Hello, Livejournal. This is cherry_pizza about half-way through the third day of his four-day weekend. How sweet it is to know that, even when you only make a cameo appearance at the school to leave a DVD that one of your classes will need in your absence, you can still be treated to one of those special fuckwit-student-induced moments.

Said special moment occurred when I was walking toward the ramp that leads to the front of the school. Hanging around in the area between the oval and that ramp were a couple of students, one of whom thinks he is incredibly funny and thinks he achieves great satistaction by imposing his 'humour' on me. After hanging around on a bench doing not much of anything, as soon as I walk past, he decides he will follow me, doing some sort of exaggerated gesture while he matches my every step. I turn around and ask him, "Will you please stop following me?", and am quick to refute his "I'm going to class excuse." I continue, he resumes his following (of course he is too immature to realise that this constitutes harassment in the forms of invading personal space and mocking), I turn around and shout, "I said stop!" Of course he will call me a "psycho" and act like he is genuinely surprised when people feel taunted by his taunting. Say bye bye to his alibi when his teacher calls him back to where the rest of the class is, asks him what he is doing and I walk up the ramp expressing my opinion of him. His reply? "What did you call me? Fuck you, too!"

Well, that was... special.

My work pants were starting to feel loose towards the end of last week, and then on Friday they regularly needed to be pulled up. Whether this means I'm making progress with the eating/walking everywhere plan, I'm not yet sure. Either way, I am beginning to question the wisdom of getting a set of scales to use at home. Yes, monitoring progress is good. Yes, avoiding putting gold coins in the scales at the shopping centre is good. Weighing myself several times a day, re-weighing several times for each weighing in case of scale farts... not so good. Getting myself responding to the body naturally fluctuating a few hundred grams at a time... far from good.

However, the true trauma that faces me is in the conflict between two noble causes. My grand plan to walk every aisle of the supermarket, even though I usually only need a few items (since I walk across town to the supermarket every day) seems to live in conflict with my yearly goal to not hear any Christmas songs all the way through. When my ears fall upon one, I change the TV channel, keep walking or otherwise avoid the aural attrocity. When Christmas songs are playing in the very supermarket whose every aisle I walk...

When the only cinema in town was having umpteen screenings of Twilight, the final screening of Julie and Julia (which I've already seen) and one screening of Mao's Last Dancer, it's really not that hard to guess which cinematic choice I made. Such a beautiful movie (so now you know for sure I'm not talking about Twilight), so gob-smackingly amazing. I only picked up one obvious "Hey, this was filmed in Sydney moment" (for those keeping score, when Liz drives away because she's leaving Li, notice the distinctly Sydney street signs) and Jack Thompson putting on an American accent really doesn't fool anyone. And Penne Hackforth-Jones was a slight "made in Australia" giveaway for me, but she herself has said that the main thing for which people seem to remember her is Sultana Bran commericals.

I really wish my supervisor from Queanbeyan would get back to me about the draft of the reference I sent her a week ago. I wish the cheque for which I've been waiting four months would arrive.

Two supervisors (one current, one former) have today allowed me to write my own references for them to sign! Oh, they will be glowing appraisals :)

And so, to fill time over the weekend, I was re-watching some recently-acquired DVDs. Even Pugwall, with its "bought and re-watched for nostalgic schlockiness"-ness managed to get a repeat viewing.

In an early episode, Pugwall was trying to get the attention of a girl in the hospital (said girl would become the singer in his band and the sharer of his puppy love), but she was showing no interest. To express his frustration, he turned to the camera and said:

"I know I'm not Tom Cruise or Mel Gibson, but I'm not that bad!"

Is it just me, or do those words have a very different meaning in 2009 from when he said them in 1989?

