Thanks For The Memories, Google Auto Complete!

Before you look at the image below (I know it's too late, but just pretend you haven't looked yet... for me), let's jump in the wayback machine and visit my first blog post about the hours of fun to be had typing a simple adverb into the Google search bar and reading a list of questions Google think/s you MIGHT like to ask...

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(I've never used this symbol on my keyboard for anything other than a dream sequence)

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Today... while wondering how long after you lay turf you are allowed to treat it just like any other lawn (*makes devil horns with fingers*), I stumbled across this beauty:

Assuming that the questions that find their way into Google's 'auto complete' lists do so for popularity and not some other arbitrary reason (ie somebody's own amusment), it seems that people have a lot of questions about pregnancy, huh?  That and saying 'I love you' and filing for bankruptcy... FOR THE SECOND TIME!  Oh and the working out question?  Only a person dipping their toe into the world of exercise for the first time would ask a question like that so here's my answer to that: GET OFF GOOGLE AND DO A COUPLE MORE PUSH UPS, FATSO! 

Just in case you didn't do it earlier... follow the link to the devil horns.  It just may be the best thing about tonight's post.

And just in case you are one of my two newest readers, drawn into my blogweb with the promise of Judy Blumerama, I assure you regular programming will resume to shortly.

Otherwise Known As An Uppity Unpleasant Girl Called Sheila

I've stupidly allowed too much time to pass between my reading Otherwise Known As Sheila The Great and now.  As a result I find myself without too many words or reflections upon it... except perhaps this one: Sheila is a great big pain in the rectum.  I guess that's the point of the book - that Sheila talks herself up all the time because of low self esteem, but having first hand experience of low self esteem manifesting as self obsession (as opposed to the much preferred decline into introversion and self loathing), i don't find it easy to sympathise, empathise... whichever is appropriate.

I think what bothers me most about Sheila 'The Great' is that she doesn't get her come uppance.  At the end of the book she is no more self aware and no less self concerned.  She learns that... wait for it... her sister isn't that bad ... GASP!  Dogs... also not that bad.  WOW!

What she doesn't learn is that people don't like people that lie and who think they're awesome.  She is really never made to do anything she doesn't want to do and, right to the end, she successfully gets out of things she has talked herself into... like writing and publishing a weekly newsletter for the vacation care centre.  In my day as a 13 year old, a handwritten 'newsletter' written by a 10 year old would have earned my derision and would never have gained the support of Mrs Kernick (the lady who operated the stencil machine at Artarmon Primary School) to actually run off copies for distribution. 

And now to what is missing from my Sheila dossier... in brief.  She claims to hate dogs because she refuses to admit she's scared of them.  Anything she can't do she lies about, such as playing with a yoyo and swimming.  Why on earth other kids tolerated her at all, I will never know.  Why her parents didn't spank her and tell her 'no'... also.. baffled.

That's all. 

Oh... no it's not!  In the Google Image Search that accompanies every post, I just uncovered some stills from what looks like a stage production of  'Sheila'... and I have realised too late to draw decent, in depth rigorous comparison that Sheila and Erica Yurgen from Hating Alison Ashley are the same character.  Thank goodness for dodgy theatre stills or I never would have figured it out!

Don't Mind Me ... I'm Just Playing A Game Of Paper Toss...

Here's a project for someone.  You know... one of those motivated someones that goes from project to project, always thinking of what the next project might be.  It's not a job for me.  I'm just the spark to get the flame of inspiration going.

*tsssst*

iPhone Etiquette - blogs need to be written, articles need to be published, something needs to be done.  Since when is it okay, in the middle of a conversation, to pull out your little pocket gadget, whichever barrow at the fruit market it comes from, to surf the web... and not, I might add, for some bit of information that would contribute to the conversation (which is also questionable as it may be the death of conjecture and collective problem solving in conversation as we know it, nod Pip).  Say it's to check facebook, or a car club forum, or an ebay item.  Why is doing two things at once (being driven somewhere in a car and having a conversation with the driver) no longer enough to occupy the modern gent/lady?

