Robyn’s Secret Passage

It’s been happening for about as long as I’ve had a website. People search for something and their search engine leads them to a page on my website. They don’t stop and read it and realise that just because someone writes about, say, Berocca on their website, doesn’t mean that they are affiliated with Roche and can hook you up with free Berocca. Similarly someone who writes about the Incredible Film Fest can’t hook you up with free Jackass movie tickets. And a review of a fashion parade doesn’t make the author the organiser of a fashion parade.

And it still continues. Today I received an email from Brad from Canada. He wrote:

Hi,
My gal and I are looking for a very sexual, neat experience in Thailand including a villa, massage and good food???
Any ideas?
brad

Oh, Brad. Poor Brad. Perhaps he searched for “experience with a masseuse in Thailand” and didn’t notice that the full sentence on this page was, “Dennis: “I had a bad experience with a masseuse in Thailand” and was just that one line with no context at all (and the Dennis in question hasn’t been to Thailand, but I can’t be sure about bad masseuse experiences).

But I decided to be as helpful as I could, so this was my reply to Brad from Canada.

Hi

I’ve spent a total of 12 hours in Thailand. It was a stop-over between London and Auckland. Most of the time I spent sleeping, but I did have a cup of coffee at the Bangkok airport café, and it was pretty good.

I hope this helps.

Robyn

Today at the mall:

1. I saw Che Fu in the foodcourt. He was with his wife/girlfriend/paaartnaaa and two kids. He brought them over a tray stacked full of McDonald’s. It reminded me of when I was a girl and going to McDonald’s was the ultimate treat. Then I grew up and realised that McDonald’s wasn’t particularly appealing any more because a) it’s not such a treat if I can get it whenever I like, and b) it doesn’t work well as a satisfying meal.

2. In the supermarket I was perusing the cans of flavoured tuna. Amid the little 95 gram lemon pepper tuna and sundried tomato tuna I saw a can of fancy seafood delight. Upon closer inspection I discovered that the fancy seafood delight was a can of gourmet cat food that had somehow been snuck in the tuna section. It was disturbing to note that the actual cans were identical in size and features. But it was also amusing, because canned tuna has always seemed like cat food for humans.

3. I saw “Win a date with Tad Hamilton”. It was nice, but I kept feeling that all the characters apart from Tad Hamilton were miscast. Begone, attractive blonde chick and attractive boy-next-door! Go back to Hollywood!

4. My car failed its warrant of fitness again. Boring. This time it’s the front left tyre. It doesn’t have enough tread, apparently. Hey, it’s just as well I’ve started a new job that pays $2 more than the dole so that I can go and buy a new tyre. The mechanic attempted to claim that my battery was rooted because he had trouble starting my car. I don’t know what he was doing, because I’ve never had trouble starting it (touch wood, etc), and indeed it started up perfectly after I got the car back.

5. Speaking of the dole, it’s fun ringing up Work and Income to report my weekly earnings. Two things always happen. 1. The call centre personal always mispronounces my case manager’s name. It’s Ros (pronounced Roz), but it either gets said Rose or Ross. 2. The call centre person asks me what my job is and gets all excited when they hear I’m working in the exciting, fast-paced world of television, and even more excited when I say I’m a captioning editor. I let them be excited and don’t mention stuff like having to figure out if Reagan’s would-be assassin was Mr Hinkley or Hinkly or Hincklee or Heinghckleigh-Amber (sorry, I was slipping into teenage mother baby-naming mode).

My iPod is scratched and battered. I’ve dropped it more than a few times and I’ve lost the two plug covers. But my iPod brings me joy and happiness almost every day. I feel sorry for all the people who got one at Christmas, loaded it up with their mp3 collection, and have barely touched it since.

Because as well as the joy of listening to your favourite tunes (or Michael Buble), you can do silly stuff like the iPod Sonnet. It’s a sonnet - well, it’s a 14 line poem, ok? I put my iPod on random and wrote down the first line of the first song, then the second line of the second song, and so on, and this masterpiece was the result:

iPod Sonnet

Acid tooth, it’s got nothing to do with you.
It pays my way and it corrodes my soul.
I wanna take you to a gay bar.
Instead of feeling the love you break it all down into section.
Gotta get outta the way.
Sent to the earth to educate the fool.
Jeudi c’est mules pour les garçons.
I am the rain, I am the new year, I am the sun.
A broth of roots and charms.
This revolution has just begun.
So here’s a ho-kay for your whole ho crew.
But you can’t switch off my loving, can’t switch off the sun.
I’ve got a freaky secret, everybody say.
Snapped out.

Three quick movie reviews

1. Kill Bill: Volume 2.
It continues on from Volume 1 and nicely concludes the adventures of The Bride. Curiously, there’s a bit of a surprise ending, which changes The Brides motivation for killing Bill from revenge to… well, I don’t want to give it away. And it was also good that the movie didn’t end with a brainless fight sequence, but rather than a battle of wills. I want to see both films together now.

2. Starsky and Hutch.
The best and worst thing about this film was the not-so-subtle comedic homoerotic undercurrent between Starsky and Hutch. As funny as it was, all that sexual tension is just going to lead to teenage girls and bored housewives writing bad Owen Wilson/Ben Stiller slash fiction. Oh crap, a quick google reveals that this nightmare has already happened.

3. Haunted Mansion
I had a couple of hours to fill in today, and this was the only film on at the right time. Unlike “Pirates of the Caribbean”, it’s not as much fun as the Disneyland ride that inspired it, but it wasn’t bad. Nothing surprising happened, but it looked really good and was a decent enough use of 90 minutes of so.

I ended up working today which means I can take Monday off and go to the NZ Idol results party that Idolblog.com are co-hosting (yay!). I was in cafe at work, looking at the sandwich chiller when I sensed someone standing near me who also wanted to look in that chiller. I moved out of the way and smiled to indicate that, like, everything was cool, man. I looked up and doing a courtesy smile back was a newsreader. I had prevent myself from laughing out loud because last night I’d seen him say “designer vaginas” on a news promo, and had laughed then.

I ended up getting a tuna, tomato and cucumber roll. I also expertly timed my dinner break so that I could watch “What not to wear”.

I woke up this morning to discover that my bathroom ceiling was dripping. Sometimes it drips with condensation after I have a shower, but this dripping was different. I discovered a small crack in the ceiling and saw water trickle across from that and drip down. Fortunately it’s dripping directly above the bath. Unfortunately the ceiling now has a distinct sag in part of it.

This is what happens when you live in a building with character. It ends up giving you character too.

Excuse me while I phone my landlord.