Tomorrow we leave for New Zealand. As a huge heat wave hits Victoria we are escaping to the cooler and more manageable climates of Auckland, Rotorua and Wellington for the better part of 10 days. This family holiday has been in the making for the last two and a half years and I have excitedly planned and booked this self guided trip around the North Island with a lot of enthusiasm and loving detail. I have tried to encompass all of the things that our family have show an interest in exploring whilst we're in New Zealand, even the things that may be pushing me well outside of my comfort zone like spelunking (caving) and zip lining, which means that without a doubt this is going to be an epic family adventure for all of us. 
I am drawing the line at bungee jumping and zorbing though, happy for the kids to throw themselves off bridges and toss themselves down hills in giant plastic balls, but I am not willing to be involved in that kind of stuff and nonsense. The last thing that I need before I head back to work is a back injury, broken arm or leg or worse; no thank-you! I am going to leave the high impact action to the young and brave of heart, besides I am more than happy to wait out their high octane antics from the comfort of a good day spa with a glass of delicious New Zealand wine in my hand. Have at it kids, I'm happy to find my own fun! 
This trip will be especially significant for Zoe because this trip is her 21st birthday gift - finally coming to fruition! It's one thing to give someone plane tickets and spending money as a gift, it's another thing altogether to finally get on to that flight and have the chance to spend that money overseas. So needless to say, the anticipation is high and the excitement has reached fever pitch.
We are all super excited to be going over to New Zealand as a family for what will probably be the last big overseas holiday that we all have together for quite some time. Zoe has overseas destinations that she wants to explore with her fiance and Craig and I have a few big ticket items to get done out here that will occupy our spending money for a while as well, so it's hard to say when we will have an opportunity as good as this again. In light of that, we are all heading to New Zealand with our sights set on having an absolutely marvellous time.
​So I bid you all a fond farewell as I depart the country for a spell, I will without a doubt have wonderful tales to tell upon my return.
Just like Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, I am going on an adventure! Perhaps my most favourite adventure of all time and I cannot wait!

THE FAVOURITE
Release Date: 2018
Rating: MA 15+
Running Time: 121 mins 
An historical period drama/ black comedy directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and written by Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara. After winning the Grand Jury Prize at the 75th Venice International Film Festival where it had it's world premiere, The Favourite has since gone on to receive further critical acclaim, praise and accolades for it's screenplay, cinematography, music, costume design and the stellar performances of the three lead roles portrayed by Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz. 
In 1708 whilst Britain is at War with France, Queen Anne (Colman) sits on the throne entertaining eccentric behaviours and struggling with her unpredictable emotions and eating patterns. Sarah Churchill (Weisz) offers the Queen counsel, advise and comfort in many and varied ways, and has always held the Queen's attentions and affections. That is until her impoverish cousin Abigail Hill (Stone) arrives and seeks to gain the Queen's affections and adorations over Sarah. An unspoken and vicious competition commences as the two women vie for the Queen's favour. 
I adore Yorgos Lanthimos as a director, he always brings a fresh and raw perspective to his storytelling and The Favourite may be my favourite of his movies so far. This film looks lush in every way, and the constant excessive indulgences really drive home the dreadfully wasteful and revoltingly spoilt lifestyles of the British Aristocracy of that period perfectly.
The acting is flawless and the three leads have been perfectly cast and the story is delivered in a wickly interesting way. Olivia Colman is looking mighty good for a Best Actress Oscar here, and Weisz and Stone bring a very real threat to the Academy Awards in their terrific support roles as well. This is unmissable stuff, a truly amazing cinematic experience. 
FINAL SAY: As it turns out, I'm capable of much unpleasantness. 
4.5 Chilli Peppers ​

Age gap is something that regularly comes up in random conversation and everyone pretty much has their own opinion around what is an acceptable age gap for a couple and what is not. To be honest, I generally don't give that much of a shit about age gap, but I would be lying if I said that I didn't find some age gap relationships a little over the top and somewhat cringe worthy. 
If you ask google what is an acceptable age gap it comes up with this interesting statement:
The rules state that by dividing your own age by two and then adding seven you can find the socially-acceptable minimum age of anyone you want to date. 
My first wondering about that statement is who actually created this so called 'rule' that they speak of? And their definition of a 'socially acceptable minimum age' is, in itself, an extremely grey area, I mean can people outside of this equation still be accepted into society or will they forever feel the sting of being ostracized for their forbidden passions? And why are they assuming that everyone wants to date someone younger than they are? What are the rules for older partners? 
If this statement is true then I could be dating a 29 year old which may not raise too many eyebrows, and if the same applies in reverse then I could also be dating a 73 year old, which may raise even more eyebrows. So, according to this google formula I can date anyone between 29 and 73 and no-one would be put out or offended, but if I started dating a 28 year old or a 74 year old, well that would just be getting freaky. 
I don't think that there really are any 'rules' around age gap dating, because we all know that love is love and that consenting adults have the right to date anyone that they want to. However, as I said earlier there are some age gap relationships that do make me feel uncomfortable. I don't think that people should be dating anyone that is the same age or younger than their own children, and I also don't think that people should date anyone older than their own biological parents either.
In my case, if I was to date someone around my children's age I would be seeing a 21 year old and if I was to date someone around my parents age then my partner would be in their 80's and I am not comfortable with either of those options. Now I know that everyone has their own personal boundaries around age gap dating, and I am not claiming that my choices are correct, I am simply stating that that is where I draw my line in the sand on age gap romances. 
Hollywood is notorious for putting massive age gaps in movies that no-one ever bats an eye at because they are usually younger women with older men; in fact an older man with a younger lady is generally not considered to be nearly as controversial as an older lady with a younger man is for some reason. Perhaps it is because we are conditioned to seeing more older men with younger women romance dynamics in cinema and as a result of that we have become conditioned to accepting it as normal. 
Here are some prime examples of older men with significantly younger women in romance films that defy the realms of acceptable, and yet no-one seemed too bothered about them at all:
Drew Barrymore and Tom Skerritt in Poison Ivy - 42 year gap
Kevin Spacey and Mena Suvari in American Beauty - 20 year gap
Gary Cooper and Audrey Hepburn in Love in the Afternoon - 28 year gap
Woody Allen and Mariel Hemingway in Manhattan - 26 year age gap
Johnny Depp and Amber Heard in The Rum Diary - 23 year gap
Brad Pitt and Rose Byrne in Troy - 16 year gap
Gabriel Byrne and Winona Ryder in Little Women - 21 year gap
Richard Gere and Hilary Swank in Amelia - 25 year gap
Timothy Hutton and Natalie Portman in Beautiful Girls - 21 year gap
Tom Cruise and Olga Kurylenko in Oblivion - 17 year gap
Liam Neeson and Olivia Wilde in Third Person - 32 year gap
Denzel Washington and Lymari Nadal in American Gangster - 23 year gap
Hugh Laurie and Leighton Meester in The Oranges - 27 year gap
However, to be fair, Hollywood doesn't always get it wrong when it comes to age gap movies and there have been some truly tasteful and empowering age gap movies that are not only plausible but also liberating in terms of love and what both platonic and romantic love can look like. Some of my personal favourite recommendations are:

• Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool - Jamie Bell and Annette Benning - 28 year gap
• The Reader - Kate Winslet and David Kross - 21 year age gap
• Harold and Maude - Ruth Gordon and Bud Cort - 52 year gap
• Leon the Professional - Jean Reno and Natalie Portman - 33 year age gap
• Lost in Translation - Scarlett Johansson and Bill Murray - 34 year gap
• The Graduate - Anne Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman- 10 year gap
• Seeking a Friend for the End of the World -Steve Carell and Keira Knightley - 22 year gap

At the end of the day, everyone knows that age is really just a number and that it can never define what is acceptable in terms of real love and meaningful relationships. I suppose that it is important to not get hung up on the actual age gap in a relationship but rather to look deeper at the parameters of that love and whether or not it is respectful, meaningful, plausible and genuine, and if it is indeed all of those things, then who am I to judge? 

There is nothing like the turning over of a New Year to reinvigorate the spirits and to get you thinking about how far you've come and where you'd like to be going for the next twelve months. I used to be completely bonkers about setting myself huge goals at the beginning of each new year, I used to be the resolution queen once upon a time. I spent hours and hours stupidly exhausting myself trying to maintain new year's resolutions and 'upgrade' myself.  I have since wised up and discovered that the turning over of the calendar from the 31st of December to January 1st has little or no reflection on how your year is going to play out and whether you will or won't achieve your set goals. Real change requires effort of a more consistent and repetitive nature than just flogging yourself silly for a few months, real change can take much, much longer than a calendar year could ever provide. 
What I have found, through a process of diligent goal setting and also wild abandon of all goal setting and letting the wind blow me where it may in a devil may care type of fashion, is that if you want something bad enough you don't need to set yourself a resolution to do it, you will just do it. If it matters to you, if you can make it a priority, then you will make it happen.
Just like those people in your life that don't see you for a long time and use the pathetic excuse 'that they were just too busy' to get around to catching up (which is quite frankly a load of horseshit) because everyone is busy and that excuse is just ridiculous! If you really want to see someone then you will make it a priority and you will see them. And the same goes for any other goals that you set for yourself in life, if it matters enough to you, then  you will make it a priority, and I guarantee that if can do that, then you will make it happen.
You do not need to write it on a calendar or drunkenly shout it off a balcony at midnight on news years eve to make it happen, in fact those flimsy pledges rarely go anywhere anyway.  If you can make something a non-negotiable aspect of your life, then you will see your goals come to fruition. 
​And that, I believe, is the key to all of life's successes. Consistent, continual, conscientious prioritising is what you need to make your goals a reality. Making new year's resolutions and dreamy promises to yourself does not get shit done, but committing to making your goals non-negotiable and essential in your everyday life does. Trust me, it's true, you cannot go halfway on your dreams and life goals, but you also do not have to make everything happen in a twelve month time bracket either.
The reason that so many people fail when it comes to resolutions and personal goals is because they didn't want it bad enough in the first place and/or they wanted it too soon. Every major goal that I have achieved in my life has taken me years to attain, and has generally required a fair amount of upkeep to sustain as well. The good stuff takes work, there are no shortcuts. In order to make changes in your life for the better, you are required to commit and persevere, even when you want to quit, you have to persist and be 100% non-negotiable to meet that goal. 
In January of 2015 my new years resolution goals were:

• Finish all of the reviews on my blog (I had 310 backlogged movies to review at that point)
• Do half an hour of exercise a day
• Drink more water
• Meditate twice a week
• Plan a get together once a month (with friends or family)

I set those goals for myself four years ago and I think that I have only just met them now, but again, I still have to work hard to maintain them. And there were also other major changes that I made to my life along the way to meeting those goals that I didn't write down or pledge to the world, I just made them a priority and was fiercely uncompromising with my efforts to achieve them.
I managed to quit smoking, started performing daily yoga and meditation practices, learnt to read and write Braille, maintained my daily journaling and also maintained my Spicywatch reviews and blog entries, and trust me when I tell you that sometimes, these things are hard to maintain. I too get busy, and  I want to cut corners and stop doing as much, but they are my life goals, they are things that I have made a priority in my life because I want to have a richer fuller life experience, and I will not compromise on my goals.
Real change takes time, a lot of time and a lot of consistent and continual effort. Unfortunately, personal upgrading is not just a flippant news year's resolution thing, it's a lot of hard work but it is also completely satisfying to set your sights on a better version of yourself and then achieve it. There is really no better feeling (apart from giving love and being loved) that I know of. So, yes, do set out to meet your life goals and push yourself forward, but do it realistically, knowing that it is going to take a lot of your time, effort and persistence to achieve and that what you set in motion in 2019 may not be your reality until 2025, and that that is okay as well....slow and steady wins the race my friends, so take your time and enjoy the ride! 

