Monthly Archives: July 2008

Cadbury Favourites – a box with none of my favourites.

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I went to the cinema today to see Children of the Silk Road which was not bad but at the same time not quite the epic saga I was expecting.  I think the film attempts to be a sort of Schindler’s List type film but set in Japan occupied China c1930s but I’m not sure it really hits the mark.  The main character George Hogg (played by Johnny Rhys Meyers) British journalist who naively gets himself into the wrong place at the wrong time and ends up seeing things he wasn’t prepared for and then he kinda floats along on the fringes of the unrest being equally effected yet somehow distant to the Japanese occupation that was going on around him.  He seemed a bit one dimensional to me perhaps because the screenplay has come about by interviewing people who idolized him – I’m not sure.  The film is well worth seeing for some of it’s rather impressive dramatic action sequences but it was also a little disappointing … I think I was expecting something better given that Michelle Yeoh and Chow Yun-Fat were in the cast.  Nevermind – they can’t all be winners.

My Mum who came to the cinema with me asked me today what my favourite movie was and I replied with a blank stare and asked her what sort of question is that?  It’s like asking what your favourite music is?  It depends so much on what sort of mood you’re in, what you’ve been exposed to lately, what is speaking to you at the time.  I could no sooner answer her with definitive answer to my favourite film than I could answer definitively to my favourite food.  I could tell you today that Grosse Point Blank is my absolute favourite film, but then I might remember how much I loved Amelie.  It’s an impossible question.

Today some of my favourite films are –

Grosse Point Blank
Dazed and Confused
Threesome
Ideal Husband
Queen Margot
Mallrats
Hero
Office Space
Artemisia
Empire Records
The Last Supper
Eurotrip
Before Sunrise
American Beauty
House of Flying Daggers
Much Ado About Nothing
Monsoon Wedding
Heathers
Curse of the Golden Flower
Pushing Tin
Amelie
Romeo and Juliet (Baz Luhrmann)
Reality Bites
Matilda
Pump Up the Volume
The Importance of Being Ernest
8 Femmes

Ask me again tomorrow and I’d probably have a totally different list.
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Grade One… vocabulary building.

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The Small Child brings home a new reading book every night and we sit and read and help him with any difficult words.  Most of the stories are kinda bland and tend towards the repetitive (including this one) and  the children work through various levels as they progress.  Just before the school holidays Angel went up a reading level to level 13.  One level up and the vocab has gone through the roof!  I can’t believe some of the adjectives in this little story….

Mother Hippopotamus’s Bad Hair Day

0hippo01 mother hippopotamus bad hair day

“I wish I had some hair,” said Mother Hippopotamus.
“You have a meticulous mane, Mother Zebra
You have curly curls, Mother Monkey
You have lanky locks, Mother Giraffe
But I have no hair!”

“You could buy some hair,” said Mother Zebra “You could buy a wig.”

0hippo02 mother hippopotamus bad hair day

Mother Zebra and Mother Monkey and Mother Giraffe went with Mother Hippopotamus to buy a wig.

0hippo3 mother hippopotamus bad hair day

Mother Hippopotamus tried on a black wig.
“Amazing.” said Mother Zebra
“Appealing.” said Mother Monkey
“Astonishing.” said Mother Giraffe
“Awful.” said Mother Hippopotamus and she took it off.

0hippo04 mother hippopotamus bad hair day

Mother Hippopotamus tried on a brown wig.
“Magnificent.” said Mother Zebra
“Marvellous.” said Mother Monkey
“Miraculous.” said Mother Giraffe
“Messy.” said Mother Hippopotamus and she took it off.

0hippo05 mother hippopotamus bad hair day

Mother Hippopotamus tried on a red wig.
“Fantastic.” said Mother Zebra
“Frivolous.” said Mother Monkey
“Fabulous.” said Mother Giraffe
“Frizzy.” said Mother Hippopotamus and she took it off.

0hippo06 mother hippopotamus bad hair day

Mother Hippopotamus tried on a blonde wig.
“Stunning.” said Mother Zebra
“Splendid.” said Mother Monkey
“Scintillating.” said Mother Giraffe
“Stupid.” said Mother Hippopotamus and she took it off.

0hippo07 mother hippopotamus bad hair day

Mother Hippopotamus tried on more and more and more wigs.
“No good,” she said “No more wigs!  They make me look ridiculous!”

Mother Zebra and Mother Monkey and Mother Giraffe went home with Mother Hippopotamus.

0hippo08 mother hippopotamus bad hair day

“You look beautiful just the way you are!”  they said.

“Do I?” said Mother Hippopotamus.  “That’s good!”

You gotta laugh.

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So yeah… this is funny. 

I had my mobile phone with Goliath (who I worked for briefly last year) since 1994.  I never had problems with reception, global roaming was easy (so long as your wallet could handle being sodomized).  Admittedly the bills were generally far too cunning to be understood… but on the whole the service ‘worked’ fine.

It’s been approx four days since I switched providers and signed on with The Other™ telecommunications company and lo and behold –  they have a cable cut which happens to coincide with some sort of card failure on their back up system that causes a STATE WIDE outage for mobile phones, internets and landlines for some.  It also caused outages for people whose providers piggy backed off he Other™ provider’s network. 

Medicare facilities were down.  Banks were unable to process transactions.  Hospitals were off line.  EFTPOS facilities weren’t working.  ATMs were rendered useless.  Airport checkins couldn’t access their systems.   Fun and games for the whole family I say.  You’d think that all hell would break loose and that you’d be having aggressive and pissed off customers all over the place… but mostly the people I spoke to  yesterday found the whole thing amusing really.

Still even though the lack of service rendered my iPhone useless for the duration I find that it’s intrinsic sexiness was not diminished by it’s inability to function as a phone!!!   😛
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I’m normal … really I am.

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I’m not sure why, but I seem to have been getting ever more twitchy with the OCD tendencies lately.  I have a sneaking suspicion that it has something to do with a desire to exert control over my environment due to feelings of complete and total impotence in being able to affect other aspects of my life – like pervasive chronic back pain, reliance on other to help with what should be simple situations as well as the old infertility and  IVF bullshit which tends to lurk in the back of my mind on a pretty regular basis.  But seeing that acceptance and resignation aren’t really my style I find myself trying to fight the battles I can while studiously attempting to ignore all other issues that steadfastly refuse to submit.

So lately I’ve been feeling increasingly frustrated when the so called ‘controllable’ things aren’t what or where they’re supposed to be.  Unfortunately it matters not a whit how insignificant these things actually are… because for reasons beyond my feeble comprehension these things tend to take on a life of their own… and those lives have a habit of appearing to be of far greater import than they deserve.

Were it but within my power to achieve, I think I’d live in a house with phenomenally practical storage, perfectly clean with nary a toy or item of clothing out of place.  There would a fabulous filing system for the god awful plethora of paper that modern living creates.  There would be clean windows, weeded gardens and paths, gutters… my dears…  that don’t overflow due to ridiculous amounts of leaf litter.  There would be walls covered with floor to ceiling bookcases where items were stowed chronologically by subject.  There would be nothing stored below knee height to avoid having to strain one’s back by bending.  There would also be curtains that got laundered, windows that got washed, garages and patios that got swept and I know not what else one might be able to achieve were I as fit as my Mom.

Instead I occasionally look back at something I have done and see my desire for order subconsciously  channeled onto ridiculous little things….  at which point I frequently sigh at how absolutely anal retentive I have become.   😐

ocd pin head collection
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