How you Gonna Cook Crack When You Can't Even Cook Breakfast

Fetty What?

I download the US and UK Top 100 every now and then to find out what will be playing on Australian stations in six months. It’s an interesting study to compare both countries but it’s fair to say the US is country heavy, but it never makes the top 30, and the UK is dance floor heavy.

What I don’t get is this man called Fetty Wap. He dominated the top 20 in October and I’ve barely heard of him.

Drake, Kanye, Selena, love you. Know you. Justin and Taylor yes you’re OK. Wouldn't kick you out of bed but not overly keen.

The Weeknd, knew you’d be massive since your first hit. Love.

Fetty “how you gonna cook crack when you can't even cook breakfast” - where did you come from? And where did you get your name? And why do you and your Remy boys spend so much time in your songs cooking pies and crack? It's very interesting and makes for good music.

According to the internet, young Willie Maxwell was born in 1991, grew up in surburban New Jersey and decided to become a rapper and call himself Fetty, which means money. So far, so normal.

I like him. He sounds like a mix between Drake, Kanye and Jeremih. I love the originality of his beats.

He’s been cosigned by Kanye and is a rapidly  rising star.

He is sure to win either Best New Artist or Favorite Rap/Hip-Hop Artist at the American Music Awards. I’d go for both.

H&M Opens New Flagship City Store in Sydney

H&M bag behind smug child

While I was not as excited about this event as Stefan Lutz who woke up at 4am to be there at the opening, I was pleased to see another great large clothing empire spreading in Australia, adding to the Zara and Topshop Sydney city retail joy.

While discount fashion outlet H&M have been in both Melbourne and Sydney’s Macquarie shopping centres, most Sydney siders had little experience with the label until this week.

I went three times in the first opening week and was very impressed.

Three levels, well-staffed and organised, homewares and plenty of joy for women who love to shop. I was surprised to see everything you could wish for, basics, evening wear, underwear, swimwear, gym wear, men’s and kids all well represented. 

I bought a cute pleated evening dress for $40, a transparent wrap white work blouse for $30 and a beach dress for $15. But when I hit the kids wear I went a little crazy as they had $2.95 opening specials on $20 boys knitted tops and girl’s tops. I bought about 10 of each in all sizes.

Kids wear is fabulous with cute knickers and basics all around $10, adorable swimsuits in pirate and flower designs and plenty of gorgeous babywear all made of organic cotton with an under $10 price point.

I also lost it in the homewares department seeing the pink stripey rugs and manchester. I adore pink stripes and can’t get enough.

Target Australia is going to suffer as everything in H&M is better, well made and cheaper. While you can occasionally find a decent dress at Target , it is generally over $40, but everything at H&M is cheaper and more stylish. 

Mums are going to love H&M with softer price openings compared to Zara and better overall selection.

The only problem is the fitting room queues are out the door and there could be even more staff at checkouts as every line at all six checkout sections were ten deep.

I’m loving this summer already!
 

Friendship with Ryan R VS $400,000

Ryan R is upset his old friend shopped pics of new baby, a girl called... James...and broke up with the lifelong friend.

Sad, but given the choice between a continued friendship with a man who is dull, consistently unfunny, and calls his baby daughter James, or $400,000, I know which one I'd choose.

Even Scar Jo left him. I'd certainly be emulating her actions.

Baking is Not Dead: 3 simple ways to make Your Cake Rule

You can have your cake and eat it!

I always considered myself a good cook and a great baker. It's easy to mix a cake and bang in it the oven and I was motivated from an early age by the lure of sugary treats.

But recently I have discovered three basic tricks which help you create a most, moist superior cake. These tips are simple and take your cake from good to great.

Mothers Prayer for her Daughter

Already the mother of Alice and Penelope, motherhood is very much on the comedienne's mind. So now we bring you this excerpt from Tina Fey's book, Bossypants:

First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches.

May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it's the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach's eye, not the the Beauty.

Opening Up

A lot of people have a lot of questions about open marriage.

In order to avoid going into too much mind numbing detail, I will offer a simple analogy.

Bad behaviour and lolly bags

3D lolly bag before the unfortunate indicent

This weekend I left the lolly bag on the car roof as I strapped my daughter into her seat after a four year old party.

