Another Year Already? Fuck.

yes, yes, very nice.....

Surely I'm not alone in despairing about the sands of time.  Every year rolls on,  the march of certainty bringing with it a whole new myriad of misery that we have no idea how to anticipate or deal with.  Another 365 days of wasted existence, and further examples of what useless piles of crap we all are.  None of us are ever going to be better people, none of us.  Go back to the couch and take a whole container of cheap ice-cream and some Homebrand Twisties with you, as you watch re-runs of crap that sucked the first time, and sob into your wretched realisation of personal failure.

I googled 'wasted lives' and got this - to me this looks more like a good time

hello lover

Happy New Year Everyone. I always like to start off my first post of the year with some inspirational stuff.  Honestly, I'm doing you all a favour.  If you hit rock bottom in early January then the only place to go is up.  Really it is.  Sink to a whole new all-time low first - that's all you have to do to feel better.  In that frame of mind I went to the corner store today and bought a jar of Dulce du Leche (for all you thickies it is basically a jar of thick caramel weighing in at about 20 000 calories......per mouthful).  Fucking Christ all mighty that shit is good.  I am not exaggerating when I say I've eyed it off about 4 times a week for the last 2 years and two months.  That is a total of 448 times, yet, trying to be a better person I never allowed myself to go there.  Well I have embraced the year of surrender to the misery, and let me tell you it is glorious to swallow it down.

I always get a little 'introspective' at the end of a vacation.  Yes, it was fabulous.  Yes I was almost drunk with feelings of popularity and worthiness.....but that's over now.  I'm back to sitting around in my underpants and uggboots and pretending that I am actually going to get that book I'm always banging on about, written.  At last.  At long long last.  Unfortunately I can't wish it into existence - where's fucking Rumpelstiltskin when you need him?  He can have both of my kids if he wants them,  for the love of god, just type me out a manuscript I can prostitute out, or at the very least achieve person satisfaction at a job completed.  How about a Genie?  A magic god damn fish......give me something.....anything......

he looks like a bit of dick really - and nobody has ever mentioned the teeth issue before

Due to buying some shitty ticket back to Australia at the last minute, we had a couple of stops on the way home.  They seemed like such a good idea in theory - 6 hours in Beijing??? No worries we'll get a car to take us on a tour of the Forbidden City.  12 hours in Vienna on New Years Eve?? Sounds awesome - fireworks, mulled wine and those mini gnocchi muthfuckas covered in two tons of cheese - Gimme.

worth being chubby for.....

The reality was more like this;

on the drive by....

It took us two bloody hours to get out of the Beijing airport.  Those airport folks really love a queue.  Plus the place is HUGE and there are a hundred terminals all connected by trains.  We were met by our car driver that looked like he was about 13.  I honestly thought he was there to push the bag trolley until he slid behind the wheel.  Well, they do say the kids work the hardest.  And I suppose a 13 year old's reflexes are pretty sharp - all those computer games and everything.  I fell asleep bent over with my head on my knees.  I woke up with a start (and an unusually large quantity of facial creases) as my husband elbowed me after an hour and a half crawl through the traffic and said "There it is".  I pried open my red crusty eyes, wiped the dried drool off the left side of my face, peered out my window.......and saw a giant picture of Mao Zedong and some large walls.  Then our prepubescent  driver passed us his phone where he'd translated from Google "We cannot stop.  We do not have time".  So, straight back to the airport we went.  It was one of the most expensive and least fruitful drives in history.

The G man

More exciting was the commotion that broke out at the airport upon our return.  As we arrived we saw people lining the entrance peering down below.  We looked over the rails and saw hundreds of women screaming and pushing toward a small solo figure in a khaki puffer jacket who was being kept from the masses by about 15 bodyguards.  More and more women started coming.  They were running and screaming from all directions.  The bodyguards got the small figure outside and toward a waiting car.  More and more people came sprinting and shouting, it was incredible to watch.  "Who IS it?"  we wondered aloud.  "It's G-Dragon!!!" said a rather breathless red faced young women next to us "You know?  Korean Pop Star.  I love him.  I LOVE HIM".  "You're not the only one Sweets, by the look of it",  I offered.  And she surely wasn't.  A thousand young women were hysterical outside and pushing each other, while the black car tried to negotiate past the crowds of girls throwing themselves in it's way.  G-Dragon is a hot commodity around here.  I'll have to have a listen, it's important to keep up with Chinese teenage girl trends - you never know when that knowledge will come in handy.

Good news for all the girls there today is that they are officially allowed to pop out more than one kid.  China just last week announced the end to their one child policy that has been in place for more than 35 years.  That's a pretty major deal if you think about it.  Imagine being forbidden to have more than one kid and you really wanted more?  You'd be spewing if you went into menopause last month lets put it that way.  Unfortunately for all the G-Dragon fans, they are going to have to find someone else to knock them up, as there seems to be rumours that the young man in question is, in fact, gay.  Who would have guessed?

many young heterosexuals enjoy pink satin blazers and matching hair

As soon as we arrived in Vienna we all totally crashed out in our hotel beds of unbelievable comfort (24 hours of cramped flying really gets into your knees), and would have completely slept through the New Year celebrations if my husband hadn't woken us at 11.15pm.  We pulled on our jackets and joined the crowds surging toward the town hall in the old city.  It was freezing.  Absolutely freezing.  We had left 36 degrees behind in Melbourne and headed straight to -7.  Nipple-numbing cold to put it bluntly.  Saw the fireworks - moderately impressive, but soon after we realised that below zero temperatures while surrounded by a bunch of people who'd been on the turps since 5pm, was no place for a couple of 6 year olds who were bawling from cold by this stage.  Of course the girls then spent the entire night awake, and got very familiar with the entire series of Shrek movies for the following 6 hours.

