World Some Youth Day

So, World Youth Day is coming to Sydney next week. The Sydney Morning Herald tells us the faithful have begun to arrive in droves. Today’s lunch - tomato soup - splattered over the following:

“THEY packed their Bibles and rosary beads along with their bedrolls, sleeping
bags, guitars and woolly beanies. Loudly and proudly they proclaimed their nationalities, wearing vibrant national colours and carrying flags with the
broadest of smiles.

There were 24 pilgrims from Poland, another 24 American Catholics living on the Kadena US military base in Okinawa, Japan, 15 including a choir from a group of 700 coming from Holland, 21 from the US diocese of Manchester in New Hampshire and 117 from Germany who burst into impromptu hymn singing.”

I don’t know about you, but I find that kind of adorable. Especially the bit about impromptu hymn singing. How adorably dorky and gauche these people must be!

You may have thought, based on my general outrage around the time of APEC, that I’d be donning an ‘offensive’ T-shirt and doing my best to ‘annoy’ pilgrims at the big event. Yay for controversy! But actually, I also believe in good manners. I believe we should welcome the visitors with good grace as well-meaning visitors to this country.

...Though I am just a little bit tempted. As usual, the NSW government, Sicilian peasants that they are, decided to trample all over civil rights like a bull in a china shop and make a new law forbidding people to ‘annoy’ and disrupt people attending the event, or risk being executed by firing squad. Heil Mussolini!

I really don’t believe in discomfiting nice people who are just trying to have a good time. I may not be a Catholic myself, but the pilgrims are all basically decent, well-meaning people, who do their best to live by a righteous moral code. Let them have their festival. Tolerance! They’re harmless, right?

…Or are they?

Let’s take a closer look. Starting this weekend, Sydney will be crawling with thousands of people, who believe, literally:

1. The world was created only a few thousand years ago, in six days, by a God who decided he needed a rest on the seventh day. Despite the evidence to the contrary. We know all the scientific evidence is wrong because God said so. Or at least, he told some peasant a long time ago and then eventually someone wrote it down.

2. There used to be a place called Purgatory, where everyone, including unbaptised babies, went to suffer before they could go to Heaven, and this was all moral and good. And now there isn’t. This is also moral and good.

3. You used to be able to give money to the Church in exchange for your sins being forgiven. Now you can’t. Presumably this has nothing to do with politics and the changing spiritual attitudes of society, because of course God is above all that.

4. God causes miracles to happen, like a shadow of the Virgin Mary appearing on a mountain. Of course, the latter could actually be explained as a mass hallucination, or wishful thinking, but it’s far more likely the Virgin Mary actually was appearing!

5. A lot of this religion seems irrational. In fact, it is. In order to believe, you have to suspend reason and have faith. And this is a good thing! Forget common sense, just BELIEVE, and you will go to Heaven. And we know Heaven exists because…ummm….because it…er…does?

6. God created us with free will. He also created us flawed, and with the capacity to do bad things. But if we do bad things, he is enraged. He also created us to be rational, but if we are rational and don’t believe in him, he will be very angry.

7. God may have created the entire universe, but he is not above being enraged if you do not believe in him! Even though evidence and reason points against his existence (at least for many people). He could solve this problem by revealing himself in an extremely obvious way to everyone, as often as is necessary, but that would be too easy and not nearly so much fun. He preferred to have his Word dictated to illiterate and superstitious tribesmen two thousand and more years ago. If you do not believe in God, you will go to Hell.

8. If you believe in the wrong god, you will also go to Hell. It’s ok to work with atheists and followers of other religions, and even be friends with them, but your non-Catholic friends will roast when the time comes. And that’s good!

9. It’s ok to kill people in the name of religion.*

10. This religion, which sounds so obviously man made and medieval, which would make sense given that it was formalized in the Middle Ages when people really thought and acted like that**, is in fact the real deal! Because!

