Wednesday, December 31, 2008

endhasastartrepeat

normally i write some epically angsty prose about the disappointment of new years eve and the beginning of the next year.

i'm too tired to do that this year. this time last year though, i was working a dead end job, dreaming of parisberlinedinburghromereykjaviketc. now im unemployed and still dreaming of the same cities.

so put your heels on, your best dress, your red lipstick. put on your glad rags and hoist your glass of champagne. make resolutions to be fantastic, outrageous, immoral and exciting.

and have a good one, i guess.



(im living in hope that i learn to like this blog in 2009)

Monday, December 29, 2008

technology

my computer just wiped my ipod

and considering half my music was stolen from other peoples computers, and half those people are in different countries, and i don't have a proper list, i'm fairly pissed off.

nngg.

Monday, December 22, 2008

we dance to the sound of sirens

people keep asking me about my top songs/albums/books/videoclips/milkshakes* of 2008. my standard reaction is to mutter something about innumeracy followed by disappearing in a cloud of smoke. i don't really understand why everything has to become a competition to be the best. and anyway, surely people know me well enough to know that if i were to take the best of lists seriously, then editors/brmc/sigurros/idlewild/thenational would feature, and apparently that's not the point of those lists. it's just an exercise in how cool you are. but looking through everyone's lists on hypem and godisinthetvzine, i get to wondering if people are ticking albums because they genuinely enjoyed them or if its because they're terribly cool albums. like MGMT. a technically good album thats nice background music to an afternoon toke, but not a very good live act, or a very engaging band. are people listening to music because they want to, or because they need to keep up with the cool kids?


huh. cynicism before midday. points for me.


x

i've bought three christmas presents this year (and only one of them was for a family member. it was an ikea buy and way too awesome to pass up). my mother has braved sydney central today to try and hunt down gifts. brave woman. it just doesn't feel much like christmas, instead it feels like the beginning (finally) of a long hot summer filled with sunburn and cricket. there's a crate of mangoes in my kitchen (a demand from my father that i eat at least one a day is a challenge i'm happy to meet) and Spike is barking at nothing, as per usual.

but ten years ago, i would have been excited, thrilled, bouncing ready for christmas and presents and the big family extravaganza. now i'm actively avoiding the majority of people that i know because i don't want to have to go through the year's recounting. i'm sick of hearing "aren't you supposed to be overseas" and sick of having to say "yeah, but i ran out of money (and patience with myself)". and i don't want to have to buy presents because i hate shopping.

mother: "you're too old for lots of little things this year"
sister: "but they got lots of things when they were fourteen!"
madeleine: "is it about quantity, claudia prudence?"

jesus christ, i'm turning into my mother.






*the best milkshake i had this year was in manchester, of all places.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

woe.

I am going to die.
It will not be a noble death.
urrrgh.



I'm only twenty but evidently my hangovers are that of somebody twice my age. I thought I was going to be fine! I was hyped up about going to the Newtown Markets. I was even considering a tipple at the Shakey this arvo!

Instead I am curled up watching bad video clips that my eyes are too sore to follow. I will not be receiving any visitors today and I make no apologies for behaving like a big baby. I'm allowed, because when you drink too much no one is sympathetic, so one has to over indulge in the wallowing the way one over indulged in the white wine about ten hours ago.

At least I didn't end up in Minsk

Saturday, December 20, 2008

glamour

i did something very stupid last night, and in the warm fuzzy morning, when the hangover is being kept at bay by enough water to fill sydney's dams, i feel very stupid.


i went out without my phone last night.


ten years ago, this probably wouldn't have been an issue. (although if i did what i did last night ten years ago, well. i would have been one fucked up 10year old) but now, in the dying days of 2008, this is a dumb thing. because i didn't come home last night and i still live with my parents. so i'm feeling a bit guilty. they left the alarm off and were probably wondering where i am. they're pretty cool with me rocking up at all hours, but six am?? i haven't done that since the disastrous macq uni days.

so now that my make up has been washed off, i'm beginning to worry about how much of a hooting idiot i was last night, when the champagne was for free and the people were rather nice. when i'm drunk i become the bastard love child of Patsy (from abfab) and Bernard Black (from Black Books) apparently this is hilarious. but at the moment i feel old. old and a bit embarrassed that i didn't know better.

i mean, you can sprout all the Bret Easton Ellis bullshit about disenchantment and distant, but when it comes down to it, kids my generation (are we still children, i don't know) have everything but we don't want it. sometimes i think we're all desperate to be back in the sixties with the threat of the a-bomb on our heads, or the forties with ration booklets in the supermarket. we've had everything given to us, and that's still not enough. so we drink and we take drugs, we stay out all night and act unrepentant.


so i was looking good last night, i know i was. with my newly brown hair (it's not black, shut up) and my heels that i can barely walk in, my cinched in waist and red lipstick. a force to be reckoned with, bait on the hook. but now that doesn't really mean anything, with my mum coming past my room to give me that look that every under achiever has catalogued. that disappointed, "what are we going to do with you" look. i could play the pity card and tell you that i'm used to this, no one expects brilliance from me, just drunkenness. but that's a lie and i'm an honest hungover harpy. i don't like disappointing people, especially when it's something stupid like not coming home. no, not letting them know that i wasn't coming home.

now wide awake and tiptoeing towards the moment when my stomach grumbles and demands food, but instinctively i know it's a bad idea. i threw up last night, in whoever's house i ended up in. their bathroom was huge, and as i tried my best to puke quietly, i wondered about what makes us, makes me, drink so much. everyone does this when they over indulge. they make promises never to touch the stuff again. i don't do that, because i think about giving up sunday afternoons, or post lecture bevvies or having to deal with family gatherings sober, and i think that it's more about boundaries than denial. as a member of a generation who has no boundaries, learning to set them, implement them is a difficult thing. i know, logically that three glasses of white wine is probably more than enough. but when i'm presented with free alcohol and people that i don't really have anything in common with anymore. well. some little part of me (the Patsy part) goes "yippee" and before you know it, i may as well be Ivana Trump.

