Haiku Thursday (PM)

When good brains go bad

My poor haiku brain

Slept so long, Keira Knightley

Not enough to rouse 

Once weekly produced

Five seven five but now

Struggles to haiku

Haiku Thursday (AM)

Shameful haiku confessions following a viewing of the enigma code movie.

It seems that something

Has snuffed out all my dislike 

Of Keira Knightley. 

'Twas a normal day.

Never thought it could happen.

Now I fear: who's next? 

It's a wonderful night for Oscar (PM)

Well, you've heard K's thoughts on a bunch of movies she hasn't seen, I'm pretty sure you don't need to hear mine. I will say I would really like to see Birdman and Boyhood. But I haven't seen either. I'm not much interested in most of the other nominated films because I expect they would largely bore me. I don't know if it is that movies have gotten shit or that the reality of life after 35.5 years has numbed me to their effect but I can barely remember the last time a film really blew my mind, let alone made me blow my wad. I have actually seen The Grand Budapest Hotel. It was pretty good, but nothing was blown as a result. It was no Royal Tenenbaums. Me, I guess I'd like Boyhood to win too, just last night I was thinking about how I can't wait for Baby to be old enough to enjoy School of Rock and thinking about how Richard Linklater has made some really good films. And I spent so many minutes in my youth thinking about how cool it would be for a movie to be made the way Boyhood was, the same people over a long time. But, obviously I haven't seen it so who am I to say what should win.

Sure, I'll watch the Oscars. You know I love NPH. And I love a hunk. And a pretty dress.

I guess Oscar night is about hopes and dreams. (Or so I can imagine some idiot saying.) I have hopes and dreams. Hope that the presenter list will be full of hunks. Dreams that some day a movie will make me feel something again. And that one day someone will  look as beautiful as Michelle Williams did that year in the yellow dress. You know, like K said.

It's a wonderful night for Oscar (AM)

Apparently the Oscars are on tonight. Who knew? There was a time when I used to heavily anticipate Oscar night. Not any more. I guess I'm just to old for that shit, as Danny Glover would say, though I've never actually seen Lethal Weapon. Back then,  I would most likely have seen all the movies and know who was likely to win based on previous awards ceremony results. Now, I barely even know what's nominated, and I'm sure I've seen very few of the films that are nominated. But heck, that shouldn't stop me from adding my $0.02, right?

Ok, let's go over the best picture nominees.
The Imitation Game. That's the one about the enigma code, right? I wanted to see that, mainly because I have never seen a film about the enigma code, nor read a book about it, nor have The Simpsons ever done an episode on it so I don't know the details of the story. Appleheart would roll his eyes whenever I mentioned it which kind of made me want to see it more, as a joke. But I didn't. So I don't know if it's good. So I guess it won't win?

Next, The Theory of Everything. That's the one about Stephen Hawking. I am sure it's an incredible story of triumph over adversity, and love,  but it looked kind of boring to me so I don't really want to see it and I don't really want it to win. Sorry.

Apparently Selma is the third film nominated. That's the one about Martin Luther King. Look, Americans know how to make you feel a lot of feelings in the cinema, so I'm pretty sure I would feel a lot of feelings if I saw it. But I haven't seen it. And I probably won't. But I do want to know why it's called Selma.

Oh, American Sniper is nominated. That's the one with Bradley Cooper and the fake baby, that Clint Eastwood directed. Haven't seen it. Mainly because of Bradley Cooper, Clint Eastwood and a very low level of interest. It might win something I guess. People love Clint, and he's no spring chicken anymore.  But I don't think it will.

The Grand Budapest Hotel. Look, I've enjoyed many a Wes Anderson film in my day. But lately, I've grown tired of them. And so I never saw this one. Which I kind of regret now, because people said it was really good. I guess I'll get around to seeing it. But I'm not in a massive rush. It might win I guess. People were pretty impressed with it. I'm shrugging my shoulders and moving on.

Boyhood. Now that's a film I really did want to see, fully intended to see, and felt really bummed out when I missed out on seeing it. I like Patricia Arquette. I like the concept. I like watching Ethan Hawke on screen these days, and feeling a little grossed out by him and feeling slightly bemused by that reaction. This movie sounds like it could be a really good movie and even though I haven't seen it, I think I want it to win.

