CULTUREMASH.

If you could eat dinner with any person, dead or alive, who would it be and where would you go?

2010-05-13T21:37:00.001+10:00

It would be with the members of the USyd Vegetarian Society, next Thursday (20 May), at Govinda's in Darlinghurst (http://www.govindas.com.au/), and you-ou-ou are invited! Ask me about details later.

General inquiries, constructive criticism, interactive stalking, open ears.

formspring.me

2010-02-03T21:11:00.001+11:00

Ask me anything http://formspring.me/shrapper

Hey internet.

2009-12-28T01:11:00.003+11:00

What's up? I'm restless tonight, and feel like hammering out some experiences before the worst happens (and it could! at any time! car accidents! swine flu!), but I'm not sure where my 'personal blog' lives these days. Tumblr? Here? Probably Tumblr, it's where I just reflex stream anything that entertains or moves me these days due to cbfness re: creating own content. So I starting letting my mind pour out there but then I realised that it's just banal show-and-tell "on Tuesday mummy and daddy took me on a holiday to ___ and I wore a hat and bort a pill box and [etc]" WHICH dundundun may deter my fervent followers and so like... I'm just putting it out here. Sentences with too many words in them. Mumblings of a teenager with a backache. This is where I'm at.

10 hours in the car today and I'm back in black! Somehow it's approaching 1am and I still haven't unpacked but nevermind dears. There are leftover mince pies to be nibbled and emails to be checked, everything in its place and the like.

I had told Vaanie I would blog for her, but never quite made it to a computer. That was a pity too, because the day I arrived in Canberra I was feeling so damned poetic. Really! It was unusual, born I think of hours in the car reading Dave Eggers pretty intently, feeling all affected and quasi-inspired by this early-20s mid-1990s hyperbolic tender pomo bildungsroman-y memwah [note 'memoir' is now pronounced in the manner of John Malkovich's character in Burn After Reading, that sexy drawling beast]. Canberra is actually pretty incredbile. Ask me about it some time! I will be defend it staunchly, albeit ignorantly, having spent two pleasant days there in six years.

So then it's that drowsy feeling as though you're about to start sobering up, caused by ideas from books, lethargy, shitty fast food and a weird little inland country town whose sole tourist attraction is a hulking huge submarine hull enshrined in a grassy park. Holgarth! Pit stop of the century! It was strange days.

Saw family in Tocumwal. In summary: Christmas presents = 10 or so books, Van Gogh print, hip journal, two or three sundry items, nice things from Andy inc. customised headphones!. Christmas holiday: very nice, good wine, interesting salads, catching up, cool cousins, card games, entomological and etymological appreciation. Murray River, amateur fireworks. Suchlike.
During the course all this I realised I'm having a feeble sort of epiphany atm also, of the tired old self-improvement-through-literature variety, which is embarrassing. But kinda sweet too right? Reading list since going away last Tues:

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers
Orlando: A Biography - Vag Woolf
A Room of One's Own - ditto, and consumed pretty much within the same 24 hour period!
Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
The Consolations of Philosophy - Alain de Botton

Whatever shall I stumble through next! It's a toss up between The Adrian Mole Diaries and Great Expectations really, haha. Or some more Alain de Botton [Status Anxiety] but goddamn what a dork he art. The first half of Consolations is so banal, and the second is by turns *headdesk*ing and life-changing. Questionable questionable!

Further: my newish cartilage piercings are infected againn, crusting up the metal, can anyone figure out why I keep getting more of the damn things? Nine punctures, at last count. And a curiouser obstacle: I return home to find all my Papermate Gel Roller IIs have stopped working. They still have ink and everything, they've just been lying prone for waay too long! I've stopped writing! I forget to bring my notebook places, my journal has temporal gaps intimidatingly wide so I just feel guilty and forget about it. I fear my own creativity or lack thereof (if you don't try you can't fail, right? WRONG, the two are synonymous, one way only, in that a square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not necessarily an equilateral, capiche?

So anyway this blog is just to say I'm going into hibernation until New Year's Eve. I will be doing my darndest not to Tumblr (some posts in the queue for y'all though) - the past 5 days I've only been on the internet once, five minutes on Facebook, and I felt alot more... vital? by the end of that. And this is kind of a blanket ban on all interaction: There's a party tomorrow night. I'm not going. And noone ask me out for coffee or anything until January either please my darlings. There is much to do!

reading pile exactly 30 books high, if lain cover on cover. some titles are less enticing than others and will probably be relegated to the bottom for another year or so, but nonetheless. much to be carrying on with! see epiphany.
oodles of TV on DVD to consume over rolling hills of ironing
I'm going to make something. not sure what yet, but There Will Be Glitter!
I have to cook and clean while mum's away in Melbourne, work that vagina yeah
like three potentially life-altering medical appointments to configure
should really tart up my resume
should REALLY get my L's

Happy Holidays and all that!

11:11

2009-11-11T23:11:00.004+11:00

So. High school is World War 1. No kidding, it really is - you're not on the front line all the time, but there are days or months or years when getting up to catch the train really feels like 'going over the top'. And year 12? Everyone does their HSC in 1918. The major works and exams are Ludendorff's Operation Michael and now it's July and August and we're tearing up the counter offensives with Monash and Foch and tanks and speed and combined arms attacks all over the place.

Today I signed an armistice agreement in a railroad car in France. How fucking awesome is that right?

According to Wikipedia, some other notable events that have occured on past eleventh days of the eleventh months include:

1634 – Following pressure from Anglican bishop John Atherton, the Irish House of Commons passes "An Act for the Punishment for the Vice of Buggery". (aw shit!)
1975 – Australian constitutional crisis of 1975: Australian Governor-General Sir John Kerr dismisses the government of Gough Whitlam and commissions Malcolm Fraser as caretaker Prime Minister, and announces a general election to be held in early December. (BOO. I can has my free education back now please?)
1992 – The Church of England votes to allow women to become priests. (women? as intelligent and spiritual as men? civilisation is crumblinggg)

It's the end of the beginning, and my birthday tomorrow, and everything hits at once... Two minutes silence please! Then the rest of our lives: dancing.

Joanna Newsom touring etc.

2009-11-04T14:10:00.005+11:00

Ahh oh dear. Have been lining up an extravagant amount of concerts for someone so unemplyed this summer. Do I go do I go can I afford it (who cares) do I go? If so, who will go with me?

linkypoo - Sydney Opera House Concert Hall, Monday 18 January 2010

[Update: Waaait JENS LEKMAN is supporting on her Wollongong date. But apparently not in Sydney? What is this shit? I almost don't want to go at all out of spite!]

P.S. Also on the musical side of things - Ooh la la, Girls have sent out a new version of their beloved Lust For Life video but with more dicks, boobs and guitars. NSFW obvs. I think I might like the clean cut better though actually, for all its (irresistable, sigh) pseudo-retro pretentions and relative lack of nudity. It's just a bit funn(i)er? Or maybe because I first saw it before listening to the song a hundred thousand times so the impact was better.

Giirrlls you are so 1990s lo-fi stoned sun-brushed home-movie-as-political-statement Indian summer musty Kool Aid fresh. Zeitgeist, dayumn...

It's not like there's anyone left who doesn't read PostSecret, but really now, really.

2009-10-26T21:25:00.004+11:00

17 days left of being 17! I'm on the edge... (Here is my secret: earlier this year I went through an [extremely short] phase where I wanted to beeee Stevie Nicks. That fluffy hair! Those whirling capes! Platform heels! It passed, of course. These things do. But I still think she's badass.)

(And isn't it cute how I'm counting these things down? It's kinda just because of the end of the HSC aka end of the world as we know it coincide right about there though. Speaking of which, where did my night go? Bothersticks!)

Fitz and Dizzyspells

2009-10-23T22:07:00.004+11:00

I can't help but be impressed by my hard-partying neighbours. They have played 'So What' by P!ink* not twice, not thrice, but five times and counting this fine evening! That is some dedication to still being a rockstar/ having my own car, right there. I actually have to study though guys, so I'm trying to blast it out with Satie** but um, ill conceived plan because the work of Satie is generally very very quiet, like Phillip Glass you know. Phillip Glass <3s Satie. That is what I learned from Wikipedia today. Speaking of ill conceived plans though... Board of Studies, English Paper 2. WHAT WAS THAT? I had a rant prepared, fuming on the way home, "clogged with dregs of betrayal, reprisal, hatred", but I swallowed it, but suffice to say, I no longer have an academic future. My Hamlet thesis was awesome though year 11s: ask me to send it to you so you can leech off my now-unacknowledged genius and maybe it will have its moment of glory next year when the HSC won't make me cry with needlespecific questions on minor obscure features of the play. Fuuu-

Okay news update!!
1. I want to move into an apartment so I can have my own coffee table, magazine rack and doomed pot plants. Magazine racks are so hot! I love magazines lately.
2. Having a Karen O day today, as in one where I worship her. because she is queen of the living fierce and she is probably going to play a sideshow in Sydenay this summer and that will be awesome. Plus the whole Where the Wild Things Are soundtrack thing. So where I'm at right now. So me, so me...
3. Speaking of awesome, look, it's a leaping Iberian wolf! (from this wildlife photog competition)

*Does she st!ll even spell her name l!ke that, or am ! so two-thousand-and-late?

** Don't call me pretentious or I'll sic minimalism on you. Not sure how that would work, but you don't wanna risk finding out right?

V.ii

2009-10-18T23:40:00.000+11:00

If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all.

In honour of impeding affluence: Erised

2009-10-10T20:35:00.008+11:00

I'm whiling away my time making object lust lists. Partly because in a month and a bit HSC is over and we're going on a job hunt! (We're going on a job hunt!) We're gonna catch a big one (We're actually gonna catch a poorlypaid casualposition but hey!) I'm not scared! I'm-not-scared!

But not really because of that. Tackily, in a similar time frame I turn 18 and people keep asking me that impossible question, "What do you want?" to which I must honestly answer thusly. I got everything I need. But if you insist, please don't fill my desk drawers with cutesy, grammatically incorrect Azn stationery. They're already fairly bursting with such fruits of my junior years at a selective girls' high. I'd much rather...

your favourite book
Moleskine soft cover pocket-sized daily diary (oh fuuu- I'm a wanker. A converted converted wanker...) (D:) (whatever, they're nicely designed. a no-name brand daily diary of a similar size, appearance and function will of course suffice)
an analog camerah (my SLR's shutter function has ceased to do so)
Polaroid? lomo? Demekin fisheye 110? something photographically fun...
Agyness Deyn

band tshirts! Next year I'm making new friends by o n l y ever wearing band tshirts, so efficient in delineating tastes and preferences that we'll barely need to talk! Leaving so much time for other, better things... (Personal branding FTW. Webcomic shirts are also good for this sort of thing.)

shooting stars, unicorns, hash brownies, whatnot...

a dictionary of quotations (to wean me off Tumblr)

a wicked hat stand/coat rack. Captain Hook.
a vegan cookbook: two New Years resolutions with one tome! (them being to live mindfully and learn to do basic stuff for myself)

an extravagntly mystical and beautiful incense holder
cream or brown headphones. Like these darling retro panasonic ones, but available in Aus :(

gypsy jewellery
magic stockings or scarlet socks

braces (pants braces, but preferably teeth braces because people wivvem are sooo cute! but I hear they're also expensive and painful, so maybe not)

gin/red wine/butterscotch schnapps

the gift of knowledge
nothing

And yet it stands: no matter how hard I hoard curiousities, complete collections, and vigorously Improve My Existence with Lifestyle Products™, I will still die alone. Ah, the incontrovertible! Breathe it in now, breathe it in!

P.S. "I see myself holding a pair of thick, woolen socks." Harry stared.

The Thought-Fox

2009-10-03T12:06:00.002+10:00

Here's a poem by Ted Hughes. It's about writing a poem, or maybe rewriting essays and notes once accessible from a wayward USB, minus the misery that entails though. God I feel so uninspired & disconnected... Accio perspective. But fuck this year.

I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.

Through the window I see no star:
Something more near
Though deeper within darkness
Is entering the loneliness:

Cold, delicately as the dark snow
A fox's nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now

Sets neat prints into the snow
Between trees, and warily a lame
Shadow lags by stump and in hollow
Of a body that is bold to come

Across clearings, an eye,
A widening deepening greenness,
Brilliantly, concentratedly,
Coming about its own business

Till, with a sudden sharp hot stink of fox
It enters the dark hole of the head.
The window is starless still; the clock ticks,
The page is printed.

Countdowns:

18 days until HSC begins

40 days until it's over & I turn 18

then formals

then schoolies

then sanity?

So you walk that way, I'll walk this way

2009-09-29T15:16:00.003+10:00

The future hangs over our heads
And it moves with each current event
Until it falls around like a cold, steady rain
Just stay in when it's looking this way

-Bright Eyes, Landlocked Blues

We graduate this week! I know I'm leaving, but I don't know where to...

I need Tumblr back for things like this. Random media sharrin. A couple more months yar.

2009-08-29T18:09:00.002+10:00

I also need to smile smile smile! At least Devendra Banhart was once a senior high (to use the American) loser too:

Ooh look we both have awkwardly short hair, stupid knitwear and an interest in curious quotes. The girl on his right has an unattributed Wilde quote under her picture. The boy on his left has rosy cheeks bordering on fatal-fever territory. I have a tummy ache and school-centred anxiety. Oh I wish I had a suntan, I wish I had a pizza and a bottle of wine!

"Well, I think the way you feel as a teenager stays with you, forever. I really believe that. And we try to change and we hope that we change, but we don't really in big ways, in serious ways. I think the personality is formed at that time, for the good and for the bad. ... We all want to grow up and move on and appear to be different to people. And we want people to see us in a different way. But, I don't know, I think the personality is very, very strongly cemented, and we just bear whatever shortcomings we have and learn to live with it."

- Whatever shall we do with you Morrissey?

No, this.

