Oh the Thinks you can Think

Time for another Monday’s Which What Who, where I spend time faffing around on the internet, so you don’t have to. Yes, yes I know it’s Tuesday already. Yes, yes I know I cheated by putting yesterday’s date. Hush now.

Nanny Goats in Panties addresses the funny side of google ads in gmail. Especially how certain keywords can block ads altogether. (I’m just tickled that when you check your spam folder, you get recipes for Spam.)

Faffing around on the internet just wouldn’t feel right without doing a Mental Floss quiz in between laughing at LOLcats and “accidently” clicking on porn. The Heavy Metal Umlaut Quiz appeals to me as a former German language student and secret aficionado of men with long hair and ripped jeans.

Being somewhat accident prone I appreciated this list of things that were invented by accident. Who knows, one day my short attention span may make me a household name. Should I ever start hanging around in laboratories, that is.

If The Beatles, The Who, Hendrix and Led Zep had owned thesauruses, our airwaves could have sounded so different – with Rock and Roll Thesaurusized at McSweeneys.net

Now, pardon me at the same time as I make out with the atmosphere…

First of all, I’m kind of glad that Susan has been so distracted with her plans to Organise the World, that she hasn’t noticed that I didn’t post a WhichWhatWho post last week. Or if she did notice, she decided not to say anything because of that whole glass-houses-stone-throwing thing.

Right – on to what has caught my eye this week.

As much as I don’t like to laugh at another’s misfortunes, Kristin at Kicked Out of Mom’s Club had me giggling with  her discovery that Smooth Silky Legs hair remover, red wine and the Karate Kid Soundtrack do not a good combination make.

Find out what type of twitter personality you are at Tremendous News.

Mia Freedman of mamamia.com asks whether technology is stealing our ability to be alone. I only started using a mobile phone regularly about two years ago, and I’d have to say yes. My handbag was stolen yesterday, and I shuddered most at the thought of going out today without my phone. What if something happened to the kids and the school was trying to get hold of me? Two years ago I would never have thought so negatively – but for a moment this morning I considered not going to a long awaited lunch with my primary-school friends because I wouldn’t have been reachable. Silly. Is it great to be contactable in an emergency? Yes. Do we need to be contactable 24 hours a day? I think not. Would I have not recognised my phone’s ringtone and just sat there grooving to my own personal theme music and thus missed the call anyway? Most likely. My ringtone has been the same for the past two years, mind you (the intro to Stacked Actors by FooFighters, because I am just that cool) so it’s surprising that I don’t recognise it and if you hear it coming from a phone and the person is carrying this bag please punch them in the face for me, because THAT’S MY BAG AND MY PHONE!!!

On a lighter note (and as a reward for making it to the end of the previous “sentence”), here’s the 15 creepiest vintage ads of all time.

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.

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!

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.