Best Part Of The Day

Scene - reasonably empty City Rail train on a rainy Sydney morning

Old lady 1: Gee, it's cold today, isn't it?
Old lady 2: Mmmhmm. I'm looking forward to a hot cup of coffee.
Old lady 1: Best part of the day...

Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah

There is an advertisement on the radio trying to sell some sort of car. I believe it to be a Jeep or a Landrover or something equally impractical. Regardless of what it was selling, I thought the way it presented the 'great for everyone' sale's pitch was quite clever. The script went something like this (with rather inaccurate details, but the jist is the same):

Voiceover: What you hear at the car dealership...
Car salesman: Eight speaker sound system, six speed manual or five speed automatic, 18 inch alloys and a 3.6L V6 for the low price of blah blah blah blah
Voiceover: What your wife hears...
Car salesman: blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah low price of $39,990

While it did take the notion of selective hearing to absurd extremes, it did raise an interesting question. Just what is it that makes males and females so different from each other that we sometimes seem to speak totally different languages? Surely, it's not solely the work of biological factors and hormones? Perhaps it boils down to long established gender stereotypes. That men are looking for bigger toys louder grunts. That women are hopelessly drawn to something with 'sale' stamped on it. That men do not give a damn about price. That women pay no attention to function (hence the alarming number of mini skirts worn in the middle of winter). That neither sees what the other sees, especially when looking at the same thing.

But if neither understands the other, why is it that humans are attracted to the opposite sex? Freud believed it was an innate drive to promote the survival of the race but, like everything else I've learnt in psychology, this is a rather airy fairy theory with no real evidence (besides, would you really believe someone whose name looks like the word fraud?). Some people think we're attracted to things that we don't understand because of the sense of mystery and adventure. Which makes sense because after marriage (i.e. after the mystery and adventure is replaced with nausea and contempt), 45% of the time the next step is divorce. Of course, the obvious counter to this is the racism argument: that we are all innately racist (some more than others) because we fear those that we do not understand. Does that then make homosexuals the only sane ones because they stick with what they comprehend (slightly better)?


Anyway, to end this little rant, here's a short video (thanks to Cyd for sharing) which is a representation of opposite sex interaction which is simultaneously amusing, alarming and accurate.

Things to try before the year dies

First of all, I'd like to apologise for my lengthy blogging absence. I've been preoccupied sorting out my increasingly interesting (pronounced: 'chaotic') life and I haven't really had time to tihnk of anything particularly witty or profound to discuss. This post isn't particularly clever either (at least not that I know of) and it's really more of a consolation until I'm done concocting my next piece of anti-christ rhetoric. Anyway, let's get on with the show shall we?

At the beginning of every year, I make a list of things I'd like to acomplish for the year. It's not really a set of New Year's resolutions as such because none of them are about self improvement and most of them are quite trivial and trite in the grand scheme of things. But these are the little things that I enjoy and make me smile every day. And now that we're well past the half way mark, I decided to dig up the list and see what I've accomplished, almost accomplished and haven't given a second thought to.

1. Complete a cryptic crossword - I got oh-so-close sometime back in about April when I was one answer short of completing the damn thing. Still doing these almost every day with varying degrees of success. Definitely crackable if I happen to get an easier one on one of the few days when my brain is switched on.
2. Complete every puzzle in the SMH - okay, so this is never going to happen without completing the first goal but I did get very very close as well. 4 cryptic answers and about 3 target words short of completion (yes, I managed to solve the word wit).
3. Compose a major work - was going to co-write a 20,000 word script during semester one break as part of Scritpfrenzy but that sort of fell through. Looking forward to participating in NaNoWriMo again this year so expect another lengthy garbage-filled rant around November. Also contemplating composing a suite of poetry over the summer break.
   
4. Go to a live concert - hasn't happened yet but I will be going to see Linkin Park in October. There goes another $99 (or 33 cups of coffee seeing as that's where most of my money seems to be going these days).
5. Write a letter - emails don't really count so this still stays on the list of stuff I need to do. I never did specify who the letter should be too (I think it was implied that it'd be some form of romantic confession but that option flew out the window about a month ago). Maybe I'll just write a reminder to myself or something...
6. Stand on a soapbox and yell out dumb stuff - not quite a soapbox, but I did have a bit of a rant from a balcony.
7. Get rid of those bookmarks - no, not just get rid of them as in throw them out. I've made a rather bad habit out of not completing novels. I'm currently about 5 or 6 chapters into about 10 different books. Was going to sort out this little issue during my break but ended up blinding myself via 10 hour DOTA sessions.
8. Perfect a poem - I don't think I've ever really taken the time to re-visit any of the poetry I write and it'd be nice to go back and refine something to the point where it's up to scratch with T.S. Eliot.
9. Argue with an evangelist - joy of joys. I haven't been approached by nearly as many evangelists this year. I can think of a few reasons for this: I don't hang around Wentworth nearly as much as I used to, they've learnt their lesson and I'm officially blacklisted, VSU has cut funding to their nefarious operations. If worse comes to worst I'll go around and try to get people to subscribe to my purple hippo theory.
10. Hit a six in cricket - I actually accomplished. =D. I am now the only person to have hit a six during our friendly holiday matches.
11. Complete a game - not one, but three games so far =D. Of course, it helps a lot that the games in question are shorter because they're all on DS. But I'm considering this done. I'll get around to finishing a Final Fantasy game sometime.
12. Start a dvd collection - while my bookshelf isn't losing weight at all, my dvd collection is bulking up quite nicely (at the expense of my rapidly starving back account). So far this year I have purchased: Ren and Stimpy boxed sets (seasons 1-4), The Godfather trilogy (boxed set), Rocky anthology (boxed set), Hellsing (boxed set), Who Framed Roger Rabbit?; and Amadeus amongst a few others. Slowly ticking all those movies off my list. Very, very slowly.
13. Try some new food - reasonably self explanatory. I've tried quite a few new things this year and it's mostly been pretty good. *thumbs up*
14. Everything on the GJ menu - yup, that's right. Drink everything on the GJ menu at least once. I'm almost done with this one. Just the ristretto and chai latte to go.
15. Bake a cake - from scratch. I've made plenty of cakes using those premixed things. The last time I baked something was back in high school where we made ANZAC cookies. I vaguely recall my batch coming out a tad soggy.
16. Crack 7000 in solitaire - yeah, it's long been a goal of mine to crack the 7000 point mark in solitaire. And guess what? Not only have I cracked 7k, I cracked 8k and I almost cracked 9k (8909 to be exact).