Sweaty Betty: Man, is it hot!

It's hot. (Insigtful observation, I know). It hasn't been this hot for about 22 years, and the only evidence I have of this is a picture of myself at about 18 months, clothed only in a uncomfortable-looking cloth nappy, standing on my Mum's kitchen bench next to a fan and looking very pleased with myself. Ah, to get back to the 80's where children could happily frolic on benchtops near electrical appliances without fear of reprecussion. Thankfully, my house, car and office has the mod-con of air-con and it's been crankin' today. Charlotte sensibly made a little bed right in front of the air con and slept there happily all afternoon.

Now, I know if you live elsewhere in Oz (and, for the record, Tas is part of the country too, which some mainlanders find difficult to fathom) stinking hot days of 40 degrees occur reasonably regularly in the summer. I feel sorry for people in say, Adelaide, because a) they live in Adelaide and b) from what I can tell or what weather reports tell me, summers are always stupidly hot there. Stop complaining, Taswegian! I hear you say. By the weekend it'll have cooled down to the high 20's (perfect summer weather, actually) and in a few months it'll be back to the high teens, and the mercury won't rise until at least December. Except Hobart, where it'll be 31 tomorrow and 13 the next day. In case you're interested in such things, you can, like my partner, spend the best part of hot afternoons in your boardshorts or pj shorts avidly checking and re-checking Weather Zone for an up-to the minute report of the temperature. Constantly updating everyone within earshot of what celsius we have reached will not, however, make the air any cooler. Nor will standing on your front lawn at midday WATERING IT. OH MY GOD. I can't think of a more arrogant and ignorant gesture, when the country is plagued by drought, the earth is running short on water and it hasn't rained for months than vainly attempting to keep your front lawn green. In the middle of the day, with a hose AND sprinkler. Even when your neighbours are doing it, it's not an excuse for everyone else to. These people, however, are the type that Windex their driveway. Can I put it out there, that if you see someone doing it, either switch off their water source, dob them into the council or local paper, or leave a nasty letter in their letterbox and then get the kids from down the street do a nice big skid on their driveway with their BMX's. No need to go Al Gore on them, just a simple "are you a fucking nutbag?" will do the job nicely.

On another note, today at Frock You we received some lovely winter coats. They are truly lovely (new season update coming soon, and the A/W '09 catalogue is out next week!) but seriously I know you aint gonna want to buy them yet. Fashion seasons work in mysterious ways. I tried to buy some beach towels yesterday, as ours have been in the front-loader one too many times and resemble exfoliating gloves, and after extensive searching managed to find the very last non-velour one in the entire city. It's fugly as all fug, but it'll do. I also wanted to get some plain s/s tees for Charli and another swimsuit for myself, but apparently High Summer is just when you want to be stocking up on long sleeved and knitted apparel. And before you say anything, yes I know it happens every year but it still pisses me off. Though not as much as a shiny green lawn on a hot, hot day...(and also not as much as summer "fashion" choices, seriously love a tea towel is not a dress regardless of how sweaty you are, but more on that tomorrow)!

The Vintage Advantage

Hear ye, hear ye, the ecomomeee is melting and people are carrying their office supplies in cardoboard boxes. The hour is upon us to rethink our spending habits and invest wisely. Does this mean we'll have to sort through mustry racks at Vinnies and rummage through boxes at garage sales ourselves, instead of luxuriously browsing through a funky vintage boutique, happily paying $50 for a 50c piece? (Hold your horses/fire, there's a reason for this) - "vintage" is so overdone, it's lost it's point. There is a line between Vintage and Second-Hand Crap from a few years ago (not decades) and most people don't know it's there. You know those pop vox sections in magazines? "Oh my jewellery is from Tiffany's and my bag is Gucci and my shoses are Loubs but my dress is vintage Miss Shop circa 2002". Pft. Stuff people chucked out last summer is not vintage if you re-buy it this summer. It's ecomonical if you buy it at Vinnies, stupid if you buy it at a vintage boutique, but it's. not. vintage. It's literally, last season. There are some awesome vintage stores out there, that source geniune vintage threads from Nanna's heyday, gorgeous well-made pieces in good nick. Props to these shops and people for having the eye for this, they do a brilliant job and I sure as hell couldn't do it. But then there are other shops/sites/ebay listings/pop voxes (voxi?) you wander past and sorta go, hmmm.....I didn't realise that pair of Payless evening shoes I bought for my year 12 ball in 2001 and discarded before the big move OS would end up in a shop window for more than I paid for them (they are, in a local "vintage" shop that's never open, probably with good reason). Just because something is from Vinnies, doesn't make it vintage. It shits me in the same way that it shits me when people claim they've "renovated" their kitchen, when all they've done is paint a DIY feature wall. The stigma of buying second-hand, buying economically, has only been partially lifted, it seems. We're possibly going to be forced by neccessity to throw it off with joyful abandon because it's no longer viable to fork out for the latest overpriced trends in Sportsgirl. Either save up for the designer original or admit your new jacket was $2 and from 2 years ago. Fashion trends do cycle swiftly, after all. Eco-everything is hot right now. Will a glossy fashion mag ever do an under $10 shoot? (No.) It's cool to be green, so why can't it be cool to show off your latest (non-vintage, admittedly last season but see how you've reworked it?) op-shop find. Surely this in turn will feed the buy-to-last ethos Nanna knows about into our consumer consciousness, thus keeping glam high end labels in business and potentially minimising factory child labour? Hey, it seems those vintage ideas were right on the money to begin with.....

