Ouch!!!

it's Xmas, I'm stressed. Furry lost his job, money's tight.. pretty much typical Xmas cheer going on in the House of Fur and Purple Love. We're off to Chez Fur on Xmas night, so let me take this opportunity to thank all of you for your support over the past 12 months, and wish you all the merriest of festivus's, however it is that you celebrate.

Anyhoo.. with all of the above going on, I do tend to cut corners... too much to do and too little time. You know the scenario?? I know the knife is blunt, but I am too busy to take that extra 5 mins to sharpen it... that sort of thing. So the other night, my unemployed bum of a husband (he secretly loves it when I call him that!) was cooking me dinner. I must admit, this coming home to a clean house, and dinner already prepped is rather beguiling. I could do this whole house-husband thing, if it weren't for the fact I'm a Nurse and earn crap money.

But walking through the door, yelling "Hi honey, I'm home", to be greeted with a glass of wine and moreish smells from the kitchen..... yeah, I could totally get used to it.

Anyway, I digress... the other night Furry was cooking steak and salad. And we had about a zillion things to do (last minute pressie buying, wrapping, packing).. so in a fit of pique, I muscled my way into the kitchen to hurry things along.

Now... I have a pan. A very sexy pan. It is my favouritest pan in the whole world. It is made by a company called "Chef's Toolbox".. My sexy pan has this name, chef's toolbox, embossed on its handles.

Now, Furry had been frying steak in this pan. The Malliard reaction evidence was there in front of me. But what do you suppose my thought process might have been??

Newp. Whatever you're thinking, you're wrong.

My mind said "Of for F's sake, hurry up, we've got too much to do to be stuffing around with letting the bloody steak rest.. here... let me."

And with that I grabbed the pan.

By the handle.

Which had been frying steak.

And proceeded to sear my thumb to aforementioned handle.

Which, if you've been concentrating, is embossed.

With words.

Yes, dear reader, I am now the proud owner of a fetching BRAND on the ball of my thumb. Clearly, in the perfect world, the word "tool" would be permanently etched. Given that that's exactly the word used to describe someone who grabs a hot frypan handle without a mitt. It would be the Universe's way of permanently reminding me of my folly.

But nooooo....

I get "oolbo".. or when you turn said thumb around to look at it, "odloo"

I hope it's not permanent. "tool" I could have lived with. But "odloo"?

**heavy sigh**

I'm going to warn you, that a few lines further down is a picture. Close this post now, if you have a weak stomach.

I JUST GOT BANNED FROM A FOOD SITE!!!

Oh my giddy Aunt!!!

I am sitting here, literally PISSING my pants with laughter!!!!

A few weeks ago, I joined Taste.com, a collection of on-line food mags and a forum. I was pretty disappointed at how slow the forums moved, being used to Chowhound but hey.. it was Aussie and the members there were great!!!

So, to my crime... **insert suitably dark and minor keyed muzak**

I answered a post and described how my Asian grocer beamed with joy and greeted me, every time I walked into his establishment...

And subsequently get this email:

Dear Ella,

We have received a complaint in reference to your recent post on the Taste.com.au forum, under the “I love my Asian Grocer” thread, about your description of what your Asian grocer says to you. I have edited this post to tone down the offensive portrayal of the grocer. I did feel you could be a little more culturally sensitive in the way you reported what your grocer says, and not play up to stereotypes. I hope you can understand but we wish to encourage a community that is welcoming to all and that doesn’t make fun of someone language ability or accent.

I have reviewed your other posts, and also found references to “over-wogging” and “couldn’t be fagged”, which are also likely to offend. If I could please ask you be mindful of this type of colourful language use in the future.

Sincerely,

Anthony Peet

Producer

Can you believe it!!! I hope they never link to Furry's blog, hell, the'd have to put out a farking CONTRACT on me, just for being married to him!!!

I sneakily suspected I had stumbled on a bastion of famous aussie Political Correctness Gone Hysterical, when in an early post, I referred to "food porn" and in the body of the post I got "food ****"

Anyhoo.. that was my crime... but my hanging offence was this...

What the idiot admins over at Taste don't realise, is that I run a phpBB board, so I know EXACTLY what goes on behind the scenes, and how a moderator can follow members around.

Bear with me, I'm getting to the hanging offence

Well.. after the email, I decided to no longer be a member of such a ridiculous site, and I logged in and began to remove all 87 of my posts. Stupidly, who ever set the board used the incorrect HTML tags for editing posts, so I had to physically return to all my posts and edit them individually. All I left in place of my previous post was :

"ed".

I nearly busted a phoofer valve laughing, when about 10 mins into my editing, my post count started to drop!!! Some idiot mod/admin was following around behind me, deleting all my ed'd posts!! (Can't let the natives know that nasty things are afoot in the land of pretty flowers and singing birds, where every day is Spring and ladies don't say FUCK!)

I could actually HEAR the scurry of their tiny, ratty feet as they followed me around the cyberavenues of their precious, politically correct little corner of The Web, deleting my insidious and controversial "ed"'s!!!

So I got a bit snippy. I would have been happy with just deleting all my posts (some of which had personal info in them) and leaving then to their happy little place full of magical pixie horses and ladies who drink tea and don't swear, riiiiiiight up until then.

So I popped into my original introduction post, deleted my original post and put the following:

"Those of you with 1/2 a brain and a sense of humour know where to find me"

Well, bugger me backwards with a spoon, if not 2 mins later I was banned!!!

Can you IMAGINE the flurry of smelling salts that was going on in THEIR admin forum... the pm's, the swooning!!!! I swear I am almost aching with the laughing I have been doing. Can you imagine if they saw some of my posts at The Tav?? or at Chowhound!! (where I also described how a Sri Lankan woman used to talk to me, and my post was met with resounding applause!!!)

Pity tho, there were some wonderful women over there.... those with 1/2 a brain and a sense of humour!!!