When pumpkins drink too much...

List of things to do before I clock up another 365 days:

Remember to walk the dog.
Learn to walk into a room without assuming I am inferior to everyone in it.
Control my orange juice addiction.
Stop hiding from people. Behind trees, on the ICQ list, under the desk, inside my head. I've wasted too much time holding back and being afraid of people.
Tone down my impulsive online shopping.
Stop playing Space Invaders in meetings
I will not go online late at night because it only makes me feel lonely and pathetic.
Write down my dreams.
Moisturise.
Stop taking everything so personally. Am I really that important that everything is about me? No. So there you go.
Grow my hair long. And not so I can hide behind it, but so I can toss it around all red and sassy like a Pantene commerical.
Stop writing stupid lists.

Hello lovelies! I am just back from the Dandy Warhols concert. It was quite indeedy good. Some might even go so far to say they were quite dandy. Bwahaha! Don't mind me, I just have Post Concert Stupidity. And I may have to add the pretentiously titled lead singer, Courtney Taylor-Taylor, to my prestigious Lust List. Oooh la. Nothing quite like a nice and sweaty singing man.

I barged my way to the very front row in the manner of some barge-like object. I perched against the security rail and had a lovely view of proceedings. Of course, I was there to capture the moment on film. I took some brilliant shots! Oh how brilliant they were. But what do you BLOODY KNOW? I get home to find the freaking batteries had died. WAH! Now you people won't be bombarded with my amateurish attempts! Boo to the hoo!

So I am quite deaf right now and my ears are all ring-a-ding, because I stupidly stationed myself in front of the big arse speakers in order to shoot aforementioned photos. And I am losing my voice for singing along to the song known to the general public as the Never Were You So Passe Song. I sound all husky and 0055, so for a good time call now, more purr per minute guarranteed from the ol' pussycat. Mwahahhaa! Oh man. I'm spent.

Did you know...

• I was a penguin in my past life
• Lust is my deadly sin
• I am 27% slut
• I am 38% procrastinator
• I am 46% geek
• I am 71% perfectionist
• I am 74% giving
• I am 93% sensual
• I am 100% bored off my tits.

Do you ever feel like your life needs a massive overhaul? Everything must go. Bad habits, bad memories, bad people that you're clinging on to for whatever pitiful reason. I can feel it coming on like fire, this urge to destroy everything and start over from the ground up. It starts with little things, like my web sites. I look at them and they seem tired and stale and lacking in any sort of oomph. Then I look at my job. Then I look in the mirror. I hate what I see. I feel the discontent crawl up and gnaw at my insides. Then I wonder if I can pull off some sort of beautiful transformation of my life. Then I stop and wonder if I am expecting too much of myself, if this is all I deserve, if this is all I am capable of. That endless little war inside your brain, Reach For The Stars Shauny versus Reach For The Remote Shauny, is an exhausting battle.

So Telstra can kiss my voluptuous arse this morning. I got my mobile bill and instead of the usual $22 fee (since I never make any bloody calls on it) it was for $60 and there was a call to some weirdo number lasting for an hour. This was on the day I was at Mum's place moving her Empire of Junk to her new house.

I was going to just pay it in my typically gutless fashion, but a colleague bullied me until I called up the Bill Enquiries. I was pleasantly surprised I only had to wait 25 minutes on hold. Then I got some cocky Victorian bloke who sounded 19 at the most and insisted I must have made the call. I was cool and calm and collected and explained that I had been moving house for my Fascist Mother™ on that day and have never made a mobile call longer for an hour in my life and YES it was turned off and NO it could not have dialled the number by accident BECAUSE you have to enter the freaking password before anyone can make a call.

After waiting on hold for another 15 minutes: "Well, we won't make you pay for the call, but we KNOW you did it and this is the one and only time you'll get credit so make sure it doesn't happen again," said the charming young man.

Crikey! Then he says to me, "Is your home phone with Telstra too?"

"No it's not."

"It's not? Really? Why not?"

"Because," I said most articulately, "Your international rates stink."

"Oh! But we have discounts and stuff now. I can put you through to someone to tell you about them..."

"I'm quite happy where I am thanks..."

"Oh come on! I just did you a favour! This is least you can do for me!" he huffed.

"FINE then, put me through!"

