Advice please

Readers, for a little while Miss Soft Crab has been thinking about starting an advice segment, because obviously we have a lot of excellent advice for people. Then one of our faithful and beloved readers suggested the same thing! So you know what?! Here it is. Of course usually K and I will both be giving advice, but today, to start things off I am just going to ask K for some advice re: grooming. But if YOU want some advice from Miss Soft Crab you can leave a comment, email us at misssoftcrab@gmail.com or leave a comment on our Facebook page

So mate, can you please help me out. Do you think that one of my grooming problems may be that I dress like Olivia the ~4-year-old pig? Here is a selection from Olivia's wardrobe and my wardrobe.









What do you think?

The Miss Soft Crab Brownlow Blue Carpet Wrap Up

Day 2 of Groom Week comes to you from the Brownlow Blue Carpet. As with most Brownlow medal counts, J and I texted one another throughout the show. Here are our special comments, starting with J.

I'm sure by now you have all heard of the 'fashion pod'. It was basically a giant lazy susan that the WAGS would stand on, and slowly rotate. Being able to see the WAGS from all angles made me realise that back fat is a serious problem that affects all of us: from the normal looking to the very very hungry looking.
Anyway. this is the outfit we referred to as Beauty Secrets Barbie (later reclassified as Twirly Curls Barbie):

And here is Laura Palmer:

  Now back to the special comments.
Have I told you guys that Midbro is having another baby? It's true, he totally is. Perhaps don't mention that I told you about the name Jobe/Gob being on the shortlist if you guys see him. He's quite discreet and probs wouldn't want me telling people. I couldn't find a picture of the lady wearing the curtains, so let's all have a look at Jobe shall we?

 More special comments:
Look, Jimmy's girl, obviously we don't hate you because we have never met you. But you are going out with Jimmy who we love very much, so bitch, you are fair game. Also, eat a sandwich some time lady.

Also, try to at least act like you are happy. If I was going home with that, I think I could muster a little more enthusiasm.

OK guys, I need to suspend normal broadcast activities for a moment while I tell you something. After the show last night, J uploaded all the screen dumps of our text conversation in to this post, so all I had to do was annotate and add the pictures of the WAGS. Thanks J, you are so helpful! However, I am a tad clumsy and accidentally deleted some of them. I thought about calling J and asking her to upload them again, but I didn't want to disturb her because she might be sleeping in, she has a baby you know. So the following three screen shots actually come from my phone. So grey is J and green is me. This is K, by the way. I'm sorry guys.
Lets get back to the commentary, shall we?

 I like Mrs Demetriou's outfits normally. This one, not so much.

But she is a good looking woman. There's no denying it. Meanwhile, have you guessed who we thought looked like she was wearing vomited up corn?

Honestly, Twiggley. I can't even look at you. And if you think i'm going to include a photo of Nathan Buckley here then you've got another thing coming. Dude has been on my TV screen practically every day for a million years, he's not getting on my blog too.

As for this next sequence of messages, they were  sent after a 10 minute interview with some guy who owns some suit shop where tonnes of players got their suits fitted, including Miss Soft Crab favourites Gary Ablett and Joel Selwood.

For some reason, none of the Brownlow photo galleries have any pictures of Gary and Joel that are worth a damn. Lets go back to the archives, shall we?

I'm just going to let that picture speak for itself. 

Several more messages were sent through the evening, including one that said "phwoar, have a look at this!" when Gary and Richo were having a little interview that, again, the galleries refuse to capture (WTF galleries! Get to know your audience why don't you?). But I prefer to leave you with this final image of what a Ling night ahead might actually look like.

Go Cats.

It's Groom Week

Look guys, it's possible that we are crazy obsessed with grooming right now and you are all thinking shut up about the grooming already. But just in case you feel crazy obsessed too, we have decided to make this week Groom Week on Miss Soft Crab.
Every day we will explore aspects of grooming. There will be posts about our own grooming situation, like J's post this morning. There will be posts about other people's grooming, like our Brownlow Special tomorrow. There will be posts about make-up lessons that may or may not have taken place last weekend. It's Groom Week and anything is possible (within reason).

