10 Things To Do or Avoid Doing on New Year's Eve So You Don't End Up Upside Down In A Garden Bed With Bleeding Shins And Short One Hoop Earring and A Victoria Secret Lipgloss

So it's New Year's Eve tomorrow. Everybody's favourite excuse to get drunk and end up either spewing in their hair or in their handbag. Or ending up upside down in a garden bed with bleeding shins and short one hoop earring and a Victoria Secret lipgloss.

That sure is a classy way to see in the New Year...

My 2012 New Year's Eve celebrations will probably involve a bottle of cheap wine and as many episodes of Offspring Season 2 I can squeese in before I pass out. I've either grown up or become boring. Maybe both.

But for those party-monsters among you, I thought I'd come up with a fail-safe list of 10 Things To Do or Avoid Doing on New Year's Eve So You Don't End Up Upside Down In A Garden Bed With Bleeding Shins And Short One Hoop Earring and A Victoria Secret Lipgloss.

Listen carefully. This is gospel.

1. Avoid quick and dangerous slides down the drunken slippery dip by avoiding vodka and ginger beer concoctions. This will, subsequently avoid any staring into the porcelain beyond.

2. Leave your camera in the capable hands of someone who will a) not lose it b) not damage it and c) remember to shoot your good side when your face-raping the man who looks a lot like your boss, but couldn't possibly be. Right? Right? No... wait.... oh dear....

3. Have a hearty meal before the madness. A crisp green salad does not count. You are not a sheep. In fact, why not eat some sheep instead? A good lamb kebab ought to set you up right.

4. The lamb kebab outlined in Item 3 is also good for during-the-madness munchies as well as post-madness munchies. The aluminum bag also proves useful on the cab ride home if anyone says they 'feel dizzy' or start to burp...

5. When deciding on New Year's Eve outfits consider the following - Can this flip over my head if I fall into a garden bed? Will these heels make cute flats if I have an unfortunate stumbling accident? Can I get this outfit off in rapid speed after waiting in line for two hours for the ladies toilets? In the event of a wardrobe malfunction, does this dress leave room for spontaneous re-designing? Will these earrings match the vomit in my hair?

6. If, after asking these questions, you decide to walk out of the house in a playsuit, be reassured you're in for an interesting night. Especially if the playsuit is black. However, a playsuit does not satisfy the criteria in Item 5 as a playsuit CAN NOT be removed in rapid speed. You failed. Go back to the wardrobe and start again.

7. In your clutch/purse/bag, be sure to pack the following items along with your standard clutch contents - safety pins, electrical tape, an Enviro bag which folds up into a small ball for easy storage but sure does come in handy when you're faced with a person about to vomit and you're caught without an aforementioned kebab packet, bandaids, gauze, perhaps an entire First Aid kit, a Please-Return-To card with your name and address in case you forget who you are and where you live, a laminated (very important) photo of yourself just in case you go missing but your clutch does not and finally, a muesli bar (in case you get peck-ish.)

8. When deciding who will be your midnight manic pash, remember this is how you're welcoming in the New Year. Think carefully - do you really want your first memory of 2012 to be with someone who's wearing an Ed Hardy t-shirt?

9. When faced with the horrendous and difficult task of getting a cab home, put yourself in the shoes of the taxi driver. Who would you pick up? The person who looks green or the person who is waving a few more notes of green than is necessary for a fare to Surry Hills. It may be wrong, but when it comes to snaffling transport on New Year's Eve, it's every man (and his money) for himself. And if you don't have any money? Walk. And if you can't walk? Pull out your Please-Return-To card and hope for the best.

10. And as the fireworks explode over the harbor or the paddock or the beach or just on the TV and the glorious 2012 presents itself in fine form, take a second to revel in the moment. A new beginning. A fresh start. A clean slate. Embrace it.

And then throw up.

KH.

All I Want For Christmas Is...

