rainbowtatt

I get picked on because there are more than a couple of “older gents” that I definitely wouldn’t kick out of bed:

Looking at the thousand names listed for Rudd’s 2020 Summit, there is no one named Laura.

This is unacceptable! Surely we deserve our 2 cents as well?

There’s been lots of discussion as to whether tonight’s Earth Hour is actually going to do any good.

One friend has referred to it as slacktivision. Another says that the awareness alone is worth the effort. Of course, the likes of Tim Blair are anti-Earth Hour, what what do you expect from rightys who’re into creationism? *

And yes, there’s talk of the energy spent turning lights back on in an hour’s time and how can one hour really make a difference and BLAH BLAH BLAH.

But I remember last year driving around Sydney and seeing icons without their lights on (even the local Maccas) and, I dunno, it just highlighted just how many people give a shit about the environment and want to do something to fix it. Surely it’s worth all the hoo-ha to really show governments and naysayers that we’re serious?

That said, it’s just got Earth Hour o’clock and we’re yet to turn anything off. And Dan and Josh are out buying KFC for dinner. So clearly we’re doing a great job.

* To clarify, I haven’t seen any evidence that Tim Blair’s actually into creationism. I just love to generalise and assume all those who sit on the right of the political scale believe that god created everything. Just like the generalisation that all females with short hair are lesbians and/or feminists.

** Hey, wow, Tim Blair linked me. Way to get my badly-written and not entirely well-though out opinions  some publicity. But it suddenly makes sense as to why there’s been a spike in my stats (2 a day to 300, anyone?). I don’t claim to be a decent writer or of decent opinion. So if you want to tell me I’m wrong about Tim Blair, whatevs. I’ve heard it before. Please save your energy and keystrokes for someone who actually deserves it, e.g. someone with talent.

Is that how you spell eerie?

In any case, whoever you spell it, this is it: an abandoned amusement park in the US.

photo not mine, obv. Although I’d love to go to Ohio and check it out.

Nice to see a big chain step up to the challenge: Myer is going to give its permanent staff paid parental leave.

Ms Broderick said just one third of Australian working women have access to paid parental leave and those that do are mostly in highly paid jobs, government roles or in large companies.

I’m very very lucky – I get 14 weeks paid leave. Not very many of us are that lucky!

To anyone else thinking of toilet training their cats – be prepared to put in a lot of effort, make lots of mistakes and be Very Bloody Patient.

We’ve been working on training Elvis and Bear since June last year, so NINE MONTHS. Admittedly, we’ve been slack (most) times and just as we were making real progress (i.e. early orange stage) I went overseas for a month. GAH!

We’ve been struggling with Bear (aka STUBBORN CAT. Elvis is easy to train because he’s My Cat, not Dan’s Cat) and getting him to poop on the red tray while it’s on the toilet – he has some psychological issue with it. Nothing worked. I’d spend time trawling the forums at the Litter Kwitter site and would try every tip and trick (within reason).

We’ve endured with finding poop in areas of the bathroom THAT AREN’T ON TOP OF THE TOILET and we’ve become quite good at cleaning up the evidence of such poor performance. And yesterday we finally had success with Bear using the Litter Kwitter red stage appropriately, although it’s so totally gross.

You know what we did? We had to leave one “nugget” in the litter. Something about it being in there was enough for Bear to actually “toilet” properly and we were so completely stoked, you would have thought that he’d said “I LOVE MAMA AND DAD” in perfect English.

So there you go. Don’t clean up too well and Bear knows how to poop in a tray on top of the toilet. Who would’ve thought.

We’re still waiting for him to poop today, so maybe it was a one-off yesterday.

Who is the patron saint of cat toilet training? St Anthony looks after Lost Souls, so we could be on the right track with Anthony. Anthony already does a great job of finding us parking spots, so we could be in luck.

This is my cup from my baptism. That was 29 and a half years ago and it still hasn’t been engraved. I think I might get it engraved as my 30th birthday present to myself. It could also do with a good polish.

New music I’ve downloaded today:

Carole King – How can I not love someone who is willing to appear on The Colbert Report? Her voice is still awesome even though it’s 30 years since her heyday. Stupid me didn’t realise she’s the “Natural Woman” chick, a song that I sang a gazillion times back in the days when I had singing lessons. So I got her best of album from 1978, I figured it’s the safest buy, although Tapestry seems to be her ultimate album.

Axle Whitehead - Yes, he’s the guy who was on Idol, then hosted Video (s)Hits, then dropped his pants on TV and was promptly ditched by Channel 10. Funny to see him on Video Hits in the form of a video clip and “dial 1900 suckit to win a signed single”. But I love this song of his “I Don’t Do Surprises” and can even deal with the fact that he sounds like the Coldplay guy in parts of the song. Not a bad video clip either.

Newton Faulkner - He was on Video Hits this morning too, and played Teardrop (the Massive Attack song) on his acoustic. Very cool, although he sounds like a character from The Lion The Witch and the Wardrobe. I grabbed his album “Hand Built by Robots” and have already done the washing up to half of the album. I liked it. I think I have soft spot for him because of the dreads.

Gabriella Cimli - Never heard of her, but discovered she’s an Aussie (a Melbournite, but I won’t hold that against her) who’s been living in the UK for a few years and is only bloody 16 (way to make me feel old, kid). She’s hot in her video clip and her voice is what I would say is typical of what I like in a female vocal. I read somewhere that she might be compared to Amy W(h)inehouse – please god, no. I found a clip of her singing her single “Sweet About Me” on Later… With Jools Holland and turned it into an mp3.

Right-click > save as Gabriella Cilmi – Sweet About Me (Live on Jools Holland) | MP3 | 3.43

I lost most of the first of this delicious 4-day weekend by napping on the couch for over 3 hours. In my defence, the cats were up at 6am and we had to pick Josh up from the airport at 8am. Not exactly sleep-in material.

This is what Josh bought Dan while he was away:

I can imagine pimply/middle-aged/still living with mum/mom-types buying this hoping for real ideas.

I’ve been forced to use Windows Live Writer to post to this damn blog with any success cause the wordpress.com interface has turned to crap and crashes when trying to include pics or URLs. Makes me glad that I’ve bought myself a domain and will be back to using my own WP install very very soon.

I found a draft for a post that I wrote just before the APEC long weekend last year:

it’s really cold outside and I’m torn between

• going to bed to read Notes from a Small Island again, as holiday research
• going to bed to read The God Delusion, picked up from the library today
• sitting under the couch blanket and watching a few more eps of Whose Line Is It Anyway? so I can ogle Wayne Brady

if it wasn’t night time and raining outside, I’d be out there taking pics on my “new” camera:

I think I’ve decided how I’ll make the most of my APEC long weekend.

Little did I know that I would end up spending APEC weekend dealing with Worst Food Poisoning Ever (a valid title considering I’ve never had it before) and when I was having an intimate relationship with the bathroom, I was curled up in bed in the foetal position.

Good times.