Every year the same debate begins around the time we put up our Christmas tree.  I’ll get to that in a minute.

Putting up the Christmas tree is a joyous family time.  The kids hang their favourite decorations up, chatting about the “little snowman” or “beautiful bells”.  They haven’t quite worked out the whole big picture of tree decoration though, so we tend to end up with large clumps of decorations about the same height as the children’s heads.  I tried spinning the tree to encourage a more evenly dispersed approach but they tended to gravitate to the clump as if the texture of plastic pine needles was an offense to their eyes that had to be covered as thoroughly as possible.  Of course the whole process took a bit longer this year as our youngest child is now old enough to pull decorations back off the tree in an attempt to eat them.  My wife and I get more laughs out of assembling the Christmas tree than the traditional TV re-run of Chevy Chase’s Christmas Vacation.

So, the argument.  Well, not really an argument, more a polite exchange of views.  Views which neither of us are likely to budge on in a hurry.  Everything goes fine every year until it is time for the tinsel.  My wife prefers big, fluffly, boofy tinsel that looks like somebody tar and feathered a boa constrictor then spray painted it gold.  I prefer thin, subtle strands.  The cheap tinsel as my wife calls it.  Not that I’m a tight wad, mind you.  I’m happy to mortgage my house to get more Christmas lights.  But big, boofy tinsel tends to overpower everything else.  It is no longer a Christmas tree, but a tinsel tree.  If you’re going to do that don’t bother about the tree, just hang a whole clump of tinsel from your roof and be done with it.  My wife, however, feels if you’re not going to have big boofy tinsel it’s barely worth the effort of a tree, as the tree’s main function is obviously to support such tinsel.  Eventually the argument discussion is settled, however, by whatever tinsel happens to be left over from last year.  Except when it is just the cheap stuff, in which case my enterprising spouse removes it once I’ve gone to work, more content with no tinsel at all than try hard whisps of silvery nastiness.

Christmas; funny as a fit, really.  I love it!

A few days ago I realised I’d let my nasal hairs go too long without a trim. I realised when a 2 year old I know pointed them out. She likes to say how soft people’s hair is, and told me I had “softs” in my nose. When a kid spots the softs in your nose, that’s a dead giveaway that your personal grooming has slipped.

This little interaction got me thinking, though. What if you could somehow harness that innocent honesty? What if the complete lack of guile combined with wide-eyed wonder at all the world around them could become a power for good, not evil. Can you see where I’m going? I want someone to develop an iPhone app called “2YO”. Before going anywhere important such as a business meeting, a date, or a job interview, you could scan the iPhone up and down your body like a metal detector, and then wait for the programmed two-year-old-intelligence simulator to let you know how you look. As well as notification that there were softs in your nose it could give other important feedback such as “you smell funny”, “your eyebrows stick out”, or the classic “that a clown shirt”. This could help in so many situations. My wife today tried to signal to me I had something stuck in my teeth. I thought she was licking her fingers after finishing her lunch. 2YO would have no such subtlety: “Why your teeth green?” would be all you’d need to hear to prevent a social disaster. Of course when 2YO says “Where your hair gone?” or “You old. You fat.” then there’s probably not much you can do other than suck it in and hope for the best.

The only other downside I can see is if, having addressed all unforseen personal grooming disasters, when your job interview is going along wonderfully, 2YO decides to chuck a tantrum screaming for a biscuit. The other difficulty is how you fit a diaper to an iPhone; you would not want an accident whilst making an important call. Hmm, there may be a few bugs to work out before this hits the app store. In the meantime you could always polish up the back of the iPhone to work like a mirror.

I’ve just looked up the weather for the next few days. What is the difference between “mainly fine” and “partly cloudy”? There must be a certain percentage of cloud cover at which the definition switches over. Like “occasional shower” as opposed to “light rain”.

