Cloudy with a Chance of Bullshit.

Imagine if you were violently electrocuted by lightning hitting your house because you were on your (charging) laptop, manically looking up the B.O.M. (Bureau of Meteorology) to check if there was the possibility of a thunderstorm approaching. 

Would that be irony? Or stupidity? Or a dodgy safety switch system?

I do it all the time, even though Scotto yells at me when I do.

The trouble is, where we are in Townsville, North Queensland, we always seem to miss out on the cooling rain and storms. It’s something to do with the bloody topography.

We lust rain here. I’d give away my first born for rain. In fact he’d probably give himself to you if you paid off his HECs debt.

This has been the hottest summer I’ve ever experienced up here in frontier land.

But if there’s one thing I hate, it’s whingey, whiny blog posts, so I won’t tell you about how I can’t even tell anymore if I’m having a hot flush or if the mercury level has burst through the thermometer and seeped into my brain.


I won’t even tell you about the kids in my class who come to me with blue lips and their teeth chattering, begging, “Mrs. Poinker, for the love of Jesus, can you please turn the air-conditioning down?” and how I just reply, “No. Bugger off and bring a jumper to school tomorrow.”

I won’t go into the grim details of how my yoghurt curdles in the short trip to work or how there are mushrooms growing between my toes because of the humidity.

Instead I want to tell you about an idea I’ve had and I need your imput.

I want to be a weather person thingy.

I want to be ‘unaccountable’.

I want to say things like, “Tomorrow there’ll be a 50% chance of storms.”

Can you imagine if I was sitting in a parent teacher interview and I said,

“Your son has a fifty per cent chance of passing but only if the south winds form a trough that provide a cool breeze that intercepts with the upper atmosphere moisture. There’s a chance of his scraping through mathematics but his literacy is light and variable, depending on the tides. He’s a bit foggy in the morning but that should clear at morning tea when he eats his first food for the day when it may become windy. We usually expect unstable and inclement weather after lunch when he’s had his salt and vinegar chips with an iced coffee chaser.”

I just love the way weather forecasters hedge their bets.


New career for me?

What career would you like to switch to?

“So Mrs. Poinker, will you be going up to Grade Five next year with us because you’ll have learned everything in Grade Four?” asked a little cutie in my class today.

“No sweetie, this is my sixth year in Grade 4,” I replied despondently.

She looked at me with a soupcon of pity. 

“What a dumbass teacher Mrs. Poinker is,” she must have been thinking.

The truth is I don’t know if I’ll even have a job next year what with our tree change to Mount Tamborine and all. Unlike Pete Evans, I don’t look in the mirror and see a youthful teenager staring back at me. I see a woman of advanced years with glazed eyes, a relaxed jawline and a possible penchant for furtive drinking.

Scotto keeps encouraging me to write application letters and get my name out there but I’m scared. I haven’t written one of those types of letters for decades… centuries even.

I don’t even know what my strengths are: an ability to exploit highly expressive and ludicrous voices when I’m reading stories to the students in order to hold their attention? 

I don’t think that would cut it.

Maybe my prospective employers will take one look at my resume, have a good snort over it when they spot my age and chuck it in the bin.

Perhaps I should look for work outside of teaching.

Most teachers I know, exhausted at the end of term, say they’d quite like to work at Bunnings. They’re particularly specific about it being Bunnings. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s because there are lots of aisles you can hide in and slide under with a nice magazine.

Or it might be that there are rarely any children to be seen mid-week at a Bunnings outlet.

I don’t fancy Bunnings myself. I don’t know the difference between a Sphincter Valve and a Grease Nipple Kit.

I could see myself working in a second hand bookstore though. Preferably one I owned myself. I could take my dogs to work with me and sit around in a rocking chair with a shawl over my knees sipping tea and ignoring customers. I own enough books to have a book store. But then I’d probably sell them and have to order more and I couldn't stand the paperwork. Besides I don’t think second hand books are much of a money spinner.

Of course I could incorporate local wine tastings into the second hand book shopping experience. We could have poetry readings (where I got to use my silly voices) and wine sessions to raise extra revenue. Although I’d most likely drink all the wine and end up with a hangover I suppose.

But then I’d get to sleep in every day because no one wants to buy books in the morning do they?

I could open the shop at 11:00 am and have a nice breakfast before work. I’d have eggs and sausages I think. 

I could learn to paint watercolours and have a corner of the shop set up with my works for sale. I might become famous and rich… it’s not impossible. 

