If Leopold Bloom’s out-of-body experiences don’t do it for you, Wordle can help with creating your own happy bubble of the nonsensical.

Although being ever so slightly health conscious, this little gem recipe does include dark chocolate, turns out perfectly fine when you use light butter and, well, despite all of its saturated fats, coconut is surely another serve of fruit?

All in all, this is a pretty quick and cheap dessert to whip up from scratch and will still impress the extended family when they come over for tea.

Pear, Chocolate and Coconut Crumble

Serves 6 (or 4 generous serves)

Ingredients:

• 80g dark chocolate, chopped
• 6 medium-sized William pears
• 120g butter
• 3/4 cup raw sugar
• 1 cup self-raising flour
• 5 tbs dessicated coconut (shredded also works just fine and even adds texture)
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon

The Cooking Bit

Preheat oven to 175°C.

Peel and core the pears and cut into quarters. Slice each quarter again 3 times so that you have 4 thinner slices of pear from each quarter.

Place thin slices of pear into a microwave-safe bowl and add 2 tablespoons of water. Microwave on high for 5 minutes until pears are tender. Drain pears.

To make the crumble, combine flour, butter, sugar, coconut and cinnamon in a large bowl until it looks surprisingly crumbly.

Place pears into a baking dish and top with chopped chocolate.

Top with crumble mix and pop into the oven for 40 minutes or until the crumble looks nice and toasty..

Enjoy one of your five a day.

The time saved by hunting around in your desk drawer for the stamp, pulling off the little plastic cap, wiping runny ink off your hands, aligning the stamp onto the paper just to press down “URGENT” upside-down, is enormous considering the effort it would normally take you to print a few letters.

So what stamps are out there that could further save you time in your administrative sprint up the corporate ladder?

Number 5.
This stamp would be excellent for those things that come through internal mail when the sender has no idea of who you are, what you do, or why you should care.

Number 4.
These nifty series of stamps are perfect for pretty much any document that passes your desk.

Number 3.
If you think Hallmark is out to rip the world off by charging $7 a card, this stamp is for you. With just a single outlay, you’ve covered yourself for not forgetting any occasion- just stamp on a post-it note to show you care.

Number 2.
If I had a Fail Stamp, it would need re-inking at least twice a week.

Number 1.
Not to end on a jaded-employee note, there may be some things that appear on your desk which inspire a sense of awesomeness in you. Like a press release involving pink poodles, a midget and 2 minute noodles. For these moments, there is the Facebook reaction.

“…we just can’t stop people from being homeless if that’s their choice…”
Tony Abbott at a Catholic Social Services Conference, Melbourne, 16/02/10

Can I please have cancer as well?

“…Jesus didn’t say yes to everyone. I mean Jesus knew that there was a place for everything and it is not necessarily everyone’s place to come to Australia.”
Tony Abbott on Q&A, 05/04/09

Remember that bit in Matthew, chapter 3?

“Western civilisation came to this country in 1788 and I’m proud of that…”
Tony Abbott on Four Corners, 27/08/09

Because he personally supervised the First Fleet.

“Even if dispossession is taken to mean that government has a higher responsibility to Aborigines than to other Australians, the production of beautiful art and connectedness to the land does not warrant the maintenance of a way of life also characterised by unemployment, substance abuse and domestic violence. If people choose to live in difficult to service places, that’s their business.”
Tony Abbott in The Australian, 27/06/08

I for one would never fail to choose to live in a situation with prevailing domestic violence.

“What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it’s going to go up in price and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up, every year….”
Tony Abbott in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald, 09/02/10

I think about this as I dust the curtain rods as well Tony.

In the same article, he’s mentioned saying that a woman’s virginity as “the greatest gift” she could give someone. How do you expect the fairer sex to contain our raging iron-wielding hormones when you prance around like this Tony???

While I was on my nightly weekly trek to the bottle shop (“off-licence” for those in the UK, “liquor store” for US counterparts) I noticed a rather odd-looking label on a bottle of spirits. Can you guess the main ingredient of this liquour delight?

This got me thinking, what other strange but wonderful drinks are in my local bottlo apart from Passion Pop? So off I went around the store, snapping a few gems along the way.

This next drink is obviously aimed at anyone living in Wales/ New Zealand/ Tasmania: Sheepshaggers Premium Beer. Well you wouldn’t trust what was in their second-rate stuff.

This wine called Retsina may not exactly have a name that will make you smirk, but take a look at the picture on this Greek label to see what this drink is really all about.

On a completely different end of the spectrum, we now come to Virgin beer. I assume the name isn’t actually specifying the main drinkers of this beer, otherwise they’d be loosing out on customers as soon as a six-pack was sold.

