I say it’s ridiculous because it doesn’t cook any better, nor does it last longer. Some of the cookware has a lifetime guarantee and I’m always puzzled by that claim. What does that mean?

And there are caveats to the guarantee. You have to use the cookware for the purposes for which it was intended.

I guess that means cooking rather than digging for iron ore. And I do suspect that in about ten years’ time you would have difficulty finding the manufacturer of said cookware to return it. They also want it to be posted and the cost of that postage would be prohibitive. That’s if you can unearth the receipt.

In other words, the cookware lasts for as long as it lasts and not any longer. Can’t argue with that existential concept.

If you read the fine print, you should expect the saucepan to show scratches. This will look bad but will not affect your cooking results. You can machine wash the cookware but it’s better not to because it may spoil its appearance.

Although the cookware has been tested in laboratories by a million jackhammers drilling the amazing bullet-proof surface of the pan, it is suggested that you stir your cooking with a plastic or wooden utensil.

All this in spite of a rather pretentious and misleading name like Swiss Diamond which gives the impression of a very resilient and indestructible surface. Not true. I know because I invested in the brand. I use the term “invested” since it cost a fortune.

I was informed at the time that Swiss Diamond never go on sale, but they were 40% discounted at some stores last week. So “Never” must mean the same as “Lifetime Guarantee.”

I’m also the gullible owner of some Circulon cookware. This one scratches, sticks and has grooves which are hard to clean. Ironically, there is a big ad campaign on TV at the moment praising this brand’s ease of use. I scoff somewhat bitterly at its claims.

Anolon was no better but I managed to return it because it warped. I was in one of those “I’m fed up and I’m not taking it any more” moods.

As for cast iron cookware, it’s good for casseroles, but who can lift the ruddy things? If you really want a physical workout try to pick up some Staub cookware. Now if you dropped that on the floor it would result in a crater and the Staub cookware would emerge in China.

The astute reader of this blog might have worked out that I’m fed up with falling for the hype. Cookware is cookware and you are better off buying a brand new pan every year at $29.95 as I have done recently and in ten years you will still be ahead financially. The pan will be lighter. You can machine wash it or not. If it scratches you don’t mourn the damage to its perfect surface.

And believe me, life’s too short to be fooled by promises of everlasting service or surface (as the case may be).

I wonder how long my new penny-wise attitude will last? Probably for as long those guarantees, I guess.

What better store than ToysRUs for a gift to be sent from that American store to an American address? Simple? Not exactly.

We looked up the website and selected a doll for her. Then we proceeded to order it online. Easy? Not exactly.

ToysRUs would not accept our credit card because we live overseas in Australia. Understandable? Perhaps. Amazon can do it but apparently ToysRUs can’t.

So credit card was out of the question.

How about money then? A cash transaction online?

The following is the reply we received from this company:-

Thank you for contacting RUs.com regarding transferring money to one of our bank accounts. I am sorry, but ethically we cannot do that. I sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused you.

If you need any further assistance, please feel free to call us at either of the numbers listed below or just respond to this email. Thank you again for contacting RUs.com. We value your business and look forward to serving you in the future!

Sincerely,

Melissa Green
Guest Service Team
www.ToysRUs.com (800) ToysRUs / (800) 869-7787
www.BabiesRUs.com (888) BabyRUs / (888) 222-9787
Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week!!

Yes, you read it correctly. ETHICALLY is the word Melissa Green used.

It’s comforting to know that ToysRUs value our business and look forward to serving us in the future. I wonder, though, in what capacity they intend to serve us 24 HOURS A DAY. 7 DAYS A WEEK if they won’t accept our money?

Perhaps we should offer some Dutch beads, buttons and other trinkets to Melissa and the Guest Service Team at ToysRUs.

I only heard about this video tonight on the Channel Nine TV news. Some people are offended by it. Some Holocaust survivors don’t approve of Jews dancing at Auschwitz, but I take a different view.

I say “Hitler tried to kill us all, but he is dead and we are still here. Let us rejoice.”

As a person who is involved in The Jewish Holocaust Centre I am well aware of sensitivities. We should respect and mourn what happened. We should never forget and personally I will never forgive.

But be damned if I don’t glory in the fact that all those Empires and civilisations which tried to destroy the Jews are dust.

So if 89-year-old Holocaust survivor, Adolek Kohn wants to dance at Auschwitz with his daughter and three grandchildren, good luck to him!

I’m sure he has shed enough tears in his lifetime and I would encourage him to celebrate to his heart’s content.

If you have not seen the video, here is the link:-

Grandpa Kohn’s words at the end of it are what made me cry.

Looks as if the video has actually been removed from Youtube.

