jayneandmarty.com

There’s an ad on Bay FM every 15 minutes broadcasting the various winners of this year’s Telstra Golden Plate awards (a bit like the Good Food Guide). The ad mentions the winners in various categories: best cafe, best restaurant, best brasserie, best bistro. Okay, but what’s the difference? Our combined 10+ years of hospitality experience couldn’t answer the question.

Wikipedia doesn’t help much:

• A restaurant is an establishment that serves prepared food and beverages to order, to be consumed on the premises. The term covers a multiplicity of venues and a diversity of styles of cuisine.
• A brasserie is a cafe doubling as a restaurant and serving single dishes and other meals in a relaxed setting.
• A bistro is a familiar name for a cafe serving moderately priced simple meals in an unpretentious setting.
• There are two types of cafes: those that specialize in coffee and hot beverages, and those with a full menu.

To me, brasserie and bistro sound like the same thing. Also, they’re both cafes. And restaurants.

About the only thing I can determine is that high-end restaurants that serve fancy meals in a more formal setting are definitely NOT brasseries, bistros or cafes.

Apart from that, everything else is technically the same thing. So we’re still in the dark.

As you probably know, we’re looking to buy a ski boat. Without getting into the details, we can buy an old inboard ski boat like this one

or an outboard ski boat like this one

Looking at this photo from today from the Lake Eildon webcam makes me think that we should be looking at something that we can comfortably take out onto Corio Bay, where the water will never run out.

That’s the Eildon Boat Club at 5pm today. The water level is 16%. Yes, those houseboats appear to be stranded.

You can still launch your ski boat, but according to the wake.com.au forums you’ll be flirting with the trees and even underwater bridges every time you venture out when the water’s that low.

Lake Hume is just as bad…

So. Lucky the tide comes in twice a day on Port Phillip Bay.

This morning, whilst consulting Wikipedia for the correct way to use a hyphen, I noticed a link under the Uncommon typography heading for the "interrobang". The link was accompanied by a symbol that looks suspiciously like a quesclamation mark.

Further investigation (i.e. clicking the link) revealed that according to Wikipedia the interrobang is, in fact, a quesclamation mark, which was invented in 2003 by my friend Jeremy Stubbs when he was bored.

Here’s the symbol for interrobang.

‽

(The quesclamation mark symbol remains under development.)

Read the wikipedia entry for interrobang and you’ll understand why the world isn’t yet taking it seriously. How can society be expected to be comfortable with a piece of punctuation that sounds like the dramatic end to a tough line of questioning? Besides, as long as the symbol remains a combination of two existing symbols it’ll never have its own identity.

Jed often takes time out of his day to evangelise the quesclamation mark, and today is no exception. He’s added a paragraph to the Wikipedia entry that gently suggests that the interrobang is sooooo 20th century. Long live the quesclamation mark.

Just in case a nosey Wikipedia moderator removes that text, Jed wrote:

A modern alternative to the interrobang is the Quesclamation mark, invented by Jeremy Stubbs in 2003. A variation on the theme of a rhetorical question mark, it has a dedicated symbol as opposed to combination of 2 existing punctuation symbols. The application of the Quesclamation mark aligns to that of the interrobang.

Jed will be touring the country speaking about his role as the father of modern-day punctuation in December. You can catch him at the Rooty Hill RSL, the Dandenong Workers Club and the Kalgoorlie Bowls Club, and other similar venues. He’s on just before Ian Turpie.

I’ve been carefully researching old ski and wake boats so that when we buy one we make a good decision. Unfortunately less than half of advertisers in the Trading Post bother to include a photo with their ad, which doesn’t help somebody with low power boat knowledge to visualise a potential buy. (Note to sellers - you’re crazy. Pay the extra cash and include a photo you dorks.)

So as I browse through eBay and the TPost I save many of the photos that I find. Here’s the collection so far, I’ll add to it as I go.

‘73 Skicraft

‘83 Skicraft

Flightcraft Phantom

Gilflite Javelin

Ramsay Cheetah

Gilflite Laser

Performance Craft Boss

Flightcraft XL225

Gilflite Spitfire

Caribbean Jaguar

Pride Panther

Pride Cheetah

Flightcraft Bandit

Found this site after googling "mulwala ski boat".

http://www.ericandjoan.com/worldtrip/australia/aus_main.html

Awesome. Check out the attitude on the homepage: "We quit our jobs in May 1997 to bicycle and canoe around the world. If you’re bored with your job, we highly recommend that you quit, too."

It’s good reading. Maybe jayneandmarty.com will include something like this one day.