The Voice: Some Thoughts

I used to be an Idol tragic. I never pretended that I wasn't. But I now have a much, much bigger problem. I have an addiction to The Voice, and it's only moderately related to the fact that I have had a crush on Joel Madden for approximately ever. If I do this in anything other than point form, I'm going to end up rambling, so here are some brief thoughts on the April 30th episode.

*I have really missed Joel's ridiculously coloured hair. Not the terrible black top and white bottom. That was hideous. The purple and blue. Like back before Good Charlotte actually got radio play during the day. It's amazing.

*I don't understand how it is that Benji seems to be aging so much faster than Joel. They're identical twins. I mean, I get that lifestyle factors come into aging, but this is just ridiculous. Joel looks like, 5 years younger than Benji. This could. of course, explain why I've always thought Joel was hotter than Benji.

*Speaking of aging, Darren Hayes looks old and tired. This makes me very, very sad. It's almost as bad as the fact that the Wiggles are starting to look old, which, quite frankly, is earth shatteringly horrific and saddening.

*I don't understand why Seal's mentor is Ricki Lee. Yes, the girl can sing. But you know who sings better than her? Seal. You know who has far more experience in the industry than her? Seal. How does Seal even know who Ricki Lee is? I can't help wondering what is going on in the back end of that show that lead to Seal potentially taking advice from Ricki Lee.

*The opening song both perplexed and amazed me. When did Keith Urban start sounding like Bono? And when did Delta Goodrem get that gorgeous low range, and why does she not use it more often?

*Why in crap's name is Dawn French doing Coles ads? No, this is not strictly related to the voice, but they're playing the ads every 3 seconds, and it's perplexing me.

*Joel's wardrobe on this show must be single handedly be supporting the clothing stud industry. So very, very many studs on every single outfit.

* I need one of those judges chairs. I shall sit on it, plotting evil plots and stroking Handschuhe, and people will come into the room, and I will turn around and be all "I've been expecting you..." And people will be like, "Dude, just cause you have an awesome automated spinny chair, it doesn't make you an evil mastermind." And I will be all "Yeah, but I also have an animal on my lap to stroke, and everyone knows that people sitting in big spinny chairs, stroking animals on their lap are evil masterminds. SO STOP TRYING TO RUIN MY FUN, OR I WILL END YOU!" And then I will laugh evily, and there will be thunder and lightning. And then I'll probably do a Count von Count impression on account of the laughter causing thunder and lightning and ruin the illusion of evil that I just built up.

*Keith appears to have freakishly large feet. Either that, or he really needs to pick different shoes.

*Watching guitarists try to sing without their guitars is hilarious. I already knew this, but the pair singing the Fray song are particularly bad.

A shout out...

...to the person who found my blog by googling "how do i make my k26s shoes not so slippery". Seriously, whoever you are, I hope you found the answer. I also hope you realise how hideous those shoes are. And I can't help wondering how the hell you ended up here.


And to the person who wanted to know "what does the crumpet setting do toaster". It does amazing things, my friend. Truly amazing things.


And to the people who are STILL getting here by googling "Mark Hoppus glasses". I hope you're aware that he has new glasses now, and that you can see a picture of them on twitter. Personally, I liked the old ones better.


And to the many, many people who are getting here by searching for variations on the theme of glitter and/or sparkles. I apologise for the serious lack of glitter AND sparkles here. I know how sad it is when you're expecting awesome shinyness (which I have decided looks less wrong with a y than a second i. I don't think either is correct, though) and you get a crappy blog filled with the inane ramblings of a 20 something chick who doesn't get out enough. Or, you know, anything that's not awesome shinyness.

Shit My Housemate Says/Does

I have all new housemates this year. Housemate number one is a friend from uni, who I've had a few German classes with, and who I regularly sit with at German conversation evenings, speaking lots of English, not much German and giggling hysterically. Housemate number two is a girl who I worked with briefly, although she found out that I had empty rooms pretty much by coincidence. Housemate number three arrives this weekend, and is effectively an unknown value, although she's doing Zoology and likes dogs, so we think she's safe.

Housemate number one is continually saying and doing all kinds of hilarious crap, some of which is intentionally funny, and some of which is just funny by accident. I felt I really needed to share this with all of you.

On her first night in the house, completely out of the blue: Please don't lick my toothbrush.
Naturally, I hadn't even thought of doing this until she said that, but I now very much want to do it.

