Shopping: Its Own Reward

The Colorado chain of retailers is the latest big corporation seemingly set to crumble in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis. Remember that? It was going to be the End of the World before 2011 decided to rain some "for realz" apocalyptic nastiness down upon us. Oh, for the simple days of mortgage stress.

Without wanting to upset any of the group's 3800 staff - whose entitlements hopefully remain secure as administrators are appointed - to be honest, I'm not that surprised.

Sure, Mathers and Williams sell reasonably nice shoes, and Diana Ferrari has some lovely dresses, but Colorado itself remains a puzzling mix of what I like to call "Adventure Dad Wear" - chunky sandals, excessively pocketed shorts and coral-coloured chambray shirts. And that's just the women. Honestly, there can't be that many pockets of undiscovered country out back of North Lakes or Forest Lake or Springfield Lakes or any of those other 'burby developments that throw in a "lake" to make the scream of your neighbour's bratty toddlers seem altogether more "tranquil".

This man is wearing Colorado,
so we can't show you his face.

Look, it's unfair of me to bag out Colorado. I have actually shopped there on occasion - mainly due to the often fantastical discounts that they constantly seem to be offering.

Now I know why.

Sell You Light

Of all the tortured relationships in my life, none is more agonising than the one I have with my thighs.

It's due in part to their size, but moreso due to the insidious subcutaneous fatty deposits known as "cellulite".

Orange peel skin, cottage cheese legs, the lumps-and-bumps, Satan's Curse, the Saggy Moguls, "Indiana Jones and the Dimples of Doom", Rice Pudding Pins, The Hammy Gams, "Look Upon Ye Thigh-ty and Despair", "The Buns of Have-A-Moan"...

OK, I may have made a number of those up. But still, they're reasonably accurate descriptions of the current state of my legs, knees-up.

How to Write a Blog Post

I'm feeling a bit bereft of ideas for GirlClumsy content at the moment.

Perhaps it's because I've been using my creative brain power to write readable reviews for the Brisbane Comedy Festival. Perhaps it's simply because I haven't had enough sleep.

Anyway, my initial thought was to have a bit of a self-indulgent rant about how shit I am as a writer. But having a rant about something that I do that isn't 100% perfect is a bad habit that I'm trying to break.

It's time instead for positivity. It's time instead for action.

It's time instead to punch "How to Write a Blog Post" into Google.

The resulting find was this post by Problogger.

Now the Problogger website seems to prove my theory that while you CAN make money from your blog, the only real way to do that is by blogging about how you can make money from your blog.

I've had a few emails approaching me about cross-promotion ("sponsorship" doesn't really cut it). My favourite was the start-up humourous t-shirt company that wanted me to post about their hilarious slogan tees, but had the caveat that if I didn't actually like them, to NOT POST ANYTHING AT ALL. Seriously, they capitalised that. Obviously weren't all that confident in the postmodern ironic statements adorning their retro ringspun cotton garments.

But I've yet to attract any actual, sweet corporate coin - and maybe there's a reason. Maybe I am just not a good enough blogger.

So OK, let's do this. Let's follow Problogger's tips, and see if I can indeed start raking in the cash reward readers with excellent content.

Unchartered Waters

Today, 22 March, is World Water Day. There are lots of ways to take part; the easiest being an online purchase or donation.

About a month ago, I promised my new buddy Rowan I would promote this excellent day of awareness. So here's a snapshot of why it's important, courtesy of the Red Cross:

• Some four million people die each year from diseases associated with the lack of access to safe drinking water, inadequate sanitation and poor hygiene. 

• Dirty water and poor sanitation are the second biggest killer of children worldwide. Some 4,000 children under five die every day from those same associated diseases.

• Worldwide 2.7 billion people do not have adequate sanitation facilities.

• And 880 million people do not have access to clean water.

I must apologise to Rowan. I had the best of intentions to write something devastatingly clever in support of World Water Day.

But today was somewhat distracting.

For you see, while the course of politics never did run smooth, today was rougher than navigating the Horn of Africa in an upturned tortoise shell. Today the Queensland political landscape capsized, sending all sprawling a-midships.

Lawrence Springborg, the now former deputy leader of the Liberal-National Party, put it best when he said the organisation was now in "unchartered waters".

Fresh Prince

Sunday saw me trek out to the West Moreton Anglican College at Ipswich to cover Prince William's visit.

