An email from President Obama

This morning, as I do every morning, I sat at my desk, opened my email and waited to see what tripe flowed into my inbox.

I was expecting the usual of course. A chance to buy some alarming looking apparatus to improve my love life. An invitation to view photos of some ‘designer watches’ or my future mail order bride. Perhaps a heart wrenching story that I had to pass onto 10 of my closest friends within 5 seconds, or risk being struck by a falling meteorite the moment I set foot outside my front door. Even an email from a long lost Nigerian relative, letting me know that I was but only a set of bank details away from inheriting my rightful fortune.

Any of these would have been right about the norm. But this morning threw up something a little bit unexpected.

An email from the most powerful man on the planet – President Barack Obama himself.

Yes, I did do a little bit of a double take I have to say, especially when I realised the email address was legit and he wasn’t trying to sell me little blue pills – with worldwide shipping and a discount programme.

Obviously I know the President didn’t actually sent it from his own Blackberry, as he wondered through the hallowed halls of the White House. And yes, I accept that it wasn’t written specifically to me, but hey, his name is in my inbox and that’s good enough for me.

So why did I deserve the honour? Probably something to do with the email I sent him, asking what he and his administration intended to do about the growing problem of childhood obesity. A problem which, I believe, stems in part from the many fast food companies who market their products directly at the young.

The companies who use cheap plastic toys as a lure, in order to put a colourful box full of salt, sugar and trans fats in the hands of hungry young children. The sort of companies who are, for all intents and purposes, aiding and abetting those parents who slowly murder their kids everyday with an unhealthy diet.

Hopefully such an intelligent and forward thinking man, with 2 young daughters of his own, will acknowledge the issue and give it the attention that it deserves.

And now that The President is in my address book, I will certainly be keeping an eye on any new health care reforms he passes, and hope that at some point he finds a way to put some form of media gagging order on those who profit off the greed and ignorance of the young.

I’ll give him 6 months, and if I don’t see anything happening, I guess I’ll be forced to drop him another line..

For those who might be thinking that I imagined my email, here it is.

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When BIG really isn’t beautiful

Some people might have thought that my previous post about parents murdering their kids was a little extreme. And then a story popped up on the world news that backed up everything I had said.

It’s about Leanne Salt. A 24 year old girl who is happily feeding her 8 month old triplets towards a life full of medical problems, and all but giving them a helping hand into an early grave. A girl who should be locked up for the great big helpings of child abuse that she is dishing out to her kids, along side the junk food she’s filling them up on.

Despite the fact that only a moron wouldn’t know better, this 30-stone lump sees nothing wrong with how she is bringing up her triplets. Far from it. She is actually proud of the fact that her babies became card carrying members of the Happy Meal club at just 6 months old.

Refusing to acknowledge that she is doing anything wrong, she believes that because she takes the batter off their fish and chips, she is giving them a healthy diet.

And after all,  as she says, she does feed her babies vegetables every Sunday. Perhaps she believes that an onion ring and a pickled gherkin count towards their 5 a day? Or should that be their 5 (at a push) a month.

Now 8 months old, these poor babies are being fed around 1,249 calories a day, with a diet consisting mainly of junk food, fish and chips, crisps and microwave meals.

Seriously? Is this woman for real?

It goes without saying that such an eating machine has zero respect for her own body, or her diminishing life expectancy, but how can she be so incredibly selfish when it comes to her kids?

And there in lies the problem. As well as being selfish, the girl is obviously plain stupid. Certifiably dumb actually. Devoid of brain cells and missing any sort of solid matter between her ears. After all, anyone who seriously believes that watching what you eat and consuming healthy foods leads to anorexia is one stitch short of a lobotomy.

Her line of reasoning? “I do worry my kids could get picked on if they get fat, but I’d tell them that big is beautiful.”

Yes, that will make them feel so much better when their mother is harpooned in the school car park by Greenpeace. Or when they get diagnosed with diabetes. Or when they drop down from a fatal heart attack as they turn 21.