some people get angry when they are hungover. apparently i get contemplative and philosophical.


if i'd gone out with my phone last night, would it have been any different? would i have rung and said "i'm going to be staying with Hayley at her boyfriend's house."? or would i have waited for them to ring me? would i have come home and tried not to wake anyone up? would i? but thinking all those things doesn't matter, because i did none of them. i got stoned at Hayley's boyfriends place and was probably embarrassing and ridiculous. and god, it felt good at the time, but now its got me wondering how i can expect to be treated like an adult if i refuse to behave like one.

x

and then there's hangover music. normally i play Sigur Ros and Plaid for hours on end, but today all i want to listen to is Skinny Love by Bon Iver, which is one of the most heartbreaking songs i've ever heard. (yes, it totally tops that stupid Chasing Cars song.) it's quiet and desperate and the imagery conjures up cold winters waiting for the sun again. it's the bottom of the whisky bottle, when you're wondering why you went to all that effort when it was always obviously going to end like this - a three week beard and nine packets of cigarettes that you haven't smoked because smoking is bad, but it's supposed to help these moments and it doesn't. it doesn't and regrets a bitch, hindsight's a whore. normally i'd be more coherent, but i'm doing my best to think in a straight line here, so trust me on this. go listen to it.

oh god. someone in my house is making coffee. erk.


x

I told you to be patient
I told you to be fine
I told you to be balanced
I told you to be kind
Now all your love is wasted?
Then who the hell was I?

--bon iver.

Monday, December 15, 2008

shouty bits in songs are awesome. ikea not so much.

gosh. looks like i'll be back at university next year. unless i enter a reality teev show.

x

jason's been emailing me words every day because i told him that i can't write 'creatively' at the moment. tomorrows challenge apparently involves an album, but i thought i'd put todays up here because. well, because i can. and because it makes me smile, a little. (mostly though im tired from ikea)



summer. basslines, poetry and pimms. pretentiousness without blinking. tripping all the way through the sunrise. brandon flowers mustache. my dog trying to recieve alien transmissions with all four legs in the air. cotton dresses and the stupidity of shoes. the hollow lie of christmas and the promise of fireworks constrained by champagne bottle. the distant memory of the winter chill in bloodshot eyeballs over the wooden tables in the Shakespeare. five o'clock on sunday afternoons where we don't have to tell the bartender our orders anymore, and when we stumble out five hours later, monday morning eons away, he wishes us goodnight and says he'll see us next week.

and because it's summer, it doesn't matter that we're going nowhere.

Sunday, December 14, 2008

goodgollygosh

mobody tell my grandmother, but.....



i don't have red hair anymore!!!!!


and i bet you someone will try and have me disqualified from being a madeleine because of it


photos when i recover from a night of debauchery, pimms and bingo at the shakespeare.



also, also: i have nearly finished writing about Pukkelpop. almost 4 months after the event. my bad.


go and listen to (We Are Performance) and try and forgive me for William Beckett. it's not my fault i have a thing for stringbeanboys.

Friday, December 12, 2008

acceptable at the time

it's been raining all day. i could almost believe i was back in Reykjavik were it not for my dog snuffling and grumbling about like a furry steam engine. somethings never change. it's nice that Spike's love is one of them. it sucks that Sydney is still in much the same state as i left it, over six months ago. although they've turned Pitt Street Mall into a building pit covered in tinsel. which brings me to one of my least favourite things in the world. christmas.

the christmas count down is on, and we're clearly all on edge. i'm moments away from buy ing a crate of alcohol (pimms or champange or both) to keep me in a tolerably pickled state until this wretched season is over (so, march or something like that). i am not a jolly christmas person. i am like Morrissey during the Christmas period - i scowl at everyone and accuse them of clubbing seals. there's just something about Christmas that annoys me. i think its all the carols. and bloody Bjorn Again, who seem to be a fixture for this time of year. errch.

so obviously travel didn't change me. much. it made me slightly wary of Belgium, and poor Danni thinks that i'm an arsonist waiting to happen. but other than that i'm still grumpy and disillusioned with humanity and hamburgers. i live in hope, but i am yet to meet a hamburger that i like.

maybe i should get a kitten. that might make me a nicer person.

or if i got a job. that'd be all kinds of wonderful. a job, some sort of staying power that enabled me to finally finish my cursed uni degree and um. wings. wings would be pretty awesome.


oh, and for my writers block to finally go away, because it's such a cliche.

















(im really really embarrassed to admit that i really really like mark ronsons music)

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

guilt!

who thought i was dead, go on, show of hands?

i'm very much alive and well as can be expected. apparently. i promise i'll try and get this up and running again, perhaps this time with something interesting on it. if we're lucky.

in the meantime though, i've discovered this The William Beckett Blog which is providing me with hours of entertainment, as well as insightful things, which i'd tell you about but they've slipped my mind.

other things that i'm doing at the moment instead of being a slave to my computer:

- looking for a job
- drinking heavily at the Shakey with Lizzlefonizzle
- sleeping
- reading Walter Moers books, which are comedic genius
- reading Barack Obama's book, which is not comedic genius
- shouting at everything and everyone
- drinking heavily
- wishing i was back in Berlin and/or Edinburgh
- making lists.

BUT! i have terrible guilt that the last y'all heard of me, i was about to go glacier trekking in Iceland. seriously. terribly terrible guilt. verging on catholic, my guilt is. honest.