Spartans, Snartans and Bed Smeg

It isn't your ususal skirts and sandals epic, 300. But I'll spare you the Margaret-n-Davids because I'm sure you all know it is a totally freaking bulgefest. And this blog probably won't be too interesting if you haven't seen it.

Sunday night I saw it for the second time. Not for any reason other than I had committed to see it with friends, but had already seen it. I'm glad I did - the local Hellenic Association was having a fundraiser and the upper gallery of the Astor in Mt Lawley was humming with Greeks.

They provided less bulge than the ones on screen, but just as much entertainment.

A friend overheard a young woman ask an old Greek lady how historically accurate it was. Considering the inclusion of monsters with blades for arms, it seemed like a mute point to me.

Another pondered aloud why they made Xerxes so much taller than Leonides. Considering they made the Persian "God-King" look like a Zamels' catalogue puked on a drag queen, that wouldn't have been my first question.

As they milled around outside the theatre they seemed genuinely bemused. I'm not sure the screening had inspired the nationalistic pride and reassurance the organisers had anticipated.

The former WA Governor, LT Gen John Sanderson, had been sitting in front of me in the cinema. Alone. The gore clearly too much for wife Lorraine. (It's not funny, I just thought it was interesting).

On the way home Thom stumbled over his tongue and invented the word "snartan". We decided snartan was too good a sounding word to lose, so we spent several hours (even as we were drifting off to sleep) coming up with a definition and debating whether it should be a noun a verb or an adjective and the possible implications vis a vis suffixes, etc. (Neither of us wanted "snartanisation" to ever exist).

So far the front-runner is that snartan is the name given to the dried bits of food left on forks and dishes after they have been washed, which you have to pick off with your nails.

So snartans aren't as hot as Spartans, but either way you can't wait to get your claws into them.

In the process we also decided the stuff that collects at the foot of the bed, which tells you it's reeeeally time to change the sheets, is called "bed smeg".

I welcome your thoughts.