Is it?

Yeah I know. I’d better write those bloody letters and get my name out there.

I’m not fishing for compliments but can you think of any hidden strengths I might have?

Does anyone want to write my resume for me?

The Amazing New Amoeba Diet

This week, proponents of the Paleolithic Diet are reeling in shock after a new hypothesis emanated from experts and fanatical adherents to weight loss regimes. 

The latest diet, the Amazing Amoeba Diet has surpassed the Paleo diet in popularity stakes and dominates the conversation topics of fashionable A Listers such as the Kardashians, Paris and Nicky Hilton and their little brother, Perez. 

The theory behind the popular Paleolithic diet is based on the premise that before the development of agriculture and animal husbandry, humans satisfied their nutritional needs with foods readily available at the time. Modern human metabolisms have been unable to adapt quickly enough to cope with foods such as grain, dairy and Macca’s Fillet o Fish, thus leading to a breakdown in our digestive system’s ability to cope and leading to insidious disease and a lot of unnecessary fatty boombahism.
Paleo exponents recommend we eat a diet matching early Stone Age man in order to place our metabolisms back on track.

How about we do a Maccas run instead tonight?

However, leading experts now purport that we, as a society, need to re-evaluate our calculations to even further back in history and examine the original source of life 3.5 billion years ago; when single-cell marine organisms first appeared.

Dr Rocky Crust, Senior Professor from the Crock Swindler Institute states,

“The one-celled creatures living in the cradle of Earth’s life provide the true revelation of where our digestive systems should be at. The amoeba didn’t need to go and enter silly marathons, Colour Runs or pay expensive gym memberships in order to prevent diabetes, tooth decay and obesity. 

In fact, the simple creatures did very little exercise apart from a lazy swim around a warm pond. The crux of the matter is this; you can’t get much thinner than a single celled creature can you? I think that pretty much sums up our argument. The amoeba’s exceptional secret to a bikini bod was its impeccable diet.”

But what did the single cell organism actually eat all those years ago? 

In light of the fact the amoeba was not in possession of a centralised organ (a.k.a brain) it still managed to maintain a regulated nutrient supply. 

“Much like a teenage boy,” declared Dr Crust. “the amoeba sucked up protein and sugar from anywhere it could in a 2:1 ratio. It was a ravenous scavenger.”

Professor Fay Kerr from Crock Swindler has already written and published a book on the topic, “The Euphoric Prehistoric Cook Book” with accompanying suggested recipes such as the delicious sounding, Archean Primordial Soup. The professor is also working on her second book whilst touring the country promoting her upcoming television series, “The Dubious Nucleus Rules”.

When asked for his opinion on the new diet, self-professed Paleo authority, Pete Evans had this to say, "It's a load of f#*&ing garbage."

The jury is still out on the Amazing Amoeba Diet but the evidence looks promising.



Warning: This diet is not recommended for anyone under the age of 3.5 billion years.

Why aren't they called Cockatoo Smugglers?

I was having a quick, condensed, twenty minute conversation with some colleagues in our staff room the other day and I won’t name who it was because one of them recently threatened to sue me for alleged defamation on my blog (hi Shazza). Two of them were male colleagues and the other was Lee-lee.

For some reason; I think it was the impending swimming carnival, we were discussing budgie smugglers, banana hammocks, lolly bags, DTs (aka dick togs) and whatever else they’re called.

“I can tell you an embarrassing story about budgie smugglers!” I said.

Four forks full of microwaved leftovers clinked down on plates and four sets of eyes stared at me in unadulterated fascination.

“What?” hissed Lee-lee. “Tell us, Pinky!”

Lunch time in the staffroom is pretty boring.

“Well…” I tantalisingly drawled, enjoying my fifteen seconds of fame. “It was when my kids were little and having swimming lessons. The swim coach wanted to talk to me about their progress and he was standing there dripping wet in his budgie smugglers and I had a fleeting glimpse at his bulging manhood.”

“What? You mean you looked at it?” choked J.B. one of my male colleagues in absolute disgust.

“I had to!” I squawked in my own defence.

“You had to?” he echoed with barely disguised contempt.

“I couldn’t help it!” I said. “It was like my eyes were drawn to it! You know when someone has a mole the size of a twenty cent piece in the middle of their face with hairs sticking out of it and you can’t help staring? I didn’t want to look at it!”

