Pet Peeves 2 – Just my opinion!

Gotcha Calls


How unbelievably unfunny are these? How lame, bourgeois, unoriginal and low brow? But not only that, they actively make me wince with embarrassment whenever I am forced to listen to them, cause as if I’d ever voluntarily put myself through an auditory nightmare such as this. But if, for example, someone else is driving and I can’t ask them to turn it off (my boss), or I have been kidnapped for a huge ransom and am tied up and trapped in the boot of the car yet can still hear the radio or am waiting to pay at a service station, they have the radio on and I can’t escape without being arrested for stealing petrol forever carrying the title of criminal,…then I gag, push my fingers in my ears and go ‘la la la la’ like babe the pig on ecstasy until it is over. Ridiculous, and can you believe that if just hearing one as a once off isn’t enough for some idiots, that you can look up the station on the net and re play them all again...Oh My God. By the way if you’re not sure what Gotcha calls are, they are a series of crank calls like we made when we were 11 and a ½ and used to indiscriminately call people and ask if there are any Walls there? Except longer and less imaginative.

Fussy People

I have absolutely no patience for people who are overly fussy. I think its okay that people have preferences and general likes and dislikes of course, that’s normal and not at all annoying, for example I would send a steak back if it was bleeding like a slaughter yard or burnt to a crisp and I don’t like fried eggs with runny white. I’ll eat an apple no matter what type it is as long as it isn’t flowery or harbouring a worm. But these fucking fussy people give me the shits, especially when I dine out with them. I don’t find it embarrassing at all, although I used to as a kid when my nana would demand the rolls be heated, the butter be soft and that a doggy bag be crafted into an alfoil swan and brought out the instant after the removal of a plate with remaining food still sitting on it. Then, I was embarrassed but I was 12, what the heck doesn’t embarrass you then? No, I just feel for the waiter who runs back and forwards, back and forwards as if this person is the only diner in the place and I feel like saying, ‘Just eat it the fuck up and be grateful’ who the hell are you and where’s your date palm frond fanner person? What runs a close second is people with food allergies or intolerances and tell you continually and when they come to your place grill you about every ingredient in a dish. Bring your own dish of boiled grass mother fucker. I always make sure I have a vegetarian dish and a gluten free dish when the friends of mine come over who are vegetarian and/or have celiac disease. I think that is reasonable. But the other fussy buggers can pack a lunch. I made small quiches at a ‘bring a plate’ function a while ago and a couple of people were eating them and making nice comments and one woman bit into one and stopped as if she found a wad of packaged cyanide in the middle. “Is there bacon in here?”


“Yep.”


She spat it out like a two year old trying a bowl of mashed brussel sprouts.


“Don’t eat pig then?”


“No, I wish you told me. I’m a vegetarian.”


“Yeah, well I’m not. Eat a cucumber lovie.”

Fake Allergies and Hypochondria

This kinda follows on from the last peeve of mine. I know there are real food allergies and this is in no way a swipe at them but it’s the people who one minute have an ‘allergy’ to something so we all cater to their allergy by using non dairy or non wheat and visit them in a plastic bubble at their house, then the next time you see them they are hoeing into that very thing (and sitting next to the exhaust pipe in the gutter taking in that good old carbon monoxide). What is up with that? You can either eat it or you can’t.

I have no patience at all for hypochondriacs. That can make me seem unsympathetic but I will sympathize with the best of them when it is warranted. Hypochondria simply does not fall under that empathy deserving banner (to me). They spend 40 hours a fortnight at the doctors looking for some made up disease they have researched on the net, take up precious time in ED departments and then do it to their children when they come along. These are the pains in the arses that will whinge their whole lives and never get anything but a cold and flu and eventually die at 103 because they over dosed on Tylenol. I know that Hypochondrias is now a diagnosis in the DSM as a somatoform disorder (mental disorder) and that is altogether a different matter entirely but fess up 'fake' hypochondriacs, it's sad and get a life, stop being melodramatic and stop reading the internet incurable disease page based on a small pimple on your left knee cap...and if you don’t, this middle finger is for you!

Moodiness

It’s not that I don’t believe in it, I’m a female. I know what PMS is and have gone from Sybil to, well...Sybil. One minute, a joy to be around (of course) and the next looking for a large blunt object I can use to shut someone up. But I do loathe a sulker and I hate moodiness as a way to communicate. Tell me if you are pissed off or throw something at me. I can’t read what moodiness might mean always but I can have a good argument and sort it out. And when I ask “what's the matter?” and I get “fine” and I ask again an hour later and I get “fine”...I’m not asking again. It’s the silent punishment, moodiness for some and with some people it can happen at anytime. I used to work with someone about 15 years ago who was the moodiest bitch I have ever met. You honestly had no idea when you got to work that day what sort of person you were going to see. Would you be friends today or not? Would there be conversation or not? It just did my head in. I guess I just prefer consistency. I do however fully support a bit of bad mood should something terrible have happened...what I call warranted mood change but the yo yo moody bullshit which I find is often best buddies with moaning and pessimism and just simply irritates me extraordinarily. Build a bridge, take a pill...it is exhausting.

Work Toots and Pod Etiquette

“Shit, someone is in my toilet cubicle. Who the fuck is that?”

I almost stooped, both literally and figuratively speaking, to have a gander under the door to sight the shoes so that I could identify them somewhere in the office afterwards and say “Um excuse me intruder, the first loo on the right is mine, Okay Missus.” But how disturbing would that be?

