The Bruising Adventures of Girl Clumsy

Ryan

2010-07-29T17:20:00.003+10:00

Michael Johnson is all yellow. A yellow jersey marks his involvement in a 2003 parliamentary rugby game; a yellow baseball cap embroidered with his name sits slightly askew on his head. He matches the National Union of Students activists buzzing around a table behind him; whether by accident or design is unknown. He’s in the Great Court at the University of Queensland, his alma mater, to sign the

The Woman on the Bicycle

2010-07-27T22:06:00.003+10:00

It's been an odd, and slightly troubling day. Not least because of the 10 centimetre dent now branded on my car's passenger side door. I've had the car for less than three months. I thought I might get away without any damage for at least six. It was a woman on a bicycle. I was stopped on the driveway at my place of work, waiting to pull out onto the road. Paused, I looked to my right for

Thigh July Near Miss

2010-07-25T21:48:00.001+10:00

That was a near miss in Canberra. Thanks to Dan for the comic, and for saving me from myself. It's funny, the whole not-eating-chocolate thing. Aside from one morning at work where I was struck for about two minutes with an insatiable desire for a Peppermint Aero, I haven't particularly had strong cravings for it. Instead, I've found myself hankering for sweets I CAN have, but are slightly more

So Endeth the Week of Impro

2010-07-25T19:33:00.001+10:00

Well, I've lost my voice. But that's OK. It's been a good week. I journeyed down to Canberra on Wednesday for the first Improvention - a gathering of improvisers from around Australia for forums, workshops and performances. It was really informative, and good to get a handle on where ImproMafia fits in on a national level. Turns out we should be damn proud of ourselves; a lot of the themes and

A Week of Impro

2010-07-20T23:58:00.003+10:00

We had the second heat of our interschool impro comp at the Brisbane Arts Theatre this evening. It's always fun watching baby improvisers - some just 14 or 15 years old. There were lots of amusing moments; some intentional, some not. One of my highlights was a party scene where a player was told to be "Tony Abbott". She replied that she didn't know who he was. So instead she was given the much

Election Predictions

2010-07-18T23:20:00.000+10:00

Elections are wonderful things, with waves of behaviour and activity that can sometimes be predicted with astonishing clarity. For example, we're just a day or so in, and Julia Gillard's already done more baby-kissing than Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing. Maybe frenching some infants is too obvious a cliché. So I present here, in no particular order, a list of events that I believe have some

Julia's Song

2010-07-17T18:53:00.000+10:00

Election time is here! Election time is here! Which means it's time for me to pull out my Julia Gillard impersonation. To be honest, it's still got some way to go, but it'll have to develop over five weeks of campaigning. Powered by Podbean.com This is gonna be fun.

Newswrap

2010-07-16T15:28:00.001+10:00

They say every oak started out as a couple of nuts that stood their ground. Channel Nine political editor Laurie Oakes showed he's got what squirrels want, when he unleashed a bombshell question on Prime Minister Julia Gillard this week. Must've been a fair bit of high-quality wood in the National Press Gallery after that one. Still, should we chastise Julia for not speaking out about a

The Sting and the Scar

2010-07-15T06:45:00.002+10:00

It's been a year since The Wah and I came off second-best after an entanglement with a jellyfish in Ha Long Bay, Vietnam. One year on, and the record of my encounter is still an angry red barb on my inner-forearm. In a split second, that goddamned inverterbrate sea creature left more of a mark on me than all of Tom Cruise's films of the past decade. I have a bunch of scars. Most are on my

I'll Give You a Ride - Remembering "The Extraordinary"

2010-07-13T11:46:00.000+10:00

For me, the 1990s really were an extended prime-time fright-night geek-shriek fest. Back when I was 13 or 14, I used to stay up to be terrified by the villains confronting Mulder and Scully on The X-Files (remember the stretchy-liver-eating bloke? The toilet fluke worm? The fat-sucking vampire dude?); then strap myself in for the out-and-out freakiness of American Gothic ("Someone's at the door!

Paul

2010-07-12T13:32:00.001+10:00

Congratulations to Spain, sure, but apart from vuvuzelas, the 2010 FIFA World Cup will be remembered for Paul the Psychic Octopus. Thanks to Dan for helping me with that one. I hate MS Paint. What else can we put Paul onto now?

Poke Her Face

2010-07-11T22:54:00.002+10:00

Going Between

2010-07-10T23:25:00.000+10:00

Brisbane has a new bridge! It goes from one side of the river to the other! Revolutionary!