Whiplash. What the heck is Whiplash? Wait, I have to google it. Oh, actually, I have heard of it. It's that movie about the jazz drummer. But that's all I know about it. Has anyone seen it? Is it meant to be good?  Well, maybe it's good. Hopefully it is. But I don't want it to win because of Boyhood.







Finally, Birdman. I've actually seen this. And I really liked it! Edward Norton really should work more. And even though my feelings for Christian Bale are well documented, and I am of the very firm view that he is the best Batman, a part of me still thinks that only Michael Keaton is the only real Batman. But, I have to say, I still want Boyhood, a film I have never seen, to win.




I don't really know what that says about things, but there you have it.

In all honesty, I mostly want someone to wear a dress as beautiful and memorable as the yellow Michelle Williams dress. And I want to be excited about the movies and the oscars again. But mostly, it's about the dress.

Hot buns (PM)

Christ. I didn't know about the assless chaps. Not at all. And just like any talk of buns bringing Tai's words about buns not feeling nothing like steel to mind, those chaps make me think about a line from another film I liked a lot as a kid, "I've seen enough to know I've seen too much". 

That line is from A Leage of Their Own, a  film that harks back to a simpler time. A time when women had to wait until there was a world war going on to play baseball at a professional level, but where shape wear didn't have holes for butt cheeks. You can bet your bare ass on that. I'm afraid that I have worn shape wear once or twice in my life. But not for my butt. I'm not crazy-assed. And the reason I've only worn it once or twice is because it doesn't get rid of unsightly bulges, it just sends them in another direction. Forget that. On a related note, j spent a lot of time looking at my buns in the lululemon change rooms last night. They have mirrors everywhere in those change rooms and you can see yourself from every angle under the sun. Again, I've seen enough to know I've seen too much. Not because I have a problem with my buns. Just because I like to keep some body parts a mystery.  

 

Hot buns (AM)

I think about hot buns a lot. Cinnamon buns, chocolate buns, straight out of the oven, all warm and sticky and delicious. But I don't think about the other kind of hot buns that much. Not my own or other people's.

Re: hot buns of the human variety I usually think of two things from my youth when they come up. First, a test that I will, correctly or otherwise, attribute to Jane Fonda, that if you put a pencil under a buttock and it stays in place you do not have hot buns. I don't know where I read this or when exactly, but I was a child of an age where I did not really have to worry about hot buns but knew that in the near future I may, and as I have aged I have thought of this test often and whether or not it really defines hot buns. The other thing I think of, of course, is from Clueless, when Tai tells Cher, "And my buns, they don't feel nothing like steel." I think of this in relation to any workout and any mention of buns ever.

 

Luckily for me, I have a pretty "out of sight, out of mind" attitude to my body, so I don't spend time agonising over the state of my buttocks. Sure, I have a general feeling that I could be fitter, slimmer, more toned but the benefit of having so much hate for my hair is that it leaves me little time to focus on any other negative attributes I have, thus relieving me from the self-scrutiny and loathing some people suffer.

But I know people fixate on their perceived physical shortcomings and do all kinds of things to overcome them, like work out, get surgery, wear assless chaps. Wait what?

I don't really understand 'shape wear', so I guess you could say I am at a complete fucking loss as to why you have to have nude buttocks to give you a great ass. I understand that the work of this particular garment is to lift and emphasise your butt, but I don't really understand why some less intensely tight fabric couldn't be used in the place of those gaping butt holes. And sure, there's not anything exactly wrong with buttocks being nude, and yet it just seems like including some more fabric on these underwear may have been a way of making them more comfortable and also more like underwear. Is it meant to make this shape wear sexy? Because shape wear is definitely not sexy, and perhaps I am alone in thinking this, but lumps of flesh pouring through holes in ultra tight stretch fabrics isn't really sexy either. It's like Blur said, modern life is rubbish.


I'd like to thank my aunt for bringing these pants and their stupidity to my attention, and yet I'd also like to curse her for bringing these pants and their stupidity to my attention.

Things that make you go ewwww (PM)

Poor tiny J being terrorised by frozen tomato sauce. And poor adult LB being confused by your reaction to frozen salsa. Childhood traumas are hard to get over and hard to understand. 

But the grossness of eating a frozen sandwich is plain for all to see. What a waste of one of only three meals we get in a day. That guy should get a clue. 

