Well that’s how I reckon Marcos Baghdatis was feeling right after he was beaten at the Australian Open. Those in the know say it was a veiled message at his racquet sponsor who is no more. I disagree. He just felt like throwing a tantrum. And you might as well be fined for going hard out. Four racquets is always better than one.

Anyway check out Marcos’ tanty. Sorry about the ad. I had terrible trouble finding the footage. Maybe Marcos threw another stirkey and got it banned. Powerful people those tennis people. The ad’s pretty funny too.

The IV bit is from the couples love of the Roman numeral for four not for IV as in drip. Honestly I thought the child was named after a rehydrating product Blue IV. “Nurse, get me the blue IV, stat!”

Doesn’t matter though. She’s Beyonce’s and Jay-Z’s kid. She has coolness bred into her. She’ll survive the medical jokes.

In a tribute to American royalty (aka the Kardashian sisters), K names are all the rage in the US at the moment. Karis, Kay’lyn, Kristina, Kyren, Kalylah, and Khloe have all made the cut for baby names in 2012. Calling your child Kalylah is rather cruel and I predict that she will sue her idiot parents and the Kardashians at a later date. Heck all the K kids could implement a klass action (sorry). Image

A few years ago I had to get a strappers licence. For those of you who do n’t know what a strapper is, I’ll explain. Strappers are the people who do the grunt work of looking after racehorses. They’re the people you see leading the horse around at the races. Not very glamorous, not well paid and I was only doing it to help out a family member.

So what’s that got to do with a prince and millions. Well doesn’t it seem a bit weird that I had to cough up for a police check to pick up horse shit, but New Zealander, Joel Barlow, claiming to be a South Pacific prince can waltz into Queensland Health and embezzle $16 million dollars? Where was his required police clearance. He had a criminal record but no one bothered to check, relying solely on the pseudo prince’s say so.

Actually the whole thing is comical, something like you’d see in an overacted movie of the week. Fake prince cons the big wigs of Brisbane society, spends money left right and centre, signs his name HRH, steals some money, gets investigated, is cleared of wrong doing, steals lots more money, has a big party and invite bosses, buys a kick arse unit, is discovered, disappears, gets caught after sneaking back into kick arse unit because someone forgot to change the locks, is found snoring (so unprincely) after a suspected drug overdose, faces charges.

Nah that wouldn’t float as a movie of the week. Too far fetched.

Anyway seems that our racehorses are better policed than the Queensland Health coffers. Image

This is from my weekly Gen X Girl column that appears in the Townsville Bulletin’s Savvy magazine.

Like a pre-teen girl to Justin Bieber, so is Julia Gillard to Barack Obama. That’s the only comparison I can make after last week’s touchy-feely visit from the most powerful leader in the world to our shores.

In fact I feel like chanting “Julia and Obama, sitting in the tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G”. And I wouldn’t be lying because that’s all they seemed to do. Get off the plane, double cheeked kiss. Official function. Kissy, kissy. Another function—pucker up. And if they weren’t all kissy, kissy they were all handsy, handsy.

There is one photograph of a back view of the couple where they have their arms around each other, with Julia’s hand drifting very close to the President’s behind. I may have just vomited in my mouth a little as I wrote that. It’s a bit like finding out that your parents have sex.

Anyway, it’s all terribly inappropriate. They’re world leaders not dizzy teenagers.

Julia behaved like the nerdy high school girl who scored a date with the captain of the football team. She’s all blushing and batting her eyelashes and setting the women’s cause back forty years. And Obama isn’t setting any kind of example either, constantly putting his arm around the Prime Minister. If this were the real world he’d be up on a sexual harassment case.

We couldn’t even count on Quentin Bryce to behave herself either. She looked for all purposes like a proud mother of the bride watching Jules pecking away at Obama’s cheek. But then I realised that she was just waiting for her turn to grope the President with the longest handshake in history—even longer than her Melbourne Cup presentation speech.

Quentin further brought into the hoopla by dashing home and changing from the lemon-coloured suit and emerging in an orange affair half an hour later. She was a veritable bowl of citrus. Is our Governor General a head of state or an Academy Award presenter?

To Obama’s credit though, he has made Jules glow like a giddy schoolgirl and heaven knows she needs a bit of fun with her opinion poll numbers. His aren’t that flash either.

Just an aside: did you know that they were both born in 1961? And that they send each other birthday cards? I’ll bet Julia actually goes out to the newsagent and chooses the cleverest Hallmark card she can find, writes a personal message, seals it with a kiss and sends it off. I think Obama gets his secretary to do his.

