MELLIPOP HAS GIRL GERMS

Ok, so Anton and I have been dealing with the fraught question of toothbrush ettiquette of late, and frankly, I think he’s being a big wussy girl about it.

To me, a toothbrush is a toothbrush. If it’s in the bathroom, you use it. As long as we’re already swapping bodily fluids anyway, I don’t see why I shouldn’t be able to use Anton’s toothbrush, and vice versa. This apparently, is the source of some disgust and revulsion on his behalf.

I mean, this is the same guy that gets all squeamish when I use the lipstick testers at K-mart, issuing stern warnings about cold sores, Hep A and herpes. But this is also the same guy that lets his DOG drink directly from the lip of his water bottle and then takes a swig himself, lets his DOG give him big sloppy kisses smack on the lips, lets his DOG lick our dinner plates clean and showcases a neat trick whereby his DOG takes a piece of food right from out of his open mouth.

THIS DOG IS A HABITUAL POO-EATER!

THIS DOG HAS EATEN DIRTY TAMPONS!

And I’m supposed to NOT be offended when he is disgusted that I would dare to put his pristine toothbrush in my goddamn filthy Tester-lipstick-infected mouth.

Anyway, Anton’s principle complaint when confronted on the issue is that he DOESN’T LIKE USING A WET TOOTHBRUSH. Naturally, I concede, it is wet after I have used it. But my point is, you have to apply water to the toothbrush for it to work effectively. The water plays a vital role in acting as a catalyst for the toothpaste to create a lather. This is an essential aspect of the cleaning process.

To quote from the Macquarie dictionary:

LATHER: Foam or froth made from SOAP (read: toothpaste) and WATER.

The entire process just does not work without water. And using water necessarily entails using a WET TOOTHBRUSH.

But it doesn’t end there. Crazy Old Anton has a couple of other very weird toothbrushing habits. Hey why not? We’re all friends here, right!

1) Instead of moving the toothbrush from side to side in a brushing manner, he SHAKES HIS WHOLE HEAD rapidly from side to side instead!

2) He SWALLOWS THE FOAM after rinsing!

And being the eternal winner in the one-upmanship stakes, Anton came up with a novel display the other day, intended to deter me forever more from putting his toothbrush in my mouth. Let's just say that the said toothbrush made a couple of unseemly visits down both the front and back of Anton's daks, sullied forever by its contact with some very sweaty cracks, sacs and crevices.

Yeah… And I’m the disgusting one…

MELLIPOP'S XMAS MIRACLE

Ok, so I have a story to tell. A wondrous story, a heartwarming tale, a bona fide “Telemovie of the Week” Christmas miracle. And most miraculous of all, ‘twas I, young Mellipop (played here by Olivia Newton John), who was the beaming recipient of this Christmas miracle. (circa 17th December 2004)

Now as regular Mellipop users will well know, a couple of weeks out from Xmas I was playing a devastating turn at being the sad Little Mellipop Matchstick Girl, orphaned and lonely in WA, far from family and friends. Sniffle…(choked sob)…Sigh….

So anyway, shortly after my winsome post about missing my folks for Xmas, I got a surprise phone call at work from the kick-ass boss at my previous job (you may remember him from an earlier post as He Who Held Mellipop’s Head Out of the Gutter While She Was Drunkenly Vomiting AND Didn’t Sack Her The Next Day).

Now as I answered the call I thought how nice it was of Mike to give me a call and wish me a Merry Xmas. Until he OFFERED TO FLY ME TO AND FROM SYDNEY FOR THE COMPANY’S CHRISTMAS PARTY AT THE COMPANY’S EXPENSE, as a surprise for all my old colleagues. All that was missing was a big old cake for me to jump out of in a sequinned g-string and tasselled pasties.

I’m sure that my squeals of shock and delight at that point were heard clearly by the entire population on the East Coast. Of Iceland. I also recall repeating the question “Are you serious?” over and over again, as though my entire command of the English language had regressed to those three sole words. Well that, plus the squealing.

