Keeping up appearances - A guide for classy supermarket shopping.

1. When you wish to purchase embarrassing foods to be eaten alone at home on a Monday night, it is always best to purchase a party sized quantity to throw the cashier off the scent. Instead of looking like a sad individual who will later be sitting on her bed eating cocktail frankfurts for dinner and watching Twin Peaks on DVD, it looks like you might be on your way to a children’s party. Buy at least half a kilo. Sure - you’ll be eating them for the next three nights but at least it only cost $2.47 for three meals.

2. After you have collected your cocktails franks, proceed directly to the health food isle. Look at a bag of dried apricots, checking to see if they’ve been preserved with Sulfur dioxide. See that they have, and decide to leave them in order to avoid extreme flatulence later, as if cocktail franks aren’t made of ground up puppies and Sulfur dioxide.

3. Proceed directly to lolly isle and collect a catering-sized quantity of Lindt chocolate with hazelnuts. Don’t forget that low fat bag of marshmallows.

4. Realise you’ve been dehydrated for the last five days and rectify the situation by proceeding to the soft drink isle and grabbing a 1.25L bottle of Coca Cola.

5. Walk directly past toilet roll isle, even though there is approximately half a sheet left at home on the roll.

6. Oooooh! Reduced to clear, close to expiration date Big M’s!!!

7. Proceed to checkout in haze of self-disgust.

8. Drive home staring into middle distance.

Ever wondered how the drug ‘de-gas’ works?

I did.

This afternoon I walked past a building being demolished on campus where I used to attend biochemistry practicals. I sat there and watched the demolition crew as they tore apart everything but the supporting beams. I swear that I saw an old fume hood fall three stories and smash into a million pieces. The whole process was TOTALLY FAAARKING AWESOME and I spent a good twenty minutes wishing that I’d put half of the time I have spent studying biochemistry towards learning how to operate demolition equipment instead.

Whilst watching the crew go to work I began to reminisce about all of the incredibly useful knowledge I had gained in that building. Like how laxatives, diuretics and anti-emetics work. Unfortunately, between my pre-botanist days of the year 2001 and now there has been a veritable cavalcade of water under my biochemical bridge that has rendered most of this knowledge removed from my brain like so many multi-metaphored sentences that don’t make any sense any more after you’ve hit the fifty-first word.

So sitting at my desk tonight I decided to have a bit of a Google and remind myself just how laxatives and such actually work. As the nearest living relative of A. Lewis, I know that one of her favourite beauty products (aside from the fresh blood of children) is De-gas.

Now here is a word of advice for those playing at home.

Like me, attempt to type ‘degas’ into your Google search box on your toolbar.

Whoops! Accidentally typed ‘degas’ into facebook login instead. Incorrect password for ‘degas’. Hahahaha. Please try again.

Instantly type ‘degas’ into Facebook login again – same result.

Whoops.

Now type ‘degas’ correctly into Google toolbar.



Laugh? I nearly de-gassed myself.

As most of you know, the level of photographic humour I tend to indulge in lies somewhere between this…




…and this.



I’ve never been a big fan of LOL cats (too much emphasis on lame cutesy text and not enough on hilarious cat with anthropomorphic face ect) until I came across this hum dinger.




Don’t speak.

Dear Jebus.

Why oh why have you taketh my ipod from me today? Were you punishing me for not but the seven separate occasions it has fallen from my pocket and onto the bike track this week? Could you sense the unbridled pleasure I was taking in listening to ELO’s Balance of Power as I sat at my microscope? Did you know that all I wanted after a hard days toil teaching first year science was to listen to 'I Touch Myself' on repeat all the way back to Brunswick on my bicycle?

Were you punishing me for the repeated daytime sexual fantasies I have about Iva Davies that can be initiated purely by the first two bars of Icehouse’s ‘Electric Blue’? Would you have preferred it if instead of getting freaky behind the test tube rack to ‘Some Like It Hot’ by Robert Palmer and the Power Station Five that I was listening to Amazing Grace instead? Well let me tell you this, Jesus Q. Christ - under this rusted robotic exoskeleton I am still a woman.

In light of this recent tragedy, I hope my loved ones will band together and support me. Perhaps if you were all to take just one adult contemporary record from your parents collection and send me a copy, I could somehow get close to replacing the hours of easy listening that has just passed me by. My only hope of getting to sleep tonight is if some kind of incredibly handsome man calls and sings me a James Taylor song down the telephone line.

Oh God – just saying that reminds me of ‘Telephone Line’ by ELO.

I fucking love ELO.

Anyway, in light of this tragedy of biblical proportions, the first gentleman caller wins my virginity.

FIN.