Max: Oh my. We could go back to Milk the Cow Carlton and make our own ... they would have great cheese to put in ...
Tina: YES! Today?
Max: Hahahaha - babe, I say, babe. Alas not today. But let's get a gang together ...
Tina: A CHEESE GANG
Tina: And then we can write about the experience and be a CHEESE-PRESS GANG
Max: That bun is so cheesy
Tina: I have a fettash for bad puns
Max: You are brie to stop the puns whenever you cheese, though ...
Tina: That one was a bit stilton
Max: It's just idle cheddar
Tina: Loch Arthur Farmhouse talk?
Max: are you changing the pun-run rules darls, because I can see holes in that latest offering ...
Tina: I'm making stuff up on a Tilly Whim
Max: I reggiano to inform you that changing the pun-pong rules is a parmigiano offence ...
Sunday, December 08, 2019
8 December 2012
2012 Max likes it when people work while she is sleeping
OMG I have totally just realised this status works for both home and work sleeping habits
2012 Max couldl represenete Ausdtralia in teh slep Olympisc righte now
Elbow: Well sleep for me whilst I work. Till 2am. After 4 hours sleep. Hangover
Max: I will. I totally, totally will. Lots of sleeping. While you are working
2012 Max has be Pitch-slapped. Rebel Wilson and Elizabeth Banks have made me reconsider my Not Keen On Blondes stance
*been, even. God, I am tired
2012 Max loves other people going to themed costume parties; making suggestions but not having to source the actual materials or do the labour is my favourite thing in the world
SUCCESSFUL COSTUME!!! The Hard Hat brought all the Men to the Yard ...
Jay: All the sleazy men
2012 Max loves her high heels. But how abused her feet, legs and core muscles feel at the moment due to the aforementioned heels? Not so much
2012 Max has the most terrible wig-hair after committing to a twelve-hour Christmas Party, with dancing. Good hustle girls!
I am glad I am not the only one up at an inappropriately early time after such a party
Workmate 1: Hahaha tell me about it!!
Max: WHY ARE WE AWAKE NOW? Why am I not sleeping in until 1pm? Do I need another party? Thinking? I am not thinking! I am trying to work out why the hell I am not asleep still
Workmate 2: Max outlasted us all!! I'm impressed Bell! Well done! And sweet moves on the d-floor - great night all round I think!!
Workmate 3: What time did guys stay till?? Haha I was smashed lol
Max: Workmate 2, I have to admit I only outlasted you and Workmate 1 by about, oooh, ten minutes, I was out by 2pm on the dot - the dancefloor was cold after you girls left. Workmate 3, you were, like, totally under control, really! :)
2012 Max and Elbow are members of a silly household; late night, no commitments, awake too early. Why would we do that?
Granted her house is so great for an Inappropriately Awake Beaching Appointment, so, not so silly
OMG I have totally just realised this status works for both home and work sleeping habits
2012 Max couldl represenete Ausdtralia in teh slep Olympisc righte now
Elbow: Well sleep for me whilst I work. Till 2am. After 4 hours sleep. Hangover
Max: I will. I totally, totally will. Lots of sleeping. While you are working
2012 Max has be Pitch-slapped. Rebel Wilson and Elizabeth Banks have made me reconsider my Not Keen On Blondes stance
*been, even. God, I am tired
2012 Max loves other people going to themed costume parties; making suggestions but not having to source the actual materials or do the labour is my favourite thing in the world
SUCCESSFUL COSTUME!!! The Hard Hat brought all the Men to the Yard ...
Jay: All the sleazy men
2012 Max loves her high heels. But how abused her feet, legs and core muscles feel at the moment due to the aforementioned heels? Not so much
2012 Max has the most terrible wig-hair after committing to a twelve-hour Christmas Party, with dancing. Good hustle girls!
I am glad I am not the only one up at an inappropriately early time after such a party
Workmate 1: Hahaha tell me about it!!
Max: WHY ARE WE AWAKE NOW? Why am I not sleeping in until 1pm? Do I need another party? Thinking? I am not thinking! I am trying to work out why the hell I am not asleep still
Workmate 2: Max outlasted us all!! I'm impressed Bell! Well done! And sweet moves on the d-floor - great night all round I think!!
Workmate 3: What time did guys stay till?? Haha I was smashed lol
Max: Workmate 2, I have to admit I only outlasted you and Workmate 1 by about, oooh, ten minutes, I was out by 2pm on the dot - the dancefloor was cold after you girls left. Workmate 3, you were, like, totally under control, really! :)
2012 Max and Elbow are members of a silly household; late night, no commitments, awake too early. Why would we do that?
Granted her house is so great for an Inappropriately Awake Beaching Appointment, so, not so silly
8 December 2008
ARCHIE
I have a question for you. your wedding... small private affair, or friends and family gathering - wedding sprung on the guests at the last moment? Also, Church or not church?
MAX
eeeeeeeeee, I don't know
I think Miss Bailey would have a tiny, tiny church ceremony for her grandparents, aunts and uncles, parents and adult family friends, and then a more expansive picnic and trivia afternoon reception with friends and cousins. Trivia quiz gives answers what must be found in the treasure hunt sending groups of four off into the house looking for references to art, books and cooking utensils in the house and flowers, bugs and rocks in the garden
ARCHIE
Ok. Otherwise i was thinking that it occurs one sunday after church at the usual gathering at the Manor. No-one knows except about four people who are needed to organise parts of it. Shall I get Grandmama to host the picnic at the Manor. So, will you be doing anything considered outrageous in a single woman between the intimate ceremony and the picnic, just to scandalise those old ladies who used to tut at you all the time?
MAX
Heee, I like that. She would limit the Church Ceremony to those that tut, just to toe the line, and then the reception for all those who are interested in what she thinks - but the trivia quiz will be all about unfashionable questions like suffragettes and class and race etc, and the treasure hunt would hinge on a collection of books, paintings and ideas those who are not welcome in the political sphere to become active - women, working-class, natives etc. And I think she should have her first opinion piece on politics published in the newspaper the Sunday she gets married - imagine, her ideas in print!
ARCHIE
I was thinking have the intimate church ceremony, then the next day, after church at the usual gathering doing something as simple as kissing Freddy in public with gloves on. you'd have to have the picnic that afternoon. Remember, many of the paintings at the Manor are either of or by the family. The library, however, is extensive
MAX
*sigh* ok :) Kissing Freddy hey? That sounds like fun. I will be up for that
I have a question for you. your wedding... small private affair, or friends and family gathering - wedding sprung on the guests at the last moment? Also, Church or not church?
MAX
eeeeeeeeee, I don't know
I think Miss Bailey would have a tiny, tiny church ceremony for her grandparents, aunts and uncles, parents and adult family friends, and then a more expansive picnic and trivia afternoon reception with friends and cousins. Trivia quiz gives answers what must be found in the treasure hunt sending groups of four off into the house looking for references to art, books and cooking utensils in the house and flowers, bugs and rocks in the garden
ARCHIE
Ok. Otherwise i was thinking that it occurs one sunday after church at the usual gathering at the Manor. No-one knows except about four people who are needed to organise parts of it. Shall I get Grandmama to host the picnic at the Manor. So, will you be doing anything considered outrageous in a single woman between the intimate ceremony and the picnic, just to scandalise those old ladies who used to tut at you all the time?
MAX
Heee, I like that. She would limit the Church Ceremony to those that tut, just to toe the line, and then the reception for all those who are interested in what she thinks - but the trivia quiz will be all about unfashionable questions like suffragettes and class and race etc, and the treasure hunt would hinge on a collection of books, paintings and ideas those who are not welcome in the political sphere to become active - women, working-class, natives etc. And I think she should have her first opinion piece on politics published in the newspaper the Sunday she gets married - imagine, her ideas in print!
ARCHIE
I was thinking have the intimate church ceremony, then the next day, after church at the usual gathering doing something as simple as kissing Freddy in public with gloves on. you'd have to have the picnic that afternoon. Remember, many of the paintings at the Manor are either of or by the family. The library, however, is extensive
MAX
*sigh* ok :) Kissing Freddy hey? That sounds like fun. I will be up for that
Friday, December 06, 2019
6 December 2013
MAX
To the extended Bell family
Mum and Godmother have been good enough to preserve and share Nan's thoughts on political and social reform.
I am grateful that they did this because it allowed me to see that the women who have inspired me in life have always been the soul of the age that resulted in my own social and political environment.
So I thought I would share the intersections of Nan's thoughts with the thinking of the women of my generation who are intent on social and political reform.
To me
:-)
MAX
To Godmother
*hugs* thanks, it was REALLY nice to read how clear things were for women back in the day - it is very encouraging for me, trying to be as clear today about equality :)
FUtE
To the extended Bell family
Hi Max
I was up at the farm and unable to successfully respond to this. I also tried to blog on insanelysociable but at the point at which they asked me to start creating a profile I got to the "... fuck this I have got to much to do and this screen is too small and my eyes are ... etc etc ... but I tried so that is good Huh? Mind you I was digging ditches so anything was preferable.
Very interesting to see Mum in action from years ago. Makes you realise how capable she was/is so a good illustration of why one needs to engage with the issues of the day and stay engaged. The psychological and philosophical benefits on their own are worth it and the physical ones tend to follow.
I think I would disagree with one contention and that is that feminism was beginning with Mum's generation. I suspect it was a generation or two prior to that that formal feminism was kicking in (Emily Pankhurst etc). I suspect that Mum's feminism really reflects "practical feminism" rather than ideological feminism at a time when a significant proportion of the population had experience of 2 world wars and the Great Depression. They were pretty tough and very pragmatic and you see that in Mum's response. Their ideological world was constrained to some degree by the contingencies of making a living. Their opposition the "feminism", as feminists of my wife and my generation experienced, was probably because they saw our feminism as being a very privileged form of feminism.
When I was in Swaziland, in the mid 80's, I saw in TIME magazine (September 1985) an article on the 3rd UN Conference on Women in Nairobi. The group shot had a large number of western women with all the trappings of privilege in the way of cameras etc (sorry kids mobiles, laptops and tablets didn't exist then so they were all looking at the photographer and not the palm of their hands!). In the foreground where two Maasai women sitting very formally. The article was asking what the women wanted. The majority wanted rights of equality and political representation whilst the Maasai women wanted access to clean water. Quite sobering and a stark contrast. I was acutely aware of this need because I was seeing it all around me where I was living and it gave some perspective to the overall agenda.
I think Mum's generation were very concerned with efficiencies. They had large families and relatively lower level social safety nets. They had a great deal of pride and stoicism was expected. They got on with it and hoped they could cope. Mum told me the other day that she thought she used to get depressed but "..there was nothing you could do about it" I suspect my generation of feminists were simply seen as a little self-indulgent.
I suspect that this is always going to be the case as each new generation engages with the issues. So well done for giving it some steam.
Love
MAX
To the extended Bell family
FUtE - I appreciate you taking the time to stop digging ditches to address my grateful engagement with political ideology! :)
I couldn't agree more with the idea that social reform for women has been around for longer than the word 'feminism'.
I first discovered the concepts of social reform for women in Mary Wollstonecraft's 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman', a set text in Politics 101 at Uni. And to be honest, Nan's piece of writing holds a lot of Wollstonecraft and her ideas of Utility. Wollstonecraft (b1759) is a remarkably practical woman, and her ideas are still around now in the fight for non-gendered toys and the backlash against the Disney Princesses - when it comes to stoicism, Wollstonecraft was right there. Wollstonecraft's daughter was Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein - arguably the creation myth of the age of science. Two great thinkers, and two of my personal heroes.
Christine de Pizan (b1363) is another marvelous learned lady who argues against the inexplicable discrimination of gender. Women asking the right questions about discriminatory social structures have been around for a long time.
Privileged Western White Lady Feminism is definitely not applicable to many of the women in the world - and your illustration of the Masai women is still utterly relevant (as Romeo would attest!) This year I read two books by non-Western commentators of social reform for women
around the world and they were very sobering experiences.
For example, 'Sex and the Citadel: Intimate life in a changing Arab World' by Shereen El Feki is a master class in teaching that women need different things from their social reform. It illustrated that what is conservative feminism in the West is radical feminism elsewhere: she discusses how Western pornography can be an unlikely ambassador for encouraging men to work to end Female Genital Mutilation!
Then there is 'Unnatural Selection: Choosing boys over girls, and the consequences of a world full of men' by Mara Hvistendahl, which is the history of sex selective abortion using ultrasound and the 60 million missing women in Asia that is resulting in the trafficking of huge populations of women and tens of millions of permanently single men. Science used in a sexist way compounds sexism exponentially to numbers that are terrifying. None of this can be addressed by Western White Lady Feminism, but by the social reform movement of that country and culture.
So yes, while every generation has its battles, usually they can rely on the battles won by their elders to help them along.
Lots of love
To a Brontë uncle
Uncle Chicken Farmer, I thought you may enjoy this collection of emails - the first time to my knowledge that the Bells have openly discussed politics on a mass email.
Bless FUtE for actually engaging with me in this, shrieks of silence from everyone else :)
FUtE
To the extended Bell family
Max I defer to your well founded and extensive historical knowledge of the major figures in the process. Radio National had a very interesting piece on Mary Shelley some months ago as an adjunct to the stuff they were doing on the Age of Wonder. It must have been a wonderful thing to be wealthy enough to be able to gain and education and have the time to engage in the rise of science. As the alternative was Parliament live then it made easy listening. Well done
MAX
To FUtE
*wink* Thanks Uncle Paul for your delightfully leading comments and kind words about my education.
I can't think for a moment who it is the person who influenced me to keep reading, keep learning and always try topics outside my last area of interest. Oh yeah, that would be you ... :)
As you would know from the talk, Mary Shelley had extraordinary parents in Wollstonecraft and Godwin, and amazing peers in Shelley and Bryon - all that practical philosophy and art in one place.
Education is really such a wonderful thing if you are paying attention and learn to keep going, and if you have good people around you that encourage you to find out more.
Thank you for being one of those people :) And your wife also, who is referenced here in my companion piece to the Wollstonecraft piece.
To the extended Bell family
Mum and Godmother have been good enough to preserve and share Nan's thoughts on political and social reform.
I am grateful that they did this because it allowed me to see that the women who have inspired me in life have always been the soul of the age that resulted in my own social and political environment.
So I thought I would share the intersections of Nan's thoughts with the thinking of the women of my generation who are intent on social and political reform.
Women's Liberation: What is it?GODMOTHER
To me
:-)
MAX
To Godmother
*hugs* thanks, it was REALLY nice to read how clear things were for women back in the day - it is very encouraging for me, trying to be as clear today about equality :)
FUtE
To the extended Bell family
Hi Max
I was up at the farm and unable to successfully respond to this. I also tried to blog on insanelysociable but at the point at which they asked me to start creating a profile I got to the "... fuck this I have got to much to do and this screen is too small and my eyes are ... etc etc ... but I tried so that is good Huh? Mind you I was digging ditches so anything was preferable.
Very interesting to see Mum in action from years ago. Makes you realise how capable she was/is so a good illustration of why one needs to engage with the issues of the day and stay engaged. The psychological and philosophical benefits on their own are worth it and the physical ones tend to follow.
I think I would disagree with one contention and that is that feminism was beginning with Mum's generation. I suspect it was a generation or two prior to that that formal feminism was kicking in (Emily Pankhurst etc). I suspect that Mum's feminism really reflects "practical feminism" rather than ideological feminism at a time when a significant proportion of the population had experience of 2 world wars and the Great Depression. They were pretty tough and very pragmatic and you see that in Mum's response. Their ideological world was constrained to some degree by the contingencies of making a living. Their opposition the "feminism", as feminists of my wife and my generation experienced, was probably because they saw our feminism as being a very privileged form of feminism.
When I was in Swaziland, in the mid 80's, I saw in TIME magazine (September 1985) an article on the 3rd UN Conference on Women in Nairobi. The group shot had a large number of western women with all the trappings of privilege in the way of cameras etc (sorry kids mobiles, laptops and tablets didn't exist then so they were all looking at the photographer and not the palm of their hands!). In the foreground where two Maasai women sitting very formally. The article was asking what the women wanted. The majority wanted rights of equality and political representation whilst the Maasai women wanted access to clean water. Quite sobering and a stark contrast. I was acutely aware of this need because I was seeing it all around me where I was living and it gave some perspective to the overall agenda.
I think Mum's generation were very concerned with efficiencies. They had large families and relatively lower level social safety nets. They had a great deal of pride and stoicism was expected. They got on with it and hoped they could cope. Mum told me the other day that she thought she used to get depressed but "..there was nothing you could do about it" I suspect my generation of feminists were simply seen as a little self-indulgent.
I suspect that this is always going to be the case as each new generation engages with the issues. So well done for giving it some steam.
Love
MAX
To the extended Bell family
FUtE - I appreciate you taking the time to stop digging ditches to address my grateful engagement with political ideology! :)
I couldn't agree more with the idea that social reform for women has been around for longer than the word 'feminism'.
I first discovered the concepts of social reform for women in Mary Wollstonecraft's 'A Vindication of the Rights of Woman', a set text in Politics 101 at Uni. And to be honest, Nan's piece of writing holds a lot of Wollstonecraft and her ideas of Utility. Wollstonecraft (b1759) is a remarkably practical woman, and her ideas are still around now in the fight for non-gendered toys and the backlash against the Disney Princesses - when it comes to stoicism, Wollstonecraft was right there. Wollstonecraft's daughter was Mary Shelley, who wrote Frankenstein - arguably the creation myth of the age of science. Two great thinkers, and two of my personal heroes.
Christine de Pizan (b1363) is another marvelous learned lady who argues against the inexplicable discrimination of gender. Women asking the right questions about discriminatory social structures have been around for a long time.