Now to put this in perspective – I haven’t worked for the company since the start of March this year (after 3.5 years of dedicated toil). We aren't talking about some massively filthy-rich multi-national, but a small independent record label of about 20 employees. They bought me a freakin’ iPod as a farewell gift. And now they wanted to fly me back home AT XMAS, feed me free food and alchohol and then spot me $50 for the cab fare home. Their generosity has far outstripped any practical or financial worth I ever offered them as an employee. I AM good value at parties, however….

So yes, I have to admit that I felt very loved - a bit like visiting royalty. A princess in dirty jeans and adidas trainers, light beer in one hand, contraband ciggie in the other and a nascent WA accent, if the bloody piss-takers are to be believed.

The one downside was that I was forced to snub my current colleagues and their Christmas party over here in WA, as unfortunately both dates coincided. But that was well made up for by the fact that I got to catch up with all my best mates and family in the three days I was over in Sydney. Though my current colleagues were left somewhat bewildered by the ostentatious gesture, wondering if I am really THAT good an employee (I'm not) and half-suspecting I was going to be lured back to my old job in Sydney (I'm not).

So anyway, tears were shed, good times were had and I was pleasantly reminded of how much I love Sydney’s Inner West, with its grime, choice of quality restaurants and weird-looking people swarming the streets in that swift Sydney gait that I still can’t shake.

THAT WAS MELLIPOP’S CHRISTMAS MIRACLE! AND IT ROCKED THE BIG STUFF!

P.S. Thanks again to the NW crew for yet another fabulous night, and to everyone I was able to oh so briefly catch up with during the three days I was there. And apologies to Nick for missing his Tarot reading because I was busy bantering with one of his suppliers. Seems we need to work on those non-verbal cues a bit ;)

MELLIPOP TURNS 28

Ok, so I'm not having a crisis this year. So I'm 28 and closer to the big three-o than I have ever been. Homo sapiens of many generations past would have felt pretty darn invincible to have reached my age so I really shouldn't complain. And the Sex in the City girls have made the thirties look like the place to be. Though in Manhattan, not Freo.

So I as yet have no concrete plans for today but I know that it somehow involves a home-baked chocolate fudge cake made from a Betty Crocker cake mix and a huge value pack of 24 Tim Tams, cooked by my very own Iron Chef-in-residence, Anton.

Tonight we are heading off to Leederville (think wannabe Newtown but without the grime and unusual dress code) to the outdoor cinema to see End of a Century, a doco about the Ramones.

Mum has already phoned for an extended chat - it seems I played the guilt card to perfection once more ;) ALL IN GOOD FUN. I'm really not the horrible, ungrateful child I appear to be. Not anymore, anyway....

Happy Birthday to Me!

LET'S PLAY PARENTAL GUILT

OK, so I call my parents this morning and the bloody buggers couldn't get me off the phone fast enough. Five minutes and a couple of Merry Christmases later and the Yuletide Power Chat was over before it even got started. It was long enough however, for my parent's to have had a mini-drama with a plastic kitchen appliance burning on an accidentally-switched-on stovetop.

So Happy Christmas Mum & Dad ! I'll send you both a postcard instead......;)

CHRISTMAS EVE MELLIPOP-STYLE

OK, so it’s 5pm on Christmas Eve, I’ve had 365 whole shopping days to prepare for the obligatory round of gift-giving tomorrow and here I am wrapping Anton and Comanche’s presents with NEWSPAPER and BLU-TACK.

Yes folks, people actually do things like that. People over the age of 27 who have both a disposable income and the sense to know better. Invariably I get bored with these things before getting to the finer points of gift-wrap and cellotape, much like a marathon runner who, with the end of the race in sight, gets bored, goes “bugger this” and ducks into the next pub she comes across on her way.

So we have the Santa Claus pillow cases, the Christmas banners, a Beach Boys Christmas CD and a decidely ugly plastic Santa in the front window but no wrapping paper. Nevermind. I have a stupid political thing about wrapping paper anyway. It really has no inherent use besides its eventual role as gaudy landfill. Wrapping paper is the ultimate display of consumer arrogance. Sure, let’s cut down trees to make paper dyed with toxic chemicals so that we can use it to conceal other useless commodities that we don’t really need either.