Of course beauty is very much in eye of the beholder, and big can be beautiful. But there are always exceptions the rule, and this has to be one of them. I don’t know when Miss Salt last looked in a mirror, I suspect it’s been a while, but beautiful is not one of the words that immediately springs to mind.

And that brings me to the question that everyone who has heard about this girl is surely asking themselves. How in God’s name did she even snare anyone mad, brave or drunk enough to impregnate her in the first place? And when she did, presumably with the aid of chloroform, how did the the deed itself (I shudder as I write that) even take place.

Now I’m certainly no physicist, but aren’t there some laws regarding mass, volume, weight and proximity that would have made this nigh on impossible? It would be like trying to mate Dumbo with Mickey Mouse.

So taking the fact that some poor bugger did somehow manage to put 3 buns in her cavernous oven, and then wake up with a hangover from hell and run screaming from the house, how did she even know she was pregnant? Did she wake up one morning and think, that’s odd, my stomach looks slightly swollen today?

Let’s face it, she could have gestated an elephant without attracting any attention. Well apart from the fact by the 9th month she had gained a further 10 stone.

And now for the bit of the story that really makes you believe that the world has gone mad. Being that she was the fattest mother of triplets that medical science had ever clamped eyes on, it took a team of 68 people to deliver her babies, at a cost of £200,000 to the NHS. This included the operating table that had to be specially-built for her Caesarean section.

Well come on, you didn’t think that she was going to have a natural birth did you? All the crow bars in the world and a forklift truck wouldn’t make that a possibility.

Now that she is back at home with her brood and securely wedged into her 5 seater sofa, she is happy to live off benefits with no future plans to ever lift a 20 kg finger and do any work again. After all the poor girl is apparently already too busy to clean, tidy up or prepare proper meals for her children. The family only get dressed to leave the house once a week – so that they can collect her benefits.

And let’s not forget that if the governments latest  hair brained scheme takes off, then one day she’ll also he paid to walk (roll) her kids to school as well.

On the upside, Miss Salt is making some plans for their future. She has decided that she now deserves to be given her own council house, and is completely ready to face the world alone.“I know how to microwave a meal and make up instant mash, so I think we’d all manage.” Stand aside Jamie, the girl’s got your job in the bag.

And what is the shocking truth about this tale of chips and child abuse? This girl is not alone.

A recent survey by the Infant and Toddler Forum found that 29 per cent of children under the age of three ate a takeaway at least once a week, while 23 per cent eat crisps and 16 per cent drink fizzy drinks almost every day.

Damn that fairy

This past week has been something of a traumatic toothy experience for my daughter, and a scary glimpse into her dental future for me.

First she started off in the dentists chair, for what we thought would be a quick once over and out. It turned into several x-rays, and the photographic proof that she has more cavities than a rabbit warren has burrows. This news made my jaw drop. When the dentist turned to me and told me that I would have to improve her diet, my chin all but hit the floor.

As if it wasn’t bad enough that my child’s baby teeth were full of holes, I was being accused of pumping her full of Coke and Coco Pops for breakfast and filling her lunch box with pick ‘n mix. Marvelous, just marvelous. Everyone knows that asking a mother what sort of diet their child has is paramount to calling them hopeless, useless and completely irresponsible.

If I believed for even a millisecond that I was any of the above (and we’re only talking about diet control duties here, not mothering as a whole)  I guess I would have just hung my head down to meet my jaw and wished that the floor would open up and suck me on in. But I don’t believe that, so I decided to argue my case. Or rather defend myself, and say how incredibly healthy her diet actually is.

Chocolate is a treat in our house, sweets are a rarity (the last consumed were 2 jellybeans given by the doctor, go figure) and fizzy drinks are a no-go. She brushes and flosses twice a day, and resigns herself to 99% of the contents of any of her party bags going into the bin.

So short of sucking out all the sugar from her fruit, vegetables and wholegrain bread as well, I am at a loss of just how far I can go to improve her diet and stop the rest of her teeth dropping out as well.

