HO HO HO MERRY CHRISTMAS

Merry Christmas to one and all!!!

Since the hours of the red suited hairy man popping down the chimney are nigh I would like to make this a Christmas themed post.

I recently received a letter from a reader which I would like to share with you.

"Dear Lacksadaisy,

First of all may I say I love your blog, I treasure it like I treasure tomato sauce on my food and I put tomato sauce on everything even Christmas pudding. I was hoping you might be able to help me. Our son is a smart little six year old. Do you think this is an appropriate age to tell him Santa doesn't exist or should we leave it to the cluey little tacker to figure out in his own time?

Merry Christmas,

Belamy, England."

Merry Christmas Belamy SMACK! I just hit you in the face. SMACK, SMACK!! I just hit you again and now you're looking at me with the same sad confusion as a cartoon penguin who has just had his beaked smashed and he looks like he's gonna tear up a little. Why? Because you trusted me. You believed me to be the wise oracle of blogs. You thought I was nice, stunningly beautiful and stunningly smart. You believed that I would help you, not hit you in the face with a wet Christmas snapper from my mums fridge. Instead of helping you and spreading Christmas cheer I spread Christmas fish clamminess. That is exactly what you would be doing to your sub double digits, Stephen Hawkins of an offspring. He trusts you, relies on you to provide wisdom and magic and you want to hit him over the face with a cold truth snapper. Shame on you Belamy, shame. on. you.

Lets look at the facts.

1. Growing old is slow, painful and full incontinence, wars and digestive problems.

2. The movie Elf with Will Farrell is awesome and in that movie Santa exist and the Elf is happy.

3. No one has done long term studies as to the effects of lying to your children but I have a feeling that it's not that bad.

These and other well thought out factual suppositions conclude that you should not tell Belamy junior about Santa. In fact you should probably do your darnd-est to keep the fantasy alive for as long as possible. Even if it means dressing up in a red suit to visit your adult son in the middle of the night when he's away at school camp, or on his 21st birthday or once he turns 30, its Christmas eve and he's asleep with his trophy wife by his side and his triplets are in the next room. (Basically your son has triplets because his trophy wife has an IVF disaster. She has three at once and sadly loses her stunning figure... at least that means you no longer silently lust after your daughter in law and that can only be a good thing.) But I would like to stear this post away from you deviant sexual fantasies Belamy and focus on my Christmas message:

Christmas is the one time of year that it's ok to believe in fictional figures without being branded a lunatic, it says so in film.

Merry Christmas to all my readers,

I hope you get some of my mums trifle.... I've posted some to all six of you but you won't get it unless it's delivered by santa... and for that to happen you have to believe.... believe..... believe...

L.D xxx

Kyle, the short man.

I am inundated and undulated daily with emails from my 6 readers asking me for advice. "Dear Lacksadaisy am I ready to get married? Sometimes I like to sit on sprinklers and my girlfriend doesn't know", "Dear Lacksadaidy, how many pairs of shoes do I own?", "Dear Lacksadaisy, how did you become so wise?" etc. I have decided to share with you my answers to some of the standout emails, just in case you too are sitting at home asking YOURSELF how many shoes you own. In the words of a communist peasant: I live to serve.

Here's a typical question (*N.B):

"Dear Lacksadaisy,

how can I get taller?"

- Kyle, Mordor

Well Kyle, I would say it's physically impossible to grow taller once you have reached your age, but since you didn't state your age I'm going to have to guess how old you are. I'm going to guess that you are 26. (I could be wrong, but I was once told by my grandma that I have a strong psychic intuition and then she told me I can watch "Who's the boss" and continued eating her bag of lolly bananas.)

Once a man reaches the age of 26 it's physically impossible to grow taller. You're of an age where your metabolism starts to slow down, your thyroid glands secret an oxyplamocin and in technical terms you hit a "physical stunt". (Not based on scientific or medical evidence) This leaves you with very few options.

Option 1. You can undergo a very lengthy (sorry for the pun) surgery which involves transplanting the legs of giraffe onto your own, similar to grafting plants together. This is often very painful and can leave you with physical and emotional scars. Emotional because you will be called such names as "Giraffe-y legs" and "animal/ human hybrid". People aren't creative but they are cruel Kyle, they are cruel.

Option 2. (this is my preferred option). You can walk like a tall man and pick fights with guys in pubs to prove your masculinity.

Option 3. You can celebrate the world in all it's diversity. You can acknowledge you are of less than average height (sure, some superficial girls only date guys over 6ft), you can laugh about your height, but realise that the true measure of a man is not how tall he is in inches, but how good looking he is and how many people he's slept with.

