The Karmic Challenge: Week 37: Bad to the Bone

First the points!  This week I fed Captain Savage’s cat, Tabitha, while he was away. She was so sweet, and soft, and purry…I don’t know why CS is always complaining that she beats him up.  THIS tender, harmless little pussy???  And then…SWIPE!  Ok, CS, now I believe you! (she’s still cute, though, and she did keep her claws sheathed).

And today Beetle and I went to see Clipsie, our blind pony, and brushed half a ton of summer fuzz off her.  On the way home, Beetle had what is known as ‘an accident’.  In case of accident, I’m supposed to let Beetle clean herself up in privacy or whisk her home forthwith, in case I get accused of child abuse.  Since she clearly wasn’t managing, ‘in privacy’, I risked my career as a volunteer and asked her if she wanted some help.  She did.  Isn’t it strange how an obsession with sex and fear of its misuse have grown up together like twin monsters, hand in hand.

Talking of monsters, I want to draw a portrait, in half-light, of someone very close to me.  This person’s done the usual range of unsavoury things.  Cheated on their lover without a condom and denied both.  Spent a weekend away with one lover, nipped out to spend an hour of it with another, while a third waited in ignorance at home.  Passed on gossip knowing that it would lower other people’s opinion of the gossipee, and pretended it was accidental rather than malicious.  Dropped friends who were too boring, arduous or obese.  Wished someone dead, seriously.

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This person’s usually the last to call when you’re down.  Why? Because she forgot about you or worse, she wanted to finish her book.  She’s the last to offer to help with the dishes. Other people got up first (they always do, somehow).  When you’re having a hard time coping, she probably won’t even notice.  If she doesn’t like you, you can have cancer and she won’t really give a stuff: not only that, but she’ll probably invest minimal effort in pretending to.  While other people are fluttering about your baby’s pram, oohing and aahing, she’s probably sitting right where she is, fetching up an insincere smirk, and thinking how much prettier hers were.

She doesn’t like your success (unless she has a soft spot or feels sorry for you).  The fact that it isn’t HER success annoys her.  She doesn’t care when unknown teenagers fall off balconies, but she generally cries at funerals in the same way people catch yawns.  Her caring is random, at best.  At weddings, she’s always thinking about the divorce. She loves her kids, her animals, her family. That’s it.  She’s quite likely to forget all about you when you’re not there.

She seems gentle enough.  If you harmed her children she wouldn’t shoot you or watch as you sat in an electric chair.  No.  She would eat you alive, tearing you apart with her teeth and claws.  Nine tenths human, one tenth big cat.  Who is this person?

Me.

Well, partly. At times.  I’m better than some and worse than others – but maybe this goes some way to explaining why I’m trying to be a little ‘gooder’ this year.  And while you’re here, check out the tags!! Yes, courtesy of Ms M – who is MUCH nicer than I am!

The Karmic Challenge: Week 36: the End is Nigh – really

THE CHALLENGE. A man (Captain Savage).  A woman (Rose). A quest. To earn enough karmic points by Christmas to be reincarnated as Something Nice.  Preferably not straight away though. Like, I don’t want to get hit by a truck on New Year’s Eve.  Hit on by a trucker..now that’s a slightly more attractive possibility (but not much).

Well, it’s almost Christmas. That means I can stop being good.

Well actually it doesn’t. Because I’ve signed up to befriending Beetle for at least a year, and I’m hardly going to drop elderly Mr L, my Red Cross Visitee, as soon as the clock ticks 2013.

Roughly three weeks to go of collecting karmic points.  And the big question for me is:

DO I WANT TO GO OUT WITH A BANG OR A WHIMPER?

Well, a bang, naturally!! (and believe me, I’m working on it)

So at this point I need HELP.  Suggestions.  Ideas.  Karmic things to do which will push me over the Magic Five Hundred Points by CHristmas with a resounding thrust, like the last voyage of the Space Shuttle.  In short, I wanna do something different. Scary. Interesting.  But what?????

Anyone?  And don’t forget, Captain Savage badly needs a bang too!

And why this? Well, I just thought it would cheer everyone up. For Christmas. You know?

