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

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.

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Hey internet.

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:

1. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers
2. Orlando: A Biography - Vag Woolf
3. A Room of One's Own - ditto, and consumed pretty much within the same 24 hour period!
4. Franny and Zooey - J.D. Salinger
5. 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

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.

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...