Wear Your Skirt Like A Flag

the dust in the corners of my mind

2011-05-25T19:45:00.006+10:00

I have been wandering around my head for the past few hours, trippped up by the ethics of the atomic bomb and women's role in revolutions. I wanted to write something about Milan Kundera, who is never far from my thoughts, and I wanted to explain how I don't have an ethnic identity but I can feel a heritage, a stereotype, a stencil fitting over my skin and self. But all that is too hard when I have no sense of bien dans sa peau, so instead, I present a joke, from Milan Kundera

A Czech requests a visa to emigrate.
The official asks him, ''Where do you want to go?''
''It doesn't matter,'' the man replies.
He is given a globe.
''Please, choose.''
The man looks at the globe, turns it slowly and says, ''Don't you have another globe?''

Well, don't you?

(joke from here)

(to clarify, because i had a gigantic freak out on the train home - this is not a racist joke. it isn't intended as such. it is an example of what Kundera calls "the Prague spirit" which is "an extraordinary sense of the real. The common man's point of view. History seen from below. A provocative simplicity. A genius for the absurd. Humour with infinite pessimism", which he explains in that interview. Got it? Good. Now, go find me a new globe)

The Loneliness of the Long Distance House Sitter // IN THREES

2011-05-22T23:00:00.002+10:00

So it turns out that I am a social creature. One never would have guessed it. This is something I had to hear from my brother. With only 294 words left to write on my essay on intelligentsia and state-socialism, I have realised that my thesis statement rings true for me. Just as the intelligentsia can never be separate from state-socialism, neither can I. Despite living under a democracy. Don't ruin the neatness of my intellectual epiphany.

I have been living in Leichhardt now for a month, looking after a dog and two cats. There is another five weeks to go. One of the cats, Fat Vivian, took an immediate dislike to me. The other is just a paranoid idiot. The dog eats the kitty litter, and about half an hour ago, she bit me. Hard enough to bruise, not bleed. I responded by sitting down and crying like a two year old. Unlike the two year old, my mummy couldn't come to rescue me. All that was there to comfort me was a near-complete, utterly dodgy essay and the new Wild Beasts album. Desolate and despairing, I dry heaved.

This is not quite how I imagined my year was going to be. I had plans, I had theories, I had something brilliant on the tip of my tongue. Instead, I am whinging and whining, I am moving in triplicate. I am saying "I AM I AM I AM" and spending my nights awake.

My mind races with these 'white people problems'. My mind throbs with the problem of speaking for others - I will never be a subaltern, I will never have my voice taken from me - even if it is taken, I will still have had a chance at speaking. So why should a dog bite and a dodgy essay cause me more grief than usual?

Because it is only me here. Boring little me. Little me who thinks in threes, like most people do. I read something about that the other day - I think it was AA Gill who said we speak in iambic pentameter, we think in threes. Like Roman triumvirates. Like Caesar, Pompeii, Crassus. Octavian, Antony, Lepidus. Jeremy, Claudia, Madeleine.

There are four of us in this house. A Fat Cat, a paranoid cat, a dodgy dog and me. Four, not three. That's probably why I feel so stuck in a Smiths song, devoid of Morrissey-ian humour. Why I managed to get interested briefly in Czechoslovakia, before I realised how twisted everything is, how inseparable. All I really wanted was to write about Milan Kundera turning his back on a failed socialist dream, not how they all clamoured at Novotny to give them something, anything, that tasted of pure socialism.

In class, I have a mouth that runs like a long distance runner, desperate to make noise that is heard. In class, people are confused - is she a genuine idiot, or an idiot savant? What is her deal with Kundera and Forster? In class, there is so much potential that I find slipping through my fingers. It makes me want to cry, the way I did when the dog bit me.

oh god, this is the worst thing ever. but i wanted to make some noise. any noise. white noise.

frankenstein's maddie

2011-05-08T22:49:00.004+10:00

At the urging of the universe, I went back to university for my final undergrad year. I promptly fell into a term long argument with Henry James*, rediscovered my interest in Indo-Anglo writing**, managed my usual schtick of writing a history essay on something that 'not really historical' *** and fell in love with Eastern Europe****.

Before that I went to Vienna, where this happened.

And then I came home, where this happened.

And now? Well now I am Frankenstein's Maddie, a patchwork of tea consumption, historical generalisations and a marked distaste for Socialist-Christian-Marxists. I am reading too many things with too many words and I am thinking alot about silences. I also work at a place patronised by retirees who have nothing better to do than tell me about how my generation is an evolutionary cul-de-sac.

*based mainly on his hatred for Germany

**and the politics surrounding Indo-Anglo writing - should people write in English? What's magic realism got to do with it? Are we all colonialist pigs?!

***I'm writing a treatise (yes, a treatise) on the importance of American Jazz in WW2 Europe. It's awesome and going to send me to an early grave.

****not really a hardship, seeing as Berlin and Vienna, and now Prague are my three favourite places ever, and grumpy intellectuals like Kundera and Milosz are my role models.

lost relics

2011-01-18T23:10:00.003+11:00

I love going through my computer to find photos of things I can barely remember doing. This is from last years Halloween, which has recently become a big thing in Australia. Chris is a Zombie, I'm Coraline. We have piñatas on our heads. I seem to recall that moments before this, I gave a red wine induced lecture about the gender politics of piñatas and then proceeded to belt the shit out of the poor orange thing, much to the horror of all the men there. Awesome night, despite the devil child on the jumping castle.

I have no idea what is happening here, but I suspect Chris was accidentally misogynistic at me. Serves him right.

donnerstag delights me

2011-01-06T21:12:00.003+11:00

Thursday. The day Arthur Dent and my mother could never get the hang of. The day when the week starts to get better because you can see the weekend and maybe also the things you've achieved this week.

Donnerstag is Deutsch for Thursday. I know this because Lizzle gave me a diary from Germany, so I'm learning middling German. I like German, and I like the word Deutsch even more. "Like" is such a funny little word, bastardized by the Valley Girls and reclaimed by the crafty indie wannabes like me, who try really hard not to say "like" every three seconds and instead restore it to the original use, which is for similes, metaphors and approval.

......I was supposed to be writing about how I'm going to make an effort to chime in on Gala Darlings "Things I Love Thursday" this year in an effort to be more positive, but I got distracted by a little word. I love doing that.

Other things I love: Running in the rain. Reading Alan Hollinghurst and Miranda July. Listening to albums that I missed when they were being super hyped - namely Lykke Li, Laura Marling and the Arcade Fire. My new Campers shoes. Being organised with my Deutsch Diary and Bitchy Calendar. Training myself to write every day in my 365 book. Finally filing all of last year's university papers - and rereading articles on Dickinson and Gaskell. Watching Stuart: A Life Backwards. Reading Stuart: A Life Backwards. Cooking cupcakes that taste like earl grey tea and eating them with a cup of earl grey tea. Plotting cinema visits in cemeteries. Attempting to go to the moonlight cinema and getting rained on. Meeting boys dressed in haute couture drag and teaching them to walk in heels. Going for long ambles with Lottie, and having conversations with her about highly cultured things. Using the word thing. The bookplate stamp Liz gave me, and stamping people with it. Floating in our pool with Pimms and a book on skinheads. Researching weird and wonderful things to do when I'm in Vienna and Berlin and Bratislava and Dresden. Clean sheets. Leopard prints. Civets, which are a weird cat-like animal. Eating Clinkers on my veranda at one am while thinking about how weird words are. Making lists. Leaving Post-it notes about that say things like "Blog about how you never really understood Eastern European history but love it anyway". Pretending I'm a Cold War Spy. Sleeping in one day, getting up super early the next.

the first incident

2011-01-01T15:51:00.003+11:00

(berlintakenbyme2008)

Why helloooooo 2011. How nice of you to show up, all blisteringly hot and dry. I'm sorry about my dreadful hair, runny nose and blocked ear. I have caught a cold, which is just a swell thing to have in January in Sydney.

Despite my cold, I think this year will be a good one. I'm convinced of it, in a prophetic way I usually try to avoid. But how can it not be a good year when in a few days I'll be seeing one of my favourite bands, The National? When I've got my last year of undergraduate classes? When I've got a house-sitting gig that will let me play at being an adult for a few months? When my dog is totally neurotic and gorgeous? When there is roller derby once a month? When there is new Doctor Who and John le Carre movies? When i have a job?! When i am going to Vienna, Prague, Melbourne, Surfers??

it is going to be a good year. for me and you.

just because it's over 300 years old doesn't mean it's useless

2010-12-19T22:05:00.005+11:00

Some sanctimonious little twit wrote into the Herald a week or so ago, complaining that school hadn't taught him anything useful, just made him study Shakespeare. I wrote into the Herald, carefully illustrating how this twit was wrong. In hindsight (something I never subscribe to) I should perhaps have left out the phrase "sanctimonious little twit"

So. LIFE LESSONS SHAKESPEARE CAN TEACH YOU

- If you have three daughters, be on your guard, and trust the good one (for reference, the good one will have the least stupid sounding name)

- Try not to fall in love with your father's mortal enemy's spawn

- If you're going to bite your thumb at someone, then commit to the action for the sake of expediency.

- If you think you kissed an ass, you're probably right

- If you are one half of a set of opposite gender twins, endeavour to have similar hair cuts and body builds. it will prove to be enormously helpful in the long run

- Don't trust a forest that wasn't there the night before

- Don't trust the political predictions of witches.

- Beware the Ides of March, which, for reference, occur on March 15, every year.

- Don't trust the timing of the almost death potion. Cosmic irony dictates that you won't wake up in time.

-Henry is a perfectly acceptable name to pass down through 8 or more generations.

-If you choose to become a playwright, people won't mind if you re-write history just please your monarch.

- You can also plagiarise from Plutarch and other sources!

-And recycle your jokes and plot lines!

- You can tell if your life is a comedy if you end up married, a tragedy if you (and everyone else) ends up dead, and a history if it is long and boring.

- Naming everyone Caesar is the cause of much unnecessary confusion. Don't do it.

- If, in your closet, he comes before you with his doublet all unlaced, then he's probably not worth it.

- If there is something suspicious happening in your family, then you can get to the bottom of it by staging a dummy show that informs everyone of your suspicions.

- Fortinbras is a good dude to call in a crisis.

I'm sure there are thousands more, but I took Shakespeare and Renaissance Drama two semesters ago, so I'm rusty.

shuffled

2010-11-30T22:39:00.002+11:00

oh gods. i have a blog, right? apparently? you'd never ever think it. it feels like i only sign on to apologise for not ever signing on. how Beckett-ian of me.

truth is, i spent so much time staring at a computer screen this semester that now i'm on break, most days, i don't even turn my computer on. it's bliss. you oughtta try it. connectivity is overrated, and Moloch is eating you alive. Ginsberg would be so crushed if he knew how much time we spent staring at a screen, guys. do you want to upset Ginsberg?

i had a strange term - it was so so so much hard work, with over 30 books to read, not to mention all the extra reading, the american lit discussion board, major essays, minor essays, essays that i didn't need to write but wrote anyway. so much writing and reading, which is what i signed up for. so i probably shouldn't complain too much.

but now summer is here in all its muggy glory. which means i am spending my days in John Le Carre novels, fighting over the sofa with Lottie (who is not allowed on the sofa, no matter what she thinks), drinking copious amounts of Pimms&Lemonade&Cucumber and steadfastly not thinking about Christmas.

what i am thinking about is 2011. which seems, so far, like it is going to be awesome. my last year of undergrad classes, a european jaunt in feb, employment, housesitting and undoubtedly more forgetting to blog.

revolutionaries

2010-11-09T22:13:00.002+11:00

Lizzle and I just saw this:

And it was utterly wonderful.

(made in dagenham)

i am trying

2010-10-05T11:57:00.004+11:00

I have just handed in my final essay for the term; in which I argued - very loosely - that the courtship art of conversation is the method Elizabeth Gaskell uses to educate her characters and readers in North and South. This was after an essay in which I argued - very loosely - that Kate Chopin's The Awakening and Oscar Wilde's Dorian Gray paint pictures of dissatisfied fin-de-siecle sexual beings. Which came after I argued - very loosely - the the Whitlam Government changed my family history by handing out free education. And before that, I argued - very loosely - that sometimes Ginsberg and Dickinson freak people out because they approach poetry from a non traditional standpoint.

.........I sense a pattern that I don't want to acknowledge.

And I was going to do a long whiny post about how I have no idea what I want anymore except maybe a big bottle of Pimms and access to the British National Library and to be magically fluent in French, but instead I thought NON!

And that was about as far as I got before I got distracted by the books I have to read for tomorrow, which are kind of utterly miserable in a beautiful way. When I have started my own university, which is tentatively titled THE UNIVERSITY OF YOU'RE NOT INVITED in my daydreams, I'm going to teach a course on books that aren't utterly miserable. It will be called "Sometimes Stuff is Nice" and there will be complimentary ice cream.

lamest post ever?

2010-09-14T22:48:00.002+10:00

I am supposed to be reading Washington Square by Henry James and rereading Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf for class tomorrow, but I have had a brain melt and feel I need to do some shouting about how, sometimes, I do things other than read books.

Except I can't remember any of them. This concerns me. I think I went to an open poetry night, but I'm pretty sure I spent most of the time worrying about Ginsberg and Dickinson. And I went to see Bre's band play again, but I spent most of the night trying not to embarrass myself in front of a boy and some bongo players. I failed.

I do know, that I went to Roller Derby on Saturday and had so much fun that I am considering giving up everything to be a Derby player. I would be Mad the Bad and I would be awesome. I'd have broken limbs, but they would be broken in an awesome manner.

That's what I fantasize about at present, when I don't know how to write about Kate Chopin and Oscar Wilde, or Dickinson and Ginsberg, or Elizabeth Gaskell, or how the 70s were good for women. I think "Gosh, all that would have been better with Roller Derby."

......I'm very tired, by the by.

womb-tomb of decadent closure

2010-08-31T23:12:00.003+10:00

I recently discovered (...err, was forced to read) Emily Dickinson, Kate Chopin and Kathy Acker.

I sort of want to carry on this with "DUUUUUUUUUUDE. DUDE. SO. FREAKING. WONDERFUL." but that's not very classy or articulate.

So. Emily Dickinson. Why haven't I read you before? Why did I dismiss you as some sort of American Jane Austen prim princess when you are a masochistic, sadistic, death dancing, church hating, desirous wonder-babe? I have seen the error of my ways, and boy. I love being wrong about words. Dickinson is fantastic - she packs more into a four line poem than Wordsworth ever did. She's so quietly vicious, so uptight. Her poems are like being laced into a corset, they're like shouting in the middle of the night, they are pinpricks of perfection. She is so incredibly stealthy, you don't even notice the bodily language you're using until you read it back.

Of course, none of the boys in my American Literature class are willing to give her any credit. She was "locked away". She had no "life experience". She was "socially inept". Listen, there's a big difference between "locked away" and choosing to reject the world. There's a whole world, a new language in her work that Dickinson created that I (and you, smelly boy) could never have dreamed up. It's bodily metaphysics. And besides, Allen Ginsberg loved her, so you have her to thank for those three famous lines you know. Talk to me when you've read the rest of Howl.

Ahem. Sorry. The dismissive nature of the boys in some of my classes is beginning to get to me.

So. I am in love with Emily Dickinson's words. I have also been heavily influenced by Camille Paglia's work Sexual Persona which recasts Dickinson as a female Marquis de Sade. I cannot get enough of stuff like that.

The next woman that has recently entered my life is Kate Chopin. Another American, but from the South. We read The Awakening for Women's Lit, and the best way to describe it is the first of the unhappy married women who undergoes sexual awakening novels. Except that doesn't do it justice at all. It's a powerful novel, powerful and beautiful and warm, with New Orleans and Grand Isle so vivid you can taste the sun. Edna Pontellier, the anti-heroine, is amazing. Her politics of refusal, the way she says no and refuses to give reason, is breath taking. This book is the first fin-de-seicle/Decadent book I have ever read by a woman, and I want to know more. I want to devour all her beautiful words again and again, all that lace, all that choked breath, that female Oscar Wilde, the knowing outsider. It's naturalism, you can hear her Darwinian thinking, her Greek Decadence. I feel like I always say this, but The Awakening is one of the most perfect books I have ever read by a woman.

Kathy Acker. The third American. The pickpocket. The whore. The woman who took a look at authorship and told it to fuck off. There are no words to describe Kathy Acker and The Adult Life of Toulouse Lautrec by Herni Toulouse Lautrec apart from nightmare thievery. Like Dickinson, she's bodily. Like Chopin she's refusing. Like neither of them she's pushing her way into and through desire, to satisfaction and away from it again. It's a mindfuck, complete with Henry Kissinger. My family would all hate it. Acker cheats you, cheats you the way she was cheated. Makes you push your boundaries, says "if you're some stupid boy going through a James Dean phase, I'm going to take James Dean and make you rethink him completely without changing a fucking thing."

C'est Magnifique, these women. With their desire and their anger. I don't think I knew women wrote like that. They are so refreshing, so terrifying, so beautiful, so dangerous.

Nothing else happens in my life except reading at the moment. Oh, and I saw Inception twice. For the explosions.

favourites

2010-08-15T16:40:00.004+10:00

The only reason I picked up the book in the shop was because Joseph Gordon-Levitt was looking devastating on the cover. There, I said it. I didn't expect the book to be amazing. I had no hopes for the film.

Sometimes, I really really love being wrong.

I read Mysterious Skin in one night. I remember staying up and having my throat aching the way it does when I'm tired. It was hot, Sydney being indecisive in summer, as I read about Brian Lackey and Neil McCormick. It was heartbreaking. There's not really anything uplifting about this book, except the occasional beauty in the language. It's about trying to find out who you were, and how you were that person. It's growing up in the most awful awful way. And it was all the anger, all the confusion, all the fucking hormones that I had, tied up and presented messily. It was the most believable story about aliens and being an alien I've ever read.

And then there's the film. I hate film versions of books (especially wretched Merchant Ivory). But Gregg Araki's film was exactly what I wanted. The dreamy music, the hick town, Brady Corbett as darling Brian, trying to remember the summer he was eight years old. Joseph Gordon-Levitt as cutthroatfragile Neil, who can't forget that summer. Even Michelle Tratchenberg was awesome. The whole movie captures that knife edge, when you know you're not quite grown up, but you so desperately want to be (I feel like I've been on that edge since I was about 7), when life feels hyper-real and the towns feel too small. It's confronting and gut wrenching. Mysterious Skin is unforgettable.

dotdotdot

2010-08-14T21:06:00.003+10:00

........I'm beginning to feel like maybe I have a real life beyond a computer screen. This is disconcerting, but not unwelcome. It's a like actually experiencing something, as opposed to wanting to. Of course, this does mean that I'm in a quandary over my position as a subject or an object, but I figure as long as I'm craving macaroons and a houseboat, I'm probably a subject.

I'm currently trying to analyse an utterly stupid passage from Richardson's Pamela. It's stupid, stupid and stupid and I feel stupid about it, which is also stupid. I alienated everyone in one of my tuts by accidentally letting slip the fact that sometimes, the way everyone is so obsessed with the sixties irritates me. But I didn't really explain myself. What I meant was, we go on and on about the sixties being free, and how good it was. We don't do anything to try and make our own sixties.

So clearly now, all the boys who think they're Bob Dylan won't talk to me. Which phases me not! For I was always a Mick Jagger girl! Even though these days I find it difficult to look at him!

Besides, who needs Dylan when you have Bre&Eva?? Bre is one of the most amazing people I know, and on Wednesday she and Eva played their first open mic night at a pub in Glebe. It was intimate and wonderful. They did a cover of Aqua's "Dr Jones" which was adorable, and a song in French about Grand Theft Auto. It was so lovely to watch people have fun, and to have fun myself.

I spent today having lots of fun. I was supposed to be at a funeral, but I didn't want to spend the day being sad and angry, so I danced around to KISS and thought of funny things. And refused to be guilty, which is what I feel funerals are. A big guilt party. Well, fuck that.

And on that poignant note, I better go finish this ridiculous English paper.

.............if I ever. EVER. look like I'm going to take three English subjects at once, hit me.

not dead yet

2010-07-29T22:39:00.005+10:00

Lurching. That is the best way to describe me at present. Lurching. Possibly creaking, like my bones are made of very precariously patched together scrap metal.

This is after two weeks of university, so the thought that the first two weeks have been good fills me with a sort of British Dread, y'know the "oh dear. things are going badly well, it can only get worse" sort of feeling. Optimism does not run strongly in my family, despite my best efforts at morning affirmations, which usually go "you are alive! congratulations, special snowflake!" before I fall back to sleep and dream of giant boots chasing me while brandishing copies of the Yellow Pages.

So. Faux-Academics, the only thing we talk about here (apart from irritations vexations and agitations). I'm currently studying a course on 18th-19th Century Literature (not quite sure how Kipling's 'Kim' ended up in that one), American Literature (which, in typical American fashion, refuses to travel linearly), Women's Literature (which rants and raves) and an history course that I have renamed "Why the 20th Century is so depressing". It's all terrible fun - I have been swamped by my readings, heading to bed at 2am after writing reams on Whitman and Margaret Cavendish (who was amazing), listening to bootlegs of Ginsberg reading his poetry rushing around campus trying to be in the right place at the right time, reading the unfortunately named Northrop Frye, who name drops more than I do. It's not quite the academic dream I had in mind, because people still don't really want to talk about it, but I wear a beret on days I forget to brush my hair and think about how awesome my brain's potential is.

I spent tonight at home, ostensibly dog sitting although in reality I was reading about some guy who once met Thomas Pynchon during the 60s and has never quite recovered. I wanted to sneer at him but that would be like sneering at myself (I only do that on Tuesdays). So instead I read Tennyson, who's not even on any of my courses, but my brain was hammering out like Ginsberg the night he met Moloch and really, I have to start going out on Saturday nights.

...I went out last Saturday night. I did! My siblings took me to see Bill Bailey, who was witty and outraged and called Julia Gillard a Dalek. He's probably right, I've never seen her use a stair case (only an elevator). He played Eine Kleine Nachtmusik on clown horns. We're playing that in our quartet at the moment. His was more orderly. The best thing about Bailey's comedy, for me, was that it's a little meandering, sort of whimsical. He doesn't swear just to make people laugh. My sides hurt the next day, in a good way.

This week I have to read Pamela by Samuel Richardson, Oroonoko by Aphra Behn, Inherent Vice by Pynchon and some ghastly article about the why colonialism fell to bits. I'm seeing Inception tomorrow afternoon, and planning on eating lots of yoghurt.

overboiled

2010-07-04T14:50:00.001+10:00

"If you were an Archibald prize entry, you'd be a perfect portrait of middle class guilt."

Jason, like me, is extra snarky when he's not being paid attention to. I figured this out about three minutes after I met him, and he probably worked out the same about me. The problem today is that I'm trying to make my bed, listen to his griping/advice, learn the entire Camera Obscura discography and re-read Moll Flanders.

It's the latter that's causing me the most grief. I've read it before, sure, but it's the first book we're supposed to read for the ominously titled "The Novel" course, and I want to make sure I've got a decent grasp on it. The fact that the book is currently lying on the floor under my phone suggests that there is no grasping. I got distracted by Jase and his rude comment about my hypothetical Archibald painting. Surely my hair's not that bad, I responded, and would his be any better? We're both from similar backgrounds, both irritated that we're hampered by class in a supposedly classless world, and are both attracted to prints over pastels.

Australia can be surprisingly class-centric. Currently our media is fixated on our new PM, a 10pound Pom (like my grandparents?) from Wales. The words "working class background" are tossed around like some sort of exotic salad. What does it mean? What if Gillard was a toff? Isn't she a toff anyway, being our PM and all? Can we say we're a classless society when we're turning people away from our country and always talking about those wretched baby boomers, who have ruined everything? How am I supposed to feel in all of that, when I'm the picture of the problem with our generation, unemployed and unrepentant? It gets under my skin and I can't express how I feel about my spot in life, except to say that I'm worried, probably for all the wrong reasons.

When I was thinking all of this, I got so worked up that I had to sit upside down for a bit. And then when I stopped being dizzy, I tried Moll Flanders again. The problem with Defoe is that he writes in first person, and I've never fully reconciled with first person, because there's always an annoying part of me that says "this isn't you. you wouldn't be doing this." The last book I can think of that was written in the first person that really grabbed me was The Elegance of the Hedgehog (I am looking forward, in my own anxious way, to seeing the movie)....oh! and A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr, which I read last week. It's a lovely little book about English summertime. But other than those two, I just don't 'get' first person. It's probably a middle class failing. I hope that my Archibald artist can capture that when they paint my portrait.

And that I can decline all telephone conversations until after midday.
x

When I'm not reading books, then I'm looking at them.

bite me.

2010-06-29T13:02:00.004+10:00

I woke up this morning to find that I had spent the night in bed with a copy of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. Considering I'm not even reading this book at present, and it was on my bookshelf when I went to bed, I'm a little concerned. Well, not really, as I knew that I was going to spend today finishing off Twilight, so my subconscious was probably trying to suggest something else. Let me be very clear. I am not reading Twilight by choice. I am reading it because it is a required book for my Women's Lit course. Boo hiss.

I knew my plan of getting all my reading done during the holidays would come back to bite me. Ahem.

When I found out Twilight was on the reading list, I wasn't that irritated, because most of my irritation was directed at the fact American Lit wanted me to re-read Beloved by Toni Morrison. Then they decided that they'd rather we read A Mercy, and all of my rage fell upon Twilight.

I feel this rage is justified. For I am not a reader of trashy novels. I get no joy out of reading works that rely heavily on dodgy punctuation and overusing the thesaurus. Vampires and werewolves are boring, as are passive-aggressive chiseled male love interests. But you've heard all of that already. The world is divided, after all, into people who love Twilight and people who loathe it. I was surprised that it was worse than I expected. The section in which Bella Swan takes her shabby copy of the Complete Austen outside to read, but then can't read because Sense & Sensibility has someone called Edward in it, and then Mansfield Park has an Edmund and it's all too much because it reminds her of nutjob Edward Cullen was just painful. The whole book is painful. Like having a tooth drilled - you're sort of numb from anesthetic but you know it's going to hurt later. And all the Wuthering Heights rubbish. Urgh. I can't even explain my repulsion for Heathcliffe and Cathy. My sister once commented (screamed from a rooftop) that the only way Wuthering Heights would be any good was if it had guns. I have to stop writing about these two books, with their wetfish females who don't like anything at all except the emotionally abusive, physically stupid male love interests and tendency to live in desolate landscapes. Bah.

There are lots of fun Twilight criticisms out there, much funnier and more astute than me. Two of my favourites are Cleolinda and Alex Reads Twilight.

xx

To something nicer: I'm also reading Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South which is waaaaaaaaaaay better than I thought it would be (and also better than the two mentioned above) . The books on the reading lists aren't really that bad, although I've already read half of them. I'm enjoying rereading them and thinking about why they've been picked for the courses I'm taking, what makes them special (or not). I hadn't been into a bookstore for months, and then all of a sudden I found myself in Abbeys and whoa. I must look like a big snob, as I'm mostly buying Oxford World Classics. This morning I went out to buy new shoes and came home with Les Grandes Meaulnes and Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky. I'm also powerless to resist literary journals like Brick and Zoetrope. In the face of Etsy's zine section, I'm like Napoleon at Waterloo.

