Camel Toes

M'sister recently emailed me.She had caught a West Indian production of "Carmen" on SBS and noted how exuberant it had been - size 20 sopranos ,she said, still looking sexy in tight pants with camel toes. 

What, I e-mailed back, was a camel-toe - apart from the hoof of a dromedary.(I actually thought- some kind of footwear)

Google it, she replied.

So I did. 

I was taken to a porn site from which I will doubtless be offered penis enlargements and instant erections for the next 20 years or so.

Har har said M'sister, You should have had a filter on your internet.

Useless to point out that my knowledge of the computer falls so short of this that ,to me, a filter is either a coffee strainer or an anaesthetic device.

DOM in gloom over her results- ABBBC- in any other culture perfectly acceptable but in her high achieving circles less than average (I would point out that these are aggregates and by definition she is in the highest 50% of the state)

I was slightly peeved by the revelation that her long nights of study (or so I thought) were mostly spent writing a fantasy novel. All I can say is that if she finally gets published she should profusely thank her mother for support (as if).

Nocturnals

DaughterOfMine has been back from Schoolies for two weeks and is in the inevitable limbo of awaiting her year 12 results.

She has been as sick as a dog for those two weeks and is currently on her third course of antibiotics.

Any suggestion by me that fresh food, exercise and a decent night's sleep (as opposed to eating cheese toasties all night whilst surfing the internet and concocting strange cocktails with the leftovers from the drinks cabinet) might boost her immune system are met with scorn. After all what would I know?

Obviously the problem is that the stupid doctors haven't given her strong enough medicine...and of course she's the first patient to ever say that to me. 

I got up the other morning to find that she had been making gingerbread men overnight.I looked at them and then looked more closely. Each tiny face had a carefully pipetted expression of fear or anxiety - like a little row of Munsche's "Scream"s (only edible).

I raised an eyebrow at DOM. She shrugged. "Well, after all" she said " They do know they're being executed in the morning".

Fish tales

Number one son is living in Sydney's Western suburbs (aka Bogan-ville) . He is rebelling against his parents by becoming a contented lower middle class git.

 Pathognomonic of the syndrome apparently (apart from the more obvious plasma screen TV, X-Box,BBQ and two car (man-like sedan for him, chicky-babe bubble car for her ) garage ) is an interest in fish.In tanks. With complex eco-systems (many involving miniature plastic palaces and ruined temples). 

There are even large chain stores, some dealing only with the complicated apparatus of the fish-lover , others branching into other aspects of what I can only consider to be an unhealthy interest in lower forms of life. If you can't eat it wear it or ride it what could possibly make you spend time with it?

Of course No 1 has a history of this sort of thing . Who could possibly forget the Great Guppy Massacre of 2005? Or the Siamese Fighting Fish fiasco of 2004 which preceded it ?Only his aunt's carelessness with a vacuum cleaner (goodbye 150l tank and a carpet) and a refocussing of his year 12 interests (towards parties and girls) saved us from becoming Fish Paradise.

And so No 1 found himself in the pet equivalent of k-mart looking for a shrimp to clean his windows.

Not for nothing did he do aquaculture in year 11 -when the girl brought out the little fella he looked at it suspiciously.

"That's a yabby" he said.

No, she asserted, it was a shrimp.

He pointed out that he was pretty sure that shrimps were not black with menacing claws and furthermore- if he was correct -that the fate of his existing fish would be decapitation the moment they went to sleep in the presence of their new buddy.

The sales assistant insisted tearfully that it was a shrimp. The manager arrived and looked at the counter. "What's with the yabby?" he asked.

No 1 looked more closely at the girl's badge. Under her name "Mandy" it stated "Bird Dept".

"You don't know anything about fish do you? " he asked.

"Well, " she said defensively "All the other girls are in the toilet."

(He didn't ask).

Exams

Both our fellows failed their exams this week. There was doom and gloom and anger  in the Unit (as you might expect), although they both came to terms with it pretty quickly.Both are from overseas. I think  if they had been from Oz that the anger and disbelief may have lingered a bit longer. 

Australians don't really know how to fail any more (or at least not cheerfully and often as we seemed to).

 Entry to medical school is now based on psychological testing and an interview rather than scores. At medical school nearly everything is a non graded pass.In specialist training assessments are a mishmash of politically correct tickboxing ; robust comments are discouraged; sensitive interviews for the "trainee in difficulties" (usually an overt psychopath) are the recommended course of action (and mostly geared toward reducing the College's liability).

Failure in the primary exam is often the first obstacle that these  people have ever encountered although since most regard the subject matter as immaterial it doesn't have the same devastating impact as failure in the Finals. Failure in a superspeciality exam even more so.

There's another PC subject for med school "How to be a Failure'- maybe you could only pass if you have failed something thus ensuring that nobody has a perfect academic transcript.Fairness rules.

A Dog's Life

The Urban Terrorist had his tenth birthday recently.For some years my sister in law (no,I don't think she likes me very much actually) had been threatening, sorry, offering to give him a dog.She finally followed through and while he was away in the hinterland having a birthday camping trip with his father the sister in law delivered the animal.

She breeds- chihuahas.

Enough said (or misspelt).

I left it up to the UT to name the creature but in the four days we were alone together it learnt to respond to my  form of address. Unfortunately you can't use the word Motherf..... in public.