Now it's my turn to share. I'm going to start with hair too.
Unlike J, my hair is extremely soft and thin, with a natural wave.
Not a curl, which I could do something with, but a wave. To have thin, soft, wavy hair is a curse, and is one of the many cruel jokes that nature has played on me. It's the thinness that is the problem. When my hair is left to dry naturally, it forms this limp, pathetic little kinks and is really just a total embarrassment.
It looks like this, but much less cute:

The real problem with letting my hair dry naturally is that waviness makes it kind of lank, and the lankness robs it of the very best thing about it, which is that when it is all straight and shiny, it is exactly the colour of chestnuts. I love chestnuts and therefore I love the colour of my hair.

You absolutely can't really tell that it is the colour of chestnuts from this picture, but trust me.

Anyway, I got wise  to the reality of my situation some time ago, so for me, grooming begins with blow drying my hair after every wash.

But here's a special tip for you! If you can't be bothered washing your hair, just wash and blow-dry your fringe. It's much less annoying and people totally can't tell.
(Right guys?)

Groom Quest/ Groom Fest 2011

Remember a few weeks ago when I said that I had other things on my mind than grooming, like Libya and global economics and some other things I just said so y'all wouldn't think I was totally superficial? Well that was pretty much a lie. And, um, I think maybe we should talk about grooming all week!

But you'll be happy to know that I think I am making some progress. I have identified what I think are the 3 keys to my grooming downfall. And, as we all know, admitting you have a problem is the first step to recovery.

1. Firstly, what the eff am I meant to do with this friggin hair?! (Seriously, if you know the answer to that PLEASE leave a comment.)


My hair problem is this, it is kind of curly but needs some help to go full curly and look good. Also I can make it straighter, kind of nice wavy. But this also needs help. I kind of like both of these looks but on some days my hair wants to go one way and other days the other, or one look seems easier to cultivate but it means I am always only half committed to a look and wondering if I should be going the other way. This in turn means I only half commit to the actual grooming because I may be doing one thing while secretly wanting the other. This in turn makes me look shit.

Without a doubt my hair is the biggest hurdle I have to overcome on Groom Quest 2011 and I am nowhere, nowhere near overcoming this.

2. My face. My face is fine, my skin is ok. But you know how when you see really well groomed people their complexion is always clear and lovely and their skin tone is even? That's what I want! I want it so bad. But I have always been scared of lots of make up. But not any more people. This I have finally found the answer too. More on that later this week.

3. The final major issue standing between me and grooming is my previous lack of desire to spend lots of time and money on this thing. Well you know what? I am so obsessed right now these things are no longer objects. I just do that shit, yo. Throw money at it. Spend time on it! YEAH! First I bought all this expensive skin care. And you know what, my skin is really nice these days. Then, the other day I spent heaps of dough on new bras because I thought that new bras would make all my clothes sit better! Does it work? I don't know. Don't even care. I feel like it does. YEAH JUST THROW MONEY AT THIS SHIT AND YOU'LL FEEL A MILLION BUCKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Look, I don't really think you have to throw heaps of money at grooming but I guess I am just really saying you have to commit to it and do whatever it is you feel you have to do to make it happen. That's all.)

I LOVE TO GROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!!

Friday Favourites - Babs (kind of)

You know my favourite thing about Babs (other than The Way we Were, which really is pretty great)? It’s how much K loves her.

When we were kids K had Foxtel and the number of times I would go over there and find her watching The Prince of Tides or The Mirror has Two Faces! When we were younger K really had this thing where she loved giving blow by blow accounts of movies. This one time we watched the movie Primal Fear on Foxtel and because it was on Foxtel K had already seen it a bunch of times. Man, you should have seen how happy she was at the end when the big reveal came that Norton was guilty and she had sat through the whole movie and not told me. It really was impressive.

Anyways, because of this I could give you pretty accurate accounts of The Prince of Tides and The Mirror has Two Faces even though I have, thankfully, never seen them. Thanks Mate.

