NO, PANTS!!! BAD, BAD, BAD, PANTS

I started this blog as a reaction to breaking up with my last boy friend, Wild Indian Joe. Joe lives up in Seal Rocks and is a total fucking nightmare. And certifiable fox.

Up north, he's asking around town about me again. Asking my cousins for my number.

A text message conversation:

Amby:I know I probably shouldn't tell you this, buuuuuut schrappy asked Kirra sbout you the other day...Haha? Nervous laugh

Amby: And i think he might have asked for your number

[check out me trying to be mature and shit]

Pants: Ha!!!!! God he's a card. That boy....sheeesh. Glad to see he's developed as a human :P

Pants: Hang on! Shit! I read that as he asked her OUT. Oh Well. Same applies I guess.

Amby: Same applies? Are you sure ha ha

Pants: NO!!!! Who am I kidding!!! Liar liar pants on fucking fire!!!!

Amby: Well this weekend I'm going to see my dad and grandma in Newy, then I'm heading up to see the fam. If i happen to see  Chris (ha) [her gorgeous but emotionally retarded long time repeat offender ex lover, and best friend of Joe] and Joe shall I pass on your number?

Pants: Goddammit. Yes. Bloody hell. In for a penny, in for a pound (literally).


******

YES I KNOW

I KNOW, OK

STOP LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT!!!!

Hey, Kids!


1. Fitness and shit
So, I'm still kickboxing, boxing and bootcamping, and now I'm working on my running technique too. Pretty productive way to spend my semester break, I guess. 


My boxing and kickboxing technique still leave a bit to be desired, but fuck me I'm getting strong and fit. Whenever I have a new boxing/kick partner, their eyes go all wide when I land my first punch or kick. I feel kind of proud of that :) I got told by my male boxing partner this morning that I was a "machine", which I'm not entirely happy with as it makes me sound grunty, but I guess that's good? My latest record for # ribkicks in 3 mins is 251... the fitest woman in my gym does 280 (albeit a lot harder than me). I'm aiming to hit 270 soon.


Oh and I've lost 5 kg since... well the last time I weighed myself. Can't remember when that was. Not bad considering the muscle mass I've put on and the fact that I haven't dieted.


Thanks for the positive comments, by the way. Not that I'm hating on myself or anything, or that I need anyones approval for having a large (although may I say quite toned) arse. Very kind of y'all none the less :)


2. Recipe
Word to Koops! Here is the cake recipe as per your request. It's a variation of a Bill Granger cake.

• CAKE: 3 mandarins; 3 Cardamon pods; 250g (1 cup) caster sugar; 6 eggs; 230g (2 cups) ground almonds; 
• GLAZE: 60g (1/4 cup) caster sugar, extra; zest of 1 orange; Juice 1 orange; 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon 

METHOD

• Put the mandarins in a medium saucepan and cover with water. Add cardamon pods. Bring to the boil and for 2 hours, adding water if the mandarins become uncovered.
• Pop your oven on to 160C.
• Drain the mandarins and cool. Split em open and dig out any seeds. Puree the little bastards, including the skins and one or two of the cardamons in a blender.
• Add the sugar and eggs  and ZING ZING.  Same with Almond meal.
• Pour the mixture into a buttered up cake tin. I use a small and deep silicon mold. I like silicon. 
• The original recipe says to bake that bitch for about 1 hour 10 minutes, or until the cake looks set in the middle. I reckon it's more like 1 hr 40. Check at 1hr 10, and if the middle is goey, chuck it back in. When I first made this, I turned the cake out onto a plate and then the prick of a thing collapsed because it wasn't set properly. I just jammed it back into the pan and kept cooking. turned out fine. 
• For the glaze, put the extra sugar in a saucepan with the juice, rind and cinnamon. Kind of reduce it down a bit, until it's darkened and/or making sugar crystals on the side of the pan. Dribble over the cake.
• Serve hot with thick cream, bitches. Or cold the next day with a cuppa tea. YUMMY. And sort of healthy, too. Hey, it's got fruit in it.

3. Romance
Fuck it. Can't be arsed. Rather finger myself.


4. Edumacation
Back on Prac (for counselling this time) as of next week. I've been warned there's a slight suicide epidemic at the high school I'm working at. Sounds....relaxing.


