Checking In

I've been a bit lax in the old blogging department this past week.  Undoubtedly the fact that I have been as busy as a one-armed fan dancer is to blame. Have had extra work duties, and they are to be carried out in an oppressive fog of yucky, miasmic, sweat-inducing humidity.  At the time of typing this post - 8.08pm ADST - just walking around feels like I'm walking through sticky, warm, molasses.  The heat clings and hangs around like that really annoying drunk at the pub who just doesn't understand you're watching the band, and you don't want to talk.  Nor do you wish to listen to his blathering babble about how you're just sitting along and shouldn't be alone.  At least, that's what you can make of it during the few seconds of quiet between the band's numbers.  When you frown at him, and cup your ears with your hands hoping he will take the hint and realise that you cannot hear what he's saying, it's to no avail.  So you stare with grim determination at the band as they belt out a Ted Nugent number, refusing eye contact, and hoping the drunk will leave you alone.  Anyway, that's what this heat's like.

Trying to keep the balls in the air is a pointless exercise.  I was always last kid picked for the team because I cannot even catch ONE ball, let alone juggle several, so they're all going to fall around me, and bounce a few little bounces, before rolling away.

Got one kid going on excursions for Japanese, and another doing life saving at the local pool.  Will he valiantly execute a safety jump and swim to the middle of the pool to 'rescue' the kid pretending to drown, before towing him back to the side of the pool?  When I had to do this all those years ago, we got lumbered with rescuing the fattest kid in the class.  Everyone nearly drowned trying to tow the behemoth to safety.  One year, nobody passed Intermediate because nobody would do mouth-to-mouth on the mannequin, owing to one kid sticking his dick in the mannequin's mouth when the instructor was momentarily called away.  I do hope the kids in my son's year aren't engaging in such buffoonish jackanapes.

I'm kind of happy about the engagement of Prince Henry of Wales to Meghan Markle.  What I will do is get over it very quickly if I don't stop getting bombarded with articles about it every time I switch on my television or check my online newsfeed.  The last time an American divorcee married into the British Royal Family there was an abdication, but I daresay being fifth in line to the Throne, Harry's not likely to relinquish any titles.

Person I'm Pissed Off At The Moment: Don Burke.  He's just an odious grub.  I'm not saying this because of the allegations, although if proven true, then he will be an even more odious grub.  No, it's his way of qualifying being a prick.  He blames it on self-diagnosed autism.  Yeah, you read right. 'Self-diagnosed'.  Um, first of all, does Burke have the medical qualifications to form this diagnosis?  Second of all, why does he think autism would justify that behaviour?  ('Wow, everyone's saying what a fuckwad I am.  This could lead to my downfall and a substantial loss of income.  Shit, what will I do?  Oh, I know!  I'll say: 'Sorry I come across as a sexist, entitled cockwomble, but I'm autistic.  I made that diagnosis up myself." That'll work!' - um, sorry Don, but it doesn't).

Anyway, got things to do, and no time in which to do them.  Ciao for now.

References To Aesop And Bill Wyman In The One Post!

That Aesop had quite a shitload of common sense, didn't he?  When I was a kid, I read a lot of his fables.  Their themes and their morals ring as true now as they did when Aesop was spinning a yarn some six hundred or so years before Jesus was born.  There was one I got thinking about: The Man, The Boy, and The Donkey.  In a nutshell, a man and his son were taking a donkey to market.  Someone pointed out they were mugs because after all, what's  a donkey for but to ride?  So the boy got on.  Then someone said the kid was a lazy little shit because the father had to walk.  So the kid got off and the father got on.  Some old biddies complained what an overbearing and obnoxious father to let the poor boy walk whilst he enjoyed the ride.  So THEN the kid climbed on, too, and a bunch of people castigated them for weighing down that poor donkey with their combined weight.  In a moment of brilliance <jokes>, they tied the beast's legs together and attached him to a pole, and tried to carry him in the mode of those African hunters who carry their kill back to the village, for boiling in the pot and divvying up amongst the villagers.  Anyway, they couldn't carry the donkey, the pole broke, donkey went over the bridge into the river.  Owing to its legs being bound, the poor beast couldn't get to safety and drowned.  Now, who knows what the moral to the story is?  If you can't figure it out, let me tell you: try to please all, you will end up pleasing none.  If you needed that explained to you, go back to viewing the Kardashians' pictures on your Instagram feed.

