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Evening.

A post on my blog! Whodathunk it. Well, no-one, seeing as no-one actually reads it. And whose fault is that? Little ole me, I guess.

So it's almost Christmas. I've managed to tire myself out with social gatherings running thick and fast. Nothing scandalous has happened, which is a little sad. Am teased of the time one person took their shirt off at a Christmas party. This is teasing because I fear that will never happen in my lifetime.

Ooh, I think I hear Dean approaching with food, so I'll bid you all adieu! Ah, no, it wasn't him. Shall continue...

So, yeah, have piked on my final dinner - Friday - and I feel tres bad about that, but I just coundn't take it any longer. I had to go home and just be silent for a little bit. Silent because - and this may shock you - I'm quite boring, and getting boring people to talk is a mixed blessing.

Speaking of getting boring people to talk - some loser I work with made the grand pronouncement that in the "good old days" of the national broadcaster people he worked with were more interesting. This was spoken to a man who resembles a yeti and speaks to no-one for the majority of the day because he's watching animal penises on TV all day long. This is a slight exaggeration, but it's almost on the money.

Okay, the food really is here. Ciao!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

just for jade!

hi, jade!!!

hello, everyone else. Yeah, right.

i have two seconds of battery time left on stoopid laptop. am at SLV. working - not!!!

will write more now i've remembered how to blog!

catchya...

why do i hear violins...

living where i live, i hear a lot of odd things from the street. it's half-11 on a saturday night, and i'm hearing a violin from the street below. how uncommon!

mmm, yeah, livin' it up on saturday night, clairey? well, yes...

this is my first proper week of being a normal person - you know, the type of freak who works m-f 9-5! i haven't done normal hours for seven years, so i'm not sure exactly what to do with myself. and the other odd thing is that i don't HAVE to be in the office during the day - yes, i can choose my hours to a degree! far-freakin'-out.

thankfully this new lifestyle change coincides with the melbourne international film festival, so i shall be spending all my free time in various cinemas over the next two weeks.

and what has brought about this new change?? well, i've backfilling someone else's job...so I guess someone else has a cool job...but anyway it's mine for a while. so i'm doing footage research for certain arts programs on a certain network television broadcaster.

i think it's awesome, but it's all a bit freakin' draining. like, i was doing my last shift at southbank on friday (sob, sob) and i freakin' forgot to do something - organises a feed for monday for some arts footage from sydney - and i'm semi-screwed. damnit!! yikes.

i might post a few more pics to flickr and then get offline...seeing as i'm stealing someone else's internet. is this so bad?? probably!

thinks like i see

hola!

well, it feels like i haven't blogged in sssssuuuuuccccchhhh a long time. but it's only been about a month and a coupla days. ah, so i don't feel so bad. but, man, i had to wrack my brain to remember my goddamn log-in.

so what's been happening lately?

i've been abandoned by buddies. nic's gone to vietnam with david, and dean's gone to canada to meet terence & philip and then on to nyc to boast about how great it is. gggrrrrr. no, not jealous...at all! to show them all who is the coolest cat of all, i'm going to tassie at the end of the month.

what else? i have per-chased my very first melb film fest passport. yes, i shall be in dire need of vitamin d by the start of august, but it's worth it.

what else? latest musical obsession...and there's always one or two floating around. today's lucky contestant is...dexys midnight runners.

and if anyone sees the following solo album by kevin rowland, do buy it for me! i will compensate you handsomely for the pain involved in taking it to the usually too-cool-for-school music retail genius who's going to scoff heartily at vous.

erm, so if you're still reading, work is going oh-kay. oh, and eva from work has abandoned me as well, so work is a little on tha quiet and boring side.

going to see canadian band sloan tonight. i have dean's car so i'm going to enjoy being in charge of my own vehicular destiny. i shall be enjoy singing along to 'searching for the young soul rebels' loudly, tunelessly but with passion.

well, best get my arse into gear. have got a dress to put on, then i need to hitch up the skirt and lower the top. it's a look! i like it!

home!

am just about to run out of battery power.

am home. well. wet.

more later.

xox

what a fool believes...

yes, i've been listening to way too much doobie brothers. but they're just so smooooooooth!!!!!

