doubleshiny

Well, we're off to Comic Con tomorrow as proper press and everything. We have the pro camera, the solid gold contacts, the press accreditation and the business cards, and now all we need is a pro-looking mic block like all the big entertainment presenters have. Now, these don't come cheap, but you can knock one up with a few easy steps.

Step 1 : Take a normal kitchen sponge and remove the scouring bit. I thought about leaving it on so that I could do last minute nail buffing but then I thought, what would Joan Rivers do?



Step 2 : Cut a whole in the sponge for the mic to go through. Better get your mum to do this because craft knives are sharp.



Step 3 : Voila! You have a mic block! It already looks awesome and we're not even finished yet!



Step 4 : Next, disguise the fact that your block is made of kitchen sponge by covering it with some spare box. Again, mums are better at this.



Step 5 : Marry the foam block and cardboard together in a perfect erm, marriage of card and sponge.



Step 6 : Add your kick ass logo to the block, and you're ready to go, with just one final step...



Step 7 : Do a practice interview!



So there you have it, we're ready to go!

Today I went to a leaving party for someone at work who has been there 15 years and is retiring. I like this job, I can imagine being here for 15 years, though I hope I won't be posting on livejournal in my lunch hour when I'm the Principal. Actually, I probably will be. 

Today's Writer's Block is rubbish :

 If you made up your own cereal, what would it consist of, and what would you call it? 

What a boring question. Why would you make your own cereal when there are too many varieties anyway? Choosing cereal now is a real ball ache, they're all either full of crap like Lucky Stars, or not crappy enough like Bran Flakes. I quite like crunchy nut cornflakes but the bits of nut gets stuck in your teeth. I'm also keen on sugar puffs but they go soft too quickly in the milk. I suppose if I made up my own cereal it would be a nut-bit free puff of sugared wheat which was particularly hardy. The Ray Mears of sugared cereals.

Elsewhere in DS Meadows

I have lost my DS charger, and this is causing me some distress. 

I'm going to the Jacaranda for the first time in ages tomorrow, could be messy.

Paypal have incurred my wrath and I may have to write an angry email, or at least seethe quietly.

I need a Father's Day present for my Dad and have no ideas. My ideas so far are : a DS charger, a rabbit, a Poland football shirt.

I was pondering today that I might try answering the questions that pop up in Writer's Block for a week and see if they are in fact interesting or not. I was pondering this until I checked my email and saw that my blog post from yesterday about Zachary Quinto's birthday was in the google news update. Why do I never learn?

Anyway, the writer's block question - 1/7 is..

Recount a remarkable incident involving insects.

I do actually have a story involving insects but it's not that remarkable. When I was in primary school I was out with my class on some waste ground drawing creatures for art class (as you may have gathered, it wasn't an exclusive public finishing school, and yes I did say 'waste ground'). My friends and I had collected a nice crop of orange caterpillars in a Flora tub and thought that instead of putting them back where they came fro, happily munching on dandelion leaves, that we should take them home and let them enjoy the luxury of a semi-detached 3 bed before their inevitable early death.

So we formed a human chain around the caterpillars and managed to smuggle them into school. We hid them in the entrance hall behind a blackboard, but we couldn't find anything to make holes in the top of the tub and didn't want them to die so we just left the lid with a corner off. 

You can imagine what happened next.

The caterpillars made a bid for freedom whlst we were doing maths, and the next I know me and my friends, otherwise known as the Chrysalis Six, were in the headmistresses office. Luckily for us she was a good old stick and we didn't really get into any trouble. We wrote her a grovelling apology and I copied it up because I had the best handwriting. She later told us she'd shown it to her mum. By now of course, she was used to be doing things like this. I had after all been in her school for four eventful years.

So there's my insect story. It's not that remarkable and it might have been better if I'd lied and said that the caterpillars hatched into butterflies and charmed the school with a well-timed display of flutteriness. Damn.

 
PS T Shirt of the Week

Saw a guy yesterday wearing a tshirt that said 'Heisenberg May Have Been Here'.

Click for why that's funny if you're not a huge geek like me

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncertainty_principle

More psychobabble courses for work, they have the greatest of intentions but you have to filter out a lot of the crap before you can truly gain anything from it.