............is that pathetic?

go on, go on

2010-06-16T20:15:00.007+10:00

I often think about methods of repetition, and how my life goes in circles, like Lottie chasing her tail. And I think about how the days bleed into one another, making Thursday the same as Monday. And then I think about Endgame which is my favourite play ever, and how bleakly awesome the human condition is. And now, after Wednesday night when I went to the theatre and saw Ian McKellen and Roger Rees in Waiting For Godot I think about how funny the bleakness of human existence is. That's what Beckett is all about, examining why we go on, even when we can't go on, and should we go on - what's there to do if we don't go on? No, we must go on, because going on is all there is to do. One of the things that makes Beckett accessible to me is that my entire life, my mother has (perhaps unconsciously) spoken like one of his characters. He writes in a language I understand, with his jokes satisfying my immature side. Theatre, no, Art is supposed to make you think, and I will challenge anyone who comes out of a Beckett play not thinking about their existence and motivations. Especially the current Waiting For Godot production - it's mesmerising and awesome, from the heartbeats in the music, to the ridiculous Potso, to the relationship between Vladimir and Estragon, although I admit I was mildly concerned by how old and tired Rees and McKellen looked, until they started dancing. Their movements are those of tiredly cheeky old men, and there's an element of The Goon Show in Beckett, some of Spike Milligan's sadness. If you've never seen a Beckett play, run out and go to the first one you can find.

And if you've never heard The Goon Show then really, you aren't a human being. My dad played me tapes of this radio show when I was a kid, and I've never quite recovered. Libby and I used to sit around reading the scripts together, hooting with laughter. Napoleon's Piano and The Flea were two particular favourites. The show consists of the adventures of Ned Seagoon, voiced by Harry Secombe, and his encounters with Gryptype-Thynne and Count Moriarty (voiced by Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan respectively). There's also the hilarious brown-paper trousers Bluebottle (Sellers) and the less-than-half-wit Eccles (Milligan). The show is surreal, absurd, ridiculous and fantastic, all in one, with bizarre plot lines that make no sense. They used to play it very early in the morning on ABC radio and when I couldn't sleep, I'd listen to it and be in a good mood all day. Now you can buy the cds. I presume it's on you-tube somewhere. Prince Charles is also a big fan. Libby and I used to try to get out of PE with the excuse that we had "The Lurgi", and blowing raspberries ala Bluebottle is common place in my household. I wish there was a radio programme like this on these days. Or just anything decent on the radio, really.

lemonworld

2010-06-14T23:01:00.005+10:00

Oh dear. Just a scant week after term finishes, and I've already gotten my self prepped for my exam, had my birthday and a haircut, been violently ill for three days, read all the books I borrowed from the library, exhausted my dvd collection and become terribly bored.

It seems I've been terribly busy without being busy.

Part of the problem is that I am (gosh,this is pathetic) so desperate for next term to start, and also a wee bit lonely. Any attempts to make friends with people last term sort of...fizzled. I must be very scary, due to the fact that in two of my classes I was the only person who wasn't studying education. And possibly because I had to explain who Horatio Nelson was, and people don't like it when you tell them that the telescope was invented before WW1. I don't know, really, it just felt like a weird and lonely term. So I read a lot and learned a lot and thought a lot. Nothing very profound, or if it was profound, I forgot about when some wag nearly knocked me off the train on the way home. The moment they work out a safe non sweaty route from my house to university, I'll be bike riding every day. Even in the rain. That's how much I detest the late running over crowded train ride home.

Often the train is so crowded, I can't even get my book out to read. Because the books I've been reading are very thick, or have covers with naked people on, stupid classical art, like the biography of John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester that I'm blearily making my way through. It's ridiculously awesome in its detail, but sort of heavy going. So I've my concession to the World Cup, a copy of Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals, which is about wizards who try to play football. I don't mind admitting that I'd quite like to be the Librarian from Unseen University, even though I'm not that fond of bananas.

And that's it, really. No profound thoughts or ranting. Just one tired litle pickle of a girl who's worried that the net four weeks are going to be interminably boring.

x

not exactly

2010-06-09T12:59:00.002+10:00

from Jezebel

"Doctor Who script writer Gareth Roberts would like for Lady Gaga to be on the show! "She is no stranger to dressing up and would be more than a match for the Doctor." (NYPost)

...........

No.

I have absolutely nothing against Lady Gaga, I'd just like her to stay away from the Doctor. As far as I'm concerned, she makes above average pop music that has been super hyped by her costume and staging. The woman is clearly very clever and aware of how fame works, but the thought of her on Doctor Who is a little cringe worthy, mostly because I'm not sure Gaga can step out of her persona, become an alien and let the Doctor save the day. It wouldn't be an episode of Doctor Who, it'd be an episode of Lady Gaga.

Hrmph

waterloo

2010-06-01T21:25:00.005+10:00

I turned my computer off last Tuesday, and didn't turn it on again till this evening. I did the same with my phone.

And spent the weekend with my mind on Eurovision.

There are guarantees with Eurovision - the Greeks always wear white, the Eastern European entries are particularly bizarre, the wind machines get over worked, the commentators that SBS sends to Europe are awful and snarky. France enters the same song every year and everyone pretends not to notice. Oh, and the English entry will be dreadful.

This year though, the English entry's dreadfulness was surpassed by Cyprus. Or Wales, depending how you look at it. For some reason, the songwriters who wrote the Cypriot entry couldn't find one decent singer in the country, which numbers 862.434. According to Google, so that's probably wrong. But still. So they went looking and found a Welshman. There's something about this that seems very dubious. The Welshman in question pulled his shirt up to reveal "I Love You Mum" had been written on his stomach before the performance. Which was, musically and Eurovisionally, a bit woeful.

Most of the entries that made it to the finals were woeful, come to think of it. There was the Ukraine's entry, which was an Evanescence meets Kylie apocalypse type song. Belarus did something operatic about butterflies. The highlight of Azerbaijan's entry was Jeremy and I trying to work out how to do the dance move that symbolised a "drip drop drip drop" (you make a figure eight, horizontally and then a dismissive gesture). The English entry, while an improvement on last years Andrew Lloyd Weber fiasco, was still pathetic and confusing. Iceland should have sung about volcanoes, but instead chose to sing in French. There were too many ballads, which made the Romanian duelling piano number twice as exciting as it really is (plus the male singer looked like my cello teacher). Moldova had some thrusting saxophones, Serbia sang about the Baltic-ness, but we were mesmerized by how the singer's hair surpassed Justin Beibers for hilarity. Turkey was just plain weird. The German number, which won, was very cute but needed more oomph.

The whole thing was made much more "oomphy" by the addition of a bottle of peach schnapps we found in the pantry, but the fact is, Eurovision was lacking for us this year. This was partly because of the overload of ballads, but also because LITHUANIA WAS ROBBED.

um.

We're still a bit sore about that. I mean really, Lithuania had the Eurovision package - their song was upbeat, had totally insane lyrics, inflatable instruments, an great costume reveal (plaid pants to sparkly hotpants) and was totally kitsch. Which is what Eurovision was all about. Sadly, Lithuania didn't make it past the 2nd Semi-final. My siblings and I rediscovered our (tenuous) Lithuanian heritage and threatened war.

Then my brother fell in love with the adorable Lena from Germany and defected. Traitor. Claudia got fed up with the annoying commentary from the SBS people, and I became interested in whether you could track a country's alliances/historical enmity through their Eurovision votes. Turns out you can. The French and English still hate one another, all the Scandinavian countries love each other and Georgia and Russia aren't talking.

Eurovision. It's kind of like the United Nations, except that they achieve stuff (hilarity and breaking of wind machines, mostly) and everyone else isn't invited.

Lithuania

Romania (watch the official video clip, it's hilarious)

Germany - I love Lena's pronunciation, but I wish she'd been more glittery.

***

Two days of term left, and then I can finally, finally, finally, sit down and do some reading. And clean my room. And the Film Festival starts tomorrow!

Oh, and it's my birthday in a week.

anyone's ghost

2010-05-12T22:22:00.002+10:00

My nose is always the first thing to freeze, and there was a morning where Claudia and I plotted making nose warmers out of felt and string that always makes me smile. Nowadays we talk about the Revolution, and how irritating it is that the world turns on money, not smiles.

The second thing to freeze is my toes, and I know that winter is making a valiant attempt when I wear stockings for more than a week and find myself washing them in the bathroom sink. Lottie is a jumping dog, so I've had to invest in thick stockings that she can't destroy. I caught her trying to pull them off the washing line.

And then the mornings are cold all the way through to the afternoon.

#

I read Coleridge and Foucault and Byron and Woolfe and Stein today, while listening to the National's new album. I ducked in and out of a greener land and tried not to think about how David Cameron might ruin my plans of studying in the UK, thinking instead about how terrible Oscar Wilde and I could have been, ripping through the young men of London before Alan dropped his Physics textbook on my leg, demanding I explain David Malouf.

The really rotten thing about being a Literature-History fanatic is that there's always this bloody wall between you and the things you love. It's beyond frustrating, trying to learn from the past when you can't ask questions of the people who wrote things. But only if you're an idiot, I might add. The thing that's so wonderful about being a Literature-History fanatic is that there's always this bloody wall between you and the things you love. I have spent the past two weeks thinking about E.M Forster and Radclyffe Hall and all the things they did in the name of love and education. I have been thinking, using my brain, doing the work for all the lazy idiots in my classes who are studying to be teachers but can't be bothered to think independently. I am a terrible snob, but one who is worried about the future of education in Australia. Not worried enough to become a teacher and force children to listen to me, but worried all the same.

There's a section in Orwell's 1984 which talks about how they're going to distill Shakespeare and Wordsworth, and all words until there's just one word. What if that happens?

I'll be a dinosaur.

#

i have to be careful to read things written recently otherwise the tone of my voice turns into toffery and people think i'm awful.

sometimes, a cigar is just a cigar

2010-05-08T17:11:00.003+10:00

I have opened a bag of Clinkers, and of the three I've eaten so far, they've all been banana flavoured. This sort of sums up my week. Banana flavoured lollies are gross.

I'm reading a biography of Oscar Wilde when I should be writing an assignment about the French Revolution, because I find procrastination to be far less stressful than actually working. Apparently Wilde took this approach also, and considering he churned out The Importance Of Being Earnest in three weeks, I feel confident that I can produce 2500 words of passable tripe on the French for Monday morning.

It's that point in the term, when suddenly there are 8 assignments, plus the looming threat of exams, and absolutely no light in the tunnel except for the glare of the computer screen as one tries to find something, anything that makes the smallest amount of sense that can be paraphrased and placed neatly within the confines of an argument that probably doesn't have a real argument at it's heart. The British election process makes more sense than I do at this point. At least they have people who may or may not be in charge. All I have is a packet of Clinkers and a worrying sense that the future will see me turning into my mother. This is not a bad thing, per se, (scads better than turning into my European History teacher, who is a moron) but means I will spend too much time worrying about my work, think that theatre that involves lots of shouting is "brave" and become addicted to True Blood.

And the Freud will come and hit me with a stick, whilst telling me about the symbolism of the stick. I will respond by saying "sometimes a Clinker is just a Clinker" and he will be incomprehensibly Austrian at me. We looked at Freud this week, and while the silent majority of my class (everyone except me. they must all have lockjaw) seemed to take a very very quiet academic approach to him, I just felt worried by reading Lecture 33, in which he discusses Feminine Sexuality. It worried me because it seems so prescriptive, like one must pass through the Oral, Anal, pre-Oedipal, and Oedipal stages in order to be considered a normal female. That we have to be normal. The most worrying thing of all was the way that the Freudian approach to Feminine Sexuality - which is to approach it in terms of way is pleasurable for a man - has remained the dominant ideology in popular culture's thinking of sex. We can talk about how modern we are until the cows come home, but pick up any woman's magazine, and Freud is there, waving his cigar at you.

I had a very loud conversation about this on the train home, and a little old woman kept giving us filthy looks. A few men looked decidedly uncomfortable, but when the conversation degenerated into cries of "a banana is just a banana!" "a newspaper is just a newspaper!" "communism is just communism!" and so on, people looked a little relieved.

Wouldn't do for one short literature fanatic and one tall physics genius to undo several decades of thought whilst on a late running train, would it?

minor irritants

2010-05-01T16:46:00.002+10:00

Alan is intently trying to explain the Large Hadron Collider to me, using three pencils, two cigarettes (origins unknown, neither of us smoke) a straw, a usb stick and a pencil sharpener. I have had two hours sleep and am trying desperately to understand why everyone thinks the LHC is so dangerously wonderful when he breaks off and says
"Whatever happened to that blog of yours?"'
I mutter something about Lillian Faderman and Lytton Strachley and Marston and stupid religious reforms before hurling my usb stick towards the pencil sharpener. Nothing happens except they stop moving, and we both pause. Clearly the Swiss have a better set up than we do.
"Perhaps we'd get a more realistic reaction if we used glitter."

#

I am growing used to Sydneysiders and their terrible behaviour on public transport. I have had my bottom pinched by lecherous old men in the crowds at peak hour, my pudgy upper arm pinched by a cranky woman who wanted to be standing where I was. I have had things thrown at me by idiot youths. I once had to endure a very smelly man providing the entire carriage with a running commentary about how bad my posture was.
But Wednesday just about had me learning to drive.
Sydney trains come in about four varieties, all dated from 1826. The train I was on had a bench seat that seated three, then an aisle, then a bench seat for two. I boarded this train at 8.42am at Ashfield. It was nearly full, and one thing people in Sydney hate is other people. Especially on trains. I agree with this line of thinking, but it was early and I wanted to sit down. So I politely squeezed past the tiny girl who was sitting on the aisle side of a three-seater. She though this was a bit rude, and let out a giant sigh. And threw her bag over the remainder of the seat.
I let out an equally huge sigh, and put my bag on top of hers, (it couldn't go in my lap, I had three chapters of Faderman to read before 10am).
It was a long journey, this time even longer because this girl would not stop sighing. Clearly I was an affront to decency by daring to sit near her.
When we got to Redfern, the two-seater across the aisle became free. She stood up and moved towards it, taking her bag. And mine.
"That is taking it a bit too far" I thought. So I politely, and loudly asked
"Sorry, do you mind if I have my bag back?"
She let out another huge sigh, as if this was a terrible thing for me to have asked her, and I snatched my bag back. I then stormed up into the vestibule, waiting for Central (next after Redfern). Idiot girl got out at Central too, and I was determined not to have to deal with her on the bus to uni.
She pushed in front of me in the bus queue.
By the time I got to university, I had calmed down a bit, grabbed a coffee and was nearly finished with my Faderman. I sat in the sun, slowly defrosting (mornings are cold here!) and ignoring my watch.
When I finally bothered to check the time, I realised I was two minutes late for my lecture, so I ambled off (past the continually sighing girl who was no doubt bitching about me to all her friends. unsw is a small small place sometimes). And was confronted with a sign that said
"Dear H.O.S. Students, in case you haven't checked your email, the lecture is cancelled today as Z is sick."

I went home, feeling curiously defeated by life. If I had checked my email, then I wouldn't have put myself and that girl in a bad mood.

But I still think Sydney public transport users should learn some manners. Its that or facing me on the roads.

more faux academia...

2010-04-18T21:49:00.003+10:00

Me (thought): Do you think that perhaps reason we start to see more of an awareness of the problems inherent in Othello when we attempt to place it in a modern setting, and that maybe race isn't really the crux of it, not in ways we 21st century beings conceive of it anyway. And couldn't we argue that Iago isn't a sociopath or psychopath, that he's instead displaying some sort of repression crisis emblematic of the stifling society Shakespeare lived in?

Me (out loud): Oh god. Othello hurts my head. Oh look, I need new socks.

I wish my brain had a better connection to my mouth.

I do have an issue with people "diagnosing" Iago though. I think it's stupid. When people say "Iago's a sociopath" what they mean is "I watch SVU religiously and therefore have a deep understanding of mental illness". Iago is a nasty person, beset with jealousy and insecurity. End. Shakespeare didn't put thoughts of mental illness into his characters. I'm sure someone has written a convincing paper about how Iago is a sufferer of mental illness, but until I read that, I'm sticking with my Professor's viewpoint, which is "think not what you think of Shakespeare, but what Shakespeare thought of Shakespeare", reason being, that viewpoint lets me be a hellion during class, allowing me some sort of revenge for not originally following the viewpoint in the first test. Because apparently Shakespeare didn't have a deep understanding of mental illness, but he had a deep understanding of how important youth apprentices were in his portrayal of women.

Ugh.

#

We finally got to watch the first episode of the new Doctor Who. I'm impressed, but I'm slightly underwhelmed. More explosions would have been good. Matt Smith certainly has energy (and custard and bow ties!!), and it's a different energy to Tennant's. I'm reserving judgment until at least Episode 3, but I've got my fingers crossed that Eleven doesn't turn out to be as sentimental as Ten. I may be the only person who was irritated by Ten's last few episodes, muttering "get on with it" as my mother sniffled over his angst torn face.
I fully expect legions of Tennant fans to garrote me tomorrow morning.

#

Even after spending too much time drinking Coopers last night, talking about the politics of Lady Gaga, singing along to Bon Jovi and Joy Division (god help me), in the back of my mind I was still thinking about this essay I'm writing for History of Sexuality. Normally, if this happens, it's because I know I should be home working, but last night it was because I'm actually really excited about writing this essay. It's only a few thousand words, but I'm looking at the emergence of gay and lesbian Literary Subcultures in the early 1900s, which means looking at the Bloomsbury set (Woolfe, Isherwood, Forster) and The Americans (Stein and Radclyffe Hall). It's completely awesome that during a period when national identity was being fully shaped, literary people began to move their manuscripts out of the closet. Anyway, all that probably solves the mystery of this morning: "Why I woke up with the words check antiquity chapter and climb state library written on my hand.

For a moment there I thought I was planning a heist, but when the morning fog cleared, I realised that no, no I was drunkenly planning to visit the State Library. Because I have no consistent social life to distract me from becoming emotionally invested in my work.

habitat

2010-04-15T10:04:00.002+10:00

I have a love hate relationship with libraries. I love that they are free, full of books and that there's always one stereotypical snarky librarian. But I intensely dislike that all the books are hardbound so they look the same, half the books seem to be missing because other people have the audacity to borrow them, these 'learning spaces' keep popping up which disturbs the quiet peace of the library, they make me sneeze and everything is electronic.

So I was mildly surprised to discover that the library had the book I wanted. I was slightly surprsied when the only version of it on the shelves was written in French. (This happens a lot at my library.) But I was positively shocked when a librarian walked past and asked me if I was looking for anything. When I explained, she looked over her cart, and presented me with the book I was looking for. I had a brief duel with the self-borrowing machine, and went home, surprised at my success.

Now I just have to read the damn thing.

five hundred in twenties

2010-04-02T09:51:00.003+11:00

It felt slightly sacrilegious, but I spent Good Friday writing about Onanism and Early Christian Sex, but there you go. It's not like I'm particularly attached to religious convention or thought anyway. But we live two doors from a very loud church that always seems to have bad music coming out of it. So while they were Crooning for Christ, I was writing about Onanism, and that people just couldn't stop desire. It's all so silly, how scared of desire people were...are, even. I want to be able to talk about these things, about why we're so scared of our bodies when nowadays science has largely explained them to us. But the people in my tutorial just want to talk about how they've had sexual encounters in art galleries.

#

"It's like, they couldn't see, y'know, how the Church was like, taking away their like, freedoms and like the concept of like human rights was like, totally alien. Y'know?"

I've started counting how many times people say "like" and "y'know" when they open their mouths in tutorials, because that's far easier than trying to work out if they're saying anything or just Valley Girl-ing.

#

And everything here is the usual drama-that-isn't-really-drama. My Grandparents are on the mend, and the Gray's Anatomy vibe that's been hanging about is ebbing away. Liz and the Beard are abandoning me, sorry, heading off on a European Adventure tomorrow morning. Lottie is bigger everyday and is terrified of ducks. I am trying to write an Analysis of the so-called "Crises" of the 17th Century, an essay+annotated bibliography on Freud and Dora and an essay on Othello/Antony+Cleopatra/Sex. I'm moving into the library next week, and I'll be dropping breadcrumbs behind me, otherwise you'll never hear from me again

backdrifts

2010-03-29T19:21:00.004+11:00

Some people, when presented with a crisis, will stand up and take control in a calm, sensitive manner. Others act like total tits. Some people will try and centre anything on themselves, and others will cry in corners for weeks. Some people, like my dad, will be bastions of self-control and concern, up until the point where they can't resist making some sort of joke. Others, like my brother, will be charming and cheerful. And some people, like me, get quietly angry (at goodness knows what) and have the urge to knit, because goodness knows they can't do anything else to help.

I've been thinking about all of this, partly because I'm interested in trauma culture but mostly because on Saturday evening my grandparents Gill and Phil were in a terrible car accident. They're both in pretty bad shape, but should be fine (in a few months). My brother and I spent most of yesterday in RNS Hospital with Rob, our step uncle, waiting and waiting and waiting until we could see them. When we did see them, they were both pretty out of it. And because I couldn't do anything, I fidgeted. Which is where my desire to knit came from, presumably. And I thought about how we deal with trauma, and as my mind is wont to do when I think about trauma, and trauma culture and memory culture and all these things I've read about but never actually studied, I ended up at what is considered the Heart of Australian Identity, ANZAC Day, and had to go breathe into a paper bag for a bit.

Perhaps I am one of those people who makes everything about them.

I can't begin to describe how relieved our family is that they're alive. (and making rude jokes about nurses)

#

And when mum and dad got to the hospital (they'd driven for four hours from Orange) suddenly everything got a whole lot more real. Everyone looked tired and older than usual. Watching Dad was bizarre, and I think I probably haven't processed all of this, so I shouldn't really be thinking about it. Phil did lots of silly morphine talk.

#

Sunday morning saw Lottie and I going on our daily walk, wherein she drags me around for an hour and I trip over things and wonder why I'm awake at 6.30, when it's still dark. At that time of day, it's as if nothing bad has ever happened. Lottie snuffles and mumbles to herself and is just so dear that I feel we could spend all day walking.

with eyes that had gone intensely blue

2010-03-22T20:40:00.006+11:00

I have spent all afternoon trying to write something about how wonderful E.M. Forster's Maurice is. It's a beautiful book on so many levels - the story, of Maurice Hall and his awakenings & growth - mostly sexual, but also spiritual, political - the rejection of urban England and civilisation - the love between Maurice and Clive and Alec - Maurice's heartbreak, which is so very devastating, like every first heartbreak is - the writing itself which is so tense, so perfect -the sense of change in the air -the way you can see Forster in the story - that, (according to Leavitt in the intro essay in the penguin 2005ed) Forster writes himself out of the story -the ending, which is so dearly vague as to let you think that maybe, maybe happy endings exist.

I loved this book. I've read it five times in the past week, which is not a massive thing because it's only 214 pages, but there's so much there. This is the best criticism of English culture I have ever read. This is the best gay novel I have read, because I think it's one of the best real love novels. The fact that this is a gay novel, written in 1914, is essential to what makes it great . I could go on and on and on about Maurice. But instead I think I'll cross my fingers and hope you love it as much as I do.

His mind had cleared, and he felt that they were against the whole world, that not only Mr Borenius and the field but the audience in the shed and all England were closing around the wickets. They played for the sake of each other and of their fragile relationship - if one fell the other would follow. They intended no harm to the world, but so long as it attacked, they must punish, they must stand wary, they must show that when two are gathered together majorities shall not triumph. And, as the game proceeded, it connected with the night, and interpreted it.
-page178-8, Maurice, E.M. Forster, Penguin 2005ed.

seven hundred billion stairs

2010-03-14T21:37:00.004+11:00

The first two weeks of term are always draining and raining. I spent the first week in a daze with "buy notebooks" on my hand, trying to remember the names of people I'm sure I've met. There are lots of orange tanned people. None of my lecturers can work the projection system. There's standing in the massive line at the bookstore to spend over $200 on textbooks, then another hour in the second hand bookstore to spend far too much on Shakespeare and books that I don't need for school, but want to read anyway. The stairs still steal my breath. The bus line gets longer every year, and they still haven't realised that they need more than one bus at midday.

It's good to be back.

Although I feel a little out of place, like someone is going to tap me on the shoulder and ask me where my mummy is. Like I've been let into second year by mistake, and the computers haven't noticed yet.

The subjects I'm taking are mostly history based, so as I've been doing the readings, I've managed to forget that there's this thing called the Internet. Really. When reading about trade routes or city walls in 15th Century Europe, or sex hierarchies in Ancient Greece, I'm sort of amused and awed by the way people found something to do with their lives other than post comments on Facebook. Which is what every student with a laptop is doing during lectures.

While I'm still managing to make an idiot of myself in tutorials, my lectures are interesting (so far) - my Modern Europe; Renaissance to Revolutions lecturer managed to make city walls almost as interesting as the awful things people used to do to one another (reigniting my interest in Heloise & Abelard). My History of Sexuality class isn't so much about sex, as it is about what people think of sex, identity and the relation between the two. And the two subjects link quite nicely with one another, as does my third class (yes, I'm being lazy and doing 3 classes. I couldn't find a fourth one I liked)

I did run away from Creative Writing, but it was more of a considered retreat. I found myself sitting in the first lecture being ridiculously worried by the number of people wearing berets. I myself own two berets, but had forgotten to wear one that day. I then realised that I would spend the entire semester in a ridiculous state of self derision and judgment, which would result in much unneeded angst and bad writing. So I enrolled in Shakespeare & Renaissance Drama, and couldn't be happier. The lecturer is brilliant, and the fact that we get to study other playwrights from Shakespeare's era is awesome, because the sex-violence-nexus focus of the time is fascinatingly dangerous, scintillating and so very clever.

I don't think I really wanted to be a writer anyway - a creative writer at least. I don't like the word "creative" as it simultaneously says "what we do is better than academic writing" and "this isn't real work". The idea of there being a correct way to write is also unnerving. But what terrified me most was having to share my work every week. I don't like having to explain my choices to people, and will often attempt to blind you with library science and intertextuality if you ask me to justify myself. "If Marcel Proust did it, so can I!". Why I'm trying to justify my choice to drop Creative Writing is beyond me. I'm happier writing papers with an academic edge, working on developing my own voice in essays. Is that nerdy? I don't really care.

Back to Shakespeare. We're currently studying Romeo & Juliet. I once saw a production of R&J done by girls from my school and boys from the local private. The concept somehow involved Bruce Springsteen songs as musical interludes performed by ex-students. The masquerade scene had Lady Capulet dressed as a naughty Red Riding Hood. Having never read the play until now, I was quietly pleased that it's much much funnier and bawdier than any school production is ever allowed to be.