anyway, i haven't posted anything since the judee post video, of which i explained nothing, so i should explain it now. judee sill was a singer-songwriter during the heady californian rock days. i came across her via matt lending me barney hoskyn's 'Hotel California: Singer-Songwriters & Cocaine Cowboys In The L.A. Canyons' (of which there is to be a doco made it seems). nobody in the book comes across as a nice person so i'm not under the impression that judee was anything but wholly egotistical and jagged. however, who in rock music isn't? perhaps kamahl. anyway, just diggin' the judee. she does a lot of multiple vocal layering in her music which doesn't come across in the performance below, of course, so if you want to know more about her sound it's best to find the studio albums, of which there are only two.

anyway, onto other things. am at work at this very moment. am having an incredibly slack day today. i think i might go take a sojourn over to the ripponlea estate and sit under a tree for lunch. i'm virtually the only person in the whole building and i always get a little freaked out by that. another thing that's freaked me out is news from across the water. i heard that a guy i was at uni with when we were about 18-19yo died last week. now, i won't pretend that i knew him well. we did talk a bit. well, we tried to but seeing as i was made catatonic by chronic shyness seemed to put an end to any conversations we tried to have. anyway, i found his death, at age 35, all a bit shocking. i don't know what he died of but i hope he was in a good place at least.

sad.

anyway, i shall post more when the spirit takes me.

Judee Sill performs The Kiss

hot buttered soul

hi, y'all

ooh, i see i have a few comments! thanks, ladies! i must make the blog rounds today and see what y'all are up to. i hope you're not spending too much time on this dating website like i am. er, let's change the subject.

saw new york dolls at the hi-fi bar last night, or as i like to call it "the can't fucken breathe bar". yes, ooh, i am witty. i've always been a bit partial to the ol' passing-out-coz-i-can't-breathe-when-there's-no-air routine, and i must say i was pretty shocked to see just about everyone there smoking their guts out. like, dudes, you can smoke in your homes, on the street, in your cars - why do you have to save up all yer smokes till you're in a hot, airless confined space? anyway, so i had to pull over to the side of the show and feel ill for a bit. before that moment, tho, the dolls were pretty awesome. i have some foties on the flickr thang too.

what else?

my new fave album is issac hayes' 'hot buttered soul'. i try to look past his scientology leanings and just dig the 18m of 'by the time i get to phoenix'. it's awesome. here's the track listing:

"Walk on By" (Bacharach, David) – 12:03
"Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" (Hayes, Isbell) – 9:38
"One Woman" (Chalmers, Rhodes) – 5:10
"By The Time I Get to Phoenix" (Webb) – 18:42

well, better get off to work very, very soon. ciao, all!

four days orf

hi, all

not a whole lot to post on les blog at the moment. i'm surfin' around looking at cars at the moment. i'm not entirely sure why i'm looking at cars. i guess it's something a 35yo should own, shouldn't one?? perhaps this looking is procrastination.

another thing i just gotta do is my tax return. man, i think i'm going through the laziest stretch of my entire life. thank god i've got four days off so i can maybe get my head around some admin shite.

excitement news - my thesis is in the la trobe uni library! that means i'm finally somebody! okay, maybe that's a little exaggeration, but surely it means i'm somebody in bundoora!!

have been enjoying the music of judee sill lately. she made some pretty amazing music around '72/'74 and lived a pretty full life before dying in '79.

other musical explorations: side 2 of van morrison's 'into the music', john martyn, robert palmer...

okay, better go and make the most of my four days of before about two weeks of 8am shifts and a month of 9pm finishes. (groanalicious!)

alive and kicking

or perhaps just gentle padding. you know, like a cat does before it settles down for a mega snooze.

yes, i'm sorry to have given the appearance that i've gone on a mega blog snooze, but i guess i did. sometime at the start of february i got a virus on my computer. now, i'm not blaming anyone, especially my housemate, but my housemate probably gave me the virus via the la trobe uni modem connection i let her use. i guess the key phrase is "let her use" which actually makes me responsible for the dozens of trojan horses i've been wrangling lately.

