MY MAGNUM OPUS:

I HAVE FINISHED IT !!!

You lot just think I sit at home all day employed in nothing but banal little insignificancies, don't you? Wee bits of stuff and nonsense for my own amusement and, magnaminously, for yours .. just whiling away my hours ..., floating around aimlessly ..., with a casual flick of my fingers occasionally at the odd piece of housework .. NAY, DEAR READERS, NAY! I work tirelessly for the benefit of all personkind, DAY IN DAY OUT and FINALLY I HAVE FINISHED IT!!!!!
So, here it is: my greatest work of art; stand in awe and be silenced all you critics at the magnificence of ....


The World is now A Better Place .




*Reminder: the anonymous jones blog blackout will commence in one week until the beginning of February. What is your favourite onomatopoeia? We all want to hear it - leave it in the comments!

You know, I'm not in a very good mood right now and I want to complain about some things but my Political Correctness keeps holding me back. So the rage is turning inwards, dear readers, turning inwards. But we cannot restrain the tide of fury forever, can we? So every now and then it surfaces and manifests itself in URGES OF WANTON VIOLENCE; like on Saturday when I went to IKEA. Phew-ee! I had to grip that sharp, short, free little IKEA pencil with a vice-like grip to stop the carnage I could have wrought with it! Stab! Stab! Stab! Like in Psycho!

I blame the arrows. They have painted arrows on the floor and herd everyone around the shop in the same direction like sheep between the cheap furniture and the instore restaurant. It smells like cabbage constantly in there.Who can withstand the psychological, psychotic trigger of the smell of cabbage, for goodness' sake?! ANd who wants to buy crab paste from Sweden, from IKEA, anyhow??
Ho! Ho! But there was a time when we got our own back dear readers, one brilliant time of reckoning! Yours truly and her little accomplice (Pig Number One) pre-set the entire basket of egg timers in the kitchen department to all go off together (with a few staggered to go off as little annoyances after that). MWA HA HA! TAKE THAT CORPORATE GLOBAL MOGUL!
Then, AND THEN, there was the time (dare I tell you?) that we WALKed AGAINST THE DIRECTION OF THE POINTING ARROWS! Yeah! We shall overcome! Don't mess with the little people! Move over, Yoko.

At IKEA everything, from dining chairs to shelves and bathroom mirrors to tea towels, has a Swedish name bestowed on it by its designer. Do you suppose they pre-fabricate their umlauts too? I think they just make up fjordenflergenbrrmonnen names for things and stick an umlaut anywhere it'll look good! Have you noticed those little circle things, like degrees, that occur over the odd letter A? That's the difference with Asian rubbish and European rubbish: your bonus, classsy umlaut or krouzek ! There's nothing ickier than IKEA.


And I'm cheesed off with TomKat's wedding. Tom Cruise (hang on, there is something ickier than IKEA...) is standing on a box in that photo, isn't he? WHo cares about their 'wedding' anyway? Why did it have to be on the front page of the paper yesterday? Duh! Editors are so dumb. Oh I KNOW people are interested and that is why the editor did it. But people are only interested because other editors played into Xenu the Warrior Prince's hand! Cheesed, cheesed off!
The Catholics wouldn't be manipulated and let Tom and Katie get hitched in a fancy cathedral, so they rent a bloody castle somewhere and get a sickening stream of sucky celebs to turn up for maximum magazine-appeal. How rude not inviting Oprah! (How shrewd.) I don't like this whole King and Queen and Princess thing Tom Cruise is trying to sell. THat little place in Italy was just used. Cirque de Soleil should do its next theme on that wedding.

Hmph.

It's only a couple of weeks till the Summer Holidays; so soon there will be an anonymous jones blog black-out till the beginning of February. Better start doing my mental health exercises now.
I usually write a big list of holiday jobs for InstantJim to do, but usually he is sick or injures himself. For example, the infamous time - on the very first day of the holidays - when he was sitting on the couch, had a stretch, yawned, AND PUT HIS BACK OUT. Yup.

Mental health exercises, one two.. one two.....

"DROP THE REPTILE!"

