Old man Tony and baby Doggy

What happened to Tony?

In my mind, today's morning post begs three questions. The first, obviously, is WTF is a daisy bike, which you have already done all you can to answer.


The second, is where can we find a daisy bike and when can we get together to ride the heck out if it? It sounds like PK and Phran had the best time ever riding that daisy bike! It also sounds like daisy bikes can only be ridden in one direction: towards bona fide hilarious shenanigans! I'm serious, I want a shot on one.

I am kind of imagining it to be the terrestrial equivalent of those water bikes that you used to be able to hire on Albert Park Lake. You know, these ones:

I hired one once, because I saw some people on it looking like they were having a whale of a time. Laughing, joking, you know. I can't remember who I was with but we realised it was a terrible idea fairly soon after we started paddling. Why would we think that maneuvering a large object around a body of water using only the muscles in our legs would be more fun than, say, sitting around and just having a nice time? Idiots. Still, I kind of want to have another go, if we can't find a daisy bike to hire.

The final and most pressing question is: if not at the hands of PK and Phran, how did Tony die? Perhaps you could write a comment below and tell everyone. Also, if LB has a picture of Tony lying around, I would like to see that too, because I suspect he is really cute and it will add some flavour to the story for me.

What the eff is a daisy bike?

So the other night was LB's bro's birthday so we went round to his place for dinner.

Let me start by saying that his wife, PK, had made a lovely dinner and a delicious orange cake which she had slathered with a kind of toffee which made the cake virtually impossible to cut but awesome to eat.


PK's bestie Phran was also there and together they reminisced away like besties do. Like in the presence of LB, Birthday Bro and other brother Paz, they recalled how early in PK and Birthday Bro's relationship, PK and Phran had hit the family dog, Tony, with their car and watched him stagger off to, what they assumed was, die. Tony didn't die that night but I'm pretty sure that LB and Paz, who did not know this story were not that happy about it.

Then PK and Phran recalled how they had rented a daisy bike in Queenscliff one time and basically ripped the side of a car off. Turns out daisy bikes are really dangerous because when they got home that night after swearing to secrecy PK's dad accosted them with "What happened on the daisy bike and who was the boy?" They confessed to damaging the car but had no idea who the boy was. Turns out PK's Dad had heard about some entirely different daisy bike accident that happened in Queenscliff that day.

Oh what laffs! But, seriously, what the fuck is a daisy bike?

"You know" PK and Phran said, "A daisy bike! Like a porch swing on wheels"

Really?!

A google search just provides images and details of bikes with daisies on them. There were three people in this daisy bike story. Two pedaling and one steering. WTF kind of a bike is this?!?

And the answer is...

Well when I saw that picture I instantly knew who it was! The offspring of Alec Baldwin and George Clooney! But then I saw there were a few flaws in my theory. Like the guy in that picture is way too old to be their child. And even though I am pretty sure Science can make a baby from two eggs and thus could maybe do it from two sperm (is that how Science works?) it probably couldn't have done it way back when that guy was born.

In my theory Alec Baldwin was clearly the parent with the strongest genes so there is the answer. It guess it took me about 2.5 seconds to figure that out, but the picture in your post was very clear, not blurry at all. So I don't think it is a test of anyone's skillz. Because my face recognition skillz are quite good. But, as I recently learnt, not awesome. The other day I totally thought Ron Perlman was Tom Waits.


WTF?! LB corrected me. And this is the most embarrassing bit of all, because he sees random fat dudes in the street and thinks it's Bert Newton.

Anyway I digress. After thinking about the offspring of Alec and George I thought I should see if I could find their face's mashed together. I couldn't. But I did find this website. There was no baby Alorge on it but I did learn that Rebecca Romijn has the strongest face in the world! Her face doesn't look mashed at all!

I also learned that Julia Roberts' smile is as stupid as ever.

Now I hope all this facemash talk has distracted from the fact that perhaps I should've been talking about some mad skill I should (but don't) have!

I have a special skill

On Tuesday nights I have taken to going to the Union for trivia. The Union in Brunswick, not the Union in Offspring. I have a killer team and we have won three weeks in a row. We have only been three times, and we have won three times!
My team is called Mike Gatting due to a fortunate guess at a previous trivia evening. Our success is largely due to the incredible audio recognition skills of HuShaz. She need only hear about five seconds of a song and she can tell you what the song is called, and who the artist is. And five seconds is the most time she will need. More often than not it is two seconds. She is the human Shazam! This is very handy during the round where you have to listen to about five seconds of a song and then name the song and the artist. Basically, the game is won or lost in that round and I really hope that we never have to front up without HuShaz because I don't fancy our chances without her.
Having said that, everyone else in the team brings something special to the table, which is why we are the carryover champs. This is purely accidental. We didn't set out to compose a balanced team of movie/music/sport/science/geography experts. Its just that we were all free the night Scampy suggested we go to the pub for trivia, and we all happen to have mad skillz.