Friday Favourites: Barbra Streisand

One of the things I inherited from my mother is green eyes, which are set quite wide apart on my head. Not like a hammerhead or anything, just somewhat wide compared with other people. People sometimes say that I look like her, which is a massive compliment because when she was my age, she was a total fox.

Am I right?

Anyway, another thing I inherited from her is complete and total love for Barbra Streisand. When I was little, it seemed sensible to enjoy the music of Barbra Streisand, because Mum would play it all the time and there was nothing any of us could do about it. And like going to Church, we just did it without questioning whether it was a good thing to do.  Now I am grown and I don't have to like Barbra any more. But again and again I find myself hearing one of her songs and totally loving the shit out of it. I can't help myself. In my mind, she is kind of like the benchmark for lady singers. I hear all these singers they have these days. Adele. Amy Winehouse. The other ones. I hear that they sing well but they don't make me feel like Barbra Streisand makes me feel. She's the best guys, what can I say?

She's great in the movies too.
Have you guys seen Funny Girl? Do, it's awesome!
Yentyl? Also great. And young Mandy Patinkin is a total peach.
The Way We Were? Forget about it, that movie is the best.

There are so many YouTubes I could insert here to illustrate how great Barbra Streisand is. But i 'm going to go with this one, because I love what she is wearing. I know you're all super busy and at work and stuff, but please watch it all the way to the but where she is on the ferry at the end.

I love you Barbra Streisand, and I always will. 

I kind of love twins

I learnt so much from this morning's post!  Except for the things you said about Will Young, because I watched Graham Norton last night too, and therefore already knew all about his underbite and good grooming. But the other guys, I have never heard of them. And there are so many of them to hear of, what with them all being twins and what not.
Anyway. Even though I could bang on about those shows and the weird people they uncover, I am going to focus my response on twins, mainly because it will allow me to talk about Handsome Stan, who totally has a twin.  I have spent many idle minutes wondering whether Twin Brother has the same je ne sais quois as Handsome Stan. It's a captivating thought though, don't you think? The idea that there is someone identical to Handsome Stan out there, but without the girlfriend and the newborn baby. There is a third brother too, who I met one Friday night at Meyers Place. I think, however, that he is to Handsome Stan what Daniel Baldwin is to Alec, if you catch my drift.  Because if he is the twin then the answer to my earlier question about shared je ne sais quois is no, absolutely not, not under any circumstances. (I'm sorry brother guy, you're probably a really lovely person. I'm sorry I called you Daniel Baldwin).

Anyway, twins are incredible and always blow my mind, especially the identical ones. A person who looks exactly like you? Forget about it!
You know, my friend Honeycomb comes from a family where there are 9 kids, and two sets of twins. Lets all just pause and reflect on that for a moment, shall we?

Now guess what Honeycomb is pregnant with right now?!
Twins!
I know!

The strange adorable men of UK 'talent'-based reality TV

Everything I know about Pop Idol and X-Factor UK I learned from Graham Norton. Except for what I know about Susan Boyle which I learned from pop culture and also an old boss who once busted me watching YouTube and then asked me if I had seen Susan Boyle. I had no idea what she was talking about at the time and just kind of smiled, awkwardly bobbing my head until she went away. Worked every time.

The first time I saw Jedward was on The Graham Norton Show. They are some pretty weird talkative, finish-each-others-sentences, super cheerful pop star twins. They won UK X-Factor a few years ago.


Oh, you don't know Jedward? They were Ireland's entry into Eurovision this year. But before that they were on Graham Norton. And they were pretty creepy. I think Sarah Jessica Parker and Joan Rivers were pretty creeped out. They kind of reminded me of Brothers of the Head.

No, I don't think all twins look the same. And some of my best friends are twins.* Jedward are creepy in the opposite way to these guys in Brothers of the Head but there is definitely something similar. Anyway, I think Jedward are kind of adorable in their creepiness.

And what about Will Young? I have seen him on the GN show a couple of times. He won the first Pop Idol, apparently. And his music is definitely as shit as Jedward's. I guess we are lucky this stuff doesn't get exported here (maybe it does, I have no idea what the kids are listening too, but I am pretty sure it is awful). But Will Young is also kind of adorable. He is quite camp, almost handsome but with this huge under bite. Oh, here he is now.

