Oxford Collapse
Presenting my recommendation for the album you should listen to this spring/summer:
Oxford Collapse: Remember the Night Parties
It's fun clean pop that's just a joy to listen to. The sound brings me back to the summer after we left high school, when we had nothing to do, no idea what to do but plenty of time to find out.
Upon opening the cd case my eyes were greeted with pictures of late 20somethings enaging in behaviour reminiscent of people many years younger (public urination, water bombies etc). Yes, I thought to myself, this is a band I can identify with
heart cooks brain 3
We danced together slowly, cheek pressed to cheek, the soft strains of Norah Jones' Turn Me On playing in the background. My hand nestled perfectly in the small of her back, like a key in its lock, while the other hand gripped hers gently. Her hair smelt of strawberries.
"If I had one wish, just one, I would wish we could stay like this forever, cheek to cheek, dancing away an eternal night", I whispered in her ear. She giggled.
I colored in embarassment. "Yeah that was a bit cheesy" I sheepishly muttered, turning away a little.
"No no" she quickly replied, pulling away slightly to look at me, "it was sweet!". My face split into a shy smile.
"It's just that I was thinking..", and with this she shot me a wicked grin, one eyebrow raised, the effect causing me to go weak at the knees, "..what about sex?".
I stopped suddenly and looked at her. "Oh yeah, I forgot about the sex," I replied, grinning at her, "...let's do that instead". She threw back her head and burst out with uncontrollable laughter.
A few minutes later, after the laughter had died down, she looked at me again, carefully. Her smile faltered slightly as her eyes gave me a questioning look.
I pulled her close and kissed her.
facebook loner
Friends and fans, I have a confession to make. I am guilty of a little hypocrisy.
Several months back I espoused the benefits of social networking sites - notably Facebook, the current fad of the moment for middle class myspace escapees, their lives filled with poking, pirate recruiting and inane likeness comparisons - trust me, you don't want to know how similar we are, it might be too depressing for you. At any rate I send forth a plea - get out of your circles, embrace social networks, meet new people.
The thing is... I'm not really into Facebook. I don't proactively look for people, all my 'friends' have been reactive invites. I don't proactively post on walls either, mainly because having an elongated conversation frustrates me - the stop/start nature of a wall posting makes me lose flow, and I always have to read previous posts to even get a bearing on what the hell people are talking about. The applications are frivolous and pointless - the only app I've truly embraced is iLike, and I find it unlikely anyone actually listens to any songs on mine, for obvious reasons. So, I have done NOTHING remotely close to what I preached.
I thought about it. A person like me should eat this up right? It's actually an excellent site as far as social networking sites go - it's not as openly exhibitionist as Myspace, nowhere near as annoying (when I go to a profile I'm not bombarded with garish wallpapers and obnoxious streaming emo-rock), and the app system when utilised effectively is what makes Facebook so popular at the moment.
However! I'm still the Facebook loner - sitting at the back of the class, staring dreamily out the window, animated when spoken to but ultimately content to let the world drift past.
No idea why I'm so disinterested. Maybe I have yet to be engaged in something on Facebook - conversation, person or other - that truly interests me. Or, as Jess would probably suggest, it's because Facebook is super popular now, and the budding hipster in me yearns for something less mainstream. Who knows?
Final news - My alcohol ban is over! Woo to abusing my liver! and alcohol fueled awkwardness! Based on a very basic interpretation of Nietszhe, this makes me a Superman. Take that Aryan master race!
klubz with kkkk
Banger's & Cash - B.O.O.T.A.Y - guaranteed club hit for the year. You saw it here first!
saturday noises
I'm standing on the dance floor of Tigerlils on saturday night, a place that had too many people for such a small place, deafened by thudding electronica mixed in with bongos. A girl that had been introduced to me as Emma stood next to me. Her head lolled to one side, eyes heavily hooded, slowly swaying side to side slightly. She looked wasted.
I decided to use that as an icebreaker.
"You look drunk" I told her. She shot me a venomous look and huffed angrily. "That's a bloody nice thing to say to a girl", she shot at me. Turns out she was normally like that. I belatedly noticed that the music had died down, and the floor around us, where a scarce 30 seconds before had been packed to the gills with dancers, was suddenly empty. I looked around desperately. There wasn't another person within 4 meters of her and me, so I couldn't turn around and talk to someone else without making it obvious I wanted to get the hell out of this conversation.
I coughed apologetically and studied my feet. She looked around the floor. She was probably thinking the same thing I was. Both now trapped in a situation we didn't want to be in, we stood next to each other for a very silent, extremely awkward, 2 or 3 minutes.
