Muffy the Wonder Dog

Pic: Craig Barrow

If it's as cold in your neck of the woods as it is in mine, you can at least warm the cockles of your heart by checking out the story of Muffy the dog.
My son sent me the link yesterday and it's a ripper. You'll find it here.
Sorry I haven't been around much lately but the weather's been brilliant, if freezing, and I've been outside every day digging, weeding, planting and painting (walls not pictures, unfortunately).
While I was down the bottom of the garden planting quince trees yesterday, I spotted what I thought was a really big pelican out of the corner of my eye.
Turned out it was a lunatic (and I say that with the greatest admiration) paraglider doing aerial "wheelies" over Mt Clarence, so I raced inside and grabbed my camera.

To put this pic (and his/her altitude) in perspective, here's another one taken without the zoom. The paraglider is the tiny little dot you can see to the right of the crest of the hill if you've got really good eyesight and a better camera than mine (as in, now I've made the pic smaller I can't see a bloody thing but if you click on it you'll get a bigger and better image).

Today I have to finish up some painting but I'll be back next week with bells on.
See you then.

Of bladders and bad English

Prostates and pelvic floors being what they are, I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone came up with a website for movie-goers who lose the plot (literally) because their bladders can't make it through a screening.
That website is RunPee.com, an online help-line that takes the guesswork out of when to take a dunny break without missing any crucial scenes or plot twists.
The site covers all sorts of movies and tells you when it's a good time to head to the toilet, how long you've got to do the biz, and then gives you a short synopsis of what you've missed while you were away.
In the case of My Life In Ruins (pictured above), you're safe to go 45 minutes into the movie and have four minutes to get back to your seat.
Brilliant or what? You can check it out here and there's also a blog here.
On another wet note, did you see the story in The West on Wednesday about rain delaying the opening of the new Perth to Bunbury highway?
It was pretty unremarkable except for spokeswoman Tammy Mitchell, who when asked about the delay said, "We've had a constant series of rain events."
God help us. Whatever happened to "raining a lot"? Or even a good old Australian, "It's been pissing down"?

From the Crypt

There's a box down in the shed that's stuffed full of newspaper clippings - almost every column I wrote for The West Australian since I began in the late 80s.
Some of these were included in the two books I had published and I hadn't thought about them for years until I was stopped in my tracks by an episode of Murder She Wrote on Foxtel's TV1 channel.
It was an episode that inspired a column that was written, oh, it must be 17 years ago now and it made me think it might be fun to drag out an occasional oldie and run it here.
(I should add that I can't post anything of mine published between 2004 and 2009 because The West owns the copyright and would shit on me from a great height BUT all of the columns written before that are owned by me and good to go.)
Anyway, here it is, the first instalment From the Crypt - living proof that (1) pay-TV has no shame when it comes to endless re-runs and (2) cop shows really haven't changed that much over the years.

I WAS lying in front of the fire watching Murder She Wrote and all of a sudden this guy said, "I always wanted to be a carp. My daddy was a carp, God rest his soul, and when I was a kid he always let me polish that silver badge of his..."
It made me realise you need to have extraordinary abilities to get into American cop shows, as opposed to British cop shows like The Bill where all you really need are sturdy shoes and the ability to memorise three lines: "PC39 reporting for duty, sir", "Give us a break, Sarge" and "Right, mate, you're nicked."
American cop shows, on the other hand, require a multitude of talents. For starters you have to be totally incapable of getting on with your boss so that he can:
1. Take you off the case (but you do it anyway)
2. Suspend you from duty (but you do it anyway)
3. Give you till noon on Toozday to solve three murders and cure your partner of the death wish that is threatening his otherwise promising career, this death wish having been brought about by the violent demise of partner's wife/childhood sweetheart/handicapped child at the hands of a black crack dealer who drives a white Mercedes.
Not that it's essential you have a male partner with a death wish. You could just as easily have a female who's wet behind the ears. This female will have replaced the partner who retired after 47 years on the beat and who has been married to the same woman for 45 of them.
Your ex-partner and his wife will retire to Florida, be gunned down on a golf course by a black crack dealer driving a white Mercedes and wet female will help solve the crime, proving she's got what it takes after all.
You will also need to have an ex-wife so you can go to her apartment to visit your two cute children who will throw their arms around your neck and shout, "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" every time you walk through the door.
This wife has to be "ex" because then you can visit your mother and say things like, "Jeez, Ma" when she serves you up enormous home-cooked meals. These meals are necessary because your diet consists entirely of doughnuts and Danish washed down with cawfee that comes in a polystyrene cup.
What's more, you will eat only when you're sitting behind the wheel of a car, preferably one that's parked alongside a broken fire hydrant that's squirting water all over a Puerto Rican couple having a domestic on the sidewalk. Then you can leap out mid-bite, throwing doughnut roughly to one side while you pull out your gun.
And why anyone would want to go through all that just to be a carp, I have no idea.
Far easier, I think, to lie in front of the fire like a stunned mullet and wonder at the meaning of it all.