The reason WHY I got thinking about this story is the Blackfriars' Priory School in Adelaide has just unveiled a statue of St Martin de Porres, who in his earthly time was a member of the Dominicans in Lima.  Here's a picture of the statue that has caused consternation.  I'm sure you will realise why:

All right, get your minds out of the gutter and have a better look.  It's a piece of bread.  St Martin, having been an illegitimate mixed race child who experienced abject poverty when growing up, was very focused on providing for the unfortunate in society.  This piece of work depicts him giving the kid something to eat, okay?  It's not his dick.  It's bread.  Yes, the positioning is unfortunate, but I'm not a sculptor and I'm not sure if it was feasible for the artist to have the bread held elsewhere, given whatever medium the work has been sculpted in.

But some people complained.

'That's just offensive!'

'That will trigger young people who have been abused by the clergy!'

'This makes a mockery of child abuse carried out by religious institutions!'

'What were you people thinking?'

So the school did this:

Different people complained.

'It looks like a burqa, and is going to inflame anti-Muslim unrest!'

'Why did you give into the people whingeing?'

'It looks like he's being kidnapped, and is about to be thrown into the boot of a car and driven to a secret place, then held for ransom!' (That one's mine).

But you can see my reference to the Aesop fable here, can't you?  Doesn't matter what happens; someone's ALWAYS going to carry on like they need a tampon change.  To the school: please reinstate the statue.  It's a piece of art, it's not that bad, and St Martin de Porres sounds like he was an all right bloke.  Also, it's probably not going to be too long before the statue is covered with bird shit, anyway.  Of course this could be a job for the naughty children of the school: scrubbing it away.

Sigh.  RIP, David Cassidy.  No more suffering for you.  'I Think I Love You' is a very nicely crafted pop song, ostensibly performed by your television family, but more likely performed by you, your stepmother Shirley Jones, and professional session singers.

Double sigh.  That moment when you go read the playlist of the CD you won - 'Hard To Get Hits' - and see 'You Raise Me Up' by Westlife (emetic putrescence), and even worse: 'Je Suis In Rock Star' by Bill Wyman.  It's not that they're hard to get hits, it's that they're hits nobody WANTS to get!  The Bill Wyman ditty is a labia-shrivelling, craptacular paean to the art of recording a song when one is completely tone deaf.  That part where Bill croaks in faux cockney: 'she took 'orf 'er 'at, and she 'ad lovely 'air' just makes me think having Tabasco sauce dripped into my urethra might be a slightly more pleasant experience than listening to that. 

Flogs: Illiterate, Stupid, & Evil

I start this post by doing something I thought I would never do.  I am going to thank Salim Mehajer.  He has actually come in useful for something.  Stop laughing.  Pick your jaws back up from your laps.  He has. It's true, I tells ye!  If you read my last post, you will have read my incredulous rant at the advertisement he posted for staff, a position that is clearly out of the question if you're a bloke with tattoos.  I have printed off a copy of that lamentable ad, and am taking it to the student I am tutoring this afternoon.  I will get him to read it, tell me what's wrong, and correct it.  I will probably also need to get him a handkerchief as he weeps with despair.

Aren't some people flogs?  They are just pure, unmitigated, unadulterated, flogs; stone-cold, motherless last down the bottom of the intelligence scale.  I don't know if it's even worth my time blogging about this flog, well she-flog in this instance, but I was so damned annoyed that the imbecile is taking up space in my newsfeed.  I guess it's her own fault in a way; she's the one who turned to the media with her grievance.  I was annoyed at her for what she's annoyed about.  This is what she's annoyed about: she attended the Stevie Nicks concert the other night and is complaining she was escorted out by security for dancing.  No, this is not a 'Footloose' scenario wherein the joy that is dance has been banned by a civic committee of misguided stodgy old farts.  This is a situation where she was told to sit down three times, and when she didn't, the security took her out of the venue.  She is totally humiliated, she says, and feels like a criminal.  Maybe the realisation that many people think she is an entitled prat might be just a tad more humiliating.  Listen, woman: if you're told by the security staff to sit down, and ignore directions, then you're going to be removed from premises.  How hard is it to understand?  This is what actually really pisses me off: you want to dance?  Great.  Go and dance where you're not impacting up on the visibility and enjoyment of other patrons.  This was the issue.  Usually there are standing areas, and you can dance your silly guts out there.  In a seated area, not everybody wants to have to stand up.  Not everybody can stand for long periods of time, either.  But these other patrons have parted with their hard-earned cash to see the show, and it is the show they wish to see; not your bloody arse swinging around in front of them.  It's annoying.  I saw a Live Aid tribute concert a few months ago.  Enjoyed it.  Then someone started dancing near the stage, just close enough to my peripheral vision to be really irritating.  I was actually going to say something, and closer inspection of the patron had me realise she was a person with special needs (there were a few special needs people there, so I daresay there had been an excursion organised).  I realised saying, 'Will you get the fuck away from there?' would have been a bit churlish on my part as the woman did not realise her repetitive dance movements were a bit distracting.  But to the person who has gone to the media crying because she no doubt annoyed the crap out of other people, ignored warnings, and then got what was due her: fuck off.  Listen - your right to extend your fist ends where another person's nose begins.  Try and remember that.  You are an idiot who has climbed onto my nerves like a virulent parasite.

