miscellania

Things on my mind

• I'm sick today. This means I can either: a)sleep; b)sloth about on the couch listening to 891; c)change this ugly blog template to something less hideous (I get sick of things quickly, which leads to my next point...)
• I can't be arsed finishing my simmer sauce reviews. The idea was to write simmer sauce reviews but use the rhetorical structures of other types of reviews. That first one was obviously based on a car review. The butter chicken we had last week was going to be a theatre review, and the Latina Fresh pancetta and marinated deep-fried leek juice (or something) was going to be written like one of those travel shows doing a story about a hotel somewhere, which leads to my next point...
• On Flyaway, or Runaway or whatever it was called, Catriona (check-out-my-amazing-cleavage) Rowntree did a story on the place where C & I stayed the night of our wedding. She was there, looking around and gushing over the couch (actually, they may have edited that bit out). But imagine that, having Channel nine's latest pin-up girl walking around in a bedroom where I once shagged! Which leads me to my next point...
• and no, it's not about shagging. Was unfortunate enough to catch ACA the other night (Ch9, in case you were wondering) where they did a story on the Danish Royal couple. Not content using the ambush technique of interviewing for dodgy businessmen, people who take advantage of vulnerable (or stupid) people, or "neighbours from hell", they saw fit to pounce on the crown prince and princess as they were going up an escalator. I don't know who the interviewer was but he was using that same gooey smugness that Mike Munro had down pat, asking "Is it good to be home? Ohhhh." I just wonder if people like that actually know how unprofessional they're being, or whether they care at all
• on a note related to something I typed a few minutes ago... I'm kind of bored with predictable ideas. You know how in a book, or a show, or anything with a story, there always has to be this construction of how the elements introduced early on in the piece come into play later on in the story. It's usually in an ironic way but it's just oh-so-clever, and ultimately boring and predictable. Which leads me to my next point...
• I'm currently reading Chekhov: The Comic Stories, which is a collection of 50 short stories by a guy called Anton. What I like about it is that a lot of them are not stories in the classic-narrative sense of the word we've all become accustomed to. Some of them are just vignettes of a few moments between characters and others are character studies written in the first person. The humour is often dark but even in the 'story' stories, there's usually a twist that you never see coming. It's nice to read a story (even a short one) where you know something funny is going to happen but never really knowing what it's going to be.
• Ah... paracetamol with pseudoephedrine. My hero.

And I seem to be mostly doing a, and am currently leaning towards b as the preferred option.