Views from the arse end

So, there’s no getting away from it. You’ve decided you have a big butt. It’s so large, it’s a barge. It is so huge, there’s a construction crew building a hotel down there. It’s so enormous, you can see it with the naked eye from the moon.

So, what do you do? Do decide to give up Clinkers, jelly slice and chicken and camembert party pies? Do you vow to spend every free waking moment at the gym?

Not likely.

What you probably do is try to cheat your way to a smaller arse. (Go on, tell me I’m wrong.)

You wear clothes to minimise your gluteus maximus. You avoid lycra at all costs. You try not to bend over when there’s an audience. And when anyone suggests swimming, you claim an allergy to water.

Newsflash: here are seven butt-minimising tricks that SOOO do not work. So, give them up, okay?

1. Wearing long cardigans
Yes, when you look in the mirror in the morning, your cardigan forms a nice loose curtain over your tush. But as soon as you move, the friction causes your cardigan to cling to your cheeks, thus accentuating your posterior, rather than hiding it.

2. Tying your jumper round your waist
This just murders any waist definition you may have and the fabric adds an inch to your butt.

3. Wearing light colours
Black clothing camouflages shadows and this makes you look thinner. Okay, your butt’s silhouette will be visible but from the back, your rear will look smaller if you do the black thing. (See also, point 3.)

4. Wearing patterns
Some muppet came up with a theory that checks, florals and paisleys are so busy they disguise your derriere. Yeah, right. Patterns actually add kilos. And horizontal stripes add tonnes The only pattern your should remotely consider is vertical stripes.

5. Wearing high heels
They might make your legs look longer and shapelier but even low heels will make you stand up straighter and push your butt out, making it seem more prominent. It’s ballet flats all the way.

6. Distracting with bling
Glitter tirmmed pockets, sprawling script and anything at all with sequins do not belong anywhere in the vicinity of a less than miniscule derriere.

And the big one...

7. Wearing jeans
I'll give you the tip: anything other than dark, perfectly fitting low rise bootlegs or flares makes your butt look even bigger than it is. I know you would probably rather chew glass than try jeans on, but it must be done. Too tight or too loose and your jeans will not contribute to the small bum cause. High waisted jeans just make butts look longer and wider than they are (but don't buy them so low that you flash your bum crack every time you drop your pen). And if you really have to wear skinny jeans, make sure you wear chunky boots to balance out your shape. Forget stonewash or other light coloured jeans – besides the fact that they are totally last century, they make your bum cheeks look like a couple of hot air balloons.


If you’re dead set hell bent on butt minimisation, for goodness’ sake, do it properly.

But do you know what? Your butt probably isn’t that big anyway. Ask any man, he’ll tell you.

Image: Francesco Marino

12 things you'll never read in a Mills & Boon

Mills & Boon was founded by Gerald Rusgrove Mills and Charles Boon in 1908 as a general fiction publisher. They started focusing on romances in the 1930s.

The company has been criticised for repeating plots, the inevitability of their happy endings and a simple writing style, but fans say predictability is a drawcard.

Here’s how a typical M&B goes: a rich, gorgeous, aristocratic and initially unattainable guy (probably Greek) takes advantage of a stunning but poor ingénue. Upon discovering her practically inevitable pregnancy, she runs away from his cold domination to have the baby in secret. He finds out about the child, whisks her (and the child) off to a palatial prison against her will, keeping her locked up until she sees the error of her ways and admits her undying love for him. Pretty realistic, huh?

In any case, here are some things you will never find in a Mills & Boon:

1. 'Oh, Bruiser,' she sighed, 'I just adore a guy with love handles, a beer gut and man boobs.'

2. JD sat in the truck listening to heavy metal, smoking and picking his nose so intently, he nearly set his eyebrows on fire.

3. 'For heaven’s sake, Roxxy, can’t we just do it the normal way in a normal bed? Why does it always have to be on the deck of an opulent yacht, beside a sparkling waterfall or in a magical forest glade?'

4. As she lay, paralytic, on his bathroom floor, he weighed up the bottle of Stones she’d knocked off against the tarty skirt she wore and the condoms he'd found when he riffled through her purse. 'Hey babe, how about it?' he asked and decided her grunt was close enough to consent.

5. 'Sorry, Bubba,' she said, tears glistening in her eyes, 'I can’t give you the precious gift of my virginity tonight. I'm on my rags.'

6. He dropped to one knee and opened the tiny velvet box. He took great satisfaction in her gasp of surprise and delight. Peggy Sue was butt ugly but she owned the adjoining ranch and he wanted the property.

7. 'Oh, Bambi, you look so beautiful tonight – and so does your friend. How about a ménage à trois?'

8. Oh my god, she thought, I'm about to kiss my boss. Then she figured if he didn't come through with a large, glittering rock, she could always sue him for sexual harrassment.

9. She felt hot, sexy and ready to get down and dirty as she posed provocatively before him in nothing but her stretched and faded Kmart undies.

10. Gently, Lucille shook Ronald awake and whispered to him that she thought there was someone in the house. 'An intruder is here?' he said, 'I’m a bit scared. Let’s call the police.'

11. Gloria finger-combed her armpit hair, twirled her tongue piercing and yanked on her mumblers. Tonight, she was gonna find her a man.

12. Duane licked his lips and met the sexy smoldering gaze head on and said, 'Give it to me, cowboy.'

If you don’t sleep, you die

Dragging my butt out of bed this morning was a challenge on the scale of rescuing those Chilean miners. Singlehandedly. With nothing but a piece of string and a butter knife. I’m just not getting enough sleep.

Should I just shrug?

I decided to find out.

It turns out that sleep deprivation causes more than just crankiness around the breakfast table and a dire need for caffeine.

Apart from the usual suspects like balancing your hormones, managing your stress, improving your memory and keeping your weight under control, here are the top seven reasons you need shut-eye:

1. Studies show women need an hour more sleep each night than men - and not getting it may be one reason women are much more susceptible than men are to depression. If you're a chick, you need enough sleep, so that when a man leaves the milk on the bench or the totthpaste uncapped, you don’t put a chainsaw through his head and end up in prison for the rest of your life.

2. A duck can keep one half of its brain awake while the other slips into sleep mode. Most people are not that talented (though, some of my colleagues make me wonder if they have perhaps inherited a stray duck gene). The NRMA estimates fatigue is a factor in one in six fatal car crashes. Indeed, the extra-hour of sleep we receive when clocks are put back for daylight savings coincides with a drop in crashes. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I’d make the fashion pages wearing a windscreen.

3. A snail can sleep for three years. You probably don’t need to sleep for that long but after being awake for 17 hours straight, your performance decreases to a level equal to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%. If you're seeking stupefaction, drink a nice Jansz. It’s quicker and it tastes good.

4. After five nights of partial sleep deprivation, three drinks will have the same effect on your body as six would when you've slept enough. Sure, you’ll save money at the bottleshop but by the time the party gets started, you'll be snoring and drooling on the couch.

5. Missing even half an hour of sleep every night adds up to an impressive sleep debt of 182.5 hours per year. Next time you tell yourself you can get by, stop and consider just how big your sleep debt is. Note: red bull and power naps are not short-cuts to paying this debt.

6. Ants don't sleep but you need to. You would die from total lack of sleep sooner than from starvation. You can manage about 10 days without sleep, while starvation takes a few weeks. Hunger strikes are a bit passé, so maybe people could trial sleep strikes to make their political points – at least they wouldn’t have to give up toasted sangers or oreo McFlurries during their protests.

7. The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill off Alaska, the Challenger space shuttle disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident have all been attributed to human errors in which sleep deprivation played a role. I know everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame but there are probably better ways to get it – like chucking out your spouse's winning lotto ticket, shooting yourself by mistake or having octupulets.

