Cause Celebre

Barbara Walters speaks with SpoiledCharlotte
Transcript of interview, aired on Foxtel, 7.30pm  3/2/11

Your blog has been described as "crystal meth for the modern housewife",  where do you glean your inspiration?
That's an interesting question. I truly believe it is a gift.  Often inspiration comes to me when I'm watching the ShamWow ad.

You do have some followers - what would you like to say to all your readers?
It's my turn for the chicken skin.

It sounds like you have quite a close relationship with your readers?
Yeah my sisters and I are quite close.  Mum reads it too.

What do you think would attract more readers?
Well I'm thinking of doing a promotion where the 10th person to join as a follower will get a counter meal at the North Star Hotel with that guy in the ad from Clare Valley Toyota.  That idea's got success written all over it.

If you were Miss Universe what would you hope to achieve?
World peace. I would also encourage extra thoughtfulness and kindness towards poor children, cripples and old people.

Isn't that a bit patronising?
Oh I'm the most patronising person you'll ever meet.  I fly the Australian flag from my car aerial, I've got Ken Done quilt covers and my dog exclusively wears Jenny Kee knitwear.

So you encourage kindess to the handicapped and elderly?
Absolutely.  They are such a drain on the economy.  If we're kind to them they will feel guilty and won't  ask for the right to the same standard of living shared by everyone else.

What do you stand politically?
I believe Prime Minister Hanson is the best thing to happen to Australian politics.

Julia Gillard is Prime Minister.
Oh.  I get them mixed up. Must be the red hair and dialect.

Where do you see yourself in five years.
Hopefully we will have evicted Angelina by then so that I can take my rightful position by the side of Brad, George and David.

David?
Yes, David Thorne He's a skinny, chain-smoking, unemployed blogger.
I am having an affair with him.  Actually I'm having an affair with his brain.  My synapses do high-fives when I read his work.  If we ever corresponded ..... well, lets just say the millenium fireworks on Sydney Harbor would fade into insignificance.  David doesn't know this yet.

What about Humphrey?
Who?

Your husband, Humphrey?
Oh, yes, we've discussed this at length and agree that I can keep him, as a pet.

And your children?
Who?

Your children?
Ohhhh. I was vaguely aware of some small people living in the house.....where are they?  They might need feeding....and brushing.

If your life was a theme song what would it be?
Watership Down, performed by chipmunks.

Any projects in the pipeline?
Well, when George and I are no longer tackling the misappropriation of aid in third-world countries, sitting on the War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague and coordinating multi-national cooperative research into locust control, I think I'll take over from where Princess Diana left off with the land-mine thing.

I think Prince Harry is already doing that?
Yes, but the cause needs some real celebrity and substance behind it so I'm willing to step up to the plate.

You seem to be involved with so much on top of your glittering literary career....
I'm aiming to become the first person to win and Nobel Peace Prize and a Pulitzer in the same year.  It's important to have goals.

Where are you going after this interview?
I'm going to Hostage Negotiation Training and then Zumba classes.

*This interview was available on YouTube, but was deemed to be discriminatory and in contravention of child protection laws.  It has since been blocked by administrators.  Of course you'd expect that from a bunch of one-armed lesbians.

The Most Dangerous Game

Dear F*ckwit-with-whom-I-shared-a-lift-at-the-Women's-and-Children's-Hospital,

Despite your advanced age you obviously haven't been taught the nuances and mores of social interaction with females.  Because of my socially conscientious and generally kind nature I have burdened myself with the task of educating you.

1) Do not assume that just because you are sharing the lift with another person that you should initiate interaction with them. This should have been taught to you, at the age of three, under the title "Stranger Danger." That sweet little old lady in a wheelchair with rheumy eyes?  She could be a vampire slayer.

2) Should you insist on "shooting the breeze" with stranger limit the interaction to comments about the weather.  This is called benign, or non-threatening behaviour.   As a rule these brief exchanges ought never include your opinions on politics, the judiciary or your parole officer.