While investigating the parts of the house that aren't her room: Oh my god, look at this cupboard! It's awesome! Can I have this cupboard?
Said cupboard is very small (it has one standard size door, and doesn't go back very far), and is built into the smallest room in the house. It will be henceforth known as The Cupboard. She has 4 times more cupboard space in her room, which is apparently totally boring.

Several days after moving in
Me:  Where are you?
HM#1, wandering up the hallway: I was in the empty room, looking at The Cupboard. It's so awesome.

Walking up stairs and smelling my cooking dinner, which was not vegan at all, even though she is: Oh my god, your dinner smells so good!
Me: It's lasagne
HM#1: Oh, so that's just like one giant animal product, then?
Me: Yep
HM#1: Damn.

Coming home after going downtown: I swear to God, I just saw Viktor Krum walking down the street.
Me:  Sure you did.
HM#1: I DID! He was all scowly and everything.
This conversation resulted in her admitting that "scowly with a monobrow" is all it takes to look like Viktor. I think this means that if Viktor was a muppet, he'd look like Bert. I am apparently the crazy one.

After hearing that the council says that we're not allowed to have chickens as pets: What about ducks?
Me: If they say no chickens, they probably also say no ducks.
HM#1: What about dickens?
Me: Huh?
HM#1: Dickens. They're what happens when you sticky tape a duck and a chicken together and pretend that it's one animal. I bet they don't say ANYTHING about dickens.

Talking about The Cupboard: I mean, it's not like I pull an Edward and just stand there and watch it sleeping all night. It's a cupboard. It doesn't sleep.
And "To pull an Edward" is now an expression in our house. HM#2's puppy apparently did it the first night she (the puppy, not the housemate) was here, and is now under suspicion of being "a sparkly creep" from HM#1.

While we were talking about God Only Knows What: You know what else is kind of cool? That door in your bedroom wall. I was in there the other day, and I was like "Hey, what's this blue door thingy in the wall?" and I opened it, and there was this big empty space with boxes in it. But I don't know how you sleep in there, because, I mean, there's just a random door in your wall. How do you know what's up there?
This door is the access to the ceiling storage space. It's really not that interesting. Of course, I'm not allowed in there, because the potential for falling through the ceiling by being unco is massive, so for all I know, it's actually an entrance to Narnia, and this is why we couldn't find the box for my printer when I realised that that's where the CD with the software for scanning documents to text instead of image was.

Last night at about 9pm: Who wants to brush my teeth for me?
Me: Oh! I'll do it!
HM#1: No. You're too enthusiastic about this and it scares me...have you been licking my toothbrush?

An open letter to everyone bitching about the return of The Yellow Wiggle, who always has been and always will Greg, and not Sam the stinky imposter

Dear people who are bitching and moaning about the awesomeness that is Greg's return to The Wiggles,

I feel I should give you some fair warning - I'm far too emotionally attached to The Wiggles to not rant and rave about this.

Stop your moaning. Look, I'm not going to pretend that this whole thing couldn't have been handled better. Clearly, it could have. That Today interview is possibly the single most awkward thing I've ever watched, but it's not like the interviewer was doing a particularly good job. Who the hell asks anyone, ever, if someone they worked with for 5 years in that sort of job was just "a hired hand"? Also, who the hell lets Anthony be the spokesperson for anything, ever? Even as a little kid, I was aware that he was kind of a tool, and I was a little kid and he was a Wiggle. Does that not tell you something? But this is not the important issue here.

The important issue is parents everywhere, saying that their kids are going to be heartbroken that The Yellow Wiggle is leaving. No. He's not. The Yellow Wiggle is returning, and the person who was shoved into his skivvy as a reasonable substitute is leaving (on a related note, why do we still talk about Wiggles wearing skivvies? They haven't worn actual skivvies in forever. Possibly over a decade. Now they're just normal shirts. This bothers me more than it should). This is nothing personal. Sam seems to be quite lovely, and I have nothing against him as a person. But they could have had anyone in the world put on Greg's skivvy when he left, and I still would have had serious issues with it. No, really. I probably could have brought myself to hate Chris Cheney if he'd been Greg's replacement (although, seriously, how awesome would that have been? And how awesome IS The Living End's version of Hot Potato?), because they were idiots for trying to replace Greg. Everyone's now all "Why couldn't he have come back as the Green/Orange/Heliotrope Wiggle?" Because Greg is the Yellow Wiggle, that's why. Why couldn't they have made Sam the Green/Orange/Heliotrope Wiggle 5 years ago, instead of clearly attempting to trick the kids by putting someone who looks a lot like Greg in a skivvy the same colour as his? Yeah, you've got no answer for that one, do you?