2009-08-16T19:08:00.002+10:00

I'm going to overcome uncoordination in a few weeks and just do what they're doing. Like everywhere. Swish, swish...

© 1971, Mary Sue Ader-Andersen

2009-08-08T23:27:00.001+10:00

This.

Guys today is the 90th anniversary of the Battle of Amiens!

2009-08-08T07:20:00.002+10:00

So it was like, "the black day of the German Army" --> Hundred Days Offensive --> Armistice!! More or less. Woohoo?

Let us celebrate with a whimsical drawing from this guy who I'm digging like a fertile art garden lately:

Ah, but General Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff is not amused!

Sorry General Erich Friedrich Wilhelm Ludendorff... Also, Monash has a freaking throne. What a neat guy. This is seriously the pinnacle of my weekend.

The amusements of my outrageously long day:

2009-08-03T21:52:00.004+10:00

1. Instead of the terrible cartoon I drew in society today trying to explain the shining brilliance of this picture, behold the glorious glorious original:

2. In confirmation that I am just a fan of Prussia, as people keep questioning my pseudo-nationalism: (Like all day today. Like, three times. Question it not ye impure of blood!) So Frederick the Great, the king of Prussia, was no fan of coffee. In 1777, he declared: "It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects… Everybody is using coffee. If possible, this must be prevented. My people must drink beer."

"He himself had been brought up on the old beer soup and reasoned that if beer soup was good enough for the monarch, it was good enough for his subjects." (The world of caffeine by Bennett Alan Weinberg, Bonnie K. Bealer)

We Prussians have come a long way since then, and indeed submerged ourselves in the world of caffeine thanks to many sleepless nights spent doing modern history homework and planning a socialist revolution. First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin!

“A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture,
or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so
temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an
insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.”

Mao surely has some Prussian blood in him yet (although he needs some more exclamation marks in there. Just imagine the exclamation marks kay! There, that was one. You can shuffle it around for greater effect if you want.) We will nationalise healthcare and heiresses, and the only class will be modern history class. Get it my friends? That was a pun! Dyslexic on fire...

1 2 Crush On You

2009-08-03T01:26:00.002+10:00

Let's build a little house that we could live in, or a ridiculous apartment to be featured in The Selby, and cut each other's hair.

Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768)

2009-07-31T21:13:00.003+10:00

This man is my hero tonight, as I sit battling ancient history notes in a fluffy dressing gown and silly hat, for several reasons in addition to this shared experience:

The padre of modern archaeology and art history who "showed that it was possible to understand ancient cultures through their artefacts, and introduced order, system and knowledge into archaeology". What about Karl Weber? What ABOUT Karl Weber? He had his moments sure, but lots of the Pompeii stuff under Weber was messy and damaging anyway and JJ was cuter.

Also totally queer.

And Prussian!

You go Johann Joachim Winckelmann.

My god I am a genius!

2009-07-26T23:02:00.003+10:00

I just realised why my impulsively short haircut since a few days ago is so awesome - It mimics the shape of my childhood mushroom beret/squishy Rad Rags hat! I'll never have to wear it again! (Unless it's super cold, but still, accessory efficiency is these GFC'n times.)

...Yeah, ceci n'est pas un blog actually. I'm just bemoaning the lack of social networking sites in my life, but also kinda of celebrating them. It's fun- got bored today, so I read a book! Quaint, huh? Nonetheless, absence of Twitter makes my head full of Twitter-sized thoughts that scream around inside it, wings thrashing hopelessly etc etc, and the urge to purge online is occasionally like crippling. Quite a habit to kick. Tumblr patches please? (No, just... no.) Draconian measures are all Bodhi responds to these days though. They've mostly stopped me from hiccupping up random complaints into the ether, like, say, "Shit my PIP is now 10 925 words of repetitive waffle, unformatted quotes and resource lists." But hey, operative word mostly!

So, positive affirmation time: I am going to do so much work tomorrow. So much. I'm going to finish like two major works and do heaps of other stuff, and still have time for yoga and walking and personal hygiene and absorbing the new Sarah Blasko album. I won't be tired despite impending late night and I won't be paralysed by stress. It'll be totally wunderbar, I promise.

To make this entry worth your while, here are some nostalgic action shots circa last last summer. I'm not a summer person at all, but it does feel good to remove all my pairs of socks every now and then, and also one must be actually madly psyched for this summer above everything else in future life, ever. *Alice Cooper growl* "Schooool's been blooown to pieeeces!" Collective chin up my year twelve lovers, happiness is just around the corner. Hey now hey now, hear what I say now, we'll be there for you...

Oh L. Cohen,

2009-07-13T12:35:00.002+10:00

"The future is already here, and it's always been bleak. The whole place looks like a butcher's shop. Probably always did."

If you go to ze party on Friday night dressed as Adam Ant

2009-07-07T16:42:00.002+10:00

you will be A for Awesome:

My music is where I'd like you to touch!

2009-06-17T21:05:00.009+10:00

The prospect of triple j's Hottest 100 Of All Time poll has for some reason thrilled the shit out of me. Probably just the pleasure of pseudo-constructive dilatory activities (thinking about things!), but I like lists/like popular music/didn't like High Fidelity but still like music lists anyway. I guess that's why? So while I'm carefully compiling my own top 10 favourites EVER (it's ridiculously hard, have so far shortlisted 108 songs...), here is a link the imperfect but generally valid timeline from the jjj website of pop landmarks from the 60s to now. Behold, Stuff You Really Should Know!

EDIT:

Here lie Bodhi's Favourite Songs in No Real Order, At the Age of 17 and One Half, With Short Explanations. But yeah, voted for these 'uns.

Truce - The Dresden Dolls
The ultimate break up song. Clocks in at just over 8 and a half minutes, which is all you need really when it charts the successive stages of loss, self-destruction, anger, and bitter victory of a broken relationship. Simultaneously melodramatic and mental but heartbreaking and human and true. I like it alot. Amanda Palmer is my favourite.
I Like Giants - Kimya Dawson
First listening: A nondescript Thursday night somewhere in the wheezy start-up months of 2007, being driven home from that horrible dance class in Dad's little guava Mitsubishi, listening to triple j. We both sat in the car for just another a minute or two more once we'd pulled up , transfixed by her humility. This song sounds so naive, but so wise, and so catchy! Special place in my heart fer sher.
Someone Great - LCD Soundsystem
Just before I left for India in December 2007 I decided that I needed a Favourite Song. This came along. It fit! Perfectly ambiguous lyrics, bizarrely melancholy electronica. Curled up with mild food poisoning and a bruised heart in the women's dorms in an ashram in Bihar I used to listen to this on repeat, real soft to save batteries. There were no power points so I had to ration my mp3 player pretty hard for a few weeks... Someone Great got about 70% of listening time. It's like sublime.
Fiction - The Luckmiths
Mmm love a good narrative song. So chill, so wry, so nice!
Be Gentle With Me - The Boy Least Likely To
Actually I'm kinda pissed that this song has wormed its way onto my final list over so much other high quality material. I'm really sick of it's sickening cuteness. But it seems to describe me so perfectly, and has continued to do so despite the massive emotional and other changes I've gone through the past two years, that it's somehow made it anyway. You've won this round BLLT!
Overture - Patrick Wolf
Deep stirring string parts are such a frigging turn on, honestly. This dark-amazing-beautiful creature (combined with Regina Spektor's Hotel Song, which was on the shortlist), brings back the most vivid memories of the new perspective of moving house for the first time ever: July 2007, gloves, gardenias, walking home, generally healing. Furthermore, his Magic Position tour in November that same year was possibly the most fucking incredible thing I have ever seen/heard/felt!
Hey Ya - Outkast
Have you ever been to a party? Have you ever danced to this song in the glorious fizzy first stages of love at first slightly drunk? If the answer to the second question is no, then you have never been to a party.
The Anglo-Saxons - The Mountain Goats
I feel genuinely guilty for putting an obscure historical novelty song as my MG choice here, given the breathtaking intelligence and emotional honesty of the rest of his stuff. But it was too hard to choose between Love Love Love, This Year, Autoclave, Going To Georgia, and everything else, so I went with this one because it never fails to pin a silly grin all over my face. Plus, history is awesome!
Hurt - Johnny Cash
Mercifully, I've actually moved on from really loving this song in terms of the degree to which it speaks to my current experiences, but it is still so good. Also covers rock and my list needed one and this may be the most moving and 'original' cover version of a song ever.
April Skies - The Jesus and Mary Chain
Just awesome. Another break up song, if you're into that sort of thing (I clearly am.) Now that I think about it, this spot could possibly have gone to a more deserving recipient, but I was tired and under pressure while voting. No regrets though! Non, je ne regrette rien...
Bonus Beatles song: Rocky Raccoon
No best-songs-of-all-time list is complete with a song by them, so I'm cheating with the blog version. Similarly, I can't believe there's no Cure or Smiths here either, but there you go. Rocky Raccoon is a hugely underrated, the ye-olde sense of ballad and honky tonk piano gets me every time. So playful!

This list is ridiculously incomplete, but all's fair in love and war and music polls, and sacrifices had to be made (however unwise). This isn't 'Nam, bitches get left behind.

If you voted, gimme your list! Or even if you didn't, devise a favourite song list anyway. It's sehr challenging but an interesting process.

Darwinian literary criticism

2009-05-26T22:13:00.004+10:00

Flipping through the most recent issue of New Scientist this morning I came across a fairly interesting review of a book about how storytelling shaped humanity- On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, cognition and fiction by Brian Boyd.

Here are some of the good bits:

Boyd argues that art, including fiction, is a unique human adaptation whose
chief function is "for improving human cognition, cooperation and creativity".
His excellent accounts of these three areas of human activity show both an
impressive mastery of the science and an admirable inclination to question
orthodoxy.

[...]

Boyd does acknowledge that stories need both creators and audiences, and he
analyses their different evolutionary roles. Taking a cost/benefit approach, he
argues that the process of creating a story may be expensive in terms of time
and energy but is intrinsically rewarding because it appeals to our brain's love
affair with pattern. It also reshapes the mind, promotes a creative approach to
problem solving and increases the storyteller's social status. The audience,
meanwhile, pay a price in their time, but in return acquire a deeper insight
into society and the minds of other individuals.This cognitive exchange,
however, requires attention. "

Art alters our minds because it engages and reengages our attention," Boyd
writes. This may sound obvious, but for Boyd it has sweeping implications for
the content of stories. For one, it means that surprise is crucial - fiction
must appeal to our evolved preference to pay attention to the unexpected. So too
are elements of the fantastical, the ability to take readers beyond the here and
now, and the capacity to engage their emotions and appeal to their innate
attraction to pattern.

And when I looked it up on the website in order to do a bit of copy+paste magic, there was a link from that article to an article about literary Darwinism. Read it if you like! It is basically about a developing way of reading that challenges the prevailing idea in the way we approach humanities that "Nature is nurture, or, put another way, our nature is simply to spoon up whatever culture happens to feed us - and we are what we eat." Relating fiction to the idea that the human mind is not a blank slate. I don't agree with everything in it, notably the gender stuff, and it doesn't appeal to some of my more romantic ideals about art. Also, it's just about this experimental branch of criticism. However, it's a mildly though-provoking form of synthesis, if you're into that sort of thing. Another weary step on the potholed road to some sort of conclusion re: nature vs. nurture? Perhaps. In a very specialised way. Maybe I will think some more about this in the morning...

In defence of the word 'cookie':

2009-05-18T22:23:00.005+10:00

Like most good, kind and free-thinking Australians, I am generally anti-Americanisation language-wise. But I have just officially decided to make a permanent exception when describing choc-chip biccies, or any of those soft sweet baked things. 'Biccies' is fun to say because it makes me feel like an absolute Aussie and a sweet old nana, but amongst certain circles it just doesn't feel quite right. And 'biscuit' in its full form is nowhere near jolly enough. And according to the Online Etymological Dictionary:

biscuit
respelled early 19c. from bisket (16c.), ultimately (1330) from O.Fr. bescuit "twice cooked," alt. under infl. of O.It. biscotto, from M.L. biscoctum, from L. (panis) bis coctus "(bread) twice-baked."

cookie
1703, Amer.Eng., from Du. koekje "little cake," dim. of koek "cake," from M.Du. koke (see cake). Slang application to persons attested since 1920. Phrase that's the way the cookie crumbles "that's the way things happen" is from 1957.

Little cakes are cute! Sold! And "twice-baked" rather smells like inaccuracy to me! Also, the 'Biscuit Monster' would have sounded really menacing so the USA wins this round... Cookies for all peoples. However, 'lolly' still forever wins out over 'candy'. The former is derived from 1362, lollen "to lounge idly, hang loosely," perhaps related to M.Du. lollen "to doze, mumble," or somehow imitative of rocking or swinging. Specifically of the tongue from 1611. Which I think is hilarious and good. 'Candy' has evolved from the Old French sugar which evolved from Arabic from Persian from Sanskrit (probably) from Dravidian (possibly). Too much history! It overwhelms the simple sweetness!

So this is because I was eating a freshly baked cookie just then I was like, "Shit what do I call it?" then I decided what to call it, then I decided that this all required a public manifesto in the shape of a blog entry. Procrastinating? Who, me?

The Lucksmiths announced that they are breaking up today.

2009-05-13T15:53:00.006+10:00

Fuck. By the way, I don't really use this blog anymore, and this is going to be a really pointless post, but I'm self-banned from Tumblr and I want to vent about this a little and I can't think of a friend who won't think I'm a moron if I call them all upset, so general internettage it is. Maybe someone sympathetic will stumble upon this, and and...

1993-2009. Sigh.

From- http://www.thelucksmiths.com.au/:

Dear Friends,

There's no easy way to put this, so please accept our apologies for the seemingly abrupt nature of this post. We are saddened to announce that after sixteen years as The Lucksmiths, the band has decided to break up.

The last few years have been an uphill battle in many ways, so this isn't a hasty decision based on any falling-out between band members, but rather, an acceptance of the inevitable. This decision was finally reached a few months back, so we've had plenty of time to let it sink in.