3) Do not attempt to be funny, unless you are Jimeoin.  And if you are Jimeoin, can you please autograph my breasts?

4) For the love of God please, please, please THINK before you open your gob.
 DO NOT approach an unknown woman and child and say to the child "Oh, did Granny leave some lipstick on your forehead."
I can only assume that you'd had a bad day and were feeling suicidal when you said this to my SON.
Perhaps you come from the wrong side of town where women, on average, give birth at the age of eight.

You possibly considered that remark completely innocuous, however the ramifications have been far-reaching and tragic.  This confident, outgoing and intelligent woman has degenerated into an individual who frequents abandoned warehouses at night to share needles with other botox abusers.  I cannae attend any social event without some degree of botoxication.  Sadly, it is only a matter of time before I resemble the Bride of Wildestien.

You actually came out of our exchange rather well. 
After I stabbed you with my incisor the lift serendipitously opened at the haematology department.

May God bless you with migraines.

Yours Truly,

Charlotte
Vampire Slayer.

WORD FOR THE DAY

behemoth, n:  Bible. an animal, perhaps the hippopotamus. 2. Colloq.  a huge powerful man or beast.

Context:
"Oh Humphrey, you naughty behemoth!"

or

"Does my bum look behemoth in this?"

or even,

"Jimeoin is a comedic behemoth whom is welcome to ravish me at his whim."

Corruption of an Innocent and Computer Ebola

I've always fancied myself as a reasonably open-minded individual.  I nary offered a blink when (many years ago) a friend asked me to have a threesome with her and her husband (I mustn't have looked like Gollum on that day).  I find p0rn, well, amusing - and I'll try almost anything once  (much to the delight of a gleefully clapping Humphrey).   HOWEVER............my illusion of sexual sophistication was recently shattered....nay ANNIHILATED.....by an experience that will forever be branded on my cerebral cortex.
My Whatever-Rocks-Your-Boat attitude has deserted me.  I now wear Mary-Janes and a chastity belt.
All I can say is; Don't try this at home folks.  Your innocence will flee and you will never. ever. be the same again.  Don't be fooled; if you have participated in multiple-partner-naked-activities YOU ARE STILL AN INNOCENT.  If you have tied your husband/wife/friend/dog to the bed and whipped them with feathers YOU ARE STILL AN INNOCENT.  If you get your jollies from chocolate sprinkles and nappies...YOU ARE AN INNOCENT.  Even if you want to wee on someone, fine, just don't do it in front of me and don't tell me.  (A quick disclaimer here....no, I haven't done any of the above..... and if I have I won't be telling you about it.)

I am here to serve and protect.

I AM that someone who is stupid enough to Google something I was told wasn't child safe (or even remotely normal-brain-safe).

Do not Google anything even vaguely referring to two girls and one drinking recepticle.

Let me just say that as a result of doing that thing I wrote about just up there.....I am now anorexic, and possibly frigid. 

My computer has seized and has fifty gazzilly million trojan viruses and cyber-ebola.

What the hell is wrong with humans?????  Can we not derive enough excitement from Ferris Wheel rides, the scent of rain or a quickie on the kitchen table???

Coprophagia is the domain of DOGS and even then it is GROSS.  IT IS UNNATURAL. period.

It does beg the question; are humans so over-stimulated that we have experience fatigue?  How does someone even imagine something like the two-girls-one-drinking-vessel game? 

For God's sake, get a hobby....fly a kite....just leave animals, children and poo out of it.

My head hurts.




 

The Potato and How My Children Became Addicted to Crack.

The following post may or may not be a true story, but if you are my neighbour, I'd be checking your porridge each morning for ground glass. 

