Grace Notes @ Snarkattack

Being a girl is depressing.

Well, for me. Perhaps if I weren’t such a pathetic example of a girl, it wouldn’t be so depressing.

I could do with a new bag. Even my mother nags me about that sort of thing. Yes, usually I use things till they fall apart, but it’s occurred to me that I don’t have a decent semi-casual bag that can fit a book and/or my organiser. That’s not so good. But I managed to narrow it down to a couple of good candidates.

Right about now, I could do with a female friend’s eye. My best friend is pretty helpful but sometimes it’s nice to get a girlfriend’s opinion.

I can only really think of one female friend who is pretty much without fail, reachable, or available. I have about three others except that one lives in the country (and commutes from there to Melbourne every weekday), and one who did live in Melbourne has moved to Ballarat – not an insane distance but far enough. The other one who lives in the same city as me is always…really busy.

Busy I don’t mind. Being the person who always has to get in touch, even when the other has promised that they will – well, it makes me unhappy. I even explained to one that I don’t like calling people when I’m really unwell, but it’s really nice when they call. Heck, she couldn’t even be bothered to call to let me know that she wouldn’t be able to make it to my birthday dinner. That sort of hurt.

My other girlfriend, who did manage to call to let me know that she wouldn’t be able to make it, told me that after Easter we’d meet up and catch up properly.

It’s official: I’m totally into the World Cup. The past few nights, I’ve been staying up to watch the qualifiers for quarter finals.

I reached my peak of fandom when Beckham scored that goal against Ecuador thus securing a place in the quarter finals. I was elated when he scored! It was literally a Kodak moment. Sadly, I missed the more exciting game that followed – Netherlands vs. Portugal. Drat!

So…am I going to be awake for the England quarter final that will be showing here at 4:30am? You’d better bloody believe it. Guess I’ll just have to stay up all night, eh?

I wonder how Australia will go? I’m watching them against Italy and they’ve got some flair on the field. England yesterday was so bleh. Come on, where’s the fire! Aren’t these people supposed to love the game?! So show us, you morons!

I’m soooo happy!

The second Blogcritics article I put up was featured in the masthead and in the Spotlight column on the front page! I was pretty damn pleased about that!

I told a few people about it via e-mail, and tried to call NMD, who is after all my best friend, to tell him. He’s swotting at uni because he has some big project due as usual. He said he’d have his mobile phone on his person, but when I tried to call twice, there wasn’t any answer. It was a little deflating, not being able to share my good news with him immediately. I should be used to it by now, though…

Anyway, I got so excited, I even took screenshots. Very silly. Besides, I should be thinking of my next article. The second article will be going up here soon; thought that I should let it be up exclusively on the other site first, then post it here a week after. It’s just waiting patiently in the draft folder…

Gee, it only took a month, but finally I submitted my second post for Blogcritics.

It was supposed to be a post about bathing, and when I first got it typed out, I fecking hated it. I mean, really hated it. Usually, when I’m up to the typing-out stage, it means that once it’s typed up, it’ll resemble something indicative of my intellectual faculties or abilities. Well, you know how those damn things work. They let you down.

But after three days of persistence, whinging, rereading, and much more rereading, I don’t want to so much even think the word ‘bath’. I selected the ‘pending’ post status and clicked on the scary save button. So it’s now in the bowels of editorial purgatory. A week later, I’ll put it up here and hope that my faithful reader-friend types will forgive me my utter suckdom. Though, I do feel it’s in better shape now. Phew.

Alas, I must depart. It’s 2pm on Wednesday afternoon, and I’m still in my nightclothes and was supposed to hand in my dole form on Monday. If you’re inclined to be religious, please pray for me: I’m not sure my car has enough petrol to drive me to the social security office.

Oh – before departing, I must tell you of the fun letter I got today, just now. My student debt. 25000 AUD or so owing. The narcs are SO not seeing any of that in the near future. Scabrous dogs.

The serial killer fascination! I think I might know what has been causing it!

Sufjan Stevens’ Illinois might be to blame…

There’s a song on the album, the fourth one ‘John Wayne Gacy, Jr.’ is about a serial killer from Illinois. The CD is in my car at the moment, but it’s a very soft, folky album at times and the words aren’t always fully audible, especially during peak hour traffic. On Tuesday evening, I’d turned up the car stereo seeing as the traffic was shocking, and it’d wile away the time.

The words – I heard the words to that particular song very, very clearly for the first time. It was horrifying. It sounds like a sad, thoughtful song:

His father was a drinker
And his mother cried in bed
Folding John Wayne’s T shirts
When the swing set hit his head

The neighbors they adored him
For his humor and his conversation
Look underneath the house there
Find the few living things rotting fast
[...]