Without doubt, my special skill is facial recognition. One of the rounds involves naming a bunch of celebrities from slightly fuzzy photos printed on an A4 piece of paper. While I don't like to blow my own trumpet, I am so good at that round that I would actually kind of look like an asshole if I didn't acknowledge how awesome I am at it. Facial recognition really is my special skill.People: if I have met you once, or never met you but sat opposite you on a tram one time or seen you in one of my friends' photos, I will remember your face. It's just the way my brain works. I'm sorry, I hope that doesn't creep you out. Of course, this also works very well for recognising celebrities and therefore works very well for the celebrity facial recognition round of Tuesday night trivia. Having said that, I don't get all of them. Some of them I have no clue about. But I just get a lot more than everyone else.
Here's one I didn't get last night.

Can people tell who that is? I should point out that it was a lot fuzzier than this on the piece of paper I had. Looking at it now it seems very obvious to me who it is. But can you people tell?

The internet has gone rogue

I'm glad you brought this up, because lately I have been thinking that the internet has basically stopped trying.

Gmail used to really creep me out but now I am losing respect for them. Remember when you were pregnant with baby, but hadn't told many people yet, but we would talk about it discretely in our email communications? Well during that time gmail used to slather it's side panels with ad after ad for baby products and I used to think shut up for pete's sake gmail! We are trying to keep this on the downlow! But even while I was thinking that, I had a grudging respect for it because it was reading through all the euphemsisms in our emails to see that we were talking about a baby.

These days it takes no times to listen, I mean really listen, to what my emails are saying and it just makes the most obvious association it can find. Like the other day, when everyone was emailing back and forth about what they were going to make for the italian dinner, Gmail tried to get me to buy some Flora pro-active margarine. As if I would ever buy margarine. And if I did, as if it would be margarine that is named after an acne treatment. Gmail has no clue.


But I have an even larger gripe with the internet. A little while ago I was writing an email to my boss to tell him that during the course of an investigation, I had found something juicy and was going off on a tangent to investigate it further. As I was writing the email, I remembered that I had heard Sarah Palin's staff used to describe her frequent departures from the planned course of action as "going rogue". I thought it would be somewhat amusing if I described what I was doing as going rogue in this email to my boss. Because I like to make sure that people have the best chance of being amused by me, I also thought I would include a link to somewhere on the inerweb that describes how Sarah Palin's staff used this term to describe what she was doing. So off I went into the internet to find a link. Do you think I could find such a link? No, no I couldn't. What I found instead was an urban dictionary definition that claims 'going rogue' is a term used to describe certain sexual practices, the kind you should never talk about in an email to your boss. I'm not linking it here because I don't want to get in trouble. Since then, Sarah Palin has published a book called Going Rogue so I guess she has kind of reclaimed those words again and you can probably look it up without fear of getting in trouble. Anyway. At least the internet helped me get out of a potentially embarassing situtation that time. But I still wish gmail ads would listen to me a bit more.

Chut up internet, you're not so smart

The Internet thinks it is so smart, tailoring it's ads just for me.

It's not so smart. For some reason the other day in my gmail account there was an add for Jaguars (the cars, not the animal). Why gmail thinks I can afford a Jaguar? It must be totally misreading my emails. And if it paid any attention to me at all it would know that my heart belongs to Volvo.


And if I were ever to leave Volvo it would only be for a Citroen CX.


Or maybe a Mini Cooper in navy with a cream roof.


Whatever. The point is I am totes not buying a Jag.

And Amazon thinks it knows me so well. You don't know me Amazon! You don't know what I want!

One time I was thinking how Dirty Dancing would be a good film to own on DVD so I was checking out the prices on Amazon. Now it thinks I want to buy shit like Pretty Woman and The Notebook. Like I want any old crappy boy/girl-from-the-wrong-side-of-the-tracks-makes-good-love-can-conquer-all bullshit movie. Um, excuse me Amazon, but I have excellent taste. Don't you know that by now?! If I want that kind of move it will star Patrick Swayze, or at least Kevin Bacon and definitely have plenty of dancing. Sheesh.

