Grace Notes @ Snarkattack

Off the top of my head, only…four, maybe five people know what my Achilles heel is? Rephrase: how badly it actually burns.

This, though it’s soppy, did make me feel exceedingly…oh you know. Thanks to @Katrucia for showing me. Animation is adorable.

I just got an e-mail from my former mentor-type person and being the ridiculously insecure person I am, am wondering…

…why didn’t he say anything about the long poem? He probably didn’t like the format is my guess. Sigh. It is most likely my best poem this year.

I sent him four poems, three of which were written this year, one last year. He liked the most polished one (at least, it felt like the most polished one to me). Two of them are apparently publishable, though one could be longer.

But apparently my treatment of Agamemnon’s death was too reductive, as circumstances leading to his demise were complex. Personally, I think know if I started trying to add discussion of these circumstances, I’d kill my own poem. Same with the four-line poem I sent.

Foolproof me way to ruin a poem? Make it longer. Giggle. Then sigh.

British poet Adrian Mitchell passed away. Read the poem of his they want to send to space.

Also, right now (11:30pm Mon 22/12), @Katrucia informs me there is a special on Dorothy Porter – if you have anything to do with poetry (particularly Australian poetry), worth watching (I wager).

…from big sis.

Name: Gem

Height: incarceration tells me 149cms!

Age: twenty-nine. Sigh

Tomboy or Girly Girl? Former.

Describe your beauty routine.
I use facial cleanser whenever I shower. That’s pretty much it.

Describe your hair
Brutally short and black-brown. It is actually brown but no one really believes me.

Describe your personal style
Comfort wins over looking good, much to the disappointment of my parents.

Do you…

Like metrosexual boys?
No largely straight girl likes boys that are prettier than her, but alas, ’tis life. I like them fine as long as their personalities are as lovely as their looks!

Like accessories?
I do but I often forget about them.

Like high heels?
NO NO NO.

Like matchy matchy, or mix and match?
Giggle, that sounds silly. Mix and match I guess?

Spend a lot of money on beauty products in general?
No, I spend too much on books!

Shop online for clothes?
Yep. threadless.com is full of major win. As is ModCloth.

Favourite…?

Article of clothing in your closet?
Jain (Melbourne designer) ‘Crustaceon (sic)’ dress that cost me a fortune.

Makeup line?
Um, Urban Decay, MAC & Shu Uemura. A holy trinity of sorts!

Skincare line?
Aesop. I nearly died when I saw they have a store on the corner of Victoria and Errol Streets (North Melb, about five minutes’ walk from me)

Perfume?
Fave in the world would be BPAL Bathsheba fragrance oil.

Colours to wear?
Black & red.

What is a trend you dislike the most?
Pretty much all of them.

What is your fashion philosophy?
Wear whatever you want? I constantly commit supposed fashion faux pas like wearing brown and black together. Meh. So what.

What kind of shoes do you like?
Ones that fit width-wise – very hard to find as I have narrow feet, but a bit big (length-wise) for my actual height.

What is your biggest fashion problem?
Finding the right-fitting bra. I’m small and big in odd spots.

What old trends do you think should come back?
Let’s all dress like we’re from the modernist era! Or like James Joyce (mismatched suits).

What one piece are you dying to add to your wardrobe?
The perfect pair of black jeans. Was gutted when I could no longer squeeze into my size 26 black Nudies (told you I was thin once!)

How long does it take you to get ready in the morning?
Physically, not long (thirty minutes). But mentally, takes at least an hour, or even two.

Would you ever go out in public without makeup?
Constantly do so.

If you had a fashion budget of 1 million dollars, where would you shop, and why?
Any high street in any town in London. Yes, I realise they use pounds there.

Is there anything you absolutely CAN’T wear?
Really pointy shoes look horrendous on me.

If you had to pick one designer to wear for the rest of your life, who would it be, and why?
If I could actually afford it? Marc Jacobs.

Dorothy Porter, a famous Australian poet, has passed away. Not sure of what, but she was still fairly young (forties). Am lazy (full from magnificent breakfast) so if you want to find out more about her, read her Wikipedia entry. Have read several of her verse novels – prefer her middle period personally.