*and if they don’t, then they must think they know better than various popes who were appointed by God.
**that = everything that happens in the Bible

So, I don’t know, harmless, barmy loonies? Numbers 1 to 6 just sound ridiculous, the sort of thing people do believe when they’ve been brainwashed from childhood and haven’t really thought deeply about the issues for themselves. Nevertheless, harmless. But numbers 7 to 11? I’m not sure how I feel about people who think like that wandering my city. Should I bolt my doors at night and keep the cat in for the next fortnight? I do wonder!

Folks, I do respect your right to believe and worship as you see fit. But I don't respect your beliefs.

But anyway. Welcome!!!!

P.S. Another thing that bothers me is the name - 'World Youth Day'. Why not 'Catholic World Youth Day', to be more accurate? It breaks my heart to think of some Muslim, Hindu or atheist youths turning up, thinking it's for them, and being disappointed!

Brushing, Brushing...and More Brushing

Twenty two minutes. That is how long it now takes me to clean my teeth.

Here is how I used to clean my teeth:

1. Rinse and spit,

2. Brush with electric toothbrush, including tongue, and roof of my mouth if I remember,

3. Floss,

4. Rinse and spit.



Taking a total of 3 or 4 minutes depending on how much I could be bothered.

Here is how, seemingly, I now have to clean them:



1. Brush with electric toothbrush, concentrating on gums, tongue and roof of mouth,

2. Floss (takes about 15 minutes)

3. Brush with orthodontic toothbrush

4. Brush with teeny little brush thingy the dentist gave me, getting into all the little nooks and crannies around the braces,

5. Brush with electric toothbrush again, using only water,

6. Put wax on. Orthodontic wax! My new best friend! (My second new best friend is minty mouthwash. I have a morbid fear of the braces giving me skunk breath).


All that effort to make my mouth nearly as clean as it used to be!

I have worked out that at this rate of cleaning, if you add all the minor brushing incidents and gargling I'm doing at work, then over the coming year I will spend two weeks cleaning my teeth. That's two weeks of nothing but cleaning. My teeth may well be worn away by then.

I will try not to blog any more about braces. But it's hard to think about anything else when your mouth feels like it's full of barbed wire.

Nice Work, Blogger

Thank you Blogger for losing my last post! Thank you!

I'll Never Smile Again (Not for 18 months anyway)

I believe I may have mentioned last post that I was getting braces on. Well, they're on now, and unless I tear them forcibly from my mouth in a moment of desperation, that's how they'll be until I'm in my thirties. Gosh, I'm old.

So now I have the pleasure of allowing everyone I know to acquaint themselves with my new look. Everyone I talk to looks at me in a "Something's funny with Sprite's face, but if I keep talking at the same speed she won't notice I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with her" kind of way. How attractive I feel! I did alert some people beforehand that I was going to have them done, so I wouldn't have to go through that with everyone. And you know what's kind of weird? The number of people who said to me, "So what exactly are they going to do? Which teeth need straightening? Let's have a look!" - and then start to lean forward as if I'm actually going to open my mouth and give them a guided tour of my sickening dental abnormalities. Freaks!

My dentist is really nice, and it wasn't an awful experience, but it wasn't comfortable either. I had to lie back with my mouth open for ages while dabbed stuff on my teeth, squirted stuff on them, dried them off, and said confidence-inspiring stuff to his assistant like "Be careful not to put too much glue on the brackets. There was too much on the last one. It went everywhere!" Suddenly an image flashed through my mind - the dentist was Hannibal Lector and was about to perform an intricate and creative work of torture on me. But I lay there obediently with one side of my mouth stretched open, hoping I wasn't going to be left with too many permanent mouth wrinkles, and tried not to swallow anything toxic.

After the dinky little things had been attached to my top layer of teeth, he told me I could rinse and spit. I sat up and tried to return my top lip to its normal position, but it felt like boulders had been attached to my teeth. Would I ever close my mouth again?!!

Then it was bottom teeth time. The highlights were when he thought he may have glued two of my teeth together (well, that would solve the problem of flossing!) and when something small and vicious clamped itself to my top lip! I don't know what it was and I wasn't in a position to find out, but it did get removed after I pointed it out through a mixture of gargling and singing.

