Thursday, January 6, 2011

Books pirates forced me to read this week at gunpoint

Isn’t it weird that read (as in go read that- future tense) and read (as in I already read that – past tense) are spelt the same? It’s like when you look at a word for too long and you’re like fork can’t just be four letters. It’s deceiving me!

Anyhow, I’ve decided to start up a weekly section called what I read this week (actually I’ve changed it. That was too boring). I read at least one book a week, and even if it’s as boring as crap for you, at least it can advise you not to read the stuff I’m reading. And trust me; I have no shame when it comes to reading crappy books. I own the complete Princess Diaries and I’m proud of it. I may even name my daughter Mia.

This week I started out with The Distant Hours by Kate Moreton. Kate is actually a family friend so it’s interesting to read her books and pick up little personal references. This is her third book and I think the best. I read it in one afternoon and was hooked from the beginning. It skillfully weaves the narratives of three sisters and a history hunting daughter and is full of mystery and family secrets. Kick-ass book Kate! She should totally put this review on her back cover.

My next book was The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, the amazing author of A Little Princess (which is not to be confused with The Princess Diaries, although clearly I have a thing for princesses). I’ve read this before but only just found a copy to keep and was inspired by a Vixen Vintage post on the movie. It’s also kick-ass- full of ugly sour girls and bitchy cripples and a total babe called Dickon (imagine him having that name now. Poor bastard. I actually interviewed a teenager whose last name was Dickfrost recently. Sucks to be him). Is it wrong to be crushing on a 12-year-old? Well yes, but he had a lot of animals and I’m a sucker for animals.

Third book was So Much To Tell You by John Marsden, best known for the Tomorrow When The War Began series. This was his first published book and it’s amazing. The book is the journal of a girl who no longer speaks after a horrific accident involving her father. John doesn’t spell out the accident, the results or the situation but lets the reader uncover it.

Next on the agenda – Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra. I read it several years ago but can’t remember much of it. It is an autobiography of sorts, about when Lorenzo and three mates accidently kill someone in a prank, go to boys reformatory and then become hardened criminals themselves after being abused by the guards. Eventually the boys grow into men and shoot their tormentor in a crowded bar decades later, than stand trial for the murder.

Anybody got any more recommendations for me?

I’m pretty sure my body runs best on cheese and cheese flavored snacks

So, as the day of doom approaches (or if we’re being traditional, the wedding), I had to start a diet. Since meeting That Dude I’m Going to Marry I have steadily put on weight as try and match his impressive eating habits.
Turns out, when he was younger he had part of his gall bladder removed and now food essentially goes in one end and out the other. Whereas with me, it goes in one end and then attaches itself to my thighs. F you food.

Below is a photo of my boyfriend. Amazingly I have captured his speech with my camera!




Ok, you got me. It’s Gumby.

Anyway, since I have put on 15 kilos in the 4 years we’ve been together, I really need to do something about this before the wedding. And not just because I’m festively plump, but because I am really unhealthy. I tried to help carry a pretty light TV up the one lot of stairs to our house the other day and stopped breathing on the fifth step. So to fix this I did two things – took up Bikram yoga and went on a diet.

First up, Bikram yoga is effing extreme. It is sweating in a room of 40 degrees (105 if you’re in America) or higher, with 40 per cent humidity, holding poses that basically hurt for 90 mins. People are known to vomit, pass out, cry or literally CRAP THEIR PANTS. I did none of these things because I am a tank.



This video makes it seem like there was a lot of babes sweating sexily to porno music. There is a lot of babes but it turns out, no one sweats sexily.

Now the second part of my master plan – eat well. And I did. I ate mainly vegetables, some turkey and tuna, small amounts of dairy. This may not sound like much, but my typical diet is:
Breakfast – left over pizza from dominos, glass of coke
Lunch (which stretches over the entire work day for me) – packet of Twisties (big), several glasses of coke. Usually sushi or something for the main meal, but not the healthy kinds, the tempura fried, wrapped in egg kind. Or as I like to call it, the good kind. Oh, and at least one Mars Bar

Dinner: more coke, usually steak, some form of potato, a few token veges and a rich creamy sauce.

Sounds like heaven right? Well, after going to Bikram yoga five days a week for five weeks and sticking to my diet of veges, water and lean meat. I lost approximately -2 kilos. That’s right, I gained weight. And don’t give that muscle weighs more than fat crap because I measured myself and I was bigger.

OH AND I GOT A RASH. A big, allergy rash all over my neck and chest that I had to take pills for.
I am allergic to being healthy. My body wants coke, cheese, bread and bacon.

I’m off to combine those ingredients into a sandwich.

This blog she is a-changing (best sung to the tune of These Boots Are Made For Walking)

So – you may have noticed for a while there that I stopped blogging. There are several reasons for this:
a) My computer died. Too much midget porn, according to my buddy who fixed it (I paid him in Cherry Ripe cup cakes and donkey porn)
b) I developed a life. Well, not really, but I did get a whole heap of new books and reading is my favorite thing to do, and we had some family issues and I’ve got this mother-flipping wedding to plan and I took up Bikram yoga ( a post on that soon) and then gave it up again cause it was so pricey.
c) My camera is a P.O.S and I can’t take any decent photos with it and finally
d) I just wasn’t feeling the theme anymore. Really – I love zombies, I love vintage, but confining myself to a particular genre (coming soon to a library near you!) was too limiting. Most of my conversations come back to zombies anyway but when I feel like I have to they just don’t. And my previous posts have been less than amusing, for sure.
So now this blog will be about whatever I feel like. Oh, the crap I’m going to write….
No seriously. It’ll be crap. My apologies in advance.

Today I nearly died, but I’m pretty sure some old ladies just thought I was joy riding and tut tutted at me.

Today I nearly died, but I’m pretty sure some old ladies just thought I was joy riding and tut tutted at me.

No seriously, it has been pouring rain in Brissie all day and while going through the rabbit warren, round-a-bout ridden hell that is the place that I work (let’s call it Smorth Shmakes), my car spun out. I wasn’t speeding, I was just singing along to Regina Spektor while driving through the round-a-bout when WHAMMO I was facing the wrong way. If some one had been behind me it would have become a head on collision.
Some cars coming the other way paused for a second then drove on around me. While I was all “Holy fudgepacker, I just did that thing they do in the Blues Brothers when they park a car and am I even alive?”.



That’s right, near death experiences make me think of the Blues Brothers. Then I drove the wrong way up a road so I could U-turn and get to my interview on time. Because I am a mother-effin professional. And on the way home I did 80 in a 100 zone and five billion trucks passed me and I didn’t care because I was so scared still.

People who get back in cars after serious crashes are amazingly brave.

But the most annoying part about this near death experience is the other motorists seriously seemed to think I was joy riding or hooning or something. And I can guarantee that at least one of them will write a letter to the editor to MY paper about kids these days and probably give out my license plate number. Old people suck (except you Grandma).