The religious holiday raffle

It is that time again my friends, time for the *insert religious holiday name here* raffle! I have just discovered the ‘Christmas raffle’ tickets in the bottom of a bag for the small child’s childcare centre.  The proceeds go towards buying 'supplies' for the centre...  

What’s that I hear? Outrage?

Just because the centre is a privately owned business does not mean that they shouldn’t be able to cash in on the holiday raffle! Why shouldn’t we have to donate prizes and fundraise for them to buy toys for our overenthusiastic child to steal off others, or paints for her to eat and get all over her clothes, the owners need to be able to guarantee their profit margins! So put you outrage aside because the fact remains - our child cannot wear the stigma of being the only baby in her room that doesn't sell all her tickets.  And frankly, I don't want to buy them all!

I can't make any promises about the awesomeness of the Christmas Hamper because I refused to donate anything towards it - but the first ten lucky people to PayPal their dollar to me will have the once in a lifetime opportunity of buying one of these amazing tickets and feel good about ensuring that two businessmen in Queensland get to keep their condos – and who can say no to that! 

Duck, duck, ornithophobia.

I have a friend who is TERRIFIED of birds. Tippi Hendren backed against a wall, hands defending her face type terrified. Apparently this is not so uncommon. It has a name: ornithophobia. In saying that though, so does the fear of peanut butter sticking to the roof of your mouth: arachibutyrophobia. And the fear of long words: sesquipedalophobia.  I am not going to comment on the obvious irony of that being quite a long word... because that would be too obvious.  This all makes me feel very normal about my podophobia!

So, the strange part is not that that she has a fear of birds but rather that this fear developed from a childhood memory – which wasn’t actually hers. A few years back whilst going through old photos we came across a photo of the scene of her terror. Two small girls huddled together on top of a picnic table screaming at the ducks and swans surrounding them.

Terrifying.

Only, she doesn’t have a sister… and has never been to that park.

Turns out that the friend who is actually in the photo is such a good story teller that it has haunted her since childhood. Tippi Hendren backed against a wall, hands defending her face type haunted.

I mention this only because I was reminded of it yesterday on a baby distraction mission to see the ducks.

I have always been a very vocal cautioner against feeding bread to ducks.  Though delicious, the resulting avian botulism, malnutrition and noxious odours resulting from decomposing remnants of the tasty snack around their watery home just isn’t worth the carby delight. That is, until there is a small child squealing with delight as she throws her sandwich at the ducks. Eat little duck, bloat and discharge schistosomatidae. That’s right, leave plenty floating in the water to form aspergillus, clog the waterways and diminish the other aquatic life my child is effing loving it!

After all the excitement of destroying our local natural habitat she was utterly exhausted and took a long, long nap which allowed me to finally finish reading Wicked. Years it has taken me to finish that book. Not because Gregory Maguire's brilliantly clever depiction of how the apparently reasonable though perhaps wildly passionate actions of the Witch lead to her branding isn't absorbing it's just because that’s how I roll!

Despite my friend chanting death to all ducks I do feel guilty. I would hate for a seemingly innocent action to have me branded forever throughout literature as the duck killer!

E-fundamentalism

If my grandparents' prayers were ever to be answered and I married a man it would definitely be a Fundamentalist Mormon!  The more wives the better!

Firstly, the more wives there are the less nights a week I have to lie about my headache. Secondly, a polygamist's wives are bound to be far better wives than I have ever been. I will never again have to dry myself with a tea towel because there are no clean towels left!

Mostly though, I just love Big Love. That and it would show my grandparents that they need to be more specific when they pray!

So, what does this have to do with anything? Only another reason I love
e-books so much: the ability to download cult/religious fanatic material without the risks involved in obtaining them in person. I know myself well enough by now, I ring to cancel a monthly charity sponsorship and hang up donating twice as much a month in addition to committing to selling books of super prize raffle tickets. If I were to get these books in person I would acquire them for the bargain price of the deed to our house and the pledge of a millennium of service. 

To the great fear of my family I have worked a block away from a Scientology Centre for a few years. The image of my mother's stern look of disapproval triggered every time I walk past has stopped me from going in to buy a copy of Dianetics.  Thank you e-books!

Sadly though, the first chapter is not 'Does Jumping on Oprah's Couch Like a Tool Mean You're Mentally Ill'. Despite the long wait to get my hands on this book, by page five I was bored. Turns out I'm not going to be a Scientologist. Disappointing.

I might try harder to read it on the weekend. That is, after I read my e-copy of the Book of Mormon and explore my calling to plural marriage.

In the meantime, I am going to find some paper towel to dry a coffee cup because all my tea towels are in the bathroom.

Apocalypse How

Apparently on Saturday we get to meet Jesus.  

This, of course, led me to do what every person does when they’re anticipating meeting someone. I Facebook stalked him.

Turns out there are a number of people on Facebook that go by the name Jesus Christ. Sadly, having never met him, I couldn't pick Him by His profile picture so I had to do some old fashioned stalking from the books I have in my library.  Which felt a lot more academic than the sinister joy of finding 256 of His photos that don’t have privacy restrictions on them.