Privileged Western White Lady Feminism is definitely not applicable to many of the women in the world - and your illustration of the Masai women is still utterly relevant (as Romeo would attest!) This year I read two books by non-Western commentators of social reform for women
around the world and they were very sobering experiences.
For example, 'Sex and the Citadel: Intimate life in a changing Arab World' by Shereen El Feki is a master class in teaching that women need different things from their social reform. It illustrated that what is conservative feminism in the West is radical feminism elsewhere: she discusses how Western pornography can be an unlikely ambassador for encouraging men to work to end Female Genital Mutilation!
Then there is 'Unnatural Selection: Choosing boys over girls, and the consequences of a world full of men' by Mara Hvistendahl, which is the history of sex selective abortion using ultrasound and the 60 million missing women in Asia that is resulting in the trafficking of huge populations of women and tens of millions of permanently single men. Science used in a sexist way compounds sexism exponentially to numbers that are terrifying. None of this can be addressed by Western White Lady Feminism, but by the social reform movement of that country and culture.
So yes, while every generation has its battles, usually they can rely on the battles won by their elders to help them along.
Lots of love
Wollstonecraft Summary
Other books about social reform for womenMAX
To a Brontë uncle
Uncle Chicken Farmer, I thought you may enjoy this collection of emails - the first time to my knowledge that the Bells have openly discussed politics on a mass email.
Bless FUtE for actually engaging with me in this, shrieks of silence from everyone else :)
FUtE
To the extended Bell family
Max I defer to your well founded and extensive historical knowledge of the major figures in the process. Radio National had a very interesting piece on Mary Shelley some months ago as an adjunct to the stuff they were doing on the Age of Wonder. It must have been a wonderful thing to be wealthy enough to be able to gain and education and have the time to engage in the rise of science. As the alternative was Parliament live then it made easy listening. Well done
MAX
To FUtE
*wink* Thanks Uncle Paul for your delightfully leading comments and kind words about my education.
I can't think for a moment who it is the person who influenced me to keep reading, keep learning and always try topics outside my last area of interest. Oh yeah, that would be you ... :)
As you would know from the talk, Mary Shelley had extraordinary parents in Wollstonecraft and Godwin, and amazing peers in Shelley and Bryon - all that practical philosophy and art in one place.
Education is really such a wonderful thing if you are paying attention and learn to keep going, and if you have good people around you that encourage you to find out more.
Thank you for being one of those people :) And your wife also, who is referenced here in my companion piece to the Wollstonecraft piece.
Thursday, December 05, 2019
5 December 2018
MAX
so, I am prowling the online sites for fun times, and this wee babbie totally crossed my path. what intrigued me was the story that all his photos told.
first photo is a nice muscle shot (if you like that kind of thing), but I am drawn to that handy rail in the shower/bath that means I can both get out of the bath safely because I am an old lady, and hold onto it during sex. very thoughtful of him.
second photo confirms that muscles are the result of hard work, and that he has hair that I like (I like spiky hair, it is known)
third photo ... he has an oven in a kitchen??? This intrigues me, this photo. Is the oven/kitchen incidental or pivotal to the photo???
it this even the same man in the fourth picture? it is just him young? after the oven picture I am unsure and discombobulated. man of mystery AND cooking facilities.
blessed be the online perving platforms …
my profile is beautifully written and entertaining, and I say I am a writer.
sometimes, the menz think they have a fighting chance with me in my area of expertise.
fam, I present, the man out of his depth …
CAS
That's my girl!
I look forward to living vicariously through you 😉
I found this one a little unnerving … Could be because the thought of online dating atm makes me want to vomit in my mouth a little … ?!
MAX
correct response - I am looking only. Cannot stomach menz at the moment xx
when dudes try to keep up, but I can see them
so, I am prowling the online sites for fun times, and this wee babbie totally crossed my path. what intrigued me was the story that all his photos told.
first photo is a nice muscle shot (if you like that kind of thing), but I am drawn to that handy rail in the shower/bath that means I can both get out of the bath safely because I am an old lady, and hold onto it during sex. very thoughtful of him.
second photo confirms that muscles are the result of hard work, and that he has hair that I like (I like spiky hair, it is known)
third photo ... he has an oven in a kitchen??? This intrigues me, this photo. Is the oven/kitchen incidental or pivotal to the photo???
it this even the same man in the fourth picture? it is just him young? after the oven picture I am unsure and discombobulated. man of mystery AND cooking facilities.
blessed be the online perving platforms …
my profile is beautifully written and entertaining, and I say I am a writer.
sometimes, the menz think they have a fighting chance with me in my area of expertise.
fam, I present, the man out of his depth …
CAS
That's my girl!
I look forward to living vicariously through you 😉
I found this one a little unnerving … Could be because the thought of online dating atm makes me want to vomit in my mouth a little … ?!
MAX
correct response - I am looking only. Cannot stomach menz at the moment xx
when dudes try to keep up, but I can see them
Wednesday, December 04, 2019
4 December 2013
MAX
so, not tonight then :(
KIM
I'm not sure if there was any text to that besides the subject?
But are you still available for this evening? What's all this nonsense about confirmation and notice. I said yes and put you in my calendar. That's basically biblical!
I booked a table for two at 353 for 1800 this evening. Does that sound alright? It looks like an interesting place and I need to make tracks into Wembley tonight for a leaving the country party for a friend.
MAX
Alas, you did not tell me you had said yes and put me in your calendar :) I'm good, but I am not the NSA I'm afraid. Are we getting some Vulcan mind-meld for the ruling of the universe gig or will we just have an army of Personal Assistants with their own Personal Assistants?
KIM
I said yes in the email - therefore it was a yes and went into my calendar.
I think Vulcan mind-melding will be an important tool to take advantage of but many layers of PA-caption will also be required. Both for organisational purposes, excuse purposes and protection of course.
MAX
*wail* but I don't have an email in reply to mine! It's either in the intertubes or in my spam because I definitely got no reply in my inbox
:(
http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/the-daily-show/videos/3482/title/senator-stevens-internet-series-tubes
Nevermind, I have persuaded my brother to take the babysitting gig (not too hard, we both love our cousins) and I will be at 353 Cambridge at 6pm for dinner :)
KIM
See below, highlighted text :P You definitely need a PA. Glad you could re-arrange the babysitting :)
MAX
cool, I didn't miss an email.
So, I am guessing you don't have a PA :) I am, of course, an Executive Assistant of ten years experience.
You did not reply to my email, therefore there was no confirmation to me.
Your previous email to me proposing days I could pick from was not a confirmation to my email saying which would suit me since, you know, it had been sent before my response :)
*wink* take it from the professional PA, a quick 'Wednesday it is, I'll confirm details closer to the time' was all the confirmation needed to close the deal.
Next time we'll do better, we have to get our A Game up for galaxy-wide domination.
KIM
Roger roger. I took yours as a confirmation. But I will know better for next time. Unfortunately no PA for me, they don't like provided them for those about to leave the company... Maybe I should just get a PA so I don't have to learn to do better prior to universal domination.
MAX
hehehe.
I would advocate making sure you understand your PA's job so that if they don't do it right, you will know it before the shit hits the fan :)
Nothing worse for an aspiring dictator than watching someone in power get deposed because they didn't know what their minions were doing … I always wonder how they got into power in the first place if they didn't work up through the roles that were supporting them. Classic story of managers who had never actually managed anything.
No, wiser to be better at your minions' jobs than the minion, so the terror of your eye falling across them is real and ever-present ...
I just cannot wait to be King ...
KIM
Good point. I'll be sure to master many roles. Though this could put a slight delay on the move to dictatorship if I need to spend years mastering other skills...
MAX
*cough* you do not need to be master of all, just be better than MINIONS that work for you.
you will, of course, have actual MASTERS to oversee operations that you have no interest in. And their heads will roll if their minions misbehave. They should not get the job unless they are better than their minions.
but for one's own operations, one should definitely be better than the minions. Not that being better than the minions is hard for ones such as us *wink*
KIM
Ah, I like that thinking. Duly noted, my Supreme Overlord of Earth
MAX
Well, you know, I have to keep making sure I am head of the pack … if I am not at the head of the pack, my life is minionless ...
BOOM!
KIM
Wow...
MAX
Yes :) It's a gift.
KIM
I finally understand how you became a writer.
MAX
People pleaded with me to pick on strangers, not on them as long suffering friends and family.
I did it to save people ...
KIM
Hahaha. But picking on friends and family is so much more fun!
MAX
But, there are a LOT more strangers in the world than friends and family.
Therefore, once I am in the public sphere, exponentially more fun to be plundered
You are plunder from the public sphere ...
KIM
Do they still count as strangers once you are all powerful dictator of them?
MAX
Now there is a question.
I can imagine I would be a less murderous Shahryar, a new person brought to eat a meal with me each lunchtime and they must laugh gaily at my jokes and tell me marvelous stories so as to become friends with me, and be spared the pitilessness of being a stranger to the Supreme Dictator …
MAX
let me just rearrange some things
sorry, sorry, I just went outside to check my texts (I don't get coverage in the office) and I hadn't heard from you!
I was asked to do some babysitting of my cousins and I said yes and I just have to make sure my brother can do it ...
:)
MAX
not cross, just in the middle of organising things, as I know you are ...
... and I am always paranoid that I miss emails because sometimes I open them on my phone and then miss them when on the computer :(
I was looking forward to seeing you and having a chat, but I knew you had things to organise, so I was going to let you do your thing.
I have things to do also that would not be disrupted by getting another night free, so I made sure I was gliding along with other things (playwriting) to do in case you had to cancel.
:)
KIM
Fair enough.
You have an interesting way of writing emails, utilising the subject line as you do.
I have a great 'Flushed' related story I probably shouldn't share with you tonight!
MAX
RE: re: FWD: [restricted] re: THIS is HILLLLARIOUS! Don't stop it now
Ah, in the good old days before gmail needed similar subject lines to group emails, my friends and I had elaborate and delightful games with our subjects - entire weeks of emails would be composed under subjects that were poems when collected together, or runs of puns, or completely incorrect indications of contents or elaborate private jokes.
:)
I like to start the email in the subject because I like it to be personal as soon as you see the snippet on your phone or on the computer ...
KIM
Hmmm, I may well have deleted emails with subject lines such as this if I were to receive them unsolicited or unexpected. Though those games do sound fun.
MAX
dear dove kim you have won 35 OOO OOO OOO in Euro MILLIONS
I agree :)
so, not tonight then :(
KIM
I'm not sure if there was any text to that besides the subject?
But are you still available for this evening? What's all this nonsense about confirmation and notice. I said yes and put you in my calendar. That's basically biblical!
I booked a table for two at 353 for 1800 this evening. Does that sound alright? It looks like an interesting place and I need to make tracks into Wembley tonight for a leaving the country party for a friend.
MAX
Alas, you did not tell me you had said yes and put me in your calendar :) I'm good, but I am not the NSA I'm afraid. Are we getting some Vulcan mind-meld for the ruling of the universe gig or will we just have an army of Personal Assistants with their own Personal Assistants?
KIM
I said yes in the email - therefore it was a yes and went into my calendar.
I think Vulcan mind-melding will be an important tool to take advantage of but many layers of PA-caption will also be required. Both for organisational purposes, excuse purposes and protection of course.
MAX
*wail* but I don't have an email in reply to mine! It's either in the intertubes or in my spam because I definitely got no reply in my inbox
:(
http://www.fanpop.com/clubs/the-daily-show/videos/3482/title/senator-stevens-internet-series-tubes
Nevermind, I have persuaded my brother to take the babysitting gig (not too hard, we both love our cousins) and I will be at 353 Cambridge at 6pm for dinner :)
KIM
See below, highlighted text :P You definitely need a PA. Glad you could re-arrange the babysitting :)
MAX
cool, I didn't miss an email.
So, I am guessing you don't have a PA :) I am, of course, an Executive Assistant of ten years experience.
You did not reply to my email, therefore there was no confirmation to me.
Your previous email to me proposing days I could pick from was not a confirmation to my email saying which would suit me since, you know, it had been sent before my response :)
*wink* take it from the professional PA, a quick 'Wednesday it is, I'll confirm details closer to the time' was all the confirmation needed to close the deal.
Next time we'll do better, we have to get our A Game up for galaxy-wide domination.
KIM
Roger roger. I took yours as a confirmation. But I will know better for next time. Unfortunately no PA for me, they don't like provided them for those about to leave the company... Maybe I should just get a PA so I don't have to learn to do better prior to universal domination.
MAX
hehehe.
I would advocate making sure you understand your PA's job so that if they don't do it right, you will know it before the shit hits the fan :)
Nothing worse for an aspiring dictator than watching someone in power get deposed because they didn't know what their minions were doing … I always wonder how they got into power in the first place if they didn't work up through the roles that were supporting them. Classic story of managers who had never actually managed anything.
No, wiser to be better at your minions' jobs than the minion, so the terror of your eye falling across them is real and ever-present ...
I just cannot wait to be King ...
KIM
Good point. I'll be sure to master many roles. Though this could put a slight delay on the move to dictatorship if I need to spend years mastering other skills...
MAX
*cough* you do not need to be master of all, just be better than MINIONS that work for you.
you will, of course, have actual MASTERS to oversee operations that you have no interest in. And their heads will roll if their minions misbehave. They should not get the job unless they are better than their minions.
but for one's own operations, one should definitely be better than the minions. Not that being better than the minions is hard for ones such as us *wink*
KIM
Ah, I like that thinking. Duly noted, my Supreme Overlord of Earth
MAX
Well, you know, I have to keep making sure I am head of the pack … if I am not at the head of the pack, my life is minionless ...
BOOM!
KIM
Wow...
MAX
Yes :) It's a gift.
KIM
I finally understand how you became a writer.
MAX
People pleaded with me to pick on strangers, not on them as long suffering friends and family.
I did it to save people ...
KIM
Hahaha. But picking on friends and family is so much more fun!
MAX
But, there are a LOT more strangers in the world than friends and family.
Therefore, once I am in the public sphere, exponentially more fun to be plundered
You are plunder from the public sphere ...
KIM
Do they still count as strangers once you are all powerful dictator of them?
MAX
Now there is a question.
I can imagine I would be a less murderous Shahryar, a new person brought to eat a meal with me each lunchtime and they must laugh gaily at my jokes and tell me marvelous stories so as to become friends with me, and be spared the pitilessness of being a stranger to the Supreme Dictator …
MAX
let me just rearrange some things
sorry, sorry, I just went outside to check my texts (I don't get coverage in the office) and I hadn't heard from you!
I was asked to do some babysitting of my cousins and I said yes and I just have to make sure my brother can do it ...
:)
MAX
not cross, just in the middle of organising things, as I know you are ...
... and I am always paranoid that I miss emails because sometimes I open them on my phone and then miss them when on the computer :(
I was looking forward to seeing you and having a chat, but I knew you had things to organise, so I was going to let you do your thing.
I have things to do also that would not be disrupted by getting another night free, so I made sure I was gliding along with other things (playwriting) to do in case you had to cancel.
:)
KIM
Fair enough.
You have an interesting way of writing emails, utilising the subject line as you do.
I have a great 'Flushed' related story I probably shouldn't share with you tonight!
MAX
RE: re: FWD: [restricted] re: THIS is HILLLLARIOUS! Don't stop it now
Ah, in the good old days before gmail needed similar subject lines to group emails, my friends and I had elaborate and delightful games with our subjects - entire weeks of emails would be composed under subjects that were poems when collected together, or runs of puns, or completely incorrect indications of contents or elaborate private jokes.
:)
I like to start the email in the subject because I like it to be personal as soon as you see the snippet on your phone or on the computer ...
KIM
Hmmm, I may well have deleted emails with subject lines such as this if I were to receive them unsolicited or unexpected. Though those games do sound fun.
MAX
dear dove kim you have won 35 OOO OOO OOO in Euro MILLIONS
I agree :)
4 December 2004
There are a few criteria that make a party the ultimate experience for me –
#1 It should be in the house you are staying in, yet not be your house so you can avoid most of the cleaning.
#2 There should be lots and lots of good looking available men.
#3 There should be limited competition for the attention of aforementioned men.
#4 You should be the most interesting person there.
Judging on these four criteria alone I went to a party that got a perfect score.
Tom has a friend, Elaine, in Leeds and Elaine invited her up for her Christmas party and invited her to bring a friend. So we spent forty quid and three hours getting to the party. We got into town at about 12 and looked around for a while before we went to Elaine's house.
Leeds has been called the London of the North and I think I will declare it Max's Ultimate City. The shopping precinct is a gob-smacking six city blocks that included huge covered markets and stunning malls that were more beautiful than anything I saw in Paris. There was every shop imaginable, huge outlets for the really very expensive shops like Harvey Nichols and specialty shops that made me gibber with lust. As a barely reformed shopaholic, I was walking through the ultimate gauntlet of temptation. The shops had me so hypnotized I didn't notice a single hot Northern guy – and THAT is a miracle.
When I simply couldn't cope with another moment in shopping heaven with no money, we left for Elaine's house. We arrived, settled into our own room and waited for the party to come to us.
Criteria #1 score = 10
The guests had been invited from three pools of people – Elaine's gym, Diane's police co-workers, Kirsty's customer service job that included trainee firemen and marines. To Max's utter delight the door kept admitting groups of tall, young, cute and fantastically fit men into the living room. I got ogling overload. I grinned like the cat that got the cream. I decided that I simply had to meet EVERY ... SINGLE ... ONE of those lovely, LOVELY men. Thirty single men looking for a good time. Life is indeed very hard sometimes.