God that’s so fucking obvious in an undergraduate kind of way.

Look, I’m just being a Grinch because I’m still at home with my even lazier partner instead of being on the beach with the second installment of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series.

CHRISTMAS DAY UPDATE

Ok, so suddenly I don’t feel so bad about the newspaper/blu-tack combo I’ve cleverly used to wrap Anton’s prezzies with.

I get handed what appears to be a beautifully wrapped gift with real Xmas paper. When I turn it over to open it, I see that the entire thing is actually held together by band-aids….

It seems that Anton couldn't find the sticky-tape either.....

THE PRESSURE IS ON TO BE PERFECT

Ok, so I've always been a shining example of wasted potential. Of disappointment. Of underachievement.

When everyone around me is shooting for the corporate stars, buying property, doing respected degrees like law and economics, getting married, having babies and leaving their mark on the world, I've packed up my sociology degree and have exiled myself to the ass-end of the continent. I'm renting in the most affordable city in the country, about to take possession of my second dog and doing a job that requires neither intellect or dynamism. And for which I am earning roughly $10 000 LESS what I was earning in Sydney this time last year....

I've got the career trajectory thing ALL WRONG! Like some dumb suburbanite on The Price is Right with Larry Emdur getting the "Higher or Lower" game at the end of the show ALL MIXED UP! I'm not even in the ballpark, baby. And Larry is MOCKING ME with his Macleans Ultra White Smile set to SMUG!

Here I am dicking around doing a blog while others of my generation are cleaning up in the showcase game - investing in shares and hosting dinner parties with cloth napkins and matching chairs that didn't come from St Vinnies. As lacking in ambition as I am, I WAS hoping to move out of the undergraduate faux-poverty interior aesthetic. Then we got a bloody Staffy.

I always kind of wished I was more ambitious. Though ambitious people invariably bore the crap out of me. You know the types. The ones in high school kissing post-pubescent ass to get on the Student Council or the Yearbook committee (including the bitch who dated your ex-boypal, deliberately left your photo off the front cover out of spite then made sure you didn't actually receive a copy of the darn thing and so are left with a photocopied replica kindly provided by a mate). The ones with resumes stuffed full of extra-curricular awards from Maths competitions and First Aid courses and volunteer work with elderly dementia patients who have lost not only their minds, but their bowel control as well.

I was going somewhere with this. See, I've been nominated by Nick for Best WA Blog in the 2005 Australian Blog Awards. Like a cat coughing up a furball, it's brought up all my repressed insecurities about being crap. Best WA Blog? Best WP Blog, maybe.... That's Wasted Potential, for those of you I lost back there in the second paragraph.

Kind of makes you nostalgic for the dirty tampon anecdotes, doesn't it?

FUCK FAKE POCKETS

Ok, so here’s one for the ladies - as opposed to my previous post about dirty tampons and dog poo, a theme with an undoubtedly universal appeal.

Anyway, you will all thank me for this ladies but I’ve cracked the Fake Pocket Conspiracy. It came to me in a flash of blinding insight this morning when I realised that the conspiracy to design women’s clothing with faux-pockets is a capitalist rather than a patriarchal one.

But before I elaborate, let’s take a few steps back as to better reveal the trail of genius involved. See, it all started when I headed off to the ladies loos this morning. It so happened that I also needed to attend to what I will discretely refer to as “women’s issues” or - put more colourfully for the brave - I needed to “pull the plug out”.

Now it’s one thing to walk around the office with coffee mug or manila folder in hand, but yet another to walk around swinging a tampon from a sassily-cocked wrist. So I am by necessity forced into covert behaviour, tampon concealed in tightly-clenched fist, praying that I don’t happen to bump into anyone I need to shake hands with on my way through the office or that someone doesn’t hand me another file on my way through. Note to designers of femme coture: THIS IS JUST ONE INSTANCE IN THE COMPLEX LIVES OF MODERN WOMEN WHERE HAVING A POCKET COMES IN HANDY.