This course is about 'motivating' students, and apparently human beings, rather than being complex and unique are actually easy to categorise and colour code. In the exercise they gave us you start with six random cards, all colour coded, all featuring words like 'writer', 'mathematician', 'conservative', 'controlling'. Then you have to mingle with the group trying to swap the cards which don't describe you for ones that do. The idea is that once you have collected 6 cards which describe you the colour of those cards tells you everything about your personality.

The trouble is, the cards have clear social value. Everyone wants the red cards because they say more socially endearing things, like 'sensitive to others' and 'people orientated'. No-one wants the green or blue cards because they say things like 'administrative' and 'likes charts'. Honestly, when being asked to choose whether you want to be known as someone who likes charts or buys flowers, which one would you be?

Of course in the end the experiment doesn't quite work - some people are actively seeking out the descriptors which they want rather than have, and others are trying to rid themselves of those cards which everyone else knows has them down to a tee.

At the end most people have a range of colours, and this doesn't sit well with the course leader, he wants us to choose one colour right now. No messiness allowed, just assign yourself one colour, place your bets now before I tell you that you're a wannabe serial killer because you picked up a yellow card instead of a red one.

I ended up with two green and two red, but the description of the yellow people was more accurate. In the end I gave up my two green cards and settled myself in the red camp. Here are the descriptors so you can see for yourself. In bold are the things that I consider describe me more accurately.

Blue

Analyzes, quantifies, logical, critical, realistic, likes numbers, knows about money, knows how things work, fact based, quantitative, intellectual thinking, problem solving, technical, numerical, mathematical, they know better, show me the figures first, reacts unemotionally, appreciates a good debate, efforts to spend time wisely, likes charts, presentation in allignment with corporate goals, wants precise facts, problem solving - analyzes the facts logically. 

Green

Takes preventative action, establishes procedures, gets things done, reliable, organises, is neat, timely, plans, likes details, safekeeping, conservative, traditional, controlled, speaker, reader, administrative, makes things happen, reacts cautiously, punctual, alignment with well established proceduures, very low risk, written communication before meetings, likes scheduled appointments, in family photographs, will notice things other than people, organises facts

Yellow

Imagines, speculates, takes risks, impetuous, breaks rules, likes surprises, curious, playful. intuitive with solutions, conceptual, metaphoric, artistic, visual, original, imaginative, thrives on chaos, creative, society tries to stop them, likes freedom to explore, long term objectives, connection to the bigger picture, minimal details, visualises the facts and deals with them intuitively

Red

Sensitive to others, likes to teach, touches a lot, is supportive, is expressive, is emotional, talks a lot, feels, interpersonal, empathic, people orientated,  writer, caring and loving, gossip, spiritual, teamworker, nicest people in the world, makes everybody tea, buys flowers, reacts spontaneously, likes involvement, good attitude, eye to eye contact, respects others feelings, feels the facts and deals with them expressively. 

You can see from this how flawed it is. There are eleven statements within the yellow area which I think apply to me, but I HATE surprises. I like to be able to visually script things (hence the visual, writer and imagines tags) and if I can't then I can't deal with them very well. Similarly there are a lot of red words that apply to me but I don't think I'm that emotional or sensitive to others. Predictably there is nothing in the blue category that I associate with, but in the green area, which is the same side of the brain we see my natural tendency to organise people and things. 

So, probably all a load of old balls pedalled by pop psychologists looking for quick and easy ways to categorise people. What do you think?

I was just throwing away a load of rubbish in our office when I found these 'Untrue Facts' which I used to do on my radio show. I thought others may be amused by them..

Untrue Facts About Foxes

* A fox is what happens when a dog kisses a cat

* Foxes appear red to our eyes but if you think about it, no animal is red, so they must be brown.

* The original Basil Brush puppet was made from a real fox but was abandoned for a fabric hand puppet after a child was struck in the eye by it's sharp false teeth.

* A fox's bushy tail is used by the fox to clear out its den, and also to make it more attractive to hunters.

* All foxes are not sly, in fact they are well known in the woodlands for their honesty and liberal thinking, not like those damn badgers!