...and what alice found there

Friday, December 05, 2008

more answers than you asked for

I think my body is preemptively adjusting to New York time. That's the only explanation I can come up with for staying awake until 5:30am despite the two sleeping pills I took. And that explains why at 4pm, an hour until I have to get my lazy ass to work, with piles of parcels I have to ship back home to Melbourne before I'm booting off, I finally feel awake.

At some point during this post, I need to slap some makeup on my face and drag my tired feet to tear tickets for four hours. At least I don't have to do anything too serious or for too long. My last two paychecks have indicated to me that I have spent far too much time slogging it for Palace, and that I can afford to get a few full versions of the free apps on my iPhone now.

I can judiciously say that Fieldrunners (aka Desktop Tower Defense with better graphics and on your iphone), is worse than crack. It's a cheap one off payment, it's on you always, and it sucks the (battery) life out of you. Now that I've had time to absorb, I don't think getting the iPhone was the best cure for my media addiction. But now I can do a Sydney Morning Herald quick crossword puzzle 90% of the way through now! I'm only missing the technical stuff (21 down, a large motorboat starting with L - Launch. Who knew?!). With a little more practice, I could graduate to the NYT Monday puzzles by the time I get there.

***
interval - slap and slog time
***

My 4 hour shift got cut to 3 1/2 because it was so quiet, and half of those hours was spent waiting at Don Don's for my manager's food. Fun times.

It's high time I started shipping my ever expanding wealth of stuff home. Somehow I have with me 15 books, 10 dvd's, four cosmetics bags filled to the brim with makeup products, and two trunk loads of clothes and shoes. All in a 3 x 5 metre space, that I was only going to stay for two months in. Granted six of the books are plays and acting related. But did I seriously think I would need 9 recreational volumes of reading material? (That's on top of the magazines, by the way) I can remember exactly what I was thinking. "What if I need some lighter comedic reads? (When You Are Engulfed in Flames - David Sedaris) What if I wanted a high concept epic that was written by someone who still knows how to use language? (Kavalier-Clay, Michael Chabon) What if I wanted some smut? (Delta of Venus - Nin) A modern classic that I can depend on? (Lolita) Some linguistic porn? (Usage & Abusage - Partridge, seriously, have you ever poured through a language manual? I love the bits when he gets condescending, it's delicious.) etc.

Madness. And clearly a sign of things to come as I'm getting to the age of mobility and moving houses, states, and countries. How on earth am I going to go about moving my life with a 25kg limit? I'll have to get friendly with the postal service workers I suppose.

iPhone photo sharing time!!

As an appendix to my last post, I found this ghastly thing on the back of a bus as it was speeding away from me. Luckily I haven't seen it again, so therefore I haven't had to kill anybody.



If you can't read it, it says "Cancer, cancer go away. Don't come race another day." It doesn't make sense, the rhythmic structure is forced, and it's obnoxious. Clearly this is a campaign that does not work because not only do I not understand what they're advertising, my previously intact natural sympathy for anyone affected by cancer is being tested.

Not to be outdone by cancer patients however, we have this shocker.



Let's be clear here. I'm 100% behind the message, I'm all for punk disabled teens with 'tude. But if you need to use fruity capitalisation in your main tag line of the campaign, you need to step away from the myspace, and act your age. It gets to a point when it's no longer market research, but teetering on "online predator".



Now I know why I'm growing my hair to ridiculous lengths. I want to be this creature. She was walking briskly in front of me and the damn lack of auto zoom on the iPhone means this was the best I could come up with. I've been told she often models for the art college nearby. It was like walking behind an elf around Darlinghurst.


Now I need to go crush up 3-5 melatonin tablets and see if it works any better than that Unisom Sleep stuff I took yesterday. I basically need something to replicate what the sun and the heat does to me around 4pm in the afternoon. Seriously, poor Heath, I feel his pain. The world thinks he was partying too hard and having deviant sex, but the damn boy just needed some sleep.




Type rest of the post here

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Wednesday, September 17, 2008

in transition



That was sticking out of the middle of Taylor Square. A whole row of them. A bit rude I thought. I had to walk down that patch of Bourke St so often it felt like the very ground that I was walking on, Sydney, as a city was just pissing on me. Every time.

You wanna know what else is rude?