“So what did he do? Did he catch you looking?” asked an enthralled Shazza.

“Yep, he knew I’d glanced at it alright. He just sort of stopped talking for a few seconds and sneered at me in distaste, then kept talking about Thaddeus’ doggy paddle style.”

“And what did you do after that?” asked O’Reilly.

“I think I blushed, and very soon after that changed swim schools,” I replied, picking at my chia seed health bar thoughtfully.

I’ve never forgotten the incident which occurred about twenty years ago. It still makes me cringe in shame.

The trouble with budgie smugglers is that there’s only the sheerest of nylon between the pulsating thing enclosed and the outside world. It’s impossible to maintain eye contact when you’re talking to a man wearing nothing bar a nylon tissue standing two feet away from you without peeking and I think this is why women hate them so much.

We don’t want to look but we sort of have to. It’s not nice but it’s true.

It’s a similar thing when you’re talking to someone who’s cross-eyed and you don’t know which eye to look at so you just stare at a spot in the middle of their forehead because you don’t want to inadvertently address your concerns to the eye that's not really looking at you.

Anyway, at the end of the day I think the little chat with my male colleagues was beneficial because they both wore board shorts to the swimming carnival yesterday, praise the lord. 

Either that or they’re now afraid of me.

Nothing Ever Bloody Works

My friend Mailer Daemon

I received a shite load of emails the other night from someone called ‘Mailer Daemon’. 

There were over two hundred, all up. Ms or Mr Daemon sent them to me straight after I’d opened a strange email from a friend of mine which contained an advertisement from that irritating crowd who market Cambogia Garcinia weight loss tablets.

My friend had been hacked and by opening the email sent to me it seemed I too had been violated; e-Raped.

If you get a weird email from me telling you to try Camdodgier Farcinia belly fat tablets, then don’t open it. I would never promote this product in a million years because… well, it clearly doesn’t frickin work despite what the ‘celebrities’ say.

This is how I know.

If it really worked no one in the world would be fat.

If there really was a miracle cure for fatness everyone would buy it and there’d be no fatties left, including me. I’d guzzle those tablets like they were Tic Tacs.

When everyone became thin as a twig it wouldn’t be the preferred shape anymore and everyone would want to be fat again. We’d be spammed by Sara Lee instead of tamarind extract. 

Models would waddle down the catwalk and we’d all be a lot less p#ssed off.

As I’m always telling Scotto when he stares longingly at the telly, it’s the same with those heinously expensive baldness cures you see advertised.

If they worked do you think this terrible situation would exist?

Do you think this very wealthy man would go around looking like he scraped the hairs from Pamela Anderson’s shower drain and glued them to his head if there was a real solution? 

It's not as if he can't afford it.



I’ll tell you something else that doesn’t bloody work the way they do on the telly; fast food joints.

Every fudging time I go via the drive thru thingy they say, “If you wouldn’t mind just driving forward and waiting in that bay, madam.”

My brother-in-law Pedro, just grouches, “Nup,” when they ask him to park and wait. “This is supposed to be fast food, bring me my fast food!” he says defiantly and sits behind the wheel in steely resolve. They can’t call the police can they? They just have to cook his burger really fast, like fast food should be cooked.

Varicose vein creams don’t work either. Magical face creams never give you the same result as a face-lift. You'd be better off pulling your ponytail extra tight.

Under garments that are supposed to make you look 10 kgs lighter just push the fat up under your arms. Fake nails wreck your own nails the same way eyelash extensions wreck your own eyelashes.

And don't get me started on computers and the like.

Technology NEVER works properly. I’m yet to attend a conference where the speaker is unimpeded by ‘gremlins’ in the system when attempting to show a carefully constructed video they laboured over for hours and which is intrinsic to the presentation.

In fact I think technology is THE most unreliable product in the universe. Literally. #See Mars Rover.

Nothing works like they say it does. Nothing. Everything is substandard rubbish.



What have you been hideously disappointed with lately?

A Valentine's Day Quicky

An author/blogging friend, Susan Lattwein prompted a Flash Fiction challenge for Valentine's Day.

Susan has written and published two books, Arafura and its sequel which are available on Amazon.

Pinky's Flash Fiction

Lola stuffed the corner of the letter under the bread container where she could be sure Chris would find it. 

‘Ha!’ she thought, ‘A nice little surprise for him to find when he arrives home.’

Suddenly, with nervous afterthought she decided to check it one more time. Sliding the note out and opening the folded paper she reviewed her shaky writings.

