they're always after me lucky charms

this is the type of media coverage that, on a certain level, makes me long for my home country. at the same time, it also makes me glad that i am no longer subjected to fox news even though i am living in the country that spawned rupert murdoch. while the story seems to be from a quaint local news station (sans the southern twang we might expect), it smacks of something fox news would have pulled from its proverbial asshole.

i'd also like to point out that the amateur sketch bears a striking resemblance to james carville, albeit if he lost the glasses and donned some sort of bowler hat.

many thanks to the wodie for discovering this fine example of journalistic integrity.

and on a related note...

reasons why i am proud to be a pseudo-australian

i have been meaning to discuss this article for quite a while but, as usual, life and working for The Man have gotten in the way. (alvin purple also stood in my way for a few hours last night, but that was an entirely pleasurable detour as i'm all about campy 70s sex romps). 

my ideas are barely in the blastula phase of development, but i am thinking about somehow molding this proposal into the topic of the research project that will be consuming my life for most of 2008. the link between population control and climate change is certainly politically timely, and i love the idea of tax and carbon credits for contraception. it may turn into a bit more of a philosophical discussion than i'm willing to tackle, and may make me yearn for the simple days when gonorrhea or anal sex were more likely to be the topics of my research, but i think this is an idea that i need to gestate for a bit before deciding whether or not to abort it. 

i need to stop writing before i am tempted to include any more ill-advised puns in this post.

reasons why i am glad i am not canadian

so i haven't posted in approximately 5 months. this is due to a variety of reasons, some school-related, some work-related, some booze-related, some relationship-related, some "hey! a computer virus stole my bank account info and transferred all my money to the middle east via arizona"-related, some "hey! some bogan punks broke into our house and stole our computers"-related. in any case, it's been an eventful southern hemisphere late winter/spring.

my mind has been churning in efforts to come back with a bang, with a post or anecdote that is truly extraordinary. and thanks to the ladies at go fug yourself, and to shofferhoffer for alerting me to the existence of their recent post, i think the time has come. it is also especially timely as i will be returning to north america for three whirlwind winter weeks of holiday celebrations and will be a mere hour's drive from the canadian border.

after watching this, i feel that one hour's drive is all too close.

enjoy.

every week is shark week in australia

this post is dedicated to my old chum (pun not intended until i did some proofreading and noticed it and saw how awesome it was) from upstate, peter, who loves shark week like no other. he is planning his '08 sojourn to the melb around next year's shark week (which should make me feel slighted but doesn't), and instructed his office assistant to make him one of those construction paper chains where you rip off one of the links for each day leading up to a specific event, the event in this case being shark week. he will then celebrate the end of the chain with a trip to legal seafoods.

peter also hates anything to do with menstruation.

why am i mentioning this?

check out the last bullet under the subheading "in popular culture."

i truly hope i haven't shattered his worldview.

oh my god, i'm back again

for my first back-in-oz post, i'd like to introduce the concept of all-you-can-eat souvlaki, often abbreviated souva because we can never let any word go without a diminuitive around these parts, can we?

then i'd like to direct your attention to what souva-makers apparently like to do in their spare time, which seems about right for those who have decided to make skewered meats their life passion. (please note that the link on the page is for their "achievement"; someday i hope these resourceful souvlakieers will find another world record to break so that we can change that to the more prestigious-sounding "achievements").

many thanks to google ads for providing a link to this establishment with an email concerning lunch tomorrow that had absolutely nothing to do with souva, zorba, or greece in general. unless threshermans is owned by greeks? no? didn't think so.

and please pardon the comic sans on ozvlaki's home page. let's not get shofferhoffer all riled up.

*insert catchy disco beat here*

i think very few songs are classic enough to have their own website.

*sigh* if only i had been alive during disco's death rattle. i wasn't even a glimmer of a thought in the minds of swen & the clown circa 1980. they were too busy attending pink floyd laser shows at the strasenburgh planetarium and the like.

please don't ask why i was wikipedia-ing funkytown in the first place...just trust that i have my reasons.

speaking of making moves to towns that are right for me, i will be heading back to the homeland of upstate NY on wednesday for two and a half weeks of summery bliss! the main focus of the trip is the wedding of one mary boom boom...who would have thought that a software engineer could tame that wildcat? good onya, jed. perhaps i will be proactive enough to post some bridal party photos here, but in all likelihood i will be too busy soaking up that northern hemisphere sun to give a damn.

until our next bit of aussie miscellanea...

toads for beer

for once, i wish we had a cane toad infestation in victoria. this would easily help me reconcile my drinking habit with my student income.

before you scoff at such a scheme, which actually promotes the humane euthanisation of the toads, please consider that one of the other suggestions was to organise a mass slaughter with golf clubs and cricket bats. the fact that this proposal came from a federal MP (that is, member of parliament) should give you a bit of insight as to the type of mentality we're dealing with here.

also worth noting: the fact that the RSPCA promotes the use of haemorrhoid cream to euthanise the toads; the antiquated aussie/british spelling of the word 'haemorrhoid', (welcome to the world of the public health scholar, where everything is all tumour, oestrogen, faecal, and diarrhoea about itself); and the fact that the locals were willing to compromise by placing said cream to the ends of their golf clubs. classic.

as most of you are likely unfamiliar with the origins of the cane toad scourge, let me direct you to the IMDb page of one of my favourite cinematic masterpieces. i own it on DVD, so let me know if you'd like to organise a personal viewing.

never trust a big butt & a smile

i am not ashamed to admit that i know pretty much every word to this song.

if you have any doubts as to the truth of the above statement, just ask the wodie who was around for my belated BBD obsession circa freshman year at GW. (and by belated i mean, seriously, like 11 years after the song came out).

the wodie is a bit of a poison fan herself, albeit in the bret michaels "every rose has its thorn" sense.

she subjected me to that song for a good 6 months or so, so methinks it was fitting that i subjected her to a bit of poison myself.

my cervix is not a subway platform...

...or a footscray* tram stop for that matter.

ladies, read here.
men, this link is for you.

(many thanks to the shofferhoffer for passing this bit of info along).

while this type of satire is delightful, it is painful to acknowledge the facet of truth in which it is steeped. exhibit A:



unfortunately, at the rate i'm going it seems as though my future husband will not only be holding a bare stem, but one that's been de-thorned and stripped with a vegetable peeler. good thing i am hoping to eschew the husband notion and shack up with my future partner in a sort of goldie hawn/kurt russell-esque de facto blasphemous cohabitation situation. will jesus still love me? does jesus actually care?

i applaud those of us whose cervixes (cervices?) manage to straddle the fine line between public toilet and spring-loaded steel bear trap.

*while the suburb of footscray has the dubious distinction of being one of the most undesirable places to live in the melb, it deserves credit for (oddly enough) housing the headquarters of lonely planet publications.

live simply/run wild

suck on this, barbie.

call me when you come complete with a bag chock-a-block with home grown "herbs."