Charles Manson has died.  I guess this kind of compensates for the loss of Malcolm Young the other day.  Rot in Hell, Manson.

The Good (Because It's Bad), The Bad (And It's Bad), And The Ugly (Because It's Pretty Bad)

I had planned to write about three topics and categorise them as The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.  But of the topics I have chosen, none are good; so a spanner has been chucked into my works.  Perhaps I can just re-phrase them slightly.  Here we go:

1. The Good (But Only Because It's So Hilariously Bad)
My travails on Twitter a few days ago had me chancing upon footage of Pauline Hanson decrying what she presumes to be a curriculum for sex education in schools. I'm going to see if I can post a link so you can have a listen and a good old guffaw like I did.  If you have hassles, go to my Twitter page. My handle is Bingells.

https://twitter.com/TheQTU/status/931305813897072640

She goes on in her usual shrewish and shrill manner, her voice as lachrymose as ever and capable of peeling open a sardine can.  But it's the combination of what she's saying, her indignant outrage, and that, that voice that kills me.  It is a horrible mixture of hilarious and ungodly to view a furious Pauline Hanson snarling the words: 'strap on a dildo'.  Then she squawks about teaching the kids to masturbate, but my giddy aunt, her pronunciation of 'masturbate' had me succumbing to another fit of the giggles.  Let's just say she watched a bit too much Captain Pugwash with the kids.  Giggle-fest aside, it also made me wonder when someone will slap a scold's bridle on the woman.

2. The Bad
Malcolm Young has died.  I'm very saddened for his family, given they lost his brother George only a few weeks ago.  Malcolm had been suffering from dementia, and it has taken him at the age of sixty-four.  It's funny to think of my childhood idols dying at sixty-four; my mother died at sixty-four.  Mr Bingells and I attended an AC/DC concert in 1996, and I remember them performing 'Dirty Deeds (Done Dirty Cheap)', and Malcolm on rhythm guitar, growling into the microphone: 'Dirty deeds and they're done dirt cheap/Dirty deeds and they're done dirt cheap...'.  From memory, he was wearing a dark blue singlet and jeans, his slightly straggly hair hanging down just past his shoulders.  No bullshit with Malcolm; just rock and roll.  Rock in Peace, Malcolm.  No more suffering for you.  If there's a Heaven, you're no doubt jamming with your bro George.

3. The Ugly
Check this out:

It appears to be an advertisement for a personal assistant to Salim Mehajer.  Notwithstanding no self-respecting secretary of sound mind would want to work for him, everything about this ad just made me want to (1) soothe my burning eyeballs with calamine lotion; (2) Cleanse my brain with Aqium to erase the unholy image; and (3) drink wine until totally blotto because everything I believe in, and hold dear and sacrosanct, has been compromised most foully.  

He is seeking a 'sophisticated personal assistant'. This is understandable because the secretary who is a ditzy dumb-arse is really only the fodder of corny television situation comedies.  But Jesus Christ on a pony galloping through a field of land mines, where to begin on the rest of it!  The crimes against grammar and spelling include:

1. A mix-up of 'then' and 'than'.  For future reference: 'then' is a sequence of events, and 'than' is a comparison of subjects.  Got that?  Easy to remember: the last two letters of 'then' are the first two letters of 'ensue', which is what happens in a sequence of events.

