Grace Notes @ Snarkattack

No, no, not the book. The actual time of day. To me, everything looks beautiful.

It’s been a crap week, yesterday was ace. @futuresandwich asked me if I wanted to play croquet in the early evening with some friends. I’ve never played croquet before, and said of course!

Turns out there wasn’t much playing, it was more an excuse to drink wine, eat cheese and eat cucumber sandwiches. I also got to meet @tjlefebvre, fellow white tea lover. Wilde would have been proud!

A fun time was had by all. Plus, I get to say I’ve played croquet now. It gets progressively harder, the more you drink. The company was fantastic and the lit-talk was hawt.

Afterwards, I went to my fave glam girl’s birthday party. I seemed to avoid having to purchase my own alcohol, was appallingly well-behaved (I deliberately did not take advantage of a hot bloke who may have been partial to it, groan) and my hair defies gravity still. L burnt my finger with his cigarette, and Orange-puss proceeded to hop onto my lap once I’d snuggled in an armchair and clawed at burn blister. It popped. It’s gross, and it still hurts. Much thanks to Hitler-Matt for explaining how it is a person can be in possession of a terabyte of porn. It’s so much…

It was lovely to see Superhans & Orange (both felines). I made sure I gave my own puss plenty of hugs when I got back home. Him and Mum had stolen my blankie.

The parents’ place is pandemonium. Floorboards have been stripped of their carpets, and painting has begun. I can’t unpack a lot of my things because I’ve pretty much been told not to.

Oh, also, I’m sub-editor for a site called Snarkhunters. I get to be pedantic, and stuff. Yea!

You decide.

Okay, so I’ve finished reading Twilight by Stephanie Meyer. It is a good bit of fluff, I shall give it that. I do have a few issues with it, however…

- teens (while in some weird vacuum, the sort mentioned in Physics class) apparently abstain from sex and don’t even feel each other up. Perhaps they don’t menstruate either. The female ones, of course.
- main female protagonist Bella sounds even more stupid than she is because Meyer cannot employ the subjunctive mode. This makes me saaaaad.
- main male protagonist Edward Cullen is hot and a stalker. no one should forgive a stalker his or her ways even if s/he is hot
- Meyer uses so many cliches, one would think she actually invented them
- real vampires don’t sparkle. Emo ones, however, apparently do
- also, are girls really that boy-obsessed? Come on, even Dawson’s Creek had a girl obsessed with something other than boys (Joey, played by Katie Holmes. She wanted to go to college)

This book is poorly written enough to be exempt from me attempting a psychoanalytic reading. Yes, I know, I was lame for wanting to read it. Thanks to Mel for lending it to me, it is good escapist reading when you feel like poo!

I was chatting with @lluke very early this morning and he told me that “blogging is so 2005″. I realise blogging isn’t en vogue these days, but I harbour a fondness for it. Perhaps because it allows me to crap on ad infinitum. I mainly do it as a record I can read back on for when I go all Mrs Dalloway Septimus, which isn’t really any fun.

I’m only listing the ones I use or have a signed account with.

So, you want to know what I’m doing now? Well, you can check my Facebook status, or check my Twitter updates. Want to see me on video or see things I’ve filmed? Well, there’s YouTube or if you really have a short attention span, see my 12seconds account.

Want to see what I’m reading, or what books are in my collection? Check out my aNobii profile, or LibraryThing. How about the music I listen to? Why here you go! Oh, and (some of) my music collection on CD is here too.

Have a really short attention span? Then check out Tumblr which is somewhere between blogging and microblogging. Bonus points to anyone who can tell me how Posterous is different to Tumblr.

Then integrate all your feeds into one using FriendFeed.

There are a bunch of others I have accounts with that I just haven’t bothered to mention. Also, if you haven’t done so, I do recommend reading Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf. It’s actually really good.

My faves are Twitter, last.fm and Tumblr (I have two differently themed Tumblrlogs). I do use LiveJournal to subscribe to communities that post poems daily, and also to comment on friends’ LJs.

