Toxic Dilemma

As a new father, I'm still coming to grips with many aspects of parenthood. There are so many new and exciting things to get used to. And when your little angel smiles up at you with pure delight, nothing is wrong with the world. But there is one aspect of parenthood that men universally dread........(insert dramatic music here)......The Dirty Nappy!

Now, I'm not talking a standard wet nappy, those I can handle with ease. I'm talking about the kind where there is the subtle aroma of week old broccoli, a scent that strikes terror into the hearts of men. Especially when you lay your little angel down on the changing table and, with a shaking hand, undo the diaper....

You can not believe that something so vile can come out of something so sweet and innocent! Needless to say that my lovely companion handles this with minimal effort, while I am almost too afraid to touch it lest I contract some rare tropical disease. So I have now come up with a cunning plan, as the following picture demonstrates.....

Although I realise that this plan is not exactly fool-proof, and will only work once or twice, it is the preferred option!

But alas, I know that I cannot run away from this duty forever. At some point, I'm going to have to take a deep breath (preferably in another room), man up and do what is expected of me. I mean, come on, millions of people do this daily! How bad can it be......

Masterchef

I like food. I enjoy making it, and I enjoy eating it. But after recently watching a few episodes of MasterChef, and then taking a cooking class because of it, I have come to realise that my knowledge of cooking is rather limited. Even my lovely companion has expressed interest in expanding her knowledge, and so far I have yet to find anyone that can rival her culinary abilities. At the cooking class that we attended, we were to prepare a romantic 3-course meal. We started off with a salad that consisted of baby spinach leaves, some nuts (no idea what kind), oven baked beetroot slices, oven baked pear slices, danish feta and then a rather complicated dressing. Now, my idea of a salad has always been something like a greek salad; lettuce, tomatoes, olives and feta. The idea of replacing the lettuce with baby spinach and then adding beetroot and pears would never have occurred to me! For our main course we made a succulent piece of beef fillet and mash. Now this I can do! Or so I thought. It had to get a peppercorn and chilli crust, with a garlic and Gorgonzola cream sauce. The end result was extremely tasty, but I still would never have thought of doing that. Give me a piece of steak with a BBQ or a standard cheese sauce any day, and I am happy! I just don't understand this more advanced cooking. Most of the time while watching MasterChef I look very similar to this....

To me it looks like Fear Factor with food. The ingredients just make absolutely no sense! Most of the time it consists of things I would never think of adding together, or things I've never even heard of! Where would they even get these ingredients?! Are they shopping at a local store or the Sci-Fi Channel?! I swear they sometimes make up ingredients, just to mess with the contestants. It wouldn't surprise me if, on one episode, the judges gave them the following challenge:

Judge: "Okay chefs, tonight I want you to make a 3 course meal. For the starter you must make grilled scorpion with a cranberry and Tabasco reduction. Your main course must be diced lion with a side of buffalo testes, lightly seasoned with ground up glass. Your side dish will be grass with a lemon and grape vinaigrette. For dessert, chocolate mouse with jelly tots and honey-dipped ants. You have one hour. Don't lose your ants!"

That would make about as much sense as most of the challenges anyway! I have come to realise that I do not have a complicated palate. I can very easily eat a meal consisting of baked beans and bacon. But my lovely companion enjoys fusion cooking, and I very much enjoy the end result, so I think for now I will shut up and stay out of her kitchen......

