I thought ‘your boyfriend’s in my top ten’ fascinatingly embodied a fleeting moment in modern culture (myspace, aggressive teen-female-sexuality, return to hideous over-sized fluoro coloured t-shirts)  but ‘I heart shoes, bags and boy’ and ‘I love shopping, boys and flirting’ seem to signal a return to not so modern culture…WHY? Why do we put this shit on shirts and why do people buy them?!

Can we have I heart Gardening, Oral and Proust? Or I love Decoupage, Bondage and Feminists? Or just anything that doesn’t result in god awful, outdated, offensive gender stereotypes being plastered across the chests of young women??

I haven’t checked out what guys are being sold but I presume they’ll be thinly veiled  references to the wearer’s love of breasts, blowjobs and cars. Or perhaps not so thinly veiled.

Oh, and Ross Noble was on Spicks and Specks tonight which I guess means he’s in Melbourne. Where I’m not. Sigh.

And Israeli Tourists:

‘”I was shocked, the animal clearly wanted to kill me,” Mr Mashiah said.

Clearly…

Let’s exam the evidence further, shall we?

“One minute I was leaning over the boat teasing it for a picture. The next minute it burst out of the water with incredible speed … its jaws fully open…

“I began playing with it for a photo,” he said.

“I was pointing at it when it suddenly jumped up at me – I didn’t realise that crocs were so aggressive.”

Mr Aviguy said they were not alarmed when the crocodile first approached the boat.

“I was laughing but it wasn’t so funny in the end,” he said.’

Oh no, that’s where you’re wrong Mr Aviguy…it was very very funny in the end…

Crocs. Don’t tease them. Ok people?

Brat Camp: the entire 15 minutes I have just watched seemed to consist almost entirely of girl yelling ‘i’m going to fookin’ kill you you fook, i fooking hate you you fookin’ fook’ and other threats along much the same lines interposed with shots of her pearl wearing mother arranging yellow roses in a vase at home…

And

It Takes Two, which I mention only to take a cheap shot at everyone’s favorite vertically-challenged, gay, singing ex-Idol Anthony Callea, who is barely taller than the 11 year old violin player and similarly aged ballet dancers who accompanied him and his partner…

How many ways can you reinforce gender stereotypes in under a minute???

Women do housework in the private sphere, reliant on the men in their lives to create new technology that will make their wifely duties less strenuous. Men, in the public sphere, outside the home, in the office, earn not only praise from their superiors for their innovation, but the means to support their dependent family and their woman’s eternal gratitude.

Note that none of these time-saving, chore-reducing solutions actually involve the husband helping with said chores…

Playing the bongos in the park across the road from my apartment does not make you closer to nature. It does not make you interesting. It does not make you a musician.

It just makes you a pain in the arse.

4:51fuckingaAm update: plumber gone, water going. And the moral of this story is: never leave your washing machine running while you sleep (thank you upstairs neighbour) and if you live in apartments, maybe check to see if there is water coming out from the door of those living above you before ringing a plumber.

On the bright side our floor is as clean as it is ever likely to be.

This advertisement appeared in the Weekend Australian Magazine Dec 8th-9th, advertising the Weekend Australian itself. I had to photograph the ad as it was the only one that didn’t appear in the online version of the magazine. The center text reads ‘Take a Broader View’ and the tag-line below ‘The Weekend Australian’ in bottom right corner reads ‘The Heart Of The Nation’.

I tore it out and stuck it on the fridge and have spent the last few weeks thrusting it in the general direction of all our unfortunate and uninterested guests, demanding to know their opinion of it.

Here’s mine:

The tag ‘heart of nation’ takes on so many connotations when combined with this imagery. The excellence of the journalism – or getting to the heart of the matter, addressing those issues closest to the nation’s heart (think of the children Mr Brough), the nation’s physical heart – ‘The Red Centre’ and finally the nation’s future and heart – our children.

I’m not sure what it is that leads me to the assumption that the child pictured is male – in fact, after weeks of thinking about it, it only occurs to me now that I made that assumption. What was your first impression? I was going to make the argument that putting a male child at the centre of a picture with ‘the heart of the nation’ written beneath it is evidence of implicit patriarchy – however perhaps my own subconscious prejudices have just been exposed!

I think the choice of two women in the picture is very deliberate – if either one of the adults were male it would take on a whole different set of meanings – especially given the recent sexual abuse cases in Aboriginal communities that have attracted so much media coverage.

I think the woman’s legs (and I do think they belong to a woman, though others disagree) intentionally verge on gender neutrality – it implies a sensible, intellectual, readership and by not being too “feminine” doesn’t exclude male readers. I imagine them connected to an equally conservatively and well dressed body reclining in armchair some where in Sydney (again with my own prejudices!).

The positioning – even the inclusion! – of the legs leads me to the most disturbing aspect of the advertisement – the representation of race and class. The white woman is clearly outside the picture looking in – the faceless observer ‘taking a broader view’ as the text implores us. This positioning forces a very clear distinction.

The Aboriginal woman and child are part of the ‘issue’, a news item and therefore, by default, are not part of the Weekend Australian’s readership – desired or actual it would seem. The dichotomy is obvious and deliberate. White Australians are the readers, Indigenous Australians are the read about.

This ad invites the Weekend Australians readership, who the advertisers presume are, and actively represent as, white middle class Australians, to sit back, take in the ‘broad’ expanse of the red centre, the outback (because ‘real’ Aborigines live in the desert) and inform themselves thoroughly. The informed and the information.

The black child runs happily in the red sand while his mother looks on lovingly and white Australia watches them both from the privileged position of anonymous judgment.

There is obviously a lot more I could say – especially about the representation of race, Australian nationalism, and gender too – so pretty much all of it really – but I will try contain myself. Would really like to hear what others think of it – do any of you find it as disturbing as I do? Does it remind anyone else of an ad for the National Geographic channel (watch the natives from the comfort of your own home!)?

Let me know.

‘Green Tea: To help the environment and save energy, when you’re boiling the kettle, use only the amount you need. So, if you’re making tea for two, just boil that quantity’ suggests a bright Tasmanian, whose contribution to saving the planet is only outdone by her contribution to stating the obvious.

‘Sticky situation: You can remove any sticky patches from labels on jars, bottles or school lunchboxes by rubbing with a cloth dipped in smooth peanut butter.’  Smooth peanut butter? Does crunch peanut butter not work? How did she discover this? Has she tested both sorts? Does she dip the cloth straight in the jar they eat from, or is there a separate ‘DO NOT SWALLOW’ jar of peanut butter? And what lead to this discovery? At what point do you think ‘aww, peanut butter, obviously my cleaning product of choice?’. I am, by the way, totally going to test this theory. However, I only have crunchy, organic peanut butter so results may not be conclusive.

So, after a week away I was out admiring how well my herbs have survived the heat. The thyme is looking bright and fresh, same with the basil, and the chives are just as happy as usual. When I looked at the oregano, however, it looked a bit bare. Like something had been eating it in fact. So I looked a bit closer and this is what I saw:
For the uneducated those are two fucking huge caterpillars.

Now I don’t know what to do about them. On the one hand they are so big and pretty that I’m sure they will one day transform themselves into beautiful tropical butterflies, which makes me feel bad about chucking them over the balcony or into the neighbour’s yard (a whole other ethical debate we will ignore for today) as I would otherwise do. On the other, when they do become beautiful butterflies, and presumably fly away, they will do so full of my oregano. Also, throwing them over the balcony involves touching them which kind of freaks me out right now.

Brie, you were good with slug psychology, any suggestions?

*Bigger photo for Brie so she can more accurately assess the size of the problem