Over To You: Which Would You Be?

Would you rather be a pet:

dog
cat
bird
or
fish
?

I vote cat, because they sleep for 16 hours a day and do whatever the hell they feel like for the other 8, and people still love them a lot. I would be a nice petite black cat with a white chest and white socks, because it's classy and black goes with everything.

Soda Fountain of Knowledge (Language Edition): Shirty

shirty: (idiom) Aust.

Unreasonably bad-tempered or annoyed. As in "Someone's shirty today!" or "Don't get shirty with me!"

The best use of the word shirty was a recurring segment called Shirty the Slighty Aggressive Bear, on a late 90's Australian sketch comedy show called The Late Show (clip here. I have no desire to learn how to embed YouTubes).

Soda Fountain of Knowledge (Language Edition): Torch

torch: (n.) Aust.

A hand-held electric light, usually battery operated.

Commonly referred to in North America as a flashlight.

Notes: To North Americans, a torch is a flaming stick usually used by members of an angry mob on the lookout for Frankenstein's monster. Thusly, consternation is caused among Americans when an Australian casually mentions that they need a torch to look for something. Right, husband?

Americans Say The Darnedest Things

"So, are there any cities in Australia, or is it all just Outback?"

Really?

Soda Fountain of Knowledge (Language Edition): Doona

doona: (n.) Aust.

A padded bed covering to go on top of bedsheets. Also called a quilt, but is thicker than the traditionally handmade type of quilt.

Commonly referred to in Britain as a duvet, and in North America as a comforter.

Wikipedia offers us this explanation for the etymology of doona (link to full entry here):
In Australia, a duvet or down quilt is often called a "Doona", which is a genericized trademark (registered to the Tontine Group) which is derived from the equivalent common Scandinavian term dyne and popularized by the retailer IKEA in the 1970s. Originally the term continental quilt was the standard name used across Australia, and some regions continue to use this term.

uh-oh, addiction!

so I kind of got addicted to the emo album meme:

Health Food Makes Me Sick, the new album from indie darlings LaVergne.

Somebody to Divide it With, by Stellar Association.

Raw Treasures Volume 1 (actually an album name, sadly) by Extravagances of the Poor (not a real band name)

Hours in the Library, by The Blue Sickness.

and (my favorite design)
You Talk to Your Enemies by Molalla Oregon.



Don't judge me.

Analyze This. I Dare You.

I was visiting Australia, on my way to have dinner with two friends. At the bus stop, there was a young woman, a kindly old lady and a skeevy young dude. The old lady leered and creepily presented the younger lady with an uncooked hot dog from her purse.

When I arrived at the restaurant, I told my friends about this, but even though it had just happened, I already changed parts of the story (this is something I do frequently. I call it enhancement).

Then I was at the beach. Suddenly a giant white tube started coming up out of the ocean. It turned into a Chinese dragon, similar to Falkor from The Neverending Story, except not as furry. It looked like it was made of plastic. It began to speak and told us that was an alien god and that it would tell us the meaning of life. The words began to form on a giant tablet rising out of the ocean...

And then I woke up.

All the cool kids are doing it.

(This is modified from a Facebook game, in case you have not heard of it before and are a Luddite, in which case, get off the internet before God smites you.)

You put these three elements together to make your emo band's first album.

1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random”
( click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random )
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to “Random quotations”
( click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 )
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
( click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days )
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use Photoshop or similar to put it all together. And you all know about my mad Photoshop skillz.

Here's mine:
Find out who we are, the debut album from Totonacan Languages.

Hey, if you do this meme, post a link in the comments, 'kay?

booooooooooo.

ever been so hungry you thought you might vomit? no? just me then.

i feel like i eat all the time and yet somehow my tummy is always grumbling. and when i say i eat all the time i mean it - i have a mid morning snack and an afternoon snack as well as the usual 3 meals. i sometimes even need a snack as soon as I get home from work, even though i make dinner right away.

back in college i had the metabolism of a freaking hummingbird and i was skinny as hell. i still feel hungry all the time, and i don't feel like i'm eating more than before, but i have a round little belly where there was no such thing before. back in the day, all i had to do was lay off the mayonnaise for a couple of months and the weight would start dropping off. these days, things are not the same.

it's gotten worse in the last couple of years as i slide down the slippery slope to thirty, my metabolism slowing down and my early-onset old-lady attributes (deafness, forgetfulness, crotchetiness) increasing exponentially.

bloody hell.