A real pocket. Not a seam sewn into the fabric that promises a pocket yet delivers only disappointment and frustration. The pants I wore today fell somewhere in-between like some weird hermaphroditic third cousin of the faux-pocket and the real pocket, which is essentially a pocket no more than an inch deep. Thankfully deep enough to conceal a regular tampon tucked in horizontally, but not quite enough to fully reassure me that it was still going to be in there at the end of my hike to the loos.

This is entirely unacceptable and I really cannot fathom just why women put up with it because you know what happens when you take our pockets away from us? WE HAVE TO BUY OTHER SHIT TO CARRY ALL OUR SHIT AROUND IN!

How many blokes do you see walking around with the ill-fated Man-Bag? Not a single self-respecting one of them! Though I did see this guy standing on the train the other day, carrying a well-stuffed pink handbag. I stared at him rather quizzically until I realized he was carrying it for his comfortably seated wife. That’s class. That's the way it should be!

Anyway my point is – boys get all the pockets. They can get their bloody wallets in there, mobile phones, iPods, car keys, condoms, a pack of fags and a lighter - you name it. Fully self-contained.

The question is, why do us chicks get lumped with fake pockets instead of the real thing. See, I used to think that it was all about the patriarchy. Women as ornamental beings rather than functional ones. And women as sexual objects ie a woman with a wallet in her back pocket denies the fundamental sexual right of the man to get an unfettered view of the divine curvature of her arse. And side pockets interfere with man’s appraisal of a woman’s suitability for breeding by artificially inflating the appearance of her childbearing hips. And so on and so forth.

I mean sure, that all sounds absolutely stone-cold reasonable. But there's more at work here than simple sexual objectification.

You see, it's really actually a Capitalist Conspiracy, comrades. If they don’t give us pockets we have to buy handbags, bumbags, purses, crappy little crocheted mobile phone bags and Libra Fleur brightly-coloured tampon purse packs so we can DISCRETELY conceal the fact we’re carrying tampons around the office. Though we might as well be walking around with red crosses daubed on our foreheads with menstrual blood and a sign hanging around our necks reading "Beware: Dirty Breeder in Heat - This Message Proudly Brought to You by Libra Fleur" for all the discretion a fluoro-pink box with big yellow polka dots implies….. Fuck all this shit. JUST GIVE US BACK OUR GODDAMN POCKETS.

And I'll lay off on the tampon thing now, promise. Don't want to lose my bloke demographic ;) Stay tuned for boobs on Mellipop. Boobs and V8s. Rrrrrrrrrrrrrr........

THE STAFFY & THE DIRTY TAMPON

***** Dedicated to Graham ******

OK to those of you who have already heard this story before, I apologise. But it’s another painfully eventless day in the life of Mellipop and so I am forced to trawl through the mental archives for something novel to deliver.

So anyway, I’ve never formally introduced the third member of my little Freo family, but I have mentioned her in other contexts before - usually those to do with her eating various household items or destroying some new piece of furniture. Her name is Comanche and she is our 18 month old Staffordshire Bull Terrier.

To those of you unacquainted with the nuances of the dog breeding world, Staffys are not a breed renowned for their intelligence. In fact, one might say that they are the perfect combination of brawn and stupidity. Our little angel is no exception.

Just before we go any further I will warn you to put down whatever you are eating. Just in case.

Manche really loves eating things that aren’t meant to be eaten. She even ate a bottle of something called “No-Bite” which we bought to spray on things we didn’t want her to chew - she munched on the bottle and drank the contents.

The condensed CV of Comanche Cuisine includes: the iron, a briefcase, television cabinets, countless books and CDs, wooden balustrading, outdoor furniture, a mantelpiece/fireplace, a tall lampshade from IKEA, mops and brooms, the sofa bed mattress, sprinkler heads, slippers, Foxtel remote controls (x 2), cockroach baits, cat poo, a whole family-sized block of chocolate (which is like speed for dogs and is highly toxic), a rancid stick of csabai (Hungarian salami), skirting boards and dirty tampons.

