News stew

Look, promise not channelling Malcolm Fraser, I know that there are a lot more pressing and devastating issues but i have to table the following vatuous and facuous items, oh perhaps i yam.

Charlotte Glennie - The gel's news reports are fahne in content but glory the gel's voice; is she the love child of Lexie Downer and Christopher Pahne!?! Enunciation is important, and it's important to pronunciate clearly (to quote Tina Arena as Idol 2008 Special Guest Judge) but i cannot go for those fancy alleged refahned dipthongs, fricking no can do. Daryl Hall looks so old these days, oh don't we all. Bonjour Tristesse. Anyway i wikied the gel (Glennie not Sagan) and she is not from Addles but NZ probably Auckland and an award winning journalist (no Logie equvivalent but something akin to the Walkleys, still better than nothing i guess...) She needs to flatten her vowels though, it's all too terrribly finishing school and 1950's. I do love a clipped consonant though , love a sharp t. Baby!

Sydney Morning Herald - LOATHE the majority of its 'reportage' which is worse than the Mercury cos (ooh so 70's rock journo) at least that rag doesn't have any hairs and graces about being a quality broadsheet. ooh i would not mind some quality street chocolates, been a while, i loved those toffee squares with the red and cream crest wrapping - Chew-wee! And of course no better than the Daily Telegraph. Sensationarama. Before the terrible bushfires happened in Victoria, the Herald appeared to be miffed about missing out on the heatwaves in SA and Vic. So just before that tragic, awful and horrendous weekend, it had all these outrageous predictions about what could happen in Sydney over the weekend as it could hit 42 in Penrith. Train lines could buckle, seniors could die (call me cynical but think there's high chance irrespective of extreme temperatures) and there'd be massive bushfires akin to the Sydney 1994 ones. Outrageous and lame-O. It took the online smh service ages to cover the actual horror in Victoria. It was a disgrace. I really do think the paper was peeved. Since the horrific fires the paper has continued the sensationalism about possible nightmare situation in NSW. Grotesque.

Kerry O'Brien - No complaints, love and adore, but i often ponder your ears. They are so big, so long. How old are you? And do you use some kind of Clairol rinse to freshen your hair's color. ( i said Clairol so i think i should use US spelling and i rather like that spelling. Props to meeeeeeee.)

Juanita Phillips not Mick and Papa John's love child or a track from Black and Blue but the ABC 1 newsreader, Monday-Friday. Lady, what's your game? You do all that fancy pronunciation, and then it slips and you start saying coast in the most cosiest of fashions, cohhhst.. And you become quite the coquette with the weatherman. Thanks, Graham - INDEED. Settle pet, and Wake Up, Patti.

Alan Kohler - The Warwick Hadfield of Finance reporting on ABC 1 News. Ugh. SMUG. Bring back Phillip Lasker.

And i won't even go on about the Peter Wilkinson and his sports presentation. Utterly Kath Day-Knight but without the biting yumour.

Yep over and opinionated out. Gotta dash. Got tap class.

I am curious marshmallow

On Saturday evening I caught the ferry to the Quay. The atmosphere was magical on the harbour and the water looked black, sparkly and kind of gelatinous. I had an overwhelming urge to throw myself from the deck into the harbour and see what would happen. I wondered if i could swim to Fort Denison without incurring harm. Fortunately common sense prevailed. Several days later a shark attacked a diver in the harbour.

It wasn’t me, Miss

Glory the lifts at work have pretty much become more contentious than the old dunoir.

The foyeh and her lifts currently reek of old sweat, opposed to that lovely new sweet smelling sweat, well you know what I mean - it’s stale, it’s pungent, it’s totally present and overpowering (no, that is not my cyberspace profile!).

I just enjoyed a spell in that den of malodour. My solo passage from the 7th floor to the ground was broken by the arrival of another passenger. She sniffed the air and then looked askance at me, or perhaps she caught her reflection in the lift's mirror. I swear that the only scent wafting from me is l’air du temps, perhaps with just a soupcon of vinegar. I didn’t pong out the lifts. Oh get. I didn’t. And with that I

Silver Screen memories

I have been to the cinema three times this week!! That is what it's like being an adult you can have bulk school holiday treats without going to school, except you have to work so you can pay (ohwuh).

