Wick-ee-pee-dee-ah

When I'm famous enough to have a Wikipedia page, I would like it set up thusly (I looked that up on dictionary.com, I love it when words mean what I think they do):

Early life
Little is known about the reclusive author before she published her first novel. What we do know, is that at the age of six, she decided she wanted to marry Buddy Holly. At the age of seven, she learned why this wasn’t going to happen. Her fascination with boys who played guitar and wore glasses never waned.

Career
Her first novel, See that? I Totally Wrote all Them Words, was a surprise success considering the amount of crude drawings that were featured in the margins. The story told of two detectives trying to make it on the mean streets of New York, hindered only by the fact that they were a monkey and an elephant on an otherwise all human police force. *SPIOILER ALERT* the killer was a shifty duck. It was praised for its grittiness, and panned for its excessive use of the word ‘hullabaloo,’ which the author claimed was necessary all 427 times. Her second novel, I pissed away all the money I made from the last book and need some more, y’all, was shite.

Personal Life
Lauren married a total of nine times, just to show Elizabeth Taylor who’s boss. Of her 23 children, she openly admitted that JimBob was her favourite, and that the music he made with his all transvestite jug band was truly inspiring. His father was one of the hot Doctor Who’s (husbands four and five), but she could never remember which one.
She was also known to be a brilliant artist, a talented musician, the inventor of the George Forman Grill, and a pathological liar.

Retirement
Lauren became a recluse after her last divorce, and decided to live out the rest of her days sailing around the world on her yacht, the ‘S.S. Stick That in Your Pipe & Smoke it.’

Death
Turns out she didn’t know how to sail.

Lauren’s Book Club

If Oprah can have one, I can have one.

Dr. Seuss - Hop on Pop

The first thing that must be noted about this book is that despite popular belief, this is clearly not for children. There are far too many adult themes and sexual references. There are obvious phallic connotations involved when one character is depicted wearing nothing but a satisfied grin as he sits on top of an upright baseball bat, and no one can deny that there’s something a little bit kinky going on when Red, Ned, Ted and Ed all decide to share a bed.

Next up is the section where ‘all’ play on the wall. Really? Encouraging people to juggle and play baseball while balancing on a wall? Did we learn nothing from Humpty Dumpty? Less observant readers may feel that the characters learn their lesson on the next page when they are shown falling from the wall, but this only shows the process of falling, not the consequences. If the next page had something along the lines of ‘all are feeling very sore, all shall sadly walk no more’ with an illustration of ‘all’ enduring a painful physio session, Suess would be a far more responsible author. To be honest, I’m not even convinced he’s a real doctor.

Then there is the horror of a man being attacked by a lion, people being chased by kamikaze bees, and the concept of fish living in a tree (though one could argue that they’re just chillin’ up there, and we all need a little time away every now and then).

The story becomes downright ridiculous when we see a dog catapult its owner out of town using a seesaw. I found this to be unrealistic on the grounds that the weight of the animal pictured could in no way ever propel a grown man to reach such distances.

My only other complaint is that I freakin hate rhyming. Unless it’s clever rhyming, which this isn’t. One must question the amount of desperation that lies behind rhyming the word ‘thing’ with ‘thing.’

Now, I don’t want to give too much away about this book, but let’s just say, it involves one unhappy pop.

I’m not ageist, but...

I’ve figured something out, and it involves maths. Heavily estimated and not properly researched maths.
The Elderly:
20% are awesome
40% don’t know what’s going on
40% are really freakin mean

First up, if I don’t know you, I don’t want to hear about your surgery. An elderly woman on a tram once asked me if I had the time, and apparently telling someone it’s twenty past three translates to ‘please tell me about your hernia operation for the remainder of the trip, and don’t leave out any of the details.’

I don’t want to hear about how ‘in my day,’ you didn’t know cigarettes were bad for you. If anything, people nowadays are worse off. We know that everything is bad for you. Sun: cancer. Red meat: cancer. Not laughing at my blog… cancer. No happy-go-lucky-good-times for us, thank you sir.

I used to complain about all those idiots who got on the train with their iPod turned up way too loud, or the people who don’t even bother with headphones because they think they’re so bada$$ that they want to inconvenience everyone else on the train. As annoying as that is, it’s nothing compared to a new trend I’ve discovered: Old people who get on the train with a transistor radio. It’s always turned up full blast, and crackling due to bad reception, while a talkback radio host and all his callers express how outraged they are about whatever issue the media has decided to sensationalise that day. It’s gotta be exhausting to be that outraged all the time, doesn’t it? Take a break dude. Have a cup of tea, and maybe even some biscuits. Nice biscuits. Chocolate biscuits. Cream filled chocolate biscuits. Then go hug a puppy. Feel better now? Thought so.

Speaking of transistor radios and older people (segue!), I feel the need to mention an incident from high school. One of my teachers (an older gentleman) was chatting to the school librarian (an older lady) about how he liked to listen to talkback on his transistor radio when he couldn't sleep at night. What he should have understood, is that the 15 year old student standing behind him, would most likely get the wrong idea when he heard him say the words ‘last night I was in bed with a trannie.’ That’s how rumours start, y’all.

Ignorance is bliss

I learned something yesterday. Apparently ‘chock-a-block’ is a nautical term. For almost 23 years, I’d always assumed it had something to do with chocolate, and how it comes in blocks, and if you eat too much of it, you’re full, or ‘chock-a-block.’ It’s just logic, really.

Sadly, pieces of information such as this never come as a surprise to me. I have an extensive history of completely missing the point. So, in a spectacular celebration of shame, here are some of my greatest misunderstandings:

• I used to think Elvis was singing ‘I’m a sugar,’ despite the facts that a) this makes no sense, and b) the song was called All Shook Up.
• In early 2009 I finally realised that the title of blink-182’s 2001 album Take off Your Pants and Jacket was a pun. Yes, I thought it was an odd request, but hey, whatever floats your boat. Maybe they liked getting down with their shirts still on? I felt dirty. Dirty and betrayed. However, now I can enjoy the fact that it is both clever, and amusing. Kudos, boys. Kudos.
• ‘Feckless’ is a real word. I thought it was Irish slang.
• I thought Danke Schoen was sung by a woman.
• Towards the end of high school I found out the book is called To Kill a Mockingbird and not Tequila Mockingbird, and that it is about the racial divide, and not a drag queen (she sounds fun though, right? Yeah. You know she’d show you a good time). I still haven’t read the book, but I saw the movie. Shut up, that's not lazy. It's time efficient.
• It took me 14 hours to understand the bumper sticker ‘My Karma ran over your Dogma.’
• You know that scene in Grease where Rizzo and Kenickie are going at it in the back of his car, and he pulls out his ‘25cent insurance policy?' Up until the age of 16, I thought it was an actual insurance policy. I could never understand why they were so upset that it broke.
  

What worries me about all of this is the number of other things I’ve completely misunderstood, but still have no idea about, and will surely one day embarrass myself with.

Personally, I chose to believe that I’m not slow. Society is just impatient.