5. Money
Broke. as. fuck. So poor. Lost track of how many thousands of dollars I owe my pare's.


Good news is i will be back in full time employment as of OCTOBER. BOOM!!!! Also means I get to wear my funny gown and hat at a graduation ceremony soon. And then I will be a Master. Well, not really, I'll just have a Master's degree, but I feel like that achievement deserves a name change. Master Pants. Lady the Masterful. Something like that.


6. Obsessions
I really really really love Lady Gaga, even though I think she's a bit of a try-hard and becasue I actually don't particularly like her music. Oh, except for Born this way, which I legitimately like. She's just so... fucking OTT and bonkers.
Completely want to do the guy with the skeletal full body tatt. 

Have this song burnt into my head at the moment. It's laughable in parts, and the film clip is...Gaga-y. But I can't stop looking.

And finally this kid. OH MY GOD, HEART GOES BOOM!!!!!!! We're much alike. Nawwwwwwww! Click through, for the love of God. As an aside, one of those husbands is a total fox.

Lazy Pants

So my birthday has been and gone, and was passed quite pleasantly. I ended up going to Opera Bar for champagne and a bite to eat, whilst checking out the Sydney Vivid light shows that were on at the time. the customs house display was most impressive. Did anybody else get to see this? The weekend after, I went to hang out with some friends and family, had a few nice diners, some sunny breakfasts, rah rah rah. Nothing ground breaking, but pleasant none the less.

Which could sum up my life at the moment. Pleasant but...meh. I really have nothing to complain about. I'm even on holidays, gaddammit.I should be happy. And most of the time I am. But over the last few days, I have not been my sunny self.

I think I'm lonely. Every weekday I'm either boxing, kick boxing or boot-camping. Then throughout the day, I nap, or do some work for uni, or...well thats about it really. In the evenings, I either go to my job gym or I go to yoga or I shoot the shit with my flatmate. I've not been going out very much at all.

I've not got the hots for anyone, and noone has the hots for me, or if they do (hello hot boxer at the gym) its all kind of pointless anyway because they aren't making  a move, and they aren't that interesting that I would make a move.

I havent had sex since february, but there is nothing worth the energy of fucking, all the energy of the flirting and such. In other news, pretty sure I'm still straight. Well, most of the time.

Plus, sometimes I feel fat. I'm training like a mother fucker,  and fit as hell, but my body wants to be round. Most of the time I'm ok with it, but then sometimes I HATE it. I've never had a tummy before! Also, my tits are enormous and bovine.

I think I want a boyfriend again. But, see above. BLARG.

Here are some pictures:

 breast in the dark

 Mandarin and Almond Cake

 Meatballs a la Jamie Oliver ...(Also I made a beef and red wine casserole of his - HOLY BEJESUS it was tasty)

 A restored iron and glass table I got for my birthday. And my little potted garden in my patio

 Another restored table my mum bought for me, just because. And my sticks/leaves/paper flower arrangement.

me giving up whilst attempting to change the sheets on my bed this morning

Portrait of a family

I'm at my parents' place on the beaches, doing an assignment for uni that's due in tomorrow. I've got a bit of a sore neck, and I ask my dad for a heat pack or similar to drape over my shoulders to soothe my muscles. "No, don't know where that's gone," he says "how about a Valium instead?"

Yep, that's how we roll.

PS I'm 29 tomorrow. Eeeep.

Morons Ahoy

Ain't Facebook a wonderful thing. Really warms the cockles of my wee little heart to know that I am sharing the planet with such complete fucktards. Please read the status update below which was regrettably posted by someone I am related to (not by blood, thank fuck):

lol, what to do when a government blows all the cash?? ...... Come up with a magic boogie-man tax on EVERYTHING!! Carbon isnt pollution, it's the 6th most common element in the universe! humans are 18% carbon!! (thanks wikipedia). Have they noticed the 2549918274 people in China and India lately?? (or cant they see them through the smog?)

Right. First off, "lol". Just don't. Not even ironically.

Secondly, Wikipedia. Not exactly your go-to source for scientific enlightenment. But that's me just being a bit snobby, I guess.