Image: Ioana Grecu

Just the way you are

Call me a crusty old cynic but the Bruno Mars song, Just the way you are, is a complete crock.

In case you haven’t heard it, Bruno thinks his girlfriend’s got a bit of a self-esteem issue, so when she wants to know if she looks all right, he launches in to an effusive litany of saccharine praise to boost her fragile sense of self-worth.

HIonestly, if he did this in real life, she’d think he was being sarcastic, wonder if he crashed the car on his way home from the pub last night and was working up to telling her, or this would happen:

Girl – Do I look okay?

Bruno –When I see your face, there's not a thing that I would change, ‘cause you're amazing just the way you are. And when you smile, the whole world stops and stares for a while, ‘cause, girl, you're amazing just the way you are.

Girl – Tosser.

Guys, while on the one hand telling your lady her bum does indeed look fat in that outfit falls in to the category of assisted suicide, blurting out a whole catalogue of her strong points makes you look a) facetious, b) guilty or c) lame.

Go for the middle ground. Tell her she looks great the three times she asks (Is this okay? Really? Are you sure?) and move on.

Image: graur codrin

The Monstress Shonky Awards 2010

Choice is once again naming and shaming shonky companies.

Among the bodgiest rip-off merchants and scam artists is Nurofen. It sells separate pain killers specifically labelled and promoted for back pain, migraine, period pain and a whole raft of other ailments. However, except for the packaging, all of these products are identical.

Coles also blips the Choice dodgyometer for its promotion that claims four people can be fed for less than $10. The catch is, you already need to have some of the ingredients for the dish in your kitchen. The items that Coles assumes you just happen to have on hand aren't included in the price. One ingredient you're likely to keep handy, according to Coles, is three quarters of a bottle of wine. If you add this to the $7.76 Coq au vin, it would actually cost more like thirty bucks.

The Monstress Shonky Awards 2010

I reckon [a HUGE phone retailer] ought to get a placing in the awards. This company told me if I ever wanted to add a phone to my plan, under the terms of the arrangement, they would contribute to the cost of the phone. The company promptly discontinued the plan without telling me. When I went to their store to purchase a phone, they said that because the plan no longer existed, I had to pay full price for it. The cost to me was up something like 57% and I received not so much as an ‘Oops, sorry’. Charming.

Another contender would be [an optometrist] who told me he had no problem with completing the forms so my employer would reimburse a (significant) percentage of the cost of my glasses. The forms indicated that the glasses were largely for work-related purposes. But after I ordered, paid for and collected the top-of-the-range specs, the optometrist changed his mind and would not sign the forms, after all. This is top of mind because he recently had the audacity to send me a reminder that my next eye test is due. Some people have no shame.

A third contender is [one of the better known jeans retailers]. Their self-branded jeans fit perfectly in the shop but transform forever in to sloppy, shapeless sacks after a single wash. What's worse is that this store's pricing structure encourages you to buy two pairs of the wretched things, so you get double the eternally flaccid leg bags. Not cool.

Is there anyone you want to nominate for The Monstress Shonky Awards?

(Check out the Choice Shonky Awards at http://www.choice.com.au/)

*GUEST POST* The conundrum that is ‘fine’

When the Big White Steed begged to be allowed a chance to post on The Monstress, I said, 'fine' and this alleged insight in to woman-speak is what he came up with for his post. Sometimes being a muse is overrated.

When a man hears a woman say the word ‘fine’, he should exhibit extreme caution (leaving the room/house/country is a definite option).

The meanings of ‘fine’ exist on a continuum. They range from ‘I’m in the middle of an orgasm and if you stop doing what you’re doing, I’ll rip your throat out’ to ‘You’re breathing, I'll rip your throat out’.

Between these two extremes are numerous finely nuanced gradations.

Very rarely, a man is caught completely by surprise when a woman says that something is ‘fine’ and actually means it is fine. In these moments, a man can actually understand a woman – assuming he recognises the ‘fine’ as the genuine article and isn’t distracted by his imminent sprint for the hills.

If he does notice the real, true and authentic ‘fine’, he should treasure the moment of its utterance for its exquisite rarity – and try not to be too afraid.

Image: Dariusz Urbanczyk (and messed with by The Monstress)

The Amazing Spandex Room

How stupid do real estate agents think we are?

Once upon a time, all we had to contend with was predictable, ridiculous but fairly transparent real estate speak:

• renovator’s delight – do you know a good arsonist? This placed needs to be gutted and rebuilt
• original features – think gold suede wallpaper, this place hasn’t been updated since 1973
• cosy – so small that if you walk too fast, you’ll bump in to yourself
• spectacular view – if you stand on the coffee table and crane your neck around the high rise next door
• efficiency kitchen – I hope you like takeaway.

But with the advent of the internet, there’s a new wave of real estate traps to look out for. My pet peeve is the trick I’ll call the Amazing Spandex Room.

A fifth grader can stretch a photo of a room to make it look more spacious (and they could probably do a more convincing job than many real estate agents).

Do real estate agents believe viewers don’t notice if standard doorways look so wide they could accommodate a trio of sumo wrestlers, side by side? Do they think their audience doesn’t know that your average bath can not comfortably contain a full grown crocodile, tail and all? Do they figure we don’t observe that in real life, paperbacks lying on a shelf are not the length of roadtrains?

And if an internet researcher somehow overlooks the flagrant inaccuracies portrayed in the outrageously doctored photographs, do these agents not suspect that a potential buyer might be somewhat surprised and disappointed by the actual proportions of the room upon real life inspection (or, if interstate or overseas, by the dimensions on the plans)?

Disappointed is probably not the ultimate state of mind for your prospect to be in when you are trying to encourage them to part with half a million dollars...

...Unless you’re about to launch in to bait and switch tactics, which I wouldn’t put past some of these dirt merchants, and which is a whole other blog post.

40+, undignified and lovin' it

Apparently kids think it’s not cool for their 40-something parents to giggle or move at a clip beyond a fast walk.

What a load of crap.

Here are some other things you can do, even when you’re 40+:

1. Use social media
Okay, your kids will probably only ‘friend’ you on their sanitised Facebook pages but texting, Twitter and networking sites like LinkedIn are not only fun, they can also be a practical way of staying in touch and in the loop.

2. Look sexy
Avoid trendy gear, short shorts (even if you have great legs) and anything baggy. Maintenance is your friend – wax, manicure, hair. Refresh your style as your body changes and dress to add va va voom to your best assets.

3. Get fit
Even if you haven’t done a scrap of exercise since you were dragged, kicking and screaming, to your high school PE class, it’s not too late. Now is the perfect time to counteract the effects of gravity with some muscle tone; and to balance out the demands of your busy life with a fitness program just for you.

4. Make new friends
Yes, your old friends are comfortable like your fav pair of trackies but it’s okay to widen your circle of acquaintances. Meeting new people opens you up to new networks and fresh experiences. You don’t have to stop growing just because you’ve been around the block a time or two.

5. Sort your finances
If your money’s in a mess, it’s never too late to tidy it up. If you really don’t know where to start, see a financial planner. But you probably do know – you just don’t like it.

6. Par-tay
Frock up, get tiddly, shake your booty, sing karaoke, eat pizza. It's okay to let your hair down.

7. Learn stuff
Surfing, tax law or anyting in between  – your brain does not atrophy once the big four-oh hits.

8. Get that promotion
You’re perfect for that role you’re eyeing off. Don’t buy in to the myth that you’ll be overlooked as ‘past it’. At 40 you have the wisdom and experience to know how to do the job properly – and you still have the energy to make it happen.

