According to a company in China, Virgos and Scorpios are moody and critical. So firmly attached to this theory are they, that they have told anyone born under this star sign not to bother applying for any jobs they might offer. A spokesperson from the company said that Scorpios were moody and Virgos hugely critical.

“I hired people with those two star signs before and they either liked quarrelling with other collegues or they could not do the job for long,” she said.

OK, then. I guess that’s taking generalising to a whole new level.

However should you be a Capricorn, Pisces or Libra, then you will be welcomed with open arms, in fact prioritised.

Other argumentative Scorpios include Hillary Clinto, Pablo Picasso, Truman Copote and Goldie Hawn. Luckily for them they don’t live in China. Image

• They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot and then once it was full it was taken and sold to the tannery If you had to do this to survive you were “piss poor”.
• But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn’t even afford to buy a pot. They “didn’t have a pot to piss in” and were the lowest of the low.
• In the 1500s most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell, brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odour. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.
• Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Here’s where the saying, “Don’t throw the baby out with the bath water!” evolved.
• Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying, “It’s raining cats and dogs.”
• There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. A bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That’s how canopy beds came into existence.
• The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, “Dirt poor.”
• The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way–a threshold.
• In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: “Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot nine days old”.
• Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, “bring home the bacon.” They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew the fat.
• Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.
• Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the upper crust.
• Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom; “of holding a wake”.
• England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people so they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be, “saved by the bell” or was “considered a dead ringer”.  Image

Turns out there’s a reason for that for Kate has been attending Princess School. Not the Princess School that has been set up for spoiled American child princess in London, but real school–where you have to learn stuff.

And this is what Kate is learning.

• deciding which charities she’ll choose to support
• meeting with government officials in a rigorous curriculum “designed to prepare her for everything that her official life will throw at her over the decades to come
• learning how the British Empire works, from its government to its economy (it’s stuffed Kate–all of it)

“The Duchess is being briefed on how the State works, getting to know our national institutions better and learning more about organisations such as the arts, the media and the government.

“It is a process that will carry on for several months but is being done privately … As well as meetings at St James’s Palace, the Duchess is spending time carrying out private research of her own,” someone quite pompous said.

Got a joke about Princess Kate this morning. She went to the Queen seeking advice on how to be a good princess. The queen had only two things to say. “Don’t piss me off. Wear a seatbelt.” Actually it’s more topical than funny. Don’t know why I repeated it really. Image

I don’t thing they are here is Australia because we’ve got those things you put over your unruly, cold sensitive, horny nipples. You can even resort to bandaids if you need, but they make you boobs look weirdly flattened. Anyway we’ve got it wrong because sticky out nipples are desirable. They advertised the fact that you are turned on though how this would go down at church on Sunday could be a bit weird.

Turned on by Jesus sticky nips for your Sunday outing. Actually that’s blastphemous. I may go to hell.

OK, well there’s a site where you can buy your sticky nips should you wish to looky sexy, excited and wow just like the lady in the orange top in the following video clip. Personally I just wanted to get her a good bra and hoist her puppies north–but who am I to judge? She’s feeling wow for goodness sakes. Image

My own pregnancy ranks right up with the most horrible things that has ever happened to me. Nine months of all day sickness that saw me bedridden for a month and the short term ability to throw up in a rubbish bin or gutter without qualm. I can’t say I missed the smoking (because I don’t smoke) or the drinking (because I honestly thought that I had a very long hangover for the first week I was pregnant and never wanted to look at alcohol again) but I really missed the coffee. It wasn’t that I was even thinking about the effects of caffeine on my unborn baby–nope it made me throw up too.

Anyway 43 year old Carla is totally “fed up” while waiting for the birth of her second child. Actually I’d be pretty fed up with being called an elderly primagravida. It makes her sound like she’s ready for a bed in the local nursing home.

“The baby will be viable at any time from October 1,” the former model told French newspaper Le Parisien. Aurelien arrived on time, which means this could be a long wait, but I really do want this child so much.”

Okey dokey then.

I have visions of an induced labour on October 1, a packet of Marlboro Lights waiting by the bedside alongside a bottle of Moet et Chandon, a nanny and a night nurse.

There won’t be any photos though as Carla says that the birth of her child is “a totally private event.” But she may just have to trot out Sarkozy Jnr to give her husband’s French presidential  re-election campaign a boost. Image

Not a great way to start the week you might think–but you’d be wrong. It’s touching, uplifting and make you want to hug the one you love rather than nag him about where he leaves his dirty socks. Image

Actually Barbie and Ken have tied the knot millions of times when every little girl in the world march Barbie down the aisle with a handkerchief draped on her head. My Barbie never got to marry Ken. She had to marry GI Joe because I was one of those deprived children who never had a Ken doll.

I don’t think this wedding has been endorsed by Mattel. They are the brainstorm of photographer Beatrice de Guigne who has way cooler Barbie gear than I ever did. Jealous much.

This is the link to the full wedding album featured on Glamour’s site. If you’re thinking of getting married you should check out every cliched wedding shot.

As an aside that is nothing to do with Barbie’s wedding–get yourself to a department store and check out Barbie’s little black dress range. Seriously nice. I wanted to buy one just so I could get a Vietnamese tailor to copy it for me. Image

I’m really into Foxtel’s new series, My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding. So much stuff going on that I never, ever imagined could really happen in 2011.

We Aussie’s don’t really know that much about gypsies other than they read fortunes and Johnny Depp played a misunderstood one in Chocolat. How’s that for a big, fat gypsy stereotype.

Well modern-day gypsies are something else. And their wedding dresses. I’ll be frank–they don’t border on, they are, ridiculous. Take for instance the pink number worn by a non-gypsy girl marrying into a gypsy family. It was pink, the skirt was wider than the girl was tall, it lit up like a Christmas tree and had moving fake butterflies. I actually sat with my hand held in horror over my mouth. That is till the woman who made the dress turned up with a fire extinguisher in case the whole thing when up in a big melted puff of polyester. That made me laugh.

Communion dresses take on the same vein with it normal and acceptable to fake tan a six-year-old. Perhaps these gypsies should branch out into child pageants. They’ve got the get up for it. They even change after the ceremony to a pole-dancer’s outfit that is quite creepy to watch. They get their dance on too. Shakira is a role model.

Anyway there are some things other than their poor dress sense that have truly shocked me. Here are some of them.

• Grabbing: where a gypsy boy attacks a girl and takes her somewhere private so that he can kiss her. I hope it is just kissing–it looked more like attempted rape to me. This is an acceptable practice. It’s how boys meet girls. Charming.
• Domestic violence: is an accepted practice in gypsy communities as dependent women see it as their lot in life.
• Domestic drudgery: women do no work outside the caravan which make them reliant on their men. See above.
• Education: is not a necessity for girls who are usually taken out of school when they are 11 or 12. They are needed at home to assist with domestic duties.
• Marriage: a girl is usually married by 16 with much fanfare, big dresses and big cakes. Groom is met by the process of grabbing.
• Alcohol: it’s OK for boys of 11 to drink alcohol–encouraged really. Probably gives them a bit of courage for grabbing and domestic violence when the.

Anyway I’ve gone from finding the first episode absolutely hilarious to being a little disturbed by the next one. I’m guessing the gypsies aren’t terribly impressed by how they’ve been portrayed.

Watch and see what you think. Image