Mushi mushi,

Now, before I start, I know all my fellow Australians are preparing to de-Follow me for even daring to write the words ‘Lara Bingle’. We are sick of her. She just keeps popping up in every publication every bloody day. And she’s made her way onto my blog, too. Bitch.

So, if you’re sick of her, close the browser window now. I won’t hold it against you, promise.

I just think the whole thing is… dare I say it?… well, pretty funny. And I would like to share it with the whole two Americans (well, maybe there is a few more than that) that read my blog. Because one truly hopes the news has not made it to the US. Surely, they have more interesting things to talk about. If not, then there is obviously something seriously wrong with the world.

So, for the Yankees, here is the very brief story of Lara Bingle. Please excuse the messy YouTube embed-ments, they just don’t go that well with Pyzam templates. OK? OK.

She began like this- you may have seen the ad. Bloody awful. That’s her at the end. In the bikini. The blonde. Swearing. You can’t miss her.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TebeNC-_VjA]

Not long after, she engaged in a torrid affair with this bloke. Footballer. Meathead. Married. Shame, shame, shame.

After that little debacle, it seemed she cleaned up her act, and found true lurrrve with this guy. Micheal Clarke. Cricketer. Not a media whore. All round nice bloke. Ain’t they cute?

Lara and Micheal get engaged with a huge big sparkly ring, move into Micheal’s $6 million flat, he buys her an Aston-Martin. As you do. That’s how my relationship progressed, anyway. Everything is lovely. Lara occasionally crops up on the front cover of women’s magazines, but that’s OK. As a couple, they are very, very boring.

Until this happens.

* This photo has been removed due to me realizing what a dick I was to republish it in the first place. It took two years…  but I got it.*

Oops. Look like meathead married footballer is coming back to haunt her, 4 years on. Ah well, poor lass, can’t hold that against her. And Micheal didn’t, I don’t think. I think what he had a problem with was this.

Yuh, that’s his classy chick Lara, selling her side of the story to the very same magazine that published the shower pic in the first place. Hmmmm. Surely that has to be more to it than that?

Whatever, the details don’t thrill me. What thrills me is this (sick, twisted woman that I am).

I love a big, messy, public break up.

And as far as they go, this one is awesome.

Micheal got the removals truck in in the middle of the day to cart all Lara’s stuff out, with the paparazzi and media snapping away frantically. A couple of days before that, Lady Lara was seen flipping the paps the bird from the balcony of the apartment.

And the icing on the cake?

Yesterday, it was highly publicised in the media that there were plumbers searching the sewer pipes of the apartment, looking for a ‘small but very valuable’ piece of jewellery.

What a brilliant end to an absolute cracker of a break up.

Flushing your sparkler down the loo. Great work, Ms. Bingle. When I grow up, I wanna be just like you.

Aloha,

OK, first off, this one is sponsored by Nuffnang. (Read on, believe me, it could win you a thousand bucks…)

My name is Lori, and I am shortie. A munchkin. I’m tiny. (Personally, I prefer ‘elfin’, but any of those other terms will do).

I’m 158 centimeters. That about five foot two, I think. It’s the same height as Kylie Minogue.

I am OK with this. I’ve grown accustomed to being small. I am the person who can shop in the kids clothing section, and still needs to get her pants taken up.

I have to stand on tiptoes to kiss the Man, even when I’m wearing heels.

I’m so short that if I walk at an automatic door from an angle, it doesn’t open. I’m not tall enough for the sensor to see me. Stop laughing.

And I was that kid who was always in the front row of school photos.

I used to complain to my mum about it, always being the shortest (that, and my freckles). Her response, bless her, was always “Good things come in small packages, Lori”. (And for the freckles, it was, “They’re not freckles, Lori, they’re kisses from the sun.”)

Anyhoo. Freckles aside, good things do, indeed, come in small packages. Cottees know this, obviously. Because, just in time for summer, they’ve released their Cottees cordials in 1 litre bottles.
Don’t be alarmed. They make be smaller, but they are just as good….

• It’s makes the same amount of cordial- 10 litres- for the same price.
• All your favorite flavors are still available, just in 1 litre packs.
• It’s twice as strong, so you only use half as much.
• These cute little bottles are easier to pour, store and carry, and much better for the environment, what with less packaging and all.

