Chris

I'm not sure I can keep doing this...

2009-12-07T08:37:38Z

...how can I continue a relationship with someone who thinks Jean-Claude Van Damme is sexier than Bruce Lee?

Ze prefers this:

to this:

And what is going on in that first picture anyway?

There would be poll here, if I could do those. A terrible poll not worth your time.

Nadya’s 101 Candles Orkestra

2009-12-06T00:39:13Z

I don't go out enough, so I am going to a gig tonight. I haven't heard the band before, but that's ok because I like surprises. And Quirkz usually have good stuff on. And they are the type of venue that YOU need to experience.

The email I got had a quote from an anthropology professor, for some reason, saying:
“…Nadya’s 101 Candles Orkestra vibrates souls, its infectious spirit bonding communities with each other and with the locals, and as past is mixed with present, generations blend. Musical traditions, which have stirred deep emotions, released ancient yearnings and kept feet dancing in Europe for centuries, are re-vamped and brought into the present by effervescent Sydney girl Nadya Golski, the central personality and lead singer who’s prodigious ear, intense vitality, and extraordinary vocal delivery have brought together a disparate group of virtuoso musicians from multi-cultural Sydney. Nadya’s is the voice which makes the music present and exciting, never suppressing the individuality of the musicians, and producing an unforgettable sound. And as the 101 Candles lives and changes, it embraces Poland, Russia, France, Spain and even South Pacific Island cultures with surprising twists of jazz and blues in English, woven magically into the vital and mysterious tapestry of a wonderful performance…”

So, who knows? Might be good. Anyone else at a loose end tonight?

EDIT: Too late, I got a better offer :P

Where the Wild Things Are

2009-12-03T13:41:33Z

Max was a good Max. His rumpus was true. The indy soundtrack was not nearly as precious as I thought it would be and actually worked very well.

The Wild Things themselves. . . well, I just expected them to be wilder, you know? They were basically lost children with adult New York accents, and each some aspect of Max's personality or family. Disappointing. But taking it as it was rather than as I wanted it, it was really well done. It made me care about Carol, who was the wildest wild thing, and it does take some decent cinema to make me care about big furry suited thingies.

This movie also included the essential ingredient of children's movies, a child doing incredibly dangerous things without an adult around to tell them not to. So it ticks that box.

And it did make me want to put on horns, run up to the top of Sydney Park and howl at the moon, and I was only mildly discouraged by how this might inconvenience whoever was screwing in the bushes that night. So I guess it was successful?

We'll eat you up; We love you so.

The Magic Google Door.

2009-12-03T06:15:05Z

The boy discovered a magic door, just like in the book, except it wasn’t a portal into an icy forest populated with talking creatures (and don’t creatures talk to each other, anyway? The only thing special about those creatures was that they learnt a lingo the tourists could understand), it was a door into other people’s google searches. Not only that, but he could change their search results. Trolling sex searches got old quickly. He redirected “2 girls” to a blog post by a siamese twin on the diffuculties they faced being treated as an individual, “brightny spheres” to an astrophysics blog. He redirected “why do i sleep so much” to sites on lucid dreaming techniques. “sex is for making babies and revenge” he just fobbed off with a bunch of contraception sites. He read one that said “fucked by an invisible ghost”, but he didn’t really know how to respond.

A lot of people would search “when to say I love you”. Sometimes he would respond with poetry, sometimes with a civil war in a far-off country torn to pieces by the colonial aftermath and damned by first world middle class indifference.

For the heartbreaking “what can i take to make me feel good”, he answered: anything, as long as you don’t pay for it, and redirected the search to a selection of how-to sites on shoplifting.

He painstakingly redirected a thousand fundamentalist and creationist searches to the most careful, friendly explanations of evolution he could find, and likewise redirected every search for “Dawkins” or “Hitchens” he could find to various explanations and explorations of eastern philosophy and religion.

