Silver Lining*

*this post is both long and boring, but it has pictures.

My mother and I want to watch 'Mothra,' but the local videostore only has 'Godzilla vs Mothra'. The ensuing indecision (take a chance on that, or watch something else?) is a choice I never thought I'd have to make. Luckily she is making it for me and has trotted off to get a John Wayne. I intend to spend the evening hanging out with my mama with my blankie and endless cups of tea and if that's a lame way to spend a Saturday night then I don't want to be cool.

My money's on Mothra.


Here is a Contents Page for what promises to be a rather lengthy post. So you can stop, go and do something productive, then come back to it. Unlike most Contents Pages, this one is completely unrelated to the order in which the items appear. It's just a list of crap you can expect to read about today.

onesie = no swine flu / warm inside a dog / meteorology magic / british beetroot / pronking-stotting / sitting up like pork / my parents: courtship of / videostore, incense / horses in suburbia (greenday) / get stuffed! / the dumb bug / carpark patrol / hizach


Firstly and most urgently, I really want a pyjama onesie. Pyjamas with arms and legs in them. A jumpsuit made of pyjama fabric. Onesies are remarkably hard to describe, although fashionpolice.net describes them as 'adult footed pyjamas.' Anyway, I thought that these delightful items were the preserve of small children and my friend Riadan, who has a red woolen one that I remember fondly (?) & which I always thought he just sort of found somewhere (he is that sort of person) but it turns out that no, pyjama onesies are widely available! I really want one. Swine flu - which is apparently kinda wimpy anyway - can't getcha when you're in a onesie and also they make for practical zombie fighting gear.


See? Ready to fight zombies.

Seriously I am willing to do pretty much anything for a pyjama onesie please can somebody buy me one for my birthday (july 29) and give it to me now pleasepleaseplease.

Have I conveyed how totally I want a onesie? I REALLY REALLY WANT ONE.


Scientific discovery of the week: it is warmer inside a dog than it is inside a person!* I discovered this because I was walking the dog and, while my breath wasn't misting in the cold, his was.

Fuck yeah, science.


Also in the 'scientific' field, I can predict the weather!** Yes without reading the weather report. I am like an old man sitting in a rocker gumming away and saying "Ee, storm's a'coming, can feel it in my bones," but without being an old man - the scar on the back of my hand itches when there is a storm coming! It has to do with humidity and air pressure*** but last week I said to someone, "Storm's a'comin'!" and then, having used up my apostrophe ration for the week, retired to bed. And then the storm a'came! I am a meteorological Harry Potter, is what I am. From now on I am going to run about shouting that my scar is itching and the Dark Lord is active! (Meteorologically active.)


In an aside, I really like how the British pronounce 'beetroot.' Not 'bee-droot' like the rest of us, but 'bee'root,' or sometimes even a distinct 'beet root.' Beet beet beet! Root.

Today I am going to teach you two words which mean the same thing! I know, it's exciting. Fuck I have an educational blog.

You know that thing that springboks do, when they bounce straight up in the air off all four legs at once?

Not a springbok, but yeah, that thing.

Well, that thing now has a name, and that name is pronking! Or stotting. They both sound slightly rude describe that action. I have made it my mission to tell everyone about pronking in the hopes that they will admire my sophisticated vocabulary and/or buy me a onesie.


Did you know you can buy incense in the videostore? It's right there, with the videos and the popcorn. It was in this one videostore anyway. That's about all there is to that story.

Another good story: I saw a horse walking down the road today. With a rider on it. It is weird, seeing horses in suburbia. I would have been completely confused by the 19th century (and, in fact, all of the centuries before it.)

Another good story: I saw a dumb bug today. It was hopping along the pavement, no doubt looking up at the sky and thinking happy bug thoughts, when hop! it jumped straight into a drainage grate. Whoops, bug. Shoulda paid less attention to how cool you were, breathing through your skin and all, and more attention to where you were going.

(How cool would it be to breathe through your skin? Hopefully not through your butt-skin, though. There should totally be a specific word for butt-skin. Actually I was thinking today, after accidentally saying HIZACH to my friend Zach, that 'hizach' should be a word. Maybe it should be a word for butt-skin, as in, "I have a boil on my hizach." Yeah, that works. (Mum wasn't sure why bugs would mind breathing through their hizachs. "Well," Kate said, "do bugs fart?" According to the Internet yes, yes they do. (What is this, Biology Week?) I wonder if that bothers them, what with the breathing through their hizachs?))