Dear Christopher,

Firstly, thank you for picking me up from the airport last night and wining and dining me at our favourite restaurant by the river. You called me every night I was away to check I’d opened one of the seven cards you’d so eloquently penned and left concealed in my suitcase; one for each day. ‘Such a romantic man,’ I thought. ‘My soulmate.’

The flowers, the quartet of violins, the private terrace and your romantic proposal, gosh, last night was like a fairy tale.

I awoke this morning to find your note telling me to enjoy my lie in and to let myself out of your unit at my leisure. I luxuriated under the doona thinking about our future and your beautiful words to me last night. I held the diamond ring up to the sunlight streaming gloriously through the window and watched the carats sparkle.

I’ve never felt so warm, contented and safe. Our lives could not be more perfect, Chris.

Then I found them.

Was one week too long for you to wait for me, my virile Narcissus? Did you endeavour to fight your carnal desire but discovered seven days was just too long a time to resist quenching your animalistic needs?

The three long, blonde hairs on your pillow slip were hard to miss.

At first I tried to come up with an explanation. Your housekeeper’s hair perhaps, I desperately grasped at straws. Then I recalled Mrs. Cheeseman’s short, matronly, grey bob.

Well Chris, I’d like to say thank you for the good times. I can see this relationship meant much more to me than you.

As the ancient Chinese saying goes, I hope you rot in hell.

Lola.

P.S. The diamond ring is in the toilet bowl and I’ve concealed the bag of prawns from your fridge somewhere special. I’m sure you’ll sniff them out eventually.

Satisfied the note was adequately pithy, Lola heaved her handbag over her shoulder and pulled the deadlocked door of the unit closed; a symbolic closing of one rather large window in her life.

Trembling with emotion, she walked past Chris’ spoiled Afghan hound lounging on the patio and stopped. She’d miss Sheba. Despite her constant slobbering, Lola found her to be an affectionate old mutt and she felt sad she’d never see the dog again.

Lola stooped to rub the dog’s neck just behind her furry ears. It was the place Sheba loved to be stroked the most.

It was then Lola noticed the long blonde hairs all over the patio decking and the penny dropped.



She glanced back in horror at the deadlocked door and wondered why she’d never asked Chris for a key.

Don't forget to check out the first five chapters of Lee-Anne Walker's exciting new novel, "Eyes of Violet" on Pinky's Previews

Fifty Shades of Foreplay

This is my Valentine's Day post.