Soda Fountain of Knowledge (Language Edition): Ta

ta: (idiom) Aust.

Ta is an expression used in Britain & Australia meaning "thank you".

It is one of the earliest words Australian children learn. I always thought it was one of those silly words that arise from small children not being able to form words correctly, just along the lines of mama, dada etc.

However, a cursory search of the internet reveals that there are various possible explanations.

One, that it is an acronym for Thanks Awfully, or Thanks Again.

Two, (from Yahoo Answers):
The word is a result of the heavy Danish influence on the English language. The Danish word for "thanks" is "tak". In Scotland and upper England it was common to drop the "k" at the end because of the way words were pronounced during the time of old English and Middle English. Hence the slang word "Ta" which should actually be pronounced "TA-k" but over time became "Ta".
(Then I guess the British brought it to Australia with them. More useful than some of the other things they brought, like smallpox & rabbits).

I vote for the second explanation. It seems more likely to me.


I keep forgetting this one is pretty much unknown in the US, but thanks to context it doesn't cause as many furrowed brows as some of my other expressions... Also, I think I'm gonna keep teaching you guys words like this, because I actually learn things along the way too (unlike when I was in school, I enjoy learning things now. As long as there's no maths. Or "math" as you call it).

Can We Talk About: Homesickness.

I don't actually get homesick that much but when I do it's like being stabbed in the guts. It's sharp and painful.

Things I miss (starting, appropriately enough, with soda and candy):

Schweppes Lemonade. Lemonade in Australia is not what Americans refer to as lemonade. It's basically Sprite or any similar beverage, like Seven-Up (Schweppes is just my favorite brand of this type of soda; it's not as syrupy-sweet as Sprite).
It irritates me that there is no generic name for this soda flavor here in the US.
What you call lemonade in the US doesn't really exist in Australia. I guess Aussies would call it homemade lemonade.
On a related note, what you call soda, we call soft drink.

Milko lollies. Lollies are what you guys call candy. Milkos are delicious chewy lollies that taste sort of like vanilla milkshake. There are also tongue-staining red raspberry-flavored ones called Redskins. They used to have a charming picture of a Native American gentleman on the wrapper but I'm pretty sure he's gone now, even though they haven't renamed them*.

Toffee Apple bars. We call candy apples toffee apples. Toffee Apple bars are a red & green striped bar of chewy candy . The red part sort of tastes like the candy coating of a candy apple, and the green part sort of tastes like apple flavor, but the whole thing tastes excitingly of insulin shock.

Also, they don't even have caramel apples in Australia, to the country's devastating detriment. Thick gooey sweet caramel surrounding a crispy, tart green apple is one of life's great pleasures.

*Shut up, they're not our native people. And you named a football team after them. Shame on you.

Soda Fountain of Knowledge (Language Edition): Yobbo.

yobbo: (n). Aust.

Loutish blue-collar person. Often found at pubs and sporting events. Enjoys shouting, bullying, pushing, cutting in line and demanding to be served alcohol whilst clearly intoxicated.



Note: You may have gathered this by now, but Soda & Candy grew up in Australia. She now lives in the United States of America, and enjoys talking about herself in the third person.
The name of this blog, while referring to two of Soda & Candy's favorite things, derives from the fact that American English is not her first language, and so she derives an inordinate amount of glee from referring to things by their American names. Americans, on the other hand, seem to derive an equal amount of glee from learning the Australian words for things. Soda & Candy enjoys this about Americans and encourages their enthusiasm wherever possible.

Lost Merchandising Opportunity

I guess Mel Gibson was too busy hating on Jewish people or whatever, because he totally failed to come up with the perfect merchandising tie-in for his Mayan epic, Apocalypto:

Apocalypt-Os! Delicious*.




*Until 2012.

omg you guys (making me laugh)

making me laugh on a saturday morning:

1) nietzsche family circus

2) this:
There are 10 kinds of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who don't.

fine.

there are two kinds of people in this world.

one type means it when they say everything's fine.

i'm the other type.

"what's wrong honey?"
"nothing." [pouts]
"no really, what's up?"
"everything's fine." [crosses arms, frowns into middle distance]

for some reason i cannot bring myself to simply state what is bothering me, but must have it drawn out of me spanish-inquisition style, even though i'm horribly, petulantly obvious that it is there to be drawn out.

why is this?

and which camp do you fall into?

i need a hook.

i'm thinking of going all e.e. cummings and writing everything in lower case.

i won't leave out punctuation (because i am a grammar nazi and i love brackets, although i guess i could switch to square ones, which i also love. but however), but it means I won't have to stretch over for that damn shift key so much (i have little fingers and it's annoying).

also, it reminds me of my beloved archy the cockroach poems (click here if you don't know who that is!) by don marquis.

i find it pleasing and unusual - and yet i still want to know your opinion on the matter! please let me know what you think in the comments.

