Thursday, January 11, 2007

Australian stamps

I have an odd and growing preoccupation with Australia. It's completely because of the movies "Muriel's Wedding", "Danny Deckchair", "Strictly Ballroom" and the book In A Sunburned Country. Granted I know movies are not generally like real life, but I remain fascinated. This is in the face of reports that it's 140 degrees there in the shade (heat?...not a big fan) there are more deadly critters there than people (spiders, snakes, sharks...oh my! Again, not a fan of critters either) and there have actually been tourists that went there and disappeared. No one is sure if a) they were eaten by dingoes (I'm not kidding) b) they were bitten by the most poisonous spider known to man and then eaten by dingoes or c) went for a swim and were eaten by tiger sharks.
Nevertheless.... I think I want to go there some day.
Well, all this time you've been reading this post and wondering...."I know "Muriel's Wedding" (and if you don't, run to Blockbuster and rent it now!) and you might even know "Strictly Ballroom", but what the heck is a "Danny Deckchair"?" Not what, dear reader, but whom? It's a quirky little movie about a dude in Sydney who ties a bunch of helium balloons to the back of his lawnchair and takes off and lands in a cute little Northern Rivers town. Oscar material? No, but very entertaining, at least to me. And for 2 years I've been trying to find the frickin' soundtrack in the states and on the internet. No one was selling it. So I finally resigned myself to paying $22 for it on ebay from some guy in Australia. It came yesterday (surprisingly fast I might add). And you know what? Even the stamps covering the padded envelope had pictures of deadly creatures on them (sharks and box? jelly fish). I bet they're just trying to scare off all the fascinated Americans.

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