2. The word 'luck' is not a proper noun.  What's with the capital 'L'?

3. The word 'legitimacy' has been spelled apparently by pulling random Scrabble tiles out of the drawstring bag.  Seriously, mate; can you even spell your own name?

3. Termination will take 'pace'?  Huh? 

I was labouring under the misapprehension one of the worrying things about low literacy levels in adults is being unable to competently carry out tasks like preparing reports, or incident reports, and case notes - these things are becoming more and more of a requirement these days in what some would consider even the most basic of blue collar tasks.  This ad has made me consider the lugubrious situation that someone with the grammatical skills of a backward nine-year-old, or maybe a monkey at a typewriter, can become the deputy mayor of a Sydney suburb.  This ain't right (and before everyone jumps up and down, my use of the colloquially poor form of 'isn't' is my idea of irony).

Watched the 'Countdown' special episode tonight.  It focussed on 1984, and it was awash with so much putrid synth pop it made me question the fairness of life.

It Takes The Cake

My fellow Australians, isn't it great to be in the 21st century, along with other First World countries?  Yesterday, it was announced the majority of the country had voted 'Yes'.  I hadn't realised my youngest was so politically and socially aware until he came home from school and asked, 'Who won, Mum?'  'The 'yes' vote did,' I smiled.  He fist pumped in the time-old triumphant gesture.

Not everyone likes this.  I just roll my eyes, make a 'pfffffft' noise, and invite the naysayers to eat a dick.  I know this has all been said, but if someone marries someone of the same gender, is it really going to affect your life?  That's what annoys me.  It's someone else's life - not yours - and what they do really is not going to affect you, unless they move next door and throw dead cats on your lawn.  That option will have nothing to do with marital status, but a lot to do with mental status.

The legislation has not yet been finalised, to my knowledge.  I think the anti-discrimination aspects are to be ironed out.  Problem here is you can't please all of the people all of the time.  There is an oft-trotted out argument that a baker shouldn't be expected to bake a cake for a same sex marriage if that baker objects on religious or moral grounds.  I'm uncertain how the baker will know the cake is for a same sex couple, unless that couple has the cake decorated at that premises. But hey, if the baker is silly enough to turn away business and gain a reputation as an intolerant bigot (whether or not that reputation is warranted), then that's the baker's fault.  If I was one half of a same sex couple and had a service refused on the grounds of my sexuality, I'd just say, 'Well, you know where to shove your cake-or-wedding-car-or-camera, mate', and take my business elsewhere.

Churches are a different kettle of fish, I suppose, given we have freedom of religion here.  The Catholic Church will probably say no to solemnising the wedding of a same sex couple, because it's against the doctrine.  Hey, I've known of people who've had to marry in another place because one of the party was a divorcee.  Churches might have their own rules, kind of like a club might have rules about members and dress codes etc, but if the Church wants to influence our government, maybe pay a little tax?  Oh fuck it, pay some tax anyway.  It's absurd to have a bunch of superstitious men in dresses trying to influence people's lives and the legislation in this land - all in the name of an omniscient invisible sky wizard - without coughing up a little to help pay for some infrastructure and health care.

Oh, so tired.  I've had some wine and I think it's affected me somewhat.  I have a big day tomorrow, and a big weekend of lesson planning (got some students to tutor), some poems to look at (I'm judging a poetry competition), and taking one kid to dress rehearsal for his dance concert.

Just been goofing on You Tube.  Watched a film clip of Ted Mulry Gang playing 'Heart of Stone'.  Everyone will always associate 'Jump In My Car' with dear old TMG, but the one I'm playing I rather like.  I don't know if it's musically marvellous per se, I just like it.

I have also discovered someone has decided to remake 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show', and watched a clip of Adam Lambert as Eddie performing 'Hot Patootie'.  Meatloaf pretty much made that song his own from the original movie (and Broadway production).  It's not the easiest song to sing, from what I can tell, but Meatloaf of course could sing for the country in his heyday.  I've seen the show live a few times.  The first time I saw it on stage a very young Russell Crowe played the dual roles of Eddie/Dr Scott.  He brought humour in the latter role of the wheelchair-bound science professor, but watching him trying to sing 'Hot Patootie' made my nostrils flare and set my teeth on edge.  Some years later, in the early courtship of Mr Bingells and me, we saw a production wherein the doomed biker was played by Wilbur Wilde.  Again, I thought he sounded a bit pants and was only cast because he could actually play the saxophone in the song's bridge.  But watching Adam Lambert performing it in this remake kind of restored my faith in mankind.  Lambert is a very talented man with a heaping helping of the X Factor.