That time has rolled around again, the time for me to collate all of my viewing efforts and put forward my recommendations for the best viewing choices of 2018. As I have mentioned before, quality television really dominated my time this year and I gave more 5 Chilli Pepper ratings to TV series than I gave to movies this year. To be honest, overall I do feel that the quality of movies this year was not as strong as it was in 2017, and I feel like I watched a lot more mediocre movies than I did last year as well, but sometimes that happens. 
In total I viewed 253 movies in 2018 and 133 TV series (some of which had several seasons). I have watched programs across every genre, and I can honestly say that there were excellent offerings in all of those genres in both movies and television. This year I am not going to list my least favorite viewings for 2018 because I have made myself a new years resolution to be more positive and to not focus on the negative things, so to list the worst things I saw in 2018 would be counterproductive to that resolution. Besides, as I have said before, even if I didn't love it, doesn't mean that someone else won't or that it is rubbish. At the end of the day, even the movies that we don't really enjoy have required a lot of time, money and effort to be produced; to shit on someone else's dream or vision is a pretty lousy thing to do, so I am choosing not to go there. 
I hope that you find something on these lists that you have not seen yet and can hopefully now explore. For full reviews of all of the recommended movies below, just go to the appropriate genre tab at the top of the page.
So without any further ado, here are my TOP MOVIE CHOICES (2018 release):  

• ROMA - Foreign 4.5 Chilli Peppers
• Hereditary - Horror 4.5 Chilli Peppers 
• Beautiful Boy - Drama 4.5 Chilli Peppers 
• Isle of Dogs - Kid Friendly 4.5 Chilli Peppers
• BlacKkKlannsman  - Drama 4 Chilli Peppers 
• A Star in Born - Romance 4 Chilli Peppers 
• The Tale - Gritty 4 Chilli Peppers 
• Paddington 2 - Kid Friendly 4 Chilli Peppers 
• Avengers: Infinity War -  Super 4 Chilli Peppers 
• The Ballad of Buster Scruggs - Art House 4 Chilli Peppers 
• Upgrade - Science Fiction/ Action 4 Chilli Peppers  
• John Leguizamo: Latin History for Morons - Documentary 4 Chilli Peppers 

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

• A Quiet Place - Sci-Fi/ Horror 3.5 Chilli Peppers
• Annihilation - Sci-Fi 3.5 Chilli Peppers
• Black Panther - Super 3.5 Chilli Peppers
• Ready Player One - Fantasy 3.5 Chilli Peppers
• The Breaker Upperers - Comedy 3.5 Chilli Peppers
• Searching - Crime 3.5 Chilli Peppers
• Game Night - Comedy 3.5 Chilli Peppers
• Love, Simon - Romance 3.5 Chilli Peppers
• Bohemian Rhapsody - Drama 3.5 Chilli Peppers
• Blockers - Comedy 3.5 Chilli Peppers

Here are my top recommendations for pre- 2018 releases that I didn't see until 2018: 

• Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri - Drama 5 Chilli Peppers (Hall of Fame)
• Bright Star - Romance 4.5 Chilli Peppers
• Wind River - Drama 4 Chilli Peppers
• Good Time - Drama 4 Chilli Peppers 
• The Shape of Water - Fantasy 4 Chilli Peppers 
• Coco - Kid Friendly 4 Chilli Peppers 
• Mudbound - Drama 4 Chilli Peppers
• Call Me by Your Name  - Romance 4 Chilli Peppers 
• Ingrid Goes West - Drama 4 Chilli Peppers 
• Beasts of No Nation - Gritty 4 Chilli Peppers 
• The Tunnel - Foreign 4 Chilli Peppers 

BEST TELEVISION SERIES of 2018: 

• Master of None S2 - Comedy/ Drama 5 Chilli Peppers 
• One Strange Rock - Documentary 5 Chilli Peppers
• Atlanta S2 - Drama 5 Chilli Peppers
• Sharp Objects - Crime 5 Chilli Peppers
• Patrick Melrose - Drama 5 Chilli Peppers
• Kidding - Drama 4.5 Chilli Peppers
• Who is America? - Comedy/ Documentary 4.5 Chilli Peppers
• Here and Now - Drama 4.5 Chilli Peppers
• Maniac - Sci-Fi 4.5 Chilli Peppers
• Lemony Snicket's a Series of Unfortunate Events S2 - Fantasy/ Kid Friendly 4.5 Chilli Peppers 
• Mosaic - Crime 4 Chilli Peppers
• The End of the Fucking World S1 - Crime 4 Chilli Peppers
• Dirk Gently S2 - Fantasy 4 Chilli Peppers
• Barry S1 - Crime/ Drama 4 Chilli Peppers
• AHS - Apocalypse - Horror 4 Chilli Peppers
• Mr Inbetween - Crime 4 Chilli Peppers
• Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat - Documentary 4 Chilli Peppers
• Just Another Immigrant - Comedy  4 Chilli Peppers
• Mr Mercedes S1 - Crime  4 Chilli Peppers
• Wanderlust - Drama  4 Chilli Peppers
• The Miracle - Foreign  4 Chilli Peppers
• Anne with an E S2 - Drama 4 Chilli Peppers

HONORABLE MENTIONS:

• Britannia S1 - Fantasy 3.5 Chilli Peppers 
• Ash vs Evil Dead S3 - Horror/ Comedy 3.5 Chilli Peppers 
• Swedish Dicks S2 - Comedy/ Crime 3.5 Chilli Peppers 
• Future Man - Sci-Fi/Comedy 3.5 Chilli Peppers 
• GLOW S2 - Drama 3.5 Chilli Peppers 
• The Detectorists S2 - Comedy/ Drama 3.5 Chilli Peppers 
• Sabrina the Teenage Witch - Horror 3.5 Chilli Peppers 
• Wellington Paranormal - Horror/Comedy 3.5 Chilli Peppers 
• The Kominsky Method - Drama/ Comedy 3.5 Chilli Peppers 

Another year is drawing to a close and what a wonderful year it has been for me. There have been so many highlights and so many special events, holidays and celebrations that I have been able to share with my family, my friends and my work colleagues this year that it is hard to know where to start. 2018 has truly been a year filled with great blessings, personal growth and many, many smiles.
I really like to make a list of the highlights of a year as it draws to close because it is so easy to forget just how many joyful things you do and get to be apart of; and how much you have achieved if you don't take stock on some level.  I always feel so deeply overwhelmed whenever I look back at everything that I have achieved and shared throughout the year and reflecting on a year is a really lovely thing to do that really helps you to count your blessings and focus on the abundance in your life. 
Here are my favourite highlights from 2018, all of which have brought me a great deal of joy, a sense of belonging, a feeling of enrichment and have provided me with many memories to reflect upon during the quieter and more contemplative times of the year. 

JANUARY:  Zoe and Lachlainn's engagement, Seth's 13th birthday, Jubilee Lake Picnic in Daylesford, Australia Day Fireworks, BBQ's and Drinks on the Enfield deck, TRUE - 30 days of Yoga program, Started my new job adventures. 
FEBRUARY: Chinese New Year- the Year of the Dog,  Rockabilly Festival, dinner and coffee dates with friends, Curry/movie night get togethers kicked off. 
MARCH: White Night Festival, International Women's Day, Cooking Day at Enfield  with friends, My Birthday, Jesus Christ Superstar, The Begonia Festival, The Arts Trail, the Egg Painting session at Enfield on Easter Saturday.
APRIL: Craig's Birthday, Eating Hot Cross Buns and good quality Chocolate on Easter Sunday, Dinner Parties, the Autumn School Holiday Break, Movie Nights at Enfield with mates, Apple and Quince harvesting. 
MAY: Mother's Day, The Festival of Light at the Great Stupa in Bendigo, a Daylesford Chocolate Mill visit, meeting Daniel Kish (aka. The Batman- echolocation expert), Spicywatch's 4th Birthday.
JUNE: Zoe's 21st Birthday, Winter Solstice Celebrations, Mushrooming, Completing my Level One Braille Qualification, Weekend Breakfast Dates with friends, the Winter School Holidays.
JULY: Alice in Wonderland at ACMI, Winter Movie Marathon nights, Flashy Cocktails and Long Lunches with my friends, When I Grow Up Art Exhibition, All day Baking and Soup making Sessions, Prospects dinners, eating Homemade Apple Pie with my Family. 
AUGUST:  Dinner parties, Dress-up Events at School (Book Week, 100 days of School, PJ day), committing to 30 days of 30 minutes of extra exercise (which I have continued with ever since).
SEPTEMBER: Father's Day, Seeing the Showcase Performance at school, Commencing 20 minutes of daily Transcendental Meditation (have also continued with this all year), the Spring School Holiday Break.
OCTOBER: Halloween horror movie/ dinner night, Rediscovered the joy of the local Botanical Gardens, School trip to Melbourne Zoo, Landcare Open Day, Cocktail and Perfume Night at The Lost Ones.
NOVEMBER: Bonfire Night, Anniversary weekend at Skenes Creek, Dinner Dates and Movie Nights, Sunday afternoon Live Music at Smythesdale Pub. 
DECEMBER: Dinner Party with friends, Having a KK to spoil and one that spoilt me as well, Staff Christmas function, Student Graduation, the Foundation Team Dinner, Summer Holidays kicking off, Christmas Day, Champagne Breakfasts, Reuniting with my nephew. 