Twitter I use to communicate with others. last.fm I use to discover new musical artists. Tumblr – one is for posting poems I really like or really hate, the other is for posting images I like. I was pretty obsessive about aNobii a while back but I haven’t been reading as much as I used (gee, I wonder why).

I’d tell you what I’m going to do now, but you’ll probably find out – regardless of your interest – on several feeds in a bit. kthxbai.

(edit: christ, I didn’t even mention BrightKite or TwitPic, both of which I use! Head…going…to…explode…)
(edit #2: forgot blip.fm. Am worst blogger EVAR)

No more hoarding! Much more testing! Says I from quite some time ago, in happier but more fecked-up times.

Again, non-olfactory orgasm addicts, tune out now.
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A while back I got some fragrance oils from a company called Blooddrop.

They are nothing short of stunning, and sadly, many were limited edition. A few did get kept on, I noticed. As always, I’m most fond of the non-foody ones, though a few foody ones snuck in to charm my pants off me.

Some impressions follow. Some of you may choose to tune out at this stage… *grin*
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I’d never made a mixtape for a crush till late last year. Z and I, when we first met, chose a whole bunch of CDs we thought the other would like and swapped them over. Got introduced to some fantastic music that way. M already listened to a lot of stuff I liked. He’s also the only sort-of normal Tool fan I know. I can’t remember who told me that Tool fans were weird, but they were right. They’re kind of creepy. Or, the ones I’ve met, anyway…

Anyway, here’s my list. Non-music nerds might want to tune out at this stage. It’s not going to be overly interesting for you.
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I hate the suburbs. Wordsworth was clearly on crack when he waxed lyrical about them. Or wanking (not an original idea: actually suggested by his far more liberal contemporary Byron in Don Juan. I kid you not).

I remember why I hate taking my sleeping pill: it makes me forget the last half hour just before I fall asleep, and it makes me very dizzy and hazy the following morning. On the upside, I had uninterrupted sleep for the first time in a few weeks.

Parents wanted to go to a local shopping centre, and as I want to stay awake, thought I’d go along. I went to two awful bookshops and nearly bought Twilight (I know, I know, but I’m feeling that depressed, haha).

Instead I went to the ABC Shop (internationals: shop devoted to the Australian Broadcasting Channel), lusted over season four of Doctor Who, and bought the complete first series of David Starkey’s Monarchy (squee! British history fix!). Have an awful lot of catching up to do. There’s three series! I also bought an audio recording – Andreas Scholl (countertenor…swoon) in recital, singing John Dowland! The sales assistant asked me where I got my t-shirt from (Threadless ‘Communist Party’ one) and explained he’d seen it at his uni (one of the ones near my parents’ place). Lame, but it kind of made my day.

Of course I still have my weaknesses: bought the Guitar Hero game for Nintendo DS. It’s awesome, so far. Not as cool as the full version for the console of your choice, but it’ll do for now.

Current guilty pleasure: Torchwood. Acting is nowhere near as good as Doctor Who (as in, they’re not really convincing), stories are not quite as believable but I can’t stop watching. It’s so escapist. Captain Jack Harkness is so much better when he’s in Doctor Who. Still, now that I’ve finished watching Rome, have to find other things to fill the void!

Pretty shallow stuff, eh? Especially given that the state of Victoria is somewhat traumatised by major bushfires given yesterday’s high temperature. Twitter isn’t helping with its constant updates of just how many people have passed away as a result of the fires. The news tells me the town of Marysville has been completely wiped out.

Nearly a decade ago, I once got paid by a small orchestra to go on a tour into a town that is on the border of my state, Victoria, and New South Wales. The town is called Swan Hill. It was summertime, and the heat seemed unbearable.

It was a fantastic gig: I was just a temporary flautist, the music was amazingly hard but a great challenge and the conductor came up to me to tell me I played well, which never happens (I’d not seen the music before: it was my first time through). I remember it fondly because I got paid (thus actually making me a real classical musician…for a bit!) and because, I played so well and it seemed so…effortless. Ah, the zone.

