Given the closing scenes of Guest House Paradiso, it’s a tad ironic that I was feeling pretty queasy overnight. I found it difficult to sleep, and when the alarm woke me at 7am (summer time), I got up for a few minutes, then thought bugger it, and went back to bed for an hour.
I was still sleepy at work. I usually am. Must try and get to bed early tonight.
 Guest House Paradiso |
5:45pm. I have just returned home, my pockets bulging and my arms stretching from the weight of, in no particular order:
Not bad, especially travelling on foot.
Most of this stuff I’d normally bring home anyway on a Sunday afternoon as part of my shopping ritual. I ended up with the DVDs because… ummm… well, because there were some pretty damn good discounts at K-Mart today, and according to my schedule of buying one per month, I was due for another one. The other can be next month’s. Or maybe it could be a reward to myself for having to work a not-insignificant minority of the weekend. Yeah. Retail therapy. That’s it.
Of course, retail therapy sounds a bit… well - girly - doesn’t it. Something about boys and their toys would probably go better at this point. Whatever.
The Phantom Menace is one of many movies I meant to see when it was in the cinema, but never got around to. Okay, so going out and buying the DVD may seem a bit extreme, but if you consider that OKAY, OKAY, I GOT SUCKED IN BY ALL THE HYPE, OKAY?!? Phew.
Guest House Paradiso is another movie I’ve been meaning to see for a while now. It’s a spin-off of the Bottom TV-series, which is one of my favourites.
10pm. And it’s damn funny, too. The kind of unpredictable, brainless juvenile movie that’s great for relaxing with on a Sunday night and having a bloody good laugh. Who knows, it might even inspire some new Ron & Jeff.
Of course, there was me thinking I had extra hour before I should get to bed. But that’s only because I haven’t switched most of the household clocks to summer time yet… Damn.
Summer must be coming. I just kersplatted my first blowfly for the season. It had been buzzing around the house all evening. Finally, as I was reading a magazine in the kitchen, it landed. It was so big it may have even made an audible thump when it did so.
Without moving too much to frighten it off, I looked over to my left, to see it, apparently settling down nicely on the table. I got up from my chair slowly and went to find some ammunition. I thought I had a fly swatter in the cupboard, but I didn’t. I needed something, quickly, before it flew off again. I went slowly back towards the table, and grabbed a piece of the newspaper that I’d already read. I rolled it up, intently watching the fly. I slowly lifted the newspaper, and… THWACK!
To my utter surprise, the fly didn’t move. Not until the newspaper hit it, anyway. Result - one dead fly on the table. And some pretty horrible looking residue. Eugh. I cleaned it away, and went back to my magazine.
Unusually for me, I had two dreams last night (I normally can’t remember any). One was that much of the continental United States had been wiped out overnight by nuclear attacks. The other was that I’d left my car overnight with the keys in the ignition and the engine running!
11pm. Don’t you hate it when you notice a funny mark on your finger, and you go to wash it off, and it won’t come off easily, and you scrub, and it comes off, and then you realise it was a small scab you didn’t realise you had, and now your finger is bleeding?
A rumour on the grapevine. Apparently my dad’s cousin Fay in England heard from a friend of a friend that she was walking down the street and an Arab man dropped his wallet up ahead. Stop me if you’ve heard this. She ran after him and gave him back the wallet. Stop me if you’ve heard this. He was very grateful. Stop me if you’ve heard this.
And he said to her, "I want to thank you, so I will tell you something". Stop me if you’ve heard this, please. He said: "don’t go into central London on Tuesday week."
What, you haven’t heard this? Or you couldn’t stop me because this is a web page, not a conversation? Well fair enough then.
If you have heard this one, hopefully you know it’s a load of bollocks. If you haven’t, then click on the word bollocks for enlightenment!
I was a bit more polite when I interrupted my dad in the middle of him telling me this, of course. He was telling me because my sister lives in London at the moment, and so of course he was concerned. I’m betting the message had been relayed all the way from Fay over the past few days, through various obscure relatives, via Dad, intended to go via me to my sister. Nice of them to think of her I suppose. I told him it was an urban legend, and not to worry.
There’s a twist to this version of the story, which is this: the Arab man turns out to be one of those on the FBI’s 22 Most Wanted Terrorists list. Yeah. Right.
I like most of my mum’s tastes in music. And I like my mum - in fact I like both my parents. But sometimes it’s comforting to know that I don’t have identical tastes to them, and that I’m not turning into them just yet.
Last week I lent my mum and her boyfriend a CD I’d burnt with various music on it - stuff like Ocean Colour Scene* (including the theme from "Lock Stock", which I really like), Corduroy, Coldplay and Gomez… She gave it back saying rather unenthusiastically "Yes… it’s all very modern
isn’t it."
*Ocean Colour Scene is almost a name made for the Internet, isn’t it. Chuck a jumble of words like that together, especially with one of them in non-American spelling, and you’re sure to find a .com available. Unless the words happen to be "Toxic" and "Custard" that is. Though custardtoxic.com is available…
Oh dear, my cynicism towards politics is really showing this week, isn’t it.
![[Letter in newspaper: Dear John and Kim, could you please let us know, before we vote, which are the *core* promises?]](/images/2001/10letter.jpg)
Have you ever played the "work out what this advertisement is for" game? It’s where you have to work out what an unfamiliar ad is advertising, before it becomes blindingly obvious. I’ve been playing it a bit recently, because I don’t watch a great deal of commercial television. But now it’s moved to another medium. A few days ago, a glossy leaflet arrived in the mailbox. This was the first bit I saw:
Ah. Black and white picture, with ray of sunlight. Must be Christians. But no! Worse! I looked on the other side and realised that horror of horrors, it was political junkmail!
Yes, it’s Federal election time again. Which means we’re going to get bombarded with horrific images of politicians grinning inanely, arguing with each other and trying any tactic they can to get our votes. How can one avoid it? Turn off the TV and radio, cancel the newspaper and bury yourself in the doona for the next month? It might almost be worth it.
I glanced at the rest of the leaflet, wondering if anybody really reads these things and thinks "Yeah, I think I’ll switch my vote from <insert other party here> and switch to this mob instead! They sure know how to put together a good leaflet!"
Another bit of it said "Heading in the right direction". I looked below it at the face of my ugly git of a local member, and thought yeah, maybe they are heading in the right direction. I see he’s finally shaved off that hideous beard he used to have, with no moustache, which made him look like a gnome. That’s got to be a move in the right direction.
Next to him was a picture of Prime Minister Garrison, err that is Howard. And in big letters it said "And there’s more to be done". So this was the government, pleading to be voted back in, obviously. Whether that happens or not remains to be seen, though Howard’s hobnobbing with world leaders during the terrorism crisis probably hasn’t hurt their chances.
Oh well, I suppose this is the kind of junk we’ll have to put up with, from all sides, for the next few weeks. Everybody, please, stay calm, and try not to panic.
(No, I haven’t forgotten that last winter I spent a couple of weekends dropping political propaganda into people’s letterboxes. That was completely different. None of the stuff I distributed had pictures of politicians that could have frightened small children.)