And we're moving...

Tally ho everyone, we're moving here.
Blogger is driving me (more) dilly, which isn't safe.
Please let me know if you encounter any problems.
Same me, different place.

The Women's Changeroom at Gym

The horror of the gym changeroom is something dramatically underreported, I believe. This is why today's post is devoted to just that.

G.B and I headed off to the gym last night. We plonked down our bags to change into our sexy gym clothes (if by 'sexy' one means 'old but clean'). Almost immediately, we were accosted by a woman in her late 60s/early 70s, who demanded to know why I was using "her locker." She all but shoved me aside as she started rambling away at G.B, me and another unfortunate gym-goer about how she was promised a permanent locker when she joined this fitness chain; how this one was HERS and ONLY HERS, and how another her swimming costume was falling apart – she subsequently tied a piece of wool around the straps across her back to keep the cozzie in place. G.B muttered that the crazy git must be homeless. The other poor sod in the changeroom whispered to me that she thought this woman took pride in her growing 'eccentricity.'  As she began yelling for one of the changeroom attendants to come help her with something, G.B and I beat a hasty retreat.

We completed our sweat 'n pain session, only to return about an hour later to collect our bags (safely stowed in unmarked lockers!) As we walked in, we were met with a sight that terrified the living shit out of us: a woman weighing about 120kgs sitting on a bench, facing the entrance…naked…and legs slightly spread.

Turning away in an attempt not to face this Rubenesque-plus, starkers individual, we came face-to-face with crazy locker lady, following her swim (with her swimming costume in tact.) This time, the rant was about how cold the water was in the showers, and how another gym chain we shall call Passive Ho was so much better than this gym chain. Kerayzeee locker lady proceeded to speak AT GB for a while, until the woman turned her attention to (mercifully) now-attired fatty on the bench. We ran away.

Yesterday's scarring events in the changeroom, coupled with the area's generalised fug of body odour and musty heat, are definitive reasons to avoid this area as much as possible. To men: the images of lust you might cling to about a women's locker room are as far from the truth as a weather forecast. In reality, they are as sexy as socks and slip-slops.

Russian Tiger

Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, has cemented his place in my mind as Russia's sexiest and bravest leader ever...sexier, even, that Mikhail Gorbachev, if that's possible.

The Vladster single-handedly saved a tv crew from being mauled by a Siberian tiger, reports Reuters: "Putin, taking a break from lambasting the West over Georgia, apparently saved the crew while on a trip to a national park to see how researchers monitor the tigers in the wild."

Apparently the trapped tiger escaped and ran towards the crew. Putin quickly sedated the animal with a tranquiliser gun.

In an interview following the terrifying event, Putin was quoted as saying: "Nyeh, eet vos nothink. In Rossia, ve wrestle dronk people for wodka every day. Thees tiger ees no metch for Yuri after zeven glasses of wodka on your average Tuesday night, thet I promiz you."

Well, he might not have been quoted saying that exactly. It's possible he said something entirely dissimilar to what I've written.

By the way, the pic above shows the outfit Vlad that Hottie wore which got him into glossy magazines across the world.  Grrrrow!!

 

The Nearly Dead

Steve Jobs is dead.

So are all the members of ABBA.

Oh wait, hold on… they're not. Not even Agnetha, who hasn't been heard from since 1984.

It seems Bloomberg's publication of an obituary for Apple's founder and CEO, Steve Jobs, was a mistake….Le Massivo Mistake-o, as they say in Swiss German.

It seems the Bloomberg people were updating Jobs's future obituary – as one does on a slow day – when it was published accidentally.

I believe this kind of thing could happen far more regularly than it actually does. There are many people around who appear to me to be dead, or at least, undead.

Some examples:

-Michael Jackson (happy 50^th b-day, missy!)

-The whole of S.A's parliament

-All the cashiers at the Spar I patronise (and who, in turn, patronise me)

-Danish singers Michael Learns to Rock

-Essop Pahad

-Chris Martin from Coldplay

-My friend's family friend Bevan, who I'm convinced is a zombie

 

The problem is, anyone who tries to compose an obituary for the above-mentioned individuals is likely to die of boredom before completing it.

 

To end….a joke:

Two nuns are driving at night when they're pulled over by a vampire.

One nun says to the other: "Show him your cross"

So the other nun leans out the window and says, "Get out of bloody way, you git!!"