Daughter of mine and I have agreed that ,given its size (smaller than a handbag) relative to the amount of faeces it produces (bigger than a suitcase)  its' primary organ must be its' large intestine.DOM when she returned from Schoolies danced the I-told-you-so Dance (which is like the snoopy dance only more malignant).

It thinks that I am its mother. Well, why not. I feed it ,bathe it ,clean up after it and yell at it a lot.All I have to do now is pay its private school fees.

A further sign of the passage of the years -the urban terrorist had his first sex education lesson today. (Sorry, now called Life Matters. I have resisted the urge to write in and ask if this is a title or a declaration of intent.)The class were given templates of the male and female body (anatomically correct as they say) and asked to label them.After 10 minutes it was mentioned that this would go in their Portfolio of Work which occasioned much white-out usage.

I surprised a human (ie prejudiced ) comment from his (usually politically correct)principal the other day.I had gone to her office to pass on that another mother (whom I was careful NOT to describe as a fat blonde with an attitude- a wordpicture painted by T UT-) had baled up a group of boys in the playground and abused them collectively for excluding her son.I felt honour bound to say in mitigation that this child DID tend to be bullied and excluded and she nodded.Then she paused "of course...J IS a very irritating child." So is UT, I pointed out."Ye-es" she conceded "but he is clever and funny with it". I have always found his ability to amuse a saving grace but I would have thought it would wear thin with teachers.

Pitfalls in Counselling

Daughter of Mine has yet to tell me what she intends to do with her life. I wouldn't mind so much if I didn't have a sinking feeling that I will be funding it.

DOM is (it goes without saying ) beautiful bright and charming. She and all her peers have had the benefit of the new wide ranging State curriculum designed to turn them into thoughtful active citizens and have been enthusiastic participants in the many and varied extracurricular activities on offer- all of which serve to build us a better balanced dole queue.

It's not called a dole queue anymore . Even in my parent's day it was the unemployment office and by my time it had advanced to be the Commonwealth Employment Bureau (although with fewer jobs on offer.

As the Marriage Guidance became Relationships Australia (some sense there) and Family Planning became (bizarrely) Shine so did the Employment weasel- word it's way to become Centre-link (?huh).

In Year 11 school classes go to Centre-link ostensibly to seek career advice but probably so most of them will know where it is on a map. Each teenager has a short interview with a case-worker and they are then shown (I got all of this from DOM so no claims to accuracy here) a room with files full of job descriptions and encouraged to browse.

Just how much information you can glean with the inevitable Davo and Jonno running around declaring "I wanna be a topless waitress" and "Where's the file on dealing dope?" I don't know.

DOM's interviewer asked her what she was interested in. She said painting, writing and drama.He said " I actually meant that you could earn a living from."

I knew I should have gotten her that T-Shirt when we went to LA. It said "Yes , I do have a Performing Arts degree and would you like fries with that?"

The school was not much better in year 12. DOM went to see the Careers Guidance Officer who was actually one of the Maths teachers in disguise ( I think it was the one who had offered to join in the book-burning when her (lowest- rated) class finally finished the compulsory Maths curriculum in Year 11).

He sighed heavily as she outlined her interests (see above), perked up briefly when she mentioned an interest in psychology and collapsed back down again when she expressed a aversion to rats and statistics (and science in general.)

"You really mean a counsellor" he said dispiritedly "Why on earth would anyone want to do that?"

"You're a counsellor" she pointed out.

He thought for a moment .

"Oh God.......You're right."

She hadn't had that much encouragement since she told her favourite teacher (Drama naturally) in Year 9 that she might like to teach. "Christ, why would you want to do that?" was the reply. "Change your mind now before it's too late".

Futurekind

Daughter-of-Mine has her last day of school on Friday.It will (apparently) be a much more muted affair than when her brother left only a few years ago.

"Muckup Day" - that frankly odd mixture of ceremony and spite which first appeared in schools about 25 years ago and has been flourishing ever since- is now politically incorrect. Not just the obvious and understandably frowned -upon  components- damage to school property with eggs and flour, publishing the Year 12 "Hit List" of the most despised staff and students - but the relatively innocuous water pistols (threatening behaviour) and the exchange of boys' and girls' uniforms (apparently cross-dressing can offend an unspecified and one can only assume hitherto silent minority).

At least I won't get her uniform back ripped at every seam from some 6 foot tall hairy male wearing it for the day.Or covered in obscene graffiti.

The PC revolution continued with the official briefings for Schoolies.

 With Number One Son's class it was a  paramedic and a council officer and some sensible damage limitation advice -how to put your mate in the coma position , which chemists dispense the morning after pill, where to go to rest,to rehydrate or just to feel safe if it was all too much. (I know these tents will still be there down at Victor because my church helps run one).

This year it was a policeman who looked and acted as if he hated all teenagers (OK certain sympathy there) and a knit- your- own -yoghurt -and have -it-with-brown-rice Welfare worker.

The entire message was don't get drunk and don't have sex. Yes,well- but apparently if they admit the possibility let alone give any advice about it they could be seen to be condoning it- even encouraging it- and of course that makes them (gasp) potentially LIABLE  (the real boogie-man).

So abstinence and orange juice all round, chaps and chapesses.(or lads and ladettes).