We had tried to operate the band in a way that would suit all of us, but at the same time we've been very conscious that too much compromise would in the end affect our creative output. We're very proud of the music we make, and we certainly didn't want it to start stinking. So, in taking our cues from Devo, we've decided to whip the proverbial cream before it sits out too long.

We're really excited about our upcoming European tour, and have booked some Australian dates for our "farewell tour" in August. The details for these shows are in our gig guide. We really hope to see as many people at these shows as possible, as we will be playing super long sets, cramming in as many old favourites as possible.

We must apologise for not making it back to the USA, Canada, Japan, New Zealand or Singapore, or to the other amazing European countries we've previously visited — and for never having made it to the other fifty or so countries we'd hoped to tour one day.

We really want to thank you all, especially the wonderful people who've helped us out in any way, and anyone who's listened to our music or come to a show. We've loved having you in our world and we will miss you dearly.

xo The Lucksmiths

An email from the Lucksmiths' label, Matinee Recordings, added, "Tali White, the band's lead singer and drummer, has decided to further pursue his career as a primary school teacher, while Marty Donald, Mark Monnone, and Louis Richter intend to head forth into new musical terrain whilst juggling parenthood, study and the fun-park ride that is casual employment." (Pitchfork)

Maybe it's just the stress and the everything and that I get silly about stuff, but I am trying to stop crying right now and it's difficult. School is bad and can only get worse. Gotta leave to go see Hamlet in half an hour. As much as I dig the play, really hope this production is teen-lite, as am so not in the mood for something depressing and long! Agh the trials and tribulations of the teenaged middle class, haha. "FML." Incidentally, The Lucksmiths are playing a show with Okkervil River in Melbourne this Sunday! Oh if only I lived there and was 18 and not in school and shit.

The upside is that they're playing a farewell tour with Darren Hanlon supporting. The other downside though is that that Factory gig is on the 21st of August which is EXACTLY in the middle of HSC Trial exams, which are the ones that actually count at my school. And also I have seen them live before only once but they were supporting Hellogoobye and HGB fans are insanely rude! But that time was really good anyway and I met Tali afterwards and he was so sweet. "There seem to be alot of people here tonight who have fridges!" Nawhh.

P.S. If you don't know who they are what you should know is they are super cute and their songs are "redolent with ordinary minituae". As The Vine puts it:

The bands live shows became legendary, as much for the hilarious interplay between the three members - guitarist Marty Donald, bassist Mark Monnone and drummer/lead vocalist Tali White - as for their signature tunes. With Monnones's bass bubbling away alongside White's deft snare and cymbal work, (lead guitarist Louis Richter joined the fold in 2004) it was Donald's wry lyrical observations and razor sharp wordplay that elevated the band to cult status. His tales of simple vices and local lifestyles easily elevated to universal level, pathos streaked with kid humour and bittersweet nostalgia. Or as Wikipedia pithily puts it:

Songs by the Lucksmiths are mostly about love and relationships, but also deal with other everyday issues such as notable friends or warm weather.

You may be stupid Wikipedia but, sometimes, you are also right.

Thank you for the music guys!

((EDIT: The Sydney show is in fact 18+ only. Frignuts.))

((Double Edit: No it's not! Fuck school, we're going!)

Things that are true:

2009-04-07T22:08:00.006+10:00

I am a list-maker and a sporadic journaller. I'm one of those ridiculous dreamy people who prefers to substitute overly-long roll calls of corny pleasant things for actual relevant biographical information. Accordingly, I overuse the word 'lovely'. It's a plague amongst the romantic, notably the indie-blogging romantic (of which I wouldn't necessarily count myself part of, but still). Lovely this, lovely that, calling strangers by pet names, milkmaid braids in skinny girls' hair, She & Him, Au Revoir Simone...

As a public service, here are some adjectival synonyms for the general livening-up of things: admirable, adorable, alluring, amiable, attractive, beauteous, bewitching, captivating, comely, dainty, delectable, delicate, delicious, delightful, enchanting, engaging, enjoyable, enticing, exquisite, fair, fascinating, fetching, glamorous, gorgeous, graceful, gratifying, handsome, knockout, lovesome*, nice, picture, pleasant, pleasing, prepossessing, pretty, pulchritudinous**, rare, scrumptious, splendid, stunning, sweet, taking, tempting, winning, winsome.

* 'having or displaying warmth or affection' (my favourite)
** 'having great physical beauty' (don't really like this word)

Okay? Are we good peoples? Ever onwards!

I love colours! My favourite colour this week is warm yellow light (that's a colour okay). My equal second favourites are plum, and every shade of blue you can think of except electric. My favourite painting is Judith Slaying Holofernes by Artemesia Gentileschi because it is absolutely badass. I pretend to like super dark chocolate and spicy foods more than I actually do because it makes me feel powerful and in control. That used to be a secret, but I just put it on the internet so it isn't anymore!

I have a pretty prolific internet presence. This is largely because I hope that someone, one day, will find me, click my links, and fall so stupidly in love with me that they lose the power of speech. I am also hoping that this person is Stalker Type #2 (the type that goes through my Facebook photos again and again, imagining themselves in them with me), and not the type that makes hats out of human skin (Type #5, v. worrying). Beggars, however, cannot be choosers!

As a dedicated phase-goer-througher, I can never hold down a hobby for more than a week or two. The only real exceptions to this habit are the appreciation of music and photographic art and/or journalism. Webtrawling doesn't count as a hobby. Oh hi, I'm the most generic person in the world!

I cannot sustain writing. Um, the end?

P.S. This was saved in my (bursting) drafts folder about a month ago, but the past few days we've been listening to lectures on Ted Hughes about biographies and conflicting perspectives and whether you can own your own life story, and what is private and public, and whether there is such thing as absolute truth. The paradox of putting anything intimate into the public domain and expected not to be shredded for it. Sylvia Fucking Plath, et cetera. So when I found this entry just then I thought, why not? Sure, so there are plenty of reasons why not. But I never give the internet much of myself anymore (bar ugly desultory little bursts via Twitter and the like). Maybe that's an insanely good thing, the internet shouldn't and daresay doesn't want me. But I felt like writing for a bit with no real purpose so fuck it. Self-absorption is the new self-absorption! Thank god it's the weekend peoples, that's all I'm trying to say...

I just realised why I have so many internet accounts.

2009-03-20T20:43:00.003+11:00

They're horcruxes. Social networking sites are fucking horcruxes. Facebook, Blogger, Twitter, Flickr, deviantART, last.fm, Tumblr... My soul's been ripped into seven, I'm barely human, I can't stop. Think about it- your Bebo or Lookbook or whatfuckingever isn't just the slimy silver snail trail you leave all about cyberspace as you try desperately to live your life both online and off. It's about as close as you think you'll get to immortality without selling yourself to reality television. Hell, the internet is about to REPLACE reality television. Too much information, too much lifestyle prostitution, too much. All for the sake of procrastination? Including but not limited to. Golly gee.

"Sometimes, I think silence is going to be the new punk," she said. "We're
all going to throw our BlackBerries off bridges and start talking to each other
again."

Generationext launch party

2009-03-19T22:08:00.000+11:00

Autumn 2009 (during National Youth Week)
Sunday 5 April, 6:00-8:00pm
FREE EVENT for teenagers
Museum of Contemporary Art
Circular Quay

They're really getting into Yayoi Kusama, her art is the dress up theme this geNext. Polka dots, mirrors, 1960s, etc. Anyway the MCA is opening its doors yet again, for free food and mocktails and um mingling galore! Good times will surely abound...

Reading Amanda Palmer's old blogs makes me happy in a time of school-induced unhappiness.

2009-03-17T21:35:00.005+11:00

She is such a magical creature. So much passion, so little restraint. Maybe she overshares sometimes but I love it, I lap it up because it feels like truth when little else does. Sometimes I just want to BE her, to take everything in my stride and be spontaneous and shout and sing and wear outrageous, not entirely fashionable, things! Oh to be free. Enjoying her hastily and regularly Macbook-ed musings on art, small tragedies, perception... It's all about perception, isn't it really? All of it!

"A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousands of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.

The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?"

- The Huffington Post

...are you dead my friends, or just comfortable? I'm so tired, everything I do lately is absolutely sporadic. Every emotion, every gesture, every spurt of academic dedication defiantly followed by sullen adolescent lethargy... It's not balanced, it's bipolar. My eyes are welling with instant coffee. As of tomorrow I am regulating my internet time UBERSTRIKT. Disconnection is nigh! Sing and clap your hands! I want to be a tree in a forest, big and old-smelling, dying every autumn in a blaze of colour then you know how it goes... Life cycle etc. I want a million little animals living inside of me, eating me but sustaining me at the same time. Um and I never want to be sarcastic again! Or be late. Shit, I'm late already...

Mood: Romantic

2009-03-01T17:37:00.005+11:00

Oh, it's practically autumn! To celebrate the fast-approaching end of foul oppressive heat I am wearing bright lovely colourful things, and opening all the windows. The first day of March is always massive for me emotionally/historically/etc... but amongst other things, today is the Roman New Year, Bosnian and Herzegovinian Independence Day and Chopin's birthday! So I'm just sitting about, studying, listening to music that's sadder than I am, struggling to enforce the only-one-packet-of-Mi-Goreng-a-day rule...

To Autumn

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cell.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,--
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

John Keats, 1819

Florence and the Machine

2009-02-23T22:50:00.011+11:00

Cold War Kids cover which is totally growing on me. It's a slideshow vid, she's pretty hot. Most of her other stuff sounds like a rocked-out Kate Nash but this is more stripped down and showcases her voice which is like, mega...

I think this song could save my life.

2009-02-22T23:11:00.000+11:00

Listen to the Live in Columbus 12-2-99 version though. Breathtaking.

The Arcade Fire are stunning...

2009-02-18T22:33:00.004+11:00

Oh gosh. Come to Australia now yeah? But it's okay, I don't care about missed concerts anymore because in exactly one week from right now I will be in the same room as Amanda Fucking Palmer and that will be good. Everything else makes me want to jump into a bucket of acid and never have to face to the sick sad world again, but Ms. Palmer is good. I am reeeally tired! Lady A, give me strength...

Horses

2009-02-15T15:10:00.001+11:00

E.P as P.S.

P.S. as P.S.

I'm gonna UH UH make her mine!

...because love isn't quite complicated enough as it is!

2009-02-14T20:46:00.001+11:00

Gross, another Hallmark Holiday on which to a) spend money, b) feel bad about yourself, or c) all of the above? It's cool though, I don't mind! Let us celebrate by trawling a softer world archives and doing meagre amounts of last minute homework. Lol, school...

Truisms

2009-02-11T20:16:00.002+11:00

by Jenny Holzer.