The door was like Narnia, time passed differently. He didn’t need to eat or sleep, didn’t even have a body, as such. When he emerged, he had been in there for months, years even, but barely a day had passed in our world. And he knew when he emerged that he may have changed the world. But it’s hard to tell.

puddlesofun @ 2009-12-01T11:50:00

2009-12-01T00:50:39Z

This library keyboard will not pull out far enough for me to put it on my lap. Are there more keyboards than people in this country? Would it be better if people were keyboards? We are all constantly frustrated by the physicality of tools. We are impatient, we want to think it and it will be done. Learning skills wastes time. We don't want to learn, we want to know everything. We DO know everything. We heard about it. We know about vaccinations and conspiracies and the truth about 9/11 and the history of psychology. SHUTUP, YOU don't know about the HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY! I KNOW ABOUT THE HISTORY OF PSYCHOLOGY! Tell us more, you are clearly a well-balanced individual. Well, Tom, as you know, I am famous and you should listen to me. You may have heard conflicting "facts" from journalists, scholars, historians, but let me ask you this: do any of those so-called "experts" have haircuts as nice as mine? Do they? And how many films have they been in? Oh sure, that guy over there says he is a "doctor", but when it came time to pay someone umpty million dollars to play a doctor in a film, was it him they called? I don't think so.

So, apparently that is too long for a facebook status update. Whatevs, man.

puddlesofun @ 2009-11-21T00:18:00

2009-11-20T13:18:48Z

There it was at the bottom of the abc news story I was reading, a link to another story:

HAMSTER EFFECT: Anyone wanting to experience life as a hamster need not go all the way to France.

It was listed under political analysis.

There is no way, I thought to myself, that I am clicking on that, because I know very well that what lies beyond it is mundane, and all the possibilities are so much more interesting.

puddlesofun @ 2009-11-05T23:45:00

2009-11-05T12:51:33Z

As it turns out, I find it very hard to put aside an unfinished essay (which I now have an extension for) to work on more pressing ones. I need closure damnit.

Now I need to exercise willpower to stop doing an essay? The fuck?

Anyway, just in case anyone cares (I care!) the 12th of November will be the final thing I hand in, and I will be at leisure, to do leisurely things.

I may even keep writing 1500 words a day, but only in a leisurely fashion.

puddlesofun @ 2009-11-02T22:14:00

2009-11-02T11:25:57Z

I'm writing an essay about celebrity!

I suspect I shall have to read some Baudrillard. Hmph.

....

Oh crap, I just realised that I have miscalculated when everything is due by about a week.

I am going to fail everything. Fantastic.

Low brow. Or "lo-brow".

2009-11-01T12:22:16Z

Decent post content once again eludes me at this hour, so here is some filler:

You can tell I have stuff to do, can't you?

Not at all particularly fun fact: October 2009 is the time by which Rudd promised to reinstate the anti-discrimination act when he ran for office.

So, whaddya say, federal government?

*sound of crickets*

Hmm.

Moon.

2009-10-26T05:31:53Z

You know when you look at all the stuff that has happened since you last updated LJ, and then you kind of scratch your head and just give up? Yeah.

Anyways, I am seeing this movie tomorrow night. Who wants in?

puddlesofun @ 2009-09-23T10:29:00

2009-09-23T00:31:05Z

Should be doing my work, but everything is the colour of pisschrist.

More shots here:
http://www.abc.net.au/news/photos/#id=2693741&num=13

In which you get to witness the sorry spectacle of C geeing himself up for a thing.

2009-09-14T11:27:36Z

The China in the 20th C course has the exact same structure, assessment wise, as the China in the 19th C course I did last semester. As such, I need to turn in a full 2000 word draft tomorrow on an essay I haven't really planned yet, as it isn't due for another 3 weeks. It's only worth 5%, but I don't really have quite the volume of depression and self loathing that served as an excuse for not doing it first semester. And I missed out on a distinction by 2% in the first semester. So I should totally do it!

So why am I writing this instead? Why have I only written 500 words and done barely any research? Is it because I resent pointless busy work? Is it because I hate the idea of putting all that work into something that won't be read? Somewhat. Maybe I'm also a procrastinatory jerk. I am considering inserting some sort of story into the middle of it.