Oh well, all three films were really good. I reckon Frost and Nixon was the best. Frank Langella was brilliant. He should win the Oscar but I guess Jelena Dokic will. Michael Sheen as Frost was good but at times he seemed like a caricature crossed with a successful Alan Partridge meets Austin Powers - or perhaps that's how Frosty is/was. I would have thought DF was too smarmy, shrewd and ambitious to be that much of a smirking twit. Still i suspect that the last time i thought about David Frost I was nine years old and it was his voice that struck me - yes i've been attemptin' to talk like him ever since ; unfortunately i sound more like Robin Leach. Catastrophe.

You should see the movie on the silver screen rather than the plasma.

Anyway i have to go now and buy some Olympic stripe exercise books as la grand rentree approaches.

MIckey Rourke Meltdown

Well, no, of course not! Can't claim to have tasted major success or hit rockbottom (well, it's all relative, sugar) but it's just that it has been sooooo hot for the past 5 days that every day i feel like a little bit of myself has melted and gone further askew.

41 today in the blinking harbour city.

Mental. Indeed i was.

What was i to do to combat this infernal heat? The boxfan was providing no relief. The swimming didn't really help - the sun's light was still bald, its heat still blistering. And i couldn't send myself off to the cinema two days in a row - too extravagant and totaly unGFC. So i took myself down to Circular Quay to take a round trip on the ferry throughout the inner harbour. A brainwave that had also occurred to a group of twenty Seniors. My first and last matooer thought.

Oh mate. Those seniors were going off. Big time. They weren't wearing red hats but lord ... If they didn't come and sit right next to you, practically atop your lap, they were dancing about comparing scars from open heart and knee replacement surgery, jigging up and down to demonstrate how one leg was shorter than the other. Knees up mother Brown (as interpreted by Herman's Hermits).

Keyed up at the Quay and oh so soigne!

Yes, it was hot, heat happens, man, and yes, it was sticky but lllady do not roll down your singlet just below your breastline and expose your turquoise bra to all , even if it does match your bobbysocks and you are carrying a handbag that features a photo of Audrey Hepburn. No, you cannot, must not and will not. It is completely against the law.

Bumps and eye bruises

One's return flight to Sydney was rife with turbulance, veiled nervy b's and a skitterish bumpy landing that provoked an expletive to be exclaimed and embarrassment to ensue.

However the most curious spectacle occurred on land in the transit lounge prior to embarkation. "Take a chance on me'' was playing in the background while i read a book. Despite my managing to block out the sound my focus was broken by some jiggling movement in front of me.

I raised my head and directly before me was a pair of buttocks, covered in a linen cotton blend - should have been gabardine, being flexed and crunched in time to the music, while its owner tapped her fingers against the airline's counter. Most remarkable was that the flexing of buttocks was alternated, the left would jut backwards while the right remained still then righty's turn to flex while etc., which i guess further defines alternate...

A fascinatingly gruesome dance. Possibly a tribute to Agnetha, who was once deemed to have the world's sexiest bottom , well Agnetha as interpreted by Kath Day-Knight.

Carry on at your convenience

Apparently toilet cisterns no longer feature ball cocks. Well that's what the plumber just told me. Being of an unquesting but whimsical mind i didn't enquire what had replaced them but chose to wonder why that carry on film about a toilet factory didn't make many jokes about ball cocks. Life is full of wasted opportunities but not in 2009.

VIPs

Well hello dollies.

D'you know what? i have been gadding about so much that i cannot help but feel a bit like a liz taylor jetsetting character in an airport movie - sporting a divine snow white swing coat with fur trimmed hood all the while hamming it up and trilling a few goddamnits to a stella cast of silver screen has-beens (no offence, good friends, but your halcyon days have passed, whereas mine, why i've just rejoined facebook so my life has taken a whole new flavour - desperation).