a little knowledge can go a long way
a lot of professionals are crackpots
a man can't know what it is to be a mother
a name means a lot just by itself
a positive attitude means all the difference in the world
a relaxed man is not necessarily a better man
a sense of timing is the mark of genius
a sincere effort is all you can ask
a single event can have infinitely many interpretations
a solid home base builds a sense of self
a strong sense of duty imprisons you
absolute submission can be a form of freedom
abstraction is a type of decadence
abuse of power comes as no surprise
action causes more trouble than thought
alienation produces eccentrics or revolutionaries
all things are delicately interconnected
ambition is just as dangerous as complacency
ambivalence can ruin your life
an elite is inevitable
anger or hate can be a useful motivating force
animalism is perfectly healthy
any surplus is immoral
anything is a legitimate area of investigation
artificial desires are despoiling the earth
at times inactivity is preferable to mindless functioning
at times your unconsciousness is truer than your conscious mind
automation is deadly
awful punishment awaits really bad people
bad intentions can yield good results
being alone with yourself is increasingly unpopular
being happy is more important than anything else
being judgmental is a sign of life
being sure of yourself means you're a fool
believing in rebirth is the same as admitting defeat
boredom makes you do crazy things
calm is more conductive to creativity than is anxiety
categorizing fear is calming
change is valuable when the oppressed become tyrants
chasing the new is dangerous to society
children are the most cruel of all
children are the hope of the future
class action is a nice idea with no substance
class structure is as artificial as plastic
confusing yourself is a way to stay honest
crime against property is relatively unimportant
decadence can be an end in itself
decency is a relative thing
dependence can be a meal ticket
description is more important than metaphor
deviants are sacrificed to increase group solidarity
disgust is the appropriate response to most situations
disorganization is a kind of anesthesia
don't place to much trust in experts
drama often obscures the real issues
dreaming while awake is a frightening contradiction
dying and coming back gives you considerable perspective
dying should be as easy as falling off a log
eating too much is criminal
elaboration is a form of pollution
emotional responses ar as valuable as intellectual responses
enjoy yourself because you can't change anything anyway
ensure that your life stays in flux
even your family can betray you
every achievement requires a sacrifice
everyone's work is equally important
everything that's interesting is new
exceptional people deserve special concessions
expiring for love is beautiful but stupid
expressing anger is necessary
extreme behavior has its basis in pathological psychology
extreme self-consciousness leads to perversion
faithfulness is a social not a biological law
fake or real indifference is a powerful personal weapon
fathers often use too much force
fear is the greatest incapacitator
freedom is a luxury not a necessity
giving free rein to your emotions is an honest way to live
go all out in romance and let the chips fall where they may
going with the flow is soothing but risky
good deeds eventually are rewarded
government is a burden on the people
grass roots agitation is the only hope
guilt and self-laceration are indulgences
habitual contempt doesn't reflect a finer sensibility
hiding your emotions is despicable
holding back protects your vital energies
humanism is obsolete
humor is a release
ideals are replaced by conventional goals at a certain age
if you aren't political your personal life should be exemplary
if you can't leave your mark give up
if you have many desires your life will be interesting
if you live simply there is nothing to worry about
ignoring enemies is the best way to fight
illness is a state of mind
imposing order is man's vocation for chaos is hell
in some instances it's better to die than to continue
inheritance must be abolished
it can be helpful to keep going no matter what
it is heroic to try to stop time
it is man's fate to outsmart himself
it is a gift to the world not to have babies
it's better to be a good person than a famous person
it's better to be lonely than to be with inferior people
it's better to be naive than jaded
it's better to study the living fact than to analyze history
it's crucial to have an active fantasy life
it's good to give extra money to charity
it's important to stay clean on all levels
it's just an accident that your parents are your parents
it's not good to hold too many absolutes
it's not good to operate on credit
it's vital to live in harmony with nature
just believing something can make it happen
keep something in reserve for emergencies
killing is unavoidable but nothing to be proud of
knowing yourself lets you understand others
knowledge should be advanced at all costs
labor is a life-destroying activity
lack of charisma can be fatal
leisure time is a gigantic smoke screen
listen when your body talks
looking back is the first sign of aging and decay
loving animals is a substitute activity
low expectations are good protection
manual labor can be refreshing and wholesome
men are not monogamous by nature
moderation kills the spirit
money creates taste
monomania is a prerequisite of success
morals are for little people
most people are not fit to rule themselves
mostly you should mind your own business
mothers shouldn't make too many sacrifices
much was decided before you were born
murder has its sexual side
myth can make reality more intelligible
noise can be hostile
nothing upsets the balance of good and evil
occasionally principles are more valuable than people
offer very little information about yourself
often you should act like you are sexless
old friends are better left in the past
opacity is an irresistible challenge
pain can be a very positive thing
people are boring unless they are extremists
people are nuts if they think they are important
people are responsible for what they do unless they are insane
people who don't work with their hands are parasites
people who go crazy are too sensitive
people won't behave if they have nothing to lose
physical culture is second best
planning for the future is escapism
playing it safe can cause a lot of damage in the long run
politics is used for personal gain
potential counts for nothing until it's realized
private property created crime
pursuing pleasure for the sake of pleasure will ruin you
push yourself to the limit as often as possible
raise boys and girls the same way
random mating is good for debunking sex myths
rechanneling destructive impulses is a sign of maturity
recluses always get weak
redistributing wealth is imperative
relativity is no boon to mankind
religion causes as many problems as it solves
remember you always have freedom of choice
repetition is the best way to learn
resolutions serve to ease our conscience
revolution begins with changes in the individual
romantic love was invented to manipulate women
routine is a link with the past
routine small excesses are worse than then the occasional debauch
sacrificing yourself for a bad cause is not a moral act
salvation can't be bought and sold
self-awareness can be crippling
self-contempt can do more harm than good
selfishness is the most basic motivation
selflessness is the highest achievement
separatism is the way to a new beginning
sex differences are here to stay
sin is a means of social control
slipping into madness is good for the sake of comparison
sloppy thinking gets worse over time
solitude is enriching
sometimes science advances faster than it should
sometimes things seem to happen of their own accord
spending too much time on self-improvement is antisocial
starvation is nature's way
stasis is a dream state
sterilization is a weapon of the rulers
strong emotional attachment stems from basic insecurity
stupid people shouldn't breed
survival of the fittest applies to men and animals
symbols are more meaningful than things themselves
taking a strong stand publicizes the opposite position
talking is used to hide one's inability to act
teasing people sexually can have ugly consequences
technology will make or break us
the cruelest disappointment is when you let yourself down
the desire to reproduce is a death wish
the family is living on borrowed time
the idea of revolution is an adolescent fantasy
the idea of transcendence is used to obscure oppression
the idiosyncratic has lost its authority
the most profound things are inexpressible
the mundane is to be cherished
the new is nothing but a restatement of the old
the only way to be pure is to stay by yourself
the sum of your actions determines what you are
the unattainable is invariable attractive
the world operates according to discoverable laws
there are too few immutable truths today
there's nothing except what you sense
there's nothing redeeming in toil
thinking too much can only cause problems
threatening someone sexually is a horrible act
timidity is laughable
to disagree presupposes moral integrity
to volunteer is reactionary
torture is barbaric
trading a life for a life is fair enough
true freedom is frightful
unique things must be the most valuable
unquestioning love demonstrates largesse of spirit
using force to stop force is absurd
violence is permissible even desirable occasionally
war is a purification rite
we must make sacrifices to maintain our quality of life
when something terrible happens people wake up
wishing things away is not effective
with perseverance you can discover any truth
words tend to be inadequate
worrying can help you prepare
you are a victim of the rules you live by
you are guileless in your dreams
you are responsible for constituting the meaning of things
you are the past present and future
you can live on through your descendants
you can't expect people to be something they're not
you can't fool others if you're fooling yourself
you don't know what's what until you support yourself
you have to hurt others to be extraordinary
you must be intimate with a token few
you must disagree with authority figures
you must have one grand passion
you must know where you stop and the world begins
you can understand someone of your sex only
you owe the world not the other way around
you should study as much as possible
your actions ae pointless if no one notices
your oldest fears are the worst ones

PLEASE CHANGE BELIEFS.

Les Trois Mousquetaires

2009-02-07T16:50:00.011+11:00

What is it about all the best films being centred around an invincible trio of comraderie? It's always two boys and a girl too, a hero and a best mate and a friend-slash-love-interest. Maybe it's vaguely objectionable in a couple of PC ways, but CBF. The formula works, and indeed I used to be in a friendship like that actually! Fun fact. Our Live is Not a Movie or Maybe.

P.S. They are all movies about growing up yes, and you know what happens when you are growing up? You (might) do the HSC! So I'm going to go back to doing homework now... Hurrah hurrah...

consistently inconsistent.

2009-02-07T12:49:00.008+11:00

The latest ASW is so... touché.

Does anyone else remember Dinosaurs? That mad Jim Henson TV show? I just restumbled upon it, but once upon a time was an absolute favourite. Circa early primary school methinks, but Googling it now reveals that the intended audience was (probably ragingly leftist) adults: according to Wikipedia, topical issues featured in Dinosaurs include environmentalism, women's rights, sexual harassment, objectification of women, censorship, civil rights, body image, steroid use, allusions to masturbation (in the form of Robbie getting caught doing a mating dance by himself), drug abuse, racism, peer pressure, rights of indigenous peoples, corporate crime, government interference of parenting, and allusions to homosexuality and communism (in the guise of herbivorism). Aww, the 90s...

+ all my new Papermate Gel Rollers have stopped working, what the fuck is this shit? I blame it on the heatwave. Sacrebleu. It's so hot and my computer and spine are frigging up... Yeah sorry, am aware that irritable blogging is foul. But it's all these ch-ch-ch-ch-changes... Generally speaking, I don't know what to think. Perhaps it is the worst thing ever to think you have a chance when really, you just don't? It’s called a reality check. The last thing Amélie wants. Acht neun, gute nacht!

Actually I have some cultural postcripts re: Eurotrip09

2009-02-01T15:09:00.006+11:00

First being, I've been reading Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino on and off during and since the trip. There is something wrong with my head lately and I can't sit down, begin things, finish them, but this book is a subtle, beautiful creature and I want to share a some random excerpts here. His writing is so incredibly elegant and measured and fantastical... It just seemed kind of fitting because it's all little descriptions of imaginary cities, explained to Kublai Khan by Marco Polo. And I just went on a wacky adventure to a couple of distant lands. So that's nice.

Cities and Memory 3.
In vain, great-hearted Kublai, shall I attempt to describe Zaira, city of high bastions. I could tell you how many steps make up the streets rising like stairways, and the degree of the arcades' curves, and what kind of zinc scales cover the roofs; but I already know this would be the same as telling you nothing. The city does not consist of this, but of relationships between the measurements of its space and the events of its past: the height of a lamppost and the distance from the ground of a hanged usurper's swaying feet; the line strung from the lamppost to the railing opposite and the festoons that decorate the course of the queen's nuptial procession; the height of that railing and the leap of the adulterer who climbed over it at dawn; the tilt of a guttering and a cat's progress along it as he slips into the same window; the firing range of a gunboat which has suddenly appeared beyond the cape and the bomb that destroys the guttering; the rips in the fish net and the three old men seated on the dock mending nets and telling each other for the hundredth time the story of the gunboat of the usurper, who some say was the queen's illegitimate son, abandoned in his swaddling clothes there on the dock.

As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. A description of Zaira as it is today should contain all of Zaira's past. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.

Cities and Signs 4.
Of all the changes of language a traveler in distant lands must face, none equals that which waits him in the city of Hypatia, because the change regards not words, but things. I entered Hypatia one morning, a magnolia garden was reflected in blue lagoons, I walked among the hedges, sure I would discover young and beautiful ladies bathing; but at the bottom of the water, crabs were biting the eyes of the suicides, stones tied around their necks, their hair green with seaweed.

I felt cheated and I decided to demand justice of the sultan. I climbed the porphyry steps of the palace with the highest domes, I crossed six tiled courtyards with fountains. The central hall was barred by iron gratings: convicts with black chains on their feet were hauling up basalt blocks from a quarry that opened underground.

I could only question the philosophers. I entered the great library, I became lost among shelves collapsing under the vellum bindings, I followed the alphabetical order of vanished alphabets, up and down halls, stairs, bridges. In the most remote papyrus cabinet, in a cloud of smoke, the dazed eyes of an adolescent appeared to me, as he lay on a mat, his lips glued to an opium pipe.

"Where is the sage ?"

The smoker pointed out of the window. It was a garden with children's games: ninepins, a swing, a top. The philosopher was seated on the lawn. He said: "Signs form a language, but not the one you think you know."

I realized I had to free myself from the images which in the past had announced to me the things I sought: only then will I succeed in understanding the language of Hypatia.

Now I have only to hear the neighing of horses and the cracking of whips and I am seized with amorous trepidation: in Hypatia you have to go to the stables and riding rings to see the beautiful women who mount the saddle, thighs naked, greaves on their calves, and as soon as a young foreigner approaches, they fling him on the piles of hay or sawdust and press their firm nipples against him.

And when my spirit wants no stimulus or nourishment save music, I know it is to be sought in the cemeteries: the musicians hide in the tombs; from grave to grave flute trills, harp chords answer one another.

True, also in Hypatia the day will come when my only desire will be to leave. I know I must not go down to the harbor then, but climb the citadel's highest pinnacle and wait for a ship to go by up there. But will it ever go by? There is no language without deceit.

5.
Marco Polo describes a bridge, stone by stone.
"But which is the stone that supports the bridge?" Kublai Khan asks.
"The bridge is not supported by one stone or another," Marco answers, "but by the line of the arch that they form."
Kublai Khan remains silent, reflecting. Then he adds: "Why do you speak to me of the stones? It is only the arch that matters to me."
Polo answers: "Without stones there is no arch."

In other news, I think I'm falling in love. I watched Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist twice on the plane there and back again, not because it's a particularly good film (so thin, so thin! Soundtrack is v. acceptable though- more of a mixtape than a movie), but because Devendra Banhart has this awkward, gratuitously indie cameo about 2/3 of the way through, and he's just so adorable. Wearing the cutest cardigan. That is all, I need some alone time with his hairy head now...

I lost the gloves that my mother gave to me

While on my ways to the make believe sea

Amd I lost the rings that my lover gave to me

While on my ways to the Red Salt Sea

And I lost my ways to my happy pen club

And ended up where I still can't say but

I lost my favourite pen on the way

And I lost my friend but that couldn't be

I lost the friend who sang with me

I lost my son but that couldn't be

I lost the son who sat on my knee

I lost my man I let inside me

And I lost my friend that my love and I shared

While on my ways to the make believe cares

And I lost the tunes that stuck to my ears

While on my ways to the make believe hears

And I saw Sapiena she sang to the sea

The only person left on the island was me

And I love the man who took care of me

He owns the ship the Charles C. Leary

Yes I love the man who took care of me
He sails the world on the Charles C. Leary

P.P.S.

Like a fox.
Comme un renard.
Come una volpe.
Όπως μια αλεπού.

[Translations courtesy Babel Fish, corrections welcome bilingual dears.]

Home again, home again, and not a drop to drink.

2009-02-01T14:11:00.009+11:00

Been back in the land of the living for several days now, and someone was like nyah blog Europe how was it? And I'm all like afrigginmazing but CBF. So, I'll just summarise with the predictions I made before reaching each destination- that is, crystallising pre-conceived notions by comparing cities or countries to my favourite films set in said cities or countries, then deciding whether they measure up in real life...

London: Love Actually vs Harry Potter

Verdict: We made our own Heathrow montages! And we (well just me really) sang Hedwig's Theme non-stop for a couple of days so yeah pretty much.

Paris: Amelie vs Madeline

Verdict: Not as uniformly whimsical and all-round charming as either of the above, and despite our best efforts we never made it to a photobooth or had our appendixes out, but still. It actually is almost as glorious which is saying rather alot. Paris, je t'aime! Satisfactorily beautiful and fascinating, merci beaucoup. Fermez la bouche! Vous avez perdu le joue! Snap!

Italia in general (Firenze, Roma, Vatican City, Pompei, Herculaneum, Napoli): A Room With a View vs La Vita è Bella

Verdict: Our Florentine experience was unfortunately not quite as romantic as the former (bar the Italian stallion stalkers in that square), and fortunately there was no genocide going on while we were there so the superficial premise of the latter didn't really apply, but the whole country is astoundingly beautiful and the coffee is motherlickin' good. Yay Italy!

Athens via Delphi: Hercules vs... Mamma Mia! (not quite in inner-city Athens but it'll do)

Verdict: OPA!

In conclusion, I spent lots of time with gorgeous friends, learned alot, gained some bigger sense of where everything fits in history and culture and the world, did no homework whatsoever and collected shot glasses from every country. Success!

So what happened while I was gone? Obama's coronation- ahem, that is, inauguration- hurrah for that. The media is so gloriously biased, or perhaps just genuinely naively optimistic like the rest of us. Yes we can! Heh! And Australia Day, which was heartily celebrated by the applying of bogan flag tattoos to faces in the bathroom of Athens Airport... Although I pretty much have to agree that we should change the date to something less imperialistic and genocidal, I'm really not sure as to what to. Federation Day would be better to celebrate but that's on New Year's Day which is kind of lame. We should get it out of the summer holidays for an extra public holiday! But come to think of that, school holidays won't apply to me personally by next year... *gulp*.

