This just in

Auctions suck.

Groundhog month

It has been an utterly mad week of stress and building inspections and I think I just spent $700.00 to find out there are no termites in a house that may well be bought by someone else and how do we pay a deposit at auction when we dont have a chequebook and stress and do we really want this house what are the schools like around there and children not sleeping and stress and what do you mean you won't consider an offer before auction are you mental not that we're too keen to buy or anything and stress and oh it's a fantastic house if we get outbid this is going to stink and maybe we should have gone to at least one auction ever in our lives instead of just hoping that accidentally watching Hot Property once was enough and stress.


Arrrgh.

Fortunately there has been a lot of cake in the fridge at work so not all bad news, really.

With less than two days to go before the auction, all is in readiness and all we have to do now is be the highest bidders without bidding more than a bank would actually lend us.

I am hoping that this will be my one and only post about house hunting ever, so let me take this opportunity to acknowledge a few spectacular efforts from those professionals we have dealt with in recent weeks.

Firstly, a shoutout to our mortgage broker, who gave us an estimate of the stamp duty we would pay that was several thousand dollars off the mark, even though you don't even have to work it out you just look up a table and write down a number.

Secondly, some excellent work from a couple of estate agents. One, despite being generally rather likeable, struck me as less than motivated. When I told him that I had searched the entire backyard and it appeared than the property was completely free of clotheslines, he said "Well, I'll take your word for it".

This was topped by another agent who insisted the bench tops in the kitchen were not orange.

While we were standing in the kitchen. With the orange benchtops.

She managed to do this with a completely straight face, and didn't even blink when I took an orange out of the fruit bowl and held it up next to the bench.

This takes determination.

Finally, congratulations to whoever designed those mortgage calculators for websites of banks. We had a serious panic attack today when we checked that our fortnightly repayments would be what we thought they would be and two out of three mortgage calculators indicated that the payments would be around $100 per fortnight higher than we expected (and therefore totally unaffordable).

It took me a few minutes to figure out that this was because these super internet calculators had worked out a fortnightly amount by taking the monthly amount and dividing by two.

This works if it's ALWAYS FEBRUARY, and even then it's wrong in leap years.

As Tegan once pointed out to the Doctor, even a stopped clock is right twice a day, adn I think these mortgage calculators are similarly useful.

Here endeths the venting.

Expect celebratory posting early next week.

This one will be followed by a discussion entitled "Should I have posted it? No"

Just because I can, here’s a poem that I wrote eight years ago for a friend who I did not actually ever date. It went like this:


I love you and I wish that you were my wife
You don’t know, you don’t care, and I hate my life
I know that it’s true, but what can I do
Just like a wrong number, I’m hung up on you

Sometimes I feel I’m on the verge of hysterics
I’m beginning to understand Bon Jovi lyrics
The touch of your hand, the smell of your hair
Makes me want to sing “Wo-oh we’re halfway there”

I think of you so much it’s getting pathetic
I’ll lose my job leave home and become peripatetic
And as I sleep under a bridge with a smack addict named Stu
I’ll still be writing bad poetry about how much I love you


Which is worse: that I wrote this in the first place, that I’m posting it now, or that eight years after writing it I didn’t have to look it up in order to post it because I still remember it word for word?

The stuff I wrote when I met Honey Bear was way better than this.

NA NA NA NA WEY-HEY-EY GOODBYE

This one's for my good friend Princess* who sadly leaves my workplace for apparently greener pastures at the end of this week. In honour of this unfortunate-for-me event, here's a brief list of things I recommend for farewell cards on occasions such as this when good luck with your career we'll miss you etc etc seems a little too cliched. These include:

1. I think I speak for us all when I say that we will miss you like a left arm that was lost in a war. Okay, maybe the others wouldn't have said it exactly like that...

2. This must be how Buffy felt when Giles moved to England

3. Near, far, wherever you are, you are safe in my heart and my heart will go on and on.

4. This workplace without you will be like Mt Thomas Police Station without the wise and calm leadership of Sgt Tom Croydon**

5. As Cyndi Lauper once said "There's a hole in my heart that goes all the way to China, though you can't see the bottom you know it's a long way down."



Today's quiz: How many of these do you think I have actually used?

It's more than one.






* Not MG's daughter, just someone else with the same name


** In fairness, that particular guy does look, sound, talk and act exactly like John Woods.

Driving through the hot night/ without my headlights/ 20-20 hindsight

It is odd how something can seem relatively normal at the time but around twenty years later the same event will be completely incomprehensible.