anyway, i might have tamed the trojan horse from snowy river, but i'm not really game to get online more than i need to - hence, typing this at work means no access to cute pics and stuff unless i'm extremely organised!

and i freakin' love using pictures instead of words, as most writers do (?), so this is as painful for me typing as it is for you reading. but i shall continue...

what's happening?? well, not too much.

i have found les car of moi dreamz. i must get off my arse and enquire about it. it's a one-owner deceased estate. oooh, it's lovely. exactly the model i want. good price. never been in a crash. red. loves it. (ooh, i've included a picture! much easier than writing about it!)

other than that...the oscar competition this year was won by emma from tha abc. her prize was a vhs copy of 'spice world'. nice one, eh? this year's telecast was unlike no other i had witnessed = excruitiating. love ellen, always will, but it was WAAAAAYYYYYY too long. seriously, there were salutes to tributes to montages to memorials to ARRRRGHGHGHG! enuf already!

well, better go. sorry to be abrupt, but footage waits for no-one! xoxox

sad, sad, sad day

now, i think we can all agree that anna nicole has had a life a bit too full of controversy, brouhaha and court proceedings, so it's with great sadness but a tinge of relief that she's gone to the great press junket in the sky.
there's so much to talk about with ANS. i think a lot of her public image is coloured with a certain cringe factor. for me it was the pain of seeing her clearly loaded and still being allowed to talk to the media, be photographed, act, perform, whatever, without her full faculties. i guess i'm concerned about this public image she was allowed to cultivate because it hones in on what i have studied - the construction of the bombshell image. the bombshell image certainly takes a large amount of maintenance and effort to control, and for the most part you'd expect a bombshell to have a raft of people supporting their employee to present the best face possible.

i think we can see this with the wonderful world of britney spears. she, too, seems to not be employing the right kinds of people to help control her image. or perhaps there is no down time from a medicated high in which to allow the bombshell to do her work. so her work must be done when it needs to be done, whether she's in the best shape possible or not.

a good example of ANS speaking her mind is the "bring it on, mother" tirade from 'entertainment tonight'.

anyway, so all this makes me grumble that i should've written something about ANS by now, and i haven't. i did attempt to write something...but a paragraph doth not maketh an article. so perhaps this tragedy will spur me on to help make sense of losing anna nicole.

mo money

okay, two mini posts in a few hours. i've obviously been dazzled by inspiration: yes, i have found my new love. his name is eddie. he's a tad older than me, but what joy he brings to moi life. check out his total hotness in this clip:

at least now we know where michael jackson stole all his tight moves from. if you're unconvinced, take a slow youtube trawl through eddie's finest. seriously, he's kinda hot in the 'baby, hold on to me' clip, but perhaps i'm just tired. i tell ya, doing all this cataloguing of 'countdown' episodes at work is doing in my poor brain. there i was tonight, singing along to elo's livin' thing'. and the other week i was bawling over the 'mull of kintyre' clip. so very, very odd.

oh, great, someone's on the street below destroying property. man, people just suck. thank god there's eddie!

real estate art

just a quick post, seeing as i'm at work...surfing. but i saw this picture on a real estate site of a house in my dad's street in launceston and thought it was real swell like, and just had to post it. awww, takes me back. literally, seeing as i'll be back there on the weekend. ciao for now.

a bit more to fursdee than i fought

i remember...i do have something to write about. granted, it's not very interesting but i never pretend that my blog is anything near to interesting, so let's just rack this one up, shall we?

let's play guess the celebrity! he was seen getting off the #19 tram at the brunswick rd/sydney rd tram stop and walking to barkly square via the side entrance, which implies a seeming knowledge of the area!

who could it be?? and should i really have snapped a photo of his arse? eh. either way, might be getting tix with my work posse to go to a taping of his show downstairs at ripponlea next week. okay, that narrows it down. yes, it was (i think) alan brough. and blv me, he's a fast walker!

other things...well, i am truly enjoying my time in AOR land, especially spending some quality time with the steve miller band. if i haven't said it before, it seems midlake has stolen all their good hooks from SMB, which explains the remarkable transition in quality between midlake album #1 and #2. and i've been exposed to the breathtaking beauty of yacht rock, thanks to emma from work. i had no idea there was such a sub-genre. like, i just love the cover of jimmy buffett's 'livin' and dyin' in 3/4 time' album, but i had no idea it was all part of a larger movement!

