Dinner parties

Aren’t dinner parties a quandary?

You use every pot and pan in the place; you spread food from floor to ceiling (and even in your hair); and you exhaust yourself shopping and cooking.

Yet, on the one afternoon both you and your kitchen look and feel like Hiroshima (after), you know that in two hours (and counting) you are meant to look as though you just stepped off the cover of Vogue; your kitchen is meant to look like a Fisher & Paykel commercial; the meal is supposed to look effortless (even though it cost you three hundred bucks before the bottle shop) but taste divine; and you are supposed to initiate and maintain polite social chit chat until your guests finally depart.

At The Monstress’ residence, the chit chat will start in approximately nine minutes. I just pray no unsuspecting guest opens the spare room door or they will be buried under an avalanche of hastily banished stray sporting equipment, umbrellas, ugly throw cushions and a still-decorated Christmas tree.

There’s only one thing for all this stress – champagne. Gimme.

Happy New Year.

Image: savit keawtavee

8 things men don’t want to hear

Over the years, I’ve noticed a few touchy subjects that are almost guaranteed to induce symptoms from selective deafness to homicidal urges in a man. Here are eight. Feel free to contribute some of your own.

1 Any stories about your ex – even if, in the story, he superglues his penis to the toilet.
2 ‘I’d say decent, average, adequate…’ Just sidestep the size issue.
3 Decisions that involve home renovations, pet acquisitions or household health kicks.
4 Exercise or diet conversations of any kind. Men want to look at your great body, not hear about the million crunches and celery sticks it took you to achieve it. Or worse, the guilty cake obsession that perpetuates the curves he loves.
5 Plans to rationalize their wardrobe. Just sneak the things with holes into the rubbish. It’s less traumatic.
6 Any details about things you considered buying but didn’t. Save shoe-longing for your girlfriends.
7 That your parents are coming to stay.
8 The word ‘fine’ by itself.

Hotmail and iPhones

What is it with Hotmail and iPhones? Like ice cream and anchovies, they just don’t mix.

The web’s bulletin boards are full of plaintive posts and weird workarounds to make Hotmail (more or less) work on an iPhone.

What the web is not full of is comment, reassurance or solutions from Microsoft or Apple.

I refuse to believe that people who are clever enough to cause a photo of the teen’s soon-to-arrive kitten to be in Geelong one second and in Hobart the next are unable to tweak said technology so that I don’t have to email the photo from my Hotmail account via Gmail.

I also refuse to believe that people who can turn my iPhone in to everything from a torch to a mirror can not spend half a nanosecond developing an app to make Hotmail work.

Is there some geeky pissing contest going on in the background that we can only guess at? If so, I wish these tossers would just build a bridge – and an iPhone app for Hotmail.


Image: Idea go

10 weird Facewaste stories

 1. In 2008, 23-year-old Lauren Michaels created a group called ‘I Need Sex’ on Facebook. Within 10 minutes, she had 35 members and soon attracted 100 — 50 of whom she eventually slept with.


2. An 18-year-old Wisconsin man posed as several different girls on Facebook to blackmail underage male teens by coaxing them to send nude photos of themselves. He could be facing up to 300 years in prison.

3. Thirty five-year-old Emma Brady was shocked by a message her husband posted on the social networking site: ‘Neil Brady has ended his marriage to Emma Brady.’ The woman said she had no idea about it until her best friend phoned her to see if she was okay.

4. In 2009, an EMT at a crime scene took a cell phone picture of the body of a New York woman who had been strangled and beaten and then posted it on his Facebook profile. He was later arrested on charges of official misconduct and was fired from his job.

5. A 39-year-old Pennsylvania father was arrested for openly asking his 13-year-old daughter for sex over Facebook.

6. Nathalie Blanchard, a 20-year-old IBM employee in Canada, lost sick leave benefits from her insurer because her Facebook page showed ‘cheerful’ photos while she was on paid sick leave for depression.

7. On 1 July 2009, shortly after Michael Jackson passed away, his page became the most popular page on Facebook. Previously, the most popular person on Facebook was U.S. President Obama with just over 6 million fans.

8. A Facebook post in December 2009 led to a kidney donation.

9. ‘Where's my pancakes?’ 19–year-old Rodney Bradford typed one Saturday moring. The day after, he was arrested as a suspect in a robbery. He successfully used the Facebook entry as his alibi.