And while the stories Shakespeare told are old hat to us, I think it's important to remember that at the time, this was new - it was fresh. The tale of Romeo and Juliet went against all social conventions, and today still forces a judgment of the characters. Richard the 3rd (one of my dear favourite plays) is amazing political propaganda for the Tudor family, as is Henry VIII. The plays also saw the invention of phrases that are still in use "beast with two backs" and "forgone conclusion" being but two. My highschool English teacher, when asked why we had to study Hamlet, placed her hands to her expansive bosom and sighed. "Because, my darlings, are we not all, in some way, Hamlet?" What she lacked in clarity, she made up in gravitas.

I suppose I could have just said "I took Shakespeare because it fit in my timetable" instead of waxing lyrical, but waxing lyrical about things is what I'm best at, and what this blog is all about.

i think too loudly

2010-03-02T20:04:00.003+11:00

UM. I think if you added up all the words I wrote in February and did some sort of mathematical thing with them, then you'd find that I did write about 25 words a day. Just not on every day. What happened was that real life got in the way. Insomuch as I have a life. I got sick, my computer got sick, my dog needed lots of walking and there were lots of books to read . (and my merlin series two dvd arrived, so there was lots of laughing to be done). But now I'm back at university, and thinking more than I do in the summer.

I've been thinking about misanthropy, and how it's becoming something we like in ourselves - most of our conversations are complaining, we actively deride the mainstream, nothing is ever good enough. It's beginning to worry me, but I'm counteracting it by looking at pictures of puppies, people with tattoos and making faces at babies - that's one of my favourite things to do, make a funny face at a small new person, and seeing their reaction. Most babies grin with delight at getting attention, some look confused. When I was working for CullaChange, a woman was having a very serious discussion with my coworker Dee, while I poked my tongue out at her baby. When they finished talking and the woman looked at her baby again, the baby stuck its tongue out. The mother said "Where did you learn to do that?!?". One of my more awesome moments, I think.

I've had non awesome moments recently. Sometimes I am a nasty person. I have a competitive streak that never found a sporting activity to keep it quiet. So I measure myself up against everyone else, and find myself wanting, every. single. time. It's getting boring. I also hate admitting that I'm wrong. All this leads to inarticulate stomping around. I know what's wrong, but I can't get it out, because I feel stupid. (And also, I feel like in this post-therapy culture where everyone's fucked up, we're becoming more cynical about people having bad days.) So the past few weeks saw me stomping around because I can't have what I want, but someone else can, but I don't want to get what they have the same way they did, I want to do it all on my own. Does that make any sense at all? Probably not.

This all culminates in me having to have an awkward talk with my father. My parents and I aren't talkers. It's awkward. I never got the sex talk all my friends did, my mother and I don't have heart to hearts. We talk about books or theories more than we talk about our feelings. Anyway, the awkward talk about what's wrong with me (because it is nearly always me) involves a clarinet, a hyperactive puppy and three tissues. I admit that I am not a nice person, but that I would like to be. My dad says possibly the best thing he's ever said to me (however cheesy it renders on here)

"So you aren't a nice person. But you want to be. That's the most important thing. You want to be good, and you try."

And then he compared me to Lancelot*, and things went back to being academic.

*people think Lancelot was the bravest knight. But he was always the most scared, and had to work the hardest at not running away. It doesn't seem as important when you learn that Thomas Malory based Lancelot on his perception of himself.

canada's greatest export

2010-02-14T18:02:00.005+11:00

"All the disparates of the world, the different wings of the paradox, coin-faces of problem, petal-pulling questions, scissor-shaped conscience, all the polarities, things and their images and things which cast no shadow, and just the everyday explosions on the street, this face and that, house and a toothache, explosions which merely have different letters in their names, my needle pierces it all, and I myself, my greedy fantasies, everything which has existed and does exist, we are part of a necklace of incomparable beauty and unmeaning."

- Leonard Cohen Beautiful Losers Vintage Books 1966, page 17.

My head always spins when I read Beautiful Losers. Having the Winter Olympics on in the background doesn't seem to make much difference, although the Luge terrifies me.

skip this

2010-02-13T23:12:00.003+11:00

Today was a manky day. You know, one of those days where everything seems slightly off and irritating and you don't really know why, nor do you know what you want to be doing. today was manky, and steamy and rainy and dull. My A string kept going flat, and this new Haydn piece we're playing in Quintet is boring - bloody wind instruments get all the interesting parts, and the two cellos don't get anything challenging because the other cellist doesn't like to over exert herself. Hrrmph. This wretched TinTin book I'm trying to read has such potential, but is so bland. Everything on telly is about some giant sporting event in Vancouver, my cooking is still an utter disaster (if the recipe says sunflower oil, don't use olive oil, your cupcakes will sweat) and really, this whole "blogeverydaytogetreadyforcreativewriting" business was a silly idea.

I hope tomorrow is not manky.

thunder

2010-02-12T22:23:00.002+11:00

I really have to start making more of an effort to go out on Friday nights - otherwise I stay home watching Silent Witness, wishing I was a forensic pathologist and had Dr Nikki Alexander's wardrobe.

The cricket has been rained/thunderstormed out, which makes me feel better about not going. Lottie came home from being "fixed" today and celebrated by chewing on the TinTin novel I'm trying to read. I suspect that was some sort of cultural commentary. The book - TinTin In The New World is weird, but I can't work out if it's due to translation problems or Belgian uppityness.

Have a swell weekend!

every word, every word

2010-02-11T21:23:00.003+11:00

"Like any form of Art, literature's mission is to make the fulfillment of our essential duties more bearable. For a creature such as man, who must forge his destiny by means of thought and reflexivity, the knowledge gained from this will perforce be unbearably lucid. We know that we are beasts who have this weapon for survival and that we are not gods creating a world with our own thoughts, and something has to make our wisdom bearable, something has to save us from the woeful eternal fever of biological destiny."

- from page 244 of The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery (Gallic 2008 English Edition)

I am going to have this printed on to small cards so that when people ask me why I so desperately love literature and so desperately believe in authors who are the opposite of Dan Brown, I can give them a card, smile smugly and return to my book.

I was a bit suspicious of Barbery's book, because I am a snob who would prefer to read something no one else has read so I can be all snobby about it. It's a habit I picked up from an undesirable acquaintance and a habit I'm trying to get rid of. When Amanda recommended The Elegance of the Hedgehog I realised that I had to get over myself. I handed over my $25 (what is the deal with rising book prices, dear government, do you want to encourage boorishness?) and curled up with Lottie (who likes to gnaw everything, including the remote, whatever book I'm reading and her own tail). I was pleasantly surprised. While some of the writing style seems a little heavy, there's such intelligence within that you can forgive that. The autodidact concierge Renee and the anti-bourgeois teenager Paloma are delightful. I wish I'd been as intelligent as Paloma when I was twelve - the way that Barbery has written is mischievously world-weary, if one can be such a thing, without being cynically pretentious. And Renee is the sort of woman that I would like to have tea with. Self taught, secretly smarter than the people she has to work for, she's just delightful. The ebb and flow of the two women's voices is lovely, the way their thoughts intertwine and their lives begin to move closer together.

What I enjoyed most though, was the appreciation of little moments that Barbery and her characters have, whether it's watching owners try to separate their dogs or defending Grammar or watching rose petals, there is a feel that, as Paloma says (on page269) "beauty consists of its own passing, just as we reach for it....Maybe that's what being alive is all about: so we can track down those moments that are dying." You might find that morbid, but I think in this busy modern world where we worry about our superannuation when we're only 21, we need to find those dying moments, those things that will never happen again. If only so that we don't feel like beasts.

x

Dearest Cricket Australia,
It has been a summer of lots of cricket, hasn't it? And you're not finished yet, not by a long shot! I understand your desire to promote your sport and make as much money as possible, but I have one or two issues to raise with you. Firstly, there is too much cricket happening. We, the viewers, are bored. We are turning off the television, having stomached more than enough of Channel 9's abysmal excuse for a commentary team, we are staying away from the cricket grounds. Might I suggest that whatever you have planned for the 2010-2011 season, you cut in half. Yes, in half. Yes, I know this means the Ashes tour will be shorter, but really, unless the English cricket team can promise that all its players will be fit, in a competitive mood, then watching Australia beat the Poms 5 test matches in a row is going to be very very dull. Even if they do win back that little pot of ashes. So shall we say 3 tests instead of 5, half the number of one-day matches, and for goodness sake, don't schedule any Twenty20s. They are boring, bogan cricket and make Bill Lawry wet his pants. There is barely any tension in Test cricket, let alone one-dayers and Twenty20. Tension is the whole point of cricket. It is a gentleman's game, it's supposed to be full of barely restrained fury, twirly mustaches and cries of "jolly good show!". Not Bill Lawry's nasal cries of whatever it is he goes on about. While we're at it, new commentary team please. Perhaps with a woman or two involved - I'm sure I'd be fabulous at it.
My next issue with you, dear Cricket Australia, is your ticket prices. My brother and I were all set to help your declining audience numbers tomorrow at the one day match between the West Indies and Australia. At $50 for a Bronze ticket, which would put us two lily livered pasty pants out in the scorching sun for the majority of the match, I have to regretfully tell you to get stuffed, and lower your ticket prices. It's not worth it - not when the result of the match is practically a foregone conclusion. Which brings me to my final point - Until there is a team willing to get their act together and offer the Australians some decent competition, the Australian team must play not with 11 members, but 10. They must also bat with their less dominant hand and during batting power plays, at least 6 of the fielders must have a hand tied behind their backs. I say this not as someone proud of her national team, but as someone very very very very bored with Australia winning all the time. It's boring. And they are so ungracious about that. Someone get Jerome K. Jerome back from the dead, I'm sure he could teach them how a gentleman should play cricket.
So, dearest Cricket Australia, don't let me down. I (and probably all the other viewers who have turned off the teev) am counting on you.
Sincerely,
Madeleine
P.S. If you could get Channel 9 to stop going to the news at 6 o'clock if the team that isn't Australia is batting, that'd be great. I wrote them a rude letter about the colonial racist undertones and double standards, but they haven't replied. Pip-pip!

hic.

2010-02-10T22:53:00.003+11:00

{Loud sighs of happiness}
Reasons for the awesomeness of Shakespeare pub:
-it might be the only pub in Sydney that doesn't play music - or if it does, it's not so loud that your eardrums bleed.
- it's also the only place in Sydney where I don't feel embarrassed for being a Pimms drinker.
- watching ten grown men being told the pub has no shot glasses, and seeing them do shots from tumblers of whiskey - and seeing their faces afterward.
- all the people there who don't drink to get drunk.

I have the hiccups.

charmed

2010-02-09T20:25:00.005+11:00

from here

There are some people whose guilty reading pleasure is Harlequins. But for me, re-reading the Harry Potter series will always cheer me up (like yesterday, when I spent the day reading books 1 though 5 and missed posting). Even though I know my letter from Hogwarts is never coming.

Sometimes though, I wonder what my patronus would be (and secretly want it to be a fox or a bear)- ever done that?

malcontent

2010-02-07T22:15:00.002+11:00

isn't the point of civil service and servants to be civil-minded? not just with their manners, but with regards to their intentions - they should have the city and its inhabitants in mind? not just their bank balance and superannuation fund? doesn't the basic definition of civil servants cover not just government officials, red tape loving bureaucrats but teachers, doctors, nurses, public transport operators?

sorry, i'm just crabby because they closed my train line this weekend, but haven't done any work because of the rain. and they hiked my ticket price up. and had the audacity to tell me "be patient, we have your interests at heart".

if my interests were at the heart of civil servant operations, books would be a hell of a lot cheaper, and my university would have a train station.

i wish we could have some sort of bloodless coup in NSW.

more of a response than a review

2010-02-06T21:29:00.005+11:00

I didn't blog yesterday. I had good reasons! My computer was being crabby, and I was a bit exhausted.

Yesterday though, I went to see Precious

(here)

It broke my heart.

I knew it was going to, and that made it worse.

I don't want to write too much about the story line of the film, but the basic story line is such: Clareese Precious Jones is 16, pregnant with her second child by her father, abused by her mother. She lives in Harlem, and gets the chance to go to an alternative school and really learn.

There is always something weird about saying I "liked"/"enjoyed" a movie like Precious. It's a horrible story, it's bleak, it's humanity at its worst. But it was one of the best films I have ever seen. ever. It was perfectly acted, perfectly filmed, perfectly scored. Gabourey Sidibe as Precious was radiant, devastating. Paula Patton as her teacher Ms Rain was so patient, so gentle. Mariah Carey was so so so not Mariah Carey like, and made me cry when I thought I'd run out of tears. And Mo'Nique was fucking terrifying and heartbreaking. They all deserve Academy Awards.

Any film that deals with violence, rape and poverty risks being a caricatured farce. any actor that attempts these things risks being a caricature, not a character. We laugh when we're uncomfortable, and any movie that attempts to deal with the things Precious deals with risks that. I think that's what I was most worried about in seeing this film. But there was none of that. Not once did I want to laugh at Precious. I laughed with her, and I cried with her, for her. I was terrified of her mother to the point of physically curling in on myself every time she was on screen. There was nothing funny about any of the violence or sexual abuse, just dull bile on the back of my tongue.

This is not a comfortable film or a sentimental film, despite the basic undertone that anything is possible. This is a film about doing things yourself, putting yourself first. It's quite possibly one of the most important films I've ever seen. I could talk like the women who sat behind me* about how lucky I am, how lucky Precious was to get a chance to turn her life around. I could be all colonial and talk about skin colour, except making assumptions based on skin colour is the stupidest thing ever. But what I want to say is that I know people like Precious are worth the effort. Most humans, apart from politicians, are worth the effort. We forget that. We get comfortable, and then we talk about how there shouldn't be movies that make us uncomfortable. That's bullshit. You need to feel uncomfortable every now and then, even if it only makes you feel lucky. But, if like me, you feel the need to do something, then you can get off your fat behind and donate some time, some money, a smile, to making everyone feel loved, to making everyone feel precious.

*if there is a god, please don't let me turn into an abominable lady who lunches and talks through movies about carpet.

pudding

2010-02-04T23:30:00.002+11:00

burnt my toast this morning, set off the smoke alarm, which is too high for me to reach. don't tell anyone that i clambered on top of the piano to turn it off.
have decided to stick to bananas for breakfast.

x

have planned a very busy schedule for the next few days in order to get my brain to work again. this lazy summer holiday nonsense is turning me into pudding.

they tell me my cupcakes are nice

2010-02-03T22:20:00.003+11:00

Yesterday I made a cake that exploded and covered the oven in ginger goo.
Today I made a bowl of muesli explode and cover the inside of the microwave in goo and nuts.
I think tomorrow I'll have toast.

x

It is February, the time of the great wet torrential rain in Sydney.
Normally people rejoice about this.
My grandma is grousing because she can't do the washing.
Lottie seems to like mud.

easily swayed

2010-02-02T21:34:00.002+11:00

have you ever picked up a book that you had been reading, but left off for a bit? and when you sat down to read that book, you felt inexplicably lost, but you couldn't have been, because you're sure you got this far, after all, that's where the bookmark is, right? you must have been up to page 263, unless....

unless someone moved the bookmark.

i'm not sure whether i should feel silly for thinking i was losing my memory, or for thinking that i'd plowed through more of The Last Cavalier than i had, or for trusting that a book left on our kitchen table for two weeks would go untampered with.

double-dog-dare

2010-02-01T20:58:00.004+11:00

It has been too hot to blog. Also, my inexplicable dislike of the word "blog" sometimes turns me off. Someone fix this please, and while you're at it, do something about the words "lubricant" and "moist". Those words make my skin crawl.

(I'm watching my sister organise my books into alphabetical order. It's kind of bizarre, and vaguely slave-labour-esque. Still, she was the one who wanted to do it. I now have two bookcases, one for fiction and one for non-fiction. I was pleasantly surprised by how much non-fiction I own, although most of it is travel and music related. Or educational. At any rate, this is the most organised my books (and I) have ever been. Claudia predicts it will last a month before I knock something over.)

As it's February now, and my summer is slipping away, university looming closer like a big scary thing, I feel I should try and get back into blogging. As much as the word disgusts me. So I apologise in advance, but I've challenged myself to write a twenty five word minimum entry per day for the entirety of this month. I'm an over-talker by nature, so this should be easy. I'm apologising in case its boring. I think the problem with my blogging is that I've never been sure exactly what to write about - and when I do find something, it never comes out right.

Someone very drunk once told me that you can't ever be right, you just have to be consistent. Which makes absolutely no sense, but you know, drunk people don't have to make sense. I think perhaps what he meant is that you just have to be doing something, and that sometimes repetition is kind of helpful.

The same person also asked me to try to be more cultured.
So I've made some Bircher museli, and am waiting for the culture to set in.

No, no, seriously, some real culture for you: I'm reading A Very Long Engagement by Sebastien Japrisot, which is the novel the movie was based on. As is often the case with these things, the book is almost completely unrecognisable to the movie. The main characters, Mathilde and Manech are dealt a much harder hand than they are in the movie. You get a sense though of how World War One left no one untouched, from the stories Mathilde collects as she tries to find Manech. I haven't finished it yet, but I'm hoping the ending is similar (or better) than the movie.

I dragged Claudia to see The Princess and the Frog on Friday. Best Disney movie in years. Really. Better than Mulan and Aladdin, on par with Beauty and the Beast. There's a fully formed world, with awesome jazz and blues music, jokes on every level for everyone, a decent story line and characters who do more than wait around for fate to be nice to them. The Alligator, Louis, is awesome. And the food! I think I've talked about how much I love Southern USA food. I was drooling, and this is a cartoon. I have to convince my family we need a deep fryer so I can make beignets. Go and see it. I'll come, and bring pecan pie.

Um, all that was way more than 25 words.

all the walls in your house (a very boring entry)

2010-01-24T22:19:00.005+11:00

The past few weeks have been utterly mad, in that way that isn't really mad, but feels so. And the list of things to do is still not done!!! It keeps getting longer!!! Yet again I'm reminded of my tendency to be a total sook and a complete quitter. Fortunately my mother is Iron Woman who threatens me with early mornings if I don't do what she says immediately. When I point out that I am twenty one and therefore not a child, she gently points out that I am twenty one, still living at home and once again unemployed. And then I do as she says, whilst scouting the job ads.

All this is vaguely humiliating and made worse that it all happened whilst I was wearing an unflattering pair of short shorts, an old shirt three sizes too big and several layers of paint.

We've repainted my room. I wish I had photos to share, but my camera is packed away in a box somewhere, as is my usual computer. It was a mammoth undertaking that began about six months ago, when my mother pointed out (as she does every time she enters my room) that it was a bit of a swamp, with manky walls. I responded that maybe we should paint it, she agreed and then we probably had an argument about my tendency to leave everything everywhere. I should perhaps note that this tendency spawned as a result of my wardrobe door breaking about 8 years ago when I hid in it, for reasons forgotten.

Then I decided (probably drunkenly) that 2010 would be "the year that I did all the things I say I'll do but never get around to doing" starting with revamping my room from its pink and green with white rose trim little girliness. My mother also must have been intoxicated, because we got the ball rolling quite quickly. We had an inspiration trip to Ikea, where I bought the LameLamp and lamented that I couldn't have a sled bed. We traipsed to our local hardware store to pick paint colours, and I decided I wanted barely there colours.

This was a mistake.

Barely there colours used to be the bane of my existence when I worked for Culla Change . North Shore dwellers with their expensive silk shirts would appear at my desk and say "I'm after a colour that's sort of eggshell, but y'know, lighter." or the woman who demanded "Latte" and told me "No, that's not Latte, that's Cappuccino." I thought I had sworn never to become one of those women, until I found myself looking at paint samples. All of the whites had too much yellow in them, the creams were just gross, the pinks looked like pigs innards, red "wouldn't fit with the house" (Nippan do an awesome red called Redcoat that I am going to use one day.) and I knew I didn't want purple. I am not a purple person.

That left me with blue and green. Green was vetoed, because when we moved in here (15 years ago) the walls were sickly green. So that left blue.

I picked Taubmans' Orchid Dew and City Lights. Last Monday Mum and I undercoated my room, which was a giant hassle because I am 147cm and my room is nearly 3500cm high. I sort of had to charge the walls with my paint roller. Then we put the samples on the wall. Orchid Dew looks like a faded purple bruise and City Lights is the colour of London sky when it can't decide if it wants to rain. But you wouldn't think that if you looked at the little cards you get at the paint shop.

Annoyed, we trudged back to the paint shop on Tuesday, where we spent nearly TWO HOURS trying to pick a colour. Most of my choices were made in frustration and shot down, as apparently our 170year old house has a tone that needs to be maintained or the people from the historical society will come beat us with spoons. Curse my parents. Finally I grabbed what looked like a nice pale blue called Chalkdust. As I was charging to the counter, I noticed something called Angora Blue. (I want to be one of the people who names paint colours) which looked like a sort of washed out sky blue. My mother bought me a Mars bar to stop me grizzling, and we went home.

The Chalkdust looked like the London sky does when its just decided to rain because it knows you didn't bring your umbrella. Gross. Angora blue however, would do. It's crisp and fresh and not sodding purple. Mum threw her hands up in relief and went back to the paint shop. I had a nap on the sofa, where I'd slept the past two nights.

I hate sleeping on sofas. People assume I don't mind sofas, because I'm little. But I am, as previously explained, a weird sleeper. I need a little bit of space. Our sofa is kind of narrow. And the back of it curves out slightly. I don't know, its fine for naps during the day, but a whole night is a bit much.

The other part about sleeping on the sofa is Lottie. Little Lottie is not that little anymore, at 18kgs. And every morning, when she's let in, she tears around the kitchen to the lounge room and jumps on the sofa. This is bad. It's also bloody painful when you're fast asleep and a canine cannonball jumps on you and tries to lick your face off. After two mornings like that, I was a bit tired. So naturally, I fell asleep on the sofa. And Lottie jumped on me. And licked my face.

Once we got painting though, it wasn't too bad. Idlewild turns out to be the best music to paint to, even if I had a bit of an embarrassing moment during The Space Between All Things because Roddy Woomble always sounds a bit sneery when he sings "all the walls in your house were painted in deep blue/you're at that indecisive age to choose colours that reflect you." but Mum dripped paint on my head and I got over it.

On Wednesday morning while Lottie was busy sleeping on my stomach, Mum painted my floorboards. Then we went to the theatre, which I've written a post about, but it needs rethinking as I'm probably being too rude about religion. I spent Wednesday night on the sofa again.

Thursday morning we went to Ikea. I'd done my research, and thought we could just pop in and pick up the new wardrobe, table, chair and underbedthingforshoes that I wanted. I reckoned without my mother, who is like a small puppy when presented with stores like Ikea. We left with the things I had wanted, but also a cutlery holder (that is now a pen holder), a wooden plate thing, two packets of napkins, a door mat, two new garbage bins, two storage boxes, a standing mirror and a stuffed toy mouse. I have no idea how that happened.

My silly thinking continued - I was under the impression Ikea furniture would be easy to put together. Mum and Jeremy made jokes about losing the Allen key whilst hauling the stuff upstairs. I tackled the chair, and got half way before cursing the Swedes. Turns out Ikea furniture is not made with Left handed people in mind. By the time we got to putting the table together, I was sent away and told I was useless. The Right Handed people continued without me.

It took until Saturday to get everything together. I'm back in my own bed now, and all that's left to do is paint my bookcases from pink to white and then reorganise my books. There was a lot of shouting, and my room smells a bit like paint. My mother claims I'm going to have to keep everything tidy, and I'm thinking that as good as mother-daughter bonding is, we've had enough to last us the rest of 2010.

And for all my siblings jokes about not losing the Allen key, I have to admit I've got no clue where it is now.

light up

2010-01-12T21:03:00.003+11:00

It's far too hot to do anything except watch the Australian cricket team drag our national identity (as well as good old fashioned manners) into the dirt. Except the cricket doesn't start for another few days, so I have to content myself with watching the dog chase her tail, or reading the new Walter Moers novel The Alchemaster's Apprentice (which is awesome).

Oh, and I'm cursing this stupid lamp I bought from Ikea. I shouldn't have bought it in the first place, but the lure of Swedish sensibility, combined with the deep desire to get out of a warehouse that is better organised than I will ever be, and full of people I never want to see again forced me into buying the dumbest lamp ever.

The lamp is solar powered.

On the surface, this is a very good idea. My new watch is solar powered - an hour of sunlight keeps it going for 6 months, and because it gets exposure to light every day it will never stop! I must have been thinking of that when I bought this wretched lamp.

I've forgotten what cutesy name the lamp has, but I've renamed it. LameLamp. To begin with, you have to remove the solar cell and place it in direct sunlight for at least 9 hours, preferrably 12. I decided I would leave it on my veranda for two days straight, thinking that would mean sunlight from about 5.30am to 7.30pm. Doubled, that's about 21 hours.

9 hours gets you 3 hours of lamp time, from the LameLamp. 3 nines are 21, so that should give you about 9 hours, right? (My maths skills are hazy) WRONG.

ONE HOUR. THIRTY MINUTES. The LameLamp begins to dim.
ONE HOUR. FIFTY MINTUES. The LameLamp dims further.
TWO HOURS. LameLamp goes out.

Poor little LameLamp.

Clearly I expected too much, as I so often do. I could take the LameLamp back, but I feel sorry for it. I don't really use my desk that much (preferring to do most of my work at the UNSW Library, where the lights are powered by the souls of the Engineering students, apparently), so as long as I remember to put the solar cell in the sunlight in the morning, we should be ok.

Ha.

Give it a month, and I'll be posting about how my room has no lights because I keep forgetting to charge my LameLamp.

x

Remember my mention of continued employment? This turned out to be a phallacy, a falsehood, a misconception. I am unemployed as of next Sunday. While this is frustrating, I'm not worried. Not yet, anyway.

Mostly I'm looking forward to not hearing Susan Boyle ever again.

half awake

2010-01-01T13:00:00.003+11:00

Greetings 2010. I hear you bring much goodness - an expedition or two, a decorating project, a new Doctor Who, an Editors tour, many good albums, a Marcel Proust project, 2nd year university courses, continued employment,the demise of hotpants. Despite making the last one up (someone has to start the trends), 2010 looks like it will be better than 2009. Mostly because we are now out of the dreaded"noughties" and into the "twenty-tens", which sounds more grow up, and should encourage maturity.

Maturity. That's a dastardly word that should only be applied to wine and cheese. It's certainly not a word applicable to most of the people I know (in a good way), or the people I've had the misfortune to meet since I began working (in a bad way). I think it's the sales. Especially Boxing Day. It's like the Battle of Hastings, except with make-up and dvds. People revert to their most primal, grunting and chucking their credit cards at the poor sod behind the register - because they know we have no souls. We are soulless spineless people, deserving only of abuse, scorn and disdain.

