Sigh

The comforting and dulcet tones of canned laughter set against corny jokes is the ambience to which I sit and write this evening.  My household is tuned in to 'The Big Bang'.  I guess this is a typical scenario in a house awash with testosterone.  I have one husband, two sons, and three male pets.  This I guess means 'The Big Bang' is going to get an airing - that and the fact the free-to-air channels don't seem to know how to run anything else.  It's like there is a needle stuck in a groove.  I'm starting to get seriously fucked off with 'The Big Bang'.  The canned laughter is starting to erode and gnaw away my will to live, the way a rat will gnaw at a wall to make itself a portal to the other side.  There is a subliminal message to canned laughter: 'This show is really unfunny so we have to point out where the humour is to make you laugh, and we think you're too stupid to get the jokes anyway'.  Note to the producers and writers: we get the jokes, just don't think they're funny.  My oldest enjoys this show, but his best subject in school is Science, so this might be why.  My husband thinks the Bernadette character is hot.  The Penny character shits me to tears.

It's not been a great twenty-four hours.  First of all: I am sick.  Again.  First world problem given the rest of the shit that's going on.  I am seriously tired of superstitious people attacking others.  I don't give a fuck if people want to follow religion, or indeed what religion people want to follow, just live and let live; leave others alone.  It's depressing the snot out of me, which at least might be more effective than the cold-and-flu medication I've been taking.

Warren Mitchell has died.  This is not really a surprise, given the man was eighty-nine years old.  Some mind find it interesting to know he was a rather left-leaning Jewish man, a complete opposite to the bigoted old curmudgeon Alf Garnett.  There's a deliciously cringey scene in the movie version of 'Til Death Do Us Part' at his daughter's wedding reception, where he tries to show his acceptance of coloured people by slipping his arm around a West Indian woman, who jokingly tells him to be careful in case her skin colour rubs off on him.  He realises she's joking, and decides to prove how encompassing he can be of other cultures by pointing to her, and telling passing guests, 'The coon's got a sense of humour!'  I remember watching this with my hands over my face and pretty much shrinking inside my epidermis.  This is of course the embarrassed reaction the movie makers wished to achieve, and it worked.  If anyone cares, the actor playing Garnett's son-in-law, whom Garnett had great disdain for, is in real life the father-in-law of ex-PM Tony Blair.  I was delighted and lucky enough to see Mitchell perform live in a play many years ago - I toddled along to Halftix and got myself a front row seat for a matinee performance of 'Orphans', which also starred Colin Friels and Mitchell's real-life son, Daniel.  I had only ever seen Warren Mitchell as Garnett, and it was a true treat to see him playing an US gangster type.  I know I'm gushing, but I think his performance was up there with Brando in 'The Godfather', and he rightly received standing ovation at the end of the play.  Vale, Warren Mitchell.  The world, and Australia where you made your home and took citizenship, will miss you greatly.

I had a lousy train trip last night.  I know catching the Hunter Line on a weekend is like dancing with the devil.  It doesn't make it any easier.  At least I didn't need the loo on this trip because the toilet floor is usually a pestiferous petri dish of nasties.  Patches of piddle, and peppered with swatches of toilet paper (seriously people, it goes in the fucking toilet!).  The toilet bowl is usually half full of foul liquid that appears to be caustic, and will burn away your skin like the rays from a hydrogen bomb if it splashes you.  The real hassle is the other passengers.  And of course, last night, two guys in their early twenties staggered on, both totally wasted.  I managed to ignore them, until the train reached Singleton where one of them stumbled off, as his mate kept calling him back.  The train left the station, and he addressed the rest of the carriage, slurring as he did, to inform us his mate had disembarked at the wrong station.  I bore this news with mild amusement, and turned back to my crossword puzzle.  The young man lurched back to his seat, and then I heard it.  We - that is, everybody else in the carriage - all heard it: that shuddering, hiccupping retching 'glurt' that is the sound of someone having a good old fashioned drunken chunder on himself.  Myself, and other passengers looked up in disgusted disapproval.  We coped, until lo and behold a few minutes later he barfed up again, with such force I became concerned he was going to bring up his liver.  Most of the passengers in the carriage hurriedly congregated to one end.  I, along with a few others, were already sitting at the other.  The drunken moron stumbled along to the alcove where passengers stow luggage, and snuggled up in there.  I thought he was going to pass out in there, and would have happily left him to miss his station as he slept the slumber of Bacchus, but I would not have wanted him to succumb to 'carrot poisoning'.  I didn't want to touch him to wake him, but thankfully he stirred of his own accord.  He left the train, or rather fell off, at Muswellbrook, same as me.  Myself, and another passenger alerted the staff this idiot had puked in the carriage, and the guard said they would seal the carriage so nobody else would go in there.  I felt very sorry for the people who had to clean it out. 

What can I say to all this, but: 'Sigh'.