Let’s see who’s butchering the English language today, shall we?

2


I went on a morning stroll/jog/run/walk/undignified crawl today to work off some Generally Undiagnosable and Irrational but Very Real Crankiness and wandered through a new industrial estate.

It’s all rather exciting looking at chunks of former farming land being reinvented into large sheds and marvelling how importing cherries from the USA, avocadoes from New Zealand and kiwi fruit from Peru or Gautemala or some place on the other side of the world makes good sense.

The current lessee of one vacant block stores monster trucks that move dirt from here to there with a burgeoning side business in growing dandelions.

The developer’s marketing campaign for this block took my interest because it, well, seems less industrial than its intended client base would expect.

Who on earth invented the word ‘factoryette’ for an industrial estate? A dickheadette?

Crank-o-meter: the stupidettes are taking over the world

29 December 2008

Lose Christmas kilos now, just don’t ask me how

6


Only two things were going to stop me from hitting the Boxing Day sales: I hate crowds and would rather knit my own towels out of cat fluff than queue for discounted manchester and, oh yes, I’m down with gastro and can’t be more than five metres from a toilet.

Urgh.

I did a mental walk through my digestive habits on Christmas Day to hunt down the cause, but I was quite the freeloading guzzler about town. All I had eaten at home were some cherries ($21 a kilo so it wasn’t even a *lot* of cherries) and a piece of toast. There was a mince tart from Place A, those yummy chocolate-mint wafers from Place B, nothing from Place C but a young child stole my water bottle and perhaps had dirty hands when running about with my source of hydration (you give kids scooters and Wii games, and all they want is a bit of plastic filled with water!), and a sit-down dinner at Place D where I may have petted the dog or fed her treats under the table and forgotten to wash my hands.

Gotta go. Bye.

Crank-o-meter: using my telekinetic powers is not making rolls of toilet paper fly in the front door

27 December 2008

Rudolph doesn’t look too happy

9


Today’s question is how many bags of mixed pretzels does it take to find enough star shapes to turn into mini-reindeer antlers for a batch of whacky cupcakes?

I know! I know! Pick me, pick me!

Yes, cranky cook?

A fucking shitload!

Or, to be precise, this many.

Stupid pretzel makers should put more than three stars in a mixed bag and less traditional pretzel shapes. If I wanted the ubiquitous pretzely pretzel, I’d have bought a bag of them, not bags based on a false pretext of being mixed.

So half of my reindeer cupcakes ended up with curved horns like demented water buffalo. Whatever. They all tasted the same.

Then I had to cut 24 liquorice eyeballs. I say yes to the stupidest projects, but just wait until Easter when I have to choose between making rabbits or bilbies. No one knows what a bilby really looks like, so I won’t be asked the, “What on god’s earth are those things?” question like this time.

Crank-o-meter: sugar crashin’

19 December 2008

Come back later, too busy with my new mentors

4


With more than a million hits and hundreds of comments on every post, I’m last in line to know about Margaret and Helen and the whacky cross-section of society who post comments on their blog.

Thanks, Foodycat, I found them when clicking through your site!

I want to be them when I get older. Ah, bugger it, I want to be them now.

Now go away while I make some popcorn and laugh at Helen’s crisp analysis of Christmas tradition:

However you celebrate the holiday with your family – celebrate it fully and savor the time with loved ones.  Hang your tree right side up, upside down or stick it up your ass for all I care.  Quit worrying about how others choose to celebrate it.  It accomplishes nothing except to ruin your own holiday.

I wonder what they make of Kris Kringles and office Christmas lunches that no one wants to organise but everyone bitches about?

Crank-o-meter: sides are aching

13 December 2008

Sleepy

5


You know you’re tired when you:

  • grab deodorant and face cream during the morning routine but, with only two options, swipe your face with the deodorant
  • have two diaries yet forget the only meeting of the day until the meeting keeper drops by and asks why you’re still at your desk, and he doesn’t understand see the innocence of “because this is where I work” in reply
  • ask a staff member why her mandatory training was out of date, and you are reminded that Sept 2009 is next year
  • discuss a wealth and hellbeing program and not realise you were transposing the letters until after several mentions

Wealth and hellbeing sounds a lot more fun than the alternative anyway.