Thing 1 and Thing 2 are rather fond of telling each other they stink.
"You smell like a stinky old goat bottom," says Thing 1.
"You smell like a dead goat rhinocerous bottom boils," replies Thing 2.
And so it goes on until they have covered the entire zoological, dermatological and infectious disease spectrum.
Speaking of fragrance spectrums, the domestic setting plays host to all manner of apongination (that's a distinctive blend of abomination and pong).
Humphrey's metwurst farts spring to mind.  These are so bad that he can sometimes be seen scrambling to escape from himself.  I prefer to quarantine him in the garage, but he says this banishment constitutes domestic violence.  I told him perhaps he'd prefer to be tried for murder....as in "Man Kills Entire Family With Flatulence" type murder.
His socks come a close second.

Being a farm girl my pong radar is pretty well tuned; dead foxes (9/10), dead sheep (6/10),  flyblown sheep (8/10), blocked septic tank (7/10), bore water (2/10), putrid water (5/10) Humphrey's morning breath (900/10).
Nothing, however, packs an olfactory punch quite like the dead potato.
I say this because I'm sure one crawled into our wall cavity and died.
It wouldn't be so bad if it had the manners to die with dignity, like lettuce.
Lettuce is a well-mannered vegetable.  Generally lettuce is all bouncy and green for a few days and then suddenly one day you open the fridge door only to find it sliding from the crisper toward the compost bin.  Carrots are rather considerate too.  They alert you to their imminent death by getting a bit droopy and then break out in melanomas.
Onions are fickle creatures.  I'm yet to meet one I really like.  They tend to be a bit sly when it comes to death.  They can look all fresh and crisp.....until you pick them up and  realise that all their papery skin encases is a puff of green spores. Ponk level: Moderate.

Potatoes win in the Ponkinator stakes - especially when you can't find them.
Our wall cavity victim has left us all smearing Vicks Vaporub under our noses which is akin to using hairspray as an asthma inhaler.  Our entire family has been whacked out on Vicks for the last three days.  Whilst it makes for interesting dinner conversation, I think the likelihood of Things 1 and 2 graduating from primary school has somewhat diminished.
I suspect they are not too far away from becoming fledgling criminals because everyone knows that once you've tried Vicks the next stop is crack and I just can't see Humphrey going out to score.

Anyway, the local media has been parked on the front lawn ever since men in nuclear fall-out suits knocked on the door Thursday morning.  Apparently neighbours had been complaining about the smell so the EPA investigated and their little ponkimetres had peaked out at our front gate.
I don't know if we'll ever get our house back.  Right now it's under a giagantic sheet of plastic and the men in suits with Darth Vader breathing apparatus are trying to locate the source of the odour which is apparently a violation of the smell pollution code.

I'm guessing that I'll have to wait another year for my "World's Greatest Mum" mug.  It is generally expected that anyone initiated into the delicate art of housewhiffery could keep track of their potatoes.

I need some Vicks.

The Plague and Other Gifts From God

WARNING: IF YOU ARE IRISH, CATHOLIC OR EASILY OFFENDED PLEASE DO NOT READ THE FOLLOWING. This post meanders a tad because I was bombed on Valium a little tired when I wrote it.  Also, I love the Irish (paricularly YOU Melon) but reserve the right to ridicule them because I am one.....a bit like I can poke fun at fat people....'cause I am one.....and that means no one can sue me because it's not really that offensive.  I am, in effect, offending myself.  I also learnt at Journalism School that truth is the best defence (or is that with an s?). That doesn't work when you apply it to netball though.
I'm going to bed now.

The Plague and Other Gifts from God  The Rant That Has Secured My Place in Hades

When God created man She was premenstral.
Or drunk. Or hungover.
Perhaps she was hungover because she was premenstrally drinking.
She also didn't like the Irish very much.
My own Leprechaunian lineage is a case in point.
"Gaelic f*ckerrrrrrrrrrrrs!," She cried as She flattened a face, pugged a nose and inserted a bad temper.
(I may have made that last bit up because I'm sure that God doesn't swear and I'm unsure whether I need to be nice about Her because I'm meant to be Catholic and being guilty goes with the territory and I don't want to end up in Purgatory for eons).