Now it’s back again. I strongly recommend that you view Parts 2 and 3 of the video too. We’ll see how long this one lasts but just in case I’d better explain what I meant by “Grandpa Kohn’s words at the end of it made me cry.”

The family did some very simple unchoreographed dance steps at the various sites with their aged grandpa.

And then the mood changed and Mr Kohn reflected on his life to the music of Leonard Cohen’s “Dance me to the end of Love.”

“If you had told me 63 years ago,” Kohn says, ” that I would be here dancing with my family, I would have said what you talking about?…what you talking about?

Had Hilter achieved his aim then none of that delightful family would have been born. No wonder he marvels at being back where he could have perished. He considers himself blessed.

So many people did not survive, including many members of my family. I wept for them but I also wept with joy that Mr Kohn is alive.

It’s because this is what we have come to expect from that group of people. They do it so often that it has become a humdrum matter of fact. In a market place, at a wedding, at a funeral or in a mosque, if you are a Muslim you have to expect that another Muslim faction is out to get you.

If you are a woman who has been caught talking to a man who is not your husband, brother or father, then you could be stoned. If you have been raped you may be accused of adultery unless you have four male witnesses to confirm the rape. Can you imagine a group of gang bangers coming forth in support of the woman they have just raped?

if you are a woman in Saudi Arabia you are not even allowed to drive a car.

Left wingers and women’s libbers don’t seem to be bothered by this discrimination at all. They are too busy picking on Israel for protecting its borders. Of course, there is a double standard here but it’s one that I’m proud of because it means that the world expects more from Israel than it does from the other side. And it does this because Israel is a democracy with a modern court system.

I have been writing about this double standard since 2007. Here and here and here.

If Israel defends itself by not allowing arms to be smuggled into Gaza and in the fracas nine Turkish activists are killed, then Israel is condemned.

If international navigation is placed in jeopardy because Somali pirates are constantly hijacking ships for ransom, we seem to accept the situation in a rather complacent manner. They need the money, the charities explain, as if any of that booty would go to feed the poor people of Somalia.

Anyway, they are Muslims and isn’t that what Muslims do?

If Israel were to do this sort of thing then there would be outrage at the UN. The Brits and the French would shriek in horror at such piracy as has been committed by the Somalis. Note that Israel only wanted to inspect the stunt aid flotilla and offered to transport legitimate aid to the Gazans.

Even this was not good enough. Israel is expected to sacrifice more than any other nation in the world. Its security, its right to exist and its desire for a peaceful life next door to neighbours who only wish it harm.

In other words, the double standard is at work here because Israel is not like its neighbours. It has a conscience and a system of justice that is not Neolithic and this is held against it in a perverse way.

It’s actually a reverse sort of compliment from the world which expects the highest of standards from Israel while accepting the lowest from its opponents. That is why the world shrugs its shoulders indifferently at suicide bombings, beheadings and stonings perpetrated by Muslims against their enemies as well as on their own fellow Muslims.

How can one believe anything that this organisation says when in June this is what they said?

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has cut its links with anti-whaling activist Peter Bethune after he carried a bow and arrows during confrontations with Japanese whalers in the Southern Ocean.

Below is what they wrote on the Society’s website, according to the ABC report on June 9 of this year

The bow and arrows revealed to be on the Sea Shepherd vessel Ady Gil, and in the possession of Captain Bethune on that ship, are absolutely not in line with Sea Shepherd’s policy,” the statement reads.

This morning on the ABC the spokesman for the Society revealed his forked tongue, when he admitted that the above statements were a ploy to get Bethune off. I can’t quite understand how that would work but they obviously are still trying to pretend that they are a peaceful organisation. What a bunch of hypocrites!

Suddenly they are proud to align themselves with a man who behaved like a pirate and threatened the crew of a boat he boarded illegally.

What sort of friends are these activists who are ready to distance themselves from one of their heroes when he’s in trouble? And yet when he gets off with a very lenient judgement, a suspended sentence, they pretend that they support him totally?

All better now?

I don’t think so. This organisation has blotted its reputation by admitting to lying.

It is thanks to the Japanese that Bethune is not in jail. No thanks to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, though, for abandoning him.

I got sick of charging the blasted thing. I got sick of having another gadget to be plugged in. I got sick of the brush telling me how long I have to brush my teeth and allotting to me the requisite two minutes which the gadget manufacturer said I have to do.

It made me feel as if I wasn’t in charge at all. Let’s face it, if you’re at the mercy of an electric toothbrush how autonomous are you?

There are people out there who bid their gadgets goodnight and then charge them ready for the next day’s onslaught.

All this dependency on electric gadgets has been getting on my nerves.

