I went bra shopping last week. I forgot how much I hate bra shopping.

Do not. I repeat. Do not go bra shopping in "boutique" (spew!) shops in places such as Chapel Street and Toorak Road unless you are suicidal and want something to tip you over the edge.

I was "assisted" by a scrawny bag of bones that looked at me like I was something from outer space to be studied and tested.

The anomaly? Er...I have breasts.

And shopping in a bra shop. WHAT NEXT?!?!?!

Her blank blue eyes appraised me coldly. "Well...um. We can perhaps do a fitting for you"

Her saccharine-drenched tones cut through me like glass.

No bloody thank you. I do not want to be subjected to prodding and poking by a Paris Hilton-esque greyhound-shaped, solarium-toughened, over-attentive Y-gen.

She proceeded to hand me the most hideous bras I have ever seen in sizes I had never heard of. Baffled, I checked the bra I was wearing and concluded that the shop must have moved up all the sizes to make people freak out and go on the Atkins diet.

The bra that she handed me looked like a suit of armour. Bright purple with flowers on it.

Seriously. You could have used it for a tent.

The bras in styles that I kind-of liked seemed to be made for 10 year old boys, Paris Hilton and Olive Oyl.

Not that there's anything wrong with small breasts, but if you look more like this:



than this:



then you will probably have a problem finding anything decent in these shops.

I came to the conclusion that the the way to buy bras is to do it the old-fashioned way. Go to the lingerie section at Myer and speak to the nice old ladies in the fitting department.

I think it's much more reassuring to be measured by somebody who has a lot of experience in the quantum physics that is bra fitting.

Personally, I have always liked the Elle Macpherson range. It has some great styles that are beautiful and well designed.

Bendon seems to have a handle on what works and looks good.


And if you get a fitting by someone who knows what they are doing, you can't go wrong.

Technorati Tags: bras lingerie fitting Paris+Hilton Salma+Hayek Olive+Oyl Elle+Macpherson Bendon Myer Chapel+St

Ahhh. It's beautiful, I thought. Great for recording vocals, guitar etc.
RRP $120 approx

I thought it would be simple to use as my last computer worked ok with a basic crap sound card.

The brilliant Shure SM58 (RRP$290) is the microphone used for recording into the computer.

However...the microphone doesn't show any signal when plugged into the "Microphone" jack and when it is plugged into the "Line In" jack I need to scream loudly to get any level registering.

Aargh!!

The Frequency response of the Shure SM58: 50 to 15,000 Hz so perhaps it isn't compatible with the sound card?!?!?!

Perhaps I should plug in my old Toyoda microphone ($17.50) and see if that works. But that sort of defeats the purpose as the Shure SM58 is a quality microphone and the Toyoda works but isn't really ideal.

Any comments would be very much appreciated.

Help!!

Technorati Tags: audigy+4 creative sound+blaster shure+sm58 computer+recording sound+card

Has this ever happened to you?



You put the pan on the stove and then it's all so confusing. When do you put the food in?
How hot does it have to be?

Apparently Jamie Oliver has solved all our problems.

It's called the "T-Fal Thermo Spot"

It's quite amazing. There's this dot, see? And then the dot changes colour when it's time
to put in the dull grey Atlantic salmon that has been fed red or orange dye in the last week of its miserable life swimming in its own filth.

But I digress.

Ok, the game's up. It's not a good invention.

It's designed to dumb down the general population SOOOOOOO much that we need some
stupid dot to tell us when a pan is hot.

A pan is hot when it's hot.

If you don't know that, then you shouldn't be cooking in the first place.

I previously had some crappy aluminium pots and they were irritating - burning, smoking,
and generally being a nuisance.

That all changed when I found a Baccarat 8Lt dutch oven.



RRP approx $80 - $100

They are solid as anything and made from stainless steel and a very thick copper base. The heat conducts so brilliantly that you can cook a large volume of food without stirring every 2 seconds. It doesn't tend to burn on and it holds its heat so well that you can turn the heat off and leave the pot on the stove and the next morning the pot will still be warm.

Because the pot is so large you can cook a huge amount and freeze for nights when you can't be bothered cooking.

Brilliant!!

Technorati Tags: drawings baccarat cookware dutch+oven pots pans Jamie+Oliver t-fal thermo+spot

*Yawn*

You'd think they'd get tired of doing this but I suppose as long as people keep responding, these scumbags will keep sending them.

This arrived in my inbox this morning and is the latest one to look out for:



Can you believe this one? "Please add our address-shown in the "From" line above-to your electronic address book to make sure that important account messages don't get blocked by a SPAM filter."

Er...it gets blocked by the spam filter because...it is SPAM!!!

Good grief.

Think about it in terms of vampires. You add them to your address book, you are inviting them
in and you will be needing a lot of iron tablets.

Here are the telltale signs:

The email address is support@paypal-25.com which is a tad suspicious.

The email came through on the email address that is NOT registered with PayPal. That's a dead
giveaway.

If you are ever unsure about the origin of an email, close it. Go into another window and login to www.paypal.com and check your account.

Whatever you do, please don't click on any links in the email. That is what they want you to do.

And you don't want to make a spammer happy.

I am so tired of spammers trying to unnerve people by saying "your account has received
unauthorised access....blah blah blah" they feed on fear, insecurity and ignorance.

As I said in a previous post, they are all going to hell. And I hope they get LOTS of spam,
telemarketers and junk mail when they get there.

Technorati Tags: paypal spam fake+email junk+mail scam

I love E.T.

Anyone who didn't cry in the bit where Elliot finds E.T. dying has a cold, black heart.

Here are some E.T. goodies:



E.T. Doll

This is the cutest thing ever. My friend had one of these on school camp when we were little munchkins. She cried for a week because she lost her E.T. doll at the beach. Sometimes it's good to revive those things you liked when you were a kid.



E.T. Yo-Yo

Do you even remember these? No PS2 here!! Yep, that's right. Entertainment without electricity. It used to happen a lot more. Next thing we know we're all going to have to plug a cord into our frontal lobes so we can lower our intelligence by watching Big Brother. Big Brother? Does anyone get the 1984 reference or do they just think about what Mandy and Brad are doing in the shower? I think it's dangerous to raise a generation of people into thinking that invasion of privacy and loss of dignity and humanity is the way to operate.

But I digress.




E.T. & Me Badge

Speaking of munchkins, how sweet is Drew Barrymore in this?

*sigh*

I'm off to dig out my rollerskates and listen to my old Madonna tapes.

Technorati Tags: E.T. extra+terrestrial yo-yo Drew+Barrymore