Dear Shampoo Manufacturer,

I recently purchased one of your products to try in my never-ending search for a shampoo that will get oily hair clean.

I mistakenly believed that a product entitled "Oily Roots & Dry Ends" would have been formulated for someone who has oily roots and (by reason of the length of the hair belonging to the individual in question) has some need for moisture application to the ends.

What I didn't realise is that the label of the product was to highlight the desired results! Silly me!

Would you permit me to suggest a more appropriate name for this product? I believe "Olive oil roots and ends like straw" would be far more descriptive of the results I achieved after a few weeks of use.

Fortunately I am blessed with a non-descriminating husband who is finishing the bottle while I move on to try other products.

Yours Faithfully,
No longer your customer.


And the chance that blogging isn't the preferred weapon for the passive-aggressive among us?
... Approximately None!

Thanks Heaps Education Queensland...

I was reminded this morning of all the things I was taught in school that were not entirely accurate. I always used to say there were three main things. In fact there were more.

Add to this the fact that I was not taught enough English grammar to be able to learn another language (and in fact none of the schools I was at ever taught another language anyway), and that we were not made to rote learn our times tables (thankfully Mum was pretty keen on that activity), I begin to wonder what I was doing for those 12 years at school?

Wrong Fact #1:
Taipans only live on the very tip of Cape York Peninsula.

Yes, the most deadly snake in Australia, the bite-first-and-ask-questions-later type of attack snake isn't a threat to you unless you live on the hardly-populated-at-all tip of the Cape.

Then I moved to Cloncurry.

This is the best advertisement for sending all the new graduate teachers into western or northern Queensland where they may learn stuff not relevant to SE Queensland. And maybe we will warn them about the taipans in advance. Neh... much more fun if we don't!

Wrong Fact #2:
We don't have earthquakes in Australia.

Okay, so we don't suffer as much as New Zealand or San Francisco, but hello...the whole Great Dividing Range is a result of plates shifting. There was even an earthquake in Newcastle when I was in high school.

Wrong Fact #3:
The Ancient Greeks believed "everything in moderation".

Then I did ancient history at uni.

Pardon me for laughing immoderately, and allow me time to collect myself for a minute...

The truth is that some Greeks of the upper classes talked about "everything in moderation" - usually as they drank themselves into a stupor at a symposium.

Fact that I'd forgotten about:
Menstruation lasts for 4-7 days precisely 28 days apart.

I don't think I need say more?

And finally the fact that they didn't manage to teach me because I already knew that they were wrong:
Draftsmen don't design roads.

At the time my Dad was a Design Draftsman at the Department of Main Roads. In fact he was in charge of the Design Office. I'm not certain what he was doing with his time, since he obviously couldn't design a road, but I'd like to thank the Queensland Government for paying him for nearly 40 years to do nothing!

Certainly engineers check things; engineers may design bridges; they may do some design themselves from time to time. But the majority of the design and checking was done by drafties.

But the chance that my teacher would take my word for it?

... Approximately None!

Rude Old People

Generally I love old people.

I've sat by the bedside of old people I don't know as they struggle through that knife-edged balance between this world and the next.

I've sat and talked with them about many things, amazed at how much better the world is because they have lived in it (even if they only feel they've influenced a tiny part of it).

I've lead funerals where their lives are celebrated by those who love them.

And I've probably known more of them than most people my age because I grew up within the church family, which is one of the few places where cross-generational activities are still encouraged (at least in small churches where I've always been involved).

The thing is that I've also heard the tisking and negative comments made by some older people about children and young people. I do stress that these were not by all older people, but certainly a representative sample of them.

I couldn't help but reflect on this as I madly vacuumed the church hall floor yesterday morning before setting up for our children's music morning. You see, after 35 years in the church I know that it is the kids who create mess, not the adults who came to yesterday's funeral.

We are incredibly careful to clean up after ourselves, even to the point of making the kids sit and have their morning tea on a tarp that can be shaken out afterwards and catch any liquid spills. And here I was trying to scrape ground-in icing off the carpet with my thumbnail and pick up cake crumbs and the occasional cakey sultana with the vacuum cleaner. (And I must stress that as a member of my church I would have been happy to vacuum the floor after the funeral yesterday, I just didn't need 20 minutes of vacuuming added to the set-up time this morning when numbers were down in the set-up team due to illness!)

We all know that it is the kids who create disturbing noise in church, but it was two ladies well into their retirement who used to talk throughout the distribution phase of communion in one of my former churches.

It also reminded me of an incident from a shopping trip where I was standing in the line a the bakery waiting my turn to buy bread rolls, when a lady of mature years pushed in front of me to buy a loaf of sliced bread that she'd picked up. I was so stunned at her behaviour that I couldn't come up with anything to say. I could even have been standing there with my mouth hanging open at her behaviour, I was that shocked. You see, I know that it's the kids that are rude and don't consider the needs of others or take their turn.

The thing is, I guess rude people get old as well as the dear, happy and polite. As a society we don't cull people with bad manners (although, maybe that's not a bad idea?!) At least the rude kids are in the process of learning manners. The chance that rude old people ever will?

... Approximately None!

Flagman Index

I was reading this post by Bush Babe and it reminded me of another type of waving in the bush that just doesn't happen in the city.

I could have left a comment about it on her blog, but hey, when I get inspiration for another post there's no way I'm going to waste it on a comment on my own blog, let alone someone else's!

