>Today is the auspicious occasion of this beautiful creature’s birthday.

Get over to her place and give it up. She deserves the birthday love.

Hapy birthday beautiful. I love you
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

>ms. mac has passed me the stick to do a meme about music and in my never ending quest to emulate her blog related excellence, I present the result to you both.

1. Total volume of music files on my computer? For ms. mac’s benefit, I will just go to the folder with my music in it and right-click it. Then the properties tab will tell me that I have 6.47 GB (6’956’015’987 bytes). The other 20GB are on the desktop PC with ms. mac.
2. The last CD I bought was? Robbie Williams Greatest Hits for ms. mac’s Christmas present.
3. Song playing right now? I am listening to the dulcet tones of Happy Birthday being sung to ms. mac by me over the magic of the internet. It apears that MSN Messenger has decided to make it so that I can hear everything that I say a second after I say it. I am the worst singer in the world, so music is in a bad way for me right now. Hopefully, I’ll make it better on the weekend with the impending purchase of some Apple products.
4. Five songs I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me (in no particular order)
   
   • Black and White Town by The Doves. Geat band and this song just gets played over and over again. The song gives me shivers. For some reason I feel like I identify with this and I don’t see how, since I come from suburban Sydney. We had a swimming pool for fucks sake!
   • Time by Pink Floyd. When ms. mac and I first met, we were waiting for a taxi at 3am and someone in a flat near the taxi rank was playing this song. It was so loud, so clear and strong. This is an absolute fave. Hearing it reminds me of the beginning of the best and most constant thing in my life – my best friend and one true love.
   • Flame Trees by Cold Chisel. This is a song from the end of their career and is much more ballady than the classics. It just gets right in my head. Barnesey never sounded better than this. A renowned screamer, really singing his heart out.
   • Mr. Damage by The Angels. This band defined the aussie rock ‘n’ roll side of my youth. This song is about 2.5 minutes of pure energy. There isn’t a better song to drive as fast as your Kingswood will go. I love these guys and have the lot on vinyl. Would fork over any amount of dough for the CDs.
   • Temptation by New Order. This is my favourite song of all time and when I hear it, I just shut out everything else around me. This is the song that defines the import and British music culture side of my youth. At my school, if you liked this kind of music, the AC/DC crowd needed to know if you were some kind of poofter or something. The path that New Order leads me on could consume the rest of the blogosphere so let’s finish with these guys. And they’re still going. It’s never gonna be just five songs or five movies or five books or five…
5. I am going to pass the stick to gomad. He is a music buff from hell. I’d pass it to ms. mac but she passed it to me. You can read hers here.

—End transmission—

>Dear Sir,

On the evening of the 18th of May I experienced what could only be described as a luggage related laundry emergency. 750 ml of St Anne’s Magenta red wine decided that it would prefer to be outside of the bottle rather than in (doubtless helped by the friendly and efficient baggage handlers of QANTAS). This resulted in the disaster you see below:

After two washes with the hotel laundry powder, I was about ready to throw three shirts and a pair of trousers in the bin. But help came from an unlikely source. It turns out that a foxy little Hausfrau from Switzerland had a solution. She advised me to procure some Napisan. This little gem usually cleans anything, but I decided to go for one of the new Oxy action products. Your offering to the market:

saved the day. I followed the directions (albeit roughly – there’s half a tub of your product in the bath at my hotel. The resulting science experiment had me gagging:

but the results, as can be plainly seen, are nothing short of amazing.

In conclusion, I love you Mr. Clorox, you’ve saved me from an unpleasant trip to the Macquarie Centre on Saturday to buy new shirts for my trip to Malaysia.

mr. mac Help for travelling businessmen rating: 1000/10

>I’m blogging from a meeting. I’m on the other side of the world from home and am making a post in the middle of the meetig. It is a little bit unprofessional I admit, but we are in a break so I’m cool – back off!

For fun, here is the result of leaving the bottles of red wine in your luggage instead of transferring it to your carry-on bag.

If the Napisan doesn’t work, there’s gonna be trouble!!!

—End transmision—

>Just a quick post before I check out of my hotel. Yes, that’s right, I am now officially a Bloggie. This prestigious and elite club of blogging superstars has accepted me into their folds and now I can proudly claim to be part of a gang.

Wanna join? Get yourself over to WS! and start blogging the way God intended.

