Saturday, October 16, 2010

I gots a microphone



And I'm SPRUIKING!




So imagine me in front of blogworld with my twinset, pearls and a little amplifier and listen whilst I tell you stuff.

The Fat Lady
has this liddle meme-y/linky thingo going that I have been meaning to participate in for awhile but I haven't because I have been caught between a small existential crisis and the idiocy of Telstra Bigpond.

I'm still having the crisis but fuck it, I'm not letting my buddy down AGAIN this week!

So I'm spruiking my fave blog - actually I'm spruiking three of them. When I finally returned to my blog I ran straight to my favourites cos I missed them.

1) Revealing the Real Me, Andrea I just love. Just quietly her photo sucked me in because her eyes sparkle and her posts are so sunny. She also doesn't mind when I drop the F-bomb in her comments section.

2) Kelley at Magneto Bold Too This chick has serious crap going on but at all times makes me laugh whilst rockin her old lady shoes. Check it out.

3) Jemikaan -you MUST read this post. It's so close to my heart and if your heard The Fat Lady spruiking my Cyclone blog you will see why. The difference love, understanding and positive re-re-reinforcement can make to a child's life. there is going to be a 2010 remake of To Sir With Love over this post I can tell ya. I might even volunteer to sing (screech) the soundtrack....yanno, cos I'm Lulu and all.

Thursday, October 14, 2010

High School Reunions

My 20 year high school reunion was this week....and I decided to go.





I haven't been able to draw breath much lately and it seemed yet another thing to stress about, but I was DYING to see some old friends. Lots I have already caught up with on Facebook and that made the idea more appealing.

We all had months to crap our pants about it, feel old and wonder if we really wanted to go. My Unperfect life is a pretty open book anyway so I shook off my sooky-pants, shaved my armpits and skidded out the driveway as the sound of my screeching offspring faded away. Clearly a good choice already.

It was wonderful. Most people I could pick across the room, others it took awhile to match...but there was shrieking and smiles aplenty. Constant flashback memories and "remember when?"




It wasn't a long night - after all, this was a Catholic School and it was held on a during the week, but enough emails and phone numbers we exchanged so we can have a longer catch up soon.

I'm pretty sure everyone was still the same. The loud ones remain loud, the quieter one still reserved and we have all lived the rollercoasters of our own lives and come out sorta normal.


I was thrilled to hear of a friend who ran away to the UK nursing her broken heart, spent years in a sharehouse with 26 people sucking up all the drugs she could get her hands on whilst maintaining a job with an elite makeup company.
Two of the brightest faces there credit their happiness to recent divorces. The most positive girl in school remains the same and has had 42 different jobs in 20 years.






No one was down on failed relationships or careers that didn't work out - they were sources of laughter. I didn't have a bad time at school, I don't have any horrible memories. Things that might have seemed terrible back then are funny now. Things that were funny then are even FUNNIER now.

Burning memories

- daring to go up the bell tower to find the dead nun in the rocking chair.
- the infamous chairthrowing incident with T and Mr M.
- Being lined up on our knees whilst they measured the length of our dresses.
- The young priest who wrote FUCK on the blackboard during "sex ed".
- The passionate maths teacher with her beautiful saris who was completely wasted on us.
- the day the local fire brigade came to assembly and filled the entire courtyard with foam.
- the day Mr M was "arrested" during assembly and put into the back of a divvy van with the entire school screaming with laughter.




On a separate and far more sombre note, I was shattered to hear of the death of Elizabeth. In my eyes she was the Ice Queen. Statuesque, nordic blonde and with an almost supernatural disposition. She was unflappable, supercool and when I named my youngest daughter I thought of her.
Something insidious stole her away from her friends, family and worst of all herself. That razor sharp brain and confidence diminished. I didn't have any preconceived notion of what she was meant to be, but to be cut short like that was certainly not in the plan, not right and what pisses me off about the world sometimes.

A short life - but one that made a lasting impression on many people. I'm sorry you
couldn't stay Liz.




Monday, October 4, 2010

Im back - with AWARDS!

Whale snot, shit/fuck and fruit bats giving blow jobs – it’s all here folks!

The Ig Nobel Awards have recently been announced. Don’t confuse this with the Nobel Prizes. The Ig Nobels are awarded to scientists whose research makes us laugh…and then makes us think.



Photo of Nobel Laureates Roy Glauber, Sheldon Glashow and James Muller at this years awards modelling the Gas Mask Bras that won an Ig Nobel last year..


First up, for Medicine – the Dutch scientists that discovered riding a roller coaster can treat asthma symptoms. Lucky I don’t get asthma because there is no way you are getting my arse onto one of those things.

Engineering Ig was won by a Mexican/British team for using a remote control helicopter to collect whale snot. Laugh! Then think….how else would you go about collecting snot from whales when you need said snot to monitor disease in whales and help their conservation as a species?

Physics Ig
goes to the New Zealand researchers that proved wearing socks outside your shoes reduces slipping on icy paths. Thanks for that guys. I don’t like slipping over on the ice, but I would never have thought of putting my socks on OVER my shoes….

Management Ig Nobel goes to the Italians for “demonstrating mathematically that organizations would become more efficient if they promoted people at random”. Claaaaassic, and I believe it too.

Biology – the Chinese/British researchers skipped off with their prize for revealing documented evidence that female fruit bats perform fellatio on their partners. This is big because apparently humans are the only species that do this….and it shows that fruit bat ladies are really hot little shaggers because giving your bat bloke a blow job before you do it, makes the act of bat copulation looonger. Go you dirty fruity things!

BUT the one I love the bestest and which PROVES my point about fuck being one of the most satisfying words is the Ig Nobel for PEACE won by the Brits and Keele University that proves swearing relieves pain.
During their research they found volunteers could tolerate more pain if they spat out swear words rather than something neutral. In the words of Richard Stephens, the new Ig Nobel Laureate “swearing induces a fight or flight response and nullifies the link between fear of pain and pain perception”.


I can also back this theory with some evidence of my own. See many moons ago I woke in a hospital bed to some random dude using his entire body to ram a metal pole (artistic licence much?) into my chest to relieve the pressure of what turned out to be a collapsed lung. Local anesthesia did nothing to relieve the shock and pain, but I was told to swear my little butt off – which I did with relish and oh MY it really worked. Then I got some decent pain killers and had a great hallucinations……but the swearing worked it’s magic. Fuck yeah.