1. To star in a Christmas movie with Olivia Newton John

2. Cleaning fairies. You know, to clean stuff

3. Ryan Gosling

4. A puppy that's cuter than Ryan Gosling.

5. A never ending packet of Tim Tams

6. A never expanding waist-line for my never ending packet of Tim Tams

7. A carrier pigeon, so I have another communicative device to compulsively check

8. A Quick-Quotes Quill in which to write my resume

9. The Secrets To The Universe

10. The Secrets to Lara Bingle's success as a celebrity

11. One ring to rule them all

12. Snow

13. A worm-hole between my bedroom and the USA, which by-passes border control and issues you a green-card and a 'Party in the USA' singing telegram upon arrival

14. A non-toxic-to-humans bomb which when it explodes, smells like warm cookies while killing all the little black ants in a 100 metre radius. Then the cleaning fairies, mentioned in Item 2, will come and disspose of their repulsively minty carcasses

15. An iPhone which turns into a Transformer. An iPhonebot, not a Decepticon

16.  George Clooney in a Santa suit. Acceptable alternatives to this include Robert Redford, Kevin Costner and Dr. Chris Havel in Offspring

17. A puppy that is cuter than Ryan Gosling and George Clooney in a Santa suit

18. To be Where The Wild Things Are

19. Someone to scrub my foot calluses

20. Someone to employ me

And in return...

Merry Christmas!

KH.

Itsy-Bitsy-Spider is not so itsy-bitsy when he's the member of an army

How's this for irony?

After watching Spiderman the other night, I decided to take myself off to bed. Because I was tired but mostly because the special effects back in 2002 leave much to be desired. While I was pulling back the sheets, I noticed three little spiders crawling on the wall near my bed.

'Huh,' I thought to myself. 'Maybe they are superspiders and I am about to become the next Spiderwoman, with my own slew of comic books and poorly made blockbuster films?' But, deciding that I hate the sensation of blowing my nose let alone having spiderwebs shooting out from my wrists, maybe I am better off as I am.

So I squished the possible superspiders with my plugger.

But then I saw some more of them climbing up my wall. And then I looked up at the ceiling.

The ceiling was covered in an army of itsy-bitsy spiders. Hundreds of them. It was like Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, but in my bedroom rather than the Forbidden Forest. And without Harry. They were all scuttling together and at any second, they were going to swarm me and carry me away to their hovel in my back garden.

So I promptly screamed like a little girl and ran out of the room.

What does one do when their ceiling becomes the set of a horror movie?

One goes to town with a jumbo can of Mortein. Then they have a shower just in case any fell in their hair. And then they sleep in the spare bedroom.

But after you've gassed a hundred-odd superspiders and inhailed enough fumes to make yourself high, some stupid thoughts start running through your head as you're lying in bed trying to go to sleep.

Like, what if all the itsy-bitsy superspiders who's carcasses are now lying on your bedroom floor suddenly come back to life and come looking for revenge? It's not like you can just shut the bedroom door and rest easy. They're superspiders. They'll find a way. Probably under the little gap between the door and the floor.

Or what if there are more of them? And they come crawling through the cracks of the house and down the airconditioning vents and I wake up to their little faces looking at me greedily?

Or I wake up and they've taken over the house? And instead of living in a normal four-bedroom Australian dream-home, I have to live in a spider hovel, kept hostage by the superspiders. And over time, I start to develop evil spider senses and then I terrorise the town folk like the nemises do on Smallville.

Or what if when I went on my Mortein-rampage, some of them fell in my hair and are now making nests in my eardrums? And I'll end up on a squeamish episode of Medical Marvels alongside the man who has tree roots growing out of his foot calluses.

Or what if they're under my skin laying eggs? And I wake up covered in boils which explode with spider spawn?

You get the idea...

I finally did fall asleep, with the Mortein can in one hand and my plugger in the other. And when I woke up, I wasn't living in the spider hovel nor was I sporting any strange skin boils about to explode with spider spawn.

Nope, I was your everyday 24-year-old girl. There were no side effects.

Except the sudden craving I have for insects. Not sure what that's about...

Reasons why being a scorpio can be bad for the blogging business...

My friend and I were talking yesterday about horoscopes and their traits. I am a scorpio and apparently, according to the cosmic realm of the stars, I am meant to be firey and emotional with a tendency to bottle my feelings.

This I already knew. The emotional, bottle-my-feelings part seems about right.

"But, firey?" I said to my friend. "I'm not firey! I hate conflict!"

To which my friend looked at me like I had just taken all my clothes off and danced around the room singing tribal worship songs. That is, she looked somewhat shocked and bemused.

