And another thing

This is a dodgy photo of page 4 of today's Sydney Morning Herald. It's a full page ad about how great APEC is going to be.

That would have cost a lot.

The fine print says "With your assistance, we [the "Australian Government"?] can successfully showcase Sydney to the world."

Which is a bit of an Irish way of telling us to stay home, out of everyone's way.

NOT sulking

In case you're wondering, I'm NOT upset that the Socceroos were beaten by Japan in the Asian Cup quarter final.

I'm NOT cross at Vince Grella for getting sent off, leaving his team mates to struggle on with ten men for a really really long time.

Really I'm not.

Let's just look at Winnie's favourite toy instead of talking about it anymore.



Scary, isn't it?

She looks up at that for ages and shakes it by its crinkly skirt.

She'd eat it if she could.

Twelve weeks old and already I don't understand her!

Four Bloody Nil*

Looks like I was WRONG yesterday about the Socceroos crashing out of the Asian Cup.

But I really really really don't mind.

Lucas Neill is still a twit though. Wish I'd got the mini-Viduka instead now.


* With apoogies to Michael Palin's Gordon Ottershaw.

No hope

Wish I'd waited till AFTER last Friday to order Beloved a Socceroo figurine for his bithday.

Then I wouldn't have caused us to have a miniature Lucas Neill at home who'll constantly remind us of his pointless RED CARD against Iraq and how Australia won't actually have any defenders when they take on Thailand tonight* and we'll crash out of the Asian Cup and soccer will go back to being slightly behind LAWN BOWLS in levels of spectator interest** and I won't need to fret about taking Winnie to the next WORLD CUP in South Africa because we're not going to qualify for anything ever again.

At least I didn't decide to order a mini Mark Schwarzer.

*I mean GOOD defenders. We'll have people there but they won't stop many of the other ones from running along wherever they want to be.

**Beloved keeps saying that the Socceroos weren't fired up because there were only about three fans at each of the games they've played. We'd talked vaguely about going over but soon realised we had absolutely no idea how to take a newborn to a stadium much less how to get her to Thailand without a truckload of things babies need. It was all too hard. But that doesn't excuse the other 10,000 people who went all the way to Germany last year. They can't all have had kids.

Mogblogging

Ok, I never thought I'd ever exploit my cat, GAFIC, for blogging purposes seeing he's not really able to give permission for the use of his image but, um, this is quite cute and I've been stuck on the same book for a couple of weeks now and that's far too boring to talk about just yet.

These two shots show GAFIC in his new favourite spot - under baby Winnie's crib. When I get up in the middle of the night to feed her, the cat gets up too to keep us entertained. First he rubs against my legs for a while. Then he runs up and the hall a few times. Then he jumps underneath the crib and plays peekaboo. Very cute.


This one shows his second favourite spot - in the middle of the baby's playmat, preferably when she's on it.

I keep telling him I'd be more impressed if he could only play with the toys the right way but he's far too dignified for that...

Um-ah

Daniel Johns just told the Triple J breakfast show that he thanked Bono on his latest record because he said he liked the demo tapes for it. Jay and the Doctor asked whether Daniel was there when Bono listened to them so he felt constrained to say the tapes were good and Daniel said that yeah, he was. On a really "bizarre day", he said he visited Bono at the house he was staying at in Sydney and he, his wife Natalie Imbruglia, Bono and PETER GARRETT all lay round on a bed smoking joints listening to these tapes.

Daniel is so sweet and frank sometimes...

But it's just as well Parliament isn't sitting or poor old Peter Garrett would be hassled mercilessly about whether or no he inhaled.

Anarchy rules

According to today's SMH from next year prams must be sold with tethers so if people forget they're pushing their precious bundles of joy around and answer their phones, their prams won't roll off into rivers.

This makes me so cross. It's NOT HARD to use a pram's brakes or hold onto it with one hand. It takes far far less concentration than driving. The first time I took Winnie out I was surprised how quickly the pram built up momentum downhill but two minutes of practice later and I worked out what to do.

The article says that parents are only going to be "encouraged" to tie themselves to the prams but I can just see the disapproving looks on people's faces if you dare to go out unrestrained. And heaven help you if you shop like me by leaving the pram at one end of the aisle in the supermarket while trying to find something quickly. You'd soon be pulled up short by your harness. Gives new meaning to the idea of kids tying you down!

I wonder if failure to tether will be grounds for Mal Brough to take away whatever tax concessions parents get.

Don't quite know why I'm so upset but such a small thing when incompetent terrorists have paralysed international travel for days. Maybe I really am
an anarchist after all.

IM IN UR CRIB WATCHING UR BABY

Be good if I could get a camera in my hand when my Geriatric and Fat Indoor Cat (GAFIC) jumps into the storage basket under Winnie's crib. So cute! So kittenish! Such an attention-seeking beast now there's a new member of the family who has all this STUFF in spaces where he used to laze about. Poor cat.

Over the past few days, in between laughing at GAFIC and feeding, cleaning and playing with the baby, I read In the Woods by Tana French. I bought it because I loved the cover and the way the edges of the pages are black. The photo doesn't show this or the lovely dual textures of the cover. It looks so SPOOKY and interesting that I didn't even mind paying full price (or not much anyway). It's a beautifully designed book.

For once, the inside didn't disappoint. This is really well executed police procedural set in contemporary Dublin. The thirty-something Detective Ryan is investigating the murder of a twelve-year-old girl in the same suburban remnant wood where two of his friends disappeared at the same age more than two decades earlier. He was with them but was left behind for some reason and he has no memory of what happened. He's convinced the crimes are connected and turns his world upside down trying to recover his memory and prove this.

What makes this book so good is the way French evokes the thoughtless animal joy of childhood and the atmosphere of suburban Dublin. The contemporary scenes are scattered with enough pop cultural references (Scissor Sisters, South Park etc) to make it seem part of the real world too - unlike many in this genre. I can only assume the stuff about how the police operate is true too. Ryan's central relationship is with his partner and this is really beautifully realised as the emotional and professional core of his life.

This is the sort of book where I have to put it down and do something else to avoid rushing through to the end pell mell and I was sad to reach the last page.

Hmm

According to a terribly scientific quiz at the political compass (thanks, Pav), I'm further to the left on economic issues than Marx and than Ghandi on social issues .

Gotta stop reading that pinko-bleeding heart-black armband Sydney Morning Herald if I want to hold my head up on the Lower North Shore.

Mind you, if I did stop reading it, I wouldn't have come across this oddity from a bestelling Russian-American author Gary Shteyngart on being told that his publishers had rushed to print an additional 200,000 copies of his book Absurdistan after a favourable review in the New York Times Book Review:

"Who are these people? They must be incredibly rich to have time to just sit around and read."

Maybe they'd need to be incredibly rich to pay full price for hardcovers...