People of arrange my age or older will probably remember the disastrous attempt at sketch comedy formerly known as “The Comedy Company”. Yes, the show that was responsible for such appalling blights on our culture as Con the Offensive Ethnic Stereotype, and which launched the careers of Russell “British Comedy Classics” Gilbert and Glenn “please stop it” Robbins. Sure, at the time I was proud that they filmed a sketch at my school and the “Advance Australia – Learn Languages” poster I made for my Year 8 German class briefly achieved national prominence by being in the background for about 3.4 seconds, but apart from that the show was an exercise in finding the lowest common denominator Kylie Mole style and I’m deeply embarrassed that I ever watched it.

Anyway, at some point in this show’s mercifully brief history, probably around 1987, ABBA decided to tour again and the Comedy Company duly assembled the usual suspects for a musical parody. The baffling part was that they decided to parody not just ABBA, but also the recent nuclear non-proliferation summit between Ronald Reagan and Mikhael Gorbachov.

For memory, the lyrics, sung to the tune of “Mama Mia”, went something like this:

Ronnie Reagan, here we go again/ talking non-proliferation/
Ronnie Reagan, in Moscow again/ talking missile limitation/
But when the talking’s finished/ stockpiles are undiminished/
Why why, did they ever let him go

At the time, this didn’t seem odd. However, I now find it utterly beyond all comprehension that, within my lifetime, there was a time when the possibility of nuclear holocaust was so much a part of our everyday experience that it didn’t seem odd when the most lightweight, apolitical sketch comedy program in the history of this country presented us with amusing songs about it.

I’m curious as to what will seem equally odd in another twenty years.

Wake me up before you yuyu

A few weeks ago, or whenever I last did a meme, the concept of a yuyu got mentioned in passing in one of the comments. As far as I understand it, a yuyu is the opposite of a meme, in that the blogger who writes the yuyu writes about someone else for a change.

Unfortunately, this concept is yet to take off the way it deserves to. As far as I know, the only people to have ever tried this are Bevis and of course the inventor of the yuyu herself, MelbourneGirl.

So, since I find other people way more interesting than I find myself (this is generally because they actually are way more interesting that me), and because spreading a bit of extra positivity around the interweb can’t be a bad thing, I thought I’d try writing a few of these yuyu things myself. I’m hoping that this concept will take off and everyone will start doing it and MG will be rich and so forth.

Well, enough of the awkward explanation of the backstory in the manner of Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Philosopher's Stone. Let's get straight to the Quidditch yuyu.

It is no secret that I am a massive fan of Gigglewick’s work, so where better to start the yuyuing that with a visit to this excellent blog.

It is perhaps slightly unusual that I was a massive fan of Giggle’s work even when her entire blog consisted of one post, the entire text of which can be found here. Frankly, the post itself was not that exciting, but Giggles had left some truly exceptional comments at another famous blog. One comment in particular amused me to the point where I started a petition to try to get Gigglewick to post on her own blog. That comment was in response to question from another reader about the naming of babies, and it said this:

One of the few good things about the Federal Government is that they give you a bit of a grace period after the child is born before you have to register their name...that way you can see whether it's more an 'Audio Science'* than a 'Jack' (or more a 'Arloretsinaweewaks' (pronounced "Kelly") than a 'Mia').

* real celebrity child name

** not a real celebrity child name.....YET


I can’t help but notice that, in a sign of things to come, even this very early example of GW’s work is heavily footnoted and includes a random swipe at teh Federal Government.

Anyway, I used the comments section of Do I Have To to create an online petition, Harpo and Thomasr signed it, Gigglewick started blogging and the rest is very entertaining history.

My suspicion that Giggles was freakin’ hilarious was confirmed in her second post, where, in response to a request to list three things she hated, Giggles included the following item:

- Aggression/Aniseed

(still can't decide which one I hate more. If a sociopath aggressively tried to feed me aniseed while I was mulling something over it would be my worst nightmare)

The comedy has continued to this day. Giggles’ posts still frequently make me laugh for days on end.

Giggles was also instrumental in the creation of We Do Talk About Our Kids. The adventures of a particularly entertaining four year old known only as Grizzlewick are endless fascinating as well as a little frightening for anyone who has children who are soon to reach that age. I don’t actually much care if no-one reads that blog. I get to gain endless amounts of credibility just by contributing to a blog which has Gigglewick’s name on it (and having Actonb, Meva, MG and Mizanthrop on there also bolsters my status no end)

Giggles is more than just a very funny young lady with a blog. She also has the ability to inspire readers and write wonderfully thought provoking posts on social justice, politics and, occasionally, spirituality.