See what I mean. And dude obviously loves a good time. I saw him on GN last night you see. He was so well groomed. I kept thinking about how if I was a gay male pop star I would have no grooming problems at all. But I guess that is never going to happen.

*It's not true. None of my best friends are twins. But I have had good twin friends in the past. I actually can't think of any twins I know anymore. I guess they don't hang out in pairs as much when they aren't at school anymore. Wow, I have to go and find me some twin friends.

Look at them ducks

Where the hell are you going to put your ducks indeed?! You know to me it kind of sounds like a metaphor for that labyrinthine duck vagina Isabella Rossellini taught us about on Friday. But more pertinent to you.

I have to say that commenters "Sarah" and Cloudcontrol make some good points. When I first read your post my immediate reaction was that near the TV was definitely the goer. And I like CC's idea of them looking like they are about to fly out the window. But "Sarah"'s suction cup window idea is kind of adorable too. And you aren't getting Graham to put blinds up on that window, right? Whoever the fuck Graham is.

But to that thing you tried to hide up there in the first paragraph. Remember the other week you told me that you ate cream on apple and I was all "on raw apple, that is such a lame excuse to eat cream" and you were all "no, cooked apple" and I was all, "oh, that's totes legit" and then I felt bad for accusing you of such a thing. Well after that golden syrup in ramekin declaration I am withdrawing all bad feeling from accusing you of eating cream on raw apple.

Where the hell am I going to put my ducks?

A couple of months ago, I moved in to my very own place.
It's tiny, but super adorable. The best part is that its all mine and I can do whatever I want with it. I can also do whatever I want in it. For example, the other night, I really felt like a sweet treat after dinner, but because I didn't have any proper sweet treats in the house, I just put a few teaspoons of golden syrup into a ramekin and ate that. I probably wouldn't have done that in my share house days, but you know, my house, my rules.

The best part of having your own place is that you can decorate it however you please. Paint stuff. Hammer stuff in walls left right and centre. You can let your imagination run wild! Of course, everyone will know that you have decorated it yourself so if it looks bad, it's all on you.  This thought has paralysed me a little since I moved in, and despite there being metres of wall space upon which to hang things, I haven't hung anything because I am worried I am going to stuff it up.

I have a bunch of really nice things to hang, too, so I really need to get over it and start hammering. The thing I most want hang are some flying ducks that Scampy, Neville and Banana gave me for my birthday a few years ago. Here they are, just sitting on a stool waiting to be hung.

I love these ducks. But I have no idea where the hell I am going to put them. On the wall at the top of the stairs?

As you can see, there is a whole lot of blank space there, begging to be gussied up. But the ducks might look a little silly amongst all that white wall. I think that I should keep that for something bigger.

Maybe I could put them on the wall above the kitchen table.

They could look quite cute there, but I was thinking it might be better to hang a bunch of other things there. I have some paintings and prints that I thought might look good all clustered together. The ducks would just get in the way.

There is also the wall near the television.
Would the ducks look cute above the television? Like they are flying past it? 

I can't decide. Also, The Bachelorette, a scene from which is displayed here on my television, is a terrible show. That's one thing I am sure of.

Anyway, if members of the Crab community have ideas about where to put the ducks, I'm all ears.

Dead horse

Magic sauce looks delicious. 
Speaking of sauce, I went to Dainty Sichuan for dinner last night with AB and Coco and our food was awash with delicious, spicy, salty red sauce.
Man I love a good sauce.
That's all.

101 Cookbooks

Do you read 101 Cookbooks?

I had a look at it years ago and it didn't really hook me. The recipes looked nice but not mind-bending. And it was just so fucking wholesome. Not just the food but the site, the writer. Heidi, who writes the blog is the sort of person who takes little gifts or baskets of cookies everywhere she goes. She takes photos of flowers and her partner runs marathons. And the food is wholesome. Though I don't have a problem with that at all.