The Stuff of Nightmares

The other day we were having a discussion about exotic pets, seeing as though my sister has a wide variety of weird and wonderful creatures in her possession. Eventually, inevitably, the conversation turned to owning spiders. Now, when it comes to spiders, I have this outlook on life:

I'm not the world's biggest fan of arachnids. In fact, you could say that, when it comes to spiders, I instantly turn into a little girl. And the bigger the spider, the younger the age of the little girl! But I am willing to give thousands of spider-owners around the world the benefit of the doubt. So after much preparation (which included large amounts of alcohol and some deep breathing) I gave the matter some thought. But even after some careful thought, which may have involved some involuntary whimpering, I still came to this conclusion:

It boggles my mind that people can keep spiders as pets, for a variety of reasons. First, there is the cost involved. Most pet spiders fall into the tarantula category, which makes them quite expensive. Secondly there is the fact that most of the time they just sit in their tank just staring at you, because the tank can't be too big otherwise you will never see them. Thirdly, they rarely move when it's not feeding time, and you can only stare at a stationary spider for so long. Fourth, most tarantulas have very fine hairs on their bodies that they can shed at will, causing severe skin irritation, and can give you quite a nasty bite, so handling them is best left to the truly fearless.

I have accepted the fact that I will never like spiders. To me they will always be creepy. But I've grown to tolerate them. Upon discovering a spider in my home, I now let it go with a warning, instead of immediately dealing out the death penalty as in the past. So some progress is being made. Who knows, one day I may even like them. But owning one? It'll be a cold day in hell......

Sweet Dreams are Made of This....

Dreams. What can I say, some are pleasant, some are not, some are just downright weird. I had a dream the other night that left me looking like this:

It was sort of a Neverending Story meets Alice in Wonderland, complete with giant car-eating snails and a guy called the Soup King, who rules this weird kingdom while sitting in a giant bowl of soup. I woke up wondering if my Lovely Companion had slipped something into my coffee the previous evening. Or if I had smoked an old gym sock stuffed with dishwashing liquid, mouldy cheese and possibly some bacon. Because that dream was just plain weird. At some point in the dream, I engage in a pillow fight to the death......with myself. Which makes about as much sense as anything else in the dream.

Why do we have dreams that seem to just come out of nowhere, which make as much sense as licking a cactus? (Or the latest Miley Cirus music video) What causes these midnight hallucinations? Is this where all makers of cartoons get their ideas? At least I know for a fact that when I go to sleep, I will never ever be bored!

Then you get the dreams which are so realistic that you wake up struggling to separate fact from fiction. Like when your Lovely Companion is mad at you because of something that you did in her dream....

Me: "Good morning."

LC: "Hmph!"

Me: "What's wrong?"

LC: " You slept with my 9th grade math teacher, you *****!"

Me: "Hang on, I did what???"

Then there are the dreams that make you wake up in the middle of the night with your Lovely Companion looking at you strangely. It is only then that you realise that you have been having an entire confusing conversation in your sleep, mostly about green grass, sunflowers and purple elephants. Or video game characters.

I guess I'll never understand dreams. Not their meanings or their origins. So I have decided not to try and understand. Sweet dreams are made of this, who am I to disagree.......

Sing it!

I'm a big fan of Disney movies. The innocence of the plot lines, the fact that, in a violent world, there are still movies without the sex, strong language and violence. They are also usually brilliantly animated, and just make you feel so much better after watching them. There is just one thing that baffles me: why must everyone always sing about everything? And no-one bats an eye while it's happening! If I were to try that in the real world (well, apart from the fact that I sing about as well as a bullfrog) people would lock me up for being out of my mind! Can you imagine the situation? In an office environment, walking over to the printer to collect a document that I've just attempted to print, only to realise that the printer is out of ink. What to do? I know! I'll burst into song for no apparent reason!

A movie that sums this weirdness up perfectly, is Enchanted. It is ironically a Disney movie, but where they make fun of the fact that people randomly burst into song at inappropriate moments. My favourite scene in the entire film is where Prince Charming finds his princess, starts singing about how glad he is and then gets run over by a whole group of cyclists. THAT's the way it's supposed to go! My favourite movie line of all time also originates in this movie. It is where Prince Charming finally gets to belt out his love for the princess, and the male lead character mumbles to himself "Oh good, he sings too." I have shamelessly adopted that line, and mumble it at least once while watching any Disney movie, much to my Lovely Companion's chagrin.