Whenever someone in our family walks into a bank with a sawn-off shotgun behaves in an antisocial manner Dad always says "Oh, that's the Mad O'Callaghan coming out...."
Someone should have spayed Mad O'Callaghan back when he was a Fomhoire cavorting with evil faeries, giants and leprechauns.  I'm sure we could have avoided at least one world war and possibly the spread of the bubonic plague.
Whenever one of our relatives is arrested the subject of malicious gossip, Mum (of dour English Methodist stock) purses her lips and sniffs something about "the mad Irish".
I merely blame the O'Callaghans for my stumpy legs, manic depression and sexual attraction to paper clips.

It is interesting to note that whilst God quite obviously didn't like the Irish, the Irish are exceedingly obsequious when it comes to God.  Kind of like an abused dog.
You need only consider the potato famine and Angela's Ashes to conclude that the Irish servility in the face of The Almighty is kind of perverse.
(It may also account for the fact that the Irish also drink more alcohol per capita that any nation in the developed world).
Take for instance the pop star status of the Parish Priest.
In days gone by the having Father Finnegan at the dinner table was akin to getting a passport straight to Heaven with no purgatorial stop-overs.
Whilst extra white sauce on the corned beef probably saved a dozen or so souls, slipping Father Finnegan a fiver with his after-dinner sherry was a gold plated guarantee of a five star suite in the House of Many Mansions.
And that is how I came to stab a priest.
Well I wanted to, but it was my grandfather's funeral, which called for a level decorum of which I am not particularly renowned.
Ol' Father Altarwinebreath was pontificating hellfire and brimstone and the whole "Let's-hope-dear-old -(insert name)-doesn't-get-stuck-in-purgatory-too-long" thing when he took a long meaningful look at my grandmother's purse.
My pulse quickened as the demon within (lets call him Legion) stirred.  Veins pulsed in my temples and my talons extended.  It was all I could do not to leap upon the pulpit and rip out the mercenary bastard's jugular.  Perhaps it was just the garlic necklace that saved his life.

*sigh*  the plasticity of religious protocol.

Except when it comes to Methodists.  With Methodists you can be a teetotalling Sunday School teacher who prays every night, never has sex, wears a hair shirt and self flagellates and still end up burning in hell.
With the Catholics anything goes, provided you can turn a blind eye and hand over your credit card details (the Vatican has now approved PayPal).
One of my ancestors, Seamus O'Callaghan,  bludgeoned fifteen grannies with his fiddle at a County Clare bingo night**.   Whilst he did spend some time languishing at Her Majesty's leisure, he was completely absolved of his sin.  Why? Because he went to confession and his family agreed to sign over their house (and all firstborn sons for the next millenia) to the Church.
It goes something like this:
One child handed to the Church = 15 hours of prayer;
15 hours of prayer = 5 days less in Purgatory.
It's rather an expensive exercise, considering Purgatory is where you stay for infinity unless someone prays you out of it. Obviously priest prayers are more effective than the prayers of parishoners.
It's a bit like clerical prostitution, but more delicately referred to as simony (buying or selling ecclesiastical preferments) and indulgences.
This is precisely why I choke on communion bread and morph into a Wolverine whenever someone mentions the words, Catholic, priest, nun, convent, manse, rosary, church, mass, Virgin Mary, virgin birth, immaculate conception and peace-be-with-you.
The only time I genuflect is at the gym facing Madam Lash.
Not that I'm bitter.........about the 12 years I spent locked in a convent with hirsute nuns and having to attend mass twice a week.I just have a bit of a tic.
And I'm sexually attracted to paperclips.


Anyhooo, in other news.....
Anyone who knows me will know that my all-time favorite book is the Bible (I said that in case God is reading and She may reconsider banishing me to Hell) and my second most favorite, despite the fact I can't spel, is the Macquarie Dictionary.  So from now on we are going to have......drum rolll.......

