i'm observant from experience really.
karate disciple made me cautious.
knowledge is a powerful weapon, awareness will give you knowledge.
the world would be a better place if everyone communicated more; wars wouldn't need to be fought if people could just rationally talk things over, instead of thinking about their own opinions.
if you express your discomfort at its early stages, you can stop something festering into a major problem, simply because its just your thoughts running rampant without someone to talk about it to.
- my best friend.

turning rachteen in five days !

i love how grey-haired i am already. i just really want Paul Kelly's new ish hybrid release of his own greatest hits and other prominent Australian artists' takes on those songs which exist on a twin accompanying cd + John Williamson's new ish hybrid release of his own greatest hits and other prominent Australian artists' takes on those songs which exist on a twin accompanying cd..

ABSOLUTE GREATEST JOHN WILLIAMSON: 40 YEARS TRUE BLUE
CD1: 'Absolute Greatest.' - with general greatest hits
CD2: 'Absolute Tribute.' (this whole blog post was sparked by hearing Ash Grunwald's J W'son cover on the radio last night, driving back from dropping the boy home)
= Flower On The Water (Wendy Matthews);
Salisbury Street (The Waifs);
Galleries Of Pink Galahs (Shannon Noll);
Cootamundra Wattle (Kasey Chambers);
Chandelier Of Stars (James Reyne);
Paint Me A Wheelbarrow (Sara Storer & Greg Storer);
Tubbo Station (Songbirds);
You And My Guitar (Ash Grunwald);
Truckie's Wife (Ami Williamson);
Raining On The Rock (Troy Cassar-Daley);
Wintergreen (The Ordinary Fear of God);
Hillbilly Road (Adam Harvey);
Old Man Emu (Tommy Emmanuel).

..i had thought i greatly disliked about 90% of the artists on that cd but i'm positive that this little musical experience could change my opinion on a lot of them.


and since my blog is accidentally nostalgic and always seemingly dwelling on the past + things i miss or things i have recently re-found in my computer archives or something that i've remembered or a song/image that has sparked a memory or a conversation i'd had a while ago or something that's been playing on my brain for a while now or a past memory or something that i'd written in school a year or more ago..here's another written piece of sorts. or at least, partially so.
in yr 12 Modern History i wrote a hugely extensive assignment on a soldier and the mystery that surrounded his short life and sudden/relatively unexplained death..
i've removed more tedious parts (the vast majority) of the essay, and in their place sequences of dots have been inserted..:
'we are a generation that has not seen war first-hand. therefore, never could we ever fully understand the enormity of the blood that was shed for the freedom of our own.
we are a generation that travels overseas no longer to fight, but to try and grasp why those before us travelled thus far and fought; fought and were killed.
not rarely are the individual lives that were lost in World War One simply blurred into a mass number. perhaps it is less confronting to think of war in this way, though, we must not forget that behind each number existed a face, and for each face there was a name; a life.

the Australian National Memorial stands tall in the village of Villers Bretonneux in southern France, in memoriam to the blood that was spilled there, overseas, so many years ago. the memorial represents the freedom of Australia’s contemporary society, as upon it are inscribed the names of 11 000 Australian Infantry who fell during battle in France between 1916 and 1918, and as a result, have no known grave.
one particular name that can be found upon the great structure is that of Francis John Charles, who was killed on night patrol in late February 1917.

..due to his English upbringing, it is possible that Francis would have held what was perhaps an even closer bond to the Mother Nation of Britain than that of the plainly loyal and young nation of Australia at that time. for this reason, it does not come as a surprise that Francis enlisted when he was just twenty-one years old.

..at that time within the Great War, the personal battle of simply surviving the winter conditions was at the forefront of every soldier’s mind; perhaps even more so than the horrendous war that engulfed them. less and less major battles were being fought as the conditions steadily worsened and grew impossibly difficult to survive in, let alone wage war within.
wounded men drowned in mud-filled shell-holes while around them, shells hit the frozen ground, shattering and dispersing at every imaginable angle.