No, I'm serious. Boxing Day saw me having to show my work tag to the police barricading my workplace, having my bottom pinched in the crowd, numerous insults about my height from people I'd never met, idiotic questions galore:

Customer: Do you have the Fantastic Mr Fox?
Me: um, it only came out today
Customer: Yes, so can you tell me where it is?
Me: in the Cinemas.

It would be nice and twee to say that the small girls who come to the counter clutching Madagascar make up for all this, but they don't. I am not good with kids, and kids are not good with me.

Still, there are worse jobs.

So, Welcome 2010. I meant to give you a proper greeting, but I veered off. I hope this is a good year. I hope bad shit doesn't go down. I hope all the resolutions work. I hope we don't sink because of climate change. I hope BRMCs new album is good. I hope they stop Twilight.

I also hope this is a year where I can 'reclaim' the words impact, decimate and however.

xo

We saw Avatar today. I got in trouble for my over-thinking of the films portrayals of Indigenous people AND Americans. I can't help it. I'm a critical thinker - someone has to be.
James Cameron shouldn't be allowed to write dialog.

my feet ache!!!

2009-12-23T22:46:00.003+11:00

I have lost count of the number of Susan Boyle albums I have sold to gleeful Grannies. I have lost count of the number of times I've been asked "where are the men's toilets?" I haven't lost track of how much I hate Susan Boyle's voice, or how mundane Michael Buble is, or how if I ever meet some lamer called "Pitbull" I'm going to kick him in the teeth.

I don't feel very Christmas-y at all, which is a shame. My feet hurt, my ears are sort of ringing, and my tongue is kinda sore from biting - you can't talk back in retail. If I could, I would have told the arse who yelled at me today because I wouldn't sell him an iPod because we don't stock them to learn some sodding manners.

On the plus side, Emma and I have done lots of dancing.

And I have two new pairs of black shoes that aren't boring, are mostly comfortable and good for work or whatever I end up doing.

And we close at 6pm tomorrow, which is the earliest in about 3 weeks!!!!!

Merry Christmas All

Ugh. Not very updatey or interesting. Wait till after the Boxing Day sales

yikes.

2009-12-18T09:59:00.003+11:00

nobody i work with has a sense of humour.
this makes things very awkward, sometimes. (often)

yesterday a customer threw 2 dvds at my head.
and three people (all irish) told me that australians don't queue as well as the british.

if one more person tells me to "think of the money"
i will shove the money somewhere that they'll never forget.

christmas cheer?
sod it all.

-

(i was going to do proper haiku, but am exhausted. consider these post modern haikus)

help!

2009-12-15T11:34:00.004+11:00

If you were me, and you had a choice between two subjects - one being "Creative Writing" and the other being "Slavery & Freedom: US History 1750-1890", which would you pick???

I'm sort of nervous about creative writing, but I'm not sure I could handle doing three history subjects (the other two subjects i'm enrolled in are History of Sexuality and History Of Europe: Revolutions). So any and all advice is welcome. (Please don't remind me that I'm supposed to be doing 4 subjects)

I have a long rant about public transport and the evils of teenage girls, but I have the Venusian Death Cold, as well as 40 hours of rostered work this week. If I have to hear the Glee soundtrack one more time, I may expire. In a fiery ball of fire.

Also, how the hell did it get to be the fifteenth of December??

**Having just tried to enroll, I was told that I haven't met the requirements to do Europe or Creative Writing. If I have to do any more Level 1 courses, I will seriously consider giving up and joining the circus. Honestly, UNSW, I have three Level 1 English HDs.

reflection of the television

2009-12-05T00:52:00.002+11:00

It feels like I've been terribly busy the past two weeks, even though I haven't. The parents fled to Paris last Monday leaving me in charge of the three barbarians, mostly with the instruction "eat some bedamned vegetables!!"

So far, only the puppy has shown any interest in eating any of the eighteen kgs of beans my mother bought. I may have to make bean cupcakes in order to trick them into eating the wretched things.

Speaking of the puppy, Lottie takes up all my free time - I have to get up at an unholy Adult hour of 6am to fed her and be subjected to the morning acrobatics. Then I sleep on the lounge floor while she chews my hair. Then we run around the garden. Then I go to work or hide in my room. Then we repeat. Sometimes we go swimming. Tuesday we went to the vet and she behaved like she was being tortured, stole the ear-checking-contraption and carried on in a wholly embarrassing manner. Today she met my friend Libby's terrier, Buffy who is half Lottie's size. She wet herself in fear, sooked for half an hour and then chased Buffy for two hours. She slept for the rest of the afternoon.

Napping in front of the cricket is possibly her favourite time to nap - I wholeheartedly agree. Cricket was designed for napping, and the commencement of the season has my napping seasons bouncing in glee. I have a lot of sleep to catch up on, after the wretched year I've had at university.

The results are out by the way. Are you sitting down? You might be quite surprised - I managed distinctions for my two history subjects (honestly, I'm surprised my American History tutor knew who I was to give me my tut mark) and, get this, you'll never believe it - I PASSED MEDIA STUDIES!!! I KNOW!!! I have never been so happy about a simple pass mark, ever. I wept with joy, tiredness, shock and then hayfever. I am headed for second year next year. Now all you have to do is worship the timetabling gods for me, so that they smile on me and let me do the subjects I want.
I don't think I've ever been so excited to start school - but I expect this will change by March 1, 2010, when I have to go through all that stupid O Week/Week Zero rubbish again.

---

I'm terribly sorry, but I think Australian politics has become more of a spectacle than the West Indies cricket team. Tony Abbott as Opposition Leader??????????? Kristina Kenelly as Premier of NSW?????? I must have drunk too much whisky. I always think strange things are happening when I drink whisky. Like, really??? It doesnt make any sense. The only thing possibly more reviled in Australian Politics apart from Abbott is the NSW Labor Party. Its disgusting, all of it. I don't care how good the economy is, or if you personally don't believe in climate change. We have the chance to do something good, that will pay for itself eventually. You can't have it both ways. Australia suddenly feels like a fucking scary place to live, full of liars and religious nuts with their fingers on the triggers and purse strings.

New Zealand is suddenly looking very nice.

gasp

2009-11-29T00:20:00.002+11:00

Lottie keeps eating Christmas Beetles. Does this bode negatively for Christmas??? She sort of tortures them before she eats them, clever little puppy.

x

I really want to tell everyone how special Hospice by The Antlers and Forget the Night Ahead by The Twilight Sad are. Like, shout it from rooftops and let off fireworks.

But they keep taking my breath away, and then I get so light headed that anything I write is more rubbish than usual, and climbing the stairs to the roof is out of the question.

x

at work today i
-buggered up the registers so many times i nearly cried
-wished people merry christmas even though its not december yet
-had a great talk with a girl about how sucky pearl jam are
-had a weird talk with a hipster boy about Mick Jagger's version of Ned Kelly
-arranged our Doctor Who DVDs in proper order, because I was sick of them being too high up and not in proper chronological order.

x

Its too hot for coherence.

the great bathers quest

2009-11-23T22:22:00.003+11:00

The last pair of bathers I owned were gleefully tossed into a dumpster in Reykjavik at 4 am one rainy September morning. I remember this because I was so sick of these bathers, I'd had them for 4 years. I then avoided buying a new pair until last Sunday. I'm not big on swimming, mostly in some sort of Freudian reaction to my mother, who adores swimming. She petitioned, campaigned, downright whined for about 7 years until we relented and said, yes, OK, you can have a pool. Stop pouting. When summer hits, my mother goes out and buys herself new swimsuits. Gleefully. I have never met a woman who loves swimwear shopping as much as my mum. She's a wonder.

Part of the reason I think most women (women that I know, anyway) hate swimwear shopping is because its just so revealing - and that's just in the change room. When I went bathers shopping on Sunday (the hottest day EVER. UGH), I tried on TWELVE pairs of swimmers. I had to remind myself that they're supposed to be tight.

I didn't go near any of the bikinis. They're dangerous. For several reasons

There's just not enough fabric to protect me from skin cancer. I am PALE. I am Snow Maddie. I am not about to put my skin in danger. In fact, if I go swimming during the hottest period of the day (11am-3pm) then I am in rash shirt and boardies and 9L of 30+ sunscreen. Having grown up with a cancer specialist for a father, I cannot impress upon people how dangerous over exposure is in the sun. I am the girl who got sunburned in the Cotswold's DURING A FIVE MINUTE BREAK IN A THUNDERSTORM.
There's just not enough fabric to protect me from over exposing myself. Look, I get that the human body is a wonderful thing, but unfortunately, I (like alot of other lovely ladies) have very poor self esteem, as I am not all that thin. I don't have limbs you can snap. Also, I am very flaily with my limbs - expressive is a nicer word, I guess. Put me in something that is held together with two knots and is roughly the size of a tea saucer and we might run into some problems. You might see more than you wanted. And then I would run away and never come back.
They're boring. Like, really. All the patterns are boring. This season.
Why should I pay the same price for a bikini as I do a one piece???? That's just stupid

So with all that in mind, I decided on a one piece - yes, I know, you can get tankinis, but I don't like the word tank. Or that my tummy tends to escape. I trekked into DJ's and moseyed around the swimwear section. And found 12 one pieces to try on. Out of the twelve I tried

ONE of them had a neckline that perhaps should have been called A BELLYBUTTON LINE.
ONE of them I couldn't work out how to get into for a good 10 minutes.
ONE of them had a very unflattering red flower that emerged from ones rear.
TWO of them had weird cutout bits that I hadn't noticed when they were on the hanger
THREE of them had this sort of skirt thing that in theory was great, but in reality made me look five (the pink one) or eighty (the blue and navy ones)
FOUR of them were too high cut in the thigh.

I was beginning to think that I would just go and make myself a pair of swimmers that looked like this
from here

And then I tried on the last one piece I had found. To be honest, when I saw these on the rack, I'd sort of decided that they'd be the ones. Cut nicely on the thigh, with a little retro look to them. They looked swish, as long as I didn't look at my pasty thighs or belly. They weren't in danger of falling off. They would do, if only to ensure that I could go into the pool in the 40 degree heat that was Sunday.

from here

Obviously I look nothing like the girl in the picture. Which is the problem with swimsuits, and most fashion. They only cater for the beautiful. The rest of us have to work hard, the rest of us try stupid diets, or worry that perhaps they can't go out in public. It's sad. I mean, good on the beautiful women that meet the grade, but speaking as someone who rarely meets the grade when it comes to clothing size (because I am petite, but I am chubby! Who knew!) it can be very demoralising. The lights in change rooms don't help, nor all the mirrors. What does help is that all my friends are lovely, and when we were splashing about in the pool, trying to recover from the disgusting 40degree heat, they told me my bathers were nice. And then splashed me.

x

It was disgusting yesterday. So I of course, made a sort of invented pecan pie. Which was awesome. Sometimes my desire to vist the Americas is purely food based. Except for Tex-Mex. Ew.

T-O-M (or, spelling mishaps)

2009-11-17T21:46:00.002+11:00

There's a scene in one of my favourite movies, Being Julia where Julia (Annette Benning) asks young gentleman how to spell his name. He replies "T-O-M...Tom" and they're all terribly embarrassed by the faux pas, as you would be in 1930s London.

I suppose not knowing someones name means you're allowed to ask how to spell it. That doesn't really enrage me (surprised?) but what does irritate me is when people who have known me for years, or people who have no connection to me (doctors, stores, UNIVERSITY) spell my name wrong and act offended when I correct them. The attitude seems to be "what's in a name?"

Well. A lot. I'm a Madeleine. That's M-A-D-E-L-E-I-N-E. You can bring nominative determinism into if you like - MAD by name, mad by nature. The three E's are VERY VERY important. And so is there placement. I have been a Madeline. A Madelein. A Madeliene. Look, they're all perfectly acceptable. But they aren't me.

I can't quite work out why I get so annoyed about it. Does this happen to anyone else, or is it just my fault being beset by parents who like to over complicate things?

Sometimes, I wish they'd stuck with the name they had for me when I was in utereo.

They used to call me Og.

Even then, I'd probably be asked how many 'g's.

x

Gosh, what a wonderful day today was - found out that my health has drastically improved (!), found a decent translation of Notre Dame de Paris (!!), went to the KIT Christmas launch (!!!) where they gave me and Claudia 20 Cupcakes (!!!!) came home to a bouncing puppy (!!!!!), watched Being Julia (!!!!!!) and will go to sleep on CLEAN SHEETS (!!!!!!!!!) (sleeping on clean sheets = brilliance. pure brilliance)

arrivée de toujours, qui t'en iras partout

2009-11-16T11:14:00.005+11:00

from here

One of my heroes - no, one of my kin is the French poet/anti-poet Arthur Rimbaud. I say kin because he would have hated being a hero. I discovered him when I was about 12, absolutely friendless in highschool, and devoured his Saison d'Enfer. He joined other French loves of mine - Alexandre Dumas and his d'Artangan, Victor Hugo and Quasimodo, Dumal, Foucault, Francoise Sagan, and the Americans in Paris - Fitzgerald, Stein, Hemingway. It's possible that I should have spent more of my teenage years outside instead of reading. When we (by we I mean me, my books and occasionally my friend Jason) used to smoke too much and drink even more, Rimbaud was always on my mind, as a sort of decadent god who watched us, both dearly and depreciatingly.

It wasn''t until I was in Paris last year that I got my hands on a biography of Rimbaud, by Graham Robb. I devoured this book by the Seine, and then again on various trains. It wasn't that Rimbaud was a shining light, but rather that he was so very clever, so very cunning and so very orchestrated. Rimbaud constructed himself, deconstructed and reconstructed in ways that weren't very common back in the 1800s. He wanted to be a celebrity, a god. He wanted adventure. His poems are the beginnings of punk rock, a reaction against the mathematics of poetry - but they are also an exploitation of the same.

The feverish anger in Saison d'Enfer is tempered by the beauty of Illuminations, the music in Drunken Boat, the depravity in First Communion. There's godlessness, there's sunlit mornings. Often excused as the squealing brat of French poetry, Rimbaud's lyricism is something very special.

And that he stopped writing completely at 21, became a traveler, a trader, an explorer in Africa, makes me feel slightly more hopeful about days when the words don't come out right.

from Illuminations:

To A Version Of Reason

One tap of your finger on the drum releases every timbre
and founds the new harmony.
You take a step and new men materialize; they march out.
You turn your head away: the new love! You turn back: the
new love!
'Alter our destiny' you hear the children sing. 'Stamp out
plagues! Stamp out Time, for a start!' Everyone begs you: 'Raise
the substance of our fortunes, our desires, wherever you can.'
You - fresh out of forever. Making for everywhere.

-
i needed cheering up this monday morning, so excuse the entirely wanky self induglence of this post.

rounded up

2009-11-05T22:17:00.006+11:00

The hype surrounding the Melbourne Cup, aka "the race that stops the nation" has never really made that much sense to me. While I like watching horses race (there's something powerful about it), I'm not really that invested in the gambling/drinking/dressing up side of things. Which is odd, considering that I love getting dressed up, very rarely say no to champagne and should probably take any chance I can to double my finances. Also, I don't really like the concept of racing. It doesn't have a point. I feel it would be more interesting if contestants (runners, cyclists, horses etc) had to run away from something. Like a dragon.

Mostly its the orange fake tans, the dresses that make you look like you're a bursting sausage, the bogan boys and the vomiting (It is possible to have a drink or two and not get trashfaced) which makes the Races just seem particularly trashy to me, for reasons that make me sound like a prudish old fuddy-duddy. Which I'm not, am I?

This year, I decided to inject a little bit of class to the whole affair. With cupcakes.

I baked 24 "Almost Coconut Cupcakes" from The Whisk Kid's recipe. I am never ever using any other cupcake recipe except this. The coconut milk gives the cupcakes a softness that lasts for days, as well as a lovely summery taste.

When the cupcakes were out of the oven, and I had dislodged Lottie from my lap (more on that later) I set about icing each cupcake according to the jersey that each jockey would be wearing in the race - there were supposed to be 24 horses racing, but Changing of the Guard was (somewhat controversially) scratched, leaving me with 23 cupcakes to make.

Of course, the cupcake that I was least happy with turned out to be the horse that won the cup. It's name was Shocking (it's the orange/black and red one), and later that night, Libby would eat it with aplomb. The other horse that was difficult was Daffodil, whose jersey had a horse on it. That's the white cupcake with six green smarties on it. I find it hard not to use smarties in all my food decorating.

Libby, Emma and Lizz came over for pink sparkling wine, nachos and cupcakes. Very stylish. It was forty degrees Celsius, which is ridiculous, so Libby got in the pool, and took poor Lottie with her. Lottie will do anything for treats, and demonstrated that she may turn into a water dog.

Mostly though, Lottie is very good at three things: Eating, Bouncing and Sleeping. The eating isn't really a problem (although she ate a cupcake wrapper and spewed it up) but the Bouncing is truly terrifying. She's about 6 kgs at the moment, and just over a foot long (not counting tail), but when she bounces towards you, its hard to know whether you're going to be licked or nipped or both. The Bouncing lasts for about half an hour, then is followed by a long nap, which lead several members of my family and friends to comment that Lottie and I have similar sleeping skills - we can nap anywhere, anytime.

For proof:

Lottie, napping in her bed, which she is now sort of too big for!

Lottie and I, napping on the kitchen floor at 6am. Excuse my ludicrous pjs and hair. I have gotten a haircut recently, and no longer look like a gothic haystack.

Lottie, napping next to my leg. The flash woke her up for all of 30seconds.

Lottie, napping on my mother's lap and doing her best kangaroo impression.

Lottie, napping on my legs. After she slid off my lap, she stayed like this for half an hour.

Lottie, napping on mum's lap, distrupting year 10 marking. She likes to have her head higher than her body when she naps.
I think its because it makes her snore.

Lottie, napping on mum's lap, side view. See how much bigger she is???

In other news, it turns out that Editors have contributed the song "No Sound But The Wind" to the New Moon (sequel to twilight) Soundtrack. I generally support soundtracks, but this just makes me cranky. It looks like its going to be worse than the last movie. But the main thing upsetting me is that Tom Smith wrote this song after reading The Road by Cormac McCarthy, not some wretched vampire story. Pah. I thought Death Cab for Cutie were bad enough, turns out The Killers are involved too. See ?? Is it just me, or does this reek of something rotten?

november is for parties

2009-11-04T22:47:00.007+11:00

J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" opens with a discussion about the habits of Hobbits, particularly concerning their birthdays. For Hobbits it is tradition to give presents on one's birthday instead of receiving them. My friend Bre does that with mixtapes quite often, I try to do the same with cake, and now the Amazing Amanda Atkins is doing the same, but in a very big way.

To celebrate her upcoming November birthday, as well as the fact that it's November, and we've all practically made it through a year, Amanda is doing a portraiture give away. All you have to do is leave a comment on her blog, Amanda Atkins in a Canary Forest, put a post up on your blog, and she might end up painting a portrait of you!

I've touted Amanda's artwork before - I love the vintage circus modern feel, the celebration of women, the whimsy, but especially (admittedly this is coming on the back of a very disappointing trip to the MCA) I love the fact that her artworks are genuinely beautiful and pleasing to the eye. They are obviously created with a great deal of love and care.

I hope I don't sound like I'm sucking up, but Amanda has been really lovely to "know" in the blogging world - I get a bit nervous about leaving comments sometimes, but she's always been friendly and helpful (she's provided the first lot of books on my reading list!).

Amanda also has a store you can purchase prints from, which can be found here.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMANDA!!

the long tail

2009-10-28T10:51:00.009+11:00

For the past two nights, I have slept on the sofa. This is not because the mess in my room has finally rebelled and set up its own single party state (down with vaccumming!) but because we have a new family member who is very little, and very needy, and very easily chilled. Because it's my fault we have this new family member, I have to look after her.

Her name is Lottie. She's a German Short Haired Pointer, and she's totally wonderful. Her colouring is mostly Liver, but her legs, chest are whiteflecked and her tail is half white. We're all in love with her. Besotted might also be a good word to use.

My mum, mum's mum and I went to pick her up on Sunday, from Maitland (I found her for sale in the NSW Trading Post, which is also the same way we found Spike). We had a choice between her and her sister, but there was something about Lottie - she's got a narrow face that seems full of quiet intelligence and mischief (I could be projecting). The car trip home was slightly unnerving for her, having to sit next to me as I tried out various names "Juno" (sounded too much like no), "Beans" (seems more like a spaniels name, for some reason) "Bones" (a boy dalmations name, for sure) "Sally", "Peggy" etc. I think she threw up just to get me to shut up. By the time we found somewhere to stop on the highway, she'd eaten it all and gone to sleep. So I went to sleep too, until Pymble. By Concord, she'd thrown up again (For non NSW residents - about an hour and a half after the first vomit came the second)

The smells at our place were instantly interesting, although the prospect of a nap on my lap even more so.

Eventually she met everyone else, and responded positively. We came up with Lottie over dinner, as it has a sort of Germanic sound, and she's a sort of Germanic dog.

At night time though, she's a hound worthy of the Baskervilles. It's probably not much fun being left in the laundry with no one to play with! Mum was getting up at 5am to check on her (and the pool, her other baby, at least until Lottie fell in the pool and was pitiful) So Wednesday night at one am, my parents coerced me into sleeping on the lounge room sofa, which is far more comfy than my bed, so that I could get up to check on her. We gave her a hot water bottle, and that seems to be a success. Last night she came inside (because I am too softhearted) and slept all night without going to the toilet inside!

She's very very bouncy and playful, and has already mastered the concept of fetch. She has a stuffed giraffe that is the best thing ever, after food. When she eats, her big floppy ears fall in the bowl. It's likely that she'll never grow into her ears. I think she's going to end up being about 30kg, and at the moment she's 5kg, so she's a sixth of the way there! Her paws are huge and she hasn't worked out how to use them.
Lottie seems to think that both my parents are nutters, so I guess she's already a true Barton.
I'm trying to take as many photos as possible of her, but she chewed my camera cord this morning.

we are ACHIEVERS

2009-10-20T16:28:00.008+11:00

My brother, sister and I started our exams this week - hers to get her in training for her School Certificate, mine to finally catapult me out of first year university, his to catapult him into first year. It is incredibly bizarre to watch this little boy, who I remember visiting in the hospital when he was a few days old, talk about chemistry and Spartacus and Maestro - he writes beautifully, and wrote a story about a man and his books that I'm trying to convince him to let me "publish" on here. The NSW Higher School Certificate is, in some ways deeply problematic in that it tends to try to be too modern, and leaves gaps within one's education (which is presumably having an effect on the quality of university level english courses, but then everything is having an effect on that) It's been difficult for him this year, what with the emphasis on ranking and the exhaustion that the final two years of school bring. Still, Jeremy has plodded through it with his usual puppyish charm and humour, and I am deeply proud of him, and feel that I should say something like "he's matured into a deeply sensitive sweet intelligent young man" except about fifteen minutes ago he rang past me, stark naked and giggling. He does that alot. He also dances as badly as me, and encourages me to dance often.

I'm also quite proud of my other sibling, Claudia. About this time last year she decided she wanted to go on her school's Classics tour, to Itlay and Greece. Instead of demanding that our parents pay for the entire thing, she got herself a job at MacDonalds and paid for a large portion of the trip. She went for three weeks this October, and I gave her all my leftover spare change from when I was in Europe. I'm proud of her for being so independent and determined, as well as far more interested in her education that she is in boys - she's resisted private school culture (in a more positive way than I did.) Claudia is by far the most intelligent of the three of us, and certainly the most ambitious. So I was surprised to hear that she had returned from Europe without conquering it and declaring herself Supreme Dictator for life. I should point out that upon hearing that it took Hitler 7 hours to invade and conquer Belgium, Claudia remarked "that's a bit inefficient." Unlike Hitler though, Claudia has a sense of humor. Most days. Well. For a part of most days. Around dinner time.

And as for me? I HAVE SURVIVED THIS SEMESTER. There is one more exam left, but that's November 11, so I have a few weeks to revise. My American History exam may have ended in me accusing the question of being stupid, but really. You can't talk about The Americas as a single entity - there are too many social, economical, cultural, geographical and political differences for any of it to be homogeneous. Hah. I totally learned something. I thought my killer final sentence of "what about CANADA!?!" was a winner. And then in Gender History today I had a small meltdown because none of the essay questions had any real focus, so I decided to accuse the Medieval Christian Church of using Binary Thinking to inform their Gender Constructs, because they're all dead and can't subject me to their bizarre maternally fixed exectuations anymore. Seeing as that was all about 500 years ago. There were probably too many capitals in my essay, but its DONE.

Ugh, I'm exhausted.

x

Culture News: Mum and I went to see Bright Star which is a movie about John Keats' and his lover Franny Braun. I had to pretend to be an English teacher for some reason, the movie was abit too long and there was little or no soundtrack which was unnerving. I didn't really like it that much as I was tired and grumpy, and also I'm a cynic, but I thought Ben Whishlaw was perfect as Keats. The cinematography was divine, and I wanted the cat, Topper.

I'm reading The Pornographer of Vienna, which is a fictionalised account of one of my favourite artists, Egon Schiele. It's kinda tough going, but beautifully imagined. Chaucer was great, but the Olde Englishe got to me after a while. Next up is a book with a very long name about a Russian Gambler. I'm determined to read over 100 books by March 1 2010. (which is when uni goes back)

Also, I have a job for Christmas! I'll be working with Emma at Virgin Records. I'm excited, and can't wait to get started - I'm already fantasizing about what I'll spend my first pay on.

Oh, and that super super exciting news I mentioned might be happening?
It's definitley happening....on Sunday.
I can barely keep my mouth shut, but I promised I would.
It's going to be brilliant.

pages

2009-10-18T18:01:00.006+11:00

There are four days of term left, although there's a considerable gap between day three and day four. Stupid media exam. I am so glad that I never have to take another Media subject - it made me miserable, and we had a very horrid incident with a group member who too busy pretending to be a member of MGMT to bother to do any sodding work. I'm proud of myself and Justine (the other group member) for standing up to him and telling our tutor about the unfair circumstances. It wasn't "dobbing" or "tattle telling". It was us standing up and defending our work, and also, unfortunately, having to defend our gender against a silly little misogynist.

Just because he fits in girls jeans, doesn't mean he respects women.

In nicer news, I have decided to do something proactive-ish about the culling of upper level english classes, and started writing my very long reading list for the summer, starting with Chaucer and ending...well, I have no idea where. Any suggestions are welcome.

books that were in a pile until i knocked them over and spent a day reading them all back in summer 07

I might have something super super exciting to debut next week.