As Australians, we really do not do ourselves a lot of favours, internationally, with our image. Croc-wrestling hicks and roo-boxing yobbos is the usual export image, or else bronzed, bosomy, bikini-clad surf-chicks who round up sheep as jillaroos in their spare time. This is why a lot of intellectuals leave the country in disgust (eg Germaine Greer, Robert Hughes, Dame Edna). It's called the 'Cultural Cringe'.

Poor Constable Dale Howe of the Northern Territory had a novelty-news-item-moment last Saturday around midnight. While on patrol, he pulled over a car that had been swerving all over the road and told the driver to get out. Of course the teenage driver was drunk, and so he began the usual breathalizing and booking procedures. Anyway, suddenly a 1metre long brown snake appeared out of the dark and the kid saw it and raced to pick the thing up! Grabbing its head he brandished it at the police officer like a weapon.

"Drop the reptile!"

I bet you've never heard that one on Starsky and Hutch or Miami Vice, or CSI before! (Though you may have heard it at a Britney Spears concert.) By the way, FedEx was on a CSI episode, did you know that? She sure dropped him. "Drop the cold-blooded, legless animal of the class reptilia, the order Squamata the sub order Serpentes, and of ethnic-appearance." Why couldn't the policeman have just said "Drop the snake"??

Well, you know what happened next don't you? He threatened to shoot him. (All my dear little American readers are now imagining an arsenal of hand guns) but fear not, Constable Howe is a very sensible chap who only pulled a can of pepper spray on the kid, who, freaking out that this would enrage the reptile, ran off into the bush with it, with poor old Constable Howe giving a long and fruitless chase!
Which just goes to prove that a snake in the hand is worth it at 2am in the bush.

Must dash, the brainy plane is about to leave.

"AND THEY'RE OFF!"

Australia has always been suspicious of America since 1932 when they killed Phar Lap. Well, that was the theory anyhow.

Today is Melbourne Cup Day!
(Did I hear a 'whoopi-doo" out there in the audience, dear readers?) Don't you know what Melbourne Cup Day is?
It's the day that (supposedly) "stops the nation"; the biggest horse race in Australia!

Yeah, OK, I'm not too over-excited about it either. Not since Phar Lap can't be there.

There is such dreadful ignorance these days. Must I explain about Phar Lap, too? The world is so U.S.A-centric it drives me nuts. But maybe you have seen the movie? Read the book? Done a school project on it?? No? Sigh*

From 1929-1932 Phar Lap, a big red 17hh chestnut race horse, captured the heart of Australia during the Great Depression by, basically, being unbeatable. He was a huge animal with an enormous 6.2kg heart, here is a picture of it:
and he also had buckets of personality and a touching relationship with his strapper the famous Tommy Woodcock.

Many bookies eventually refused to take bets on him because he was so amazing! However, in 1932 his owner took him to America and from there he won a race in Mexico against all odds (the Agua Caliente Handicap) (Al Jolson apparently wrote a jazz song about it) but afterwards Phar Lap was poisoned and died in California. That's worthy of a rap song. Yo.

So, that is the reason why there has always been an undercurrent of resentment toward the Yanks from then till now. Hey, we take our sport seriously! And yes, it has been proven that he was poisoned - with arsenic, in fact! Scientists got a hair from his stuffed body and ran it through a particle accelerator. No one knows for sure the means by which he came across the arsenic. There is one generous theory about him eating some poisoned grass that had been sprayed by the local council. But I think most people go for the mafia theory because gangsters stood to lose a heap of money against him. And also, Americans don't like losing to Australia (just look at the baby-behaviour over the America's Cup in sailing back in the eighties). Actually the U.S.A's reputation is not so good world wide for that, sad to say.

OK you are an American, you feel affronted, you are going to press the little red cross in the top right! Sheesh. Learn to take a bit of national criticism, please!

Oh, fair enough. I guess I am in a bit of a mood. I don't think the Irish are overly happy with Australians at the moment, either.
Hang on, why don't we just blame MEN?? That's better!

Anyway, before I go I'd like to ask for a bit of help. What is the difference between a hat and a fascinator? (This is not a riddle.) Flemington racecourse is going to be chockers full of hats and fascinators today and I'd just like to know the difference. Here are a couple:
In the mean time, I've got some stuff hanging off the ceiling which I think will do. Tally ho!