I’m sure everyone claims the same, and the dentist probably just sits there thinking to himself  ‘Madam, you do protest to much’. But I was, to put it mildly, shocked, upset and riled up. Not at my daughter, or even really at myself, but at all those other countlesslittle Fruit Loop eating children out there. The ones boasting a perfect set of knashers, who are undoubtedly served up nothing but junk by a mum who doesn’t know her arse from her electric oven.

Seeing my stress levels increase, the dentist did try and pacify me somewhat, telling me that some kid’s teeth just can’t handle the same amount of contact with sugar. For the record, and for anyone else wondering what you are supposed to do in a situation like this, the dentist told her to start using a pea sized amount of adult toothpaste (not enough fluoride in the kids stuff when they are 7/8) and then not to rinse her mouth after. He also said to rinse her mouth out with some water after everything she eats, to brush her teeth after any treats and to steer clear of anything with any flavour.

OK, maybe he didn’t say the last, but he may as well have.

Her menu has now become as unappetising as a horses nose bag. The Sultana Bran (at 22.7% total sugar) is out and the Puffed Wheat (at 1.8%) is in. Not hard to see why Puffed Wheat is so low, it looks, tastes and bobs around on the milk like a handful of saw dust. The juice cartons have left her lunchbox, along with the ‘healthy’ fruit cereal bars and boxes of raisins (natures equivalent to candy floss).

Even the yogurt is being re-assessed for it’s high sugar content and then rationed. Quite frankly mealtimes are becoming a bloody nightmare. Still, what to do. Until her teeth are back on track and we can start again with a blank slate, I reckon it’s better to be safe than even sorrier.

It does seem that nothing on the shelves for kids these days comes without a cup or so of sugar thrown in for good measure, and this seems criminal. Cigarettes packets now host graphic images of the consequences, alcohol abuse is highlighted in hard hitting TV campaigns and even the danger of the sun is spelt in no uncertain terms, yet any company can target kids with their fat, salt and sugar laden foods, and no one seems to mind. Yes, the boxes are all labeled with food contents so a parent should know, but surely the kids ‘healthy breakfast cereals’ could at least veer a little more towards actually being healthy.

Little wonder that childhood obesity is taking over the way that it is, when these companies care more about profit, than doing their bit to try and prevent future generations becoming balls of doughy lard, with shorter life spans, diabetes and no teeth.

Anyway. Off my soapbox and on to the next dental disaster took place this afternoon.

Yesterday afternoon, with a referral in hand, we trotted off to the nearest Orthodontist. Several more costly x-rays later, and we were seated to be told even more news. The expensive sort of news. Is there any other? Apparently her lower jaw is too far back, her teeth are too far forward and she’ll need a plate to bring them all back together. OK then. So that will be another $1700.

On the bright side the plate comes in a wide variety of pretty colours, something which I am now using to try and sell the idea to my daughter. The idea that I steer clear of the whole issue of discomfort, increased saliva and the problems that she will have stringing two words together when it’s in.

That wasn’t actually the worse part of the days bad news . Oh no. Not at all. The news that really had me jumping up and down with glee, was the glimpse into her future and the joys that are still to come. The x-ray also showed crooked adult teeth making their way down, that would in time require a full brace to be glued onto her teeth, for a rather reasonable $6000. Once again it does come in a choice of colours. Train-track grey, or the more expensive and less effective clear plastic. Hmmmm. Decisions, decisions.

So was that the end of the bad news? Don’t be silly. Add to that a tooth that’s gone AWOL. That’s right a missing tooth. No, I can’t say I saw that one coming either.

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I  guess at some point the tooth fairy got the hump with us, possibly for not leaving enough under the pillow, and as revenge decided to swipe a tooth to make us pay. Literally. In the form of a no doubt ludicrously priced false tooth when the other one falls out. Have to say that if I ever catch that damn fairy she’ll be lucky to make it out of there with both her (or his) wings intact.