All the best Kyle, go get 'em little buddy.

Lacksadaisy.

*Question may have been taken from a google search of questions that I typed into Google, I cannot verify or vilify... and I have definitely not changed peoples names to protect their identity.

Second Job = Hot pigeon

I’m poor for the moment. I’m so poor I’m considering selling pigeons I’ve caught off the street… they’ll fetch a mighty sweet price once I dress them in pigeon turbine and jazz pants and teach them to dance.

Being poor has got me thinking. Maybe I should get more work…then I slap myself across the face and tell myself not to be so stupid. There must be a get rich quick scheme that works. It worked for Mark Zukenburg. All he had to do was invent facebook.

Actually I have an invention…I’ve been sitting on this little baby for a while now… it’s called “claymail”… it’s the mail that is emailed to you in clay form…unfired earth. Genius? It just may be. A money-spinner? After I’ve paid a little visit to the Gramean bank…watch this space.

My current tightening of la purse strings has got me thinking about other poor people. Why they’re poor? What are they going to do about it? Are they happy? Do they smell bad? Do they eat popcorn? Do they wear sunscreen? The answers are most likely: born that way, nothing, yes/ sometimes/no, yes, no, no.

Wealth is relative. Compared to, say, Mrs. Hinju Nababi of the slums of Banjabi (made up name and place) I am so friggen wealthy I could very well be queen of Tasmania (actually, I am). Compared to the average income in Australia I AM Mrs. Hinju Nababi. As both me as myself and also as myself as Mrs. Hinju Nababi, we and I are presently unhappy with our/my current state of wealth… or rather my un-wealth, my poor-ririty. I hate having to think: rent or food this week? Rent it is!! (Porridge contains vitamins, right?) Now that may be being a little melodramatic. It’s probably more realistic to say I have a tug of war between whether to spend money on eBay or witchery.

Oh, my accursed eBay addiction. I flick on that screen and the little yellow logo of hope lights up my eyes and says: “EBay: adventure, fashion, fashion risks and adventurous fashion… EBay, where you can dress like a 90’s lawyer or buy 7 pairs of Homeyped shoes for $14.95 simply because it’s a discontinued line”

Perhaps… just maybe, if I were wealthier I wouldn’t want to shop at EITHER ebay OR witchery. I wouldn’t be so fazed by my humble appearance, I would not wish to buy nicer clothes and THUS ERGO I could save a lot of the money.

Perhaps my status anxiety at being poor is making my want to buy things I could easily afford if I were a rich bitch like Lauren Conrad. (Did she actually ever DO anything to become famous?)

Similar to a food drought, where my body desperately clings to every calorie if it knows I’m on a diet…or I see food, or think about food, or I’m told I’m going on a late lunch break, or the kitchen is too far away, or my snacks are out of arms reach…. well my wardrobe is the same. “I’d better buy this top just incase I can never buy a top again. We wouldn’t want me to be topless now would we? Most of the time, and in most places toplessness is illegal, so really, to buy this top is simply abiding by the laws of our conservative Government and prudish society.” I also think it has a little something to do with my status anxiety:

Maybe if I buy this top from country road that is far beyond my budgetary limits I will feel like the person who CAN actually afford to buy this top from country road.

There lies’ the catch 22. The rich do not need to buy things to remind them they are rich, they know they are rich (they know because they ate Wild aniseed duck, flummoxed into submission by a mint and pea mash T.D.F for breakfast). Because they are so rich they can dress like one of my dancing pigeons and still be rich. Whereas the poor people want to feel rich so badly that they start to dress like Janette Howard. I swear. The poorer I get the more likely I am to buy a fake Luis Vuitton from the midget tranny creatively named “Bruce”, behind the community centre in Crows Nest. Damn you Bruce! Damn my status anxiety! And damn you ebay! ….Also damn you Mark Zukenburg for inventing facebook before I could think of it.

So what have I learnt from this most recent stream of consciousness? Get another job…. Get another job and then you could afford to shop at David Jones… but you won’t WANT to shop at David Jones, so you won’t, you’ll shop at St. Vinnie’s… and you’ll look like a pigeon.

Second job = hot pigeon. Simple.

LADY POWER...no, not lady powder...like grandma put on her pits..lady power!!!

Lady Power.

When I was little I was cool. I'm talking 7 year old cool. I played basketball with the boys before school and that gave me an elite status normally reserved for school captains. You either had to be pretty or be able to play with the boys and I, kazam, had instant cool. I’ve come to the conclusion that things haven’t changed much. We, yes, you and I, define women by how pretty they are or whether they can play with the boys.

