Never was a cornflake curse

AlixandKelly=singleandfun
Originally uploaded by JungsPN

So I figured that having written about Kelly and Alix the Asterix extra from the Mercury in The Great Kettering Man Drought Post, you might like to see them in all their high maintenance glory. They copped a bit of a spray in the comments section of the paper - so if you are in Hobart and a bit of a quality single man, why not look them up? Sure, Alix will hold you to high standards and Kelly probably won't put the phone down for the whole date, but they are available, and I'm entirely sure that's their real names, and they aren't just employees for the Mercury hired to pat out a flimsy story, caller to talkback radio style. I get the feeling that Kelly and Alix would instantly think you are scum if you asked them out, but hey, you never know, might be worth a call. There's certainly no other news down here at the moment - The Devils are obviously going out of business, but we knew that. As for me, I've been mostly reading old NWFU footy records from the early 80s, when the men were so unreconstructed, they wouldn't have been interested in Alix and her career. One Peter Borlini for instance, in his East Devonport player profile, doesn't even list his wifes name and says openly he likes a beer and a roast. I wouldn't imagine this kind of maleness would appeal these days - and I can't imagine Peter Borlini sipping a latte...unless it had beer in it.

So I don't really believe in ghosts or anything like that - I really never have, and not even that show where Girls Aloud ended up getting spooked out or any episodes of Spooky Ghost (how did he keep that hat on?) could convince me otherwise. I feel a bit bad sometimes because we've lost some of our relatives before their time, and their families have gone to James Van Praagh style crazy gay mediums to try and get closure. Naturally, they then try and apply vague generalisations to the lives of their dead loved ones - for instance, when I was in Scotland on holiday, the medium said to one of my relatives "he's saying something about a caravan" and they instantly went "Oh, there was a caravan holiday we went on in 1985!" - and I'm sort of sitting on the couch listening to a Get This podcast going...oh...good...and trying not to launch into my James Randy speech about it all being bollocks and didn't you see that episode of South Park? Since I don't believe in any of this, I would like to point out that I have seen a ghost - it was on my Grade 8 school camp in Zeehan (boy got to get to that soon). I was asleep in my bed after a heavy night in the TV room of watching Chances, when my door, and I don't how this happened, locked itself. This was spooky enough, but about an hour later, there was a ghostly tap at the window...tap...tap...tap...I didn't open the curtains...tap...tap...tap...and against all the fear...I opened the curtains...tap...tap....slowly...so pale...so...frightening...tap...tap...and it was a local Zeehan youth who had got onto the grounds of our camp giving me a bit of a pressed arse against the window. Until the janitor caught him and absolutely smashed him with a hard tackle into the ground. I guess you could say I saw a spiritual opening...anyway, it turns out he was really after the girls camp, which was about 1km down the road, and had taken a wrong turn at Alberqueque. Poor bugger...knowing some of the girls at our school, he'd have been half a chance...

Anyway, having established myself as a sceptic, I must admit I do find one thing pretty weird - three times in the last 11 years (and only 3 times) I've eaten a bowl of Kelloggs Cornflakes a major international disaster has happened. I had Cornflakes in 1997, Princess Diana died. I had a bowl of cornflakes in 2001, Victoria Beckham released Not Such An Innocent Girl...no, actually, September 11 happened, I was on holiday in Scotland, and was on the bed lying watching an episode of Ricki Lake that was about fat out of control teens (incidentally, I have a theory the best episodes of Ricki Lake are the ones where she's fat and grumpy rather than thin and inspirational) and then...well, that was twice...and the third time, Mum bought Cornflakes into the house and suddenly there was a giant tsunami sweeping across South East Asia. I'm sure there are other reasons as to thy all this has happened - I was probably wearing tracksuit pants (not good enough says Alix, why not wear a smart suit?) and I was probably being lazy, but as to why I connect all of this to Kelloggs, I think there's probably some kind of backwards message for in the Tori Amos song Cornflake Girl, something like "unleash the evil" or "one day my tinkly piano stylings will be stolen by Vanessa Carlton (noooooooo)"- actually, the other problem when Princess Diana died was that I was in Mount Stuart, in a 6 bedroom house all on my own, and instead of using the time to have a giant party, with strippers and drugs and rock and roll and rapacious uni students - I was using my time to watch the Sunday programme and eat cornflakes. It might not have solved the cornflake curse, but it certainly explains the girl drought curse that afflicted Mount Stuart throughout most of the year...thank goodness that's been cleared up.

While I consider my cornflake curse to be the only supernatural thing I can't really explain, the rest of my life I've been very cynical about the spirit world. In fact, I can remember the exact moment I lost interest in the notion of an afterlife of ghosts who ended one episode with lots of friends and the start of the next episode of one friends. And it wasn't anything to do with spiritual realisations or a massive questioning of my own mortality or anything theological. It was a girl called Sarah who made me realise it was all nonsense. Sarah was a Scottish Ayrshire girl with the brains of a chair but the social life of Hugh Hefner, and a seriously ugly best friend who's name I can't remember, who looked like Rocky Dennis. Anyway, she was trying to tell us all a ghost story once in art class, about these ghosts that came and took your soul at night, and then would do horrible things to your soul when you were helpless (like making you live in Beith...one for the Scottish people out there). If your soul was sensitive to having things put into certain parts of your anatomy or being entirely exposed to torture, then you certainly didn't want to encounter these ghosts. Unfortunately for our "Sar", and indeed for Rocky Dennis who was backing her up on this story, at the key point of the story, she let slip that this group of ghosts were known as "The Proclaimers" - I guess her cultural radar was off, as of course The Proclaimers are Scotlands most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo, responsible for I Would Walk 500 Miles, and two ginger twins in glasses who, yes, are as pale as ghosts, but she certainly lost her thread at that point. I can still remember her anguished cries of "Yez are aw fucking basterds" as we ridiculed her story and Rocky Dennis glared with all her masky glaring power, her entire existence, and wondered exactly how far the ghosts would have to walk just to get someones soul...oh, 500 miles...how hilarious...

I realised at that point there was no such as ghosts...they'd surely have been smart enough to name themselves after a better standard of Scottish group...Strawberry Switchblade is much scarier...