9. Be undignified
Snort with laughter, tell fart jokes, have tickle fights and – yes – giggle and run. It’s healthy to let loose from time to time. Just keep in mind a first date or the board room might not be the best environment.

15 cheap, quick and easy 'me treats'

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don’t have time to waste on pampering yourself and you don’t want to throw money away on luxurious indulges.

But consider this: spoiling yourself doesn’t have to be time consuming and it doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg.

Besides, treating yourself can have a positive impact on all areas of your life, especially your relationships.

And you work way too hard not to spend time on you.

Here are some ‘me treats’ to give yourself a well deserved boost without blowing up your wallet or your watch:

1. Chuck out your most faded, stretched underwear and order a new set online.

2. Turn off your phone and spend some time completely alone (the sky won’t fall down, I promise). Eat an ice cream while you walk in the park, read a magazine in a coffee shop, take a candle lit aromatherapy bath or clear your mind with a jog on the beach or even a swim.

3. If your iPod playlists are stuck in the 80s, borrow some new music from your friends or the library, or browse iTunes. Download something. Instead of playing music while you're doing the housework, dedicate at least half an hour to sitting back and really listening to your new treasures.

4. Do something nice for a sick, elderly, pregnant or overwhelmed friend – take them some flowers, fruit buns or herbal tea, take their kids to the park, wash their car, or make them a compilation CD of music you know they'll love.

5. Learn something from your kitty – there's no bad time for a cat nap. Stretch out on the couch and relax – you don't have to actually go to sleep, just drift on a tide of pleasant thoughts (bad thoughts are banned).

6. Give yourself a manicure – or hook up with a friend and do each other’s hands and nails.

7. Prepare a special meal for yourself – it might be a super healthy dish or a calorific indulgence. Browse through new recipes or choose an old favourite. Enjoy every moment of the meal from picking up the ingredients to preparing the food and eating it. (You can invite a friend on the proviso that it’s her turn next week!)

8. Write a letter to someone and send it by snail mail.

9. Get up before everyone else, watch the sunrise, drink a herbal infusion, read the newspaper or all of the above.

10. Do a hair treatment or face mask – you can buy a single application product for under five dollars.

11. Allocate an hour to your favourite pastime, whether it’s photography, scrapbooking, singing, calligraphy, yoga, bicycling or going to the gym.

12. Be crafty – make cards or Christmas decorations, knit, bake, sew, put a collage together, make candles, paper or soap, write a poem, or cook soup from scratch.

13. Hang out with your pet.

14. Call a friend – your best buddy or someone you recently hooked back up with on Facebook – and talk for half an hour without once mentioning bills, housework or the annoying things your partner/pet does.

15. Look through old photos.

Image: Simon Howden

The Monstress little question #3

Is quicksand real? And if it is, what do I do if I fall in some?


We’ve all seen a movie where the heroine is running away from the baddie, she’s nearly made it through the jungle when – oh, shit – she finds herself sinking helplessly in quicksand. ‘Mwah-ha-ha-ha!’ laughs the bad guy, moments before the hero saves the day with a convenient vine.

Despite what you see on the silver screen, quicksand isn’t some living creature that can suck you down into a bottomless pit. For a start, it’s rarely deeper than a metre.

Quicksand is basically just a mushy mixture of sand and water that is so wet it can no longer support any weight.

If you step into quicksand, it won't suck you down – but if you struggle, you’re likely to sink deeper into it.

So, how do you escape its clutches if you find yourself hip-deep in it?

Easy.

Make slow movements and bring yourself to the surface, then just lie back. You'll float and you can paddle to safety.

A word of warning: occasionally unusual conditions can liquefy solid ground in minutes. In the 1800s, a Kansas Pacific Railroad train fell into a quicksand creek bed during a flood. While some of the cars were recovered, the 200 tonne engine sank so deeply that it was never seen again.

It’s all about me me ME!

Egosurfing (Googling yourself) has become increasingly popular. The idea is that you search the net for your own name, to see what articles appear about yourself or what images of yourself crop up. Professionals use this strategy to reassure themselves that there's no embarrassing information out there that could harm their reputations and that no one is using their data or IP without their consent. I do it just to reassure myself that I exist. Normal people search for themselves (and their friends) for cheap kicks.

At once worrying and gratifying, the normal outcome of a vanity search is that you discover most people who share your name are ugly, stupid bogans with prison tattoos and nose hair.

A recent study found that 47% of adult internet users have done a vanity search.

So, if you haven't ego surfed yet, give it a whirl!

Image: Salvatore Vuono

I'm not Robinson Crusoe

When I started my blog, I made up the title, The Monstress. Little did I know it had existing cultural connotations.

A quick ego search revealed the following:

There’s the Monstress Zine – each issue is organised around a different monster. Monstress is feminist, anti-racist, queer and trans-positive 'but not directly political' (how does that work???).

Monstress (Candi Pyponte-Le Parc III) is also a DC Comics superheroine and a member of the Legion of Super-Heroes.

She was a rich kid who gained her abilities (gift of the gab, iron nerves, lightning reflexes…a bit like me, really) and monstrous appearance (including green then orange skin) from a gene-altering bomb on one of her father's sweat-shop type labor farms.

She featured in eleven issues of the post-Zero Hour comics.

Dan Abnett said: ‘When we took over Legion, Monstress was deeply unpopular. We'd regularly get letters and posts demanding we bump her off. We actually liked her, and through 'Legion Lost' we did our best to make her an appealing, interesting character. When she died, tragically…people were suddenly upset!’

Asise from mine, there are other Monstress blogs, for example:

• http://www.monstress.org/ - seems to be about quilting, thinking happy thoughts and cleaning
• http://www.monstress.com/ - showcasing the work of a modern artist who can’t spell
• monstress.blog.friendster.com - a little tricky to get my head around – angsty poetry, corpse bride aspirations and stuff in a language I can’t understand.

Resurrection of Monstress is a toy line by Yellow Submarine that features action figures such as a heavy metal guitar playing werewolf.

And monstress silage triticale is a quality cereal for intensive livestock feeding that is high yielding from spring or autumn sowing and has excellent disease resistance.

So, I’m not Robinson Crusoe.

Do your pseudonyms have interesting associations? Why not do a vanity search and find out?

56 centimetres of pure stress

Reading is supposed to be pleasurable, soothing and relaxing. But my ‘to read’ pile is 56 centimetres of pure stress. (I measured it.) Whenever I see it, I sweat, tremble and break out in hives. I try not to look at it.

Sometimes, I go for weeks without picking up a book.

‘Just make time,’ my friend helpfully offered the other day.

I wanted to hit her.

Sure, I’ll just tell the boss I’ll be in a bit late to work or boycott cooking. Maybe I can skip the gym and become fat and frazzled or I’ll pass on homework help, housework, grocery shopping and errands. I could stop walking the dog and ditch the blog. I know! I just won’t sleep.

Besides, if, by some miracle, I do create a sliver of time to read, which volume do I choose?

There are half a dozen publications where hope triumphed over experience and I crammed in a quick forty pages (think Wimpy downing burgers) – but all of these optimistic forays were months ago. Not only has the pull of a brand new, unknown read been diluted to the strength of angel’s pee, but I have forgotten the content. Did I like any of these offerings enough to re-read the beginnings? I can’t remember.

There are two 'read again' projects. Should I read something I know is good or something that might be better?

There are also seven borrowed tomes, all probably making their owners antsy – will these paperbacks ever come home, wagging their bookmarks behind them?

And what is it with the library? You have four items on order. You are 164th in line for one, fifth in line for another, they’ll get back to you on the third one and you don’t even remember placing the hold on the last one. You can practically guarantee they will all turn up in the same week and add to the multitudinous centimetres of worry and aggravation.