Every time I place something on the roof I simultaneously warn myself I'm going to forget it. Then I do. The petrol cap, a porcelain plate and cake, lunchboxes and children's clothing have all come the raw prawn these past few months.

Last week I left the remote control of a fantastic toy car on the roof, losing both the device and the car's purpose. It didn't even belong to me, I had borrowed it from my mum.

Show us your Tits

I don't know if it's just me, but I feel like a bit of a creep when a mother is breastfeeding nearby. I look anywhere but her, avoiding all eye contact and generally give her a wide berth. If a women starts breastfeeding next to me at playgroup I'll find a reason to get up and move.

I wonder why it makes me so uncomfortable, and I know I'm not the only one who feels like this, given that men and non mothers probably feel even more ill at ease when  a woman does something we've been trained for decades not to do: pulls out her tits in public.

Regrets of Parents

Who needs Huggies to swim?

What!? No one regrets a baby!? Want to bet - this kid sure grew up feeling like a mistake.

Then along comes the Huggies survey of parents, saying two thirds of parents regret stuff about raising their children. I have to say I'm kind of shocked at the large amount of parents regretting things, and the long list of regrets, none of which I identify with. 

End of Summer and the Stalker comes out

The salt has dried. Broken glass litters dirt tracks leading to the beach. Sand is all over the floor. The lipstick in my car has melted and reformed over 100 times. Sydney's long hot summer has come to an abrupt end. Goodbye endless 45C degree days, fish and chips at sunset and three swims a day. Now that I'm getting used to the feel of clothes on my body again, I've reentered the world of blogging and intend to post a few things every month.

Endings and Beginnings

It's been about a year since I touched this blog site. It is now top of page two when you Google "best brothel Sydney" which is interesting since my blog was supposed to be about parenting and kids, not brothels. I clearly digressed, then abandoned my blog, like so many before me.

Such a cliche. To get you up to speed on what I've been doing for the past 1-2 years, I had another baby, a boy, again by Csection in a public hospital. This was liberating and fun as I had so many pain killers, my family visited me every day taking me for wheelchair rides and my room had ocean views. Best of all, I kissed my two year old good bye and she was taken home by her dad to read about The Wild Things and enact the book.

Day in the Life of a Sydney Stay at Home Mum

Even in winter we're at the beach

OK, so while I wait for the Institute of Teachers to approve my teacher status, I am wiling away the hours at home with my little one. It's a sweet reminder of what the first year of her life was like, and now that she's just turned two, a hell of a lot more fun. It's also a welcome reprieve from what was a hellish year of huge challenges and changes as I trained as a teacher. I am now done! And I have a long hot happy summer stretched out before me.

Peppermint Vagina

Cup of tea anyone? How would you like it served? In your vagina?

I don’t think I’ve ever Googled something so much or worried about my vagina so much as when I suffered a Bartholin cyst, a mysterious little, or big, swelling on the Bartholin glands. 

Overnight I became an expert on these little glands on both sides of my vagina.

Several weeks later I woke up in a pool of my own blood with a sore vagina after an operation on my infected cyst called marsupialisation.

I experienced a lot of pain and annoyance from this episode, as you'd expect from gynecological surgery, alleviated only mildly by a box of oxycontin from my doctor mum (thanks to my gyne for the box of Panadeine Forte but I think I'll take Endone instead.) The bottom line though, is a cure I want to share that I inadvertently discovered. 

Teabags.

Four months after the operation, I was still experiencing pain and regular eruptions of inflamed glands, probably due to the stress of work and study while parenting. They completely stopped and healed almost magically after I applied a hot, wet, plain old teabag.

Another several hours on Google bought up scores of cures, and this was first on my list, just before turmeric paste and milk soaked bread. It actually worked. I placed three teabags over a day inside the vagina, and by the next day the infected cysts had ejected the gunk inside and were soothed and normal looking. I couldn't believe it. This apparently also works for boils. If I had a boil I would apply disinfectant and boiling water, but I tired of doing this on my poor vagina. I'm so glad to have found a very easy and accessible cure.