That's all for now.

'Shiny, Shiny' (More Like 'Shite-y, Shite-y')

Gather around the campfire, children; it's time to tell ghost stories.  Auntie Bingells has a doozy.  I'm not going to shine a torch under my face for effect (trust me, the last thing I need at my age is any kind of technical effect that makes me look more haggard or scary), nor am I going repeat the oft-told urban myth of the serial killer with the fork for a hand, and then hold up the barbeque fork as I triumphantly roar, ''THE KILLER STILL ROAMS THE WOODS!  BOO!"

Nope, this one is even more chilling.  Here goes...

Way back, back, probably in the late Seventies or early Eighties, there were some men who worked as record producers.  Most scary stories and fairy tales feature hunters or wood cutters, but these blokes were record producers.  They met up in an office one day, and someone had left magic powder there.  They breathed it up their nostrils, and strange ideas came to them.  One of them said, 'I've got the most fantastic idea!  Let's find a young guy and girl, preferably completely devoid of any musical talent whatsoever, and get them to record the most dissonant, jarring, and meaningless song ever!'

'But, but..' giggled one of the other producers, as he toyed with his erection, 'we're talking about music here!'

The original producer went on, sniffing a little, 'It doesn't matter.  The kids will listen to what we tell them to listen to.  They will believe this is the New Age.'

One of the acolytes, now under the thrall of the magic powder, interjected in the most ingratiating of tones, 'Super idea, boss!  What super larks!  I think I might know of such a couple.  The guy is a bit androgynous which is super fashionable these days.  You know, that Boy George chappie and all, really.  The girl can't sing for toffee, but the sneer on her face is second to none. Also, she has the most filthy dreadlocks because she doesn't wash her hair, and writes the most horrid rude words on her shoes.  The young folk will lap it up!'

'Right!' exclaimed the most senior of the producers, rubbing his hands together in unholy glee.  'I can just see a cottage on Mustique now!

They carried out their evil plan, and soon thereafter a single was released by a band with the name Haysi Fantayzee, and that single was 'Shiny, Shiny'.  Teenagers everywhere were taken in by the evil spell cast by that song.

Not all teenagers were hoodwinked.  Your blogger, for one.  I saw through the tripe for what it was: a disharmonious, discordant, atonal heap of bullshit.  I despaired for the future of music when I saw the clip on 'Countdown'.   In the passage of time, I thought I had put the nightmare behind me.  I thought the spell had been lifted.  But tonight its evil presence manifested itself on the 'Countdown' special.  I should have known I was not in for a good time when the episode opened with Pat Wilson's squeaky 'Bop Girl', a ditty that ruptures the fabric of time and space with its pointless mediocrity.  But I coped.  And then it re-appeared, like an evil boomerang: 'Shiny, Shiny'.  My thirteen-year-old sat there stunned by the sheer godawfulness of it.  So did I.  I found myself reaching for a beer to cope.

That song is a gangrenous pile of pustules.

Patriot Yellow (Better Suited Colour Than Blue)

This were my thoughts and plans when I woke up today: 'Coffee.'

I had my coffee, and then started to really get in depth for my plans, and my thoughts went something like: 'Well, I'd best fold the washing, and I want to make those chocolate-and-macadamia nut cookies.  I have to get something for dinner at the supermarket, and then I'll call by work and print off my roster for next week.  I'll contact the parents of the kids I'm tutoring and let them know when I'm free.  Better get something sorted for writers' group tonight, too.'

What I did NOT think was: 'I'll catch up with a few of me redneck bogan mates at the pub.  With a bit of luck a politician we don't like will drop by.  What a fucken bonus if he was born in the Middle East because then we can crowd around him while he's havin' a coldie and that way we'll block off his exit route, 'cos that's real brave an' all that, especially if there's only one of him and three or so of us, aye? Don't want him to get away when we call him a terrorist and tell him to go back to Iran.  I'll wear me hi-vis work shirt with the company logo on it, 'cos that's real smart of me.  Fucken bonus if someone films it on his phone because then we can put it on Facebook and all our mates'll see what top blokes we all are, like all our mates at Patriot Blue.'