That was on Bourke St as well. The good part, the part with all the terrace houses that I gaze into longingly. The one where George the cat hangs out. I named him George. Although I'm 80% sure she's a girl.



I've pet her twice now, we're pretty tight.

So a week in Sydney. It's not terrible. Could definitely be worse. I could have said yes to paying $210 a week to stay in a cramped dilapidated twin share room in supposedly Darlinghurst but actually a block away from Kings Cross. The hunt is still on, although I have a good feeling about this place tomorrow. 5 minutes from work, 2 seconds from the bus stop that's 15 minutes from class. I won't even care if it's not as clean as the photos suggest, if it's livable, I'm moving in.

Apart from walking everywhere trying to find a room, I really haven't achieved much else. I've confirmed that stainless steel pots are absolutely useless if it doesn't have a non-stick surface. And I've found a half decent cup of coffee, a kiwi girl at this cute little cafe/fancy 2nd hand book shop. (I gave her my number, after declaring to the entire room that I need a place to stay). Found out that I DO love most Coles house brand products with the exception of their flavoured tuna. And watched every media file on my computer 5 times over, most of which I'd already seen multiple times. Read very little, written nothing. I'm thinking once I get a desk and chair situation happening I can be a lot more productive.

I do my first shift at Palace Verona tomorrow, very excitement, they have a huge bar with three split sides of tickets/coffee/drinks that actually makes a lot of sense. Plus I've felt bad about going to scam tickets before actually doing a shift so finally getting to see movies again would be good.

I'm waiting for In Bruges to finish download so I'll have something new to watch tonight. continuous repeats of Studio 60, seasons 2,3 and 4 of the American Office, and Clarissa Explains It All is so unhealthy. It might sound like a lot but I have a highly media saturated mind, it needs a constant buzz to keep me from thinking about anything that needs some real doing.

And I miss my boys. They had their first birthday three days before I left, so they are no longer kittens.



My bed feels so empty. Charlie is not slightly elevated, he's sleeping on my legs. While Miles is sleeping against them, successfully blockading me in my sleeping position all night.

I should probably venture into the CBD at some stage, if only to go to the Apple store. I'll do a macgasm post for you all about it one day. I wonder if there will be little old Indian ladies buying their plane tickets on the iMac displays



And don't even get me started on the stupidity of that poster, I had to stare at it for 10 minutes while waiting for my bus, wanting to punch both Jack and Jill's heads in every second.

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Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Veronifugs

Why am I not surprised that, when the veronicas get together with target to design a range of clothing for pre teen girls, combining my hatred for celebrity labels and inappropriate faux punk girly fashion, that my worst fear of all was going to be involved. That's right. Leggings with stitching that's made to look like denim.



No, please do click on the image to enlarge it I beg of you. You need to understand where I'm coming from when I say the world as we know it is coming to an end. This is almost worse than the time when Bratz (the doll company) tried to sell push up bras for 6 year olds. Or that other time (now) when Linds Lo tried (trying) to sell leggings with knee pads, and leopard print, ankle, things...

Really people, this is a terrifying fashion world we live in. Inspired by a good friends upcoming house warming theme of 90s fashion, I started digging up a lot of repressed memories. I'm talking, early ninties starting from the Babysitters Club moment I had in grade 3, to afterschool adventures with Clarissa Darling, to marathon evenings with Kenan and Kel (and an entire SNICK evolution). Stay with me folks, there's a lot to get through. I would like to just outline two of these fashion heroes here in order to come up with a look suitable for the said party, even though there is a high chance I will not be able to make it.



BSC. We actually started a club, back in the day, and we each took on a role of the original four. I was always going to be Claudia can't-spell-for-her-life Kishi. I would pretend I liked Nancy Drew, eat lots of candy, and braid my side ponytail. I wanted to make my own jewelery and paint my dads shirts, when I was old enough. Lucky for everyone involved that by the time I was old enough, I'd moved on. Recently I came across a fascinating blog written by a girl who was clearly brain fart twin back in the day, because the entire blog is just a transcript of all the passages from the books, of what claudia wore. (aka the best instances of literature ever! what imagination, what style!) My only regret is that I never stuck around long enough to get to the Super Mysteries part of the series. They sound like fun.