To which I then remembered the conversation we had had about six hours earlier where I admited my tendency to pick fights with people I'd just met when I'd had too much to drink. Not in an unnecessarily, over-aggressive, throwing punches, get-hauled-out-of-the-pub-by-very-large-muscled-bouncers kind of way. But in an I'm-right-you're-wrong-let's-argue-instead-of-make-pointless-small-talk kind of way.

To which my friend then pointed out that the majority of my blog posts were related to times in my life when I was really pissed off and needed to channel my firey fury in a sarcastic, but socially-acceptable way.

To which I then felt very sheepish.

And like I didn't know myself at all.

Because she was pretty right (Not entirely, but mostly. She wasn't wrong, but she wasn't entirely right either. There's still a bit of room for me to be right also...) I looked back over my last couple of posts and all of them were courtesy of something that had tickled my scorpian tail and sent me on a stinging spree- not being able to rent a studio in Sydney because I am poor, the bin-bandit who got a bee in his bonet about my throwing my coffee cup in his trash and 7th Heaven's anti-sex clause. All of them a big fat gripe sesh. Just me, up on my scorpian soap box having a nice fat old rant.

So then I thought, maybe I am too firey for my own good? Maybe people don't want to hear about all the things that go wrong in my life or get me in a hot tizz? Maybe they want to hear about the good stuff too? The happy things that happen to me?

So...

Today I went for a walk. And I saw a puppy. And I decided that, no, the puppy was not cuter than Ryan Gosling.

Then I had breakfast with my best boy friend. (My best friend who is a boy. Not boyfriend. Note the space inbetween). And my breakfast was so delicious and the company so wonderful, I felt like I had floated up into the clouds and was bouncing around on their soft billowy white cotton ball-ness I believe clouds would possess if they weren't made out of air and moisture.

Then I went shopping. And I didn't buy anything because nothing fit me and the shop attendent looked like she'd just eaten sourcrout, but that was okay. Because when I looked in the mirror,  I liked the person with the 'great personality' who looked back. And I'm sure the shop attendent only looked like she just eated sourcrout because her boyfriend broke up with her the night before and she tried to drown her problems in a few bottles of Passion Pop.

And then on the way home from the shops, I found a four-leaf clover, picked up a coin that was heads up, caught a Santa Claus whisker, made a wish and had it come true on the spot

Then the heavens opened up and the cosmic stars slapped me across the face and said, "You're a scorpio. Be the bitchin' blogger we intended you to be."

Well, if my horoscopes say so...

KH.

Let's Talk About Sex, 7th Heaven.

Dear Camden Family,

This goes out to the entire family of 7th Heaven - the Reverand Camden, wife Annie, children Matt, Mary, Lucy, Simon and Ruthie and the twins, Sam and David who may not yet know what sex is, but are a product of sex and therefore, this is still relevant to you.

I've been watching your obnoxious family every day at 10 o'clock for the last few weeks. I can't help that the television show which follows the ins-and-outs of your dramatic lives plays every week day at the exact time I like to have my second cup of morning coffee. This is not my fault. It's either you or The View. And as I still harbor a bitter resentment towards Whoopie Goldberg for never making a sequel to Jumping Jack Flash, looks like I have no choice but to be a witness to your sorry lives.

For a christian family, you certainly have a lot of drama. Not that christian families should have any less drama than non-christian families. I mean, if they made the plight of Job into a blockbuster, I'm pretty sure Brad Pitt or George Clooney or Robbie Redford or whichever over-the-hill hottie they chose to play God's humble servant would put in the kind of Oscar-winning performance which made people reconsider the difficulties of being Godly in the face of grief. But you are not Job and Satan has not smited your family and covered you in boils to try and prove a point.

Instead, big-brother Matt is off marrying women on a whim, Mary is behaving like the bad seed, Lucy is a drama-queen, Simon has started an escort service and Ruthie is an A-grade gossip. I can't help but notice that your drama seems a little self-inflicted. Not to mention, the majority of you don't exactly exercise christian values on an hourly basis. For the most part, you're all pretty selfish and self-involved.

And you're all obssessed with relationships. But that's not exactly an uncharacteristic trait of christians, is it?

Except maybe for Mother Theresa, the one woman who's biological clock screamed, "Help the sick" instead of "Have a big white wedding and procreate".

