On Top of the World

One of the goats that lives near me (as I live in a veritable sanctuary of wildlife) gave birth to a couple of kids - at the left of the photo - a few days ago. When I went on my walk yesterday I took some photos. Naturally, they were sitting as far away from me as they could get, and not even my encouraging calls of “Goats!” could get them to come over. So the photos aren’t as good as I’d have hoped, but maybe I’ll be able to get a better one another time. The ones I took with the flash on were pretty cool, since it reflected off the eyes of some of them and made them look possessed. Goats have weird eyes anyway, with their oblong pupils, but this was just a cool Psycho Goat look.

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There’s a guy at work who’s really pissing me off at the moment. Do you remember that episode of The Simpsons with Frank Grimes? I feel like the guy at work is Homer and I’m Grimey, and that one day I’m going to go totally lose it and end up electrocuting myself.

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I watched the final episode of Grumpy Old Women last night. What a great show! It’s a British show where a bunch of women aged in their 40s and up say what irritates them (usually about ‘young people’, but also about being ‘older’). Most of them I’ve never heard of, except for Jilly Cooper and Germaine Greer. I found myself agreeing with a lot of the things they said, which I guess makes me a Grump Old Woman myself, but they honestly did raise some valid points! I wish I’d seen the whole series - I only saw the final two episodes. I hate it when that happens.

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My final thought is a little indelicate - I’ve been wondering about it for a while, but didn’t really know how to put it. So, just in case you’d rather not read about bodily functions (but why wouldn’t you want to, really?!) I’ll hide it…

I used to love Basil Brush when I was a kid. And Playaway. They didn’t show Playaway for very long, but what they did show I thought was great. I found something really cool today, and I can’t remember how I stumbled across it, but it’s so cool! I was looking through the list and thinking, “Oh my God! I remember ___!” Playing the title or a couple of clips brought back all the good memories. It’s just like when you’re reminiscing about when you were little, and all the great cartoons you used to watch, like The Perils of Penelope Pitstop and The Herculoids, before all the shit cartoons started. Aaah the good old days! What cartoons/TV shows did you like when you were a kid?

The Brits make some pretty good TV… in fact, I think most of my favourite actors are from Britain - Ian McKellen, John Hannah, Nigel Hawthorne, Robert Carlyle…

There have been a couple of fatal shark attacks in the last week in Australian waters, the most recent one being off the coast of Adelaide. The victim was 300 metres offshore, and was taken by two white pointers. The hunt is now on for these two sharks, which will be killed if found, and permission has been granted to kill any shark posing a threat to swimmers.

I think that this is ridiculous.

For one thing, how are they going to know they’ve got the right sharks? And another thing, if it’s known that sharks are around, then rather than a chopper circling around waiting to kill them to protect the swimmers, why don’t you do the smart thing and STAY THE HELL OUT OF THE WATER? Sharks have been around a lot longer than we have, and although humans like to think that they’re the rulers of everything, I think it’s fairly safe to say that once you enter the water, you’re entering the sharks’ domain.

I don’t know how they can justify killing a shark because it killed a person - no matter whether you are an animal or a human, the fact of life is that you eat or you die. What happened here is that there was a human (who looked remarkably like a seal) in the water, the shark was hungry, so it went for the food, and because of that, it could possibly be killed by people who can’t bear to think that humans aren’t always at the top of the food chain.

I just think it’s sad that when a shark attack occurs (which really isn’t that often), they are automatically pegged for extermination. When a person deliberately kills another person (not in self-defence), they don’t necessarily get the death penalty. Why not? Something to do with ‘inhumanity’ I assume. There are plenty of premeditated murderers in prison who have less right to life (in my opinion) than a shark who was merely doing what it has to do to live. If the same penalty applied to sharks were applied to these people, we’d get rid of a lot of the trash in our prisons, and maybe our taxes could go towards something more useful than keeping them alive.

Do you think it’s weird how you can listen to a song that you haven’t heard for ages, and the lyrics just come back to you, and even the improvisations that the artist does?

I haven’t had any speakers for my computer for ages - the last ones I had were pretty crappy, and died long ago. I found my headphones today when I was doing some cleaning out, and I’ve been listening to some music that I haven’t heard for over a year, and I can still remember all the words and everything. I was just wondering what part of my brain all those lyrics and improvisations are stored in that I can recall them over a year later? Probably the same place that all the other useless information I have is stored in!

There’s an ad on tv for a type of cereal (I can’t remember which one), and it’s got a whole lot of people who are dressed up as tastebuds. The point of the ad is how happy you’ll make your tastebuds if you eat this cereal. And it has a woman eating the cereal, and all the tastebuds with looks of rapture on their faces. Does anyone know the ad I’m talking about? Anyway, is it just me, or is every one of those tastebud people really weird looking? They just all have the strangest looking faces I’ve ever seen.

…has anyone tried that Refan place - the one that makes the imitation (men’s and women’s) fragrances? I was at TTP today and I saw a Refan shop there. I’ve been thinking for a while now that it would be good to have a cheaper perfume that I can wear on a daily basis, and save my favourite perfume for less frequent use (since it’s so damn expensive), but I thought that if I could get a decent copy of my favourite one, then that would be better than trying to find another fragrance that I’d want to wear every day.

So have any of you tried it? Is it any good? According to their brochure, the fragrances are eau de parfum; if they were EDT I wouldn’t buy it. I’m a bit hesitant to buy an imitation, but if anyone has tried and liked it, I might change my mind…