Stick a badge on that pole and call it Officer.

I wasn't aware of this story until it made headlines across the ditch and one of my 'Stralian cousins alerted me to it.

In a nutshell, two prisoners made a break for freedom from a courthouse, one had just been sentenced to two years for assault and the other was in custody for violating parole and stealing a car.

Their escape was going swimmingly well until they forgot one minor detail - that they were, um, sort of, like, handcuffed together.

A light pole took them out when Einstein went for the left hand side of the pole and Rutherford opted for the right hand side. Momentum dictated swift u-turns around the pole in opposite directions, and the officers of the law who were in hot pursuit then decided lashings of pepper spray was a good way to top the whole episode off.

Shucks, these guys' parents must be bursting with pride, they've bred children who could qualify for the Darwin Awards.

Did I miss something ?

I'm trying to find something out about an event that's going on in a very small remote community soon. These are the conversations I've had over the last few days.

Phone call #1.

Insert phone greeting part. 'I'm trying to find something out about X, can you tell me who I need to talk to?'

'Oh, you'll have to talk to Jack. You'll find him on this number.'

Phone call #2.

'Hi, insertphonegreetingandexplanationpart. So is Jack available ?'

'No, he's not. But ring this number tomorrow and ask for Wayne.'

But I thought I was asking for Jack?

'Ask for Wayne?'

'Yes.'

Phone call #3

'Hi, insertphonegreetingandexplanationpart. So is Wayne around?'

'No, you'll catch Jack down at the workshop.'

Either these people are messing with my brain, or everyone has two names.

And the Oscar goes to...

On a job I was working recently we were talking about strange things that we have witnessed in our lives.

I think one of the nominees for the Strangest Thing I Have Observed Award is the time I was on a work trip in Malaysia. We were having our forty-five cent breakfast of roti and dal (yes, it was kind of weird until you got your head around it) at a local joint. We were meandering through breakfast when one of the guys looking out the window remarked, 'There's a naked man.'

That caught everyone's attention. And most he certainly was, tall and naked.

Being the only girl of the team I noticed something else, 'Naked, except for those high heels he's wearing.'

We watched him for a bit and then went back to our roti and dal.

Until one of the others said, 'And he's cleaning those motorbike seats with watermelon.'

There were about fifteen motorbikes parked outside the food place and he had started intently scrubbing the seats of the bikes with a big juicy watermelon.

As you do.

So there's my morning talk, the floor is officially open.

It's no wonder she looks twenty years younger than she really is.

Rose Jacobs is a ninety-four year old inspiration.

She walks eight kilometres every day, spends an hour and a half a day at the gym and took up tap dancing when she was eighty.

When she was ninety-one a friend suggested she should take up running. She wasn't sure whether she would be able to.

'How long since you last ran?' Asked the journo.

'Oh about eighty years!'

This Sunday she is taking part in the Masters Games in Wanganui, she will be the only competitor running in the 100 metres sprint for ninety-four year olds. She's hoping she'll do it in thirty seconds.

What a spunky woman.

Jessica Who?

I've just been working with a guy who has been kissed by Sandra Bullock.

She did so as she was giving him his Oscar.

He was on Team Lord of the Rings. The poor sod happened to be trapped in a car with me for about five hours and the only way he was going to avoid giving me an Oscars blow-by-blow account was if he were willing hurl himself from a moving vehicle.

(Just to put this into perspective, people-who-don't-live-in-New-Zealand, when LOTR was being made you could divide people in the country into three categories, people who worked on LOTR, people who knew someone who worked on LOTR and tourists.)

Anyway, his stories were sensational and he made a potentially run of the mill schlep through the countryside highly entertaining.

His first Oscar was only just beginning to gather dust when the old greedy guts was nominated for another for King Kong. Him, and the other guys who were nominated were so sure that it would go to Walk the Line that they hadn't even prepared a speech.

Just as an aside, speeches are strictly allowed to be no longer than forty-five seconds. You even receive instructions in which you are told to not thank your family. There are three ways to they get you to wind up your speech, bring the music up, turn the lights down and if you're still banging on after that, they make the microphone retract back down into the floor, which I think is very Batman of them.

Anyway, he was proud of the fact that all four of them managed to say something before they got the moving-right-along-folks music.

He said that their award was presented by Eric Bana and an incredibly beautiful woman. When they were walking off the stage he whispered to one of the other guys, 'What's her name?'

'Jessica.'

'Jessica who?'

'Alba.'

I am reasonably confident to say that he must be the only guy in New Zealand who has two Oscars, been kissed by Jessica Alba and Sandra Bullock and nearly kissed by Halle Berry - except they didn't win that year.

From this week's Popbitch...brilliant.

'The most powerful politician in the world is black. The best golfer in the world is black. The fastestracing driver in the world is black... MichaelJackson must be kicking himself.'

