This year Chris and a couple of his pals at school are participating in Movember, much to Chris's horror. He hasn't attempted facial landscaping for years and is dreading it now, but apparently is going to jump in the deep end and have muttonchops to go with his moustache.

The aim of Movember is to raise money for men's health, centring around depression and prostate cancer. Depression is something that needs as much support as we can give, and any dollar helps. My dad had prostate cancer when I was very small, and I didn't find out until I was much, much older how serious it was - he was given a 30% chance of survival - or what had even happened. But he has completely recovered and every advance can help. If you have anything you'd like to donate, the link to Chris's, er, MoSpace is here. If anything, do it for the lulz of Chris being anything but clean-shaven.

In the meantime, here is a stupid I have done. One of my friends shaved his epic full beard off recently, and I said to him, "You've got it all wrong! It's like you've completely reversed the point of Movember. Unless you do a new version, where you shave off your beard! And they could call it, uh, November!" new_perestroika: the new face of marketing.

Does it ever stop being embarrassing to buy condoms? I always expect the people behind the counter to drop a sleazy wink or ask for a price check over the loudspeaker a la Woody Allen's movie Bananas (and the first time I bought them when I was a teenager, argh.) I guess you truly know you're a grown-up when you don't get all red in the face for buying something that five million other people in Australia bought the same day. Oh well.
 

Last night we hired The Descent, turned all the lights off and watched this claustrophobic, terrifying horror movie about monsters in underground caves while a thunderstorm raged outside. People, it was the scariest freaking night ever, and that was before I even remembered it was Halloween.

Consequently I got no sleep. I rarely get nightmares from scary movies but last night, despite realising the silliness of being afraid of critters living in underground caverns in the middle of nowhere in an entirely different country in the opposite hemisphere, I'd be dreaming about happy, normal things, then someone in my dream would turn a corner and BAM, monsters everywhere and me jerking awake and seething over the stupid scares that kept me awake all night.

Also, I'm not enormously well at the moment. It started Thursday night, made Friday miserable, and while I felt a bit better on Saturday morning and went to work I left after three hours because I couldn't stand up properly any more. Chris took me to the after-hours clinic and after some entirely unpleasant tests with at least a very nice doctor (including a tense few minutes while we waited to see if the issue was me being pregnant) I was given a diagnosis, a prescription and permission to drug myself up with painkillers until the problem goes away. I still don't feel great, but the edge has gone and I am functioning a bit better, at least than I was yesterday.

I have this problem when I am unwell where I make jokes about it the whole time and force out the happiest chipperness imaginable. At work I was just as peppy with the customers as usual and wonder if people believe me when, seconds after laughing and cajoling with them, I'm telling them I really quite urgently need to seek some medical attention. Perhaps I should have asked for a doctor's certificate.

Anyway, this left me unable to go to pretty much the only thing that's been on my calendar for an entire year: World Vegan Day. It seemed like a beautiful day for it, too, and we'd made no plans so we could go. But I just really wasn't up for being that far away from home. Therefore, I need to hear all of your stories about it. Also, pics or it didn't happen.

In related news, a year since the last World Vegan Day means another thing: it's been a year since I first met socraticomatic in person! And meeting her led me to meeting others, and then more others, and eventually heaps of you, dear friendslist. So, dear pal, Happy Anniversary! Strawberry internet flowers for you.

Soooooo, Aduki is up for sale.

I have enquired about the price. If we cashed in every single bit of excess money we have in share and savings, we could actually afford it. But then, no house or holiday or anything fun ever again and three cents in our bank account. But we'd have a publishing company. And I could totally hire all of you guys for things. And then blame you when it goes horribly wrong.

But seriously...should I even think about it?

In a big case of awwww, one of Chris's students made me and him a toy each:



Mine's the one on the right, now known as Squidmonkey. Chris's is Tigerpuppy. How utterly freaking adorable are they? If this is what the future generation are doing then I am absolutely not concerned about the future in the least. How sweet that she made one specially for me, too! Chris clearly talks about me as much as I talk about him (ie a whole bunch.)

