Pondering: fear and regret

February 29 always brings me a tiny twinge of regret and reflection as it wings around its little four year cycle. It's the birthday of a girl I had a huge crush on in high school - Ferne Kohlman - not a hard date to remember given its infrequent nature (and the fact that it's the day after my dad's birthday as well).

We sat across the aisle from each other at the back of the classroom and I was hooked from the moment my angsty little hormone filled teenage self laid eyes on her in early February at the start of year 7.

Obviously I've moved on to bigger and far better things in the #cough#24years#cough# time since then but as a lesson in how events at that age help shape who you are and what you become, it's still something that pops into my head on the odd occasion.

Valentines Day came around about a week after school started and the night before I spent hours painstakingly making her a valentines card that I planned to secretly slip into the pigeon-hole/shelves that we had just near the classroom door for our books and whatnot.

In green pen I (clumsily) drew this lush fern frond (because her name was Ferne - get it) with hundreds upon hundreds of those tiny fern (uh what are they called - leaves/nodules?) thingys and agonised over the perfect combination of words.

Being a relatively private person, (or perhaps fearful), I didn't sign it, figuring I could gauge the reaction when she read it and take my cue from there.

Come the next day I scurried early to class and eagerly scanned the pigeonholes looking for her name - Fern Coleman. (Which was how I had intricately written it in fronds on the card). Logically, it would have been between the B surnames and the Ds.
But no. I scanned in a panic another dozen times - why wouldn't she have a pigeonhole - it didn't make sense.

I scanned the whole wall of pigeon holes and reached the Ks (for Kohlman) to realise to my young mortification that I had spelled not only her first name wrong but also her surname. I slipped the card in regardless and when it was discovered, proceeded to deny absolutely to all and sundry that I had had anything to do with it. (After all, if I truly loved this girl, how could I possibly not even know her name)

And that was it - for the next four years (until she changed schools at the end of year 10), I pined for her from afar - afraid of I'm still not entirely sure what but nonetheless, ruled by my fears.

The truly stupid thing is that I'm pretty sure that she did actually like me and there were any number of chances to move on but in my strange little mind, I just couldn't and wouldn't act.

I hope now that I'm less proud or fearful or whatever the hell it was that I was doing - possibly a modicum of stubborn self-destructive willfullness in there as well for all I know.

But February 29 will always remind me of the consequences of fear

Enjoying: Star Wars as explained by a 3 year old.

This is all too cute but pretty impressive at the same time - she manages to get the gist of the movie across (not sure how you would go if you'd never seen it of course) and its really interesting to get a sense of the parts of the story that grabbed her attention the most.

She spends a fair bit of time talking about how the sand-people capture r2d2 and c3po (the shiny man) and have a sort of garage sale - except it's with robots.

She steers well clear of the whole Han shot first debate too - got to love the light sabre description as well.

Admiring: Till Nowak's "Salad" (eat your vegies before they eat you)

(Click on the image to view it at full size)

This is a beautiful piece of 3D work that pays tribute to HR Gigers design work for the Alien series of films. There's a fair bit of interesting info on the website about the creation of this image too.

LOLing: Yes we can song parodies

I mentioned back here how impressed I was with the song that Will.I.Am put together paying tribute to Barack Obama which has become a bit of a web sensation.

As with most web things, it hasn't taken long for a couple of piss-takes to arise - one is the kind of video that John McCain (front-running Republican candidate) would put out in response, playing on his statements that the U.S could well be in Iraq a hundred years from now and his poor-taste Beach Boys impression - bomb bomb Iran.



The second is a more generic rich peoples version of the will.i.am song, taking a "no you can't" line.

Sharing: the Meaty Bites diet story

This story just came through the email - gotta love it.

I've got 2 dogs. I bought a large bag of Meaty Bites at Big W and was standing in line at the check-out.

A woman behind me asked if I had a dog.

On impulse, I told her that no, I was starting The Meaty Bites Diet again, although I probably shouldn't because I'd ended up in the hospital last time, but that I'd lost 25kgs before I woke in an intensive care ward with tubes coming out of most of my orifices and IV's in both arms.

I told her that it was essentially a perfect diet and that the way that it works is to load your pants pockets with Meaty Bites and simply eat one or two every time you feel hungry & that the food is nutritionally complete so I was going to try it again.

I have to mention here that practically everyone in the line was by now enthralled with my story, particularly a guy who was behind her.

Horrified, she asked if I'd ended up in the hospital in that condition because I had been poisoned by the food. I told her no, it was because I'd been sitting in the middle of the road licking my **** and a car hit me.

I thought one guy was going to have a heart attack he was laughing so hard as he staggered out the door.

Stupid woman…why else would I buy dog food??

Thanks Flyfinn