Most importantly, though, there appears to be a conflation here of 'carbon' and 'carbon dioxide'*. Two rather different things,  child. One is solid matter and the other is gas. Now I DO realise of course that the "carbon debate" is a bit of a misnomer, seeing as we aren't actually debating anything about carbon per se, but rather a toxic gas (well, toxic unless you are a photosynthesising plant), the molecules of which contain one carbon atom and two oxygen atoms. The confusion of carbon with carbon dioxide is akin to mixing up Prince and Prince William - who are quite different beasts, I'm sure you'll agree.  "Carbon" has been used to stand in for "carbon dioxide"  in media coverage and political debate as apparently  the dimwitted amongst us find two words and five syllables too difficult to deal with. However, I think the time has come where we may need to reeducate some of our citizens on basic scientific facts.

More than being just toxic to most respiring beasts including our good selves, carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. And yes, 'greenhouse gas' is yet another buzz-term set to cause confusion amongst the less astute. Our voting public needs to understand what this means in everyday language. For example,  "Carbon Dioxide is a greenhouse gas which when present in excess, forms a invisible barrier in our atmosphere trapping in the heat of the sun, and ensuring that we/our descendants will eventually broil in our own juices. Also, your beach house will wash away. Melting icebergs, etc.'. That ought to clear it up.

I particularly love my Facebook buddy's unintentionally ironic coup de grace:

Have they noticed the 2549918274 people in China and India lately?? (or cant they see them through the smog?)

Putting the not-so-implicit racism inherent in this statement aside.........................UM, SMOG. That's kind of what we're talking about here. Not exactly, granted: smog is generally comprised of  Carbon Monoxide (CO) + Carbon Dioxide (CO2) + teensy particles of nasty assorted crap + other horrid chemical stuff we don't want, including that shit which makes acid rain. Smog is also a more localised phenomena, where as the greenhouse effect is more globalised.  Correct me if I am wrong, however: the global reduction of "carbon" pollution will in turn lead to a reduction in smog occurrences. Whereupon my racist relative might actually be able to see those 2549918274 people.

Yes, less developed countries are also contributing negatively to the global warming of our planet through their unchecked carbon dioxide emissions. This does not mean we should be taking a leaf from that particular environmental policy, however. In my mind, people who make these arguments are like whiny spoilt children: "Hawwwwwww how come THEY get to  pump out toxic greenhouse gas, I wanna pump out toxic greenhouse gas toooooo! Not! Fair! And they're Asian and they're dirty and they smell!!"

Dear Readers, I certainly am not presuming for a second that you require this illumination. But rather, I wish to point out the follies of the fucking cretins that we share our oxygen with. It is scary. People have graduated high school without even a basic grasp of elementary scientific fact.

You may well ask, did I correct my stupid relative? No, I did not. I would not have even known where to start. And anyway, it would be a waste of breath.

* In the body of this post I have not addressed a of my own key beliefs. In the spirit of full disclosure, they are listed here:
(a)  I'm pro carbon-tax, but would also like to see more  pro-green energy policy and activity along with the financial disincentives for carbon dioxide output.
(b) My experience working within resource sector  lead to the knowledge that these companies are generally wilfully polluting colonialist cunts who can well afford to cough up for their misdeeds instead of purchasing a $24 million jet personally researched and selected by their charming PA i.e., me. Oh,  and my own general green/slightly commie leanings might also have something to do with it.
(c) I support the notion that the global warming we are currently experiencing is a direct result of human activities such as: the use of coal for energy, deforestation (less trees = less photosynthesis = more CO2 and less O2), the cattle industry (cow fart, and they fart a lot = methane = another greenhouse gas).

Lazarus

Greetings!

You've been dying to know, haven't you? I mean, I *must* have been up to something truly fascinating, given my extended absence, right?

Uh, I wouldn't go that far. But here's a synopsis:

1. I've been teaching High School english for the last 4 weeks.

Fuck me. I can turn from Miss Honey  to Miss Trunchbull* in, like, 2 seconds flat. Ok so I wasn't swinging kiddies by their pigtails. In fact I never even raised my voice. My 30 second silences and stares, however, positively bristled with barely contained fury. Kids were pretty much curling into the foetal position whilst in their seats. Speak whilst I'm speaking and I WILL fuck you up, kids.

