Monday, March 23, 2009

Dear Manufacturers of Baby Paraphernalia,

If it can't be used or operated with one hand while someone yells at you, it's as useful as a peddle-powered wheelchair.

Ditto any disposable item that comes out in a big, clingy string, rather than one wipe/nappy sack at a time. Kleenex tissues can manage it. Jatz Crackers can manage it. Why can't you?

10 comments:

  1. give up on the nappy sacks. we just buy bucketloads of them, pull them in frustrated clumps from their stupid packs and then secrete them in every available storage space. your bag, wife's bag, car, pram, every single room in the house, grandparent's houses and the shed. you do not want to get caught short. no matter how many times the child has pooed in the day, it can always manage at least one more.

    be prepared.

    and yes, wipes also suck. i hate the ads were the mother wafts a single wipe gently in the air near the baby's arse and, bingo, poo is all gone. the baby is never featured inserting its foot into the poo, grabbing said foot, grabbing you with said hand and smearing everything in a five metre radius in poo in about 3 seconds.

    bitter experience has taught me to remove at least 3 wipes from the tub before begining the arse wipping process.

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  2. The thing that really fries my chicken is that the first few cabs off the rank always come out perfectly. This tricks me into thinking that it should be like that for the rest of the roll.

    Come to think of it, maybe they could teach Kleenex that little piece of engineering because I'm always tearing a large, manly clump of tissues out of the top of the box before the proper flow gets going.

    *More to come on baby-based advertising - WATCH THIS SPACE*

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  3. I'm with Myninj on this one - nappy sacks EVERYWHERE and the same goes for wipes. Handbag, backpack, car, kitchen, bathroom, bedroom...hell, shove a box on your friggin' mantelpiece!

    Oh and they're still handy nine years later. For dog poos, sticky-fingered younger visitors, etc.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Jeez Kath, I wouldn't like to be a sticky-fingered visitor in your house if you deal with them with little plastic bags!

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  5. Nappy Sacks..? I'm confused. I don't need this knowledge just yet.

    All I can say is...

    "It doesn't work everytime"

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  6. Sorry mate - that's "shitbags" for the non-parentals out there. Trust me: there's a whole bunch of stuff I'm not to fussed about finding out that I'm being forced to on a daily basis ...

    ReplyDelete
  7. Thinking back over more years than I'd like, I had cloth nappies for my kids, no wipes, no nappy sacks. Wiping was done with a warm, wet facewasher,nappy and facewasher then immediately rinsed and dropped into a huge plastic nappy bucket holding a solution of Napisan. Everything soaked overnight, then was rinsed and washed next morning. Going out? Pack a baby bag with pre-folded nappies in one compartment, plastic bags to hold wet or pooey nappies in another compartment, smaller plastic bags with damp facewasher in yet another compartment. Stash it all in the bag hanging from the back of the pram, add a bottle of warm or cool water, a small container of formula or baby food, several bibs, a spoon. On arriving home, clean, feed and settle baby, unpack the whole bag full of stuff, deal with all the pooey wet stuff, get fresh supplies of prefolded nappies and plastic bags and repack the baby bag for the next outing. You'd think it would be easier to just stay home, but we did go out often, shopping, visiting friends, to the park. I don't drive so there was an awful lot of walking going on. And it was fun. It was the way things were. I even took the oldest one across country by train from Brisbane to Murray Bridge, then on to Adelaide and Port Pirie at the age of 16 months. (Hubby was away with the Army.)Things were easier with babies 3 and 4 as disposable wipes were available and disposable nappies too although I didn't use those much since I still had a goodly supply of cloth nappies. Pre-folded nappies you ask? These were the cloth nappies freshly washed and line dried, folded into "kites" ready to put on the baby. With nappy pins.

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  8. Although I probably don't have a choice in the matter these comments have only further convinced me that I will never procreate, not in a million years. I am soon to be an uncle however. And that is clearly preferable, as when I am bored with it I can simply hand the child back.

    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