Swandives

Image via WikipediaCue the Twilight Zone music: something weird is happening. I posted a minor rant about my disappointment with Weight Watchers and it mysteriously disappeared. The WW faeries came and took it away - if only they could do the same for the extra 8 kg of lard that’s hanging around right now. But thank you for all your ideas and comments - they’ve been filed away where I will put them to good use.

Yesterday I ran 4 km and then did a pump class. I was a wee bit weary by the end of it all. But I’ve entered the City to Surf so it’s training, here we come. I wasn’t going to enter because with only a few weeks left, it’s unlikely that I’ll get the 14 km even at my snaily pace, but I had a mini epiphany - I don’t actually have to run the entire way. Hell, most people don’t run the entire way. And all of a sudden, the C2S stopped being this painful chore and started being potentially fun. So that’s the plan, anyway.

Of course, this comes in the first year that C2S offers timing chips, so I’ll know exactly how slow I am. I am very happy about the chips and it’s providing extra incentive to train but why in the very year when I decide to be zen about my time and walking? Oh well. There’s always next year.

… in other news, a truly weird moment watching the news on the tele tonight. Actually, I was listening, not watching. It was all about the wildfires in California, which are pretty dire by the sounds of things. Too many fires, not enough resources to fight them all, forcing fire fighters to pick and choose and leave some to burn. The news coverage switched to the obligatory pollie news grab, and all of a sudden I was listening to Arnold Schwarzenegger declaring a state of emergency and ordering the National Guard to assist in the efforts.

It was a surreal moment because my first reaction was to think, “Why doesn’t Arnie just put the fires out?”. He saved the world countless times - he even saved Mars, for goodness sake! A few fires should be a doddle, right? A few moments later common sense kicked in: “D’uh Swannie, this is real life we’re talking about, not some movie.” Oh yeah. Right. Darn.

If there was ever a laugh out loud moment on the interwebs, it was this comment from the live stream on Big Brother. Attributed to Rebecca and Bridget - I kid you not, it’s word for word. Hilarious!

Our passion is bikini modelling”

I’m sure many blokes will be stoked. And, you need a passion in life. It’s very admirable.

So it’s the last day for voting and I head over to the YouTube awards channel. And, pretty much at random, I click on Randy Pausch’s ‘Last Lecture’ in the inspirational category. In recent times I have found I get a lot out of inspirational stories, even though in the past I may have dismissed it all as sentimental and therefore somehow unworthy of being useful. At about one and a quarter hours long, this YouTube clip is waaay above the commonly accepted two minute timeline for web video. But it’s worth every. single. minute. Randy Pausch is a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, but that’s only part of the story. If ever there was a lecture that defined inspiration, this is it.

Sometimes, being right sucks. It took Channel 9 nine weeks to completely screw up the programming for Moonlight. Actually, it took seven weeks, seeing as they managed to screen episodes eight and nine out of order. Now, instead of watching noir cute vampiry goodness, I am here venting. That’s right - three episodes of season one to go, and the show has been taken off air indefinitely. Now, I know the writers strike in the US is playing havoc with programming, but these episodes are in the bag. There is no excuse not to show them - and certainly no excuse to take the show off air for a Leonardo Di Caprio movie rerun, which is what they’ve put in its place.

As a general rule, I don’t BitTorrent television. But I will make an exception for arrogance.

And, if you think I’ve got my tits in a knot, I suggest registering with the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) and reading the Aussie comments on its message boards regarding this. People are mad, Channel 9. They hate you. And your current viewers are starting to shuffle off this mortal coil. That can’t be good.

I love my tele. Luurrve it, I tells ya. Doesn’t have to be high brow, or even of terribly good quality - schlock TV, like music, is a wickedly wonderful social commentary that should never be underestimated. But us TV junkies have our limits; a few pet hates that will move us to action despite our addiction to the box.

