Red mushrooms are good for you.

Had a rather strange dream last night…

Up the street from where I grew up is the Terminus.  The Terminus is a strip of shops which sprung up along side the old tram terminus stop in Carina.  The shops were very practical initially  – butcher, banks, bakery, newsagent, pharmacy, fish and chip shop,  habadasherer etc…. but once the trams disappeared and most people drive to the really large shopping centres for their groceries etc the Terminus shops underwent a change.  The butcher closed, the habadasherer closed and so on and so forth eventually most of the street became over run by real estate agents.  Lately a few weird shops have turned up there… a swordmaster (selling recreationist gear) and more recently a tattoo shop.  I’ve been meaning to stick my head into the tattoo shop when it’s open to see who was there as when I went past there a couple of weeks ago (when it was closed) and I saw a whole pile of GD tattoo flash on the walls…. Gary was an old friend who did two of my tattoos back when I was in my teens.  I haven’t seen him for years and would really love to catch up with him again.

Anyway in my dream I was up the Terminus looking for new houses – because that is where all the local real estate agents are!  I was looking for a new house because the air con in our house is causing some watermarks on the ceiling (condensation from the fairly extreme humidity here)  and in my dream, rather than get someone in to remedy the watermarked problem, we had decided to sell the bloody house instead and move to Canberra ?!?!  Go figure.  

So I’m window shopping for a new house to buy in Canberra at the Carina shops (!?!?) when I decided to go into the tattoo shop which was open (every time I’ve actually been past it’s been closed).  I walk in the door and my old fried Gary is there and we greet each other warmly and spend a few hours chatting.  While we’re talking he changes the mushroom tattooed on my right foot from being a purple coloured mushroom proper (kinda) into a red coloured mushroom that looks like a Nintentdo Mario mushroom (obviously there’s been too much Wii in the house since Christmas).  We’re talking away and suddenly he says: "Do you remember when I asked you to marry me?" and I replied fondly with a smile "Yes I remember that very clearly… and I also remember the Corvette sized engagement ring!"  He suddenly got down on his knee and looked at me very seriously saying "I still have your Corvette Borys if you want it… and me."   Very strange.

Back when I was 19, Gary proposed to me and in lieu of a traditonal engagement ring he wanted to give me his 1972 Corvette Stingray because he thought "I’d look great in it".  Anyway in my dream after his comments above some time seemed to pass though I don’t recall with what or how long… but suddenly I was married to Gary and he’d taught me to do tattoo work and we were working together in the tattoo shop and I was practising on all my friends when I woke up.

Tres strange …
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The glass is half full…. of shit.

Long time pessimist that I am, I have a tendency to jump to the worst conclusion in any given situation… IMMEDIATELY.  Yesterday we couldn’t get hold of Mr K’s Gran who is in her mid 80s and currently residing alone and my first instinct is that maybe she’s had a fall (the steps are rather bad at her place) or maybe she’s had some other injury and will be found three days later by an Energex worker checking the meter readings half eaten by Alsatians or perhaps someone has broken in and assaulted her for the ten bucks little old ladies tend to have in their purses or maybe she’s run off gotten a tattoo and joined a biker gang.  Well okay, maybe not that last one but you see where I’m going here.

I tried to call my Mum to see if she wanted to join us for dinner tonight and we left several messages on her machine and tried her mobile but got that annoying ‘the person you are trying to contact has their mobile phone switched off or is not in a mobile service area’ tripe.  Seeing that she’s been away for the weekend up the coast I immediately think she’s had a car accident or maybe she’s stuck on the side of the highway somewhere with a flat tyre and I find myself fervently hoping no opportunistic sociopaths happen to come to her rescue so we don’t get a call in the morning telling us she’s dead in a ditch somewhere.  Of course the reason she is unable to be contacted is thankfully far more mundane – vacuuming and couldn’t hear the phone and her mobile battery was flat.

Unfortunately this happens to me ALL the time.  If Mr K tells me he’s going to be home around 1745 and if he hasn’t walked through the door by 1800… I’m already envisaging his mangled corpse and twisted bike frame wedged up under the rear wheels of a semi-trailer on Wynnum road and cursing that we never arranged that additional life insurance policy…. or other equally gruesome unfortunate scenarios in a similar vein. If a doctor tells a friend they have ‘need tests to investigate that strange whatever’… I’m immediately preparing for hideous life altering news.  On the two occasions where our dog needed to be rushed to the vet (one for a paralysis tick the other for an accidental ingestion of rat poison)… my initial reaction is to mentally prepare for the likelihood that we might have to euthanize the poor pup.

It goes on and on and on and it’s exhausting.  Barely a day goes by when I don’t get a horrible sinking feeling that something crap is about to happen. And the worst of it is not so much that I’m just such a cynical pessimist chick who’s always waiting for the hammer to fall (and always has).  No the worst of it is just how fucking crazily creative and detailed my little brain gets when I start thinking like this.  It’s not just ‘dead in a ditch’ it’s a full blown episode of CSI or Bones that’s going on in my head 

You start by sinking into his arms and end up with your arms in his sink.