A couple of highly recommended volumes would be perfect for an international plane flight or a lonely business trip hotel room. However, they look somewhat intimidating to a time-poor, constantly interrupted and usually brain-fried person.

At the other end of the spectrum, you’d think I could immediately eighty-six the disposable romantic lightweights from the equation. However, sometimes the bibliographic equivalent of a box of soft-centres is exactly what’s needed – if I forget what happened in the first sixty pages, it doesn’t really matter – I can ditch it and start another one or keep reading and still get it. But like their sweet equivalents, they’re nutritionally unsound and don’t really satisfy.

There are other ways of selecting, I guess – by size, weight, colour or position (just start at the top…or bottom). I could close my eyes and grab whatever my finger points to. Or I could ‘eeny meeny miney moe’.

But this hypothetical is redundant.

Short of a miracle, the blog, the dog and the housework will continue to dominate and I will continue to avert my gaze from the Scary Pile to avoid rattles and rashes.

All miracles will be gratefully accepted.

I don't care if hair product gives you green babies

A few weeks ago, when I cleaned out my bathroom cupboard, I threw out an overstuffed supermarket bag of hair products I had only used once or twice because they didn’t work on my hair.

Every day, I get out of bed, wash my hair and condition it. Maybe I do a toner. Maybe I do a treatment. My hair’s still too knotty to drag a comb through, so I add leave-in conditioner. I dry my hair. I straighten it. And when I try to pin it up, it’s too clean and it flies everywhere. So, I add some combination of mousse, wax, texturiser, styling spritz or hairspray. Then it looks dull, so I add spray-on shine.

All this before breakfast.

I’m not going to comment on whether hair product:
• causes cancer
• makes your hair smoke when you straighten it
• makes you go bald
• makes you have green babies.

What I am going to comment on is the brainwashing that has us all washing our hair every day when half the time it probably wouldn’t even be dirty, only we’ve dumped a whole bunch of gunk in after washing it, essentially to make it dirty enough to work with. (Yes, it may smell like a caramel milkshake or an ‘ocean breeze’ but your product still probably contains sheep placenta or gas-relief medicine and still basically dirties your hair.)

All this so we can hand over our dosh to the Schwarzkopf or Pantene people.

And I haven’t even started on hair dye or bleach.

It’s a marketing conspiracy.

No, I’m not suggesting you turn in to some smelly feral and I don’t even believe in having ugly hair for the sake of the planet, but do pause and think about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. Surely we’re too savvy to believe Cosmopolitan has all the answers. And surely this kind of excess and waste is just OTT.

If you spent less on hair goop, think of all the money you could save to buy more chocolate, upsize your holiday or save for your retirement.

Maybe wash your hair every second day, maybe cut down on the amount of hair crap you plaster on your head and maybe stop believing every new product on the supermarket or salon shelf is going to turn your hair in to Jennifer Aniston’s or otherwise make your life complete.

And when you do clean out your bathroom cupboard, give your cast offs to your sisters, mum or friends to try. The pretty-smelling glop might make your hair look like an oily mop or a frizzy clown wig but maybe sheep placenta is just the thing for your friend’s locks. It’s not charity, it’s not condescending, it’s thoughtful, thrifty and, yes, it’s earth-friendly. Besides, then your friend can worry about the green babies.

Image: Graeme Weatherston

*GUEST POST* Demons with paws

A warm welcome to Molly as he makes his debut as a Monstress-wannabe.

(Thanks, Molly - you submit this offering on the very day I tell the teen that of course she can have a kitten for Christmas.)

In 1997, Karen Allen, a PhD at the University Of Buffalo, studied 48 New York City stockbrokers being treated for hypertension, all of whom had lived alone for more than five years. She found that the 24 participants selected at random to have a cat or dog introduced to their lives showed far reduced levels of hypertension during stressful situations than the 24 participants in the non-pet-owning control group.

‘This study shows that if you have high blood pressure, a pet is very good for you when you're under stress, and pet ownership is especially good for you if you have a limited support system,’ Allen said.

This is but one example of the myriad of studies undertaken on the benefits of pet ownership.

After 11 years of living alone and being nagged by friends (mainly The Monstress) about getting a pet because it would be good for me, I finally succumbed and acquired a furry child in the form of a small grey kitten.

What studies, such as Professor Allen’s, fail to highlight is the demonic side of your average pet.

The following is one such example, which I’m sure would have had a significant portion of her study group trying the windows on the New York Stock Exchange.

One Friday, I was awoken about 3am by the furry child making a racket. He was suitably chastised, but did he take this as a sign that Daddy wanted to sleep? Sadly, no.

I used all my self control to ignore him and, sure enough, he lost interest and went away.

I then heard, through the darkness, the sound of him scratching in his litter tray.

‘Ah,’ I thought, ‘that’s what he wanted. How can I be mad at him for that?’

What I heard next defies description. The best analogy I can give is the sound that a bottle of dishwashing liquid makes when you squeeze the last of its contents out. This got my attention as thoughts of emptying the litter tray first thing when I got up began to pervade my mind and I heard ‘scratch, scratch, scratch’ ringing once again through the night.

The furry child reappeared at the foot of my bed and proceeded to walk up onto my pillows and over my face, purring in a way that seemed to say, ‘See how you like this!’ Light on, examination of the bedding, no little marks, no smell… Sleep overcame me, again.

Move forward another three hours and it’s time to deal with that litter tray. I’m faced with a substance that’s the consistency of melted ice-cream (but does not smell like ice cream!). Now, despite the fact he has a litter tray the size of an Olympic swimming pool, it would appear he stood in the middle, parked his business end over the edge, and sprayed this mess all over my floor and partly up one of the internal doors.

Rubber gloves, paper towel and every last scrap of self control to suppress the gag reflex saw the unholy mess cleaned up and the offensive material bagged and placed by the front door to be deposited into the garbage bin.

I was driving to work and had just crossed the flannelette curtain that separates the northern suburbs from the civilised world, when I suddenly realised, ‘Bugger – I forgot to put that bag in the rubbish bin.’

At the end of the working day, I got home, dropped off the car and headed off to a social function with no thought of the bag.

I returned home several hours later and, remembering the rubbish, went to put that bag out. But it wasn’t there. I checked the bin – not there. In my slightly inebriated state, I tried to recount my movements that morning and afternoon. While doing this, I walked into my bedroom, the only room in my house with carpet.

The shredded remains of the plastic bag and its contents were strewn across my bedroom floor. The furry child had somehow dragged this bag 10 metres from the front door to my bedroom at the back of the house and proceeded to rip it open for me to enjoy AGAIN.

So, I was forced  to don the rubber gloves and clean it up a second time. Had I a spade at that moment, I would have dug a hole in the back yard and buried it deep – along with the cat…deep, deep underground so it may never have appeared again.

And so, Professor Allen, if you’re going to undertake a study on the benefits of pet ownership, don’t sanitise it – tell the whole bloody story. Pets are not the cute, furry all-loving-and-good-for-you things you espouse. Cross them and you will discover, to your peril, that they really are – demons with paws.

20 things I’m glad I’m not

I’m glad I’m not:

1. a cockroach – the female mates only once and is pregnant for the rest of her life

2. a dentist, gynaecologist or proctologist – everybody would hate me and I'd have to spend my life poking around in strangers’ orifices

3. a tastebud – it only lives ten days

4. a teenager – you can keep all that drama and angst; once was plenty

5. bored – boredom is my idea of Hell

6. someone's appendix – just a pointless existence, really

7. the letter Q – the least used letter and often the cause of me losing Scrabble games

8. Justin Bieber – he’s a tosser

9. Muslim – women and Islam are just not a good combination (besides, I’d look crap in a burqua)

10. toilet paper, pads or tampons – if I need to explain that one, there’s something wrong with you

11. Susan Blyth Neill-Fraser – I reckon she's having a pretty shit day, today

12. a fly – after eating, a fly regurgitates its food and then eats it again (ick!)

