Ugg.

Why do we assume "early man" spoke in a series of grunts?

Do we have scientific evidence for that (fossilized speech tracts that showed they were incapable of articulate speech), or is it just popular conjecture?

Okay, yes, most of our art was extremely unsophisticated and we left no written records of the time - but wouldn't that necessitate a more elaborate oral culture?

We would have had to speak and sing our culture into being.

Without the written word we would have had to pass our history and culture on from one person to another by telling the stories of our world.  Wouldn't it make sense to assume that the vocabulary used to tell those stories would have been rich and varied?

The minutiae of daily life - the details that kept our children alive - would have been described by one generation to the next.  Wouldn't that old adage about "100 words for snow" apply to almost every aspect of our lives?

Imagine being an early hunter-gatherer.  Every shift in the seasons has a direct influence on your day-to-day life.  The smallest of details in the world around you are worth noticing and remembering - and telling the other members of your tribe.

"Uggs" just wouldn't cut it.

And at night, when it's too dark to do anything useful, you've finally got a few minutes of "down time" from your full-time job of surviving.  There's nothing else to do except dance, sing and tell stories.  You've got rhythm and your voice.

The rap battles must have been phenomenal...

Sabre!

So, it turns out that sabre doesn't make any sense.

I understand all of the pieces that go into a sabre bout... in theory.  But when it actually comes to a bout, it's just a bunch of people who don't know what's happening flailing about with swords and hoping for the best.

Even at the elite level the people in the bout don't know what's happening - that's why they both turn to the judge with "Howzatt!" expressions.  They know someone just won a point, and they're hoping it was them - but they don't seem to actually know.

I was watching some footage from the Olympics earlier, and even in the gold medal match the fencers were all "Yay, I got a point - oh, wait, no I didn't."

Sometimes the judge doesn't even know and just tells them to try again.

I tried a bout for the first time last week, and the girl I was playing with and I kept looking at the judge just to work out why all the lights were flashing.  Turns out I was winning (yay me!), but don't ask me what I was doing.

I had a vague plan (involving a feint-parry-reposte thing) that I sometimes managed to pull off, but most of the time it was just a confused blur of swords and a lot of random flashy lights.

I'm going in a competition Sunday week.

Depending on how many women have applied to be in the sabre comp, I may just end up winning something - which would be the funniest thing ever.

Never underestimate the value of turning up.

Impossible!

I am in awe of impossible pie.

If someone actually said:  "look, just make a custard and chuck in a cup of coconut and half a cup of flour and it will turn itself into a pie..."

Well, that would sound ridiculous, wouldn't it?  Impossible, almost.

But that happens!  You just make some gloop that basically involves putting coconut and flour into custard and poor the gloop into a pie dish, and then physics makes a pie!  The coconut rises to the top to form a crust, the flour sinks to the bottom to form a base, and the custard hangs around the middle for form a filling.

It's amazing!

It's also delicious, and is completely unfazed by replacing the flour with a gluten-free substitute.  I made one on the weekend using a straight swap - half a cup of gluten-free flour for half a cup of plain flour.  You couldn't tell it wasn't made with normal flour.  The magic pastry looked, tasted and felt just fine.

It's magic!  Impossible!  Good.

Siin me oleme (Here We Are)

Siin me oleme

I watched the weirdest movie I have ever seen last week.

It was an Estonian film from the late 70's about a bunch of crazy city folk who turn up at a farm full of crazy country folk and then do nothing at all, really.

It was basically a bunch of sight-gags stretched out into sketches and then stitched together into a plot.

And it made no sense at all.

Things would happen, and there was no reason for them to happen.  Occasionally, this would lead to other weird things happening, but mostly the new weird things were somewhat independant of the old weird things.

Plot lines suddenly disappeared as if they never existed.  New storylines would appear from nowhere.  I found myself constantly gesticulating at the TV saying "What are you doing?  Why are you doing that?  Who are you people?"

There were characters who had no back story.  Of the three city folk who turned up, one was never explained.  She was just in the car with the others, and apparently brought along specifically to be a gorgeous red-head (in a wig).  Who was she?  Was she a daughter?  A sister?  A friend?

Why did she flounce around and flirt shamelessly for the first half of the film, and then suddenly turn into a sharp-witted shrew in the second half?

Where did all the other people on the farm come from whenever an audience was needed for the fat city woman to do something ridiculous?  Where did they all go in the meantime?