On a more positive note, I was leafing through the (physical, tangible, oh-so yummy) newspaper, and found that an ex has a poem published! Yea! I’d actually republish here for all to read but he might not like that (check the arts section of The Age). Grats S!

I can read them again! They don’t give me nightmares! Yea!

I was talking to LM once and I remember him berating me or pontificating upon the online version of the newspaper I usually read when I read one (The Age), and am a bit puzzled (or perhaps worried for him). Perhaps at the time I was too stupid to formulate an argument as to why one should still buy the paper version of the newspaper as opposed to read it online.

In short, the online version sucks. One might as well be reading the Herald-Sun, which is appalling tabloid fare. With no page three hotstuff, I might add.

A few weeks later, I’m chatting to JB and we’re snarking about how hideous the actual headlines are for the online version of The Age. No, really, they were cringe-inducing. A poetaster like myself was swearing she could write better ones. If a non-arts nerd (JB) is taking the piss out of them, they must be bad. Then future husband DF and I were talking about how ace the paper is on the weekend (with all its arts stuff, woo!).

My question is why would they feel they have to make the online version so…well, dumb? Yes, I do feel guilty about the insane amount of actual paper (christ, the weekend paper is half a tree), but if the online version is going to insult the little intelligence I have, then I’ll still buy it. I can eat it (the other non-arts sections will feed me for weeks) or use it for cover if I get poor enough. Or kindling.

ABC News online reads well, in my (pathetic) opinion. Couldn’t The Age online be more like that?

Perhaps this is just an extension of my disdain for e-books (sorry OM, though I should respect the opinion of a doc, eh?). But I don’t mind watching the news on television…(though that is much more nightmare-inducing. Was, past tense, was)

Anyway, I’m going out for breakfast. And I’m buying the fecking paper. And no, I don’t care if the broadsheets are just about as big as me. It’ll be worth it. Besides, Christopher Hitchens is doing my head in, and Philip Larkin is too mirthless for a day like this.

Again, reading Karen’s Makeup and Beauty Blog, I stumbled across an excellent article about how pleasing scents apparently grant us better sleep. The article is here.

Perhaps that was why I slept so wonderfully when I was wearing BPAL Alice to bed at the beginning of the year? BPAL Oneiroi, which had a lot of lavender used to knock me out good and proper but then it stopped working.

I’m sure the article will be of interest to big sis *grin* (it justifies our BPAL habit, hahaha!).

This is going to show up in my Facebook feed eventually and I’ll tag people accordingly.

Post a comment (even people I didn’t tag) and I will do each of the following:

1. I’ll respond with something random about you.
2. I’ll tell you which song or movie reminds me of you.
3. I’ll pick a flavour of jelly to wrestle you in. (It was British anglicised…)
4. I’ll say something that only makes sense to you and me, if possible.
5. I’ll tell you my first memory of you.
6. I’ll tell you what animal you remind me of.
7. I’ll ask you something I’ve always wondered about you.
8. I’ll tell you my favourite thing about you.
9. I’ll tell you my least favorite thing about you.

If you play, you MUST post this on yours.

Thank you one of my fave US fellow poet-lovers for putting up a list to test my ignorance and highlight just how bad a former lit student I am.

33/100

I’ll put an asterisk in front of what I feel I should have read and actually want to read.

Good thing I’ve stopped binge drinking…

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
*3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible (some of…yeah, scary, huh?)
*7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 1984 – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman (1st volume)
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
*13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
*15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
*18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
*22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald (I nearly stole the copy of this they had at the place I was staying at recently. Should’ve…)
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
*25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
*26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
*32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
*34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres (screw the film – this is a fantastic novel. Seriously)
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
*40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown (don’t hit me. I was bored, at parents’ place. Lulled away a few hours)
*43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
*45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
*48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
*52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
*54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
*55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
*58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
*62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
*66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce I FUCKING READ IT!!! FTW!!!
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
*80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
*84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
*87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery (bitches! I read en francais, w00t!)
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
*98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

My sleeping is really out of whack. Again. God, cannot get over how good it is to be in my own bed again – still!
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Due to various circumstances out of my control, I missed out on acquiring a ticket to see Final Fantasy – initially. However, a former workmate who has industry contacts told me that tickets were on sale and after a mad flurry, I headed down to The Toff In Town, some fairly swanky venue in Melbourne town.
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Oh lord, this is awful, but couldn’t resist. Filched from Pie.