Supermarket thing #1: It has now been brought to my own attention that, despite their humble size, appearance and stock choices, there could well be more to IGAs than we realised. I am now committed to the theory that there is some sort of conspiracy between the lot of them that each of these humble little supermarkets will stock one unique, exotic item that can not be found elsewhere. This unique exotic item will be the lure for folk to do their grocery hunting & gathering in that one spot. There was no lightbulb above my head to signify this epiphany, but there was a sight before my eyes. In one of Broken Hill's two IGAs was sitting the rather obscure item of hibiscus flowers in syrup. They are apparently meant to be placed in champagne glasses to make the drink that little bit more decadent. Natural retail instinct says that this is a product that would be found in the food court at David Jones, and not in a modest independent supermarket in a country town.

Supermarket thing #2: I have spent many a rant wanting to comprehend the internal workings of the supermarket planner. I have wondered if there is any rhyme or reason to the logic which places certain items in the company of certain other items. One of my responses to this phenomenon has been immortalised in this entry. The sight before me this week was either a really twisted example of only-in-the-supermarket-brain logic or a really insightful piece of helpful human logic. It was displayed in the form of salsa. That is the chunky tomato-based dip, not the Latin dance.

There was salsa in tall, thin-ish jars. These were jars that were possibly trying to impersonate bottles. They were living in the aisle with taco-making supplies. I did crave some salsa, but since I wanted to dip rice cakes into it, the shape of the jars was really not going to suit the salsa's purpose. And then, a few aisles away, keeping company with the corn chips and rice cakes, were the smaller, fatter jars with wider rims. Just the jars that I wanted.

Now, the question I pose is: Is this an unfair, superficial example of social segregation, where one's place in the world is determined by the shape of the fashions one wears... or is it a great piece of careful planning? The pourable salsa is kept with the taco supplies (on which it would be poured) and the dip-into-able salsa is kept with the things that would be dipped into a bowl. And so I keep pondering.

Supermarket thing #3: After deciding to properly follow the McDougall Program again (as opposed to having an eating plan that is loosely based on it), after making sure each day includes a walk across town the shopping centre and back, and after making myself walk each aisle in the supermarket twice for the sake of getting myself up to 10,000+ steps per day, I have this week lost 4.5 kilos. I have never lost this much in a single week before.

Things that have nothing to do with supermarkets: At the end of this week, I'll be having a four-day weekend. I'll be cashing in my Personal Incentive days on the Monday and Tuesday. There was a tree in my front yard which had had a rather large branch blown down over the neighbour's fence during a prior storm, has had the rest of it blown over the other way and is now lying in the front yard. Kinda profound, one storm later, it couldn't live without its other half.

The masochist social commentator in me would love to be dragged off to the nut house a la Blance Dubois "relying on the kindness of strangers".

After watching the goings-on in the 'special place', I would be very keen to start re-creating many events from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest.

cherry_pizza has an unpopped popcorn kernel in his throat.

After several days of eating well, getting excited about the wholesome food, having a healthy (in more ways than one) disregard for those sickening offerings from take-away places and pre-packaged artery cloggers, I have found myself today craving a hit of fat.

Someone either say something that will motivate me to resist this... or give me an excuse to eat some crap.

Good Riddance, Rove!

THIS IS THE PART I WAS WRITING YESTERDAY AT WORK:

Happy Friday the 13th, Livejournal. And I only just got over my indiffernce to Halloween. I was believing that the rest of this country shared those feelings, but if I was right, someone forgot to tell the Broken Hill retailers.

I await my year 8 Commerce class, the much much much more enjoyable of my two year 8 classes. Today will be the end of a strange sequence of events which went something like:

• I made a bingo game for my low-ability year 8 History class, with the moderately-educational idea of requiring them to recognise symbols used in Aboriginal art
• Another teacher saw this activity, and asked to have a copy of it for his year 8 History class
• He runs said activity with his class, and gives me credit for making it
• Students in that class who are also in my Commerce class give frequent requests/beggings for a Commerce bingo
• I brush them off and string them along with "maybe"s
• They persist. I don't know how to explain to them that bingo is a "dumb kid" activity, and I'm really not in a hurry to do it with a class of very capable students
• They ask again
• I decide to relent, and have made a game to play with them today
• I realise that maybe they just wanted to play it for the lollies that will be prizes.