Parents everywhere are saying "What am I supposed to tell my small child who is totally attached to Sam?" That Greg used to be the Yellow Wiggle, but he got very sick, and Sam was only there while he was getting better, just like when the grown ups at daycare/pre-school/kindy/whatever get sick and someone else comes in to do their job until they're better. The only reason that anyone thought Sam was a permanent Wiggle is because it never occured to anyone that Greg would get better. Let's be honest about it - dysautonomia doesn't sound like something that you recover from in a way that allows you to wiggle again. And I think you're missing the real thing here - your kid is like, 6 years old. 6 year olds are resilient, and they're still very, very much of the opinion that Wiggles are invicible and immortal (only they're 6, so they probably don't actually know either of those words, and I honestly have no idea how those concepts even exist for them without the relevant words), so it's all good, because nothing bad can actually happen to a Wiggle. You know who you should really be thinking of in this whole situation? The grow-ups. Or at least, the people who are working very hard at pretending that they're grown-ups, because that's what the law calls them, when they're actually just very, very tall children. Mostly referred to as people in their 20s.

See, as a parent of a small child, you may not understand this, but your average 20 something is fairly attached to the Wiggles. And we've had a bloody long time to develop our attachment. We're the first group of people to not really remember a world before the Wiggles. When shit goes down with The Wiggles, it rocks our worlds. Your kid is 5 and learning that sometimes, people change jobs. Life lessons, people. They're important. They'll get over it. You know what people don't get over so easily? Being 16 and learning that a Wiggle is so sick that he can't stand up any more. How does the world work without The Wiggles? We've got no baseline for that, and we're old enough so that this is kind of a problem. Little kids just make the new thing their baseline. Turns out they're just going to put another, similar looking guy in the same colour shirt and keep on going as if nothing happened. THAT is an earth-shattering, heartbreaking revaltion. It's like being a toddler and being told that Santa, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny aren't real on the same day that you discover that puppies turn into dogs and they get old and they DIE.
Now imagine being 21 and discovering that Jeff is undergoing heart surgery and having people suggest that it's because Jeff is a druggie (and yes, I DID put my fingers in my ears and go "LALALALA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" at that last part), when, clearly, Jeff actually has sleep apnoea, which makes people spontaneously fall asleep during the day, and leads to a highly elevated risk of cardiovascular disorders (seriously, google it. It's a thing, and it does that shit. I'm not making it up). I mean, DUH!

And then, suddenly, just when it seems like the world as you know it may be about to end, because there's sick Wiggles left, right and centre, and the Harry Potter series is finally over (which is only sort of related, but it's more holy-crap-the-world-as-we-know-it-is-ending stuff), you get the news that GREG'S BACK, BITCHES! The sort of person who was looking for a sign that there's a god might take that as their sign. But apparently, you can't just let us have our glorious moment of happiness. You have to go and rain on our collective parade by being all "Won't somebody PLEASE think of the children?!" Please, just let us have this one final moment of childhood pleasure before we have to go and get real jobs and mortgages and shit. Your kids have decades. We've got a couple of years, tops. If you want to be concerned about stuff that affects your kids, how about the fact that the Yo Gabba Gabba people are clearly on drugs, Lazy Town has a creepy-ass superhero who spends his whole life hanging out with kids, and Iggle Piggle is a giant, blue condom with legs? THAT'S the shit that's gonna scar your kids, not the fact that Wiggles are once again back in their original formation of awesomeness.

Love,

Cranky sort of grown-ups everywhere.
Or, you know, Cerry pretending that she speaks for cranky sort of grown-ups everywhere. Take your pick.

I Has A Happy, Day 31: Captioned Pictures

Yes, I am easily amused. But this is not a bad thing, because it means that Im rarely short of ways to amuse myself.  More importantly, how can you see this and not be happy?

Or this

 Which makes me feel smart
Or this

 Which is probably really only funny if you're a linguistics major and have therefore been that crazy person in the library.

I Has A Happy, Day 30: Two Guys & A Girl

Ok, so the acting is pretty bad. But it's childish humour at its best, AND it's Ryan Reynolds in his early 20s so I don't feel creepy for thinking he's gorgeous. Also, the original theme was pretty awesome.

This is a lot funnier with context, but really, who needs context when there's Ryan Reynolds? Particularly when he's doing a bad Scottish accent.