Criteria #2 score = 10
There were about six other women in at the party. All of them there with their boyfriends. Tom drank so much she can't remember past 10 o'clock. I was the only single, upright female there. I had a big job and I was prepared to step up to the plate.
Criteria #3 score = 10
Every other girl there was a typical Northern girl – tall, straight blond hair, legs up to her ears, skirt barely big enough to be a belt, lots of cleavage and well known socially to the guys. Your correspondent? Short, covered from head to toe in clothes, dark curly hair. SEXY ACCENT. They don't get many Australians up there and I was a complete unknown. I was the CENTER of all eyes at all times. I could feel the crowd move when I did, I could hear the murmurs of 'who is that?' as I made my way to the kitchen for my water and back. It was like being in Turkey again. Except I was surrounded by Scottish, Irish and Northern accented hulks of manhood raring for a go at the bubbly Australian.
Criteria #4 score = 10
The happenings.
I spotted my man within twenty minutes. Blue eyes, brown hair, cheeky grin, broad shoulders, narrow hips, bum to die for – the spitting image of FSO. Within about 5 minutes of talking to him I was getting seriously rubbed up against, me grinning like a maniac, his friends cheering us on as soon as they discovered I was three years his elder and I liked to get my hands up the shirts of pretty boys. I think we could have gotten down and dirty on the floor and they would have just stood around, drinking, suggesting moves. It was hilarious. He wriggled, he flirted, he pouted when I left to get a drink, he got jealous when I talked to other men, he charged through the crowd to collect me from conversations so he could purr in my ear.
He left, thank god, because he got bored with me and I was absolved of having to snog him in front of everyone AND I got to talk to all the other gorgeous men.
So I spent lovely moments with a towering blue eyed and black haired Irishman named Jack who hunched over his height and enormous chest to purr in my ear that I was a 'bubbly mad bitch' and that he had been looking for a bubbly girl all night. Only his accent allowed him to get away with that comment. And that fantastic set of shoulders. And that spectacular bum almost at my eye level. *purr*
I talked serious history talk with another English history graduate who was a very sexy man with green eyes and gorgeous dark skin. I talked surfing with a Welshman with a fantastic chest filling out the stylish t-shirt. I talked cricket with a shaven head Northern bruiser built like a brick shithouse who knew all about the WACA as soon as I mentioned where I was from. I talked guns with the two trainee marines with their huge blues eyes and unique take on just how crudely you can talk to a girl. And at 2pm I was talking about a writers' responsibilities to their readers to experience EVERYTHING with a blond Geordie fireman who did a 'Max' to me and asked just the right questions to keep me talking about myself for about an hour.
By the end of the night I was beginning to feel a little guilty that I was having ALL the fun. It almost felt like it was a party thrown just for me. Elaine declared I was her favourite guest. I hadn't spilt a drink and I had taken on the mammoth task of entertaining thirty lusty lads and not a single one felt he hadn't had a good go at trying to score with me. What can I say? I am just the perfect guest!
So I was asleep by 3, dreaming the contented sleep of a girl that had just attended the most perfect party possible. And got out of it without a single stain on my pristine reputation as a good girl. Sometimes fun can be just illegal.
#1 It should be in the house you are staying in, yet not be your house so you can avoid most of the cleaning.
#2 There should be lots and lots of good looking available men.
#3 There should be limited competition for the attention of aforementioned men.
#4 You should be the most interesting person there.
Judging on these four criteria alone I went to a party that got a perfect score.
Tom has a friend, Elaine, in Leeds and Elaine invited her up for her Christmas party and invited her to bring a friend. So we spent forty quid and three hours getting to the party. We got into town at about 12 and looked around for a while before we went to Elaine's house.
Leeds has been called the London of the North and I think I will declare it Max's Ultimate City. The shopping precinct is a gob-smacking six city blocks that included huge covered markets and stunning malls that were more beautiful than anything I saw in Paris. There was every shop imaginable, huge outlets for the really very expensive shops like Harvey Nichols and specialty shops that made me gibber with lust. As a barely reformed shopaholic, I was walking through the ultimate gauntlet of temptation. The shops had me so hypnotized I didn't notice a single hot Northern guy – and THAT is a miracle.
When I simply couldn't cope with another moment in shopping heaven with no money, we left for Elaine's house. We arrived, settled into our own room and waited for the party to come to us.
Criteria #1 score = 10
The guests had been invited from three pools of people – Elaine's gym, Diane's police co-workers, Kirsty's customer service job that included trainee firemen and marines. To Max's utter delight the door kept admitting groups of tall, young, cute and fantastically fit men into the living room. I got ogling overload. I grinned like the cat that got the cream. I decided that I simply had to meet EVERY ... SINGLE ... ONE of those lovely, LOVELY men. Thirty single men looking for a good time. Life is indeed very hard sometimes.
Criteria #2 score = 10
There were about six other women in at the party. All of them there with their boyfriends. Tom drank so much she can't remember past 10 o'clock. I was the only single, upright female there. I had a big job and I was prepared to step up to the plate.
Criteria #3 score = 10
Every other girl there was a typical Northern girl – tall, straight blond hair, legs up to her ears, skirt barely big enough to be a belt, lots of cleavage and well known socially to the guys. Your correspondent? Short, covered from head to toe in clothes, dark curly hair. SEXY ACCENT. They don't get many Australians up there and I was a complete unknown. I was the CENTER of all eyes at all times. I could feel the crowd move when I did, I could hear the murmurs of 'who is that?' as I made my way to the kitchen for my water and back. It was like being in Turkey again. Except I was surrounded by Scottish, Irish and Northern accented hulks of manhood raring for a go at the bubbly Australian.
Criteria #4 score = 10
The happenings.
I spotted my man within twenty minutes. Blue eyes, brown hair, cheeky grin, broad shoulders, narrow hips, bum to die for – the spitting image of FSO. Within about 5 minutes of talking to him I was getting seriously rubbed up against, me grinning like a maniac, his friends cheering us on as soon as they discovered I was three years his elder and I liked to get my hands up the shirts of pretty boys. I think we could have gotten down and dirty on the floor and they would have just stood around, drinking, suggesting moves. It was hilarious. He wriggled, he flirted, he pouted when I left to get a drink, he got jealous when I talked to other men, he charged through the crowd to collect me from conversations so he could purr in my ear.
He left, thank god, because he got bored with me and I was absolved of having to snog him in front of everyone AND I got to talk to all the other gorgeous men.
So I spent lovely moments with a towering blue eyed and black haired Irishman named Jack who hunched over his height and enormous chest to purr in my ear that I was a 'bubbly mad bitch' and that he had been looking for a bubbly girl all night. Only his accent allowed him to get away with that comment. And that fantastic set of shoulders. And that spectacular bum almost at my eye level. *purr*
I talked serious history talk with another English history graduate who was a very sexy man with green eyes and gorgeous dark skin. I talked surfing with a Welshman with a fantastic chest filling out the stylish t-shirt. I talked cricket with a shaven head Northern bruiser built like a brick shithouse who knew all about the WACA as soon as I mentioned where I was from. I talked guns with the two trainee marines with their huge blues eyes and unique take on just how crudely you can talk to a girl. And at 2pm I was talking about a writers' responsibilities to their readers to experience EVERYTHING with a blond Geordie fireman who did a 'Max' to me and asked just the right questions to keep me talking about myself for about an hour.
By the end of the night I was beginning to feel a little guilty that I was having ALL the fun. It almost felt like it was a party thrown just for me. Elaine declared I was her favourite guest. I hadn't spilt a drink and I had taken on the mammoth task of entertaining thirty lusty lads and not a single one felt he hadn't had a good go at trying to score with me. What can I say? I am just the perfect guest!
So I was asleep by 3, dreaming the contented sleep of a girl that had just attended the most perfect party possible. And got out of it without a single stain on my pristine reputation as a good girl. Sometimes fun can be just illegal.
Sunday, December 01, 2019
1 December 2012
Max will be putting up a Christmas tree and changing the lyrics to Christmas songs with a Christmas Angel and two Christmas Elves
Archie: You have got to be kidding. There are far more important things in December before Christmas. The tree should really only go up the weekend before Christmas. And songs are restricted to Christmas morning only!
Rhys: Bah humbug! I have been looking forward to putting up my Christmas tree for the last month. I can't think of a better way to spend my day than with two best friends a baby and some new Xmas decorations :). So for me, this is an important thing to do in December :)
Dirk: The weekend before xmas?!?!?!? That's crazy!!! After all that work you want it to be up for only 1 week? Our tradition is December 1st as well :)
Jack: Yes tree day for husband and me today, and tree day for my family tomorrow!. So exciting to have a baby to do it all with Rhys
Max I hope you are supplying some christmas baking!
Max: Elbow baked the chocolate biscuits for morning tea before the tree went up, cooked to the inexplicably disapproving Archie's recipe, and my gorgeous goddaughter was utterly charming and helped with the baubles. A good day had by all
Archie: Sorry girls, I wasn't being rude about your christmas plans as I love the family traditions that come out during the festive season. It was a comment directed at Max that Christmas can't start until my birthday's come and gone, hence the reference to the weekend before Christmas. My apologies that it wasn't taking in the light-hearted way it was intended
Max: Festivities-Jams are so AWKWARD! Especially for kids who have their birthdays overshadowed by Christmas. Jay and Australia Day have a long-standing too-close relationship, so the Festival of Jay was born. I almost always lose my birthday to the Perth Big Day Out and must counter with the Carnival of Max. And even non-overshadowed birthdays are turned into the CarniDirk ..? :) And if I remember rightly, there are some Birthday-Jams in Rhys's family too aren't there? And Jack has always disapproved of her Birthday Season in Australia as it does not allow watermelon at the party ..? God, someone stop me, I am on a roll …
Rhys: Thanks Archie :). I love lead up to birthdays. As for Jay's birthday, well husband and I threw a really big party for her three years ago invited all our friends and got married on that day. As for Max's birthday well that is the day I knew I was pregnant with my daughter (sorry Max you are by default going to have to share the day with her) All I can say is thank goodness I was born on the 10 September and not a day later
Max: Hahaha, it is my pleasure to share my Thirtieth Birthday with the sure knowledge of your daughter's imminent arrival! I should also note that the marvellous cousins were kind enough to do what you did for Jay, Rhys, and host my Birthday Party one year at their wedding. AND a Ballroom Dancer took me for a spin on the dancefloor at the reception, which made my night! :) Just like kids, we learn to share ALL our things as we get older, including birthdays
Archie: You have got to be kidding. There are far more important things in December before Christmas. The tree should really only go up the weekend before Christmas. And songs are restricted to Christmas morning only!
Rhys: Bah humbug! I have been looking forward to putting up my Christmas tree for the last month. I can't think of a better way to spend my day than with two best friends a baby and some new Xmas decorations :). So for me, this is an important thing to do in December :)
Dirk: The weekend before xmas?!?!?!? That's crazy!!! After all that work you want it to be up for only 1 week? Our tradition is December 1st as well :)
Jack: Yes tree day for husband and me today, and tree day for my family tomorrow!. So exciting to have a baby to do it all with Rhys
Max I hope you are supplying some christmas baking!
Max: Elbow baked the chocolate biscuits for morning tea before the tree went up, cooked to the inexplicably disapproving Archie's recipe, and my gorgeous goddaughter was utterly charming and helped with the baubles. A good day had by all
Archie: Sorry girls, I wasn't being rude about your christmas plans as I love the family traditions that come out during the festive season. It was a comment directed at Max that Christmas can't start until my birthday's come and gone, hence the reference to the weekend before Christmas. My apologies that it wasn't taking in the light-hearted way it was intended
Max: Festivities-Jams are so AWKWARD! Especially for kids who have their birthdays overshadowed by Christmas. Jay and Australia Day have a long-standing too-close relationship, so the Festival of Jay was born. I almost always lose my birthday to the Perth Big Day Out and must counter with the Carnival of Max. And even non-overshadowed birthdays are turned into the CarniDirk ..? :) And if I remember rightly, there are some Birthday-Jams in Rhys's family too aren't there? And Jack has always disapproved of her Birthday Season in Australia as it does not allow watermelon at the party ..? God, someone stop me, I am on a roll …
Rhys: Thanks Archie :). I love lead up to birthdays. As for Jay's birthday, well husband and I threw a really big party for her three years ago invited all our friends and got married on that day. As for Max's birthday well that is the day I knew I was pregnant with my daughter (sorry Max you are by default going to have to share the day with her) All I can say is thank goodness I was born on the 10 September and not a day later
Max: Hahaha, it is my pleasure to share my Thirtieth Birthday with the sure knowledge of your daughter's imminent arrival! I should also note that the marvellous cousins were kind enough to do what you did for Jay, Rhys, and host my Birthday Party one year at their wedding. AND a Ballroom Dancer took me for a spin on the dancefloor at the reception, which made my night! :) Just like kids, we learn to share ALL our things as we get older, including birthdays
Wednesday, November 20, 2019
20 November 2008
Archie: Didn't you get to do enough cooking on Woody Island?
Max: A girl's cooking is NEVER done! :)
Archie: Give me a scullery maid and I'd have to agree with you. I just hate washing up, especially when others do nothing to help and then expect to be able to eat it all.
Max: I would KILL for my own personal scullery maid! That would be awesome. My life is minionless at the moment without a scullery maid. I reckon Robbie would make a very fetching scullery maid ... :)
Archie: Oh, how divine an idea :) I hope she won't mind. No the person I wish demoted to the position of scullery maid has a reputation at odds with the job. And she'd only ever wash up once in a blue moon rather than when it was required of her.
Max: N'ah, I reckon she'd do it if I have RA as the Kitchen Boy - they would have to sleep in the cinders together under the roasting meat. That'll get her on board.
Archie: i think you'd have more luck with DL as the kitchen boy. I think he's a fave at the moment because of Life. And if he's your servant ...
Max: DL to get Arthur as a maid, RA to get Robbie as a maid. Maybe Arthur to get Robbie as a maid and DL and RA can be my 'bedmates'. Yeeeeeees.
Archie: But how much work are they likely to do with RA or DL or even FP in the kitchen with them?
Max: There will be shenanigans for sure, but I think both Arthur and Robbie would understand which side their bread is buttered (because otherwise, that is all the food they are getting) and put in the hours in the suds :)
Archie: you have such faith … but then you'd have more chance of getting them to work than I ever would.
Max: I have an 'I Run The Kitchen' attitude now, so you may be right. My mother has started saying things like 'well, we better get out of the kitchen because MAX is in there and SHE likes things cooked THIS way.' I am quite a bit less accommodating now I have had a taste of running a kitchen. The Queen Bee has finally shown up for 2008! :)
Archie: *tsk* *tsk* the real test will be in the kitchen with me. Is the Queen B getting too big for her boots? And is she here to stay? I'm quite prepared to demote you to second cook should it prove necessary. :)
Max: Well, I think we shall have to find out eh? When it comes to extreme cooking and running a kitchen, I think my week of catering sets me up as stiff competition ...
Max: A girl's cooking is NEVER done! :)
Archie: Give me a scullery maid and I'd have to agree with you. I just hate washing up, especially when others do nothing to help and then expect to be able to eat it all.
Max: I would KILL for my own personal scullery maid! That would be awesome. My life is minionless at the moment without a scullery maid. I reckon Robbie would make a very fetching scullery maid ... :)
Archie: Oh, how divine an idea :) I hope she won't mind. No the person I wish demoted to the position of scullery maid has a reputation at odds with the job. And she'd only ever wash up once in a blue moon rather than when it was required of her.
Max: N'ah, I reckon she'd do it if I have RA as the Kitchen Boy - they would have to sleep in the cinders together under the roasting meat. That'll get her on board.
Archie: i think you'd have more luck with DL as the kitchen boy. I think he's a fave at the moment because of Life. And if he's your servant ...
Max: DL to get Arthur as a maid, RA to get Robbie as a maid. Maybe Arthur to get Robbie as a maid and DL and RA can be my 'bedmates'. Yeeeeeees.
Archie: But how much work are they likely to do with RA or DL or even FP in the kitchen with them?
Max: There will be shenanigans for sure, but I think both Arthur and Robbie would understand which side their bread is buttered (because otherwise, that is all the food they are getting) and put in the hours in the suds :)
Archie: you have such faith … but then you'd have more chance of getting them to work than I ever would.
Max: I have an 'I Run The Kitchen' attitude now, so you may be right. My mother has started saying things like 'well, we better get out of the kitchen because MAX is in there and SHE likes things cooked THIS way.' I am quite a bit less accommodating now I have had a taste of running a kitchen. The Queen Bee has finally shown up for 2008! :)
Archie: *tsk* *tsk* the real test will be in the kitchen with me. Is the Queen B getting too big for her boots? And is she here to stay? I'm quite prepared to demote you to second cook should it prove necessary. :)
Max: Well, I think we shall have to find out eh? When it comes to extreme cooking and running a kitchen, I think my week of catering sets me up as stiff competition ...
Tuesday, November 19, 2019
19 November 2013
Going to dinner with two Coalition Voters and Supporters who are related to me this week. The topics of conversation I will raise will be Asylum Seekers and Climate Change. It will probably be horrific
Friend: Good luck!
Three years of talking to Coalition Supporters and Voters to help them work through their shame that they were taken in by Coalition Policies is going to be hard but necessary work to ensure this Government gets kicked out at the next election
Friend: It just gets worse and worse and worse … And we're only a week in :(
Max: If you had told me two weeks ago what he would do last week, I would have told you to re-write your script, because no one, not even him, could be so very, very awful
But we know what we have to do - we have to talk to the people that support the Government and change their minds. My parents are not going to like being around me for the next three years ... but I can't stand silent and put myself on the wrong side of history
Friend: Yeah there may/may not be some reflection in my next show... And then I think it's time I dusted off my copies of boal!