Yet, it would appear some guttersnipes representing a group called Patriot Blue thought this very thought one recent morning.  Seriously, you dimwitted, mutton-headed, imbecilic poltroons; did you really think this was a good idea?  You've abused someone going about his business and put it on social media.  I am unware of your employer's social media policy, but if you've contravened it, then don't come crying to me when  you find yourselves out on your respective cowardly arses. 

I'm ambivalent about Senator Sam Dastyari personally, but to you gangrenous cankers from Patriot Blue: I'm actually sure Dastyari has renounced any former Iranian citizenship and is a full Australian citizen.  Heavens to Murgatroid, he's been here since he was a young boy, and as for your concerns about his Islamic background, the man doesn't even consider himself religious.  From the footage I saw, Dastyari was actually being served a beer.  Beer is alcohol, and Muslims aren't really supposed to drink alcohol.  That's probably want offends you because not drinking is 'unastrayan' an' all that, roight?

I daresay A & E will have to get ready for the incoming casualties with self-inflicted bullet wounds to the feet.  Ever hear the phrase 'shot yourself in the foot'? As well as something that might happen when  you lot are out drunkenly pigging, it's a metaphor for unintentionally making things bad for yourself because you've not thought through your actions.  A metaphor, by the way, is a rhetorical figure of speech that compares two unrelated things by saying one IS the other: 'Jack is very helpful to me, he is an absolute ROCK.'  Rhetorical means, oh never mind, just look it up yourselves instead of acting like unmitigated arsehats.

Just go away with your stupidity.  You are all manifestations of the pilled up flecks of toilet paper tangled in the hairs around Satan's butthole.

Counting Down The Dross

I've been questioning my own behaviour of late.  Do I find it my life mission, my raison d'etre to set misinformed people straight, or to just downright annoy them in a fit of perverse superiority?  The people I like annoying are usually the ones who follow an elected senator.  Not just any elected senator, but one who has never actually fecking well voted in an Australian election in his life and then has the hide to stand for Parliament.  Him, his minions, and the mainstream media are just doing my head in again.  Look, I'm about to say something that's probably not a likeable comment, but I'm sure if my interpretation of policy is correct, is a true one. First of all, you've no doubt seen the headlines about how 'hardworking Australians' are 'outraged' that 'their taxpayer dollars' have gone toward the legal bills of Cassie Sainsbury in Colombia.  Those are clichés and standbys straight out of the Bog-Standard Journalistic Maxims textbook, in particular the chapter that deals with how to whip up public outrage.  Tabloid media, shock jocks, and shock-jock-turned-senators are whipping away like frenzied dominatrixi.  I am sure the plural of dominatrix is 'dominatrixi', but as I type this my on my 'pute, the stern red squiggly line appears below.  I tried 'dominatrixes' , but 'it' didn't like that spelling either.  Spelling semantics aside, I'm sure you get my drift.  The crappy senator wrote a post all huffing, puffing, bluff and bluster about this, how Cassie is a 'some time prostitute' (note to the senator: Who gives a flying - ahem - fuck? Judgemental and irrelevant, much?) and the hard working taxpayer blahblahblah (he was no doubt cribbing from the aforementioned textbook).  Look, I'm now at my point: my interpretation, albeit sketchy, of the Foreign Affairs policy is that in these overseas cases there will be funding made available in instances where the defendant is charged with a crime that could garner (a) the death penalty, or (b) a sentence over twenty years.  Cassie was for a while looking at option (b), hence the funding.  It's our law, and it must be applied without fear or favour.  Also, the $100,000 that has everyone losing their shit where they stand is really pretty small potatoes, chats really, compared to the obscene amount of money spent on the same sex marriage postal survey.

But questioning my behaviour?  I think I just enjoy stirring.

Okay, who watched tonight's episode of 'Countdown'.  It focused on 1982, and started with a snippet of Christopher Atkins performing 'How Can I Live Without Her?' from that woeful, cine-shite 'The Pirate Movie'.  Atkins probably peaked in 'The Blue Lagoon', when he had that absurd perm.  I hadn't wanted to see 'The Blue Lagoon'.  Even at fifteen, I was not a 'chick flick' type of gal.  I knew of the controversy surrounding the movie, and also knew the nude scenes were performed by a body double.  There was fuss because the Brooke Shields character experiences menstruation.  I didn't care; most women do experience menstruation and I was three years into the menstrual stage of my life then, anyway.  But I was wheedled into viewing this film by some younger cousins who needed an older teenager to accompany them.  'Will you take us to see 'The Blue Lagoon', Simmie?  The girl gets her periods in it!', they pleaded.  So I took them along.  And sat in the cinema bored out of my scone.