Word of the Day
(and a personal favorite)
Diamantiferous: adj. containing diamonds.

Now, I want you to all go away and use this word at least once today.  My example will be:
"Humphrey, you may shower me with gifts, so long as they are diamantiferous."

You may choose something completely different like:
"Oh look, junior has done something diamantiferous in his nappy."

Or if you are at an office meeting you can say:
"What a diamantiferous idea!"
Everyone will buy you drinks after work because you're super intelligent because you use big words AND know what they mean AND your boss will be so impressed you'll probably get a raise.


**I might have made that up.

Next Week:  A post about Atheism and why I adhere to the principles of it if it suits me.

Wrinkle Cream, Whistle-Blowers and The Global Conspiracy

(Written from a cellar somewhere beneath Mexico City)



Estee Lauder, clad in a black leather catsuit with artillery accessories, is stalking me.

It all began when, armed with a half-used tub of face cream, I approached the cosmetics counter at the local chemist.

Me: I'd like a refund please.

Audrey (the single neuroned checkout girl): What was your problem with the cream?

Me : It doesn't work.
   
Audrey: You feel that your skin isn't hydrated or ....?

Me: It. Doesn't. Work.

Audrey:  How hasn't it worked for you?

Me:    I don't look anything like Halle Berry.  

Audrey:  This cream won't make you look like Halle Berry.

Me:   Look at the poster there......Halle Berry....and this cream!  It's false advertising. It's misleading in the extreme.

Audrey: You're not black.

Me: Are you insulting me?

Audrey: I'm just saying, Halle Berry is black and you're not.  You're not even tall.

Me: What? So this cream is meant to make me tall as well?

Audrey: I don't think so.

Me: Oh, so not only are you racist you're heightist too are you?? This is UNBELIEVABLE.  So this cream should, theoretically, have turned me from a albino dwarf into a tall black goddess.  FAILURE on all counts Au-dray.

Audrey: I'll just get the manager.

Me: Damn right you will young lady. You'd better get the franchise CEO too sweetheart 'cause heads are going to topple here.

Chemist man who looks like a dentist: What can I do for you madam, a problem with your face cream?

Me: Err YEAH! (pointing to picture of Halle Berry holding face cream)  Do you see any rememblance here?

Chemist man who looks like a dentist: "Umm. No, but......"

Me: Let's just be clear on one thing here...do the words "CLASS ACTION" have any resonance with you?

Chemist man who looks like a dentist: *?*

Audrey: Perhaps you'd like to try this cream.....it's a great seller?

Me: That one with Heidi Klum? Do you think I'm stupid or something?

Chemist dentist and Audrey:  *pretend to tidy shelves*

Me: I'm sorry, but a simple refund just won't cut it any more. I'm sure you understand the negative ramifications for cosmetic companies and corner chemists like you on a GLOBAL scale. I could blow this scam WIDE open.  However...perhaps we could come to some kind of arrangement?

Chemist dentist: Arrangement?

Me:: I'm a reasonable individual Mr Chemden........seven hundred thou.....and I'll go away.

Chemden: Audrey call security.

The police weren't very polite either. I mean, here I was, handing them a global crime syndicate on a platter - which is more or less like me giving them extra stripes on their jackets and  fancy titles like Detective Senior Chief Constable Inspector Intendent - and they were RUDE to me.
(I didn't bite the security man that hard....big pansy).

Then I realised.
They were all in on it!
How could have I been so stupid??

I called Humphrey from the stop-over in Hong Kong.

Humphrey: You're WHAT?

Me: If anyone in black clothes, reflector aviators and a black Hummer comes to the door YOU DON"T KNOW ME. Ok?

Humphrey: You're kidding right?

Me: I'm serious Humphrey, pack the children up and RUN.

Humphrey: Have you been taking your medication?

Me: I've gotta go.  They've probably bugged your phone.

And that's how I came to be hiding beneath a laundromat in Mexico City.