The roadshow began on 22 December:Hobart, Sydney, Mt Victoria, Bathurst, Blayney and Milthorpe. Celebratin' messiahs' birthdays, boxing day sales, new years, 18ths and the GFC. Then last Tuesday i set forth for good time centrale, melbournia ...(dear popular culture illiterate in this instance "... " signifies the commencement of romper room psychedelia swirls within empty stringless raquet face).

I was flying Jetstar International from Syd to Mel Bourne's Tullamarine. It was a cheap ticket and at the time of making the reservation my inner constable care cautioned that there would be a price to pay for not paying ; i thought that my luggage would be sent to Dengpasar or Deniliquin. Tuh huh. Never in my wildest dreams did i expect to: see Paris Hilton and her nbff; get trapped in a landed plane because the tallowbridge was broke; and endure an aeroplane voyage from syd to mel that would last 5 goddamn hours.

However, it is all true and yes, it happened to me, and if you're lucky, pumpkin, it will be something you'll only hear about! For further details facebook me.

Charlie Girl

Happy newie, nsrs.

Oh what a whirl the old bel gel has dervished since she began her V A C A T I O N in the summer sun. A veritable roadshow, sans buckets of rose petals and cherry pickers but plenty of good times, natch. Am currently touring rural and regional Victoria and just across her stateline, where the heat is dry and delicious and my Marie Antoinette tapestry fan indispensible.

I have to get back on the road NOW but will fill you in from the very beginning soon.

Sssanctimonia

Oh yes, Sydney, the hustle, the bustle, the diabolical pluravit multivitaminess of its busy, busy world-class-sur-penury buzz and bile. How can one survive it all? By keeping schtum and observing. For the mistress not only creates her own language but, like the late Arkie Whitely, is a self-proclaimed people person – can watch 'em all day every day in a most non-judgemental but amused fashion, natch. Oh, am always lurking in the background, me.

Lawks what curious things these glauque pools have witnessed the past few days.

8.00 a.m. Monday in the foyeh of the bureau. Two of the lifts were sick and quite a crowd had gathered, one couldn’t ascend via the fire stairs until after 8.30.

After some time, crowd increasing at a furious simulated time lapse rate, a lift arrived. As I was first in the queue I boarded the old elevator along with quite a few young guns from the financial sectors. Then a man with an enormous box of fruit (not a euphemism) entered causing one young gun to comment how tight it was in the lift. To which another young gun who had entered just after fruit man replied “Yeahm well FUCK YOU! You’re alright jumping the queue and getting a space in the lift, you stupid fuck”. Young Gun 1 retorted with “FUCK OFF, you fuck”. I didn’t know where to look so surveyed that fruit box (and let me tell you there was not much variety, loads of bananas and a few large spotted red apples, which were no doubt floury). I’d just finished wincing in disgust when Young Gun 2 shouted “No, YOU FUCK OFF!!" and alighted at level 2.

Lift Rage.

Not only do I blame the parents but a little bit of the Ida Jessup/Mrs Mangle in me cannot help but attribute it to the Sopranos - Young Guns 1 and 2 were no doubt spawned by Pauly Walnuts and the delightful Janice Soprano. Now before I die please somebody make sure i get a stonesy tongue tattooed on my bosom - hottt and chic!

On the bus this morning I was standing next to this woman who prickled with efficiency and bossiness. What a powerful VIBE she had.I don’t know whether it was the curious black satin epaulets of bows that adorned her sundress, her barking at everyone to move down the aisle or her appraising me from head to toe – I don’t think my appearance pleased her. Hanyways, a seat became vacant, and the mistress was closest, so V I C T O R Y. However, it was short lived for I shifted uncomfortably imagining Sgt Major looking down on my crown wincing at the grey regrowth, I like to think of it as silver tinsel – so festive and fey, valiantly resisting an urge to pluck the hairs out. I protectively placed hand to head to smooth the fuzz that is my hair all the while noticing that the label of the shirt of the woman seated in front of me was poking out. It said she was "medium". Hmm, funny I thought, I would have classed her as "small" – oh what my eyes do not see, nsrs, what my eyes do not see.