Back to the visit though. The first bloke, Tim Whathisname, knew that he was beaten. He didn’t even hang around to wait for a car to take him to The Lodge. He hot-footed it out of the lovefest with a comment that Obama was a good bloke. Smart man. Who wants to be Kevin Dillon when George Clooney’s in town?

Benneton have just had to pull an ad campaign that featured Obama kissing the Chinese president and the leader of Venezuela. Those images were photo-shopped and condemned by the US Government.

Silly Benneton, they just had to wait around till Obama visited with Julia. Kissing everywhere. No photoshopping necessary. Image

Not that I’m cranky about that–you know with people having to be really bad to be facing death and all. The concerned senator points out in his letter that the victims were never given a chance for a last meal so why should the murdering so and so be given the privelege. Fair.

Anyway this is what Brewer requested.

• Two chicken-fried steaks with gravy and sliced onions
• a triple-patty bacon cheeseburger
• a cheese omelet with ground beef, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and jalapeños
• a bowl of fried okra with ketchup
• one pound of barbecued meat with half a loaf of white bread
• three fajitas
• a meat-lover’s pizza
• one pint of Blue Bell Ice Cream
• a slab of peanut-butter fudge with crushed peanuts
• three root beers

Sounds like the sort of meal that a person convicted of a racist murder might order. But here’s the rub–he didn’t even have the manners to eat it. Perhaps it was remorse eating him up. Image

Anyway she quotes an article by Colin Nissan who has compiled a piece on how to feng shui your meth lab. Perhaps it could be the secret to drug labs in the suburbs. Surely good feng shui would lead to less explosions.

Place Yourself in the Power Position
Make sure your chair is facing the front door. Working with your back to the front door places you in the path of negative energy and makes you the first one to get cuffed during a raid. One of many instances where the principles of feng shui, meth making, and common sense collide.
Clear the Clutter
When you clear clutter, you clear your mind. For example, once you remove the lithium from your batteries and finish stirring it into the pitcher of ammonia, throw out the battery shells. Eliminate the flow-choking mess and the risk of chemical burns in one practical step. Same goes for lab glassware and rubber tubing. Who wants to start out a 14-hour meth-making session by doing dishes?
Enhance Your Prosperity Corner
As you enter a room, the area to the far left is considered your wealth and prosperity corner. It’s advisable to put something valuable and water-related here. An aquarium stocked with brightly colored carp is a good choice. One word of caution: you may, on occasion, wake up after a particularly blinding meth-smoking session and find remnants of a fried-carp sandwich all over your shirt.
Create a Nourishing View
Chances are you’re covering up your windows so people can’t see you making meth. Though completely understandable, this is a giant feng-shui no-no, and all the more reason why you need to keep your lab balanced and flowing. Think about what you see when you look up from your worktable. If it’s a wall or a blackout curtain, maybe it’s not just withdrawals that are making you feel antsy and depressed. This is the perfect opportunity to hang up some artwork, like of dogs playing poker.
Balance Your Senses
Phosphine gas is a byproduct of the meth-cooking process and is highly lethal to inhale. Lethal smells are so not feng shui. A good idea is to counterbalance a lethal odor with a delicious one, like that of a Mango Splash Glade PlugIn.
Plants are a key feng-shui component for their unique ability to absorb energy-stifling toxins from the air. Unfortunately, your average fern probably won’t stand up to the piercing wafts of hydrogen chloride, so consider something hardier, like a fake fern.
Don’t disregard the aural energy in your lab. Drown out persistent drones from the propane tank with a nice ocean-wave relaxation CD. You’ll feel like you’re making meth on a beautiful secluded beach while the tide slowly rolls in and the refreshing, frothy water gently creeps up through the burn hole in your shoe.
Free Your Life Force
If you’re having financial problems, examine the lab for anything that might be draining your life force. Also look to see if you’re on the best street corner for unloading rock. If your corner is good, maybe that unruly backroom where you keep the sacks of lye is the problem area. Or how about the broken lawn chair where you spend hours a day popping cold pills out of their infuriating foil packages? Reworking these areas can unclog the drain, so to speak, and get the money flowing again.
Build Harmony From the Outside In
The need to keep the exterior of your meth lab nondescript isn’t necessarily at odds with the principles of feng shui. While you’re at the store picking up bottles of ether and antifreeze, pick up some nice perennials and a few simple lights to line your walkway. Make sure the lights are bright enough to symbolically illuminate the path to success but dim enough to obscure your face in surveillance photos.
Be careful not to get too carried away with the landscaping. After all, you don’t want to attract unwanted attention from the neighbors. If you’re new to the area, someone will inevitably bring over cookies, so you’ll just have to deal with that person as best you can. Just be sure to fight the urge to show off your new feng-shui space. Remember, it’s still a meth lab and you’re still wearing a gas mask, and that’s a can of worms you don’t want to open over a plate of pecan sandies. Image

Happy 50th birthday Princess Diana. Well happy 50th birthday if you were still alive.