AUSSIE MEME
Bold the ones you’ve done!

1. Heard a kookaburra in person
2. Slept under the stars
3. Seen a koala.
4. Visited Melbourne (me: well duh, I live here)
5. Watched a summer thunderstorm
6. Worn a pair of thongs
7. Been to Uluru (Ayer’s Rock).
8. Visited Cape York
9. Held a snake
10. Sang along with Khe San
11. Drank VB
12. Visited Sydney
13. Have seen a shark
14. Have used Aussie slang naturally in a conversation (me: I tried, and failed, apparently)
15. Had an actual conversation with an indigenous Australian (aboriginal).
16. Eaten hot chips from the bag at the beach
17. Walked/climbed over the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
18. Used an outside dunny, and checked under the seat before sitting down
19. Seen Chloe in Young & Jackson’s.
20. Slept on an overnight train or bus.
21. Been to Sydney’s Mardi Gras
22. Have gone bush-bashing
23. Taken a sickie
24. Been to see a game of Aussie Rules football
25. Have seen wild camels
26. Gone skinny dipping.
27. Had a Tim Tam Slam
28. Ridden in a tram in Melbourne
29. Been at an ANZAC day Dawn Service.
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Held a wombat
32. Been on a roadtrip of 800km or more
33. Seen the Great Australian Bight in person
34. Had a really bad sunburn (me: LAME. I’m brown already!)
35. Visited an aboriginal community
36. Seen a redback spider
37. Have watched Paul Hogan
38. Seen Blue Poles in person
39. Wandered barefoot in the bush/outback
40. Eaten Vegemite
41. Thrown a boomerang
42. Seen the Kimberleys
43. Given a hitch-hiker a lift
44. Been to Perth
45. Have tried Lemon, Lime and Bitters (me: that an Australian thing?)
46. Tried playing a didgeridoo
47. Seen dinosaur footprints (at the museum)
48. Eaten Tim Tams
49. Been to Darwin
50. Touched a kangaroo
51. Visted the Great Barrier Reef
52. Listened to Kevin Bloody Wilson
53. Killed a Cane Toad
54. Gone to a drive-in theatre
55. Have read and own books by Australian authors
56. Visited Adelaide
57. Know the story behind “Eternity”
58. Been camping
59. Visited Brisbane
60. Been in an outback pub
61. Know what the term “Waltzing Matilda” actually means
62. Gone whale watching.
63. Listened to Slim Dusty
64. Own five or more Australian movies or TV series
65. Sang along to Down Under
66. Have stopped specifically to look at an historic marker by the side of the road.
67. Eaten a 4′n’20 pie
68. Surfed at Bondi
69. Watched the cricket on Boxing Day (bah! Dad’s fault)
70. Visited Hobart
71. Eaten kangaroo
72. Seen a quokka
73. Visited Canberra
74. Visited rainforests
75. Used a Victa lawnmower
76. Travelled on a tram in Adelaide
78. Used a Hills hoist
79. Visited Kata Tjuta (the Olgas)
80. Used native Australian plants in cooking
81. Visited the snow
82. Chosen a side in Holden VS Ford
83. Visited the desert
84. Been water skiing
85. Read The Phantom
86. Visited Parliament House
87. Gone spotlighting or pig-shooting (me: WTF?)
88. Crossed the Nullarbor
89. Avoided swimming in areas because of crocodiles
90. Listened to AC/DC.
91. Called someone a dag
92. Voted in a Federal Election
93. Have been swimming and stayed between the flags
94. Had a possum in your roof
95. Visited the outback
96. Travelled over corrugated roads.
97. Hit a kangaroo while driving
98. Been well outside any mobile phone coverage
99. Seen an emu.
100. Have woken to the smell of bushfires (me: does it count if they’re super far away and the smell’s drifted to your city because they were so bad?)