I've lived in Brisbane, I've lived in regional towns around the state, and I've lived in the dreadful conurbation that constitutes the coastal strip in South East Queensland. I've travelled a few miles during that time and I developed my little theory about "The Flagman Index".

Of course, these days they are probably known as "Traffic Control Officers" or something equally as swish, particularly as a growing number of Flagman are actually not men at all. These are the men and women who stand for hours in the boiling sun or pouring rain and turn their lollipop signs to either stop or let the traffic go through the roadworks without running into on-coming traffic or construction vehicles. Very important people.

Now see, in the real bush the Flagman will lean in the car window and have a chat with whoever is first in line as you wait.

A little closer to town and they will cheerily acknowledge the quick "thanks, mate" wave that Bush Babe described as you go past.

On the outskirts of cities they just seem to get worried about the fact that some people wave at them and try to hide themselves behind their walkie talkie and pretend that they don't have enough hands left to wave back.

In the real city they simply pretend that they don't know you exist - despite the fact you've been sitting face to face and within 10 metres of them for a good 5 minutes.

Now, it seems that the reliability of my Flagman Index is being eroded by the greater number of temporary traffic lights (that I have seen get out of sequence and show the green to both directions at once after a loooong time of no-one going anywhere) and the fact that these days they bring in traffic control from the city where they don't train them about bush courtesy, but it used to be a very reliable guide of how close to so-called civilisation I was getting during a long day behind the wheel.

And now you too can work out where you live on the continuum of the Flagman Index.

The chance that the Flagman Index will lead to very important life changes for millions of people?

... Approximately None - but hey, what do you expect from a blog?

Wishing you a happy and holy Khi mas

One of the local churches has dragged out the old chestnut about the abbreviation Xmas "taking the Christ out of Christmas" for their 'wonderful' sign on the highway where they display their irritating anti-evangelistic platitudes each week. Grrr.

As someone with a smattering of ancient Greek, it drives me a little nuts. The capital of the Greek letter Khi looks like our X. It represents the first letter (Kh) of the word Christ (which should be spelt Khrist and if you wonder why we spell it wrong blame the Romans, I believe that it's their fault). It has been used as an abbreviation for the word Christ for centuries. Xian in lieu of Christian, for example. I use it all the time when taking notes for sermons or assignments because it is a frequent occurrence and I am lazy.

The fact that a classical education is no longer the standard to be considered 'edicated' is probably not the end of the world, whatever Sir Humphrey Appelby may think. The fact that good Xian people get upset about it when there is no reason to is mildly irritating, but simply underscores the lack of good Biblical (particularly language) education we get generally in our churches unless we particularly search for it.

In fact, I get a giggle anytime I suspect that someone has deliberately swapped Xmas for Christmas to be more politically correct/inclusive, because Christ is still in it - maybe undercover, but still definitely there. (he, he, he)

So wishing you and your families a happy and holy Khi-mas, and God's richest blessings for 2009.

What is the chance that I will write a letter to the aforementioned local church?

... Approximately None (I told you I was lazy)

And if you go to church as part of your Xmas tradition, I dare you to wish people a 'Happy Xmas'. What is the chance that I will?

... You guessed it!

What did they do to get the violinists to smile?

I'm now going to risk offending half my reading audience. After all, I can have no idea what musical experience any of my readers have.

I watched 'Dancing with the Stars' last night. I love dance, and I love watching people who are as unco as me getting better and better and enjoying themselves so much. I'm glad Luke won.

The really amazing thing was that they had Andre Rieu on the show with his orchestra. And the string players were smiling. I simply cannot compute this anomaly.

It has always amazed me that string players are always so poker-faced. Even if the occasional one manages to get their body swinging to the music, their faces are blank at best and most often stuck in a positive scowl.

The irony is that their facial features have access to showing a full range of human emotion. Granted, it would be difficult for a violinist to throw back their heads with gusts of laughter without losing their grip, but the woodwind and brass usually manage to have expression with eyes, eyebrows and as many of the other facial muscles as they can use without disturbing their embouchure (fancy word for the way you have to hold your mouth to play).

And yet last night the string players appeared to be enjoying themselves.

I did not think this was possible.

How much money would I wager on the fact that they were real string players?

... Approximately None.

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I can't take it anymore!!!!!

I have reasonable eyesight. I often wear glasses when I'm at the computer, but I can still get away without them most of the time. But not necessarily when I'm commenting on a blog and they have that letter recognition code thingy.

I don't like it, but most of the time you can see before you comment that it's required. Mostly it's legible. Sometimes I have to have another go, because the 'l' was actually a 't' with a very tiny cross that I thought was just part of it going around the corner in some weird, twisted fashion.

But I ran across one today that not only had a combination of letters and numbers (What's the difference between a the letter 'O' and a zero in that style of writing?), it was on a very textured background, the letters were sort of chipped AND had strange lines across the whole thing. Worst of all, it was dark grey writing with black lines on varying shades of grey texture. Arrrrggghhh! And it was a secret code, because it only came up after I'd gone to the bother of entering my details and writing a comment.

The blogger obviously wants people to comment. They were featured on a blog recognition and support site. But did they have to make it so hard to do so?

Now I can understand not wanting to get spammed. It hasn't happened to me, but I recognise that some blogs get a little more traffic than mine, and therefore are prime targets for spammers. But I reserve the right not to comment on your blog if you expect me to go cross-eyed and if I haven't got my glasses handy.

How much do I want to offend my bloggy buddies who do choose to protect themselves this way?

... Approximately Not at All - but I needed to have a whinge.