Augusta and Winston

2010-07-09T11:42:00.004+10:00

To be honest with you, I've had better weeks. This one started promisingly, as I attended the lovely wedding of my friends Emily and Troy on Sunday. It was a relaxed and happy day, with the ceremony and reception in one place (always the best option, I find). But a couple of slings and arrows during the week put a dampener on things. I guess them's the breaks in life, but combined with chronic

Unseen

2010-07-07T12:08:00.001+10:00

My work colleague, the erstwhile Disco Stu, turns an interesting shade of bottled purple every time I mention that I still haven't seen The Shawshank Redemption yet. That's despite the fact he lent me the DVD sometime in late 2008. That's right - the DVD is sitting at my house. I could watch it at any time. It's incredibly rude of me that I haven't. I guess I just ...forget. I don't know, I not

Frozen in Time

2010-07-04T22:51:00.004+10:00

I bought a Frozen Coke yesterday. A foolish drink for winter weather, absolutely. But damn it was tasty. And it had a nostalgia factor. Proper Frozen Cokes are the best of the iced carbonated beverage options. Better than the 7-11 Slurpees, or the Night-Owl Slushies (who wants to add syrup to crushed ice anyway?). My local IGA has some weird granita machine. The flavours are far too sweet, like

Last Supper

2010-06-30T23:30:00.001+10:00

Hopefully I will be able to distract myself from the choco drought with Agatha Holmes, ImproMafia's latest six-show season of improvised murder mysteries. I've been busily working away on this behind the scenes - but now I get to take to the stage in my 1920s finery. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to it. The great wonder of impro is the ability to lose yourself in the moment, in

Thigh July

2010-06-28T09:58:00.001+10:00

A few people around the place are signing up for this Dry July campaign. The idea is you give up booze for a month, get your friends to sponsor you, and raise money for cancer while seeing if you can function without your daily quart of Old Speckled Hen or Fruity Lexia. It's a great opportunity for sanctamonious teetotallers like me to get all up on our high horses and sniff at the sad drunken

Eclipse

2010-06-26T23:58:00.000+10:00

Nice eclipse, that. 'Course the zoom on my Nikon D80 doesn't quite having the seeing power of the Hubble telescope, but still, I think the impression of the Earth's shadow on the moon comes out nicely.

Prime Minister Gillard

2010-06-24T11:39:00.001+10:00

There was a moment, around half past nine this morning, after Julia Gillard had been announced as the new Prime Minister of Australia, that my heart suddenly caught in my chest. We have a female Prime Minister. Now the fact that she wasn't leader at the time of a federal election doesn't make it an "illegitimate" appointment. Sure, the circumstances were extraordinary, complex, with more than a

Rudd V Gillard: An Uninformed View from the Sidelines*

2010-06-24T01:00:00.003+10:00

I first encountered Kevin Rudd back in my early days at 4BC in 2005. It was back in his old Morningside electorate office - a cramped, two-room affair with yellowing paint on the walls and a large mahogany desk that took up most of the-then Shadow Foreign Minister's tiny office. I remember him being very slick, even back then, while discussing some foreign relations matter he disagreed with the

BAT Vintage Sale

2010-06-22T15:00:00.001+10:00

Any of you people like vintage? Vintage fashion, that is, as opposed to wine or cars. I ask because I've never considered myself a vintage-lovin' gal. To be honest with you, it's probably due to sizing. Those 1950s babes really knew how to cinch in a waist and keep their cup sizes below a DD. Of course sometimes it goes the other way too - ballooning 70s skirts or sack-like 80s dresses seem to

GC Helps BP

2010-06-19T23:20:00.001+10:00

Honestly, I'm full of good ideas.

GC helps the Socceroos

2010-06-16T01:49:00.000+10:00

So the Socceroos had a big of a bad start to the 2010 FIFA World Cup. Well, they lost 4-nil, which may as well be 50-nil, which may as well be they were transported back in time and forced to fight Napoleon and his massed Frenchie hordes solo at the Battle of the Pyramids wearing nothing but a tube top and armed only with roller blades. Or something. Anyway, the point is - never fear! Girl

Slur

2010-06-13T23:48:00.015+10:00

I find the story of Timana Tahu's exit from the New South Wales State of Origin team quite fascinating. I don't profess myself to be any kind of rugby league expert, and forgive me for perhaps painting with a sweeping brushstroke here, but the code strikes me as being the kind of environment where one could expect to find a range of attitudes/discriminatory language that may otherwise be less