So any of my readers who may suffer from blocked Bartholin's cysts - about 2-5 per cent of women - please do try teabags. Lady Grey is my natural choice, with high notes of bergamot and citrus, but ginger and lemon worked well as well. Just don’t add milk and honey.

Fifty Shades of Nothing

Where's a real bondage queen when you need one?

Besides the silliness of the plot and the shocking writing, this bestselling book is doing a great disservice to authentic BDSM communities, to bona fide Christians who would hate to meet someone like Ana, and to writers who can actually write erotica without resorting to cliche.

Why even bother? But yes I have to admit that before I slag it off, I have yet to read the most discarded book on earth. I will go to a hotel room to find a copy this week.

My daughter's child care worker has the full Anastasia meets Christian - (and-bites-her-lip-and-crosses-her-legs- and-wonders-if-her-hymen-may-tear-from-too-much-masturbation) set in her front room bookshelf and declared it the best thing she ever read. I think it may be the only thing she's ever read but that's not very nice of me to say.

Until I borrow it from her, the loveliest lady from a small village in Croatia, I am happy to make do with the slather of hilarious reviews on the book from amazon ("Did a teenager write this? 16,691 of 17,270 people found this helful"!! ha ha), and my favourite part of The Guardian, their digested read section. It really does save a lot of time and I do honestly doubt, from what I can surmise thus far, that I will be capable of reading more than a few pages before I toss the offensive item to the dust.

But who knows? Judgement shall be reserved as I do have a chequered literary past including, truth be told, trysts with Virginia Andrews, Marianna Keyes, The Sweet Valley High and Babysitters Club and other light chick lit. I may yet fall for some steamy clit lit, who knows? I'll keep you posted.

And the Zoe Williams of the Guardian, thank you:

That's what the pornographic slavering was about – not sex, but diamond bracelets, jet skis, hosiery, purest silks, smart day-to-night dresses, Power Macs and 19-bedroomed houses with glass walls. In the orgy of self-adornment that was meant to characterise her sexual discovery, along with the torrent of outlandish gift-giving that supposedly betokened the adoration in which she was held, Steele fixated on the stuff. Her only moral quandary was whether or not it made her a whore, or a "kept-woman", to accept an expensive gift. What a tangential, trivial consideration, set against the travesty of letting your sex drive be all but erased by your consumer impulses.

ps: Couldn't resist tearing a chuck off amazon for your amusement if you don't go to the link:

The main male character is a billionaire (not a millionaire but a billionaire) who speaks fluent French, is basically a concert level pianist, is a fully trained pilot, is athletic, drop dead gorgeous, tall, built perfectly with an enormous penis, and the best lover on the planet. In addition, he's not only self made but is using his money to combat world hunger. Oh yeah, and all of this at the ripe old age of 26! And on top of that, he's never working. Every second is spent having sex or texting and emailing the female character. His billions seem to have just come about by magic. It seriously feels like 2 teenage girls got together and decided to create their "dream man" and came up with Christian Grey.

Then come the sex scenes. The first one is tolerable but as she goes on, they become so unbelievable that it becomes more laughable than erotic. She orgasms at the drop of a hat. He says her name and she orgasms. He simply touches her and she orgasms. It seems that she's climaxing on every page.

Then there's the writing.

characters roll their eyes 41 times, Ana bites her lip 35 times, Christian's lips "quirk up" 16 times, Christian "cocks his head to one side" 17 times, characters "purse" their lips 15 times, and characters raise their eyebrows a whopping 50 times. Add to that 80 references to Ana's anthropomorphic "subconscious" (which also rolls its eyes and purses its lips, by the way), 58 references to Ana's "inner goddess," and 92 repetitions of Ana saying some form of "oh crap" 

the entire first-person narrative is filled with Britishisms. How many American college students do you know who talk about "prams," "ringing" someone on the phone, or choosing a "smart rucksack" to take "on holiday"? And the author's geography sounds like she put together a jigsaw puzzle of the Pacific Northwest while drunk and ended up with several pieces in the wrong place.

an awful lot of frowning for a woman who experiences "intense," "body-shattering," "delicious," "violent," "all-consuming," "turbulent," "agonizing" and "exhausting" orgasms on just about every page.