Now, I’m not the sort of person who really wanted to believe in the “country people stereotypes” but (that lethal word but!*) when I got billeted out with a member of the community, it did make me reconsider my position.

In case you didn’t already know, I’m not white. Apparently, this was cause for fascination on the part of my host.

“So, where are you from?”
“England, originally.”
“But…what nationality are your parents?”
“Well, my father’s from Guyana, and my mother’s from the Philippines.”
“Oh. So…you must have been brought up in the Filipino…way, then.”
“I’m sorry?”
“You know, brought up like someone from the Philippines.”
“Well, that would have been hard, given that I grew up in the West. My first language is English, you know. It’s what we speak in England.”
“But you would have eaten different food…”
“Different from bangers and mash?”

Myself and my billetee exchanged knowing glances.

“Right. Well, let me show you my scrapbook. I keep it to show my grandchildren when they come to visit.”
Billetee and I again exchange glances. Um, sure, why not? Not much we can do to refuse, really.

At first, she starts talking about God. This is fine. Then she opens up the scrapbook. There are newspaper articles pasted in it. The one she shows us is a car mashed up in an accident. She starts to tell us about how she shows these things to her grandchildren to remind them how lucky they are and how good God is to them. She saves similar such articles for her grandchildren.

Fellow billetee and I went to bed in shock that night.

I am happy to report that I did meet people the next day of a similar generation who were quite the opposite to that particular lady, thankfully.

I really do like bangers and mash. But damn, I’d kill for a decent trifle.

Stability results were medium which suggests you are moderately relaxed, calm, secure, and optimistic.

Orderliness results were moderately low which suggests you are, at times, overly flexible, improvised, and fun seeking at the expense of reliability, work ethic, and long term accomplishment.

Extraversion results were moderately low which suggests you are reclusive, quiet, unassertive, and secretive.

trait snapshot:
introverted, secretive, messy, depressed, does not like leadership, somewhat nihilistic, observer, does not make friends easily, unassertive, feels invisible, feels undesirable, hates large parties, does not like to stand out, leisurely, suspicious, submissive, abstract, unpredictable, intellectual, likes rain, likes the unknown, negative, weird, not a risk taker, unadventurous, avoidant, strange

(if the intertubes is telling me I’m strange and weird, it must be true! I tend to be so different when I’m well)

Here are the rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 10 or more people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you.

1. Last night I drank 2/3rds of a bottle of red wine, about an inch or so of vodka, and about 3/5ths a bottle of Kahlua and am still hungover.
2. I hate the hot weather.
3. Despite being brown, I do still burn in the sun.
4. I once went out with a guy whose mother was born in the same hospital as me.
5. My PayPal account got hacked a few days ago.
6. I have been intimate with the former producer of Tortoise.
7. I have also been intimate with someone who claimed to be a member of Blonde Redhead before they got big.
8. I read Oliver Twist when I was five, when it was given to me as a gift.
9. Artificial intelligence developing human emotions makes me cry.
10. I’m not afraid to dine out by myself.
11. I’m afraid of the water, and don’t tend to enjoy beaches with waves.
12. I love thick cut day-old chips – cold.
13. I declare that I am too stupid for Linux.
14. I really like the Scottish accent.
15. It doesn’t happen often, but I feel ashamed whenever I get down about being single.
16. Having said that, I am perpetually lonely.
17. I love Japanese food, but hate Japanese curry.
18. My favourite Doctor Who is a tough one but it’d be a toss-up between Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy.
19. I once won an award for being nice to my brother at primary school in England.
20. I’ve been taken to a witch doctor.
21. I used to really hate beer, till I moved into a house with a homebrewer.
22. I’ve never smoked a full cigarette.
23. Animal cruelty greatly upsets me.
24. I have an astigmatism in my left eye.
25. I love avocados, but it sets off my irritable bowel, so I can’t eat them anymore.