Toenail Clippings

1. Sets air-con in her bedroom to below freezing.

2. Locks the front door with wicked relish.

3. Wipes down her dusty bedside table to clear away odd fluff and toenail clippings.

4. Polishes wine glass until it sparkles.

5. Puts  crisp wine in fridge to chill.

6. Prepares low fat cheese and fruit plate.

7. Covers plate with Glad Wrap and puts in fridge.

8. Cleans teeth.

9. Flosses teeth and spits blood. Cries a little at disintegrating-body-syndrome symptoms.

10. Uses mouth wash.

11. Showers with delicious, coconut body scrub.

12. Washes and conditions hair with products that smell like strawberry shortcake. Feels hungry.

13. Shaves her legs and puts toilet paper dots on cuts afterwards.

14. Applies silky body lotion with sensual strokes avoiding stinging cuts on legs.

15. Scrapes dead skin from her feet with pumice.

16. Brushes dead skin off bed onto carpet.

17. Blow dries her hair in sexy fluffy waves.

18. Applies cherry lip balm to her dry lips.

19. Puts fig-scented moisturiser on bedside table for later.

20. Changes the sheets on bed. Thinks it must be about a fortnight since last change. Can't recall. 

21. Fluffs her pillows.

22. Sprays expensive perfume around room to disguise pervading doggy aroma.

23. Closes blinds.

24. Opens blinds again and checks street for strange cars after hearing German Shepherd in backyard barking head off.

25. Straightens wedding photo on wall.

26. Smiles wistfully at the youthful faces in photo.

27. Notices gecko poo on photo frame.

28. Scratches off poo with fingernail.

29. Files broken fingernail with emery board.

30. Checks phone for messages.

31. Sees message from eldest son asking obscure question about the life of Mao Tse Tung.

32. Turns phone on to silent.

33. Fires up laptop.

34. Answers urgent emails regarding periodontal appointment confirmation.

35. Becomes engrossed in video about cats terrorising dogs.

36. Snaps laptop shut with steely willpower.

37. Checks self in bathroom mirror with stomach sucked in.

38. Checks self in mirror for front on view.

39. Tries to stifle bitter tears.

40. Checks self while squeezing stomach fat and pushing it to the side, out of sight.

41. Sees distant possibility of nice body after six week 500 calorie a day diet.

42. Feels slightly optimistic.

43. Does a little dance in front of mirror and feels sad again when sees how much jiggling is occurring.

44. Puts on flattering (loose) nightie.

45. Goes downstairs and retrieves wine and cheese plate.

46. Takes upstairs and places on bedside table.

47. Pours chilled wine in glass.

48. Pushes arrogant Chihuahua off her side of the bed.

49. Slips between cool sheets.

50. Dims lights.



Turns on Kindle to read latest Marian Keyes book and at last feels completely and utterly satisfied.

Today I lost 85kg but gained 55 back.

So... are you ever coming back Dad?

This morning Scotto flew off to work in Cairns for a week. The dogs were a bit peeved about it.


But my 18 year old daughter, Lulu arrived back home today after two weeks of partying in Melbourne… alive.


She phoned me last week all in a huff.


Apparently she was scolded by a train officer for putting her feet on the train seat and given a $200 fine.


“Did you tell him you come from Hicksville where we don’t have frickin trains?” I asked her in panic as it suddenly dawned on me she’d probably spent all her holiday funds and would have to borrow the money for the fine from me.


“Yes Mum,” she replied. “But he didn’t care. He went off his brain.”


Bloody, officious train people.


So I thought I’d pen a letter to voice my concern.


Dear Mr. Fat Controller,


Recently my daughter, Lulu was visiting your fair city of Melbourne and made the mistake of restin’ her pinkies on one of your train seats. I heard you did ya lolly with ‘er. In her defence I’d like to point a few facts out if it’s not too much bother to ya and I hope ya not goin’ to go off at me like a bucket of prawns in the hot sun, like ya did to my daughter.


Ya see we don’t have no trains up here in this necka the woods in North Queensland. Bugger me, we don’t even have no buses that run past drinkin’ time. Why, my kids don’t even wear shoes up here unless they have to cross the bitumen road, and there ain’t too many of them to be seen here either. Mosta our roads are the dirt kind.


Fair dinkum, I remember takin’ my kids to the Pacific Fair Shoppin’ Centre at the Gold Coast so’s they could ride up and down the escalator thingimebobs for a few hours as entertainment. They’d never seen movin’ stairs before. It was like some kinda miracle. Even then the security guards were very understandin’ and let us go without callin’ no boys in blue.


The only trains North Queenslanders know about is them cane trains and they don’t have no seats at all! You can ride in ‘em but you gotta make sure you hop out before they arrive at the sugar refinery ors you might end up as molasses.


I knows it must be hard for youse all to do your job with all those kids slashin’ seats and puttin’ their chewy and graffiti all over the place, but me little girl ain’t done nothin’ wrong like that. I’d be real cheesed off if that was the case. She’d be in for a walloping if I ever caught wind about those types of shenanigans.


Up here in North Queensland we put our filthy feet up on’n everythin’: the seats in the thee-aters, the doc’s surgery, the cinemaplex and sometimes even up on the dinner table. That’s if we’re lucky ‘nough to have a dinner table and not just be using a crate of four x beer left over from the Sundee roast chook.


Crikey, we even pick things up with our feet up here. If I’m cookin’ dinner and a pea rolls off me husband’s plate I just pick it up with me toes and put it back on the plate.


I’ll have a good chinwag with me daughter when she gets home this arvo and tell ‘er about how much more culturated youse Melbournians are and how ya don’t do things like plant your drongo feet on a train seat.


I know ya work on a train but I’ll bet ya don’t have tickets on yourself and won’t mind pullin’ your head in for once. I know indignants is no excuse for the law but it’d be really grouse if you could kinda forget about that fine because she needs to pay to have ‘er car fixed and has Buckley’s chance of gettin’ the dough outta me.


Cheers Big Ears,

Pinky xx

How do you reckon that'll go down?

P.S. Scotto just rang to say he's only 75kg not 85kg. 
Soz.

Linking up with Jess at Essentially Jess for #IBOT

Dummy Knobs

Dumb as a door knob.

“I have to stop in at Bunnings when we’re out shopping Pinky,” said Scotto yesterday morning.