...Another, oft-ignored aspect of Mao's success both in gaining peasant support and in negotiating his way to chairmanship of the party was his adeptness at handling dragon politics. It was in fact the support he gained (by fox like trickery) from the two serpents that slept under the Huanggang Peak in the Wuyi Mountains that allowed the Jiangxi Soviet region to be successfully defended for so long against the forces of Chang Kai Shek, and it was the knowledge of Dragon lore he reputedly picked up in this experience, as well as his ability to recruit peasants to the cause, that ensured Zhang (who had dragon blood on his mother's side) would never be able to challenge him again for leadership of the party once they had both retreated to Shaanxi. This also explains how Shaanxi itself was so effectively defended, despite being made almost entirely out of roast pumpkin.

In other news, civil wars can be depressing.

Also, apparently it is possible to take space pictures for less than US$150, so I guess that's pretty cool.

Edit:
I emerge from wikipedia several hours later with the following useful information:

-The article on the Uyghur people has been edit-warred so heavily that it is, for the moment, completely empty.

-The perpetrators of the Ern Malley hoax were both from my high school.

-So was the winner of The AVN award in 2004 for Best Oral Sex Scene, in "Throat Gaggers #6."

D:

-It doesn't tell me which founding member of the KMT went there, however, which is what I was looking for.

-Lists are great. But an attempted list of all the revolutions and rebellions ever is a pretty scary sight.

negation

2009-08-22T16:47:59Z

I was going to post when I got home tonight. About what I don't know. Happy stuff? Sad stuff?

Instead, I read, played guitar, and made a slightly embarrassing comment on the blog of one of my favourite authors. Should access to those you admire really be that easy?

I will tell you, though, that I hear but never see the fireworks go off in my neighbourhood each night. And in the morning there was smoke in the air.

I will tell you that someone saw me and I didn't see them, and maybe that has too often been a thing with me.

Probably sleep is advisable. 'night, world.

CONSUME!

2009-08-14T02:11:50Z

So the first thing I had to hand in this semester was a diary of things I purchase over the course of a few days.

Prepare for too much information.

A Complete record of everything I buy from the 9th to the 12th of August.

Sunday
Purchases: Nothing
I was sick today and stayed home reading.
(there was going to be a big section here about the things I use at home that are purchased at other times - electricity, internet, food - but this is already a little long)

Monday
Purchases: Travelpass, Chilli and snowpea stirfry; Movie ticket to see Beautiful Kate.

Red Concession Travelpass from the Newsagent at my nearest bus stop
I started buying Travelpasses some way into my first year of uni at UWS Bankstown. I did the sums and found that if you took into account my other travel for work, dancing, etc, it would usually work out cheaper than buying a weekly train ticket and a travelten. Now that I go to a university very close to where I live, it is not possible to tell in advance whether it will be cheaper unless I know in advance everywhere I will go during the week and add it all up, and in many cases it is not. So I find I am paying for the convenience of not having to worry about whether I will go somewhere or not, or needing to buy additional tickets. I think not having to worry is easily worth a few dollars.

Chilli Snowpea Stirfry from a noodle place on King St.
I buy this because I am meeting my friend Anna before we see a movie. The choice of restaurant has a lot to do with convenience to the cinema, as we only have half an hour.
Here seems as good a place as any to mention my vegetarianism, as it is certainly a very particular and deliberate aspect of my consumption. The main reason is that I don't see any reason to kill animals, although I expect by now, with what I've read, I would most likely have stopped eating meat by now for environmental reasons even if I was completely cool with slaughtering living feeling creatures just for the taste of the juicy stuff inside.
I've been vegetarian for about six years. Some people on hearing this try to tar me as an animal lover, and although it is true that all of my romantic partners have been mammals, I don't love all animals. Some of them are creepy or downright gross. Cows have big heads and they stare at you in an unsettling manner. But there are people I don't like as well, and I don't eat them.