Sweet dreams aren't made of cheese

On Saturday night I did leave before the taleggio was finished but I’m pretty sure I did not have cheese dreams. As if I could even tell though. I have been having cheese dreams lately even when I haven’t eaten cheese. On Friday night I dreamt I was a reindeer herder. And I was in a reindeer race. But the king of the reindeer herding tribe set me up to lose by swapping my rad reindeer with an inferior reindeer. Jib.



Once a couple of ‘friends’ told me that listening to other people’s dreams is the boringest thing in the world. I do not subscribe to this. Hence, when I have an interesting dream I tend to tell people about it.

Last week I dreamed that I was getting married but I also was a Harry Potter-type chosen one and I had to fight Voldemort on my wedding day and I had lost my powers! Fucking mind-bender, right! You can bet everyone I have told about that dream was pretty impressed. At the end of the dream I was transported to an island to fight Voldemort while a bunch of death eaters circled around chanting. Then Voldemort and I were sucked into a black sea. Everything was black. THEN I woke up. WHOA!

I told Mickey ‘Mikey Doubleword’ Blue Eyes about this dream and he told me about a dream he’d had in which he had set his alarm too early and woke up in 1918. Then he hit snooze and woke up in 1945. Other people’s dreams are boring! Pah!

Cheese dreams

On Saturday night we had dinner at Miguel and Legsly's house.
Everyone brought something to eat. There was an Italian theme.
I brought cheese for after dinner because I think it's nice to end a meal with a cheese course.
We didn't realise until dessert - which was separate to and immediately before the cheese course - that every single course throughout the whole meal involved cheese. Parmesan on Blephanie's soup, mozzarella in the mushroom side dish J made, Parmesan on the gnocchi Miguel made, goats cheese in the cauliflower quinoa salad Biz made, and marscapone in the dessert David made.
So that was all the cheese we ate before we started properly eating cheese as part of the cheese course.
I think I speak for the whole group when I say that the volume of cheese we consumed was no a problem. But as we were eating it, Miguel noted that it was likely we were all going to have cheese dreams that night. Everyone chuckled and nodded.Except for me because I have never heard of cheese dreams.
What the heck are cheese dreams? I eat cheese all the time and I don't think I've ever had cheese dreams. Are cheese dreams really a thing? I don't think they are!
Miguel explained that cheese dreams happen following consumption of a great deal of cheese. In the wake of cheese, sleep is restless and dreams are crazy. These are cheese dreams.
I decided I would pay careful attention to the dreams I had last night to see whether I am a cheese dreamer.

I guess I should have known from many many years of experience being me that when I decide to pay careful attention to something I might as well decide to completely forget about that thing forever. It's like my brain thinks I am playing opposites with it. I don't understand why or how it happens but I always immediately forget things I try to make an effort to remember. So as I laid down to sleep I was thinking I can not wait to see what cheese dreams I come up with but really I should have been thinking I can not wait for some undisturbed sleep tonight, yes sirree because it was my only hope of actually remembering what I dreamt, but apparently I will never learn. While I certainly did have restless sleep that night the only thing I remember dreaming was that at some point I was wearing a pair of glasses that had a fake moustache attached to them, like Groucho Marx, but someone told me to take them off because it was culturally insensitive. WTF.

TGIF, agreed

Rhys' cock on a 'nana is pretty funny. But I guess I do prefer cock on a tenner.
I guess my issue with cock on a 'nana is that it's all a bit obvious.
Drawing a phallus on an phallic object is kind of like a double negative. If Rhys had drawn a cock on a melon I might have been more impressed. Like when people write down the name of a colour, but use ink that is a different colour to write it. Like this: red and blue. So awesome, right? But Rhys' work does not impress or surprise me very much at all. I guess on some level, I've always expected to see cock on a 'nana.
Anyway, further to yesterday's penguin posts, let me say: oh shit!
Is anyone else worried about this?
Though perhaps the penguin is acting strangely because a freaking horse is walking past it and that is not something a penguin should ever have to see.
I'm really worried about Pingu!

TGIF again

So it's Friday again. For reals. And I'm about to go down the beach.

That should be nice.

Last time I was at the supermarket down there I thought I would splash out and buy a banana. If you liked cock on a tenner, you may also enjoy cock on a 'nana, which I found while choosing my bananas.


By Rhys. Or I guess it could be for Rhys. I like to think it is by Rhys though, you know, he just signed his drawing like any artist does.