On the bright side, the episode screened a clip of Iron Maiden performing 'The Number Of The Beast'.  How awesome a singer is Bruce Dickinson?  I knew he was a pilot, but had forgotten he was also a high-ranking fencer, having declined a place in the Olympic team because he was touring with the band.  I sniggered at the lycra, and pointed out his black studded wrist bands to my 16yo, telling him I used to wear similar, having been something of a metal head when younger.  Upon hearing his mother used to sport such gauche accoutrement, my son said, 'You are not a good person.'

Other bands were featured, some of whom I'd never heard and indeed would have remained happy in my ignorance; one featured a singer who appeared to be a precursor Courtney Love in that she was bleached, skanky looking, and had a painful singing voice (which matched the shit song she was, um, delivering).  Seeing Devo performing 'Whip It' was lots of fun, and compensated for the rest of the dross.

But it was fun, and made up for the aggravating afternoon I spent trying to purchase my 13yo son a pair of shoes.  I couldn't find suitable ones in his size, but he found some elegant women's high heels and put them on, strutting around the store like a cross between a catwalk model and Dr Frank'n'Furter.

I have also prepared a lesson for a lad I am to tutor in English tomorrow.  So I am feeling virtuous.  I am also feeling tired, and have a kitchen to tidy.

Ciao for now.

Your Daily Dose Of Kitsch

Okay, reader.  Don't say I don't do anything for you.  I'm going to post a clip of true, flesh crawling badness for you.  It might make you laugh.  It might make you cringe.  It might make you tap your feet.  It might take you back to a carefree time when you wore studded black wristbands - a heinous crime against fashion to which I plead guilty, but then again, I was a nineteen-year-old metal fan (as opposed to a fifty-one year old metal fan) so I plead mitigating circumstances m'lud.  Without going into too much detail, I had reason to You Tube this clip today, which is Brian Mannix and Uncanny X-Men on 'Hey, Hey, It's Saturday' performing 'Best Looking Guy In The Factory'.

For sheer kitsch horror, it simply cannot be beaten.  Mannix is busting moves that make Elaine Benes from 'Seinfeld' look like Margot Fonteyn.  The blonde guitarist is in shiny leather (or more likely sweaty vinyl) pants.  The bassist has a permed mullet.  The lyrics include 'the girls are all dogs/the men are all wogs...'.  Not exactly the stuff of Sondheim, is it?  Towards the end, Mannix addresses some unseen person - possibly an audience member, or possibly a character in the ditty - 'Hey, you with the snot rag on your head!'  Truly, what's not to love?

So, I had a look at it again today.  And I could not look away.  It drew me in with its tractor beam of sheer unadulterated vulgarity, as if plotting to stow me onto the mother ship and transport me to the planet of Tacky.  Almost a little like St Patrick being kidnapped by pirates.

I will post the clip here, and don't say you weren't warned.  It's really an unbearable guilty pleasure.  Maybe, as I mentioned, it evokes memories of being carefree.  However, it's awfulness is enough to rupture the very fabric of time and space, so to save embarrassment, you might want to draw the blinds and dim the lights, lest the neighbours watch you viewing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoBFZWEkZjQ

The other day my home town unveiled a statue to honour the 100 year anniversary of the Battle of Beersheba.

It's not apparent from this picture, but if you were up close you would see pure horror, fear, and determination in the faces of both the rider and the horse.  There is remarkable detail in the anatomy of the animal, and the body language of the rider is phenomenal.  As a work of art, it is breathtaking.  I was not at the unveiling, but when I had my chance, I inspected the new statue.  Then I read the plaque, and it mentioned 'unveilled'.  Yeah, you read that right.  Double consonant after diagraph vowels before a suffix.  My day was officially ruined, and I made due enquiries with my local council.  I have been informed this plaque is only temporary, the Good Lord be Praised.  

Again, I have advertised my services as a tutor in English.  One of the local schools informed me I could not advertise in their newsletter.  The email bringing this negative news had a misplaced apostrophe, and I had to fight an almost insurmountable urge to write back and point out the author of that email could do some tutoring herself.  Pedantry aside, I have had enquiries from other people, so will hopefully have some more students next week.