Ticket to see Beautiful Kate at Dendy.
I don't see movies that often, but I like movies and often am disorganised and miss those that I do want to see, so I've recently tried to be a bit more active about such things, in some cases seeing movies by myself. I put out the call on Facebook that I was going to see this tonight (I was going whether or not anyone else was free) and Anna said she wanted to come.
I get a slight, mysterious glow of moral satisfaction out of the fact that I am seeing an Australian film. I have no idea why. I have no particular stake in the local film industry, and most of my favourite films come from other countries. I could retcon in some ideas about my resistance to cultural homogenity and the need for a diversity of stories etc, but I'd just be guessing.
Complicating this also is the fact that the film is based on an American novel.
It's a good film, though.

Tuesday

Flat White
Coffee! Possible the least harmful recreational drug our society engages in, but nonetheless people will tell you that it isn't recreational at all, no, they need it. It is a necessity. I generally do not feel this way, but occasionally I do. I slept poorly and got up late, and all I have for breakfast is the banana I grabbed on the way out. Ok, so maybe not a necessity, but a useful supplement.
Also, Toby's Estate is fair trade. Sadly, this probably has less influence on my decision to buy from here than the fact that the cafe is between my house and the bus stop, and I am running late. Technically, ordering a coffee makes me more late, but at least now I feel I am getting something out of it.

Groceries
I am at uni until 7 and am planning to go out to a film tonight with my girlfriend and two of my housemates. So my girlfriend has gotten to my place before me and is starting to make dinner. She calls me when I get out to let me know what ingredients I need to pick up. I go to Harris Farm (they are: usually slightly cheaper, and more importantly usually fresher than other nearby alternatives) and pick up said ingredients, which are green beans, potatoes, mushrooms and fresh coriander. I also pick up some strawberries (because they are cheap and I like strawberries) and some chips and avocados (for making nachos in the future).

Movie ticket to see Public Enemies
Worth noting: two movies in one week is fairly unusual. Zero movies would be far more common.
We were all looking forward to seeing Coraline tonight, but as it is in 3d the tickets were $20, even on cheap Tuesday. My housemates and my girlfriend all earn less than me, and I don't earn very much. So we saw this instead. It was too long.

Chocolate, Tea
Fetched by my compatriots whilst I mind cinema seats. The tea is terrible, but that is made up for by the cosy domestic feelings that inevitably stem from having a loved one bring you tea.

Wednesday

Coffee+Pear and Raspberry bread, from the shop near the footbridge
I was really looking forward to eating my strawberries during the Consumer Cultures lecture, but I forgot to bring them. So I had this instead. It wasn't particularly what I wanted, it was just one of the few vaguely appetising options I could access in the ten hungry minutes of the mid-lecture break.
No doubt I would be more in the habit of packing lunch, however, if I wasn't used to relying on an abundance of conveniently placed food retailers.

Dinner comes courtesy of my dad, if you were wondering.

Conclusion: I am a consumer whore who buys too much. Although a diary of individual purchases doesn't really deal with the bulk of my consumption, i.e. energy at home.

Stand By Me

2009-08-09T10:12:44Z

And things.

2009-08-03T12:13:55Z

I was going post a proper update and stuff, but my real computer has died completely, and this one has an annoying keyboard and is making a high pitched noise, so instead, here is a picture of a tortoise:

I'm off to watch Hedwig with my housemates.

Summer, 1897

2009-07-29T12:16:41Z

More.

A supreme court official.

2009-07-26T09:37:50Z

She was quite large, and very friendly, and when we opened the door she apparently regretted to inform us that our landlord was in the hole to the tune of about 1.8 million dollars and that it was extremely likely that the house would be repossessed in about 8-10 weeks, at which point we would get a months notice from the sheriff.

So, poo.

Whenever I have counted my blessings in the last few years, this house has been among them. It's in the right place, the people I live with are amazing, and there is nowhere, I mean nowhere in the entire inner west that is anywhere near as cheap. And now I'm going to be finding a new place sometime in the middle of exams, thank you very much 2009 are you quite done yet. We housies would like to find a place all together, but they can't afford much of a rise and everything's expensive. So we may be split up, which is just crap.

I can't believe that I probably won't see another Summer at this place.

