Much weirdness on my American TV shows! First Buffy cuts her hair, and now Dawson and Jen are together and happy? (If that means Joey and Pacey hook up again, I’m gonna need somebody in the States with a VCR to capture the moment.)

Lord of the Rings kicked ass. But you knew I’d say that, right? Snookums and I have to go see it again as soon as we get to Sydney, since we missed the first three minutes of the movie. We were out buying popcorn and ice cream, and the thing started without any commercials or trailers or anything! I guess the theater was really trying to push through as many screenings as possible. Anyway, what I saw definitely exceeded my expectations. The fight scenes where terrific; they were everything that I wished Gladiator had been (i.e. brutal and swashbuckling and lasting more than ten seconds). I jumped several times, and there were more scary bits than I expected. (Hello? Who knew Cate Blanchett was that freaky?) Mostly, though, I just wished that I’d been part of the production. Like, say, in casting. Can you imagine?

“Yes, I’d like to run an ad in the paper. ‘Calling all six-foot-tall, blonde, pale, impossibly beautiful and slightly gender ambiguous types to audition for a new film’…”

That would’ve been awesome. 🙂

Nigel Hawthorne died. That sucks.

Boxing Day Betrayal
The deviousness of the Snook family is not to be underestimated. Knowing that I have had a lifelong aversion to seafood, they contrived to make me eat this against my will today. I’m as shocked as you are.

It all started when we sat down to a lovely, light post-Christmas lunch. We had some fruit and smoked chicken, and several boxes of crackers and dips. I asked my beloved Snookums what he was eating, and he replied, “Paté.” I’ve never really had paté before, so I asked him what kind it was. He replied, “Dill. Here, try some.” I wasn’t ecstatic about the concept of eating chicken livers, but I gave it a try. To be honest it didn’t have much taste, but I did notice an unsettling aftertaste that kept me from eating anymore. Later on, I noticed that my dear boy’s water glass had emptied. Graciously, I headed to the kitchen to refill it, and there I spotted a label on the counter which read: “YABBIE AND DILL PATÉ”. I gasped in shock.

You’re probably thinking, “What’s the big deal?” Well, not only was it quite a shock having eaten seafood (considering that the last time I tried it I was throwing up for the next day), but I was stunned that my very own Snookums, who previously had been very understanding about my food phobia, had betrayed my confidence in such a way. Confronted with the evidence, both he and his mother claimed that they were only following my expressed wishes of “introducing it to me slowly.” I maintain that my original statement implied that I would be conscious of what I was eating.

So now it’s up to you, folks. The charge: slipping something that you know your girlfriend doesn’t like into her food and tricking her into eating it, “for her own good.” Harmless prank or heartless betrayal? Please cast your votes in the poll to your left.

Robbie and Nicole got the UK Christmas number one! Good for them.

Next come the locusts.
Seriously, am I jinxed or what? Every time I visit Rodd’s parents, some plague of devastation hits New South Wales. Last time it was the floods, this time it’s the bush fires. If I risk it a third time everyone will probably come down with boils. Sheesh.

Anyway, so yeah, it’s been hot here. Like, over 100 degrees the last few days. I’m coping surprisingly well, considering that I’ve never experienced this weather before. The wind yesterday was insane; it was coming out of the west (i.e. NOT from the coast) and it was so hot and dry you felt like you were standing inside a clothes dryer. We couldn’t even swim because these buggers were washing up on the shore. Of course, Dad told me today that it’s fifteen degrees with an expectation of four inches of snow at home, which makes the situation somewhat more bearable. 🙂

Anyway, I hope everybody had a great holiday. Don’t worry about us; the fires are miles away. I’ll try and get a picture of the smoke on the way home. Ooh! And tomorrow it’s finally Lord of the Rings time! Kickass.

Judging from the current responses to my new poll, it looks like you guys aren’t big fans of the novelty Christmas single. Which is too bad, because some of them rock.

Sunburn. Yep, it’s three days til Christmas and yours truly got a sunburn while traipsing about on the beach today. I’m sure you’re all radiating sympathy… NOT. 🙂

Anyhoo, on Thursday the Snook and I set off for an eight-hour train journey up the coast to his parents’ place. Total nightmare. We arrived at Sydney Central Station to discover that the signalmen had called a random strike that morning and that every departure was currently suspended. So we waited. Miraculously, the strike ended rather quickly and we were only twenty minutes behind schedule. Naively, I thought that was the end of our troubles. Then we boarded our carriage and I discovered that the Australian equivalent of the Herdmans (remember them?) were sitting behind us. A few hours later I sat there gritting my teeth as three half-naked, barefoot, be-mulleted little boys flung themselves from one end of the carriage to the other. They discovered that the railroad magazines would slide on the carpet and amused themselves greatly by “skateboarding” up and down the aisle. They staged ninja fights for our entertainment. They ripped the rubber armrests off the chairs and beat each other with them. I’m serious. And get this: at one point, their mother got up and moved to another carriage, instructing her kids to stay put! Other people were deserting us in droves as well. (Not to mention the fact that the air conditioning wasn’t working so well.) I’ve never been so glad to leave a place in my life. I actually muttered “Thank GOD” as we stepped out onto Eungai platform. Arrrgggh. Luckily Ma Snookums is giving us a lift back to down. I couldn’t bear that trip again.

