24 Mar 2010
PROCRASTINATION
Note to self...must muse again soon. All these are getting very old.
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5 Oct 2009 GIFTED CHILDREN When i was at school, in every class there were a couple of really smart kids, a couple of dummies and a whole bunch of fairly average kids in between. Today, if you believe what parents tell you, then every single class must be made up of 100% amazingly gifted children. I am yet to meet one parent who says "yeah my kid does okay at school, he's no genius but he gets by." Quite the opposite, these days, everyone has incredibly bright progeny, frighteningly bright according to some. Frighteningly. I miss the average kids. The kids who could spell a lot of words but still got the hard ones wrong, who sometimes forgot the "i before e" rule. The kids who got 60-70% on tests and were pleased to have passed. The kids who sat there mostly unnoticed during class. These children may not have been "gifted" but they also weren't allergic to nuts...or dairy...and curiously, they usually had a lot more friends than the gifted kiddies too. Average kids ate cakes or biscuits for playlunch, real cakes and biscuits not specially made "gluten free" cakes that taste like wet sand...Or "healthy lollies" made from DATES (mmmm) and dried apricots...ooooh num num. If I was a child today, I would beg my parents to let me be average. |
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2 Oct 2009 DO CELIACS EXIST Celiacs...they claim to be allergic to wheat. They say it's a disease. But what are the symptoms? Do they break out in a rash? Do they go into anaphylactic shock? No, what happens is they tend to "feel really quite bloated" after eating...As do I when I eat too much, however I call that "being a bit of a pig" and as far as I know that's not really a disease. So, celiacs? I say there's no such thing. The correct term for someone who claims to be wheat intolerant is: "irritating attention seeker." Especially if they're at your house for dinner. |
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11 Feb 2009 Markets and Haggling I did some gigs in Asia recently so spent some time shopping at markets. I’m not really sure why. I find markets very stressful. All that haggling. They say: “Best price for you 100” and I say: “Oh gosh that sounds like a lot.” They say: “No, is good price, is best price.” And I say “Oh well, gee, I guess if that’s the best price, then okay, 100.”I do, however, admire the positive attitude of market stall holders. In Hong Kong I walked past a woman who shouted at me to “Buy this duck lady!” (I should just clarify, she wasn’t selling some freakish duck lady as in a half woman/half duck, she was imploring me, the lady, to buy a duck.) Now that to me represents sheer hope and pure optimism because what in god’s name would I want with a duck? I have no idea if she was proffering it to me as a potential pet or a potential meal, either way, I was quite clearly a tourist. Therefore I was highly unlikely to have the facilities or permission to transport a live duck back to my country of origin. It seemed even less likely that I would have the equipment or set up in my hotel room to slaughter and hang the animal in order to prepare myself a duck supper. And yet still, she urged me, buy this duck, buy this duck. In the end, obviously I did buy the duck because she offered me a good price, her best price actually. I call my duck Phil, he still lives in Hong Kong due to visa and avian flu constraints, we talk on the phone regularly. |
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3 Feb 2009 Mules Last night I watched a man on television being busted for smuggling cocaine. Turns out he’d swallowed 86 packets of the stuff before he got on a plane in Argentina. He arrived in Sydney some 12 hours later and the drugs, no doubt, would arrive...in due course. |
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31 Jan 2009 GSOH If you have to tell someone you have a good sense of humour...odds are you don’t have one. |
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24 Jan 2009 Music My music knowledge is sadly lacking. So much so that when I was recently introduced to members of the critically acclaimed band Wilco, I commented that they were a lot younger than I'd expected. My friend kindly pointed out that I had Wilco confused with The Travelling Wilburys. Tragic really, especially as I'd waited all night to sing along with that fabulous Wilbury toetapper "Everything You Want". |
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