Things That Piss me Off Vol 3

Or is it 4? I don't know. Anyway, I hope none of you who read this are psychologists or anything, else I'm in trouble. Or people who wear tracksuits or leggings (omfg: yesterday = white leggings alert. I don't mean to be legging-racist but white leggings should leave the country. fast.), else I'm in real trouble. This week's rant:

1). It's shit on a pointy stick when you rely on emails for work and also your state of mind, and then poof! it just stops working. Like, ALL DAY. This is bollocks because it means when it comes back up again (my web guys are blaming the server people who are blaming George Bush who should blame his parents) I'll have 345786970 emails to sift through, and also because I am currently corresponding with e-people via hotmail. Sooo 2000. How embarrassment.

2). Don't pick me out from across the supermarket (yes I constantly have issues with supermarkets, if I didn't rely on food to be alive I wouldn't go near the dastardly places), make a beeline for the checkout line I'm standing in and then stand really close behind me and breathe on me and my food. OH MY GOD. It's foul and makes me thankful for handbag size bottles of Dettol waterless hand wash. Supermarkets are giant evil corporations who enjoy chopping down trees and bulldozing playgrounds to make their shops as big and unflatteringly-lit as possible - please stand a few, you know, centimetres away at least. Nobody will push in, and Australia is pretty sparsely populated. It's not likely Indonesia will invade your local Coles anytime soon so until personal space is at a premium, learn to embrace it. And also deodorant.

3). If you are a bogan and proud of it, please print it on a baggy tshirt to wear under your flanellette instead of shouting it at the top of your lungs. Your family or friends or whoever you are with can hear you when you are standing with them, people across the road cannot and do not want to. The whole city does not want to come to a standstill and listen to you and your Centrelink Q-troop talk about getting into your car which you haven't paid any parking for. Just get into it and go back to the government funded abyss from whence you came. Also, if your lady friends try purchasing shampoo and conditioner instead of mousse and hairspray next time they are stealing from Priceline, you'll notice a remarkable, more cleanly change in their appearance. God, I am such a snob. Thankfully.

4). At the other end of the scale, and I have already touched upon this subject: having a 4wd doesn't mean that traffic stops for you, that you do not have to indicate, and that you can pull out into the street without looking. Regardless of how many private school stickers you have on your back window, we're all still smirking.

5). Last but not least - is anyone else not looking forward to the Olympics? Aside from the fact that all sportspeople are as boring as batshit (poor batshit, it gets a hard run) and I don't want to watch 2 weeks of muscly morons running around a track or swimming up and down a pool and then getting out and claiming that they are happy to be there, that it was the crowd that did it, sport was the winner on the day etc etc, China has a lot to answer for. Culturally and historically it is a magnificent place, I wuld absolutely love to visit. Politically? Fuck. and I'm sorry about my French, but fucking hell. The press is heavily monitored (and government-controlled, so much so that at one point they had to claim Osama bin Laden was not real), the government tries to block as much of the Internet as possible (aside from their own sanctioned sites), a significant portion of the people live in abject poverty, it's polluted beyond all hell and Tibet???? Is anyone going to stand up at these Games and say something? If sportspeople are the "gods" they are made out to be, will they make a stand like a few brave souls in previous Games did? I hope so. I also think they won't, because their country's governments don't want to piss off China, and it's bad PR to be a sportsperson and have a personality. Or a brain. Imagine the difference that could be made. I hope Bono's going.

More on China in upcoming posts. It's not very patriotic I guess to not give much of a stuff about supporting our athletes, but it just seems like there is so much more important stuff going on. And anyway, in true Aussie spirit, unless they win and break world records, we won't really care anyway.

OOH, CYNICAL. Sorry. That feels better. Incidentally, did you see how China have made people with even-numbered numberplates drive one day, and odd the next? On your day "off" you have to use public transport - and for the first time in years they're seeing blue skies and unblocked highways. HOW SIMPLE, why don't all countries try it?! (Oh except here of course, because it's quicker to walk on your hands to your destination then use the bus system).