I am no literature snob. However, this book feels like it us on a 5th grade level made to seem better with a thesaurus. It's repetitive and just plain bad.

Next, the non-existent plot. Seriously, nothing happens. They meet, they have sex, they email each other, the have more sex, the bite lips, they have more sex, the end. Just plain boring.

Last, bad sex. "Down There?" are you kidding me? It's called a vagina. Grow up. This book most likely intrigues bored housewives and hormonal teenagers. If the author was aiming to give that demographic the tingles she most likely succeeded. However, a book that it 70% sex should at least be good sex.

While I was out...

Leopard print for the boy!!!!!!!

So I haven't posted anything for about two fat months but they have not been slow lazy sun and sex fuelled months, believe me.

While I was finishing the practicum placement of my teaching degree in Sydney, which involves me teaching four grades of pimply but rather hilarious teenagers for 80 days full time, ten hours weekly commute, $500pw in childcare and fuel bills, no income, student fees and tiresome hard to communicate with lecturers...the media simply did not let up on mothers and mothers kept on bitching about other mothers!

I felt exhausted just thinking of all the problems mothers are responsible for, including that my daughter turned up to childcare wearing wispy Balinese sundresses in the middle of winter because my husband said she wanted it, and that Sue on Puberty Blues had developed a drinking problem and a nasty habit of teenage sex.

The media was busily keeping tabs on the mothers of the world while I was swotting away. August and September saw Jessica Simpson pilloried for not shedding her baby weight in under six months, Kendra defend her by saying she was focused on her baby and couldn't run due to her large tits anyway, some unfamous British personal trainer given a tongue lashing for telling new mums to get a grip and stop getting so fat, and my favourite Kardashian, Khloe, start fertility treatment. Snooki also happily birthed a baby boy and showed him off in a bassinet replete with leopard print blankets. Awww...a must have for every guido baby.

The shock event of the month was when X grade celebrity Charlotte Dawson tried unsuccessfully to top herself after being urged to do so by several 4chan members on Twitter. I mean, this is someone who makes a living being nasty to vulnerable people, which may explain her fragility of self. A feature quite apparent in her shaky psych ward 60 Minutes interview. If 4chan told me to put my head in an oven I'd chide them for putting me in the same literary league as Sylvia Plath.

And even while I was up to my teeth in lesson plans on medieval Europe, Mussolini, women's lib and federation Australia, I still had time to start yet another novel, this time a fan fiction inspired by yet another sex fuelled debut novel, book several flights, organise my daughter's 2nd birthday party (that's an overstatement as there's nothing to organise, just a box of booze, some fairy bread and turn up at Sydney's Palm Beach next week) and read several interesting books to undermine my cultural values including Sex at Dawn, The Sex Starved Marriage, and Mating in Captivity. Darned good reads I will review shortly.

I have nothing of value to add at this late hour in the day. I think the media sums it up best by saying to mums: "if you can't cope with your kids, why did you have them in the first place? YOU made the lifestyle choice, YOU deal with it!!"

On that note, remind me to write something soon on private school mothers, and on darling Khloe and her imminent baby with Lamar, what a treat that child will be, and so dearly awaited.

Don't Blame Mum

The last dress she ever wore

Another baby has died at the hands of her mother, the very person who is supposed to champion her rights above all else.

Why this keeps happening is anyone's guess, but it is an enduring feature of humankind, and our friends in the animal kingdom, that babies die, sometimes often, and often at the hands of their mum or dad.

The biggest cause in modern Australia is depression. The self loathing some mothers feel when they 'fail' to breastfeed or settle their babies is all consuming. The effects of sleep deprivation, a popular and very successful torture technique, combined with clinical depression can be toxic. I do not want to demonise mothers with depression or even try to imagine the horrific combination of factors that could push you over the edge.

What I want to do is mourn the loss of this little child's life, just a baby girl starting her life. Eighteen months is the most adorable age, when grandmothers come up to your little one in the street and say My Goodness, I just wish they'd stay like this forever! Their eyes sparkle with mischief, their little cheeks dimple and their fat rolls are irresistible as they skip ahead of you, tiny versions of their future selves.