I have just re-started work again after 3 years and five days off, on extended maternity leave. I only go a couple of days a week but I already own my loo and I did the first hour I was there. It’s a thing I do. I actually almost hate that I do it because it’s quite restrictive but I even do it at a pub, convention, restaurant or plane. I’ve always done it. I’m hoping I’m not the only one who does it. The first time I go to a toilet where there are a few to choose from I kind of very rapidly check them out first, almost subconsciously. I stop to think which one I am comfortable with because I know that for the duration of my working life in that office, longevity of my address in the vicinity of the local pub, session duration at a non local pub, or trip on a plane; that will be my loo. It just feels wrong to go into a different one when “mine” is being used. So on starting back at work a couple of weeks ago, I went into the toilets for the very first time and consciously stopped and thought, ‘now which loo feels right because baby this is going to be your loo for a while’. I chose and I haven’t looked back! Even scarier thought; Sometimes I want research on the psychology of people’s decisions in relation to picking a loo so that I go to the most infrequently used one...I have a feeling though that I am quite average and possibly the loo I choose is every other fuckers too...only no-one admits it!!!

The pod is an interesting concept as a work setting. I hate the pod for a variety of reasons. People sit too close, there is no privacy. You can hear everything. You can see everything. You can’t eat tuna in a pod. It’s true. It’s on the list of pod etiquette. Don’t eat tuna and other things that might disagree with peoples olfactory responses. It’s also an obvious example of substantive employee positions. The managers and other people have individual offices or pods but the plebs have to sit together. Look, don’t get me wrong I think people in management earn their roles (mostly) but I really feel lesser being in a pod. Maybe that’s my issue alone and maybe that’s because in the past I have had my own office as a manager but that’s how it feels. I do enjoy pod camaraderie of sorts but it makes you fat. To really belong to a pod you need to provide and consume tea, coffee and fattening comestibles regularly. Things like bun, croissants, cakes and sometimes even chips. It also makes you poor because you have to belong to coffee and milk groups and pay up often. It makes you late because when it’s your buy, you have to firstly drop your child at day care and then stop at a convenience store to purchase milk and coffee and other assorted items, (bun, twists, pull aparts) and then try to get a park. Fuck the pod I say.

Handkerchiefs and Talcum Powder

Its a snot sock

I had some old family friends stay for a weekend recently and I have no idea how it came up but somehow the father of the couple made some statement about having the ‘absolute shits’ that his son, a 40 year old, won’t use a hanky. Thank fuck for that is all I can say. I also recall my own father saying to my brother, “where’s your hanky?” My bothers unsuppressed cachinnation was followed by a look of complete bewilderment at the suggestion and seriously, who uses a hanky at our age? What the hell are tissues for? They even make man sized tissues now as well as aloe vera and eucalyptus ones that shit all over the small hemmed square pieces of thin fabric old blokes and ladies with purple hair call a hanky and seriously how can it be hygienic? Really, how? How are they still allowed to make and sell them. You blow snot into it and think it’s a fab idea to carry it around in pocket or purse for possibly weeks...there is snot in there!!! Come on people.

As a decoration in a pocket (at a stretch) then okay, we no longer need white hanky’s to indicate surrender, that’s what our friggin’ arms are for. Hold them straight up mother fuckers. No hanky needed. Children have purses and more truthfully mothers, who hold all their small shit now (normally in a Dora, Dorothy or Ben 10 back pack) so they no longer require the use of a small handkerchief. Status and class is now implied by the automobiles they drive to ‘show off’ their wealth and standing in society. They don’t need to display a monogrammed silk or linen handkerchief to say, ‘hey, I’m loaded, bend down and kiss my Hilfiger’s serf’....NO, Give them the flick I say. Old fashioned, out dated, ridiculous and filthy. Men like Arthur’s and George’s used hanky’s in the old days along with Great Aunt Gertie and Iris. You will never see a bloke named Ashton or Jett or even Steve use a hanky.

Talcum powder on the other hand is lovely stuff even if a little old fashioned. Controversial and hardly ever used anymore as far as I can tell but I like it. It smells great on babies and me. My mum was a huge advocate for the handy talcum powder of various fragrances. The downside though is that some suspicions have been raised about the possibility that its use promotes certain types of diseases, mainly cancers of the ovaries and lungs...Hmmm not good. Talcum powder exposure has also caused the progression of tumours in some laboratory rats. However, studies on human beings haven’t yet been able to confirm a positive link. Don’t know if that is actually good enough for me. What I couldn’t believe was that until the 1970s, it was perfectly legal to have asbestos in talcum powder. Obviously with the jury still out on its safety, I’ve gotta say, I can’t in all good faith pop it on my baby’s booty, regardless of the fact that I love it. Ladies called Agatha and Mildred used talc. Probably lavender. A chick named Eisha or Kyra will never hold in their bathroom cupboard, a small canister of talcum powder. Not ever.

Pet Peeves

Pet peeves, petty annoyances, irritating displeasures. We all know them, have them, whinge about them. I have a list of them, not that I dwell on them, they just kinda come up. It’s just the stuff that happens on a day-to-day basis and probably most people never even notice some of the things that annoy the hell out of me, just as I possibly never get bugged by stuff that annoys other people.


My top 7:




1.Probably one of the most aggravating peeves of mine is when driving and the person in the car in front of me brakes and then indicates. That shits me. It’s not only dangerous, it’s wrong. Every time someone does it a long list of swear words run out of my mouth while I slam my own brakes on in complete disbelief. “Youfuckingidioticmaniacalimbecile”...or something like that. Sometimes I vary it a bit particularly when driving with my toddler.

 2.Something I am affronted by is people who sit outside of Woolies with their long table and posters and are fundraising. The fundraising does not bother me at all, I know it is vitally necessary. Come around to my place and I’ll make a cup of tea and fork out some dosh or leave a canister on the til and I’ll deposit some coins in there, but when I have just spent $400 on lettuce, toilet paper and sandwich wrap and they are ducking and weaving trying to catch my eye as I attempt to keep my trolley on the straight and narrow and have a small child asking me over and over again, “why can’t I have a strawberry milk Mum, why?, why?”, then the last thing I want to deal with is someone from Surf Lifesavers Queensland, saying,

“Excuse me mam, fancy dropping off some more money for our cause?”