Seriously, it has been the best year, I have so many things to be grateful for and so many reasons to celebrate what a wonderful life I have. On top of all of that, Spicywatch hit 11,000 return readers this month and I cannot tell you how wonderful it is to think that people are not only reading my blog and reviews, but are returning for more, it is just incredible to me. I am truly thankful to each and every Spicywatch reader for their continual check ins to my website, for their beautiful comments and their amazing support throughout the year. 
May 2019 bring you all much peace, much happiness and an abundance of all of the best things in life. I look forward to delivering more reviews and movie information to you all in 2019 and sharing my personal life experiences with you along the way as well.
Happiest of New Year's wishes to you all, may your resolutions be fulfilled, your hearts be full and your hangovers minimal; may you discover many new, enjoyable challenges and rewards in the new year and I hope that 2019 allows you to find your groove in all things,
Sending all of my love to you,
Happy New Year,
From Spicywatch xx

Today is Boxing Day and I have officially dropped out the other end of Christmas. What I am now experiencing is that numb sense of overwhelment and exhaustion that arrives in the days preceding Christmas time. I have indulged in copious amounts of rich and decadent deliciousness, I have drank enough alcohol to challenge the driest of sailors on shore leave and I have received the most amazing gifts over the last four days. In short, it has been tremendously busy and I have been tremendously spoilt all over again. Talk about your first world problems over here, too much of the good stuff for me that's for sure!
However, it wasn't all take and no give, I really had a wonderful time giving all of the gifts that I had shopped for and I made plenty of treats and delicious eats for others to indulge in. I also did my volunteer shift of Christmas gift wrapping and fundraising for the Salvos as well, so I actually got to give over quite a bit of my love this jolly season. Everyone knows that the giving is generally even more special than the receiving at Christmas time and it was so wonderful to spend time with my family and friends over the last few days in an unhurried, indulgent and relaxing way. 
To be honest I haven't even managed to get out of my pyjamas today, I am having the laziest of days and with the fridge full of leftovers, I won't even need to cook this evening either. Unfortunately, my body clock has not adjusted to holiday time yet and insists on waking me up at 6am, which wouldn't be a problem if I wasn't continually burning the midnight oil at the moment as well. I don't think that I have been in bed before midnight since I finished work last week, and the lack of rest is starting to get a hold of me. 
Tiredness affects people in all kinds of ways, some people get cranky and moody, others get dozy, but I get vague, really, really vague. People can have entire conversations with me and I won't hear a word of it because I am off with the pixies. I also do really stupid things like lose my glasses (which are perched on top of my head) or put things away and forget where I put them. I suppose that I am just getting a really good glimpse into my future, because from what I have heard, people in their old age do a lot of wacky stuff like that all of the time. However, I also get really annoyingly foggy and I can't focus on anything for very long, everything seems much harder than it actually is and I am really only good for one thing, movie marathons and TV bingeing.
Am I using my tiredness as an excuse to hit the couch hard for a couple of days? Probably, but I don't feel guilty about that, it is the holidays after all and I have well and truly earned my right to be lazy and disconnected for a while. The time to unplug and tune out has finally arrived, so I think I might watch something a little on the slanted side because my mind is already there after all!

Gimme a high five, a kiss on the cheek and a slap on the arse - work has officially ended! I have now happily navigated (and survived) the Christmas Staff Party, the work place Kris Kringle certificate exchange and the obligatory tipples, cheerful chatter and tears of goodbye that come with all end of year farewells and the much anticipated and fiercely coveted Summer holiday escape. All of my Christmas work events were thoroughly enjoyable, as one would expect when you work with a group of wonderful people, and I was sweetly touched by the outpouring of love and care that everyone in my school community shared with each other over this busy and genuinely exhausting time of the year.
The children (literally dead on their feet by the final stroke of the clock) showered me with much thanks, many hugs and a ridiculously generous cascade of gifts that were both greatly appreciated and overwhelmingly touching; highlighting all of the reasons that the slog is always worthwhile and that we do indeed change tiny minds everyday for the better. It would be more than fair to say that Christmas definitely came early for me. I don't even need to open another gift now, I have already been insanely spoilt and my ego has had a mighty good fluffing up from the many compliments and thanks that the children's parents (who did not hold back their gratitude or appreciations) happily gave to me. 
And so now I move onto more personal affairs, as today I brave the supermarket hordes to shop for my pre-Christmas get togethers and my family Christmas Day lunch. And even though I know that the supermarket is going to resemble a looting escapade during a zombie apocalypse, this is truly a labour of love now and I will undertake it with a lot of thought and loving devotion, because after all, it is Christmas time and therefore an excellent opportunity to spoil your loved ones and indulge in the finer things in life without feeling guilty. 
I have my menu planned, my shopping list written and I have purposely set aside Christmas Eve to prepare desserts and spend some time with Zoe and Seth swanning about the kitchen cooking up some delicious Christmas fare. I like to do all of the hard work and as much of the preparations before Christmas so that on the day I just have to load up the oven and grab a glass of bubbly. No-one should be slaving away in a kitchen on Christmas Day, that is just downright criminal. The load on the day has to be shared; the kids will dress the table (which Zoe has a turned into an art form), I will fill the oven and carve the roasted beasts, we will all do a little dusting and turning out of pre-prepared sweet treats, Seth will organise some appropriate and festive mood music and Craig, as he always does, will provide a jug of good gravy which he makes with the precision of a surgeon. And voila - we will have ourselves a merry little Christmas family gathering. Nothing more to do on the day but pop open the crackers and enjoy a relaxed meal together, which now that I have written about, am getting very excited for.
​Come on Christmas, I am ready for you to arrive!

I cannot deny that the fatigue of a rather long term has begun to set in over the last week. Since the beginning of December I have attended seven dinner events, two graduations, five after hours appointments, two breakfast dates, squeezed in a trip to the movies and not missed a day of work in the process. I have also finished my Christmas shopping, wrapped all of my presents, sent off my Christmas cards, put up the tree and decorations, planned my Christmas menu and volunteered to work for the Salvos and wrap presents on the Sunday before Christmas. I don't want to brag, but I am bloody well going to because I am slamming this Christmas so hard!
With only two days of work left, I am starting to feel the drag of this busy time of the year weighing down on me, which means that I need to shift my focus back to the positive things that have lead to me to this point in the year. I admit that I am ready to unwind a little, and I probably deserve to because I have been going at it like the clappers, and even though work will fall into blissful respite for a while, I still have quite a lot to do between now and the new year, which at this stage looks like a sweet lull from the busyness for me. However, no matter how you look at it, it is always easier to get  more done when you are on holidays and things don't ever feel like a chore when you are marching to the sound of your own drum and don't feel compelled to adhere the time constraints of paid employment. 
Overall, 2018 has been an absolutely massive year for me in every way, absolutely positive that is. I have incorporated so much new learning and self discovery time into my life this year, and for that reason I have a much fuller and richer life than I have ever had before. I have worked really hard to develop routines that have offered me a healthier lifestyle overall; one that embraces me in mind, body and spirit, and I have reaped a  lot of rewards for those efforts. I have also worked harder at my employment, taking on new skill sets and trying out new experiences on a level that I would never have had the confidence to do before, which has pushed me out of my comfort zone but made me grow as a person. And I also believe that I have worked really hard to cultivate meaningful relationships in my life this year by nurturing the positive and uplifting relationships that I am lucky enough to have by spending more time with people who stimulate, entertain, enchant, respect and interest me, which has made my family and social life incredibly enriching and deeply satisfying. 
On all fronts, I feel blessed. Blessed to have had the year that I have had, blessed to be able to spend Christmas time with my family and friends and blessed to have grown as much as I have this year. And even though I have no idea what kind of fuel is carrying me across the finish line of Term Four this year, I am deeply thankful for it and cannot wait to see what lies ahead for the rest of this wonderful season of celebration. 

When people think of stalkers they think of famous people that are in the spotlight getting pursued by weirdos that send them creepy stuff like mutilated dolls in the mail or have creeps turning up at their houses in their underwear demanding a massage; but the truth about stalking is actually way more alarming and far more common than that.
It is only the celebrity stalkers that make it into the news, so we never really hear about all of the other stalking that goes on around us everyday. Turns out, that the real life everyday stalkers are actually very common and according to the National Centre for Victims of Crime statistics, one in 45 men and one in 12 women will be stalked by someone during their lifetime. How creepy is that? I bet you didn't know that there were that many people out in the world with stalker-ish qualities. I have to admit that I was pretty surprised when I read the statistics myself. So, obviously I wanted to know more about stalking, like why does a person stalk and how can you spot stalker behaviour before it gets out of control? 
From what I have read, a stalker's main objective is to induce fear which they try to incite through methods of harassment and intimidation. The official definition of a stalker is anyone that creates unwanted contact between two people that directly or indirectly communicates a threat or places the victim in fear, which means that stalkers can be intentional or unintentional in their actions. 75% of all stalkers personally know their victims, so if you do find yourself being stalked, odds are that you will know the perpetrator. 
Here are the seven types of stalkers to watch out for:
Domestic: A former spouse or paramour. This is the most prevalent type of stalking and can often manifest in the workplace. It also has the highest incident of putting  innocent bystanders at risk.
Lust: A serial predator that stalks victim after victim. Serial rapists and murderers often begin as lust stalkers. 
Love-Scorned: An acquaintance, coworker, neighbour etc. that desires an intimate relationship with the victim but is rebuffed.
Celebrity: Famous people stalker, aka. obsessive stranger. 
Political: A person who's stalking is motivated by their political beliefs.
Hit: A person hired to stalk and murder a person.
Revenge: An angry, aggrieved, resentful and vindictive person that is seeking payback.
Unfortunately, there is no reliable profile to predict who is likely to stalk. Some patterns have begun to emerge from research, and although these fall short of providing a reliable or conclusive checklist, what has been discovered so far is interesting to say the least. Clinical studies have discovered that a large percentage of stalkers are:

• Unemployed or under-employed
• In their late 30's to late 40's
• High school and/or college graduates
• More intelligent than other forms of criminals
• Mostly male
• Often delusional
• Sometimes narcissistic
• Usually antisocial 

Interestingly, in another study, most women said that they felt more afraid of being stalked by an unknown stranger than by someone that they knew. And I suppose that it is easier in some ways to see why an unknown predator would seem scarier, it makes them more unpredictable and mysterious. However, the truth is that the greatest danger of being stalked comes from the devil you know, not from the strangers, so don't get too complacent about odd behaviours in people that you already know. 
Some potentially stalking behaviours to pay attention to would include:

• Someone who has an unnecessary need to contact you but still does, their contact levels will be persistent and incessant. They will use calls, text, emails or even visit in person more often than you feel comfortable with. 
• Someone who seems clingy or keeps tabs on your goings on. They will always enquire about who you spend time with, where you are going and the details of your future plans. 
• Someone who knows more about you than you have told them. This means that they have enquired about you to other people or researched you through the people you know and your online profiles. 
• Someone who is socially awkward, says inappropriate things in large groups of people or is rude or mean to your friends. Many stalkers have these social traits. 
• Someone who cannot respect your personal boundaries and tries to contact you at inappropriate times, even after you've asked them not to. 
• Someone who drops in unannounced and hangs around when you don't want them to. 
• Someone that becomes aggressive, annoyed or intimidating when you try to set up personal boundaries or if you decline an invitation that they have initiated. 
• Someone that has left signs that they have been to your home, near your car, at your place of employment or on your social media accounts when you have not been there yourself. 

Above all else, if you do feel like you are being pursued or stalked by someone in any way then you really need to take action. Firstly, by telling the person clearly that you would like to be left alone, then by increasing your own personal security (eg. telling friends and family about the stalker, changing your phone number, getting your locks changed, adjusting your daily patterns, not being alone as much as possible) and then if your stalker still doesn't get the hint, then you need to alert the police.
Remember that stalkers are not emotionally stable people, and therefore you cannot rely on them to make the right decisions, so always protect yourself first and never approach them alone. Hopefully, you will never need to employ any of this information, but with many things of an insidious nature, prevention and early detection can be key. So, don't feel like you ever need to put up with being intimidated by someone who attempts to gain your attention and friendship through means of fear, harassment and aggression becasue that's called stalking and it's illegal. 

So many people have asked me if I think that a remake can be better than an original version of a movie, and my answer is always the same: 'Yes! Of course it can!' With movie technology continually improving, we can now enjoy advanced CGI effects and superior sound and visual experiences, which in short means that we can have a more immersive cinematic experience than we ever could have had before. However, that does not necessarily make the original version redundant or of lesser value and importance, because if I was also asked if remakes were always better the original versions, I would most definitely answer 'Hell No!' 
To this day I still watch a lot of classic movies, and by classic I mean movies from the 1930's to the 1970's. Movies from that time period didn't have a lot of options in the effects and sound department compared to today's standards, so they are often movies that relied on excellent acting and directing to deliver their stories. I have a stockpile of movies on my 'still need to see' list (which seems to be ever expanding and absolutely endless) and around 70% of them would fall into the classic film category. Most of them are very good, some of them are downright legendary and could not be improved upon by a remake, but some of them certainly could. 
To be better than the original movie, there needs to be an improvement on all fronts, and not just in the effects department, because if the storyline is thin then my attention is never held for very long by CGI effects and all of the other bells and whistles that filmmakers feel compelled to throw at movies. For me, there needs to be something fresh about a remake that warrants the movie being remade in the first place. The perspective needs to alter in some way or the story has to become enhanced or given more depth or meaning in a remake. The actors need to be every bit as good and preferably better than the original actors and the director needs to be an avid fan of the original in a way that forces them to keep the integrity of the original intact, in other words it needs to not feel like a director's ego trip, which has happened so many times in remakes. 
There have in fact been heaps of excellent remakes that are deserving of your time, even if you have seen and enjoyed the original version. 
Here is my list of the best movie remakes that I have experienced, in no particular order:
Romeo and Juliet -Baz Luhrmann perfectly remixed this Shakespearean classic by installing a couple of modern heart-throbs and infusing it with a funky fresh soundtrack, and it is slice of pure brilliance. 
Mad Max: Fury Road - I also really liked the original, but the heart-pounding, high octane, adrenaline rush action of the remake was just so damn good, oh and Tom Hardy was in it, definitely a bonus. 
The Jungle Book - Jon Favreau's version of this Rudyard Kipling's classic is a perfect example of how CGI can be used to enhance an experience. It is magical!
Dawn of the Dead - This comedy/ horror homage to George A. Romero from Zack Snyder is a brain eating spectacular, so much blood and tasteless humour! 
Blair Witch - I didn't really like The Blair Witch Project original, but I really got creeped out by the 2016 remake that was simply called Blair Witch. Kept me away from camping for years!
A Star is Born - remade four times, and finally they got it right! The onscreen chemistry  of Coops and Gaga and the modern musical score made this new take an old romance a real winner. 
Ghostbusters - The girls had a swing at it in 2016 and were every bit as good as the boys were in 1984, and they didn't try to 'remake' it so much as have another go at something similar and I enjoyed it a lot. 
The Ring - The 1998 Japanese version was still really good, but the 2002 Gore Verbinski English language remake had an expanded storyline and some extra creepy CGI visuals. The acting was seriously stepped up in this version as well. 
Bram Stoker's Dracula - Dracula has been done to death (pardon the pun) but when Francis Ford Coppola had a go, well it was just magic, finally something Stoker would've loved!
IT - Probably the best horror remake of all time, the effects and storyline have been fine tuned to perfection, unmissable remake material. 
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory -Tim Burton takes us on a delicious and disturbing romp into Willy Wonka's chocolate factory in this accurate realisation of Roald Dahl's classic tale that his own family were involved in creating.
King Kong - Peter Jackson's epic realisation of Skull Island and the tragic tale of Mighty Kong is by far the best version to see for all of it's impressive CGI effects and in depth story telling. 

Lots to consider at the moment.
The world is kind of whizzing past me in a wild flurry of activity and I am desperately trying to keep a hold on everything and remain positive, polite and jovial. Enjoy the ride Barb...remember you said you were going to enjoy the ride? says the voice in the back of my mind. And then the voice in the front of my mind says, what are you bloody well doing lollygagging about when Christmas is coming in twenty days? You aren't even close to ready for this!  
And I am constantly fighting between these two state of being at the moment, one is a state of blissful acceptance and joyful meandering and the other is a state of slight concern and mild panic. I say mild panic because I am not actually freaking out, but I do know that things are starting to mount up around me and that I am having to try my best to eliminate any clutter as it occurs so that it doesn't get too hectic. However, this need to eliminate the clutter as soon as possible has also caused another condition to occur; the 'too many balls in the air' condition that plagues everyone at some point around the silly season. Curses on the balls I say, I don't want balls to keep in the air, I want a blissful ride! 
Unfortunately, most of these said 'balls' have just arrived of their own volition and have not been of my own making at all, and this entire experience has swiftly reminded me that no matter how good my intentions may have been to remain all zen and joyful on the road to Christmas, that the rest of the world is not always sharing that sentiment with me and that poses a pretty big challenge to my plans. Every year I tell myself to slow down and enjoy the ride and every year it gets harder and harder to follow through with that idea because everyone else seems to be stressing out around me. 
It can be really hard to find enough down time at this time of the year as well, which means that I don't get nearly enough time on the yoga mat, the hiking tracks or the meditation pillow and that generally means that I am not really operating at my most tolerant levels either; and when you go and smash that together with every other pre-Christmas concern and 55 very tired foundation students a day...well, you know where this is going...not to a very zen like place that's for sure. 
However, as I said it is only slight concern and mild panic at this point, certainly nothing that I cannot manage and considering some of the side balls that I have had tossed at me over the last week, I think that I am actually doing okay. Got a whole new mantra going and everything:
Enjoy the ride Barb...enjoy the ride!

Genocide is the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious or national group. When we think about racial genocide we generally think about all of the indigenous communities that were horrifically and systematically murdered, removed or bred out of existence because of greed and intolerance.
Native people with advanced civilisations like the Mayans, the Aztecs, the Incas, the native Mexican tribes, the Apache, the Navajo, the Cherokee, the Yuki, the Indigenous Australian and African tribes, the New Zealand Maori and Inuit tribes were all severely diminished or even completely wiped out when the Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, British, Belgian and Russian explorers began to invade their lands.
These white invaders from across the seas came to rape, plunder and claim the land, at any cost. If they couldn't just overpower or kill the natives outright with brute force, which was often the case, then they crept in, in the most insidious of ways, spreading their diseases, destroying their crops and livelihood and abducting and enslaving their people, eventually destroying entire native cultures from the inside out.
And that, is genocide. And that is the stuff of history is it not? White man comes, white man takes and white man wonders why he is not trusted anymore. And we all like to tell ourselves that this is all just bad water under the bridge, that this type of thing does not happen anymore, that people have learnt from their mistakes and that genocide is not a modern construct but an ancient one. Well I hate to be the one to break it to you, but people haven't learned jack shit from their sordid and generally horrific past exploits because genocide has also feature heavily in the 20th century history as well, and in a lot of those cases, people have actually turned on each other, their very own people and it is just so disturbing. 
There were the atrocities of the Ottoman Empire/ Turkey when the Christian minorities of Armenia, Assyria and Greece were persecuted. There was the starvation of the Ukrainian people during the Soviet Famine of 1932. Then the mass deportation of Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians and the systematic slaying of Poles and ethnic cleansing of the Crimean Tatars by Stalin in 1937-38.  There was the mass killings of the Chinese people by the Japanese in the Nanking massacre followed by The Holocaust - when the German Nazis murdered approximately 3.8 million Jewish people and performed an ethnic cleansing of the Slavic countries. Then there was a genocide that was carried out on the Cambodians by the Khmer Rouge regime led by Pol Pot in between 1974 and 1979, and the list just goes on and on.....Tibet, the Congo, Somalia, Chechnya, Myanmar, ISIL... I haven't even touched the sides here, there are literally billions of lives and cultures throughout history that have been destroyed through means of genocide. And genocide is still going on today, it is happening right now and the end is nowhere in sight. 
So what have we learned through all of this killing? What is the take away from all of this bloodshed and civil unrest? For some, they have learned nothing and maybe never will, but for many of us around the globe we have learned that no-one is safe from persecution and that only through a united global mindset will we ever be free from another genocide.
The positive is that most countries have now signed to a peace treaty and will not tolerate the inhumane treatment of any ethnic, religious or racial party; and that is a very good start. We now also place more emphasis on learning from the past and understanding our torn history as humans and supporting the liberation of depleted and destroyed cultures.
It is not okay to not own our history, it is ours, we must own it and learn from it if we are to get better, and I do believe that we can, but it's going to take time and patience and empathy and ownership of what has transpired. And quite frankly, not everyone is prepared to own the atrocities of their own heritage which is going to slow us all down quite a bit, but that doesn't mean that we can give up, it means that we have to push even harder to drive home the message that no-one's culture, religion, ethnicity or race makes them inferior to anyone else and that no-one ever has the right to take that very human right away from anyone else. We have seen enough genocide in our past, wouldn't it be nice to see a lot more liberation and fraternity in our future? 