While you're waiting for that, go see "Whip It". I love Drew Barrymore so much.

conversing

2009-10-12T22:48:00.002+11:00

Mother: Who was I reading about in the newspaper?
Father: Is this twenty questions?

sometimes, living at home isn't that bad.

x

Me: Erm....
VideoStoreGirl: OH! TWILIGHT! This is such an awesome movie!
Me: Oh, really?
VideoStoreGirl: Uh huh- The story is so romantic, and the acting is awesome, and the direction and (I tuned out until I realised she was looking at me expectantly)
Me: Yeah, I hear its up there with Fellini.
VideoStoreGirl: Who?
Me: Nevermind. Can I have the dvd, I have a Twilight party to go to.
VideoStoreGirl: That's such a cool idea! I'm going to do that for the next movie - which is out November 17th, by the way.
Me: ................thanks.

I don't know whats worse - that the conversation wasn't the weirdest or most awkward conversation I had last week, or that she didn't know who Fellini was and she worked in a video store.

Can we still call them video stores when then now primarily stock DVDs?

Oh, and for the record? Twilight made me insanely angry. Angry in the pants.
And drunk in the liver.

fury

2009-10-09T21:08:00.003+11:00

I'd like to apologize for being so selfish. I am not a valid member of society – I contribute nothing to your precious sodding economy and I am very sorry about this. Clearly, I am not anything worthwhile.

I am a piss poor arts student with an interest in LITERATURE – remember the written word???? Before it got viciously hijacked by your liberal vales and blessed economy????

And as such, I know nothing, and will never know anything that will further humanity, and that negates my right to want change within my society.

Don't tell me I'm being over dramatic. Don't pat me on the head, and don't patronise me. I have had enough. I am sick of the way I am treated, I am sick of justifying myself and I am sick of being told I'm over reacting. This is MY LIFE, I think I'm allowed to be upset about it.

All I wanted was to study WORDS, stories, legends, to unearth meaning in them and to maybe, one day, share that with people. I wanted debate and discussion. God help me, I WANT TO THINK.

Why does no one want to do this anymore? We spend our money on trends, we worry about how we look more than we worry about what we think. Newspapers are becoming tabloids, and I know more about the KARDASHIANS, of all fucking families, than I do about the Literary Canon.

I suspect this is all a giant conspiracy to dumb us down so that we don't notice that our civil rights are being impinged upon. And if you're wondering what this has to do with Literature, then I'll remind you that words formed our world and our understanding of it. You probably know more about Shakespeare than you think, and he definitely has a more positive influence on society than The Hills. Yet the number of times I've heard people dismiss Shakespeare, Chaucer, Keats, Byron, Rimbaud is beyond counting. “It's too hard and it's outdated.” you say.

TOO HARD?!?!?!!?!?

Psscht. It's only hard because you are LAZY. It's only hard because Literature doesn't have a right or wrong answer – it requires you to form an opinion and make your own mind up.

God forbid, in the world we live in, that we should think for ourselves. Why bother, when we have gossip magazines to tell us what to think.

I'm going to move into a library and never come out again.

And another thing. My university has cut out half the English and History courses for next year – and you don't do “English” or “History”. You do “Arts”. I am so upset about this (I cried twice about it), because I have been looking forward to doing upper level Literature for YEARS and now they've scrapped it. I'll be doing all this general stuff, and I'm sure it'll be thrilling, really, because the staff at UNSW are FANTASTIC, but I wanted to learn about more than that, I was told that I'd be able to specialise, that there'd be more innovation. Except apparently that doesn't get students in lecture theatres. Its so fucking depressing, that there are three media courses on economics, countless business courses and just FOUR English subjects next semester. Sod the John Howard years – I don't give a shit about how wonderful his economy was (and look, was it really that grand if we've just had a recession?), devaluing education was the dumbest and most destructive thing he ever did.

365

2009-10-08T11:48:00.002+11:00

(photo taken in Berlin, by me)

I have been back in Sydney for a year.
My hair's a different colour.
My book shelf is near collapse.
It's as windy here as it was in Reykjavik.
I'm still unemployed.
And I still don't know if I believe in posterity.

(street art in downtown Reykjavik, taken by me)

But I felt I ought to mark the date anyway.

quiet please

2009-10-01T20:41:00.003+10:00

So sometime next week, things might return to our brand of normal.

(from here)

There are 67 unread emails in my inbox. That aren't spam. I've lost count of the spam.
My fringe has stopped being a fringe.
Yann Tiersen makes music for when I'm too tired for words.
Bonjour Tristesse by Francoise Sagan is kind of wonderful.
My new circle skirt makes me feel like making cupcakes.
And there are three weeks of term left.

failure and fitzgerald (part one)

2009-09-28T15:38:00.004+10:00

from here

Mr Fitzgerald, I wish you and your buddies (a Mr H. Stearns and a Ms Media Studies) to relinquish me from your grasp. I'm dying to tell everyone about the shockingly terrible yet oh so wonderfully bad book I read called "The Scotsman" (complete with accents!) but every time I think I've finished writing about your love of scotch and failure, you point out something I've missed.

Still.

"At any rate, let us love for a while, for a year or so, you and me. That's a form of divine drunkenness that we can all try. There are only diamonds in the whole world, diamonds and perhaps the shabby gift of disillusion." (A Diamond as Big As The Ritz)

How can you not love a sentence like that?

don't look too closely

2009-09-23T20:59:00.003+10:00

(photo from smh, by Chris Button)

We woke to Armageddon, which was much more red than we'd anticipated. I pulled the covers back over my head before deciding that if the world was ending, I wanted to annoy my parents one more time, so I headed downstairs and hijacked the kettle before them. The sky was reminiscent of the red hair I used to have, and the wind was a Baskerville hound. It was terribly dramatic for six am. So I went back to bed, and dreamed that Tom Baker and David Tennant were having a light saber battle in the dust. If this is how I go, dreaming of Dr Who, then it's probably not all that bad. I thought. Eventually I decided that even if it was the end of the world, I should probably go to my classes and make a real go at a final last stand. By the time I left the house, the sky had gone from neon orange to a sherbet colour. The wind was ferocious, but me being me, I lifted my head and said "PAH! This is nothing, for I have been to Iceland, and ye gods, wind that can knock you over when you're carrying a 15kg pack is real wind! This is sissy wind!" Before narrowly avoiding being sent to my death via car-splat. I must remember to put my glasses on before I leave the house. The walk to the station was like being in a spaghetti western - my hand kept straying to where my gun holster should have been, except I had chosen not to wear it that day. It clashed with my polka dot skirt.

By the time I was in town, every second person I saw was wearing a face mask. I myself was busy coughing to get the dust out of my mouth, unsuccessfully. It was eerie. And then of course, human nature ruined it when I heard a man demanding to know when his office would be cleared of the dust. The wind whipped around my shoelaces, and I read some G.G.Marquez for my American History Class.

By one o'clock, the sky was clearing. Alan told me about some of his neighbours, who've locked themselves in the church, praying for Judgement Day. Someone had organised a protest to do with Climate Action and Change. The wind was still roaring, tangling my hair in impossible knots. We talked about witches and Freud in gender studies, the image of scared old men cutting the breasts off women sending chills down my spine. I gave up dealing with the library and bought the textbook I've been trying to use for my Fitzgerald essay. By the time I left uni, the sky was dark, my lips were chapped, my eyes dry, all of me dusty.

I felt much better. I think it's because finally something happened that wasn't my fault, or my doing. Or maybe it was the threat of the end of the world that made me get over myself a bit. Maybe it was the brilliant article on women and tattoo aesthetic that I'm reading, or the fact that there are only four more media tutorials that I have to suffer through. Whatever. The point is, we woke up to Armageddon, but we go to sleep with one more day.

2009-09-22T17:42:00.004+10:00

things haven't been very good lately.

do you ever feel like there's no one on your side? that all the nods and half grimaces people offer you are just courtesy while they're waiting for you to stop talking? that people are just waiting for you to trip up, circling like vultures? yeah.

i don't think you could ever accuse me of being grateful.

wait, is that a ninja hook?

2009-09-11T23:03:00.004+10:00

I'm not entirely sure that I know any adults, or that any of the people I know are truly capable of being considered adults. I'm including myself in this sweeping statement, by the way. And by adult, I mean I can't ever imagine not laughing at inappropriate jokes or Freudian slips. Paying bills before the final notice. Writing essays a decent time before the due date. Not eating chocolate for dinner, or beer for breakfast. Not wearing shoes that I know will make me cry the next day, but are beautiful nonetheless. Not having pointless crushes on people I'll never meet. Being resigned instead of outraged. These are all things that I equate with the maturity that I don't have at present. And don't really want to have. I take myself too seriously, far too seriously. You might have noticed. But in the past three weeks, life went a bit odd and I ran out of effort. Sod being an adult.

One of the odd things was that I received an HD for an essay that I wrote the day after it was due. I was very embarrassed about this, as it encourages bad habits and also makes me really confused - the essay was rambling, had no point and insulted the French. But my professor liked it, and I'm not really in a position to argue with him. This lead to me considering French history for next semester, as it seems I've picked up a History sequence by accident. And that means I should probably make an attempt at the French language at some point. I'm still an English major, it just means that eventually I'll be proficient (hopefully) in English & French Literature. Knowing me, it'll be obscure medieval literature written by goatherds, and I'll have to learn Olde Englishe.

I was pondering all this, along with my usual pondering about why academics get such little respect when suddenly I was on holidays. Which really didn't make that great a change to my life as I've had an essay on Revolutions & Women hanging over my head all week. It's nearly done, I swear. Keeping with the trend, most of it is me accidentally insulting the French, I think. I like the French, honest. They believe their own hype, which is something I wish I could learn how to do. Anyway, my head was going at a million miles an hour, and then Emma rang.

This was a Big Deal, because Emma had just arrived back from Edinburgh. Where she'd been for a year. Without me. I last saw her in September, when I had arrived back from Iceland at midday, caught an overnight bus that stopped in Birmingham for 5 hours for no reason and dumped me in Edinburgh very early in the morning. Where Emma was. It was awesome and windy and if we'd had more time, we could have taken over the city. I love Edinburgh, its my kind of city. So I'd left Emma there (reluctantly) and set about annoying the beejezus out of poor Lizzle for a year.

And then Emma came back, and we had to celebrate. We did this by taking over the back room at Badde Manors - we being Emma, Lizzle, Beard, Libby, myself, and some wine. There was much laughing and shouting and more laughing and I remember thinking at some point that these guys are family, that part of growing up is making a new family for yourself. And that possibly, this is one of the few good things about growing up. It's being able to have people there who will tell you when you've got falafel stuck between your teeth (although they're laughing hysterically). It's not telling someone that they've managed to throw ice cream into their wine glass. It's drinking rose shiraz out of tumblers and not feeling pretentious. It's trying new things (like vegetarian food for Beard) and knowing that if you don't like it, the people you're with will be ok with that, even though they'll tease you good naturedly about it forever. It's wandering up and down George Street eating gelato and shouting about politics. It's seeing a hole in the station wall and wondering "wait, is that a ninja hook" and going on a flight of fancy. It's standing on a traffic island while everyone in the restaurant has to listen to you shouting your own reworked version of the classic "I'm on a Boat". It's finding the people who don't mind that you're you, and that you have a tendency to refer to your disagreements as "states of cold war". It's realising that you don't have to be out on a Saturday night, you just need a Doctor Who DVD and a bag of clinkers and each other to have a good time.

So in the midst of all the noise on the drive home, with Brandon Flowers singing in the back ground and Libby realising that she had driven past my house, I felt that perhaps growing up is overrated, that adult maturity is a concept I'll always be chasing, and I decided I didn't really care. I'm just relieved that there are a bunch of nutters with me, telling me to stop thinking and open the next bottle.

Libby, wondering why Beard is taking so long, Me in the midst of laughing, Emma being suave and Lizzle clinging to the pole for balance. We're on a traffic island.

and with that somewhat soppy post, i hope i've captured the promise spring is bringing. we're all feeling full of potent potential, and if i ever get this wretched essay about Revolutions and Women finished, you might see some of my sewing potential documented on here.

um, is the new header ok?

on weekends and weasels

2009-08-31T18:40:00.006+10:00

Yet another weekend passed - this time with not one, but TWO hangovers. I am remarkably skilled at both creating and dealing with hangovers - whether or not this is a sign of encroaching alcoholism, I know not. However, I got to see some people that I hadn't seen for a very long time. So it was probably worth it. Wasn't so impressed when Sunday's plans went down the gurgler due , to wretched Media Studies, which (in case you hadn't picked up on it already) is the new Metaphysics. University is impinging upon the time I get to spend with NICE people and I don't like it. At all.

So apart from drinking, what did I get up to this weekend? Music was business as usual - equal parts exhilarating (I'm playing stuff that Patrick Wolf wrote. Eek) and frustrating (having to deal with playing more than 3 flats upsets me) but not particularly note-worthy (ha). However, I did go to see The Young Victoria, which was one of those movies that you go into knowing the basic plot but are pleasantly surprised by the quality of the film. And boy, has this film got quality. Emily Blunt shows a surprising amount of steel as Victoria, but an even more surprising amount of gentleness towards Albert, who is played by Rupert Friend. All I know about him is that he's dating Keira Knightley, so I was pleasantly surprised by his ability to carry off an accent with believability. The music was great, the costuming even more so, Paul Bettany popped up as Lord Melbourne and was great. All in all, this is sort of a upper level chick flick. And tops anything with Katherine Heigl in it. (Has anyone see The Ugly Truth? It looks shocking.)

While I'm talking (typing?) about an era where finding a man was the priority for most women my age, let me talk about Jane Austen. I'm not a fan. Its all the repressiveness, all the behaving that I don't like. And then I read Persuasion last week. For no real reason other than I needed to read something that wasn't about Buddhism, America or Mobile Media. And I had a three hour break, so I polished it off then. And I loved it. Persuasion was Austen's last novel, and I finally understood what she was doing. She was being satirical. Satire is grossly misunderstood by my generation, so no wonder I missed it. But the protagonist of Persuasion, Anne, is fantastic. Like Cinderella, she's stomped on by just about everybody, including Captain Wentworth, who she once nearly got engaged to. The story takes place 7 or 8 years after the engagement fiasco, when Anne's family goes bankrupt (sort of) and Wentworth returns. He's all terribly Colin Firth-y, and Anne is having none of it. The novel made me giggle all afternoon, as Austen's attacks on the class system of England are probably more evident here than they are in her other works - or possibly because Persuasion hasn't been victim to repeated dramatisations like Pride and Prejudice has been, its easier to take it as a satire instead of a romance (although apparently there's a version of Persuasion with the lovely Rupert Penry Jones.) So I have finally enjoyed a Jane Austen novel! I still wouldn't want anything to do with any of the characters, but I can sort of see what people are on about when they gush over her.

And as for books, I've found myself reading a lot of pre 1950s stuff recently. There's been Austen, of course. But there's also been The Crimson Petal & The White, which despite having a slightly irritating ending, was one of the wildest books I've read in years. And now there's Wesley Stace's Misfortune which is brilliantly written and even more brilliantly conceived. I'll write more about it when I finish it, but it's a great Gothic book that is so very very clever. And finally, I've been reading lots of F. Scott Fitzgerald, in preparation for an essay I'm going to be writing about him for American History. So far I've re-read Gatsby and Tender is the Night, now I'm reading The Beautiful and The Damned. I love his turn of phrase, how it seems so effortless, and seems to reflect the assumed effortlessness of that generation. His words make me want to drink Mint Juleps and Champagne, learn the foxtrot and do my hair in finger waves. I've been thinking of trying that anyway, but my hair is getting longer than ever and is quite thick. I have a sort of pageboy look going on at the moment, and sometimes if I curl it write, I can pretend I'm Rita Hayworth.

Fitzgerald has also inspired my latest clothing quest/craze - I want a white summer dress. Sydney is warming up, rustling in anticipation of spring. I can see me wearing a white or cream dress as a colossally bad idea. I'm bound to spill something or sit in something, but I don't care. I want one. And I think that with my hair being so dark at the moment, I could probably pull off a white dress. All I'd need is a long red necklace and red shoes. Or blue. Or a sash! So now that I've made that decision, I'm trawling Etsy and Ebay for something vintage and affordable, as my Spring resolution (much more effective that New Years Resolutions, I've found) is to stop buying new clothes and only buy vintage or make my own. (I'm also going to wean myself off meat. and make more of an effort to get to my mobile before it stops ringing.) I haven't decided if I want to make this imagined white/cream dress or not. Maybe I'll find a dress on etsy, and make a back up version in case of aforementioned spillage? If you see anything, anywhere, that you think I might like, please please let me know!

Finally, Jack's Mannequin's clip for Dark Blue. The song is one of my guilty pleasures, as its very very very pop, and Andrew McMahon's voice can sound a little whiny. But I think this is their best song, and it's certainly their best film clip, and I wish, I wish, I wish that someone in Sydney would organise an event like the one depicted in it. I would be there, dancing my little toes off, and I would win it. In my new white summer dress, of course!

for goodness sake

2009-08-26T21:38:00.001+10:00

i figured i'd let jarvis cocker express my total disgust at absolutely everything today.

empirically, progressively, eventually

2009-08-25T18:01:00.004+10:00

You know when suddenly four days of your life have disappeared, and you have no idea where they went because the whole thing is a blur of mistakes missed phone calls missed chances Mozart procrastination Foucault Roland Barthes angst etc, and you still haven't done that thing that you were supposed to do??? Except you can't really remember what it was that you were supposed to do - but you remember at the time, maybe midnight or Sunday morning in the sun, whenever, right before everything fell through and went totally crazy, you knew for about thirty seconds exactly what to say.

Thirty seconds.

What a rip off.

x

In attempting to write 700 words that "identify the way the chosen document problematises the effects or use of media forms and technologies within that territory" I have come quite close to chucking in my degree and never going back. I wouldn't blame that assignment (although it is due tomorrow and at present I have approx. 0 words), but I would blame that subject, and I would blame the absolute apathy, disinterest and disrespect displayed by my fellow students. And I know, I know, I know that I shouldn't be bothered by other people's attitudes towards things, but it does have an effect on the environment I find myself in - tutorials where nobody says anything, lectures where nobody asks questions, group work where nobody does anything. It's depressing. University is supposed to facilitate the growth of knowledge, instead we all just sneer at the word 'facilitate'. Is this what I want to do with my life? I had vague notions of taking up a post in Literature somewhere, which would keep me quietly entertained for the rest of my days. Now, I'm having doubts. I don't know if I want to go through the blank stares of students, or feel like a neanderthal being washed away by the technology march (what is wrong with books in books format in a library?). There must be some benefit - in fact I know there's a benefit. Not to blow my own trumpet, but according to my English tutor last semester, it's people like me who do the reading, do the extra reading, who ask questions and care about their subjects that make teaching worth it (how sappy but wonderful). Granted, I'm slightly more likely to do this for English (which I'm not taking this semester) than I am for Media. But still. People told me that I'd find my niche at university. It's been three very long and wonky years, and I still feel like perhaps I should have been at university during the 1940s, that perhaps I am the outdated one who should get with the program. There's a lack of respect for knowledge and learning that confuses me, and I don't know if its what I want anymore. Maybe I'd be better off joining the rat race and making millions.

(and all the jokes about doing a "farts degree"? they got very boring a long time ago. not that they were ever funny.)
x

Things don't make sense very often, that was my starting point for this post. Some days I feel very very very old, and some moments I feel very very very young. Alot of the time I'm hungry and tired, and that makes me wonder if there's a point to all this, which some days feels like the 15yearoldblackjeanswearing me, and other days feels like the James Joyce brandishing87 yrold woman I might eventually turn into. I don't know why we do these things to ourselves - my father does a job that has given him both an Order of Australia Medal and terrible migraines. When I asked him why he kept it all up, he pointed at the stereo set up blaring The Rolling Stones and told me it was the material benefits. And that instilled in me a realisation that material objects aren't that bad. I think I went and bought a dress to celebrate.

Sometimes though, when that song comes on, or when my fingers hit the right notes on my cello, or when the pastabake turns out right, or the front page of the newspaper inspires a rant, or when someone smiles at me, I think that maybe not understanding is ok. Because I'm a learner, and I'm trying to understand. Unlike alot of people, I'm making an effort.

predictable post

2009-08-17T22:05:00.002+10:00

yes well. i am peeking out from under piles of notes about the French in New France (why were they so unimaginative when it came to naming new places back then?), Ancient Greek sex practices (wowee. vases. lots of pictures of erotic vases) and a bunch of stuff about ethics, fouccault and SBS to mention that perhaps i am a little edgy. everything is due in the next five minutes (ha. ha.) and as usual, i am left wondering if perhaps my academic techniques are rubbish. and i am edgy.

i think that was common knowledge anyway.

although, i have given up drinking coffee, and it feels rather good to wake up in the morning and not have this urge to lurch towards our goliath coffee machine, which makes noises like a distressed robot cow. however, several people have commented on the fact that the noncoffee drinking is making me do very strange things, like play cello for four hours straight and cry over trills.

at least i haven't been back in my doona cover.

Hiding Under My Sofa

2009-08-11T22:13:00.005+10:00

At present, if I make the mistake of turning the television on, I'm greeted with this:

Which, granted, is a major step up in that it doesn't seem to feature any of those people (y'know, the ones who I keep insisting are trying to kill me, and you all keep rolling your eyes about.) However. It does make me want to hide under the sofa and chew on the television cables.

Unlike my mother, who once famously proclaimed "I understand hip hop" (which left the rest of us wondering if anyone understood her) I don't. I just don't get it. I have tried, believe me. I have tried very hard, to the point of standing near the Black Eyed Peas when they played the Sydney Big Day Out in 2005. And yes, I understand that they probably aren't really hip hop 9there's always a purist) , but I also once had a very bizarre experience of watching Kanye West support U2 whilst drinking beer with a frenchperson who knew every lyric of Kanye's but in french. I like Kanye, though. He seems like a laugh, in that he clearly embodies hiphoprnb but knows its a bit of a joke. Anyway. Sidetracked. Again. I don't get what I am being told is "modern r'n'b/hiphop".

Mostly because it looks very very aggressive, seems to involve gratuitous abuse of the English language, uses exactly the same bass beat for every single song, spawned the popularity of those stupid stupid grillz (who needs diamonds on their teeth? are you a Terry Pratchett troll?) and just. The dancing is terrifying. If Ciara isn't slapping at all her flesh whilst prancing around in shoes that were made in order to paralyse, then the Pussy Cat Dolls are doing some sort of obscene gyration thing that involves knee pads and me wishing that i hadn't decided to be interested in music video culture. And if its not a female, then its Eminem telling me that he thinks he's Hannibal Lecter and that its 3am when it's clearly not. Or that guy who wears Top Hats and is always on a boat. Or Beyonce, who has clearly taken a trip on the Ego Train and never wants to get off. And so on, and so forth.

I just don't understand how people can be attracted to what appears to be a very shallow lifestyle. Like, don't you want to talk to the girl before she's knocked up and you're off shooting things? Or would that throw out your day? I don't know. Perhaps my life would have been different if 50 Cent had got to me long before BRMC did (although, perhaps not. BRMC have legendary rescuing capabilities and I highly recommend them for any musical interventions you may be planning). The other thing is that it all seems so faceless - and perhaps you could argue that all my beloved indie bands would look that way to a hiphop fan - but the song material is either a bass-ed up version of "its a hard knock life" or an x-rated version of "Pour some sugar on me" (if that song could be x-rated?).

I could just turn it off I suppose. I'm sure there's some Top Gear episode on (its always on) that I haven't seen that I could watch instead. I could even make a start on my reading for next year. But the thing is that I love music videos, and I love pulling them apart. I wrote 3000 words about the clip for "I'm Not Ok (I Promise)" by My Chemical Romance and then spent the next two weeks wondering why every time I saw Gerard Way I wanted to ask him to do my homework. Patrick Wolf's offering for "Vulture" had me jumping about wondering if perhaps, we were seeing the acceptance of pornification of MEN instead of women in a leather-istic way, and if so, could Patrick possibly rope in William Beckett (I'm sorry. Objectification. I'm no better than Hugh Hefner, really). The National's 'anti -video' for "Mistaken for Strangers" has my heart swelling every time as much because of the 'anti video' as the song. I've loved every single video Lily Allen's done, and I could possibly write a treatise akin to Lord Of The Rings on how I think it's very unfair that there aren't more music videos by female artists that I like in which they don't have to gyrate/wear something skimpy in order to get attention. So you get it. I like music videos. Possibly a little too much. (My excuse is that I don't have the attention span for film, which is a lie)
The first music video I ever remember seeing was Blur's Song #2, in which the band kick up such a storm that the room they're in goes nuts and they get flung against the wall. Great storyline, obviously, and very reflective of the song. (pfft.) And ever since then, I've thought that music videos should be viewed and analysed the way we view film and television. There's probably a whole bunch of accredited people who study this and use big words about what this means as a society, but I've always been interested in gut reactions as opposed to academia (which is why I keep ballsing up my academic life. probably).

And then Ciara started entreating me to "shake that thing like a donkey" and I lost my train of thought, because I became enraged at the silliness of EVERYTHING. What, pray tell, am I supposed to be shaking? And can you provide evidence of how a donkey shakes, because I like to get things right. And if you are not referring to an actual donkey, I expect a detailed analysis of your metaphor, including why you chose to use it, on my desk double spaced by 4pm tomorrow.

Clearly though, the silliest thing is that I am letting myself get weirded out by people who think wearing PVC on a hot day is a good thing.

i used to be your biggest fan

2009-08-06T17:46:00.006+10:00

(a post that started with me eavesdropping and ends with me talking about boys)

When I was in high school, a girl I knew kept a list of the celebrities that she was determined to engage in conjugal relations with. As far as I remember, these ranged from Orlando Bloom to one of the Backstreet Boys to Chris Martin of Coldplay. This list got updated, I think, depending on who was on the cover of that month's Cosmo magazine.

I, on the other hand, was determined to snag Quidditch player Oliver Wood. Even if it meant that I had to trick actor Sean Biggerstaff into permanently pretending- sorry, acting as said Quidditch player. It wasn't even really how good he looked in bastardised leather cricket pads and maroon gold stripes (what a strange fetish that would be). It was mostly his accent. Which was Scottish and adorable and slightly incoherent. Like most Scottish people that I've met or encountered via mediums of entertainment. Roddy Woomble particularly. I went through a phase where I was sure the answer to life would be having Woomble as a next door neighbour to pester (sometimes I still think that). And the guy who played Pippin in Lord of The Rings. In full hobbit garb, he looked like an awesome guy to take to the pub.

This all has a point, I swear. I'm not doing a gratuitous eye candy post. Actually, there really isn't a point. I heard a couple of girls talking about their lists and was struck by how a) the list was basically identical to the list that the girl in my grade was keeping 4 years ago and b) the dominating nationality were Americans. I find that odd, and then had to have a think about which Americans I would put on my list.

And I came up with three obvious ones, and one that I was a bit in denial about.