Looks pretty....pretty fucking freezing that is

I hate those stupid glasses

Our arrival into Israel appeared uneventful (unlike the lightening strike on the plane wing during last years homecoming).  It was good to see Bar Refaeli again.  On every single wall of the airport like she always is.  Staring down from the Carolina Lemke ads.  Sometimes it's the Hoodies advertisements, in which she poses in a rainbow variety of hooded sweatshirts, that line the airport walls.  This time, it was the ugly Carolina Lemke glasses.  Surely Bar must have shares in both companies?  Throughout the entire city of Tel Aviv, it is the same.  Bloody Bar Refaeli staring down from the side of every building, every billboard.  It's like some weird future world where only one model exists and is allowed to appear in advertising.  We have a stunning babysitter who looks exactly like her (letting her babysit is sort of like a present for my husband.  He gets to look at her at the beginning and at the end of the night).  I asked the girls if they thought the giant image of Bar looked like our babysitter, Shir.  "No" replied one of them "She looks like Mummy".  So there you have it everyone - I am a dead ringer for Bar Refaeli.  Unfortunately she is not so popular at the moment due to some kind of tax evasion, plus trying to block the air space above where she got married a couple of months ago, and also for dodging her service in the army.  Hopefully I won't accidentally get hounded by an angry Anti-Bar Refaeli mob while I'm out in my Uggies and filthy trackies buying jars of caramel.

don't even get me started on the puppet

the resemblance is uncanny....to the puppet

So senseless

Coincidentally (in a horrible way)  just as we touched down at Ben Gurion airport, another bloody nut job opened fire on a Friday afternoon bar session a few blocks from our place.  That is a seriously fucked up New Years resolution right there.  Two people died and another eight were injured.  One of them has a bullet lodged in his head that is impossible to remove.  You couldn't get a shittier start to the year for those poor bastards or their families.  Such a tragic and random event.  Life really can be cruel.  

Astonishingly the gunman managed to get away.  He took a taxi, but after the taxi driver recognised that he was the criminal, the gunman shot him and dumped his body on a beach just north of where I go walking on occasion.  Then he ditched the taxi and basically disappeared off the face of the earth.  The police have been searching for him for a week now with nothing.  There were rumours that he was still in North Tel Aviv (where I live) but now the police seem to have branched out and are searching other areas.  People have been very very edgy.  This isn't the old city of Jerusalem where fights and violence break out all the time.  This is Tel Aviv on a chilled out Friday afternoon.  Imagine this happening right where you live.  It's hard to believe it could isn't it?  For me too.

The search continues

People keep asking me if I'm scared.  There are rumours flying around - namely that he has a hostage somewhere, and that he is still armed and intends to commit another shooting.  It's the talk of the neighbourhood actually.  Everyone from the parents at the school, to the fishmonger round the corner wants to talk about it, and in particular ask me how I'm feeling.  To be honest, I feel nothing regarding my own safety.  Not even when my sister said "he could be hiding out in your building".... way to inspire confidence Sis - I actually haven't seen Joanna from number 4 in a while, and there has been a fair bit of thumping going on from underneath us, so perhaps I should pop down......  It was like this though when missiles were being shot into the city in summer 2014.  I didn't feel frightened.  Barely uneasy.  This is not because I'm particularly brave or anything - on the contrary, I'm a total coward, and have a real fear of things like clowns, and maggots - maggot infested clowns - eeeuuugghhhh.  I've thought long and hard about why everyone is so freaked out and I am not, and I think it must be my Australian psyche.  We (as Australians) are so used to feeling safe, and believing that things like this always happen to other people, elsewhere, so that it just doesn't make much of a dent.  Not so for the Israelis.  And the Palestinians.   They have been constantly pounded for decades.  There is a long history of disasters, and mayhem, and violence - so it's impossible to think that each person has not been affected in a significant way, or knows somebody who has experienced direct effects.  That is bound to leave a lasting mark.

Everyone's good time girl

Let's hope our relative innocence as Australians lasts.  The world really feels like it's changing, like its winding up faster and faster.  Is it just me who feels it, or does everybody....or nobody???  Perhaps it's always been like this, and I only feel it in this way as I get older.  In contrast to my 'views' expressed above, I actually do believe in a better future and a happier world despite what is so often laid out for us to gape at in horror.  I'm still waiting for that good news only channel, but I'm not holding my breath.  But in the meantime, if you really want to feel good about 2016, do not check out this years predictions made by a (now deceased) blind Bulgarian witch called Baba Vanga.......and stop saving up for that European tour next Spring........Don't say I didn't warn you.....

And have a fabulous year everyone.  I mean it, I really do.  Love and light, and all the rest of that other hippy shit xx

and cosmic kisses

* Update - At about 4.30 this afternoon the gunman was killed in a shootout with police in the north of Israel near his hometown - Arara . So I guess he wasn't hiding out at number 4 then......