The Catalog Tales of Gary and Elaine

Gary, I can tell you’re chewing something and I told you the mossballs are for our guests!

A friend has lent his support to my latest initiative with a list of web suggestions that will take hours or perhaps days to get through, but he singled this one out and I couldn't work out why from it's rather unassuming title of Catalog Living.  If you require explanation in order to coerce you to follow the link, expect captions that reveal the motivations of the fictional characters (Gary and Elaine) that allegedly inhabit the constructed worlds of interior design catalogues.

File this one under 'keep here for safe keeping'.

Turning Passing The Time Into A Career

I have been tempted during my recent sojourns into the world wide web of international design to start a new blog that could be singularly devoted to the worship of 'things'.  It would not be the first of it's kind by any means (I strongly recommend this one, and this one, and this one), but it would give me the chance to share with you some of the things that have been making my heart skip a beat in the wee hours of the many a recent morning.  For now, my discoveries are dutifully recorded in an Excel spreadsheet, but hopefully, before too long Materialist Australia will be a fully functioning retail store, and with it a companion blog to release those discoveries from their monochromatic temporary home into a technicolour wishlist.  I might even invite people to vote for what they want me to import... or at least invite them to comment on my impeccable taste in 'things'.

But this one couldn't wait.  I suspect it will never be viable to import them, but aren't these rings simply smashing?  Made from the pages of [your favourite book], set in resin and polished to a high gloss finish, these rings take literary nerditude to a whole new level. 

Make mine The Faraway Tree, thanks.  Or perhaps Catch 22... because I would love to walk around with my finger wrapped in an enigma wrapped in absurdity.

Web Gadget to End All Web Gadget

A Little Junkie Chic For Your Neck

I just stumbled across this website/online store. Aside from being a cool artisan slash designer 'enterprise' (sound familiar?), Wire and Twine sell scarves made... by hand... by KELLEY DEAL!

I heard an interview with this lesser-loved Deal once in which she described her life as full time carer for her aged mother. When I see these objet d'craft, I can't help but imagine a drug-ravaged, but still pretty rock star busily handcrafting her way through mid-life in an attempt to escape the daily grind of administering sponge baths and mashing vegetables. Then again, maybe it's a rehab thing.

Anyway, there are only three left, and I suspect they are the last three for a reason, but owning one would be like owning your own bespoke little piece of rock memorabilia.

Home Game

Every day I wake up late... and slllowwwww. 

As I delay the inevitability of another day, I consider its possibilities and set out to fill it with productiveness and leisure in almost equal measure.  Aside from being keenly aware that the 'devil' makes work for idle hands (and worse yet for an idle mind), I value getting shit done a little too much to dwindle away the preciousness of unemployment entirely in a fog of midday movies and young adult fiction.

With 'the enterprise' gradually gaining momentum, the line between leisure and productiveness is blurring (which is somewhat inevitable when trying to start a business around something you do for fun), but cooking is still on the right side of that line and slow cooked lamb is the latest in a dynasty of cooking fads to which I have succumbed (one that was immediately preceded by 'Bill Granger's Pork Belly').  Surely it is pure coincidence that it requires the time available to the likes of the me to supervise the many hours of cooking time?

With our household already in the grip of this fad, the Good Weekend published this incredible recipe in their most recent issue, and it bears repeating in writing here for repeating in kitchens elsewhere.  Pictured above at the halfway mark, I followed the recipe faithfully but for the cut of meat (lamb shanks), a reduction in the oil by half, and the addition of some eggplant in the final few hours of cooking... which I also stretched out to six and a half hours at a slightly reduced temperature.  Cooked in a heavy cast iron pot with a lid and served with spinach, sweet potato and homemade tzatziki, this was possibly the best meal I have ever prepared... and it don't half make the house smell good.

Good Weekend Greek Lamb
Juice of 2 lemons
2 tsp Dijon mustard
1 cup Olive Oil
2 tsp Greek dried Oregano
6 large sprigs thyme, roughly chopped
6 large sprigs rosemary, roughly chopped
5 cloves garlic, crushed
1 boned lamb shoulder (about 1.5kg), some excess fat removed, but not all of it.
Sea salt and freshly ground pepper

Begin this recipe the day before.

In a large bowl, combine all the ingredients, except the lamb, salt and pepper. Add the lamb, making sure it is totally covered with the marinade. Refrigerated for at least 12 hours, and up to 24.

Preheat the oven to about 150°C (the temperature will depend on your oven). You can increase the temperature if you need to hurry it up.

Place the meat in a roasting tin and season well with salt and pepper. Roast the lamb for 3-4 hours, basing it from time to time with cooking juices and fat.

When the meat is cooked, leave it to rest for 20 minutes before carving or pulling apart.

n.b. my latest trick is to spoon a generous amount of the liquid from the cooking pot into a small saucepan, and boil it on high until the sauce is reduced so that it can be served separately and poured over the meat and veges.

If You Notice This Notice You Will Notice That This Notice Is Not Worth Noticing.