I grunted my disapproval. I hate going to bloody Bunnings with all its dusty aisles full of boring rivets and screws.

“I need some dummy knobs,” he added.

“Isn’t that tautology?” I asked.

He rolled his eyes. “You’re a dummy knob, Pinky.”

“No, you are,” I replied with the quick wit I’m renowned for.

We have to start fixing up our house since we’re putting it on the market later in the year.

The dummy knobs are for the lounge room doors which my five kids have gradually wrecked after thirteen years of careless yanking.

There’s a big crack in the upstairs hallway wall which Hagar and Jonah created many years ago during a particularly violent altercation over a mystery ten dollar note.

Of course the carpets all need replacing due to nail polish, paint and Macca’s coke spills; especially the one in the corner bedroom where a certain eighteen year old spewed all over the middle of the floor after celebrating his inaugural drinking birthday. No matter how hard I scrubbed the stain never came out and that was seven years ago.

The walls all need painting after a generation of fifty grubby, little fingers covered in Nutella then later mechanic’s grease, were smeared all over them. Not to mention the blu-tack stains dotting every centimetre; the result of Michael Jordan or Justin Bieber posters from days gone by.

Even the tops of the door frames are heavily soiled from when my young men grew bigger and would jump up to see how tall they were getting... every time they walked through them.

Each set of blinds in the house needs to be replaced since every single one was snapped after one of my baby bear cubs viciously pushed the other into the blind's vicinity during a fight over television channels, access to the only computer in the house, or whom stole the other's rubber thongs.

Three bedroom doors need to be restored; the constant slamming has almost ripped them from their hinges.

The wooden floors in the downstairs’ hallway need a re-polish after over a decade’s worth of scuffing basketball shoes, footy spikes and a gaggle of teenage girls in high heels on their way to a party.

Our grass is destroyed after Monday spaghetti nights when all five kids descend like fruit bats for a feed and park their cars on our front lawn. It’ll need re-turfing for sure.

There’s so much work to do.

And so many precious memories of a happy, growing family will be erased so that the house is sparkling and fresh; ready to welcome a new, young family, who’ll hopefully have as much fun as we did while wrecking it all over again.

How long have you lived in your current house? Would moving be a monumental effort for you too?

On a less sentimental note! Please check out my friend Lee-Anne Walker's new novel, "Eyes of Violet" on Pinky's Previews.

I'll be posting the first five chapters of Lee-Anne's enthralling novel each day this week.

Enjoy!

Don't Do Drugs!

We were probably tempting fate when we named our Chihuahua, Pablo Escobark, after the infamous drug lord.

Scotto pulled up in the driveway after work on Tuesday to find a highly distressed Pinky, pacing the front patio with a bedraggled Chihuahua draped in a towel in her arms.

“Don’t close the garage door!” I shrieked melodramatically. “We might have to rush to the vet! We have a situation!”

I’d arrived home from work, made a coffee, began reading the newspaper then noticed Celine the fox-terrier had followed me upstairs but the Chihuahua was nowhere to be seen. This was uncharacteristic of him. I called out and waited for the familiar rat like, scuttling noises up the stairs… but none came. 

I sighed and wandered downstairs.

Honestly, it’s like having a three year old; gawd knows what the little shite was up to.

I heard a raspy, hacking, Joe Cocker type cough coming from the lounge room.

Pablo staggered out, foaming liberally at the mouth with eyeballs rolling around in their sockets.

I’d witnessed this grisly scenario before. It was a clear case of ‘cane toad crack head’.

High as a kite.

I scooped the perma-fried speed freak up and stuck him under the laundry tap while he spluttered and belligerently protested.

“Leave me alone, man! I just wanna get high. You suck man!”

As soon as Scotto arrived, he drenched Pablo under the tap and washed the dog's mouth out again while I made an anxious phone call to the vet.

“He looks a bit weird,” I told the girl. “His eyes are staring in different directions.”

“He’s probably just a bit stoned, you know… off his face,” said the receptionist after consulting the vet. “Keep an eye on him, but he should be alright.”

Luckily for him, the wee junkie ferret recovered quickly then developed a raging case of the munchies and ate Celine’s dinner as well as his own.

I’ve lost a dog before as the result of an insidious addiction to the hallucinogenic effects of cane toad venom. That dog died in the back of my car on the way to the vet. It was his fifth O.D. He was totally burned, that dog.