So. Obviously Johnny Depp. Because you have to appreciate a chameleon like him, and also when I was bored I could force him to take me swing dancing. We could talk about France and possibly learn how to make cheese. He seems like a guy who does stuff.
Obviously Brandon Flowers. I have to admit that my appreciation and admiration for this man really only started when his band released their second album "Sam's Town" and Flowers turned up to the party with the most hilarious moustache ever. He looked like the villain in a Western film, and he totally knew it. He comes off as slightly conceited, but I think that's just confidence - he knows his music is insane and a guilty pleasure for just about everyone (except me. I will be dancing to Joy Ride until the day I die of laughing at Joy Ride) and he knows how to dress. But then he shaved off the moustache, and I stopped talking to him. I think this is why he's seemed a bit gloomy recently. A lack of Maddie in your life will do that to you, trust.
Third Obvious is William Beckett. I don't know how to explain this one, except for the fact that the video for "We've Got A Big Mess On Our Hands" had me drunkenly contemplating if the universe would render itself in two if there really were two Beckett's. He has lovely hips and seems like a total geek. And appears to have actually read Ayn Rand's Fountainhead, so would be useful when I do Modernist Literature next year.

The American that I was in total denial about until I sat down to think about this is Paul Banks. The lead singer of Interpol has disappointed me twice live, but I wouldn't be averse to sitting down with a bottle of red wine and talking about obscure albums that he's heard and I haven't, obscure books that I've thrown across the room and he's finished, and how I really can't be bothered making an effort to be 'obscure' anymore. I was in denial about Banks because he seems way out of my league (because y'know, I'm having dinner with Depp and Flowers won't stop sending fucking bouquets.) and also because he kind of looks like all those really annoying art school boys who spend three hours doing their hair (I am sure Beckett does that. However, someone who uses the word 'existential' in the wrong way in one of his songs can be forgiven. Clearly art school didn't suit him the way it didn't suit me)

So. Yes. A list of males I would engage in conjugal relations with. Or would I? What I was thinking about when I was eavesdropping on those schoolgirls today (who should have been in school, not on the 14.27 train) was that they were talking exclusively about the physical aspects of their to-be conquests. Whereas I was thinking (far too seriously) about how long it would take me before I threw red wine all over Paul Banks for suggesting that perhaps "Paper Soldiers" was a good movie. (I concluded it would depend on the quality of the red). And really, do I want to be drinking wine with Paul Banks when I could dancing and talking all night with Paul Smith, who probably is the musician for me (remind me to post the zine thing I did on Maximo Park, please)? Is it because I'm older and realise that looks aren't everything and that sex is inevitably not what Hollywood frames it as? Or is it because I have too much time on my hands and would rather be thinking about boys than Colonial Latin America? Is it because I'm a natural conversationalist who isn't really ever satisfied? I'm inclined to think so.

I think celebrity attraction starts out as a sort of physical thing (those hips! one thinks) and then as you slowly realise that the odds of that person ever showing reciprocated interest is very very small, and that you only really know a quarter teaspoon of information about them, it becomes kind of boring. Perhaps this is why Pete Wentz is the object of affection for so many girls and boys - he's constantly blogging and tweeting, and there's a sense that one really knows him (even though I'm sure alot of it is just conjecture). But I don't know Oliver/Sean's favourite coffee blend, or Roddy Woomble's favourite thing to do on a Sunday, or if Johnny Depp likes vacuuming, or if Brandon Flowers has ever played pub trivia or if William Beckett hates tomatoes or if Paul Banks secretly loves the Harry Potter series. I don't really know anything about them, and that's what puts me off thinking too much about them. They aren't real to me, and I'm much rather someone real.

I'm sure all this had a point. Maybe I'm trying to say that I think objectifying celebrities is a little cruel, not only to them, but to ourselves as well. I was so sure my first relationship was going to be perfect. It wasn't. It was messy and awkward and hysterical. We were expecting Hollywood and we got something closer to a Monty Python sketch. And with all the maturity that 21 years gives me, I think that was better. And when I look at my friends relationships, which are quiet lovely little things that have their hysterical moments (Beard thinks yams grow underwater. Liz rolls her eyes), I feel that sort of warm feeling that Romantic Comedies are always trying to inspire within me, which makes me feel queasy. I'm not saying you shouldn't settle for less than the Grand Narrative of Love, but you should realise that the little moments, the little people, are far more real than whatever simplified thing the magazines and novels and movies have taught you. Sometimes I feel like our idea of love and relationships are being ruined by all that.

All that said, I'm sure I'll end up in Scotland again sometime soon. Sean Biggerstaff should be on the look out.

xx

I did something today that I haven't done since the 6th Harry Potter book had me in tears. I threw a book across my room and nearly broke my window. I have shitty aim. The book was Marion Bradley's "The Mists Of Avalon", a title that sounds more like a face cream. It's (yet another) book about the Legend Of King Arthur, except told from the perspective of the women. Which would be totally great, if it wasn't so bloody rubbish. It's medieval Mills and Boon. I can't work out who I want to kill more - Gwenhwyfar, who is the wettest wet blanket christian I have ever met or Lancelet, who is like medieval Paul Banks, Morgraine who gets angry and sulks alot, the Merlin, who is nowhere near as amusing or wise as the Disney/TH White Merlin (or the recent BBC Merlin), Irgraine who magically went from being a loyal pagan to obsessed with Uther, Christianity and being a bad mum or Mordred, who hasn't turned up yet but I'm sure will be very annoying. My favourite character is six year old Gareth, who has two lines. And I kind of want to take Marion Bradley's Arthur and give him a hug and tell him that yes, I understand its all very upsetting, but he is the greatest king Albion has ever seen, and as such should not have married such a bloody wet blanket, and he should get more angry more often. Ugh. I think it might turn out to be worse than Beloved, if I ever bother finishing it. I have to go watch the Disney version again to remind myself that the Arthurian legend is about chivalry and friendship and battles, not bloody moaning about snake tattoos and babies and Saxons.

Oh, for the record. I did end up doing the Colonial Latin America Reading. Much more interesting than anticipated.

by the fireside

2009-08-04T19:05:00.003+10:00

I finally got my watch fixed today, and then proceeded to clock (ha) myself in the head with it, as I'm not used to wearing a big stainless steel thing on my wrist anymore. I have no idea where the watch I bought in Amsterdam is, and I'm sick of pulling my phone out of my bag to check if I'm late or not. It's much more fun nearly concussing myself. Or getting my hair tangled in the blasted thing.

Oh my bag. It's terrible. Up until last week I had this lovely little leather satchel that I'd purloined from my Father. And then a train ticket barrier managed to snap off the latch, and I managed to have an attack of the foaming mouth variety at the stupidity of cityrail, the universe and everything. So now I'm back to using the $5 cotton tote bag that I bought from the Australian Museum which has a Mammoth on it. It fits everything, but its not that swish. And it doesn't have pockets, so whatever item I'm hunting for, goes straight to the bottom.

In fairness, I don't really carry that much. I have one notebook for all my subjects, my pencil case is small and doubles as my make up bag, there's usually my non required Reading (currently a biography of Thomas Malory, what is it with me and the Arthurian scholarship at the moment?). If I'm adventurous, my knitting makes it in as well. Keys, phone and ipod go in as well. I don't carry an umbrella, as they make me angry and I end up even more wet when I attempt to use one. If its cold enough for a jacket, I'll be wearing it. Sometimes I take my camera.

So why do I feel so attracted to bags that I could live in? Huge bags, bags the size of cows, emus and apartments in Bondi?

I can only deduce that I really, really, really want to be living somewhere other than the inner west of Sydney.

xx

People keep asking me "what are you going to do with a BA in English?"
Today I told someone that I was going to make a hat and become the next Napoleon.
A witty person would have pointed out that perhaps a degree in French would be more useful.
As it was, they just blinked at me.

(I'm going to write a paper on Bloc Party and terrorism. And then I'm going to curl up in a library somewhere with a big sleepy dog and go horse riding on the weekends.)

xx

On the weekend, my mother completed a Cassoulet. Which is posh baked beans. With an entire farmyard in it. I'm not a huge meat eater (thanks to years of yelling from Emma, and her arrival back in Aus in a month, I'm thoroughly expecting to be a vegan by christmas. I'm not sure how I feel about this.) but I was quite happy to help eat my mother's concoction. It's a good thing I was happy about it, as I suspect she was probably going to make me eat it regardless. There was a lot in the pot, and I've been having it for lunch for the past three days.

According to some French people I know, Cassoulet is basically leftovers, thrown into a pot with beans and cooked for Sunday lunch while everyone is at church. In the Barton Household, Cassoulet gets made every six years, in winter, when my father somehow manages to bribe my mother into cooking it. So on July 26th, my mother commandeered the kitchen and spent the next six nights doing very strange things with basters, beans and bottles. Depending on the stage she was up too, the house either smelt brilliant (like beans), bizarre (like duck) or plain bad (the lamb. I hate lamb.)

The Barton's are not known for our wide social circles. My father is almost as antisocial and disparaging as I am, my mother is a workaholic like my sister, and my brother is Jeremy, which is more than enough said. Still, we each managed to procure a couple to share our Cassoulet. Denise and Lou were bullied by my dad into coming, Rowena and Doug happily trotted over at my mothers invitation, and all I had to do was say to Lizzle and The Beard was "hey, mum wants to feed you" and they were there. With wine, which was a truly fantastic idea (given that I had had yet another frustrating week).

The Cassoulet was pretty fantastic - very rustic, very French and very delicious. The flan for desert was great too. It was a good night, with just the right amount of booze and more than enough laughter. The prize moment was me and Claudia hearing our mother shrieking with laughter from six rooms away. Our collective sense of doom as we realised that our future was spelled out by Briar Ridge Sauv Blanc, French Baked Beans and Dinner parties, was lifted as we realised that our future was spelled out by Briar Ridge Sauv Blanc, French Baked Beans and dinner parties.

And when we'd kicked everyone out at quarter to twelve, my parents announcing that they were too old to socialise, I decided that I'm going to have to throw (possibly literally) more dinner parties where the fire burns brightly in the hearth and everyone's cheeks are rosy from having a good time.

xx

(Yes, Emma is coming back from Edinburgh in A MONTH. there will be much rejoicing.)
(Also, I am sad about how America has better and cheaper vintage than Australia.)
(Furthermore, I am worried about the Arthurian thing)

stop rubbing it in.

2009-07-26T11:12:00.005+10:00

The Sunday newspaper, regardless of where you live, can never really be considered a serious newspaper. Always full of trivial pieces of 'information'; pictures of this weeks 'scandal' that was never really a scandal (and was old hat by Wednesday anyway) and quotations from Members of Parliament who want to look like they're doing something other than embezzlement.

Generally I try to keep away from the Sunday Herald, which my household accidentally signed up to and now can't get rid of. I don't want to look at pictures of jewelry that cost more than a house. I don't really mind if the Italian Prime Minister has been tied to a bedpost. Reports of killer starlings about to descend upon Sydney don't raise my eyebrows. If I read the Sunday Herald, then my blood pressure would be dangerously high.

This morning however, I made the mistake of looking at the cover, to be met with "MINISTER WARNS GEN Y: BEGGARS CAN'T BE CHOOSY"which sparked small irritations. For starters, doesn't the minister in question (Senator Arbib, whom I've never liked. But then the politicians I do like can be summed up as "Winston Churchill" and he's dead.) know that the established "Beggars can't be choosers" is established because "choosers" sounds infinitely better than "choosy". "Choosers" is a word an English schoolmarm in the Victorian age would have spat at disobedient pupils, yet smiled graciously when said pupils turn out to be the new Prime Minister and lead England to glory, or at least a decent scone. "Choosers" implies an individual choice has been made. "Choosy" is a word that I used to use (when I worked at the Dye place and customers from the north shore wanted to talk about the difference between egg yolk yellow and midday yellow) when I want to describe someone as a indecisive fussy bitch, but am in polite society. "Choosy" therefore, to me, is not a good word.

I realise that I am, as usual, over thinking things. But the other reason this article annoyed me is because I am one of these people who are, apparently, being "choosy" about my employment and think that there are jobs that are beneath me. This isn't true. I have applied for many jobs that I know I won't enjoy, but the lure of financial independence is louder than thinking I'm too important to work at Woolies stacking shelves, or with children, or at MacDonalds. I even applied at the wretched Supre the other day. And if they call me and offer me a job, I'll go.

The last job I held started out great but made me deeply miserable in the end. I had something to look forward to though, and that helped. Being lost in Vienna beats having to tie-dye 100000 tshirts in one day, any day. And this time, regardless of whatever job I get, I'll be able to look forward to being able to afford to move out of home and stop being a drain on my parental purse. It will be a fantastic bonus if I can get land a job that makes me happy, but whatever I get, I'll do it well, and I won't let it ruin me.

That I am 21, unemployed, living at home, doing an Arts degree does make me worry alot. I don't like that I rely on my parents for funding, and I have tried to be as frugal as possible about asking them for money. Even though I went to a school with lots of girls who only had to snap their fingers for daddy to give them a BMW, I've never felt comfortable doing this. I like to know I've worked well to make/earn something. (Which is why I enjoy shouting at my sewing machine so much.)

I don't like Senator Arbib's implication that my generation doesn't know the meaning of hard work or the value of being unhappy. Because that's the feeling I get from the article, is that people older than me feel that my generation has it too easy, that we haven't really lived because we've never seen battlefronts or had to use food stamps. What I want to know is, why do so many people feel like we have to be unhappy in order to deserve the things we get? Certain members of my family are always telling me "Life is about doing the things you don't want to do" which always sounds like complete toss.

It's more about finding the things you love and enjoy and are good at, that make all the bad shit bearable. I'm slowly slowly working out what I'm good at (ranting, I suspect, will be my crowning glory), and I know that I love cultural things that are pretentious, cooking and naps. And that's why I can do any job, and I can do it well. It isn't a question of me being choosy. It's about me being a chooser - I choose to enjoy what I'm doing.

EDIT: You know, I just worked out what it was that really annoys me: The SMUGNESS. The smarmy smugness.

xx

Also I've now become annoyed by Generation Labels. They can just sod off - I don't fit within the descriptors of my generation, and I doubt that many people do. It's just another form of crowd herding, and I seriously intend to speak up about this in my Media & Power class tomorrow morning. I don't care how all the mature age students react. People need to pay attention to this stuff. Your age, gender, height, colour etc are not reasons for being spoken down to. And if you ignore it, they get more smug, and continue to ruin the English language.

(did that make any sense at all? i think mostly i'm railing against protestant work ethic, catholic guilt and the fact that politicians have it all too cushy.)

on the subject of sleeping

2009-07-24T21:00:00.002+10:00

I deal in acts of social altruism: I use an ipod to stop me eavesdropping, I drop out of film courses that may or may not have the potential to make me a bit over anxious and thus overly rude to people who have done nothing wrong except wear leggings because they are misguided little lambs, and I spend a good deal of my time asleep.

The sleeping thing is becoming a bit of a problem. On Thursday, I fell asleep in the sun at uni for two hours. While this was very lovely, I woke up slightly sunburned and disinclined to do anything for the rest of the day, except eat something. Unfortunately I decided to have the spiced veggie wrap, which is always way too spicy, but I am way too stubborn to be beaten by a veggie wrap. So, sunburned sleep and scowling at my veggie wrap, I went to the film lecture.

And then I came home and went back to sleep. It just seemed easier.

Except for the fact that I appear to have developed a few habits that are, perhaps, slightly odd. Not perverse or anything, I promise. Its just that, apparently, I curl my little hands into fists in case someone tries to attack me in the middle of the night and I have to defend my teddy bear's virtue. I think I mentioned this a week or so back? It's been getting steadily worse though. I was discovered curled into a very tense little ball, and when my mum tried to wake me, I kicked out, caught my foot on my teddy bear and ended up in a very undignified pile on the floor. My mother merely said "remember to buy milk today" and left me to my own devices. It was then I noticed that my teeth hurt. I've been clenching and grinding them in my sleep.

Perhaps I'm channeling Otto Von Bismarck in my sleep. He always seemed like a very stressed individual.

The final sleep habit that I've developed is the most embarrassing. I thought I'd fixed it when I purchased new bedsheets, but alas. What happened with my old bedclothes was that, because I've had the same Minnie Mouse doona cover since I was about 6, all the buttons that keep the quilt inside the quilt cover had come off. And this winter, it's been very cold. And I'm very wriggly when I sleep (or I used to be, before I turned into a human claymore mine). And that's why I kept waking up inside the quilt cover and had three very embarrassing incidents in which I couldn't find my way out of the quilt cover and knocked my head on the bedpost. And that's why I bought a new quilt cover, (I could have sewn new buttons on, but the new cover is pretty and warm. Besides, the other one is 15yrsold) and the morning Casper reenactments stopped.

Until this afternoon, when, weary from trying to explain to my Subject Advisor, that "Yes, I know I'm absolute pants at history, but I'll be less pants at it than I would be at having to work with people in the film course, because that relies heavily on group work and do I look like a team player to you? No. I am a lone ranger. Watch me being lone and rangy." And then I promptly tripped over my own shoelaces and he remarked that perhaps I need looking after. So, yes, I came home and managed to churn through a chapter of an e.e.cummings biography before nodding off.

When I awoke, all was dark. And fabric-covered.

I was inside my new quilt cover.

After much cursing, I emerged from my quilted prison. I buttoned the cover back up, and then with crushing shame realised that all the buttons had been done up when I first curled up on my bed. I must have undone them in my sleep. This causes me great concern, as I fear it might be the first step to utter madness.

My family, when I told them, laughed a lot. Claudia suggested that perhaps I relax before I go to sleep. My father suggested that perhaps I take up narcotics again. My mother patted my head and made her "you are a mad duck face". My brother burped.

There you have it. The highly embarrassing and uninteresting habits I have when sleeping. I have no idea what's wrong with me, and I'm too scared to ask Freud.

I'd say that I should simply stop napping, but I don't really think I can. It's my own form of social altruism, remember?

(There's a school of thought that says there's no such thing as altruism. To them, I say "I like napping. I dream of electric sheep and Lizzle marrying fish".)

back to school

2009-07-22T18:59:00.003+10:00

I meant to spend today taking photos, unearthing my bedroom floor from whatever semi-sentient thing has taken over, working on my Mozart piece and finishing my book.

Instead, I spent the majority of today asleep under a tree using my book as a pillow. Sydney is having its usual winter weather wimp out, in that the weather goes "UGH! So many people in BLACKGREYPLUM clothes. This will not do!" and chucks a spree of 20 degree plus days, which means that nearly everyone strips down to their singlets and short shorts. Then the weather glares at people like me, who are glaring at the weather, because "its winter. I want to be cold and wearing my wool dress, thank you." Today though, I gave up and removed my stockings. The paleness of my legs worries me. It's like looking at two pieces of chalk. I know that I'm not uber uber pale, but I think because alot of people are so violently orange that sometimes my lack of melanin seems odd. It's not.

What was odd, however, was how I managed to eat two punnets of strawberries and still be grumpy. I worked out a reason for this whilst working my way through another punnet of strawberries - it's because Australian strawberries, despite being the size of my head have no flavour unlike their European counterparts. There are also, on average, 9 strawberries the size of my head in one punnet. Which means that I ate roughly twenty seven strawberries today and possibly accounts for the tummy ache I got, and the nap I had to take in order to get rid of the tummy ache. I live such a hard life.

University went back this week, which was a bummer. I'm not taking any English subjects this semester which fills me with dread - what will I complain about without John Donne? Will Shakespeare get a big head without me there to point out his flaws? The reason that I'm not taking any English is that I'm not allowed to. Having completed enough credits last semester, I was expecting to be ushered into 2nd Level English (and hoping for a trumpet fanfare). However, it turns out that I've been moved to UNSW's new Bachelor of Arts, which only started this year. And because the new BA Program came in this year, there are technically no upper level courses available**. My student advisor Michael laughed alot when he told me this.

Michael also declared that I had to declare a Major and Minor. So, I did declare English as a Major and Critical/Cultural Studies as a Minor, mostly because nobody at UNSW seems to know anything about C/CStudies, and I enjoy that sort of thing. Plus it sounds vaguely more useful than bloody Metaphysics. Michael agreed with me on my final point and proceeded to tell me all about his one man war against the philosophy department.

So this semester will see me attempting three subjects, "Media Society & Politics" "Women & Gender" and "Working with Image and Sound". I have to admit I have little or no idea what to expect from any of them. I'm slightly terrified of "Image and Sound", as it involves lots of practical film production stuff - I predict there'll be a whole bunch of 'experimental' films being made which will rival "Paper Soldiers" in frustration and fury. "Women & Gender" will probably involve cliches and granola. "Media Society & Politics" will probably focus alot on the triviality of Australian Media.

Signs point to awesome term. Kissinger nowhere to be seen.

Despite today being Wednesday, I haven't actually had any classes yet. For some mad reason, Gender Studies has put back the classes until next week, which was the reason I was asleep under a tree today when normally I'll be in class. Tomorrow I have my two other lectures, but tutorials don't start till next week. It's a bit iffy. And despite being a slacker and only doing three subjects, I'll be at uni four days a week, a weekly total of 15 hours.

All this entry was really , was a way of longwindedly saying that I have to get up very early tomorrow morning.

**This has also befallen my poor friend Alan, a mad arts/science student. They told him he couldn't take English or Physics this semester. I think he nearly cried, then decided to take Linguistics and Electrical Studies. I think he may be building a Frankenstein Monster. Or a TARDIS.

all the notes in your heart.

2009-07-18T14:10:00.000+10:00

(my cello)

Saturday morning I make my into town, to The Music Practice for my quartet session. I play Cello, my father plays clarinet, tiny little Jan also plays clarinet and Canadian Mike plays Bassoon. Poor Alison has to look after us, and try to make sure that we don't slow down too much, or completely maul whatever it is we're working on. At the moment it's a Mozart Adagio. It was my first week back today because my Cello had a problem with its fingerboard, which made it sound like there was a very enamored bee accompanying me. So my cello, in its sparkly new blue case, was sent of to Edgecliff to be seen to. I'm very pleased to report that it now sounds like the beautiful full blooded beast it is. And it turns out that I own what is called a "ladies" cello, as its not quiet 3/4, not quite full size. It's a beautiful red colour, and its new sound is just begging for me to learn the Bach Cello Suites.

this is my very favourite cellist, Peter Wispelway. There's a recording of him playing these Bach Suites where you can hear him breathing, the clack of his bow and the tap of his fingers all underpinning the incredibly beautiful Bach music. There's something very intimate and personal about it that I love - the cello is a much more intimate instrument than the other strings in my opinion. I played (at knifepoint) for eight years at school, but it's only since I came back from Europe that I've picked it up again, and to my surprise I've turned out to be much better than I thought - and now that I own the sheet music for the Bach, I think it's going to be one of the best things I do this year. I'll let you know how I go, and maybe try to put a recording up if any one's interested?

While we're talking about music, the darling Renate, who is my Norwegian e-pal, asked me what music I'm listening to at the moment. So I thought I'd do a proper music post, so that I can link it to a bunch of forum people and get my hand back in at it. Alot of this will be old stuff that you've probably heard, but I refused to do a Top 10 albums last year, and got yelled at, so consider this a sort of apology.

Voxtrot - Trepanation Party
Voxtrot have kind of always been a band that I like to listen to best on Sundays. Because their music is sort of quietly bouncy, very gentle stuff full of romance and whiskey (they have a song called Whiskey that's just heavenly) but "Trepanation Party" is darker and disco-y-er. It's like the band went so some hipster club in LA one Friday night and spent the entire time sitting in a corner, nursing a drink (because they could only afford one drink because hipster clubs are overpriced) and wondering what the hell they were doing there. And then on Saturday night, instead of going out, they wrote this song. I may be projecting slightly, but that's what this song sounds like. Lead singer Ramesh has such a gentle voice that to hear him sing things like "everyone i know is losing their mind, everyone i know has a really good time" and "how does it feel to be one of the beautiful people" sends a shiver up my spine. I can't wait for their new album.

Orphans and Vandals - I Am Alive, You Are Dead (album)
I have been curled around this band protectively for over a year now. I saw them supporting Broken Records and the Twilight Sad last year in London, and decided that I didn't want anyone to know about them ever because their words and music is spectacular and epic and intimate. And then their album (which shares a title with my favourite biography ever) came out and I knew that I had to share this with the scant few people who read this thing, because I Am Alive, You Are Dead is the most real thing I've heard in years. It's not rehearsed and there are mistakes and it's all so endearing that it's like the musical equivalent of long conversations with people you love. The songs are primarily odes to Europe, London in particular, and fill me with nostalgia for a city that I found big and overwhelming and unfriendly. My favourite song would have to be '"Mysterious Skin" which was the first song I ever heard from Orphans and Vandals. It's a letter to Arthur Rimbaud, in which singer Al Joshua goes on a quest to Paris, to Charleville where Rimbaud was born. The song is interspersed with observations of modernity, the fickleness of life. At over ten minutes, it's emotionally draining, but beautiful. Other favourites are Terra Firma, because of the casual elegance of the lines "this town is like Jericho, the walls will come down if I tell them to" I don't know, there's just something so very genuine about this band. The gentle strings, the drumming that underpins every song like a heartbeat, and the ease with which mistakes are made and ignored. I love the evilness of "Metropes" which casts a devilish air over "cocktail parties for the rich and influential/walking on my hind legs feels unnatural", adding a cruel undertone to London nights and social circles. That this band choose to sing about sex like it's just sex as opposed to a toll for advancement also endears them to me greatly. This album is diverse and raw and honest and I think you should go listen to them.

Idlewild - 100 Broken Windows (album)
Is there a post where I haven't mentioned this band? I don't think so. The 100 Broken Windows album was Idlewild's second full length album, and has always held a very special place in my record collection. As much as I love their later folk-ier stuff (and the crazy dance track No Emotion, complete with pinata), I adore the way this album ebbs and flows between teen punk and indie rock and mellowness - it sounds like a band coming into their own and working out who they are without losing their sense of humor. There's energy in this album, semifrantic energy that's even visible in the slower songs, like "Bronze Medal", which always puts me in mind of winter nights. Most of the songs use repetition in such a way that you don't really notice the repetition until Woomble starts singing about it - which may or not have been intentional. But what I love about this album the most is how literary it is, how intelligent. I love Woomble's sneering "i bet you don't know how to sell conviction" in "These Wooden Ideas", which is the only song about post-modernism that has accurately captured the bullshit of postmodernism and mixed it with the fun of po-mo. "Roseability" has probably inspired hundreds of people to read Gertrude Stein (although I still haven't because, well, I'm recidivist like that). This is a gem of an album, perfect for winter walks and an even more perfect soundtrack for trying to write English essays.

