Merry Madness - or - Gift Guzzling

Ah, the Curse of Christmas is past, the guests - having arrived early and left late - are gone and the wrappings are in the bin. I'd thought the stories about parents buying masses of gifts were a bit of a beat-up until Der Tag. You could have wrapped a tennis court with the paper alone. Kids of 4, 2 (almost) and 6 months? I swear the gift-piles were larger than the kids - really! Never mind that most of it made no impact, created little interest and was discarded in favour of boxes and wrapping to play with. Babies do not need or benefit from this expensive junk.

On the other hand, Think Geek (unpaid plug) provided the usual range of tasteless and yet usable gifts for me offspring. The matching bathmat and shower curtain in white with 'Psycho' style footprints, splatters, hand-prints and streaks in a sort of blood red. The Star Trek 'red-shirt' t-shirt with Expendable thereon. Gifts to cherish and remember.

Now they'll take us seriously. . .

My understanding of zombie biology is that if you manage to decapitate a zombie then it's dead forever Professor Neil Ferguson

Iss the BBC innit? Iss gotta be right, eh?

Some employees OTOH . . .

Decided to make the jump (lurch) to Blu-ray. Off to JBHiFi for an LG that plays H.264, mpeg and the evil mkv files as well as DivX. Worked well for a week or two, then started freezing in mid-movie. Not good. Back to JB Indooroopilly, ready for the fray. Out in 15 minutes with a brand new one thanks to Brad. No arguments, no sending it off to be fixed, lost, dropped, lost again etc. Just take this new one sir. Not only does this one work brilliantly (I was a bit leery of LG as a brand) but ol' Brad has guaranteed good word-of-mouth publicity and my future business. And he knew what he was talking about!

Useless Employees?

My son and hairy decided to get a new car, largely because the Magna died rather suddenly and permanently. Being a life-long student with part-time jobs, he heads off to Credit Union Australia for a loan.
1. "Certainly sir, no problem there, you'll have your money in a few days".
2. "Sorry sir, as you're a student, you'll need a co-signer". (They knew he was a student, it was on the forms and in the original discussion, so. . .?) "No problem then."
3. "Sorry sir, it turns out we don't loan money to students. Ever. Even with well paid jobs. Even when the co-signer has a well paid job. Ever." (WIH couldn't one of these prawns have said that in the first 5 minutes instead of stuffing us about for over a week?)

Round 2, off to the Teachers Credit Union.
1. "Certainly sir, no problem with you being a student as long as you have a co-signer."
2. "Yes, the payslips etc are all in order, you'll have the cheque in no time."
3. "Sorry sir, we can't give you a loan at all. In fact we can't give your mother a loan if your name is on the application. At all. Ever."

Bear in mind he has excellent references, good work record, steady jobs, no bad credit history or criminal record. It's just because he's a student. Now if that is their policy, fine. They can exclude who they like I guess. But why couldn't any of these idiots just tell him that as soon as he walked in the door? Weeks of messing around, pointless collection & filling in of forms, waiting for approval which was always "no problem", "easy". Is it too much to ask that these people know their own companies policies?

Time for brunch?

What a great start to Saturday morning. Check clock - 10.04am. Check wife - snoring at acceptable level. Check weather - bright, clear and pleasantly cool, maybe walk over to Indro for brunch. Why bother blogging this? To give hope to any who may have spent the last 4 hours on child-wrangling, soccer/ballet/netball transport etc, etc. Eventually they either leave or, in the case of our dear son, turn into semi-mythical creatures. Some days we only know he's here because there are strange noises in the night and the tell-tale spoor of dirty socks under the coffee table. And the fridge raids.

Anyway, there is light ahead for all you poor parents. Sleeping in, staying up late, drinking too much, talking rubbish till 3am. It's all there waiting for you. Hang in.

Bearded Nutjobs indeed

Memo to Self: Must remember to issue a fatwah against that NowhereBob chap. Cheeky young infidel implied that I may have been a bearded nutter. Must be some bits he can do without?

My Latest Theory (by Anne Elk)

This theory came (in a flash of inspiration naturally) while sitting out the back burning sticks in the brazier and drinking red. Several reds. See, I like fires. Not big nasty ones but the sort you can sit and stare into for hours. You can poke them, stir them, throw stuff in, watch the sparks and coals, even cook things. And having some bits feel warm while the rest are cold somehow gives you more of a sense of 'conquering the elements' than flicking a switch can. I said it was like nature's screensaver but The Woman gave me one of those 'looks'.

Thing is, most animals are scared of fire and run like the dickens. Except rhinoceroses which of course stamp them out with their large flat feet. So I started thinking about why most humans enjoy the whole campfire thing while Naked Saharan Mole-Rats* (for example) don't. The answer is of course evolution (unless you're my son's ex's mother who can't even say the word without choking and waits daily for the rapture. By all indications that's the only rapture the cold-hearted brain-dead, grasping ... but I digress). I reckon that some Homo Hairybackus's just happened to be a bit odd about fire. Instead of running, they hung around and played with it like us. Maybe some even carried it around on the end of a stick, like an Olympic torch relay but with more grunting and scratching than one tends to see today. Some may have pushed different things in it to see what would happen, as you do. If one of those things was meat - well, I think you see where this is going. Yes, Gordon Ramsay. Before you know it, Tarquin's warm winter fire has attracted a swarm of potential mates and the fire-loving genes are on their way down to us. (I refuse to call early hominids Og or Thag as I believe this to be a form of racial stereotyping. Henceforth let us call them Tarquin or Nigel.)


* I mention Naked Saharan Mole-Rats because they are, IMHO, the world's ugliest and most disgusting mammal. More people should know this so that one day we Mole-Rat Haters can rise up and exterminate them all. If you think this is unjustified, google them and see for yourself. Especially the part where they eat their own faeces or feed the green ones to their baby rats or something. I've had pet rats and nursed injured pythons so I'm not squeamish but these things are just wrong.