13. poor – hello? Myer sale, bling, holidays, hair product, architects, Maldini...

14. dead – I’m too busy to die

15. fat – or really tiny for that matter, not being able to buy clothes off the rack would suck

16. Hold With Hope (Greenland) – this has got to be the place with the stupidest name in the world; at least Lord Berkeley's Knob (Scotland) and Middle Intercourse Island (Australia) have the rude factor going for them

17. freelancing anymore – now I have extra time to fill up with new activities to spike my blood pressure and exhaust me

18. Comic Sans – the world’s most loathed font (don't forget to vote in the poll on the right)

19. aspic –  aspic is such a Neville no-friends, everyone leaves it on the paté plate

20. an emo – being an apathetic yet melodramatic teen with hair constantly in your face, ridiculous clothes and barely intelligible affected music in your ears sounds too much like hard work.

5 things that sex guys up

You look at a guy. He's okay. He's not bad. He's average. And then he does something that really works for you and his sex appeal goes 'zing!' (Well, it does in my book, anyway.)

Here are five weird things that instantly sex guys up for me:

1. Cooking - his sex appeal ramps up if he’s comfortable producing something a bit more complex and healthy than tinned braised steak and onion on toast. Adding cream cheese and/or tomato sauce does not count as ‘more complex’. Using the jaffle maker doesn’t help either, even if he remembers to put the butter on the outside. There is very little sexier than a man who cooks – except maybe a man who cooks and then cleans up.

2. Shaving with lots of foam and a cutthroat razor - primal, dangerous and sensual all at once. Flick the Phillips cordless, guys. No Norman Gunston blood blotters, though. Iiieeew!

3. Splitting wood - maybe it’s the sweat, maybe it’s the muscles (and maybe it’s just the fact that I don’t have to do it!). In any case, don’t ask me why, but watching a man split firewood logs, sure gets me going.

4. Picking up litter - not riffling through garbage cans in search of recyclable glass or edible food scraps. Rather, bothering to stop and pick up that lolly wrapper that fell from his pocket, the sticky note that blew off his folder or the water bottle that bounced off the bin rim. A social conscience is sexy.

5. Talking to a child on the little one’s level - I saw a fellow pause outside my office building and squat down to explain to his worried little girl that the automatic doors would not actually close on her or gobble her up like a cupcake. I was a veritable puddle after watching that scene.

Let me know the little things you think turns a guy from so-so to sexy.

Time for a shoe audit?

Look down. Go on. Down, down, down. Take a long, hard squint at your shoes. What do you see?

Do you see a pair of fashionable shoes, gleaming and in excellent repair?

If so, read no further.

If not, you could be murdering your look (or at least inflicting grievous bodily harm).

I followed a woman in to the elevator at work the other day. The first thing I noticed was her blonde hair – it was so artfully coloured, you could tell it was either dead-set natural or phenomenally expensive (since she was older than I am, I'm figuring she'd thown serious moolah at it). She had a great suit - Cue, if I’m not mistaken - and a red blouse that perfectly matched her lipstick. She wore those cute patterned tights that are in right now. Her manicure was French. And her bling was understated but elegant.

However, (you knew there was going to be a ‘however’, didn’t you?) her shoes were out-and-out cactus. They might have been fashionable five years ago, the heels were worn down to stubs and they looked as though they had never seen a lick of polish.

Clearly, this woman wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving the house with a pulled thread on her blouse or a run in her tights. She would have taken a sickie before attending work with hacked nails or no makeup. And yet, she mindlessly shoved on a pair of shoes that the Salvos would knock back.

Scuffed, dirty or broken shoes could cost you dearly – you might miss out on that date or promotion if the wrong person translates the untidy state of your footwear into your likely bedroom or boardroom performance.

Do yourself a favour. Do a shoe audit. Set aside some time and clean and polish every pair. Check them all for wear and tear. Take the fixable ones to the repair shop - ask for a bulk discount if you need three or more fixes.

Now, here’s the tricky bit: throw the trashed ones out (putting them in a garbage bag in the spare room or the garage doesn’t count). This way, you can’t pull the ‘just one more time, no one will notice they’re wrecked’ stunt we all know so well. (Tip: someone will notice and it might be someone important.)

Also toss the ugly ones. Yes, really.

The best part?

You get to buy new shoes!

Image: Carlos Porto

The Monstress little question #2

How do we know what noises dinosaurs made?

Dinosaurs are extinct, right? And Dorothy never growls or vociferates. So, on what basis do four-year-olds run around roaring and bellowing when they are 'being dinosaurs'?

For a start, we know dinosaurs probably made noises because they had very good hearing. If they could hear sounds, they could probably make sounds.

Like modern-day birds and reptiles, dinosaurs probably made noises to signal that they were horny, that danger was lurking or that they needed first aid. Babies may have made sounds to let adults know they were hungry or in strife.

Some supposed dino noises are just guesswork to make TV shows more interesting but some simulations may come close to the real thing.

Here's one way we know:

Some dinosaurs had crests on top of their heads that probably filled with air when the animals breathed. As air was pushed through these crests, they likely made a deep bellowing sound, like a horn.

Scientists unearthed an almost complete parasaurolophus fossil crest in New Mexico. This gave them some big clues.

Using a CT scan, the dino-geeks found air chambers a bit like trombones in the crest. They made a computer model of them. Then, knowing the size and shape of the air passages, they could figure out what tones and pitches the passages could produce.

Listen to the sound of a dinosaur here (then practice imitating so you can demonstrate for any misguided preschoolers).

Next question: how would you make a dinosaur sound in a text message?

I hate Comic Sans

Comic Sans is evil. There is no reason to use it. Ever.

Comic Sans is not just sans serif. It’s also sans class, style and charisma. It is a horrible insipid weevil burrowing its nasty little way through the fabric of desktop publishing and decaying the very heart of graphic design. I've encountered pus that is less offensive than this vile font.

For decades, this noodly, wormy little bête noire has featured in charmless amateur publications worthy only of incineration. It is so recognisable and so closely aligned with twee design elements like bubblegum pink thought clouds and 3D rainbow Word Art, that it has developed a reputation for superlative ugliness it will never divest (especially if I have anything to do with it).

Being a primary school teacher or a child care centre worker is no excuse for employing this atrocious, unworthy font. It doesn’t make your worksheet look friendly – it makes your worksheet look as though your four-year-old designed it - in a hurry - blindfolded.

Speaking of four-year-olds, children’s hands should be smacked every time their mouses hover over this option in the font list (I am not one for physical punishment but the ‘hot plate rule’ surely applies here).

If you are writing a church flyer, you should know better. Comic Sans is the work of the devil and will suck your soul right out through your keyboarding fingertips.

And using Comic Sans for a business purpose looks cheaper than a welcome mat tattoo.

If you use Comic Sans, no one will take you seriously. This font is the typographical equivalent of clown shoes, Lindsay Lohan and alcopop.

If you send out an invitation in Comic Sans, nobody will come to your event. Your invitees will all stay at home shaking their heads and sniggering at your immaturity.

If you send a blackmail demand in Comic Sans, the victim will just laugh at you.

It's time the world realised that Comic Sans is not cute. It’s not fun. It's just plain fugly.

Don't use it.

(You can have your say about Comic Sans in the poll on the right.)