Bloc Party - One More Chance // Intimacy (album)
As I'm a cultural studies student at heart, Bloc Party provide me with hours of speculation and interest. They're one of the few bands to tackle the post 9/11-7/7 culture of fear and isolation in both grandiose and intimate ways. Their music is always epic. But "One More Chance" is. Well. A bit flat after too many listens. It's a lovely idea for a song, the desperate lover trying to get back into his partner's good graces, but I'm a little over all the 80s music that's around that moment (hinthint, Lady Gaga and La Roux.) Still. It's probably a good songtoexerciseto, and I suspect that it will grow on me, the way Bloc Party tend to. Kele's voice sounds fantastic on it, and the video is pretty awesome. Until that happens though, I think I'll continue listening to the mad genius that was "Intimacy". From the opening thunderstorm of "Ares" to the operatic "Zepherys" to the vicious "Talons" this album is mad in the best of ways. It's music for the dark streets and rainy nights. It's simultaneously a portrait of global paranoia and a detailed breakup. You know what this album (and Bloc Party in general, probably) is? A perfect example of GLOCALISATION. HA. I think I've just decided to write my thesis on Bloc Party. Oh, I overwhelm myself with my intelligence. But seriously, go listen to this album. It's a rollercoaster of techno beats, ravishing guitars, intertextual imagery overload and e.e. cummings makes an appearance. What more do you want? (Apart from a decent explanation and review of this album, I mean.)

Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (album)
It either takes balls or French finesse to take your album title from one of the greatest composers in history. Seeing as it was French indie band Phoenix, I'm guessing they have oodles of the latter. (And considering they're an all male band, probably the former too, but y'know, 'it takes balls' is very American and I suspect the French would sneer at it). That they also make reference to composer Liszt is cunning yet verging on twee. Happily Phoenix has far too much cool to be twee. The slight hint of French accent adds a jauntiness that conjures up images of ray bands at the Lourve. This is an album you should listen to on sunny days lying in the park with a crisp white wine and a copy of Mozart's biography. I think there's a harpsichord (or a spinet?) involved at some point. "Rome" is a very clever sweet extension of the old "Rome wasn't built in a day" and "Lisztomania" is one of my favourite songs (and videos) of the year so far because of it's summery nature and jangly lyrics. I don't really want to go into massive detail with this album as I know here's been a lot of talk about how this is the *breakthrough* album for these guys, and I don't really see it as such. It's just lovely music that seems like the soundtrack for a movie I haven't seen yet but really want to.

The National - Ashamed of the Story I Told (Polaris cover)
Another band I'm always raving about (I should throw in an Editors song, just to complete the trio) The National continue to surprise me and tear at my little heart strings. This is a cover of a Mark Mulcahy song, part of a tribute album to Mulcahy's late wife (I know nothing about Mulcahy's work - now I'm furiously researching it). Considering The National contributed/put together the AMAZING Dark is the Night compilation earlier this year, I can't wait to hear the entirety of "Ciao My Shining Star" to see who else is contributing. But in the meantime, this is just beautiful, and perfectly suited to The National's style. If you haven't heard them before, go out and buy "Boxer" right now - their songs are portraits of the mundane - and the moments when the mundane becomes magic. There's much drinking, hiding in corners and wondering when it all when so wrong (but how did it go so brilliant). And in "Ashamed of the Story I Told", the strings are so gentle, the piano chords like drips in time, and the drums (which are sort of The National's secret weapon) will beat in time with your heart. And over that all, Matt Berninger sounds like a man quietly, calmly losing his mind. The song ebbs and swells with sadness - like when you know you have to so something that you really don't want to do, even though you know it's bad for you. It's a song about goodbyes, ones that hurt, ones that are one sided. I put this song on repeat yesterday and felt the earth spinning. That's The National for you. Now, when is their new album coming out?????

Editors - A Thousand Pieces
Ok, ok. An Editors song. Part of what annoys alot of people about Editors is the whole Joy Division/Interpol thing. For me, this has never been annoying. I love Editors over the other two bands because the music has always had what the other two lack - a kernel of hope. It's that feeling that even when you've fallen over and don't want to get up, you know you're going to be able to. There's a ferocity to Editors that you only really begin to understand when you see them play live - its in front man Tom Smith's mad scientist dancing, Chris Urbanowicz's commanding guitars, Russell Leetch's body shaking bass, Ed Lay's frantic drumming. This is a band that crept up on me and demanded that I hand myself over. And the song "A Thousand Pieces" is the closest they've come to replicating that live ferocity. This song postively snarls determination - its a sort of war cry for love and loving and wanting to be loved - when Tom howls "don't pick up the pieces" I can feel my whole being burst into a thousand billion pieces. It's about reaching out, it's about trying and it's sort of almost kind of a second "Bullets" for me, which is my favourite song ever. It's the machine gun guitars, the way the song is so anthem-esque that I just want to see them play it live and watch people's faces be filled with wonder. (Sorry, I'm gushing.)

Faux Hoax - Your Friends Will Carry You Home
I don't know anything about this band, except that I love this song and it's James Joyce-like stream of consciousness style. I love the quiet bassline. I love the shoutyspoken lyrics. I love the write up it got on "Said The Gramaphone" which has much better writers on it than I could ever hope to be. But most of all, I love the imagery that this song presents - that of my friends doing what they always do - getting my sorry arse out of trouble.

xx

There, apologies for the gushing and complete lack of musical professionalism that I used to display. I sort of prefer writing about things I love. Which is why the new PATD song is still unlistened and unopened in my inbox, along with a shitload of other stuff by boys with pretentious haircuts.

these walls will come down if i tell them to.

2009-07-16T17:45:00.002+10:00

The attacks of the Blue Meanies just keep coming.

until things improve:

1. What are your current obsessions?
The 1940s (the fashion, the shift from war-time to peace to cold war), Merlin (the television show and the books by TH White) sewing my own skirts in the morning to wear in the evening, dreaming about how to redecorate my room as it seems i'll never be able to move out and be an independent adult, books by the irish.
2. List three things you must do.
- have my spanielravaged blue shoes repaired
- organise a folio of my 'best' writing
- attack the reading list for this semester's english course
3. What do you see outside your window?
dark dark storm clouds and a winterstripped jacaranda.
4. What is your favorite colour?
Red and blue. Preferably red lipstick and blue smarties.
5. Your weakness?
Pimms and not speaking up when I should.
6. Which animal would you be?
A grumpy grizzly bear that roars all night and sleeps all day and is suprisingly nice to children
7. What would you like to learn to do?
Swing dance, speak German and play the jazz trumpet. so that I could go to Berlin and do all three at once.
8. What do you never want to happen in life?
I never want to suffer through another accounting lecture.
9. What is on your bedside table?
A precarious tower of books, my glasses, a packet of chewing gum, my cache of tablets, hair elastics and my ipod.
10. What's the last thing you've bought?
Casablanca on DVD and a hot curl roller set.
11. What's something that you want to buy?
That fabulous little 1940s suit on etsy. That book about Elephants that I saw the other day, or some vintage bowties to wear as hair clips. A popcorn machine. Colourful mixing bowls.
12. What's your favorite childrens book?
The Secret Garden, The Little Princess, The Hobbit, Anne of Green Gables, David Copperfield, The Three Musketeers (I was a precocious voracious reader as a child. They gave me The Handmaiden's Tale by Atwood when I was in year 6. It put me off children for life)
13. Who do you want to meet in person?
Roddy Woomble from Idlewild, or Fyfe Dangerfield from Guillemots. I think our conversations would be awesome and rambling.
14. What did you want to be as a child?
A success.
15. What did you dream of last night?
I dreamt that I was stuck inside the song "Tiger Tiger' by Bishop Allen, and that everyone I knew was imitating the action of the tiger.
16. Do you prefer day or night?
The space between afternoon tea and supper.
17. What's your favorite piece of clothing in your own closet?
At the moment? My blue lace gress from Glasgow, or my red french maid skirt.
18. What's your plan for tomorrow?
Play with my quartet in the morning (my cello has been fixed! yay!), wander to the MCA, try to read some James Joyce, learn how to use my new hot rollers.
19. If you were going on a long trip (you don't know where you're going), which 10 things out of your wardrobe would you take with you?
My blue coat, my glasgow dress, my wednesday adams dress. my boyfriendbuttonup shirt, my faithful black top, black/blue stockings, my bluethriftstorefabric skirt, my deadbambi skirt, clean underwear and my black flats.
20. What would you like to have in your hand right now?
Lots of strawberries, or a kitten.
21. What is your must have at the moment?
Red Lipstick. It brightens up everyone's day, according to the boy who complimented me in JBHIFI.
22. What's your favorite tea flavour?
Lapsang Souchong or Peppermint
23. If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would you go?
The Lakes of Alberta in Canada
24. What colour is the sky where you are?
Very grey, with streaks of sunset peaking through.

xx

Sacre Bleu

2009-07-09T19:44:00.003+10:00

I've been feeling blue recently, because it seems like I can't put a foot right. So today I had a blue day; and wore a blue skirt, blue shirt, blue scarf, blue stockings and blue coat. I would have worn my blue shoes, but they were destroyed in an act of CockerSpanielTerrorism. I took a photo, but my hair is giving me grief at the moment (not to mention my skin. eurgh.)

If I thought wearing blue would improve my mood, I was quickly proved wrong. So after two hours in Newtown (which is nowhere near as cool as it likes to think these days) I stomped home and resolved to move to outer space where, I'm presuming, I won't have to deal with pedestrians stopping in the middle of the street, or people asking me for money, or bloody strollers. Just because you own a baby and a stroller does not make you the Aston Martin of the sidewalk.

This was a reaffirmation of a thought I had on Sunday, when my brother and I went to Rozelle Market. After I bought a lovely little hat, we then dodged strollers, toddlers, overly pregnant women and a CAT ON A LEAD (???) to get to a patisserie that I had read about and wanted to investigate.

The investigation concluded that while Adriano Zumbo's patisserie is teenytiny, and that you wouldn't have been able to swing that poor cat we saw that was ON A LEAD, our purchase of 18 Macaron's was possibly the best food choice I had made in ages. Even if the girl behind the counter looked at me oddly when I royally proclaimed "oh, two of each flavour please"

The green ones, Pistachio flavoured, were my favourites. And the peanut butter. And the mandarin. And the glitteryone. I now have to learn the bicycle route to Balmain from my place, so that I can justify buying many more Macarons. I should just learn to make them, but I suspect it will involve serious amounts of washing up, and that I can not abide. I hate washing up almost as much as I hate, well, everything else, let's be honest. So cycling to Balmain it is. I could get the bus, but cycling means opportunities to alarm people with strollers.

Because the weather has been so gross here in Sydney, I've been getting a lot of reading done. I tore my way through Mallory's La Morte De Arthur 1 & 2, mostly so that I could shout at the television when Merlin was on. And then I reread The Annotated Alice by C.S.Lewis, which is the sort of overly detailed thing that someone as easily distracted as me loves. I found our old copy of The Once and Future King by T.H. White, and devoured that in fits of giggles on the train (and then watched more Merlin). Now I'm alternating The Crimson Petal and The White by Michael Faber, (which is wickedly funny, clever and raunchy) with Paris to the Moon by Adrian Gopnik. This book has become my morning coffee book.

Full of lovely stories of an American raising his son in Paris, this book is love letters to Paris, and insight into why so many people fall in love with France. If you can get hold of this one, do. It's lovely.

So what happens when I'm not indulging in pastries, or scowling at things, or reading? Well, I'm quite often to be found napping. I find that this pastime keeps me out of trouble, keeps me from dwelling on the petty things that tend to send me into dramatics. Although I noticed that recently my hands have been so very very very sore. I worked out why when I woke up in the middle of the night to find that my hands were clenched into fists. Presumably I have taken to doing this incase of nighttime warfare. I don't know. My father said "that tells you everything we need to know about you, Madeleine."

In response I scowled over my book, crammed a pastry into my mouth and went to have a nap.

x

i want to be in the circus

2009-06-30T17:52:00.003+10:00

Today, I found this:its called "And With Unspoken Ease, I Was Your Pet" and is by the Amazing Amanda Atkins. Her work can be found here

And I desperately, desperately want it. I'm not much of an art critic, (mostly because I'm under60. In my experience its people who are post60 that know everything about art, including (and especially) that any opinion you have about art is wrong.) but this, is lovely. The colours are fantastic, and if I could convince my hair to sit like hers, I'd be one happy monkey.

And the tattoos! I was fantasizing over my coffee this morning about what I'd like to get next- I think that it's going to have to be something colourful and beautiful and I want it nooooowwwwwww. Just like I want this print. Gah.

I've always been attracted to tattoos. I like the signposting of them, as well as the complete idiocy of them. I remember going to The Illustrated Man with Emma to get her first tattoo, then back again two years later to get my first one, a lightning bolt that hovers over my wrist. At the time it meant my devotion to BRMC's request that I rip back my rock and roll. It was an underpinning of the dirty basslines that run through me everyday. To everyone else, it was Harry Potter. Now, its there and a part of me, and I think that has more meaning that I could put into words. And then six months later I had a crossword within a jigsaw piece added to my elbow to remind me that the words don't have to be there to matter. And then in Iceland last year an ex criminal wrote some words on my left foot to help me find my way home and "to increase your popularity by 17%!". Now, I think I want something a little less serious, a little more fun and vibrant.

People are strangely rude about my tattoos, particularly people who I would expect to behave a little better. I think they're so disparaging because they're scared of self expression, they're scared of wearing themselves on their sleeves, as such. For someone so intensely private, I don't have a problem with it - but I want you to work it out yourself instead of me telling you. It might read like I've told you everything in the above paragraph, but its the gaps that tell you more, promise.I like the idea of road maps, of stories. On a train trip from Geneva to Zurich I talked with a couple about their tattoos and mine. The girl had a beautiful peony stretching across her shoulders and the boy a dragon flying up his calf. They were lovely and we shared our dinner together. I probably wouldn't have talked to them if it hadn't been to say "I really like your tattoo" in halting French. See, people with tattoos aren't scary! Most of us aren't criminals!

The only thing that's really stopping me from getting a sleeve tattoo (apart from the financial aspect) is the fact that when I'm old, I'm going to be all droopy in the arm. And that's not going to please me. So for now, I think I'll buy this print and stick to little signposts along my skin.

x

bones

2009-06-21T17:21:00.004+10:00

maxmusic, a teev channel available on cable here in sydney, just gave this review of Editor's "An End Has A Start" album

Stand Out Tracks: Smokers, An End Has A Start, Escape The Nest
Sounds Like: Shakespearean indie rock with a dark disco edge
Best for: Intellectual Shy Types

Shakespearean? I hope that means we see Tom, Chris, Ed & Russel in hose and doublets. Tom would probably be an awesome Hamlet, albeit the only one to ever say "um" and try to hide behind a piano.

They're so wonderful :)

Stop stalling. Make a name for yourself.

2009-06-18T18:00:00.016+10:00

I've been putting this entry off for about three weeks. People have started to hassle me about it. I really really don't want to write it. Well. It's more that I don't want to have to put picture of a certain someone on my blog, but I know that it's kind of inevitable if I'm going to explain myself.

....I just realised that in order to put the pictures on my blog, I'm going to have to actually look at this person. Christ. Fetch me a neat whiskey. No, I don't want ice. Make sure it's at least 30 years old and smells like formaldehyde. I want to be able to wipe the next hour out of my brain. There's probably only one person who is going to be able to help me cope with this. King Ridiculous, otherwise known as Brandon Flowers. Quick, put Day & Age on. It might help. Sigh. I'm ranting, sorry. I should just come out and admit it.

I own a dress named after a member of Panic at the Disco.

This guy, in fact. Ryan Ross.

Yeah, I know, right? You're thinking, why would Maddie, who regularly complains that these protégées of Pete Wentz are out to cause her maximum damage and death, name a dress, let alone willingly wear said dress if it was named after a member of the aforementioned band? It must be a pretty ugly dress, right?

Um. It's actually my favourite dress.(See? It's adorable, even if I do look embarrassed about the name of it.)

Clearly the universe has chucked a shit fit, right? I know. Which is why when Georges christened my dress "The Ryan Ross Dress” I scowled so much that I actually did look like Ryan Ross. I got better though.

Ryan Ross Scowling (pouting, wtf. with minion, Brendon Urie who looks like someone I went to school with) (jeremy and i just discovered that RRoss may actually have been HSelicks inspiration for Coraline)
and look, i can do pouty too!!!

It couldn't continue. I had to rename the dress. And also, Georges had some serious explaining to do. He's French. They're supposed to be masters of seduction and subtlety. Coming out and saying “that dress looks like something Ryan Ross would wear” doesn't exactly cut it. He then tried to explain why the dress held special Ryan Ross repelling powers. I was a little more receptive to this idea, which is why the dress was renamed (Except by the Fail-tastic Frenchman, who still asks how RRD is. Every day.). The new name was designed to be a slight crack at the enmity between me and Ross. Which has been going on for nearly three years now, and seriously, Ryan, if you're reading this, could you cease trying to kill me? Please?

Oh. The name. Right. It's taken from the bridge to what wikipedia informs me was the bands third single, “Lying Is The Most Fun A Girl Can Have Without Taking Her Clothes Off”. (One of the many songs that has a title almost as long as the song itself). The bridge runs as follows：

“I've got more wit
a better kiss
a hotter touch
a better fuck than any boy you'll ever meet,
sweetie you had me
girl i was it look past the sweat, a better love
deserving of exchanging body heat in the passenger seat
no no no you know it will always be me”

and the rest of the lyrics are here

Really, the thing that strikes me here is not the vindictiveness of the vocab, but total desperation and the absolute campness of the word “sweetie”, I hate being called sweetie by anyone except old gay male hairdressers. The last boy to call me sweetie got read a riot act. It's demeaning. But I'm tangent-ing in my own special fashion again. Aha. Fashion. Clever segue back to what I was originally talking about. The renaming of the Ryan Ross Dress.

It's now known as the “More Wit, Better Kiss”Dress. Because sweetiehoneydarlingryan, I guarantee my wit's more clever, better integrated, has hotter aim and leaves a better scar than you could ever hope to. See what I did there? Yeah, very fucking subtle. I must be French.

At this point, you've got a few queries, yeah?

Firstly, you want to know why I'm convinced that four people I've never met would want me dead.

Secondly, you want to know why the dress reminded someone of Ryan Ross.

Thirdly, you want to know how the dress has magic powers.

The first one is the easy one.

In 2006, I started at Mac Uni. And didn't like it. So I smoked a lot of dope, drank a lot of booze and listened to a lot of bad music, for reasons unknown (I blame Brandon Flowers for not living next door and putting on a gig for me every day). And then one morning I woke up to a Black Rebel Motorcycle Club song that slapped my hangover away and threw me across the room. I slipped on a copy of NME that turned out to have the scowling faces of Panic at the Disco on it.

And then I started noticing them. EVERYWHERE. on the radio. on the teev. in the newspaper, on the internet. I saw people wearing their shirts, I saw people who looked like them. I began to have nightmares about them trying to kill me. I then took some illegal substances and had a horrid hallucination in which they actually did kill me and I couldn't convince myself I was alive even though I was. That was a pretty fucking horrible night.

So I wrote something about how I wanted my rock and roll back, and it got published in a small zine in America. I don't know if they've read it, I don't want to know. But Panic at the Disco are still everywhere. I dare not go into a JB HIFI alone. Or Dangerfield. They even got me at the Opera House once.

The second query basically, it comes down to Georges rather bizarre interpretation of paisley. Ryan Ross seems to favour paisley.
Georges thinks the More Wit Better Kiss Dress is paisleyprinted . Therefore, in his small brain, the two are linked. Which lead to much scowling on my part. And incidental mirror posing.

However. I don't really think my dress is paisley. Paisley is defined as “intricate interlocking curvilinear pattern originating in India” And I think that my dress is more angular. I don't know, any takers???

Third query – magic powers of protection. Yes. I have to say Yes, this is true. The dress is magic. I feel fantastic in it. Everyone loves it, and everyone (except, we can assume, members of Panic at the Disco) loves me in it. It's my most complimented dress. And there are few greater weapons than a piece of clothing that makes you feel superb. Add some red lipstick and danger heels, and you're invincible.

Also, I have recently noticed that when I wear this dress out, the number of Panic at the Disco-panics decreases. Perhaps I just don't notice them because I'm too busy feeling good? I don't know. I don't want to question it too deeply.

So. There you go. An explaination of my favourite dress' name. And an insight into why French boys can be bizarre. And also an insight into my small mind. Make of it what you will. I'm off to bleach my brain by staring at this:

this is the most manly i've seen him look without the tache. more manly than a burst sausage, as Jeremy Clarkson once said.

rotten apples

2009-06-18T00:25:00.004+10:00

i've got these two drafted pieces that i was going to post tomorrow, but Apple has made me all upset, so it's ranting time.

i just don't understand how Apple has managed to confuse the concept of "streamlined" for "completely devoid of any help whatsoever"

my ipod is pretty much permanently attached to my ears. i consider this an act of social altruism; if i can't hear what people are saying then i'm much less likely to get irate. i'll be quiet and they can keep talking rubbish and everyone will be a lot happier. so when i can't have that luxury of listening to say, Maximo Park's rather intelligent music and instead have to hear about what a slut Linda is (poor Linda) i tend to get crabby.

yes, i get that the more you use something, the more likely it is to go kaputski on you. but surely Apple should have a better policy than "oops. buy a new one?" because for me, buying a new one isn't a feasible option. i haven't got $339 to pay for a new one. i don't want to pay that much for something that, going on past experience, is only going to last a year. i've paid less for shoes that have lasted three years. this ipod has been through some heavy stuff, i know. it's been on glacier in Iceland. it was subjected to much playing of The Smiths during the Belgian Experience. Spike once snuffled it.

i thought this ipod (my third in 5 years) might be the one to go the distance. it's a year and a half now. it was doing so well. i was proud of it. until tonight when it suddenly went "i dun wanna" and the buttons stopped working. just stopped.

so i've trolled the internet, and very helpfully the Apple discussion board is down. presumably because Apple is embarrassed by everyone going "WHAT? WHAT? I WAS PROMISED PERFECTION IN STREAMLINED FORM!" and so on. i've noticed that there is growing discontent with Apple.

i probably could have left this post until the morning, when i've had some sleep and some perspective thanks to the morning newspaper, but the problem is that i can't sleep when i'm angry, and i can't help being angry when i'm furious and i can't help being furious when i'm frustrated at technology.

maybe i should just hire someone to sing all my favourite songs. and live in my bag.

and what's even more frustrating?

i have nothing to read. nothing. nothing to read, and nothing i want to read. please don't give me anything more by obama or angela carter or toni morrison or amy tan. i'll be violent at you if you do.

i guess the only thing to do now is lie upside down until something interesting happens.

a wingspan unbelievable i'm a festival i'm a parade

2009-06-15T21:07:00.009+10:00

This time last week, I was comfortably immersed in a bottle of white wine. This is tradition for all Barton Birthdays once you turn 18, unless you are my father - in which case you immerse yourself in three martinis, two bottles of white, one red, one sticky. Me, on the other hand, spent the weekend quaffing Pimms and Lemonade, Champagne and Sauvignon Blanc. I am nothing if not classy.

My Festival Of Me began on Friday June 5th, when I careened into my final tutorials for International Relations and English. Being the last day of semester, we were doing something 'relaxed' and 'fun.' Trivia competitions. I gave the 'relaxed' and the 'fun' the stink eye by winning both and going home to far more chocolate than should be humanly possible to digest. I passed out into a chocolate induced coma for a few hours before dragging my mother into the city to see Disgrace (detailed in my previous blog entry). We had a nice time out, my mother admitting that I looked 'nice'. High praise indeed. And we had no arguments, which is akin to Israel and Palestine suddenly having a giant party together. Most mother daughter relations are like that.

Saturday began with the instigation of what may become a new tradition. Oh, who am I kidding? Clearly what I did Saturday morning is a habit of mine every time I'm hungry but don't feel like eating in the city. I went to Max Brenner and had a large Italian. um. Large Italian Thick Dark Hot Chocolate. That's possibly better than a Large Italian, to be honest. Then I saw Overlord (again, see previous blog entry), which was in the freeeeeezing Art Gallery of NSW Theatre. I defrosted myself by charging through the sun drenched Domain and into Myer where I solved a sartorial challenge that had been plaguing my mother and brother in less than 5 minutes. My mother was in a tizzy as my brother owns no 'smart clothing'. They had been traipsing through the Sydney shops trying to find a coat that "wasn't expensive, but warm, but not overly la-dee-dah", because Jeremy has a tendency to 'lose' things (ie put them down and never pick them up but instead continue on his merry way until someone points out that he's missing something, by which time its too late to go back) They had been at this for a good hour before I showed up and produced a nifty peacoat off a rack that they had missed. Not expensive, not la-dee-dah (whatever that means, my mother has her own language). Done. Over. Shopping for me time. Which meant going to KIT, my absolute favourite make up store ever. The lovely Amber covered my face in stuff, I don't know what, possibly Spackle, glitter and concrete. I looked awesome. And then I went to see YovankAH, my hairdresser, who tutted at my fringe, which came to my top lip "this stopped being a fringe along time ago, darling". She chopped, dyed and spruced my hair. Then she spent half an hour shouting at my hair to make it stay in Victory Curls. One can of hairspray later, with instructions to spray more hairspray as soon as possible. There was no way my hair was going to change for about three years. There might be a new hole in the ozone layer because of my vanity.

But I looked AWESOME. And once I got home, got some red lippy on, my fantastic Glasgow Dress, I was ready for a night on the town.

This is me, having a good night out. After several drinks and several drinks (hence the shiny). Note my total awesomeness, which would lead you to think that I know how to swing dance, right? Well, I don't. I made an idiot of myself. But everyone at the Roxbury was very lovely, and Libby Bre Lizzle and I were asked to dance by many lovely boys, including this guy
Dead serious, Roux from Chocolat was there. And woah. He totally didn't mind how rubbish I was, mostly because Bre Libby and Lizzle all have some semblance of coordination (which gets suspiciously better as they get drunker). So we danced alllllllll night. And drank. The music was fantastic old big band swing music, which is my new favourite dancing music. Libby and I discussed the merits of building a time machine in order to go back in time, learn how to swing dance, come back and wow Roux, as well as the guy who sort of looked like the one Jonas Bother who isn't totally creepy. Eventually we danced our way out of the Roxbury, heartsandheads buzzing, feet a flutter and grins on our faces.

I staggered home, couldn't be bothered to attempt dismantling my hair. I went to sleep, fully expecting to awaken to a giant frizzball in the morning.

Instead, I awoke to my hair looking exactly the same. Not a hair out of place. Which was slightly creepy, really. So I spent Sunday, the 7th of June, my last day of being 20, terrified that moving would mean my hair would fall apart and be an irreversible mess. The thought of washing it never even entered my little hungover head.

Sunday Night, I descended upon the Shakespeare with Lizzle, her boyfriend The Beard, Libby, Kathryn, Kirstin and Danny. I wanted a quiet boozy night full of laughter and adoration for me. Which I got, mostly by dint of bringing my own cake.

Thats Libby and I, along with my Victory Curls. And my cake

And there we are again! How lovely!
I demanded they all sing Happy Birthday to me, which they did. I don't think I could have grinned much more.

We had a splendid time, so much better than being in some seedy bar with people I haven't seen in years who I don't really like, with speeches about drunken things I've done. Instead, everyone shared stories of their favourite Maddie Moments, the best being Kirstin's tale of our school camping adventures, when we cried over tent pegs which wouldn't go in the frozen ground.
Then when we did get the pegs in, the tent blew over in the night.