In times gone by (don’t get me to be more specific than that) a woman was defined by her husband. She was a mother, a carer. Thanks to corsetry she could not breath...and swimming was probably out of the question. Thanks to propriety she could not laugh with a delicious snort. Her body was not her own. Thank goodness times have changed. Thank goodness we can now appreciate women as people. As powerful, enlightened beings.

Thank goodness we have so many female role models of advanced age where we don’t judge them by their appearance, but on their merit and contributions. C’mon! EVERYONE thinks Julia Gillard’s suit jacket choices make her look boxy and Hillary Clinton should just get a facelift already! Thank goodness women are not bowing to the pressure to change their natural shape at the expense of their health…..cough…Botox…tummy tuck....cough cough. Thank god a woman’s body is now hers to do with what she chooses… la did ah…not that we still operate under a 111 year old archaic law where woman attempting an abortion is committing a criminal offence ‘against morality”. Not that we young folk had a freak out about women’s lib and screamed: “No, no we want babies too…. If I say I’m not a feminist and wear enough mascara will you still like me? Lets have sex… whatever way you like. Wanna watch that porno where she dresses up like a Seabass?”

Am I oversimplifying things? Yes, but listen anyway, I stay interesting.

Often I ask myself why women who are strong and authoritative in their older years are seen as battleaxes and those in younger years seen as witches. I think it’s because women have such capacity for empathy and nurturing that when they decide to use their advanced model communication skills for rapprochement rather than mummy cuddles then it’s like a kazinga right in the Julia Gillards. It’s sweaty palms, sick to stomach and awkward, awkward, awkward. A man can swear, rant like a ranter and be physically intimidating, but when Mrs. Walker told me I looked like a boy when I got my hair cut short at age 11, it stang…. Or is it stung…. It stanged. My short boycut bob nearly fell out from the stress.

I think both the sexes arrive at different points in their lives when they ask themselves the question- who am I outside of a husband, a brother, a mother, a daughter. Women, however, have a tendency to put themselves second to all others (which often results in being second to a long line of things…which actually means your 380^th in the order of needs) and as a result I think are inclined to end up feeling a bit what for. In the long run you have cheated yourself and your partner. Once your magic armour of motherhood, girlfriendhood, wivelyhood is stripped away you may then be left asking the question... who the f&*#% was I before all of this? So may I encourage you to occassinally put yourself first for a change, yes, giving is fulfilling, but first you must find out who you are… for you…and no body else. And lets see more ladies of advanced years who are powerful in the media please. But not for their power/man/lady suits and for making to Forbes top 100 list, but are celebrated for being amazing at what they do, whatever that may be.

*N.B I don’t know what a Seabass is.

The happy vibe yang.

Something happened the other day that encourages me to believe all that "secret" crap.

I feel like I have spent the last two years of my life proving to James Antonas that I can be a struggler... I've really put my mind to it.... I'm not this happy, successful person.... I promise I can do a job that I hate too!!! I am, in fact, destined to be slightly, quietly miserable... and quietly accepting that where I am now is the sum of my life and is how I shall be remembered always.

My tombstone shall read:

After Phantom she really didn't do a whole lot. Worked in a bookshop which wasn't like Black Books.

But then something quite dramatic happened to a family member of mine...no, not the impending birth of a bubba... something bad...something they always feared would happen and then it did. They handled themselves with masterful aplomb and actually proved they are awesome... and made me and themselves very proud. When the bad thing actually happened it wasn't so bad. Proving that their really is nothing to fear more than fear itself. However the thing I want to focus on is expectations. I always secretly feared I would get cervical cancer.... and then, low and behold, I had a little brush with fate. No cancer, but a good kick up the arse to stop me secretly obsessing about it.. and a big neon sign telling me to be more careful with the way I use my "secret" and obviously powerful thoughts.

A wise book once told me that you get from life and people exactly what you expect.

This is NOT to say that the universe cannot be cruel with it's twists and turns of fate... and good and bad luck can be bestowed at random, but by and large, in day to day things, you kind of get what you expect.

I expect my housemate to get all knicker twisty if I leave a light on. I expect to get bloated if I eat pizza and drink cider. I expect to giggle like a pigtail if I watch Review with Miles Barlow. I expect to cringe like a politician recently discovered having a wank in the toilets at David Jones while snorting organic coke with Miranda Kerr...if I watch Miles Barlow. Yes, these things may be based on experience and therefore you could argue that what I am actually experiencing is logical assumption or something... I'm sure there's a more mathamatical way of phrasing that.... I've worked ten hours today people....that's ten more hours than I'm used to!!!

