Look Who Won't Stop Talking (or "Shut Up, Ray!")

"You could kick a football
through my middle teeth!"

That's right, it's Channel Nine's Chief Knob-Jockey, Ray Martin. And he hosted a special tonight called:




It introduced us to Priscilla Dunstan, the so-called miracle woman who has single-handedly discovered the secret language of babies.

Well, that's the sceptic's way of putting it. In truth, she only ever claimed to have deciphered the natural sounds babies' bodies make physiologically when experiencing or suffering from certain issues or discomforts. It actually sounds pretty spot-on to me, despite some of the boffins in the forum/audience giving her a hard time (or perhaps trying to make themselves look important and like a pack of cleverdicks).

As Priscilla ran through the noises babies make and what they mean, I jotted them down, and at the end of the show I handed the page to Wifey, saying: "From now on, this is what Sweetums is telling us". The page looked like this:

"neh" - I'm hungry

"owh" - I'm tired

"eh" - burp me

"eairh" - I've got lower wind pain

"heh" - I'm uncomfortable (hot, cold, need a nappy change, tight clothes, etc)

"wah" - buy Daddy some presents

There are plenty of people out there who diss Duncan's findings (hey - she was on Oprah, for crying out loud!), but it seems to me that rightly or wrongly, she's onto a pretty good thing, here. Everything she said made perfect sense, and the testimonies we saw of real-life participants who gave it a go for a week before the show was filmed were all in favour of her unique 'decoding' efforts.

I guess science will prove her right or show her up for being a fraud in time. Meanwhile, we're gonna give it a go and see if our GENIUS CHILD can be even more perfect than before.


Priscilla Duncan: Superwoman or Superfraud?
Surely such a good-looking woman with a man's square
jawline and perfect ceramic hair wouldn't lie to us?

If you're interested in knowing more about it, this is her website, although you can read the basics for yourself (for free!) on her Wikipedia page.

It was a bloody noisy show (everyone in the forum brought along their babies and toddlers, making for a very distracting show to listen to!), but the thing I noticed the most was how many Channel Nine newsreaders have been 'on the job' lately! They're all popping out babies together! What are they putting in the water over there? The maternity and paternity leave payments must be crippling the station! (Hence this shameless promotional 'investigation', I'd wager.)


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