Cats don’t often go for toads. Cats are too fudging streetwise to take drugs from dodgy dealers.

Once dogs get the taste it’s hard to break the craving. I’m going to have to watch this little stoner closely from now on.

For example, I’ll have to put my foot down if Pablo starts making noises about wanting to go to music festivals with friends who have names like 'Dude', 'Numba One' and 'Big Daddy'.

If I come home and find Pablo playing the guitar along to The Grateful Dead, lying flat out on a bean bag  and wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt, I’ll have to start administering a urine test on a weekly basis.

And if I discover he’s been watching Cheech and Chong movies, I’ll book him in to rehab. We’ll orchestrate a family intervention and include the cat; although the cat probably lured the toad into the house in the first place seeing as how much she hates the dogs.

Later that night, we discovered the filthy, slimy toad skulking evilly under a bookcase. It was a huge mofo who must have opportunistically stolen in when the back screen door was left open.

Bufo Marinus: Cane Toad

Scotto trapped Bufo Marinus in a plastic bucket and flung it across the road with immense propulsion and at an extremely high elevation. I doubt it survived.

I reckon cane toads might be from where the term ‘hophead’ originated, what do you reckon?

Poster Boy!

Have you ever had a pet poisoned by a toad?

I Hear Illiterate People.

Yesterday afternoon, Scotto and I absconded to the air-conditioned bedroom because it was one  of those fudging hideous 37 degree days with 80 per cent humidity. 

He watched one of his painful ‘Robot’ movies while I had a bit of a nana nap with the dogs. 

Scotto is one of the few thousand people in Australia who discovered a loophole and can access Netflix directly from the United States. It’s legal, even if it sounds dodgy.


The funniest part about the U.S. Netflix is we see their advertisements. They have to read out the warning leaflets every time they advertise medication. 

You might have a thirty second commercial for sinus tablets and the first ten seconds is about how the product works but the rest of it is: Warning, this medication may cause headaches, tingling in the extremities, dizziness, nausea, disorientation, confusion, sleep-walking, night terrors, seizures, paralysis, heart arrhythmia, stroke, aneurysm, cancer, death or adult acne. Please check with your doctor before taking.
I’d never take a fudging Panadol again if I had to listen to that all the time.

I hate robot movies. They’re so fudgingly, mind-numbingly boring. I can tolerate the odd alien and grit my teeth through yawn-inspiring zombies, but robots just have zero personalities, don't you agree? 

Yeah... Auto Whatever!

I couldn’t get to sleep though, so I lay with one eye open, ogling the screen suspiciously.

“That actress is copying Melanie Griffith,” I murmured.

“What?” grumbled Scotto.

“That actress is using the same silly, lispy, Marilyn Monroe-style baby talk, as Melanie Griffith does,” I said in disgust.

“It is Melanie Griffith,” said Scotto.

I looked closer and it bloody well was. Except it was the zombie version of Melanie Griffith; post a shite load of plastic surgery.

Now if I was Melanie Griffith I wouldn’t have spent all that money on my face before first seeking out the services of a speech coach. But that’s me. 

I make Scotto put the captions on for most movies we watch because I can’t understand a bloody word they say and I’m not just talking about movies from the U.S.

Australian television’s just as bad.

Some voices really annoy me. Teenagers lately have begun to pronounce i as in ‘pig’ as ‘pug’.

What the hell’s that about?

“I pucked up the thungs on the floor and put them in the bun.” they say as they flick their hair and sashay off to the pub.

Why are they doing it? Where does it come from? It’s not an Australian accent. Sometimes they even do it to an ‘a’ or an ‘e’.

“Thunks. I’ll see you later thun,” they mutter as they walk out the door staring at their iPhones.

No wonder they have so much trouble with their bloody spelling.

The other thing I’m going to be a cantankerous old bi-artch about is the use of adverbs. People keep leaving the ‘ly’ off their adverbs.

“I finished as quick as I could.” “He ran up the field real slow.” “People need to choose their words more careful.”

If I was having a conversation with a friend I wouldn’t even notice it but when it’s a journalist or a politician it makes me shake my head and sigh heavily… see what I did there?

Scotto yells at me in irritation every time I scream out “LY!! For fudge's sake! He played brilliant-LY …not fudging brilliant, you IDIOT!” when we’re listening to the sports on the telly.


Am I being a painful wanker or is the English language going down the tubes real quick?

Linking up with Jess at Essentially Jess for #IBOT!