Style Points to take from Claudia:
- Side Ponytail
- Overalls
- Denim Cutoffs
- Oversized Men's shirts, ideally hand painted with a pattern of some sort, and fitting with the overall theme of an outfit
- Having themes for outfits, such as: the sea, fruits, body parts.
- Fluro leggings
- Wide Belts
- The Entire American Apparel catalogue



Clarissa Explains It All.
now THAT was a show. Back when Melissa Joan Heart was still cute and a good at what she does, back when a completely platonic relationship between a girl and a boy was still plausable, back when parents are seen as the bumbling, well meaning, but ultimately foolish financial facilitators. Clarissa was way cool. She made arcade style computer games in every episode that serve no purpose. She was intelligent, had great taste in music, she wanted to be a tv journalist, and she broke the fourth wall!! Her fashion sense was off the wall as well. I'm still downloading the entire first season so I can revel in it's 90s greatness, but from memory, and what I can dredge up from youtube, I came up with the following:

Style Points to take from Clarissa
- Layers, lots of it, in block contrasting colours
- Coloured scrunchies
- Brightly coloured leggings under torn jeans
- Vests, suspenders, grandpa cardigans
- Headbands
- Polka dots, Stripes
- Billowy silhouettes
- Oversized shirts with rolled up sleeves worn as a vest over an oversized t-shirt.



Man and she had awesome diagrams and charts. This girl was way cool, how she turned into Sabrina I'll never understand.

These are my two biggest inspirations of my primary school phase. It's pretty late, so I'm going to leave it at that. But if I was to go into a whole spill on old Nick shows I'll never leave. Secret World of Alex Mack, Are You Afraid Of The Dark, All That, Adventures of Shirley Holmes, and Kenan and Kel made up most of my childhood. As dated as some of these might seem, it sure beats whatever crap the Veronicas could ever come up with, that's for sure.

speaking of which

urgh...
as Clarissa would say, they are such a burr in my butt.

(ps/ you can watch quite a few episodes of Are You Afraid of the Dark on youtube now, some are still quite creepy, some with Ryan Gosling, and all with terrible special effects)

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Saturday, July 19, 2008

MIFF 08 Adventures

It's only a week away, and sadly, as I was stupid enough to not sign up for volunteering work this year, I had to buy a Minipass with my hard earned dollar. I just wanted to keep ya'll updated on what I'm seeing, where I'm going to be etc etc

* - denotes a session already booked on my minipass (I get 10 of these)
# - denotes a session on my minipass that's before 4pm (you get 3 freebies of these)

everything else denotes stuff I still need to confirm/would like to see/might need to buy single tickets for/maybe forkout for a second minipass... god willing


---------------------------------------------------------------
*Dainipponjin - 26/07 @ 11:15 (GU5)
California Dreamin' - 27/07 @ 9:15 (Capitol)
Jesus Christ Saviour - 30/07 @ 9:40 ( GU5)
Ben X - 1/08 @ 5:15 (GU4)
*Three Monkeys - 2/08 @ 5:00 (Capitol)
*Waltz With Bashir - 2/08 @ 7:15 (Forum)
Sukiyaki Western Django - 2/08 @ 11:30 (GU6)
*Seven Days Sunday - 4/08 @ 7:15 (GU5)
*My Winnipeg - 8/08 @ 7:00 (GU4)
*Best MIFF Shorts - 8/08 @ 9:00 (Capitol)
#The Wackness - 9/08 @ 3:00 (Forum)
A Complete History of my Sexual Failures - 9/08 @ 7:15 (Forum)
The Death of Mister Lazarescu - 9/08 @ 9:15 (GU5)
#Ahes of Time Redux - 10/08 @ 1:00 (GU6)

Coopers Lounge:
*In Conversation with George A Romero

------------------------------------------------------------------
These are the "See How I Feels". a lot of these are convenient times at convenient locations:


Rock N Roll Nerd - 30/07 @ 9:30 (ACMI)
Jar City - 1/08 @ 7:15 (GU5)
Experimental Shorts - 5/08 @ 7:00 (ACMI)
Cargo 200 - 9/08 @ 5:30 (Forum)
Rumba - 10/08 @ 3:15 (GU5)

passes progress : 7 passes/2 day passes...eek
If there's something you implore me to see, please let me know!!!