I laughed out loud.

How To Get A Job 101

I was thinking about a couple of old friends of mine this morning. They have lived all over the world, but are living in the States right now. They've been together since university and they're one of those couples that are just such good fun to be around. They are really funny. You always know that you are in for some serious belly laughing when you spend time in their company.

Anyway, they're pregnant which is really cool. I pointed out that their child will have an Amercian accent and he pointed out that he was confident his wife will be giving birth to the next American president.

Quite a few years ago he was interviewing for a job with a big flash ad agency, since he came from a numbers background I seem to recall that the job was a bit of a longshot.

'Now, Mr Jobhopeful,' said one of his potential employers, 'would your friends describe you as dynamic?'

'No,' he said, 'but they'd say I was hung like a rogue elephant.'

He got the job.

I'm sorry, but it's just the rhyming thing.

So I hauled my tired arse out of bed at 5.45 a.m to watch Obama's Inaguration. Unfortunately as I was talking myself out of getting out of bed my brain was telling me 'Must.Get.Up.Obama's.Embalming.'

The other thing, instead of cellist Yo-Yo Ma and violinist Itzhak Perlman belting out a tune I was kind of expecting the crowd to erupt in this.


And if you missed his speech, in a nutshell his message was, 'We're currently screwed, I'm going to do my best to unscrew it.'

How did this happen?

From smoking hot....



to this.....



Ummm, Joaquim, have you been getting into Anna Nicole's fugly pills, again?

When Psycho Steaks Go Bad.

I have a few early memories lurking in the dusty corners of my brain (in between the flying licorice allsorts).

I remember a lot of our family home being built, which happened when I was two, and I distinctly remember telling one of the builders as he was putting down some tiles to set that that was what we had for breakfast. I thought the tiles in their unset state were yoghurt. I seem to remember him just nodding his head gently (obviously while making a mental note never to accept an invitation for dinner).

But I have a few memories before then. I remember having my nappies changed, I used to really like the safety pins my mother used because they had pink safety catches. I am such a girl.

I also remember charging around on my arse after my brother Sunshine before I could walk.But then, that's no biggie cause I didn't walk until I was about eleven. Sat on my arse and yapped, walking was for kids.

I think one of my earliest memories was getting a fright after having a dream. I had dreamt of the cartoon version of a steak (don't ask me where that came from, I must ask my parents if they read me bedtime stories such as Revenge of the Killer Uncooked Steak). Anyway, it had given me a hell of a scare and I was standing at the end of my cot and screaming my little lungs out. My mother came and stood beside the cot and very calmly said, 'Darling if you can't tell me what's wrong, I can't help you'. And I remember being really frustrated because I knew I wasn't capable of explaining my cartoon steak because I didn't have that language yet. So I just screamed louder. I can still remember that feeling that frustration of not being able to communicate. Possibly could explain why I stuck to talking and gave up on walking.

So there's my Monday morning talk. Anyone else have first memories to share?

Merci

And thank you to Homepaddock for suggesting that this blog is worth a regular check (or regular waste of your time).

I don't like to brag, I feel I am quite skilled at wasting people's time. God knows enough teachers used to tell me so at school. I do remember managing to get our German teacher talking for an entire class about her hair and styles she has had it in through various decades.

Probably explains why I can only count to eleven in German.

Evolution - we has it.

Did you hear how Peru's top court has just ruled that workers cannot be fired for being drunk on the job?

Brilliant.

So a janitor gets himself buffaloed, rocks up work and gets fired because he's drunk in charge of a broom.

Not entirely happy at this outcome the janitor took his case to court and it was ruled that the firing was excessive because even though he was drunk, he did not offend or hurt anybody.

(Naturally I have visions of Schneider off One Day at a Time and immediately feel empathy for the guy).

So if I get it right, it's okay to be drunk at work as long as you don't hurt or offend anyone - I am also loving the fact that it doesn't say you have to be productive while being drunk- you just have to be at work and not piss anyone off.

Outstanding.

I'm moving to Peru.

And finally, for dessert....

And just when you thought a girl has had enough holidays, she takes off for another couple of days. I like to think of it as a pudding holiday, if you will.

I joined the family of four-boys-aged-six-and-under for a spot of camping. Or, I should say, as they terrorised the camping ground. It was quite magnificent. The boys are six, four, three and then there's the Miniature Drunk. He's just over a year old and has only recently discovered what his legs can do, so kept us entertained stumbling about the place like a giggling buffoon while we did our best to stop him from eating things with the equivalent nutritional value to a cigarette butt. He also came in handy when we were playing beach cricket. We had one wicket and the other wicket was where ever Miniature Drunk was. It was a great addition to the game. I think NZ Cricket should adopt it, it would make test matches a hell of a lot more fun to watch.