“Not right now”, I say smiling yet obviously flustered because the trolley (we now pay for because idiots knick them) has a mind of its own and is going south while my kid is pulling me north and my hair is in my eyes.

“Just a small donation?”

“Sorry, can’t do it right now,” forced grin.

“Perhaps you’d like to look at a brochure and see the statistics on the good work we do?”

“Not at the moment. I know you do good work.” Grimace.

And all this time my little girls wrist is being yanked behind me while I have one hand now crippled with carpel tunnel on a wild roller coaster trolley and am heading for the down escalator.

“Do you ever go to the beach mam?”

“No, I fucking well do not. Get the bloody tourists to pay up they’re the ones who can’t swim.”

Why can’t they just accept that it is not always possible to stop and do this?

Sometimes I simply take my credit card with me and $1 for the trolley and when they come at me I smile apologetically wave my card at them and say,

“Sorry I only have my credit card today.”

“Well perhaps when you’ve finished with your trolley coin?”

“Step away arsehole.”


3.When I see someone litter in front of me I literally feel my blood boil. It is insane and unnecessary. It is thoughtless and messy. I actually say to people who do this,
“Who is going to pick that up? The litter fairy?”

When I see people do it while I am driving, I want to drive right up to them and get them to roll their window down and shame them. I’m afraid I’m guilty of one of those nanas that says, “where are the cops when you need them?” even if no one else is in the car with me.


4.Jenny Schecter...say no more.


5.When Australian use Americanisms in their speech and spelling. It infuriates me. Why do we Aussies think we mesh if we follow suit? I don’t care if we change some of our words to Australianisms but why American? Flashlight when it is a torch, aluminium (al-yuh-min-ee-uh m) not aluminum (uh-loo-muh-nuh m), trashcan when its rubbish bin, attorney...guess what? We don’t have them here. Bathroom, we actually say loo. It’s a bloody biscuit not a cookie. It is not a hood, it’s a bonnet, peanut paste, not peanut butter, jam not jelly, porridge not oatmeal, dummy not pacifier. Never, ever get fanny mixed up! You could be in real trouble here.

6.Flies. Well there’s one that probably pisses most of us off.


7.The Alanis Morrisette song, ‘Isn’t it ironic?’ rankles me incredibly. What is ironic about it? Isn’t it all just pretty much bad fucking luck or coincidental.
An old man turned ninety-eight


He won the lottery and died the next day – such bad luck, maybe it would have been ironic if he had bought a lottery ticket every Saturday his whole life...


It's a black fly in your Chardonnay – wasn’t that an accident?


It's a death row pardon two minutes too late – again, really bad luck – or fate perhaps or just desserts.


A traffic jam when you're already late- only when there are never ever normally traffic jams maybe.


A no-smoking sign on your cigarette break- a sign from God? Whatever I think she got her adjectives wrong.
You’re singing it now aren’t you?

Adelaidean and Proud of It

Believe it or not, people from Adelaide, South Australia seem to be some of the most parochial people I have met. I think it’s because other states pick on us – a lot, so we crawl into our insular ‘put-out’ selves and stick up for ourselves come hell or high water.


We are often teased about a variety of subjects and seem to be the butt of many jokes. Not quite as rigorous as gags about Tasmania and I know there are referrals to wet weather with regards to Melbourne or being the Alabama of the America’s like Queensland, but after being named city of churches and then known as the murder capital (City of corpses), old age home, sterile, boring, no jobs...except for lawyers defending murderers of course..but plenty of churches, we kinda have our work cut out for us. An example of this is John Saffron’s (Australian documentary maker and media personality, well-known for pranks and indelicate handling of controversial issues) popular (except with South Australians (SA)), not the sunscreen song circa 1997 or so when he sang/said, “Travel as often as you can, live in New York City once, live in Northern California once, never live in Adelaide, It's a hole”. Bugger off bastard.

At least Adelaide has real seasons. I love the changing of the leaves, an actual spring, a definite summer and winter – not like Melbourne where you need to take small luggage on wheels everywhere you go just to cater for a gamut of seasons in one day and Brisbane where it is dry and sunny, wet and sunny with a little rain and windy one month of the year only...August.

Adelaide to me seems to be the younger sibling of older sibling Melbourne who is the middle sibling where Sydney is the eldest and most experienced and knowledgeable of course....and doesn’t she know it swanking around in her frilly skirt and knickers showing, quite the slut. Brisbane swaggers along with a good white shirt, no tie and jeans and a pair of thongs. Perth, Hobart and Darwin are the cousins, a couple of which may share DNA with each other and I have no idea where they fit in. Adelaide people saunter through lovely gardens in twin sets and pearls while Melbourne’s attire is a rain coat, probably Burberry with something fancy underneath and a pair of Manolo Blahniks that people are constantly running in, to get out of the rain. Brisbane is attempting to be just like Sydney and Melbourne (Brisbane doesn’t give a rats about Adelaide-it’s all east coast) but are still falling short on some scales bar fantastic weather. Then there is Canberra...aahh nah can’t be bothered. Canberra is probably some ugly distant relative no one really cares about.

I was reading a travel page on SA recently. I was disturbed to see one of the most recommended places to visit was the Adelaide goal. Surely we can do better than that as a first? What about the Barossa, the Adelaide Hills, Victor Harbour, Kangaroo Island, Gawler (ok that might be pushing it), Glenelg, Rundle Mall, Popeye and what about the comestibles. Oh My God, after family and my best friends it’s why I go back to SA. I have to be honest!

