Posts by daleaway
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My own theory about the earlier onset of puberty in females relates it to declining male fertility worldwide, and blames the lot on decaying soft plastics in the environment, which apparently release measurable quantities of excess oestrogen into the world's waterways.
Hell, if it can affect shellfish, and it does, it can certainly affect mammals higher up the food chain. Of which we are one. They've noted the effects on polar bears already.
Disclosure: I have virtually no formal qualifications for making this assumption.
Bet it's correct, nonetheless. -
And here's some cheap Aussie leftie scissors for you Emma:
https://secure.leftys.com.au/html/products/scissors/gpscissors.htm -
Left-handed genes ran amok in my Dad's family, affecting him and four of his five siblings. And his mother. And my sister. And numbers of our cousins.
Funnily enough there were two generations of good cricketers among them, some playing for New Zealand. Does that mesh with your dominant hand/cricket bat theory, Kyle? Some of them were lefthanded slow/spin bowlers, which I am told is a very hard combo to score runs off.
Cricket was fine for this rightie, as he taught me to spin bowl, but I had to be left out of the family golf lessons as all the clubs were left handed.
As a result of growing up in this skewed environment, there are a number of things I do left handed, including beating eggs - granny used her hand eggbeater backwards and so do I, because I learned on hers which would no longer wind the other way. And call it an eerie coincidence, but my husbands have been left handed as well.
Years ago there was a left handed shop in Sydney which came in very handy when buying family presents - nothing like the outrageous prices you quote though, Emma. Quite ordinary.
Curse the plumber that just installed the cold tap on our hand basin on the right hand side, though - bet he was a leftie. Or maybe my husband put him up to it.
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I don't know that I'm in favour of jolly funerals. They seem very self-indulgent of the mourners and more than a little unfair to the departed, who probably enjoyed a good knees-up as well.
Wouldn't it be great if we could affirm people's contribution to our lives, remember funny things about them, deck them with flowers, and console ourselves for the sudden thought that we'll be off too, one day - all while the recipient was able to join in (and had right of rebuttal to those "humorous" anecdotes)?
I'm all for having a party to celebrate someone's life. But can I have mine now please, while I'm still here to enjoy all the (presumably) nice things you'll say about me.
Flowers for the living.
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Film studio publicists lied like flatfish. I would not believe any supposed measurements they issued. They made up whole names and back histories for stars, so faking body measurements was no big deal.
As well as small waists, it was particularly important for women to have small hands and feet (up until about the 1960s). Early actresses standing in cement outside Grauman's in Hollywood did it in two stages to make the print of their high heel look closer to the toe. Tricky but feasible.
I grew up with nearly every photo of a woman in the public eye having a tripartite set of her measurements appear after it in magazines and newspapers. The Sun kept it up longer than most. Gave us young girls something to measure ourselves against and fret about if we fell short of perfection.
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How wonderful that Ronnie is still performing, well into his retirement years. He's a one-off.
In the days before Sunday trash papers existed, and I'm thinking the 1940s and 50s, Ronnie's talent was a stalwart of the Sunday request session on the ZB network. I learned the words to "If I were a blackbird" almost before I could walk.
Your post has set me remembering some of the others that were so immensely popular with New Zealanders that they turned up every week in the Sunday requests.
Syrupy old Donald Pears (unless punished severely, I still do his coronation anthem "In a golden coach" as a party piece), the tinkling kitsch of the Robin's Return, the various satirical monologues of Johnny Stanley such as "It's in the Book" where we all sang along to "Grandma's Lye Soap", Stanley Holloway character monologues like Albert and the Lion, perfectly observed Joyce Grenfell songs and monologues (George, don't do that), Conrad Veidt's exotic "Where the Lighthouse Shines Across the Bay", and Joseph Schmidt's "Heut' ist der schönste Tag in meinem Leben". There were dozens of others that I won't spend space here recalling. They may seem odd today, but week in, week out, these few were the ones Kiwis chose to ask to listen to. Some are on the web today.
It does seem a different country. There are still no Sunday papers, as far as this household is concerned.
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A pleasant change of pace from obsessing on about US politics, statistics, electronics and the other low-appeal topics on offer on PAS at present.
Thanks, David, a good laugh (except for the stabee, of course).
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I do like tradespeople to use Mrs.
It helps keep them humble, and reminds them that I have backup. -
A couple of years ago I shared the canteen in Channel Nine Melbourne with the Footy Show creeps. It was memorable.
No better off-screen than on. Attention-seeking, puerile and anti-social in the widest sense. They're the blokes that gave bogans a bad name.
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Don't think I've been there since it was the Royal Oak Hotel. Its now rusty building is still "the new place" to me.
I worked at a publishing house nearby and we used the respectable upstairs lounge bar of the Royal Oak and restaurant when entertaining clients, whereas when in the mood to let off steam our staff relaxed downstairs in the notorious old Bistro Bar, among the tatts and the tarts and the trannies.
As much as you can relax in bars you adhere to.
Another one we used a lot in those days was the Clarendon on the corner of Taranaki Street - now Molly Malone's. That was a tatty old dump in the 1960s and 1970s, before its first makeover. Did good steak sandwiches though.