..it was around this time that the AIF sent out regular patrols to survey surrounding areas, and in doing so, locating nearby German positions. the focus at that time was primarily upon that of the readily approaching and much anticipated Spring Offensive, which would again mark the beginning of major battle along the Western Front.'

hmm i ended including hardly any of it, but the rest was massively informative, and unless you had done the research yourself, i doubt your interest. :)

we're engineers. no, you're pretendgineers.

i was doing some spring ? winter ? what season are we even in ? cleaning this morning and came across a print-out of some long-lost 'Dessert-based gripes' once blogged by a hilarious gf of mine.:
when dessert is involved, this is what makes me really irritable.:
1. people who look uncomfortable when you ask them if they want a slice, like you've asked them a really personal question or a huge favour and they make 'umm ahh' type noises before they finally fulfil your wildest dreams and say 'ok'.
as if this is a huge burden on them and you really owe them now. come on, you were loitering around the cake table and you'd been eyeballing it for the past half hour.
it was a social duty to ask.
2. people who say Pav instead of Pavlova. it makes me so mad.
if you can't bring yourself to utter those whole extra four letters and have to keep things monosyllabic just say "do you want some of THIS" or "how about a slice of THAT"
3. people who monitor your dessert intake and make inappropriate comments. no, I'm not that hungry, i just enjoy a challenge and so if it's 'Alright' by you, yes, i will fill up the barbeque plate with a plethora of delicious and semi-delicious baked goods instead of using your pathetic napkins
4. people who call dessert, "sweets"
it makes me sick.
&
5. people who act like loving chocolate or worse being a *shudder* chocoholic is some kind of quirky and endearing personality trait.
it isn't.
and if you bring it up like that i'm going to assume that by default you have nothing better to add and your profile in my mind now reads: fulfils but does not exceed basic human requirements including an interest in the intake of oxygen and other common substances. no further comments to add.

in conclusion
LEAVE ME ALONE.
= brilliant ? my thoughts exactly ? - with the 'sweets' call in the v least.



1.'my mother taught me to stand straight, sit erect, use discipline with wine and sweets and to smoke only six cigarettes a day.'
2.'my life isnt theories and formulae. its part instinct, part common-sense. logic is as good a word as any, and i've absorbed what logic i have from everything and everyone..
from my mother, from training as a ballet dancer, from Vogue magazine, from the laws of life and health and nature.'
- Audrey Hepburn.
(in quoting those however, let it be known that i do find the excessive girl crushes on Audrey and Marilyn Munroe quite stressful at times.)

1.'if i have a mantra when it comes to fashion design, its good quality and fit with flattering lines and without clutter.'
2.'you wouldn't know it, but i'm very good at relaxing on weekends with no social engagements. i find this time to catch up and reflect is important.'
- Carla Zampatti.

i think this is such a lovely idea of keeping dreams alive and in focus, and this is equally cheeky and light-hearted, office-working/grown-up fun. i don't see why we should opt for a life of grey just because our hair is doing so.


Lo-Tel - Teenager of the Year:

this song makes me so sad. i'm not sure if thats due to its own merit/s, or that it appears in a scene from Looking for Alibrandi that i'm pretty sure - if memory serves - was ridiculously upsetting, but that i seem to have forgotten the specifics of.
the audio quality is sub-par here, but who cares ! it was 2001 ! we were just about riding horse-drawn carts back then.

actually, semi-speaking of, i've been meaning to post this scene for so long now.
its John Barton's funeral scene from the same movie, i get goosebumps.
this song is so close to my heart as well.:



alexa chung..is absolutely brilliant.
she's got so much..steeze. keeps things simple. and what about that fantastic hair :)
and with the no-bullshit, casual atmopshere that she seems to possess in most photographs, amongst a million other things, she has just made me really want to be her best friend.
sigh.
but i suppose her plethora of chanel bags and loooooovely long limbs also add/s? to that growing love..
these looks are a *few* of my favourites, as there were farrrr too many lovelies to put on here (and there is a few that i've kept to myself, out of greed):

i always seem to retun to this

& 1:18

from So You Think You Can Dance.
it starts off kind of awkwardly, and her clothes i wouldn't have chosen for the job, even though they're 'real'. but goddam, wait for about half way. it gets absolutely brilliant.
its dancing like this that makes me cry.

the older of the male judges on the Australian series said once,
'i love narrative-based hiphop (dancing). i love the detail of it.'
oui.