Speaking of eating, I have started to follow the McDougall Program again, after doing my own eating thing for a large chunk of this year. There are no restrictions on how much food one eats, just the types of food eaten, and I've had my moments of guilt for what I've seen as 'pigging out' on fresh vegies. Strangely, even though I am full and nourished throughout the day, the one awkward effect has been that for most of my life I have disregarded breakfast and gone on my merry way each day without any problems (well, none of the 'malnourishment' variety). For the last few days, I have had myself craving food in the morning, and haven't been able to settle my belly until something was in there. I'm sure there's something to conclude from that, but I'm buggered if I know what.

THIS IS THE PART I AM WRITING TONIGHT IN VIDEO EZY'S INTERNET KIOSK:

And here I am, fresh from seeing Julie and Julia. Movie choices in this town may be limited, but seeing a movie about women indulging in unwholesome French cooking, was not the best idea. However, after a day filled with much walking across town (it looks like the half hour walk from home to the shopping centre each day is going to become a reality), with many steep road dips and much heat, walking past numerous take-away places radiating their salivation smells, being at the cinema 20 minutes early and not being the least bit shaken by the food whatsit, finding Tic Tacs in my bag and disregarding them, it was destined to prove my resolve. Of course, the fact that French cooking is rarely the least bit vegetarian, much less vegan, I was fairly safe from corruption.

After a conversation with spaciirethwent off in obscure tangents, I have now decided that the latest sensation from cherry_pizzaEnterprises will be SpeedTherapy. 10 Clients, 10 therapists, 1 hour. After every six minutes the bell will ring, and each messed-up soul will pour out his or her heart to the next shrink. Of course, there will be more money to be made from the extra therapy the messed-up soul will need when the therapist of his or her choice ended up ticking "no".

ginmartini, I have rice cakes and salsa.

Close to two years has passed since this bolt from the blue, and despite the gushing in my favour during and after the interview, I never heard from the company again. I did a bit of head-scratching over people who wanted to interview me for something for which I didn't apply, but went on my merry way.

Then I figured it was time to look for work for next year. I went back to that company's website, looked at their 'jobs' session, saw that they were looking for English teachers again and decided to maybe see if something would come of contacting the company again. I received a "We're always looking for talented people... blah blah blah" reply, so I sent the cover letter and CV their way, convinced it was a case of the resume would be kept on file with several hundred others who will most likely never hear back.

This morning, I was almost amused to receive an e-mailed reply with the very generic comments, "Unfortunately, the quality of applications was very high and on this occasion, we regret to inform you that your application was unsuccessful." Since I wasn't even applying for an advertised position, I am trying to figure out how... actully, no I'm not... don't think about it, cherry_pizza, it's not worth the brain power.

So here I am, once again abusing the privilege of being in a time zone that's much earlier than most of you folks.

Since it's already the 10th here in Australia, I'm jumping in to wish a happy 40th birthday to what is quite possibly television's greatest creation.



To a show that embraced the powers of television to engage viewers, and has spent 40 years using that power for good...

To a place where everyone has felt like 'one of the family', regardless of their race, species, home planet, furriness, or which side of the television screen they inhabited...

To the provider of so many important lessons, from how to deal with the loss of a beloved elder, to how to count to ten, to why one should put down the duckie...

To every sketch, song, routine, animation or film that started out as a fun little educational piece in my kiddie mind... and then became a trippy little "woah" inducer in my adolescent mind... and then became a matter for philosophical analysis in my student mind... before comfortably settling back down to being fun in my adult mind...

To every person I barely knew, to whom the Sesame Street bricks were the common ground we found...

To every comedy great and Jim Henson project I have found myself admiring because of Sesame's Street's introduction to them...

I raise my glass of birdseed milkshake, and hope that life truly begins at 40.