Now here’s a unique product on the market. No, I’m not talking about organic wine, but apparently you can drink a glass of female sex cells for a smashing good time. Bowl of gametes to go with that anyone?

Again we haven’t exactly reached a funny name with this bottle of Dogbolter beer (although top marks for unique branding), what I’m more interested in with this label is the grade of beer: Garage Reserve. Class.

While not exactly ha ha funny, this liqueur is unique for its bottle shape, which not only resembles an Italian landmark, but you after you’ve gotten through half the bottle.

So there are the range of strange alcoholic lubricators I had no idea was on sale at my local. Know of any other weird and wonderful drinks out there? Any comments saying VB will be flamed.

I recently had a toe injury, which doesn’t sound all that major, but required x-rays and a doctor lasering a hole into my big toe nail to relieve the built up blood pressure. My toe has since remained blue and three times its normal size which is neither attractive or practical.

Usually at this point in a post I’d upload a related picture, but as I’d prefer you to keep reading rather than make you go feel sick, I’ll refrain.

Anyway, I’ve been doing my fair share of sitting around to prevent any unnecessary blood spurts from my toenail which got me wondering, what are the best things to do when you’re not throwing a sickie from work but are actually laid-up?

Here then are my top ten things to do when you’re couch-bound.

10. Read… something

This is hardly original, but its too obvious a seated occupation to miss out on for a top ten list. If you’ve been reading the same book for hours, mix it up with a magazine or nutritional information from a cereal box. It’s good to know how much of your recommended daily intake of vitamin B6 you’re getting.

9. Learn to Draw

Why not take this new abundance of time to pick up a new skill? Sketching is something you just need a pencil and paper for, and thanks to the wisdom of the inter-web, there are heaps of sites to start you off, and all for free. Good old About.com is a good place to start, or why not try your hand at drawing your own comics?

8. Meditate

I always think I should get into meditation but never seem to have the time / solitude / ability to not get distracted. Well sitting on the couch with my foot propped up on the coffee table has made me think of the benefits of not thinking. To get you more involved than just exhaling “om”, there are free guided meditations available online- meditation.org.au will perk up your zen.

7. Learn how to play poker better

This skill could come in handy someday. You never know when the gambling bug will take hold of you- might as well give yourself the best head start possible for the inevitable addiction.

6. Online collaboration is not just a catchphrase

I’m not talking about the obvious time-wasting hours on Facebook or Twitter (though consider those tips 6.1 and 6.2) but instead, use online collaboration tools creatively and not necessarily as they were intended. As all your friends will be at work / school when you’re laid-up, get them involved in a project they can take part in, in their own time. Open a new Google Wave and share it  with everyone. Then do something weird and creative, like posting weird pictures of toothless people, or writing a sentence then getting all of your friends to write their own subsequent sentences to create a strangely unique story.

5. Make homemade butter

Yes, you could do any sort of cooking really, but it could get annoying moving from the pantry to the fridge to the butcher back to the pantry while on crutches for all of your duck a l’orange ingredients. Why not try your hand something you would usually buy pre-packaged, and that has just 1 ingredient?

To make your very own amazing butter, just grab 2 cups of double cream (or send your very nice friend down to the shops for you) and blend for 10 minutes. Pour off the extra liquid, add a bit of salt if you wish, and you have your very own toast spread! This recipe makes 250g of butter.

4. Plan something

Planned your next trip? What you’re going to get your other half for their upcoming birthday? Which knick knacks from the 80s you can throw away? What you’re going to do with your life for the next 5 years? You’ve got the time to get some stuff sorted!

3. Call people

Not email, not SMS, not tweet (though you can obviously do those too- in addition to the calling!) but keep up your interaction with the outside world by getting on the phone. Online VoIP services like Skype keep calls around the world affordable and if your mate has an account, calls are free. So go on, when was the last time you called your mum?

2. Take some weird arty photos of yourself

This can provide you with hours of entertainment. See feet photo in my last post.

1. Start a blog

Blogs can be free from sites like wordpress and blogger. If you’re worried about a topic, you can write about ANYTHING! Just look at this whole post on my toe.

We were never sure, but we couldn’t stop speculating over it. Ever since Apple’s release of the iPad though, sentiment towards this not-an-iPod-but-not-a-MacBook-so-no-one-really-wants-it-device has waned a touch.

The jokes are there with iTampon trending higher than iPad on Twitter after the device was announced, and the Los Angeles Times tech blog asking, “Yes, the iPad is small, lightweight and slim. But can you swim with it?”