I get it, Camden offspring. Believe me, I know what it's like. I get what you're trying to achieve here. All you want is to find a nice parter, put a ring on each other's fingers, get hitched and get God's gold star for 'waiting'.

To have sex.

To have sex sex sex.

Sex.

The word itself is not hard to say. It's one syllable. We all know what it means and what it involves. We've had the awkward health class conversations and most people have done the deed itself. So, I don't understand why you can't just say the word 'sex' instead of referring to it the way you do - with a knowing nod of the head or shrug of the shoulders or awkward, pointless exchange. For example, 

"Mary and whatever-his-name-is are going to... you know" (wide eyes, blank stare)

or

"When she said 'let's go upstairs' I thought she meant to brush our teeth (turn head slightly and look sheepish)

You're really putting one over us with that ambiguity. I feel positively hoodwinked.

I understand the standard audience who watch your family feud are not typically 24-year old unemployed creative writers with unhealthy coffee habits and a tendency to critique. They're more like PG13 sponges ready to soak up anything that will help them get through their pubescent lives with a bit of dignity. But do you honestly think not saying 'sex' outloud is going to help them achieve that? If anything, it's only further encouraging the sex stigma, a topic made all the more taboo by the awkward eyes you make at each other to get your point across.

What exactly are you encouraging by hiding behind a head nod? That sex is not something they should talk about? That the word shouldn't even be mentioned let alone the act discussed?

As a christian family with christian morals, there's no nookie-nookie for any offspring until your Facebook status officially says 'married'. However, that doesn't mean you have to treat the word like it's the forbidden fruit. Reverand Camden, I understand you're trying to teach your children good values and godliness. But even God says the word 'sex'. He probably sniggers afterwards because I like to think God has a sense of boyish humour about him. But he says it all the same.

So say the word, you prudie protestants or I'm going to start watching The View.

And I doubt Whoopie Goldberg's sex life is as gripping as yours.

In sexual sincerity,

KH.

Trash Talk

I am not an active environmentalist. I don't picket or rally. I don't float in the middle of the ocean protesting against whale slaughtering. I sit in the comfort of my own home and obtusely watch people who are braver than me get credited for acts of environmental initiative on the evening news.

But I do what I can to protect the dolphins and the birds and the lady beetles. I have short showers. I decline the option of plastic shopping bags when possible and I put my rubbish in the bin.

So imagine my surprise, while walking down Forveaux St this morning having just finished off a coffee from Bourke St Bakery, that I got reprimanded for putting my take-away cup in a resident's council wheelie bin.

Granted, I could have held on to the cup for another five minutes before I got up to my own apartment complex, but the bin was on the side of the street so I popped it in and kept walking.

Unbeknown to me, the home owner was standing with some friends right infront of it and didn't smile upon my own small act of environmental initiative. Instead, he yelled out after me, "Um, this isn't a council bin!"
Except that it was. Because it had a red lid. And while residing on someone's stoop is still the property of the council, not the home owner.

The company I was with turned around and politely yelled back, "Um, why don't you chill out?" while I continued walking, slightly bemused as to how I'd received a slap across the wrist for initiating a good deed.

It's not like I'd walked into his house and helped myself to his kitchen trash can. It was on the stoop of his terrace, seperated from the street by a waist-high iron fence. It was a matter of flipping open the red lid and putting the cup inside. Granted, people probably put their trash in his bin all the time. It probably bothers him no end. Everytime he goes to put his trash out, his bins are overflowing with Bourke St Bakery takeaway cups and he waves a fist at God, crying "Why?! Why, God?! Why!?"

But what if he hadn't caught me red-handed? Would he have even noticed my small addition to his weekly waste? My coffee cup would just be another piece of trash in a bin that's contents are going to the same place as my own rubbish bin. No matter who's bin the cup ended up in, mine or his, it was still destined for the same landfill. So does it really matter? Isn't the point that it was put in a bin in the first place?

If I wanted to be a dolphin-killing, lady-beetle blitzing, luting, polluting anti-environmentalist I would have dropped the cardboard cup on the side of the street and never thought of it again. But I grew up watching Captain Planet. I took the vow of the Planeteer long ago and therefore, put my rubbish in the bin just like Kwame, Wheeler, Linka, Gi and Ma-Ti told me too. Otherwise Captain Planet will disown me and Gaia will smite me with lightening.