There is something about the Australian Government at the moment that reminds me of all the governments of history that are held up as the worst of the worst. Except with this Government, people I actually know voted for them, and still support them to my face.
This action, and many other actions of this Goverment, is regressive. But this is the reality of being politically progressive and not having the guts to talk to the Coalition Supporters and Voters about their support of the Government and their fear of admitting they supported and voted for a Government that has turned out to be evil.
The people who support this Government are alive, still supporting them and they are people you know. They are the people that need to be talked to, over and over and over again by progressives until they understand that they must not support evil because they are scared of admitting they were taken in by Coalition Policy.
Talk to the Coalition Supports and Voters you know, without fear, for three years, or this madness continues.
Friend: Good luck!
Three years of talking to Coalition Supporters and Voters to help them work through their shame that they were taken in by Coalition Policies is going to be hard but necessary work to ensure this Government gets kicked out at the next election
Friend: It just gets worse and worse and worse … And we're only a week in :(
Max: If you had told me two weeks ago what he would do last week, I would have told you to re-write your script, because no one, not even him, could be so very, very awful
But we know what we have to do - we have to talk to the people that support the Government and change their minds. My parents are not going to like being around me for the next three years ... but I can't stand silent and put myself on the wrong side of history
Friend: Yeah there may/may not be some reflection in my next show... And then I think it's time I dusted off my copies of boal!
There is something about the Australian Government at the moment that reminds me of all the governments of history that are held up as the worst of the worst. Except with this Government, people I actually know voted for them, and still support them to my face.
This action, and many other actions of this Goverment, is regressive. But this is the reality of being politically progressive and not having the guts to talk to the Coalition Supporters and Voters about their support of the Government and their fear of admitting they supported and voted for a Government that has turned out to be evil.
The people who support this Government are alive, still supporting them and they are people you know. They are the people that need to be talked to, over and over and over again by progressives until they understand that they must not support evil because they are scared of admitting they were taken in by Coalition Policy.
Talk to the Coalition Supports and Voters you know, without fear, for three years, or this madness continues.
19 November 2007
DEAN
Hola miss, I meant to mail u last week to thank u for brightening up my lunch hour!! :) what do u think about breaking your no-drinks ban and going out for a drink (ethanol influenced) soon???!!
x
Ps. Actually, that's unfair, u don't have to drink if u don't want to...
MAX
'Twas my pleasure, as always. I enjoy thinking aloud to you, you always have such a great perspective on things. I will be up for a drink, let's make it a watering hole with plenty of people to laugh at hmmmm? And thank you for being the first person in a very long time to be thoughtful enough to say I don't HAVE to drink! You would be surprised how many people don't think to remember. Not this weekend, but next ... mayhaps a Friday night? We could go stalking Lawyers or something ... :)
I am working at the Medical Board of Western Australia for a week and all the Med graduates are coming through to register. Fresh, young meat. Trying not to get itchy fingers :) How was your weekend?
DEAN
next friday night sounds like a very good idea :)
maybe perth, like one of the drinks strip along hay/ murray street, or the subi hotel? :)
oh yeah ... and my lil brother may be one of those med graduates. he starts at sir charles gardner 2008, but he wont be coming through for awhile ... haha ... you're terrible, muriel!! :) easy, tiger :)
x
Hola miss, I meant to mail u last week to thank u for brightening up my lunch hour!! :) what do u think about breaking your no-drinks ban and going out for a drink (ethanol influenced) soon???!!
x
Ps. Actually, that's unfair, u don't have to drink if u don't want to...
MAX
'Twas my pleasure, as always. I enjoy thinking aloud to you, you always have such a great perspective on things. I will be up for a drink, let's make it a watering hole with plenty of people to laugh at hmmmm? And thank you for being the first person in a very long time to be thoughtful enough to say I don't HAVE to drink! You would be surprised how many people don't think to remember. Not this weekend, but next ... mayhaps a Friday night? We could go stalking Lawyers or something ... :)
I am working at the Medical Board of Western Australia for a week and all the Med graduates are coming through to register. Fresh, young meat. Trying not to get itchy fingers :) How was your weekend?
DEAN
next friday night sounds like a very good idea :)
maybe perth, like one of the drinks strip along hay/ murray street, or the subi hotel? :)
oh yeah ... and my lil brother may be one of those med graduates. he starts at sir charles gardner 2008, but he wont be coming through for awhile ... haha ... you're terrible, muriel!! :) easy, tiger :)
x
19 November 2004
There are weeks when nothing much happens and weeks when each day is a MINI adventure – these last few weeks was definitely brought to you by the letters G and R and the number 8 … a great time had by all!
Friday 12 November
I went to another Avanti party at which many things happened:
- the English architects finally cracked out of their shells and beamed when they saw me. They are such funny creatures
- I acquired more bad dancing Germans to go out clubbing with
- Teddy was left in doubt as to my intentions and I left him at the end of the night with no satisfaction but a certain glazed look on his face that may have been caused by thoughts of sex. Sometimes I am as subtle as a train wreck and it WORKS! :)
Saturday 13 November
I was at one of the most famous clubs in London, Tiger Tiger, for Tom's birthday bash;
I put on layers and layers of Elizabeth Arden makeup and looked rather foxy. M and M were so impressed they got out the camera to capture the amazing transformation. When I got to Tiger Tiger I went hoarse from growling "Move the FUCK along, mate" to the men that glanced at me and decided I was too pretty to let go past. I hate meat markets! Tiger Tiger was vast and an impressive pickup joint but I am just too old for that kind of stuff. Tom and I stumbled out the door at 2am and Sister and Wifey had just arrived to start their night. So Tom went home and us three hung out in Leicester Square – Sister and Wifey eating hamburgers and me fending off a group of remarkably determined Indian boys.
*Max, Sister and Wifey in line for a hamburger*
*Group of Indian guys spot Max*
1st Boy: Hi, I'm Sexy, what's your name?
Max: Sheila
2nd Boy: Hi Sheila, I'm Dead Sexy.
*Sheila, Sister and Wifey walk outside*
*Sexy and Dead Sexy follow (btw these names are the ones they gave themselves, no relation to their actual looks)*
Sexy: Sheila, will you go out with me?
Sheila: No
Dead Sexy: Girls, why won't she go out with Sexy? Who are you girls anyway?
Sister: Sara
Wifey: Matthew
*Sexy and Dead Sexy do not bat an eyelid. They continue bantering, I continue to refuse my admirers*
*Sexy Beast and Scrooge, their friends, arrive. Scrooge has a comb-over. Sexy Beast is damn fine*
*Sheila, Sara and Matthew perk up at Sexy Beast's arrival*
*Sexy renews his attentions to Sheila*
Sexy: Can I have your number?
Sheila: No
Sexy: Can I give you my number?
Sheila: No.
*repeat many more times and rinse*
Sheila (after about 20 minutes of being a complete bitch): Well, guys, we have to go. Thanks for the entertainment.
*Sheila shakes hands with Sexy and Sexy Beast*
Sexy: PLEASE TAKE MY NUMBER!
Sheila: No
Sexy Beast (smiling confidently and smoothly as he leans down from his broad-shouldered height and flashes bright green eyes with lush black lashes): So, can *I* have your number.
*Sheila is tempted but feels the satisfaction of refusing will outweigh the potential pleasure of being caught*
Sheila: Nup.
Great night :)
THEN we were entertained by a group of very pretty but excessively drunk Spanish boys who decided that I had beer in my bag that I had to share immediately.
Right then boys. We ran away :)
Sunday 14 November
I went to the Natural History Museum to watch a young, nerdy but rather hot Fish Curator with lovely hands talk about fishy stuff, saw the very awesome Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition complete with action shot of a baby penguin pooing (gotta love that penguin fixation – photo available on application to your correspondent) and finished off the day with 8 friends in an empty cinema to watch our own private viewing of a film on the Iraqi war.
Monday 15 November
I went to the National Film Theatre to indulge in a black and white classic, The Women, with bitchiness the agenda for the film and the immortal line 'There is a name for you ladies – but it is not used in polite society outside the kennel.'
Tuesday 16 November
Wifey scored free tickets to the dress rehearsal of the English National Orchestra and so we rocked up with men in tow. The men were my darling friend Joel, whom I turned down in Year 12 to go out with *cough* Colin Barnet's son *cough*, and his mate Simon who is currently going out with Wifey since Joel and I introduced them five weeks ago during Joel's first stay in London. Joel had only got in from Geneva two hours before so he was feeling very cosmopolitan. The opera itself was in English, was spectacularly staged and really, REALLY raunchy! The lead female was totally naked on stage for about 20 seconds in FULL VIEW and the chorus seriously got it on with each other all over the stage at one point! It was shocking, it was titillating and it was everything I wasn't expecting from Opera! :)
Wednesday 17 November
I went down to Wimbledon to have more birthday celebrations with Tom (her real birthday) and was lucky enough to be sitting next to two young English strippers on the train who were comparing breast implant scars ...
Friday 19 November
Moss had a last-minute ticket to see Amy Winehouse at the Brixton Academy and so I got to catch her last night. For a 19-year-old who debuted to huge acclaim 12 months ago, Amy was a great show. I don't know if you guys have had any of her singles over there, but she has an amazing Jazz voice and is nowhere near as pretty as you expect most pop starlets to be. She has a huge nose, nice boobs and amazing legs – so she strutted onto the stage in a TINY sky blue baby doll dress and all the guys in the audience nearly spontaneously combusted! She was an incredibly engaging performer, combining genuine talent with the amazing ability to sing each song as if it still meant the world to her; being able to dance badly and merely make you feel that you just happened to be in her bedroom while she was singing her favourite song and dancing dorkily.
Friday 12 November
I went to another Avanti party at which many things happened:
- the English architects finally cracked out of their shells and beamed when they saw me. They are such funny creatures
- I acquired more bad dancing Germans to go out clubbing with
- Teddy was left in doubt as to my intentions and I left him at the end of the night with no satisfaction but a certain glazed look on his face that may have been caused by thoughts of sex. Sometimes I am as subtle as a train wreck and it WORKS! :)
Saturday 13 November
I was at one of the most famous clubs in London, Tiger Tiger, for Tom's birthday bash;
I put on layers and layers of Elizabeth Arden makeup and looked rather foxy. M and M were so impressed they got out the camera to capture the amazing transformation. When I got to Tiger Tiger I went hoarse from growling "Move the FUCK along, mate" to the men that glanced at me and decided I was too pretty to let go past. I hate meat markets! Tiger Tiger was vast and an impressive pickup joint but I am just too old for that kind of stuff. Tom and I stumbled out the door at 2am and Sister and Wifey had just arrived to start their night. So Tom went home and us three hung out in Leicester Square – Sister and Wifey eating hamburgers and me fending off a group of remarkably determined Indian boys.
*Max, Sister and Wifey in line for a hamburger*
*Group of Indian guys spot Max*
1st Boy: Hi, I'm Sexy, what's your name?
Max: Sheila
2nd Boy: Hi Sheila, I'm Dead Sexy.
*Sheila, Sister and Wifey walk outside*
*Sexy and Dead Sexy follow (btw these names are the ones they gave themselves, no relation to their actual looks)*
Sexy: Sheila, will you go out with me?
Sheila: No
Dead Sexy: Girls, why won't she go out with Sexy? Who are you girls anyway?
Sister: Sara
Wifey: Matthew
*Sexy and Dead Sexy do not bat an eyelid. They continue bantering, I continue to refuse my admirers*
*Sexy Beast and Scrooge, their friends, arrive. Scrooge has a comb-over. Sexy Beast is damn fine*
*Sheila, Sara and Matthew perk up at Sexy Beast's arrival*
*Sexy renews his attentions to Sheila*
Sexy: Can I have your number?
Sheila: No
Sexy: Can I give you my number?
Sheila: No.
*repeat many more times and rinse*
Sheila (after about 20 minutes of being a complete bitch): Well, guys, we have to go. Thanks for the entertainment.
*Sheila shakes hands with Sexy and Sexy Beast*
Sexy: PLEASE TAKE MY NUMBER!
Sheila: No
Sexy Beast (smiling confidently and smoothly as he leans down from his broad-shouldered height and flashes bright green eyes with lush black lashes): So, can *I* have your number.
*Sheila is tempted but feels the satisfaction of refusing will outweigh the potential pleasure of being caught*
Sheila: Nup.
Great night :)
THEN we were entertained by a group of very pretty but excessively drunk Spanish boys who decided that I had beer in my bag that I had to share immediately.
Right then boys. We ran away :)
I went to the Natural History Museum to watch a young, nerdy but rather hot Fish Curator with lovely hands talk about fishy stuff, saw the very awesome Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition complete with action shot of a baby penguin pooing (gotta love that penguin fixation – photo available on application to your correspondent) and finished off the day with 8 friends in an empty cinema to watch our own private viewing of a film on the Iraqi war.
Monday 15 November
I went to the National Film Theatre to indulge in a black and white classic, The Women, with bitchiness the agenda for the film and the immortal line 'There is a name for you ladies – but it is not used in polite society outside the kennel.'
Tuesday 16 November
Wifey scored free tickets to the dress rehearsal of the English National Orchestra and so we rocked up with men in tow. The men were my darling friend Joel, whom I turned down in Year 12 to go out with *cough* Colin Barnet's son *cough*, and his mate Simon who is currently going out with Wifey since Joel and I introduced them five weeks ago during Joel's first stay in London. Joel had only got in from Geneva two hours before so he was feeling very cosmopolitan. The opera itself was in English, was spectacularly staged and really, REALLY raunchy! The lead female was totally naked on stage for about 20 seconds in FULL VIEW and the chorus seriously got it on with each other all over the stage at one point! It was shocking, it was titillating and it was everything I wasn't expecting from Opera! :)
Wednesday 17 November
I went down to Wimbledon to have more birthday celebrations with Tom (her real birthday) and was lucky enough to be sitting next to two young English strippers on the train who were comparing breast implant scars ...
Friday 19 November
Moss had a last-minute ticket to see Amy Winehouse at the Brixton Academy and so I got to catch her last night. For a 19-year-old who debuted to huge acclaim 12 months ago, Amy was a great show. I don't know if you guys have had any of her singles over there, but she has an amazing Jazz voice and is nowhere near as pretty as you expect most pop starlets to be. She has a huge nose, nice boobs and amazing legs – so she strutted onto the stage in a TINY sky blue baby doll dress and all the guys in the audience nearly spontaneously combusted! She was an incredibly engaging performer, combining genuine talent with the amazing ability to sing each song as if it still meant the world to her; being able to dance badly and merely make you feel that you just happened to be in her bedroom while she was singing her favourite song and dancing dorkily.
Monday, November 18, 2019
18 November 2010
Max is rugging up for Hogwarts tonight
Cousin's Husband: I thought we were at Hogwarts last night?! :D
Max: Oh GAWD, good call, but it was HOTwarts last night ...
Cousin's Husband: Oh nice play on words … I'm impressed! BUT … just how hot are warts really? seriously?
Max: More like if you touched one of the hot kids, you'd get warts. Whether that is normal warts or magical warts depends on the strength of the 'paedophile' spell on the kid ...
Cousin's Husband: I felt dirty just being there ... people kept asking me how I grew facial hair
Max: I kept on being mistaken for the Teacher in charge of the school outing ...
Cousin's Husband: Must have been the naughty teacher's outfit you were wearing
Max: And I do think that ONLY wearing your beard was slightly inappropriate, though that one girl liked what you had done with the ... carpet ...
Cousin's Husband: I thought we were at Hogwarts last night?! :D
Max: Oh GAWD, good call, but it was HOTwarts last night ...
Cousin's Husband: Oh nice play on words … I'm impressed! BUT … just how hot are warts really? seriously?
Max: More like if you touched one of the hot kids, you'd get warts. Whether that is normal warts or magical warts depends on the strength of the 'paedophile' spell on the kid ...
Cousin's Husband: I felt dirty just being there ... people kept asking me how I grew facial hair
Max: I kept on being mistaken for the Teacher in charge of the school outing ...
Cousin's Husband: Must have been the naughty teacher's outfit you were wearing
Max: And I do think that ONLY wearing your beard was slightly inappropriate, though that one girl liked what you had done with the ... carpet ...
18 November 2009
Max would like to have someone rubbed out before Friday
Friend: i know a guy who knows a guy who might know a guy ...
Archie: I'd like to take the rare opportunity to be the good angel sitting on your right shoulder and return the advice you've often offered me: Karma's a bitch
Max: Friend, I need to talk to him
Archie, not for me, for someone else. Also - Croquembouche on Masterchef next week! eeee!
Elbow: We are planning *clap* we, we are planning *clap* we are planning!
Friend: i’ll ask for his number ...
Elbow: Thanks friend who I don't know ... or do I? You're helping me out greatly. After this, we shall be the greatest of friends
Max: He is a god-fearing man who is obviously fine with bending certain commandments for justice. We salute you, my Friend ...
Friend: bend commandments? i thought you just needed an eraser. the guy just works at a stationery store ...
Archie: you're not trying to rub out your younger sister are you?... though I wholeheartedly agree with the general principle
Max: Actually, both Elbow and I agree that we must dispose of this person with extreme prejudice. So an eraser may just be for starters ...
Friend in London: Bargain deal for friends. Only £500. Send cheque + details by post. Delivery 1-week maximum
Friend: i know a guy who knows a guy who might know a guy ...
Archie: I'd like to take the rare opportunity to be the good angel sitting on your right shoulder and return the advice you've often offered me: Karma's a bitch
Max: Friend, I need to talk to him
Archie, not for me, for someone else. Also - Croquembouche on Masterchef next week! eeee!