That's just the most recent insult.  More concerning to me is that it may now be okay to whip ones phone out while sitting around with friends TO PLAY A GAME!  Nothing says 'you are boring pricks and I need further stimulation' like the simple act of engaging with a computer game on your iBerry.  Even in the early days of Gameboy this was known and enforced, and even now, with technology leapfrogging known social niceties and norms every millisecond, if somebody pulled out a dedicated game console during a conversation everybody would shuffle their feet awkwardly and clear their throats.  The more forward of us might give the strongest indication necessary to advise the perpetrator that they need to leave the room if they are going to do that... not unlike other antisocial behaviours... like wanking.

Is this the decline of modern society as we know it, or is it the way of the future and I need to buy myself a ticket because the bus to the future is prepay only?

Are You There God? It's Me, a Voyage of Puberty and Religious Discovery

Another one down.  Man, these things just go down like lollies.

I'd like to start this in the same manner as I started the last post.  Do you know what I didn't remember about  'Margaret'?  I didn't remember that she had 'no religion'.  I completely forgot that the whole book is about Margaret's attempts to evaluate the two religions that her parents walked away from (Judaism and Christianity) when her mother's parents forbade their marriage, as well looking into any other religions she could access in her new hometown of Farbrook, New Jersey.  I think I may never have recognised the fact that she was praying to a 'God' despite having never experienced formal religion, which surprises me for one big fat reason: surely I identified with her.  I too grew up with no religion and I think early on, before I had a good understanding of just why I didn't believe in God, I may have sent a few requests skywards to a being I didn't believe in.  Despite that, I had no flickers of recognition as this plot unravelled to me once more.  What I DID remember was that mostly she was praying to her 'God' for bigger boobs and for her period to come... and that I certainly never understood and even at that early age put it down to cultural differences between Australian and American pre-teens.

Towards the middle of the book, it became clear that I had inadvertently blended Deenie's locker room experience with Margaret's 'downstairs toilet' experience, where indeed she was cheered and coerced to spend time in a room with a boy at a party.  I felt a little vindicated by this... and it also made me suspect that as an adult, the entire Judy Blume catalogue read in childhood (or young adulthood) becomes one big narrative from which incidences and not necessarily plots are recalled.  By way of example, 'we must, we must, we must increase our bust' is only said once in this book, and referred to one other time, but is this not the lasting image you took away from Are You There God, It's Me Margaret when you first read it?

In this book also, we maybe first met the archaic sanitary pad that attaches to some sort of belt... which I was thrilled to discover came in a nice girly pink.  I learnt that tampons were not recommended for young menstruaters.  That's actually something that this book and Deenie have in common: they both include a scene which is essentially just a personal development lesson experienced by the character and not so subtly transferred to the reader.  Deenie had a question and answer session that focussed on masturbation, and Margaret and her classmates watch an educational video on menstruation.  Judy Blume barely had to conceal her noble intentions under a plot for the message to get passed to me as a pre-pubescent reader, yet all wrapped up neatly as a lesson being taught to somebody else so as not to appear as a lecture.

Margaret turns twelve during the time scope of this story, and that is where all the boob and period stuff still really clangs for me.  One day, I am going to make friends with an American tween and ask her how she really feels about it, and I reserve my opinion until that day.  All I know is that I didn't want boobs, plucked out my first pubic hair and I thought getting my period was miserable.  Even though, according to the parents in Judy Blume's novels, it meant I was 'becoming a woman', I was pretty sure I was still a kid.

Special mention to Margaret's fantastic grandmother 'Sylvia Simon' for being the overbearing Jewish grandmother that I never knew existed until I was familiar with stuff like Seinfeld.

Also... these books get through some cover designs!  These last two posts have involved two of the more comprehensive Google Image searches ever undertaken.

Another 'also'... outsourced reading Superfudge to my lil pal (well... not outsourced, but he decided to get into the spirit) and was surprised/horrified to learn that recent editions have been modernised, with kids wanting laptops, mp3 players and CDs for Christmas.  Noting that here in case I forget when I get around to Superfudge.