You're not normal

Coming back from the Hanging Rock races I had strange conversation with the person sitting next to me on the connecting bus. The bus ferried passengers from the race track to Woodend station and was packed. This woman sat down next to me with her young daughter on her lap. She struck up a conversation with me and asked who I was at the races with. I pointed to Ms Jade and Jason who were sitting in the seats across the aisle. She asked if I wanted to swap seats with her to be nearer to them, but I said that I was OK where I was. It was only a 10 min bus ride and it would have been a hassle anyway to change seats. I was quite happy to peer out the window and watch the world go by. She found this quite strange, and asked me a stack of other questions and tried to fit me into some kind of category such as a genX-er. Exacerbated by her inability to do so, she called me "strange", "not normal".
What is normal? It is impossible to define and I think that "a normal person" doesn't exist. You would think that an academic at a major university (which she was) would also agree. Is it normal to be a 40-50 year old male, showing off to your wife with your impressive ability to get drunk (like this is really hard to do) and then walk up to two people sitting at the races and slur "How good is it to be an Australian today?" This happened to me and Ms Jade. We looked at each other, then looked at this man. Ms Jade responded that it would be good if we were ahead on the punt. Not the response he was hoping for. He then looked at the cryptic crossword I was doing (obviously not an Australian thing to do), muttered some derogatory remark under his breath and walked off. To answer him, it's not good if you are representative of Australians.
I am not "normal", and I'm glad.

Among the Living 08: First down

The first one is down, Suharto. 5 points.

Island living

I have been in Vanuatu and had to comes to terms with the language,
while taking in the view,
sleeping under a net,
getting woken early by roosters,
living amongst the Ni-Van,
using local transport,
snorkeling and swimming,
tagging and recording endangered giant turtles,
standing on the rim of an erupting volcano,
and eating the magnificent local produce.

I have stories of local rebellion, dodgy foreign aid organisations, no money, and exploitation which will be told soon......

Among the Living 08: First entries in

UPDATED
Here are the first lot of dead pool entries:

Those who are outstanding, get them in quick.

Among the Living 08: Selections

Here are my 10 selections:

Name	DOB
Amy Winehouse	14/09/1983
Zsa Zsa Gabor	6/02/1917
Suharto	8/06/1921
Jason Becker (Shredder)	22/07/1969
Pete Doherty	12/03/1979
Ben Cousins	30/06/1978
Dick Clark	30/11/1929
Farrah Fawcett	2/02/1947
Margaret Thatcher	13/10/1925
Courtney Love	9/07/1964

Here is a nice website which has the deaths for this year listed.

Among the Living: We begin again

Well, 2007 has gone and it's 2008. I'm running the deadpool again this year. Entries will close on the 19th of Jan and entry is $5. Send me your 10 names and you are in.
Rules and points as per here. The results for 2007 were:
A-man 45 pts (Anna Nicole Smith)
'Door 18 pts (Lobby Loyde)
JadF 18 pts (Lobby Loyde)
TomC 13 pts (Pavarotti)

A-man wins. Can you get your $5 from JasF and JadF, and I'll get the cash off the other two.

Let the games begin.