Elbow: We are planning *clap* we, we are planning *clap* we are planning!
Friend: i’ll ask for his number ...
Elbow: Thanks friend who I don't know ... or do I? You're helping me out greatly. After this, we shall be the greatest of friends
Max: He is a god-fearing man who is obviously fine with bending certain commandments for justice. We salute you, my Friend ...
Friend: bend commandments? i thought you just needed an eraser. the guy just works at a stationery store ...
Archie: you're not trying to rub out your younger sister are you?... though I wholeheartedly agree with the general principle
Max: Actually, both Elbow and I agree that we must dispose of this person with extreme prejudice. So an eraser may just be for starters ...
Friend in London: Bargain deal for friends. Only £500. Send cheque + details by post. Delivery 1-week maximum
18 November 2009
There is a long story and a short story ...
The short story is that I did my Honours Thesis in 2007 and it killed my ability to write without referencing each sentence :(
The long story is that I only ever wrote from life, usually when it was boring. I now have a frantically exciting life and writing about it bores me because it is a pretty specific lifestyle ...
I am a theatrical agent now and I spend three nights a week in the theatre and at showbiz parties. It sounds exciting, but only for me, retelling the stories of the endless partying is a cross between bragging and name-dropping, so I don't like to do it
I am starting an exercise though to get back into writing - it will not be nearly as political as it got before my thesis, but hopefully it will warm up and be interesting
The short story is that I did my Honours Thesis in 2007 and it killed my ability to write without referencing each sentence :(
The long story is that I only ever wrote from life, usually when it was boring. I now have a frantically exciting life and writing about it bores me because it is a pretty specific lifestyle ...
I am a theatrical agent now and I spend three nights a week in the theatre and at showbiz parties. It sounds exciting, but only for me, retelling the stories of the endless partying is a cross between bragging and name-dropping, so I don't like to do it
I am starting an exercise though to get back into writing - it will not be nearly as political as it got before my thesis, but hopefully it will warm up and be interesting
18 November 2005
No one can escape me on google …
I have had a rather entertaining P&O Ports week – I emailed my old boss Mike (CEO of the North American Operations of P&O Ports, including newly devastated New Orleans) and he got back to me in only three days! I am so chuffed that he was able to get to my email so quickly.
And then, in a completely unrelated incident, I was talking to our PR firm’s Senior Consultant and it turns out that he went to school with another one of the Jolly Hockey Sticks P&O Corporate Lawyers (although Campbell Mason, the lawyer in question, is actually Australian). I had to sit down I was so amused that one cannot escape anyone, and I have only lived in two cities in my short life and already I have cross-continental contacts. I had better keep behaving well and doing sterling jobs eh?
And last, but certainly not least, this same PR Consultant, Richard by name, paid me two compliments yesterday that are making me feel far more confident that I am on the right track. About ten minutes into his talk to Jim and I, he turned to Jim and asked why he was there as I seemed to have everything under control. THEN, later in his meeting with me, I was showing him my twelve-month forward planning, he told me he had never seen a Marketing Co-Coordinator with such a long view. I was surprised and told him I would have assumed you only got anywhere with some forward planning, but he assured me that looking ahead and integrating opportunities to maximise promotional potential was, in his experience, unique to me.
*phew* I keep on feeling confident that my ideas are good, but with no external mentorship, I have not yet had my suspicions confirmed. I sleep a little better now!
I have had a rather entertaining P&O Ports week – I emailed my old boss Mike (CEO of the North American Operations of P&O Ports, including newly devastated New Orleans) and he got back to me in only three days! I am so chuffed that he was able to get to my email so quickly.
And then, in a completely unrelated incident, I was talking to our PR firm’s Senior Consultant and it turns out that he went to school with another one of the Jolly Hockey Sticks P&O Corporate Lawyers (although Campbell Mason, the lawyer in question, is actually Australian). I had to sit down I was so amused that one cannot escape anyone, and I have only lived in two cities in my short life and already I have cross-continental contacts. I had better keep behaving well and doing sterling jobs eh?
And last, but certainly not least, this same PR Consultant, Richard by name, paid me two compliments yesterday that are making me feel far more confident that I am on the right track. About ten minutes into his talk to Jim and I, he turned to Jim and asked why he was there as I seemed to have everything under control. THEN, later in his meeting with me, I was showing him my twelve-month forward planning, he told me he had never seen a Marketing Co-Coordinator with such a long view. I was surprised and told him I would have assumed you only got anywhere with some forward planning, but he assured me that looking ahead and integrating opportunities to maximise promotional potential was, in his experience, unique to me.
*phew* I keep on feeling confident that my ideas are good, but with no external mentorship, I have not yet had my suspicions confirmed. I sleep a little better now!
Saturday, November 16, 2019
16 November 2004
Anyway, on to nicer things! All my bosses are away (hence the continuous emailing!) I am going to the movies. *max scrounges around for more happy stuff* I am alive, I am warm, I have chocolate.
I will get sleep tonight.
that's about it folks.
oooh! I have no more pressure on me to write that story! :-P
Here is a little one for the afternoon ...
Once upon a time, there was a Christmas light. This Christmas light had been lighting up Regent Street for four years, the first year as blue light, the second and third as a white light and the fourth year as a red light. As a red light, it sat in the far bottom-right corner of the first rank of lights off Oxford Circus. Each day this light did its thing and while adding to the sum total of the constellations of Regent Street, it also cheered one dour Australian girl who had never been so miserable in her entire life, seeing as she was used to being stupidly happy ALL the time and not just three times a week.
This red Christmas light is a friggin legend.
THE END
I am super super bored so I am going to tell you a juicy bit of Max gossip! :) *bet you CAN'T wait!*
anyway - my little English friend Sam (inappropriate outfit at my party and dislike of anyone getting more male attention than her etc) sent me a break-up email about the time I confronted her with the three times she stepped in to effectively 'steal' the guys that were talking to me. It was a surprisingly amusing email for a few reasons -
#1 She was afraid it would be difficult for me to read and that I would hate her for writing it. *grin* sorry dear, you lost me long before this! She thought that since I brought it up that it offended me, even though I patiently explained at the time that I just wanted her to see her actions from someone else's eyes.
#2 She 'didn't really want to tell me' but each guy, after coming up to chat me up, confided in her that they were now more attracted to her. Oh NO! And to think that I would rather chew off my own arm than even talk to some stupid, ugly drunk Englishman who thought she was attractive! *retch*
#3 She outlined my faults which were - too loud, too talkative, too judgemental and too rigid. *phew* I am so glad to see that she is documenting such numerous and debilitating defects, seeing as anything she finds pitiable, I am naturally proud of!
#4 I sent her a rather cold reply and I am rid of the last friend in London that does not share my moral code, with surprisingly little inconvenience to myself. In fact, she probably thinks she broke it off herself ...
And so that is the end of that little saga. It is really sad because when there are no men around and Sam is not the wriggling, giggling and pandering to the men in the area, she is really lovely. It is just that her moral code is practically the polar opposite of mine and I am determined not to surround myself with people with dangerous or offensive moral codes!
Pip and Sam were my experiments in trying to be friends with people that did things I object to morally and how they failed!
It is one of the reasons I absolutely treasure you and Sister and Wifey - I am not alone in being an outspoken, intelligent woman that refuses to be stupid and submissive. It is a lonely road isn't it, my dear? And not many men are strong enough to walk it!
I will get sleep tonight.
that's about it folks.
oooh! I have no more pressure on me to write that story! :-P
Here is a little one for the afternoon ...
Once upon a time, there was a Christmas light. This Christmas light had been lighting up Regent Street for four years, the first year as blue light, the second and third as a white light and the fourth year as a red light. As a red light, it sat in the far bottom-right corner of the first rank of lights off Oxford Circus. Each day this light did its thing and while adding to the sum total of the constellations of Regent Street, it also cheered one dour Australian girl who had never been so miserable in her entire life, seeing as she was used to being stupidly happy ALL the time and not just three times a week.
This red Christmas light is a friggin legend.
THE END
I am super super bored so I am going to tell you a juicy bit of Max gossip! :) *bet you CAN'T wait!*
anyway - my little English friend Sam (inappropriate outfit at my party and dislike of anyone getting more male attention than her etc) sent me a break-up email about the time I confronted her with the three times she stepped in to effectively 'steal' the guys that were talking to me. It was a surprisingly amusing email for a few reasons -
#1 She was afraid it would be difficult for me to read and that I would hate her for writing it. *grin* sorry dear, you lost me long before this! She thought that since I brought it up that it offended me, even though I patiently explained at the time that I just wanted her to see her actions from someone else's eyes.
#2 She 'didn't really want to tell me' but each guy, after coming up to chat me up, confided in her that they were now more attracted to her. Oh NO! And to think that I would rather chew off my own arm than even talk to some stupid, ugly drunk Englishman who thought she was attractive! *retch*
#3 She outlined my faults which were - too loud, too talkative, too judgemental and too rigid. *phew* I am so glad to see that she is documenting such numerous and debilitating defects, seeing as anything she finds pitiable, I am naturally proud of!
#4 I sent her a rather cold reply and I am rid of the last friend in London that does not share my moral code, with surprisingly little inconvenience to myself. In fact, she probably thinks she broke it off herself ...
And so that is the end of that little saga. It is really sad because when there are no men around and Sam is not the wriggling, giggling and pandering to the men in the area, she is really lovely. It is just that her moral code is practically the polar opposite of mine and I am determined not to surround myself with people with dangerous or offensive moral codes!
Pip and Sam were my experiments in trying to be friends with people that did things I object to morally and how they failed!
It is one of the reasons I absolutely treasure you and Sister and Wifey - I am not alone in being an outspoken, intelligent woman that refuses to be stupid and submissive. It is a lonely road isn't it, my dear? And not many men are strong enough to walk it!
Friday, November 15, 2019
15 November 2005
Hey Jim - I hear you have an email in the making for me ... send it through! Send it through! This is my email to you ...
The Epershand Epistle
My overheated yet undercooked thoughts for this week.
Vellum & Purple:
I am reading Terry Pratchett's 'Night Watch' and the book has me mesmerised with each page, above and beyond Pratchett's usual ability to ensorcel his reader, because the theme of this book caresses every bruise on my heart. Night Watch has our hero, Sam Vimes, now the Commander of Ankh-Morpork's Night Watch, thrown back in time to take up the role of mentor and inspiration to his younger and greener self during his first days enlisted in the Night Watch.
Pratchett is a visceral writer, his jokes are so good your appreciation rises from inside you to meet the humour streaming into your brain and the humanity of his characters is enveloping. Vimes especially is driven by a bone-deep understanding of humans and their frailties, so when you read a novel about Vimes, you find the endless permutations of your life reflected on the page.
'Night Watch' is Vimes given the chance to BE the person that shaped his younger self, to BE the person that sees all the characters of his future life moving inevitably towards the people he knows they will be. It is a bittersweet read for me because it is like I have gone back in time also, coming back to my place of two years ago and finding myself trying to unpick the impression I left behind and resew myself, as I am now, into the fabric. At first, I did this with aggressive slices and steel staples, but now I am trying to do it with little nicks and invisible silken stitches.
It is a difficult read for me also because I have stepped back into family life and been lucky, or unlucky, enough to be the new broom that has been able to sweep some nasty things out of the family closet. Each time Vimes tries to toughen up his younger self, teach him to be tougher so he can survive to become the man he is supposed to be, I think of my forceful manhandling of my parents and my siblings so they have to look at the mess they created in the last two years, trying to drag them through the eye-opening thought processes that travelling forced me into.
Once again, Pratchett has written a book that will, I suspect, mean almost too much to me.
Glockenspiel & Gallery:
I have been listening to a mix CD that Kate gave me when I left London, and particularly enjoying a song about coffee and cigarettes. The coffee shops of Perth are the only social perk that I missed in London, but now that I live in the middle of one of the nicest coffee strips in Perth, I find that coffees (well, hot chocolate for me) should be accompanied by fine conversation, and fine conversation is something I have a serious shortage of at the moment!
The learned conservation of my London friends can easily be aligned with the image of cigarettes. Cigarettes (and far-ranging topics of conversation) are discouraged or banned from most Australian clubs and pubs, are regarded as anti-social and detrimental to your (social) health, are habits that most travellers from Europe come back with and are cultivated by only the most dedicated of 'cool' people back home.
Thus I sit in a coffee shop, nursing my sinful iced-chocolate-double-ice-cream-no-ice and I wish I could share this little slice of conversation-inducing heaven with a hard-smoking Cockney Sparrow, my favourite Evangelical, or any of the other invigorating (and not necessarily chain-smoking) friends that live in the Town with No Coffee Shops.
Take & Cut:
If you haven't yet seen Elizabethtown and were intending to see it, don't. If you want to see how good the movie could have been, watch the trailer! It was trying to be Garden State, but it was scratched from the race barely 20 minutes in. It isn't even tragically bad, it is just a pretty, floppy-haired nothing, and that was just Orlando and Kirsten. There were no engaging characters AT ALL and even Susan Sarandon couldn't save the movie, though she nearly tried. No, I can't quite believe I have spent any time writing about it; I really should have stopped at the first sentence.
The only good thing about seeing the movie? The quote 'I'm going to miss your lips, and everything attached to them.' Cute, but not cute enough I'm afraid.
The movie I did enjoy was 'The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill', which was so good the theatre was sniffling and clearing their throats at the plights of parrots!
Philglass & Swigott:
I spent the last week on an incredibly indulgent run of End to End Eating Engagements, of which the majority of the dining was conducted at the superb restaurant on Cottesloe Beach, The Blue Duck. The Blue Duck is situated a mere 20m from the breaking waves and sits next to the Cottesloe Surf Club, so my three hour Saturday breakfast and my four hour Sunday lunch was spent inhaling fabulous food at not inconsiderable prices while dreamily letting my sunglasses track the bronzed bodies of the male surf lifesavers bustle around the beach in front of us.
Saturday breakfast was especially enjoyable as it was graced by genuine top totty in 'The Body', a young man who stopped the conversation of the entire balcony as he went past, and so entranced our table at the end closest to the surf club, that the lifesaver on duty started laughing at our stunned ogling. Quite embarrassing that!
Eighty & Daze:
I have an MSN friend, Jakob, a frighteningly intelligent 19-year-old Croatian who constantly humbles me with his wide-ranging world political knowledge. Our first conversation was such a success because he was able to tell me more about the treatment of Australian Aborigines than I had learnt at an Australian University.
The other day he recommended me the New Perspectives Quarterly to read, and I am here to recommend it to you … read, learn, and marvel!
http://digitalnpq.org/
And if you don't trust Jakob and I, trust the peer reviews …
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0893-7850&site=1
Old & New & Borrowed & Blue:
I have always been a very lucky little girl, which meant I was always relentlessly optimistic, I had a grand total of 30 seconds depression a year and I cried maybe twice a year if I was lucky, usually at the end of a favourite book. The world just never gave me reason to cry …
The other day I discovered an endless supply of ready-to-shed bitter tears, and they appeared because I started researching what charity work my company could be involved with. I started looking at the websites of all the charities I could find and as tales of abuse followed tales of sickness followed tales of disaster, the screen started blurring as I lost control of my usually sunny emotions and I just started crying at my desk. And the tears lasted for hours and even days now as I try to continue to do the research I needed to do.
I puzzled over this strange loss of control on the part of my more light-hearted side and finally came to the conclusion that my experience of poverty, sickness and helplessness has changed drastically since I left Perth. Firstly it is the irrefutable fact that I have seen hardship and suffering close up now, from the local beggars in London to the slums of Istanbul. I have seen it with my own eyes and now when I read about problems, it is personal for me.
Even more importantly I have seen just how bloody big the world is and how difficult it is to change and stuck a million miles from anywhere in Perth I fully understand how little I can do to help things along. When you are in the centre of it you can make a decision to do small things that help immediately. When you are far away you can only do things that rarely ever show you a tangible result.
I wait ... :)
The Epershand Epistle
My overheated yet undercooked thoughts for this week.
Vellum & Purple:
I am reading Terry Pratchett's 'Night Watch' and the book has me mesmerised with each page, above and beyond Pratchett's usual ability to ensorcel his reader, because the theme of this book caresses every bruise on my heart. Night Watch has our hero, Sam Vimes, now the Commander of Ankh-Morpork's Night Watch, thrown back in time to take up the role of mentor and inspiration to his younger and greener self during his first days enlisted in the Night Watch.
Pratchett is a visceral writer, his jokes are so good your appreciation rises from inside you to meet the humour streaming into your brain and the humanity of his characters is enveloping. Vimes especially is driven by a bone-deep understanding of humans and their frailties, so when you read a novel about Vimes, you find the endless permutations of your life reflected on the page.
'Night Watch' is Vimes given the chance to BE the person that shaped his younger self, to BE the person that sees all the characters of his future life moving inevitably towards the people he knows they will be. It is a bittersweet read for me because it is like I have gone back in time also, coming back to my place of two years ago and finding myself trying to unpick the impression I left behind and resew myself, as I am now, into the fabric. At first, I did this with aggressive slices and steel staples, but now I am trying to do it with little nicks and invisible silken stitches.
It is a difficult read for me also because I have stepped back into family life and been lucky, or unlucky, enough to be the new broom that has been able to sweep some nasty things out of the family closet. Each time Vimes tries to toughen up his younger self, teach him to be tougher so he can survive to become the man he is supposed to be, I think of my forceful manhandling of my parents and my siblings so they have to look at the mess they created in the last two years, trying to drag them through the eye-opening thought processes that travelling forced me into.
Once again, Pratchett has written a book that will, I suspect, mean almost too much to me.