Personally I think it is a little more crude than cock on a tenner, not nearly as special. Perhaps it is because by signing it Rhys has taken out some of the mystery.

Anyways, I hope you have a nice weekend. I plan too.

Another penguin post

I know what you mean about penguins. They are both adorable and a little sad. This one time I went to an aquarium in Osaka and there were plenty of penguins there. They just stared up at the fake snow falling on them. Or maybe that happened in Happy Feet, seeing as my photographic evidence only kind of supports my memory.


Either way, it was a little sad.

Mind you, not nearly as sad as the polar bears I saw at the zoo in Tokyo a week later when it was about 30 degrees.


Anyways, I wouldn't worry too much about Werner's penguin facing certain death because:

i) Seriously I love the 'Zog, but how can you take anything he says seriously after that wonderful Where's Waldo reading;

ii) Werner is German, it's probably practically impossible for him not to imbue everything he sees with some sort of existential angst;

and iia) technically we all are heading towards certain death;

iii) Haven't you seen Happy Feet? Pingu's going to be ok.

The Penguin Post

I love penguins.
I think it is because they waddle. And then drop to their tummies when they are sick of waddling and slide along the ice for a little while. Also, they look so neat, like they are wearing suits.
But they can also be so heartbreaking.
Sometimes, penguins get lost and end up separated from their penguin crews. Doesn't the thought of a penguin that is alone and far far far away from home break your heart a little bit?
Take this guy, who turned up in New Zealand yesterday. What are you doing in New Zealand little guy? You live in Antarctica! The article says he appears really well fed, and that reassures me. But he looks so out of place, all alone on that beach staring at some guy in a backpack. A guy with a backpack is not going to provide the kind of companionship that a young penguin needs! I just feel like this is going to work out really badly. I guess my reservations are informed by this, the saddest thing I have ever seen. Watch it all the way to the end people, the bit where Werner says that the Penguin is headed for "certain death".
This is why I am worried that things won't work out for the New Zealand penguin.
But I guess I am less worried and the NZ penguin than I am about the one who is headed for certain death in the mountains. He is well fed and has his friend with the backpack after all.

Plus, I find this so amusing that I guess I can listen to Werner's commentary about the penguin with a touch of amusement, rather than despair like I did the first time.
Still, I hope everything works out for the NZ penguin, because I like the cut of his jib. And the cut of all penguin jibs. I really like penguins.

My first lunchbreak post

So while reading your post, I pulled up another interweb tab and googled 'German Stats' because I wanted to remind myself what our German stats are. Obviously, I was not going to find the Miss Soft Crab reader stats by googling 'German stats' , but most of my brain is trying to do work leaving only some of my brain for fun things like reading your post and absolutely no part of my brain remaining to do things like follow up on MSC reader stats. Obviously by googling 'German stats' I did a really dumb thing. But it made me realise: I don't think I have enough brain to do all the things I want to do. And I'm not talking things like 'write a novel' or 'become the President of the Melbourne Football Club'. I mean just the basic, day to day things I might want/need to do while I'm at work. They say that if you want to get something done, you should get a busy person to do it. I don't think that's true. Seriously, please don't come near me when I am really busy. Also, why are these people looking for other people to do things for them? Do it yourselves!
But seriously, I guess it got me thinking that I really shouldn't be writing these blog posts at the same time as trying to do work. Because while googling something dumb is a pretty minor consequence of trying to do two things at once, one day I am going to really screw up because I am trying to do something that requires brain power when my brain is already fully committed.

Like, for example, maybe one day I will be working at a place where I have to deal with a lot of freaks, and maybe some of these freaks will be people I work WITH, and therefore maybe I will have to spend a lot of time mucking around with my like minded colleagues to make it bearable. Maybe one day one of these freaks will send a bunch of all-staff emails advising of problems they seem to be having with their phone. Maybe there will be about five emails in the space of an hour that say things like


10:00am "There seems to be a problem with my phone. If you are trying to get in touch, please email".


10:05am "I have called a technician to deal with the phone problem".


10:30am "The technician is here and thinks it's going to be a quick fix - should be back up in half an hour."


10:30am "Looks like it make take longer than expected".


10:40am "All fixed! My phone is back in action".