On that year 12-licious note I'd better get my arse off the internet and find my assessment schedule, then start doing some proper work. To be fair I still have jetlag and have been all insomnia-ish until an average of 3 am these past couple of days. And I read a kid's history book about WWI today, sophisticate! It made me cry a little though. Then it prompted me to read the last couple of pages from The Diary of a Young Girl, and Anne Frank made me cry a little more. Yes, I know it's the wrong war... But as Martin Brown would say;

*sigh*

Tschüss!

Today I am in Paris.

2009-01-13T09:53:00.002+11:00

I am going to the Arc De Triomphe, the Avenue des Champs-Élysées and the Place De la Concorde. I am going to walk along the River Seine. It will be cold as a witch's teat!

2008 in photographs + 2009 in FUN!

2009-01-08T10:00:00.000+11:00

Most of them aren't exactly what I'd call beautiful photography but they're well done and give an interesting overview of what happened in the world last year The Big Picture: 1, 2, 3.

They also recently uploading a rather moving photoessay on the recent conflict in Israel and Gaza. So like, war... What the hell is up with that?

But in other news, at 4:40 PM this very day an aeroplane is going to leave Sydney for Singapore, and I, along with a bunch of lovelies from school, will be on it! And so like after Singapore, we'll be getting on another plane to London. For details on the rest, I reccommend you watch classic of contempory cinema Eurotrip (teeheehee). We come home 27th January but until then, much love everybody! Happy Australia Day in advance! (If you're into that sort of foul patriotic jingoism.) (Yes I am unfair.) Try not to miss me too hard a'ight? ;)

Oh well done BBC, the Eleventh Doctor has a smug ham face.

2009-01-07T18:40:00.008+11:00

I am not entirely pleased, but will try to be prudent and put off judging him until I've actually seen the new series. Speaking as someone who started watching the Doctor Who revival series very early because of a sci-fi geek dad, but became mildly obsessed when David Tennant took the role in, what, 2006/7 or summat? (no 2005 apparently, but surely that wasn't screening in Aus back then) I can testify that the show is in fact watchable even without his dishy goodness, BUT the new Doctor, Matt Smith, is like 26 and kind of twitty-looking. So my hopes are not high. I was also a little disappointed that they didn't pick a black or Asian guy as was generally rumoured, or a women I guess (as implausible as that would have been, but it's science fiction and Russel T Davies' writing has been getting weirder and arguably worse of late anyways... But um he's being replaced too so there ya go!) OKAY so, have some pictures and an excerpt from an article, and tell me what you think. Good, bad or ugly?

Matt Smith has been named as the actor who will take over from David Tennant in Doctor Who - making him the youngest actor to take on the role.
At 26, Smith is three years younger than Peter Davison when he signed up to play the fifth Doctor in 1981.
Smith will first appear on TV screens as the 11th Doctor in 2010.
He was cast over Christmas and will begin filming for the fifth series of Doctor Who in the summer. Tennant is filming four specials in 2009.
Smith was named as Tennant's replacement in Saturday's edition of Doctor Who Confidential on BBC One.
The programme was watched by an audience of 6.9 million people at its peak, according to official overnight figures.
The actor said: "I feel proud and honoured to have been given this opportunity to join a team of people that has worked so tirelessly to make the show so thrilling.
"David Tennant has made the role his own, brilliantly, with grace, talent and persistent dedication. I hope to learn from the standards set by him.
"The challenge for me is to do justice to the show's illustrious past, my predecessors, and most importantly, to those who watch it. I really cannot wait."
Piers Wenger, head of drama at BBC Wales, said that as soon as he had seen Smith's audition he "knew he was the one".

The 11 Doctors
1. William Hartnell (1963-1966)
2. Patrick Troughton (1966-1969)
3. Jon Pertwee (1970-1974)
4. Tom Baker (1974-1981)
5. Peter Davison - pictured (1982-1984)
6. Colin Baker (1984-1986)
7. Sylvester McCoy (1987-1996)
8. Paul McGann (1996)
9. Christopher Eccleston (2005)
10. David Tennant (2005-2010)
11. Matt Smith (2010 - ?)

- From here.

So in some photos he looks like a Barker-educated prime wanker...

But in others he's kind of yuppie-geek-cute. Plastic specs to nothing to hide that big man jaw though...

It's motherlickin' huge!

So now the question is: the next lady sidekick? (Cause that's all women are good for...) Will it be Lily Allen? And if so, what the fucking fuck?

The Big Ask: Campaign for a strong climate law

2009-01-07T15:56:00.006+11:00

"We need strong leadership on climate change. Too many politicians are happy to speak about the issue, but their promises have often turned out to be just a load more hot air. One exception is the United Kingdom, where a climate law has just been adopted, which will force the government to reduce greenhouse gas emissions every year.We need your help to ensure that other governments follow this example.

On 10th August, more than 6,000 people took part in the recording of short film The Big Ask at Ostende on the Belgian coast. This was the largest event against climate change ever organised in Belgium. The film clip was made possible due to the engagement of volunteers from Friends of the Earth, and many film industry professionals including award winning director Nic Balthazar, film crews, production houses, actors... Music has been supplied by Hooverphonic. The video clip has been launched, and now is the time to send it round the world, and to share it with everyone you know!

Friends of the Earth groups are running The Big Ask climate campaign in 17 European countries, so if you are in one of these countries, you can sign an online petition after you have watched the film. Watch the clip online at: http://www.thebigask.be/. More info about the European Big Ask campaign at: http://www.thebigask.eu/."

Via Friends of the Earth Australia

2008 Greek Riots, possible new Doctor Whos

2009-01-03T16:28:00.008+11:00

(Because cramming a million unrelated things into the same post is just the way I roll.)

Source.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009/jan/02/doctor-who-bbc

So we will know who's to be the 11th Doctor like... Really soon? Gosh!

Annnd while we're here, this is nice. "A Sheffield man who lent a penniless Australian tourist £5 to pay for a ferry trip in 1969 has been repaid his debt nearly 40 years later." Aww! People who treat other people with kindness and consideration! That's cute.

You fo' reall HP?

2009-01-02T19:29:00.000+11:00

Apparently yes, once upon a time. So what I want to know is why the hell is this amazing excellent product no longer available to the consumers of the world? Angry letters need writing people!

Dear 2008: goodbye and good riddance!

2009-01-01T18:50:00.007+11:00

Happy New Year kids! This is really lame of me, and you'd think I'd have grown out of them by now, but it's the first day of the rest of my life and for one reason or another I feel like completing a self-obsessed retrospective internet survey. So!

1. What did you do in 2008 that you’d never done before?
Oh Jesus, this is hard already.

2. Did you keep your new years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I barely remember what they were actually. Probably something dumb, like get pretty and hold onto friends. So not rearray. And yeah I’m working oh9- Getting a half-decent UAI will probably be up there. Veganism. Which will be hard. I’m thinking a gradual ascent, because I already fucked it up this morning when I was mildly hungover and very tired and drinking tea in another person’s house... Guh leniency? Also:

I don't know where I find all these stupid things, but sounds like a good idea non?

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Cousins and suchlike.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
Nope.

5. What countries did you visit?
India.

6. What would you like to have in 2009 that you lacked in 2008?
Much wicked fun! A nice last year of high school- free of self-loathing, jealousy and old resentments. Mutual forgiveness.

7. What dates from 2008 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
1st March, 21st March, 11th May, 1st September, 12th November. Not telling.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Kicking out the jams, motherfuckers! And by the jams, I mean depression (I think). There, I said it. Woo hoo! :)

9. What was your biggest failure?
Letting down two particular friends. Not sticking up for myself. Relationships in general. School! Oh, the list tends to go on.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
No major mishaps really.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
Um! Loving this new laptop but that was a gift. I don’t know, I’m trying not to let my possessions own me. So that’s good!

12. Whose behaviour merited celebration?
Those who committed random and/or methodical acts of kindness. Those who made an effort, however small or large, to unfuck the world. Americans for electing Barack Obama, a moderate (rather than their usual right-wing meanies) and the first black president like ever.

13. Whose behaviour made you appalled and depressed?
My own, not so much in a morally righteous way as in a that-action-caused-unhappiness way. In the former manner though- that of a certain boy, that of a couple of schoolmates.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Books, CDs, gigs. Selfish shellfish!

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Secret crushes, social change...

16. What songs will always remind you of 2008?
Ohmigod that is so hard.

The entirety of Who Killed Amanda Palmer. Any upbeat Magnetic Fields song. “Someone Great” by LCD Soundsystem. “Kids” by MGMT. “Don’t Fight It” by The Panics. “Midnight at Bandcamp” by Bluejuice. “Prince of Parties” by Flight of the Conchords. "April Skies" by The Jesus and Mary Chain. "The Anglo-Saxons" by The Mountain Goats... I don't even know, ask me in a year, when I'm in the mood for reminding.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder? Happier!
b) thinner or fatter? Slightly fatter, probably. Bathroom scales are for losers.
c) richer or poorer? Equally unemployed, although a little less recently. Maybe richer though. I have Christmas money!

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Laughing at myself, partying, studying.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Worrying, sulking, hurting, stalking people on the internet...

20. How will you be spending Christmas?
It’s been and gone- at home, with a cameo by a small section of the extended fam.

21. Did you fall in love in 2008?
Not quite.

22. How many one-night stands?
I only have one nightstand, for you see I only have one bed!

23. What was your favourite TV program?
Ohh it was a good year for TV: Discovered The IT Crowd and The Mighty Boosh. Continued devotion to Doctor Who despite dreadfully inconsistent quality this last season. Bit of Skins, not as much Black Books as I would have liked, but always the token NCIS with my family. It’s our only regular bonding activity, don't judge me.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
“Hatred paralyses life; love releases it. Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it. Hatred darkens life; love illuminates it.” – Martin Luther King Jr.

25. What was the best book you read?
Mmm I don’t even know. I’m just not that excited about reading these days. *sheds a tear*

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
The Magnetic Fields. Leonard Cohen. Others too I guess but can't remember off the top of my skull.

27. What did you want and get?
Can't quite think of anything, the ungrateful sod. Better?

28. What did you want and not get?
Truth. Beauty. Freedom. Love. A new camera. Actually I did get that last one but it was broken so tharr ye go.

29. What was your favourite film of this year?
Juno. Ellen Page so ridiculously cute! It was possibly released in 2007, not sure, but I watched it last January so suck it. Wall-E was very good as well. Most underrated goes to Unfinished Sky... I imagine The Diving Bell and the Butterfly is excellent as well but somehow I still haven’t seen it. Flight of the Red Balloon and The Painted Veil were both lovely. St Trinian’s and Indiana Jones 4 were both apalling.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Now officially 17 going on 18- I went to school but on the weekend Bec, Vaanie and myself hosted a barbeque which I think was quite nice, then everyone went and got drunk at Elise’s. Yeah nice.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Immeasurably? Hmm. HMM! I do have an answer but hear it y'all shall not!

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2008?
Derelicte! No um. I’m a big man with small eyes. I want a multi-purpose tweed utility suit. Also, vests are so hot right now.

33. What kept you sane?
Music + solitary walks. A flash of hope every now and then.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Ohh tough call. I think it was the year of David Tennant for all involved, and seeing as he’ll be relinquishing his sonic screwdriver very soon I should really award it to him. There were others though, notably charming old British men like Colin Firth and Alan Rickman, and raging musical ladies a la AFP... I dunno. Lots.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
I’ve been feeling quite stirred over most errything of late actually! I wish everyone were vegetarian pro-queer feminists who actually cared about the environment and were willing to give peace a chance. You know what was stupid? The racist bogans who protested against an Islamic school in Camden with pigs heads on stakes. But um that’s kind of a micro issue. When the church isn’t really separated from the state. War worldwide.

36. Who did you miss?
Ex-friends and lovers, former selves, people I haven’t even met yet. The usual!

37. Who was the best new person you met?
I shant say in case they read this and it’s awkward jellyfish.

38. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2008:
Candy is dandy but liquor is quicker. Most people aren’t worth the hassle.
There, that was two!

39. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year:
Do it for the living and do it for the dead
Do it for the monsters under your bed
Do it for the teenagers and do it for your mom
Broken hearts hurt but they make you strong!

40. And one for next year?
I played video games in a drunken haze
I was seventeen years young
Hurt my knuckles punching the machines
The taste of scotch rich on my tongue

And then Cathy showed up, and we hung out
Trading swigs from the bottle, all bitter and clean
Locking eyes, holding hands
Twin high maintenance machines

I am going to make it through this year if it kills me
I am going to make it through this year if it kills me.

“May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you’re wonderful, and don’t forget to make some art — write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.”

- Neil Gaiman

A minor jumbled sort of rant on gay marriage

2008-12-29T15:56:00.011+11:00

So I re-stumbled upon Keith Olbermann's impassioned speech about gay marriage and Prop 8 due to its inclusion in AfterEllen.com's Top 8 LGBT Political Videos of 2008 list just now... (Check it out, the first vid is an anti-Prop 8 musical starring Jack Black as Jesus.) And on second watch it still resonated so I thought I'd share:

Transcript here.

It seems like the main reason people (and when I say people, I mean religious bigots and deluded conservatives- so a loose definition y'know) do oppose gay marriage is the sheer symbolism of the thing- civil unions are accompanied by most of the same legal entitlements as marriages, right? But "Seperate but equal" is by definition segregationist and therefore just not true, it's a signifier of second-class citizenship. Recognising gay marriages as legally and socially completely equal would mean that the validity of homosexual relationships would have to be taught in schools and accepted everywhere- that they would be recognised as equally good, morally and practically. This is an article on same-sex marriage and equality by Wilkinson & Kitzinger which I've only skim read so far because it's holidays and my brain is disintegrating into melted ice-cream mush, but looks stimulating. Love doesn't discriminate and neither should the law! Oh look, I'm reduced to yelling slogans. That's okay though. It's holidays.