Things that make you go eewwww (AM)

Once, at work, I heard that my boss was eating a frozen sandwich. Why would a person do that? I don’t know, but a woman I work with was telling another woman I work with that our boss was eating a delicious-looking sandwich and that it was frozen. The impression I got was that this sandwich had been made, then frozen, then taken to work for lunch and then eaten before thawing had been achieved. Now I'm the kind of girl that starts thinking about my lunch at about 10:30am, so I understand premature lunch consumption and yet I still can not understand why, how a person would eat a frozen sandwich. It remains a mystery to me. Surely a large part of the deliciousness of the sandwich would have been negated by the frozenness of it? 

It reminded me of something that happened to me has a kid. One day in either the name of science or making me want to spew Russeth and Chickpea froze tomato sauce. It was gross. So gross, like an icy, granita of tomato sauce. I remember when they pulled it out of the freezer I felt so sick. And then...then, they ate it. Watching this made me run to the sink, but as I’m not much of a vomiter,  I think that was mostly for drama. But if I was a vomiter I can assure you I would have been spewing. For sure.

Far from being some minor forgettable moment, it has stayed with me as one of the defining gross events of my life. LB and I had an argument recently that was basically a result of that frozen tomato sauce incident. Sometimes with tacos, LB likes to have some store-bought salsa, and if it comes straight from the supermarket he puts it in the freezer to cool it down and give a little extra freshness to the tacos. I told him I thought it was gross and he felt that was a bit of an extreme reaction. Apparently he thought the word 'gross' was offensive, but I guess he's never seen his brother and sister eat frozen tomato sauce.

I love ice-cream, I like frozen grapes and frozen bananas, but frozen savoury really grosses me the fuck out. But that's normal, right?

On the upside, while searching for an image for this post I came across a bunch of pictures of ice-cream sandwiches, it really helped cleanse my mind palette.

Cheesecake experiments (PM)

Oh, cheesecake, that is one special cake. And yet, like K, when do I ever eat it? Never that's when. And let me tell you why: my Polish grandmother made the king of cheesecakes. A little sweet, a wonderful sour note, perfect density, a base strong enough to hold it together but not intruding into the overwhelming cheesecakeyness of it. Never has a cheesecake come anywhere near the deliciousness that was Babcia's cheesecake. She kept baking for a long time but as she got into her nineties the baking, unsurprisingly, got rarer. And after she died, the sweet treats really dried up!

Babcia was a great cook and baker, do not get me started on her apple pie (this is another thing to which nothing has ever come close). Periodically I say to my mum, "Do you have Babcia's recipe for this or that" and my mum will tell me it is somewhere or only in Polish or something like that and I'll say, "I really must get it from you" and then I don't, because then I'd probably end up with too much cheesecake or apple pie in the house. But it is time for the excuses to end!!!

I will find that recipe, and sure I will compare it to other good-looking recipes, but there is no question what is going to happen in my kitchen, Babcia's cheesecake will rise like a phoenix from the ashes that are forbidden by Jewish law.

 

Cheesecake experiments (AM)

Cheesecake. One of the all time great cakes. But so easy to eff up, which is why I never order me a slice when I'm out and about. If I'm going to ingest all that fat and sugar, I want to be sure it's going to be worth it. The kind of cheesecake they have for sale at so many cafes, you just can't be sure. It could be too sweet, to claggy, it could have a rubbish base. I don't want to take the risk. And making cheesecake at home isn't something I've done much of, because it results in one have a lot of cheesecake in the house and that's a pretty dangerous zone. But if one doesn't order cheesecake, or make cheesecake, one doesn't get to eat cheesecake. You see the difficulty of my situation. 

I've been in this deadlock for a while and I think it's time to break out. So I'm proposing, for MSC's second cake experiments, that we launch into some cheesecake experiments. 

This is how it's going to pan out.

First we need to lay some ground rules about what makes a good cheesecake. Then we compare some recipes, and each of us picks one to bake. 

Then we bake!

Then we get together and taste.

Then we think about what we've done and what we've learnt and promise one another that whatever happens, we'll never forget this summer.

Ok, the rules for me are simple. I like a pure cheesecake, no fruit or glaze or anything fancy on top. It has to have a hint of sweetness but little more than a hint. The texture needs to occupy that wafer thin space between light and dense. And the base needs to yield to the fork, but be sufficiently solid to hold up against all that cheese. I also think the base should go up the sides too. 