"So...uhh...you come here often?" I ventured. Oh God, I thought to myself, I can't believe I just said that. Someone came to talk to her and, deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, I left like a bat out of hell.
"What the fuck just happened there??" I asked Justin after relaying to him what had happened.
He looked at me sympathetically. "Don't worry," he confided reassuringly, giving me a sideways look. "She's a huge slut anyway".
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Excerpt of a conversation with Kel:
"Megan Fox, she's pretty hot. How does she stack up to Jessica Alba?"
"What" I sputtered, incredulous. "That's like comparing me to Jesus".
amor
"Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means someone can get inside you and mess you up. You build up all these defenses. You build up a whole armor, for years, so nothing can hurt you, then one stupid person, no different from any other stupid person, wanders into your stupid life... You give them a piece of you. They didn't ask for it. They did something dumb one day, like kiss you or smile at you, and then your life isn't your own anymore. Love takes hostages. It gets inside you. It eats you out and leaves you crying in the darkness, so simple a phrase like 'maybe we should be just friends' or 'how very perceptive' turns into a glass splinter working its way into your heart. It hurts. Not just in the imagination. Not just in the mind. It's a soul-hurt, a body-hurt, a real gets-inside-you-and-rips-you-apart pain. Nothing should be able to do that. Especially not love. I hate love."
Neil Gaiman wrote this in American Gods, and I always remember this when I think about love. Who hasn't felt those exact feelings? You can't choose who you love anymore than you can choose whether the sun rises or sets in the morning. And yet... yet despite all the heartbreak, the grief, the pain, we yearn for it. It's the missing piece of our heart. We were born in the presence of another, and we long for that touch the moment we left the womb.
It's the search for that...something.. to immerse yourself in. Love is the desire to return to that place where we felt so safe, so protected, so happy. And when love is found, it's the desire to preserve that love, through the pain and joy of children.
"Down with love!", we'd say in pain, our hearts broken by unfeeling word and insensitive deed. And maybe we do mean that, for a little while. But then we run back into the arms of another, and the cycle begins anew.
Unequited love is a curse I wish upon my enemy. Let him suffer the pain of rejection, the lonely walk home, the unfilled spaces. Let him scream with an ache no salve nor pill can heal.
Happy union I wish upon my brothers, for no greater joy exists than a person who knows that, somewhere, is another who lives and breathes on the strength of his joys and pains, just as much as he lives and breathes on the strength of theirs.
Heh. Hey. I say the three words I couldn't say when I held you in my arms.
I love you.
3l1te?
"It's not a cock you faggots, stop stroking it". I was pimping a grey woolen scarf on a very cold saturday night, and like every night I wore that scarf, people were entranced by it. Every now and then one of the boys would reach out and stroke it ever so gently, or yank on it while I was in mid-sentence. Guys in the bar eyed me with suspicion as I eyed them back with feigned casual indifference, while inside I'm wondering whether we're going to rumble. Perth is not ready for my sartorial revolution. In truth, I never adjusted to the cold here in Perth despite my long years of residence - I shiver in cool breezes on hot summer nights, and inevitably find excuses to wear long sleeves, rolled up, just in case.
Saturday night found me in the Brisbane yet again, this time for Kel's birthday bash. Peter and I idly wandered in, looking around for familiar faces. Brisbane is the new Steve's - everyone seems to be there. I looked at a vaguely familiar girl, subconsciously noticing the two blonde girls at the corner of my eye had stopped suddenly. I looked around to see Jess staring at me with a somewhat stunned expression. I choose to believe I took her breath away. It must've been the scarf.
Jess is a pretty blonde physiotherapist (and serial facebook-ist) I got to know quite serendipitously through circumstances that remain quite unclear to me even to this day. I find her to be quite engaging, intelligent and charming, despite her propensity to, at times, offend. Also, she let me check out her rack. Well, she probably didn't, but I did it anyway. I'd like to think she thinks the same of me, especially the 'pretty blonde' part, but regardless she continues to speak to me, via not-so-carefully-concealed verbal barbs and insults.
We were discussing things she knows about me, narcissistic person that I am, - who my favourite poet was (Rudyard Kipling!) - when she uttered these devastating words:
"I'd say Browning, but that's probably too mainstream for you".
What? What! What is this perception that I am some sort of hipper-than-thou elitist? I carefully considered this as I sipped my expensive imported green tea (made to smell like strawberries) while listening to indie classics toy-rockers Pianosaurus.