JOHN LEGUIZAMO'S LATIN HISTORY FOR MORONS
Release Date: 2018
Rating: MA 15+
Running Time: 90 mins
Colombian-American actor John Leguizamo brings his one man Broadway show to Netflix in this unmissable documentary about Latino history. Latin History for Morons earned a 2018 Tony Award nomination for Best Play on Broadway and is easily the most interesting chalk and talk history lesson that you will ever sit through.
When John's son falls victim to a white bully at a Manhattan private school for being Latino, John delves into his own history to try and identify the reasons for America's whitewashed historical recount and the hidden heros that have been sadly overlooked. 
The excruciatingly violent past of the indigenous people of America and South America is delivered here in an informative and effervescent way by Leguizamo who manages to illustrate all of the ugliness with a good speckle of humour and an engaging flair. However underneath it all, this is a harrowing tale about all of the native people that were slain and driven from their homes over the past 3000 years and the impact that is still being felt today as a consequence of that.
Everyone needs to see this, it is a powerful and thought provoking watch that offers a great overview into Hispanic culture for people (or morons like me) that don't know a lot about the topic. 
FINAL SAY: Violence is the lowest form of communication.
4 Chilli Peppers ​

In life we are presented with a never ending stream of opportunities. Opportunities to meet new people and experience new things, opportunities to evolve and unfold as a person and opportunities to change your way of life or your way of thinking. These opportunities come to us every single day, and sometimes we don't even recognise them for what they are because we are too busy or distracted to see what we are being presented with. 
This time of the year in particular is so consuming; consuming of our time, our money and often our patience as well as we scramble toward Christmas, hanging all of our hopes on the day that our holidays begin or that special day when we get to celebrate with our family and friends. We become so fixated on arriving at our destination (which isn't happening for another month yet mind you) that we completely forget to look around and embrace any new opportunities that may be arriving, and we certainly don't make the most out of everyday of the festive season along the way. This happens every year, and I write about it every year because I see it happening to people all around me every year. For some reason we just don't allow ourselves to enjoy things completely in the lead up to Christmas and I am beginning to think that we have all been programmed to do this, and it really has to stop. 
Now don't get me wrong, I do really enjoy Christmas, I am not Scrooge for goodness sake! However, I do feel like people lose focus of what is important at this time of the year and hold themselves to ransom, often sacrificing huge amounts of money, time and energy which they invest into just one day of the year. A day that comes and goes without nearly as much fuss required as we feel compelled to throw at it in my opinion. What about the next 30 days leading up to Christmas? Don't we deserve to enjoy the ride, the countdown and the anticipation with a bit of joy as well? Damn straight we do! We totally need to stop and smell the flowers along the way, indulge in the lead up to the day and seize any new opportunities along the way to Christmas day, but often we just don't. 
The pressure to deliver a so called 'perfect' Christmas quite frankly has balls on it! The best Christmas's that I have ever had were really quiet events spent with my nearest and dearest in total relaxation. I cannot tell you how much stress I have put myself under for Christmas events in the past, and for what? I've spent hours stressing about whether people would be happy with their gifts or not and then barely received a thank you when the gifts were actually opened. I have spent hours slaving away in the kitchen trying to cook for a tribe of people and then had people only point out what they didn't like about the meal when it was over. I can even recall Christmas' where my own family have made me feel completely unwelcomed at Christmas events, and it honestly made me realise that none of it is worth it. 
The build up, the expectation to deliver, the need to perform, blah! Who needs all that? That is the complete opposite of what Christmas is about in my mind, and I think that so many people are getting it all wrong. Why not take some pressure off yourself this year and seize an opportunity to look around at what is really going on. Be honest with yourself, are you really embodying the Christmas spirit or are you just ticking off some stupid 'to do' list that you feel compelled to complete that has nothing to do with love or generosity or kindness, or bloody Christmas spirit for that matter!
Let's get this into perspective. In a nutshell, gifts at Christmas are a bonus, and should never be an expectation unless you are under 10. Kids get to expect Christmas gifts, adults need to be happy with whatever they bloody well get and should not sook or bitch about it because  it's petty and it's mean to look any gift horse in the mouth, especially if you have enough money to buy yourself whatever you want anyway, which is often the case with the biggest whiners. Keep gifts small and thoughtful and never let yourself get frazzled when selecting gifts for people, remember that it is the thought that counts and anyone that thinks otherwise is an asshole! 
The Christmas food on the day should be special but also simple and it should never be too labour intensive because no-one wants to be chained to the kitchen on Christmas day, it's cruel. And people please, think about your food quantities and don't over do it. Creating days of leftovers is hardly 'good will' toward the planet, it is Christmas dinner, not a 'feed the world' campaign and therefore the amount of food doesn't need to increase. Remember that sometimes less is more, and a delicious simple meal with a couple of special additions always works best in my opinion, so don't freak yourself trying to make a 10 course extravaganza, it's not worth the hassell. 
Decorating before Christmas should be a joyous thing to indulge in, something that the whole family can do together which will also take the pressure off one person being responsible for 'doing' the tree and making things festive. Small accents are enough, you don't need to go all 'flashing lights on the house' crazy to feel like you're bringing the Christmas spirit into your home. Effective natural decorations and Christmas accents can be as basic as a few sprigs of evergreen and a couple of pinecones from outside; so damn simple and also free!
So, how are you going to spend your time in the lead up to Christmas this year? Freaking out or chilling out? Seizing and embracing new opportunities or completely oblivious to anything else because you've got your Christmas 'to do' list to perform and come hell or high water you're gonna get it done? Well, essentially the choice is your own, but I know that I'm not gonna sweating the small stuff this year, that's for sure. I'm on the lookout for fun, frivolity and opportunities to enjoy every day leading up Christmas day and every day after that as well!

Just when you think that you have dealt with the worst of the weather for the year, another round of cold, windy and rainy days arrives, swiftly reminding me that I live in Western Victoria and that November is definitely no guarantee of clear skies and sunshine. However, to be completely fair and honest, it is actually quite nice to have a very decent excuse to pound the couch and catch up on a lot of television that I have stockpiled over the last few weeks, so the recent bout of bad weather hasn't really dampened my spirits that much at all. 
Quality television opportunities are arriving in buckets at the moment, and I am seriously struggling to keep up with the high volume of television series that have continually popped up over the last few months. Never in my life have I watched this much television before, and for good reason, there never used to be this much good television to indulge in! These days, that is certainly not the case, because as soon as I finish one series another six sprout up in it's place. It's like whacking the head off a hydra, the more that you cull the more that new ones seem to arise in their place and it is getting harder and harder to squeeze in as many movies as I would like now that I am getting snowed under with television. 
And I suppose that's why it is imperative to also be really discerning about which television programmes you put your time and energy into, because you can literally find yourself watching hours and hours of mediocre shit just because the show delivered a strong and promising pilot episode and now you feel compelled to see it through. Trust me, I have been roped into watching a number of TV series for that very reason, and I have since learnt that being faithful to a television series but not discerning about its actual content will waste hours of your life that you will never get back, so don't let a series hoodwink you into watching series upon series of tripe if it's not going anywhere, there's too much good stuff around these days to allow yourself to do that. 
Here's my top ten 'avoid at all costs' (aka. what a load of shit) television shows that are not worthy of yours (or anyones for that matter) time:
1. The Walking Dead - probably the most pitifully sad, dragged out, outdated garbage that is still being peddled to the masses. Woefully bad and shameful, I actually feel bad for the cast now, they even look bored delivering it.
2. Modern Family - I think that nine seasons of this has been rolled out now, and it is always the same formula. In nine years not one character has developed beyond who they were in season one, how is that even possible? Blah!
3. The Bachelor / The Bachelorette - why are people even watching shows like this? The premise is awful, the people despicable and the whole concept is deplorable, need I say more? 
4.The Exorcist - we did not need to go here, no one needed to go here, I went there...I really wish I hadn't! The movie is more than enough of that thanks very much, can't believe it got 2 seasons!
5.  Nailed It! - Any television show that has founded its name from a meme or Youtube channel is never worthy of your time, this is just pitiful viewing. The cakes on this show are bad for a reason, the bakers are fucking idiots! 
6. The Handmaid's Tale s2 - started out with some promise, and I was enjoying it, and then.....they totally dropped the ball and went for cheesy and unbelievably stupid story arcs that all had to involve torture or brutal death scenes. Season 1's boots were too big to fill. 
7. Snowfall - I sat through two full seasons of this show about drug dealers because I really liked the first two episodes. It did not get better than the first two episodes, but rather proceeded into a slow and arduous decline. I wasted hours hoping it would improve ...a waste of my time! 
8. American Survivor - if you thought that Australian survivor was getting sad, think again. American Survivor is gut wrenchingly sad, it is utterly unwatchable in every respect and quite possibly the saddest shit on modern television. 
9. No Tomorrow - I was sucked into watching this because it had good online reviews, it was also the last time that I allowed online reviews to dictate what I watch. Think fuzz feel good meets apocalypse and gets all kissy and convenient and you'll be in the wheelhouse. God it was bad. How it got good reviews still kills me. 
10. America's Next top Model - I admit that I got pulled back in this year and gave it another go, and I did love to hate all of the bitchy waifs as they fought their way to the top, but at the end of the day it is a dreadful show. Even when they are trying to be all forward thinking with plus size models and a controversial judging panel, everyone knows that the fashion industry is still as deep as a puddle and rife with terrible people. 
So there it is, my avoid at all costs television list. Hopefully you won't fall into any of those horrific and painful viewing experiences yourself!