The Karmic Challenge: Week 35: Revealed, the Greatest Cake Recipe on Earth

It’s been a rosaceous family secret for hundreds of years.

Strong men would kill for it.  Women would sleep with Donald Trump for it (almost).  Hugh Hefner would give his virginity for the chance to eat, but once, of this divine concoction…

BUT I – and Beetle – are going to give it away FOR FREE – no virginities required – on this blog.  I mean, how karmic is that!!

This is how it goes.  First, take one assistant, approximately eight years old, untutored in the ways of cakes (Beetle tells me she’s never made a cake before, so that fits the bill).

Take one large bowl.  Squash into it some banana, half-beaten (but not cowed) egg, sugar and cocoa powder.  At this point, as Beetle says rhetorically (I hope),

“How come it looks like something you can eat?”

Yes it does. So both you and the assistant can stick your fingers in and lick them, to check that there’s enough sugar.  There isn’t, so chuck some more in.  A cake can never have too much sugar in it.

Now tip in some flour.  Oops!  Beetle comments that the mix looks like ‘that stuff mum puts on to smell nice.’   Uh oh, too much flour – better add some milk.

“Is cake SUPPOSED to have milk in it?”, Beetle asks.  Sure – if it’s not wet enough.  Please proceed.  Ok, NOW it looks wet enough – BUT, oh my god, there is something missing!! Something vital! Something without which this secret cake will be as enticing as banana flavoured cow poo – what is it!

BUTTER! Of course.  We forgot.  Quick, melt some butter (well it says it’s just like butter and who am I to question Sunnyfarm) and splosh it in.  But now…it’s TOO wet.

“Why does it look all eggy?”

Indeed.  But the experienced chef sees no problems, only solutions, and so she quickly hoists up the bag of flour and tips a whole lot more in, until the mix has the consistency of a well rotted swamp.

And here comes the essential bit.  Sticking your spoons into the swamp, you must now pretend to be an electric mixer.  It helps a lot if you make the right noise, as cake mix responds as much to the musical vibrations of the mixer as to the actual mixing action.

There! Perfect! Splat the mix into a cake tin and tip half a packet of pepitas on top, for the truly professional touch.

Now you’re ready to put the cake in the oven, which you’ve carefully set at 20% over the recommended temperature because your oven is 20 years old and leaks a bit.  Set the timer to a while, and sit down to scrape the bowl, not forgetting to offer some to the dogs.

DELICIOUS!!! (It was, too).   Ten karmic points, I think?

The Karmic Challenge: Week 34, Dusky Bosoms

THE CHALLENGE. A man (Captain Savage).  A woman (Rose). A quest. To earn enough karmic points by Christmas to be reincarnated as Something Nice.  And then to lose them all in the following year (preferably doing something involving foul sensuality, see below, and perhaps a Mohammedan menace, as long as he comes with his own plane).

So, well, I’ve been home schooling Ms M in the last three weeks, seeing as she’s had enough of going to school and I’ve had enough of making her go there.  Instead, we’ve been studying the Crusades.

One of the upsides of this is the sonorous and hopelessly politically incorrect prose of 19th century historian James Ludlow.  In the old days, he says, before both sides came to an appreciation of what was due to their respective religions, Moslems and Christians used to intermarry, and:

“..often the Christian dignitary..was led by gold and political advantage to assent that his daughter should run from her guardage to the sooty bosom of the Moor.”

Where I bet she had a pretty good time, enjoying “the foul sensuality allowed by the Koran.”  No wonder Islam’s the world’s fastest growing religion.

Who says school can’t be fun?

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Anyway, proof that the universe is watching over me came today in the mall, when I was able to help an old lady with weak arms haul her trolley down the out-of-service moving ramp thingummy. I know it had something to do with the divine as the ramp always stops working on Sundays, and this is the third time I’ve had to help somebody get their trolley down it. God just KNOWS when I run out of good deeds.  Thank you, Lord (or Buddha, as the case may be).  Five points, I think.

Btw – if God asked you to revamp heaven to your own taste,  what would you put in it (apart from dead relatives and friends, obviously)?  Would you have large breasted maidens and fountains of chardonnay? Or lots and lots of good books?  Or something else entirely?

The Karmic Challenge: Week 33: Blue. Seriously.