I really think that a true South Australian will always return for the following (and bring as many as feasible back to where we are currently residing). Balfours frog cakes, pies pasties and sausage rolls...and YES they are better than Villies and better than anywhere else. Bung Fritz and sauce sandwiches...not devon, not luncheon...they just don’t cut it..ever. Fruchocs (now you’re talking), metwurst, trombone, Newmans horse raddish, a pie floater (ok never had one but it’s a true South Australian delectable apparently, especially after a skin full of booze and a loss at the casino). A Cornish pastie, a bush biscuit, Menz Yo Yo Biscuits and Haighs chocolate. Most places now offer Farmers Union Iced Coffee so the need to acquire this the minute after I collect my luggage from the conveyer belt once landed is not as desperate as it once was. A night out at the Mars bar, a look (around November Christmas pageant time) at Nimble, meeting your buddies at the Malls balls and a ride on Popeye on the Torrens completes the Adelaide experience. Satisfies the soul.

I also love to return to a place where intonatedly, I mesh. Adelaide or SA pronunciation is different. Leggo (laygo for SA), dance, chance, pool, plant, school. Words like texta (nikko), bathers (Togs), suitcase (port), fritz (devon), undies (knickers) and the rest of course..

At the end of the day...wherever we are from is home, it’s ours. It’s what we know, grew up with, miss, feel comfortable with, identify ourselves with even. So, though is the place we are currently in... it’s where we are hanging our hats and raising our children – by choice. You can have both!! You also have to cop it on the chin when they give you stick about it. It’s damn Australian after all. Whether you know it as Addy, Adders, city of churches, or even city of corpses...it still has the best Parmy EVER!!!

Ben Folds' Adelaide

Neon Vegas

‘Très magnifique’ was the one thought going through my mind as I wandered the cobbled streets beneath French wrought iron street lamps under a light dusky sky. The shop fronts beckoned me with French delights as I strolled past bubbling fountains and down the winding alleyways. In the background was the sound of the ching-ching of poker machines that brought me instantly back to reality...of a sort. I’m not sure if I would put ‘Las Vegas’ and ‘reality’ in the same sentence. Standing amid the 85,000-square-foot casino floor of the ‘Paris’ Casino I glanced up at the 40-foot ceiling which is painted to resemble the sky at day time. After spending an hour or two having a meal and another hour having a glass or two of wine at a bar I left feeling it was time for an afternoon nap. Stepping out onto the street from the casino I was immediately befuddled. I glanced at my watch quickly while my head raced to put it all together. It was 9.50pm, it was black out....well not really it was Las Vegas..it’s never really black out...if there was a blackout...it would be absolute chaos. Regardless, that was how Las Vegas worked. It was like following Alice willingly down the rabbit hole.


Las Vegas. I really enjoy writing about this city because it is implausible and that really is an understatement. You actually have to see it for yourself to comprehend. Neon is the word that comes to mind immediately when considering this place. Neon and slot machine noise. A location that appears to have been picked up from another place (planet) and dropped, certainly not gently, in the middle of nowhere. People come to Las Vegas to gamble, to get married in one of the hundreds of tiny chapels, kitsch and tacky, seedy, themed and certainly different. It’s a story to tell. “We got married in Vegas...by Elvis”. I did in fact and it was amusing, appealing, something celebrities do frequently and a little embarrassing too. Vegas is also a base from which to launch from easily to see the magnificent Grand Canyon, Lake Mead, Hoover Dam, Death Valley and the Valley of Fire. Monument Valley is also on offer from here. Historically, Las Vegas has been linked to the Mexican trader Rafael Rivera who discovered Las Vegas springs, Mormons, Railroad tycoons, the mafia, dinosaurs and finally the gambling masses.

The first time I visited I flew in during the day, stunned to fly over the snow covered mountains surrounding this remarkable metropolis lying like a jewel in the sand of the Mojave desert. I got off of the plane to a 42 degree arid day (105 f) that blew a hot wind. It is a very different place during the day. It really does wake up at night-time to show off its real core and easily recognisable regalia. The place dazzles at night with its trillions of lights and is an absolute neon Mecca. There is a plethora of casinos, motels, budget buffets and shows. An embarrassment of options. If it’s culture you are after, forget it. This is not the place. Gamblers will find this is their paradise. Kids have plenty to do in terms of Adventure domes and parks, museums, games arcades, theme parks and a shark reef and the backpacker can afford it easily with reasonably priced accommodation, meals, drinks and entertainment. $1 Coronas and an overabundance of show girls.

A few days however, in Vegas is enough for me. I love it while I am there and then by day 4 or 5 I feel a strong desire to get out as quickly as possible, a sentiment I have never felt anywhere else in the world. It does not stop me from returning though. The second time I visited Las Vegas I drove in at night by car from LA. The friend who was travelling with me was absolutely speechless while she took it all in. Doused herself in it. “I don’t know if I will ever be able to describe this place to anyone”, she mumbled.

We are all of course, by means of a variety of movies and TV shows, able to recognise famous casino landmarks like the Golden Nugget, Caesars palace, The Flamingo, The Mint, MGM Grand, Excalibur (Oh MY), Circus Circus, Luxor, New York New York, Treasure Island, The Mirage, The Stratosphere tower equipped with roller coaster on the very top...and well the list is truly endless. You can choose extravagant, luxurious accommodation like the Bellagio or crash more cheaply at Wayne Newton’s Stardust. It’s all an eye opener where ever you stay and it is worth wandering the main strip or Las Vegas Boulevard and going inside many of these unbelievably flamboyant casinos just to really soak it all in. It will blow your socks off. Heading into a casino, keep in mind that it is a good idea to wear a watch because you lose track of time very easily. You really have no idea whether it is day or night.