United We Stand

This is one of our local businesses.
They have a commercial on local TV that features five male employees standing in a line underneath that sign, smiling at the camera.
Every time I see it I think, "How long before they catch on?"
Top marks to the ad person who thought it up, though, for making me laugh every single time it comes on.

Here it is

Hopefully coming to an IGA carpark near me soon, although if I ever see it in the flesh I'll probably start to hyperventilate.
Thank you Leanne from Wicked Campers for asking me to submit a saying to grace the back of one of your vans. It looks fabulous. I love it.
If you don't know what the hell I'm on about, you'll find the full story here and here and Leanne's A Wicked Evangelist blog here.
Now I'm going to have a cup of tea and a lie down. The excitement's just about done me in.

Channeling Elvis 3

School holidays started on the weekend and the town's already awash with "No Vacancies" signs.
I love all the tourist seasons but especially winter when you can wander down the main street and play Spot the Visiting Sullen Teenagers.
These are the ones who'll be making their way through the horizontal rain that's hammering the pavements, pretending they're not related to the man and woman walking directly in front of them.
They will be mobile phone-less because their dads will have said, "We didn't drive 400kms so you could spend all day texting your mates."
Shortly they'll be herded into family cars and driven off to look at The Gap and The Natural Bridge, where they'll consider throwing themselves off.
But before that, Mum's going to make them go into every single gift shop on York Street.
When they get to Wombat Lodge, which is total kitsch heaven, they will find the Dog Rock snowdome pictured above.
I love this snowdome so much, I've bought it many times for family and friends. It costs $10 and was made in Sydney. The "snow" is glitter. It's breathtaking.

Above is a picture of the real Dog Rock, which comes courtesy of Wikipedia Commons.
I had every intention of driving down Middleton Rd and taking a picture myself but it's pouring down at the moment, plus it's also blowing a gale and the temp is 12C.
The real Dog Rock is a huge granite outcrop in the shape of a bloodhound's head. See the cute collar someone's painted on it? I think that's what probably did it for the Sydney snowdome-maker. I think he saw that and couldn't contain himself any longer.
Luckily, his loss of control was our gain. I don't think you could find a finer souvenir.

Dear me

I've got more hair on the left-hand side of my head than on the right-hand side.
I know this because I've been told so by various hairdressers, the most recent just yesterday when I was having my hair cut.
They've also told me that this condition is really common but I can't say I'm convinced.
I mean, I've never had one person say, "Yeah, me too," when I've mentioned it in conversation, which admittedly I don't do very often because then everyone would know I have a sub-standard scalp.
Sometimes I wonder if my life would've turned out differently if my hair follicles had been more evenly distributed.
As in, maybe people would take me more seriously.
Maybe the asbestos-fence removers wouldn't have dicked me around for six weeks if I'd been able to say from the get-go, "Listen mate, you're dealing with someone who has an exceptional follicle-to-skin ratio."
As it was, the bloke on the other end of the phone kept me waiting for ages, called me "dear" five times in 90 seconds and then instructed me to jiggle my phone plug in the socket because there was interference on the line and it had to be at my end because, "It was fine until you rang, dear."
Follicularly unbalanced as I am, my brain was urging me to tell him that Dear would be popping over shortly to rip out his voice box via his rectum and maybe go over a few points he'd failed to assimilate at customer-service school.
But seeing as his was the only asbestos removal company I could find in the phone book, I said things like "Thank you" and "Sorry" and "No worries" instead.
Not that it made any difference. I ended up calling him three more times, was called "dear" a total of 21 times and was eventually sent a red herring called Les.
Les knocked on the door and said he'd be here to remove the fence on the Wednesday or, no, hang on, probably the weekend, depending on the kids' sporting fixtures.
That was three weeks ago.
Then my husband rang and, hey, guess what, two blokes came round the very next morning and removed the fence.
In the meantime, in an effort not to go completely insane, I've been busy establishing an Unbalanced Head Support Group. You're welcome to join even if your head's normal.