Let’s just call it a Lori size bottle, shall we..?

Here’s a closer look. To scale.

New bottle compared with…

..milk bottle (much easier to carry than that giant lug of a thing)….

….. the Man’s stinky shoe (much more compact than that too!).

*Ahem* Moving on- here’s the $1000 part- I want you to tell me, right here in the comments section, your own best experience or time, when good things have come in small packages.

The best response across all the blogs hosting wins $1000 from the totally awesomeness people at Cottees. Check out the finer details here at Nuffnang, and the small print T & C’s are here.

So. Get your itty bitty teeny weeny thinking caps on, jellybeaners, and tell me what you got….

It’s the Blog This 50th Challenge and they want a list of ‘Fifty Things‘. I ran out of time got procrastinating decided to enter at the last minute couldn’t get past number seven for any of them had so many brilliant ideas, here is my list of Fifty Things I Almost Wrote A List of 50 Things About. Enjoy! Or something.

• 50 things you didn’t know about clowns.
• 50 reasons I am awesome.
• 50 reasons I make a great Girl Guide.
• 50 meals to cook in under 20 minutes, using only a bowl, a spoon and your microwave.
• 50 things my husband does to really p*ss me off.
• 50 of the best kid’s shows on free to air TV.
• 50 things you didn’t know about me.
• 50 things you didn’t want to know about me.
• 50 reasons Aussies are awesome.
• 50 things to do before I die.
• 50 good reasons to breastfeed.
• 50 things I like to Google.
• 50 things I’m scared to Google.
• 50 things I’m scared to admit I Google.
• 50 conclusive facts to prove Google is attempting to take over the Earth the InterWebs.
• 50 Reasons as to why that’s a very bad thing.
• 50 of the worst cups of coffee ever made (top 30 made by me).
• 50 of the Daily Telegraph’s best headlines.
• 50 reasons drugs are bad, mmmmkay?
• 50 reasons I should not cook. Really, really should not cook.
• (oh Good Lord,is anyone actually counting these….?)
• 50 of the most annoying children’s toys.
• 50 reasons I hate Yo Gabba Gabba.
• And Dorothy the Dinosaur.
• 50 medications not to mix with alcohol.
• 50 reasons not to live in Picton.
• 50 sensational balloon animals- naked!
• 50 celebrities on crack.

• 50 things I would do if I had a gazillion dollars.
• 50 things I would like you to do for me if you had one gazillion dollars.
• 50 reasons Justin Beiber needs a good smack on the arse. Preferably from his mum.
• And 50 reasons why that ain’t never gonna happen.
• (Are we done yet? No? Almost? OK, a few more then..)
• 50 reasons Sundays are the best days for chasing leprechauns.
• 50 reasons a full moon is the only way to tell if you’re pregnant
• 50 reasons Kevin Rudd is a dead-set spunk
• (Really stretching the limits of believability here… You’re OK with that? Good then, let’s go on.)
• 50 reasons MasterChef is actually a brainwashing cult led by Matt Preston.
• 50 reasons pornography is good for the soul (sponsored by Google).
• 50 ways to know if your computer loves you back.
• 50 of the most anti-climatical ways to end a first date.
• 50 amusing ways to worship roadkill.
• (We’re just about there.. it’s the home stretch!)
• 50 reasons I need an iPhone
• 50 of the worst ‘pun intended’ names for Thai restaurants
• 50 of the funkiest yogic Sanskrit chants
• 50 things I call my kids other than their given names (and most of them are nice. Most of them).
• 50 reasons you really should not eat that five day old pizza, Man.
• 50 of the worst things to say to a laboring woman.
• 50 of the best celebrities I have slept with in my fantasies.
• (And praise heaven we are just about done)
•  50 reasons my blog is just the most total awesomeness thing ever.

So… *cough*  there you have it. My list of 50 things I almost wrote a list of 50 things about. Made you giggle? Good. Go vote for me. They have, like, prizes and stuff.

And if there’s any on there you actually want to see the full 50 list of (really?), let me know and I just may write it. Maybe.

It is said that women in some Native American tribes grow their hair long all their life, only to cut it if they become a widow.

The dictated mourning period is one year. But the widow cannot remarry until her hair has regrown.