Glockenspiel & Gallery:
I have been listening to a mix CD that Kate gave me when I left London, and particularly enjoying a song about coffee and cigarettes. The coffee shops of Perth are the only social perk that I missed in London, but now that I live in the middle of one of the nicest coffee strips in Perth, I find that coffees (well, hot chocolate for me) should be accompanied by fine conversation, and fine conversation is something I have a serious shortage of at the moment!
The learned conservation of my London friends can easily be aligned with the image of cigarettes. Cigarettes (and far-ranging topics of conversation) are discouraged or banned from most Australian clubs and pubs, are regarded as anti-social and detrimental to your (social) health, are habits that most travellers from Europe come back with and are cultivated by only the most dedicated of 'cool' people back home.
Thus I sit in a coffee shop, nursing my sinful iced-chocolate-double-ice-cream-no-ice and I wish I could share this little slice of conversation-inducing heaven with a hard-smoking Cockney Sparrow, my favourite Evangelical, or any of the other invigorating (and not necessarily chain-smoking) friends that live in the Town with No Coffee Shops.
Take & Cut:
If you haven't yet seen Elizabethtown and were intending to see it, don't. If you want to see how good the movie could have been, watch the trailer! It was trying to be Garden State, but it was scratched from the race barely 20 minutes in. It isn't even tragically bad, it is just a pretty, floppy-haired nothing, and that was just Orlando and Kirsten. There were no engaging characters AT ALL and even Susan Sarandon couldn't save the movie, though she nearly tried. No, I can't quite believe I have spent any time writing about it; I really should have stopped at the first sentence.
The only good thing about seeing the movie? The quote 'I'm going to miss your lips, and everything attached to them.' Cute, but not cute enough I'm afraid.
The movie I did enjoy was 'The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill', which was so good the theatre was sniffling and clearing their throats at the plights of parrots!
Philglass & Swigott:
I spent the last week on an incredibly indulgent run of End to End Eating Engagements, of which the majority of the dining was conducted at the superb restaurant on Cottesloe Beach, The Blue Duck. The Blue Duck is situated a mere 20m from the breaking waves and sits next to the Cottesloe Surf Club, so my three hour Saturday breakfast and my four hour Sunday lunch was spent inhaling fabulous food at not inconsiderable prices while dreamily letting my sunglasses track the bronzed bodies of the male surf lifesavers bustle around the beach in front of us.
Saturday breakfast was especially enjoyable as it was graced by genuine top totty in 'The Body', a young man who stopped the conversation of the entire balcony as he went past, and so entranced our table at the end closest to the surf club, that the lifesaver on duty started laughing at our stunned ogling. Quite embarrassing that!
Eighty & Daze:
I have an MSN friend, Jakob, a frighteningly intelligent 19-year-old Croatian who constantly humbles me with his wide-ranging world political knowledge. Our first conversation was such a success because he was able to tell me more about the treatment of Australian Aborigines than I had learnt at an Australian University.
The other day he recommended me the New Perspectives Quarterly to read, and I am here to recommend it to you … read, learn, and marvel!
http://digitalnpq.org/
And if you don't trust Jakob and I, trust the peer reviews …
http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journal.asp?ref=0893-7850&site=1
Old & New & Borrowed & Blue:
I have always been a very lucky little girl, which meant I was always relentlessly optimistic, I had a grand total of 30 seconds depression a year and I cried maybe twice a year if I was lucky, usually at the end of a favourite book. The world just never gave me reason to cry …
The other day I discovered an endless supply of ready-to-shed bitter tears, and they appeared because I started researching what charity work my company could be involved with. I started looking at the websites of all the charities I could find and as tales of abuse followed tales of sickness followed tales of disaster, the screen started blurring as I lost control of my usually sunny emotions and I just started crying at my desk. And the tears lasted for hours and even days now as I try to continue to do the research I needed to do.
I puzzled over this strange loss of control on the part of my more light-hearted side and finally came to the conclusion that my experience of poverty, sickness and helplessness has changed drastically since I left Perth. Firstly it is the irrefutable fact that I have seen hardship and suffering close up now, from the local beggars in London to the slums of Istanbul. I have seen it with my own eyes and now when I read about problems, it is personal for me.
Even more importantly I have seen just how bloody big the world is and how difficult it is to change and stuck a million miles from anywhere in Perth I fully understand how little I can do to help things along. When you are in the centre of it you can make a decision to do small things that help immediately. When you are far away you can only do things that rarely ever show you a tangible result.
I wait ... :)
15 November 2004
dying of the cold
Morning sweetie
You know the way I sounded this morning? Well, if you looked at my soul at the moment it would look like I sounded. I am in a great black hole of boredom and tiredness, disillusionment and loneliness. It is like I have forgotten what it is like to be happy all the time. Sometimes I listen to the complaints, bitching, derogatory and cynical comments spilling out of my mouth and I swear that I am not the person I used to be and I want to scream and cry.
I just want to go home. I want to sit in sunlight on the beach, watch unbearably happy people and know that there is nothing standing between my heart and that of those that love me but warm, brown skin.
I cannot imagine how I am going to fare this winter. I am being really bolshie about doing things I love now, I refuse to mix with people that annoy me (the Fi and Kim sagas have reached their conclusions) and I am consciously trying to get that mischievous sense of enjoying everything back. But this place sucks it ALL out of me.
Why do I have to leave my heart all black and blue to keep my mind happy? I am not sure I am the sacrificial kind I think, I cannot neglect one part of my soul for the other. I am tired, I need some sunlight and I need a goddamn hug.
*grr*
Morning sweetie
You know the way I sounded this morning? Well, if you looked at my soul at the moment it would look like I sounded. I am in a great black hole of boredom and tiredness, disillusionment and loneliness. It is like I have forgotten what it is like to be happy all the time. Sometimes I listen to the complaints, bitching, derogatory and cynical comments spilling out of my mouth and I swear that I am not the person I used to be and I want to scream and cry.
I just want to go home. I want to sit in sunlight on the beach, watch unbearably happy people and know that there is nothing standing between my heart and that of those that love me but warm, brown skin.
I cannot imagine how I am going to fare this winter. I am being really bolshie about doing things I love now, I refuse to mix with people that annoy me (the Fi and Kim sagas have reached their conclusions) and I am consciously trying to get that mischievous sense of enjoying everything back. But this place sucks it ALL out of me.
Why do I have to leave my heart all black and blue to keep my mind happy? I am not sure I am the sacrificial kind I think, I cannot neglect one part of my soul for the other. I am tired, I need some sunlight and I need a goddamn hug.
*grr*
Thursday, November 14, 2019
14 November 2012
Max has heard from the Italians regarding cooking offal; what about the Persians and the Greeks?
Wifey: The answer is yes! We cook all sort of intestines and internal organs and -a bit more disturbingly for me- testicles!
Wifey: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magiritsa
Wifey: http://kalofagas.ca/2010/04/07/kokoretsi-κοκορέτσι/
Greek in London: Oh gosh no idea! I'm vegetarian :)
Greek in Perth: I don't do offal. I'm still of the belief that offal is awful! If anyone thinks they can change my mind, however, I am willing for that challenge. I know the Greeks like pan fried chicken liver...I think it's awful. This is as far as my knowledge on offal goes lol
Max: So glad you used the Awful Offal line. I have been waiting, waiting ...
Max and Archie would like to cook brain, tongue, heart, liver, kidneys, tripe, tail, trotters, cheek, sweetbreads and blood - who has recipes they are willing to share?
Southern Italian: Find the recipe for Nduja! Ohhhh and make Trippa Alla fiorentina....
Southern Italian: And black pudding! And trotters boiled until soft and then finished in a sticky dark sauce. And poach the tongue then slice it and grill it! SO MANY CHOICES
Moses: A pie!
Max: Southern Italian you are brilliant. I will be going to your Dad! He'd be able to get me a sheep's head right?
Southern Italian: Easily. And ask him for recipes! Or ask Uncle in the front of the shop!
Northern Italian: As a vegetarian I am horrified but as an Italian I am impressed!
I have a number of good recipes from my Nonna's cookbook … let me know if you want 'Budino di Cervella' (Brain Souffle), 'Budellini di Agnello alla Lombardia" (Lamb's intestines Lombardian style), 'Coratella di Capretto' (Baby Goat Offal, Hunter style), 'Spezzatino di Interiora' (Tripe and Sweetbread Stew) … my god there are so many tripe recipes
Northern Italian: Omg I just found a recipe using donkey meat and snails …
Northern Italian: Seriously there is not one but two different Donkey Stew recipes, WHY?!?
Max: Send them through my dear! Also, we are being environmentally friendly and using ALL of the animal that has been killed
Northern Italian: Okay I will message you *after* I finish eating my ricotta and salad dinner. Feeling a little queasy right now lol
Max: You are an amazing brave vegetarian! :-)
Northern Italian: Out of all those recipes the only one I've consumed would be 'sanguinaccio' - it was actually really nice, that was years ago though!
Max: They are amazing recipes, and thank you SO MUCH for translating them for us. The chocolate blood pudding looks incredible!
Southern Italian: omg max can you email them to me too???
Northern Italian: I'll translate more this week, seriously I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the ol' family tripe recipe collection :P
Wifey: The answer is yes! We cook all sort of intestines and internal organs and -a bit more disturbingly for me- testicles!
Wifey: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magiritsa
Wifey: http://kalofagas.ca/2010/04/07/kokoretsi-κοκορέτσι/
Greek in London: Oh gosh no idea! I'm vegetarian :)
Greek in Perth: I don't do offal. I'm still of the belief that offal is awful! If anyone thinks they can change my mind, however, I am willing for that challenge. I know the Greeks like pan fried chicken liver...I think it's awful. This is as far as my knowledge on offal goes lol
Max: So glad you used the Awful Offal line. I have been waiting, waiting ...
Max and Archie would like to cook brain, tongue, heart, liver, kidneys, tripe, tail, trotters, cheek, sweetbreads and blood - who has recipes they are willing to share?
Southern Italian: Find the recipe for Nduja! Ohhhh and make Trippa Alla fiorentina....
Southern Italian: And black pudding! And trotters boiled until soft and then finished in a sticky dark sauce. And poach the tongue then slice it and grill it! SO MANY CHOICES
Moses: A pie!
Max: Southern Italian you are brilliant. I will be going to your Dad! He'd be able to get me a sheep's head right?
Southern Italian: Easily. And ask him for recipes! Or ask Uncle in the front of the shop!
Northern Italian: As a vegetarian I am horrified but as an Italian I am impressed!
I have a number of good recipes from my Nonna's cookbook … let me know if you want 'Budino di Cervella' (Brain Souffle), 'Budellini di Agnello alla Lombardia" (Lamb's intestines Lombardian style), 'Coratella di Capretto' (Baby Goat Offal, Hunter style), 'Spezzatino di Interiora' (Tripe and Sweetbread Stew) … my god there are so many tripe recipes
Northern Italian: Omg I just found a recipe using donkey meat and snails …
Northern Italian: Seriously there is not one but two different Donkey Stew recipes, WHY?!?
Max: Send them through my dear! Also, we are being environmentally friendly and using ALL of the animal that has been killed
Northern Italian: Okay I will message you *after* I finish eating my ricotta and salad dinner. Feeling a little queasy right now lol
Max: You are an amazing brave vegetarian! :-)
Northern Italian: Out of all those recipes the only one I've consumed would be 'sanguinaccio' - it was actually really nice, that was years ago though!
Max: They are amazing recipes, and thank you SO MUCH for translating them for us. The chocolate blood pudding looks incredible!
Southern Italian: omg max can you email them to me too???
Northern Italian: I'll translate more this week, seriously I haven't even begun to scratch the surface of the ol' family tripe recipe collection :P
14 November 2006
TO ASH, CHE, ELBOW, GERRY, JOEY, ROBBIE, TOM
*Right* ... so, Friday is all sorted then!
I may have mentioned *cough* that I was going to the West End for drinks with family and friends this Friday night to the young man. Actually, I only wrote 'Friday, essays handed in, West End, Brother, Friends, Drinking.'
What was his reply? Which pubs he would be in on Friday, approximately what times, the NAMES of who he was going with AND he asked if he was going to have to stay out of my way because of how much of an idiot he was to Romeo.
So girls, Friday night, I think you will all most likely get to meet the young man.
Your holy mission, however, is this:
The group picks the pub - I *NEVER* get to say 'We should go' because the young man is not there.
You girls pinch me if I survey the door too much!
And when he arrives, as is inevitable he will at some point during the night, I MUST NOT STIR ONE FOOT TO MEET THE ENEMY! If you see me even *twitch* in the direction of a tall, attractive brunet that looks like all those photos you have seen, PLEASE lean over and latch onto my arm for grim death.
If indeed he does arrive and decides to come over, the grilling is ALL yours, girls! :)
And that is about the size and the shape of it.
Off to try and pretend I care about a whole lot of things at work, when I really, REALLY don't.
*Right* ... so, Friday is all sorted then!
I may have mentioned *cough* that I was going to the West End for drinks with family and friends this Friday night to the young man. Actually, I only wrote 'Friday, essays handed in, West End, Brother, Friends, Drinking.'
What was his reply? Which pubs he would be in on Friday, approximately what times, the NAMES of who he was going with AND he asked if he was going to have to stay out of my way because of how much of an idiot he was to Romeo.
So girls, Friday night, I think you will all most likely get to meet the young man.
Your holy mission, however, is this:
The group picks the pub - I *NEVER* get to say 'We should go' because the young man is not there.
You girls pinch me if I survey the door too much!
And when he arrives, as is inevitable he will at some point during the night, I MUST NOT STIR ONE FOOT TO MEET THE ENEMY! If you see me even *twitch* in the direction of a tall, attractive brunet that looks like all those photos you have seen, PLEASE lean over and latch onto my arm for grim death.
If indeed he does arrive and decides to come over, the grilling is ALL yours, girls! :)
And that is about the size and the shape of it.
Off to try and pretend I care about a whole lot of things at work, when I really, REALLY don't.
Monday, November 11, 2019
11 November 2006
Notice of Intention
Wifey, Sister - thank you for lending me your ears this afternoon.
It is incredibly important to me that you both heard what I decided today because you two have seen me reach my dreams (a visa) and seen it taken away from me the next day. In London you met the Max that was living the life she wanted, you saw me free and powerful and able to reach my almost impossible goals through sheer will and work.
I was re-reading my diary the other day and I found an entry where I recorded that you, Sister, told me in no uncertain terms that you just knew I was going to get a visa. And you were right, so right.
And Wifey, I cannot adequately describe the pleasure your marriage to your husband brings to me, that night you two first met was such an extraordinary meeting of otherwise separate people that resulted in something beautiful. That I was able to start off such a string of events is an incredible treasure in my heart.
In an extraordinary convergence of fate I have in my sight exactly what I want in life, and I am going to take it, no faltering, no mistakes.
And I will be inspired by my wifey and my sister as I reach out because I know that the person you know is capable of anything she puts her mind to.
On a lighter note, my GOD the boy is incredibly hot! :) On Monday he came in to see me and as he left he thought of something else he needed to say and came running back up the corridor towards me. Seeing that incredible body moving towards me at that loping footballer's run was truly an awesome sight! *grin* Sometimes I wonder how I could have POSSIBLY been good enough to be rewarded with him. I think some forms got mixed up in the Man Allocation Office ...
Not that I am complaining!
much distracted love
Wifey, Sister - thank you for lending me your ears this afternoon.
It is incredibly important to me that you both heard what I decided today because you two have seen me reach my dreams (a visa) and seen it taken away from me the next day. In London you met the Max that was living the life she wanted, you saw me free and powerful and able to reach my almost impossible goals through sheer will and work.
I was re-reading my diary the other day and I found an entry where I recorded that you, Sister, told me in no uncertain terms that you just knew I was going to get a visa. And you were right, so right.
And Wifey, I cannot adequately describe the pleasure your marriage to your husband brings to me, that night you two first met was such an extraordinary meeting of otherwise separate people that resulted in something beautiful. That I was able to start off such a string of events is an incredible treasure in my heart.
In an extraordinary convergence of fate I have in my sight exactly what I want in life, and I am going to take it, no faltering, no mistakes.
And I will be inspired by my wifey and my sister as I reach out because I know that the person you know is capable of anything she puts her mind to.
On a lighter note, my GOD the boy is incredibly hot! :) On Monday he came in to see me and as he left he thought of something else he needed to say and came running back up the corridor towards me. Seeing that incredible body moving towards me at that loping footballer's run was truly an awesome sight! *grin* Sometimes I wonder how I could have POSSIBLY been good enough to be rewarded with him. I think some forms got mixed up in the Man Allocation Office ...
Not that I am complaining!
much distracted love
11 November 2005
M
Hey there. Here we go.
Your quick-she's-back-let's-get-her-hitched story gave me a chuckle.
a) because I'm distanced from it and
b) cos I know you'll be able to handle it, even if you're finding it difficult at times.
Those new guys sound pretty nice. I'm waiting for more info, when you're ready to tell me.
I've been going close to my limits most days recently. Work-wise, business-wise and personally. I've been doing daily goal setting and as such I'm seeing continual improvement just happen, almost by magic.
On the weekend I went to a painting and tarot workshop. I found it interesting. (who'd have thought *I'd* say that hey?) Basically we pulled a tarot card and that was our theme. We then started fingerpainting on huge 2x2 meter pages and then used those paintings to see what comes up.
[excised for privacy purposes]
Jesus! 11 massive paragraphs about women. Not how I intended this email, but the raw truth of what's going on in me *right now*.
I'm also seeing my businesses grow. More on that later - I have a singing lesson to go to, and a teacher to convert into a friend.
