The Bed and Breakfast man

New show ideas.

I think I've watched foxtell history, discovery, nat geo and various entertainment channels to death. Time for some new titles. Here's what I'm spruiking.

Whose line is it anyway - Drug dealers crazy fight to the death for the last of the cocaine.

See spot run - Pimple squeezing for beginners.

Magnum pi - The ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter worked out by a delicious ice cream.

Are you being served? - A Wimbledon retrospective.

Gunfight at the OK corral - Next week the corral is new and improved.

The book of Genesis - From the perspective of Phil Collins.

Jurassic Park - Tips on reverse parking your stegosaurus.

The cotton club - David Attenborough looks at early man's least effective weapons.

The Merry Wives of Windsor - What are those kooky royals up to now.

Sheepskin boots

Mrs A. called me an Alpha male the other day.

I've never had that term applied to me before. I'm having urges to mark my territory with bodily fluids all of a sudden. Admittedly she also bestowed said epithet on the Ugg boot salesman I was squaring off against as well. "Two alpha males" she said to my grandmother who we were visiting up at Blackheath. To be honest I'd only stopped to buy the bloody ugg boots because my grandmother's carpet is allergic to shoes, and my feet are allergic to freezing to death on the concrete slab below the carpet and I wanted to avoid whatever ailments are produced by frozen extremities acquired over tea and biscuits.

But he didn't have to insult my Blundstone boots and proffer his belief that redback were superior in every way, and then top it off by trying to sell me the wrong size ugg boots which had just been glued and could not be worn for 24 hours which is slightly longer than it takes to get to my grandmothers house even if the big bad wolf takes up some of our time along the way.

Don't insult the Blundstones man.

I seriously considered walking away from his sheepskinly goodness in and alpha male stalking type huff, but the flashbacks to the last time I visited grandma in the depths of winter with only my stockinged feet had me shaking and sweating like a shell shocked veteran of the Somme.

So I bought them. He probably took the money straight to the redback store and bought a pair with money I had handled.

It's hard being an alpha male.

Varekai

When Icarus fell, we all shed a tear and the term "flying too close to the sun" entered the vernacular. "Wherever" did he go after the fall?

Varekai, so I am lead to believe, means "wherever" in the Romany language of the gypsies, and wherever is a magical place.

Having missed the Umbilical Brothers opening night due to an old war wound, I was pleased to get tickets to the dress rehearsal, pre opening night of the new Cirque Du Soleil extravaganza. We had done some work for them and were kindly offered tickets to last night's performance. I recommend you now, go and see it. If you live out of Sydney, go and see it. If you live on the moon, go and see it.

I had been to one of Cirque Du Soleil's shows a few years back and thought it quite reasonable. But the intervening years have seen changes of breathtaking proportions.

There seems to be two ways to get top billing in a show like this. Work hours each day training, exacting, timing, strengthening, defying injury and I don't think it an overstatement to say even death, and  use those skills to awe your spectators.

Or be capable of physical comedy and getting a laugh.

Seems a little unfair, but the blend of awe and laughter works in the same way a sorbet works to cleanse the palate between spicy dishes. From the acrobatics on stage and suspended over the crowd which have people on the edge of their seats gasping and flinching, and in the case of the people behind me, farting in anticipation of miracles of human skeletal removal, to the laughs as an inept magician and his assistant pull hapless audience members on stage to humiliate them or bring new life to the old moving spotlight gag, each segment gave you a chance to wipe the sweat from your brow before you had to wipe the tears from your eyes.

And the costumes. The costumes would have made a show all of their own. How on earth half the cast didn't trip over their fins, tentacles and other extraneous doodads added to the awesome spectacle of the magical underworld.

Now to ruin the ending for you. Our hero, Icarus, comes to terms with his new found friends, accepts their often misguided yet well timed help, falls in love and learns to fly again.

A fairytale in a big-top.

Photoblog

Anyone who likes the idea of a photoblog, but like me has absolutely no idea how to set one up, go here. It's new, and therefore a little lacklustre, but getting in at beta level tends to benefit you when the paying starts, and it's bound to get more bells and whistles as time goes by. Mine is linked to your right.

Census

Last night was census night. An super fun happy hour of working out what your address is, where you used to live last year and five years ago, how to describe your occupation and feel bad that you haven't done any voluntary work worth speaking of. I think they could have made it easier by putting a check box for generic/average/bloke on the first page. The questions, whilst important in an infrastructure, economic index, population counting sort of way, don't seem to get to the core of, well, anything. So I think it's time we as Aussies had some input in the question writing department.

The top ten questions I would like to see in the census are,

1. Are you a dog or cat person?
2. Scruncher or folder?
3. Is your job in any way related to your childhood dreams?
4. Are you an Alien?
5. Or a pirate?
6. Should magazines that live off Paris Hilton's life escapades be banned from being printed?
7. How would you like to put reality TV personalities to death?
8. Can you actually afford petrol any more?
9. Do these jeans make my bum look fat?
10. Why do people list their religion as Jedi?

Any more suggestions?

Friday on my mind.

If the days of the week are represented by their first letter, or their first two letters for Thursday, and stress is rates on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the greatest stress, 1 being the least stress, and the most basic mathematical equations are bastardised, what, you are probably thinking, will the result be?

Let's take Newtons third law of motion. You know the one. Equal but opposite reaction yada yada. It looks a little something like this.

So if we wanted to represent Monday for example you could write it as S10=-C3(<7.30am) over M. Or in layman's terms a level of stress at factor 10 with an equal but opposite reaction of at least 3 coffees before 7.30 in the morning divided by Monday should cancel all factors out to a state of complete inertia.

Conversely, S1=-B5(>5.30pm) over F (Low stress, 5 beers, after 5.30 on Friday) will, by virtue of alcoholism also, in effect, end in inertia.

Wanting to check the scientific data described above to ensure its validity I then decided to look to my horoscope. It took me a while searching the massive amount of them on the net until I found one that suited me. It's nice how you can pick and choose.

Today, 04 August 2006 Gemini

Few things are more tedious than being forced to concentrate on situations that are as dull as they are practical. But if you don't tackle these now, then when your ruler Mercury moves into the considerably more lively Leo, late next week, these will remain undone, and be far more bother to deal with.

Bingo. My state of inertia be it from coffee and stress or alcohol and Friday has caused me to concentrate on issues that are dull yet practical, insofar as I'm not actually doing any work whilst writing this entry which is dull if not practical, and when Mercury starts hustling in on the turf of Leo I'm going to realise that I should have done said work this week rather than putting it off till next week.

Have a good weekend.