so weird. and if you've got the time and the inclination, check out this classy re-enactment of key moments in yacht rock's history. i've only seen one episode, but the touching reunion between michael mcdonald and jim messina brings one to tears again and again.

fursdee

ooooh, it's been a long time betwixt entries, hasn't it? why? not really sure, but i suspect it's something to do with a diminished quality of life thanks to sinus issues. i shall be addressing said issues with a naturopath in the coming weeks. this has just gotta shtop!

made it through another golden globes. must say that i did want leonardo to win best actor, but i'll settle for the excitement of scorsese winning best director. if scorsese doesn't win an oscar i will be tres upset. stay tuned for more oscar buzz.

ah, running outta things to type and am feeling the need to go wash, so i shall do the do. more later...

shootin' down the walls of heartache...

..bang, bang!

name that song!

nah, you've got better things to do, eh?

hmm, i haven't posted for a while. i think i slipped into a bit of i-can't-blv-it's-supposed-to-be-summer depression. to my suprise, summer has made a comeback. and i'm liking it...mostly. before i head off in another direction, i'll quickly mention my sinuses, just because they're so incredibly fascinating. my problem area is that large cavity between the teeth line and the red splodge...and the red splodge...and the nose-shaped thing at the top. after yesterday's effort on behalf of said sinuses, which had me nauseated, in pain and headachey for way too long, i did some internet research in desperation. therefore, my next step is to explore the rewarding world of sinus irrigation. but first, let's see what i found out via wikipedia. my "sinus headaches" are in fact migraines. great!!! so now i get two types of migraines!

Sinus headache vs migraine
Headache is rarely a symptom of sinusitis and a "sinus headache" is often a misdiagnosis of a migraine. Acute sinusitis can cause pressure within the sinus cavities of the head, but this always has associated pain to palpation of the sinus area and purulent greenish discharge from the nose. The use of the term sinus headache therefore is often misleading and results in underdiagnosis of migraine. Recent studies indicate that the majority of "sinus headaches" are migraine headache.

i'm glad to report that any "purulent greenish discharge" hasn't been noticed in any large quantities. i'll be sure to contact the epa if such an outbreak occurs.

so now i'm working towards flushing out my sinuses on a regular basis. seriously, this is a great post, isn't it? but seriously seriously, sinus pain has made most of every year since the late 1990s really unpleasant. thank you, god of bodily irrigations, for offering light at the end of the tunnel.

i should mention xmas, shouldn't i? perhaps this pic will speak volumes...

or maybe it won't. yes, this xmas, it hailed in melbourne! but why does dean have an umbrella inside the car? well, some lowlife junkies smashed dean's driver's side door and stole his car stereo on xmas eve. what a generous gift. seriously, if they'd smashed any of the rear windows instead, would that have killed them??? and of course the hail bucketted down as we're driving along hoddle street! cleared up by the time we got to his ma's house.

since then...well, it's been a topsy-turvey ride. i've had waaaaaaaay too many shifts allllllllllll alllllooooonnnnnneeeee out at ripponlea. i described ripps to someone the other day as having been renovated for five minutes every decade since the 1950s. i think that's about accurate. consequently, i had my first shift in aaaaagggeeeessss at southbank today, and i was just so sooper excited to be there i did heaps of freakin' work! my time at ripps was spent in something akin to a diabetic stupor.

anyway, time to post and run. i've got more to say later ('cause i'm so freakin' interesting), and i promise i'll have no more sinus diagrams!

holy tinsel!

is it really the 22nd of december? i feel like i've been in a bit of a haze. hang on, all of melbourne HAS been in a real smoke haze, but this is more of a sugar-induced haze. the cupcakes went down a treat at the christmas party in the ripponlea gardens.

seems like the fires have settled down up north. i think they're getting better in tassie too. having spent many happy childhood days in bicheno, just south of st helens, it distresses me lots to think of the very epitome of "a sleepy little beachside hamlet" going up in a wall-o-flames. especially when some dickwad might have started the fire.

