Month: November 2004

Listening to Leonard Cohen’s ‘Dance Me To The End Of Love’ on the computer tonight Rae commented on how much she enjoyed CrashBurn, the television show that used a Mark Seymour cover of this song as its theme.

It was a great little show tracing the life of several relationships from the initial stages through to the ‘crash/burn’ phase. Cleverly told using a his view/her view style it was intelligent, funny, touching and beautifully shot right here in Melbourne. Of course with all this going for it no body watched it and it was shunted from time slot to slot until it petered out in some god foresaken time after only 13 episodes.

We thought we’d never get the chance to see it again until tonight when Rae, looking for the sound track, stumbled across the DVDs for sale. We never thought to look, just assumed as it was unpopular there wouldn’t be any DVDs released. It’s great that DVD now gives us a chance to watch, and own, gems such as these where in years gone by series such as this would have been lost forever. Another candidate for DVD should be Good Guys/Bad Guys, especially the first season.

Any way, there’s now two happy little critters here counting their dollar coins so we can get the two volumes and do the series justice once again.

Just want to say bye to Rae’s blog.

I know why you’ve done it hon but I just want to say how much I enjoyed what you wrote and how you wrote it. You gave a lot of yourself in those words and many others will be as grateful as I am that you did. Count me as one of your fans who will miss Where The Wild Thoughts were.

I cashed in some karma points yesterday.

I went to have my haircut (number 2 at the sides, short and spiky on tops thanks very much). I had to wait a while and by the time Doug had worked his magic I’d been in there an hour. As I crossed the road to my car I happened to look up.

Hmmm, what’s that sign?

Oh, it’s a no standing side and I’m parked on the wrong side of it.

All those years of sticking to the speed limit and not buying a four wheel drive must have paid off, or the good grey ghosts of Yarraville must have already knocked off for the day ’cause my windscreen was thankfully free of any small bits of pink paper.

I was doing the last minute flick through channels last night when I stumbled across Iedereen beroemd! on SBS. Of course I suckered in and watched it all.

This great little Belgian comedy (now there’s a phrase I’ve never used before) ended with a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it link to my wonderful home town, Melbourne, that featured a true blue Aussie accent. This got me thinking – where on earth did they get that accent from? Did they walk out in to the street while looping and grab the first Aussie tourist looking for a pub? Did they dial a number in an Australian phone book at random? Or is there a secret herd of Aussie actors hiding out in pockets of Belgium, just waiting for the phone call?

After yesterday’s whinge it’s time for two things that made me happy since the three things that made me grumpy.

1. Rain.

It’s been bucketing down like the end of the world these past couple of days. But I’m not happy for the garden, or our parched water reserves or even the ducks. I’m happy ’cause it means I can wear my new Canucks windcheater (sweater for our fine foreign friends) that arrived in the post the other day.

2. Rae

My wonderful Rae, completely independent of my complaints, tracked down a cheap copy of NHL 2005 for me. We even had a chance to play a little Canucks v Devils last night. What a great game – the controls are impossibly complex but straight away I could tell it’s a game I want to master. Now if I could only get rid of this pesky work thing that pays the bills I could go and spend the rest of my life perfecting my slap shot.

Three things that made me grumpy today.

1. Target, Malvern Central.

I’ve been wanting a copy NHL 2005, mainly, well only, because it has Marcus Naslund, the captain of my beloved Vancouver Canucks, on the cover. As Target was having a 15% off day, and Target price match K-Mart where it was cheaper, I thought I’d wander down to the local Target and pick it up.

There it was, just sitting on the shelf waiting for a Canuck loving Melbournian Xbox owner to come along and take it home. I took it to the counter and asked if they’d price match.

“No, there’s no K-Mart near here.” came the reply.

So, even though K-Mart and Target are part of the same giant Coles Myer conglomerate, and they were guaranteed a sale, a decision had made that would require me to hop in my car, drive to another store and pay them there. Their policy, while apparently good for them in some unfathomable way, did nothing but drive this customer to their nearest competitor. I will now go out of my way to ensure Coles Myer don’t get my money for this, and other, Xbox games.

2. Ebay.

Rae and Phee have fallen in love with Midtown Madness 3. Being the good bargain hunters we are I turned to Ebay to grab a copy so we can give Daniel back his loaner. Everything was going fine until, with 7 minutes to go, I thought I’d bid.

Of course Ebay, for the first time, crashed. Couldn’t place a bid for love or money. Doubly of course a couple of minutes after the auction closed it was working fine. And the damn thing went for only $15 too. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

3. Car Park

I was leaving work today, as I always do, through the public exit. This gives me traffic lights to turn right across traffic and makes life a lot less stressful than leaving by the staff exit and risking car and limb each night.

The big four wheel drive in front of me surrenders its ticket and drives through the boom gate. I swipe my pass only to turn and see that the four-wheel-idiot has stopped just the other side of the boom to give way to a car; a car it didn’t have to give way too under any laws I know of.

So as this good Samaritan idiot sits there, probably feeling quite good about themselves, the boom comes down. I swipe again but no, the computer is cunning. It knows I have already left and haven’t come back in so the boom stays down as four-wheel-doesn’t-have-a-clue drives off. I had to go around the other side of the building, hop out of the car, swipe myself in and then drive back to swipe myself out again.

Bloody four wheel drive drivers.

My god I was scared. I was typing away at this very keyboard when something flicked against my hand, I shook it and it flicked again.

One second later I looked down to find a European Wasp sitting on my t-shirt sleeve. And it wasn’t a little wasp, it was huge – 2-3cm. I think this makes it a Queen or Male. I reacted in a very manly way and screamed to Rae to come and help. I only had one hand free so I held the sleeve out in case the bastard tried to sting me through my top.

Rae, who was just about to jump under the shower came running out, towel in hand wondering why I was screaming like a litte girl. Yes, I may be the only person in the world rescued by a topless exterminator. She bundled the wasp up in the towel and dumped it in a convenient bucket of bleach sitting in the laundry trough. This only stunned the monster and it took the extreme application of a sneaker to make sure it was really dead.

Now, according to all the horror movies I’ve ever watched, we will have to sit up keeping vigil until the dead of night when a swarm of super killer wasps will try to invade the house to avenge its death.

Excuse me while I go to plug up the fire place.