Gigglewick, I am endlessly impressed with your writing, I am very happy that I get to read your blog and I am honoured that you read mine and leave many exceptionally entertaining comments. Please continue to place your excellent writings on the web for many years to come.

Avast ye hippies

Well, it’s finally happened. I never thought I would say this, indeed I had thought the very notion absurd and impossible, but it’s true.

Ms Fits said something that I disagree with.

I know, I know, the universe no longer makes sense, but don’t panic, we can get through this if we all just stay together.

What the hell are you talking about?

Its quite simple, my friends. Ms Fits suggested that perhaps it would not be worthwhile to tune in to the third episode of “Pirate Master”.

And it was. It really, really, really was.

There are many things to enjoy about this show. Chief among them is the permanently fixed ‘how did I find myself on this boat and who exactly are all these mad people’ expression on Cameron Daddo’s face and he gives us his best impression of Jeff Probst’s long lost Australian cousin.

Another particularly fun part of this is that each week one of the contestants gets to be the captain of the pirate ship. This means that, in addition to getting way more loot, he gets to live separately from the crew and breakfast on bacon, eggs and rum, while the rest of the contestants live on gruel and hard tack or something. However, the captain only gets to do this until his or her team loses a challenge, then someone else gets to be captain and the former leader goes back to bunking in with the rest of the crew, who probably snigger quite a lot at this point.

Sure enough, the third episode saw evil captain Joe Don deposed in favour of psychotic looking dreadlocked hippy Azmyth. If you haven’t seen the show, imagine John Butler in pirate gear. On speed.

The utterly entertaining and also truly baffling part of all this (other than the obvious point that this dude’s parents named him Azmyth) was that, as soon as he put on the captain’s hat and jacket, Azmyth adopted a ridiculous British accent which he then kept up (with varying degrees of success) throughout the rest of the show.

No amount of mockery or ‘dude wtf’ facial expressions from the host or the other contestants seemed to cause Azmyth to stop and think, even for a moment, that he should perhaps explain his thinking here.

Surely, if one is on a boat full of Americans pretending to be pirates and everyone INCLUDING CAMERON DADDO is mocking one’s accent, one might start to question whether this whole ‘I think I’ll talk like Tony Blair’ thing was a good idea.

Here’s a few more fun facts about Azmyth

* He used to live in Snohomish, Washington.

* He has previously worked in architectural construction.

* He has one cat, Cinnamon, and two snails, Oogey and Ooget. One has to suspect that at this point he was getting stoned bored and he had decided to have a little fun with whomever has the unenviable task of collecting biographical information on reality TV contestants.

* He enjoys building props, spinning fire and playing the drums.

* He was cast as an extra in "Pirates of the Caribbean 3," where he was hanged in the first three minutes of the movie.


I will, be watching again next week, even though the only reason for doing this will be to find out what Azmyth will say next, and more importantly, will he stick with the current accent or just start speaking like the Swedish Chef.

And if that thought doesn’t get you to tune in, clearly you do not even own a television.

What is the deal with throwing tacos?

I have never in my life been more disappointed to read an advertisement two hours after an event happened than when I read this:

Come and witness history as the artist passionately hurls 97 tacos at our lady Helen Hunt. With music from Rudi (strange noise sound system) this once in a lifetime performance piece should not be missed!


That paragraph did not really need of an exclamation mark at the end.

Whoever said there is nothing new under the sun* clearly had not met Melbourne artist Bethany J Fellows.

My disappointment is slightly moderated by the discovery that the tacos were being hurled at a picture of Helen Hunt, not the actual person. I suppose it would be fairly hard to arrange to have exactly 97 tacos handy just when Helen Hunt was coincidentally walking past.

You can read more* about this somewhat intriguing event here.

This sort of random stupidity should, of course, be encouraged, and art doesn’t come much more random and stupid than this. Bethany J Fellows, we salute you etc etc.

But the more I think about it, the less disappointed I feel to have missed this. Sure, I love that this event happened, but surely to actually watch this would get reasonably tedious after, say, the first 54 tacos. Do they use different seasoning on the last 43 tacos to keep this interesting? Is there an intriguing mix of traditional and radical new flat based tacos? Or is it just, possibly, slightly repetitive?


So, staying home and eating butterscotch icecream while watching Pirate Master is actually looking like a pretty good choice right now.





* Tradition tells us that it was King Solomon. Ironically, he is generally considered to have been the first person to say this.


** although, frankly, not much more