So, the big moment. The proud dentist handed me a mirror. Now, just remember my lips had been pulled about for the last hour, and when I sat up and looked at my reflection, my first thought was "Oh my God! I have a MUZZLE!" I swear my heart broke just a little bit.

Fortunately my lips settled down a bit and although I do look a little like I've got a mouth full of marbles, at least they're small ones!

By far the worst thing of this whole braces things is, I can't bite down properly. The dentist stuck hard lumps of stuff on my back top teeth to stop me biting down all the way and knocking the braces, and it's very sore. Try biting some pebbles and you'll know how I feel. My poor front teeth are tender too. I'm told I'll get used to it. I also hope I'll get used to spending half an hour bloody brushing them every morning and night, plus power cleans throughout the day!

On the upside, I can't eat anything except soup and mashed stuff. So I'm going to be very slim very soon, I hope!

Bracing Myself

I am getting braces in an hour and a half. I don't really know what to expect, but here goes!

Bowser Grousers

I'm back, having decided that if my work load doesn't ease off and allow me to blog, well, I'll ditch the workload. Bastards gave me a ridiculously paltry payrise at payrise time recently, so I'm sure they won't mind me slowing down and slacking off. You get what you pay for, right?

It was a pretty traumatic weekend. The Man and I have been having Talks. We've sort of broken up, only, we're still going on as usual. Look, I don't know what the hell's going on. It's all too complicated.

Anyway, on with the topical chit chat.

Some asinine breakfast show was on this morning - that's all they show in the mornings, somebody's mum and dad from the suburbs sitting on a sofa and twittering about the light news, and cartoons - and they were going on yet again about the petrol prices. It struck me not for the first time that while these people love shock news items about climate change, Antarctica's melting ice, the plight of poor cute polar bears etc, it doesn't stop them having self-pity parties whenever petrol rises a cent or two and they might be forced to *gasp* economize on driving just a teensy bit. You'd think that it might occur to them to say, "perhaps rising prices at the pump aren't such a bad thing, as we all know we should be cutting energy use and finding cleaner sources". I mean, cutting edge analysis might be a bit challenging at 7 in the morning but I'd appreciate some indication of intelligence. As it is, the idea that high oil prices might be a good thing for the environment doesn't get within in a mile of being mentioned. It's just greed, greed greed. My breakfast cereal is probably cannier than these stupid, smug, westie TV presenters.

Ah, rant rant. Is it nearly time to go home yet? Half an hour to go. Should be able to waste it somehow...

A Break in Melbourne!

I just came back from a very lovely very long weekend in Melbourne. (Well, not just come back, long enough to have done a million things at work).

I have come to the conclusion, and excuse me ladies and gentlemen for being indelicate because you know I just hate that...that Melbourne completely shits all over Sydney. And I am going to move there at my earliest possible convenience!

Melbourne is cleaner, friendlier, better mannered, far more intelligently designed, more cultural and more beautiful than Sydney. It was wonderful to spend five days away from the ear-splitting traffic noise I usually have to put up with (I'm talking about the buses here) and to be able to cross a road without having to wait ten minutes. There was also considerably less spit all over the pavements. In Sydney I often feel queasy about walking the streets even in my stinky old trainers!

It was especially delightful, as I was strolling to the theatre to see the ballet (also delightful!) to come across a stage with a band playing, free, for the benefit of all and sundry on Friday night. I had the strongest feeling of being right in the centre of a city with a real vibe, a social life and a real focus on people. It reminded me of the month I stayed in Krakow, Poland. What a change from Sydney, where as a pedestrian you feel like you're an unwanted nuisance who's in the way of all the cars. OK, so we have some nice places, such as Darling Harbour, but you've got to take a little footpath over a motorway to get to it! Hardly the vibrant heart of the city! On the other hand, I felt like Melbourne is a city where you could actually meet people, walk around and have fun.

Top travel tip from me: Have lunch at Joe's Garage in Brunswick Street. You get an enormous pizza or pasta dish, plus a glass of wine, for just under $10! You can then order an obscenely big piece of gorgeous cake for dessert. (Hint - share it with someone!) I was all set to go there every day, but the Man wouldn't let me, so we only went on 3 of our 5 days there!

My bags are packed!