HELLO!

Testing, testing...

Hello?


HELLO!

and now, (because I can't figure out how to delete this), a haiku:

Liz is funny as
funny can be, she likes to
drink but not take P.

Thank you and good night.

Ruby

Cats, pomegranates and Hell; a Nutritionist's outlook.

Humour. Pretty subjective aye?
I learnt this the hard way; at the place where all great stories start; Bargain Barn!

For all of you poor, sad people who don’t know, Bargain Barn (now called something lame with “re” in the title but alliteration is awesome so renaming will remain unremembered) is a warehousey-type building in the industrial cervix of Central Dunedin where you can buy ANYTHING!

So long as “anything” is at least 4th hand, smells a little like old man trousers in a housing unit in Porirua, and costs 50 cents.

I had a couple of hours to kill, (lies, I had homework, but you can’t do homework when you’re drunk and op-shopping! Logic!) so I headed off for a pint and a browse and OH MY FUCK I’m glad I did because I stumbled upon the most epic extreme genre of ridiculously cheap and useless shit ever! Posters!!

Now, one may ask, why would you pay for a poster when they are free for the taking at any major wall near you? Because; (a) last time I tried to use a craft knife when drunk I sliced off a small piece of finger and didn’t notice for several hours and bled on the floor of The Cook and it was unhygienic and, (b) they have CAT POSTERS!!!

The thing about cat posters is; they are awesome.

Do I like cats? Hmmm. Marginally. I will definitely pat a cat if it looks clean and requires no more than four steps of standard deviation from my intended path, but I do not like cats who put fur on me. Or look at me with judging eyes. Or spurn me when I attempt to befriend them when I am feeling friendless. But cat posters suffer from none of these disadvantages; they are not hairy, they do not ever walk away from you, and in the one I ended up buying, the featured cats are playing... with books! Like lol! It’s totally situationally ironic because, wait for it, cats don’t read!

On a marginally (so marginal) more academic note, I also bought a poster of historical good bitch Persephone eating a pomegranate. And here the worry began.

Now Persephone, as we all know, was just a wee occidental wannabe chilling in the perpetual cornfields and trickling brooks (and other vaguely positive agricultural things, possibly not so much cornfields in central Europe before 1500AD but hey! Let’s keep this imprecise) of a happy pre-ice age summer. Then she ate an antioxidant rich plant ovary (actually half, but not gonna hold that against her, they are really quite tricky to eat tidily and in my head she suffered mild ADHD and was unable to get through entire pieces of fruit in one sitting without being distracted by sexy young hoplites or Pheidippides back from a training jog to Turkey or whatever) and got sent to hell.

Happy ending (sort of) she got saved and only had to spend a couple months down there per year and so winter happened blah blah BUT THIS IS IRRELEVANT the point I am trying to make is that I bought a poster of superbabe Persephone, tagged it meme-styles with “EAT FRUIT... GO TO HELL” and hung it in the human nutrition office.

Nobody got it.

I got multiple compliments on the cats (possibly sarcasm implicit), a few about my hipster potplant cartoon but evidently NOBODY thinks classics/nutrition humour is as awesome a trend as I do.

Which brings me back to the subjectivity of humour.
Verdict; very.

Also the women at bargain barn barter. This is alliteration AND true and means I got 7 posters which included 2x cats, 1x emo asian eating candy, 1x marine life, 2x jebus, 1x pomegranate, a boot bag for boots, a straw hat, a fork, a plaid shirt, an un-plaid shirt, a belt and something else which has fallen through a hole in my memory.

Also maybe she ate a persimmon. Fuck. I don’t even think I’ve even seen a persimmon before.

Right! Now I will write my research proposal.

Ruby.

Maths wins over socks

I have been thinking about maths quite a lot recently. Possibly some of this was brought on by my statistics exam. Though even before the exam I would divide laps swum (note: not swam) into ratios and percentages of a target whole, then forecast time estimates for each further subdivision.

Anyhow. it all started when, in an idle brain moment yesterday, I was contemplating the most efficient way to peg out washing.

Hanging washing always takes a mysterious amount of effort for such a mundane task. I feel that a great deal of this effort arises from the sheer amount of bending over to pick things up required. Pick up wet item, pick up peg, realise another peg is needed, pick up another peg, now necessary to pick up further item of washing; and so the sick cycle continues.

I realised that a more logical approach to the task at hand must be taken;

I would have to write an equation.

At first, the solution was easy.

If P = pegs and W = items of washing; then surely,

P = W + 1

(assuming of course that you take the accepted pegging method as that which consists of sharing pegs between two adjacent edges of washing, an often controversial stance)

Unfortunately, an issue quickly came to my attention; the problem of socks.

Taking socks as S, the equation becomes;

P = ((W - S) + 1) + S

One mundane task just got so much more equated.

Wow. I really think too much.


Ruby.

Why hormones are like sea lions.

Emotions. Sometimes they happen.

Especially when hormones saunter in and sneak past your subconscious when it's not paying attention (often, apparently) are all like "oh HEY! You haven't seen me in a solid 27 days, how's it going?"