I’ve been thinking about the dynamics that make for intellectually stimulating conversation.  Obviously you need a minimum of two people who preferably have similar interests or similar intellect.  Or, and here’s a daring thought, perhaps both each in equal measure!  O_o.  Honestly though, how often does that happen?  That you meet someone who has similar interests to yourself, and on short acquaintancw you fnd them to be well informed, in possession of suitable communications skills and an ability to apply reason and logic to concepts so as to be capable of holding intellectually challenging conversation on some topic/s of common interest?  Hardly ever, I say!  Which is probably a reflection on my total apathy about participating in anything social that is likely to necessitate having conversations with new people, rather than a reflection of my current social circle.

start sinking into arms end up sink

While I’m at it….  Why is it that on those rare occasions that you find persons in possession of the attributes described above and a friendship/relationship forms, eventually those very conversations that originally forged the connection, seem to invariably lessen or even totally disappear altogether over time??  It sometimes seems that the closer or more familiar an acquaintance we have with people… the less stimulating or challenging your conversations with them will become.  Is it because as acquaintance deepens with an individual we start to anticipate their opinions on various topics and therefore tend to discuss important or intellectually engaging topics with less frequency?  Or is it that just when we’re meeting new people we’re spending our energies on discovering that new acquaintance’s values and opinions, which often necessitates the asking of challenging questioning which naturally leads to stimulating conversations??

I find when I meet new people we’re often ourselves encouraged to voice opinions (and draw them out of others) so we can gauge one another’s values etc and assess how (or if) their new input on various issues can perhaps challenge or convince us to reevaluate our own previously held contentions.   I’m not entirely sure what causes it, but I have noticed a trend over the years that familiarity breeds… err, not contempt as popular idiom would have us believe, but certain levels of nonchalance, ambivalence or even apathy which sadly sees the dwindling of deep stimulating interactions.  And with the rapid decline of these stimulating interactions the intellectually challenging conversations ends up swifty defenestrated.

I guess what I’m trying to say is – you might forge a friendship that starts out with interesting discussions on art, literature, history, science, psychology or what have you… but over time they seem to somehow dissipate into conversations over where the onus of responsibility lies in the toast making process or questions over who used the last of the toilet paper.

Update:  Oh for crying out loud!!!  I’m going to have to install some sort of sobriety test onto my PC to stop me from writing stuff in this journal when I’ve had a few drinks ontop of my medications !
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Teach a man to fish…

I saw this article on the BBC News website just before Christmas and it’s been annoying me.  Beluga caviar imports have been banned or restricted for quite some time due to dwindling numbers of sturgeon in the Caspian…. which has been positively unbearable Darrrhlings! For the little people like us!  Why have you seen the price of decent caviar Sweeties?  Well… no I haven’t either and couldn’t give a shit…. but I digress.

A few days before Christmas Italian Customs officials confiscated some 40kgs of the stuff which has a street value of approximately USD$550,000…. and the powers that be in their infinite wisdom have decided to disseminate it to the Milanese poor and/or homeless via charitable shelters and hospices as a special Christmas treat.  

Does anyone else see a fundamental flaw in this cunning plan?  Yeah okay they can give all these poor people an unexpected (and for all we know possibly unwanted) Christmas treat or maybe they could have sold the stuff to the highest bidder and fed the city’s homeless and disaffected for who knows how many months.  Perhaps that sort of money would be better off getting those same downtrodden folks into suitable programs to assisst with providing accommodation or employment or training.  Who knows how far half a millon dollars would go towards useful programs to assist the poor in a town like Milan.  

But donating the ridiculoulsy expensive caviar as a extravagant Christmas gift?  That just seems plain stupid to me.

 

Caviar

Beluga caviar seized by Italian customs officers is
to be distributed to poor people in Milan as a Christmas gift.
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Wii… Wii… Wii… Wii… all the way home!

Yale gave me a Wii Fit thingy for Christmas as he knew that I was giving a Wii to the Small Child and Mr K.  I know… it really was rather courageous of him don’t you think?  Rather like giving a woman a thigh master as a gift  🙂  Anyway I was a little dubious as to how useful it would prove for someone who has trouble standing still for any period of above about 10 mins but this afternoon when all the visitors got off the damn thing I was able to give it a go.

As expected my BMI is abysmal with a capital ‘A’ being neither tall nor slender nor blithe or bonny… but after doing all the little balance and posture exercise body testing things the little machine told me that my ‘Wii Fit Age’ (whatever that is) was 31.    Which of course totally validates my decision to have had my 30th birthday party last year (several years late)… but makes no sense given that my current physical state is that of a notably short statured woman of ridiculously ample proportions with zero aerobic fitness and no tangible upper body strengtht!!!

So yeah… not sure what the little machine bases that on!
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