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Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Pork and Beans



http://www.youtube.com/v/muP9eH2p2PI&hl

How awesome is this video? I guess that is directly variable according to how geeky you are. On top of it being an absolutely rocking song harking back to the Buddy Holly glory days, the video is also an archive of the last couple of years of internet history. To my own amazement, there was actually a few that I've missed. (sneezing panda?) proving that I'm not as big of a geek as everyone thinks, even if I recognised 19 of the references and then proceeded to youtube the remaining 4. (Patrick Wilson is on twitter! Follow him and watch the process of releasing an album!)

I am the win. that is all.

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Thursday, May 15, 2008

Simulated Flight



I remember sleeping through a 4.2 quake when I was six. I woke up briefly from dreaming of being in a cradle when my father scooped me up and carried me out of the house, he told me not to worry, so I fell back asleep more soundly in his arms. I guess that with the foreign perspective and the news reports with staggering death tolls it's hard to watch youtube clips of students laughing as their possessions fall about them, telling his roommate not to worry because they're on the 6th floor and proudly video documenting the quake. But I remember living through what would seem like horrible disasters from the outset, and not really caring or understanding how bad it really was until the next day when you see it on the news.

Back in year 7, I remember my host mother once tried to go out on the balcony to hang some washing when a typhoon was sweeping across the little town of Nagoya. She quickly came back in, dusted herself off and said "it's quite windy today". The next day we took a walk around the town and trees were uprooted, billboards crashes houses and cars were piled up alongside the quiet streets.

Right now my cat's sleeping in a really cute position, clutching my foot and making odd noises, so I'm going to concern myself with my immediate world.

***

Many a nights were passed the last week with me looking up skateboarding videos. The hypnotic fluid lines and the bulge of the fish eye lenses sending me into the usual late night restlessness, and eventually sleep.

It began like this. My Name Is Earl is nearing the end of it's third season, and I've always held much love for Jason Lee, despite his mustachio'd mistakes like Underdog or Alvin and the Chipmunks. While I was waiting for an episode to download early last week (an episode guest starring a specially delicious looking alyssa milano), I got antsy and started wikipedia-ing Jason, his pre-Earl days, his Kevin Smith days when I thought he was rather scrummy. The pedia told me he used to be an eminent street skateboarder, and imdb trivia confirmed this. He was mentioned in the Tony Hawke autobiography three (3) times! I was on fire, I needed youtube proof, I HAD to see Jason Lee looking like one of those kids on a Gus Van Sant film. I found the proof, and it was beautiful.

One clip led to another, and soon I was looking up more videos, more tricks, and one name kept popping up, Jerry Hsu. An Asian?



It was mesmerizing, as I laid there in bed a few thoughts came to my head, a few vaguely academic thoughts, things that read like essay topics and subtitles. Unwilling to expand on any of them, here's what's left, verbatim:

simulated flight and the street skateboarder:
maintaining velocity and fluidity over constructed obstacles, freedom leaps across youth culture.

reclaimed surf culture, almost always simulated through video culture and therefore more immediate, readily acceptable into the youth mind frame.

lighting and fisheye camera, out of necessity carving out a niche look and feel

the urban cool of the unpretentious (postures and gestures)

muted rebellion, socially alienated and yet 'safe' subcultures.


Hell if I wasn't going to write essays that I was going to be marked on, there was no way I was going to blog one. Jerry Hsu as it turns out also take pretty darn good photos, for Vice magazine. These are worthy people.

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Sunday, April 27, 2008

cute things and links



so two days ago i bought six baggus. because... well... i've learned to restrain actual money spending and needed an outlet for cheap online buys that make me feel better. so eco friendly has became the name of the game, as well as free samples of mineral makeup where you only have to pay the $5US shipping.


when these items ship i'll be sure to let you know how they'll undoubtedly change my life.

says the mental who's watching a clearly manipulative chinese propagandist piece of tv at 4:40a.m. you know, take away the annoying canto mandarin accent, the obligatory 10 minute bursts of spiel on chinese/honkers politics and the fact that it's 4:40a.m. it's a really gripping show.

it's 4:40am because it took a while for me to figure out how to add the darfur wall banner onto this blog. the code they included on the site doesn't seem to want to cooperate with me and i had to kind of figure out flash embedding html, albeit very very basic code, and my brain's a mush. all this distracts from the actual aim of the banner. the point is, donate a dollar or two, add my advocate id because i'd like to see my name with a little light next to it, and help light up the wall, one number at a time.

lastly, (for it's not 4:52)

