Carla Gypsygirl's Blurty

The unexpected charmer
My blog buddy Meiying said that she'd like it if I updated my blog more frequently. And, since Meiying is 1) pretty famous in the food blogging community (she was even written about in the Herald- check her out at http://bowb.pitas.com); 2) someone who I met purely from a comment she left on my blog (yeah, she really is THAT cool); and 3) a blog connisseur (um, hello, you should see her links page), I decided to listen to her. So this post, Meiying, is for YOU!

Even Britney can't make a snake look this good

I was at work yesterday, staring into space as usual, and thinking about Laura Mercier makeup. My pal Yasmin interrupted my thoughts by waving me over frantically. "You know Steve Irwin?" she asked me. I thought to myself, "Steve Irwin? Is he like Laura Mercier? Or Bobbi Brown? Maybe he's a male makeup dude, like Napoleon Perdis." Yasmin prompted me by saying, "The Crocodile Hunter! Steve Irwin!" This got my attention. I looked back and forth feverishly and then asked her, "IS HE HERE? In the store?" I expected a man with cutely inappropriate short shorts and bowl-ish blonde hair to pop up from behind the designer handbags and exclaim, "Crikey, you kill animals to make this crap? Geez, what's wrong with using a shopping bag from Woolies?" Because, as you may know, I do love glimpsing the odd celeb within my workplace. Then Yasmin responded with: "He's dead."

Like many others, I was shocked and upset. I kept thinking about how I had just read this month's marie claire, and how the magazine had done a photo special on celebrity fathers. There was a gorgeous photo of Steve's daughter, Bindi, sitting on her dad's shoulders, laughing and holding a lizard. I pulled the magazine out of my locker today and looked at that picture again, and I almost started to cry.

I have never actually seen Steve's TV show before, and sadly, sometimes I thought he was just a little bit too silly. But all the same, it was awful to hear that he had died. Over the past two days, I have learned more and more about this amazing man. He just seemed to have so much love- for his family, friends, co-workers, employees of his zoo, and of course, animals. Last night, I was telling Geoff how sad I was. I moaned, "Steve Irwin had so much love! He loved animals! Why can't I love animals like that? I just think that most of them are gross or scary!" I am not often affected by the deaths of celebrities. There is so often a dark side...there's the journalist who asked too many questions, the fat man who had too much money. But to hear that this kind man with a beautiful family- of humans and other sentient beings- had passed away...it's really upset me. It might sound weird, but I have started to wish that I could be like Steve Irwin. I never thought that I would name the Crocodile Hunter as one of my role models. But, as someone on TV said recently (look, I'm not a professional journalist, so don't expect proper quotes from me), Steve had that perfect combination of being an entertainer and educator at the same time. He made people smile and laugh while encouraging them to love animals and their planet.

I've read a lot of the newspaper reports about Steve's life and death, and I watched the half-hour tribute to Steve on Channel 7 tonight. I wish that I hadn't been so cynical towards him. He seemed so genuine, so enthusiastic, so real. There was definitely nothing mock-croc about this dude. And now that I feel like I've finally gotten to know him, I'll miss him even more.

Love and the Red Hot Chili Peppers Recently, through the fog of sleepiness and a hungry tum that always wants more breakfast, I have noticed this dude who catches my morning bus. No, silly, I haven't noticed him- I do have a spunky Geoff of my own, remember? But it's hard to avoid seeing someone when you depend on them as visual evidence that you haven't missed the bus yet again. Anyways, this dude is probably in his mid-twenties (like yours truly), and he is rather nice-looking (but, as I've already told you, not my type). Anyway, the other day, the bus dude started making some phone calls during our journey. It was quite early in the morning (before 8am!), so I heard him apologise for waking up a lot of his friends. He kept saying, "Hey, I was wondering, do you want to come see the Red Hot Chili Peppers with me? The tickets go on sale today! I'm going to buy the tickets online when I get to work. Oh come on, it'll be awesome! Come on! Please? It'll be sooooooo good!" He begged heaps of his friends, and I don't think any of them agreed to go with him. I wanted to turn around and say, "Um, no offence, but not many people like the Chili Peppers these days. They are a bit annoying, especially when they go on about California." As I said, no offence if you're a Peppers' fan, but they're just not my thang. You can diss me for liking Hilary Duff and Frente; I won't mind (I'm used to it!). Anyway, obviously, I didn't say that to the bus dude, because it would have been rude, and because I don't like talking to people on the bus anyway (it encourages weirdos to talk to you!). So, a few days later, the bus dude sits in front of me. The bus fills up as we get closer to our destination, and a pretty blonde girl sat next to me. She was looking through some job ads she'd printed off the internet, and flicking through her diary. There, on one weekend, she'd written, "Chili Peppers with the guys!!!" So: if she said "guys", then she musn't have meant "boyfriend". And, I never heard the bus dude mention any girlfriend on the phone. I so, so, so wanted to say something...I wanted to tap the bus dude on the shoulder and say, "Hey! The girl next to me is going to see the Peppers! Maybe you two could go TOGETHER and then fall in love!" I wanted to say to the girl, "You're cute! He's cute! You both like the Peppers! Why not add some hot spice to your life?" But, of course, I said nothing of the sort, because I don't like talking to people on the bus. Oh, I know, rules are made to be broken...but who likes being set up, anyway? And being set up by a complete stranger...that's gotta take the wedding-cake of weird romantic situations. I guess I'll just have to be content with the part I play in the bus dude's life...as the weird, eavesdropping girl on the morning bus who eats Nutella sandwiches sleepily.

I have a new stalker and his name is Pete I was all geared up to write about this, but the clock is ticking and I gotta get my beauty sleep. I will update you on this next time. Let's just say that no-one- especially not FOGs (Freaky Old Guys)- are going to mess with me when I'm eating my warm banana bread. I had to break my "no lying" code to try to get rid of this FOG, but it didn't even work! Which makes this guy a FROG- Freaky, Resistant Old Guy!

Later, dudes...

Carla Gypsygirl xxx