Of course it could be the far more likely hypothesis. At this time of year they figure it’s probably going to be cold, and there’s a chance of some kind of moisture in the air. Pick a temperature reading below 20 degrees celsius, coin a moist sounding phrase, and then sell the information as a weather report. Easy. For those who’re wondering, my random weather phrase generator predicts tomorrow will be about 17 degrees celsius with a chance of an occasional shower, although mostly fine when not raining.

It is often claimed that the Internet has radically changed the way we communicate. The ease with which anybody can maintain a “My Space” page or similar has apparently caused an explosion of personal expression. Yeah, right. Blogging has been occurring for decades in homes all over the world way before people started buying computers.

I’ve been learning about people’s lives, and sharing my own, in a public way well before I ever read a blog. Why do you think fridges were invented? Oh, yes, the history books probably record that fridges were an important step forward in long term food storage, but any old shiphand can tell you meat can easily be preserved by just burying it in salt. No matter what you read on a blog, the real story of anyone’s life is their fridge door

You can tell a lot about someone by looking at their fridge. Trendy young people have them in brushed stainless steel, with built in water and ice dispensers. These dispensers are kind of fun but, really, what does it say about you if you need a labour saving device to help with the “arduous” task of turning on a tap? Although, in all seriousness, I can see how if you were literally dying of thirst it would be handy to just shove your glass in a hole in the fridge rather than wasting precious seconds getting to the sink.

Every now and then you will come across the disturbing sight of a fridge without any magnets. This is a sad, sorry state of affairs. It implies the fridge owner has no friends, family, or other social connections whose communications need to be logged. Either that or they are obsessively tidy, which I guess could lead to a lack of friends, family or social connections in case they tramp a dust molecule on the twice-a-day-vacuumed carpet. Or, even worse, leave a finger-print on the brushed stainless steel fridge door! All funny talk aside, a truly blank fridge is not a pretty sight. In fact, these fridges are downright scary. They are like looking into a dead person’s eyes.

Of course, you probably don’t want to reach the other extreme point of fridge blogging either. This is where there are so many magnets, paintings from grandchildren, postcards, birthday invitations and newspaper cuttings that you can’t find the handle to open the fridge when you want something to eat. These people would probably find it better to buy a second hand fridge, remove the door, and mount it on a wall somewhere to display their life story. The real fridge could then host a couple of important phone numbers and maybe the shopping list, while still allowing adequate access to the contents.

It’s funny to think what might have happened to fridge blogging had the Internet never been invented. My theory is before much longer fridges would no longer have been kept in kitchens but lined up along people’s front yards. You could have visited a blog any time you liked by simply walking down the road. Imagine that, blogging and overcoming the nation’s obesity crisis simultaneously! Long live the fridge!
Posted by A.Ready

In the interest of shameless self-promotion, we are looking to add Double Take Comics to some online comic directories.  We are already listed at www.thefunnycartoon.com/funny-cartoon, but now can also be found on www.onlinecomics.net.

Just to warn you up front, this isn’t a funny blog entry.  Rather, it is to let you know that Double Take Comics is now also featured on the comics site thefunnycartoon.com.  They enjoy our comics and have agreed to feature us on their website.  From the home page click on funny cartoons to give Double Take Comics your vote of approval.

Our cutlery drawer is a confusing place.  Why do forks come in so many different sizes?  We’re not exactly fancy eaters, but somehow we still seem to have a fair range of fork sizes.  At least when you get different sized forks on the table in a restaurant you know to begin with the fork on the outside of the setting and gradually work inwards.  You might not know what each fork is for, but at least you know in what order to use it.  Of course, if you skip a course, everything gets thrown into disarray.  A tip to help avoid that predicament is never to use your fork for the soup.

 As far as I know we’ve only ever bought one cutlery set, and it is standard food eating size.  It included some dessert forks we never used much until our kids started wanting to use cutlery.  It is pretty easy to spot a dessert fork from a standard fork, the dessert forks are the ones too small to be of any practical use other than to a four year old.  Of course, when you’re four you can get away with using your hands, so why would you bother with cutlery anyway?  Because when you’re four you want to do everything grownups do, and by the time you realise eating is simpler with your hands it is too late and you’re expected to use a fork all the time.  Other than a cutlery conscious toddler, who decided dessert forks should be that small anyway?  When I eat a piece of cake I don’t intend to sample it crumb by crumb.  If I was designing a cutlery set from scratch the dessert fork would be the size of a small spade. 