This little eighteen month old was deliberately left by her mother to drown in the one place most toddlers adore, the bath. The image of her scrabbling for air, trying to get out, screaming and finally choking in the bathwater is deeply upsetting. She died alone in her own home. After her death, her little body was dressed in a christening gown and she lay next to her suicidal mother for two days before someone found them, or missed them.

It is this image that speaks to the core of what I am constantly concerned about: the isolation of mothers in our harried society and its lack of support for new mums. If they feel like there aren't a lot of options out there, it's because there honestly isn't.

Baby health centres, playgroups, local libraries, modern hospitals and highly regulated childcare centres are wonderful but many of them could be more accessible to mothers. For my baby's first six weeks, for example, I couldn't walk or drive to the shops so couldn't access my baby health nurse. She was also solidly booked weeks in advance. So I didn't find out my baby was losing weight steadily for two months until she ended up in emergency. Some of the reason she lost weight was my low milk supply, something I wasn't given information about because I did not have any lactation support. The complex list goes on.

Our one playgroup is 30 minutes away. There are no support groups, meals or anything to help a new mum without mobility, unlike the elderly. A lot of what is on offer is expensive. And many in our generation can forget about grandparents: our parents tend to be more interested in their next promotion or trip to Europe than their new grandchild.

It's not just lack of governmental and civic support for mums, it's also our cultural expectations on mums and our opinion that bearing children is a lifestyle choice, like being gay (ha ha ha), choosing solar or driving a BMW. We don't berate car accident victims that they shouldn't have bought a car. We don't even tell lung cancer victims they shouldn't have smoked, or diabetes sufferers they should lay off the sweets. So why we tell mothers they shouldn't have chosen to have children when they hit a rough patch is beyond me.

I think it's the old Women are to Blame acorn. Blame the ladies for men's collective inability to retain self control. Blame the rape victim's dress for the crime. Blame the mother who kills her baby for her isolation and untreated depression. "You chose to have kids, didn't you?" is the one thing most mothers really do not want to hear when they are in trouble.

Not to mention the glaring fact that about half of all babies are unplanned (for more, see contraception failure or heterosexual couples having spontaneous sex) so were not actually conscious decisions or choices. And of the babies that were planned, not all of their parents carefully planned on having a child with autism, with projectile vomiting that lasts for 3 months, who screams ten hours straight every day. No. Not many parents happily make a choice to sign up for that! It's a miracle more babies actually survive babyhood considering the raft of pressures on their new parents, and a glowing reflection on the stamina of parents that more are not relinquished to state care. 

So let's think carefully on what we're expecting of new parents and consider how we might as a society offer more support and relief to new parents and activities for young children.

Sex at Dawn in Australia

The myth of monogamy?
Try the myth of primary care!

Apologies to anyone who thought this post would be about pre-coffee coitus. It actually touches on the brilliant bestselling book Sex at Dawn which puts to rest once and for all the myth of monogamy, and how this premise fits in with the Australian cultural context...and its denigration of mothers who work.

So let us define our Australian cultural context. We have an increasingly matriarchal society, where women and men enjoy sex freely from puberty. Serial monogamy is still the standard, contrary to what Sex at Dawn explains is against our nature, but we have quite a few features of a matriarchal society.

Many individuals of both genders are free to pursue multiple partners without fear of legal consequences or social censure. When a couple, hetero or homo sexual, decide to live together they often move to the female's home. And women in Australia are generally strong, bossy and all too quick to put in their $6 worth. Most husbands in Australia will agree their wife has the final say.

Sexual jealousy and male aggression similar to chimp societies are, however, so much a key feature of Australian culture that is would be folly to suggest Australians are becoming matriarchal. An examination of these aspects as well as our sordid recent past of female convicts, institutionalised rape and floating brothels, and our current reality of unfavourable rights for working women, expensive childcare and the persistent gender pay gap will render any claim to matriarchy null and void. Australia is far too diverse to impose one social context, so what I am really referring to is modern Sydney.

Here we see women flaunting their sexuality with abandon, free to pursue as many sexual trysts as desired. Just watch The Shire, visit a beach or peep into a nightclub and you'll see women of every age and persuasion available for free. And happy about it.