This week I signed up for a workshop in presentation skills because, frankly, I’d rather eat styrofoam than stand up and give a speech. The irony is that it’s not the speaking itself that I loathe, it’s the worrying beforehand. I once had to give a speech at my godmother’s birthday and followed a performance by the utterly brilliant Toni Lamond - and as far as I’m concerned, if I can do that, I can do anything. But I’m hardly a pro and I have a lot to learn so I thought, yeah, a workshop sounds tops.

It was a complete disaster. Contrary to what my husband will tell you, I am not a performer. And I came away from the day feeling like I was crap and useless and could never again talk about anything - which of course is complete bollocks. Anyway, during the course of the day we had to give a presentation about a topic with about 45 minutes of preparation. Choosing a topic is hard enough. In the end I decided to rant about how I hate it when TV stations chop and change my fave shows with no apparent care for viewers. And it turns out I’m not alone - Peter Mattessi evidently feels the same way, as he wrote in Crikey today. Actually, his rant is a lead into why he is watching The Wire. Somebody introduced me to this show in much the same way as Peter a few months ago and I couldn’t agree more.

All this is by the by, you know. What has really got my goat right now is the utterly blatant and completely annoying house ad Channel 9 foisted upon me last night while I was watching Moonlight. Yes, the show is still on at 9.30pm - yay! I was beginning to think that perhaps I had unfairly maligned the network that sickeningly ‘hearts’ TV when it came up with this little gem - an ad for Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicals across the bottom of the screen. It’s a static image that sits beside the channel logo. And for a show like Moonlight, which is largely set at night, a white logo (even a transparent one) is infuriatingly obvious. I’m moved to complain - which seems to involve jumping through several hoops acccording to Free TV. You can’t send an email - you must “post or fax your complaint to the relevant body”. Are you kidding? This is 2008 we’re talking about here. Email is soooo 1990s and even that’s not an option. Deliberate perhaps? And stations wonder why people are switching off in droves. D’uh!

I have a lot of favourite TV shows and unsurprisingly, many revolve around food. But my favourite is The Cook and the Chef on the ABC with Simon Bryant and Maggie Beer. It’s one of the few cooking shows on the tele that I actually learn from - mostly it’s some talking head making gastroporn, but this show is all about good produce and a love of food. So I am so happy to discover that you can download episodes (I sometimes miss them because of work or gym etc). The downloads have been available for a while now, but I only just got around to checking out the website:

http://www.abc.net.au/tv/cookandchef

Just watched the first episode of Moonlight - I have a real soft spot for TV shows about vampires. I am worried that Channel 9, with its usual disregard for viewers under the age of…ah..say 60…will relegate it to some ungodly hour of the evening after the first couple of episodes (note to programmers: just because we like watching television shows about vampires does not mean we are of that persuasion ourselves - some of us have to get up and go to work in the morning).

Now, I know, it isn’t the most original of plots (it’s been done before, as fans of Forever Knight are well aware) so when I first heard about it I was a bit skeptical. But it beats the hell out of bad American sitcoms all summer so bring it on, I say.

Oh, and Veronica Mars fans will appreciate the appearance of Jason Dohring, who played Logan in VM - plays the best friend, Josef Konstantin. Funny. Good.

First off, I am sorry. This really shouldn’t be a YouTube blog. But I’ve been off having little mini nervous breakdowns over the last eight weeks or so and so haven’t really be attending to Swandives. But I simply have to share this - the funniest thing I have seen on YouTube - or tele - in years. Tears were streaming down my face. Watch out for the Storm Trooper chorus line…classic!

I can’t stand to watch the Rugby League grand final (Manly is losing as I type) so I switched to Idol for a bit. There was this wonderful moment captured by the cameras of Dicko and Mark Holden sharing ‘a look’. Classic. I wish I could post it here. It was hilarious. Nice bit of tele. Now, unless the Sea Eagles can pull off a miracle, I’m going to crawl into a hole. Sob!