The forks that really confuse me are the ones that are almost the same, but not quite.  In our standard issue cutlery set there are two slightly different sizes of fork.  They’re too similar to notice by eye.  To get a big one you have to line the ends up in the drawer and see which forks poke out the furthest.  This is important because if you’re hungry you don’t want to be mucking about with sub-size cutlery.  This is also a handy test if you don’t care which one is technically the dessert fork but just want to get stuck into a great smelling apple pie.

 When somebody else in our family sets the table I sometimes end up with the smaller size of the regular size forks.  Again, at first sighting there isn’t much difference, but after two or three mouthfuls I realise I’m having to work much harder than normal.  There are more arm motions required to deliver the equivalent amount of food to my tastebuds.  This rattles me sufficiently that I have to go and swap forks, although I’m also aware this is a sacrifice of precious eating time.  It is worth the effort to be able to eat with a regular, measured and comfortable rhythm.  Otherwise my mouth is producing saliva at a rate required for my regular eating habits, throwing the moisture to food ration way out of balance, and things can get messy.

 I’ve been to restaurants where there are more forks on the table than dishes listed on the menu.  It seems the amount of cutlery is a kind of culinary status symbol.  The more forks at the table setting, the fancier a place must be.  For a restaurant owner this is actually a fairly certain way to increase the amount you can charge.  At each table setting simply provide an entire cutlery drawer, and the eatery’s reputation is sure to go through the roof.  If they then get some decent size dessert forks into the place, they’ll never look back!

A few days ago the family and I embarked on a brief foray into the gypsy life. Let me clarify that. No, we didn’t all get big hoopy earrings and bandanas. We did muck about with some tambourines recently, but that’s another post (or, on second thoughts, maybe not). No, we went on a brief caravan holiday.

Caravans are great. It is living out childhood dreams of wanting to live in your cubby house. Even if you didn’t have a proper outdoors cubby house or tree house, many kids made a make-shift cubby in their lounge room by draping sheets across the backs of the chairs. These kids grew up to enjoy tent holidays. Cubby house kids like caravans.

It is interesting the snide sneering that goes on between tenters and caravanners, and vice-versa. Tenters believe that true camping can only be done under canvas. Well, perhaps not canvas these days, but some light weight space age material that breathes in the summer while keeping dry in the winter, the whole time reflecting adequate sunlight to avoid fading while still retaining appropriate levels of warmth to ensure the comfort of the occupants. Tents these days are made of materials more sophisticated than most Nike running shoes. However, the tenters still insist that caravanning is a bit of a soft option. Caravanners, in the meantime, watch tenters shivering around a small gas stove while it pours with rain, hoping they can cook their tin of baked beans before the tent catches on fire or they run out of oxygen from burning the propane stove. The caravanner observes this from the dry comfort of 4 solid walls, while their twin burner stove cooks up a steak and some potatoes they’ve just taken out of the fridge, which has kept it fresh and flavoursome. The caravanner also knows that the great outdoors is just a quick opening of the door away. I can see that both have their merits. It is very hard to pack a caravan into a backpack if you want to hike up a mountain somewhere, but I also enjoy a few creature comforts while on holiday. I believe the true root of this sly jeering and jibing is the tenters are secretly jealous of the fact that caravanners had proper cubby houses as kids, while the caravanners are the whole time suspect that maybe they’ve been gypped and didn’t have to be constantly chasing spiders and other children out of their cubby house, but could have had just as much fun with a bed sheet and the coffee table.

Personally, I had a cubby house outside made out of an old cupboard. At one stage we were fortunate enough to have a cubby house made of an old Ford Transit van. My brothers and I also, however, indulged in the occasional bed-sheet-tent construction inside. So, when it comes to camping, I ended up doing both. My family has a caravan with an annexe so have the best of both worlds; a portable house, but also a canvas bit to convince us we’re camping. That way, we get to sneer at everyone.