I Has A Happy, Day 29: Scratching

As much as I enjoy scratching in the sense of the word where it's about getting rid of your itches, I mean this in the sense of the word where you're destroying vinyl records. And by you, I mean not-me because Dad's record collection is apparently worth more than my life, so I was never allowed to practise. I hope he realises that he destroyed my opportunity to have super mad DJ skillz and a related terribly successful career (I think I've just found my next series of blog posts: stuff that Cerry could have had a terribly successful career in if her parents weren't mean, old stinkyheads who never let her develop her super mad skillz in anything fun). Anywho. This is another one of those things that I probably should have grown out of my fascination with, but which I didn't. I realise that no one is going to believe that I don't really like rap, between the whole Will-Smith's-Music-Makes-Me-Happy thing and this, but seriously, scratching is da bomb (which I have suddenly started using more often that I did in the 90s, when it didn't even make you sound like a loser. This concerns me).

I Has A Happy, Day 28: Horn Sections

Not like, brass band horn sections. Ska horn sections. And occasionally swing bands, but that's mostly because swin music is kinda like ska (in the sense where kinda like means they both have horns, are in 4/4 timing and are typically fairly fast). But seriously, I love me some horn section. I am yet to hear a song that was not improved by one. I will let the evidence speak for itself.




And somtimes, there are even horns in non-covers.

I Has A Happy, Day 27: Lemurs

In about July of 2000, Dad was walking from Flinders' Street Station to Mum's office when he saw two stuffed lemurs in the window of a shop, and thought "I must remember this place. I bet Ceiridwen would love a lemur for Christmas." On the way back to the station, Dad walked past the shop again, and there was only one lemur in the window, and he thought "I must go in there now, because they're not gonna have lemurs left when we get round to Christmas shopping." So he went in and bought a lemur, and somehow smuggled it into the house without me noticing, and it lived in a cupboard until Christmas day, when I opened it and fell totally in love with it.

That lemur was named Lenny, and he is currently snuggled up in my bed with me, and looking somewhat worse for wear after having spent nearly 11 years being squished in a bed every night, dragged to sleepovers, and generally well-loved. He's been through the wash once or twice. I am now terrified to do this again, because I'm worried he won't come out alive, so now he just gets pegged to the washing line by his ears to get some fresh air every now and then.

Anyway, before I was given Lenny, I had never seen a lemur before. Ever since them, I have thought that lemurs are the freaking coolest animal ever. I dragged some unwitting friends to see Madagascar with me, because I figured it would be impossible to make a movie called Madagascar without putting lemurs in it (I was right. And they were pretty damn awesome lemurs, too). When we went to Dubbo Zoo for an excursion in high school, I bounded my way through the entire early morning (no, really early. Like, 6 or 7 am early) walk around the zoo, because I was so excited about seeing the lemurs at the end. For Christmas in 2007, Mum and Dad gave me a tshirt with a somewhat evil-looking lemur (cause, you know, lemurs that don't look somewhat evil totally exist) on it that says "My plan for world domination involves lemurs. Lots and lots of lemurs." Yes, yes it does. And they will live in my castle with me, and we will have a beautiful, happy existance and play together every day.

I'm not 100% sure if the lemur in this picture is real or not, but HOLY SHIT, IT'S A LEMUR AND A FENEC FOX IN THE SAME PICTURE!!!!! CUTE OVERLOAD!

I Has A Happy, Day 26: Rainbowness

This should not really surpise anyone, having already seen my bedroom and my doona cover this month. It kind of messes with people's heads, though, because the vast majority of my clothing is black or denim. What's left tends to be purple, because it's my favourite colour, or blue, because it's a good colour on me. Also, it's too damn hard to find rainbow clothing when you're past the age of 5. I do have rainbow thermals, though. And 4 pairs of rainbow earrings. And rainbow stripey knee-high toe socks, which I love but which are getting thin on the bottom, so I can't really wear them anymore. Oh, and this year for my birthday, I had rainbow cake (and also 2 C for Cerry cakes, but this is neither particularly interesting, nor really relevant to a post about rainbows). Have I mentioned that my mum is awesomer than your Mum recently? Yeah, she is, cause she made me this. Look at all the colours! And also, look at the super awesome black candles with rainbow glitter that were only $2 for 12. Or possibly $1 for 12, and I bought two packs so it cost me $2 all up. Either way, it was very cheap awesomeness.