Crank-o-meter: anyone disturbing my sleep will die slowly and painfully

11 December 2008

Put the book down, Kathy

4


I’m a bit behind on who’s doing whom in celebrityland and I tend to avoid casting judgement when I know less than one side of a story, but Kathy Lette is rather less conservative.

With the whole Ramsayshag-Gate saga still selling newspapers, the author has decided to lend a hand to the family in crisis. To quote an article on infidelity she wrote for the Daily Mail newspaper:

“(My latest novel) offers advice on how to learn to stand on your own two feet and not wait to be rescued by some fictional hero.

“I’ve just sent a copy to Tana Ramsay.”

If my family life was being turned upside down and journos were calling me every minute of the day and night and photographers were camped outside my house, the first thing I’d reach for is Kathy’s book. That’s not the slightest bit presumptuous.

Please be joking.

Crank-o-meter: it’s not about you

9 December 2008

A saucer of milk for the parliamentarian, please

0


Today’s column in The Age by Michelle Grattan on politicians’ performance scorecards had a pearler of information I missed earlier in the week:

‘WHEN Julie Bishop made a cat’s claw gesture at Julia Gillard in Parliament this week, the shadow treasurer was giving one insight into why she’s struggling politically. Bishop explained subsequently: “It is just a little thing that I do … suggesting that perhaps the girls should put the claws away.”’

Our taxpayer dollars fund this cheap entertainment – bravo for furthering the cause of women in politics. Pass some popcorn to the viewing gallery while the jelly wrestling ring is prepared for round two!

I’ve provided constructive and justified opinions at work involving the performance of others, and been referred to as ‘catty’ by men in lieu of intelligent feedback when discussing projects managed by women. The kitty cat ‘reowrrrrrrrr’ sounds that accompany the clawing motion adds style when I get defensive and feel compelled to add, “I’m picking on the fuckwittery and not the female, you goddamn brainless buffoons. Do you do that when men are mentioned? No. Then shut up.”

There’s enough of that crap without us doing it to ourselves in public.

Crank-o-meter: really fucking pleased

5 December 2008

Aural trauma

6


I have some questions:

  • Why do I get a migraine the day before a Christmas party?
  • Why does someone at the Christmas party bring a laptop computer, karaoke box and two gigantic PA-quality speakers on day two of my migraine?
  • Who the hell carries that sort of gear in his car? Mr Kara-fucking-oke?
  • Why does the loudest and worst singer take over the microphone and try to out-John Farnham John Farnham?
  • Why doesn’t a mixed bag of aspirin, Nurofen and codeine make the smallest dent in the skull pain?
  • Do the Righteous Brothers cry every time someone butchers ‘Unchained Melody’?

Head hurts, going to bed. Goodnight. Sing a lullaby to Whitney Houston and deaths will occur on the streets.

Crank-o-meter: ouch ouch ouch

3 December 2008

Get your butts outside tonight

4


In world-breaking astronomy news, Venus, Jupiter and the eyelash moon will form a smiley face in this evening’s sky. Have a look after 9pm and grin back at the happy formation.

The weather report for most of Australia is dark and possibly cloudy, so let’s hope the (wo)man in the moon can peek its head out to say hi. And hopefully it’s a starry night so the face has freckly cheeks because that would amuse and delight me even further. I don’t know if readers in the northern hemisphere will see the same formation because you’re upside-down and all, but I’ll try to get a photo.

By the way, the journo referred to this celestial event as a smiley face before I did. Okay, he used ‘crescent’ to describe the moon and not ‘eyelash’, but that’s my value adding service.

Crank-o-meter: say cheese

1 December 2008