love me enjoy me want me hide me

So say the delectable Tim Tams on my shelf. Australia's favourite chocolate biscuit (Americans read: cookie) has gotten more communicative of late. I dscovered this quite by chance. Wandering down the biscuit aisle Saturday afternoon I looked lovingly over at the Tim Tams and did a double take: one of the packets was labelled 'Want Me' instead of 'Tim Tam'. I was amused, and home with me they went. Further research on the Arnott's website unearthed the following:

Arnott’s Tim Tam - Love them, Enjoy them, Want them or Hide them?

Consumers will notice something different as they reach for their favourite packet of chocolate biscuits over the upcoming weeks. For a limited time, packets of Arnott’s Tim Tam Original will feature four fun new phrases including ‘Love Me’, ‘Enjoy Me’, ‘Want Me’ and ‘Hide Me’.

As Australia’s third favourite brand, Australians have a strong emotional connection with Tim Tam and Arnott’s research shows that these four phrases best represent how consumers feel about their beloved Tim Tam biscuits. For example:

‘Love Me’
The majority (52%) of Tim Tam lovers enjoy doing the Tim Tam Slam where the biscuit is used as a straw to drink coffee or port.

‘Enjoy Me’
50% of consumers choose to eat the last Tim Tam in the packet before anyone else does, while only 17% will share it with family or friends.

‘Want Me’
64% of consumers eat their Tim Tam biscuits on the same day they buy them.

‘Hide Me’
Many consumers go to extremes to hide their Tim Tam biscuits from others…inside the crisper draw in the refrigerator, the laundry basket, the freezer, the car, in a desk drawer, in the bedroom, and even in the safe!

I don't hide my Tim Tams ~ I'm more of a 'share the wealth' kinda girl ~ but as for the other three...guilty as charged: Tim Tam slams are the bomb, I'll eat the last one without hesitation, and Tim Tams may last two or three days in our cookie jar, but they are ALWAYS opened on the day of purchase. Simply irresistable!

window on our ugly world

Amongst other cheerless headlines on MSN's newspage, such as "Maddie case: Police search pet crematorium" and "Man forced to dig own grave, court told" come these two gems of humanity:

Student 'gave teacher oral sex on bus'

Riley, a teacher at the 17-year-old's school, had a two-month affair with her involving not just oral sex while he drove a minivan and chatted on a mobile phone with a colleague, but supplying her with cocaine as well, because apparently "sex and coke is mind-blowing." He told her this at the beginning of what ended up being 400 pages of emails, text messages and internet messages they exchanged during the course of the relationship, which reportedly started after the pair did mouth-to-mouth Sambuca shots during a drinking game at the high school.

Teen jailed over brutal rape of grandmother

A 15-year-old boy has been sentenced to 13 years in prison (non-parole period of only 8 years) bashing, raping and threatening to kill an 83-year-old woman. He dragged her off a path into a nearby creek bed and raped her. He punched her face so brutally that her own daughter (who had gone looking for her mother after she didn't return from her walk as expected and ended up hearing her cries and rescuing her) could not recognise her. The judge said:

The violence with which you attacked your elderly and vulnerable victim is simply beyond the comprehension of any decent person.

Exactly.

But decent people are getting a little thinner on the ground. People say the world is getting better. I don't think so. These are just two stories that made it to the press. What about all the abuse going on that we don't hear about, families where 'disfunction' is a pseudonym for cruelty and manipulation, teachers/scoutmasters/clergymen who use their authority to seduce and attack. And when you extend that to the world at large, with its 'shame' killings, child sex trade, human trafficking, websites where pedophiles get together to exchange tips on trapping children, female genitalia mutilation, sweat shops, drug mules, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc till you want to throw up just thinking about what exists outside (and for some people inside) your own four walls, some days it's hard to even see that good exists.

has dubbya has been watching family guy?

How do you spell 'oaf'? Well apparently today, as on so many days previous, it starts and finishes with a 'W'.

I heard somebody say, Where's Mandela?' Well, Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas.
(George W Bush, press conference, Washington)

(a) Mandela is still alive
(b) if he had died, at 89 it would probably have been from old age
(c) Mandela has never been, to my knowledge, threatened by any Middle Eastern leader, dictator or otherwise.

But hey, it's all about saying words that make people afraid, right? Mandela's an inspiration to millions, Saddam Hussein just a step or two from Satan, so if we say Saddam (who is dead) killed Mandela (who is alive) people will just hear the scary words, ignore the idiocy of the remark, and cheer for our Iraq policy, right?

monday monday

Hmmm...2pm.