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Friday, March 21, 2008

Hating Kylie Kwong

This is like a sport with me. I would be hungry, and turn on lifestyle channel and run into a kylie kwong marathon, and 5 minutes later be full on hate. I really don't have a problem with her actual recipes per se, it's the fact that she thinks it's Chinese cooking. If she would just own up to the fact that, being 5th generation Australian, there is actually very little Chinese left in her apart from the way she looks. Her training has been largely accredited to Niel Perry, who is well respected for being the grandaddy of fusion cooking in Australia. Fusion, not actually Asian, and especially not attributed to any particular country, let alone region. Now in comes kylie, using her Chinese looks and a part and partial knowledge of asian cooking ingredients that are widely available, in Safeway no less, (namely sesame oil, peanut oil and yellow wine which she calls chinese cooking wine, there's about 20 different varieties of chinese cooking wine but what gives right? she only can see the one that gets sold here.) and automatically gets three tv series deals, lifestyle food marathons and books that offensively overtake my Borders.

She doesn't seem to understand that Chinese food as we know it in Australia is largely Cantonese cooking, and she lumps everything together and calls it Chinese. Her palette is quite tame, just because she likes chicken feet, which frankly most of my white friends love, she thinks herself quite daring.

here are some instances:

*She was making san choi bao and she made up some crap about Chinese vegetarianism. which was utter crap, because unless you have the shaved head of a monk, vegetarianism is looked upon with utmost horror, and you'd starve in most places you go. Then as she was preparing the the bok choy she said "choy means green in Chinese, and it's spelled c-h-o-y". there are about 3 things wrong with that. First choy is in Cantonese, it means vegetables, it has no spelling but it's transliterated and not in English, where it is in turns spelled with either a "y" or an "i", and is in fact the same choy as san "choi" bao. Oh and it really doesn't belong IN a san choi bao.

*She then goes on about how there's two types of noodles, egg and rice. she couldn't be more wrong. Just the sheer fact that pasta originated in China and was brought over by Marco Polo would give you a pretty good clue that there are probably some rocking flour noodles in Chinese cooking. I am 350% sure she has never tasted a proper bowl of Eastern Chinese noodle soup. I've been looking forever in Melbourne for a decent bowl and it just doesn't exist. Even Shanghai (the hodge podge mecca of everything that it is) doesn't do it justice. You really have to venture out to Chang Shu, and more specifically to a place that used to exist down the street from where I grew up, for the most amazing mouth orgasm of your life. Every winter I dream of having some hot lamb noodle soup, and it is my absolute favourite thing. It was something I used to share with my grandfather, a love for noodles. I'm always going to miss that.

*Hypocrisy upon hypocrisy, she landed in Shanghai (a land of her past, a place she's never been to but feels like she "knows") and refused to try the stinky tofu. Failing to recognise the stinky tofu for what it is, actually discredits her as a foodie let alone chef.

*and now she's going on about making a Chinese iceberg lettuce salad. Honey please, there is no iceberg lettuce in China, they don't even know what it is. It gets imported to Hong Kong where they use it primarily for san choi baos and that's it. That's as far as the lettuce is used in all of "chinese cooking"

*"Everywhere I go I see familiar tastes and smells" as the camera lingers on a shot of takoyaki. yup. Japanese octopus balls. She didn't even know what they were.

*shen jian bao, pan fried Shanghai mini pork buns. I especially love how whenever she comes across any cooking or food preparation she likes to explain what it is to the camera without asking anyone about it and make comments like "the quality of a pork bun, is shown in how many pleats it has". Absolute bollocks. It merely shows the delicacy of the wrap. Oh and then she made deepfried wontons, which was created by American takeaway Chinese menus as a giveaway item.

my laptop is about to give out so I'll stop it there, and I'll turn the t.v. off. But SHUT UP KYLIE, YOU'RE NOT CHINESE. STOP PRETENDING!

All asians are by nature foodies, and anyone with any knowledge knows how much of a hack she is, she is catered to those suburban housewives wanting to add a little ethnic to her weekly rotation, and it just kinda sorta makes me sick.