Maybe I will not be able to take it any more and will forward the last email to a like minded colleague who sits two desks away from me and write "Who the f*#k cares". Maybe I will carry on working and wait to see this colleague's shoulders start to rapidly move up and down, which is a tell-tale sign that he is laughing, but trying not to make any noise. Maybe, because I am concentrating at work and can't do two things at once, it will take me about half an hour to realise that I have neither seen the shoulders move, nor received a reply to the email.

Maybe then it will start to dawn on me that something has gone horribly wrong. Maybe then I will check my outbox and realise that I have hit the 'reply' button instead of the 'forward' button.

And maybe then my heart will drop in to the pit of my stomach and I will start quietly freaking out like I have never freaked out before. Maybe I will decide to bolt outside and call the person who wrote all the emails and just straight up apologise. Maybe I will do that. Maybe I will blurt out an apology. Maybe that person will advise me that they have just, and I mean the week before, stared dating someone that they have been chasing for years, thereby placing them on to some sort of cloud nine where things like personal insults made directly against them just roll right off. So maybe by some miracle it will actually turn out fine, but I will age about a year in the space of a day.

Or maybe none of that will happen, but I will just do a bad job at everything because I don't have heaps of brain to go around.

So from now on, I am just going to do a little blog post on my lunch break while I have no other distractions.
I guess this one is not so little, but I took an hour for lunch today, so you know.

Next blog

Do you ever hit 'Next Blog' on the navigation bar at the top of Miss Soft Crab? Or any other blog? I had never done it before Miss Soft Crab was born. Then one day I did it. And it took me to a blog where a woman (I think, it had that vibe) seemed to whinge a lot. Something about cleaning a house. And there were pictures of cat shit. It was really depressing. I jumped away quite quickly, but I wish I stayed longer to check it out. You know, out of curiosity. But it's kind of like I was scared, as if that woman would see me. Like I was playing chat roulette and did not want to engage. But I am more confident now.

People must do 'Next Blog' a lot. I'm sure that is how we get the bulk of our international audience. Not everyone is finding Miss Soft Crab by googling shit twins. (Fact: Our blog stats tell us that twice a search for 'shit twins' has brought readers to our page. WTF?! What does that even mean?! I am kind of upset I did not invent this term.) I mean, I know that when I thought random Jordanians were reading this it turned out to be a regular and accounted for reader. And I know that our Germany stats may be skewed. But from what I can tell people in the US, Croatia and Malaysia are pressing 'Next Blog' plenty. (Hello to you if that's how you got here.)

Anyway, sadly I have never come across Cat Shit Lady again (and hello if you are reading this after doing a search on that phrase) and most blogs are pretty boring (sorry). There are so many family blogs. But then I read this on someone's family blog:

John and I finally had a Date Night on Thursday and it was so nice to get away for a few hours just the two of us. We didn't have to worry about chasing our two year old around or keeping our 2 month old baby happy thanks to our awesome mom Julie who babysat for us.


Um, is that woman dating her brother? Why is she going on a date with John when they seem to share a mother!!?? Unless Marky Mark turns up on your date night I am pretty sure no-one is interested.

After that there was another family blog. Then a blog by some pregnant woman who has named her IN UTERO baby Sloan!

What I have learned is that there are a lot of family blogs out there. And each is more boring than the last. After all the family blogs I came upon this: A frank and sometimes bitter blog about what it's like to deal with female infertility.

Sheesh! I mean, I know this is an important issue or whatever. But is that all that's out there? Mother's gushing about their in and ex utero babies or non-mothers crying about it.

PLEASE COME BACK CAT SHIT LADY!

Bringing up Baby

I'm glad that Niecey loved the footy. And in many ways I'm not surprised. When we took Baby to see Joss Whedon he loved the shit out of it, right.


Like he could sense all the excitement in the room and was totally just vibing off it. Man.

I am thinking of taking Baby to the football too, but of course, I am a little torn on this point. As a relative newcomer to football, long time hater really, I am still conflicted about my own feelings on the sport, let alone how to bring up baby on this point.

I mean, first I just thought football was some dumb thing. But then I went to a match and I saw all those machine men running around, felt the excitement. Well I kind of fell in love with it. But I also still kind of hate it. That fucked up macho culture. Frankly, I don't know how you reconcile this.

I know not all footballers are fucked up macho a-holes. Most of my favourite footballers are footballers after all.

This guy


This guy


And this guy

Who when I did a google image search for also came up with pics for this guy

HAHA. Joaquin Phoenix isn't Max Rooke! HAHAHA!

Niecey's first trip to the footy

Midbro and I took Niecey to the footy for the first time on Sunday.