Rihanna

From the LA Times website (article here):

Rihanna made it clear through her lawyer at Thursday’s hearing that she didn’t want a “stay away” order barring Chris Brown from communicating with her.

It's none of my damn business and I can never be sure that I will know what really happened between the two of them.

But every judgmental bone in my body (i.e. all of them) is aquiver right now.

If he did what it appears he did, I hope that someone close to her can get through to her and make her realize that no one deserves that, and that she will be better off cutting him out of her life for good.

Recommended Viewing: Mongol

Mongol is the story of Genghis Khan's early life. I really enjoyed this movie; it has beautiful scenery, drama, a moving love story and copious amounts of blood & violence.

... Wait, what?

Seriously. I usually hate violence, especially when it's really graphic, but:
(a) this movie could not have been made without some violence, being the story of Genghis Khan,
(b) all the violence is contextual and moves the story forward, and
(c) it makes the quiet moments and the love story all the more poignant.

Plus, the cinematography throughout the whole movie is just beautiful. The sweeping Mongolian landscapes are incredible. They spend a lot of time close in on the actors' faces - not in a horrible Pore-Vision way, just kind of natural & intimate. The acting seemed to me to be very subtle, so I liked the close-ups because I felt I needed it to be able to catch those tiny flickers of emotion.

The really striking part for me was in the battle scenes. They use this particular style of filming where everything is super sharp and defined at every moment, almost like the way they shoot hi-def sports - you can see individual drops of blood spraying out when a guy slices another guy across the chest. The only other movie I can think of that had action filmed like that was Brotherhood of the Wolf, a movie I also enjoyed despite being in a genre I don't usually care for.

I don't know how historically accurate Mongol is. According to my husband (who likes to do more research than I do), very little written history ever survived about this period; there's, like, one written account that was later translated into Chinese and even that is more like a legend than an accurate record. So it's really anyone's guess what Genghis Khan was actually like or what drove him to do whatever he did.

But still an entirely enjoyable film. You may like to watch it with a cushion in front of your eyes if the sight of blood gives you the willies though.

On My Planet...

So the husband and I were having one of our conversations which starts with both of us thinking we know what's going on and ends with him shaking his head and looking at me like I am crazy. In other words, he would say, every conversation we have.

Then this happened:

Husband: "I don't want to live on your planet."

Soda & Candy: "I know, because it's pink! ... Also, its Saturn-like rings are made of glitter and pink sugar."

Husband: "I call it [a pun name for it involving my real name]!"

Soda & Candy: "Oh, I am so blogging this, but we can't tell that name."

Husband: "Call it Planet Lollipop."

Soda & Candy: "That's an even better name! Oh, and the planet itself would be made of Chupa Chup candy!"

I look forward to returning home to Planet Lollipop one day.

I imagine there are puppies and kittens that never become dogs and cats, naturally rainbow-hued miniature horses gamboling about perpetually green fields, aquifers of Dr. Pepper, and endless personally tailored shopping opportunities.

Readers, what would your home planet be like?

Just quickly...

Is anyone else watching Dollhouse?

I feel like my husband and I are the only people watching it, and I will be very cross if it gets canceled, because I really really love it! Pretty much anything Joss Whedon does (Buffy, Firefly) is awesome and Dollhouse is no exception so far.

So if you aren't watching it already, please get caught up on Hulu and start watching it...

...I promise, that whole "Watch FOX and be damned for all eternity!" thing was just a joke!

Can We Talk About: Geico ads

Geico had a perfectly serviceable ad campaign with that adorable Cockney lizard, and then they go & raise my hackles with this annoying, pseudo-surrealist nonsense with a sentient, googly-eyed money stack that appears to be stalking people. And it's not just one misguided ad either. They appear to have produced a whole series of this dreck.

Stick with the gecko, guys. We don't want a repeat of the caveman fiasco.

Post #1

I've named this blog after my biggest vices (that's right, I live a terribly dangerous life).

Welcome to my world; I hope you will enjoy learning about the crazy way in which my mind works!