Which brings me to why my web site was down over the weekend. I use a web host as do a few other people and apparently a very selfish or ignorant company which monopolised all the available space on the host’s internet. This company was told not to do this again and I have been assured that said company will not be so greedy in future.

I wish I could believe it, but all sorts of things get screwed up on the internet. If it’s not the internet provider then it’s the connection somewhere on the line. Or else it’s because the rotten schoolkids are on holiday and they sit at their computers all day shooting demons or whatever or taking photos of their private parts and putting them on Youtube to impress the world.

Then there’s the twits or the twats and Facebook. I’m uncomfortable with all that and do not take part.

Nowadays, even the politicians twitter away, just to be with it. Do we really need more soundbites from the politicians? Still, even Julia Gillard has somebody twittering away for her. Some junior member of her staff with the gelled ridge of hair is doing the deed so that she can appear trendy.

I seriously doubt that her busy schedule allows her the time to twit. Not should it.

I would rather she concentrate on policies and leave the silly bits to some nerd who is already afflicted with a sore and arthritic thumb at the venerable age of 20.

You may well argue that I too have joined the ranks of internet afficionado since I have a web site. That’s not quite true, though. It’s a love/hate relationship that I have with my computer. I like the word processing part and I enjoy surfing the net for information.

But I am well aware of the dangers of the World Wide Web as a disseminator of falsehoods, a tool for propaganda more invasive than any newspaper by its speed and unaccountability.

I must confess I fear it.

On the other hand, I can’t think of anything in this world that is totally good. And so I endure the frustration of technology when I have to, while feebly protesting against it when it doesn’t really matter, as in the case of the electric toothbrush. T’is but a rather lukewarm attempt at aligning myself with the Luddites.

So there! I showed them, all right. lol

What I don’t like, however, are scarves that you could never wear. The majority of the exhibits looked very uncomfortable and stiff. Some of them were so rough you could clean pots and pans with them. Artistic? Perhaps. Creative? Definitely. Tempting? Sadly, no.

The neck is a delicate part of your body and does not enjoy being covered in stiff felt appliques or rough yarn that feels like barbed wire. That’s why silk scarves are desirable as are those made of cashmere or possum wool. They are meant to feel luxurious.

If I want to buy a wall hanging then I will do so, but please don’t pretend that it’s a scarf.

Which brings me to one of my favourite themes. Functionality of a product and where artistic design fits into this concept. Let’s take a chair as an example. A chair is meant to be sat on. If it can be made beautiful and interesting, even artistic, then that’s fine, as long as you can still sit on it.

I see absolutely no point in designing a chair that just looks trendy but can’t be sat on. In fact, I would call such a creation a sculpture rather than a chair. Why pretend that’s it’s something when it isn’t even suitable for sitting on?

That sort of avant garde drivel belongs to the realm of interior decorating. Forget the usefulness, just make sure it looks good and is colour co-ordinated. In my opinion, too many decorators are into creating a theatre set and they have forgotten the primary purpose of furniture which is its functionality.

That doesn’t mean that all chairs have to look like Shaker furniture. Far from it. Comfortable chairs can be beautiful to look at too. But a good chair is one that you can sit on for hours without getting a backache.

So that’s why I was disappointed with the Scarf Festival. There were only about six scarves out of the 250 that I could imagine winding around my sensitive neck. Quite frankly, there was a much better selection of wearable scarves in the Wool Museum store. I can recommend a visit to the store itself if you like possum fur jumpers, jackets and pretty silk scarves.

I can also recommend a visit to the rest of the museum which houses a working loom which will create a beautiful carpet for you. There is also an excellent display of the history of weaving around the Geelong area and the wool industry in general.

And the last but not least attraction at the Wool Museum is its fine restaurant called Lamby’s which served the most delicious fish and hand cut chips.

The meal was so appetising that I almost forgot about the silly scarf exhibit.

I would like to suggest that next year the judges should add an extra category to the twelve that won awards this year. Category Thirteen could be “For the best wearable scarf with the least amount of itchy stuff in it.”

What makes me write this? Well, Graham Kennedy, for one. While Melbourne crowned him King, the rest of Australia remained nonplussed by him. We occasionally saw him on TV when we lived in Sydney and, quite frankly, we could not understand why he was such a big hit in Victoria. He lacked sophistication, was unappealing personally and did not make me laugh.

My favourite genre is humour and I particularly enjoy satire, but I don’t relate to crudity and Kennedy was crude. People told me that this sort of humour is characteristic of Melbourne and I am at a loss to understand why.

We have been living here in Melbourne for almost two years now and I absolutely love this city. It is sophisticated and very cosmopolitan for an Australian city. So I’m puzzled by Kennedy and Deveny’s “humour”.

