I have decided it is Time To Get Organised. Note the capitalisation, my friends. I am serious this time. No more procrastinating. No more excuses. It’s time to stop writing To Do Lists and time to start actually Doing stuff…. Well, maybe just a few To Do Lists. It’s probably not healthy to go cold turkey.

I am a compulsive list maker and the queen of all procrastinators. This seems to be getting worse and my home is starting to look so chaotic that even compulsive hoarders would be shaking their heads in dismay.

The time has come to draw a line in the dust and say “Enough is Enough!”

So what does all this mean? For me, it means getting my butt into gear and putting some routines in place at home to help me get some of the mess sorted. For Meredith, it means that it is time for her to start worrying, because it isn’t just my house I need to get in order but my life, which includes our joint writing efforts. Be afraid, Meredith. Be very afraid.

“I think you might be over-reacting”, I hear you say. You think so, do you? You noticed the pile of mess above? Well, that just a sample. Check this out. This is my dining room table:

See what I mean? It’s time to do something before every flat surface in the house is covered with books, papers, kids’ craft, junk mail and miscellaneous stuff.

How do I plan to achieve this amazing organisational nirvana? Well, I do have a bookshelf of home organisation books that I could read. Who knows, they might actually contain some useful tips.

Step one will be to assemble these books, pick out the best ones, Book Mooch the rest and get to work. Hmm. That’s actually quite a few steps, but you know what I mean.

Over the weekend I am going to put together a Susan’s Self-Improvement Project Master List (note the capitals once again. I’m not mucking around here). I will then post it here including links to the books and websites that I’m going to use to help me.

I’m open to suggestions for websites that might be helpful, so please add comments with useful links or general encouragement. I may even set up a weekly challenge if anyone else is interested. You never know. We could have a home organisation revolution! Bwahahaha. Oh, evil megalomaniacal laughter probably isn’t appropriate for this sort of revolution, is it? Sorry.

Meredith and I both like to think of ourselves as being funny people. Well, to be more precise, Meredith likes to think of herself as funny and I like to humour her because it makes her easier to live with.

Generally speaking, we’re both easily amused and we quite enjoy coming across quirky news items and the absurdities of everyday life.

Neither of us tends to be particularly amused by mean-spirited mocking of others. We’re all for laughing at other people, but we generally restrict this to laughing at each other and letting the rest of the world alone. Well, we do have a go at politicians every now and then, but gentle mocking by their constituents is part of their job description, isn’t it?

We were chatting recently about which comedians we like and why and discussing humour in general – why it was funny to watch The Chaser Kevin Rudd “In Due Season” spoof of the Barak Obama “Yes we can” song (you can watch them side by side here at Mia Freedman’s Mama Mia) and why it wasn’t funny to read all the rather nasty Tweets about the Masterchef Australia finalists that were thinly disguised as witty remarks. Not nice people. Not nice at all.

I’m not a big fan of slapstick humour or the kind of humour that relies on mentioning the types of body parts and processes that I’m not going to mention here for fear of receiving an overwhelming number of spam comments. You all know the words I mean.

If I’m looking for a good laugh (and Meredith isn’t available for me to mock), the following are sure to get a laugh-out-loud reaction:

Comedians
(mostly Australian comedians listed here. If you’re not familiar with their work, you really should check them out).

• Hamish & Andy
• Shaun Micallef
• Wil Anderson
• Amanda Keller
• Adam Hills
• Tripod
• Jimeoin 

Authors

• Jasper Fforde
• Douglas Adams
• Terry Pratchett
• Bill Bryson

Television and Movies

• Monty Python
• Fawlty Towers
• Black Books
• Top Gear
• Black Adder

Comic Strips

• Far Side
• Calvin & Hobbes

Blogs

• Of Cabbages and Kings
• Moggit
• Nanny Goats in Panties
• Southern Fried Momma

So what about you? What tickles your funny bone? What comedians have you chortling in your coffee? Are there any popular comedy programs or icons that you just don’t get? Are you a LOLcats fan or do you prefer something more esoteric or intellectual? Let us know what makes you have a good giggle?

The finals of the Australian version of Masterchef really captured the nation this week. Lots of blogging and twittering about who should and shouldn’t and did and didn’t win. Personally I didn’t really mind which of the finalists made it through, they all seemed pretty worthy and talented to me. This wonderful Masterchef tribute from Crikey’s First Dog on the Moon sums it all up nicely.