"Oh ya know... had a pretty busy weekend. Headed down to the Catlins and was menaced by various bits of nature. Feeling a bit tired after all the..."

"HAHAAA! TIRED?! I WILL COMPOUND YOUR EXHAUSTION WITH SUPERFLUOUS EMOTIONS! PREPARE TO WEEP! AND ALSO BE ANGRY, HUNGRY AND SWEATY!!!"

"fuck"

Then I am like hmmm yes... I AM angry at my sheets! Must change sheets! Arrrgh so tired from mammoth effort involved in peeling back elasticated corners have to lie on bare mattress and sulk! Suddenly, am depressed about dirty hair and looking like a smelly tramp who slept in a car with 16 Tasman Bitters then rolled in wet sand and a fire and a seal poo, and get up to wash various bits but notice unpacked bag lurking in a pile of charcoaly sand in the corner. Guilt acid generated by sight of bag is funnelled to the bile duct via lymph and shame tubules, where it is catalysed to stomach acid by attention deficit hormones and propels you to the kitchen to melt cheese. Only, the 817 various eating items looming in the sink corner, and baking powder, brown sugar and corona bottles coating the floor (it bottles could coat things, these ones would), sends you back to the mattress, but no sheets, but floor sandy but... shower... guilt... food... anger... and you end up eventually hiding under a blanket reading blogs and eating milo powder with a spoon and listening to karma police on repeat.

The Catlins are cool though! 

Also educational. 

For example, I had never realised quite how massive sealions are. They are big. And they smell. And when they start waddling towards you it is unbelieveably terrifying because you suddenly can't remember exactly how fast they can run but you have a vague feeling sea lions are one of those irritatingly ungainly animals, like crocodiles and hippos, which will outsprint you for a warmup, then eat your knees and go attack a boat or something, and it starts to cut you off, and you half sprint, half creep, and Dom is behind you whimpering "ohshitohshitohshitit'slookingatusohshitit'scomingtowardsusohfuckohshit" and you narrowly escape in the most pathetic and embarrassing sort of submissive crawl ever, and as you back carefully away it stops and looks at you with 200kg of contempt and rolls over to have a sunbathe.

So. Moral of the story, sea lions are like hormones because they will make you their bitch and there is nothing you can do about it.

Or you could just get pregnant and be spewy and swelly but elated instead. 

Ruby.

Banana String, Bumper Stickers, and Pub Quizzes

I hate bumper stickers. They are on my list of '100 things I hate'. Mostly they are completely lame/arrogant/i dont care if you love your cat. Today I saw one that said 'you keep tooting, and i'll get my shotgun'. Tres witty.
I also hate 'baby on board' signs. I will drive MORE recklessly if I see one.

On my list of  100 is also banana string. You know what I'm talking about. Some bananas have more than others, usually the small and riper ones are prime candidates for an abundance of banana string. Banana strings are actually called phloem bundles and they bring much needed nutrition to the banana. But you already knew this. Point is, I hate them. 

Oh and the other day, Harry, Kinga and I went to a PubQuiz in Christchurch. The place was quite flash. We did crap at the quiz, but that is beside the point. Anyway, they had individual towels in the bathroom and I was awfully excited. I said I'd write about it. But a picture tells a thousand words.

Liz.

how to concisely win over doorframes and raising agents.

When contemplating furniture, do not hesitate to appreciate the merits of the humble chinup bar. discrete, available in a stylish chrome finish, it will, unlike other similarly furnitural items, resist the accumalation of surface debris, and also, you can do chinups on it. Not many beds can make this claim.

(chinup bar picture credit to this guy: http://www.ahbing.com, who incidentally, is totally awesome)


Also, i have been listening to one song, chicago by sufjan stevens, on repeat for three days now, is this weird? or are many people obessessed with a particular song for multiple hours at a stretch?

Liz, what do you think?


Today I baked a cake.

the recipe was something like;
baking soda (i used baking powder)
2 bananas (I used 5)
flour (I used wholemeal, couldn't be fucked measuring it, and chucked some flaxseed in for funsies)
milk (I used coffee)
vanilla essence (I used coffee grounds, left over from cooking the coffee in a saucepan)
other various things (which I omitted)

I also invented an interesting crumbed topping, consisting of flour, sugar and butter, to give my cake that special cake-y edge.

And... it worked!

AHAAHAHA I now have beaten baking hands down. If I can mangle a recipe this epically and get away with it, it must mean that baking is on its knees begging for mercy.

Ruby = 1
Baking = 0

A successful day.

Ruby.

The Double-Ewe Tea Eff Hats.

WTF is up with straw hats this summer. I am not a fan.
It doesn't matter if your black or white, straw does nothing for your skin-tone.
They are flimsy as fuck.

This lady would be hot, but she has to ruin it by wearing a fugly straw hat. 

This guy is ok I guess. 

In wearing one, I feel like you are defying the great pioneers of the human race who actually invented shit so we don't have to wear straw anymore.

This may not be the best piece of literature I have written, but I feel like I have made my point. Can't wait to start playing hackie-sack. Without a straw hat on. Fuck. I bet all the freshers will be wearing them next year. jakfajkkldakhvsd


Liz.