Once inside the casinos they are gaudy, disorientating (I think to keep you in there), noisy and covered in mirrors, flashing lights, tables, machines, and cruising cocktail waitresses offering drinks and free cigarettes. If you want any class at all while in a casino, head for the tables of craps, blackjack, roulette and the like. The machines with their constant clinking and ringing and flashing lights while exciting at first, will do your head in after a while. They all have a million bars to have a drink at which have poker machine screens nestled into the tops of the bars themselves so you can push in yet more coins while waiting for your cheap beverage or while perched on a bar stool sipping on your Pimms cocktail or watermelon mai tai. Restaurants of all calibres are plentiful and bustling with breakfast, lunch and dinner at any time of the day or night (if you remain in a casino there really isn’t a clear day or night and you never really have to go out because they are mini towns themselves offering everything possible under their twinking ceilings dotted with tiny cameras) and the endless all you can eat buffets of course. The prices are spot on because they want you to spend on games, not food and drinks. If you are not a gambler but fancy a small flutter then Vegas is great for you. If you are a big gambler, then Vegas is your heaven...until your money runs out and then it’s your basic nightmare...and remember, house always wins. For cheaper accommodation, check out the older Las Vegas, go Downtown.

Watching the high rollers at the tables is an incredible sight. It blows you away seeing them place thousands and thousands of dollars worth of chips that would in all actuality feed a small third world nation, on one solitary number and you really hope they get it, not to encourage their absurd stupidity but because it’s entirely irksome watching the house win relentlessly.

Strolling past the Bellagio fountains at night, made famous by the Oceans 11 film is an awesome sight that see’s hordes of tourists pulling out their small camcorders to capture them in full flight as they (the fountains of water) dip and dance to classical music that blares over loud speakers you can possibly hear from space. I cannot believe the use in electricity though. Those casinos are huge and all air-conditioned and with the amount of sunlight (and drought) there are no solar panels...at all. None. I stayed at Luxor and there is a huge beam of light that shines from its point, apparently the light is composed of 39 Xenon bulbs that consume 7 kW each, that is 273 kW of electricity, over 100 times what an average home uses. Apparently, Las Vegas demands 5,600 megawatts on a summer day. By 2015 that’s expected to hit 8,000. The Casinos represent 20% of Nevada’s electricity demand! That’s huge. Consumption extravagance certainly in Vegas style.

Travel out to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon. I recommend doing a particular package on offer that suits your needs and wants and that you can purchase anywhere you are staying or though any casino tourist desk. They are reasonably inexpensive and you will never forget the experience. Ever. It is easy to see it all in a day if you want to without feeling as though you have rushed it or missed a thing. There are a stack of different tours you can do. My favourite is this one; Fly by small plane after being picked up from your hotel to the edge of the Grand Canyon. The plane has large windows and an aural description via your own personal headphones regarding what you are looking at. It takes you over stunning Lake Mead and the incredible Hoover Dam and lands at the south rim of the canyon. You get your first glimpse of the enormity of the canyon and it is both a breath taking and humbling experience. From there you take a helicopter flight through the canyon to the floor 4,000-6,000 feet down and then sail by boat up the Colorado river, a river responsible for sculpting this incredible wonder around 17 million years ago. 445 kilometres long and 29 kilometres wide, its depth is an incredible 6000 feet. Flying out again by helicopter you board a hummer and visit a variety of famous and incredibly appealing overlooks and have a light Indian lunch on the edge of the canyon with native Hualapai Indians selling their jewellery and telling you some fascinating historic facts. You return by hummer to the airport and fly back in a small plane to Las Vegas where a bus will take you back to your hotel. You then have the rest of your life to digest this chasm of impeccable beauty and constant changing from season to season and times of the day. The Grand Canyon was more than I’d bargained for in terms of the emotions I felt standing on the edge of something so big and spectacular and the trip was truly worth every cent, euro, peso and yen. Probably my favourite moment was eating an Indian lunch perched on a chair on the edge of the canyon with circling eagles over head and the best view in town or out of town...whatever, it was damn fine.

The trip to Vegas is a huge experience any way you look at it. The point is there is nothing else like it anywhere else in the world. It is famous, elaborate, over the top, corrupt and fascinating, it shares an interesting history, an interesting future and inspires people who visit, to love or hate it. It pulls celebrities and entertainers worldwide who believe they have made it when they score a show in Vegas. It brings in dreamers and high rollers, the curious and honeymooners and these days, families. It occupies all of your senses while you are there and when you finally leave, a part of it goes with you and a part of you is left there with everybody else’s ideals, hopes and money....in the casinos that made Las Vegas, Las Vegas or Sin City. I knew it was time to go as I ventured into yet one more casino to have a look because while they are all the same fundamentally they are also very different in terms of themes and vulgarity...well vulgarity is a word I use after spending a while there...wonder is a term I possibly used on arrival, and knew I had to get the f*ck out of there. That place is enough crazy for anybody.

Las Vegas...who would miss it? I think in your life time you should see this place at least once.

100 Things to do in Las Vegas

Diet Schmiet

Bloody diets. Who hasn’t been on one? And how many are there to choose from? My God...it’s a hideous nightmare and every bugger who has ever been on one, successfully or not has their own advice or recommendation.


I was just saying to my best mate, how the hell did we manage to stay thin all those years in our twenties and early thirties without stacking on the kilo’s? We drank, we ate whatever we wanted as often as we wanted to and never put on an ounce.


“We were in our twenties and thirties”, she said.


“Yeah right.” I do remember a time when sometimes a meal consisted of a coffee and a couple of cigs or a couple of wines. That possibly helped.


Mum used to say, “Have you eaten love?’


“Sure”, I’d say, “I’ve had two glasses of white wine”.


“Not really enough”, she’d say.


“Well its fruit, isn’t it? Grapes are fruit. They’re on the fruit chart. In fact there are a heap of perfectly good vitamins and minerals in grapes”. Case closed.


It kind of serves my right in a way. I always easily maintained my weight without trying and was exceptionally complacent about it. Then I hit mid thirties and while I wasn’t looking fat snuck up on me. I even went to the doctor after finding a small lump on my rib cage and said, “is this cancer or what?”- always my fear.


“It’s a fatty deposit.”


“Get the fuck out of here.”