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Saturday, March 08, 2008

mock jeans

It's about time i made a new post. throughout the last couple of weeks i kept making mental notes on whines and moans to crap on about but really can't be bothered now. first order of business, a spot of geeklicious widgetry. to the left, under my pretty twitter badge, is a drop.io widget. through this you can send me anything you want, pictures, videos, music, documents, and i won't know who it's from. if it starts filling up i could just create a new free account of 100mbs. if it gets good enough i might publish the link where it all gets collected. the site is a really neat idea, you could even leave voicemail for me, it'll be an expensive call to new york to get it into my folder but that's not that much through the magic of skype. probably cheaper than leaving a message on my mobile even. anyway that's enough advertising for them. (and of course all this excitement is happening on the blog and not the facebook imported note)

the mental notes that i have basically consisted of bitching about how astoundingly bad cashmere mafia is (the production value of hollywood blockbusters, with the look and feel of soft core porn and playtime for lucy liu in costumes. lethal lethal mix), how surprisingly entertaining So You Thing You Can Dance Australia is (rhys, the resident flaming queer is the very same M.A.C. makeup artist that helped me pick out my base and powder shades), and horror upon horror, the leggins made to look like pants phenomenon that comatosed me before christmas, is now sweeping box hill, and most likely the nation, available at all good asian owned sock stands in shopping centers.

that's a pretty bad phone picture, so they might look like denim, but rest assured they all have the spandex and fake stitching of leggings. someone needs to bleed for this atrocity, and my finger is pointed at not linds lo, but people who do exercise. people who think a pair of nike's means it's ok to wrap your lumps in something black and stretchy and go out into daylight.

It was also the opening night of the French Film Festival last night, the full force of Palaise du Como was armed at the ready. finishing at quarter to two and having close to half a bottle of champagne down my shoe, the most unpleasant moment would still have to be when the greased back hair'd first born spawn to the zeccola legacy, my boss's boss, man who runs the Film division of the Palace family said to me (as i was passing trays of food around being attacked by vultures on all sides) "i just want you to stand next to me you're so beautiful". there. it's out on the internet now, i feel better.

thinking of having another movie night sometime in the near future. volunteer your most forlorn dates and we'll hug it out with chips and experimental cinema. speaking of which, my personal demi-god, felicity colman is keeping a new blog for her class this year at screen machine. the lastest lecture apparently touched on Gordon Matta-Clarke whice i blogged about not too long ago, but she included movies! so here i am shamlessly ripping off flick ripping off ubuweb.

Splitting (1974)
, Conical Insert (1975), City Slivers (1976).

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Friday, February 08, 2008

pretty plether things

so get this. Natalie Portman designs shoes now. and not only are they
a) unimpressive
b) way too expensive for what they are (vegan is now apparently code for plether, or just a word you plop in front of inexpensive products to jack up the prices, the "vingage" of 2008 if you will)
c) only available for pre-orders right now.

they are sold out, down to every style, and in every size.



Don't get me wrong i've been in love with this girl ever since that photo in either a Dolly or a Girlfriend magazine eons ago in that white faux fur jacket doing a promo for Star Wars Episode One, a love affair that's been constant throughout all her choices, even garden state, and growing steadily since closer. must she follow down the celebrity endorsement rabbit hole? oh i'm sorry it's a celebtrity "design range" but writing down a list of pumps, mary janes, ballet flats and some very basic heels doesn't exactly constitute "design". but bless her heart, she wants some vegan alternatives to designer shoes, someone should tell her you could just probably grab some cheap asian import for plether.

***

I just finished reading The Heartbreaking Work of a Staggering Genius. the Dave Eggers debut memoir/novel that put him on the map. The guy is a genius, and the fact that I started reading it traveling from San Fran to Chicago while he moves from Chicago to San Fran and you know, mentioning places I kinda sorta recognise, made it the on the road novel du jour for me the way that kerouac didn't cinch. I still don't think he put the post in postmodernism. i'm going to maintain that even if you are self reflective (staggeringly so) and utilise all these little tricks you'd find in other established postmodern novels, if all of this is used just to progress a traditional narrative then in essence it can't be considered postmodern. so basically a style/content issue. but who gives, it's an amazing book, you'd be doing yourself a favour to read it.

and now i need help deciding what to read next. my one pile on my bedside table has (since america and, more specifically since City Lights) spilled over into three small mounds running parallel to my bed. but i still have a 40% off borders voucher burning a hole in my wallet so if anyone comes up with a suggestion i don't own, i'd be open to that too. at the moment it's looking like it's going to be Atomised. mostly because i'm looking for something short (i like to have a long, short, long, short pattern to my reading habits), something not as all out young america and someone not quite as easily likable as Eggers. send me your suggestions.