Apparently, the power isn't yours. The power belongs to the analy-retentive resident on Forveaux St who dishes out a side of guilt with his trashbags and leftover takeaway containers.

Maybe this guy is Looten Plunder in disguise? Better get my Planeteer ring out of retirement...

KH.

(Past Your) Prime Real Estate

I haven't officially moved back to Sydney yet, but that doesn't stop me from planning what my perfect life is going to look like when I do.

And the perfect life requires the perfect apartment.

For awhile there, I had this delusional idea that I could live by myself in a studio. After watching too many episodes of Sex And The City and developing an unrealistic idea of the world, I thought I could be single and fabulous ala Carrie Bradshaw in a art-deco apartment in Darlinghurst. I could have a gigantuous walk-in closet, I could sit on the kitchen counter to eat take out and could walk around the apartment naked. It was all going to be so perfect.

But once again, I am faced with the sad realisation that Sex And The City is girl-porn but nothing like real life.

As I  was trawling through the online property listings, it started to become clear. If you're a struggling 20-something on a base salary on $40,000, you're only accommodation option is to live in a share house (or at home, but really? Really?) Even if you were to find a studio which was under $300 a week, add on top of that your utilities and an addiction to expensive cheese and you're looking at a large chunk of your weekly pay disappearing to living expenses.

Plus, I have picky requirements regarding studios. I don't like the idea of cooking curry in the same room as my bed. That smell travels. And clings.

And it's not that I have any issues living in a sharehouse. As long as you can stomach my sarcasm, unashamed addiction to trashy television and lazy habit of leaving used teabags in the sink, I'm everybody's dream roomie.

But when you've spent the last 15 months either living in a camp bunk with 14 teenagers, in a share-room with three other girls or a hostel room with God-knows who and what, personal space becomes a relished term.

Hence, the desire to flat with me, myself and I.

However, the Sydney real estate market is stubborn and unwilling. A clean, fairly fashionable studio apartment with a seperate bedroom/living space and a kitchen with a stove-top is in the range of $400 to $500 a week. Can a struggling 20-something on a base salary of $40,000 afford that?

Yes, if I never eat, shop or get my nails done ever again. And I walk every where. And I join a nudist colony on the weekends. That way I'll never need to buy clothes or a bikini. Or get a spray-tan.

This discovery made me realise that the only time I am ever going to be able to live by myself in an art-deco apartment in Darlinghurst is when I am making upwards of $60,000 a year. And for a creative-type, the only time I'm going to be making that kind of money is when I've been in the industry for a few decades and they have to pay me on experience. So, when I'm 40.

Which made me realise, the only time I can ever live by myself in my dream studio apartment in Darlinghust is when I am 40. And still single.

Gulp.

This seems somehow unfair (not to mention, terrifying) . Just because I am young and single, the real estate market is forcing me to slum it in a share house? And when (IF! I mean IF!) I am 40 and still single, only then I can have my own walk-in closet?

I guess this must be the perk of being 40 and unattached. One gets to sit on the kitchen counter, naked, eating take out in their swanky, art-deco apartment in Darlinghurst.

Well, if it's good enough for Carrie Bradshaw....

KH.

Over The Hills

A terrible thing happened this week.

The last episode of The Hills aired on Australian television.

I am in mourning.

In my post-travel, umemployed lifestyle, I had taken to watching The Hills on Go! every afternoon at 4:30 while running on the treadmill in my living room.

Not only did watching The Hills feel indulgently pathetic, but watching it while working out in the kind of sad saggy sweats one is too embarrassed to wear outside of the house, made it also comfortable.

 But mostly pathetic.

I found a sick enjoyment about working out while watching the superficial lifestyles of The Hills'  transpire in front of me. Plus, imagining myself with abs as flat as Audrina's always helped get me through those last asthma-inducing kilometres.

I have an unashamed, minor obsession with The Hills. I realise the show is completely fabricated. No one's hair is that blonde, no one's teeth are that white and no one has that much money to spend on spray tans as well as Hollywood rent. Most importantly however, no one's life is that affected by drama on a daily basis.

Except, maybe Lara Bingle.

Oh, but isn't this what is so satisfying about The Hills? The drama. The drama that has absolutely nothing to do with you, but you can be a non-involved by-stander passing opinion while all those trivial tall tales are spun like a silk web?