i was doing a bit of "higher duties" today at work, which was fun. the main benefit was i didn't have to catalogue last night's news, which is quickly becoming my least favourite thing to do. i got to have an argument with a woman around in news too! that was fun.

oh, 'more than a feeling's come on! ooooohhh.

which reminds me that i've just been listening to some free CDs from work - inc antony and the johnsons - and some soon-to-be-priced LPs, inc 'pearl' by janis joplin. what a great album, huh? i swear i last heard that at rebecca's dad's house when i was 18. got some awesome '50s LPs with to-die-for covers! more on that later.

well, am a little tired, which usually takes the form of annoying contact lens action which in turn makes it difficult to see what i'm typing.

and for those who care...
..bobby went orrf!

i've found my cupcake identity

i've finally launched myself fully into the world of pointless reasons to have a blog. even further beyond previous thresholds i've plundered. yes, this blog post is focussed almost entirely on explaining something i've been trying to find deep, deep, deep within myself. i've been trying to find my cupcake icing identity. sure, i like those fancypants "dip a violet in icing" or the chintzy pastels or the goddamn-i-can't-get-mine-to-look-ANYTHING-like-that icing decorations you see in magazines. so late last night, i got it. hallelujah!

while some will say "er, whathef**k", i like to see it as an extension of my wildly unsuccessful visual arts background. so there, labradors and gentiles, is cupcake. beholden its glory. tastes like sh**, though.

any for those with a yearning for some bobby flynn, look who appeared in my inbox...

bobby live at the northcote social club! whodathunkit!!!

little baby jesus of cool

hmm, was just surfing along - do-de-do-de-do-de-do - and noticed how similar (in my head anyway) these two album covers were. added to this their location in music history and i think we can call this uncanny, folks.

okay, so i'm not convincing anyone with this. but perhaps i've found my next musical obsession. yes, to stave off my budding obsession with those rasta kids musical youth i'm going to now hunt around for some nick lowe.

i must admit to enjoying 'living and dying in 3/4 time' by jimmy buffett just a little too much. 'come monday' - what a great song!!

what else? it's christmas, everyone! go completely spacko why dontcha???

smoke on the water...er, air

this is the view from our place in the normal light of day, and below is the view with the winds from the north bringing down the smoky smoke from the smoky fires. the wind hasn't brought the fire, just the smoke, so i think we're pretty, pretty, pretty lucky, to quote larry david.

so to commemorate such luck i tried my hand at some baking. for those familiar with just what i can do once apron is donned...well, not a lot. i'm more known for sweets. eating and making them. more often than not, i am an eater of sweets. perhaps visiting an endodentist will put an end to that!!

anyhoo...i did a first run of cup cakes in the lead up to the christmas party picnic we're having on the 20th.

i'm trialling a few ideas seeing as this was my very first attempt at cup cakes of a modern kitschy variety. i cannot compete with michelle on this, so i have to imagine she's not the best cup caker maker this side of the rockies and just plough on. anyway, they taste okay. nicole suggested a little lemon in the icing and i think i'll lay off the pink a bit. i might try a bit of old-school peppermint crisp decorative shaving on top next time, but i so love the dollar-5s!!

thought i should show some christmas cheer and put up the xmas decorations! because i live with a living, breathing, non-reader-of-my-blog christmas hater, chrissie is a tough time of year. i have to be careful not to decorate the flat TOO much! so this is our concession. a christmas deer/dog with a broken leg. tasteful if nothing else.



and one last piece of useless knowledge...the end of a mystery that has bugged me for years. literally years!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Everybody's got a hungry heart
Everybody's got a hungry heart
Lay down your money and you play your part
Everybody's got a hu-hu-hun-ga-ry heart

Springsteen's voice was slightly sped up on the recording, producing a higher-pitched vocal. (Bob Dylan had done the same thing on 1969's "Lay Lady Lay".)

i would always sit there thinking, "that doesn't sound like bruce freakin' springsteen" and everyone would say, "that is bruce freakin' springsteen, so shu-up!" i was wrong, but the part of my brain that that question has stodged up for 20 years is finally free!! thank you, wikipedia! thank you!!!