Craig and I celebrated our 24th wedding anniversary this weekend by getting away on our own. We headed out to a quaint and quiet Bed and Breakfast in Skenes Creek; if you don't know where that is, it's an extremely picturesque location just a few kilometres away from Apollo Bay and a stone throw away from The Great Ocean Road. The excellent location meant that we were able to enjoy the Otway Ranges on our drive there and the amazing coastal drive on the way home, giving ourselves the best of both worlds when it comes to road tripping. 
Craig and I haven't been away by ourselves for a while now, and I think that as the years tick over and things get a little rusty it is really important to escape the daily routine and getaway together at least once in a while, even if it is only for a short time. And I must say that a couple of days of salty air, sandy feet and hand held strolls did not do us any harm whatsoever. In fact, it probably did us the world of good, because we had been a bit niggly with each other in the weeks leading up to our departure; which is kind of par for the course in long term relationships. Sometimes when you've been married a long time, you can just annoy the shit out of each other and you need to find more creative ways to break that cycle of annoyance and remind yourself of why you love this person so much. 
Over my 24 years of marriage, I have found that a few days alone together can be very rejuvenating for a tiring relationship and I always make sure that wherever I stay when I get away with Craig has as little distraction from each other as possible. Farming your kids out with good intentions of spending some quality time alone at home never ever works. Regardless of how amazing your home may be, being at home alone for a romantic weekend is never as good as getting away together.
When you're at home, you really don't have your full focus on each other for very long, it is way too easy to get swept away or distracted by chores that you feel compelled to complete, unfinished jobs or projects, or other mundane things that may be going on around the house. You may have the most terrific intentions of spending quality time together, but from my experience, you'll soon be spending time doing loads of other things and not actually doing anything special together at all. I've done that so many times that it's just not funny, and it's most definitely not the best way to rekindle a little magic into a relationship.
However, when you're in a completely new place that has no WiFi connection, an alluring natural setting and heaps of tasty restaurants nearby for dinner, well that's what I call a recipe for success, and a success it was. The Airbnb that we booked was even better than we had hoped that it would be and boasted a huge outdoor soaker tub, generous self serve breakfast and a late check out. It would've been completely perfect if poor Craig hadn't found the bed a bit uncomfortable for sleeping on...ahh, the trials of being a 6'3" man, you just have to have a huge bed to accommodate that much leg! However, apart from that hiccup, it was a great little escape and a terrific opportunity for us to rekindle the spark and recharge the batteries before the madness of the silly season dominates all of our free thinking and spare time over the coming weeks. 

I love stories about magic, especially ones about witches, wizards, warlocks and far off enchanted lands. I have always been, for as far back as I can remember, completely allured by tales that involve witchcraft, magic and wizardry, which probably makes me the biggest geek in the world, but I don't care, they're awesome! I have spent many hours of my life absorbed in otherworldly realms, and I do not regret a single moment that I have spent in those places escaping the predictability of my  regular life. 
I suppose that I have always felt like there was quite a bit of magic that really does exist in the world, and the idea of there being a lot more of it going on than the average muggle could ever see has always excited me even further. As an adult reading the Harry Potter series, I was overwhelmed with joy to be losing myself in a world steeped in magic and mystery every time a new book came out, and although I love to read books and watch movies of all kinds, magical ones will always have a special place in my heart.
My first encounter with any kind of magical being came in the form of a troll from the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff. It was a tale that my father would read to me as a small child, and it terrified me completely. The very idea of some troll living under a bridge that could jump up and snatch anyone off the bridge as they passed by was really scary as a child, and in the book he was described as having huge hands, a long nose like a broomstick and eyes as big as saucers. The image that accompanied the story in the book that we had was truly horrid and I was shit scared of it. I had an unspoken fear of bridges for years because of that book. However, in spite of how horrid that troll was, he did ignite an interest in the unseen world for me and once ignited, that interest never went out.
And so I began my love affair with magical escapism, and escape I did. I escaped during my lunch breaks in primary school, I escaped in my bedroom as a child, I escaped in the garden as a pre-teen and I even escaped in my nana's chook shed as a preschooler. As a child I escaped as often as I could and whenever I could, and literature was my main source of escapism; but it certainly didn't end there. 
As an adult I escaped to the much more potent world of real life escapism, and I found that in practises of the occult. Now before you get any ideas about chasing me down with pitchforks, you really need to calm down, it was a long while ago and I hung my broom and cloak up years ago, so there's no need to panic. At first I just started with dabbling in crystals, chakras and auras, which are pretty fluffy forms of occultism, and then eventually I moved on to using tarot cards and eventually graduated to spellcrafting. No, I wasn't beheading chickens or casting pentagrams of blood, it wasn't anything that extreme, it was purely experimental, mostly performed with curiosity and certainly non-violent in its makings.
However, let me assure you all, that what I did discovered through all of this 'escapism' is that there most certainly are unseen and hidden things in this world, and they are far happier being left the fuck alone! So don't even bother purchasing a ouija board or attempting to summon up spirits because you are most certainly not Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and crafting is most definitely not for meddlers. My advice is, stick to the movies, TV and literature, it is a far more fun, hassle-free and relaxing way to access magical escapism and there is no risk of biting off more than you can chew because you can just switch it off when you've had your fill!

Men's health is an extremely neglected issue, especially in countries like Australia where the term 'Man Up' or 'Don't be a Pussy' are the staple when it comes to male wellbeing. However, the truth is that the stoic, strong and silent male stereotype that Aussie males have happily hung their hats upon for decades has actually been incredibly damning for men.
Australia now has an alarmingly high suicide rate, and 75% of those suicides are men between the ages 15-44, which means that more men die of suicide every year than from road accidents. Suicide has now become the 10th highest cause of death among men, which means that it is an issue that we can no longer afford to ignore. Just today, 6 Australia men will take their own lives, and we desperately need to get to the bottom of what is going on and why this is happening. 
The men that are taking their own lives come from all walks of life, they live in rural areas and cities, they are young and old and they have diverse employment, socio-economic statuses and cultural backgrounds, but they do have one thing in common, and that is the inability to reach out and share their troubles with others. Turns out that the strong male stereotype is so well ingrained that most men say that they are concerned or even afraid to show their true feelings, their worries, their anxieties and their burdens with others, even their closest family members and friends. This inability to share tends to push vulnerable men into drug and alcohol abuse, gambling addictions or other unhealthy outlets to try and cope with their emotions. 
Essentially we have as a culture, disempowered our men to talk about themselves and their problems. Men are struggling to allow themselves to be vulnerable for fear of being singled out as weak; the pull to be an 'Aussie bloke' who can shoulder any responsibility has overridden men's ability to adopt introspection and let their guard down, and the results of this are just catastrophic.
So what can we do about it? First and foremostly, we have to acknowledge that what we are doing isn't working and that we need to make some serious changes to the way that we deal with men and their health and wellbeing issues. Organisation like Gotcha4Life and Movember are supporting programs directed specifically at men and agree that the approach needs to be different. Empowering and encouraging men to have deeper conversations about what is going on with them when they experience a crisis in their lives is the best place to start. We must make room for men to be in touch with the human parts of themselves, which means that they need the space to share, cry, mourn and feel weak from time to time without the fear of negative judgement.
We need to stop telling blokes to harden up or man up and we need to be better listeners and show support and understanding. We need to educate ourselves about men and their unique set of challenges and the heavy unspoken expectations that are placed upon them from an early age. These traditions of expectation have become so ingrained in Australian culture that it is going to take time to loosen the shackles of those constraints for men, but we have to start somewhere because male suicide is on the rise not the decline in Australia. 
So start right away, tell the men in your life how much they mean to you and take more time to just sit and talk with them when you can. Allow time for them to bond with other men recreationally, and encourage them to spend time alone with other men so that they can learn to open up and share their thoughts and feelings in 'safe mate' circle of friends. Support and normalise emotional releases and remember that it is all of our responsibilities to make men feel valued, heard and supported so that they can face the challenges of their lives with dignity. Help men to understand that it is not only okay to feel weak, it is absolutely necessary sometimes, and that being an emotionless robot isn't of service to anyone.
It is time for us all to wave goodbye to the stoic Aussie male stereotype that we have all been conditioned to accept and expect for generations, because we know that we can all do a shitload better than that for our men. And I implore all men to reach out and share, because we are all here and ready to hear you and support you, and never forget that it's all gonna be okay, help is never too far away and it's totally okay to seek it out if you should need it. 

I believe that the death penalty is an archaic and barbaric form of justice, in fact I do not believe that it is really a form of justice at all, it is a reaction to an act of violence with violence, and I think that it should be abolished worldwide. I ask you, how on earth can we ever achieve justice through more acts of injustice? 
I cannot understand it and I will never support it, for me the taking of any life, no matter how wretched that soul may be, goes against every fibre of my being and everything that I believe in. In a day and age where there are options for proper care and rehabilitation through correct practice and procedure, I think that we are far better equipped to deal with the ugliness of social misconduct than we have ever been before. Surely we can boast that we have evolved into a more civilised and humane culture that can bolster better consequences for the mentally unwell than just executing them?
In a recent episode of the television program Kidding, the main character meets the son of his penpal who just happens to be an inmate on death row. Through contact with this penpal we learn the truth about the lethal injection that is given to death row prisoners to euthanize them, and it really got me thinking about how deeply barbaric and horrific it would be to die in that way.
The so called 'painless' execution method is actually very far from painless and consists of a series of three lethal injections. The first of the three injections is an anesthetic called sodium thiopental, which is a fast acting barbiturate that depresses the activity of the central nervous system. This initial shot doesn't serve as a painkiller that numbs pain nerves, but instead it rapidly puts a person into a state of unconsciousness that's theoretically deep enough to make pain undetectable (note the word theoretically there). The assumption is that the drug will last long enough for the other two injections to be administered, but no-one alive has been able to substantiate that theory, so it's a grey area for sure. 
The second injection is pancuronium bromide which causes complete muscle paralysis, so even if the person being executed was in pain, they wouldn't be able to cry out or let anyone know that they were; and the injection also causes the respiratory system to go into arrest because the muscle of the diaphragm (the muscle that pulls air into the lungs) stops working, so odds are it hurts like a bitch. 
The last dosage to be administered is potassium chloride, which floods the heart with charged particles that interrupt its electrical signaling and stop it from beating. According to a study in the Journal of Forensic Science, the average length of time from the first injection to death is 8.4 minutes. Try and get your head around that, 8.4 minutes of possible pain and discomfort, maybe a lot longer, before you eventually die. It's a chilling thought, and not something that invokes a painless drifting off, as one may have imagined about lethal injection previously. It may be more humane than electrocution or a cyanide gas chamber, but let's not kid ourselves here, this is still a completely barbaric practice that needs to be abolished. 
And to top it all off, there are no real health professionals present when lethal injection procedures are administered because doctors and nurses are banned by their professional organisations from participating in executions since it goes against the moral code of health care professionals to be involved in such procedures. Surely that made you raise an eyebrow? 
And even though many countries have abolished the use of the death penalty, there are still 54 countries around the world that still have laws that sanction the use of capital punishment, and in some of those countries, the lethal injection would actually look like a good option considering the fact that they still use hanging, shooting, torture, flogging, firing squads and even stoning as a means of execution which is sometimes conducted publicly. I seriously shudder at the thought. 
An eye for an eye and the world goes blind, and I firmly believe that that is true. We cannot fight fire with fire and expect to survive the inferno ourselves, a life is a life and when others make poor choices we cannot simply put out their light, it is wrong and it is immoral. Anyone that supports the taking of a life for a life really needs to take a good hard look at what is motivating all of that hate in the first place, because in my opinion, it isn't natural to want to destroy your own kind. 