The place next to label lady became free and Sgt Major took her place with great alacrity and force. As she parked her arse on the seat, she reached over and firmly tucked the label lady’s exposed label into her shirt!!!

She did not know la belle in question. Bold as brass is that Sgt Major and her proprietorial paws. She probably lifts adorable looking toddlers, who she does not know from Adam, from strollers and plants sloppy wet kisses on the poor lambs' cheeks. The height of impertinence in Snooter Pooter's handbook.

Bluster burst petering out...

Mrs D Hayden to the counter, please

I breezily waltzed out the Dymocks’ stationery store, holding a Dymocks' plastic bag in one hand and gazing with pleasure at some birthday cards in the other. Admiration turning into castigation upon realisation that i'd acquired yet another plastic bag when

Clunk, clunk, clunk

That plastic bag accompanied the book I had earlier purchased in the main section and in fact the cards were sans bag because I had actually not bought them, I’d lifted them!!!

Thus explaining why in-the-Winona-Ryder the Dymocks’ security alarms were ringing.

O M G

I quickly spun around and raced back into the shop, not quite shouting “oh, it’s me! Sorry, turn off the alarms" but if anyone had looked at me they would have read that thought, and if not at least paused to admire the handsome moustache that I’ve grown for the month – it’s faintly ginger and narrow with its ends waxed and twisted upwards, and no doubt not dissimilar from Cold Mountain’s ....I have heard that she was taunted with Ranga at school; wonder if that was alternated with Fanta Pants?

Oh enough of the japes from the old schoolyard. Don’t say vjayjay or I will have to stuff a handkerchief in my mouth to prevent my collapsing into giggles... (ugh what a solution, so Blytonian and unhygienic; St Clare's was the first school to have an outbreak of meningiccocal, not many people know that!!)

So yeah where was I?

Oh, yes, back at the counter paying for the birthday cards. I confessed to the staff that I had walked out without paying and set off the sirens. All they did was smile, with me, of course.

Baby J Day Payola

Hello nsrs, was the above matter a hot topic last week or the week before? I’ve been too preoccupied with myself and wondering about my kids. Lord love'em.

I've been pondering all the big questions that greatly concern us parents about our kiddies. You know, which language to teach them next? How are they? Where are they? What gender and colour are they? Do I in fact have any? Which I’ve heard also happens to be the same thought pattern for many of your celeb moms most mornings upon waking. So you know I’m really blessed and up there with the best.

As a frazzled and fictitious parent could you please indulge and permit me to post the next ground-breaking thought, even if it is coming to you live but delayed via satellite. And, yes, I am aware that there’s some service called “twitter” for that type of caper but no, I am not interested. Frankly, there’s only so much of the superficial information highway I can take on. So, without further ado and a hearty clunk, clunk, clunk…

BABY J DAY PAYOLA

What’s wrong with a copy of Pilgrim’s Progress, a couple of pieces of fruit, some nuts and perhaps a candy cane stuffed in a lovely Hessian stocking or pillowslip as a nice Christmas present? (dangling from mantle shelf optional) In my day..., you see, I, too, was once somebody’s child.

Actually I still am!!

Imagine all those Lions Club Xmas cakes and Big Sister plasma plum puds (wonder if possible to make some of them self-saucing) that Marmee will be able to buy me now. Hope she gets some of those Darrelleacious sugared peanuts. Yum scrum! Chocolate money! Oooh somebody's getting peckish. Oh, and an Allen’s stocking too please, Kruddy. And anything you've got in aspic will be much appreciated.

Greed is back

Announced the newspaper headline accompanied by a picture of Michael Douglas, in character, mind. The sight of such nonsense on the newspaper stand caused my dawdling to the bus stop to be enlivened with a head shake, neck rick and eye twitch. Oh Kruddy. Oh Fairfux. Oh Gordon Gekko. Oh originality! Where has she gone? (channelling Helen Reddy but who is she channelling - note to budding blog bores being obscure means never having to be genuinely funny).