I love gnocchi (with bonus recipe)

I love gnocchi.

(The singular is gnoccho.)

Gnocchi were probably invented in the Middle East in Roman times.

They’re thick, soft dumplings made from semolina, wheat flour, breadcrumbs or similar ingredients. Using potato is a  recent innovation. The smaller forms are called gnocchetti (cute!).

The word gnocchi means ’lumps’ (how appetising, ‘Mum, can we have lumps for tea?’). The name may come from nocchio, a knot in the wood or from nocca (knuckle) – neither of which makes the name much more appealing.

The name is also used in France in the dish known as gnocchis à la parisienne, a hot dish comprising choux pastry gnocchi and béchamel sauce.

Gnocchi with tomato sauce is known as strangolapreti or strangoloprevete, meaning ‘priest stranglers’, because a local priest liked them so much and ate them so fast that he choked on them.

So why do they sink, then float when you cook them?

When gnocchi are placed in boiling water, the combined density of the ingredients is more than the density of the water, so the gnocchi sink. As the gnocchi warm up, it’s a bit like inflating a rubber dinghy at the bottom of a swimming pool - the air trapped in the dough expands and the combined density of the ingredients becomes less than the density of boiling water, causing the gnocchi to rise to the top.

There are about 250 calories in a cup of potato gnocchi.

Here is a recipe I made up for strangoloprevete gnocchi. It is dead (ha!) easy and delish. We're eating it at least once a week at the mo.

Mediterranean gnocchi

What you need:
3 chorizos, halved lengthways and sliced
2 cloves garlic
1/2 teaspoon chilli flakes
1/3 cup semidried tomatoes
1/3 cup pitted Kalamata olives
1/3 cup roasted capsicum strips
350 grams passata
500 grams gnocchi
Shaved parmesan to serve

What you do:
While the water for the gnocchi is coming to the boil, pan fry the chorizo until the edges brown. Add garlic and chilli and stir until fragrant (about a minute). Add tomatoes, olives, capsicum and passata and simmer for five minutes (or until the gnocchi is cooked).

Serve the tomato topping over a bed of gnocchi finished with shaved parmesan.

(Serves three – looks small but is very filling!)

15 reasons to love your hips, thighs and butt

I was shopping with a drop dead gorgeous woman I know and was shocked to find she constantly dresses to cover up her 'hideous' hips. It got me thinking.

What if you didn't have to change anything about yourself? The experts say that once you stop ‘fixing’ yourself, you find yourself free to invent an exciting, inspiring and fun life: a life where your hips, thighs and butt are perfect – whatever they look like. Let’s all unleash wild hip-appreciation, unbridled butt-acceptance and outrageous thigh-love – and reap the benefits.

Here's why you should love your hips, thighs and butt:

1. When you love your hips, thighs and butt, you exercise to honor your body, not to kill your inner Queen Latifah; and you watch what you eat to nourish your body, not to look like Megan Fox.

2. It’s easy! Eva Ritvo says you are 20% more beautiful to other people than you are to yourself. (I like the way she thinks!) When you look in the mirror, you see your physical form and you’re looking for flaws. When others see you, they also take in your personality, style, intelligence, sex appeal and wit—the whole you. So, without doing anything, you can now love your hips, thighs and butt 20% more.

3. The more you appreciate your body, the more positive you feel about yourself. When you feel positive about yourself, you attract positive, uplifting people. Exalt your butt and get great new friends!

4. When you are positive about yourself, others reinforce your views. It’s like compound interest on your savings, really. Give your thighs a small hug and get an ebullient deluge of affection back from the world.

5. I hate to break it to you but no one is paying as much attention to your looks as you think they are. They’re too worried about their own! Let the butt-bother go and you can focus on something productive instead – schedule your tax return, book in for a facial, mop the floor, organise your photos or go dancing.

6. ‘Most of us can see a beloved relative’s shape when we look at our bodies,’ says Pat Ballard. Don’t groan about inheriting your mum’s chubby cheeks or your dad’s complete bum-dearth. Instead, cherish Auntie Diz’s thighs or Oma’s haunches. ‘Be thankful your body is a constant reminder of someone you love,’ says Pat.

7. When you love your body, you can ground yourself in reality (tip: go to the park, mall or beach and look around at the people). You can scoff at advertisers peddling flesh and not product. You can laugh at the airbrushed portrayals of scrawny women with fake boobs who look like no one you’ve ever met in real life.

8. Your body is part of what makes you unique and special. If you looked like Kate Moss or Aretha Franklin, you’d have a whole different life (tip: if that sounds appealing, the problem is not your thighs, honey) – different friends, different clothes, different food favs and even a different ringtone on your phone. You just wouldn’t be you.

9. Some people use their weight worries as an excuse to avoid living a full life. Scary as it seems, if you let go the hip-hate, you’ll be free to do that meditation, learn that language, buy that motorcycle, go for that promotion or bag that man. Don’t use your body image as an excuse to spend your life huddled on the couch. Life – it’s yours. Get into it.

10. When you love your hips, thighs and butt, your inner voice doesn’t say ‘If only…’; it says ‘I feel sexy today!’ Laugh at your inner critic every time she pipes up with one of those cutting remarks (‘thunder thighs’, ‘lard arse’). You really can embed a new attitude by repeating it for 21 days. Tell yourself you feel sexy every day and in three weeks, chances are, it’ll be true.

11. Belly dancing – if you’ve got it, flaunt it. Ancient and natural, the music is a tangible energy alive inside you. You shimmy your hips, then undulate them. Your whole body is entwined with the sensuous rhythms, celebrating your gorgeous form and its connection with the earth. What’s not to love?

12. When you love your body, your priorities get real. Question: if you had a month to live, how important would the width of your hips be? Life is too short to hate your body. Ditch the shallow self-obsession and focus on the things that matter. (Tip: they’re probably not things.)

13. Dr. Patricia Koch, found that women who thought they were attractive had more sex, more desire and they orgasmed more easily. I love my butt, I love my butt, I love my butt…

14. If you love your body, you can stop fighting with it. Waging a war against flab or cellulite is never going to work. Once you put down the weapons of war (the insults, the torturous exercise binges, the starvation diets) and embrace the way your are, you can focus on nourishing and nurturing your body and give it a chance to cooperate with your wishes instead of fighting back. If nothing else, you’ll stop being so battle weary all the time.

15. When you love your body, you can treat it as if it is sacred. Because it is.

How far will you go to look younger?

I was at a dinner last Saturday and a couple of women at my table told me how great I was looking and asked me what the secret to my fantastic skin was.

You could have flattened me with a feather.

Apart from smoking for more than 25 years, my secret is Nivea Visage (about $7 from the supermarket), another supermarket brand if it’s on special or even an economy bottle of Homebrand Sorbolene with vitamin E when that runs out.

I did buy some Roc on Brands Exclusive but even though it makes my skin feel soft, it smells more like tinea ointment than face cream, so I tend not to use it. Maybe it’s working by osmosis from its perch on the bathroom window sill.

So, is there any point spending bucket loads in Priceline?

Expensive face creams that claim to get rid of wrinkles are a waste of money and are no more effective than cheap moisturisers according to tests by UK mag, Which? Forty eight women tested the 12 best-selling anti-wrinkle products. After a month of using a cream from an unmarked pot, only one in five women said costly brands improved their skin. But a third of the cheap cream testers noticed a difference.

Some of the dear ones even caused side-effects, like rashes and spots (I learnt from experience never to try new cocoa butter cream immediately before a party).

Bird poo, sperm, mercury and placenta — are there no bounds to how far women will go to look younger?

It seems not.