And doing all that while pounding it out on a treadmill in the early afternoon heat? Oh heaven.

But the more I watch, the more I start to feel like I am actually involved with these people, that they're actually my friends. I have lamented every failed relationship of LC's, wished Kristen wasn't doing such an injustice to the collective of our Given Name, yelled at the television screen everytime Audrina got sweet-talked by Justin Bobby and withheld my rage every time Spencer opened his insidious mouth.

Until I realise I know more about these 'characters' than I do my own friends. Then I think maybe The Hills reaching a sixth and final season is a good thing and a prime opportunity to ditch my saggy sweats and pound the pavement outside.

Maybe I'll run to JB Hi-Fi and buy The City of DVD?

KH.

You can grow the mo, but can you raise the dough?

November is coming up which is exciting because that means my birthday is a few weeks away and that means I get to be spoilt and claim the limelight for 24 hours (plus the birthday sub-clause of additional birthday limelight three days prior and three days after actual birthday, which is general birthday celebration etiquette.)

And with November comes other things - the last month of Spring, the Melbourne Cup and Movember.

Ah, Movember. An annual tradition that must be endured for the good cause that is furthering research for prostate cancer.

I have a small issue with Movember, although nothing to do with the actual meaning behind it. It's not that even that I dislike facial hair. I appreciate a good after-5 shadow, a handlebar moustache makes my loins tingle and there's something about a man with a full wirey beard that makes me feel naughty. I swear, it has something to do with Ned Kelly, who in my bushranger dreams is a bad boy and therefore, a debaucherous lover.

Anyhoo...

My issue with Movember is men sporting beards, whether they be side burns, Mexican mo's or a Chopper Reid-styled 'stash simply for the sake of Movember. Not because they are registered with the Movember organisation and actively raising funds for prostate cancer research.

It's walking the walk, but not talking the talk. Growing the mo, but not raising the dough. I understand and appreciate the activity of creating awareness, but it bothers me when people say they're 'doing Movember' and all that involves is not shaving their lip hair for a few weeks.

I want to see true dedication. I want your donation tin rattled under my nose. I want to invest in your facial fuzz and feel like I too, am supporting something important. Because when you're officially doing it for the cause, other people get to enjoy your mo too, not just you.

So gents (and ladies, I guess. I mean, you never know what kind of imbalanced hormones some people have. I don't want to exclude those with their fair share of testosterone), please go and register! Do it for your mo. It'll help it grow. And you can be a bearded beauty knowing that your 'stash is raising some cash. 

KH.

Guess who's back, back again...

After a 16 month hiatus from The KH Chronicles, I bet you thought I would never come back.

I bet some of you even hoped that I wouldn't. Shame on you.

But here I am again, back in the editor's seat of the most opinionated publication in cyberspace.

Returning from my 15 month jaunt in the USA and Canada, I can confidently say I am not the same girl who sat in front of this blog little over a year ago.

Okay, so I might have the same face, the same caffeine addiction and the same lack of social etiquette, but the rest of me is different. Kind of like a sweat-stained dress you put in for dry-cleaning that comes back looking all sparkly and new again. I feel all sparkly and new.

I won't bore you with slides and stories that begin with, "Oh, that's just like that time I was in New York City..." or (cue abnoxious laugh) "You remind me so much of this great friend I met snowboarding the Canadian alps..." because I was once a non-traveller too and I know how that talk is like an ice-pick to the brain.

Plus, you should have read Where In The World is KH anyway and need nothing explained to you.

As you can see, The KH Chronicles has had a bit of a makeover. I thought it was about time the header had a facelift. If The Daily Telegraph can re-design so can I, but don't fret. I'm not going tabloid just yet.

The KH Chronicles is still going to have your daily dose of wit and satire. I'm just making the place look a little more stream-lined. Plus, the Blogspot designer is so fancy these days I feel like a female Steve Jobs.

... too soon?

If I can draw your attention to the right-hand side of the screen, we have some newly published pages about Yours Truly. This may be of particular interest to those readers who have been re-directed here courtesy of a recent job application that may have landed in your inbox. There's a couple of You Tube clips in there too, if you're tired of reading.

But if you're tired of reading... what are you doing here? This is a blog.

Have a look around. Get a little reacquainted. Feel free to hire me if you like what you see.



KH.