I would go as far to suggest that the myth of monogamy can be held up to another biting parallel: the myth of the primary caregiver. Women are forced to read study after study showing that children under three thrive under the care of only one primary caregiver. Try telling that to the billion of infants who thrived in the village!

The idea of being a primary caregiver, while flattering, is simply outdated. So How Not to F--k Them Up and all those other books can go back to their studies and start looking at incorporating some of the multiple realities of post modernism, one being that a father or mother may easily hand the baby over to a close relative or paid mercenary (this is my only option, thank you to my government subsidised day carer) and baby will NOT SUFFER.

Not only is this true, but this is how almost every generation have been raised: not by one person, typically an isolated female living in the burbs, but by a collective.We have plenty of modern, successful examples of happy infants in kindergarten and childcare in Scandinavia, in addition to millennia of farming and pre-agricultural gatherer communities raising children together, to prove that infants don't suffer if mummy works.

So let's just admit child rearing is about multiplicities and stop making rude comments (to me) at the shops or writing mean spirited newspaper articles that unless I stay home with my infant she will end up disabled. She's doing great and if she were to contract permanent emotional damage, it will be due to my emotional blackmail of her as a teenager, not her happy early days with her carer in the garden because mummy was working.

Ban The Burqua? Part 1

Friendly faces

After laughing my way through a new documentary “Dumb, Drunk andRacist” on what Indians really think about Australians (a topic for another day), I had to think.

Who really cares about the burqua, besides that slightly confused middle aged gentleman driving his “Ban The Burqua” van?

In just one week I have seen several hours of Australian TV dedicated to the issue of the burqua, including Channel 7’s “Sunday Night” current affairs program. I don’t know how they found these women. Muslims make up four per cent of Australians, and anyone wearing the burqua is far less than half of all women - in other words, well under one per cent of Australians.

I personally do not give a toss if someone wants to wear nothing at all, or a tablecloth on their head. Certain times in your life you feel vulnerable. When I was a teenager I was covered in acne scars so I wore a tea towel over my head. Or before major facial recontruction surgery, you might want to cover up.

Who cares, does the face really matter so much? The answer no, not if you don’t want to show it.

The burqua is not a security issue. If you need to show your face like everyone else to police or border control, show your face. This means removing your glasses, hoodie, helmet, scarves or balaclavas. If you don’t want to, don’t leave your house.

The only instance I could see myself caring about a burqua would be if I sent my child to school and her teacher wore a full face cover - I would wonder at my daughter’s language development given that forward facing prams and the poor Mr McLaren are being blamed for a plunge in language skills internationally! 

I do think kids of women who cover their face would suffer language impediments, although to be fair they see their mum at home uncovered so they must actually think, what is wrong with my mum's face that she covers it in public? I wonder really what their kids think. They probably don’t give it a passing thought, as long as dinner's on the table, the Nintendo console is loaded up and someone’s tucking them into bed.

There are clearly workplace policies and certain occupations that require a definite clear stance on the burqua. This is what the law defines as a “genuine occupational requirement”. I would suggest burquas are impractical for occupations where the face needs to be seen and where a huge cloth and lack of peripheral vision might cause a safety issues, such as teachers and some medical positions and trades.

To Be continued...

Ban the Burqua Part II: You Are Not The Poster Girl for Liberation

How liberated - not!

To be honest, I am yet to meet a burqua-wearing Australian, let alone a burqua-wearing Australian who actually works. All the Muslim women on TV are busy raising five children and really only wear their cloth when in public, to go to Woollies or a prenatal check-up.

What does irritate me is the way Muslim women try to portray wearing the burqua as liberating. While I can totally understand this, and agree not being a slave to fashion or other people’s perceptions could be a fresh way to live your life, I cannot stomach their trying to position the burqua in PR terms somewhere between drinking Coke and skimpy underwear, or as something a young modern woman is happy to partake in. 

If you want to walk around partially or fully covered, go ahead, but you are not a poster girl for female liberation. Tampons, education and the internet have given women a hell of a lot more freedom than a huge unwieldy sheet worn over the head. Showing just your eyes. No face equals no identity in Australia. 
I don’t care if you drive and wear a burqua. You are not free.

