THE FINAL COUNTDOWN!

Have i used that title before? probably. I'll be honest, it's not my most original effort, but it is VERY multiplicable. Yes, i made that word up, hence it is a cazism.

Multiplicable: - (adj) Applicable in various ways, Applicable for a number of reasons, eg. the title of Jake White's autobiography In Black and White is multiplicable in that it refers not only to the colour of the text on the paper, but also puns on his surname as well as referring to the racial debate in SA rugby.

I could SO write dictionaries!

Anyway, to expand upon the multiplicable nature of THE FINAL COUNTDOWN:

1) It is the final countdown - 17 days to go - until I take a ONE MONTH VACATION!!!!! (Don't moan... masters and a full time job - you KNOW I deserve it!!)

2) It is the final countdown - a matter of hours - til one of my favourite people gives birth to her bambino and I find out whether I'm an aunty or an uncle. haha, ok til i find out if it's a boy or a girl... clarification for those that live in these parts: KATE IS IN LABOUR - woohoo!!

3) It is the final countdown until I am back to my wedding weight.... lost 6kgs only 4 to go.

4) It is the final countdown until I see my dog - PHOEBE!! Yay! And also all my brothers, my neice, my folks and my gran!
This is Phoebe... how cute is that!!


5) It is the final countdown til I find out whether or not I am preggers, knocked up, etc. HA HA Cherilyn, don't freak out... I REALLY REALLY doubt it, however, due to extenuating circumstances there is a slight chance.

6) It is the final countdown til I hear whether or not I passed my Masters (sometime at the end of the year)

So anyway, I trust I have been successful in embedding that song in all of your heads? haha

Whose birthday is it??

LISTS

So I found an interesting new blog click here to see it - quite cool - and it inspired me to make my own little list which I'm sure will be added to over the coming weeks and I hope you guys will add to it to (if there is anyone out there....anyone at all?)

LIST OF THINGS THAT BUG THE HELL OUT OF ME:
* Vodacom service provider (obviously)
* Facebook users that invite you to every stupid application there is - like vampires???
* Facebook profiles that have a gazillion applications and take forever to load
* IT people who know less than me
* Cold weather when it is meant to be summer :(

LIST OF THINGS THAT MAKE ME EXCEPTIONALLY HAPPY:
* My hammock!!!
* My band!!!
* The month of holiday that is fast approaching
* Being done with my masters (and seriously this one is big enough to stay on the list for my whole life!)
* My absolutely ADORABLE neice. Seriously, how cute is this child!!!

NO MORE NERDINESS

Ok guys, I know i've been a disgrace to blogland, but it's been a heavy year!!!

But never mind, below, you see before you SUCCESS!!!


Ok that is me*, the blogger formerly known as nerdabluddylert with my completed masters thesis. WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

The relief is beyond description.

Of course, there will be even more relief when i know whether or not i actually passed!!!

Anyway, now do you forgive me scarcity?? scareceness??? or whatever?

* DISCLAIMER: please note that that is me after arriving at work at 8am (ok, fine 8.45) and leaving at 2.30am - working for 18 hours straight!!! so I am looking smelly and tired and mildly neurotic - this office is creepy after midnight!!!!!

How to annoy a vegetarian

Found this article on news24.com. I think it's fantastic!!

The next time you get the urge to antagonise a vegetarian – and if you're a meat-eater you probably suffer from a perverse need to do so – lean towards them over the dinner table and deliver one of the following immortal lines:

1. Did you know Hitler was a vegetarian?
2. But you’re wearing leather shoes.
3. So what made you give up meat – was it for religious reasons?
4. Moo/Baa/Oink (in accordance with whichever meat dish you’ve just ordered).

This will elicit a reaction, but not, as you may like to think, because you’ve ruffled fragile vegetarian sensibilities with your rogueish wit. The real reason they’re peeved is that they’ve heard all of these facetious remarks (not to mention the barnyard impressions) many, many, many times before. The prospect of getting into an argument with you also bores them to death, so more often than not they’ll just give you a pained smile and return to their tofu.

But there are lots of important things they could say to you on the topic, so, to save them the bother and tedium, I’ve listed the appropriate responses to the above comments for you here (except for number 4, which is too puerile to waste another second on).

Vegetarians, please feel free to print out and distribute as needed:

Did you know Hitler was a vegetarian?
Let’s just consider for a moment what the man would have been like, and the implications for world history, if he hadn't been a vegetarian. And anyway, there are enough overwhelmingly virtuous famous vegheads - Gandhi, Albert Schweitzer, St Francis of Assisi - to cancel him out.

But you’re wearing leather shoes
This is quite a tricky one actually… OK, here goes:

The world is a complicated place, rendered in shades of grey. Deciding not to care about an issue just because it gets a little confusing and morally murky is sheer intellectual laziness. It’s not great to wear an animal’s hide on your feet, true, but it’s considerably better than wearing one animal’s hide and also partaking of the flesh of several others.

So what made you give up meat – was it for religious reasons?

The irritating implication of this question is that if you can demonstrate you’re a vegetarian for religious-cultural reasons, then you’ll have the right to be taken seriously, whereas any other reason is somehow flakey and light-weight. Here are some of those ‘light-weight’ reasons:

Because it eases the burden on the health system
Buddha aside, how many overweight vegetarians can you think of?

Studies suggest that a vegetarian diet reduces risk for some of the biggest killers stalking the modern world:

Cardiovascular disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure and stroke
Cancer, especially of the colon and reproductive organs, Obesity,
Type 2 diabetes, Gallstones and diverticular disease

In addition to these ills, feeding on other animal species, especially when they’re kept en masse for convenient culling for the dinner table, is not a great idea if you consider the communicable diseases that have arisen from the practice. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow) and avian influenza (bird flu), to name just a couple. And let's not forget that HIV/Aids is thought to have had its origins in the human consumption of other primates i.e. bushmeat hunting.

Because it eases the burden on the planet
Billions of flatulent cows and, to a rather lesser extent, sheep, produce an awful lot of methane, one of the most potent of the greenhouse gasses. This, plus the vast amounts of fossil fuel required to accommodate, slaughter, aesthetically package and transport all that tasty meat makes livestock farming one of the biggest contributors to global warming.

And it takes up huge tracts of land and gallons upon gallons of water. Growing crops uses resources too, but nothing like as much. Besides which, most of those crops are used, not to feed the world's growing human population, but to feed livestock destined for meat-eaters’ plates: about two thirds of grain produced is fed to animals farmed for meat and milk.

Because underdogs rule
Despite a slight increase in visibility and status in recent years, vegetarians remain an often derided and unappreciated minority. But it’s always been cooler to be an underdog than a top dog, to buck the system than to slavishly follow the status quo.

Vegetarians' cool rating is further elevated by some of the Names they have in their midst: J.M. Coetzee, Alice Walker, Steve Jobs, Annie Lennox and, for some unfathomable reason, a large number of pro skateboarders, BMXers and other extreme athletes. OK, there’s also Larry Hagman and Pamela Anderson, but that just serves to show there is no such thing as a vegetarian ‘type’.

But mostly they’re cool because they’ve put some pretty deep concerns before the craven appeasing of their own appetites. As freestyle BMX vet and all-round ultra-cool extreme vegan dude Taj Mihelich succinctly puts it: “I don’t think that I’m so important that an animal has to die every time I want to eat.”