On the food theme, Jenn Thorley at Cabbages and Kings talks about Lucky Charms cereal – the forbidden fruit of her childhood. With a father who bought WeetBix in summer and semolina porridge in winter, I feel her pain. Dad did allow the occasional Coco Pops and Froot Loops, so my childhood was not completely devoid of mid-morning sugar lows. I never had a Barbie doll however, being forced to be satisfied with the UK version – Sindy. I recall her wearing a brown floral maxi frock while my friends had the Barbies that you put stickers on and laid in the sun in her bikini to get “tattoos” and the ones that had hot pink tutus and Palamino horses and convertibles, while lame and embarrassing Sindy just had stupid Sensible Shoes that never stayed on her stupid Flat Feet. Wow – that was… cathartic, actually.

The handbook to 1970s love Please Don’t Promise Me Forever at Rotating Corpse is my stumbleupon favourite this week. The text was good enough on its own, but the pictures tell a thousand equally chuckleworthy words. Make sure you scroll down to the three-piece tartan extravaganza. Want!

Finally today (well today’s date, but it was actually tomorrow in Australia so yesterday in the Top o’ the World – Wait. What? Oh, nevermind…) marks the 40th anniversary of the moon landing. Here’s a piece on the ABC about one of the most famous photos. It was taken  a little before the lunar mission, but it’s my favourite space photo, so enjoy Earthrise.

[It's Retro Day again at thinkthinks.  This was originally published in 2006 at Just Humour Us]

The lovely Melissa from Business Mums has tagged us to complete this meme. We couldn’t resist. Particularly Meredith, who has no shame about revealing her strangest quirks to the world.

Meredith:
1. I am not only arachnophobic and BryanAdamsaphobic, but also slumbermoistaphobic.
S: Slumbermoistaphobia?
M: The fear of falling asleep in a public place, and drooling.
S: You really scare me sometimes.

2. I have always wanted to own a llama.

3. My two first preferences for children’s names were Sediment and Windowsill, but sadly my husband used his veto power on those.

4. My middle name is my first name, my first name is my middle name and my maiden name is unpronounceable. Which is why government departments, banks and telemarketers all hate me.

Susan:
1. Despite enthusiastic attempts by several friends, I remain unconvinced that sport is necessary for a productive and happy life.

2. I applied to join Mensa several years ago in an attempt to meet intelligent, witty and interesting people.
M: Isn’t Mensa an organisation for socially inept pseudo-intellectuals?
S: That’s not very nice or very accurate for that matter. I seem to recall, by the way, that you  were quite excited when I gave you an official Mensa coffee mug.
M: You have noticed that I’ve decorated it with Shrek stickers, haven’t you?

3.  I am deeply and personally offended by muzak.

Both:
1. We have a strong dislike of poor grammar, punctuation and spelling. This, combined with the fact that we don’t know how to find the apostrophe on our mobile phones, results in text messages that sound like they were written by Dr Seuss. “I will not be able to make it. I do not know. I do not eat green eggs and ham.”

2. Our first combined writing project was a ‘Thrills and Swoon Horror Romance’ called ‘When Love Misfeeds’. The central character was the school library photocopier (a rather amazing and impressive piece of office equipment back in those days).

3. We were members of an all girls choir for many years during our teens. The trauma caused by having to appear in public in floor length fire-engine red skirts and shapeless white blouses continues to result in terrifying flashbacks and nightmares consistent with PFD (post-traumatic fashion disorder).

I freely admit that there are many things in this world that pass me by. Nuclear physics. Wagnerian opera. Offal. They’re all beyond my ken, but I realise that for other people they are quite comprehensible – even tasty. However there are some things that I just can’t get my brain around:

Skinny jeans – OK. I wore skinny jeans back in the 80s, when we called them stretch jeans. I even had the kind that were so tight in the legs that they had zippers so you could get your feet through. The thing is, I look back at the photos of this era and I don’t just cringe -  bile actually rises in my throat. So I just don’t understand how they could be happening again. Learn from our mistakes, people!

Caffeine-Free Diet Coke – or as I like to call it – WHY BOTHER?!

