Everything Mixed Together

There are good things to say about Dome cafes. The food is tasty, the prices aren't heart-stopping, the coffee is fine, and the waiting staff are plentiful and seem to know what they're doing. But this last weekend my dad and I ran into the sort of problem that suggested that underneath the wooden counters and artful cheesecake there is a fast food joint waiting to burst out.

We were there for my stepmum's celebratory half-century cooked breakfast and, having completed fifty successful years on the planet she was quite justified in asking that the tomato should be served raw, rather than grilled. And that was a problem, as there was no option for raw tomato on the computerised register.

Instead, after considerable tapping on the touch-sensitive screen, we were offered a "Slice of Tomato", this being a side dish, usually inserted into a burger. At a cost of $1. Even though the cooked breakfast came with a perfectly serviceable tomato of its own. For the pleasure of receiving an uncooked tomato, we had to pay extra.

And so, when the plate arrived, I was entirely unsurprised to note that it had two tomatoes. Both cooked...

To a guy, can there be anything more inaccessibly alien than mascara TV commercials?

My dentist, like every dentist the world over, has a copy of Ronald E. Goldstein's Change Your Smile book. I was sitting in the waiting room today waiting for my six-monthly check-up (once again a pillar of dental health, thanks very much) and as usual I found myself staring at the woman on the cover.

At first glance she looks like your typical 1980's US sitcom housewife with big hair and lots of make-up. But when she smiles you can see all of her teeth. Smile at yourself in the mirror - can you see all of your teeth? Looking at the cover a big longer the teeth became everything, and in the end she looked more like one of the monsters from one of my five year old's sci-fi cartoon DVDs.

As I was called to the dentist's chair my lasting impression was that she was about to eat a guinea pig. Whole.

Pizza Marketing Quarterly is the must read journal for pizzerias all over the country. Filled with adverts for industrial grade pizza ovens, and accounts of international pizza-making competitions.

The best pizzas are apparently cooked long and slow. In the world of fast food that means 255 celsius. For eight minutes...

Pizza in a cone: is the world really ready? If it is then it'll be satisfying our "inherent need to enjoy a pizza in an urban context" and fulfilling the pizza makers' "uncontrollable desire to revolutionize the habits and customs of a gourmet population".

Let's watch out for those uncontrollable desires.

There's a shopping centre close to my house. For the last few years it's been the place to go when you didn't need anything too exciting. There's a couple of supermarkets that sell the basic stuff, a liquor store, a hairdresser and a store selling vaccuum cleaner bags (cos out here in the 'burbs we do a whole lot of vaccuuming). And apparently a couple of dozen other stores less exciting than even the vaccuum bag place.

But we're a growing suburb and, all winter, builders have been expanding the shopping centre into a whole new retail experience...

The thing is that I only ever go there after dark on Thursday evenings, and I wasn't about to go exploring the building site at that time. From inside you got no clue that anything was going on, but then a week or so ago a sign went up annoucning the opening of the new shopping centre in three days' time! Where?!

So this week I nipped in to get the weekly trolley load of sensible healthy options (and my secret stash of chocolate and chips) and was rewarded with a movie scene moment. I walked in through the old shopping centre, in through the (demolished) door of what used to be the liquor store and there in front of me, where there had previously been a wall stacked with cheap wine, was a bright and shiny new shopping centre. It was like wandering into Toon Town, but with more chrome and fewer dancing animals. Happy people were gazing around in awe, stunned that they no longer have to drive 15km to find a decent coffee shop. Excited children skidded around on the shiny new floors, knocking over the "Meet Bob the Builder this Saturday" signs. Shoppers rushed to the new greengrocer, half expecting that a brand new shop must mean never-before-seen fruits and vegetables.

It was high excitement.

Then I tried to do my shopping in the new supermarket. It took me three times as long because all the things were arranged differently. Who puts ice cream in aisle 17?! Everyone knows that ice cream goes in aisle 22...

I've hung off writing anything on this for a couple of weeks, thinking that the first post should contain something significant, an big intro, a fanfare.

Then it struck me that no-one reads the first post until after a bunch of other posts exist, and then they scroll down to the bottom of the page, and there it is. The first post gets read last.

Better to just get on with it...