Anyway that first time I just had a look and left never to return... for a while. But then it just got to a point where every other goddamn food blog was going on about it. "Oooooh 101 cookbooks is amaaaaaaazing." "Heidi is such a daaaaaaarling." Blah blah blah. So I went and had another look. Truth is I felt the same way. The recipes still looked nice but not the kind of things I had to rush out and make. And Heidi was still as fucking wholesome. But I just decided I would give it some more time.

I made a few biscuits from the site. And I do kind of love them. Truth is after a bunch of reading of 101CB I was inspired to buy a bunch of cookie cutters. Yeah, I kind of hate myself for it.

Anyway this was all well and good and then a couple of weeks ago I went on and saw this Magic Sauce recipe. This is what the head picture was:


YUM! FRIGGIN YUM! Red oil! God I love red food. It promises tang and sweet, salty, hot deliciousness. Red is my favourite colour of food. Fo shiz!

It was the first time I felt I just had to make something from this site immediately. And I made it and it was yum. SO FRIGGIN YUM! It's basically garlic, sweet paprika, chilli, fresh oregano, rosemary and thyme in olive oil. YUM! Do yourselves a favour people. Make this magic sauce! (FYI I ate it on udon with some spinach and corn. Such a good one!)

Don't believe the GOOP

Gosh, it is so lucky you have me to save you from yourself and the lure of GOOP.

Mate, you must learn to distinguish what you see from the GOOP herself. Yes, her yellow hair, shiny smile and clear skin make her look clean and lovely, but those are just features. They could be on anyone.

Of course the hair and makeup situation looks appealing. Someone else to do your grooming! Forget about it! As if you wouldn't want that!

These are just things, they are not GOOP. You must learn to divorce one from the other.

How am I so wise, you may ask. Well I guess I went through something kind of similar to this when I was younger. You know that Buffy The Vampire Slayer is one of my all time favourite shows but I never liked Buffy herself much. Then one day, I guess when Willow started moving towards evil Willow, I started to like Buffy. Maybe it had something to do with her doing it with Spike. Chickpea hypothesised it was about Sarah Michelle Gellar getting kind of anorexic and more attractive. Who can say what it was. Anyway, once this changed I kind of fell in love with SMG. I’d see pictures of her with Freddie Prinze Jr and I would be totally in love with her. Kind of want to be her. I was so confused.

But then one day I realised I didn’t love SMG and I sure didn’t want to be her. It’s just that she was always in California and lit by that beautiful Cali sunshine, always tanned and well groomed. That was all. I was just being tricked. I felt so freed when I realised.

You must see past the GOOP mate, to what is actually attracting you!

I don't know what to feel anymore

A little while ago, J and I bagged the shit out of GOOP. The lady and the website. 
You can refresh your memories here, here and then again here and here (kind of). The upshot of all our GOOP themed posting was that she is really UGH and she should keep it to herself.

While I would love to be the kind of person who can just identify UGHness and then move on, I am not that person at all. I am more the type who likes to revisit something I find UGH again and again so I can go UGH whenever I feel like it. It’s a nice stress reliever for me. That’s why I found myself reading every last word of GOOP’s recent newsletter about her trip to the Venice Film Festival. I guess I just wanted to get some UGH out of my system and I knew that GOOP was a sure bet to let me do that. But you know what happened? I kind of found it enjoyable. I feel really weird about it. The strange feelings began with the image of her sitting around playing on her computer.

Normally, I would think ‘UGH GOOP. You think you are so great with your long unkempt hair and your casual jeans! Like a real woman of the people! As if GOOP!”

Instead I thought:

“Yellow hair is pretty. So clean.”

Later there is a picture of her getting ready.

Normally I would have thought: “Oh for pete’s sake GOOP. You think showing how many people it takes to make you pretty is going to make us feel better? Forget you!”

Instead I thought
“I want to go to there.”

It was very confusing for me.

Of course, I went UGH for the whole rest of the newsletter, especially the bits where she is talking about Matt Damon, but just calling him Matt, and the bit where she says she found a bunch of nice jewelery, but apparently needs a sugardaddy so she can buy it. In those bits I was UGHing like I aint ever UGHed before.

But the fact that I enjoyed even some of it is very concerning, and makes me feel like I am going soft.