Celebrity Deaths...

So it turns out that today will be one of those “where were you when you heard...” days (in the car backing out my driveway if anybody cares.)

But what about poor Farrah? She had better hair and better nipples (hmmm... I wonder if MJ actually had nipples???)

Farrah died last night too but Michael Jackson had to go and steal the limelight didn’t he?! Yeah it’s a bit sad, and Off the wall was a really good album and I have been known to Blame it on the Boogie several times in my life, but the guy had turned into a freak, and although I feel really sorry for him coz he had no childhood blah blah, he was a FREAK OK... and now everyone's gonna forget about that... and what about poor Farrah! So yes this will be one of those defining moments of our generation, blah blah, but we all know he will be down in Tijuana pumping gas with Father-in-law Elvis very very soon...

I wonder if they will hold his funeral at Disneyland???

And does this mean we will be seeing more or less of LaToya?

And in the after life... will he be Black or White?

Celebrity deaths are always a weird one, All this outpouring of grief like you actually knew the person. Come on people, what you knew was what the gossip columnists, publicists and rest of the media fed your hunger for, and it's the same with death, I think people just have a hard time understanding that these people are actually just flesh and bone... and plastic... And in the end just as vulnerable as you and I. There will be all sorts of rumours now, thing is, I think he was just a lonely sad man who had probably just had enough...

But this will be compared too the deaths of...

Marilyn and Elvis (not alive to remember)

John Lennon (too young to remember)

Princess Di (was at a 21st birthday party, first reaction was "they're faking it")

9/11 (was working at Becket-Chimney Corners Outdoor Centre in Massachusetts, taking a group of school kids on the high ropes course when all these messages came over the walkie talkies about what was and allegedly going on... the school group was from... you guessed it, New York City! It was my last day of work and I was heading to Boston the next day and NYC a few days later... obviously plans were changed!)

Now lets all brace ourselves for the onslaught of tribute shows... I wonder how many pages of the Herald-Sun will be dedicated to him tomorrow... Or will it be a special edition perhaps?

Who says you c*nt swear in the library?

J is for...

Japan!

The following is a copy of an email I sent on Monday 4th June 2001 near the end of my first trip to Japan.

hi everybody...

moshi moshi konichi-wa from Japan...I'm having a ball, Japan is an onslaught to the senses!

Here is 12 reasons why I love japan;

1/I love vending machines... I love the 20 million different sorts of drinks you can buy from them, and I love that everyone is a surprise because i cant read what they are!!! I love that I can buy film and batteries and Hagan daaz Ice cream from them, and if I drank beer and smoked I would love buying them from vending machines too!

2/I love heated toilet seats... I love them even more when they have a Boedau thing (yeah I know I can't spell, but you know, the wash your bum thing!) the restaurant we went to last night even had a fake flush sound function... don't ask me why I have no idea! some of the toilets have an automatic hand wash tap and basin thing which starts when you flush, then the water goes into the thing and becomes the water for the next flush, very economical. I love that Dave’s toilet comes with instructions including diagrams of how to sit or stand! (he doesn’t have a heated seat though!!!)(p.s. note to the girls... squat toilets are no fun when you have your period, well sorry but it’s true!)

3/I love big Buddha’s... Ive seen the two biggest ones in Japan, and millions of little Buddhas and lots of Buddhist art... and about 20 million shrines and temples and more Buddhas.

4/I love MOS burgers... I don’t care that they are about half the size and twice the price of McDonald's (and twice as greasy!) they taste damn good, were just around the corner from where I stayed in Kyoto, and have no pickle!

5/I love all the other new food Ive tried... yes I have had raw fish,* not so bad. David took me for Kaiten Zushi (revolving sushi) and i had salmon and tuna and that was a week ago and i’m still alive!!! I’ve also had Okonomyaki (As you like pancakes) and i must say that my pancake flipping skills are much better than Dave's. Shabu Shabu (One pot veggies and meat) you cook both of the last two things yourself at the table. Last night I was forced to try octopus... and we had a ‘surprise parfait’ between 5 of us and we could still only get half way through! Lots of different meat on a skewer type things and of course, god old Mos burger!

6/i love pretzel sticks dipped in chocolate called ‘Pocky’ (you can get them from vending machines too!)

7/I love tacky souvenir shopping... I love tacky souvenir shopping anywhere as some of you well know, but it’s even more fun in Japan... Haven't gone overboard but have bought myself a Kimono which I’m sending home to mum, and it’s not a tacky one at all... so someone needs to come up with an excuse for me to wear it when I get back. I could have spent so much money on crazy camera stuff and books and all the usuals... lucky I don’t have the room.

8/I love that I got to feel an earthquake... just a little one!

9/I love that I’ve seen some really cool photography exhibitions... One you would have liked Julie T was called ‘moonlight blue earth’ where all the shots were lit only by moonlight, not your average startrails!

