Go Santa, it’s your birthday!

Posted on December 24, 2007 by borysSNORC

Grocery shopping today… dropped $270 and I’m pretty sure there was scant little ‘real’ food in the trolley. Mostly it was all just stocking up on holiday snackage. Now I hate grocery shopping at the best of times, but there’s a number of things that can make it worse…

Christmas Carols playing over the PA system. Urgh! From what I understand there’s been significant research done in the field of environmental psychology in retailing and the effect of certain musical stimuli on the customers. And I have a sneaking suspicion that Christmas Carols must have scored pretty high for them to be hammering them ad infinitum they way they do. I hate Christmas Carols. Hate them in the shopping centres, hate them in office elevators, hate them in fucking carols by candlelight bullshit…. they’re so hackneyed and played to death, please stop torturing us this way.

Supermarket brand hogging. I went looking for smoked oysters today to add to my cheese and nibblies plates for tomorrow, and was disgusted to find that the only brand available was John West. There used to be several brands of smoked oysters available at my local Coles supermarket… Brunswick Smoked Oysters and Always Fresh Smoked Oysters and a Coles Own Brand. But now, all we get is the option of John West or John West smoked oysters… which is fucked, cos they were always dearer and for a much smaller package.

People congregating in the aisles. I don’t know why, but either people enjoy shopping with a bunch of their friends and relatives or the supermarkets are the real world equivalent of fucking chat rooms where you can run into a pick up conversation and just decide to be a part of it, but it seems that you’re constantly trying to navigate your predictably dodgy trolley through small knots of people. What the fuck are they talking about anyway? Deep and meaningfuls about cheese or something?

Strangers feeling compelled to talk to you. ‘Excuse me dear, but are these the spinach and ricotta triangles that are on special?” Well lady, I don’t know do they match the description on the little tag telling you they’re on special? As if I give a fuck.. oh wait ricotta and spinach huh? Hmmm they sound good.. I might have some of those.

Everything’s been moved… Again. Yes, they have to move everything around for the Christmas nonsense. Not sure why they do this as it seems they have some irregular stuff going on all year round… New Years party goods, Valentines day Chocolates etc, Easter Egg stuff, Mothers day Stuff, and so on and so on. Why don’t they just have one aisle dedicated to whatever the hell people are being conned into this week, and leave everything else out of it? Why do they have to shuffle every product in the entire store when they bring in the product lines that are dedicated to what ever is being celebrated at that point in time? I hate not being able to find stuff 🙁

Check out Boys. Never! Never! And I can’t stress this enough… NEVER line up behind a check out that has a boy working the register. For if you do, I guarantee you will regret it. Your dishwashing detergent will be in the same bag as your bananas, your eggs will be packed under tins of dog food, and your tampons will be thrown in with your cheese. For reasons beyond my limited understanding, boys can’t pack groceries for shit! Even though I fastidiously separate all my cold things into one section on the conveyor belt, and then the hard items and then the fresh items etc… if there’s a boy working the checkout… forget it. I might as well let Angel pack the groceries.

So even if you manage to get a trolley that goes relatively straight, and there’s no Christmas carols playing, and a decided lack of strangers annoying you and the store manager was too lazy to move all your favorite products around that week… even under those optimal conditions, grocery shopping still sucks…. prices are up, quantities are down…. and you still find yourself checking the fucking eggs which is a depressing reminder of just how mundane our lives are.

Merry Christmas all… can’t wait for it to be over.

How very courageous of you….

Posted on December 23, 2007 by borysSNORC

Today has been quiet. Blissfully quiet. Angel and Mr K went shopping for last minute Christmas stuff, which meant a serenely quiet house for a while. I finally got round to waxing my legs… which I have to say is strangely relaxing. I know… sounds weird and I have no idea why, but the brief and fleeting pain from having my legs waxed is nothing compared to what my back puts me through on a daily basis.

So other than slothing around today I’ve been watching a little Californication. Yes I’m a bit slow getting round to seeing this show (too much TV and not enough time), but I have to say I like it. A lot. What’s not to like? Sometimes you meet a characters in a book, in a movie or in a TV shows that you just identify with right off the bat. Something in them just appeals to you for what ever reason. In Californication, Duchovny’s character Hank Moody is a dry, bitchy, sarcastic. intellectual snob with a mean steak a mile wide and seemingly no desire to temper his acerbic internal monologue …. why it was just like looking in the mirror. 🙂

I loved the bit from the first episode where he’s just figured out that he’s fucked the 16 year old daughter of his ex-girlfriends’ new fiancé. It’s just bloody funny in a Pain + Distance = Humour kinda way.

Starts with books of the dead ?!?!?

Posted on December 22, 2007 by borysSNORC

What’s today? I think it must be Saturday, Mr K didn’t go to work. Feels like I am rapidly losing track here, and I think we can safely blame that on the medication. Nothing quite like feeling a little fuzzy round the edges, which is fine if there was tequila in the equation, but not so fine if there wasn’t. I’m trying to remember what I did today and am totally coming up blank. I know we did something this morning… (several minutes later). OH that’s right…. we went out to breakfast in Balmoral this morning and then went for a bit of a stroll around Oxford Street and cruised through the bookshops.

