my friend marco is smart. (so smart as to occasionally unintelligible, but i do my best).   it occurred to me recently whilst sharing a meal with him that his super computer mind would be an invaluable tool for those wishing to lose weight by being put off their food .   in the way of all highly intelligent persons, marco is unable to ‘dumb it down’ for us mere mortals and will tell me (as i am trying to ingest an unhealthily large portion of fried eggs) that i am...

They say that the car you choose to drive says a lot about your personality. If that is true, I am obviously some type of deranged weirdo, because every single person that sees my car says exactly the same thing: “THAT thing is your car ?”. Now before I go any further, let me explain that I love my car and plan to keep it for the rest of my life if I can, but it’s already as old as I am, and to be frank it looks like shit.   I’m not kidding. It’s painted...

    I’m a city girl, born and bred, that cannot be denied. For 33 years I occupied one of the busiest and most cosmopolitan cities in the world (okay, the country), Sydney. I never realised that anything was missing until we moved to what Sydneysiders call ‘the North Coast’ 3 years ago.   My tolerance has since gradually dropped for things like road rage, pollution, queues and ill-mannered people. When I visit the city now, these things seem magnif...

(This was sent to me by a friend and I can't find the original source, but I thought it was worth passing on. Mig)   Today we mourn the passing of a beloved old friend, Common Sense, who has been with us for many years. No one knows for sure how old he was since his birth records were long ago lost in bureaucratic red tape. He will be remembered as having cultivated such valuable lessons as knowing when to come in out of the rain, why the early bird gets the worm, life...

  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...