We had no idea how it was going to go and were both worried that she would freak out because of all the people and all the noise and the lack of crawling opportunities.

It had to happen sooner or later though, so we figured we might as well just take her and see what happened. Plus, the Dees were playing Freo, so there was a fairly good chance we were going to win and everyone loves a win, even people who are very small and have not even had a birthday yet.

I have to say, it couldn't have gone better. At first, Niecey looked a little dubious, but perhaps this was because she was wearing a purple, the Fremantle colour.

We took her cardigan off and things improved immediately. The Demons kicked a goal and everyone clapped. Niecey loves clapping. She hears the sound of clapping and starts smiling and flinging her hands at one another. Sometimes they make contact. Sometimes they even make the clapping sound. Either way, Niecey doesn't care, she just loves to hear the sound of those claps.

I don't know how it happened, but the Demons were kicking goal after goal after goal in what can only be described as a goal kicking bonanza. With the goals came the claps, and with the claps came the joy of Niecey. Basically she was having the best time ever.

Of course, nothing makes an already fun time even funner like a snack. I made chicken sandwiches and the good times just kept on rolling.
The Demons were winning the hell out of the game. At the start of the final quarter they were up by, like, 50 points. We decided to take Niecey for a little walk around the MCG. But first we dressed her up so she looked really cute.

The look on her face in this picture signaled what was to come, but foolishly we ignored it because we were having such a great time. We tried to crank up the cuteness even further by adding the flashing Demon horns they give all club members.
Readers, babies do NOT like to wear flashing horns. Niecey doesn't have a dummy, but if she had one, this would have been the point at which she spat it. Here she is, totally losing it, at the 20 minute mark of the final quarter.

I think she did a super job lasting as long as she did. And the Demons won by 89 points which almost made me want to cry too!

I'm afraid I don't have the answer

Well, in my humble opinion, you're not out of touch at all. All of those ads are gross, and the fact that so many ads are really gross would naturally make a thoughtful kid like you wonder whether you are missing something. It's normal. And you know, it was exactly that question that led to the birth of Go Fug Yourself.

Fun fact: apparently those fug girls were hanging out one day and saw a movie poster or ad or something that they found really fugly. They started discussing how there was so much fug around and that perhaps this wasn't because people had lost it and didn't know how to dress anymore, perhaps it was because people were consciously choosing to cultivate a fugly look. They hypothesised that perhaps fugly was the new pretty and voila, GFY was born.

But back to the advertisements you identified. That Transitions woman looks totally CGI to me. If she is a real woman, then I have to say I do not know what the world is coming to. She looks like she just stepped out of a game of Tekken. And keep in mind that I haven't played Tekken since about 2001, and that's what her look says to me.

As for the Wish lady, she really does seem to be walking the line between dead and undead. Maybe they are trying to capitalise on the whole vampire thing that is around these days. She does kind of look like a Cullen, what with her stupid sullen face and her crappy wardrobe. But what else would we expect from a nasty brand like Wish.

I remember when vampires were full of vim and vigour.
Remember this merry band of vamps everybody?
I miss those days.

I just have one question

What the eff is going on with print advertising?! Specifically billboards. Seriously, WTF?!?!

So driving south on Punt Rd I see the Harry Potter billboard for HP7P2. Which I love. Obviously. Driving north I see an ad for transition lenses. Which I hate. Because it has got to be one of the ugliest ads I have ever seen.

Why does that woman look like her eyes are rolling back in her head? Why does she have that stupid expression on her face? And why did someone airbrush the shit out of her?

I am pretty sure that Transitions are going to have to try a lot harder to overcome their dorky image.

But this is just one of many ads lately that have really made me ask WTF? Is there some new aesthetic that has completely passed me by?!

Here is an ad that I saw frequently on trams not so long ago for the clothing brand Wish.

I don't understand why this woman looks like she has a dislocated shoulder. I don't understand why she looks like a corpse. And not in some heroin chic way, but just in a decomposed face way. I don't understand why she is a giant.

I guess I should feel happy that at least there is no way this advertising is going to work on me. There was another ad I was seeing a lot that elicited the same feelings which I would like to write about, but obviously these campaigns are completely ineffective so I have no idea what it was. It took me weeks to figure out the last ad was for Wish.

But I also feel sad. Either the advertising people are really out of touch or I am. And the fact that these super ugly ads keep popping up all over the place is making me think that maybe I am the out of touch one! WTF!?