Apparently writing/creativity is a muscle that gets stronger with use.  A writer told me that, and by 'writer' I mean someone who actually gets paid to write, not someone who is trying to avoid her stalled career as a television producer by expressing an interest in becoming a writer. But here's the thing: I'm struggling with motivation, or perhaps more accurately, a complete lack of disclipline that traces right back to a school career spent dodging assignments and taking the easy way out (report cards with A for result, D for effort).  So, by way of sating the Gods of Creativity (and in a hope that my creativity muscle will one day bulge), here is a haiku about my bad cold.

Tissue in nostrils

To slow the persistent drip.

I snore when I'm sick.

Blubber Is A Thick Layer of Fat that Lies Under The Skin And Over The Muscles of Whales

Grab your vuvuzela... I'm back on message.

This one has taken me a while to get through.  Not in the sense of the time it has taken to read (because that, as usual, is somewhere under the two hour mark) but in the sense that I have allowed a lot of time to pass between reading sessions.  I fear my reflections have suffered for it... but watch as I disguise that with overfamiliarity with the most recently completed chapters.  Wool, over eyes, pulled.

There are two things a child could take away from this book.  The first is that there are worse bullies out there than you, and the second is that there are kids out there being bullied way worse than you.  I have never EVER been as mean to a kid as the girls in this book are to Linda/Blubber... and trust me... I've been pretty mean to kids.  No sense losing sleep though, because kids have been pretty mean to me too... but on reflection no kid I've ever known, even Jessica Whiteside who was MY Wendy, was ever so mean to me as these girls are to each other either.  To the sometimes bully and the sometimes bullied in all of us, this book gives some perspective to the cruel years of early high school, making the crimes committed seem somewhat moderate and the persecution experienced comparitively mediocre.  In other words, I don't need to track down Rubina Whatsit from school to apologise for my part in encouraging her to flash her minge to the whole PE class during an over exuberant display of the 'splits'... nor should I use the medium of facebook to stalk Jessica Whiteside in the hope that she's been involved in a freak merry-go-round incident resulting in permanent facial disfigurement and intermittent incontinence. 

Here's the story in point form.

- Jill lives across the street from her best friend Tracy Wu who goes to the same school but it unfortunately not in the same class.

- She has an annoying little brother who constantly spouts useless information and statistics (I fear I was this younger sibling in my day, though I would intersperse my 'facts' with 'jokes' from my many joke books... ADORABLE).

- Jill's parents don't understand her (stop the presses!) but her live-in Nanny does.

- Jill is a picky eater.  Her primary food is peanut butter sandwiches.

- Each member of Jill's class has to do a presentation on a topic of their choosing and the mildly overweight girl in the class, Linda, chooses to speak about whales.  Her presentation includes the sentence expertly adapted to function as the title of this post and from that moment she is ridiculed by her classmates and nicknamed 'Blubber'.

- Halloween is moments later, and Jill decides to dress up as a 'Flenser', which according to Blubber's presentation, is the name for the person who cuts the blubber out of whales.  Apparently flenser's wear floppy hats and windcheaters and carry big knives... which is not too far from the truth, I imagine.

- In the meantime, Blubber is victimised out the wazoo.  She's forced to introduce herself with her new nickname, is essentially stripped under the threat of physical violence in the girls toilets during lunch break and she is teased about the unhealthy contents of her lunchbox.  She promptly goes on a diet and is teased for that too.  Points to Linda at this point for not killing herself.

- On the night of Halloween, Jill and her friend Tracy crack rotten eggs into a mean old man's letterbox.

- Despite their disguises, which sound dangerously similar to the outfits often chosen by the Klu Klux Klan, Mr Machinist manages to identify the perpetrators and they are enlisted to rake up the leaves in his yard as their punishment.

- Jill decides that Blubber must have dobbed on them, and accuses her of it when they are brought together coinidentally at a Bar Mitzvah.  Blubber doesn't understand the accusation, and in the meantime makes great friends with Jill's annoying little brother, which really gets up Jill's nose.

- Shortly after that, during a rainy lunchbreak spent indoors, Jill and the other girls decide that they will put Blubber on trial and they assign roles to classmates.  When Blubber complains, she is locked in a closet and again expertly manages not to kill herself.  A level headed nice girl called Rochelle (the only one of her kind) speaks up to say that Blubber needs to have a lawyer for her defence.  Mean Wendy says no, but Jill says yes, because her father is a lawyer so she, of course, knows all about it.  As Wendy holds her ground, Jill starts to notice how much Wendy throws her weight around, as well as how mean she is as she takes pot shots at Jill and makes a racially insensitive remark about Tracy Wu, so Jill stands up to her and releases Blubber from the closet.

- By the very next day, Jill is an outcast and Blubber is an... incast?  Jill is nicknamed 'Baby Brenner', is teased for her penchant for peanut butter sandwiches... and is about to be stripped in the school bathrooms when she throws a logic grenade at Wendy's henchman that undoes the whole power structure of Wendy's regime.  Caroline turns against Wendy, who tries to win her back by selling out Blubber, who then also turns against Wendy.

- Now blessed with awareness, Jill befriends that very level headed Rochelle and life is sweet.

It may be a little unrealistic that this one girl can hold enough power to decide who is 'in' and 'out', Heidi Klum-style, but geez young adults are just mean waiting to happen.  No wonder 'we' found our Mark's, our Luke's and our Anthony's (?) to get us through the gauntlet of high school.  Boys germs are way less harmful to your health than young womanhood.