I'm totally just putting off sleep, i have nothing to say here. somewhere in the inner workings of my mind i must have decided that if i put off sleep, then i would not be able to wake up tomorrow and i would not be able to go help out mum at the post office in the morning BUT if and only if i'm doing something pseudo-productive like blog writing which contains the word writing in it which makes it kinda sorta worth while. oh no, it seems i'm back to my long sentences of year 10 days when i used to break microsoft word by having too many clauses. the dark days when i was still under the pc cloud. the days of blue screens and virus scans and I.E.

speaking of which, 32 gig ipod touch! that's almost worth considering! If they bump the disk space of that fit-in-a-manila-envelope, lickable-on-breakfast-tv macbook air of theirs, i might have to trade in my lowly macbook for some of that tasty goodness.

***

since this is so stream of consciousness already, here are some random links for you (pillaged unceremoniously from Waxy.org)

the arcade fire seems to be breaking some sort of record for making some very interesting music webpages (as opposed to music videos) for their kinda dull music. black mirror is the latest to get the creepy geeky weblicious treatment. question though, music videos have traditionally been made to promote album sales, much in the same vein as singles, posters, magazine interviews. how does something people have to actively look for achieve this? and if someone is geeky enough to find these little ditties (like i did), don't you reckon they'd download your music illegally (like i did)?

The Human Tetris - not that japanese one, although which is crazier i'm not entirely sure. the sheer amount of effort these guys put into making this. oh and not only tetris, they've previously done Pong, Space Invaders and Pole Position.


My blog stat reports has been a little disturbingly high lately, so for the first time in yonks i went to my site meter page and took a look at who's been coming for a visit. a majority of whom are just looking for asian porn in google images and came by way of that picture i posted of Maria Osawa a while back. with the image search terms as quite literally "asian porn" or just simply "asian"...how does google know?!?

but then there are some funny ones too, so i've decided to bring back the Friday Fives!!!

5 seach items that led people to this blog

mels boobs - with no apostrophe, because once i mentioned that the picture of mel's boobs on my flickr is one of the all time most popular. i only wonder if the net stumbler meant mel kelly too.

jesse james fucking simulation - i'm not even sure what this means, or what this person is looking for. jesse jane the porn star perhaps? maybe when jesse jane was on howard stern and rode the symbian maybe?

rosario dawson lip balm in death proof - this girl clearly knew the way to my heart, girls who kick arse combined with my love for lip products

dirty cunt - on page 27 of google, when you look up dirty cunt, is my blog. i wonder how many other links this person tried before they got to mine.

piss on my girl - this was from aol search and so i couldn't figure out the moojoo of which image exactly did they find for those search terms and whereabouts my blog came up for the inquiry. the fact that all these are vaguely girl/porn related has nothing to do with me, clearly we're all in the wrong industry and should just quit our day jobs and add to this massive empire of smut.

runners up: bemmy book (??!) photo drum girl (huh?)

i think that's enough ramblings for one night. goodnight all.

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Wednesday, January 30, 2008

house with a w-shaped hole


this is a mad man. a mad man who's currently rocking my world.

did anyone else know about this? why did i have to spend two hours staring at his photos at MOCA in LA to learn about him?

so get this right. he cut buildings. oh don't worry, he's got his architecture degree from cornwell. so he knows what he's doing when he cuts a W shaped hole throughout a house. or makes a conical insert into some building about to get demolished. or when he just splits a house down the middle. anarchitecture. it's amazing. he also made short films, performance art pieces, hang in the gallery type art pieces, was in paris for the 68 riots and aligned himself with the situationists. the man's a freak. hacking away at the american dream quite literally with a power saw. splitting the modern city. the book on him was too big, a quarter of the size of my suitcase, and weighed accordingly. so i bought a book on his films. making trees dance, cutting and descending into the base of paris to honour his friend's death.

so i'm sitting here, listening to roising murphy trying to convince me she's no longer moloko, and reading up on Gordon Matta-Clark.


Splitting


Splitting (titling pieces wasn't his strong point)


Office Baroque


Conical Insert


A W-Hole House

His influence is still felt today, just a few months ago, a british artist Richard Wilson decided to have his own go at matta-clark.