http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/savestmartinscxr/

had a good listen while delivering pizzas last night and wasn't a fan

from Sounds Passing Through Sudden Rightnesses:
- i love how Amanda and i can manage not to talk to each other for a month, totally by accident, and then converse as if no time has passed, finding each other, as always, uniquely hilarious.
- i love singing in my car at the top of my lungs, because that's what cars are for and that's what songs are for and it all just perfectly fits
- i love how all the writers/artists/creators i love; Jane Espenson, Joss Whedon, Jacob the Recapper, John Green, end up connected to and inspired by each other in ways i never dreamed, which in turn inspires me. also, all of them have J-names, and what's up with that?
- i love wearing my Missing Piece around my neck and my dad's high school ring on my finger every day, because i'm telling you who i am and where i come from without even saying a word, and no one really seems to notice, until they do. which is how getting to know someone always works.
- i love making my sister laugh, because i have to earn it.
- i love that when i have Big News and i have to call my best friends, my mom is on that list.
- i love intricately structured narratives.
- i love the thin rim of blue around my mostly green eyes.
- i love loving things to death; wearing holes in the canvas of my Converse, dog-earing my favorite pages of books, knowing lines of movies so well I can quote along with them as I watch.
- i love how i've finally found my passion and a bliss to follow; how taking classes in my majors just sets my brain on fire.
- i love connecting with strangers over a mutual love, and how at the end of the conversation you're not strangers anymore.

& from BabyFreakingPorridge:
- i want to know everything there is to know about physics, so i can hate it with a basis. i don’t want to hate inertia and The Law of Perpetual Transmutation of Energy just because i’m a blind man in sheep’s clothing and every pretty girl in my generation claims to hate physics.
- and on the topic of being blind, i want to date a blind man and kiss his eyelids in the park.
i want to describe the children’s expressions to him in terms of feeling,
like the little girl chasing after the duck has the face you get when you first turn on the shower and the water spews out in a cold fury.
- i want to hold my fourteen-year-old-self by the wrists and apologise for ever thinking that self-worth could only be attained through being with someone, as if wearing the suffix of ‘girlfriend’ was the only job title worthy of mention.
i want to apologise to her for refusing to know better and for thinking that conviction and the occasional wit weren’t enough to define me.
- i want to make eye-contact with a pale red-haired girl at the station to ask for the time just because I want to hear her accent. she’ll say, “It’s five twenty-three forever,” because her watch is actually dead and her grandfather smashed this very watch on a rock the moment he died.
i wont ask about the circumstance even though i want to, so instead i might tell her that i was born out of wedlock. and we’ll plough on for the rest of the day, keeping someone else’s secret as if to take a break from our own.
- for only a night, i want to be the wife of a man who comes home with someone else’s lipstick stains on his collar and someone else’s scent on his skin because i want to know what being a martyr feels like.
i want to know what it’s like to make a perfect roast dinner with buttered potatoes while the world crumbles and the children think that their biggest concern is that Rochelle is having an ice-skating party and they are not invited. i want to learn how to suffer gracefully, only giving myself three minutes in the shower everyday to cry.
- i want to cut my hair really short and move to Spain and live in a small apartment in a small town with a name i can’t pronounce.
i want to wear dresses for everything, from grocery shopping to watching bulls run around in a ring with a matador. and at least once, i’d have the liberty of knowing what it’s like to be reckless with my youth.
- ultimately, when i read excerpts of my unfinished, auto-biographical manuscript to my grandchildren, i want them to say it sounds like fiction. i want to call myself an artist with no-one else’s consent. i want to be proud of all the loose ends i’ve left untied because yeah, everyone wants to fulfill their prophecy, but who really wants to finish a path laid out by the stars?

