition.

Not everything is bad.  Today I reacquainted myself with a classic from my favourite childhood band, The Sweet.  The song is 'The Sixteens'.  It's got their signature awesome rhythm tandem team of Mick Tucker and Steve Priest.  Andy Scott treats us to the most angsty riffs that really seem to capture the pathos of this song.  Brian does his unique vocals, and Steve does back up, and it all blends to show what a talented band they were, particularly with the harmonies that easily rivalled Queen.

Well, something else I don't like is vacuuming, but it must be done.  Thank you for reading.

Vale, Nelson Mandela.

I love this time of year.  Usually.  At present I am not quite feeling the love. What I am feeling is exhaustion.  On Wednesday I was rostered to work a few hours, and as soon as I was finished I hurried (keeping within speed limit, of course) to the local high school where my oldest will be starting next year, and where he was attending for his final orientation.  It was my intention we attend the uniform shop and get him fitted up for his shorts, slacks, and a jumper.  Luckily, I already have his everyday and sports polos.  This was a very good idea.  Maybe not as good as using mouldy bread to treat infection like the ancient Egyptians used to do (which of course later became penicillin), but a good one nonetheless.  Unfortunately, everyone else had the same idea, and there was only one shop assistant on duty.  I shit you not, reader, that my son and I waited almost two hours to get served.  I could have walked away, son in tow, but the uniform shop is not open very often, and this was my opportunity.  To compound matters, my son had a dental appointment (a Government freebie payable on Medicare).  Finally got him kitted out, and into the car, and off to the dentist.  Husband rang as I entered the surgery, and I said, 'I'm here.'  He said, 'With Dr Suchandsuch?'  Um, say wha?  Yes.  I had merrily driven my son to the Wrong. Fucking. Dentist's. Surgery.  On the bright side, after a check up and clean, no further treatment was deemed necessary.

'As I walked out the door toward my freedom, I knew that if I did not leave all the anger, hatred and bitterness behind, that I would still be in prison.'  This is a quote from Nelson Mandela, probably the greatest man I have ever known of in my lifetime.  I sat on the lounge this morning, watching a live telecast of South African President Jacob Zuma giving a press conference in which what we had all guessed was confirmed: Nelson Mandela is now definitely free at last.

You know something I remember about Mandela, something that I think is absurd?  That he was photographed with the Spice Girls.  Who can tell me what's wrong with this picture?  A man of his calibre, being posed with five pop 'singers' of negligible talent at best.  One with a face like the north end of a south bound cat who would marry a soccer player.  One pulling a face and sticking out her tongue ('Hey, look at me, everyone!  I've got a tongue piercing!').  One who went on to do a shite cover of 'It's Raining Men' in the moving 'Bridget Jones' Diary'.  Others whom I cannot be bothered writing about at the moment because I am going to watch a DVD.  'Behind the Candelabra', which is the biopic of Liberace.  I do like biopics.  If there is ever a biopic of the Spice Girls made, I will probably not bother myself too much.

Vale, Nelson Mandela.

Kinda Lingers

Just read an online article about an upcoming movie 'Charlie Countryman', in which the MPAA (apparently the US equivalent of the classification board) did not want to deliver a rating on this movie until a scene depicting the female character receiving cunnilingus was cut.  I'm not certain  how graphic this scene was.  Won't get to find out, except perhaps in the 'deleted scenes' on the DVD, should I choose to hire it.  What has been left in is some very graphic violence.  This leads me to think it's okay to see people getting tortured and blown to confetti, but God forbid a woman receive pleasure.  This does not sit right with me.  I am not going to trot out the most over- and misused word of 2013, ie, 'misogyny', but it is sexism and chauvinism and hypocrisy, and just downright stupid.

MPAA, please get out of the caves and evolve, like the rest of us have.  Years ago, I watched a British farce called 'Confessions Of A Driving Instructor'.  As the title would suggest, this was no 'Citizen Kane'.  I didn't see it in 1976 when it first came out, nor would I have been allowed to because I was only ten years of age then.  I watched it on video at a friend's house in 1984, when I was eighteen and believed I knew everything.  Like many eighteen-year-olds, I was a tad obnoxious back then.  At forty-seven, I probably still am just a tad.  Anyway, there is a scene where the male lead ( who looked disconcertingly like Mick Jagger) is on the golf course, and flirting with a lady golfer.  She says something (can't remember exactly what), and he gets what she is hinting at, and kneels down in front of her, and we see her bliss-filled face as she hisses, 'Oh, yesssssss!'  It is obvious the male character is going down on her.  It is also obvious that this did not cause the earth to spin off its axis and disintegrate.

But the FUNNIEST cunnilingus scene I ever saw was in a film called 'Re-Animator'.  This is pure Eighties schlock, in which a scientist invented a serum capable of bringing the dead back to life.  His rival fought him for the formula, and ended up with his head chopped off.  The scientist (Dr West) thought, 'Aha!' and injected the serum into the both the body and head of his rival.  The body parts came back to life, and went on a rampage (the body being controlled by the head).  It arranged for the kidnapping of a woman with whom it was infatuated (after it had been walking around the hospital with a surgically-masked mannequin's head on its shoulders, and carrying its own head in a sports bag with holes cut in for vision).  The woman came to on a slab, where she was tied down, and - I shit you not - the body picked up the head and placed it between the woman's legs.  Perhaps this is imagery and metaphors on the part of the director.  More likely it's an attempt to have the audience shriek with horrified laughter.  I sure did.  My then flatmate had been out on a date, and when he returned home I asked him how the date had gone, etc.  He explained he had taken his date to a movie, and this was what they had viewed.  I asked him about the movie was like, and it took ages to get an explanation because he kept breaking down in giggles: 'half the people in the cinema walked out!', '...and the head was going down on this chick!'. 

Anyway, can the MPAA please review its priorities?  That goes for our own censorship lot here,  I've been trying to ascertain whether there is a petition going on to have the needless photoshopping of women's genitals stopped.  Will let you know if I find out.