I'm not so much of an elitist am I? Ok, so I listen to indie bands no one has heard of, but the last time I turned on the radio Pink was singing words like "Let me tell you 'bout hard work, minimum wage with a baby on the way". Puh-lease, because Pink of all people would know about hard work, sleeping in her million dollar mansion on sheets of finest Egyptian cotton after two hours dancing around on stage singing cash-in crapola like that song.
Ok, I also have a deep passion for indie/foreign films. But I did watch Bourne Ultimatum. Does that count for naught? Speaking of which, I'm really looking forward to Rocket Science, and wholeheartedly urge everyone to check it out also.
As for books, admittedly I'm reading Nietzsche and my disdain for Dan Brown and the Da Vinci Code is a matter of public record - but I love Harry Potter.
Fashion wise I wouuldn't call myself elitist - while I hold a disdain for the the "nonsensical tshirt-with-fictional-team-name-followed-by-numbers ("Mossimo Tuckyville Raiders 1985") and jeans with white sneakers in the middle of winter" look, but what I wear isn't so esoteric. Except the scarf. It's day will come, I assure you.
I also prefer the Financial Review and The Australian over the West Australian (When I buy the paper I expect a certain level of journalistic integrity), despise main station current affairs programs (ACA, Today Tonight, 60 Minutes) and find reality tv vapid and brain cell destroying. But who doesn't?!
So, conclusion? Not elitist.
Here's a photo of the birthday girl and me at the Brisbane! (Kindly provided by her).
touch it
oh my god new ipod with touchscreen you are great Oh Lord etc etc....
....until I read the capacity was only 16 gigs. 16 gigs? 16?! 30/60 of the current range would've been great, I could even have dealt with 20. But 16?? I have at least 20gigs of music alone, let alone my pictures on top of it! Admittedly I probably don't have to take my entire music collection with me and can do with trimming the fat a little *looks at top 200 beer drinking songs playlist*. Still, I'm not the only one. The internetzz seethes with outrage as many others like me, having been waiting for this announcement since they announced the iPhone, release wails of disappointment in the air, tearing at their clothes and beating their breast. Apple, what have you done to me they scream, somehow convinced Steve Jobs did it personally to them in some twisted proverbial kick to the nether regions. Sigh.
I also hate myself by feeling more emotion from the capacity of the new ipod than hearing about the death of Pavarotti =/
Having listened to Graduation for a couple days, I can safely say...pass. Stronger (the debut single) is probably the strongest (kill me) track on the album (mainly due to the strength of the backing track, Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger by Daft Punk), with Homecoming coming close due to the presence of Chris Martin of Coldplay. Despite these two tracks, the other songs are easily forgettable, bland and uninspiring.
drink away the part of the day that i cannot sleep away
I've been sober for two weeks and it's killing me. I blame Nietzsche. Two weeks ago I became interested in the teachings of Nietzsche when I realised his opinions and my opinions were not so dissimilar. The only thing is that he beat me to it by about 100 years. Having only been familiar with his quote "God is dead", I was astounded to discover that his philosophy aligns with my own in many ways.
Frederick Nietzsche teaches about the concept of willpower - or more precisely, in his terms, will-to-power. That is, the will-to-power is a driving force in our every day actions to varying degrees, and that this will-to-power is the bridge between our evolutionary forebears, the ape, to the epitome of human development, the Superman. Man is merely the chrysalis stage to this evolutionary and transcendental endpoint. Will-to-power also distinguishes between the strong and the weak - that the strong exert their will to shape the environment around them, while the weak bend to the strong. Social Darwinists pounced on this interpretation to further their cause but it is unlikely he shared in their beliefs.
So anyway, as an exercise in willpower I gave up alcohol for a month. I managed to coincide this vow exactly with a busy and stressful couple of weeks that would normally drive a man to drink. Nothing like a challenge! I've also taken up reading Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the flagship novel of his philosophy, which is not so much a novel as him expounding on his ideas via the Persian prophet Zarathustra loosely held together by a weak and largely nonsensical narrative. I would go further but you must be |______________| this pretentious to continue.
Anyway, Dom's started his first day at his new job, which happens to be exactly my job. He sits right opposite of me and provides a convenient target for my insults and (supposed) witticisms. Pray for him ladies and gentlemen, for there sits a man forced to endure the most harsh of punishments...me.
Oh yes, music - Places Like These, the new AiH is an awesome party album, and Graduation by Kan-yay West has hit the interwebzz. Let's hope it's more We Don't Care than Gold Digger. First impressions soon! but I do not condone music piracy so buy your music (if you like it)
Oh yes pianosaurus rocks, but thats for later
