Coffee… chocolate… coke… hmmm not so much.

Posted on July 23, 2008 by borysSNORC

The Small Child has free clothes day tomorrow. In exchange they are supposed to each bring in a block of chocolate to donate to the school fete chocolate wheel thingy. Sounded like a harmless enough plan and the proceeds all go to the fund raising for their fete so it’s all good right?

And that was my attitude towards the cunning plan until I went to buy a block of chocolate. You see unlike a lot of the Mums that were at the linen party I went to Monday night (and here’s me thinking Tupperware parties were torture…don’t ask) who all said they would have to remember to send their kids off with a block of chocolate from the pantry, I had to go out and buy some chocolate special for this.

I don’t buy chocolate ordinarily mostly because I don’t really like the stuff. I can feel the disbelief from here from all my chocolaholic friends but it’s true. I don’t particularly like chocolate….. and that includes chocolate ice cream, chocolate biscuits, chocolate fudge, chocolate milkshakes and definitely chocolate cake! Eyuk… chocolate mudcake is the worst.. I only have to have two teaspoons of the stuff and I’m madly looking around for water to wash down the taste. I’ve been known to receive boxes of chocolate as gifts for Xmas or for my Birthday and then find them unopened in the kitchen cupboard several months later which annoys the other chocolate eating members of the household 🙂

So anyway I had to make a special trip to the stores today to buy a block of chocolate for the Small Child to take to school tomorrow and you will not believe it but a family sized block of chocolate cost $3.99!!! OMG that is like highway robbery. I cant remember the last time I bought a block of chocolate but I had no idea it had gotten so damn expensive. I was expecting it to be about $2.50 or so… but $4 for chocolate! I am surprised anyone finds the wiggle room in the family budget for the stuff.
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What’s wrong with this picture?

Posted on July 22, 2008 by borysSNORC

Normally I don’t buy the Small Child fancy name brand clothes. The reason for this is that he grows out of things at such a rapid rate it seems nonsensical to buy him a $40 or $50 shirt that won’t fit him in like 3-6 months time. So normally he gets generic stuff picked up at department stores or things that are on special as you do.

However I recently went to one of those outlet shopping places that have left over stock of all the groovy brands marked down to either dirt cheap or rather more reasonable prices. There I picked up for him a few long sleeved t-shirts to see him through this winter. Now we don’t get a lot of choice on boys clothes everything is red, black, blue or cargo green and usually covered in cars, trucks, flames, super heroes or for some reason skulls and cross bones. So when I picked this shirt up I didn’t look too closely as it resembled much of what is on the market for his age group…. Exhibit A:

Looked okay on first glance… and I admit I didn’t inspect the garment too closely. It had a Mambo tag hanging on it, nice blue colour, print that look like you’re average sort of surfie brand. But a few outings later I’m looking at this shirt as I folded it out of the wash and noticed this:

FUCKING SKELETONS… LITERALLY!!!

What on earth are they thinking? Why are major fashion labels making things like this IN CHILDREN’S SIZES. When was it decided that depicting sexual activities (whether they be skeletal or not) is acceptable for children’s clothing?!?! Unbelievable.

Come to think of it…. it’s even worse if you’ve got daughters. I’ve been shopping for outfits for my nieces (I have five of them from 1-9 yrs) and more than half the clothes available in the ‘pink section’ of the department stores looks like skank wear for little girls! Inappropriate slogans, off the shoulder tops, boob tube styles, really short skirts…. strapless this…. leopard print that. It’s truly awful and the Mums I’ve talked to about this all say that it is becoming increasingly difficult not to dress their little girls like hookers!

But what can you do? Refuse to buy these sorts of clothing items and make clothes instead? You can’t. It cost you more in fabric than they can pump them out for in China. Not to mention trying to find the time to make mundane clothes. Shit like this really pisses me off…
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Mumble fuck… mumble fuck

Posted on June 15, 2008 by borysSNORC

I’ve been catching up on episodes of ‘The Unit’ which is a gung-ho bit of Sepo bullshit sort of show but entertaining enough for all that. What I want to know is – Why on earth do the ‘powers that be’ insist of fucking with something when it’s obviously working for them. I am of course referring to the introduction music/sequence.

They had this edgy military cadence thing going on with soldiers jumping out of helicopters, climbing trees, shooting bad guys looking all intense while they did it bit… and for some reason – here comes season three of the show and they swap it for some soppy piece of shit that doesn’t have the same feel at all.

I don’t know if I’m alone here, but I tend to associate different bits of music with various emotions and memories and when they do shit like this to me in mid-stream it just pisses me off. Mr K and others hate it when we’re watching a TV series one episode after another and I tend to let the intro music run as the theme songs tend to be immediately recognizable and evocative of the sort of content you’re about to view. Now I admit by the time I’ve watched about 7 West Wings in a row that the intro can get a little old but some of them never do.

Veronica Mars – love that intro… it’s cute, it’s perky it’s teen America in the ’00s – or at least we love that intro until they pfaffed with it in the third season (Hmmm are we detecting a trend here?). The Firefly them intro – now why would anyone want to skip through that? Battlestar Galactica – the intro for that is about the only thing on the idiot box guaranteed to make me look up from my needlework to see the 30sec prelude that shows all the action that’s about to unfold. There’s really too many of them to go through but I really want to know what is the value in changing the damn song when they’ve already trained their audience into making an association with a certain tune and their content?