Apple did well in creating a high-tech device that everyone was really excited about because everyone else was really excited about it. Its branding fail however is even more epic than Nintendo’s efforts with the Wii.

Let’s see what else Apple’s marketing team have missed out on in promoting a product that can absorb blue liquid thanks to its wings colour screen.

Well, the concept worked the first time.

This is perhaps a bit unfair. The iPad is lighter as well.

What we can expect to see in the near future- Steve Jobs in a black turtleneck with jeans.

It’s white, compact and will make your life seem more fulfilled until you realise it’s the reason you haven’t gone to bed for four nights in a row.

Let’s look at what is currently flooding Sydney bus stops and train stations:

Yes it’s goat-frog. You know that cheese, no pair of jeans, no massage service….

Whatever it is, it’s doing a good job of reaching out to millions of people, even though we’re not entirely sure what we’re being reached out to about.

I’ve asked around and no one is sure, though theories are rife on that it could be a Sydney Festival plug, or an ad for hair products. Organic of course, like the smiling frog.

While I’m enjoying using the ad as a talking point in the pub, I fear that once it’s revealed to us that we’re actually discussing the latest drink from coca-cola, we’ll all be bitterly disappointed and go back to being overtly influenced to buy a bottle Stoneleigh Sav Blanc with 2 glasses next to it (because that’s how you drink wine).

The problem with most ads is that they are either on the extreme in-your-face-you-need-this-product-now-yes-this-product-right-here, or they’re frog goat.

I’m keen on ads that break creative boundaries and aren’t necessarily related to the industry they’re advertising like the ever-present cow in a milk ad.

Here’s an example of an agency (though I’m not sure what kind of agency- it’s not clear from their advertising) in Sydney’s Northern Beaches:

Now this real estate/ advertising/ recruitment “agency” is spot on!

While I’m still unclear on what they do, I feel that Ben Stiller has nothing to do with their business, neither does hair spray. Yet I know their work-ethic, and I want them to do whatever it is they do for me.

Unless I feel the need to obey my thirst first.

Let’s take a look around the world on what we’re missing out on with our new fangled (but hygienic) mobile phones.

One of the ye olde yellow phone booths in Germany’s oldest city, Trier. Yes, it’s still potentially bugged from the Cold War.

An example of one of the few public phone booths still left standing in New York City, USA. Used now only to dial Dominoes.

Today’s iconic red phone booths of London, UK. It’s more British than Essex.

What to expect on the other side of the world: Woodford, Australia. This photo was taken in December 2009 in case anyone’s wondering why this makes it to the end of my evolutionary scale. Shoes are also due to be invented sometime in the next decade.

The result speaks for itself.

These little chocolate heaven bombs end up looking impressive enough to give as a gift which I did after sneaking a few myself, just to make sure I hadn’t accidentally put anything weird in the mix, like an omelette. (I hadn’t-phew!)

Despite having the oh-man-they-look-amazing-stuff-the-new-year’s-resolution factor, these cookies are easier to make than baked beans out of a tin.

Fudgy Triple Choc Cookies

Makes 20

Ingredients:

• 200g dark chocolate
• 2 king size Cadbury Crunchie bars
• 100g butter
• 3/4 cup caster sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 1/2 cups self-raising flour
• 2 tbs cocoa powder
• 3/4 cup icing sugar

The Cooking Bit

Place the dark chocolate and the butter in a bowl and microwave until melted. Should take about 2 minutes (depending on your microwave’s ability to microwave). Stir and stand melted chocolate goodness for 5 minutes to cool.

Stir in caster sugar into the chocolate mixture until dissolved. Add eggs and mix well.

In a separate bowl, mix flour and cocoa powder together and add the broken-up Crunchie bars. Don’t break them up too small otherwise all of the amazing honeycomb will dissolve in the mixture. It will still taste good, but won’t have the texture.

Mix the dry ingredients into the chocolate bowl to form a dough-like mixture. Cover the dough and chill in the fridge for 45mins- 1 hour. The longer you chill, the easier the dough is to work with.

After the dough is chilled, pre-heat the oven to 170°C and line 2 baking trays with baking paper.

Take out chilled mixture from the fridge and use a tablespoon to scoop out balls of dough. Roll them into balls between your hands and repeat with the rest of the mixture until you have a series of little ping-pong sized balls made up of chocolate on your counter.

Dip each ball into the icing sugar and roll around so it’s completely coated and place on the trays about 2 cm apart.

Bake the cookies for 12-15 minutes until they start to look on the firm side. Cool so that the fudgyness solidifies then impress everyone around you!

Yes, it’s looking at you.