To thank her I made her this hair clip, as apparently she likes goth-type things (and it's Halloween!):

Yesterday I went out to lunch at Soul Mama with my lovely friend Liz who is very talented at keeping me in stitches (the good kind, not the injury kind) and then down Acland Street for to look at shiny things and buy birthday presents for her smoochy-bear. She very kindly gave me a lift to the city afterwards, where I was questing for Mature Cheddar-style Cheezly at Habib Wholefoods but they did not have it seriously what is the world coming to. (And is there anywhere else in the city that sells it? I can get it from Allergy Block in Carlton but that was too far out of the way.)

As I walked home from the station there was a scurrying about my feet. I looked down and there was this teensy ringtailed possum staring up at me from the fence. It was so completely adorable that I wanted to hug it and squish it and call it George, but instead I went through the bags I'd filled from the supermarket and got it a slice of bread to chomp on. I tore it up and held a little piece out for it. The possum looked at me and then launched itself, facehugger style, at my arm, whereupon I dropped the bread in surprise and it ran back to the fence and pretended to hide some more. I tore up the rest of the bread and left it around for it, took a photo with my 0.0008 megapixel phone camera, then went home feeling a bit smilier. I imagined it thought it was pretty tuff, and went back to its teenage possum pals saying, "Yah, I totally took on this monster like a hundred times bigger than me and it dropped the food I wanted and then ran off crying."

Anyway my phone camera really is terrible, but this is what it looked like:



It is the first time I have seen a possum during the day. Moar, please.

I caved. AGAIN. Not with the lipbalm this time - well,  not just with the lipbalm this time - but I bought another dress for the wedding. I couldn't bear feeling so self-conscious in my tarty acid-green frock and have gone for something much more demure. It's a vintage cream dress with birds on it and blue and red leaves. It sounds a bit insane but is really quite beautiful, and I was going to take a picture to show you and get your opinion, but after putting it on, picking out shoes, pinning my hair up and practising my fashionblogger smile I recalled suddenly that Chris has our Embarrassingly Pink Camera and therefore it was all for nowt. The dress also needs to be be taken in (lazy new_perestroika will probably do this with a stylish array of eleventy silver safety pins) and a mark cleaned off the front. It's fairly indicative of how unsure I was about the other dress when I will choose an oversized and stained dress to replace it. Anyway, I'm heading to my mum's tomorrow so she will hopefully be able to help or at least convince me I look pretty nevertheless.

I picked this new frock up from Wolf Clothing, a place that is surely enamoured with its Friendly Neighbourhood Bookshop at the moment as no less than three of us bought dresses from there today, and a nice little pile of Wolf Clothing paper bags were arranged in the ladies' locker room with Leanne, Alex and I all exclaiming over our purchases. Purchasing second-hand and therefore cheap(ish) means I have still spent a bunch less than the fantasy purple dress I wanted to buy. Oh lord someone shut me up I haven't been able to stop banging on about dresses all day.



Today after cleaning Theo's food bowl I noticed not one but THREE of his thyroid tablets spat out on the floor in various places. He will regret that when tomorrow night I have to force one down his throat. He also broke into the lounge room yesterday when I was at work and threw up on the part of the carpet where I inevitably stand without looking. He is made of naughty at the moment. Bad kitty. >:(
 

I miss pancakes, and am far too lazy to make my own. (The first ones I make always go cold before I finish making them all.) Is there anywhere I can get vegan pancakes to eat in Melbourne? Or Coffs Harbour for that matter as I'll be there in a week? Which reminds me: hooray, I get to go in an airplane! Four, in fact. Which reminds me also that I need to buy a dress to wear to the wedding I'm going to. Which also reminds me that I have things to do and should get myself off the internet pronto.