Seriously and LITERALLY. If anything has the power to send me into a psychopathic axe-wielding frenzy, it’s when the internet stops working (flatpack furniture brings me pretty close too, though). Mr F, incredibly generous big brother of Ms M, BUILT her a new computer, which he set up on her (relatively) new desk (see Flatpacks). Turns out, though, it doesn’t have a wireless card. So Ms M ‘borrows’ my cable connection while I fruitlessly (but then, why WOULD there be fruit in a computer?) wander the Internet Options tabs trying to find my long lost love, otherwise known as the wireless connection I used to have before I had the cable.

As usual, Captain Savage saves the day by doing something fiendishly clever – BUT, we’re also missing a monitor cord. So Ms M nicks my monitor cord and replaces it with a monitor cord last used by Tutankhamun to play Tomb Raiders. And guess what. EVERYTHING IS NOW BLUE. I guess Tutankhamun liked it that way.

On a different subject, I’ve been thinking that the trouble with trying to be good is that it inevitably involves guilt. If you never do anything for anybody, you needn’t feel guilty, because the only person you’re letting down is yourself. Whereas if you put yourself down to visit old people, entertain children and feed cats, you start feeling overloaded with responsibilities. Some of which you MISS. Then you feel like a VERY BAD PERSON.

Seems like a good idea to me too!

Talking about bad, before elderly Mr L, I used to visit a confused old lady I’ll call H. Every time I went to see H she’d say ‘it’s been such a long time since you’ve come’ (even if it’d only been a week) and every time I got up to leave, she’d say, in a tremulous voice, ‘when can you come again?’. And I’d say, ‘soon’ – but with 2 kids, a lover, a job, a novel and 3 pets, sometimes it wasn’t soon, and when it wasn’t, I felt really guilty. Eventually, H died, which was a mercy for her, as (like so many old people) she’d been pleading to be allowed to drop off the twig for a decade. Among the feelings I had around her death were – guess what – GUILT (that I hadn’t gone to see her more often) and RELIEF (that now I could lie in on weekends without thinking, ‘how am I going to organise the time/motivate myself later to go see H?’. Is that bad or what?

Which brings me to points – lost. This week, I didn’t get organised to go see Mr L (although I did have little Beetle over). As for Cat Lady, I have 2 bags of frozen minced organic chicken with her name on them. If I don’t give them to her soon, they’ll be more organic than I bargained for.

Do you feel guilty? What for? (One of Guru Fred’s lesser known powers is the ability to forgive all sins, so please – tell the Guru and you’ll feel much better.)

The Karmic Challenge: Week 32, courtesy of Who Weekly

THE CHALLENGE. A man (Captain Savage).  A woman (Rose). A quest. To earn enough karmic points by Christmas to be reincarnated as Something Nice.  Or maybe frightening (which could also be fun).

ANYWAY…

The scene: an upmarket hotel, similar to the one presided over by The Hook and his Book…..A glamorous figure swathed in fake furs emerges onto its marble portico.  Bulbs flash (what are bulbs?), cameras whirr, a huge posse of paparazzi in black leather jackets and inappropriately tight jeans surges forward…

Rose! Rose! Abe Lincoln from the New York Times! Where do you get your hair cut??

Rose: I don’t get it cut, I can’t be bothered, darling! Next?

Rose! Barack Obama, Who Weekly – tell us about your steamy love life!!

Rose: Sweetie, ever heard of the Vagina Monologues? Well..it could be dialogues if you play your cards right..

Gail Beggie, Guardian – um, Rose, got any new karma for us this week?

Rose: I’ve never heard such a DUMB ass question in all my – what did you say? Oh, karma, sure.  Well (adjusts cleavage to best advantage, smoothes luscious chestnut waves)..

I went to see elderly Mr L on his birthday, and gave him a calendar with Australian birds on it. Mr L loves all animals (just like me!) and was quite pleased. It struck me how easy it is (would be) for amoral people to take advantage of kindly senior citizens – Mr L’s already bought Christmas presents for all his favourite staff members (Australiana mugs) and offered to buy ME a television.  Lucky I’m so damn saintly (or at least, reasonably decent).  I said no thanks, just in case anyone’s wondering.