Thank you, School Certificate exams, for relieving me of year 10 classes today, and giving me 6/8 sessions free.

And today's running gag in the year 8 Commerce class was, "Well, I don't have a teaching degree, but... {insert statement of authority here}". This was repeated numerous times until I had to say, "Well, I don't have a comedy degree, but that joke's getting old."

bizwac, will you marry the person depicted on my mouldy slice of bread?

Should I rush abroad, believing the promises made on this page, or should I subscribe to the notion that if it seems too good to be true, it probably is?

Oh, the magic of nostalgia. This is that supernatural force that has people eating deep-fried eco-unfriendly artery-abusing foods because it's good old fashioned cooking, like grandma used to make. It has people getting misty-eyed reading sexist, homophobic, racist, antisocial literature because it is one of 'the classics'. And it had me watching a DVD of 12-14 year old kids with questionable acting skills belting out their late-80s bubblegum pop tunes in their quest to make it in 'rock n roll'. Ah, the first series of Pugwall, all sixteen episodes in one day.

And there was bizwac messaging me to confess feelings of utter dirtiness from seeing Akmal in the street. I decided to try consoling with a message that I had mango juice drying in my hands and facial hair, but the predictive text on my phone insisted on calling it 'manho juice'. This all begs the question of which juice would be dirtier.

Oh, I failed to mention while being caught up in the grrrr-inducing year ten class I'm taking while its teacher is on leave, that the year ten class that is actually mine, does still do wonders to impress. When the class was watching The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas last week, they are fairly self-regulating in telling the talkative hoony clown guys in the class to shut up. When they have to be told a few times, I was amazed that all it took to completely settle them down was to pause the DVD and calmly say, "Guys, if ever there was a time to settle down and behave like mature human beings, it's when you're sitting in a History class watching a movie about the Holocaust. If you seriously find it funny, I suggest you take a good look at your qualities, and re-consider which class you should be in." Trying to reason with my year eight class would be much less successful.

sarahfer, will you marry me?

He was a plucky young fellow, that cherry_pizza. Despite all the false starts, he knew he was still destined to make a difference in this world. With all the bravado he could muster, he forced those headshots into the envelopes and sent them around to all the agents who might be able to get him a gig in jury duty.

Too busy for NaNo, so have to spew the occasional burst of novel-ish writing.

Welcome to the day that ordinarily sees me with a timetable of two lessons, both of which are after lunch. That was until I picked up lessons from the teacher on leave, and this saw me blessed with a double lesson with the rowdy year ten class I'd inherited. Earlier this week, my single lesson with them, had me resorting to the pinnacle of uninspired teaching that is known across the map as a text book. I had introduced the text book-based lesson with the excuse that the reading/question answering on refugees was going to be used to prepare them for an interactive activity that would occupy today.

This morning, I make myself arrive early, I familiarise myself with the instructions for the Great Escape game that can be found here, try printing out the challenge cards and game board, and realise I am hit with the printer problems that have been plaguing this school of late. I told myself that I could have solved this if I was determined to do a run-around to various printers in the school. My voice of self-preservation then told me that when the class is rowdy at the best of times, it just wasn't worth forcing myself on a day when I was already feeling rundown. Off I went to the library catalogue to do a search for videos that would show up if I typed the words 'human rights'. Ah sweet, Mississippi Burning will occupy them today so I can solve the printing issue in enough time to de-stress. Oh yeah, I'll just kinda ignore the M rating on the movie.

Supermarket, dear supermarket, thank you for your flamboyant display of supporting popcorn in all its forms. However, do you really need to display the fatty/salty microwave popcorn, the pre-popped pseudo-butter popcorn, the sugary coloured popcorn and the caked-in-caramel popcorn so heavily that one has to search eagle-eyed for the hidden-away-in-the-corner packet of plain old unpopped popcorn? The enriched-with-crap popcorn really defeats the purpose of fat-free snacking on the cornables.