Time to diet. I did the weight watchers diet merely by borrowing the books and adding up points and went to gym. I lost ten kilos and swore I’d never let that happen again. I hated gym. I was always one of those people who played tennis, swam and played netball regularly. None of this gym shit. To me gym was for desperate people or obsessed dieters in fancy gym wear and body builders. Still I went along, rode the bike, pushed and pulled heavy weights and kept an evil and envious eye on the thin people. What I really wanted to say to really thin, buff and fit women who squatted in front of mirrors and posed with bulging muscles and not an inch of fat on them was, “ Honestly, fuck off lovie, what’s your caper? You’re skinny enough, bugger off and let us fatty’s get on that stair climber”.


When I was breast feeding my daughter the weight dropped off of me easily and I was able to consume anything I wanted. I was complacent again, my partner was stacking on weight and complaining because I was consuming what I wanted and not everyone can do that if they are not breast feeding. When I stopped feeding her I stacked on 8 kilos in two months. Whoops a fucking daisy.


Back to dieting. So I went back to the weight watchers diet and wasn’t losing anything much even though I had drastically reduced my intake. Then I read that drinking wine even though only adds up to one weight watchers measly point each glass, means also that you retain more fat. How much does that suck??


I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen for a while and was pregnant last time we met and she said I was too thin.” What’s going on with you?” she said. Now this chick is the thinnest bitch on the planet so it was weird coming from her but then a week later a woman I know well at my local petrol station asked if I was pregnant again....OMG!!!


As for exercise, my thoughts on that really were it keeps you fit, it doesn’t really diminish fat. Jury is still out on that one. So, I sat at my table behind a bunch of library books with various titles such as the carb free diet, the Atkins diet, the shake a day diet, the weight watchers diet, Tony Ferguson diet and so on and so on, plan my goal weight, pick something that suits and hope that something works and I get rid of my gut!! I don’t need to be a rake. I just want to be happy with it. I want to practice girth control. I have to exercise as early in the morning as I can manage so my brain won’t figure out what I am doing for a while. It can get pretty crazy though. You can go overboard. I write a list of everything I eat and so notice everything I do. Having a toddler means often finishing off their food. Half a banana here, some porridge and custard there. It goes on all day. Waste not want not and all that. I caught myself the other day not having the last bite of my daughters banana because ‘I’m on a diet’. For god’s sake...isn’t that going too far?


It really comes down to one thing. Diet Schmiet.

 
This is how 'they' do it!

Cyclists.

Tight arse, fat gut and a coffee shop stop at 6am. These are the mid life crisis boys on bikes. The whole cycling apparel includes mandatory helmet of course with weird shit sticking out of the top to deter birds from chipping away at their on growing hairy ear cartilage I think. BioRacer Firm bike pants, better shaved legs than me, in fact nicer toned legs than many of us, windbreaker gloves, jerseys in a variety of fluro, the ability to balance without putting a foot on terra firma at traffic lights and attitude.

My partner always wants to open the car door when we pass a crew of them riding across seven lanes, rather than single file as they should, because they get in the fucking way and put the rest of us in danger...or so I hear regularly. I usually defended them because in all honesty that didn’t annoy me as much as drivers who brake before they indicate.

But then I had an argument with one of them at Southbank once. There was a hoard of highly prized and very probably exceedingly expensive bikes parked outside of Chez Laila cafe while a group of cycling fanatics took up seventeen tables one Sunday morning early. I was there early with my baby in a pram because she woke at 4.30am and wouldn’t go back to sleep. So there I was bleary eyed enjoying the morning sun and wander along the river, when bam, straight into a Merida Scultura carbon road bike. Before I could say “Shit, who put that bloody bike in the path of my pram endangering my infants life?...” a cyclist dude jumped up swiftly slopping his latte with skim onto his raisin toast, (no butter) and came at me. I stupidly assumed he was about to apologise when out of his mouth came an onslaught of abuse about me hitting his precious Merida Sculture carbon (how I knew the name). There was some statement about watching where I was going and finally, “Do you know how much this bike is worth? It’s a $7,000 bike for God’s sake?”

“Really, “I said. “Well my baby cost around that through IVF and this is a Bugaboo Cameleon with accessories mate. That makes my cargo worth $9,000 and take that ridiculous hat off dipshit, who wears a helmet at breakfast. What could happen?”

With that I left.

Granted I used to refer to my pram as the landcruiser because it was so big and I often had trouble getting it through narrow spaces. Shopping was a nightmare! It was also an Emmaljunga and second hand, but how was he to know. The point is, there was no room because of the bikes and there was no ‘clean in body, clean in heart’ mentality going on at all there. They tell motorists to be cautious, be courteous and have a better cyclist mentality but mind-set like that makes it pretty hard. Granted it could have been just one guy but not one other bike man stood up to defend me. They were all glancing at their own bikes with that look on their face like, thank God it wasn’t mine. I took a backward glance when I was farther away to see the rude dude squatting with another cyclist to check out the damage...of which I’m sure there was none except when I "felt abashed at the extravagant praise" – NOT.

Failing to Mask Anti Cycling Agenda

Internetting Life

I heard yesterday that people would rather go without sex, their friends, their mobile phone and other 'things' we have normally regarded as vitally important for us to exist, than lose access to the internet! You see some weird stuff on the internet, this global structure of interconnected computer networks that interchange information (or something like that anyway), that we can’t seem to live without. We can do everything via the net. You don’t really need people anymore, except to deliver the shit you order or bid for on eBay or similar websites. You can meet your future husband without even being in the same country and you can spend a lot of time doing 10 billion surveys and earn money and points that add up to a new ball point pen or something as arbitrary.