Yes, dirty tampons. Anton and I have come home on more than one occasion to see that our darling little Manche has gotten into the bin and has a fine old time with some USED pads and tampons, scattered in little pieces all over the floor throughout the house. And yes, it is as gross as it sounds…. The last thing you want to do when you get home from work is go on The Shredded Tampon Treasure Hunt picking up tiny little pieces of blood-soaked sanitary products from all over the place.

But wait...there's more! An even more repulsive sequel....

PART TWO: THE TAMPON STRIKES BACK

So I’m out walking Manche one day, down at the busy doggie-park in Leichhardt back in Sydney, a day just like any other. Having sniffed around for a while, and belted a few of the other dogs around, she squats into position and settles herself to aah…defecate.

So I’m standing there with my little doggie-doo bag poised to swoop down on some warm Staffy poo, waiting idly for her to finish up and move on. However this time, she seemed to be having some difficulties – how can I say this – “expelling” the poo from her bum-hole. And it was a really, really long, narrow poo that hung down to the ground, but it wasn’t coming right out!

And I’m totally spellbound by this really long poo and I’m watching her try to push and shake it out, with no success. It’s swinging like a pendulum and I’m getting embarrassed for her because she is walking around with it hanging out her arse like it’s a smelly second tail.

I didn’t know what to do. The precious thing is still trying to squeeze the darn thing out and there’s no way I’m going to be the laughing stock of the park, so I start chasing her around, trying to pull it out of her bum (with the plastic bag over my hand, of course!).

But this only scares her and so she keeps running away from me at the same time that I am trying to pull it out for her in a lame attempt to be helpful, but she doesn't understand and she's giving me this impatient look as if to say "can you leave me the heck alone for a sec while I take care of this". Picture me at the park, chasing my dog around and grabbing at her ass for a really long piece of poo….. Charming.

Eventually she manages to squeeze it out so I go over to clean it up, with much relief. As I pick it up, I realize that it has an unusually coarse, stringy texture and so I go in for a closer look. Turns out, it’s a long piece of cotton she has unraveled from one of the tampons she must have ripped apart and eaten, but it has come out the other end fully coated in poo. I mean, the darn thing must have been about 20 cm long. And it’s obviously gone right through her doggy digestive system without being broken down in the process (it’s the cellulose, I guess).

So there you go. It was quite funny, really. Bloody tampons and poo. Hope you’re not too squeamish.

Sorry Graham... ;)

MELLIPOP VISITS HER LOCAL GP

Ok so yesterday I surrendered to the highway robbery of a health system here in WA and went and saw a bloody GP.

In hindsight, I would have been better off:

* Heading off to JB Hi Fi and buying the new Kath and Kim DVD, with change left over from my $50 to grab a schooner at the pub before heading home

* Putting my $50 on a 100-1 long shot at the trots

* Walking up to some random stranger in the street, handing my $50 over and asking them to tell me that I look “stressed”

* Donating the $50 to my dead sponsor child through World Vision Read the whole tragic story here

So I go to see Dr Do-Nothing at the Sweatshop Medical Centre in Perth and surprisingly, am promptly ushered in for my appointment. Good start. I drag Anton in with me because for some reason I turn into a total dribbling pussy when I am in a doctor’s office (eek….not such a good adjective to use there…..)

Seriously, you know how some people get really nervous and shaky when they are forced into public speaking. I’m like that with doctors. Normally I have this loud rock-sturdy voice you can easily hear 30 feet away in a packed-out pub, but I turn into a quiet little church mouse when I’m in with the doc. Pathetic squeaky little rodent that I am.

So anyway, I'm in with the doc and begin to haltingly describe my symptoms when the phone starts ringing. THE DOCTOR ANSWERED THE FUCKING PHONE IN THE MIDDLE OF MY CONSULTATION! Now if it had been a short 30 second conversation I could almost have been cool with that.

But I got to sit there for TEN MINUTES while he was speaking to this guy or chick who obviously had some mentally ill mother who was refusing to go into aged care and the doctor kept saying that “I can’t talk about it for privacy reasons” whilst throwing pointed looks in my direction, but I still got to hear all the juicy stuff about this poor woman’s paranoia and mental deterioration and how they were both scheming to lock her away.