So anyway... Everyone got all het up over the ridiculousness that was Prop 8 last month, in America and around the world, but has anyone noticed that there is relatively no public movement for marriage equality in Australia? Nothing halfway as publicised in the US, so far as I've noticed anyway. Maybe there are just less of us here. I do think that the legalising of same-sex marriages is inevitable, like other human rights advancements that we look back on now and wonder why the fuck it took so long. But what to do in the meantime eh? http://www.australianmarriageequality.com/.

And in other LGBT news, the Pope is an arsehole! Fsk fsk fsk, I am so not into organised religion right now.

FLOW: Can anyone really own water?

2008-12-26T22:17:00.003+11:00

Flow is a new documentary by Irena Salina about the global water crisis that looks at the growing privatisation of the global water supply by corporations, whether we're running out of lifejuice and widespread ramifications of such things. It's won a bunch of important wreaths and shit, should be in indie cinemas early next year. Looks scary!

http://www.flowthefilm.com/

Dashing through the snow, etc.

2008-12-25T18:26:00.011+11:00

IS IT CAN BE XMAS TIEM NOW PLEES?

#474; In which you better Watch Out

This one kinda dilutes the message, but gosh dang whadda classic: (& lol)

I don't really mind Xmas (as I've taken to calling it in a really feeble secular gesture, considering that the X actually stands for Christ in Greek lettering or someshit- whatever, it LOOKS different!*) as like... a cultural tradition, familial bonding sort of event. I guess. Not that my family is doing excessive amounts bonding though- it does feel pretty pathetic to be cruising the internet on Xmas Day! (Also I first typed that as "excessive amounts of bondage", which is true and pretty comforting...) From my room I can hear neighbours on every side getting drunk and singing ABBA kareoke, makes me feel sorta deprived and lonelylike. No big jolly crazy times here! But at least we don't have to go to church. And I got some presents. So nothing to complain about really...

I will though, because gotta say I do wish my laptop knew it was Xmas. Maybe then it would stop giving me so much shit (on this most holy of days)- the volume control is having an epileptic fit and Amanda Palmer's blog won't open, in addition to which it has managed to summon me for a daily web trawl on what should really be a completely web trawl-free day. I've even checked my Facebook, for fuck's sake! Alas poor Yorrick etc.

*EDIT: Language Log of course has a significantly more sensible position on the matter, from a while back... Bah humbug.

(Almost!)

Austenbook

2008-12-12T18:09:00.003+11:00

Are you doing the Austen comparitive study for HSC English and CBF actually reading Pride & Przhej? Do you tend to spend all your life on the internet instead? Then look no further than Pride and Prejudice, the FaceBook feed! Gold gold gold.

(From the same site there is also this fanfic that basically summarises/parodies the book "in the form of Austen's juvenilia". Not quite as brilliant but just putting it out there yes.)

opposite day.

2008-12-12T00:28:00.005+11:00

“What if a demon were to creep after you one night, in your loneliest
loneliness, and say, ‘This life which you live must be lived by you once again
and innumerable times more; and every pain and joy and thought and sigh must
come again to you, all in the same sequence. The eternal hourglass will again
and again be turned and you with it, dust of the dust!’ Would you throw yourself
down and gnash your teeth and curse that demon? Or would you answer, ‘Never have
I heard anything more divine’? ”

—Nietzsche

I have not bummed across America
with only a dollar to spare, one pair
of busted Levi’s and a bowie knife.
I have lived with thieves in Manchester.

I have not padded through the Taj Mahal,
barefoot, listening to the space between
each footfall, picking up and putting down
its print against the marble floor. But I

skimmed flat stones across Black Moss on a day
so still I could hear each set of ripples
as they crossed. I felt each stone’s inertia
spend itself against the water; then sink.

I have not toyed with a parachute cord
while perched on the lip of a light aircraft;
but I held the wobbly head of a boy
at the day centre, and stroked his fat hands.

And I guess that the lightness in the throat
and the tiny cascading sensation
somewhere inside us are both part of that
sense of something else. That feeling, I mean.

—Simon Armitage

Picasso painting with light, 1949:

2008-12-12T00:20:00.006+11:00

The world is an amazing place.

2008-12-09T17:27:00.006+11:00

Year 12 and so forth is sehr tiring, but I found this nice thing via frankie:

With all the shit that has been going on recently all over the world, it’s
nice to see something as heartwarming, silly and gosh-darn ‘hands across the
globe’ as these dancing videos from Where the Hell is Matt? Don’t question it – just go and watch and sniffle a bit and realise that, really, we’re all the same.

Sunday Morning

2008-12-07T11:00:00.007+11:00

Sunday morning, praise the dawning
It's just a restless feeling by my side
Early dawning, Sunday morning
It's just the wasted years so close behind
Watch out, the world's behind you
There's always someone around you who will call
It's nothing at all
Sunday morning and I'm falling
I've got a feeling I don't want to know
Early dawning, Sunday morning
It's all the streets you crossed, not so long ago
Watch out, the world's behind you
There's always someone around you who will call
It's nothing at all
Watch out, the world's behind you
There's always someone around you who will call
It's nothing at all
Sunday morning
Sunday morning
Sunday morning

- The Velvet Underground

Oh xkcd, you complete me:

Also, this article:

Happiness is contagious, spreading among friends, neighbors, siblings and
spouses like the flu, according to a large study that for the first time shows
how emotion can ripple through clusters of people who may not even know each
other.
The study of more than 4,700 people who were followed over 20 years found
that people who are happy or become happy boost the chances that someone they
know will be happy. The power of happiness, moreover, can span another degree of
separation, elevating the mood of that person's husband, wife, brother, sister,
friend or next-door neighbor.
...Previous studies have documented the common experience that one person's
emotions can influence another's -- laughter can trigger guffaws in others;
seeing someone smile can momentarily lift one's spirits. But the new study is
the first to find that happiness can spread across groups for an extended
period.
When one person in the network became happy, the chances that a friend,
sibling, spouse or next-door neighbor would become happy increased between 8
percent and 34 percent, the researchers found. The effect continued through
three degrees of separation, although it dropped progressively from about 15
percent to 10 percent to about 6 percent before disappearing.
...Unhappiness also appeared to be catching, but not as strongly: An unhappy connection increased the chances of being unhappy by about 7 percent on average, while a happy connection increased the chances of being happy by about 9 percent. While having more friends is important for a person's happiness, the benefit of having more friends appears to be canceled out if they are unhappy, the researchers found.

Kind of makes sense, kind of doesn't so much, but makes me want to administer hugs all round either way!

Sexy Exciting Things #1

2008-12-04T16:12:00.007+11:00

So yesterday I gave my slapdash BOW proposal presentation, including this beautiful video called Women in Art by Philip Scott Johnson which my VA class seemed to like and maybe you will too. It basically morphs together female faces from 500 years of Western portraiture and I won't go into how it relates to my BOW but I will say that it's mesmerising and elegantly done and I reccommend it for an overview of painting through the ages, sweet Bach tunes and hot laydeez! It's a hit on YouTube...

Also, below we have the Kansas City Public Library: I wonder if they're ever out of the titles featured out teh front? How pissed would you be if they were like sorry no Charlotte's Web for you sir, onto the waiting list! Sue the bastards for all they have I say!

For more wacky wacky buildings visit 50 Strange Buildings of the World or http://unusual-architecture.com/. Feats of engineering and/or the imagination abound!

synchronised sinking.

2008-12-03T01:00:00.003+11:00

Disclaimer: Moody post! Don't read on!

So it's 1:00 AM exactly on a... Wednesday morning? Yes that's about right. I've messed myself around all day and managed to come out thoroughly unprepared for my second and third HSC assessment tasks tomorrow (today?) and Thursday. Thus, self loathing time! I'm not sure what I'm talking about, it's been an odd few days and several different factors have culminated in an urge to overshare, how regrettable...

What I am thinking about right now is this: (in handy bullet point format!)

unrealistic expectations (of self, others, relationships both friendly and romantic, humanity as a whole, etc)
subsequent disappointment (I am pathetic, others are flawed, noone really knows what everyone else wants and if they did would they give it to them?, the planet is fucked, etc)
emotional and/or physical connections: will I ever be satisfied? How the heck do you make people like you anyway?
the incredible, strange, sometimes wonderful but mostly frightening changes I and presumably most of my friends are going through right now. In the head. Other places too I guess. The ravages of puberty leave noone unscathed. New bodies we don't understand? Sure, that's actually old news by now. But everything else is changing too. It's hard to put into words. It's probably called life experience, or waking the fuck up, or similar... There are all these new things in my mind, mini intellectual awakenings and attitude shifts and emotions, emotions.
I can no longer use the word 'belonging' in ordinary speech or writing without being punched in the face by a disgruntled Advanced English student but can I just say that I'm struggling here. Maybe you are too, who knows? I don't know. You can tell me if you like. I won't know what to say though. I never do. (Oh God /wrists Bodhi, build a frigging bridge.)
self-expression reallt. I suppose that's what this is all about. Again, sorry for making my loathsome thoughts and general headspace public. Although it's not like anyone's chaining you to a desk and making you read it. At least, I hope not! You should really get that checked out if they are dear...

Anyway. Listening to The Lucksmiths on repeat is soothing. Dear friend, have I ever recommended a song called Fiction to you? If not, I do so now. It's soft and lovely and just that little bit wistful... Ah wistful. That's how I'm feeling a little bit wistful right now. That, and mildly depressed...

Oh shit gentle reader, you've just lost several minutes of your life reading this bile, several minutes that you'll never get back. I myself wasted almost half an hour writing it! A sorry state of affairs, this whole being-alive thing has turned out to be. This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. Opinion of the millisecond: I do not in fact like Chuck Palahniuk, his writing is brusque and arrogant and trashy. Not bad at one liners though. On this banal thought, I leave you! Off to find a more effective cure for stress, insomnia, and a quiet sneaking sort of loneliness. Bonne nuit.

P.S. Bodhi uses too much punctuation: (Y/N)?

A little too late to be of any significance in the Hornsby Girls Jersey Wars, but...

2008-11-30T12:11:00.006+11:00

Who is adidas?

The money: $8.3 billion annual consolidated revenue in financial year 2005
The labels: Reebok, adidas, TaylorMade
The boss: Herbert Hainer, Chief Executive Officer
The workers: In 2007, adidas-branded products were made by workers in more than 1,080 contract factories in 65 countries.
The locations: China, Vietnam, Japan, Korea, India and Indonesia to name a few. Also the Americas and some European countries. Source: http://www.adidas.com/

What's the problem?

While conditions have improved in a few of adidas' supplier factories, most workers producing for adidas still work long hours under extreme pressure for poverty wages. Among other things,adidas needs to do much more to ensure that trade union rights are respected within its supply chain. In 2006–2007 adidas removed orders from suppliers with a track record of respecting unions rights and placed them into a supplier factory with a history that is far from clean. adidas needs to be ensuring workers rights, decent wages and conditions are being upheld across all of its supplier factories, all of the time.

We are encouraging adidas to change – find out more at Offside! update

Poverty wages

adidas won’t commit to a living wage for workers making adidas products. We define a living wage as one which, for a full-time working week (without overtime), would be enough for a family to meet its basic needs and allow a small amount for discretionary spending.
We are on track to deliver on all our integration synergy targets for 2007 including €100 million in revenue synergies and €17.5 million in net cost savings. And net income will increase at a rate approaching 15%.
– Herbert Hainer, adidas CEO. Source: adidas quarterly report 2007

Who pays when adidas saves?

Rights denied

adidas continues to get its gear made in countries and free trade zones where it is either illegal, extremely difficult, or prohibited, for workers to organise themselves into trade unions. It is near impossible for workers to get better conditions (such as better pay) if they cannot get together and form a united, organised group to approach their boss.

Job insecurity

Two huge adidas supplier factories in Indonesia closed in November 2006 leaving 10,500 workers without jobs. A third factory employing more than 9,000 workers has been significantly “scaled down”. We are concerned that adidas’s actions are likely to be one of the main reasons the factories had to close. These workers were left high and dry with no work and not all of their back pay and entitlements. Find out more

Commitment phobia

adidas moves its production where it likes, whenever it likes and does not give any bonuses to factories that respect workers rights. adidas does not ban or severely restrict short-term contracts in its supplier factories. This means that workers can lose their jobs from one contract to the next and be left with nothing.

Find out more about how sports brands are tackling the problem of sweatshops in their industry in our Offside! report

What's the solution?

To take action now

Source: Oxfam Australia

If you ever need a stranger...

2008-11-27T22:56:00.008+11:00

In the name of procrastination (Iamterrible):

Fifty People, One Question: New York by Crush & Lovely.

The goddamn friggy embed code won't work even for Vimeo but click it and see.

The other thing I'm checking out on a vaguely related note (strangers you see!) is Richard Renaldi's not entirely outstanding photographic series 'Touching Strangers', the premise of which is he asks some total strangers in the street to touch each other then takes a picture. Awkward, yes. Occasionally moving. I quite like 'Kim and Yoshi'.

Also, fifty things you might not know about Barack Obama! He is a leftie (left-handed, that is), speaks Spanish, listens to Bob Dylan. Favourite movies: Casablanca and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Favourite TV shows: M*A*S*H and The Wire. He applied to appear in a black pin-up calendar while at Harvard but was rejected by the all-female committee. Fools! In other news, Joan Jett has released a version of Silent Night for seasonal compilation album A Blackheart Christmas featuring excerpts from Obama's victory speech... My iTunes is malfunctioning along with everything else on this dang computer, but sounds bizarre oui?

Zip Zip USB Memory Brick

2008-11-27T18:14:00.004+11:00

Aw! Not that I particularly care for or lust over techy stuff, but these are Australian and pretty cute:

"Each Zip Zip Memory Brick is a high speed USB 2.0 flash
memory stick disguised in a plastic toy building brick.