10/I love checking out the toy dept’s** in the department stores... nothing on Myer Melbourne toys! They’ve all been relatively small, a little bit of Lego, lots of collectible Barbies (but not many pink box, note to Jenny-Anne, Black lingerie barbie and the blonde one with the white lingerie were 7000 yen, so about 100-120 dollars) but lots of Hello Kitty as to be expected... not as much pokemon as I thought, thank god!

11/I love walking out of Shinjuku station for my first glimpse of Tokyo which feels like your walking onto another planet!

12/I love that everyone is so nice and polite (except on trains) and patient with me for not speaking any of the language (and every time I attempt it I pronounce it wrong!) the guy next to me on the plane (who i’d hardly even spoken to) gave me one of each Japanese coins with a little chart of each one he had drawn on a napkin, so I gave him a caramello koala! And the lady at the inn I stayed at in Kyoto also gave me a little present but I had left my caramello koala’s at Dave's! (note to mum, send more caramello koalas!!)

Well that's it for this episode of ‘Allison’s observations of the world... I leave for the states on the 6th and start at camp on the 10th. Hope everyone is well and please keep me up to date with all important gossip!!!
Lots of Love,
Alli

*remember this is 8 years ago and sushi wasn’t as common in western countries as it is now.

**I had just finished up a year of working at Myer toys so it was on my mind!

reading over this has been a blast from the past!

I have been back to Japan twice since then. The 3rd time was only for one night but it still counts OK! (I was on my way to the States and the Japan airlines flight co-ordination meant a 20 hour stopover with supplied hotel room, my travel agent knew I had friends there so offered me that one. They were a little surprised when I emailed them and said "what are you doing on the night of such-and-such coz I was just wondering if you wanted to take me out for dinner!")

I cant believe how green I was and it's interesting to see what was important to me then. Also many of my favourite aspects of Japan are not mentioned (maybe I didn't discover them until the second trip) like Harajuku on a Sunday and that huge massive toy store over four levels and Onsen and the food area of the department stores where you can pretty much fill yourself up for lunch on samples (gotta love free samples!) and my favourite shopping experience...

The vast range of condoms available! my favourite being 'No Touch' which have little tabs so you can open the packet and avoid touching both the condom and the penis because obviously when you are having sex you do not actually want to touch the person!!!

More chooks...

Meet chook #2 AKA Soup, AKA Brown One... Sorry i've been a bit slack, we've had her about 3 weeks now and she's lovely (unlike Ms. Roast who is still not very friendly). She lets you pat her and pick her up, comes running when she see's you coming and checks out what you are doing through the kitchen window. We are also starting to get some eggs (not sure which one is the producer as yet) so given that they are starting to make themselves useful I am thinking of re-naming them scrambled and poached!

As discussed last night!!!

Obviously the best version ever of Danny Boy!

Some good movies that have graced my screen...

I haven’t been watching all that many movies recently, I don’t tend to have the brain space nor the patience to sit through anything too long, but here is a couple of gems worth mentioning...

The dinner game – Hilarious French comedy about a bumbling idiot... I could relate!
Death at a Funeral – Love a good black comedy!
Stone – Classic Australian film, love the bit where the guy gets his head cut off... so so fake!!!
And Last and defiantly least...
He’s just not that into you – Look I’m not going to say it was good, but it was exactly the kind of mindless papp I needed OK!?
A friend told me a funny story about that one, she went to see it at the movies with a couple of girls from her work, including one who checked her blackberry 3 times during the movie to see if she had a message from a guy who, you guessed it, was just not that into her!

Sleep in a cardboard box!

Check out this cardboard box bedding by Dutch designer Snurk to raise money for homeless charities... I love it!

Old kids on the block...

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed distinct similarities between the Aussie movie Boytown (which I really like except for the completely naff ending!) and the recent return of New Kids on the Block???

A load of swine... AKA. Pigs Bum!?

One thing has upset me about this whole swine flu thing, no one seems at all concerned with the pigs! Think about it, when there was that bird flu thing a while back all the chickens copped the blame and got put down, but no one has mentioned the pigs... the pigs... the poor little pigs!!!

Now I’m not a conspiracy theorist normally, but what about the makers of this Tamiflu pill or whatever it is... What’s the bet they had big piles of this thing they just couldn’t shift and someone thought, hey you know what we need, a good medical scare, nothing too serious, just something along the lines of the common cold will do, hey I’m sure the media won’t mind getting on board here, they love whipping up a good frenzy!!!


P.S. my apologies to anyone who has actually gotten sick from this... I’ve had to stop joking about it at work now that I know someone who’s brothers sisters dogs uncles cousins 14 year old somebody has it... funny thing is, she’s allowed to go out, it’s her parents that have been told they have to stay in quarantine!

Now thats my kind of Library!