Then I took Beetle out for a walk with the dogs and a swing. I’m starting to think having grandchildren wouldn’t be as bad as I thought – an hour with Beetle, oohing and aahing at her swinging ability and answering her little questions (‘But why does your dog look so funny when it comes out of the water? But why do people like golf (god knows!)? And why don’t you buy a golf course of your own? (I would, if it meant I could kick golfers off it).

Backyard. Lovely but infested by golfers!

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Oh, and I tried to go vegan. Hey, I really tried! (and I’m still trying – in maternal solidarity with all those dairy cow mums who get slaughtered when their milk starts to run out). Now I’ve got a fridge full of pretend cheese and almond milk, I’m starting to feel slightly more sympathetic to meat addicts.  I still don’t like watery stuff in my coffee, so…but I’m getting there!

I’ll leave it up to Captain Savage to allocate the points, as he is completely impartial (and in the thrall of my evil powers).

If anyone out there IS a vegan…what do vegans eat that’s nice?

The Karmic Challenge Week 31: Meeting Beetle

What goes around has GONE around…so when’s it COMING around?

My little Kids Friend (who I think I’ll call Beetle) and I have spent our first hour together, getting to know one another.  I really know nothing about Beetle, except that she needs some time out.  I guess that’s the way it should be – no preconceptions.

Gucci as usual is the ambassador between worlds, allowing herself to be cuddled and stroked with the indiscriminate tact of a born diplomat.  Beetle, Ms M and I went for a swim, during which I dragged out my rusty skills for wooing eight year olds (‘Let’s have a race…ooh, you beat me..AGAIN!’.  Ms M watches all this with incredulity.  ‘What are you running for, mum, Best Actress in Pool?’  Afterwards she asked in a low, shocked voice ‘When I was that age, did you talk to ME that way?’.  Well, a bit.  But then my kids were both brighter than me, at eight.

Baking with Nicki Minaj – watch more funny videos

This actually has nothing to do with the subject, but whatever..

I’ve also suddenly realised how many things I’ve subscribed myself to.  $20 a month to free captive bears in foreign lands (probably supporting a thriving market in capturing bears).  $30 a month to UNHCR (those people in the mall caught me off guard).  $10 a month to help the Humane Society advertise against factory farming.  $80 a month to kids in Africa, who are both called Samuel.  The Big Issue almost once a month?

Plus I’ve made an extra effort to leave a nice taste in the profiles of people I meet on the internet.  Not maybe as sweet as Deliberately Delicious, but then who could be.

Like a cargo train loaded with Christmas treats, all this has presumably trundled its way around the circular tracks of karma, and here I am waiting on the station, wondering when exactly I’m going to see the returning headlights.  So far this year, life’s handed me the perfect job, but I can’t say I’ve noticed any other marked improvement…my mum’s died, my love life’s stagnated (partly due to increased pickiness and a refusal to ‘use’ anyone) and I haven’t yet penned a best seller.

Still, who knows how much worse it could have been if I hadn’t cleaned my act up this year.  Reminds me of that old joke about the guy who’s stuck on his rooftop in the Queensland floods.  A raft, a police boat and finally a helicopter come to rescue him, but each time he waves them away. ‘No thanks – God will save me!’ he says.  As the waters eventually sweep him off the roof, he cries ‘God, why have you abandoned me!’.

‘Bloody hell, I sent a raft, a police boat and an effing helicopter – what else do you expect, you dickhead!’.

The Karmic Challenge, Week 29: Your Life, Your Stuff?

THE CHALLENGE. A man (Captain Savage).  A woman (Rose). A quest. To earn enough karmic points by Christmas to be reincarnated as Something Nice.  Alternatively, it would be really good if MY kids could end up in the top 1% of anything (other than pains in the arse, which milestone I think they may have already achieved, at times).

If all your Stuff disappeared – yea, unto even the old love letters, stories you wrote on cafe napkins, and lockets of your favourite childhood dog’s hair – what would be left of you?