& from The Hayleylujah Chorus:
- i love how a line in a poem can strike a part of your brain that you hadn't noticed was asleep before, and you can't rephrase the line or explain why it makes sense, because it's perfect and beautiful in that it says something that's never before been put so well.
- i love driving around with Lor, being able to rely on the comfort and relaxation i've always felt with her, and knowing that her friendship is one solid constant in my life.
- i love the youtube community, and the astounding amount of creativity that comes out of the fiveawesomegirls' Secret Awesome Facebook Thread.
- i love having giggly slumber parties with my grown-up sisters (and sometimes brother-in-law), proving that you can have a law degree and still make jokes about Nickelodeon shows.
- i love when my nails are all long and even and shiny and elegant, so it doesn't even matter what I look like that day, because at least one aspect of my appearance is feminine, pretty, and under my control.
- i love walking past people in rainstorms, and how it makes the whole world feel like the inside of a bookstore: calm, quiet but for soothing white noise, and like everyone around has something in common, despite the fact that we're all choosing to think silently to ourselves instead of talk.
- i love feeling at home with my friends at school, then realizing that i didn't know any of them a year ago. i love thinking about how many other amazing and influential people i'm destined to meet later in life.
- i love having real, adult conversations with my mother, and realizing that i'm becoming more and more like her as i grow up.

- some people can spend eternity with their high school sweethearts, but most people don't find true love before they're fully-formed, independent individuals. i've had plenty of miserable experiences with boys in the past, because neither of us were emotionally ready for healthy relationships yet. i'm not the same person i was a year ago, and i'll probably be a lot different next February, because i'm young, too.
and wouldn't it suck if you met the perfect person now and ended up scaring him away, because you haven't had enough practice?


hopefully the near future will contain the following for me:
= lilac nail polish
= a one-statement-earring spree
= more self-assurance or at least the facade that i am a motivated go-getter; until i've had enough practice at that, and am able to truly own + be able to use that quality for good
= the creation of garments inclusive of upside-down pockets

i think that there is such a wonderful quality to the sound, look & taste of the following words: philosophy, skin, lungs, bblue (yes, two Bs), bank, apocalypse, abacus, sugar, colorado, cellar, immaterial, mea culpa, furnace

i'm absolutely terrifed of the idea of rising water and water levels being constantly (albeit often over great expanses of time) on the move - and now more so than ever. i've been to Venice in Italy - although only when i was five, mind you - but i remember even then being so caught up in the idea that such an interesting and terrifying place could exist. a city atop water. i've never really looked into the history of the place but i think i'd like to..has it always been built above water in that way, or was there originally no canals or water at all ? if not, then how was it built ? to what extent do water levels need to rise to complete eliminate any human life being able to exist there ?
i just find the whole idea of the place so chillingly dangerous and confronting. rising/unpredictable water levels are not something that can be ignored, are they ? or is it only a minor issue that not even Climate Change has great influence on ?

actually..about 70% of my dreams involve a spontaneous and rapid rising of water, come to think of it. i'm nearly always alone or having to fight the influx - often in the form of almost tsunami-like rushes - of water alone. i wonder what that theme of dreams/thought process means to me and within my subconscious.
i also have a *major* fear of deep water - or water that is so murky that the depth and/or footing underneath cannot be identified. i'm not sure if those two aspects(wrong word - what's the term that i'm searching for here?) of water are linked, but even the v thought of either makes me absolutely sick to the stomach. in the latter its mostly to do with not having steady footing in reach or in view while swimming.
for eg., during Schoolies i went on an island cruise and one part of that involved diving in and around coral with just a snorkel and a pair of flippers. there were a few semi-shallow patches of water, but in those the footing was only ever consisting of coral and to stand on those precious specimins was entirely off-limits. i felt so helpless and uneasy, almost forgetting how to swim and continously hyperventilating for almost the entire experience. there was no enjoyment for me.

this song, i find, is such a grower. if your music taste is anything like my own, this song could soon become one of the most powerful ones that you have come across in a long long time.
Leonard Cohen - Marianne:


i was shown this clip the other day. it provided me with a little insight and an altered perception of a band that i would have never otherwise found myself looking into.
Slipknot - Vermillion Part 2:


i can't remember where i came across the following link/article the other day; probably just on a fairly commonly-read fashion blog, i don't know. but how well-said, and how BRILLIANT is the editorial that the images have been sourced from ?!
god i want it in the flesh (well the paper equivalent of that, obviously)..i can tell that it would be a set of images that you could just flick back through, over and over and time and time again with the same shock value and ample if not excessive opportunity for inspiration every. single. time.
magnificent.
oh, and in case its unclear - its in referral to Anna Wintour, Editor-in-Chief of American Vogue.
Dear Anna: I'm Outsourcing Your Job To Vogue India. 8 Pictures That Explain Why…