Happy world wide knit in public day!

Girls Girls Girls...

Break out the pink wool friends. Contrary to what my psychic Krystal told me last year, and ten years ago, looks like it’s going to be two girls for me...

Now I know that these things can be wrong, but this ultrasound was done by a doctor and I was sent to this place because they are the best. The doctor said he was 100% sure this was a girl and if my obstetrician pulls out a boy he wants to be called straight away!

So now we are on the hunt for girls names... any suggestions?

Enjoy!

Sis...

I’ve been a little slack of late with my unsolicited book review type posts of late; I’ve been reading a lot, but nothing that has really blown me away.

Red Couch Book Club is currently reading Jodi Picoult’s My Sisters Keeper. She’s not the sort of author I would normally pick up; in fact I would probably put her into the category of “Popular faff”. I do have a friend who raves about her though so I was happy to give her a go. I have to say this one is defiantly pulling at the heart strings. The chapters alternate the voices of the characters, all in the present except Sara (the mum’s) which is giving us the background info. Its Sara’s chapters I am finding hard to read, especially the first one, where her two year old daughter is diagnosed with leukaemia.

I have a two year old daughter.

I guess I am also a bit sensitive at the moment, I am around the point in my pregnancy where I lost the last baby, and I am very aware of every movement, or lack thereof. I know on an intellectual level that there was no found reason for the loss of the last one and therefore no indication that it is likely to happen again, but unfortunately these things don’t work on an intellectual level.

So my apologies if I seem a little snappy, or disappear off for a while...

Anyways, back to the book. I am just over half way through and at first I was very sympathetic with the Anna Character and hated Sara, but as it goes along I’m beginning to understand Sara a lot more. I guess it’s that old “Both sides of the story” thing! I’m still finding Sara’s chapters hard to read and I had a bit of a cry over it last night (oh my god, I’m actually admitting to that!!!!) and I know what’s going to happen, but I’m determined to finish it... perhaps a good cry will do me good, just have to make sure I read it when no one’s around!

P.S. (a couple of days after writing this post) I just finished this book and certainly didn't see that one coming! I should have, looking back it should have been predictable. Had a good cry anyway!!!!

Cat Pee Barbie...

Yes I am serious!

In the series of "really strange toys for kiddies" I present Teresa, that's Barbie's friend, and her cat Mika who pee's. yes that's right, you feed it water and squeeze it and it pee's.... It comes complete with Kitty litter box and coloured sand!



Apparently the Barbie one comes with a Pooing dog... Comes with a pooper scooper and everything!!!

Q Balls...

I had a little bit of unexpected fun last night, I got a call from my lovely, puppet loving friend J at about 12.30 yesterday to see if I was free that night, as she had, through a hooked up friend of hers, tickets to Avenue Q. I'm flattered, but not surprised that she immediately thought of me (after all, when I worked at the Arts centre a few years back I took her to a Possum Magic stage show that was on for the school holidays, and we are such big kids that we didn't even bother borrowing any to go with us!)

She rang me back a couple of hours later all concerned when she found out it was the Australian premiere! We had quite a few B grade celebrity sightings; several neighbours "stars", Rove, Some judge guy from so you thing you can dance (apparently!), Natalie Bathingswaite, Someone who looked like a newsreader that may or may not have been Sandra Sully, several radio personalities (I think, it's hard to tell!) and Chris Lilley who was the only one that I was actually excited about!!!

I wasn't quite sure how I would like the show, with the puppeteers on stage but I actually really loved that part, it wasn't distracting at all and really showed the talent of the puppeteers, especially when they were playing multiple characters, both of which were sometimes on the stage at the same time. I'm still not sure about the human characters though, especially Gary Coleman, I didn't really get that and thought it would have been funnier to have a Gary Coleman Puppet.

Poor J though. She's no prude by any means, she just really loves puppets and hates it when they are made to do naughty things! I hope she wasn't too traumatised!!!!

Goin' up the country...

A few years back I took some friends up to my home town, promising them a typical country night out at the pub which should consist of; a)a fight (didn't actually get one, but we did get to see someone turning a table over ) and b) a sighting of Sean Smith's dick (again didn't come through with the goods though the only other female member of our party was on watch for us all night.)

But the following exchange did happen at the urinal in the male toilets between my (very camp) friend S and a man he described as "looking like a huge bulldog";

BD: So, who do you barrack for mate?

S: (shit scared thinking "what do I say, what do I say") Um, Hibs.

BD: Huh?

S: Hibs, Hibernian, their a Scottish team, I'm not from here.

BD: Oh.

Pause.

BD: So you gettin' any?

S: (not wanting to say "well my (equally camp) partner is just outside" and thinking "what do I say, what do I say") Um, I'm working on it.

BD: (slapping him on the back): Well get out there mate, there's plenty of puss out there for the taking!

RIP the Cri!