I started out with Anne Rice’s ‘Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt’.  Mostly, what I learnt from this book was that when Jesus was young he once wished a kid dead and then brought him back to life when he got into trouble. Oh, and he made a bird out of clay and brought it to life. I once made a clay ocarina that looked like a bird. If we’re hard up for conversation maybe I’ll bring that up.

Then I tried ‘The Nun’s Story’.  I enjoyed this book a little too much so I also watched the movie. Bad move. Audrey Hepburn is way too hot to play a nun. How am I supposed to focus on Jesus when she is making the habit look sexy! I will avoid this topic with Jesus.

‘First Light’. For a book about Jesus he played more of a cameo roll! Maybe I can ask him what he was up to for most of that book.

After all of those I decided that maybe I should go straight to the source and picked up the Bible. I got to Deuteronomy and when he still hadn’t appeared I gave up. I don’t know how the Jews are still waiting!

Which leads me to my number one apocalyptic question:-

One on the signs of the end times and subsequent apocalypse is the rebuilding of the Temple. However, the Jewish people are awaiting the arrival of the Messiah (and most of them, I bet, made it to the end of the Old Testament. How disappointing for them when He still hadn’t appeared by the last page!) to rebuild the Temple. I’m told this is so He can clear up some questions they have regarding how big a cubit actually is. Or, if they are really lucky and other Rabbis are correct, after the coming of the Messiah the Temple will descend in fire from heaven already completely built which will save a lot of work. Not including the cleaning of a few scorch marks it may receive on the way down.

So, the Jewish people are still waiting for the first coming (which, in order to be expecting a second coming, must have already happened) but the Christians are relying on them to build the Temple to signal the beginning of end times.  Without another first coming, which obviously there can’t be, there will be no Temple, without a Temple there will be no sign of the end times, without a sign there is no apocalypse. So what exactly is supposed to be happening on Saturday?

If there is a simple answer, and I am sure there is, my second question is what should I wear!

To 'e' or not to 'e'

My partner has been known to have had some bad luck when it comes to choosing the perfect present. Often the present is so perfect that I had already bought it for myself. This birthday though, she was convinced she had hit the jackpot with my iPad. Five days later iPad 2 was unveiled.
 
I do love my iPad though. Who needs thinner, faster, better!

This has now generated a lot of discussion around the office about ebooks. Most refuse the thought of giving up the paper book, and I must admit that I was once one of them. But oh, the convenience! I now have all my uni reading on one 9.7 inch display that fits right into my handbag. Actually, I tell a lie. All my reading bar one text book. And won't that publisher be getting a nasty email from me - as soon as I can work out how to sync my email.
 
Then there is damn Amazon and their one click download. A few glasses of wine and a few clicks later I have a whole new e-library of books for which I didn't have to witness any of the monetary transaction.
 
I agree there is nothing like a good old fashioned paper book. Mostly though, I want convenience. I want it all, I want it now and I want it chiropractic approved. But that's a whole other e-story!
 

Parlez vous… that’s as far as I got.

I decided to enrol in a summer subject this year to make up some lost time. Before I attempted that though there were some pesky jobs that needed doing, like tidying the study. As it turns out I had already procrastinated enough to have failed on the enrolment so there was no need for it in the end. The only study being done this summer will be of the wine list at the local!

I did, however, come across a number of items that ought to make my library feel much better about itself.

There is the pinned, half cut out dress that I thought would be super easy to make. Turns out it was super easy to just buy one the next day. The cross stich of Tinker Bell with the one really wide leg. Apparently I can’t concentrate on a counted cross stitch pattern and I can’t be bothered fixing it. My self paced children’s writing correspondence course. Need I say more. And finally, the text books for the French class that I was enrolled in for one term. We went to most (well some) of the classes. I’ll tell you what I did finish every time though. The pint at the pub that we went to instead of class!

The BBC Top 100 - My Way!

What started out as a list of the UK’s top one hundred novels, as voted by the people, has now been purple-monkey-dishwashered into a list of one hundred books of which the BBC believes that most people will only have read six.

But why let the truth get in the way of a good story I say, let’s do the count up… and bang on. I have read six out of the one hundred. I have, however, read The Little Prince in both French and English. Does that count for anything? I also bought the movie for $9.95. Never finished watching it.

1.      The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

2.      The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

3.      Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

4.      The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis

5.      Charlotte’s Web - EB White

6.      The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Of course, as can only be expected - by read, I mean finished. There are another forty that I have started, bought or borrowed and never read.

I would love to commit to finishing this list, but there are a few problems.

Oliver Twist – the movie scared me as a child. Though my mother has now lovingly bought me two copies of the book. I don’t have the heart to tell her. Nor the stomach to read it.

Grapes of Wrath. As it turns out, not about a man with haemorrhoids.  Very hard to continue on with the plight of drought affected farmers when you were expecting donut pillows!

And don’t get me started on The Da Vinci Code. Not only did I not finish the book, I fell asleep during the movie. Twice.

Maybe I’ll start with Little Women. I may not be able to get past the opening credits of the movie without crying but I will just close my eyes during those bits when I read it!