British journalist Tina Brown wrote the accompanying article in which she looked into her crystal ball and came up with the following.

• Diana would have married twice more after dumping Dodi Al-Fayed.
• She would have kept her chin taut with Botox (really, I didn’t know they could do that. I may have to investigate that claim).
• She would have had gym buffed arms.
• She and Kate’s mother, Carole Middleton, would have been besties.
• She would have forgiven Camilla for nicking her husband, even befriending her on Facebook with Charles liking it. (Yeah, right.)

Oh did I forget to mention the mock Facebook page. It’s a doozy with Sarah Ferguson posting a drinks invite and Diana mentioning that she was front row with the Beckhams at the Burberry show. Really! Image

I was in the bottle shop the other day when I watched a girl being chastised by the bottle shop attendant for passing her father a bottle of wine to put in a box. She just passed it to him mind, she was being helpful. She wasn’t drinking it, she wasn’t taking it away, she showed no interest in it other than to be of assistance to her father, like she would in say the supermarket or unpacking the dishwasher. The bottle shop attendant should have been packing the box, but she wasn’t because people were being helpful.

Why shouldn’t a child, in the company of her parent, not be allowed to assist that parent? As a society we like to sit back and say that parents aren’t parenting their children any more, but we have all these rules that remove those rights and responsibilities from those parents. She wasn’t drinking it, removing it from the premises, in fact doing nothing other than being helpful. And she got in trouble for it. Dad didn’t have a problem with it.

Think about all the bloody rules that exist or are desperate to.

There is a law being touted about identity cards for gambling (introduced by independent Andrew Wilkie as a payback for helping the ALP form a government). I am over 18. I am allowed to gamble by law and choice. But the government wants me to sign up for it. Why? I appreciate that there a problem gamblers out there but I am not one of them. I have actually never in my life played poker machines, but I should be able to if I want to. Why should I, and other responsible gamblers, be forced into using an identity card because some people can’t control themselves. Anyone over 18 is allowed to gamble by law. Why are the rest of us punished because some people can’t control themselves? What’s happened to personal responsibility.

It’s the same with plain packet tobacco products. What a stupid bloody idea. I am the government and I am going to take away all your brightly coloured toys–well that’s how it seems. Now I hate smoking, another vice I do not partake in. But if people want to risk lung cancer and stand out in a group in front of buildings like social pariahs then let them. Taking away coloured packaging implies that they are only attracted by bright and shiny things. As I said I’m not a smoker but I’m guessing that it’s more about the addictive properties of nicotine than having the most pimped up ciggie packet around. There’s a good piece of legislation. Have the cigarette companies reduce the amount of nicotine in cigarettes.

I’ve also had enough of that Carbon Tax. I didn’t vote for a carbon tax. None of us did. In fact Kevin Rudd got kicked out of the top job for that same tax. As in the gambling tax it was a priviso of the Greens support for the ALP forming government that a carbon tax. Never mind the stupid voters who apparently can’t think for themselves, can’t control themselves and are attracted by bright shiny things.

How come little bitty Australia down the bottom of the world is responsible for all the carbon? I am doing a fabulous job of reducing carbon already. I’m freezing my arse off in this chilly winter because I can’t afford the electricity bill to heat my home. Surely that’s got to count for something. I should be exempt from a carbon tax. I’ve done my bit. But no for my efforts my electricity bill will be further slugged when the energy companies hit me with their carbon tax contribution.

Australia and that economic giant Costa Rica will have a carbon tax. The US, no. Canada, no. China, no. They mustn’t emit as much carbon as we do. Or maybe they don’t have a minority party (that most of us did not vote for) dictating their government policy. Maybe Chile and Iceland need to have a carbon tax due to those erupting volcanoes. But you can’t tax a volcano can you? Image

I’m all for the kiss, but really, there is a time and place. Call me a tad crazy but insane sports fans rioting around the place does not make for a very kissworthy setting. Weren’t the kissers worried that they were going to get trampled? Apparently he was kissing her to calm her. Me, I’m more for the get the hell out of Dodge version of calming.

Anyway because I am patriotic I’m showing the photo because the male kisser is an Aussie. He’s probably regretting that kiss about now. Scott Jones certainly was on Saturday morning when a Channel 9 presenter started twittering on about how wonderful it would be for their future children to see it. Deer–headlights are the words that spring to mind.

So I’ve found another kissing clip on youtube of two seals set free into the wild who take a moment for a pash as they bid their farewells. It has Disney movie written all over it and hopefully will let poor old Scott off the hook.

 Image Getty