Carob – I get the premise – it’s meant to be “healthy”, but I don’t understand how anyone who has ever tried chocolate could buy carob in its stead. If you can’t eat chocolate for dietary reasons, having someone offer carob as a substitute is just plain mean. It’s like getting tickets to a reunion of Led Zeppelin and finding they’re using Sammy Hagar as the lead singer. I mean, really! Not even Van Halen wants to go there.

And speaking of reunions, what’s with the Boy Band Reunion Tours? I admit I was never in the right demographic for Take That and NKOTB the first time around, but surely even the girls who swooned for them back then have – well – grown up? Unless they’ve remade their songs for the women that these girls have become a la Aussie flick BoyTown. I’d love to see a New Kids cover of “Special Time of the Month”:

Look at me being all timely again. Susan is going to start wondering whether I have had a personality transplant.

Lots of stuff has taken my eye online over the past week. As always a portion of my time is spent looking for ideas on how to renovate the House the 70s Forgot. I’d like to specifically thank the Moggit girls for showing me that nothing I could possibly do to this place could be worse than the designer interiors that they feature. The clown safe is particularly delightful.

I enjoyed this article that Karen Andrews (@miscmum) and Judith Ridge (@misrule_au) linked to on twitter. Michael Chabon writes in the New York Review of Books about how our kids are losing the “wilderness of childhood” that so inspires creativity. We live in a quiet street full of kids with excellent neighbours who are all happy to let the children play outside together, with us all keeping a communal eye on them. They are learning to ride skateboards by hurling pell-mell down the footpath and drink water from the taps in the front gardens.  We also back onto a creek. Sure there are snakes and funnel-web spiders down there, but the kids have made plank bridges, fished for eels with string and bits of frankfurt and spent hours making “potions” of mud and plants in my good Tupperware. (They don’t think I know about that last bit…) Every now and then the Wanderlust strikes, and husband and I daydream about moving to another country or even just back to Sydney. Chabon’s words remind me just how good we have it here.

Finally – I found this video on youtube of choir Perpetuum Jazzile singing up a storm to Toto’s Africa. Enjoy!

Today I bought a container of Perfect Italiano ricotta for no reason. I have no dish planned that I need it for, although I will no doubt find one. I bought it simply because I love the latest Perfect Italiano ad campaign so much.

In my defence, the ad is BRILLIANT. Apparently it is the work of Clemenger BBDO in Melbourne, although I couldn’t find a link to the campaign on their website. For those who haven’t seen the Perfect Man ad, here it is for your viewing pleasure.

Personally, I can’t wait to find the latest commercial with the line “I love to listen. I love to hear the problems of your friends.. And when there is no woman to listen too, I practice my listening face.” Awesome.

I’m being a good little co-blogger today, and posting a timely which-what-who for the week. Followers of our book blog Reading Upside Down will have already seen this format pop up last week. Basically this will be a weekly summary of the things that have caught our attention on the wonderful and wacky world wide web. The title is of course Seussian, as we have an undying affection for the good Dr. Can you pick which book it’s from?

Some fun stuff catching my eye last week included:

11 Points.com – 11 Yearbook Photos that Musicians Wish We’d Never Seen.  Nice to know I’m not the only person who spent the 80s with Regrettable Hair.

Becky over at Mommy Wants Vodka admitted to some song lyric confusion, that brought out even more confessions of  musical malapropism  in the comments. If, like me, you find these hilarious, there is an archive of misheard lyrics at kissthisguy.com

Come Play with us at Australia’s Bid for the FIFA World Cup.  I’m mad about the Beautiful Game. My dear grandfather who passed away last year was a driving force in starting a soccer/football competition here in Newcastle in the 1960s, he toured Germany with the Socceroos in 1974, and I’m so glad he got to see them get to the Cup again in 2006.  I plan on flogging this at every opportunity, until we get the Cup Down Under. Come and help! Come play!

And of course last week the blogosphere (not sure how I feel about that word, by the way) was awash in posts about the death of Michael Jackson, which brought out all manner of reactions from commentators everywhere. There was a big blow-up in the comments over at Mia Freedman‘s blog mamamia, but rather than directing you there, check out the comments on this later post, where Mia does a blog version of a dinner game that we also like to play regularly here Chez Mif. Reading through everyday people’s best and worst experiences of the week is a wonderful reminder of the seemingly small things, both good and bad, that enrich our lives.