They gonna kick me out?

That time of evening where I change into my pyjamas, sit on tiger blankie, make a cup of Horlicks (better than Stilpox!) and try to clear out my poetry inbox on LiveJournal. Having been away from the internet for a while, I’ve clocked up 250 or so poems to read…zounds.

A poet in the States called Robert Brewer keeps a blog related to all things poetry, interviews of other poets, and tips on the craft. The most recent entry has some excellent survival tips.

Summation: carry pens, carry paper. Everywhere. If you can’t carry paper, carry PENS. If you have an idea, WRITE IT DOWN.

It’s not rocket surgery…most would-be writers with even a quarter of a functioning brain would probably work that out for themselves.

That aside, EMS soccer/football was pretty cool. Thanks Ris for organising an event to get some of us off our lazy arses and pretending to do sport (me, no offence intended to other EMSians).

Most theatrical player: Joe Paul. Sometimes Bert but I suspect his slip ‘n’ slides were genuine.
Those with actual skillz: JP, Rob Paul, Bert.
Our official media crew: Tamara, Rob.
Most improved player: Ris.
Backseat coach: Hayden (who is also quite skilled).
Colour confused folk: me, Will.
People to be wary of: Felix (he may be reedy, but damn, he’s aggressive), Ris once she figured out that aggression actually got you the ball.
People scared of the ball: me, Tamara, Cat I think (feel free to disagree Cat).

Afterwards, went to The Cornish Arms (highly recommended!) and ate fairly cheap yummy food. The bartenders were equally yummy (I put that in for your benefit, DM).

All will be considerably sore tomorrow, it is suspected. There was considerable laughter when I said my old arm injuries flared up. Yes, musicians get injuries too, dammit.

Felix was kind enough to escort me most of the way home and around the dreaded roundabout of death near my house! Had a lovely chat with him too, ta Felix. Oh and his Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is delicious, and I don’t even like SNPAs.

I finally feel like I’m back at home.

At present, I seem to have the opposite problem to that which I had a month ago for several months, that is, I seem to enjoy sleeping a little too much, and don’t hear my alarm. On the bright side, it means not having to take Stilpox. One less drug in my system, the better.

Last week was pretty good – had a breakfast date with DM, and a painter came and fixed things in our flat…weird. So now our house smells of paint, but it also forced us to be ridiculously domestic and we’ve cleaned up a good deal.

Now if I could just stop procrastinating about packing…

I fail at cooking. Perhaps it’s that I’m not used to electric cooking but the tasty fish I bought for my housemates last week, I did not cook properly. Rob may have convinced Frosty to cook for us this week…wonder if it’ll go through? I hear he does a mean spag bol.

Last Fri had dinner with my parents again. Having dinner with them on my home turf is actually a good deal nicer than me hiking up to visit them, though at present I’ve no car so I can’t really visit them without it taking forever to get there.

Weekend was spent cleaning aftermath of painter (no really, he totalled the house – paint flakes everywhere), a workmate’s going away party, then a visit to fellow Twitterer @joelsk_’s place where I got to try devilled sausages for the first time ever. Also got to meet his Tomsk (Womble, in case you’re wondering).

Am up ridiculously early today and nursing a (legal) drug headache, whilst listening to Ravi Shankar and Philip Glass – the last track sounds like it samples something, some sort of old tune that variations are usually built on (I forget what those are called). Also watching the neighbourhood kit sleep peacefully on my bed. Have said I shall test more BPALs and attempt to read some more of the Christopher Hitchens book I’ve yet to finish.

Sadly, I missed last week’s poetry workshop and will now have to wait a whole month for the next one. Had two ridiculously short poems to present, one of which I’m fairly fond of (the Richard Brautigan tribute one).

Oh, and honey mead? Deliciousness!