I absolutely love podcasts. I have a number of shows in my podcast library on my phone that I regularly listen to. Just like the recent rise in accessible quality television, podcasts are fast following suit with a wider variety of entertaining shows becoming available daily and I have become pretty hooked on a number of them.
Cooking, cleaning, gardening or even exercising, I find that even the most menial  and mundane of tasks can be elevated to enjoyable if you have a good podcast to tune into whilst you are doing it, and I wanted to share some of my very favourite finds with you all. 
First and foremost I think that I need to list my fave movie/TV podcasts, because I do like to stay ahead of what is being released and what looks worthy of a trip to the cinema to see, and these podcasts are my go-to's on the subject of quality viewing:

• The EMPIRE Film Podcast
• WHO Magazine's TV Binge List 
• Man vs Movies
• Mad About Movies

Next are my 'Feel Good' podcast faves, which offer me motivation, inspiration and stimulation when I am feeling like I need a lift:

• Dear Sugars
• Something Amazing
• That's So Retrograde
• The Lively Show
• LET IT OUT
• Happier with Gretchen Rubin
• Mindfully
• The Chalene Show
• The Good People Effect

Here are my favourite 'Freak Me Out' podcasts, which can be supernatural, crime or just plain weird, but I do like a good freaky tale from time to time:

• Lore
• The Other Stories
• Something Scary 
• Unravel True Crime

And lastly, but certainly not least are my fave comedy podcasts because we all need a good laugh from time to time:

• My Dad Wrote a Porno
• Comedy of the Week - BBC Radio 4
• About Last Night
• Conan O'Brien Needs  a Friend

So there you have it, my favourite regular podcasts, I hope that you can find something inspiring to listen to yourself, and if you have any amazing recommendations please let me know.
Honestly, with you would think that I wouldn't have time to squeeze in any movies with all of the podcast listening that I do, but trust me, I still do!

Trick 'r Treating on October 31st in Australia sure is a hotly contested topic. I heard some ladies at the hairdressers tonight going right off about it, they were saying that it is stupid and American and unseasonal and that if any kids knock on their doors looking for candy they will tell them to piss off! Woah, a bit harsh I thought. Sure, it isn't Autumn here when Halloween occurs which does make it a little un-pumpkin, chestnut and acorn friendly, but aside of that, it isn't actually American at all, it's Pagan and the bottom line is that it's fun! 
Kids love Halloween, they love dressing up and playing spooks and who wouldn't want to knock on peoples doors and get free lollies? Uh, it's frickin amazing and just because we never got to do it when we were kids doesn't mean that we shouldn't let them do it now. If you're going to use un-seasonal as your excuse for hating Trick 'r Treaters then boo to you, you're lame! I bet you still eat roasts at Christmas time even when it's hot and do all of the other Pagan based stuff the happens at Yuletide like  bringing an evergreen into your home and decorating it to welcome the coming spring....aka your Christmas Tree! That is not very seasonally appropriate is it? But it is fun, so we do it and Halloween shouldn't be any different. 
The ladies that were paying out Halloween tonight were also saying how sick it was to send your kids out for candy to strangers houses. Yes, sending your kids out to strangers houses for candy is sick, which is why 99% of the kids participating have an adult with them when they Trick 'r Treat. Safe and wholesome Halloween Trick 'r Treating can be orchestrated and seriously, if you were some Sweeney Todd type trying to lure kids into your home with candy to turn them into pies, you would hardly chose to do that on Halloween when there would be possible witnesses and the most easily traceable crime trail in all history would you? I bet that half of the people that say things like that wouldn't think twice about plopping their poor kids onto some unknown santa's lap at the mall for a happy snap would they? Are those kinds of strangers in red suits that hug unknown children at the mall better than the strangers that give out candy on Halloween? Doubtful, very bloody doubtful, but people only see what they want to see. 
We actually have a lot of little Trick 'r Treaters out here in Enfield ever year and it doesn't offend me in the least. They are often quite small and very enthusiastic and the vast majority of them are done and dusted by 7.30pm. They dress up like their lives depend on it, their faces painted and little plastic pumpkin bags in their hands, and they are always super grateful for the lollies that they receive. Some good samaritan mails everyone in our area an orange balloon to hang on their letterbox on the evening of Halloween and if you don't want to participate you just don't hang your balloon and if you run out of candy you just take your balloon down, pretty simple really. It's organised, it's optional and it's safe because all of the children are accompanied by an adult. Where is the harm in that? 
Sometimes I think that people just decide that they don't like Halloween because they can't be bothered, which essentially is fine, no-one says that you have to be bothered; but please stop making it out to be such a big horrible ordeal when it really isn't. Halloween to kids means fun, and well, even to some adults too if I'm being really honest about it, so stop being such bloody grumpy goblins, buy a few lollies and join in the fun as well, it's only one night of the year for goodness sake! 

Celebrated Halloween a little early this year, perhaps it was the full moon or maybe it was just because the 27th was the closest date that we could all manage to gather together, but whatever the reason, the Samhain vibes were flowing on Saturday. 
Whenever people get together at my place, there is always food involved. Not only do I love to eat, I also really love to cook as well, so any celebration is a good occasion for a big cook up around the bench in Enfield. Which is exactly what Zoe, Seth, Helen, Craig and I did this year, we made a delicious feast from scratch to share together.
​Our meal consisted of two different types of ravioli (pumpkin/feta and beef/mushroom) and a delicious tomato based sauce to accompany them. We also made vanilla poached pears in a salted caramel sauce with vanilla ice-cream for dessert, which was an amazing and decadent finish to our evening's festivities. Whilst we cooked, we listened to some tunes and shared some Halloween-ish cocktails and then spent the dark hours indulging in one of my favourite things in the world, B-grade horror. 
I absolutely love B-grade horror, especially B-grade horror from the 80's and 90's because those two decades were rife with poor writing, dreadfully acting, mediocre effects and cliche horror tropes that make them so damn awful that they are absolutely hilarious. I usually call them D-grade because they are so genuinely bad, which should give you some idea of the quality that I am talking about, D-grade means 'woah-fully good' material to me.
On the agenda for B-Grade gold this year? Tales from the Crypt: Bordello of Blood, the name really says it all doesn't it? It is truly classy viewing, I can assure you. Made in 1996, this 87 minute fantasy/horror got a whopping 12% on Rotten Tomatoes, and stars Angie Everhart and Corey Feldman in two of the lead roles; need I say more? In a word it is dreadful; rife with grotuetous titty shots, full of cheesy one liners, the soundtrack seems like it was recorded by someone that cannot sing in their living room with a boombox and the characters are dressed primarily in cheap silks, denim jackets and tennis shorts. It is just so bad that it defies explanation really, it's the ultimate B-grade horror find, and after a few nice strong cocktails, it is the funniest movie that you could ever see. We were literally crying with laughter at some points during the movie. 
And that is how all B-grade horror/ fantasy and sci-fi movies need to be viewed, half pissed and with really good company. Over the years we have watched some absolutely pearlers out here together that just shouldn't be missed; they are so bad, they are actually good! 
Some of my personal favourites and highly recommended B-Grade offerings are:

• Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
• Killer Klowns from Outer Space (1988)
• Vampires: Los Muertos (2002) - just outside of the 90's era but you'd never know!
• They Live (1988)
• Evil Dead 3: The Army of Darkness (1992)
• Tremors (1990)
• Highlander (1986)
• Tales from the Crypt: Demon Knight (1995)
• Day of the Dead (1985)
• Critters (1986) 
• The Thing (1982) 
• Warlock (1989)
• Elvira: Mistress of the Dark (1988)
• Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)  -a bit older, and quite possibly the worst horror movie ever made, it is unbelievably bad and hilarious. 

With Halloween just around the corner, you don't have to opt for a serious horror movie scare; a cheesy B-Grade retro horrorfest is just as enjoyable, and maybe even a lot more fun! 