"You won't regret it!" he says. Then I slammed the phone down in his ear. So there.

I'm listening to that incredible Radiohead song How To Disappear Completely over and over and over again and I can't stop and no matter how hard I scrunch up my eyes and wish... I'm still at work. Hmmm.

Lust object du jour: the tasty Ed from Radiohead. Hovering on the list for about 5 years now, Mr O'Brien is one of my longest running infatuations, maintaining his appeal despite a few dodgy haircut choices over the years.

Scottish study confirms what we've always known: redheads are sexier. Well, it kinda says that. But anyway, woohoo! We're foxy! [via acb]

Just when I thought the Olympics had taken all of the Jeering At America spirit out of me, along came Survivor winner Richard Hatch. He was a celebrity contestant on the Aussie Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? tonight. Mr Hatch bowed out after a pissy three questions when he couldn't quite work out what 12 multiplied by 11 was. He locked in 123 as his answer. Then he sat there doing the sums for a good five minutes before saying, "Oh wait! Can I unlock that?". The withering look Eddie Maguire gave Mr Hatch before reminding him that he'd already locked in an answer was priceless! Mwahahhahahaa. Oh I laughed. And I laughed and I laughed. Hehehehe.

It amazes me that there are almost 500 reviews of that new Radiohead album at amazon.com, barely a week after its release. I spend many an hour chortling at the reviews, for it is a veritable haven for NME wannabes.

"if ok.computer was satellites, police scanners, and train tunnels, then kid.a is air ducts, water pipes, and fiber optic cables. this album is a shivering child huddled in in a dark room. this child listens closely to the world outside, taking in every stimuli and intimating it to us its own trembling tones."

With comments like these it won't matter if every music journalist in the world is struck down by some deadly disease, for there are legions of wankers waiting in the wings.

She's baaaaaaack! Quiet Walking Woman had been off work for a week because she hurt her back (her cries of pain were silent, no doubt). I had not noticed her return until she shuffled up behind me like Charlie Chaplin and tapped me on the shoulder to enquire if the office kettle working. She really is bloody annoying. How am I supposed to know when to furiously Alt + Tab out of the Blogger window if I cannot detect her approach?

I went shopping with my sister yesterday, who was resplendent in her new official Olympic Village t-shirt. She wasn't actually one of the village people, but in her sporty shoes and pants, she could have easily passed off as an athlete. She did work at the Games, so on a few occassions was able to go into the village and stickybeak at the famous faces. I'm not sure if the shirt was intended for non-Olympians, but that didn't stop my sis from getting her souvenir.

It's amazing and bloody amusing the respect that can be commanded by a simple item of clothing. I'm not sure if this is a tribute to the fine craftmanship of the Bonds t-shirt, or an indication of the stupidity of Canberrans. Every second person who passed us would do a double take, gawking at the OLYMPIC VILLAGE emblazoned across her shirt.

One woman stomping down an escalator actually stopped in her tracks, lowered her sunglasses and peered at my sister. You could almost see the thoughts running through her head: "Did I see that girl on TV? She's a bit too tall for gymnastics. Too short for pole vault. Too small for a weightlifter..."

Another little kid tugged on a parents arm and whispered in that not-so-subtle kiddie's whisper, "Hey Mum! It's someone from the Olympics!"

My sister was highly absorbed in her bargain hunting as usual, so she hadn't even noticed the attention she was getting until I pointed it out. Then we had our fun concocting up too-loud conversations to really fuck with the minds of moronic passers-by. We decided she was a member of some unnamed team sport, but a highly successful one at that:

"We didn't have sundried tomatoes like these at The Village"

"Oh! This random can of soft drink reminds me when you scored that goal in the semi-final and I knocked over my Fanta in my excitement!"

"God these checkouts are slow! You're gonna be late for your Visualisation Training!"

"I will buy this Mars Bar, now that it's October."

Hehe.

I finally parted with my old Nikes today. We'd been a happy little threesome for an ungodly seven years, which is an eternity in sporting footwear terms, which of course illustrates my appalling level of inactivity.

My Nikes were the first pair of shoes I ever paid for myself. I got them in the Autumn of 1994, when I was in Year 11 in high school. My previous pair had met an unfortunate death, known in my family as The Muddy Shoe Incident (MSI)

The MSI occurred one rainy afternoon after school. My mother is a teacher, and I was waiting in her classroom while she finished her staff meeting, so I could sponge a lift home. But she was taking her sweet time and my stomach was gurgling in protest, so I wandered over the supermarket for some chocolate.