Random story: my parents' first date was at the movies - they went to see 'Zoltan, Hound of Dracula,' and my father wore his slippers. This is my second favourite story about stuff my parents did before I was born; the other one came up when I was swanning about in a Russian-style fake fur hat. "I used to have an actual Russian fur hat," Mum said wistfully. "Dad and I were on a boat, and the boat was robbed." Pause. "The only thing they took was the hat."

Speaking of romance, I was going to go to a craft evening with NRT tonight but then I remembered that I hate craft. He said, "Too bad you're not coming - I'm wearing my beret." Man sure knows how to woo a lady.


Tomorrow, links to things I like to read!



*not based on any actual science.

**not always.

***still no actual science, I made that up

7

Hello! It's me again.

My impossibly coloured friend Andrea (acatofimpossiblecolour.blogspot.com) has found another nice meme for friends to complete - you list seven random facts about yourself (and presume that people are interested in reading them). So, without further ado, let me present

Seven Facts About Ally
Now I can't think of anything even remotely interesting.

1. I am a huge fan of the Easy-Off Bam! ads. The catchphrase they shout after demonstrating the amazing cleaning powers of Bam ("Bam! And the dirt is gone.") is my favourite part. I have developed a habit of shouting it whilst cleaning things. I shouted it in the shower the other day. I have also been known to shout it when leaving a room ("Bam! And the Ally is gone") and drinking ("Bam! And the wine is gone.") Not a particularly illustrious start to the seven facts I know. But I feel Bam! is an integral part of my personality and, obscurely, the key to understanding my inner workings.

2. I had a storybook as a child which still makes me cry - it's called Black Dog. It's about a girl who has a black dog, and the girl and Black Dog are best friends who do everything together. One day the girl and Black Dog go to the beach, and the girl sees an absolutely beautiful bird. She goes to play with the bird, but before she reaches it, it flies away. Every day from then on, all the girl does is stare out the window looking for the bird. She never plays with Black Dog any more. Weeks go by and the bird doesn't come back, and the girl gets sadder and sadder. Then one morning she looks out the window and sees the bird in a tree outside! So she runs outside, and as she runs outside she sees Black Dog jump from the tree and fall to the ground, and Black Dog dies, because he was trying to be the bird for her, and he was trying to fly.
Silly story - am pretty sure dogs can't climb trees.

3. I really like my hands - they aren't particularly pretty hands, they're too square, quite scarred and my fingers aren't very tapered (rings make my fingers look squat, one more reason to not get married! hee) but I like them anyway. I am occasionally jealous of people with slender, delicate little hands, but then I guess I can...hold more stuff? Yeah! They may have dancer's hands, but I can hold stuff. Like, seven wine glasses at once. Although to be fair that is more down to the precise art of balancing wine glasses rather than superior hand strength or size.

4. About five years ago I drew an almost perfect interrobang, freehand, in Vivid on a white sheet of paper. I've kept it ever since, usually stuck up on my wall. It was only a few months ago that I was messing about on Wikipedia, looking up obscure punctuation marks (I do not remember why) when I came across the interrobang and instantly went, "That's that thing I drew!"

Sorry that I'm not much good at this!

5. I enjoy making graphs. I used to love analysing data, plotting points, joining them and then sitting back and looking at the perfect lines. Which is quite out of keeping with my normal haphazard style, but probably explains my love of cleaning fridges and Bach fugues.

6. If I could pick any superpower, I'd go for teleportation, closely followed by telepathy. If I had three wishes, I'd wish for teleportation powers, telepathic powers, and happy and satisfying lives for my friends and relatives. (And then I would give all of my money to charity. Ha ha.)

7. (Thank God, last one! There don't seem to be many interesting facts about me.) When I was 16, I dyed my hair orange by accident. I wanted to bleach it from its natural very dark brown to white-blonde. Obviously doing this at home was a great idea. With Andrea's assistance (thank you, Andrea) I managed to get it white-blonde. For about two days. And then, unsurprisingly, it went ginger and refused to go back. It wouldn't dye blond, it wouldn't dye dark...it was a nightmare. My friends called me Matchstick as it was what I resembled. On the plus side, it's pretty easy to pick me out in the yearbook photo! Tee hee.


I am so very much looking forward to going to sleep tonight! It has been a long week so far - work's really busy at the moment, and haven't been having the earliest of nights. We're down a team member at work since the departure of VB (who is loving his new job, company car etc...bastard) and as he and I did about 70% of the work between us, his absence has left a rather large hole. IN MY HEART.

Tee hee! Not really. Right, I am going to bed because otherwise I will be a zombie tomorrow, and it's hard to be enthused about eftpos when all you want is brains. Although today was almost as bad - I had immense bagel cravings until lunchtime, when I had a bagel and didn't think about bagels for almost half an hour! I am a bagel zombie.