It's a tall order, really. But that's just me. Mate, over to you. 

Nb: most of the cheesecakes pictures above do not fit the bill. 

Moving (PM)

There is both nothing worse and nothing better than moving house.*  The packing, the sorting, the deciding what comes and what's trash. The lifting, the carrying, the more lifting and more carrying. The cleaning. And that's just for the good moves. Once when moving house in the pouring rain, the heretofore perfectly fine bathroom roof leaked and flooded the bathroom. Not our problem. But really it was. In that move LB and I didn't even have a real house to move to, we just had to get out of that shoebox and away from our crazy landlord who lived next door. That night at a party at Miguel and Legsly's, very tired and very drunk LB and I had a terrible fight, then slept on our mattress which was on a pile of our belongings in the back of the car out the front of Miguel and Legsly's place. Another time when we were moving house in the pouring rain I drove a car load of stuff and 2-month-old Baby to our new home while LB drove a truckload of stuff plus our mattress strapped to the top of the truck. This is one of those stories where it is worth noting that at the start I mentioned the pouring rain. Somehow the mattress fell off the top of the truck in peak Punt Road traffic and was by this stage so waterlogged all LB could manage was dragging it to the side of the road before driving away hoping no one took down his plates. I guess that mattress would have been good for nothing anyway after the amount of water it took in.

But, when the moving is all done and you are in your new place there is so much promise, promise of a new lovely space to organise and beautify, not yet overwhelmed by the debris of everyday life, promise of all the good times you will have. Last year when I moved house right about now I was so happy. The move was smooth and it didn't rain at all. Everything arrived at the new place in tact. The space was clean and fresh and, back then, fit all our stuff. When the house you move to is good and it's a new year and exciting things are gonna happen and all your walls are white, that, that is pretty, pretty, pretty good.



*Not an actual fact. Actually it is absolutely untrue, so many things are worse than moving house and many things are better, but you didn't come here for facts right?

Moving (AM)

I moved house on the weekend, into the place Appleheart and I bought in November.   As moving days go, it was a pretty good one. Sure, it was 35 degrees,  and there was a brief downpour at almost the exact moment we arrived in Preston to unpack. But heck, it was a moving day, not a picnic. So the fact that no extremely annoying things took place, nothing got broken and apart from having to disassemble the bed, take it upstairs piece by piece and then reassemble it in the bedroom, the movers took care of everything, well that seems like a pretty big success to me. And we ended the day with pizza and beer and crappy television, the universal reward of moving. 

So now I'm a Prestonian. Things are going to be a bit different. No more five minute walk to Barkly Square. No more being able to hear the bells at the Jewell station level crossing start to ding, bolting out the front door to run for the train, and making it. No more good coffee five minutes away. But instead, I get to live in a home that belongs to me and my Appleheart. It's hard not to feel a bit heart swelly at that. We have a back yard and a front yard. Two lemon trees. A jacaranda. A tiny little fig tree. Yesterday I planted a marigold. It feels like a pretty nice life. 

In praise of plans (PM)

My old housemates used to do exactly the same thing! And it struck me as both uptight and prudent. 

Living alongside it, but not doing it myself, I have some observations to share. First and foremost, it was a real weeknight angst-buster. No denying it, they didn't have a skerrick of the what-am-I-going-to-eat? panic that gripped me for a reliable half hour every night. But nor did they have the pleasure of really nailing it. You know how sometimes you come up with a meal on the fly and it's a total deadset winner? Well that never happens when you plan the all. Sure, you get the odd 'well that was a good recipe, I think I'll make that again' kind of pleasure. But not the joyful 'holy shit I've really nailed this one' kind of feeling. 

To be fair, that's a once a month kind of thing for me. But shit guys, it's a great time of the month. 

In praise of plans (AM)

I used to work with a woman who would always complain about her conservative parents; she thought of herself as very open minded and liberal. She wore red chinoiserie to her wedding. But she used to complain about junkies and youths and other people unlike her in a way that very much reminded me of someone's conservative parents. 