Legitimate theatre.

2009-07-23T03:31:40Z

Ronnie Burkett is one of the most gifted character actors of his generation and one of the better playwrights. He puts on one man shows and often plays several characters at the same time.

Because his medium is marionettes, you probably haven't heard of him. But I saw his show a few years back at the opera house and it moved me, a lot.

So... now he has another show on in October, and I have a thing for cheap ($39) tickets, but I need to buy them before the end of Friday, so I was wondering if anyone else would like to join me.

http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/priority/billytwinkle.aspx

And why yes, it is a puppet show about a puppeteer, so you get to see marionettes operating marionettes. How cool is that?

Possible dates are:
October
1
4
6
7
8

(more boring uni wank)

2009-07-21T14:47:06Z

Sew.

China in the 20th C has a problem with Sex, Violence and Transgression. So to speak. And Australian Gothic, an English Unit I was quite looking forward to, is clashing with not one but two of my other units. So I guess it has to go.

But what to replace it with? I've really no idea. Candidates include Fantastical Women (Fantasy! Women!), Religion & Society: Conversion & Culture (History! Religion!), Consumer Cultures (Consumers! Culture!), Technocultures (Technology! Cul...well, you get the idea), Modernism (people have warned me against this), From Silent to Sound Cinema (old movies!), and Modern Cinema:modes of viewing.

If anyone has any perspectives or experience with these, or the ten million other things I could potentially do, I'd appreciate hearing them.

Life Drawing.

2009-07-20T04:13:14Z

For free, at the Sandringham hotel tonight. 7 pm.

Anyone interested?

Remember to always think twice.

2009-07-09T00:24:34Z

Did I write this weeks ago and forget to post it? Hm. Nevermind.

Michael Jackson was a distorted fun-house mirror reflection of our late 20th C obsessions, if we ever cared to look. Our preoccupation with physical beauty twisted into his cartoonish death mask face. Our obsession with youth perverted into evil appetites. And our quest for self-improvement, by any means necessary, without ever examining the standards by which we feel we must improve. Transhumanists take heed: here was a man who took advantage of all the medical tech of the age to transform himself into what he thought he needed to be. But in the end, what was that?

A cautionary tale. Of course looking at the man in the (distorted) mirror is useful only if you recognise him as such. And by and large, people haven’t. In fact, it seems for the most part an agreement by the media to more or less pretend the last decade of his life didn’t happen. “We lost a great artist,” after all. But “we” lost him sometime around the early 90s. Best to just to avoid uncomfortable questions, then.

Like: in what kind of sick, fucked up world is being able to sing and dance a justification for getting away with child abuse?

I expect Michael Jackson sightings to be just as common in the coming years as dead Elvis sightings last century. The two deceased have this in common: by the time they died, their trufans had already been practising denial for years.

***

500th POST HELLS YES!1!

2009-06-15T10:44:35Z

est. August 2003. Yes, I know many of you have been around half as long and have 4 times as many posts. I tried reading some of my old stuff but it made my organs bleed in a special way instead here is a picture of a silly guitar:

I've stuck with it, though, which is a surprise, because I'm not known for my stickiness. It's become an important way to communicate and it would be strange to be without it.

In other news, I have but one exam to go, a week from Wednesday, and then I am done. I have a bit of free time in the meanwhiles, so if you want to hang out this week, especially in the next couple of days, let me know.

CORALINE

2009-06-09T09:41:53Z

Is sold out on Wednesday. Damnit. So I will not be going.

But if any of you folks would still like to, there is still a session at 12 on Saturday. Unfortunately I will be up to my neck in take-home exam by then and won't be coming, so you will have to sort out tickets and the like for yourselves.

Try: http://www.sydneyfilmfestival.org/Festival/Films/FilmDetails.aspx?id=123

Be quick.

puddlesofun @ 2009-06-04T11:09:00

2009-06-04T01:09:50Z

Reading confessions on grouphug.us is not doing my assignments.

However, LOL: http://confessions.grouphug.us/confessions/801567532

Ok, time to turn off the internet.