What the heck is going on? The last two movies that I went to the cinema to see were romance movies. Trust me when I say that I hardly ever go to see romance movies at the cinema and it is the genre list that I had the least amount of movies on for ages, but given the recent spat of not just decent but actually enjoyable romance films, I have found myself going to the movies to watch people fall madly in love with each other and kiss each other all over the face! Seriously what the hell is happening to me? Am I getting soft and doughy eyed? Thank God Halloween is just around the corner, I really need to get back on track with my horror viewing. 
To be fair, I am not completely adverse to romance, I do quite like a bit of the luvy-duvy stuff from time to time, but there is just a heck of lot of really shithouse romance to wade through to get to the good stuff. Any film that plays on matters of the heart is at great risk of getting super cheesy and erring on the side of ridiculous; and sometimes the onscreen chemistry is about as exciting as a helium balloon three days after a party. 
There are actually quite a few elements that romance movies do really poorly and I am getting pretty tired of it. The first and most common mistake, is making the main love interest an alpha male or a 'spirited' female that abuses men all the time. In fact they often put the two of them together in movies as the two lead roles. Come up with something better than that for fuck sake, a jock body and a loud mouth chick are never going to live happily ever after now are they? They may wring a decent screw out of it but that's about the extent of that relationship, so stop implying that is a match made in heaven, it's utter crap!
Don't even get me started on the love at first sight stuff, you should know by now how much I don't want to see that old trope rolled out, and can we stop making villains turn good for the sake of love? Again, that 'gone good' shit won't last, so don't paint happily ever after on that crap sandwich and call it a delicious burger because I ain't eating it! And please romance movie makers, could we stop having people need to change to get the person of their dreams? Ever since Sandy Dee went all hot pants, cigarette puffing bad girl to get rough-house Danny Zuko in Grease to notice her, movie makers have been capitalising on the 'change to find true love' trope which not only annoys the piss out of me, but bothers me even more when idiots try to replicate it in real life as well. If you have to change yourself to get someone to love you, then they aren't the right one for you, and romance movies should never have people losing their identities or morals to find love, it's crass and it's sad. 
The best romances have two people in them that know who they are and just want to share who they are with someone else. Sure a little My Fair Lady action is all good and well from time to time, but we also know that it's old fashioned, archaic and is certainly no reflection of a good 'modern romance' tale. Just like all movie genres, you need to be discerning when it comes to the types of romance that you watch as well because Hollywood is exceptionally good at disguising really tasteless romance and selling it off as funny and plausible; but thankfully, that is happening less and less these days. 

Every now and then someone will call me out on a review that I have done on a movie or a blog post that I have made; and if you are going to put your opinions on the internet, then you have expect that people are going to give their opinions back to you as well.  Total strangers, friends and even family members will point out how they didn't like what I wrote on my blog or point out how wrong I was about a certain movie that was at least one Chilli Pepper hotter or 3 Chilli Peppers colder than I had implied that it was, and I think that a lot them really enjoy sharing their own verdict or opinion on a topic that I have raised or a review that I have posted.
I am not sure whether people are hoping that I will kick off in response to their adverse reactions to my writings, but I can say with complete honesty that I don't mind at all if you disagree with my opinions. You do not have to agree with me, it would be completely weird if you did. I do not claim to be 'the God of all movie knowledge', I am not even close to being an expert in cinema, I am just a movie enthusiast that likes to write, and that is where my expertise ends. Sure I have seen a lot of movies, but there are still millions of movies that I haven't seen, and as for my opinions, well they're just that, opinions not facts or truths to be adopted and set into action, they are merely my opinions, nothing more and nothing less than that. 
Is it actually really great to hear that people don't agree with me. I love to hear about other people's experiences of the movies that they have seen, and that is one of the things that is so damn terrific about cinema, it is completely subjective. Like any expression of art, one person's trash is another person's treasure, and cinema is no different from that in any way. We may agree sometimes, never, seldom or often, it matters not to me one way or another. Make your own mind up about the movies that I review, see them for yourself, be discerning and be disagreeable, I welcome all opinions and you never have to agree with me. 
Cinematic experiences are unique and completely individual to everyone. They can be affected by your mood, your interest level in the subject, your wellbeing, your personal experiences, your tolerance levels and even your level of alertness when you enter a cinema. There are millions of factors at play when a person decides to squat for a couple of hours to watch a film, and I wouldn't dare to assume that my experiences would be in sync with anyone elses for even half of that time. 
Nope, I don't mind if you don't agree with me. In fact, I am ecstatic to hear the opinions of other cinephiles, it is a comfort to know that other people feel as passionately about their movie experiences as I do. I would never stifle  your disagreement of my comments, I welcome them and appreciate every one of my loyal readers opinions, even when they are completely opposed to mine. Please do keep up all of the comments and the conversations about movies with me, I am always happy to receive feedback and those of you that know me well, know that I will never get enough cinema related chatter in my life, so please do share your thoughts with me. 

THE SKIN I LIVE IN
Release Date: 2011
Rating: MA 15+
Running Time: 120 mins 
A Spanish psychological thriller, written and directed by Pedro Almodóvar.  Almodóvar has described the film as "a horror story without screams or frights" which is an accurate description. Although The Skin I Live In can't really be regarded as horror, there are certainly plenty of horrific goings on that will seriously mess with your head. 
A regarded plastic surgeon that is plagued by misfortune, creates a wonderful new type of skin that is impervious to damage. His human guinea pig and private obsession is a woman named Vera, a mysterious beauty that resides as a prisoner in his house. 
Antonio Banderas does a brilliant job of portraying the Dr. Frankenstein like surgeon Ledgard, and Elena Anaya is painfully beautiful as his subject, Vera. This movie has all of the elements of a great psychological thriller; devious plot twists, intensely interesting and esoteric characters and plenty of back story. However, because it crosses so many lines it also induces disgust and revulsion, albeit in the most stylish fashion, and for that reason it will not be to everyone's liking. If you can handle the kink levels turned up to high pitch, then you should enjoy the ride. 
FINAL SAY: I breathe. I breathe. I breathe. 
3 Chilli Peppers ​

Most of the time I not only feel extremely lucky to have the kind of lifestyle that I have, but I also feel exceptionally guilty when I think about all of the people around the globe that do not have nearly enough of anything in their lives, let alone an abundance of anything. Being born in a first world country does tend to make us all a bit jaded about just how fortunate we truly are and how much abundance we get to experience on a daily basis that we don't really take into consideration. 
When was the last time you stopped to think about the people who don't have access to clean water when you turn on a tap in your house? Do you ever think about how lucky you are to have a flushing toilet or water connected to your home or food on the table every night of the week? Most of us don't think about that stuff very much of the time at all, but we do spend a lot of time complaining about the internet dropping out, or the traffic being too heavy or the line at the check out being too long. Many of us go about with surly and inconvenienced attitudes and angry unwelcoming faces, and totally forget to remember just how lucky we are most of the time. 
I think that many people in developed countries actually have a dreadful case of 'glass half empty' when in fact around 85% of the time the glass is actually overflowing and we are just too spoilt to realise it. When was the last time you had to worry about whether you would be able to eat because of a lack of food?  When have you stayed awake worrying about whether your children could access an education or appropriate medical care and vaccinations? When was the last time you yourself got dreadfully ill and could not see a doctor because there wasn't one to see? And when was the last time that you had to walk for two hours to the nearest well to get some water to drink, or even worse wait in the sun all day for a water truck to come by and provide you with a small amount? I would imagine that you answered never to all of those questions, absolutely never. 
And that makes you lucky; very, very lucky. Luckier than most of the people that are sharing this planet with you. And I think that that is something to keep at the back of your thoughts next time you feel like having a whine about something insubstantial or irrelevant, that your blessings in life far outweigh your misfortunes a lot of the time. Singer songwriter Willie Nelson once said - When I started to count my blessing my whole life turned around, and I do believe that there is a lot of power in thinking abundantly and being grateful everyday.
Try it for yourself, adopt an 'attitude of gratitude' and see how you feel about your station in life after a few weeks. Once you begin to focus on how tremendously full your glass is, I guarantee that you'll be delighted with how rich and lucky you are. And feeling abundant has a wonderful flow-on effect, because you will also start to share that abundance more freely with others, filling their glasses in the process, and guess what? It doesn't cost a thing. It's totally free to change your mindset and focus on how lucky you are, and the benefits are huge!
However, that being said, if you are in fact 'crazy rich' (and 'crazy rich' people know exactly who they are) and reading this, then you definitely have more than you are ever gonna need and you should really pass some of that wealth along to those who do need it the most. Impoverished countries are always begging for substantial donations, and helping others feels so damn good. You could change your mindset and someone else's world as well, and that's definitely something to raise a very full and overflowing glass for! 

In our household, no topic is off the table when it comes to family discussions around the dinner table. This open dialogue between myself, my husband and our children has led to many interesting, sometimes awkward and often lengthy and involved banters over the years, and even though many people have raised an eyebrow in regards to how open we are about all topics in our home, I have been vigilant about instilling the values of open conversation and honesty when it comes to family exchanges. 
Because of this open dialogue around the dinner table, we have had what many people would call 'difficult' conversations with our children as they have discovered the truths and at times the ugly realities about the world, but we pride ourselves for never lying to them or hiding an unpleasant truth from them, and they have both turned out to be pretty well rounded and open minded individuals as a result of this.
​Both of my children knew the truth about their body parts, how lives are created and that some people are 'not quite right in the head' well before they even arrived at primary school. And before they left primary school they also knew about war, religion, genocide, enlightenment, rape, cults, incest, racism, paedophilia, discrimination, poverty, mental illness, hate crimes and all forms of artistic, spiritual and sexual expression. Neither of them have become unbalanced by any of this information, and neither of them now struggle to understand the complexities of the world. The truth about the world did not fuck them up or steal their innocence and they both had really normal happy childhoods. In fact, growing up they didn't have nearly as many troubles as their peers when it came to managing social situations or complicated issues and have always had a strong sense of social justice and ethical behaviour as a result of their developed global understanding. 
I worked hard to cultivate a mindset in my children 'that nothing is too big to tell, or too awkward to ask about.' And yes, it has lead to some 'hot' discussion and even some disagreements over the years (because with an open forum people will tend to debate and defend their formed opinions) but it has also meant that my children are always willing to talk to me, really talk to me. If something is going on they will always tell us about it and if something is happened that they don't understand or need clarification about, they will ask. And the conversation is still very lively around our dinner table and although we sometimes hit the hard topics, generally we share many relaxed and casual meals where the order of the day is much laughter and silliness. 
I am in no way saying that open-conversation is going to fly smoothly at everyone's dinner table, but having room for opinion and the comfort to ask questions is certainly not a bad thing to generate in any family. Being able to talk about anything, even the really tough stuff has certainly brought us closer together as a family and my kids have always been grateful for the honesty that they have received from us whilst they were in their formative years.
​I have never been able to think of a good reason to hide things from my children or to lie to them and I have never wanted to cultivate a relationship with my children that was steeped in deception or mistrust. I often wonder when I hear adults say that their children aren't ready to hear the truths about the world if it is just because they as adults aren't ready to deal with all of the ugliness themselves. All that I know for sure from my own experiences, is that nurturing a home where secrets are supported and lies necessitated will only lead to bitter resentments, disappointments and painful truths later on in life, and we all want a lot less of that for our children in the long run.