10. What is the groom supposed to do after the vows? Before kissing the bride, Dana Hanna, a software developer, took out his mobile and updated his relationship status on Facebook and Twitter.


Image: graur codrin

8 Facewaste facts

We all love a bit of Facewaste from time to time. Here are nine Facebook facts.

1. In 2003, Harvard student, Mark Zuckerberg created Facemash, where he placed photos of undergraduates side by side so viewers could rank which one was ‘hotter’. Zuckerberg would later turn Facemash into the now ubiquitous Facebook.

2. If Facebook were a country, it would be the fifth-largest country in the world, after China, India, the U.S. and Indonesia.

3. People upload more than 2.5 billion pictures to Facebook each month.

4. The average Facebook user:
• has 130 friends
• sends eight friend requests per month
• spends more than 55 minutes a day on the site
• uses the ‘Like’ button nine times a month
• writes 25 comments each month.

5. Among children under 18, Facebook was ranked third in the top 100 searches of 2009, behind YouTube and Google. Sex and porn rounded out the top five.

6. The New Oxford Dictionary announced that the 2009 Word of the Year was ‘unfriend’ but there is some debate about whether the word should be ‘defriend’ – I personally prefer ‘defriend’ and I also think there should be a word to describe the way children friend their parents on a tame and censored version of their Facebook page while banning them from seeing what’s really happening on their ‘real’ Facebook page (and think their parents haven’t wised up to what’s going on). ‘Subterfuge’ might be a good start.

7. Around 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States.

8. In Australia, you can legally serve court notices to defendants on Facebook. A summons posted on Facebook is legally binding.


If you're bored, check out lamebook.com – a regularly updated site that reposts lame and funny Facebook user posts.

15 random Christmas facts

1. It's unlucky to cut a mince pie with a knife.

2. In December in Tasmania, retail shopping increases by 29% – 3% more than the national average.

3. The tradition of an Australian Christmas Eve carol service lit by candles was started in 1937 by radio announcer, Norman Banks.

4. Also in 1937, the first postage stamp to commemorate Christmas was issued in Austria.

5. Jingle Bells, one of the most popular Christmas songs, was actually written for Thanksgiviing.

6. Christmas was illegal in England from 1647 to 1660.

7. If you received all of the gifts in the song The 12 Days of Christmas, you would receive 364 gifts.

8. Contrary to common belief, poinsettia plants are non-toxic – but holly berries are poisonous.

9. More diamonds are sold around Christmas than at any other time of the year.

10. England only knew seven white Christmases in the entire twentieth century. According to the records of the Meteorological Office in London, snow fell on Christmas Day only in 1938 and 1976.

11. 70% of dogs get Christmas gifts from their owners. (Nellie always gets a dustpan and broom – her favourite item to chew. This year, she got a red one.)

12. Germany made the first artificial Christmas trees. They were made of goose feathers dyed green.

13. In 1895, Ralph Morris, an American telephonist, invented the string of electric Christmas lights. They had already been manufactured to use in telephone switchboards. Morris looked at the tiny bulbs and had the idea of using them on his tree. It's amazing the ingenuity workplace boredom can inspire.

14. People spend an average of two hours and 27 minutes wrapping presents. (I'm guessing this is generally two hours and twenty minutes for females and seven minutes for males.)

15. Early Santa pictures show him wearing a variety of different coloured coats including green, blue and mauve.

Merry Christmas!

Image: nuttakit

7 good deeds to make Christmas bearable

Feeling crap about Christmas? Here are seven ways to brighten up the festive season for yourself – and someone else.

1.      Thank people who are working – appreciate the shop assistants, taxi drivers, waitresses, police officers and service station staff who have to spend the holidays on the job.

2.      Go tourist hunting and offer to take a picture of them with their partner or group. They’re probably far away from their loved ones and may welcome a friendly face.

3.      Hand out compliments like lollies  – ‘That’s a great scarf’ or ‘Your hair colour’s terrific’ will give others a boost.

4.      Do something nice for an animal – feed the birds at the park, cuddle your neighbour’s cat or take your dog for a long walk.

5.       Buy a pack of Christmas cards (or just write e-cards) and send them to people you’re in danger of losing touch with. Tell them you miss them. Or even that you love them.

6.      Share some flowers or fruit from your garden with your neighbours. If you don’t know them, this is a great way to introduce yourself.

7.   Smile – look friends and strangers directly in the eyes and smile. Say ‘Merry Christmas’ and mean it.

Image: Simon Howden