Zip Zip Memory Bricks connect together.

When in use the lid clips onto the memory component, preventing accidental loss.

1 GB - $29 USD
2 GB - $40 USD
4 GB - $59 USD"

I wanna play lego now! I used to have the coolest dragon castle set...

Earth to Roadrunner Records: AFP is not fat, and neither are we!

2008-11-27T12:23:00.008+11:00

I will preface this by saying there is something terribly wrong with my internet connection and I can't embed anything from YouTube, do help if you can. Anyway, on with the show!

So a few weeks ago Amanda Palmer released the music video for Leeds United - I love the song, not huuge on the video but that's not the point - and it must be said that she is not fat. Not that it matters, but not in the video and not at all. I think she's a fucking babe. So one has to wonder why Roadrunner Records, on top of giving her shit about putting out a record that has "no commercial potential" amongst other things, wanted her to re-cut it so that shots of her belly wouldn't be included, basically telling her she looked to fat. She told them to fuck off! Woo!

So she blogged about it here and all her fans are full of righteous indignation, and they're starting a Belly Solidarity movement! From http://www.theshadowbox.net/forum/index.php?topic=6054.0, lads and lasses are sending in pics of their own big/small/hairy/smooth/stretch-marked/scarred/pierced/pregnant/WHATEVER bellies to make a statement about healthy body image for all and generally stick it to the man. You can email your own photos to doritojoe89@gmail.com, who is going to send them to Roadrunner HQ in protest.

Look at pictures of gigantic metal dudes on their label, eg Dino from Fear Factory, and ask yourself have THEY ever been censored? I could go on a huge rant here about the media & society's sexist double standards and unrealistic goals of "perfection", but I wouldn't want to insult your intelligence- if the hypocrisy and general awfulness of it all isn't plainly evident to y'all, someone needs a thinking cap and/or an independantly functioning brain. Long live the punk cabaret! Long live Amanda Fucking Palmer! Long live Rebellyon!!

P.S. For more on AP & The Belly, watch this. It's so cute!

Marjorie is dead.

2008-11-21T20:54:00.013+11:00

Above is Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie being amusing about language and pseudo-intellectualism, they remind me of that pair of sexy academics in The Crucible analysis video we watched last week. This is Stephen Fry being clever and charming and interesting about the joys of language. I particularly like the rant at pedants, which I am kind of sometimes sort of, but not about everything! Mainly about apostrophes! And I'm usually wrong anyway... But yes, the man has an incredible mind and he blogs, whoopee! Anyway, an excerpt:

"My language (as the sum of my discourses, as linguistic strata that betray my history, as geology or archaeology betrays history) is my language and it is a piece of who I am, perhaps even the defining piece. In my case it is in part a classical ruin, inherited boulders of Tacitus and Cicero bleaching in the sun along with grass-overrun elements of Thucydides and Aeschylus … not because I was a classical scholar, but because I was taught by classical scholars and grew up on poets, dramatists and novelists who knew the classics as intimately as most people of my generation know the Beatles and the Stones. Without knowing it therefore, heroic Ciceronian clausulae and elaborate Tacitan litotes can always be found in the English of people like me. In part classical ruin, then, my language in particular has also mixed in it elements of my three Ws, my particular world wide web, my w.w.w, Wodehouse, Waugh and Wilde, three writers who greatly excited my imagination and stimulated my language glands like no other. I would add Vivian Stanshall of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, Peter Cook and Alan Bennett as others of whom I am consciously aware. But the language of British movies, classic novels, sixties and seventies broadcasters like Malcolm Muggeridge, James Cameron, Alistair Cooke, John Ebden, Anthony Quinton, Robert Robinson, they all played their part in informing my spoken and written utterance too, not to mention the elemental styles which in turn informed their language. As Henry Higgins reminds us in Pygmalion, English is for all of us the language of Shakespeare, Milton and the Bible. We unconsciously use the tropes, tricks and figures of our great writers, just as we might without knowing it use a tierce de Picardie or a diminished seventh when humming in the shower. And to our native English today we have added the language of American sitcom and drama, American movies and Australian soap operas.

I’ve used this analogy before, but I’ll use it again. Think of London. Some of its outline was determined by the Romans who conquered it two thousand years ago, since then atop the ruins of the Roman, Saxon, Dark Age and Norman London was constructed a medieval city of winding streets, jostling half-timbered mansions and soaring stone cathedrals and churches. Then came, after the Tudor and Jacobean palaces and halls and after the restoration a period of renewed classical elements, the squares and avenues of Georgian and Regency London, elegant, spacious and harmonious. The Victorians brought long suburban streets, warehouses, libraries, schools, town halls and railway stations and in the twentieth century arrived a new architecture, office towers, corporate headquarters, airports, housing projects in glass and concrete, American and European statements of self conscious modernity, statehood, brutalism, socialism, capitalism and democracy. It isn’t I think, too much of a strain to see the history of our language in similar terms. A long sticky flypaper onto which at varying times of their importance the church, royalty, aristocracy, industry, commerce and international entertainment have accreted themselves. Saxon and Roman elements overlaid with the Norman French and Chaucerian and Church medieval English. A great renaissance of Shakespeare, the Bible of King James, Milton and Dryden leading into the classical English of Johnson and Pope. The Victorian English of industry, Dickens and music hall giving way to the English of the twentieth century, all the way through the arrival of radio and cinema, the political language of fascism, communism, socialism and finance, the Americanisms, the street talk, the rock and roll, the corporate speak, the computer jargon … and here we are. Glass and concrete sentences right next to half-timbered Elizabethan phrases, a Starbucks of an utterance dwelling in an expression that once belonged to a Victorian banker, an Apple Store of an accent in a converted Georgian merchant’s lingo. You get the point. Whether or not we are aware of the difference between a transitive verb and a preposition, a verb and a vowel, we are willy-nilly, heirs to Marlowe and Swift, just as that new Waitrose is a descendant (albeit a bastard one) of the Parthenon. Bear in mind that phrase willy-nilly, by the way – I shall return to it later. For the meantime, seal it in a baggie and stash it in your hoodie. Or fold it in scented tissue and lay it tenderly in your hope chest, according to taste."

Bit o' this, bit o' that

2008-11-20T18:22:00.009+11:00

It's my mum's birthday today, there are bugs in my hair, all the gel pens are running out. My legs are itchy and my feet are SO GODDAMN ITCHY. Today was pathetic, I am a waste of space. Procrastination! Who needs to pass year 12? Not I!

Urrf Patrick Wolf is no longer a ranga, to add to the utter awfulness of my life. He has new hair, it's silvery blonde. He also has a new double album coming out next February, half of which will feature Alec Empire of Atari Teenage Riot. That half will be "punky and aggressive" and named 'Battle'. These are all the wonderful things I learn from month-old NME articles when I should be starting one hundred million assessments!

"He said that 'Battle' was inspired by a period of depression he suffered a few years ago."I was having to play songs about a past relationship, I'd been through three management changes, I was breaking up, going insane," Wolf told NME.COM. "I revelled in my depression and began attacking politics and the people around me. It's an aggressive noise punk record."Wolf added that the 'light' side of the album, in contrast to 'Battle''s sombre tone, will be more uplifting. "I've found my true love, who has practically saved my life," he explained. He added: "That's in contrast to the inspiration for 'Battle', which was me thinking, 'Will I ever be in love again or will I be a bachelor for the rest of my life?'"

Wine of the day: Zonin Asti Dolce. So sweet, so sparkling!

Art of the day: The Truth About Comets and Little Girls
by Dorothea Tanning, 1945

I was trying to find Conposition with Figures on a Terrace by Leonor Fini or Judith by Richard Oelze, because they fit my mood today very rather better, but Google images has let me down. This painting is undeniably lovely though. Apparently it's a reaction against the rhetorical use of the femme-enfant by Andre Breton and other male Surrealists... Stick it to the maan Melusine!

Word of the day: dingle: (n): a small wooded hollow.

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
The night above the dingle starry,
Time let me hail and climb
Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
And honoured among wagons
I was prince of the apple towns
And once below a time
I lordly had the trees and leaves
Trail with daisies and barley
Down the rivers of the windfall light.
- Dylan Thomas

I have a mandolin, I play it all day long, it makes me want to kill myself...

...going on eighteen!

2008-11-12T19:35:00.006+11:00

While 16 will forever be saddled with a sweet image, even if the song is about sullying that very innocence, 17 is pure angst on wheels. To hear the songwriters of the last 40 years tell it, to be 17 is to be miserable, angry, depressed and quite possibly suicidal. Songs celebrating the free and easy side of 17 are very much in the minority. Boyd Bennett, an unheralded rockabilly player who reckoned Bill Haley had ripped him off, had one lone hit in 1955, with a rocking number called “Seventeen.” It went, “Seventeen, hot rod queen/Cutest girl you’ve ever seen/Tell the world I’m really keen/On my hepcat doll of seventeen.” A charmingly dated scenario, to be sure, but not the true 17. In “Sexy + 17,” the Stray Cats looked backward to the ‘50s—as they did in all their musical endeavors—to find something unthreatening to admire about the number. The dearth of positive 17 songs certainly stems from the fact that the number has become inextricably associated with its age equivalent in human years.

The most joyous moment in pop 17-ness has to be the opening couplet of “I Saw Her Standing There.” “Well she was just seventeen/and you know what I mean” is as much a part of the rock vernacular as “I can’t get no satisfaction.” Maybe if that crooked number had been part of that ecstatic song’s title, things might have turned around for 17. But the Beatles went for “I Saw Her Standing There” and henceforth, 16 out of every 17 “17” songs have been sung from the point of view of someone extremely miserable.

Janis Ian, who had an unlikely hit in 1966 with “Society’s Child,” at the precocious age of 15 (and that’s pre- Tiffany and TRL) scored an even bigger hit nearly a decade later, with “At Seventeen,” a first-person chronicle of that age’s particular pain, with details that we may never see the likes of again. Lines like, “To those of us who knew the pain/Of valentines that never came/And those whose names were never called/When choosing sides for basketball” will always send douche chills shooting up the spines of people who lived through the era when this song was all over the radio. Winning a sort of Oscar in its field, “At Seventeen” has earned a hallowed place in I Hate Myself and I Want to Die: The 52 Most Depressing Songs You’ve Ever Heard by Tom Reynolds, which I highly recommend, and a cursory Google search reveals that many people feel share the belief that the song reaches dangerous levels of moroseness. Because of its ubiquity on the airwaves during the singer-songwriter-friendly ‘70s, “At Seventeen” had a virtual lock on the number for several years, successfully withstanding a gob of spit and an elbow jab by the Sex Pistols, whose “Seventeen” declared “I’m a lazy sod!” but alas, the only number Mr. Lydon utters in the song is actually12 more than 17 (“You’re only 29/Got a lot to learn”). Pistols contemporaries The Cure went for “17” glory with “Seventeen Seconds,” the catchiest song ever written about the last 17 seconds in the life of a person who has just committed suicide. Tracey Ullman obviously saw the appropriateness of 17 for her song “You Broke My Heart in 17 Places” (a pretty nifty song, the chorus of which adds to the titular phrase, “Shepherd’s Bush was only one.”) Unsung Chicago rocker Ike Reilly has a sleazy masterpiece called “Hip Hop Thighs #17,” but it gets disqualified for numerical arbitrariness. Jimmy Eat World’s “Seventeen” gets disqualified for never mentioning the number. Tim McGraw’s “Seventeen” gets disqualified for being by Tim McGraw. Ditto “Seventeen” by Winger.

Rising from some strange, pillowy planet, “Anthems for a Seventeen Year-Old Girl” by Broken Social Scene is a favorite song of robot geishas worldwide, as well as one of mine. Sadly, and I do mean that, there is no mention of the titular number, although the line “Park that car, drop that phone, sleep on the floor, dream about me” gets said 13 times in a row. There is no justice. Ladytron’s “Seventeen,” which is as icily cool as one would expect from this gelid Liverpool outfit, decadently declares, “They only want you when you're seventeen/When you're twenty-one you're no fun.” With its throbbing dance-floor beat, this one really gives my winning choice a run for its money.

Keren Ann, the exotically heritaged singer songwriter who cannot seem to garner any negative press, comes close to seventeen-ly sublimity with the stately “Seventeen,” sounding something like what a young, alto-voiced Leonard Cohen might have written. A beautiful song, but the sophistication of the arrangement and the singer’s knowing perspective serve to belie the song’s central plaint, “Look at me/I’m only seventeen,” rendering it an odd choice for the quintessential “17” song. For that distinction, a song really must embody the whole seventeen-ian ethos. And that’s why there’s only one real choice.

Stevie Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen” from 1982’s Bella Donna has the quaking, feverish intensity of a very confused, very sexy teenager, on the cusp of adulthood. It announces itself boldly in a spray of 16th notes (16th notes—that has to be significant) and Ms. Nicks delivers a whomping vocal that I defy you not to respect in the morning. Even Joan Cusack’s campy performance of the song in School of Rock only serves to reinforce Eo17’s iconic status. Here’s a song that’s embraced by the once and future nerds and the whirling ingénues among us, as well as those of us who fall somewhere in between.
Stevie Nicks - "Edge of Seventeen"

* Random fact about “Edge of Seventeen” – The title comes from a mishearing of the phrase, “the age of seventeen,” reportedly drawled by Mrs. Tom Petty, in response to Ms. Nicks’ query as to when she had first met her husband.

by David Klein, via http://www.merryswankster.com/ Thank you to everyone who made my birthday awesome, love you kids! :)

In which I punch The Lucksmiths in the face...