I did not relate to Ms Deveny at all. Her columns were simply silly and yet she must have had a following or she would not have been employed by that newspaper. When I saw her on the ABC’s Q&A programme she confirmed my opinion of her. This woman was a shrew who interrupted the other panellists, shrieked and crowed and made herself a nuisance with her pitiful “Look at Me!” behaviour.

Contrary to my opinion of her, Deveny continued to dish out her excrescence for The Age. Until she let loose on twitter last Sunday at the Logies. For those of you who don’t know what the Logies are, they are a poor man’s imitation of the Emmys. Red Carpet interviews with the cream of our TV stars. The sort of “what are you wearing?” questions that we have copied from American TV events. In other words, the Australian television industry’s Night of Nights.

I did not watch it. But I did read that Deveny had insulted Bindi Irwin who is the eleven year old daughter of the late Steve Irwin, by suggesting that she ought to get laid.

Not only that, but she had also unfurled her viper’s tongue via twitter and the good old thumb in the direction of Rove McManus who lost his first wife, Belinda Emmett, to cancer in 2006.

We all felt extreme sadness when Rove’s wife passed away at such a young age and we wished him well in his new relationship. So did Deveny, apparently. Except that she added “I hope Tasma (that’s the second Mrs McManus) doesn’t die too”. How hilarious is that?

In her defence, Deveny explained that she was only trying to be funny. I believe her when she says that. The woman always appears to be trying so very hard to be funny. Being crass and offensive come much more naturally to her, don’t they?

p.s Deveny is now claiming that her dismissal from The Age had to do with class and gender. It’s true that she has no class and as for gender, when under attack a desperate Deveny has resorted to claims of sexism in the whole business. I seriously doubt that she believes what she’s saying. I also doubt that feminists would fall for that one.

He has approached the Muslim world in that fashion and even extends the hand of friendship to Iran which responds with a ‘get lost’ message to the U.S. This is undignified behaviour from the President of “the most powerful nation on Earth.” I use quotation marks because I am now questioning whether the U.S is still as powerful when China and India are growing at amazing speed while the U.S remains static and bogged own in an unwinnable war in Afghanistan.

I suspect that Obama has decided to be so totally different from the previous President that he has gone overboard with crawling to the enemies of the U.S. He wants the world to love the U.S. He wants to be a kind of messianic figure, a river to his people (lol) and he is making himself a laughing stock in the Muslim world.

So what do I really object to in his manner? In one word, it’s his capitulation. He can’t do anything about the rogue powers so he has decided to ignore them while talking tough to the one nation that is a genuine friend to the U.S. And that nation is Israel, a country surrounded by declared enemies who actually shout “Death to America!”

And yet Obama chooses to ignore such expressions of hatred. He has been extremely dismissive of Israel and has even threatened harsh treatment while not expecting the Palestinians to come to the party. Doesn’t Obama understand that Hezbollah and Hamas thrive on conflict and opposition to Israel and that their very existence would be threatened if peace in the Middle East could be achieved?

The latest delusion in the Obama circus is the nuclear proliferation treaty and Russia has “signed up”. Does anybody really believe that Russia will stick to this agreement even if the U.S does?

Yes, it would be wonderful if the world were at peace. All cosy and huggy. But the world has never been at peace. If you study history you study the story of wars, conflicts, hatred and persecution. That’s what it’s all about!

Does that mean we should stop trying to achieve some sort of peace? Probably not, because it’s in human nature to hope for a better world. But I am convinced that peace cannot be achieved from a position of weakness. Why should a strong power give in to a weak one? It simply doesn’t make sense.

In bending over backwards and forwards to its enemies, Obama makes the U.S appear very fragile and that’s not a good look. We all need America to be strong and determined. America should be respected and it’s hard to do that when its President is sucking up to everyone. Everyone except Israel, of course.

The purpose of the National Assessment Program or Naplan is to test the numeracy and literacy of school pupils at various stages in their downward slide towards graduation from school. The Teachers Union is against the publication of the results of these tests for obvious reasons. Here, in Australia, the Education Union does not like being accountable to anyone for its method and “efficiency” in teaching.

So the latest ploy is to reveal to the media that teachers have been told to prepare their pupils for these tests. Which apparently is a scandal! It means that teachers will have to teach spelling, reading and punctuation, counting without a calculator and all that useless stuff. They will be asked to provide extra teaching for those pupils who are having difficulties with spelling and numeracy. What an imposition!

This is all too much for the poor Teachers Union. I actually doubt that some teachers even know how to spell and count and they certainly wouldn’t know how to teach language and syntax. After all, we got rid of all that silly business years ago when grammar became a dirty word.

Next, they will be asking teachers to actually teach and I have to admit that being an ex-high-school teacher myself who has seen many teachers in action, and I mean inaction, this is a big ask.