I bought a the Taschen’s 25th Anniversary Edition of “What Great Paintings Say” which I can’t wait to get stuck into. I studied analyzing art when I was at Uni and always found it fascinating to see what we miss in paintings because we don’t see them with contemporary minds, or just because we’re not familiar with the content.

Blurb – Masterpieces under the microscope: from ancient Egyptian papyrus scrolls to 20th century works Did the Greek gods play tennis? What is the ambassador from the land of Alchemy telling us? What secrets are being told on the shores of the Island of Venus? What is a monk doing on the Ship of Fools? What Great Paintings Say has the answers to these and many other burning questions asked about the most important and famous paintings of all time. In two volumes, a selection of history’s greatest masterpieces is presented chronologically, including works by Botticelli, Breughel, Chagall, Courbet, Degas, Delacroix, Dürer, Goya, Monet, Raphael, Rembrandt, Renoir, Rubens, Tiepolo, Titian, and many others. Each chapter focuses on one painting, with enlarged details and in-depth texts describing their significance. Taking apart each painting and then reassembling it again like a huge jigsaw puzzle, the authors reveal the history of art as a lively panorama of forgotten worlds.

I got a couple of other books as well…. think I better check my purse for random receipts to see how much I spent given that it’s taken me a while to remember I even went. :S Other than bookshopping this morning, I’ve done diddly.
.

Sit down, sit down, sit down you’re rocking the boat.

Posted on December 21, 2007 by borysSNORC

Went to physio this morning, and as my normal physio Heather is now on holidays and the guy I was seeing to replace her, Johnno, was also now on holidays, I ended up seeing a third physio, Georgie, this time…. and I may as well not have bothered. Now I’ve been poked and prodded quite a lot by physiotherapists over the years, and one of the drawbacks of this is that I’m used to being poked and prodded and have quite gotten out of the habit of squealing when they apply pressure that produces excessive or acute pain. I find I mostly lay there and just… take it. It’s awful to think that I’m so familiar with painful sensations that they no longer produce an audible reaction, but there you have it.

Anyway both Number 1 physio, Heather and Number 2 physio, Johnno have a tendancy to keep on prodding and ramping up the pressure because if I don’t squeal, then I must be coping okay with what they’re doing which suits me fine, because the more aggressive they can be while I am on table, the more benefit I seem to get out of it in remaining mobile afterwards. But Georgie I think was just pussyfooting around for some reason, maybe because she couldn’t tell if she was hurting me or not. I kept telling her it was okay to apply more pressure, but for whatever reason, she just didn’t. So I walked out of there feeling no looser or more mobile than I did when I walked in, which is a bit of a waste of time really. So I’m still all tense this afternoon and unfortunately, my next two appointments are with her because the others are still on holiday.

Another bit of back related fun… the Workcover people and my GP want me to go off for some pain management counseling and for the first time ever I am in agreement with them. I feel I am totally not coping with my current levels of back pain, I’m not sleeping, I’m freaking out that it’s not going to settle back down to what I consider ‘normal’, I’m frequently tearful about the whole damn mess and have become ridiculously fearful on the road when driving…. oh and I may or may not have said something about just wanting to curl up and die… by way of trying to demonstrate how fed up I was with the entire situation, and well the quacks tend to take that sort of thing seriously. My GP recommended someone to go talk to, but that person has refused to accept me as a patient because they don’t want to deal with the Workcover paperwork. So I inform the Workcover people of the situation and I get back an email from them that goes something like this –

Hi Borys

Thanks for your email.

I will refer you to a psychologist who will probably contact you in the new year.

I am on leave over the break and will be back at work in the new year so please have a fantastic Christmas and a safe New Years Eve.

Regards

Officious WorkCover Clerk

So…. by this I guess, it’s stiff shit if you really are at the end of your rope huh?

Holiday Happy Snaps

Posted on December 21, 2007 by borysSNORC

US ‘penis photo doctor’ loses job

A surgeon who allegedly took a photo of a patient’s penis during an operation at a US hospital is no longer working there, it has been announced.

Dr Adam Hansen, of Arizona’s Mayo Clinic Hospital, is accused of taking the snap while conducting gallbladder surgery earlier in December. The trainee surgeon allegedly showed the photo to colleagues. The patient is a strip club owner, Sean Dubowik, whose penis is tattooed with the words “Hot Rod”.

A member of the surgical staff tipped off local newspaper The Arizona Republic about the incident in an anonymous call on Monday. The announcement that he was “no longer practising” at the Mayo clinic was posted on the hospital’s website. It is not clear whether he resigned or was dismissed.

Surgeons perform an operation at a hospital

The picture was allegedly taken in an operating theatre

‘Great outrage’

On the same day, Mr Dubowik, 37, learned about the photo when the Nobel Prize-winning clinic, based in Scottsdale, telephoned him. The businessman said: “I got a strange call after my surgery from a doctor who said there was a problem. He said Hansen was on the phone and would explain.”

Mr Dubowik said that the surgeon confessed to having used his mobile phone to take the picture while inserting a catheter into his penis. The patient, who said the tattoo was done for a $1,000 (£500) bet, continued: “Now I feel violated, betrayed and disgusted. The longer I sit here the angrier I get.”

Now I feel violated, betrayed and disgusted

Sean Dubowik