On the other side of the equation, my Year 7s thought I was 'cute' and would squabble for the privilege of handing out my worksheets for me. If one of the students dared to speak over the top of me, the adorable but slightly terrifying islander girls down the front growled at them to "shutttupandlissentomissokay".

My littlies were so darn cute. Their classroom teacher had told me that they were 'quite dim', and described one of the children as 'basically inbred' - charmed, I'm sure. I was teaching a unit on poetry, but the classroom teacher seemed very reluctant for me to actually use poems in the classroom as 'they wouldn't understand them'. Rather, I was to just teach them poetic features, such as simile, onomatopoeia, etc etc. Without reading a poem. Uh, yeh. That sounds...fun.

After two classes of boring the students and myself silly with totally decontextualised learning "Winter is a symbol for.... anyone? Anyone?", I decided that this was bullshit and started teaching poems. Yeah, it took them a while to understand them. It's fucking poetry to fuck's sake, it's hard to understand sometimes. A couple of lessons after that, they were requesting different types of poems, and eagerly collecting my worksheets if they had to miss my class for scripture ("Can I read it at home Miss, and try and figure out what it means?"). They were finding meanings in poems that I hadn't even thought of.

Best of all, in my last lesson, one of the 'dim' students, brought me in a gift. Earlier, she and I had spoken in the corridor about what she had learned previously in poetry. We were briefly talking about the Australian poetic ballad tradition, and she mentioned a poem about a bushranger... It seemed she remembered more of the conversation than I did, because her gift to me was a edited and reworked edition of this poem, three stanzas long. I was so fucking proud of her. I know she felt like she was 'stupid'. I know she was scared of sharing her work because she felt it was 'wrong'. But she had the guts to write that and give it to me, and you know what? It was pretty bloody good.

The moral of the story: Don't underestimate kids, even if someone tells you they won't get it. So the fuck what. Try. Maybe have some fun. We have some kids don't do well at English, so we just make it really boring for them and hope that the droll bullshit we tried to drill into them with sticks a little bit? I'd rather make it fun and give them a reason to try harder, I'd rather hide the work behind investigation, performance and creation. Hey, I'm not even going to be a teacher, and even I can figure that out.

*Matilda reference. Love the Dahl.

2. Favourite quotes from the school
* But Miss, that's just not gangsta!
* (in reference to 'the beast with two backs' line from Othello) Miss, are they talking about anal?
* (the toughest scariest girl at school, on the sidelines at school sport) Hey Miss look I taught myself to crochet off YouTube! (slightly worried about the crochet hook)
* Hey, Miss! You look like Julia Gillard. But younger and prettier! Um, no offence! (I guess I asked for it, with my reddish bob and killer glare)


3. I'm having a small sexuality crisis. I'm definitely gayer than what I was previously. I'm flirting with women... crushing on women... actively fantasising about the breasts, mouths, skin and pussies of women I meet... having sex dreams about women. I even have a 'type'. I still like men, but that attraction is nowhere near as exclusive as it once was. Confusing. See what living in the inner west of Sydney will do to a gal?

4. My ex - Dean -  has contacted me again. Usually I ignore him. We haven't talked for 3-4 years on account of particularly ugly break up. I called him 'impotence-man' and 'abortion survivor', he called me a cuntslutwhore and then called the cops on me (slightly problematic due to familial ties with drug cultivation).
Yeh, it wasn't pretty.
But slowly, over the last year, I've missed his presence more and more. We were together for 7 years, we were friends, he helped me grow up. And whilst I am almost as different as possible from the 17 year old girl he met, and from the man he is (was?), I have an urge to... reconcile? I don't think it's a get-back-together thing, I think he's still with the fat fucking pommy cunt  he was rooting from redhotpie.com. And honestly I have not come this far only to go backwards into his cringe-worthy suburban mediocre sphere. But I miss him. I'm sorry for hurting him. And I know he seeks my forgiveness also. Is it all pointless though? Bringing up past hurts for nothing?

Rad.rad rad rad rad rad rad RAD.

Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

"Typography" - A student's animation of  slam poet Taylor Mali's poem "Totally, like, whatever, you know?" (www.taylormali.com).
So. freaking. impressive. On both accounts.


oh, and this one is for me, because of my total lack of concern with editing of late: