Friday, March 14, 2008

Seven Legal Ones

Having been Blogtagged by MillyMoo, and also seeing as the old blogs are a bit thin on the ground of late (a good indicator of a healthy work-life!), I shall accept her meme challenge.

7 Random/Weird Facts About Franzy

1. I used to be in a circus.
I can juggle, do the splits, walk on stilts, ride a unicycle poorly, balance stuff, climb a rope, swing from a trapeze and pretend to get hit in the face quite well. Sadly, a neck injury followed closely by a massive knee injury has finished my circus days. Now I just quietly impress folks at the gym with my rehabilitated ability to stand one-legged on the wobble-board for extended periods.

2. I once ate a whole Quarter Pounder, in a single bite, while driving at 100km/h, in New Zealand. It was on a dare during a ski trip and (sadly, randomly or weirdly, depending on your disposition towards food) the three french fries I popped into my mouth just before the dare were neither chewed, swallowed nor seen again. (Half of one dislodged from a sinus after a particularly spectacular tumble on the slopes a few days later, maybe the rest are still waiting in my sinuses, like Noah in his ark, for that chip's return to confirm that the storm is over).

3. I have never tasted Penfold's Grange, seen a real live whale or had a cigarette touch my lips.
I regret the whale and the wine, and plan to rectify those before I cark it, but am quite proud of the cigarette thing.

4. Every single girl I've ever fancied and/or married hasn't been able to stand the taste of coriander. They all say the same thing: that it tastes like soap.

5. I get
déjà vu all the time. At least once a week. But only from dreams. So I dream it, then it happens days, weeks, months, even years later. But as soon as it goes down, I know what the dream was and when I dreamt it.

6. When I was ten years old, I killed a snake that was coming into my Aunty's house with a broom handle. Then I burst into tears because I had killed something.

7. According to our birth certificates, I was born at exactly the same time and date as my mother. 8pm, 24th of December, 32 years apart.


I tag no one, because all the people who would have done this have already done it. This meme is like the cold that goes around the school yard.


***
GTH - Lion and The Other, other Sam take away the points this week for sleuthing out the crazy Sunsilk-shilling bride in the Youtube video. I am tempted to take points away from River for the terrible pothead gag. The header was Mele in a homemade beanie, signifying just how far you can get away with telling your lady that her hair looks really smashing today darling, what have you done with it? It looks fabulous!

11 comments:

  1. eugh, coriander.

    We will never date, but i agree with your previous lady friends.

    Also, the thing about your birth date and your mum is pretty cool.

    I really have no comment about the quarter pounder thing. Wrong on so many levels.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi there, writing is my forte as well. I love to write. I think its one of the greatest arts ever. In view of its progress, I set up this writing help blog, cute writing. Please find your information to make your writing great here. good writing promotion blog

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hmm, one should always check their grammar and punctuation when using the word forte...

    ...Irony, me thinks.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Coriander - great stuff! Lucky Love Chunks and I both enjoy it and shove huge handfuls of it on pretty much everything.

    Grange - you must try it at least once. We cracked open our one and only bottle (1989) on our 10th wedding anniversary. Could have been the occasion, the food, the company but it was the best wine I have ever tasted in my life. So far.

    Smoking - good for you, though don't you think it's a tad ironic when 'electric spinach' is enjoyed instead?

    Cirkids, perchance? Half of Sapphire's class seem to be going there. I dare you to ride a unicycle to work!

    ReplyDelete
  5. bec - Whenever I get a hold of a bunch of fresh coriander, I like to pretend that I am driving along a lonely highway on the South Island, ski-slopes in front of me ...

    LenX - Hi there! I wish I could help make your writing great too!

    T.O.o.S. - I checked the blog. Ain't no irony in evidence.

    Kath - Smoking - Why ironic?
    Grange - you lucky @#)*!!!
    Cirkidz - Aiiiight.

    ReplyDelete
  6. T.O.o.S. - Just reading more of 'Cute Writing' and came across this sentence in the latest entry on grammar:

    "Written language, however, retains the same old forte of usage rules, and ever since showed inhibition to come out."

    B-yew-tiFULL!

    ReplyDelete
  7. Yeah, I gave it a quick read too mate.

    All can say is:
    Pearls Franzy. Pearls!!

    ReplyDelete
  8. That
    is
    WEIRD.

    You are the third person who, completely unconnected and unprompted, has mentioned the phrase "pearls before swine" to me IN THE LAST 48 HOURS.

    Truman! Truman!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Um, I meant Pearls as in "Pearls of wisdom" Franzy.

    Not sure WTF you are talking about, but Pearls before Swine is the worst advice I've ever heard..

    I'll take bacon over jewels any day!!

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hi there, thanks for your comment, I have scrapped a new comment there for you. Please read that. You are high ranking in google, so not difficult to find your blog at all. Do you agree for a link exchange with my blog? Also, did you subscribe to my blog? I found new subscribers.

    ReplyDelete
  11. The Corriander Conundrum... I think it's just another facet of the Great Geranium debate – does it smell of lemon of cat's piss? – I'd be interested to see if there is some correlation between the two.

    And as for the conversation above ^ the idea of bacon-based jewlery appeals to me.

    ReplyDelete

An explanation of The Joy Division Litmus Test

Although it may now be lost in the mysts of thyme, the poll below is still relevant to this blog. In the winter of 2008, Mele and I went to live in Queensland. In order to survive, I bluffed my way into a job at a Coffee Club.
It was quite a reasonable place to work: the hours were regular, the staff were quite nice, it wasn't particularly taxing on my brain.
There were a few downsides: In the six weeks or so that I worked there, there was about a 90% staff turnover (contributed to by my leaving). This wasn't seen as a result of the low pay, the laughability of staff prices or the practice of not distributing tips to staff, rather it was blamed on the lack of work ethic among Bribie Island's youth.
However, one of the stranger aspects of the cultural isolation that touched our lives during our time "up there" was the fact that nobody at my work had heard of the band Joy Division.
The full explanation is available here.
But please, interact a little further and vote in my ongoing poll. The results are slowly mounting up, proving one thing: people read this blog are more well-informed about Joy Division than anyone who works at the Coffee Club on Bribie Island.

Have you heard of the band Joy Division?

Chinese food, not Chinese Internet!

Champions of Guess The Header

  • What is Guess The Header about? Let’s ask regular “Writing” reader, Shippy: "Anyway, after Franzy's stunning September, and having a crack at 'Guess The Header' for the first time - without truly knowing what I was doing mind you - I think I finally understand what 'GTH' is all about. At first I thought you needed to actually know what it was. Don't get me wrong — if you know what it is, it may help you. I now realise that it's more Franzy's way of invoking thought around an image or, more often than not, part of an image. If you dissect slightly the GTH explanatory sentence at the bottom of his blog you come up with this: “The photo is always taken by me and always connects in some way to the topic of the blog entry it heads up.” When the header is put up, the blog below it will in some obscure way have something to do with it. “Interesting comments are judged and scored arbitrarily and the process is open to corruption and bribery with all correspondence being entered into after the fact and on into eternity, ad infinitum amen.” Franzy judges it, but it's not always the GTH that describes the place perfectly that gets it. “The frequent commenters, the wits, the wags and the outright smartarses who, each entry, engage to both guess the origin and relevance of the strip of photo at the top (or “head”) of each new blog and also who leave what I deem the most interesting comment.” It generally helps if you're a complete smartarse and can twist things to mean whatever you feel they should mean - exactly the way Franzy would like things to be twisted." - Shippy Blogger and GTH point scorer.
  • Nai - 1
  • Lion Kinsman - 2
  • Will - 2
  • Brocky - 2
  • Andy Pants - 2
  • The 327th Male - 3
  • Mad Cat Lady - 3
  • Miles McClagen - 4
  • Myninjacockle - 4
  • Asheligh - 5
  • Neil - 5
  • Third Cat - 5
  • Adam Y - 6
  • Squib - 6
  • Mele - 6
  • Moifey - 7
  • Jono - 8
  • The Other, other Sam - 14
  • Kath Lockett - 15
  • Shippy - 19
  • River - 32