From food to go, to bookings in Paris, tickets for the Nicks at Madison Square Gardens, and chatting on camera to a mate in London, the internet has shrunk the world. We have found old friends, advertised our music, writing and cars and learnt that words we think we know well don’t necessarily mean the same thing as they used to. It is about something you can’t see but know its there. Virtual. The shopping cart for example. We don’t see it or push it like when we are at Coles but it can be filled quickly with stuff and cost you money. Trojan horse is not the mythical ruse of war used by the Greeks sometime between 1500 and 1200 B.C. It is a masquerading virus in the form of a computer program. And we have a whole dictionary of brand spanking new words and terms for things such as hacker. Paypal, a payment system that lets you send money via e-mail using a credit card that isn’t swiped ever. You no longer need to go to the newsagent and buy a birthday card or card for any other event actually because there is e-card.


Broadband is not a cummerbund, it refers to connections to the Internet with much greater bandwidth than you get using a modem. A modem is an apparatus that connects a computer to your phone line. It allows a computer to chat to other computers through the phone setup. A, podcast is a mode of audio broadcasting via the Internet. A blog is an ugly word and is essentially a journal that is accessible and presented on the web. I think that the internet with its social networking sites is a huge tool to show off really. Look at my life, read about my life and know my opinions, thoughts and see my photos. It makes for interesting reading but it puts you right out there too if you choose.


One day our children are going to ask who or what is a postie and what is snail mail? What is a street directory? E-mail makes it all very easy than taking the ancient way of pen to paper. Its probably considered as antiquated as a carrier pigeon or Morse code. I bet they don’t even sell writing paper anymore.


Some of the weirdest sites I have come across using the net are,


How to avoid trapped arm while cuddling in bed.


How to underdo her bra using one hand.


How to apply translucent powder (my personal fave)


Ugly millionaire dating agency


Why do socks disappear?


Who comes up with this stuff? Or rather who doesn’t. Seems everyone can have a piece of the action if they want to.


With the arrival and popularity of My Space, Twitter, facebook and a million other web 2.0 sites like stumble Upon, Squidoo, Hub pages, Knol, Live Journal and a stack more..it has allowed us to be everywhere and communicate from anywhere. To promote, to hear the normally unheard, to cathartically express ourselves and our secrets on sites like Post Secret, one of my favourite sites!!! It’s the living room war without the conflict...although there is always some of that too with the misconduct of some.


Post A Secret

Can you live without it?

Initialisms and being PC

Who the hell thought PMS was a good idea? PMS has its own psychiatric designation and is regarded generally as a stable diagnosis. Hmmm others would beg to differ. When I lived with my best friend it was interesting during ‘that time’ of the month. Mostly we would bleed around the same time as most women tend to do (imagine a whole office of bitches about to bleed?), so we would both have a week of eating nothing but shit and about 10 tonnes of it per day and crave octopus and peanut butter sandwiches. There would be bitchiness with some crying at ridiculous things, then it would all be over, and the world would be fantastic again.

The hard part was when we would fall two weeks apart and then there was 2 weeks of hell out of four. CaaarrHrist!.

Sometimes I wouldn’t know it was coming for her and would get home from work to see her sitting on the couch with wine crying.

“What’s wrong?” I would say worried.

“Nothing.”

“Really?”

“Nothing. I’m single.”

“And?”

“I’m going to be single for the rest of my life.”

“You’re 22.”

“Oh my God.”

And there would be howling and then I’d say, “Is your period due?”

“Tomorrow.”

I’d give her a pat and a hug and leave her to it, although I’d usually try and steal the bottle away from her. It can get ugly after ¾ of a bottle of Chardy or Sav Blanc.

There would also be the face. There’s three faces in all. One is the look of incredible grief and sadness over nothing much at all. The second is the look of a spoiled brat and the third is the look of a killer. Stay away from that bitch I’m warning you. Sometimes I’d walk into her room to say hi and she’d be sitting there on her bed, her arms crossed at her chest with a look of a really unpleasant child. She’d look like Nellie Olson from “Little House on the Prairie” except with better eyebrows and bangs. We’d have some shocking arguments because having PMS makes you a snappy, nervous, paranoid, maniacal wreck for days sometimes.

The worst thing you can do, the absolute no no, is if you realise your friend or girlfriend is pissed off or something isn’t right, you never ever, ever say, “What? have you got your period?”

You don’t ask, “are you hormonal?”

Never say even calmly after she has had a blow out at you over the smallest detail, “When’s your period due babe?” like it was just some off the cuff query like ‘it doesn’t matter anyway I was just wondering’ sort of remark. Because if you do you could be killed outright with anything sharp or blunt in her hand at the time and she would feel that it is completely warranted and frankly I agree with her. It is a red, red (scarlet red, frank red) rag to a bull. The reddest flag you ever saw in all your days of red flag spotting.

After it is all over for her and she thinks back on it, she knows it was irrational and even possibly unfair and she thinks ‘poor bastard or bitch’ if she has really given it to whoever, but she makes up for it by being pleasant for the next three weeks. Until someone (he) does something stupid and even without PMS she yells at him and if he says “have you got your period?” she will still kill him with a blunt object because what the hell did he think was going on last week? And truthfully it is really because he cannot conceive that anything at all could be his problem or fault - it is always hers. PMS is an escape route in some relationships.


