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.