In the last week or two, I’ve been too busy to blog much (much to the relief of inboxes everywhere) partly because I’ve been helping to dismantle my mother’s life.  Every couple of weeks, family meetings have been held to decide what to do with this or that aspect of it – who wants her antique and beautiful (often hand-made by Dad) furniture, who wants her war-era love letters to my father and his to her, who wants her meticulously ironed, fragranced and folded linen, her clothes, her jewellery? Who wants the stuff that even she didn’t want very much, but just accumulated the way that everybody does?

This weekend we held a garage sale of the latter, before putting her last home on the market.  Setting out to best advantage, the brown leather chairs where we all used to sit and drink tea and watch BBC serials.  Tidying up the empty, flower-filled garden, with no mum to complain that she couldn’t water the azaleas properly these days!

I recently chatted on line to an anarcho-syndicalist, whatever that is, and because I’m just born contrary, I decided I really like my Stuff.  Owning it, that is.  How small and bare and lonely we are without it!  And yet, one day, my kids are going to send cardboard boxes full of unfinished stories and diaries about unsuccessful love affairs to the tip.  C’est la vie.

Anyway, to get to the point of this post, my karmic points this week come from insisting on taking the first three hours at the garage sale – meaning getting up at 6 to get across town at 7, set up, and start the whole slightly sad process rolling. I call that totally selfless (AND I don’t even get to keep the money!).

I also took Ms M to a film evening on Common Ground, a project that’s trying to get off the ground in Canberra to do with giving the homeless a nice place to live, onsite support services and help to move on and up.   I think I may donate.

From tomorrow, I’m homeschooling Ms M, who seems to have developed an anxiety disorder associated with going to school.  (Yeah right, I can hear you say – but really, vomiting before school out of pure tension isn’t normal).  Who knows, after a month of me, she may be begging to go back there! And finally, next week, a date for meeting my little girl from Barnardos Kids Friend program!

Karmically, none of this gets anywhere near Captain Savage’s recent efforts (although, CS, I AM trying to grow a moustache for Movember??).

The Karmic Challenge: Week 28: Who will stand up for Slippery Pete?

THE CHALLENGE. A man (Captain Savage).  A woman (Rose). A quest. To earn enough karmic points by Christmas to be reincarnated as Something Nice.  A mussel, perhaps? With mayonnaise?

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Hi Peter,

I just wanted to let you know that I support you in relation to the text messaging furore. God, if most of our private conversations were scrutinised in this way, who among us would come out looking perfectly politically correct. I’m a woman and I don’t feel that you particularly insulted women, any more than many men do down at the bar on a Saturday night. Toughen up, ladies – we’ve all heard the fish analogy, get over it. I think what you say in your private texts, unless illegal, is your business and should stay that way. I will say as much on my blog.  I hope things go well for you in future!

cheers

Rose of butimbeautiful

Yep, this week’s ‘good deed’ is a letter.

But who the hell is this Peter Slipper, you ask? If you’re not Australian, that is.  Well, until yesterday he was the Speaker of the Aussie House of Representatives.  His gay staffer, one James Ashby, had accused him of sexual harassment (a story in itself), and during the court case, some texts they’d sent one another became public.  And THEN..all hell broke loose.  Pollies competed to see who could be MOST shocked, MOST horrified, at the ghastly and misogynistic contents.

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VILE!  THOROUGHLY DISGUSTING!  CONDEMNED BY ALL RIGHT THINKING PEOPLE IN THE STRONGEST POSSIBLE TERMS!!!!

In response, Slipper resigned.  In fact, the guy almost cried.  Call me soft-hearted, but I wanted to hug him and say ‘there there, don’t you listen to those meanies!’

Mr F and I, watching all this on tv from our mountain eyrie (we were on holidays at the time) looked at one another and said, simultaneously, ‘So what did these texts actually SAY?’  Because we’d heard how loathsome they were, how they were a call to arms for women everywhere, etc etc – but no tv station seemed to want to repeat them.  Maybe they were just SO bad pregnant women everywhere would abort if they heard them.  Maybe, we speculated, Mr Slipper had texted something like ‘Off home to beat wife. Again. LOL!’  or ‘Women’s bits make me puke. Lets give Sophie Mirabella a clitoridectomy. ROFL.’