Stoopid eejits.
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Hot plate or petrie dish.?

Posted on June 12, 2008 by borysSNORC

I don’t know if it’s a universal experience… but public parks in Qld usually have several gazebo type shade structures erected in them and nearby there will almost always be public BBQs nearby. Sometime they’re wood BBQs which mean the men get to stand around feeling all manly in a ‘me light fire’ kinda way (lighting fires is somewhat of a novelty if you’re from Bris Vegas). Sometimes they’re gas jobbies and they’ll be free or insert coins or what have you.

So on any given weekend, parks across the country have families milling about throwing around the cricket ball / frisbee / RC aeroplane / stomp rocket / piece of outdoor sporting equipment of choice while the ‘Mum’ type person readies the food until the ‘Dad’ type person comes in at the last minute to do the actual cooking/burning of the meat bit and returns caveman style to the waiting brood who are at this point trying to balance on the industrially strong yet uncomfortable out door furniture provided and are about ready to eat their paper/plastic plates because the facilities provided are almost always provoke unreliable timeframes.

My problem with this familiar little facade of familial contentment???

Well…. I just don’t want to have anything to do with the whole gig. It all stems from an old friend who used to work for the council – JT. I knew JT from my old cadet days and when we all left school he went into landscaping for a while before taking on a role with the local council which is the governing body responsible for maintaining all those parks and aforementioned BBQs. Anyway me and JT used to hang out on Friday nights for tequila and beer chasers down at the local Tavern at the ‘Big Kahuna’ Bar (I know a surf themed bar is tragic but it was the early 90s and besides it was totally out of my control). And on the weekly drunken stumbles home from the Big Kahuna to my place we usually went via firstly the local bakery who often gave us pies at 3am and secondly a public park with swings, gazebos and BBQs.

At which point in our meanderings, we’d be scoffing down hot pies while playing on the swings and JT would regale me with stories of whatever particular horror had greeted him in public parks that week. These ‘horrors’ ranged from – syringes found in bark chips or sand under children’s play equipment, junkies found dying or dead in public toilets, used condoms stuck to the walls outside the men’s room and worst of all… stories about the public BBQs. JT and his co-workers had the joy of fixing them if they were broken, maintaining the equipment and …eewwww… cleaning them.

Vomitus, sputum, fecal matter (both canine and human), blood, semen, condoms, smashed glass, various drug related paraphenalia and on occasion small dead animals or birds are all on the list of things that JT and his buddies have had to clean off public BBQ hotplates in the greater Bris-Vegas area.

So when the family says ” Gee Mom! Lets go have a BBQ in the park” … you can imagine how keen I am on that concept.

Oohh! Ahhh! Staphylococcus epidermidis…. pretty.
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Forecast is… rarely foggy.

Posted on June 2, 2008 by borysSNORC

My new little car has fog lamps on it. I don’t now why though as they’re almost as redundant as when Range Rover put their first Discovery model into the Australian market in the early 90s and they came out with snow ski racks on the roof fitted as standard. Now here in (usually) sunny Bris-Vegas we don’t have a lot of snow and/or fog given that we’re effectively in a temperate subtropical kinda area and I’ve never seen snow in Brisbane and only very rarely do we see fog.

From what I understand of the Queensland Transport Auxiliary Driving Lamps Fitted to Motor Vehicles General Policy of 30 June 2006, the use of fog lamps is ‘intended to improve the illumination of the road in conditions of fog, snowfall, rainstorms’ etc …additionally … ‘Fog lamps must not be used except in fog or mist or under other atmospheric conditions which restrict visibility’.

What’s bugging me is that since I have acquired a car with fog lamps I seem to be noticing just how many people are using them in contradiction to this policy. Does the policy get policed? I don’t think so. Does the use of fog lamps when not under conditions of restricted visibility actually serve any purpose whatsoever other than to say ‘Hey I paid to have fog lamps on my car so I’m gonna use ’em’. Not so much.

Story Bridge this morning. Sunny Queensland – beautiful one day.. perfect the next.

And yet (and this one really does my addle pated head in) given the absolute deluge South East Queensland is experiencing these last few days… why is it that maybe only 20-25% of cars on the road have their regular headlights on even though the weather has been so bad you can barely see 50 meters ahead. And why do idiot drivers in dark coloured cars seem to be the worst offenders for not putting on their headlights in wet weather? It’s got me baffled.

Seems like we have two types of drivers … those that have got their sexy damn lamps that cost them extra so they’re gunna use ’em all the time regardless and the other type who won’t turn on any lights even though wet conditions and low visibility means you can’t see them for shit. Go figure.

Anne Street in Bris CBD, Fortitude Valley end. Never seen anything like it.

BrisVegas has been ridiculously wet these last few days… I haven’t seen this much winter rain since maybe the early 90s when I used to work in town for the Govt and had to get to and from the buses and it was frequently raining. Feels like the drought we’ve been experiencing for the last decade and a half is perhaps starting to turn around and we’re seeing some of the old weather patterns returning (with a bit of luck) but it comes with a downside….. a whole new generation of idiot drivers who have NO experience at driving in wet weather. Like the chicken fuckin’ moron (read ‘male under 25’) who tailgated me for a couple of clicks before over taking me doing 80+ kph in a 60kph zone in his black Subaru Impreza this afternoon while it was pissing down with rain .

Oh yeah… and not surprisingly … his little black car didn’t have any lights turned on!

Fantastic shots taken down the Gold Coast today.
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