This is just a SUBTLE and NOT AT ALL POINTED REMINDER that Lisa Dempster's book launch for Neon Pilgrim will be held tomorrow evening at Readings Carlton at 6:30pm. More info and some skewy paragraph insanity here. I wasn't able to get my paws on a copy in time to have it read by the event, but I'll pick one up tomorrow and hopefully get Lisa to sign it. I wonder if it will go better than when I asked Eddie Izzard to sign the tour t-shirt I bought, whereupon I showed him the t-shirt and held out a pen, and he said, "Oh, is this from the tour, is it?" And I said, "T-shirt. Yours." He signed it, and I said, "You're cool!" and then I ran away. Stay classy, new_perestroika!

Anyway, I'll be at the Neon Pilgrim launch, behind the counter with my big cheezly salesperson grin. Tell your friends! Come one, come all! Be nice to the staff, we're a fragile people.

I am a meme sheep, but a cool one like the sheep from Wallace & Gromit.

1. Pick 15 of your favorite movies.
2. Go to IMDB and find a quote from each movie.
3. Post them here for everyone to guess.
4. Strike it out/bold it when someone guesses correctly, and put who guessed it and the movie.
5. NO GOOGLING/using IMDB search functions. Totally cheating, you dirty cheaters.

I'm losing the names but giving a vague description of who says what.

1. Young woman: What the fuck you staring at?
Man: Apparently, the pleasure is all mine.

2. This is called farming! You kids are gonna grow all kinds of plants! Vegetable plants, pizza plants. (Wall-e) liadlaith

3. Wakey wakey, eggs and bacey. (Kill Bill 2) (We argued over the spelling of "bacey/bakey". It means bacon, anyway.) invader_kitty

4. I hid under your porch because I love you. (Up) bamboo_gnome

5. Big Dude: Hey Myers, you're a talker. What's a good word, a solid word for "need"? 
Not Particularly As Big Man: Well, "need" is a good, solid word.
Big Dude: Nah. Too needy.

6. Are you a Mexi-CAN or a Mexi-CAN'T? (Once Upon a Time in Mexico) invader_kitty

7. SCRUBBERS!

8. King illegal forest to pig wild kill in it a is! (Robin Hood, Men in Tights) bitspike

9.  My mother got married in pants. (But I'm a Cheerleader) liadlaith

10. Home brew my arse! Get that shit down to forensics.

11. Boys, set the terror level at code brown, 'cause I need to change my pants. (I also like from this same movie: "Don't think of it as prison. Think of it as a hotel that you can never leave, 'cause it's locked from the outside.")

12. Man #1: Everything was fine with our system until the power grid was shut off by dickless here.
Man #2: They caused an explosion!
Man #3: Is this true?
Awesome Man: Yes it's true. This man has no dick. (Ghostbusters) bitspike

13. (Sorry, this is pretty offensive, but oh it made me laugh.)
Gormless boy #1: How were Katie Holmes' tits?
Gormless boy #2: You know the Holocaust?
Gormless boy #1: Yeah?
Gormless boy #2: Picture the opposite of that.

14. I am a leaf on the wind - watch how I soar. T_T (Serenity) liadlaith

15. But, Mrs. Mulwray, I goddamn near lost my nose. And I like it. I like breathing through it. And I still think you're hiding something. (Chinatown) infloresence

We ended up watching #7 while I composed this. I actually wanted to put a different line from #7 in, but it's not as funny as I remember, bah.

Where were you brought up?

I love my new job. My coworkers are nice, the customers are mostly cool (apart from the one who called up today and said, "I just checked your website and it says you don't have this book, so, do you have this book?") and now I work in a cultural landmark. But then something happened yesterday as I went to the bathroom that made me doubt that this change was the right decision.

Someone had changed the toilet paper...and made it roll over and not under.

I KNOW. How am I to be expected to work under such circumstances? It is a FARCE. So, to continue with the theme of classy polls, vote now. It's about time for me to trim my friends list anyway.

Which way do you have your toilet paper roll?