>In recent developments at chateau mac, ms. mac and I have been playing a new game. She sits on her lounge, mouth agape whilst I sit on my lounge and shoot into her mouth. Now, before you are;

1. impressed with my range and aim and,
2. disturbed by the picture I’ve painted,

you should realise that I’m talking about firing Choco Locos* into her mouth like she is a dart board. The funny thing is that since she is such a glutton for these delicious malteser-like treats, she will put up with the forceful pelting required to ensure shooting accuracy.

As she shovelled another malted milk ball into her mouth she remarked “it’s like being pelted with grape shot. Try again!”

*Choco Locos are delicious little malteser substitutes from the Migros Supermarkt

>..am I? *

Today, Ewan decide he wanted to go for a ride on his interim bike.

He is supposed to be getting a new “gear bike” (mountain bike) for his birthday at the end of the month. Till then he has been riding Patrick’s Mongoose. Anyhoo, it turns out he wanted a big ride. We didn’t see him for a few hours, and it was starting to rain, yet still we weren’t worried. That is until we got a phone call from some people about 15km(!!!) away saying that they had Ewan and he was a little bit (a little bit!?!?!?) lost.

They kindly brought him back to our place and then stayed for a coffee. All very cosy and civilised except that they spoke no english. Naturally, our fabulous adaptability came to the fore and we were able to hold up our end of the conversation in german without too many difficulties.

To cope with Ewan’s trauma, I offered to help him to let off his smoke bombs** that he bought from the cool shop with his pocket money.

These are the offending articles.

I wish I could regale you with humorous anecdotes of woe and misery. Alas, we didn’t end up blowing off any appendages (oo-er) and none of us received any degree burns. What a boring activity. I think that next time we need something more dangerous / interesting to blow up.

No sooner had we let off two of them, then the rain started – again – and we had to come in and get ready for tea. How bloody mundane!!!

In retaliation(?), a couple of the local catholics who thought we were announcing the new Bäretswil pope. They sent out their own smoke announcing that they too had elected their own papal representative. The upshot is that there is a town meeting on the second Tuesday of the month to allow for a definitive Pontiff to be chosen.

*Of course I’m not. It’s a well known fact that ms. mac is the worst parent ever.
**What’s the scoop with selling incendiaries to 7 year olds? I swear I will never understand this place!

>…and you can go and get fucked!!!

Two hours on the most triumphant photo post ever and you screwed me, not once but twice. The second time I was one sentence from the end.

Fuck you, you wanker!

>As you may be aware, ms. mac and I like to have a little something we call “Face Time” before we turn the lights off at night for sleeping. The opportunity to say things and catch up with each other basking in the afterglow is fun and kinda nice.

One of the things about Face Time that is so good is that often we end up laughling like drains about something one of us has said. It is all very private and often times just little couple-y injokes.

Here is the transcript of something from last night:

mr. mac: “Do you know how much General Peter Cosgrove (Chief of the Australian Defence Force) gets paid?”

The answer is ca. A$420,000 – this is important because it gives you the proper context in which to view ms. mac’s answer. As a navy Lieutenant, I was earning A$45,000.

ms. mac: “$3.2 million bucks!”

mr. mac: “He is the boss of the ADF, not fucking Elvis!!!”

ms. mac: On hearing the actual amount was not the “Graceland” paypacket – “Fuckin’ hell that’s almost 10 times more than what you were getting!!”

So you see, we might start out looking at it from different angles, but we always get there in the end.

—End transmission—

>I was reading The Scotsman online this morning and saw this article related to the killing in Nairn of Alistair Wilson. A terrible crime to be sure, but what struck me as interesting, if not a little bit troubling is the fact that the detectives investigating the murder have released details of the murder weapon. A 1920s East German pistol.

What is there to observe I hear you ask? How about the fact that there was no such place as East Germany in the 1920s! It was proclaimed in East Berlin on October 7, 1949 and was fully sovereign from 1954 till the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1990.

Sorry to be pedantic, but in my opinion, this is just plain silly. Perhaps naively, I expected that the police would be a bit smarter than that. If their grasp of geography and history is so tenuous, then maybe they aren’t the best people to head up a major criminal investigation and might not even be able to find Nairn when the time comes to interview people.

As I said, just an observation…

—End transmission—