Even failed experiments can teach us things

Interestingly when I first saw that picture of the Sartorialist's handwriting I thought it was similar to yours but not crazily so. Frankly, I thought you were mildly deluded. But when I see you write those words I see that it is more similar than I at first thought. I'm sorry I doubted you.

Here is what I learnt from and since reading your post:

-Although your writing looks a little like the Sartorialist it looks a lot more like your mother's.

-The fact you can't see this makes me think you may still be mildly deluded.

-Alladin (Disney version) is a really good musical. (I ought to know. When I was a teenager and used to babysit my cousins we would sing all the Disney hits to a CD compilation they owned. When singing "I can show you the World" Mondonna and I would make Frandonna be the the Magic Carpet. Technically I did not learn this from or since reading your post.)

-The Dopp kit's name derives from the early 20th century leather craftsman Charles Doppelt, a German immigrant to the United States, who invented his toiletry case in 1919. The kits became widely known during the Second World War when they were issued to GIs. Although the term was originally a trademark, it appears to have at least mostly become generic, and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office lists the trademark as abandoned.*

Before yesterday I had never hear the term, but what is the bet I start hearing it EVERYWHERE!

-I have terrible handwriting and very few samples of my family's handwriting. I guess the letter really is dead.





*Thanks Wikipedia

What was I thinking?

I was looking at The Sartorlialist yesterday and happened upon this photo of some of his notes and sketches. Check out how similar our writing styles are! Here I am writing some of the same text he wrote in his picture.

I swear I didn't try to make them look similar, that's really what my handwriting looks like. It's really similar, right? Of course I would prefer if my general style was more like his, but handwriting style is a good start.
Anyway, this made me think about a good idea for a blog post. I know for a fact that some members of my family have very similar handwriting, and I thought it would be interesting to get everyone to write a sample sentence and then compare them. What an interesting experiment this will be! I thought to myself.
I texted Elderbro and Midbro straight away so they could get working on their samples. I gave them clear instructions. I said:

"Hi dude, could you please write the following text on a piece of paper and photograph it then text/email it to me? This is my handwriting when I am making an effort to be neat. This is my handwriting when I am making no effort to be neat. (obviously I would like you to either make an effort/not make an effort depending on the text you are writing). Thanks!"

I asked for the two samples because I thought it would be interesting to see whether our writing was more similar when we were making an effort, or when we were just freestyling. After all, it was going to be an interesting experiment.

Knowing that my parents would struggle to absorb all of this in a text message, I emailed them the same request, explicitly asking each of them to write the nominated sentences. I also asked them to scan it and email it to me because they don't have smart phones from which to send photographs, but they do have a scanner. So by the end of the day, I had notified everyone in my immediate family of what they had to do, and all that was left was to wait for the results to roll in.

Of course, this did not happen. First, Midbro replied saying that it was the school musical that night and he couldn't possible do it until morning. For those of you who don't know, Midbro teaches Year 6 at a school we will call Grighton Brammar. Each year, Grighton Brammar puts on a musical with the girls at a neighbouring school we will call Birfank. This year they are doing the hit Disney musical Alladin. Anyway, the performance was last night and because Midbro fancies himself as being a but like the teacher in Glee (he once told me that he really relates to him) he couldn't do what I asked. I guess this is fair enough.

But as for the rest of the family, their inability to follow instructions and/or inability to use technology has totally compromised the exciting potential of my handwriting exercise.

This, from elder bro after several text messages providing further clarification:

What about the sample when you are making no effort to be neat, Elderbro? What about that? My instructions were so clear! I could tell that further text messaging would just make things worse so I let it go.

Mum called me when she read the email, saying that they didn't know how to use the scanner. Knowing that my uncle Gary and aunt Glenda are staying with them, I suggested they consult with those guys to figure it out. She said they had already consulted, and no one knew. I told her that four adults with an operating manual should be able to operate a scanner. Right? Right? Apparently not.
This came through a short while later:

Not only can they not operate the scanner properly, but they also misunderstood the instructions, so only Dad wrote the first sentence and only Mum wrote the second. What kind of comparison is that?! These people would make terrible scientists!

Happily, Midbro got on board this morning and sent the following samples through:

Um, I can't really tell the difference, can you?

And finally, here is my sample:

I can't tell the difference here either.

But here's what I can tell:

-Elderbro has nice neat writing that looks like a masculine version of Mum's

-Dad has terrible writing because he is vision impaired and has arthritis but he is excellent at lawn bowls and cooking steak (the last bits I know from experience, not his handwriting)

-Mum has nice neat writing that looks like a lady version of Elderbro's

-Midbro's writing looks like a no-nonsense version of mine

-My writing looks like The Sartorialist's!