At one point I wasn't sure if the farmer's wife was talking to the cow she was milking or the fat city woman.  Then again, the lipsyncing was so bad I wasn't sure who was talking half the time.

And then there were the musical numbers.  They came out of nowhere, lasted for approximately two verses, and then disappeared.  And they weren't like musical numbers you get in normal musicals - where the song expresses part of what's going on in the character's life at that point.  It was more like the characters were just bursting into song because they had a tune in their head at that point in time, and decided to sing it out loud (with magical musical accompaniment).

Much like an average day in office for me, but still a bit weird for a movie.

The whole thing was a bit crazy-pants, to be honest.  Yet strangely compelling.  Nothing much was happening at all, but I had to keep watching to see what would happen next.

Another unnecessary bike...

Can I be considered to have a collection of novelty bicycles if I currently only have two?

Yes, I also have a couple of "normal" bicycles, so I could be considered to have a collection of bikes.  I also have a couple of unicycles so I could be considered to have a collection of novelty cycles.

If you include the Micro scooter, I clearly have a collection of human powered vehicles (although I feel I should buy a trike or a rickshaw to flesh out that claim - or maybe a canoe).

But, novelty bicycles?  I've just got the penny farthing and a folding bike.

Some may not consider folding bikes to be novelty bikes, they're just bikes that do a specific thing.  But seeing as most people who see the Brompton for the first time regard it as a bit of a novelty, I'm willing to say:  folding bike + antique replica bike = almost a collection of novelty bikes.

However, part of me is sure a collection should have at least three things in it.  Which may be one of the reasons why I want this, even though I already have a folding bike:

Or maybe I just want it because it sits in that lovely space between art and bike.

I look at most folding bikes and say "the Brompton has a much better fold", but the IF Mode just looks pretty, so I almost don't care.

Mind, the Brompton does have a much better fold...

I just need to find a spare AU$3000-$4000 to spend on something that's not going to be as good as the thing I already own.

Naked

I thought I'd include a nude photo of myself in this post, just to see who's still paying attention.  Then I remembered I don't have any nude photos of myself since the age of oh, about 10 months, and I'm happy for it to stay that way.

Also, I'm not digitising those naked baby photos, so you'll just have to do without.

This post is on body image, hence the reference to nudity.

I had an interesting moment the other day when I thought "well, I'm 34 and I think I'm finally having the 20s I would have wanted if I was paying attention."

This is for various reasons, in terms of lifestyle, career and extra-curricular activities.  When I was in my 20s I was an overweight couch potato who barely had any hobbies that got her away from books and computer screens.

I'm much more active, now, and I have a physique to match.  At my worst, in my 20s, I was hovering at about 95-98k.  For the past few years I've been hovering steady at 75-78.  At the same time, my muscle definition has been improving, so even though I haven't lost much weight over the past three years I think I'm still replacing flab with muscle, so I regard my current weight as "not so bad".

I still have a fair amount of flab to shift - which, as is standard for my body type, is couched around my hips, thighs and lower abdomen.  But I'm not that stressed about it.  I figure I'll just try to eat better and try to keep up a sensible and sustainable level of exercise and if I'm still carrying a bit of "conditioning"... well I'm probably meant to.

a) I'm a woman, b) I'm Caucasian.  We're supposed to carry stores of fat in certain key locations - it's biologically normal.

I found myself thinking, the other day "man, if I had this body back in my 20s..."

And then I realised that, the end of that sentence would be "...I'd have hated it just as much as I hated the body I did have."

I look at myself now and see the improvement.  I appreciate my current physique because I know what it was, and I can't help but think "there's less of me, and look!  I have muscles now!"

But if I hadn't lost weight and gained muscle - if I'd sorted out my lifestyle sooner and hadn't stacked on the weight after puberty and let poor choices add to it in my twenties - I'd be seeing the flaws, rather than the success.

As previously established, a) I'm a woman, b) I'm Caucasian.  That seems to dictate a level of complete dissatisfaction with one's body.  I don't know if that's biologically normal, but it's certainly part of our culture.

My physique is far from supermodel (unless you count the 17th century - I'd totally be a supermodel back then), and I think, if I didn't have the previous version of me to compare it to, I would be seeing it in a completely different light.

Which sucks a little.

I feel sorry for all the young girls who have never been ugly, and therefore have no idea how beautiful they are.