At various points during the event, I was using one hand to hold a video recorder, one hand to hold an audio recorder, and a mysterious third hand to snap blurry photos and tweet from my mobile phone.

So apologies if this video is rather shaky. But I thought you might appreciate my efforts to try to capture what it was like to try to capture what it was like. Mmm, media meta-humour.

If nothing else, the Prince IS wearing a very nice pair of tan slacks.

On Things Comedic

I've been attending a number of shows at the Brisbane Comedy Festival, taking place at the Brisbane Powerhouse until 27 March.

I've been writing reviews for Brisbane Times, and I've actually been trying really hard to make them interesting. My standard has been that if I have to resort to the phrase 'it's hilarious!', I've failed as a writer. I've tried to avoid cliches like "razor-sharp wit" and "side-splitting"; and I'm very aware of not giving too much away. I can't stand reviewers who regurgitate a comic's jokes without any thought to how that might spoil a routine. The key element to successful comedy is surprise, and I've really tried to bear that in mind.

So given all these self-imposed parameters - it's been quite a challenging experiment. You can decide for yourself:

Laconic Tasmanian Hannah Gadsby

Irish concept rock/comedy band Dead Cat Bounce

Self-confessed dandy Asher Treleaven

There's also a write-up of the utterly awesome Weird Al Yankovic, who played just one show in Brisbane, as well as reviews of Mark Watson and Melinda Buttle, whose shows at the Comedy Festival have now finished.

Love it Light

Diet Coke. It's a product aimed at women, and one that I will imbibe if my beloved Pepsi Max is not available (still nowhere near as satisfying).

Over the years, Diet Coke ads have remained relatively consistent. A bunch of go-getting modern women, coping with the demands of an active work life by enjoying a refreshing Diet Coke. Sometimes it was a hunky man enjoying the Diet Coke, but at least it was within sight of those sassy office ladies.

So I almost, almost got angry when I saw the latest ad for Diet Coke:

But then I realised that this is just the eventual, logical conclusion that Diet Coke was always going to come to. Having followed the real life office ladies for 30 years, it was only a matter of time before they outsourced the job.

And so I have to applaud the out and out ballsiness of Coca-Cola, for not even attempting to hide the subtext of this new ad. Consider:

The "women" are still office workers, but now, they're marionettes. Big heads, tiny bodies. Because that's the ideal we're all working towards. That's why we drink Diet Coke.

The "women" are not just literal puppets, but figurative puppets. Of the Coca-Cola empire. They put on a song, we all dance to it; ie, we ALL drink Diet Coke.

The song that's played is "Maniac". Because you know, all women are crazy.

OK, maybe that's a long bow. But still, kudos to you, Coca-cola. Kudos. It's the most baffling, unfunny ad for a soft drink - possibly ever. But at least you're not even pretending. Your theme is "Love it Light" - and you really, really do.

Theatre thank-yous!

It's my great pleasure to announce that The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco has won Best Play in the 2010 Briztix Audience Awards!

Shaun King also won Best Male Actor for his role as JB - and Tom Dodds picked up Best Lighting.

So I have to begin with an almighty thank-you to everyone who voted. I'm so proud of the Brisbane Arts Theatre, the cast and crew of the show - and of course, eternally grateful to John Birmingham and playwright Simon Bedak for allowing and helping me stage one of my most favourite books.

Perhaps most surprisingly in all this was that I tied for the Best Director gong (with a Queensland Theatre Company director - !)

For me, this is quite ironic - as I feel I made more mistakes during Tassie Babes than any other production I've worked on. There were certainly a lot of challenges during the rehearsal period: some I think I rose to reasonably well; others made me want to curl up in a ball and tear my nails out.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and I do like to think I've learned from those errors, blunders and missteps. Certainly it did teach me a few things about communicating with people; and hopefully the sense to know when to just back myself and trust I know the material well enough to make the right decisions.

Above all, I try to remember first and foremost the achievement of the show - from newly scripted in January 2010, we went on in April 2010. Just under four months of editing, cutting, rehearsing and staging. And it was a pretty darn good show, if I do say so myself.

While we're on the subject of theatre, I'd like to recommend to you the BAT's newest production - Cosi.

This is Louis Nowra's modern classic, about a group of patients from an institution attempting to stage Mozart's Cosi Fan Tutte. Director Susan and her cast have done a superb job. It actually stars three Felafel and Tassie Babes cast members - so there you go, an iron-clad guarantee of quality!