I don’t even care about why you wear a burqua. Don’t espouse the virtues of the burqua. Your religious dedication is shown by your actions, your community service, volunteer and charitable works, and by how you care for others, not by your choice of dress. Every time our neighbour and the largest Muslim state in the world Indonesia suffers an earthquake, I do not see a whole lot of Muslim aid pouring in. The Red Cross is far more involved than the Red Crescent. So maybe Muslims should try to focus on charity work rather than obsessing over what they wear.

By wearing a burqua you are also by default suggesting men are attracted to you. They are not. If you take your burqua off and walk around Lakemba Woollies in your tracksuit with your muffin top and five kids I promise you, not one man will look lasciviously at you. You’ve had five kids. I’m sorry, you may be a good mother, but you are not sexy.

Last time I walked around with just a scarf on my head, which I do in winter or when visiting Muslim regions, I didn’t suddenly feel liberated. Just a bit itchy. And last time I waled around uncovered in Morocco, Indonesia and Lakemba I did not cop one single sultry glance which was rather disappointing as I fancied my long blonde hair and bare skin may prove irresistible. But sadly, no. 

Many of the burqua wearing Australians grew up uncovered, with uncovered mothers, and suddenly they decide after S11 that they simply had to rush to the nearest burqua shop and buy a head to toe covering? I mean, really? It reeks of insincerity. And while Australians may be many bad things, one thing we really hate is insincerity and pretention.

Why not just move to the religious lands where you can be surrounded by Islam, the Koran on stereo sound and true believers 24-7? If I was devout, I would not want to be in Australia where any turn of the head will bring a yelling bogan or topless sheila.

Ladies, just chill out, take up camping and chuck the makeup and heels. And the burqua! Take advantage of being free and Australian. I went on a camping trip with some friends born in Syria and Lebanon who congratulated themselves on getting their hands dirty and doing things for themselves because it is not part of what they are taught culturally.

So by all means, go ahead and enjoy your head cloths, but don’t misrepresent the reason you recently decided to cover your face. And please don’t tell me how liberated you are.

There are only 3 Sexual Positions

22 positions my arse

I really want everyone to stop thinking that Prince is the standard for normal sex. Not everyone has 22 positions in a one night stand.

In fact, if you're a boring married/monogamous person in a standard heterosexual or homosexual arrangement like me, you are probably looking at no more than three sexual positions.

And we all know what they are: person A on top, person B on top and person B from behind.

That's it folks.

OK, OK, there's side by side positions, but really, most middle aged people have issues such as small male appendages that do not bend around corners, tummy flab and no stomach muscles to speak of. So let's be realistic.

When I was a teenager and before I was sexually active, or shall I say before I had enjoyed intercourse, I imagined hundreds of fun positions. Positions were the core game. I read the kama sutra and flicked through books at adult stores showing many interesting looking positions.

After trying a few in my early days of sexual exploration I realised they mostly fit into the category of "yoga sex" positions. And if you are in the majority of people not on welfare, you get up at 6am, make breakfast for the kids, go to work, come home at around 7pm and have barely enough energy left to choose from

a) swim at the beach (summer)
b) watch telly (winter)
c) lie down (year round!)
d) play with the kids - before dinner and bed...at around 9pm.


You do the maths. There's about two hours somewhere in the evening where you can choose your own adventure but you also need to eat, shower and wind down. Yoga doesn't factor into it. Neither do yoga sex positions. Some monogamous people manage to fit sex somewhere in that schedule of activities, usually right before bed and often while half already asleep.


Yoga is for people who have time to raise their chakras, and brush their hair (not that I'm suggesting they do that in their spare time. I'm not sure what they do. Actually I know what they do. Yoga sex.)

So if any of you yoga devotees are slamming down your rice milk chais, I suggest you hit the organic rubber and take a reality check.Very very few people have sex upside down on their heads or balanced sideways off the edge of the bed.

I hope I have squashed the myth of sexual positions once and for all, and I really hope all those sexual position books stop peddling empty promises to hopeful teenagers. It would put Prince and his modern representative like Rhianna and Kanye out of business.