If you thought things were out of control with collagen injections and Botox, the newest products promising an immediate anti-ageing effect are synthetic snake venom and actual bee venom.

Then there are ‘vampire fillers’ where a doctor takes your blood and spins it in a centrifuge to extract the plasma. They then injects it below the skin to stimulate collagen. This procedure costs around $2,000 and lasts less than a year. Doctors admit there’s no guarantee the treatment will have any effect at all. (If you think this sounds like a great idea, I've got a really cool briidge I can sell you.)

And for something even more full on, consider stem-cell sculpting where a doctor removes fat from your body under local anaesthetic, then processes it to isolate the stem calls. The concentrated cells are then mixed back with some of the fat and injected into your face. The cost is between $5,500 and $9,500, presumably depending on how haggard you are to start with. The results last at least five years.

Of course, we haven’t even touched on carving up your face with a scalpel and putting it back together again like some macabre jigsaw.

I think I’ll just stick with the Nivea, thanks. But I have quit the fags.


Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Monstress little question #1

Why QWERTY?

Ever wondered why your keyboard doesn’t just flow alphabetically like your phone?

Christopher Latham Sholes, a newspaper editor and printer from Milwaukee, invented the QUERTY keyboard in 1873.

He started out with letters and numbers more or less in order along the lines of a piano keyboard.

However, when the user pressed neighbouring keys at close to the same time, the metal arms the characters were mounted on jammed together.

Chris separated commonly used letter-pairs (like ‘th’ and ‘st’) so they wouldn’t clash – a bit like a teacher with naughty children really.

After six years of trial and error, he arrived at something close to what we use today.

When Remington bought the manufacturing rights, their adjustments included placing the ‘R’ key where the full stop had been, so sales staff could impress customers by pecking out the brand name ‘TYPE WRITER’ from one keyboard row.

On Tuesday, I went to Hell

Dear [local government body],

Here is my idea of Hell: sitting trapped for four and a half hours in a large room full of strangers with no food, coffee or even water and nothing to do but listen to a succession of amateur musicians maim and torture perfectly innocent pieces of music.

You provided me with this experience on Tuesday evening.

Here are some thoughts around improving your Eisteddfod:

1. Call me over sensitive, but stationing a couple of surly old women on desk and door duty does not make for the warmest welcome one could envisage. Further, closing the door and having them guard it like rabid bulldogs during performances could be construed as slightly condescending, aggressive and offensive. Personally, I’d choose a committee of Rick Springfield and his clone in strategically torn jeans to greet and seat, but failing that, someone with half a smile and no God-complex would be an improvement.

2. Consider this: the success of your event is reliant on parents -
• allowing their children to participate
• giving up their regularly scheduled evening laundry/gaming/cardio sessions/television to ferry their children to and from your venue
• (often) staying to support the proceedings.

Bear in mind that these parents have only their mobile phone apps (on silent) to interrupt the tedium of shrieking piccolos and oom-pa-pa-ing euphoniums (not to mention scraping chairs, clanging music stands and the occasional collapsing drum kit).

Pop quiz:

Do you seat the parents at the front of the room where at least they can pick their children out from the sea of tubas and cymbals on stage or do you herd them like cattle to a designated area of rock hard plastic chairs at the rear of the room?

Think about it.

Hint: cushions are your friend.

3. Instead of soliciting prize donations from service clubs and charging fifty cents for a photocopied sheet of paper masquerading as a program to raise funds for your event, sell food and coffee. You have a captive (and largely desperate) audience of parents, rellies, friends (and other hangers on who couldn’t think of an excuse for non-attendance fast enough). By nine o’clock, they would pay almost any money for a dry ham and cheese sandwich and a piss weak instant coffee, if only to break the interminable monotony. This opportubnity is a fundraiser's wet dream.

4. It’s clear that you are music zealots. This is fine. I am a tolerant person, all for diversity and harmony. However, it would be preferable if you did not inflict your fervor on unsuspecting adult community members. Some people have a life outside music. They have dinners to cook, families to care for, sleep to be enjoyed. Is it really necessary to have 762 eisteddfod sections? Word of the day: downsize.

5. Further, do not infect impressionable children with your zeal. Music is not the centre of their universe. They also have sport, homework and chores to deal with. Occasionally, they need to eat and sleep.

6. I know it’s nice for the soloists to have an audience, but sandwiching – count ‘em – SEVEN of them between the band sections reeks of rent-a-crowd. It’s one thing to listen to my own child – listening to some stranger’s brat annihilate Debussy is a cruel and unusual punishment for an unsuspecting citizen. Without this musical detour, I could have been home with a chicken burger and a glass of sav blanc ninety minutes earlier.

7. Fact: many students who perform in one section, also perform in other sections. Sometimes, they perform in five or six sections. Short lesson in cause and effect: children who perform three nights running become tired. Tired children are cranky. Cranky children irritate their parents. Irritated parents swear up and down there will be no eisteddfod participation next year. Tip: rethink your scheduling.

8. Pointed question: does it really take the adjudicator 10 minutes to figure out whether a band comprises mainly gifted protégés or talentless dolts?

9. Begging audience members to stay when you are already running an hour and a half late and it is past most of the parents’ bedtimes is pitiful. Don’t do it.

10. Three hundred females. Two toilets. Do the math.

Yours,

The Monstress


Image: Pixomar

*GUEST POST* Kaitie’s blind date no-nos

A big welcome to Kaitie who is developing many new talents, from buying frilly blouses to blogging. Today, we are privileged to enjoy Kaitie’s inaugural foray in to Monstress-land as she shares her sage advice on blind dating:

DON’T:

1. Compare
When you're teeing up the date, don’t compare yourself to anyone famous. ‘I am Emily Deschanel meets David Boreanaz,’ is something my ego can definitely handle, but my date wouldn’t recognise me in a fit. If you really look like Jessica Alba or joke like Will Ferrell, let your date enjoy the happy surprise.

2. Wear crap
Don’t spend the whole night remembering not to raise your arm because a moth ate your shirt’s armpit or monitoring how many bites of lettuce you can ingest before your dress bursts like the Hoover Dam.

3. Talk exes
Don’t mention your last boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife/mistress/booty call six hundred times…or even once, if you can help it.

4. Succumb to ego
Don’t talk about yourself too much. Paradoxically, one of the best ways to get someone to pay attention to you is to ask them lots of questions. The other advantage of this cunning tactic is that you get to find out about them and figure out if you actually like them.

5. Crystal ball gaze
Don’t wistfully mention baby names you adore or what colour you want to paint your picket fence. We all know it is important to find out if possible relationship candidates share the same goals, but not on the first date…or even the second. And when you do go the goal route, maybe start with your next DVD purchase or your new cardio program. 

6. Wander
Don’t check out other people. Imagine your date saying, ‘You know, if you hurry, you can get that babe to autograph the bucket of drool you’re accumulating, as we speak. Go ahead, I’ll wait.’ Not cool.

7. Drink too much

Think Blind date with Kim Basinger and Bruce Willis. She is the girl of his dreams until, at his prompting, she has a bit too much champagne. Before you know it, he’s lost his suit, job, apartment, car and reputation. Okay, this is over the top, but throwing up in his car or passing out on her front porch are not going to win you any brownie points.

8. Assume

Don’t assume your date will grab the bill. No matter who invites whom, it’s always a nice gesture to offer to pay for half. If you really loathe your date, think of paying your share as tidying up loose ends.

9. Boink

The first date rule is the first date rule for a reason. Girls: don’t give away your mystique too soon. Guys: don’t be sleazy. Anticipation is the name of the game. Besides, sometimes it takes three meets to realise your date is a neurotic emotional vampire with the IQ of a Brussels sprout and a fetish for licking inflatable pool toys.