I was on the return trip, happily guzzling a Milky Bar when I fell down the hole. Well, only half of me fell. Suddenly I found myself sprawled out on the wet ground on my left knee, while my left leg was buried up to my thigh in a muddy hole. Some workmen had been in the area earlier, fixing underground phone cables, and mustn't have filled up one of the holes properly.

So there I was, half-buried in 3 feet of muddy water and random muck. My first reaction was to look around furtively for witnesses, and when I realised there wasn't any, I burst into laughter. (My clumsiness has remained a source of great amusement for me over the years)

When the giggles stopped, I attempted to remove my leg. But the mud was a stubborn little bastard, and when I pulled my leg up, it gripped on to me and started sucking my sexy trackpants down. I yelped in horror, thinking my undies would be exposed to the world, so I yoinked up my pants and tumbled to the ground.

My undies remained unseen, but my shoe had been sucked off my foot and into the muddy abyss with a lovely squelchy schhhhhhhhllllloooop! sound.

So I stood there on the pavement on one foot, peering down at the hole and after deciding my shoe was not worth the rescue effort, hopped my way across the road back to Mum's classroom.

Hop hop hop, I went, one leg coated thickly in mud up to the mid-thigh like a giant chocolate bar. Hop hop hop.

Needless to say, I had to buy some new shoes. I tolerated about 2 days of wearing mum's ultra-sexy Apple Pie's before forking out $100 of my hard-earning slaving for the Colonel part time job at KFC money, for the Nikes.

I treated them lovingly, and was most weary of any dodgy looking ground. We went through a lot together over the next seven years. They would carry my unathletic little body as quickly as possible as I ran home from the bus stop, screaming as savage magpies swooped me. They survived three years of part-time work in a takeaway shop where I splattered boiling oil and fish batter on them, and frequently tripped over on the greasy floor and landing on my arse because the tread on the soles had worn away.

Sure, they ended up looking a bit shoddy. The leather was rough and patchy and the laces sagged pathetically like they just didn't give a damn anymore. The swoosh motif became more of a half-hearted little smudge. And the letters had worn away so it looked more like IKE, as if Mr. Turner had released a range of sportswear. But I kept wearing them, thinking someone as unsporty as moi didn't really need a new pair. And I could put up with their odd little scent.

It took my recent spectacular debut at the gym to realise it was time to move on. The lack of tread on the soles saw me fly into the air and nearly land face first on the treadmill. As I am not fond of the taste of rubber, I forked out for a nice new pair of inoffensive (but very clean) pair of blue Adidas.

I kept the old Nikes here in my desk drawer at work for awhile, unsure if I should keep them for pottering about in the garden. But when I realised today that my weed jungle does not constitute a garden to potter in, I turfed them into the bin.

So goodbye my old boys, nestled there amongst the orange peels, yoghurt pots and dead pens. You served me well.

What was #1 the day you were born? This is fun, and I can see it spreading like wildfire. On November 1st 1977 - "Yes Sir, I Can Boogie". Groooooovy! [via pearl]

Patriotic sentiment is running high in my neighbourhood today. I counted no less than 9 blokes in floppy hats with Victa mowers on my morning walk. My street is so frightfully suburban it rivals Ramsay. If it's not the smell of mower fuel and freshly chopped buffalo, then it's snags on a barbeque. Of course, my house is the black sheep of the street, with rebelliously unkempt lawn and a psychotic dog.

Cringe-worthy links abound from this Metafilter thread about the shoddy US coverage of the Olympics. This champion article sums it all up. My favourite quote: "The most popular magazine is Australian Women's Weekly, owned by Australian Consolidated Press. It's read by men and women alike, has news, sports and gossip, but is not easily categorized."

Hooray, the carnival is over. My favourite part of the Closing Ceremony: those delicious ten seconds when I thought that precocious little youngster Nikki Webster was going to be offered to the cauldron as sacrifice to the sporting gods. As her voice soared higher and higher, the little platform thingy crept up and up, I was so sure we'd soon see 4 foot of barbecued diva. No such luck.