Fast food ads amuse me

No, seriously. We've been having a blissful Love Den-based 4-day weekend which has, invariably, included a few hours plonked in from of the idiot box. I don't tend to consume much teev during the week, so it's been interesting to reconnect.

One thing which has caught my fancy has been the tone and text of fast food ads. About a year ago, I personally made a conscious effort to remove fast food from my diet (as part of the overall Get Fit Ya Fat Bastard Before You Become a Typical Old Fat Bastard plan... also involved swapping the pack-a-day fags for gym membership and a new bike). Watching fast food ads has provided me with much mirth, as they no longer hold the mouth-drool factor which clouded their efficacy previously.

Working for a major supplier of fresh food ingredients to most of these companies, it's been interesting to watch from the inside the transformation of their predominantly lard-arse fair, through the pseudo-healthy options, to out-and-out Heart Foundation tick territory. And now they seem to be back full circle: and for KFC at least, they seem pretty effin proud of the double-time march back into meal options dripping in saturated fats, caked in salt and dipped in sugar. (I can't find the actual advert, but here's a little bit on the whole campaign to rid the world of Tower Burger-less angst. No, seriously. There was even a petition... I'm. Not. Makin. This. Up.)

Going in another direction entirely, both Maccas and HJs are trying to re-invent themselves as "sophisticated". First it was the bullshit me-first campaigns (and the entire promise in general) of the bullshit Angus burgers. But this little gem has me all giggly... the key line - "ahh, garlic mayo. Mmmm" - pretty much brands its target market as gruff buffoons with little to no cuisine education.

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Reflections Of A Sound

The Easter weekend has almost evaporated, and as I sit on the "nearly back at work" side of the scale and look back, I can honestly say I loved every second of its lazy goodness.

Just sitting at home, soaking up the Love Den's wonderfully welcoming embrace as the slow, lazy and overcast days rolled by was sort of cathartic, in a way. I have even managed to sleep in every morning, which is pretty rare in my world (thanks mainly to the construction worker's union remaining strong and ensuring NO work was being done around my home this weekend... it's easy to forget how quiet it can actually be on Sandgate Road sometimes). Hanging out with the Tiger was bliss, too. Our lives have been slowly circling away from each other's in the past few weeks as she focusses on her study, and I find most of my evenings wrapped up in either the gym or the gathering steam of the jamming sessions.

Late this afternoon, however, in the usual innocence of the Tiger's curious ways, I was slapped in the face by where my life had come in the past few years. Researching places to stay down the Gold Coast next weekend for a friend's 50th birthday party, we clicked on to Google Maps. As usual, we get side-tracked and the Tiger takes us on a Streetview tour of Albion... a tour back in time, as it seems.

Google isn't that keen on new-ness, it seems. A cursory glance around streetview shows the pics in my little neck of suburbia were taken about 2 years ago. The office block/restaurant across the road was nothing more than a lone cement slab standing as an omen to its future emptiness (the place is still not fully tenanted!). The curtain shop next door was still the curtain shop (it's now empty); the laundromat across the lane was still the laundromat (before it was turned into the mysterious upholstery shop which never seems to open). Heading down the lane is when you get the most stark view of where this corner of Brisbane has come from in such a short time. On the screen, the corner house was still there: it's now 2-story a construction site, complete with a high-level crane and countless to-ing and fro-ing from very early in the morning 6 days a week. A little further down the road, and the streetview single storey brick workshop is still there and in business. Today, it's a 6-storey concrete slab monstrosity which has topped out and add to Albion's big grey box skyline. Across the road, and the old mill is still completely intact (although, the hoardings are up advertising its future): today, it's nothing more than the old brick mill building, the iconic blue and white silo and a motley collection of weeds slowly taking over the site.

It got me thinking, naturally, of where I'd traveled in the same space of time. Sure, 2 or so years can fly by without you noticing it, but when you pack as much into those years as you can, 2 or so years ago can seem like a lifetime ago. And it also gives you a bit of a kick up the bum to get on your way to filling at least the next 2 years with as much fun, excitement, joy and love as the past 2 or so have been.

And while it's easy to get dismayed as you see the heart of your sweet suburb get ripped out from around you (and possibly even swallow your home), it can also be the necessary siren-song for the end of an era and the beginning of another. I'm rapidly turning this into a positive, as I look at the uncertainty of both my professional and personal worlds, and see it as nothing but a great thing: I know I'll land on my feet... I'm just pretty darned anxious to see exactly where those feet will end up.

One of those funks

Commenting over at a friend's blog just now made me realise something - I've been a little bit out of the blogging loop. And I promised this one would not become another of those started, not continued numbers. Plus, I should really get back into the rhythm of writing again.

It's not that I haven't had much to talk about. In fact, life's pretty 'interesting' right now. And my head is teaming with a swirling soup of fantastic ideas which may simply be blog stories in the future, but may also be the seedlings of something larger.



I've completely changed my way of living in the past couple of months. Part of this whole 30s/looking after myself/being healthy thing which began about 10 months ago with giving up smoking. I've joined a gym (and still regularly attend!), I've had some personal training and am keeping a food diary. I have no burning need to lose heaps of weight (although some would be nice), but I do have this strong internal feeling that I haven't really been all that healthy for the past 30 or so years, and it's time to turn that around.

That in itself is pretty monumental. By nature I'm a fairly sedentary creature, so being fit and active is a 180-degree turn. But that hasn't been the be-all and end-all of my activity lately. There's an edgy feeling around my workplace at the moment, with whispers and rumours flying everywhere. Suffice to say, with 5 years under my belt at this workplace, I'm a little excited and a little apprehensive about what the future may hold in that regard.

Add to that a renewed musical activity, which is keeping me busy at least 2 nights a week. Nothing too ambitious or thrilling - just a loose collective of 4 mates with a semi-decent grasp of their instruments getting together to belt out a few numbers after work and on weekends. It's been good to get that creative outlet up and running again.

It's been a pretty cool couple of months, actually. A sort of rediscovery of myself in a way. For the past couple of years, my life's focus has been on the complicated and time-consuming elements of conducting a long-distance relationship, then the visa hassles, then the wedding drama and then just settling into coupledom life (can't believe our first wedding anniversary is this Monday!). It's been really enlightening to spend the past few weeks turning a little bit inward again and finding the joy and passion with those purely "me" things again.

And now tapping back into that writing vein... wonder what this will bring. Hopefully not a heap of boring diary entries like this one. But thanks for indulging if you got this far.

Right now, I'm intrigued by shuffle on my iPod. It's really loving Alex Lloyd tonight. Strange.