So was that the end of the bad news? I’d say. Don’t you think that’s enough to be going on with?

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All things IKEA

On Valentines Day this year the population of Perth sent up a collective cheer when the new IKEA (the old store was barely large enough to swing an oven mitt and matching tea towel) opened its doors to the Allen Key loving masses. It did seem rather an odd date to open, given that this shop is surely responsible for more arguments between couples than any other. God knows how many couples actually fell out over their meatballs that day and whose relationship never even made it past the lighting section. If Cupid had even been stupid enough to try and make it through the doors, he would never have stood a chance and was no doubt trampled underfoot in the stampede.

I always wonder what percentage of the homes on this planet have something in them from IKEA. Of course who’s to say there isn’t an intergalactic franchise out there somewhere, it’s not beyond the unimaginable.

I know that there isn’t a room in our house that hasn’t got something from IKEA in it. Take my office for instance. I am sitting in my IKEA cream swivel chair, at my glass ‘scripted’ IKEA desk, underneath 2 IKEA glass shelves and between 2 IKEA white book cases. That’s before I even turn around to face the set of IKEA glass topped drawers behind me, which sit underneath 3 IKEA orchid canvas prints. I hasten to add that the other rooms in the house aren’t quite so Swedish in their design and I have never had anyone come to visit and have them ask for a yellow bag and a tape measure at the door.

It’s actually quite incredible if you think that the shop, founded back in 1943 by Inggar Kamprad, a 17 year old Swedish boy  who started off by selling pens, watches, jewellery and nylon stockings, has since gone on to become the world’s largest furniture store, with 120,000 employees based in more than 29 countries, selling just under 11,000 products.

Incidentally the name IKEA is an abbreviation for “Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd” which is the initial letters of his first and last name, the farm where he grew up and the town he lived in.

Despite claiming that the reason you can never find a member of staff is so that the prices can be kept low, IKEA must surely be making more money per second than their customers can pocket the free pencils. But that said, it is unofficially the world’s largest charitable organization, so can be forgiven for mercilessly emptying out our bank accounts time after time.

I have to say I do love IKEA. There’s no where else quite like it. There’s certainly no other shop that has the power to convince me that I simply have to have something, that half an hour before I never even knew existed. Every time I go there I spot another weird and wonderful gadget designed to save me time and space. I discover a new and improved way to arrange my clothes, display my books and stack my spices and I always find a new range of crockery that’s just crying out to be bought.

It’s the sort of shop where you go with the intention of buying some bag clips and a couple of candles and then somehow find yourself coming through the checkout (or should I say slinking through, while silently praying that your credit card can take the battering) with a Billy Book book case, an assortment of glasses that you have no place to store, a single mattress, a new bathroom sink, 8 large wicker baskets that will now need filling and a ceiling light. One that comes in a box the size of a pack of cards and requires an advanced diploma in origami  to put together.

The fact that all of these flat packed and bulky items are highly unlikely to even make it into your car is neither here no there, unless of course your small 4 door hatchback has somehow  magically metamorphasised into a horsebox whilst you have been shopping. Then again, I have seen someone squeeze a single mattress into a Mini Cooper before and we once fitted an entire kitchen into our 7 seater, so the impossible it seems, can sometimes be done.

For all these reasons above I have to say that I also hate IKEA. OK, so maybe not hate. I could never hate it, I just wish that I had more resistance to the hypnotic hold that it seems to have over me once I walk underneath the blue and yellow flags.

On so many visits I have walked the entire way through the store (few people dare stray off the arrows and cut through the displays), written endless lists on multiple bits of paper and spent hours agonising over what will go where. Then I reach the warehouse and find that, surprise surprise, 10/15 items on the list are currently ‘Out of Stock’. Worse still there is no known delivery date and I am not allowed to reserve whatever it is I need when it arrives.