Another of her qualities that could indeed make her seem like an uptight, housewife type was her tendency to plan her weekly meals. She'd cook seafood two nights a week, meat two nights and vegetarian two nights, then she'd plan what she was making and do a weekly shop that she would supplement with biweekly market visits. Although this makes her sound uptight, it is one of the qualities in her I most admired. That and the fact she introduced me to Strawberrynet, a website that used to offer great discounts on beauty products before the Internet realised it could make lots of money in Australia by charging more for things that are expensive here and it became cheaper to buy beauty products from actual shops.

My old pod buddy's meal plans was always inspiring to me, far from creating shackles I think that the meal plan could be very liberating. Rather than pondering daily what to make for dinner and falling back on oft-revisited dinners, the meal plan and subsequent shop would provide a map to deliciousness and newness. I'd be freed from the shackles of pasta and Aussie meals that I fall back on so frequently.

Usually I go to the market on Sunday and that means I buy some fish, LB buys some sausages and that answers a couple of nights' problems, but imagine looking through cookbooks on the weekend, deciding to make things from there, buying the necessary foodstuffs, thereby forcing yourself to make those meals you'd dreamed of. I'm imagining that right now, and I don't know if it's just the energised fervor of the new year, but by god, I'm going to plan my meals next week! And, if I can maintain this new year's fervor, the week after that, and the week after that, and the week after that...

What a douche (PM)

I'm glad we're talking about this, because I saw an article on The Age the other day about Gwyneth steam cleaning her vagina and I wanted to know what it said without having to read it.

And now I know! What a relief. Of course it's pretty much exactly as I thought. Gwyneth Paltrow is steam cleaning her vagina.

I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Gwyneth and her editorial team sat around talking about whether the world is ready to hear about this. I bet someone at some point would have called her brave. 

How terribly terribly annoying. And stupid. Water in your vagina influencing your hormones? Please. What mumbo jumbo. 

But I'm quite enjoying talking about it!

What a douche (AM)

With the possible exception of Pickle, I think we can all agree that whatever else you think of Gwyneth Paltrow she has a pretty annoying side. The useless offerings on her website of vacation destinations ("Here’s the plan: Get everyone you know and love together, fly into Manzanillo, make the 90-minute trek to Costalegre where you’ll find the Chamela-Ciuxmala Biosphere Reserve..."), fashion (the GOOP "last minute winter coat guide" included Givenchy and Stella McCartney and nothing under a thousand bucks) and how to organise your wardrobe (a walk-in one helps) are enough to make me vomit. To be fair to Gwyneth she doesn't write most of that stuff on her website but it's her website, so you know. Her wholesome macrobiotic, green-juice cleanse life, accounts of wine-drinking with her soon-to-be-ex husband, he of the most vomit-inducing band of the millennium, oh it is all too much for me. Her pretty smile, lovely blonde hair, casual style, I guess both repelled and attracted me. I don't think she's a bad actress and sometimes enjoy watching her, but on balance I have to say I do not like her. 

But recently something happened to test me, I watched her on Jimmy Fallon. I watched it especially to see if she was as annoying as I thought she'd be, and you know what? I didn't hate her. I didn't love her. No, nothing like that at all, but I definitely didn't hate her. She seemed far less annoying than many other people I've seen on talk shows. When I watched Drew Barrymore on Jimmy Fallon I didn't find her endearing at all, though I expected to. Fallon is not a very good interviewer, I don't think he necessarily brings out anything special from his guests but there Gwyneth was being moderately likeable. Boy was I confused and a little confronted. 

Then a few days ago I got an email, I know in fact it was from my mum, but it arrived from my dad's account, there next to Dad's name was the subject line "Gwyneth Paltrow advises women to 'steam-clean' their vaginas". Hahahahhaahah. And with that the status quo was restored. Apparently Gwyenth, whose name was above this piece published on GOOP, likes to sit on a jet of steam to clean out her vagina and uterus. I guess I just feel like this sounds like ... a total crock of shit. But don't just take it from me, listen to Gwynny, "It is an energetic release that balances female hormone levels." Ummmmm, yep no doubt that is a crock of shit. The Guardian website has a couple of interesting articles on this steaming malarkey, one for it and one rational one. Read them if you like! Well, Gwyneth, with your zillions of dollars I'm sure you have to invent new ways to spend it and new ways of demonstrating how cleansed and zen you are and I guess a vaginal steam clean can help on both those counts, it helps me too, it helps me realise how justified I've been thinking you're a loser. Thanks, Gwyneth, I guess we both win!