2008-11-08T16:35:00.006+11:00

Not really of course. Tali and the boys are sweet and lovely and brilliant but if one more band I love comes up to Sydney and doesn't play any all ages gigs I'll... I'll... Make some more empty threats! And on my birthday weekend too! (15th and 16th Nobember at the Hopetoun Hotel if you're overage and interested.) On the plus side, their new album is finally up for sale here. I'm not in any hurry to get it personally, seeing as I don't have a live show coming up to get-to-know-it for... Bastards. But looks promising! And I will eventually! Sigh, today is so not a good day for Bodhi...
"Happy as ever to cast their rod into exotic waterways, for First Frost The Lucksmiths decamped to Tasmania during the wintertime and found themselves in a rustic shack, working with producer Chris Townend who has crafted the band’s most dynamic album to date. Germinating from The Lucksmiths’ well-honed strummy lyrical folk pop, First Frost drifts casually into fresh terrain for the band, touching at times on glam, fuzzpop, krautrock, shoegaze, country, and even a little classic rock..! With assorted strings, horns and organs peppering the guitar-happy mix, and Tali White’s duet with The Harpoons’ Bec Rigby on the twangy "Lament of the Chiming Wedgebill", First Frost is one of the band’s finest and most diverse albums yet. And with all four members delivering the songwriting goods, The Lucksmiths’ disarming lyrical hooks shine warmer than ever."

No matter what, once midnight hits, Bjork is genius.

2008-11-05T18:47:00.006+11:00

Top 100 Crime Fiction Novels

2008-11-04T20:36:00.005+11:00

Dear People Who Are Studying Crime Writing For HSC Extension English 1, also People Who Happen To Be Into That Sort Of Thing Anyway:

I found some lists compiled by two crime/mystery writers' associations of the 100 greatest crime novels of all time, ten categories with ten titles each (eg. "The Golden Age", "Thrillers", "Humorous", etc...). Seeing as we're advised to read about 30 books to get a grasp of the genre and to select some related texts from, I thought I'd share with y'all what are generally accepted by the whodunit cognoscenti as worth reading-

This is the UK list from 1990 from The Hatchards Crime Companion.
This is the US list from 1995 from The Crown Crime Companion.

Enjoy!

Owned Palin. (Ahh elections are so soon aaagh!)

2008-11-03T17:55:00.007+11:00

Palin falls prey to Canadian prankster
Posted Sun Nov 2, 2008 12:20pm AEDT Updated Sun Nov 2, 2008 12:55pm AEDT

Related Link: YouTube: Listen to the Palin prank call

US vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin fell prey to a Canadian prankster when he called her impersonating French President Nicolas Sarkozy and got her to accept an invitation to hunt baby seals.
In an over-the-top French accent, a member of the Quebec comedy duo The Masked Avengers, famous for tricking celebrities and politicians including Mr Sarkozy himself, asked if Ms Palin would take him on a hunting trip by helicopter, and then in French said they could also go kill baby seals.
An apparently oblivious Ms Palin said she thought that would be fun.
"We could have a lot of fun together as we're getting work done. We could kill two birds with one stone that way," she said.
The prankster also got Ms Palin, Republican John McCain's running mate in Tuesday's US presidential election, to reveal a potential ambition for the top job in Washington.
Asked if she would like to eventually become president, the Alaska governor responded, "Well, maybe in eight years."
Ms Palin's office quickly admitted they were hoodwinked.
"Governor Palin was mildly amused to learn that she had joined the ranks of heads of state, including President Sarkozy, and other celebrities in being targeted by these pranksters. C'est la vie," Ms Palin's spokeswoman Tracy Schmitt said in an email.
During the phone call, which was played for a Montreal radio program, Ms Palin complimented the fake Mr Sarkozy on his beautiful wife, Carla Bruni, and asked him to give her a "big hug" for her.
"You added a lot of energy to your country with that beautiful family of yours," Ms Palin said.
The prankster responded by complimenting Ms Palin on a notorious Hustler porn film Nailin' Paylin, which he said was a documentary of her life.
"Oh good, thank you," Ms Palin said.
Ms Palin also reassured the fake Mr Sarkozy when he said he would not want to bring Vice President Dick Cheney on a hunting trip. Mr Cheney once accidentally shot a hunting partner.
"I'll be a careful shot," she promised.
- Reuters

David Tennant leaving Doctor Who!! Noooo!

2008-10-30T18:52:00.009+11:00

Doctor Who star David Tennant has announced he will leave the hit science-fiction series at the end of 2009.
Tennant, who has played the tenth incarnation of the Time Lord since 2006 after taking over from Christopher Eccleston, said he will leave the role after completing production on the four special episodes to be screened in the UK in 2009 and early 2010, according to report from the BBC website.
"I've had the most brilliant, bewildering and life changing time working on Doctor Who," Tennant said.
"I have loved every day of it. It would be very easy to cling on to the Tardis console forever and I fear that if I don't take a deep breath and make the decision to move on now, then I simply never will.
"You would be prising the Tardis key out of my cold dead hand. This show has been so special to me, I don't want to outstay my welcome."
No word has been given as to who will play the Doctor's 11th incarnation after he regenerates at the end of the special episodes, but a fifth series of the show has been confirmed, with long-time writer Stephen Moffett taking over executive producing duties from show-runner Russell T. Davies, who is also leaving.
"I've been lucky and honoured to work with David over the past few years - and it's not over yet, the tenth Doctor still has five spectacular hours left! After which, I might drop an anvil on his head. Or maybe a piano. A radioactive piano.
"But we're planning the most enormous and spectacular ending, so keep watching!" Davies said.

-SMH, October 30, 2008 - 10:11AM

Life as we know it is over... Gah he was so dishy. Gallavanting off to play Hamlet in an English accent? IN A MEDIOCRE FASHION? Is that what you want to do David? Well fine, fine, fine. You USED to be cute!

(Actually fine, you still are very cute. But you've hurt me. You made even the bad episodes enjoyable, something Eccleston could just never really do for me... That said the earlier seasons were kinda better written/concieved/so on. But anyway, I loved you, you bastard!)

So R.I.P. in advance, 10th Doctor. I hope you are replaced by Hugh Grant! To mark this moment, a cute jokey picture I found on the internet that will hopefully symbolise a fruitful new beginning for Mr. 11: Enjoy! Adieu!

Art of the Day: Nocturne in Black and Gold

2008-10-27T20:11:00.008+11:00

Nocturne in Black and Gold: The Falling Rocket
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (American-born, British-based)
1875
Oil on panel

"The ill-educated conceit of the artist ... approached the aspect of willful imposture, . . . I have seen, and heard, much of Cockney impudence before now; but never expected to hear a coxcomb ask two hundred guineas for flinging a pot of paint in the public's face."

John Ruskin was considered an authority on art and his quote was printed and re-printed in the national press. The effect on Whistler - on any artist by such a well known critic - would have been severe. Whistler sued for libel and threw everything he had at Ruskin. The trial wiped him out, and though he won the lawsuit technically, the judge only awarded one farthing in damages. Whistler lost his house and his collection of art and as he grew old he became bitter.

*Another interesting fact about Whistler I didn't copy and paste off some boring apricot-coloured website is that he was the ex-mentor and ex-friend of one Walter Sickert, yes the very Walter Sickert that crazy crazy Patricia Cornwell thinks is Jack the Ripper. Ahh, Portrait of a Killer is such a poorly written and weakly argued book! I’m completely obsessed with it… Supposedly, that frequent use of “Ha ha” in the letters the Ripper wrote to the police is a reference to Sickert’s estranged American buddy’s irritating laugh, the general upset caused by that rift somehow evidence of psychopathy and an allegedly plausible motive for slashing the throats of at least five prostitutes, probably more… You see why I like it? So somewaht entertained! http://www.casebook.org/dissertations/caseclosed.html - oh snap Patsy.

Who Killed The Dresden Dolls?

2008-10-25T12:21:00.006+11:00

The music world actually hates me, like personally.

Aside from all the artists who are touring Aus in the next few months with no all-ages shows (The Mountain Goats, Adam Green, Final Fantasy, Stars...), The Dresden Dolls are officially on an indefinite hiatus which usually means unofficially sorta broken up which is sad. I only just realised basically, but there was this sensationalist, carefully edited sort of video put on YouTube last month...

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=PMsBQWXQQ90 (For some reason the embed code isn't working, no matter how carefully I select the whole code it only copies the section first visible in the box, not the whole scrollable thing. Anyone else having this problem? Anyway, thar be the URL.)

And then Amanda wrote on her blog earlier this month saying that there was a fair bit of personal conflict but they love playing together so they haven't actually broken up, and Brian says it's "open-ended" so hmm, that's basically where it's at right now. When you have loved a band since you were 13 years old, as I have The Dresden Dolls, it's all like "awhh" to see them not making music anymore...

BUT Amanda's new solo project is aymayzing, she has an incredible new album produced by Ben Folds and featuring all sorts of mad people, if you're into that thing and haven't heard it already check out http://www.myspace.com/whokilledamandapalmer. Brian has joined gypsy punk/cabaret collective The World/Inferno Friendship Society, who are alright I suppose but nothing on The Dolls. They remind me most of a slightly less feral Gogol Bordello: http://www.myspace.com/worldinferno. Dear Dressies, I am thinking of you in this difficult time! Here is the very silly and not particularly appropriate Backstabber video from 2006 to relive the good times, great classic hits... Thank you for the music!

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=K9zMizbLHYk

The Hack Half Hour

2008-10-23T16:54:00.011+11:00

If you listen to triple j with any semblance of regularity you'll probably be familiar with the "HACK" radio show on weekdays at 5:30 which basically takes a more in depth look at social issues/hot topics in Australia in an interesting, informative and entertaining way. You'll also probably then be familiar with the spin-off TV show, The Hack Half Hour (Mondays 8:30 ABC2) which has a similar format of mixing pre-recorded footage with interviews from a focus group made up of both regular people and specialists on topics like street fighting, home ownership and porn. It's been showing for a bit over a month now and I highly recommend it if you're interested in what's going on and the ways different people are thinking in the world around you.

I felt compelled to share this show after last Monday's episode in particular, which was about the importance of image in society. Personally, I reckon the sassy philosopher should have gotten more screen time. The ex-anorexic has the view that I can most relate to (and somewhat ironically, she is so stylish!) and Sophia reminds me of Tiffany from Daria. But basically, as a teenage girl watching a program about an issue that is (arguably ridiculously) high on most teenage girls' agendas, I thought it offered a balanced view (although obviously limited by a half hour time limit) and if you're interested you can download or stream the vodcast from here.

Also, if you download 'Myface' (episode 1, about social networking on the internet)- 'OLY SHIT IS THAT BREE BITES IN THE INTRO? We are living in strange times, my friends... That particular episode is well worth watching too I think, for all the MySpace and Facebook addicts out there (don't lie, you love it...) -somewhat eye-opening really. Interests me personally because that online persona has been such a big part of my life, and those of some of my friends too, for the past few years. I'm considering deleting my MySpace account, for reasons I won't expand upon right here and now... And again, it's a good episode because it presents a variety of views on internet privacy, judging people by their profiles, the impact of what you do online on your actual life, etc and I find that sort of thing quite relevant. Just thought I'd share!

Heavens to Murgatroyd!

2008-10-13T20:28:00.001+11:00

A new webhole for Bodhi? What folly is this?! As ridiculous as it seems, and is really, I've started a "proper" blog (pah) in attempt to get off the internet. You see, I'm planning on deleting my MySpace account. Like actually. I know, right? I don't think I'm ready quite yet, but am gearing up for it- shall be such a relief to be rid of the blecherous thing after all these years of up and down alternating addiction and contempt for that godforsaken website. HOWEVER I still do kind of need/want somewhere to express myself, rave about good things, rant about bad things, share exciting new things easily and impersonally with my friends and generally procrastinate. No! Scratch that last one, I am never procrastinating again! First day of year 12 today, oh my sainted aunt, so not ready for this. But anyway- such things are awkward to do on Facebook, what with vague acquaintances and ancient family members all over my account who I can't quite bring myself to delete from my friends list (dreadfully rude). Also Facebook is quite ugly and inconvenient and terribly common. Hence, this! Also I like Blogger's archives, tagging system, general bloggishness... Yarrh.

As for the URL of this baby, I was going to make it "cankerblossome" like everything else I do on the internet, but I'm going to get sick of that one of these days, soo... Tipsy cakes are actually a bona fide baked good- silly little sweet things soaked in grog. Describes me moderately well? Haha maybe, but I just think it's the cutest thing to say, ever. Go on- say it. You know you want to! Ah, good times... So I've never actually consumed one but I have acquired a recipe from http://www.gourmettraveller.com.au/ to prove it's possible:

Tipsy Cakes:
(Serves 8)

2 tbsp castor sugar
125 ml sweet sherry
4 1.5cm-thick slices of brioche (120gm, about ½ loaf), crusts removed, quartered, or sponge cake
250 gm strawberries, hulled and quartered
4 amaretti, finely chopped
60 gm flaked almonds, toasted
200 ml pouring cream, softly whipped

Custard:
800 ml milk
1 vanilla bean, split lengthways
8 egg yolks
110 gm (½ cup)
caster sugar

1. For custard, place milk, scraped seeds from vanilla bean and bean in a saucepan and bring almost to the boil. Whisk egg yolks and sugar in a bowl until well combined, then gradually pour in milk mixture until well combined. Return mixture to same pan and stir over low-medium heat until mixture thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. Do not boil. Transfer to a bowl, discard vanilla bean, cover closely with plastic wrap and cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until chilled, or for up 2 days.

2. Place sugar in a bowl, add 2 tbsp boiling water, stir until dissolved, then stir in sherry. Place brioche in a flat dish, drizzle with sherry mixture, turning to soak completely.

3. Place a piece of brioche in the base of a 150ml glass or small bowl, scatter with some strawberries, then pour in approximately ¼ cup custard, sprinkle with a little chopped amaretti and almonds. Top with 2 pieces of brioche, some strawberries, cream and nuts. Repeat with remaining brioche, strawberries, custard, amaretti and almonds, then serve immediately or refrigerate for up to 1 day.

4. *Enjoy!* See? Until next time, shine on you crazy diamond...