Can anyone lend me some little green things?

ryttu3k, would you still say no to me if we could go here for our honeymoon?

cherry_pizza needs a weekend out of Broken Hill.

Six minutes til the school day starts. Maybe last night's "Bugger washing the professional-looking pants in which I'll sweat all day, the school is used to me by now" decision was not that well-founded. First few students to see me in my hippie-ish purple pants are most amused by the sight.

So he forces himself out of bed, and pushes himself to get to work early to prepare lessons. He arrives, looks at his timetable, and realises that he does not have the classes which require heavy preparation today. He also discovers that he does not have any classes during the first half of the day.

After bathing, getting clothes which include a thin-cottoned shirt from the line and walking to work all fresh, all he has to do is sit at the computer before he feels the sweat emerging, and fears the freshness being compromised. Add to that, an ear that was waterlogged by the bath, has remained clogged, and drove him crazy over the weekend. It has shown no signs of settling today.

Now some TV-viewing blabber:

I found myself watching Australian Idol last night, and watching one contestant give a speech saying he was withdrawing from the competition because he had done some soul-searching and realised that he is a teacher, not a musician. Without question, this is admirable and took a lot of balls to declare so publicly. However, I won't pretend it didn't get me thinking about a few things.

It's the nature of the beast that teaching-related entries in this journal are more often horror stories or tales of frustration. Even though it does have these moments, I do really enjoy teaching, get a lot of satisfaction out of it, and believe that it is a worthwhile and rewarding profession. That said, it was the career I chose as the result of the "I have no talent, I'll never make it in creative fields, and probably wouldn't tolerate the business restricting my ideas" epiphany. Even though I enjoy it, and would consider it "my career" now, there is always that slight tint of black cloud over my decision to follow this path. If someone can openly and genuinely reject 'the dream' because of unconditional passion for the teaching job, more power to him.

During that episode, there was one moment that showed very clearly what happens when one is forced to bow to the pressures of the business. Andrew G (or whatever the fuck the G stands for, apparently he goes by the actual surname now) has proudly declared his vegan-ness in various places. In the wake of those Sam Kekowhatsit ads making every possible politically-incorrect statement for the sake of pimping lamb, he has done interviews extolling the possibilities and the scope of foods that come with a vegan diet. All of this did nothing to stop him from giving his heartfelt thanks to KFC for sponsoring the whatever new excuse the show found to attach a sponsor to a segment. This sort of thing really makes one appreciate James Mathison's deviations from the autocue, or Shaun Micallef's way of making sarcastic, highbrow comments about the mind manipulators that are advertisers while still smiling and throwing to commercial breaks.

For the sake of citing precedent:

In 1988, in a great act of TV nostalgia, most of the cast of The Brady Bunch reunited for the TV movie A Very Brady Christmas, and whether it was out of nostalgia or curiosity to see how the cast looked years later, it gained huge ratings, and was the second-highest rating TV movie in the USA that year. CBS had the brainwave that people must still love the bunch, and that more Brady product should be churned out. Come 1990, the cast again reunited for an hour-long 'drama' series named The Bradys. The six-episode series dealt with issues such as paraplegia, alcoholism, mid-life crises and politics. However, in true Brady style, problems were still solved in the space of an episode, and attempts at being serious and dramatic were peppered with laugh tracks. Add to that there was so much extended family that the show was impossible to keep track of, and Brady creator Sherwood Schwartz had to learn the hard way that drawing in an audience for a one-off reunion is one thing, but it does not (and did not) mean that it was going to instil some new ongoing commitment to watching the show, and the series failed miserably.

Now, after a couple of reunion specials for Hey Hey it's Saturday rated through the roof, it's been announced that the show will return in a limited capacity next year, something like a ten-episode series. I have moderate amounts of faith that it will suffer the same fate as the extended Brady reunions. \

Riding this wave of nostalgia, Hey Hey's long-term rival Young Talent Time also looks set for a revival next year. The mind boggles...