‘Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse. That’s because everybody else was out for late night Christmas Eve shopping!

Getting ready for Christmas can be a busy time: preparing for the meals, preparing for a family holiday (the running around alone is enough to make you need one!), and of course last minute gift shopping for family and friends. No wonder 2,000 years ago at the first Christmas the angels declared “Peace on Earth”, they knew how badly we’d need it!

I have tried a couple of strategies over the years to be more organised for Christmas. One attempt a few years back was to be ultra organised and start my Christmas shopping six months earlier. I found something for everybody, wrapped everything, and stored it all in the shed ready for the end of the year. Of course, every Christmas some relative turns up you weren’t expecting, so I even bought an extra box of chocolates just in case of such an emergency. Two days before Christmas, however, I heard that a great aunt was coming. She’s allergic to nuts. The chocolate-coated hazelnut trifles I’d bought (and wrapped and stored!) were not, therefore, an adequate emergency gift, and I found myself once more at the mall again fighting off every other last-minute Christmas shopper. After returning home triumphant with some nut-free chocolate I decided to also take the rest of the presents out of storage to put under the tree. That’s right, the presents that I’d proudly organised months earlier. The presents that I had safely stored in the shed. The very same presents that were now mostly nibbled away by some form of rodent, and one of which had obviously been sitting under a water leak all winter. Despite all my best efforts Christmas Eve found me back frantically shopping once again.

The second approach I tried was to spread the stress over a shorter period of time while still attempting to avoid the chaotic last minute rush. I calculated that I needed about 17 hours of shopping and preparation time before the big day. For the month before Christmas, then, I scheduled 4 and a quarter hours for “Christmas preparation” every week. I figured this way the month was still busy, but the stress was at least spread out. The down side of this approach is that after a month of Christmas stress I was well and truly “over it”, and decided to spend Christmas Day sitting on a beach fishing instead.

So, last minute shopping it is. The night before Christmas is here, and I’m off! Lots to do, very little time to do it, but at least in battling some grandma for the last “Ben 10” figurine for my nephew I’m going to enjoy the adrenaline rush of 6 months worth of rushing getting jammed into 3 hours of action packed extreme shopping! I don’t even know who Ben 10 is, but it should be fun!

Hoping you and your family have a blessed Christmas, and that in the midst of the fun you also get time to reflect on the true meaning of this wonderful celebration.

Our family has been home sick a bit this week.  I’ve had to send a few emails explaining the situation, and have run into the following problem.  You see, we’ve not really been “home sick” but “home, sick”.  One must be careful with correct punctuation to avoid any confusion in these matters.  Simply saying we’ve been “home sick” could imply we’ve gone on a lengthy Caribbean cruise and are looking forward to returning home again as we’ve missed the comfort and familiarity of our usual surrounds.  Actually, the nearest we’ve been to a cruise in this time is the rather noisy reaction from our stomachs similar to that seen on a cruise in rough weather.  This has also meant, when the dash to the bowl was alas all to late, we’ve had to swab the decks a few times.  Say no more, I think you get the idea.

The other danger with writing about being “home sick”, or even “home, sick”, is that some cool-dude-homeboy-type will assume I mean we’ve been home and we are really pleased about the fact, therefore summarizing this state of affairs as “sick maaaate”.  While in theory it is always nice to be home as a family these were less than pleasing circumstances.  Not exactly “fully sick maaaaate”, however I guess you could say in the literal sense we were fully sick.  Well, after a while we were all pretty empty, not full at all, as explained by the previous paragraph.  Nevermind, you don’t want the details.

Anyway, after facing this predicament, I’ve written this post as a service to the public.  If you ever find yourself facing the same dilema, I’ve decided the simplest way to communicate the state of affairs is to explain “We were all at home, unwell, and therefore home-sick for a sickless [sic] home.”