Is it just me, or is the world beginning to resemble a giant penis ?.   It seems everywhere I look these days, some new tribute to the male genitalia is being (pardon the pun) erected .   Just last week, a sculpture which had been commissioned for a park in my area was ‘unveiled’.   I had occasion to drive past said sculpture yesterday.   And it’s a giant penis .   The creators are calling it a ‘monument’, but ...

I have a secret confession to make: I love nerdy men. I love men who study stuff and take serious looking notes in cafes whilst frowning into huge textbooks. I can’t help it !. I love men who blurt out (sound but embarrassingly boring) theories at dinner parties !. I also love men who know a lot of trivial but interesting facts, and who like watching nature and animal documentaries. I love men who wear cardigans, who are too busy thinking to do anything about their gut, and who...

  I recently overheard my husband honking and sniggering and asked him what he was laughing at. Incapable of speech, he merely gestured to the television screen - upon which was a woman dressed in a cow suit singing and dancing about the stage, clutching at her rubber ‘udder’ as she did so. At first suspecting some awful ‘arty’ remake of ‘The Rocky Horror Picture Show’, I was astonished to find that I was in fact viewing an actual contestant on one of the ‘Idol’ shows. Now, ...

  I heard a guy on TV the other day say that the world was ‘basically divided into three types of people’.     (This made me wonder what world he lived in, because in my world there seems to have been, oh, at least forty-seven types so far, and counting).   He further went on to say that these three distinct types could be identified solely by the way they behaved in traffic jams.   (Oooooh gawd, really ?. Well shucks, what’s ...

    I have a clown phobia. They terrify me. I place the blame squarely on every awful 80’s ‘horror’ film I ever watched.   I spent my formative years viewing movies about clowns that would sit, smiling and apparently harmless, on a chair in a corner of your bedroom ... until the lights went out.   At which point they would suddenly grow very long arms and strangle you in your sleep.   Or produce an enormous meat-cleaver from the folds ...

  I have briefly disengaged myself from the throng of houseguests to make the following announcement: Somebody ate all of my Cornflakes . I can handle the endless snoring from bloated corpse-like guests passed out all over my house. I can handle the giant electricity, phone and grocery bills we inevitably get lumbered with. I can handle the utter disregard for my privacy and desire for peace. I can even handle cooking for seven ravenous people in two sittings every n...

  I hate self-help books. I hate them so much that it’s almost pathological. I hate them so much that when I see people reading them, I want to yell at them for prostituting their literacy.   They are insipid things, creeping up on people, pretending to offer the answers to lifes’ problems, yet containing little more than some words arranged in a way that gives the illusion that the author may have some vague idea about how to ‘fix’ things.   The myriad of...

  Of the many things that astonish me about modern ‘love’, the one that gets me the most is the ability of a diamond engagement ring to turn a nice, everyday woman into the-bitch-bride-from-hell.   I’ve been a bridesmaid on numerous occasions, and, without exception, as I clutched a damp tissue and waved goodbye to the bride and her brand new groom as they departed for their exotic honeymoon, I have thought exactly the same thing: “I’m so glad you’re leaving the co...

  I used to work with a fellow who had a younger sister with cerebral palsy. He often spoke with pride of her high intelligence and academic achievements, and also of her occasionally mischievous nature.   I remember one occasion when he told me, with some excitement, that she had been chosen to be interviewed by a journalist from a major magazine on behalf of the students at her university.   The day of the interview came, and he waited for her phone call ...

I cannot keep still in my sleep.   I for some reason assume a sleeping position my husband has named ‘the starfish’ (arms out, legs out), thus occupying the entire bed.   From there, I for some reason like to hurl the blankets across the room with great force and smash the bedside lamp, occasionally followed by bestowing my sleeping husband with a thump on the head.   (Neither of us has any idea why I do this. Happily, my husband ch...

  When I lived in Sydney and went to work every day, I was what one might call ‘well-groomed’. (Okay, technically, I was what one might call ‘groomed to within an inch of my life’). At the time, I never gave my intensive self-cleaning-and-preening a second thought. It was as much a part of my routine as eating or sleeping.   I had a job. I worked in an office building. Every other person that worked there did exactly the same thing. Looked exactly the same way. That the...

    Just when you thought it was safe to go back to your blog ...   Here is my question to you, dear reader, regarding my dear friend the blog spammer ... if it has to annoy me with its’ endless blah links and ads, then don’t you think the dopey bollocks could at least have the decency to make some fugging sense ?.   I can't believe it has 'Penis Erection' as one of it's links. Why must it torture me ?. Why ?. ‘Penis Erection’ ???.   &...

  Were you born before 1970 ? ... do you remember ‘the good old days’ ?. Webs were for spiders, and websites were spots you avoided walking in your garden. Surfing required water, nets were for fishermen, and a megabyte was what you took when you were really hungry. A hard drive was a difficult car trip, a download meant a truck had turned over, and a virus was something you went to the doctor for. Wallpaper went on walls , blinds stopped the neighbours peeking in, and wi...

    ... ' Words so stupidly long that they shouldn’t exist, but somehow do anyway' ...     Prestolonaslenikovica ...  is Serbo-Croatian for ‘wife of an heir apparent’     Anticonstitutionnellement   ... is French for ‘anticonstitutionally’     Precipitevolissimevolmente ... is Italian for ‘as fast as possible’ (!)     Dyeryevopyeryerabatvayushchego ... is Russ...

The ‘proper’ terms for the ‘detailed causes of death’ that are recorded on official paperwork are, despite their morbid subject matter, actually kind of funny. It stands to reason that a vague “motor vehicle accident” or “gunshot wound” is not enough information for statisticians, courts or government records. The death certificates issued for public record contain brief factual descriptions on a need-to-know basis, yet there exists an expanded list of ‘detailed causes of death’ that ...