PMS used to be PMT in earlier years but like everything, it has to go through a name change, which is why generations today are confused by just about everything each other says. It is no longer tension; it is a syndrome. Next, it will be a disorder. PMD. Once it was ADD now it’s ADHD. No one knows what people are saying anymore. It used to be shell shock then post traumatic stress syndrome, then post-traumatic stress disorder. It’s PC when we use the right language, politically correct. Not racist or biased or some other ‘ist’. And it’s right that we have changed terminology to stop defining a person through either a disability, illness or difference. Wheelchair bound, Autistic person, lesbian woman, cancer sufferer. Some terms need to change. They just had to. The old expressions define a person. But no wonder the people in the world can get confused about it all too. I always feel for older people who are not at all being disrespectful when they say someone is retarded (a term still used in America unbelievably) or handicapped yet we all shrink away in horror because we don’t say that anymore and it sounds so very wrong. We are grateful and glad that we have better terminology, more appropriate ways to describe things, disorders or people who have particular differences that while are still being labelled are not seen as negative. Labels need to go though in my opinion. The pigeonholing we use now will be disregarded as unacceptable and badly chosen on another day to come and it will just keep going around and around I suppose. It shits me but that’s probably because today I have PMS. I have to really think sometimes if ever I want or need to describe a Black person. Do I say Indigenous, Aboriginal, black or coloured person, negro or Black African, or African American without offending anyone? because whatever I say today won’t be the same tomorrow and the day after it will be something else and I’ll never mean anything prejudicial or negative whichever I use. Negro for example used to be accepted as a customary neutral formal term used by those of Black African descent as well as non-African blacks, now it is often regarded as an ethnic slur. Mostly it’s not necessary to identify anyone by skin colour but on occasion it is, just as gender is used for whatever reason. Anyway today its PMS, next week it will be KMHBTOIHMP (killed my husband but that’s ok I had my period) and next year it will be something altogether different again.

There is a whole website dedicated to acronyms or initialisms. AF acronym finder. Boasts that it can find 750,000 acronyms. OMG!

PC-Isms Politically Correct Terminology

Seriously Single Part VIII: But Can He Type?

I think one of the shittiest things to see, is a friend with the wrong one. It can be blindingly obvious to you and the world (and very, very possibly to your friend as well) and there can be a pattern. Initially they tell you they have met this person and he is interesting. It appears they like your friend, always a bonus but your friend knows in their heart of hearts that really, frankly, truthfully, they want it to work so that they are no longer single.




A friend of mine has done this several times. Oh my God it terrifies me when I see it happening. I can write it like a predictive diary of what will happen because I know the prototype. It is that obvious.


She does that whole, “Met someone last night.”


“Oh cool. Nice is he?”


“Sure.”


And that’s it.


“What else?” I ask.


“Rich.”


“Nice. How old?”


“You know. Older.”


“Well that’s alright. Good personality? Funny? Nice looking?”


“Did I mention he is rich?”


“Oh sweet Jesus.”


And you almost hear her saying, except she’s not,


“Bugger it he’s my only choice at the moment and I will make it work until it kills me.”


But instead she says, “I think I could marry this one.”


“Right,” I say, “Because he is so perfect for you in how many ways and you’ve known him how long?”


“It’s not about looks.”


“I agree. It’s about something in common and stuff you like about him. It’s about not settling. Right?”


It might sound harsh and like I’m judging her or something but this is how it will go.


She’ll see him every now and then keeping that perfect distance and then she’ll drink so she can bear to kiss him and then she’ll tell her mates that she’s not real sure but then she’ll sleep with him while drunk and then really, there’s no going back from there and she’ll know this. But to her it’s important to make it all seem like it’s the perfectly logical thing to do. Which is fine if he’s the right one.


“I’ll learn to love him,” she’ll say.


“Perhaps.”


But you know the rest is yet to come. She’ll get swept away with the thought of the whole romance. Of marrying him and finally being free from that ‘singles’ title and being able to have babies in wedlock because her clock is ticking and her parents are religious.

So she’ll organise bed and breakfast stays with him, lunches with her friends, meeting the parents, planning the wedding (with honeymoon destination) and then he’ll declare his undying love for her. She will be wrapped and shit her pants both at the same time because down deep inside she just knows she will leave him battered and torn because at the end of the day, he is the wrong one. Again. And so it’s back to being seriously single.

Why did lil miss muffet run away?

Seriously Single Part VII: Sleeping Single

Most of us know what it is like to be out there looking for the perfect partner. At least at the start it’s the ‘perfect’ person we look for, later it’s just a person we are looking for and much later it can become looking for anyone at all, it doesn’t matter who as long as they are breathing and have a drivers licence. It’s okay when you want to be fancy-free living the singles life. But when it comes down to it that aspiration doesn’t last forever. Especially when the people we are surrounded by and hang with, are all cosily partnered up in some perfect world a ‘singleton’ doesn’t quite belong to.




Singles often go on about how incredible it is not to have the supposed ‘ball and chain.’ They brag about doing anything they want. They even have the whole bed to themselves and can lie horizontally in it rather than vertically if they want to. And really, they might really love it but others pine for a partner. Especially when they are ready. It’s a hard thing to be in a very happy relationship and watch and be with a friend who is looking. You can make all the suggestions under the sun and drag them around to meet your friends, even set them up on the old blind date God forbid, but you know in the end it’s all up to them.


I remember the looks on people’s faces on occasion when I have been single and they were blissfully paired up with their companion. It was that look of pity and commiseration like I was some loser from the planet, ‘Barren bitch’ or as though I’d lost all four limbs and been diagnosed with torso cancer. It seriously irked me.


They’d say gently (with that look), “How’s things? Found anyone yet?”


“No,” I’d retort back quickly, smiling and trying to sound peppy. And then there was that sigh from them.


“But I did get a massive promotion at work and won a million dollars on power ball.”


Sigh. “Wish I could help you.”


“Hmmm, never mind.”


If I’d had a gutful of them asking and snapped a vicious “NO,” back at them they’d do that sidewards glance thing at me like they were afraid I was on the edge. They’d raise their eyebrows and I could almost hear the words they thought but were too scared to say out loud,


“No wonder you’re single hon, with an attitude like that. Oh yes indeedy.”


Sometimes it all got a bit patronising and a little bit self-righteous.


I try not to give that same look to single people when I’m paired up and ask them whether they have any potential interests out there and have even practised that nonchalant bored face in front of a mirror when asking.

Close friends are different though. They want you to be happy but they don’t infer that that means ‘with someone’. They don’t patronise or look at me like I was missing out on the best adventure in the world. They even tell me stories about the shitty side of being in a relationship. Most of the time it was crap but you’ve gotta love their objective.

She is soo glad she is sleeping single!