THEN HE RINGS SOME OTHER DUDE FOR HER “PRI” TEST RESULTS.

THEN HE RINGS THE HEARTLESS, SCHEMING CHILD BACK TO GIVE THEM THE “PRI” TEST RESULTS.

And all the while Anton and I are sitting there having a nice old conversation about the new sunglasses he just bought that day, how wacky all the one-way streets in the CBD are and how windy it is outside. And the whole time I’m thinking “I have to give this fucker $50!”

So anyway, Dr Do-Nothing gets off the phone, promptly apologises and continues with my consultation, telling me nothing I haven’t heard already about migraines (or that I couldn’t have got off the ‘net) and writes me out THREE prescriptions for various potent drugs, none of which I intend to fill because I am there to discover and treat the cause of my recent illness and not just to medicate the symptoms. Why I expected a doctor of Western medicine to help me with this I will never know.

So both Anton and I asked about maybe getting some blood tests done so we could maybe find out if there is any biochemical reason for my recent illness. I soon found out that a $50 consultation doesn’t buy you blood tests, henceforth I now have a referral to some other greedy, sucking arm of the WA health industry for my blood and pee-pee testing.

Then once I have had the tests done (at God-knows-what outrageous expense) , I get to take another one of my hard-earned $50 notes back to Dr Do-Nothing so that he can “go through the test results” with me… And maybe I’ll also find out what eventually happens to that poor old mentally ill mother they were both trying to maneuver into the obscurity of aged health care, WA-style.

Only God can help you now, lady. I just hope you’ve got plenty of $50’s buried in the backyard somewhere, hidden away from that evil scheming child and these bloodsucking health professionals.

MELLIPOP'S FIRST CHRISTMAS

OK, so I’m turning into a Christmas compulsive this year.,,,

For the first time in years I am getting excited about Christmas. I am in "the spirit of Christmas", HALLELUJIAH MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS! You see, it’s so easy to be cynical and jaded and rant about the mindless consumerism of it all when you’ve got Mum to plan the big lunch spread and Dad to get pissed with. And your brother and sister to help you take the piss out of your drunken Dad. And your nieces to play dress-ups with.

I will have none of the above this year, for the first time ever and already I am feeling like there is a huge empty abyss where my family used to be. So I’m conscientiously filling it with my Frank Sinatra Christmas Carol CD and the over-purchase of decorations for the Christmas tree I insisted we had to have. Despite the danger of it becoming a Staffy plaything of mass Yuletide destruction when we aren’t at home.

I even have a big plastic Santa in our front window, just in case the postman forgets that it’s Christmas and fails to deliver me any cards from all the people back East who have already forgotten me (or are still working it through in Gestalt therapy).

And I bought a Santa hat. And I'm sending cards for the first time in over a decade (I’m writing it off as a good marketing opportunity for the blog). Plus I am about to launch the Chrissie Season Video-Fest at home to a less than enthused audience of two - Anton and the dog. This generally consists of scouring our local video store for every possible kiddie Christmas film available, and watching them all in the space of the next three weeks. But nothing with that little drug-freak Culkin boy. The loss of innocence would be too unbearable to witness at this festive time of year.

And I will know I’m in VERY serious trouble when I sit down to watch the Ray Freakin’ Martin 2004 Carols in the Domain. The very same program that I used to sit and whinge through in its painful entirety while I would help Mum wrap presents at the last minute. More whinging than wrapping, usually. But I’m gonna slog it out with you this year Ray, I swear. And I will SING! Not whinge…..

So essentially I still don’t know what form Christmas Day in WA will take for us this year. Depending on the weather, I suspect we’ll grab the dog and head down to the beach with some pathetic substitute for Chrissie lunch in a plastic bag because we don’t have a picnic basket. And I'll try not to cry when I see everyone else with their families doing the same thing but with better food. And their Mum to pile it all up on a plastic plate for them like they were a kid again, while they're sinking a few beers with their Dad. And I'll be thinking about everyone I love and miss back home.

WE NEED MORE TINSEL OVER HERE! FAST!!!