I was very lucky in the presents given to me by my friends.
Libby gave me a sonic screwdriver pen:

Kathryn gave me 21 pairs of stockings:

Bre gave me a screenpainting, which I think is an interpretation of me:

and Lizzle gave me much swag:

a Bartons Almond Kisses Tin
(which has inspired me to make some Almond Kisses)

Babooooshka Earrings
(made by Lizzle)

Dinosaur Buttons!!!
I can't wait to put these on something...
I'm thinking a skirt and cardigan set?

A MUSTACHE NECKLACE
presumably given to try to get me to stop
whinging about Brandon Flowers lack of facial hair.
Sorry Lizzle, I'm still distraught.

A bag that she MADE.
GAH. When I opened this, I was gobsmacked that someone
would go to that much effort. For me?

A new ipod case. It looks like it has a face! And is cuddly!

Lizzle also made me a beautiful swing skirt, but I haven't got photos of it yet. But suffice to say, I was completely blown away by the effort she went to.
She's truly wonderful, and I'd be saying that regardless of what she gave me.
(I just wish she'd let me take a photo of her and me!!!)

So after that giftage orgy (although Lizzle gave me presents on tuesday) I once again staggered home, having drunk much more than I thought I had. I did however manage to dismantle my victory curls. I am determined to master them and wear them at least once a week.

On the morning of my 21st birthday, my mother woke me up.
By jumping on me, and squealing in her own brand of crazy-mum-talk.
I responded by burping in her face.
She told me that I hadn't been born yet.

Faced with that existential crisis ( I was born at 6.30 am in the UK, which is like, 7pm in Sydney, so when do I get to celebrate my birthday?) I went to see Sunshine Barry and The Disco Worms. A toddler pulled my hair. See previous post for details. Then I went back to bed for a bit. In the evening my family took me, my new dress and my new shoes out to dinner. I wish I had better photos, but they're all on my dad's camera, and we sent him to Vienna this week (what else can you do with a dad, I wonder?) so you'll have to wait. All the photos on my camera make me look like Wednesday Adams being attacked by a parrot.

Dinner was lovely, the food grand, the wine even more grand. My family were all in fantastic moods, which is rare for us. There was much laughing, toasting of drinks to me, drinking of drinks by me. Oh, and the gift orgy continued, with money from my Grandma, itunes cards from Lisa and Daniel, a new tartan skirt from Granny & Phil (no photos as the size was a bit off, sadly), and this from the Wicked Step Aunt:

her name is Maria, and she used to be a pillowcase. She fits like a dreamyglove, and everyone is jealous of her :)

But the best present of all came from my parents.

A Limited Edition Sailor "Creatures of The Deep" Octopus Fountain Pen
no 65 of 88

I know, right?
My lust and longing for this pen began in Geneva, nearly a year ago. You can't really see how beautiful it is from these photos but it's divine.When Dad and I saw this pen, I announced that I would have it for my 21st birthday, he informed me that I'd "be lucky to get a kick up the backside".

Best thing about this pen is that (and this will sound trite) but I feel like having something so lovely to write with has given me a bit of confidence back, so my writing has been happening!

All in all, I had a brilliant birthday weekend; spending it with people who I love and care for, and who love and care for me. There was much laughter, much dancing, much nostalgia of the "remember when she did this....?" type.

I'm not one for big parties, but this? This was pretty awesome.

And I won't apologise if it looks like I'm showing off, so there.

gah. i promise i'll blog more with shakespeare's 'brevity is the soul of wit' in mind.
also, i hate photobucket and html and technology in general

saving it up, spending it all on moving pictures

2009-06-15T13:36:00.023+10:00

I noticed this afternoon, (after an embarrassing incident with my chemist) walking home in the winter sun, enjoying the way my new bird skirt swishes, that people are still using the telephone box on the corner of my street to order drugs.

Glamorous, Croydon is not.

I've had a bit of glamour in my life recently. What with my Festival Of Me, the Sydney Film Festival and the Vivid Festival. Although I'm still confused as to what Vivid actually was, apart from Brian Eno doing lots of talking and the Opera House being very prettily decorated with lights.
As for the Festival Of Me, you'll have to wait a few more hours because I need my brothers help with photographs. But I can tell you it was the absolute best birthday I've had in years.
Sadly though, the Sydney Film Festival? Not so fabulous.

I love film, adore it. I'll probably grow up into one of those women who wears all black and a red pashmina across her expansive bosom (or in my case, pillow that I'll shove up my cashmere jumper). There'll be an asymmetrical hairdo and I'll wave a Birkin bag around. I'll be fabulous and I'll use words like Bourgeois and Dilettante. I'm thoroughly looking forward to it, because then I'll be able to enjoy the Sydney Film Festival a bit more than I did this year. I'll tell you all the annoying stuff first, so that you can think badly of me, then I'll redeem myself. That's a rarity with me.

The most annoying thing (after the grand ticketing debacle and the website monstrosity) was the Knowing Laughs. The people who sit behind you (usually behind, so that you can't throw anything at them) and make these "ah" and "a-HA!" noises at ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. One feels like turning around and going "What? What am I possibly missing in this leaky Soviet drama about mud? Really? Please tell me, maybe then the two of us can annoy everyone else with our shared guffawing." The most aggravating of these incidents occurred when my mother and I went to see Disgrace, which is heart wrenching. This woman sat in front of us and tittered to herself during the introduction of the film. Then she apparently knew everything about Lord Byron and wanted us all to know she understood the complexities of him. Lady, I've studied Byron twice, both times resulting in HDs. But the worst bit was when she turned and tutted at my mother. My mother had a cold, and was crying, so therefore may have sniffed. It's not like other people weren't doing it. But this lady turned around and went "TUT" as if she pitied my mother for being moved by John Malkovich, South Africa and the utter futility of the movie. I think my mother's reaction was probably more what the film maker was going for, really.

So that was the most annoying thing about the Film Festival. Perhaps because I was one of the younger people there, and I'm so painfully insecure that you could mistake me for song by The Smiths some days. Or perhaps because its when the North Shore-ites all venture to the CBD and start ranting. That's probably it. Not me at all. Nope.

Annoying thing number two: The Red Carpet. There were several films that were premieres, and alot of them were Australian, which was fantastic. But there was one film, which I enjoyed immensely, but nearly didn't make it too, thanks to Teri Hatcher. Ms Hatcher seems lovely. But she's also teenytiny and really doesn't need a red carpet that's three metres wide and takes up the entire entrance to the cinema, so that all us regular people have to try to negotiate a space about two feet wide. And of course everyone stops and tries to get their phones out to take photos so that they can say they were there. Whatever that means. I elbowed my way up and bolted into the cinema. And then the film didn't start for another 20 minutes, because Ms Hatcher couldn't get up her 3m wide red carpet for some reason. Traffic, maybe? I think the cult of the camera phone is what I'm railing against, because I really do think it's nice to see artists get some recognition.

There were other things that annoyed me, but I'm aware that most of them stem from my painfully ridiculous tendency to over think and be over paranoid. It's something I'm working on, because if I don't, they'll probably have to start medicating me with something other than Pimms and Smarties.

So. Films That I Saw. In Order. With Links. And Ratings Out Of 5. Hurrah!

1. Bluebeard (France).
I was expecting something much raunchier from this movie, but the four girls who played the two pairs of sisters (one set in Medieval/Mythical France, the other in 1930s France, I think) were so mesmerising, so natural that I didn't mind. It was a much more sympathetic take on the traditional Bluebeard story, so much so that when Bluebeard's crime is revealed, it's difficult to understand his motivation. I think this is because the focus is on sisterhood, and the way familial relationships haven't really changed. The mis-en-scene is cold, chilling French woodland that feels mystical yet hollow. However there are some frustratingly amateur shots (that set off the Knowing Laughs). On the whole though, this is a quintessential French film that will leave you thinking about sisterhood, more than anything else. I'm looking forward to seeing more from Lola Creton and Daphine Baiwar, who played the Medieval set of sisters. 3/5

2. Four Nights With Anna (Czech) + Us (no link)(France)
Us is a short film based on a Dictaphone recording made by a French Policeman as he investigates an apartment. He discovers a body that appears to have been there for quite sometime. The audio is juxtaposed with images of a family having a day at the beach, which creates a contrast much more moving when viewed. 4/5
Four Nights with Anna was frustrating, frustrating. I should have known it would be when the two men sitting behind me began ranting about Claire Stewart's (SFF director) wardrobe choices, before diverging to recent Czech films they had enjoyed. That aside, what was frustrating (and this turned out to be a characteristic of a few other films I saw) was the deliberate distance between the audience and the film. I enjoy a bit of mystery, I enjoy having to work to understand a film, but what seems typical of Eastern Bloc films is the way they just refuse to let you in, refuse to let you understand. In this film we see a Crematorium worker, who appears to have intellectual difficulties, repeatedly break into a woman's room to paint her toenails. It's kind of creepily sweet, the way he falls in love with her and cleans up for her. But at the same time, the thought of anyone ever doing that to me sends me into a terrified rage. This film would have been better had it been tightened in the editing room. The jumps between the past and present weren't really necessary. And the ending was just trite. 1.5/5

3. Disgrace (South Africa/Australia)
(This film was produced in NSW, so apparently it counts as Australian. I dunno, ask Premier Rees.) This film is based on a book by J.M. Coetzee. I've always meant to read it, even though I gathered its a fairly harrowing read. The film. Oh my. I can't say Ｉenjoyed this film, even though it's one of the best films I saw. John Malkovich is just perfectly clinical and composed, to the point where he stops being Malkovich and is David Lurie. All the actors in this film are fantastic, and every time I think about this movie, my heart cracks. This is what a good movie should do, it should leave you thinking about the world, it should leave you with an emotion, regardless of what emotion it is. Although I wouldn't/couldn't see this movie again, nor read the book, I would suggest that you see it because it is brilliant. Just make sure you have tissues, something to cuddle and something positive to do afterwards. 4/5 (I'm deducting a point for the ruination of my makeup, which was supposed to be waterproof but failed miserably)

4. Overlord (UK)
This black and white film came out in 1975. It's a fantastic documentation of the D-Day Landings at Normandy, June 6th 1944, which means I saw it on the 65th anniversary of D-Day. The film uses archival footage of the preparations for D-Day, which was codenamed Overlord. The director, Stuart Cooper (who was at the screening) used footage from the Imperial War Museum archives, and interspersed it with new footage based on the training that a reluctant solider, Tom, goes through. This lends the film a more personal edge, as well as some wonderful comic moments. It's impossible to tell which footage is which, really, and the whole thing manages to capture the horror of war and the black humor of it all. There's horrifying footage of London being bombed, and there's sweet imagery of Tom trying to make sense of it all. If you can get hold of it, do so. 4.5/5

5. Sunshine Barry & The Disco Worms (Denmark) + Little Dinosaurs (Scotland)
I love dinosaurs. So a short film about little dinosaurs who get beaten up by a big dinosaur, then take their revenge? I was so there. So were many many squawking children. But dinosaurs. Awesome. And then the narration had wee children with Scottish accents. 5/5 for cute, but it so could have been longer.
Sunshine Barry is twee, and there's no Panic at the Disco, so small mercies. What there is, however, is the very unlikeable Barry. He's a worm, he's full of himself and he doesn't listen. His worm mother is overbearing and reminded me of Mrs Q, the mother of a girl I went to school with. But despite that, this is a nice little film - Barry does get his comeuppance in the form of a bitchy office worm, the gay worm comes out of the closet to the Village Worms, Barry redeems himself, it's a nice lesson in how winning isn't everything and the soundtrack is fantastically cheesy disco. The animations are snappy, clear and the physicality of the worms is hysterical. It doesn't have the cleverness of Shrek or Toy Story, but kids will love it. 3.5/5

6. Paper Soldier (Russia)
Oh gods. I saw this film the day after my birthday, which meant that I was running on a three day hangover, not enough coffee or sleep. And it was so very cold. So of course going to see a film set in Soviet Russia/Kazakhstan was a good idea. Ugh. This film was cold cold cold and tried too hard to be absurd, put too much distance (like, the distance between the moon and me) between the characters and the audience, not to mention the length of the film. I wanted to shake the main character, who was so stereotypically soviet that my James Bond complex kicked in and I wanted an explosion just so things would warm up. And the women, ugh. So much whinging and moaning and pouting and fake hair. Seriously Russia, get over the cold and start making crazy college road trip films. Please. I know you can do it. Make something funny, something that doesn't mention bloody Chekhov. 1/5

7. The Beaches of Agnes (France)
Oh Agnes Varda, I'd forgotten how totally mad and awesome you are. Varda made The Gleaners, which is one of my favourite documentaries. Now she's made a doco about herself, and all the wonderful people she's known and the wonderful things she's done. She's so wonderfully creative, and at 83 shows no signs of slowing down. Her film is a celebration of life, of art and love. If I say anymore, it'll turn into mush 5/5

8. Coraline (US)
Oooh, spooky. Henry Selick, who did Nightmare Before Christmas, has outdone himself here. This film is magically scary, beautifully animated. The voices are done by an almost unrecognisable (andthereforeunannoying) Daktota Fanning, and Teri Hatcher, who outdoes herself on the scary. The 3-D effects are used subtly, which enhances the tension. You'll probably read alot about this film in coming weeks/months, so I wont blather - this is a film that will spook everyone, and probably make you reconsider your relationship with your mother. I am however, deducting a point for the red carpet fiasco (see above) 4/5

9. Humpday (USA)
One of the best films I've seen in a while. This film is dialogue driven, which appeals to a wordy talky person like me. I loved the way in which two best friends, Ben and Andrew describe their relationship, how real it all seemed. Humpday is advertised about two guys who make a non gay male on male porno, but its more about how two male best friends evaluate their changing friendship, and the ways in which their lives are different to what they expected. This is unexpectedly sweet. I wanted to be friends with these people, even if Ben was a bit of an arse, and Andrew one of those drifty people (although actor Joshua Leonard has the best laugh ever). Anna, wife of Ben is just brilliant, not over the top, not dolllike, just the sort of real woman you want to see in film. The movie as a whole is beautifully filmed and one that I'll be adding to my DVD collection. 5/5

10. Daisies (Czech)
This was a cute, artsy film from 1966. I could see how in the 60s it would have been cutting edge, and it did make me laugh alot. But after a while the lack of point begins to grate - this is probably the intent of the filmmakers. The flim centres around two sisters, who have decided to go bad because the worldd is going bad. So they eat and waste food, tease men and generally behave like Lindsay Lohan, Amy Winehouse and Paris Hilton rolled up and spilt into two. Its kind of fun. After a while though, I got sick of the stylised way the girls spoke, which was in a very slow ditzy Czech way. They sounded like blow up dolls would sound if they could speak. The chandelier scene though, was great. Another selling point is that it's only an hour long. 3/5

11. Cold Souls (USA/Russia) + We Who Stayed Behind (Denmark)
Wicked Step Aunt and I missed the beginning of We Who Stayed Behind, as we were queuing for a ticket for WSA. But I think I got the jist of it - something went wrong, peoples blood turned grey and they left the children alone. Then the girl's blood went grey and the boy saved her. It was kind of nice, in a hopeful apocalyptic way. I think mostly I was glad it didn't turn into a zombie film. 2.5/5
Cold Souls was cold. And I didn't appreciate that, because Sydney is very very cold at the moment. So when faced with freezing New York, then freezing St Petersburg, I was a little unimpressed. However, two of my favourite actors, Paul Giamatti and David Strathairn are in this film. I did enjoy this film, although it wasn't quite as complex as it had been advertised as. Giamatti plays a version of himself, trying to prep for a performance of Uncle Vanya (ugh). He's feeling twisted, so he goes to Strathairn and has his soul extracted. Wackyness and soul searching (ha) ensue. It's an attempt at a sort of Being John Malkovich type movie, but it falls short, I think because of the limitations of the idea of the soul. That said, Giamatti is fantastic as himself - neurotic, angry and bedecked in a fur hat with pompoms. The most beautiful part of the film is when he looks "inside" at his soul. The Russian part of the film is much better than Paper Soldiers, as the character Nina is wonderful and her clothes are to die for. I'd watch this again on DVD, on a really hot day. 3.5/5

12. An Education (UK)
Lizzle, WSA and I got into the cinema (after a near debacle with our dinner) at 7.30pm. we knew there'd be speeches and shizz, it was closing night. However, Lizzle pointed out that the movie started out at 8.30, which meant that there was an hour of talking in order to present 5 awards. What I remember is NSW Premier Nathan Rees tried to redeem himself by hiring people to cheer every time he mentioned things that the NSW Government is doing (although as far as I can make out, all our state government is doing is trying to talk about things that it might, maybe, possibly do. One day. If the Sydney Morning Herald stops exposing them, dangit). Miranda Otto was there too, clearly having left the house in her dressing gown instead of her winter coat. Someone let Nell Schofield wear a floor length leather coat. Bronson won best film. And then An Education started. And it was fantastic.
Set in the 1960s, in Twickenham, An Education is about Jenny, a precocious French loving schoolgirl studying to go to Oxford. Her parents are pushy, the boy who likes her is a geek (but adorable and I'd date him). Then she meets Dashing David, who is older, experienced and things get a lot better. From there on its parties with Danny (Dominic Cooper, looking sexy and predatory as ever) and Helen (the amazing Rosamund Pike in what might be her best role yet). They bound about the place, drinking dancing laughing wearing great clothes. It's magical and filmed in such a way that its not a montage, but a definite narrative progression. We see Jenny grow, see her and her parents become entranced with David. Jenny's English Teacher and Headmistress (the infallible Emma Thompson) try to intervene, but Jenny raises the question "Why do we have to be educated?". Although her teachers can't answer this, Jenny eventually figures it out herself. An Education is one of the best coming of age films I have ever seen, up there with C.R.A.Z.Y. and Mysterious Skin. It's a fantastic period piece, and the first screenplay written by Nick Hornby since High Fidelity that's not been childishly twee, but genuinely funny. The acting is first rate. Don't you dare miss this one. 5/5

So that was my Sydney Film Festival Experience. I didn't see as many films as usual, owing to the silly ticketing system. But on the whole, I did have a good time. I've tried to be lenient with my ratings, which is why there are a lot of 5s...well. Four. Next year though, I'd like to see a better ticketing system and more Australian films - not that there weren't any, but the timetable was so skewed.

Right. Now onto the birthday post.

ps. this post took me three hours to write because my keyboard keeps having attacks of the crazies.thats my excuse for not blogging recently, my desktop is kaput, and EEEPC's aren't really long term options.

brief rant re: faily tendencies

2009-05-29T19:03:00.010+10:00

There are some websites that one must check religiously. Or as close as religiously as a heathen like me can get. There's Grrl+Dog who makes me giggle and commit to craft. There's Vixen Vintage, who is unpretentious and makes me want to work harder on my wardrobe. There's Random Got Beautiful, which inspires me. There's Twitter, which is unhealthy and addictive. There's God Is In The TV Zine, which I love and adore for their NME bashing. There's my very favourite, Etsy, which is hours of fun. And then there's my new very very favourite website, YouAreBeautiful, which I discovered in Berlin and spent hours smiling about.

Thats not really that many personal blogs that I frequent, as they tend to depress me. And Lizzle, bless her lil' cotton socks, is at fault (I lie. I'd have run into this on my own.) The poor dear has a tedious job (almost as tedious as my last one). But she has internet access all day, which means she trolls the blogging world and finds the weirdest and most wonderful things, which she passes on to me.

And then I feel like a terrible entertainer. (because I don't like the word 'blogger' or 'bloggist')
There are girls out there who provide detailed updates of the clothes they wear every day. After a while, they all look the same. Tall, clear skinned and expensively draped, with a camera that makes them look lovely. There are mothers out there who blog about their entire family, and what little squirt has eaten/vomited/destroyed today. There are pages and pages and pages dedicated to those ridiculous 'harem' pants, which I think are proof that the fashion world needs a good lie down.

Anyway, my point is, what do I blog about, really? Originally, this was a blog to track my trip through Europe, which was great in theory but quickly turned into a cesspit of Angst as I realised how dependent I am on certain people (and alsopossiblymyfavouriteteddy.) Then when I came home, it was more about giving me a platform to rant on when things went wrong.....which tends to happen to me a lot. I don't know why. Possibly it's a flaw in the universe.

And now? Now I fear this blog is boring. I keep meaning to put up things I've written about my skirts, but I kind of feel that this is narcissism. And boring? Stuff happens, and I think 'ooh, I should write that down'. But then I think it would probably go over a lot better in the pub, with the lubrication (ergh, that word is gross) of Pimms. And waving my hands around. I'm very vocal. Also the problem with pictures is that I tend to look belligerent and about forty kilos heavier.

I'm beginning to think that perhaps, what this blog really really really needs is fireworks.

Any other ideas?

ALSO. I know I just whined about fashion. BUT. My birthday is in ten days, and yesterday I ran around like a mad thing trying to organise it. On Friday, my mother and I will be going to see Disgrace at the Sydney Film Festival, then cocktails. I'm planning on wearing my year12 formal dress, which is a gorgeous Japanese red silk wrap dress that cost waaaaay too much and has been worn waaaay too little. So yesterday I took it in to be dry cleaned. And then on Saturday, it'll be a gathering of the gaggle of girls I know, hopefully for swing dancing (if I can find somewhere open on Saturday), and then hijinks at the Shakey. For this, I'm having my blue lace Glasgow Dress fixed up so that I can breathe in it!!! And then Sunday I'll be recovering. In my pjs. And then on MONDAY, IT'S MY BIRTHDAY!!!! I'll be at the Sydney Film Festival in the morning, and then in the evening dining with my family at the very posh Wharf Restaurant. In a divine little number thats a total secret, totally awesome and called Wednesday.

As an aside: I really like naming things, it invests them with properties and personifications. Or the opposite. When I was at Mac Uni, there was a girl in my class who shouted all the time, and a boy who wore vests all the time. They were known as Shouty Girl and Vest Boy. I have no idea what their names are to this day.

OH MY UPDATE WITHIN AN UPDATE!!! We're going to be HERE on Saturday. You should come and dance with me. I'll be the one in blue lace from Glasgow.

........oh. And I still check William Beckett's blog. Because I'm a failbot.

spluttering

2009-05-25T21:45:00.003+10:00

i feel like i'm always ill. at the moment its a nasty litle head cold, making me sound like a cross between demi moore and a combat elephant. i've been working hard, honest. lots of stuff has been done, i swearz.

but apart from the endless frustration of university (they're letting me into 2nd year next semester, on the condition i tell no one the secret of the empa office starwars saga...oops.) i've been rather cultured. well. if knitting counts. i've learnt how to do a purl stitch, and how to maintain purl stitches! its funny how something so simple makes me feel so wonderful. after a shitty history tutorial, it's nice to know i can sit on the train and knit my way home, and see what it is that i'm creating. Lizzle's mum is going to teach me to crotchet next weekend, and i want to start thinking about making a blanket for my bed. i haven't decided on colours, all i know is i don't want it to look too seventies or hospitally.

Lizzler and I have been busy doing Ladies About Town things. This has included seeing Paris 36, which was charming, going to galleries and nodding in an artsy fashion, taking photos of things, ranting about books, laughing about my Ryan Ross dress, going to the MCA Zine Fair and so on.

We also went to see Samson and Delilah. this film is being touted as "the Australia Baz Lurhman should have made". I'm not quite sure I agree. the film is set in the Northern Territory, and is about two teenagers, Samson and Delilah. it's sort of a love story, but it's more sort of a look at the life of indigenous Australians in remote parts of their country. i found it hard going. there's not a lot of dialog, which i always find frustrating. and things just keep getting worse for poor Delilah. i agree that it's an important film, but i hate the fact that a film seems to need to be difficult for it to be important.

having said that, i'm a little unimpressed by the offerings of the Sydney Film Festival this year. it starts next week, and as an early 21st, my grandmother has given me 20 tickets. the only film i really really want to see is a short film about little dinosaurs who get bullied by a big dinosaur. its a kids film, so does anyone have a child aged 6 or up that i could take?

in between Kissinger (it never ever ends,that book) and Hamlet, i'm reading "HEY NIETZSCHE, LEAVE THEM KIDS ALONE" which is a look at how the emo music genre has its roots in the Romantic movement. the premise was scoffed at by most of the people i suggested it to, but it's really a fascinating read that, so far, seems to be more about what a wanker Lord Byron was than how Gerard Way is out to kill himself and everyone else. despite my previous claims that My Chemical Romance were out to get me, i sort of feel that perhaps what they were really trying to do was befriend me, in their own awkward way. Panic at the Disco, on the other hand, have no excuses. they want me dead, and i have a post all about it coming up as soon as i find my camera cord.

i just realised that my toes were very cold, and from that i conclude that it's bedtime.

literary value

2009-05-14T08:15:00.004+10:00

(Apologies for absence of posting, I know you all worry when I don't appear to rant, shout, scream and glower. So here goes.)

I think my being may be made from dirty fish. Or lichen. It's difficult to tell. I dreamed that I attempted to turn in today's english essay but they kept telling me I'd copied Stephen Hawking. I put nutella on my porridge this morning by accident (I thought I was having toast) and golly, was it weird.

I'm finding it very very very bizarre, this whole being stressed by university thing. I think this is because I'm relatively sober this time around - more time is spent shouting at JSTOR (an online literary journal resource thingy) than shouting at the pub. Either I'm doing serious subjects this time that actually require work (pfft, metaphysics) or I've developed a sense of responsibility that has been sorely lacking.

Whatever, at least i'm done with Beloved, by Toni Morrison. I recognise the value of this book to the rewriting of American History, but it drove me barmy. I don't agree with the idea that literature should be difficult in order to be important. Several people have pointed out to me that all Nobel Literature Prize winners are unreadable. It's just snobbery, and I won't put up with it, thank you very much. Just because something is readable, enjoyable doesn't mean it has no literary value. I cite Mr Tolkien as my main influence.

Next on the cards - 14 pages of reading about imperialism in the 1800s, a seminar on Kissinger and an essay on the Middle East that will attempt to make sense as to why they keep blowing one another up. Then theres a history thesis submission followed by 2000 words of metaphysics gibbering followed by the extravaganza my birthday is going to be followed by exams and then it ALL STARTS AGAIN. nggh.

On the bright side, I got my suit pattern and am now hunting for fabric :) and trying to remember to direct debit the Wicked Step Aunt the money I owe her. I also ordered a dress pattern and a knitted hat!

oo! Knitting! this is very exciting! There's a blog called Grrl+Dog, which is wonderful, and she's doing this knitting project I'm involved in. I'm currently on the hunt for any spare/leftover/homeless bits of wool people might have? Let me know.

As for now, I'm off to a lecture on Hamlet by the delightful Prof Madelaine, who looks like a bumblebee.

ps I have left Jarvis, Toya and Betty and am now safely back home. The tinsel still hasn't left Betty's belly as far as I know.