Turning the Place over

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Sunday, January 13, 2008

Simulacres et Simulation

2007 spent in the dark:

01. Pan's Labyrinth
02. The Fountain
03. Stranger Than Fiction
04. Pursuit of Happyness
05. For Your Consideration
06. Notes on a Scandal
07. Breaking and Entering
08. Little Children
09. The Illusionist
10. 300
11. The Good German
12. Perfume
13. The Host
14. The Lives of Others
15. Paris Je T'aime
16. Half Nelson
17. Spiderman 3
18. The Science of Sleep
19. Zodiac
20. As It Is In Heaven
21. Tales from Earthsea
22. My Best Friend
23. Factory Girl
24. Transformers
25. Harry Potter OoP (Singapore)
26. Alone (Singaproe)
27. Sicko (MIFF Opening)
28. Breath (MIFF)
29. Lagerfeld Confidential (MIFF)
30. In Memory of Myself (MIFF Vollie)
31. The Signal (MIFF)
32. Accelerator Program 2 (MIFF Vollie)
33. Rescue Dawn (MIFF)
34. Time (MIFF)
35. Transformers (repeat)
36. After Life (MIFF Vollie)
37. VIVA (MIFF Vollie)
38. Echoes of Home (MIFF Vollie) +Katoomba
39. In the Company of Actors (MIFF Vollie)
40. My Kid Could Paint That (MIFF Vollie)
41. Day Watch (MIFF)
42. Inside Paris (Work)
43. Born and Bred (MIFF)
44. Strange Culture (MIFF)
45. Joshua (MIFF) +Strange Hysteria
46. Mister Lonely (MIFF)
47. Man From London (MIFF)
48. This is England
49. Home Song Stories
50. Fracture
51. Ratatouille
52. A Mighty Heart (Staff Screening)
53. Chelsea Girls (ACMI 16mm)
54. Badlands + Mean Streets
55. Eastern Promises
56. The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford (Staff Screening)
57. Death Proof
58. Michael Clayton
59. Elizabeth: The Golden Age
60. Awake (LA)
61. Juno (LA)
62. Beowulf (San Fran)
63. The Golden Compass (San Fran)
64. No Country for Old Men (LA)
65. Atonement (NYC)
66. Sweeney Todd (NYC)
67. The Bucket List (NYC)

Paid for: 27

I've been back for almost a week now, but that's ok, I gave myself until this weekend to be lazy. the mother gets home on the 15th, at which time the buzzing would return to my head and any gears i've been cranking internally to get somewhere would unwind, deflate, and i'd probably settle back into same old routine of passively consuming trash starring some prepubescent doe eyed starlet. oooooh skins returns in feb, my torrent client can have something to feed it's hungry hungry heart again.

buzzzzzzzzzzzz

back to list making. favourite films from the above list:

Paris Je'Taime
In parts, the joss whedon segment sucked pickles, and chris doyle scared me.

Stranger than Fiction
Maggie G can do no wrong

Breaking and Entering+Notes on a Scandal+Little Children
these three kind of just blended together, all small scale dramas with very good performances.

Half Nelson
If i could have sex with a performance, i choose this one

The Science of Sleep
if michel gondry could get any more whimsical, he'd have be be making a movie with his 5 year old son. oh no wait, he is.

The Signal
Fucking Hilarious. getting a general release this year.

Rescue Dawn
little dieter gets the hollywood treatment. it didn't suck

In the Company of Actors
technically not a film as much as a video doco on some fabulous people putting on a fabulous show. Cate is clearly an alien, and not the MLC alumni she leads you to believe. I changed three shifts so i could see this standing in the back of the cinema during MIFF. worth every un-paid second.

Mister Lonely
rates right up there in the weirdest films of this year. in a good way. mostly.

Eastern Promises
viggo mortensen's penis gives a stella performance.

Assassination of Jesse James
i don't know why i'm writing anything, these are just good films, go see them

No Country for Old Men
ditto. a tad violent, great script.

***

oh no, the buzzing is already starting, my head hurts. I'm a catlady with no future. at least my boys love me. i'm liking how needy and clingy they've gotten since the cattery. constantly at my heels. honestly guys, bathroom time is MY time.

boy that was a sucky post. i still haven't been able to wash off the slummy stench of 07. tomorrow's monday. 2008 would start then. i'm just two weeks late, going by my usual standards it's not half bad.

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