-This was a terrible idea.

In defense of our times

Straight up, let me say that I totally hear what you are saying about the greatness of Paul and Roy and the lameness of both Party Rock Anthem and the general calibre of contemporary heart trobs. No one is more sickened by Bradley Cooper's rise to leading man status than I am. And no one is more baffled by Sparkleface's heart throb status than I am. I know a grown woman who pretty much loses her shit at the mere mention of Sparkleface's name (of course I am talking about Chambo), and honestly, space travel makes more sense to me than that. So in these ways, I have to agree that things may well have been better back in the day.

I know we've been saying this a lot lately, but it's funny that you should bring this up because it is basically the central theme of the film Midnight in Paris that KJ and I saw in NYC . It's all about how we romanticise times gone by, especially their intellectual and cultural offerings, and dismiss our own times because we are insecure about ourselves and incapable of carpe-ing our diems. Obviously, that's not a cool thing to do. But as noted, sometimes stuff was actually better before, like the work of Woody Allen (though I did like Midnight in Paris quite a lot), the work of Snoop Dogg, the work of David Bowie and the fact that if you put those foil chip wrappers in the oven, they would shrink! All these things were better before. Fact.


But I think it's important to appreciate our current times, because they have produced some of seriously awesomest stuff! Such as:

The Internet! People, don't we all love the Internet? It's so fun! And educational! It used to not exist at all and now it does! We're so lucky!

Antibiotics! Who's had a urinary tract infection before? Now tell me, who wants to live in a time before antibiotics? None of you guys, I hope, are you guys crazy?! (Obviously I know that there were antibiotics in the sixties, but you get where I am going with this.

And of course, this guy:

I'm pretty sure that Ewan could say anything the old timey movie stars said, and it would sound just fine.

They don't make them like they used to

I'm not making a judgement call on whether anything was better in the olden days than now, but last night I was watching At the Movies and they were talking about their classic film. This week it was Hud. A Paul Newman film where he plays this kind of a-hole. But he is real smooth and looks real pretty in it.

In the scene this picture is taken from he asks the female lead "Have you still got that itch?" But it's not gross. It's kind of hot. It's hard to imagine that working now.

In 1963, when Hud was made, number one hits included Roy Orbison's awesome 'In Dreams'.


And the adorable 'Sukiyaki'. (I believe 'Hello Mudda, Hello Fuddah' was also a number one that year, but only for one week so my nostalgia for a time I wasn't around for is making me overlook this fact.)

Apparently at the moment the number is a song called 'Party Rock Anthem'. Believe me when I say, this is no Roy Orbison.

Granted Snoop Dogg was also number one this year, but even Snoop Dogg isn't what he used to be. His latest number one, 'Sweat' is full of vocoder and not nearly as awesome as such classic hits as 'Gin and Juice', 'What's My Name' or even 'Drop it Like it's Hot'.

So actually I guess I am totally making a judgement on whether things were better then or now.

I sometimes want to eat things

The picture of biltong on Wikipedia is not appealing to me at all. And if J-Pav's biltong looked anything like that I would not have wanted it anywhere near my mouth. 'HA!' You may say. 'But J, you don't eat the meat!'

Well forget that. Just because I don't doesn't mean that sometimes I don't wanna. And cured meats are right at the top of my list. LB loves the salami. I, being a good little girlfriend, sometimes handle his salami. Like, I put it on a plate of snack for him or I put it on some pasta. It smells so good. And the number of times that I've thought how delicious it smelled and how I wanted it in my mouth. Eewwwww! Why does everything salami related sound so gross. Anyway, the point is I often want to eat that cured meat. But biltong. No thanks!

When I was little my processed meat of choice was pariser. My mum would give it to me. My grandmother would give it to me. You know, the continental butcher would give her an extra slice for me to eat in the shop. (I think, though possibly this is someone else's (your?) memory.) But it was always pariser. According to Wikipedia it is Hungary's answer to mortadella. But I never knew about mortadella. I never knew about strass. I only knew about pariser.

It is actually interesting you bring up this meat topic, because just yesterday reading delicious magazine, which had many delicious looking meat recipes, I thought, maybe it was time to tap that shit. But I don't think it is really for me.

Now for everyone's viewing or spewing pleasure, please see below.

Faux marble floor. Made out of salami. By Wim Delvoye.