 

The speed with which young children learn to drive iPhones, iPads, iPods… it’s terrifying. With no direction, and certainly no encouragement- my iPhone has been off limits most of the time I’ve had it- my just-turned-four year old Chop knows how to find the music and the games he likes, and has figured out how to play almost all of them.

And- again, terrifying- that is not all he knows how to technically manipulate. Turning on and finding the right channel on the TV is no problem. He can actually show anyone who cares to watch how to plug in a DVD player and tune it to the TV. Not to mention use his CD player and mp3 player (yes, he has his own).

I got myself an iPad for Christmas. Well, technically it was for me. In order to not get cranky and frustrated, I’ve begun to think of more as a ‘family present’. I remember having to stretch my mind a little bit to get it around the whole concept of apps and iStuff when I first got my iPhone. The Chop has had no such difficulties. Before the iPad was even out of it’s box, the Chop had chosen his first app, courtesy of an ad on (government funded) TV. There’s certainly nothing new- at least not in the last fifty years- about the basic principle of children being swayed by advertising. What I found pretty damn amazing was the way he connected us having an iPad to a random ad on TV for an app for an iPad. It’s not a concept that needed explaining to him- the level of assumed knowledge kids today have in the sphere of technology is phenomenal.

I’m a massive gadget geek- we know that already. I own a Kindle; iPhone with GPS and a bluetooth headset; mp3 player and dock; a laptop equipped with a webcam, cooling pad and wireless carpet mouse; a flip cam; a digital camera; and I recently relinquished my desktop computer after realizing I hadn’t switched it on for six months. While I try to live sustainably and without a lot of waste, gadgets are something I never regret spending my money on. Even my toothbrush is electric and equipped with WiFi- I’m not even joking. Is it any wonder my kids are so computer literate?

I didn’t graduate to ‘geek’ until I started studying at university, way back in the year 2000. The very first time I used the Internet was to choose my timetable for the approaching semester. We had a vending machine in the computer lab that sold disks. Not CD’s, actual disks. I don’t remember having much electronic stuff as a kid, nor needing it. As I got older we had an Atari, a Sega (Alex the Kidd, anyone? I will whoop your arse.) and a computer, but a lot of those purchases were my dad’s influence- evidently, he’s a gadget geek too.

These days, children begin using computers in kindergarten, and some much earlier, depending on if and where they do their preliminary education. I remember being disturbed and a bit disgusted when I first saw this YouTube clip of a one year old confounded by a paper magazine that doesn’t work like an iPad. Then I witnessed the frustration of my own daughter, two years old, trying desperately to work my Kindle by swiping the screen- my Kindle isn’t a touch screen.

There is a mum within me who is old fashioned and doesn’t want her kids exposed to computers and more screen time than they need any earlier than necessary. And, I must admit, part of that mothers problem is my own insecurity- my children spend too much time in front of the TV already, especially my son, especially the last year or so, while I try to keep my head above water and not let my emotions drown me. That mother in me, she feels guilty.

The more liberal and less-tortured mother within tells me that fighting this is going to be an uphill, losing battle; and it may be counter productive. The world we live in dictates a need to be technically skilled; and computer and gadget literate. I guess the key to it- within an obesity epidemic among developed countries- is a bit of moderation. Encouraging kids to get outside as well online, into the great outdoors as well as the information super highway.

And not be too pessimistic. If knowing how to drive an iPhone, access the App store and find Angry Birds is the biggest sin inflicted on my children by technological so far… I think we’re doing OK. At least he doesn’t know my password, so he can’t run up my credit card bill. Yet.

In comparison to the children of our iGeneration who have everything… there are too many children in the world who have nothing. If you happen to still be doing your last minute Christmas shopping, the UNHCR World’s Biggest Package website is the perfect place to find last minute gifts that mean something.

Rather than spending $27 on one of those beauty sets with talc/body cream/shower gel that the destined recipient will re-gift the following year, spend your $27 on malaria treatments for fifteen kids in  Nakivale. UNHCR will email a gift card to the person you bought it for, and everyone will feel better for it. There’s a lot to be said for contributing to the health of the world, rather than just filling everyone’s home with more stuff this Christmas. Surely, we all have all the stuff we need already?