20 things you never wanted to know about giraffes

The giraffe is my daughter’s and my mother’s favourite animal. This lofty feat of natural engineering is simulatneouslty stunning and ridiculous. Here are 20 facts about the giraffe:

1. The Egyptian hieroglyph for giraffe means ‘to prophesy’ or ‘to foretell’. Experts believe the animal was given this hieroglyph because of its acute eyesight.

2. An adult giraffe’s purplish black tongue is prehensile and measures 67 centimetes.

3. While giraffes are often silent, they are not mute. They can make bleating and bellowing noises that we can hear and also make sounds at frequencies not audible to us.

4.  Ola Helland, a 25-year-old web designer, was out drinking when his friend, Jørgen, refused to believe that Ola could collect a million giraffes by the end of 2010, but Ola proved him wrong.

5. Each giraffe has a unique coat pattern.

6. The giraffe has seven vertebrae in its neck, just like most other mammals.

7. Giraffes have elastic blood vessels in their necks to help them lean their heads down to drink. If they didn’t they’d pass out each time they tried to get water from a stream.

8. If you dream about a giraffe it means you need to consider the big picture. The dream may also be a metaphor for how you are ‘sticking your neck out’ for someone. If you’re riding a giraffe, you want attention, but aren't getting it.

9. Giraffes have no tear ducts – but people have seen them cry.

10. Even though they appear lanky, a giraffe's legs are very powerful and a single kick can decapitate a lion.

11. The Toys ‘R’ us giraffe mascot is called Geoffrey.

12. A giraffe eats about 64 kilos of foliage a day.

13. A giraffe's favorite food is the thorny acacia tree and some seeds germinate only after passing through the giraffe's digestive tract.

14. Giraffe’s have antiseptic saliva that helps thorn-inflicted wounds on their tongues to heal quickly.

15. Last year, police in Oregon, USA, saw drunken Sean McDowell, 24, pick up a 1.3 metre tall toy giraffe outside a shop and simulate sex with it. Twice. Maybe he had struck out with all the women at the bar and this giraffe was looking pretty good.

16. Giraffes sleep for between 20 minutes and two hours a day.

17. There are nine giraffe species.

18. In Africa you can still find giraffe meat on some menus (for example, red wine giraffe steak with tomatoes and fresh herbs).

19. Giraffes don’t bathe.

20. If you want to catch a giraffe, don’t chase it for too long or it will have a heart attack, due to its high blood pressure.


Image: Gidion Lubbe

What your dreams mean

I’m a big believer in the power of dreams. Here are the meanings of six common dreams:

Chase
In chase dreams, you are running away from an attacker, an animal, a monster (or your mother wielding a wooden spoon) who wants to hurt or kill you (or smack your bum for sitting on the terrarium and breaking it). Ask yourself if there is something stressful in your life (maybe even some aspect of yourself) that you are running away from. It might be time for a confrontation.

Exam
You're doing a test but you can't answer any questions, the paper is in Klingon, you are running out of time or your pen keeps turning in to a banana. Maybe you arrive late and miss the exam. These dreams mean you are lacking confidence and self-esteem, that you feel unprepared and that you think people are judging you. Stop worrying about whether you are good enough. You are.

Falling
Falling dreams show you’re feeling overwhelmed and out of control about something in your life, for example, your overflowing inbox, your credit card balance or that entire tub of Valhalla Blackberry Cheesecake ice cream you ate last night.

The good news is, contrary to an urban myth, you will not die if you don’t wake up before you hit the ground.

Flying
Flying dreams are exhilarating, joyful, and liberating. They show you’re on top of a situation, you have risen above something or you have gained a new perspective on things. Flying dreams celebrate your personal sense of power.

If you can’t control your flight or you run in to obstacles like mountains, power poles or Blahniks the size of skyscrapers, someone or something is standing in your way in your waking life.

If you are afraid of your flight, you may fear success. Perhaps you should hold off on taking the next step.

Naked
You’re at work, waiting in the coffee queue or just walking down the street and you suddenly realise that you are starkers! This dream means you’re feeling vulnerable, defenseless and afraid of being exposed. Maybe you are afraid to show your real feelings. Perhaps you fear being unmasked as a fraud. Or maybe you are hiding something that you fear might be revealed. Get that dirty secret out of the closet and on to the front page and you'll feel much better. Go on, admit it, you've always wanted to rob a bank just to see if you could.

Teeth
If your teeth crumble in your hands, fall out one by one with just a light tap, grow crooked or rot, you may be anxious about how people see you, especially in a sexual light. Losing teeth might also suggest you feel powerless. Alternatively, maybe you're just overdue for a dental check up.


While these basic meanings can be helpful, I find it’s also useful to pay attention to how I feel in my dreams and to think about the personal connotations of the dreams’ subject. Symbols can be highly individual – what a mouse, a book or a helicopter means to me may be something totally different for you. (And, Mum, I didn't break the terrarium - I was covering for someone else.)

For more on dreams, visit my favourite dream dictionary.


Image: Filomena Scalise

Are you stupid?

I understand that sometimes you are just too close to events to know if you are truly stupid. And sometimes you are just too stupid to know if you are truly stupid.

Answer these nine questions to find out:

1. Have you ever shredded someone’s entire wardrobe, ordered 20 pizzas and had them delivered to someone’s house or super-glued parts of another person's anatomy together?

Yes? You are probably not stupid, just bitter. Stalking is so undignified. Face facts and move on.

2. Have you ever flashed your bare chest at passing traffic, drunk a bottle of Tabasco sauce, eaten cat food, shaved off your eyebrows or phoned a death threat through to The Lodge?

Yes? You are probably not stupid, just competitive. You don’t have to do every dare that comes your way, you know. ‘Prudence’ is not a dirty word. (And if you don't quit with the death threats, someone will come and arest you.)

3. Have you ever lit your farts, had a coin or a pencil stuck up your nose or shaken up someone’s Coke?

Yes? You are probably not stupid, just immature. Grow up, already.

4. Have you ever believed the government would save your butt from marauding aliens, decided to investigate a strange noise and been maimed by creatures from outer space or tried to buy your way on to an escape spaceship as earth disintegrates around you?

Yes? You are probably not stupid, just delusional. Reality check: you are not a character in a sci fi movie. Get back to work.

5. Have you ever sat in your car in the middle of a busy parking lot and when a car passed, pointed a hair dryer at it; gone to a toy store, found items that make noise and sat in the middle of an aisle pressing all of the buttons over and over again; stood behind a person eating a chilli dog or baked beans and made fart noises?

Yes? You are probably not stupid, just sick. I have two words for you: therapy. Pronto.

6. Do you ever pretend you're a robot, try to swallow your tongue, make car noises as you walk or make Star Trek door noises by the lift?

Yes? You are probably not stupid, just bored. Find something constructive to do – bake biscuits, chop some wood or discover a cure for cancer.

7. Have you ever placed every dollar you own on red, torched your house or joined a pyramid scheme?

Yes? You are probably not stupid, just greedy. News flash: get rich quick schemes don’t work. Get a piggy bank like a normal person.

8. Have you ever said ‘I just have too much going on to really get serious right now’, ‘I don’t want to fall in love with you because I can’t have you’ or ‘I’m not married in my heart’?

Yes? You are probably not stupid but you sure have a Y chromosome. Does anyone really buy these lines?

9. Have you ever pretended to sneeze on people you don't know, photocopied your butt, dyed your hair with household bleach, declared there's a bomb on your plane, burgled someone and left your ID behind or done anything that was subsequently broadcast on a funny home video TV show?

Yes? You are probably stupid.


Image: br3akthru