Perhaps a tad too early for 'leaving a little early today'.

pardon me, but your teeth are in my neck

For anyone who might be interested, there are four new designs in my cafepress shop, three of them for Halloween and one that is what Bajans would refer to as a 'pretty pretty' design, but I can't think how to say it in regular English ('cutesie' is close, but that's not quite right), with butterflies in seven colours. I really want to add a vampire design to the Halloween category, but I haven't come up with one I'm happy with yet.

We don't really celebrate Halloween here in Australia (one reason the designs are kind of American...playing to the market) but I thought this year I'd have some fun with it, so I bought a vampire movie that I used to watch a long time ago on TV ~ Fearless Vampire Hunters. Every Halloween it would show up, screening around 2.30am after another of my perennial favourites, another Hammer Horror called To Love a Vampire (which isn't available here, or I would have bought that one, too). It's always reported as the weakest of the three in the Karstein trilogy (with The Vampire Lovers and Twins Of Evil) but I've never seen those and I grew up watching this one every year in all its B-grade goodness, so I love it regardless. Both of these movie are more shlock horror than honest-to-goodness terrify-me flicks. But personally I think creepy, campy, B-grade Halloweens are way more fun.

And vampires rule. I like them better than pirates and ninjas combined. ^_^

Just found this terrible trailer for To Love a Vampire. I remember the movie being a lot funnier than this trailer, but maybe that's just my sense of humour.

soundbite

Bernard Fanning, lead singer of Powderfinger, to his bandmates at the Silverchair/Powderfinger concert in Canberra on Tuesday night:

Man, this is such a beautiful crowd! I swear I've fallen in love twelve times already.

Right back atcha, Bernie!

made out like a bandit

(How do bandits make out? Do they kiss with tongues? hahaha)

I don't usually get a lot of presents for my birthday. Just not a kid any more I guess. but this birthday I got a whole bunch. I'd like to say I don't really care about getting presents, but in the end it was totally cool and I've spent the last week feeling like a gleeful pirate counting my treasure. Here's a selection:


Smallest mp3 player in the world. I have a big ole non-ipod 20GB-er, but this 1GB baby is tres cute and clips to my pocket.





This book from some friends who know I like Japan. I'm not really into Japanese history per se, but it's an interesting fictional setting (it's set in a world based on feudal Japan). It's the prequel to the Tales of the Otori trilogy, which I haven't read yet.







A game where you try to make high-scoring headline from the cards you are dealt, and end up with some funny headlines in the process.










Vampire romance bought with the bookstore voucher my sister gave me.


Plus about five other things including my mother throwing in for a goodly portion of my ticket to the The Police in January.



I would have gotten this lovely book, had the package not arrived open and empty. Australia Post are chasing it up as we speak, so I may still get it. I'll let you know. Frustrating, but.

Incidentally, in case you were wondering, we had my birthday dinner at Wagamama.

I had:

main meal: teriyaki steak soba
Teppan-fried soba noodles with baby bok choy, red onion, snow peas, beansprouts and chillies. garnished with grilled beef tenderloin, coriander and mixed sesame seeds drizzled with teriyaki sauce.

dessert: banana katsu
Crispy breaded banana with coconut ice cream served with honey and ginger syrup, dusted with cinnamon.

throughout dinner: Good conversation, lots of laughs, excellent birthday.

bear this in mind, frodo

Found over at Pandora's Aquarium:

If you are currently thinking, 'catbus??', go here.

happy birthday to meme

The Birthday Meme.

Instructions: Go type in your birthday in Wikipedia (month and day). Write down three events, two births, and one holiday. Then, tag 5 friends.

My birthday is today!

September 7th.

Events

1969 - Monty Python's Flying Circus records first episode.
Not the first episode, but an old favourite from their skits:





1996 - In Las Vegas, Nevada, actor and recording artist Tupac Shakur is shot several times after attending a boxing match, he would later die in the hospital due to his injuries from the shooting on September 13.






1998 - Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University
Want to see something cool? Go to Google and type 'elgoog' (google backwards) into the search field. :)


Births



1533 - Queen Elizabeth I of England

I know they say she was the virgin queen, but it still looks to me like she was trying pretty hard to hide a hickey.




1951 - Chrissie Hynde, American guitarist and singer

Got bottle?


Holiday



Independence Day for Brazil






As for the 'tag 5 people' requirement, I'm tagging anyone who reads this and has a birthday coming up in the next month. :)

just got my 'friends of japan' newsletter for september

...and the phrase of the month is:

Yo. Ore no na wa Inigo Montoya. Kisama wa chichi wo koroshita. Shinu kakugo shiro.

Meaning:

Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

I'll be sure and work that one into my next dinner party. Even if it is in boys' Japanese and will make me seem not the gentle flower that I am. *^_^*

literally funny

Loving this t-shirt design I saw posted over at Mad Baggage.