A classic example is when I brought the desk that I am at now. There was only 1 of the leg supports (I needed 2) left in the store. I ask you, why 1? Do they sell many tables without legs, or legs without tables? Why did someone else only buy 1 leg? It took 2 more trips to the store before the elusive leg finally appeared and my desk, which was wedged up on a bedside table, stopped wobbling.

Still can’t complain, where else allows you to kit out a whole house in around 4 hours.

That’s allowing 30 minutes to pick out the items you want from the catalogue, an hour to find them as you slowly walk behind other people ‘display shopping’ at a snails pace, another 30 minutes struggling to get the flat pack boxes off the top shelf in the ‘help yourself’ warehouse and then the final 2 hours, stuck in a queue waiting for your ‘too big to carry’ items to be wheeled out from within the belly of the IKEA beast.

Of course this estimated time doesn’t allow for the additional 3 hours that you will later spend driving back to the shop, to buy the bag clips and candles that you forgot to buy the last time. Then queue up for that all important screw that happened to be missing from the original bookcase. The one that is now in several unusual looking pieces and is scattered across your living room floor.

Arhhh, what a store. You’ve got to love the way they just make you keep coming back for more.

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Choice isn’t always a good thing

It is an accepted fact these days that our everyday decisions are now dictated to and in many ways controlled by marketing companies and the hypnotic hold they seem to have over us. Through the power of media they relentlessly bombard us, telling us how we should be living our life, what we want to look like, how we should feel, what we need to eat and when we should be rushing out and spending money we haven’t got. These marketing gurus also seem to have the ability to take an everyday mole hill of a decision for us and turn it into a mountain of dilemma.

Take this morning for example. I went out looking to buy some toothpaste and came back needing half an hour in a darkened room and a packet of Panadol. Had I known beforehand that buying a simple tube of toothpaste was going to be such a challenging lesson in choice and decision making, then perhaps I would have left the house a good 15 minutes earlier and taken along a friend for moral support.

On the surface it might seem like a fairly straightforward mission to accomplish.  A matter of reaching out and grabbing the same one I had used that morning, a whole 60 minutes ago. But ‘simple’ is never something that translates easily from theory into practice. Don’t ask me how, but somewhere between the bathroom sink and the shop floor my memory had somehow erased all memories of which one I normally use.

Incidentally I blame this short term memory loss entirely on having children and as a direct result of all the brain cells that have died due to years of lost sleep.

Anyway, as a consequence of my brain blowing a fuse in this manner, I was now faced with what can only be described as a bank of cardboard boxes, and a terrible case of indecisiveness starting to grow. As someone who has trouble choosing between a blueberry muffin and a chocolate muffin without first checking what my husband is having, this didn’t bode well for my walking out of that shop anytime soon.

This may seem like something of a dramatic exaggeration (something I admit we writers are prone to do from time to time), but this time I kid you not. Stretched out from one end of the aisle all the way down to the shower gel there were no less than 24 different types of toothpaste on display, and this by the way, was ONLY in the Colgate section.

I ask you, 24. Is that really necessary?

All I want from my toothpaste is something to make my teeth shiny and bright enough to stop traffic and to give me breathe as fresh as a packet of Polo’s. What I don’t want is to have to stand there trying to narrow down the choice and make an informed decision about something so incredibly mundane.

Of course I know that when it comes to sales it is purely about the figures and making even more money for Mr Colgate. But please, can’t they take pity on those of us who simply don’t have a spare 15 minutes to scan the packets back and forth and wonder whether we need the Colgate Maximum Cavity Protection Blue Minty Gel, the Colgate Advanced Whitening plus Tartar Control, the Colgate Max White or the Colgate Triple Action..

What does ‘triple action’ even mean? Will it swill your mouth out for you and wipe down the wash basin afterward? If it did they should just say so. The stuff would fly off the shelves and into the homes of anyone who has a child who goes to brush their teeth and leaves a rim of dried on toothpaste scum in their wake.