When you think about it, camping is a strange thing to do. It's like devolving (is that the opposite to evolving?). What would our great-great-great-great-great grandparents' think of the fact that we have got to a point when we would actively chose to make life a lot more difficult for ourselves and then call it a holiday.

'Why would anyone go camping?' Laughed Mother-of as we lugged an enormous plastic bin full of dirty dishes to the kitchen facility on the other side of the camping ground to stand in line to wait for a sink to become free so we could then wash our arsenal of dishes.

Thinking seems to be back to front when camping. I'm more likely to fly to the moon than walk down the street in my jim jams, yet I will happily trek about five hundred metres passed total strangers in my jammies to get to the shower block (to stand in line to wait to pay $2 for four minutes worth of shower).

Yesterday morning I stumbled out of my tent, bleary eyed, looking like the wreck of the Hesperus (you could have probably found a bird nesting in my hair) to discover the three-year-old was standing outside my tent. He looked up me and with a very serious face said, 'You're bootifwul, Katelastnamewithalisp.'

My wee heart melted.

Oh, how I love camping.

For Tinman (if you want to know what I'm talking about - see request in comments on previous post).

Said hat.

They make 'em lippy these days

During the holidays Niece #1 looked at me and said, 'Hey! That hat! I have two of those!'

'You bought this with me, remember? You told me it looked disgusting and thought that I should be buying the pink straw cowboy hat instead. And I told you that I wasn't Daisy Duke.'

'Oh yeah, that's right. Well that hat doesn't look that good on you.'

'Up yours, small child.'

Old friends are such a joy.

I got a call from an old mate who lives out of town just before Christmas (we once flatted together for about four years).

'When are you going away?'
'Before Christmas.'
'And when are you coming back?'
'After that.'
'Good, cause I want your house, I want your car and I want your fridge - preferably stocked full of food and alcohol.'

Bless him.

So we organised the minor details of where I was going to drop the keys to my house, car and the fact that I needed to text him my alarm code - which was all good.

Except for one thing.

I almost forgot about the key dropping-off part.

Luckily, I remembered while I was still at the airport and just as I was climbing into a glass of free chardonnay. (Okay, I know technically it's not free but if you don't pay for it at the time it still seems free).

What had happened was that I was running a little bit late, so I forgot the things I didn't actually need to do in order to get myself out of the city.

So you can understand that it wasn't until I was safely ensconced in the airport lounge with a delayed plane that my mind went, 'Fuck! Keys. Haven't dropped.'

Off I went and dropped them with the nice people at the desk and rang my mate to tell him how I'd nearly forgotten and smugly added that I'd remembered in the nick of time.

I then started to text him my alarm code, my text started, 'Do you know how tempting it is to tell you the wrong .....'

And then.

Yup.

Naturally - poof!- the code disappeared right out of my head. Those thieving code stealers committed daylight robbery.

I rang him again.

'What?'
'I've forgotten my alarm code.'
'You can't have forgotten your code.'
'I've forgotten my code.'
'You're an idiot.'
'Still doesn't make me remember my code.'
'No, you really are an idiot.'
'Oh and, there is also one other thing.'
'What - apart from the fact that I will get to your house only minutes before your security company does?'
'I had meant to fill up my car but I ran out of time cause I was running late, so now my empty petrol tank problem is your problem.'
'So no code and petrol?'
'Yup, even though I am confident the code shall return to my brain in due course.'
'Brilliant, how many petrol stations are going to be open at ten p.m on Christmas day?'
'As I said, my problem now your problem, kemosabe.'

You will be happy to hear that I got a text from him on Christmas day telling me that he was in my house drinking a blizzardly cold Heineken about 10.45p.m.

But I think he got the last laugh.

I got home, went to start the car.

Wouldn't start.

Bastard.

Well giddy-up, it's a brand new year!

Hello and let's slap a happy-new-year-people in there as well. I realise that very soon I shall be so last week in saying that, but I think I can squeeze one last use out of it. I hope you've all had wonderful old holidays, I certainly have.

Oh let me count the ways I love summer. As promised beach pictures.

My view.

And then a brief tumble down the hill where you could find yourself looking at stuff like this.

Okay - fessing up - I didn't take that shot, and it didn't happen when I was there - I think Mrs Sunshine took it, but it's worthy of an airing here.

And finally, my foot.

I seemed to have developed a thing about taking shots of people's feet this summer, something I find vaguely weird about myself. But in my defence Your Honour,I have to say little children's feet are terminally cute.

Okay I will stop now.

Heading over to the beach after Christmas I was in a car that was to pick up avocados. We found a roadside stall that we thought was the best value.

Bag of ten avocadoes the size of my head? NZ$4 (1.7 Euro, US$2.37).

Big bag of tomatoes that tasted like tomatoes and not sacks of tomato flavoured water? NZ$1.

Satisfaction at value for money? Priceless.