He dressed up like a clown for them
With his face paint white and red
And on his best behavior
In a dark room, on the bed, he kissed them all
[...]
He took off all their clothes for them
He put a cloth on their lips, quiet hands,
Quiet kiss on the mouth
[...]

[Please don't use the lyrics above for anything untoward - they are directly quoted from the CD liner notes of Sufjan Stevens' Illinois and are provided here in a literary context/quotation]

Naturally, I ran to the Wikipedia entry on John Wayne Gacy, Jr. to see if this person were fiction or fact.

Turns out that Stevens’ album is cram-packed with references to the state of Illinois – historical events and people, places, habits, anecdotes. Literature person’s dream, really.

And to think he plans to write an album for each state in the US?! Good luck buddy, though I doubt he’ll need it. Critics have been raving about this album, and it’s only the second in the series (the first being his native state Michigan). Kind of a cool way to learn about each of the states though.

Did I really need a quiz to tell me this?

This is actually different to the nerd quiz I’ve done previously, in which I scored significantly lower. This one is a science-biased one and I still got…
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I’m freaking out, I think I’m a sicko.

I seem to have developed this more than passing fascination for serial killer stories. I’ve seen a couple of serial killer films, I find myself checking Wikipedia to find out more. Is this normal behaviour for a supposedly pacifist person?

It’s weird, really weird. I abhor violence, physical or sexual. Sometimes it even gives me nightmares. Perhaps it’s some morbid deviant off-shoot of my interest in the supernatural? Let me explain:

Supernatural phenomena, which leads to

hauntings, which leads to

history of the places where hauntings occur which leads to

often learning about violent deaths of supposed spirit haunting, which leads to

browsing on Wikipedia, which leads to

stumbling upon other infamous and horrendous crimes.

Okay, it might also have something to do with the fact that my brother and mother are obsessed with the Crime and Investigation channel on cable. Ironic, isn’t it? My mental health actually threatens to stabilise and I form morbid fascinations.

Don’t worry. I still love animals. In a nice, peaceful, non-sexual and non-deviant way. I’m smiling fondly at my dear cat sitting next to me as I finish typing this.

I caught yet another grisly documentary on infamous murders…centred around Clapham in south London.

In the 1920s, a trunk was discovered on a train as it was giving off a stench so it was handed over to the station office (at Clapham or Charing Cross). It sat there unclaimed and eventually had to be investigated as the stench became unbearable.
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A lovely, lazy afternoon on Sunday.

I’m spending it watching documentaries, it’s been a long time since I’ve been able to watch any, the ones that interest me are always on at odd times.
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I remember my friend S bewailing the fact that certain pharmacological/statistics parlance was starting to creep in to American English, and one such word was ‘normalcy’. I groaned in contempt alongside him, as it was pissing me off a bit too.

Another weird word popping up now and then (I saw it on Sephora a while back) is instead of ‘addictive’, we have ‘addicting’. I think it’s cute when Asians use it, because English is not their native tongue. But if I’ve learnt one thing from Melvyn Bragg’s fantastic book The Adventure of English, I shouldn’t criticise: it could be indicative of language and its nature to constantly morph, colloquially or formally.

So what’s my rant about? I’m starting to feel…normal. I get up earlier, and go to bed at a decent hour. I’m still not quite settled in my bedroom, but am managing to sleep well. I’m trying to spend as much time at home as possible because every time I put pressure on myself to make it out for something, I let others, and myself down. It’s weird how in not trying, or forcing myself to be ‘ready’ sooner than I am, I actually get better.

Most of the week has been focussed on trying to write some reviews. I sat down to watch the Metallica documentary, thinking that would be good to review, but found it as laborious and as painful as therapy. Plus, one of the band members was a complete tosser. No review.

I also received two books from the States, one of which I’ve committed to reviewing for Blogcritics and have started to read – Extraterrestrial Sex Fetish, by Supervert (yes, that is the author’s name as appears on the book at least). Bit of a brainspin but am enjoying the ride. I wish I could work a bit faster – I’ve 2 blog posts that need typing, and desperately need to do another Blogcritics one, or at least, feel like I need to. I hope they don’t think my slowness to post is about me being lazy, it isn’t.

Yesterday, I had some sort of Adobe Photoshop breakthrough and can now place multiple photos so that they appear in the same workspace. So instead of cropping lots of little images, you can have them appear side by side or arranged however you like. Well, it was a breakthrough for me! Especially as I went from being a complete dumbarse to being able to do what I wanted in a short space of time.

Feels great to be reading again. But damn, I never did find that bloody Jameson essay.