It plays until April 16, and if you are in Brisbane, please consider heading along and seeing it. It's touching, heart-warming and so funny you will wind up with sore abs from laughing so much.

You can book tickets here!

Am I the baddie?

This is one of my favourite Mitchell & Webb sketches:

I've been reminded of it again by a particularly spectacular piece of internet trolling.

Booked Out

Books! I love books! There's just nothing like the smell of a book, is there? The feel of a freshly opened cover, ink wafting off the pages, the touch of dead tree - it just makes me want to curl up with a hot cup of tea and let my imagination....

...oh, I can't go on.

I'm getting right jack of sentiments like the above. They've been cropping up for years, but with the rise in eBooks and eReaders, they've become the go-to argument for every neo-Luddite who fancies themselves a literary Imelda Marcos.

"This one has a surprise twist ending." 

I'm so over the overt love of books that I'm almost over books themselves.

The Chicks Are All Right

I pondered writing something about International Women's Day. But then my attention was drawn to this:

It's not everything that needs to be said, or should be said, or could be said.

But damnit, it's a good start.

Hiccups and other hiccups

In the golden days of radio gone by, an on-air stuff-up was easily forgotten. Sure, others in the industry would furtively pass around blooper tapes, but by and large the GP would remain blissfully unaware of the verbal foibles of announcers, jocks and newsreaders.

But of course, we now live in the Age of the Internet, where people stuffing up is the stock-in-trade of almost every popular website in the world - well, YouTube and Failblog at any rate.

And so it was that a 3am news bulletin read by a young lass at Melbourne station 3AW exploded onto social media networks yesterday. Kate Wilson had been struck by the hiccups, and did what all good newsreaders do - she soldiered on and read her bulletin.

Now reading the news is certainly not the most physically demanding of jobs, but it does have its own particular hurdles. I've never had the hiccups on-air - but I'd be lying if I didn't own up to my fair share of blunders and missteps.

Vote One Tassie Babes!

Ladies and gentlemen - thanks in no small part to your efforts - The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco has picked up a swathe of nominations in the BrizTix Audience Awards.

I am as chuffed as one of Winston Churchill's stogies.

Now I must call on the power of your mouse fingers once more. Check out the list of nominees in various categories, and if you are at all inclined, feel free to put some clicks into our boxes.

Do it, or the Bundy Bear gets it:

Aw, that's silly of me really. Everyone knows that if you don't vote, the Bundy Bear will get YOU.

(Those unfamiliar with the Bundy Bear can learn more from watching his first appearance, in Felafel. I'm still trying to track down video of his encore apparition - leading a raggedy group of plushies on a "Teddy Bears' Picnic" through the York Street house in Tassie Babes.)

Thank you very much in advance if you do decide to vote - you are no doubt highly attractive and sexually confident!

Randomousness

Some random photos:

The Bendable Candle Lighter is apparently "Great For Candles!" By the way, did I tell you about my "Waterproof Bear-Hurling Trebuchet"? It's "Great for Bear-Hurling!".

What the f*** is this bulls**t? Mars Caramel? What do Mars take us for, fools?

It's pretty simple. Your Mars Bar is made up of THREE components - a crispy chocolate coating, a delicate layer of caramel, nestled above a bed of delicious nougat. The Mars Bar REMOVES THE NOUGAT. I'm sorry Mars, you just can't DO that sort of s*** and still call it a Mars Bar. Would Christians like it if you deep-sixed the Holy Spirit then insisted the God/Jesus combo was still a Holy Trinity? NO THEY WOULD NOT.

And this is a wider message for chocolate companies. Stop muddying the f***ing waters already. Isn't it enough that we have Cadbury blocks in every conceivable nut and filling combination - do we have to have them as ice-cream versions as well? Isn't it enough that we get our bubbles of minty Aero goodness from a block of the stuff, rather than a flimsy dairy dessert? I CAN'T COPE WITH ALL THIS MODERNISATION.

I thought I should try oatmeal. You know, porridge. You can see for yourself above how humourous The Wah found the whole idea.

I tried to microwave the porridge twice last week at work; on both days it exploded in a gooey milky mess.

I was following the instructions, I don't know what I did wrong. Maybe the microwave was too powerful. Maybe the milk was laced with nitro-glycerin. Damn explosive-uddered dairy cows.