So as soon as we got home, we googled what Slipper had actually said.  Turns out it was MUCH worse than even we imagined.  For one thing, he apparently thinks women’s bits look like mussels.  Peter, how could you! You must be in a minority of, oooh, about 50%? (Besides, you’d NEVER catch a woman comparing a guy’s dong to an uncooked pork sausage, now would you!)

And THEN he called MP Sophie Mirabella (renowned for her brainless nastiness) a BOTCH.  What?  Well if he’d called her a bitch that would’ve been bad enough, but a botch! What is he implying? That she should never have been born? That she was one of the Creator’s horrible mistakes? Thank God I’ve never called a colleague a botch (or bitch) in any of MY private conversations!  THAT would have been a world first.

THEN, he texted his gay staffer to the effect that one ‘Lucy’ was hot, ready and willing (tell me you’ve never heard THAT in a pub on Saturday night) – and finally, he threatened to SMACK the said staffer.  Was the staffer suitably indignant?  Oh YEAH.  ‘I might like it’ he texted back.

I don’t particularly like Peter Slipper. He may be guilty of other misdemeanours (we don’t know yet, the court case isn’t over).  But this is thought crime.  If you can’t call someone a botch (sic) and say that women’s bits look like mussels in PRIVATE conversation – what’s the world coming to!  Does anyone really think that you can’t be a neutral ‘chair’ if you think some of your colleagues are as loopy as a centipede?

So I think Australians should fight for Peter Slipper’s right to say what he damn well likes about women’s bits, to his friends.  Fight for his right to have a private conversation.  Fight for his right, and everybody else’s right, to think and say stuff that not everybody agrees with.  I may not like his politics, I may not like seafood, I may not even like HIM – but the growing climate of virtuous indignation and Right Speech appals me.  Much more than Mr Slipper’s opinion of my c**t could ever do.

If you think forcing a public figure to resign over some silly – and private – locker-room talk is a bit 1984, speak up for him and facebook it! (Or not)

The Karmic Challenge: Week 27 – Wear a Low Cut Dress for Jesus!

THE CHALLENGE. A man (Captain Savage – come on, that’s a hint, CS).  A woman (Rose). A quest. To earn enough karmic points by Christmas to be reincarnated as Something Nice.  But please, please, Whoever Up There, not a sheep in Australia?

I’ve been getting the feeling for some time that elderly Mr L has been disappointed in me.  I guess there wasn’t a spot on the Red Cross Visitor Order form for ‘pretty young thing with big tits and a short skirt who watches footy’.

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Well today, he was disappointed no more! For it is summer in Oz, and the weekend, and I was wearing a low cut yellow sleeveless top, and even though I say it myself as shouldn’t, I have REALLY BIG BOOBS! I could see Mr L was pretty impressed, to the point where he unnecessarily patted my hair, rubbed my upper arm, and feasted his eyes with a satisfied smile on my cleavage.  At last, clearly overcome with gratitude, he remarked,

‘You’re such a nice person, dearie…..let me show you something!’

Quaking in my shoes, I followed his doddery steps, to be confronted by….

a brand new shaver that he’d bought only a few weeks ago (and, as old people will, had already told me about three times).

‘Well!’ I said, looking suitably awed, ‘You’ll be pretty smooth from now on then!’.

Points, anyone?

Which brings me to the real reason I rashly went to see Mr L in my low cut top.  Ms M and me had just been to a rally on the lawns of Parliament House to Ban Live Export (you may have seen the recent coverage of Australian sheep sent to Pakistan to be clubbed to death and buried alive).  Standing there listening to speeches in the rain, I started to feel all teary and hot.  I think emotion spreads like flu – it hangs in the air and we all start to sneeze.

‘Tell the major parties that you won’t vote for any party that supports live export!’ exhorted the nice man from the newly formed Animal Justice Party.  Ok, I won’t.  Does that mean I have to vote for the Greens?  I hope not, cause I don’t like them that much…

Gucci discussing animal welfare with a fellow activist

Finally, I think I’ve just been allocated a kid as part of the Kid’s Friends program (you may remember I applied about, oh, a century ago?).  She likes painting, drawing, swimming and animals, and has an annoying elder sibling (Ms M should take to her straight away then).  I’m thinking maybe we can paint together – I found my paints and brushes the other day, and it’s been a long time!  In fact – I’m looking forward to it!