Stop the Shlock!

I attended an event last night which ended up being far worse than I anticipated. This was disappointing, however, as a number of factors were in place to save the event from itself: a super fantastic, amusing ex-colleague [comment here sometime – perhaps? Perhaps?? Perhaps!! J]; a current colleague who is a card…most of the time; food and alcohol. Those were all great. However, the actual event sucked worse than Business Strategy did during the year-long business course I undertook four years ago.

The event was hosted by a company, about which I should probably not say too much lest their people end up finding out how much I loathed their event, leading to their consequent withdrawal advertising funds from my place of employment, my ensuing unemployment and enforced retirement to a cardboard box in Hillbrow. 'Cos that's how it rolls, y'all.

Suffice it to say that the bigwig who hosted the 'show' just made love to himself for two solid hours, under the guise of celebrating the courage of a certain group of people.

Really, the guy should simply have called the evening "An Ode to Me" and then forced those in attendance to listen to some of his dire poetry while experiencing rapture of orgasmic proportions. It's easy to force people to be rapturous…just look at Ray McCauley.

These self-serving events put on by huge corporates must go away. Mind-altering substances could not improve this tripe.

To Feed or Not to Feed

Today I was copy-editing a study about infant nutrition, when I came across a real gem.
Here is the last sentence, verbatim:

"That study suggest (sic) that feeding VLBW infants during the first two months after discharge could be of particular interest at this early stage of development"

Pregnant readers (and those who've recently given birth), take note: feeding your infant may be of interest to you. Then again, it may not. Your choice, really.

Do let me know what you decide to do, please.

How I Don't Want To Be

One of my greatest fears is that I will turn out to be a certain type of person who I don't like. Yes, the possibility exists, too, that I will turn out to be a person who other people don't like all that much, but that bothers me less than the idea of realising the terrible fate of the unmarried, middle-aged woman, who has a persecution complex and feels she has to prove herself…similar to many of the members of Wedge, I suspect.

At a dinner last week with my family and various others, I came across a middle-aged woman called (for the sake of this story) Sue. She had been invited by the host because, as I found out later in the evening, as the host whispered to Sue in the geriatric fashion that results in everyone within a 10 metre radius overhearing, "There's no need for you to be all alone!" I'm sure this irked Sue – nothing worse than being pitied.

Back to earlier in the evening…

We sat down at the table to eat, and unfortunately I was placed next to Sue. Someone then mentioned something about the Masters dissertation I'm (theoretically, at this stage) completing. At this point, Sue turned to me and spoke for the second time that evening (the first time was when introductions were done): "I, too, am about to hand in my dissertation for my Masters degree. But it makes it so much more difficult when you work at the same time."

Hmmm, so clearly the hard-worker assumed that I was merely a full-time student, messing around and skiving off. Definitely not as smart or focused or serious as she is.

Anyway, conversation continued as my family teased me about giving them all grey hairs a number of years ago when I decided to start working on my Honours research report three weeks before it was due. This prompted Sue's third attempt at conversation: "I thoroughly enjoyed my Honours, for which I got a first-class pass. There's nothing like the feeling of walking across the lawns knowing you've achieved a first."

The self-congratulatory stuff carried on intermittently for the rest of the evening until she left – mercifully – about 45 minutes before the rest of us.

I subsequently found out about her being a Wedge-ie yesterday, and it all made sense. Sue is the Wedge stereotype I described in my post last week – she's in her early sixties; lives alone; has no children; has to have the last word, and can never be wrong.

Anyway, I was left wondering if, in 30 years' time, *I* would end up being invited by elderly widows to join them and other families on Friday nights for dinner.

Not the most cheery of thoughts.

I dread the idea of having throngs of people feeling sorry for me should I not end up getting married and having children. And I dread, too, becoming a humourless old git who cannot laugh at herself, nor allow the possibility that numerous people out there can do what I do at least as well as I do, and most probably a lot better.

Why do so many women turn into this type of person? Why so rigid? Where's the fun? Why does it seem that their lives are balancing on a pinhead? Did they become these smug but insecure individuals because they didn't have their own families? Or was this tendency always in them, regardless of whether or not they married?

I need not to be like Sue. However, I also need not to get married simply because I'm 30, and everyone has already done it, and it's the only way people won't feel sorry for me.