'buffaloed'?

Wall St Journal,24 Jan. A semi-interesting article about false deadlines, in the 'cubicle culture' column had this:

"We often go into slow motion when we discover we are being buffaloed" Fabulous, isn't it? Anyway, I'm off for a bit of kulture.

la Hutton (again) , John Howard

Back on deck after a pleasant spell in Melbourne. For reasons that are waaay too complicated to go into here, I was at one point reading a women's magazine, and stumbled across a column called 'Deb's Diary', hidden among the usual ads for psychics, columns about gardening and astrology (and, amazingly enough, one about gardening with astrology). Faithful readers will know I have a bit of a thing for Ms Hutton, but not in a nasty stalkerish way. The current inflight welcoming video on Qantas has her cavorting with animatronic dinosaurs, and it works for me on many levels. Anyway, in her column she was talking about her beach house (as far as I can recall) and how relaxed and comfy it was. She then spruiked some skin-care products, but I appreciate that everyone has to make a living and I can certainly think of worse ways.

Speaking of women's magazines, I saw one recently (NW?) that had a big splash on the cover "Angelina Jolie: I am not a nutcase". Which is of course exactly what a nutcase would say - and she is, in the words of my friend E, a 'psycho hose-beast'.

There's something strange about the way our Prime Minister speaks. Tonight on the news, for example, I heard him pronounce 'because' as 'be coarse'. I've certainly heard people pronounce it as though it's still the two words 'be' and 'cause' just mashed together, but never in quite the way Mr Howard does.

detox

There was an article in this morning's Sydney Morning Herald, taking about how the 'detox' products you buy over-the-counter are 1) a waste of money and 2) not based on any evidence. The expert they quoted? A real doctor? A biochemist? A nutritionist (one with a real university degree)? No! They found a naturopath!

But what do you expect from a newspaper that carries a horoscope? I might as well read New Idea.

as if!

i saw this in Mebourne. surely a joke?

Huh?

Coming back from the movies (saw "The Queen", surprisingly good) I saw a gargage truck go past with "WASTE RESOURCES" written on it. No, I'm not making this up.

heard on Dr Phil

I time my visits to the gym so that I can watch Dr Phil while I'm on the treadmill. He had a show just before Xmas, revisiting old stories to see how things had panned out. (I hasten to add that I'm not such a devotee that I'd seen these original shows.) But there was one thing that really stuck in my mind as perhaps the dumbest thing I've ever heard anyone say.

The segment was a follow-up to a story where a father had planted a tracking device in his car (a 'truck', of course) to see exactly how fast his 16yo son was driving. To his horror, he found out that the kid was doing over 100mph routinely. So far so good. The kid said, in his defence, that all of his friends drove like maniacs too. So the crew interviewed a few of his friends, asking them how fast they drive, do they think it's dangerous etc. One kid said something like this (and I apologize for paraphrasing, but I was on the bloody treadmill and couldn't take it down verbatim)...

"i think that when your time's up, your time's up, and it doesn't matter whether you're doing 30mph or 100mph"

QF460, la Hutton

Flight 460 last night. QF very nicely gave me seat 1A (next to a very disapproving-looking gent who needed a seatbelt extender). There was an agreeable amount of bowing and scraping from the cabin crew, who weren't as chipper as usual. Tired from New Years Eve? Wondering about how the private equity bid pans out? They were pleasant, even though I was looking superbly scruffy (hadn't shaved in 2 weeks, wearing nasty $5 shirt, shorts. Barefoot for most of the flight. And going commando too, due to laundry crisis earlier in the day. But they weren't to know.).

For me, the highlight of any QF flight is the welcoming video from Deborah Hutton. She's so aggressively well-preserved, so composed and professional. I love the way there's always just a hint that she's phoning it in - sometimes a little nonchalant on the delivery, and often (if you watch hard enough, and I do) a strange but very appealing disconnect in the timing between her expansive hand gestures and the words she's speaking. I probably seem a rather debauched and cynical old thing but she cheers me up. I often watch without the sound.