MAX
That was a bit epic, but I think you know what you are doing.
To me, she sounds Great, and Great is wonderful as long as you don't hurt Great when Perfect comes along. Great is the kind of person you want to make sure you look after, be very truthful with and Great is the partner you want to treat with the utmost respect when you leave her, because Great can also be the kind of ex-Great that you can be proud of.
As soon as you are treating her as less than Great you leave her because she is also the kind of person you don't want to mistreat, it is bad karma. If you start treating Great people badly, it can lead to nasty habits etc.
So I reckon bear those three things in mind, treat her well while you have her, treat her VERY well when you leave and leave as soon as you know you are not treating her as you should. Hopefully, when you find Perfect you will never need to keep those three things in mind!
And why am I saying THIS instead of the myriad of things I could say? Because I met my first ever boyfriend (before my best boyfriend, you would have met him at my Halloween Party) for lunch on Tuesday and was forcefully reminded that I have only gone out with men that I can be very proud of, that he and I are utterly perfect for each other bar the sexual chemistry, and that two of my three were Great in intellect and personality but only one of my three was Great in love. Thank god I treated them all as outlined above eh? While mistakes were made, at least I came out of it with three ex-Greats.
I wonder if the next Great will be along soon, or if it will be my Perfect.
And as for your questions about HOW, well, let's just agree that we will never know, all we can do is hope and treat everyone in the manner that you would like to effortlessly treat your Perfect, because then you will not miss your Perfect when she comes along.
M
Very true.
Your point about treating them as you should, or as with Perfect you will automatically do, rang loudly for me … and then you've also added to it. About doing things effortlessly, I'd been thinking that, but saw that seeing as that wasn't the case, it was an indication that she wasn't Perfect, therefore bad. You've given me words that changed this from a bad thing to a good thing. Nice work Bell.
Oh and I spoke with my singing teacher, and told her I'd be better with her as a friend, and she's ok with that. In fact it made things easier between us - probably tantamount to how we were both unconsciously putting pressure on ourselves with a relationship.
Sex, lust, romance, love. Such big things that affect us deeply to our core of who we are - and come from our core ...
Hey there. Here we go.
Your quick-she's-back-let's-get-her-hitched story gave me a chuckle.
a) because I'm distanced from it and
b) cos I know you'll be able to handle it, even if you're finding it difficult at times.
Those new guys sound pretty nice. I'm waiting for more info, when you're ready to tell me.
I've been going close to my limits most days recently. Work-wise, business-wise and personally. I've been doing daily goal setting and as such I'm seeing continual improvement just happen, almost by magic.
On the weekend I went to a painting and tarot workshop. I found it interesting. (who'd have thought *I'd* say that hey?) Basically we pulled a tarot card and that was our theme. We then started fingerpainting on huge 2x2 meter pages and then used those paintings to see what comes up.
[excised for privacy purposes]
Jesus! 11 massive paragraphs about women. Not how I intended this email, but the raw truth of what's going on in me *right now*.
I'm also seeing my businesses grow. More on that later - I have a singing lesson to go to, and a teacher to convert into a friend.
MAX
That was a bit epic, but I think you know what you are doing.
To me, she sounds Great, and Great is wonderful as long as you don't hurt Great when Perfect comes along. Great is the kind of person you want to make sure you look after, be very truthful with and Great is the partner you want to treat with the utmost respect when you leave her, because Great can also be the kind of ex-Great that you can be proud of.
As soon as you are treating her as less than Great you leave her because she is also the kind of person you don't want to mistreat, it is bad karma. If you start treating Great people badly, it can lead to nasty habits etc.
So I reckon bear those three things in mind, treat her well while you have her, treat her VERY well when you leave and leave as soon as you know you are not treating her as you should. Hopefully, when you find Perfect you will never need to keep those three things in mind!
And why am I saying THIS instead of the myriad of things I could say? Because I met my first ever boyfriend (before my best boyfriend, you would have met him at my Halloween Party) for lunch on Tuesday and was forcefully reminded that I have only gone out with men that I can be very proud of, that he and I are utterly perfect for each other bar the sexual chemistry, and that two of my three were Great in intellect and personality but only one of my three was Great in love. Thank god I treated them all as outlined above eh? While mistakes were made, at least I came out of it with three ex-Greats.
I wonder if the next Great will be along soon, or if it will be my Perfect.
And as for your questions about HOW, well, let's just agree that we will never know, all we can do is hope and treat everyone in the manner that you would like to effortlessly treat your Perfect, because then you will not miss your Perfect when she comes along.
M
Very true.
Your point about treating them as you should, or as with Perfect you will automatically do, rang loudly for me … and then you've also added to it. About doing things effortlessly, I'd been thinking that, but saw that seeing as that wasn't the case, it was an indication that she wasn't Perfect, therefore bad. You've given me words that changed this from a bad thing to a good thing. Nice work Bell.
Oh and I spoke with my singing teacher, and told her I'd be better with her as a friend, and she's ok with that. In fact it made things easier between us - probably tantamount to how we were both unconsciously putting pressure on ourselves with a relationship.
Sex, lust, romance, love. Such big things that affect us deeply to our core of who we are - and come from our core ...
Sunday, November 10, 2019
10 November 2010
Max thinks Dean will be happy to know that she has been having a really good week with the Chocolate Military ...
Dean: i hope this isn't what i think it is … or that is IS … details! (and PHOTOS) :) :) :) <3 <3 <3 xxox
Max: hahahaha, no, not as good as one would hope, but pleasant nevertheless! I just had to mention it seeing as the expression charmed me by itself, and when I was chatting to the lovely 'Soldiers' in question, it was just so perfect
Dean: ahahaahhaahahahahah
sweet kimchee pickles, i hope u didn't call them that. to their (sweet, chocolatey) faces
Max: No, worse! I was letting my mouth go on automatic as my brain was chanting 'don't call them chocolate military, don't call them anything silly, keep your eyes up.' It is a blessing and a curse that my brain and my mouth are so seldom actually connected to each other ...
Dean: AHAHAHA
"keep your eyes up"
hahaahhahahaaaahahahahahahaha
<3 <3 <3
Max: see, I am really good at eye-contact and just sharpening the old peripheral vision ... professional, you may say :)
Dean: i fcking LOVE it !!! hahaha!!
if only they taught us these life skills in school
Max: Methinks there is no learning of these skills darls, one is born with them or not at all! It is a skill I got from my Mum actually ...
Dean: all i got from my mum was a really fast walk :(
Dean: that sounds harsh. there are other things i scored too - but nothing of the "eyes above waist" skillset
Max: perhaps I will run a residential weekend, which will be spent on the beach sans sunglasses to teach these essential skills ...
Max: Also, dude, eyes above NECK! *tsk* see, that's where you are going wrong ...
Dean: AHAHAHAHAHA
my bad, my bad. what an amateur. Hahahahaha
Dean: i hope this isn't what i think it is … or that is IS … details! (and PHOTOS) :) :) :) <3 <3 <3 xxox
Max: hahahaha, no, not as good as one would hope, but pleasant nevertheless! I just had to mention it seeing as the expression charmed me by itself, and when I was chatting to the lovely 'Soldiers' in question, it was just so perfect
Dean: ahahaahhaahahahahah
sweet kimchee pickles, i hope u didn't call them that. to their (sweet, chocolatey) faces
Max: No, worse! I was letting my mouth go on automatic as my brain was chanting 'don't call them chocolate military, don't call them anything silly, keep your eyes up.' It is a blessing and a curse that my brain and my mouth are so seldom actually connected to each other ...
Dean: AHAHAHA
"keep your eyes up"
hahaahhahahaaaahahahahahahaha
<3 <3 <3
Max: see, I am really good at eye-contact and just sharpening the old peripheral vision ... professional, you may say :)
Dean: i fcking LOVE it !!! hahaha!!
if only they taught us these life skills in school
Max: Methinks there is no learning of these skills darls, one is born with them or not at all! It is a skill I got from my Mum actually ...
Dean: all i got from my mum was a really fast walk :(
Dean: that sounds harsh. there are other things i scored too - but nothing of the "eyes above waist" skillset
Max: perhaps I will run a residential weekend, which will be spent on the beach sans sunglasses to teach these essential skills ...
Max: Also, dude, eyes above NECK! *tsk* see, that's where you are going wrong ...
Dean: AHAHAHAHAHA
my bad, my bad. what an amateur. Hahahahaha
Saturday, November 09, 2019
9 November 2007
*lol* AAAANNNNDDD I'm pretty sure it would take a minor miracle on my behalf to become taller, skinner, have bigger boobs, leopard print top, super tan and REALLY straight black hair! :P
I've seen him out and about and the girls he is with *shakes head* no, I think I shall forever be grinning lasciviously at him from a distance ... although my mother does like him! :)
Goddess Max knows her audience! Goddess Max goes to out on Saturdays and has to fend off 22-year-old emos ... my Saturday night at Amps was hilarious, nearly giving myself a heart attack when I tried to get rid of the 22-year-olds by saying I was closer to 27 than 26.
ARGH! When did I get this OLD? :) On the other hand, toyboys are so in right now and I just need to get over the stigma of snogging around my sister’s age ...
No, indeed, more horrifying things to do with boys have overtaken me since him, making him merely the start of a rather horrid pattern of six useless men, the last two I was able to spot a mile away and avoid neatly because I can now see them coming.
Ah, what can I say? I hope I have quashed all apparent attractions I may have for men who wish to muck around. Yes indeed. Those 22-year-olds are getting the 'settling down' vibe off me big time methinks.
I've seen him out and about and the girls he is with *shakes head* no, I think I shall forever be grinning lasciviously at him from a distance ... although my mother does like him! :)
Goddess Max knows her audience! Goddess Max goes to out on Saturdays and has to fend off 22-year-old emos ... my Saturday night at Amps was hilarious, nearly giving myself a heart attack when I tried to get rid of the 22-year-olds by saying I was closer to 27 than 26.
ARGH! When did I get this OLD? :) On the other hand, toyboys are so in right now and I just need to get over the stigma of snogging around my sister’s age ...
No, indeed, more horrifying things to do with boys have overtaken me since him, making him merely the start of a rather horrid pattern of six useless men, the last two I was able to spot a mile away and avoid neatly because I can now see them coming.
Ah, what can I say? I hope I have quashed all apparent attractions I may have for men who wish to muck around. Yes indeed. Those 22-year-olds are getting the 'settling down' vibe off me big time methinks.
Friday, November 08, 2019
8 November 2015
From: MAX
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2014
To: vf@hotmail.com
Subject: Attractive
There you are then said Hermione in a superior tone They see the Grim and die of fright
you've one private email from buddy
Click here to view email
<vf@hotmail.com>
Fri, Aug 1, 2014
to MAX
RE: Attractive
This address does not accept emails from malicious and discontent spinsters.
MAX
Fri, Aug 1, 2014
to VF
So glad you saw it was a virus!
Hi V
I was watching the emails leave my sent mail in horror, so glad you knew it was a virus - why they are using Hermione as a quote is beyond me :(
Did you enjoy the IAS lecture I saw you at?
Max
MAX
Fri, Aug 1, 2014, 4:14 PM
to person whose email I opened to get the virus
The one TOTALLY AWESOME thing that came out of the hacking
OMG, you have to see what happened from that spam email debacle!!
The girl below was super close friends with me for four weeks in 2010, then she disappeared from the face of the earth.
THEN I got the reply below to the spam ...
Now, she is either making a joke about the quote from Hermione, which wouldn't make a lot of sense ... or ...
SHE IS THROWING SHADE AT ME!!
And it delights me because I still don't know what happened for her to disappear, but obviously it is something I said about boyfriends (neither of us had one at the time, not that it mattered)
AND, she thinks she has insulted me, when she has actually complimented me. And backhand insulted herself by inferring that relationship status is something so important to her that it is open to insult.
MAX
"This address does not accept emails from malicious and discontent spinsters."
Nov 4, 2015
to VF
V - I just wanted to thank you for your excellent reply to this spam email!
The comment has gone on to become a rather fabulous story, and been used to elicit much amusement from my friends.
I have included some screenshots of its starring role in some jokes.
I hope you are having a wonderful day
Max
VF
Sun, Nov 8, 2015
to MAX
Wel it captured the spirit of the intended receipt well, obviously. Otherwise instead it would have to be worded that this email address doesn't accept spam from discontent women who do everything within their power to break up relationships and make accusations that have far-reaching consequences.
Obviously, your actions speak louder than words ever will and the fact you've had to reply nearly a year later proves a case in point to your unhappy life. Now, do fuck off.
MAX
Sun, Nov 8, 2015
to VF
V - have you mistaken me for someone else who actually knew you?
I can't imagine how I could have so much power in your life in less than a handful of meetings and no contact in five years. You literally didn't know me at all then and don't know me since … so why all this anger?
Have you talked to someone about this displacement of your own problems onto complete strangers from the past? It seems not conducive for your own ability to stay happy or healthy.
I hope you are able to find some peace with yourself, because I cannot imagine how your response to my clearly spam email after five years of no contact, and such a quick acquaintance of almost no depth, was warranted.
Although your response was turned to good use, and I have let you know that it continues to live on, so thank you, again, for excellent material!
hacked hacked <vf@hotmail.com>
Sun, Nov 8, 2015
to MAX
Claire, the question is why are you contacting someone whom you don't know and only met a handful of times from five years ago? Very odd and quite honestly disturbing, hence the fuck off.
MAX
Nov 8, 2015
to hacked
Ah, but I didn't contact you, my love, you contacted me over a spam email.
I do have to ask though, what did I say that has such a strong hold over you after so long?
VF
Mon, Nov 9, 2015
to MAX
Re: "This address does not accept emails from malicious and discontent spinsters who attempt to subvert their palpable rage and indignation by continually harassing people they don't know. In such circumstances may one suggest online dating, perhaps?"
MAX
Mon, Nov 9, 2015, 7:53 AM
to VF
Now I think we are getting to the crux of the matter
V
This is very, very intriguing.
All I remember of our last meeting is that we discussed a man I didn't know in passing.
You presented all the pertinent details, and going on the fact that those were the details you told me (since I didn't know the dude), I put forward an opinion based on the facts you told me.
I don't remember the dude, the details or the opinion, I just know I never saw you again.
Until your reply to my spam email, I just assumed we had parted because of natural causes - I remember seeing you at UWA and saying hello because I was happy to see you.
The thing I found most intriguing about your reply to the email is that since you knew me for such a short time, and had not witnessed my life since then, your reply told me more about you than me.
You decided that you wanted to tell me the worst about myself, but you revealed what you hated most about yourself. You don't know my life now, so how could you craft a real insult?
Instead you crafted a really awesome sentence that was about you and some need you have for confession and cleansing.
Now, your replies have been REALLY clear that this is about men, partnerships and some kind of trust issues.
So, some questions:
1. Considering I didn't know the guy talked about, or any of your male friends, how did I affect them in regards to you?
2. Have I subsequently been involved with one of your male friends or partners since? If so, I did not know that they were your partner or friend.
3. If I have been involved with your partner, I can assure you that he was cheating on you, as all my partners are explicitly told I don't sleep with other women's partners unless that partner is with us.
I understand the pain of not having a monogamous male partner when you want one, I see it in my friends all the time, and I wish you well in finding what you want.
Essentially, why I loved your reply, and used it to great comic effect, is because being called a spinster is a great compliment to me, as I have always been and will alway be a spinster.
I am also non-monogamous, heteroflexible and I have a very well ordered and fulfilling sexual life that helps keep my successful writing career on track.
If the well-ordered sex life has hurt you unwittingly on my behalf I do apologise, but I try very hard to screen for cheaters.
All the best with everything going forward.
Max, spinster of the parish (it's a feature, not a bug!)
Date: Thu, 31 Jul 2014
To: vf@hotmail.com
Subject: Attractive
There you are then said Hermione in a superior tone They see the Grim and die of fright
you've one private email from buddy
Click here to view email
<vf@hotmail.com>
Fri, Aug 1, 2014
to MAX
RE: Attractive
This address does not accept emails from malicious and discontent spinsters.
MAX
Fri, Aug 1, 2014
to VF
So glad you saw it was a virus!
Hi V
I was watching the emails leave my sent mail in horror, so glad you knew it was a virus - why they are using Hermione as a quote is beyond me :(
Did you enjoy the IAS lecture I saw you at?
Max
MAX
Fri, Aug 1, 2014, 4:14 PM
to person whose email I opened to get the virus
The one TOTALLY AWESOME thing that came out of the hacking
OMG, you have to see what happened from that spam email debacle!!
The girl below was super close friends with me for four weeks in 2010, then she disappeared from the face of the earth.
THEN I got the reply below to the spam ...
Now, she is either making a joke about the quote from Hermione, which wouldn't make a lot of sense ... or ...
SHE IS THROWING SHADE AT ME!!
And it delights me because I still don't know what happened for her to disappear, but obviously it is something I said about boyfriends (neither of us had one at the time, not that it mattered)
AND, she thinks she has insulted me, when she has actually complimented me. And backhand insulted herself by inferring that relationship status is something so important to her that it is open to insult.
MAX
"This address does not accept emails from malicious and discontent spinsters."
Nov 4, 2015
to VF
V - I just wanted to thank you for your excellent reply to this spam email!
The comment has gone on to become a rather fabulous story, and been used to elicit much amusement from my friends.
I have included some screenshots of its starring role in some jokes.
I hope you are having a wonderful day
Max
Sun, Nov 8, 2015
to MAX
Wel it captured the spirit of the intended receipt well, obviously. Otherwise instead it would have to be worded that this email address doesn't accept spam from discontent women who do everything within their power to break up relationships and make accusations that have far-reaching consequences.