Anyway I have decided that it's probably a good idea to start expecting bigger and better things. We have one chance at life... except if you're me because this only one of my 198 lives and you all exist as fragments of my imaginationary dream... and I actually live on the planet Meherwandia.

Am I repeating myself from old blogs? Oh god!! Depressing.

Anyway, I though I would use this very public forum (to my 1 and a half readers) to announce my bigger and better expectations.

I expect:

To get an ingrown toenail by friday....

no, too small.

I expect:

To become Lord and ruler of Tasmananias...

no, too controversial.... plus most of the earthlings still call it "Tasmania".

I expect:

To become Carrie Bradshaw...

too fucking annoying, skinny and too many STD's.

I expect:

To find my passion or never give up trying.

To learn how to write comedy.

To sing in a band, maybe three.

To become a size ten and have clear skin. (Bwaa ha ha ha ha... priceless, I'm already good at the comedy bit)

To travel more and more, but not too much, to see beautiful, amazing places and memorable (in a good way) people.

To become financially stable

To be a singer

To be an actress

To fall in love again

To light up a party

Win the lottery, just a bit.

To light up my friends.... that actually sounds creepy... like I would set them on fire... I wouldn't set them on fire....as long as they do what I say.

To have a family with Hamish Blake and a house that resembles Tom Hank's house in Sleepless in Seattle... not his house in Castaway...too lonely.

To stay connected with my family, but forge my own path.

To stay connected with my friends, but forge my own path.... and still be close enough to make them tea.

You heard it. Now I encourage you to expect big things to. Like expect a big hug from me next time I see you since I'm working on getting my people skills back in shape. (My people skills have faded into oblivion since I lost the will to perky...they'll come back... just give me time and space fuckers!! Sorry, see?! No people skills.)

The way I see it is ying and yang. On one side of the ying yang is negative, life leachers, and on the other side is happy hippies.

For every grumpy arsed, life sapper you meet there must be an equalibrium of success and happiness that you, yes YOU can use up. Now everytime I meet someone who sucks the life out of me with their... their... negativity (sorry, I'm so tired I couldn't think of an analogy or similie or shmimadree) I'm going to feel grateful that they've left so much happiness on the other side of the yang for me and my friends and family to enjoy.

So thank you to my boss at work. Every time he sucks the life out of me I'm taking a bit of the happy vibe yang.

Appleberryi90Ggasm.

So my friend and I had a conversation about the newest iPhone. This friend loves the newest of things. He readily informed me that his new iPhone was a piece of shitza compared to the new new iPhone (the Appleberryi90Ggasm). (By the way do I somehow qualify for the new new iPhone if I mention it in my world famous blog? Apple? Are you listening?

Back to the subject. So my friend was all like:

“Yeah, you don’t want that one because it’s only slightly new. You want the one that goes way faster and harder and prettier than ever”.

I got a bit snippy. I didn’t know why I felt perturbed at the time but in retrospect I have come to realise that it’s because I am the iPhone. It’s not called an “i”Phone for no reason. (Oh, yes, well done, very clever Mac marketing department bastard freaks!!!)

I AM the slightly good “new iPhone”. The one that was pretty at first, nice to touch (I moisturise…sometimes) and could play songs. But then someone waltzes in with a newer version and BAM, you’re yesterdays news sister (Cliché #3). I hated to think that men could possibly think like this about me and women in general. So out of intense insecurity and unnecessary neurosis I said:

“Hey! Hey… that new iPhone is awesome and the new new one is pretentious and wanky.”

A fine argument I think you’ll agree and considering they look exactly the same I think you’ll find it hard to find a flaw in my argument since it makes no sense at all.

My point is this. Mac (and his more evil street gang friends who operate in back streets) need to make men feel like having the newest gadget will give them the greatest advantage over their fellow competitors out there in the wild. When they are out there wrestling bears and hunting game they can search for deer recipes on Bigoven and Google maps to get home safely to the cave. I’m sure none of this is particularly surprising to you and I should probably stop before I make any more sweeping sexist statements.

However I must finish with this. Unfortunately as long as I see the iphone as an analogy for women I will always want to keep my current iPhone. I will never let her leave my side. Ever. At least until it’s a bit scratchy and I accidently drop her in the loo. I don’t want her to feel like she’s uninteresting to me. She can mature, develop her culinary taste, explore her creative side and write a bad play. She can put on 10 kilos, volunteer at the Red Cross, have three kids and shave her head and still I will say:

“Little new iPhone, you have served me well. It would be a privilege to grow old with you.”

This is maybe the crux of the difference in thinking between man and who-man. Should I email apple? I’m sure they already know. Do you think they'd want me to work for them? Bastards.