So here’s what I want to know. If toothpaste is a health and hygiene product and something that we should use at least twice a day, then why does the whole industry have to be turned into such a marketing companies dream and a buyers nightmare. Why can’t they just make ONE toothpaste that does the lot. Toothpaste at the end of the day is just toothpaste and I find it very hard to believe that the ingredients in each of the 24 different types that Colgate produces can vary so much as to warrant a different name, packaging and price tag.

This overwhelming choice aside, what no doubt has that Tooth Fairy shaking her head in horror is the effect that some of these toothpaste can have on your teeth.

For years I have been coveting the Hollywood smile and buying anything with ‘Whitening’ on the box. Are my teeth any whiter for it? Of course they aren’t. Instead they are now so sensitive that eating an ice cream on a windy day can be something of a challenge. I am also forced into the ‘Sensitive’ toothpaste section, one that funnily enough comes at twice the price for half the tube. If I was that way inclined I’d say there was a definite whiff of a conspiracy to be had here. Much the same as if Benson & Hedges sold you cigarettes for years and then charged you double the price again for a new set of lungs.

Of course I am without a doubt the gullible mug for believing what I read on the packet, especially given what I do for a living. My common sense tells me that the promise of gain always results in some sort of pain. But it does make you wonder how safe on our teeth are these Whitening toothpastes over many years of constant brushing abuse?

Are there cages of guinea pigs stowed away somewhere with perfect smiles, but with teeth too brittle to bite through a sunflower seed?

Amongst the many offerings from Colgate there is even the ever so temptingly titled Baking Soda & Peroxide toothpaste. Can that really be safe? While baking soda is great for clearing out blocked drains and peroxide handy if your highlights are growing out, when it comes to teeth they both sound harsh enough to strip off all the enamel from a 100 paces.

Last year 3 brands of Chinese toothpaste, Tri Leaf Spearmint, Cool Mate and Heibeing were banned when they were found to have contained potentially lethal levels of a toxic chemical called DEG (diethylene glycol). This is an industrial solvent used in paint and anti freeze and can cause kidney and liver damage. Counterfeit Colgate toothpaste also turned up in the US last year, containing the same dangerous chemicals.

It’s enough to make you wonder what other hidden ingredients you are swilling around your mouth. Are we that generation of human guinea pigs so swayed by clever advertising and slick marketing that we are willing to use anything if it sounds to good to be true? And if so, which parts of our bodies will be turning green and dropping off in years to come?

Life in the real world

Bill Gates gave a speech at a High School about 11 things they did not and will not learn in school. He talks about how feel-good, politically correct teachings created a generation of kids with no concept of reality and how this concept set them up for failure in the real world.

Whether you admire his contribution to the personal computer revolution, disagree with his controlling business ethics or just plain envy his impressive bank balance, who can dispute words of wisdom from the mouth of the world’s 3rd richest man, worth US$58 billion at the age of only 52.

Rule 1: Life is not fair – get used to it!

Rule 2: The world won’t care about your self-esteem. The world will expect you to accomplish something BEFORE you feel good about yourself.

Rule 3: You will NOT make $60,000 a year right out of high school. You won’t be a vice-president with a car phone until you earn both.

Rule 4: If you think your teacher is tough, wait till you get a boss.

Rule 5: Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your Grandparents had a different word for burger flipping: they called it opportunity.

Rule 6: If you mess up, it’s not your parents’ fault, so don’t whine about your mistakes, learn from them.

Rule 7: Before you were born, your parents weren’t as boring as they are now. They got that way from paying your bills, cleaning your clothes and listening to you talk about how cool you thought you were. So before you save the rain forest from the parasites of your parent’s generation, try delousing the closet in your own room.

Rule 8: Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools, they have abolished failing grades and they’ll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn’t bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

Rule 9: Life is not divided into semesters. You don’t get summers off and very few employers are interested in helping you FIND YOURSELF. Do that on your own time.

Rule 10: Television is NOT real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

Rule 11: Be nice to nerds. Chances are you’ll end up working for one.

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