“Nevertheless, greed is really bad. Fortunately there’s never ever been anyone as greedy as Gordon Gekko on the stockmarket or anywhere else in real life ", the inner child reassured the on-the-outer adult, and together we heaved ourselves onto the bus and inserted my yearly pass into the green ticket machine.

The green machine did not return my ticket, with one slurp it had denied my right to board any bus, ferry or train in zones 1 and 2.

"Greed IS back!" I cried and asked the driver of bus no 3813 to assist me.

Bus driver couldn’t retrieve the ticket, despite some expert jabbing with a straightened bobby pin. He instructed me to sit down and give my contact details when disembarking so he could forward the ticket to me. I thanked him and obediently moved to the back and found a seat.

Bus continued its path and I wrote out my details on a few spare yellow post-its that I found in my purse. Every now and then the bus would stop at the lights and driver would stop and start the bus to get the machine to regurgitate the pass. The process proved to be successful and i was called to the front of the bus. I weaved my way to the green ticket machine only to be told by another passenger, stood by the machine, that “it came up for a bit but then it went down again.” Curiously it did not strike her to take it out, what a slow-witted blob.

Driver then told me I had to stand by the machine as the ticket could pop out any minute, like Michael Douglas’s penis I guess. Pop goes the weasel... So I spent most of the trip waiting to play grab, eeewe...

By the time we got to Town Hall it’d been decided that the ticket would have to be removed at the depot. I sat down and began deleting messages from my mobe, its memory was full, so I could phone work . The bus passed Wynyard when the machine started “barfing” and up popped my ticket. I leapt from my seat and slid down the aisle yelping “oh shit”. Charm and athleticism had become one. I reached the machine in time to snatch the ticket.

A stupendous victory.

Don't worry it's OK

Theresa Rein, the ever-turning-Bull, Baz, Rusty, Cold Mountain and Cmug Blanchett are gonna bail-out Aussie.

"Aussie's gonna be A L R I G H T (and that's what counts.)"

A single of celebration, titled as above, will be released at Xmas. Smith, Julia and Lindsay sing opening verse, followed by Albo, Penny and Nicola,with a bipartisan chorus featuring Kruddy, Swan, Plibersek, Brown, E-T-Bull, Pine, Xenophon and Bish. Yartz types singing back-up as the Tough Week Choir; Choirmaster: P. Garrett. 30 Foot of Grunt insist on being back-up band. S T O P

Proceeds from sale will go to Iceland and NSW STOP

Terror in the dunoir

Happy Rocktober, happy Gothstock, happy labour day long weekend and, best of all, happy three days away from the office communal toilets.

It's really only this year that the social activity, general chit chat and carping in the workplace latrine has become a ridiculous but major source of vexation and fatigue. Just thinking of it now causes tetchiness to prickle my blood and a moue of distaste upon my face, Generation Jones members can picture Dr Zachary Smith being forced to do some work on the chariot or lift a spade for HD visualisation of facial expression, but a-bog-blogging I must go.

You’re at the basin and someone enters the bathroom. Instead of a nod of acknowledgement, toiley timer transforms into have-a-chat, consumed with a desire to converse, and proceeds to continue prattling after entering the cubicle, sitting (i assume) on the honka and attending to other matters. Multi-tasker extraordinaire but please not in the dunoir.

Unfortunately there is no hand drying machine to thump and drown out the whole sorry business. I scoot out, with a clearing of throat and an awkward “I’m going, bye…” . It is worse when you scuttle into the bathroom and chatters is at the basin and continues to natter when you become otherwise engaged. It’s all so ter-rrribly inhibiting, and somehow unhygienic...

Yeah, I’m uptight. Yes, I am an embarrassment of a prude but as Marcia Hines would say "you know who you are; you are what you are. I give you props." Right on. Platitudes are indeed a tremendous source of comfort but a line must be drawn somewhere.

Last week I was in my favourite cubicle, the one at the end of the row, when I heard someone arrive and enter another (mercifully). I became tense, “must … get … , out … before other user does...” but in my haste fell off the seat and twisted my left buttock and hammy. As I attempted to get up from the floor I heard a mobile phone ring. It rang repeatedly. The person in the other cubicle muttered grumblings, annoyed that the mobile was ringing in the bathroom, she was annoyed?!, finally answering with an aggrieved “I’m on the toilet” – clearly the new "I'm on the bus/train."