Obviously, your actions speak louder than words ever will and the fact you've had to reply nearly a year later proves a case in point to your unhappy life. Now, do fuck off.
MAX
Sun, Nov 8, 2015
to VF
V - have you mistaken me for someone else who actually knew you?
I can't imagine how I could have so much power in your life in less than a handful of meetings and no contact in five years. You literally didn't know me at all then and don't know me since … so why all this anger?
Have you talked to someone about this displacement of your own problems onto complete strangers from the past? It seems not conducive for your own ability to stay happy or healthy.
I hope you are able to find some peace with yourself, because I cannot imagine how your response to my clearly spam email after five years of no contact, and such a quick acquaintance of almost no depth, was warranted.
Although your response was turned to good use, and I have let you know that it continues to live on, so thank you, again, for excellent material!
hacked hacked <vf@hotmail.com>
Sun, Nov 8, 2015
to MAX
Claire, the question is why are you contacting someone whom you don't know and only met a handful of times from five years ago? Very odd and quite honestly disturbing, hence the fuck off.
MAX
Nov 8, 2015
to hacked
Ah, but I didn't contact you, my love, you contacted me over a spam email.
I do have to ask though, what did I say that has such a strong hold over you after so long?
VF
Mon, Nov 9, 2015
to MAX
Re: "This address does not accept emails from malicious and discontent spinsters who attempt to subvert their palpable rage and indignation by continually harassing people they don't know. In such circumstances may one suggest online dating, perhaps?"
MAX
Mon, Nov 9, 2015, 7:53 AM
to VF
Now I think we are getting to the crux of the matter
V
This is very, very intriguing.
All I remember of our last meeting is that we discussed a man I didn't know in passing.
You presented all the pertinent details, and going on the fact that those were the details you told me (since I didn't know the dude), I put forward an opinion based on the facts you told me.
I don't remember the dude, the details or the opinion, I just know I never saw you again.
Until your reply to my spam email, I just assumed we had parted because of natural causes - I remember seeing you at UWA and saying hello because I was happy to see you.
The thing I found most intriguing about your reply to the email is that since you knew me for such a short time, and had not witnessed my life since then, your reply told me more about you than me.
You decided that you wanted to tell me the worst about myself, but you revealed what you hated most about yourself. You don't know my life now, so how could you craft a real insult?
Instead you crafted a really awesome sentence that was about you and some need you have for confession and cleansing.
Now, your replies have been REALLY clear that this is about men, partnerships and some kind of trust issues.
So, some questions:
1. Considering I didn't know the guy talked about, or any of your male friends, how did I affect them in regards to you?
2. Have I subsequently been involved with one of your male friends or partners since? If so, I did not know that they were your partner or friend.
3. If I have been involved with your partner, I can assure you that he was cheating on you, as all my partners are explicitly told I don't sleep with other women's partners unless that partner is with us.
I understand the pain of not having a monogamous male partner when you want one, I see it in my friends all the time, and I wish you well in finding what you want.
Essentially, why I loved your reply, and used it to great comic effect, is because being called a spinster is a great compliment to me, as I have always been and will alway be a spinster.
I am also non-monogamous, heteroflexible and I have a very well ordered and fulfilling sexual life that helps keep my successful writing career on track.
If the well-ordered sex life has hurt you unwittingly on my behalf I do apologise, but I try very hard to screen for cheaters.
All the best with everything going forward.
Max, spinster of the parish (it's a feature, not a bug!)
8 November 2006
THIS is how you do an Engineering Class ...
FRITZ
trollop! you have them eating out of your hand.
I was thinking of you two nights ago actually. I was watching the mummy, and realised finally who Rachael Weisz reminded me of ;-)
MAX
I prefer strumpet or lusty wench thanks. Well, that night I felt a lot like you must have felt when you first met me all those years ago - older, wiser, and so not going there!
Ooooooh, pretty compliment, that I will take with pleasure, thank you, sir. My favourite sayings of hers are:
I bet you're thinking, what's a place like me doing in a girl like this?
and
I'm a Librarian!
What a girl.
Yes, very pretty compliment - cheers.
FRITZ
how do you know when I met you I was "so not going there"? The presumption.
oh the presumption. maybe I thought I never stood a chance and was just protecting myself from rejection by not even trying.
;-P
Yes, she's quite a hottie. You two have the same smile and some similar mannerisms. you're welcome.
MAX
As if life COULDN'T get any more complicated - I went down Hampden Road today and I just *knew* I would see Fritz, because lately everything I expect to happen, bloody happens.
So, there he was. There we stood. There we chatted. I promised to send him an email - I sent him one with an attachment of photos of me and, oh, fifteen young men - that was the bottom email.
The rest is my direct statement technique trying to get out of him what he is after.
Yes, just when I needed the quiet.
Oh, and if that is not enough, I can feel in my BONES that An Old Crush will be wanting to catch up before he goes on the 16th. Friggin' bloody boys
CHE
I just had Jimbo get a bit hot under the collar. Fortunately, he calmed down faced with my implacable ignorance of it.
Me is confused. Did you two ever get it on? was it ever acknowledged/talked about? I haven't seen a Rachael movie, I couldn't say whether he tells the truth.
MAX
Oh, Bugger. I hate it when bosses get angry. Glad you sorted it out though.
Oh, since about 3 months after we met after he told me he knew I liked him and he would never go out with me, there was no further discussion and I dealt with it.
When I got home from London he pulled serious moves on me and I played it blissfully ignorant as if it was all the same as when I left.
He is escalating, he gets physically close - showing me martial arts 'moves' that require some serious groping, when I went to his gig he would get off the stage and sing to me (you should have seen the crusty groupies hate THAT move). And the compliments have been VERY, VERY prolific, even Elbow raises her eyebrows at them.
He is getting frustrated that I am taking his word of 2002 and not trying again. Men are SO predictable.
It's a pity that not trying again because ‘I know that he will be bad for me’ is interpreted now as playing hard to get. Sometimes 32-year-olds cannot keep their mind off jailbait I suppose.
My life is pathetically exciting at the moment. It's like old times, except with a more exhausted Max trying to get off the merry-go-round, but she just can't help herself.
MAX
And for the last five months I have been VERY careful not to let three men at ADI know how close I work to them - Carl, Fritz and Richard. For very good reasons - I can't have the past problems start up because it makes sense for us to meet up for lunch again. I just can't handle it, I really can't.
But I can feel the crash coming, I can feel that there is going to be something that will make life horrendously interesting very near in the future. I can just FEEL karma lining me up for interesting times.
And the weirdest thing is, I have been feeling it for the last two months and each time I expect an escalation, it arrives, and it arrives in style. It is like finally, I have enough experience to feel the currents that lie under the smooth surface of my social web in Perth. It is such a strange feeling, but I am glad I can see it for what it is, at least I have some warning this time.
I dunno, right now I feel a lot like I did when I first got back, that this town will crush me with the weight of the expectations of the people who know me. And no matter how reclusive I have been, even my much-reduced circle of friends is becoming problematic.
You should see the boys when they came in today to see me in dribs and drabs for the first time since last Wednesday - they all knew that I had seen them having a lot of fun - and MAN did they look sheepish. It was VERY, very amusing. Goran was in too, but he was with a group so I couldn't be especially nice to him because it would have been too obvious. But the more I hear about him, the more I wish I had turned him down with more grace than I did.
I have a lot to learn I guess.
Anyway, I am not sure I could pack ANY more adventures into today, but you know, there are still a few more hours before I go to bed. I dunno, I could still run into someone mortifyingly connected to me and top it all off nicely.
Actually, I make a bet now that before tomorrow morning there will be a long email in my inbox from Morgan, because Gidget and I have had some FASCINATING emails and chats today. She read my blog and was very impressed ... I REALLY do like her! :p
*blerg* that is me done for today - over-excited really.
MAX
Anyway, I am not sure I could pack ANY more adventures into today, but you know, there are still a few more hours before I go to bed. I dunno, I could still run into someone mortifyingly connected to me and top it all off nicely.
Yup, prophetic words. Stayed in the office until 9 and rang Elbow and was sending her photos of last Wednesday when she suddenly recognised one of the boys draped over me! It was a classmate of Timbon AND he used to go to Mass at the Cathedral each Sunday with us for years ... I am really quite entertained ... I knew he was vaguely familiar, it's just the last time I saw him he was about 15.
It is pretty mortifying now to see the photo of him kissing my cheek and to re-read the cheeky emails we have been exchanging since Wednesday (all above board needless to say, but certainly cheeky) and think that we are VERY old acquaintances. A brilliantly embarrassing end to an incredibly Perth day.
8 November 2004
This weekend I went to Paris again to help a friend celebrate her birthday and because her boyfriend was in America and there was a free bed. It was so nice to be back in such a short time – seeing her again, drinking on Rue du Lappe for two nights in a row, travelling metro lines that were now familiar and seeing the roofs, spires and statues that were so fresh last visit and seem homely the second time.
The visit was perhaps slightly better than the first one as I was not sick, I knew the ropes and I got to talk to and party with young people that knew Paris better than I did. Her friends were mostly English with a smattering of Vietnamese, Canadians Germans and Greeks, and they were all there for placements in their University language degrees. This was great, not only for the fact I again had translators for more effortless communication, but the company was well travelled and very intelligent.
On Friday we went to Versailles, spending an hour in the State Apartments and three hours in the gardens. The gardens were quite an adventure as we meandered in circles trying to see most the vast grounds. We spent an inordinate amount of time in the Queen's Hamlet – a custom-built village in the grounds with fantastically quaint houses, canals, bridges, vegetable gardens and fields. It was basically a full-scale dolls village and we were so enchanted we made grand plans to rent it out and have a dress-up weekend party. We miscalculated the time somewhat and had to head back across half the garden in the dusk and settling dark, which was a cold and dark journey that rewarded us with the spectacular sight of the palace illuminated for the night.
On Saturday we went shopping. Or rather I went shopping. There is only one purchase I can confirm and that was the completion of my holy mission for both my trips to Paris – the purchase of the ultimate pair of black boots. Photo attached. Aren't they LUVVERLY?
Saturday night was her party and we went out to a superb and fantastically cheap meal and then out to their local, Rue du Lappe for late-night drinks. We ended up in a funky, red velvet upholstered bar with a bar whose lights hung under lampshades of cymbals that were set swaying and chiming by bartenders with drumsticks. True to form, when in another country all together I was chatted up by a rather cute Irishman. Can't escape 'em.
Sunday all the Parisien attractions and museums were free, so we went to Musee D'Orsay and due to limited time we decided on the Impressionists and the Art Nouveau galleries. I got to stand in front of glowing Renoirs, halcyon Monets and walls covered in vibrant Toulouse-Lautrec sketches. The Art Nouveau galleries were filled with gorgeous furniture that was so gracefully shaped it looked more grown from than carved from the wood.
The visit was perhaps slightly better than the first one as I was not sick, I knew the ropes and I got to talk to and party with young people that knew Paris better than I did. Her friends were mostly English with a smattering of Vietnamese, Canadians Germans and Greeks, and they were all there for placements in their University language degrees. This was great, not only for the fact I again had translators for more effortless communication, but the company was well travelled and very intelligent.
On Friday we went to Versailles, spending an hour in the State Apartments and three hours in the gardens. The gardens were quite an adventure as we meandered in circles trying to see most the vast grounds. We spent an inordinate amount of time in the Queen's Hamlet – a custom-built village in the grounds with fantastically quaint houses, canals, bridges, vegetable gardens and fields. It was basically a full-scale dolls village and we were so enchanted we made grand plans to rent it out and have a dress-up weekend party. We miscalculated the time somewhat and had to head back across half the garden in the dusk and settling dark, which was a cold and dark journey that rewarded us with the spectacular sight of the palace illuminated for the night.
On Saturday we went shopping. Or rather I went shopping. There is only one purchase I can confirm and that was the completion of my holy mission for both my trips to Paris – the purchase of the ultimate pair of black boots. Photo attached. Aren't they LUVVERLY?
Saturday night was her party and we went out to a superb and fantastically cheap meal and then out to their local, Rue du Lappe for late-night drinks. We ended up in a funky, red velvet upholstered bar with a bar whose lights hung under lampshades of cymbals that were set swaying and chiming by bartenders with drumsticks. True to form, when in another country all together I was chatted up by a rather cute Irishman. Can't escape 'em.
Sunday all the Parisien attractions and museums were free, so we went to Musee D'Orsay and due to limited time we decided on the Impressionists and the Art Nouveau galleries. I got to stand in front of glowing Renoirs, halcyon Monets and walls covered in vibrant Toulouse-Lautrec sketches. The Art Nouveau galleries were filled with gorgeous furniture that was so gracefully shaped it looked more grown from than carved from the wood.
Thursday, November 07, 2019
7 November 2008
the long reach of barack obama
hey,
as all of you know, i'm not really the one for mass emails, but today was too good not to share:
north atlantic council sat today in a special session to meet, for the first time ever, the secretary-general of the arab league, amr moussa began his speech by announcing that, as far as he is concerned, the 21st century started yesterday, then spoke eloquently about 'change', and finally looked around the room and said: 'because i indeed do believe that yes, we can'.
an arab diplomat taking the message of the future black president of the united states to nato - so unreal it almost makes me afraid that i'll wake up tomorrow morning and sarah palin will be in the white house.
to everyone i haven't been in touch with lately (which means pretty much everyone), i'm very sorry and i'll try to do something about it soon ... I haven't forgotten you, just got a bit overwhelmed with organising exhibitions of military technology on one hand and on the other trying to convince the registry b*****s that letting me own a floppy disk would not constitute breach of security...
i hope life is treating you well,
love
hey,
as all of you know, i'm not really the one for mass emails, but today was too good not to share:
north atlantic council sat today in a special session to meet, for the first time ever, the secretary-general of the arab league, amr moussa began his speech by announcing that, as far as he is concerned, the 21st century started yesterday, then spoke eloquently about 'change', and finally looked around the room and said: 'because i indeed do believe that yes, we can'.
an arab diplomat taking the message of the future black president of the united states to nato - so unreal it almost makes me afraid that i'll wake up tomorrow morning and sarah palin will be in the white house.
to everyone i haven't been in touch with lately (which means pretty much everyone), i'm very sorry and i'll try to do something about it soon ... I haven't forgotten you, just got a bit overwhelmed with organising exhibitions of military technology on one hand and on the other trying to convince the registry b*****s that letting me own a floppy disk would not constitute breach of security...
i hope life is treating you well,
love
Wednesday, November 06, 2019
6 November 2014
I like to hear that people who have lived their own lives are able to find partners who have done similarly to spend lots of time with.
I like to hear that women who have lived their own lives are able to find partners who have done similarly to spend lots of time with.
It is confusing when I hear that women who have lived their own lives are suddenly invisible because of the job their partner has.
Many thanks to a Human Rights Lawyer and a Theatre Director (whom I don't actually know, but have read much about) for demonstrating this phenomenon this year.
Rhys: What phenomenon? Have read and Reread and see they have changed people with woman but don't see what the phenomenon is.
Max: Ah, Rhys, people are teasing me by forwarding articles about a certain engagement, but I am noticing a trend in how the articles about the engagement are written.
The articles about this engagement between two English Theatre Luvvies focuses on the fame of the actor, instead of the cross-disciplinary talent and hard work of the director.
It reminds me of the Human Rights lawyer who married an actor this year, and because of his fame her dresses become the story, not her successes.
Rhys: All the articles I have read have talked about her credentials as well as his (lol my articles are in ok magazine). I thought u were quoting something
Max: Do any of the articles have the following heading? I am trying to find one ... please let there be one ...
Sophie Hunter and Benedict Cumberbatch announce Engagement.
Rhys: I will have a look in my recent mag and let you know.
Max: This shit makes me so tired. This single article that lists Sophie Hunter first is still found wanting in the 'be respectful to Sophie Hunter, her life is not of interest now simply for who she is engaged to' areas, but at least they write about her at the start of some of the sentences, you know, as if she is a subject, not an object.
Language is so important.
Max: THIS is going some way towards correct reporting
Sophie Hunter And Benedict Cumberbatch Announce Engagement Through Classified Ad
I like to hear that women who have lived their own lives are able to find partners who have done similarly to spend lots of time with.
It is confusing when I hear that women who have lived their own lives are suddenly invisible because of the job their partner has.
Many thanks to a Human Rights Lawyer and a Theatre Director (whom I don't actually know, but have read much about) for demonstrating this phenomenon this year.
Rhys: What phenomenon? Have read and Reread and see they have changed people with woman but don't see what the phenomenon is.
Max: Ah, Rhys, people are teasing me by forwarding articles about a certain engagement, but I am noticing a trend in how the articles about the engagement are written.
The articles about this engagement between two English Theatre Luvvies focuses on the fame of the actor, instead of the cross-disciplinary talent and hard work of the director.
It reminds me of the Human Rights lawyer who married an actor this year, and because of his fame her dresses become the story, not her successes.
Rhys: All the articles I have read have talked about her credentials as well as his (lol my articles are in ok magazine). I thought u were quoting something
Max: Do any of the articles have the following heading? I am trying to find one ... please let there be one ...
Sophie Hunter and Benedict Cumberbatch announce Engagement.
Rhys: I will have a look in my recent mag and let you know.
Max: This shit makes me so tired. This single article that lists Sophie Hunter first is still found wanting in the 'be respectful to Sophie Hunter, her life is not of interest now simply for who she is engaged to' areas, but at least they write about her at the start of some of the sentences, you know, as if she is a subject, not an object.
Language is so important.
Max: THIS is going some way towards correct reporting
Sophie Hunter And Benedict Cumberbatch Announce Engagement Through Classified Ad
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