I guess I'll never understand Disney's logic, and maybe I'm not supposed to. Maybe I'm just supposed to sit back, relax, grab the popcorn and enjoy the show....

When All Else Fails....

Men's bathrooms. In my honest opinion only nuclear waste dump sites are more disgusting! What is it about being in a bathroom that you don't own that makes men stop aiming, and more importantly, stop flushing? It's like a neanderthal part of the male brain kicks in and goes "Duuur, I are not at home, I must mark my territory.....hur hur hur." For those of us with a more advanced grasp of personal hygiene, this is absolutely baffling! In fact, I've come to the conclusion that men's bathrooms must now be indicated as follows:

This would prevent the more intelligent modern man from going into a potentially deadly environment and catching Ebola, syphilis, measles or a combination of all three. A recent event prompted my little rant, and I feel I should explain. I went into the men's bathroom at our office complex to blow my nose. Walking into one of the stalls I was greeted a ghastly sight. It appeared that someone had eaten mexican, indian and/or thai food, developed intense diarrhea and had then proceeded to explode all over the stall. Because (and I'm assuming this, nothing else would make sense) of the low blood sugar and low blood pressure caused by expelling most of your internal organs, this unfortunate soul then didn't flush. Now, because this is a frequent occurance at the office complex where I am employed, the building management put up a sign behind the stall door which says the following:

Please remember to flush the toilet after you are done!

•At the back of the toilet you will find a handle, please hold this down until everything is flushed away.

•Please clean the toilet seat after you are done.

•Please leave the stall clean and tidy.

This was clearly not working, as this particular sign has been ignored time and again. I felt inspired to make my own sign. One that would clearly convey the frustration of more hygienic men when faced with the hazards of a public bathroom. One that would demonstrate how tired we are of having to repeat the same message over and over again. The end result was a masterpiece:

After replacing management's sign with mine, we have had a 100% increase in flushing. No more dirty toilets, no more spills on the seats. In fact, the sign worked so well that building management left it in place. I firmly believe that this is because you cannot help but flush if you have Samuel L Jackson staring at you, instructing you to flush as only he can. Now every time I enter into the bathroom, I am greeted by the sight of a clean and sparkling toilet stall. This made me think that I may have missed my calling. If ever I find myself unemployed, I can create striking, effective yet pithy signs for a living....

What Went Wrong?

I couldn't help but notice (seeing as it was on pretty much every webpage I opened lately) Miley Cyrus romping around on stage while wearing very little and doing something called "twerking", whatever the hell that is. My lovely companion and I then speculated about what went wrong. Miley went from sweet and wholesome Hannah Montana to something very akin to a singing stripper with a mild concussion. Then, a few years ago, you had Britney. She also started off quite sweet and innocent, and then turned into a hillbilly as soon as the money started rolling in. What is it about fame that turns regular people into trailer trash?

This brings me to my second point. I am absolutely astounded by the success of Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga. Why on earth would a teenage boy who sounds very much like a teenage girl when he sings be so popular? And why would all teenage girls (and some 40 year old women as well) fall so madly in love with him? Then you have Lady Gaga. This is someone who started off quite okay actually, and then got so weird that using the word weird doesn't even do her justice. Bizarre, maybe? These days, every time I turn on the radio and I listen to what is on offer, I get this expression:

What happened to music?! Gone are the days of Led Zeppelin, Dire Straits and Queen. Now every band sounds the same, and if the band or singer isn't completely weird in the process, no-one listens to them.

I firmly believe that none of the bands today can ever be as epic as Queen. We are talking about a band whose music is still being used in movies and television. And this 12 years after the death of its lead singer. A man whose vocal ability and charisma few can match. So, to all bands out there I say this, be quiet, pop in a Queen CD, get out your notepads and pencils, get ready to take some notes, stomp your feet and repeat after me: "We will, we will ROCK YOU!"