Oh live and breathe, nsrs, as I live and breathe.

Then on Friday a curious thing happened. Confined to my cubicle, I heard one user enter as another departed. There was no chatter. No-one else entered. As I heard the last person leave and shut the door, the lights were switched off, punishment for previous hostill monosyllabic behaviour?

I was surrounded in an eerie darkness and silence. Overwhelmed with terror the imagination spun out, conjuring a Bruno Anthony like-villain, who whistled a hauntingly menacing tune while sliding his hands into a handsome pair of leather gloves, snapping the elastic at the wrists, in preparation for a nice bit of strangulation bathroom-style, or worse, head down dunny flushing, as he approached my cubicle. My mind's eye saw him kicking open the cubicle door when I heard a real person come into the bathroom, “Hello...? Please...Turn on the lights .", I whimpered. I don’t know whether she voted Liberal or was Renee Geyer (Tim Freedman lyric or 1975 Aust fed election campaign joke-ish – it’s lame and it's your choice) but she obliged.

Despite this punishment, I'm still on the side of Aesop, who once observed, “ we don’t piss down the telephone so please don’t talk on the toilet.” Sagacious dude, which is also the name of the fifth ninja turtle.

The Head Boy

So hard up

In poppa’s rented flat

Battlin' on

In Sydney Grammar crested flannel


Chompin' happy snax and fruit tingles

Enormous head nutting out future Singo jingles

All while swotting over prep and the Fin Review

Man of many metiers from Struggle St Vaucluse


So a-lone

In poppa’s rented flat

Vaunting ambition

Volcanic in Sydney Grammar flannel

SCOOP

Forget snake, leopard and cow skin prints you vacuous fashionistas, foxy baristas and twisted, scissory, Shakespeare's sisters for giraffe skin print is it and totally in the NOW.

It’s true.

There must be a fever in the fashion houses like you would not believe. Well it has impressed me.

At lunch time I passed a woman wearing a magnificent giraffe print ensemble. Curiously she was also petite, about 5”3 in high heels. Inspired by such boldness, or was it 'tude?, I stooped down to cup her chin with my enormous gloved hand and cooed “we can all have our dreams, can’t we, sweetness."

Schlemiel Schemozzel NSW Incorporated

And, sweetheart, we sure as hell are doing it our way. The disarray of the NSW Government has penetrated my sub-conscious (won’t bore you about the dreams at this point) and worse, spilled over to ecclesiastical administration.

The other night en route to the Tupper Parish Hall to deposit some of my treasures, on loan to Rev Philpott for his spring gala fete, which he insists on calling the Vesta Festa Primavera Situazione (Dante Alighieri classes for seniors Tuesday nights alert), I experienced a most unsettling awakening. As I veered left at the Rectory, my stride, general sense of self-importance, abundant community spirit and gaze were arrested by this:

"Tony Martin IS Reverend Bob!", I cried, dropping clipboard and upturning granny smith cardboard box causing the enormous pastel coloured ribbons to float on the breeze (soiling and entangling themselves with plastic bags that were having Alan Ball moments - oh the profondite!) as the K-Tel merry month of Maypole parts clanged to the ground.

Oh the disarray.

In truth, had the Rev behind this caper been Motorcycle Bob there would have been some allusion to Rocktober not this verily, verily wickede Gothickeria.

Rev Philpott has not gone doo-lally but his career has gone belly-up.

In fact, last weekend Tupper Parish Council was stormed! The Bishop booted out the Rector, leaf blowers, fluoro vests, grey power, Collins pocket Italian dictionary et al.

New Rev is commencing celebrations for Gothstock, which has usurped the Rocktober labour day long weekend. So no spring fete, maypole dancing or mud baths an' topless dames atop their men's shoulders; shame.

THE MOST

and I do not mean Donny Fanta Pants.

Hooray!

Another instalment in this magnificent series.