But anyway, here we are in the country, enjoying the heat and the ocean. I believe the plans for Christmas Day involve a picnic somewhere deep in the bush. Should be fun. Oh, and I haven’t met any leeches this time, thankfully. 🙂

HAVE A GREAT CHRISTMAS, EVERYBODY!

Over the past year I’ve been noticing a new advertising trend. Let’s see if you can spot it:

1. In a UK Ferraro Rocher commercial, a man at a swanky dinner party asks his wife to go get the chocolates from the kitchen. She goes in but wants to keep all the chocs for herself, so she returns with coffee, and then cognac, and her husband gets more and more exasperated, and he’s like, “The chocolates!” And she’s all, “Okaaaay.” And she brings them out and everybody digs in and she’s all upset and like, “Don’t eat them all! Teehee!”
2. In an Australian “Persuasions” commercial, we see a young woman in close-up reluctantly accepting one of the chocolates. She eats it and it’s delicious. “Oh thank you!” she says. “Another one? Oh, I couldn’t. Well… okay!” And the camera’s slowly pulling out, and suddenly we see she’s standing in her living room alone talking to herself surrounded by dozens of candy wrappers on the floor.
3. In another Aussie commercial, this one for some gourmet chocolates, a little old lady comes to visit her friend. Her friend is happy to see that she’s carrying a big box of the chocolates. They have tea together, and the friend keeps reaching for the box, but the other old lady never offers it. Finally they say goodbye and the visitor leaves, still clutching her box of chocolates. She smiles as her friend looks disappointed in the background. The catchphrase: “Too good to share.”

Did you see the pattern? The one where we women are irrational, chocolate loving, childlike insane freaks? Don’t you find that a trifle insulting? The worst part is, every guy I’ve mentioned this to (mostly Snookums and his friends) are like: “Aren’t most women really like that?” Grrrr. It’s like there’s this regression, where we’re heading back to Freud’s vision of women as hysterical creatures of repression and hormones. I can’t even really explain how degrading I find that. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s just a few commercials. But it’s obviously infiltrating the psyches of a lot of guys who should know better.

Fifty-two things they do better in America. Not. The guy who wrote this is obviously a Brit whose only time in the U.S. has been on holiday. As someone who’s actually LIVED in both countries for a significant amount of time, here are some of my corrections:

2. Senior citizen reductions at cinemas and in restaurants from 60 years, “with ID” (ie driving licence). Huh? Every cinema I went to in the U.K. had an “OAP” (Old Age Pensioner) discount.

3. Free refills of coffee (without asking). The only places that happens are diners and Big Boys (i.e. places with really, really bad coffee). And personally, I hate when the waitress comes around and ruins the perfect ratio of milk and sugar I had painstakingly created, which was the only thing allowing me to drink the sludge in the first place.

4. Supermarket baggers – courteous youngsters who expertly pack your purchases at the checkout while you fumble with your wallet. I worked in a grocery store for four years. We’re not courteous, and we’re not experts. We’re high schoolers getting paid minimum wage. The only reason I didn’t squash your eggs was that I didn’t want to get yelled at.

8. “Less talk, more rock” on pop radio – ie 15-minute music blocks (no ads, no DJ chatter). Ha! Try driving to Chicago on a weekday morning. Turn the dial all you like; you won’t hear a damn bit of music unless it’s a commercial. And I hate that Mancow guy.

9. Overtaking on the left or right on the motorway. Only if you’re in the wrong lane, Pops. Get in the slow lane or you’ll cause an accident.

29. One dollar (70p) bills and 1c (0.7p) coins. Small denominations mean that shopkeepers can’t overcharge you by rounding up. Are you kidding? It was such a hassle when I went home to suddenly be given handfuls of dollar bills as change. I much prefer a pound. And hello? I had pennies in Britain. Pennies are the worst things ever. You can’t actually buy anything with them. All you can do is save them up and take them to the bank to change in, which banks are getting more and more reluctant to do (or the bastards make you put them in “rolls” when you know darn well that they’re just gonna weigh them anyway). Actually, I think I like the Australian system best. They have no pennies; everything is rounded up to the nearest nickel (which is only about two American cents, anyway). Small price to pay for the luxury of having less change to carry around.

30. High-school graduation, and regular class reunions. High school sucks. Graduation sucked. Nobody likes class reunions.

42. “Happy holidays!”, not “Merry Christmas!” at the festive season. TV stations say “Happy Holidays” because they don’t want to offend their audience. Everybody else who isn’t Jewish says “Merry Christmas”. You just do.

52. Timeouts in spectator sports like basketball (you have a chance to pee and not miss the highlights). Wrong. Timeouts are so the networks can make more money by shoving in commercials, you incontinent old man. Ever been to a real football game? TV timeouts are the most annoying thing to a real fan. Learn to hold it or buy a Tivo.

Wow. That’s my rant for the day.