|
|
Thursday, May 21st, 2009
| |
12:50 pm - Work is a bit quiet
|
On Tuesday there was a clock at uni which was an hour behind. Those in WA will find this funny.
As the clock can only be tampered with remotely, I suspect a disaffected old staff member cackling in the basement.
Did anyone see the storm an hour ago? It was awesome, a motorbike (parked, fortunately) blew over and I almost expected to see some people roll down the street.
current music: Some song on the radio about Nashville being tanned?
|
|
(5 comments | comment on this)
|
| Monday, May 18th, 2009
| |
9:52 am - Where has the silliness gone?
|
I finally watched Eurosvision last night and was bitterly, bitterly diappointed. Only one act was silly and absurd, they are all letting the side down! It's as though they've decided the point is to win, and so be serious, and have missed the whole reason that people actually watch Eurovision. I don't want to see talent, I want to see people making idiots of themselves.
That said, that violin playing Norwegian was good, and may I point out now that my mum is Norwegian so I feel that I can cheer legitimatly.
What is the world coming to when people on Eurovision take themselves seriously? Are we ever going to have a 'Flying the Flag' again?
|
|
(4 comments | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, April 14th, 2009
| |
11:06 am - Dualism is connected to mechanism, mechanism is connected to epistemology etc...
|
I enjoy the art of creating a good essay; you spend weeks (or days, if you like) gathering information, reading through books and journals, making notes, putting things together and then you sit back and try to put it all together. I use a metaphor of a body, the basic outline of the intro, each paragraph and the concliion is the skeleton. Then each part is fleshed out, with organs added and tendons and veins to connect relevant parts to each other. Finally, after everything has been checked over, and all the connections flow, I leave it and most likely never read it again but hand it over to the lecturer to judge.
One of the joys I get is creating a really good sentence, one that sums up my point, aludes to something relevant and is also witty or has an entendre. For example:
His ideas also set up theories for scholars in the future, who would build on his ideas about optics, for example, and create the view of the world that we have today.
This is from my current essay on Descartes, after a paragraph on mechanism. Not only does it set up links to the conclusion, which is next, it refers to the metaphor of building from a foundation, which is one of his most important theories. It also has a little semi-pun with optics and view of the world.
After I hand this essay in this afternoon, I won't think about it again till I get the mark back and after that, probably never.
I've become a bit God-like lately, in the sense that I only rest on sundays. Mon-Tue = Uni. Wed-Thu = TAFE job. Fri-Sat = Bank job. Sun = rest. Also violin lessons on tuesday; I can play hot cross buns:)
It's not how I pictured my ascendancy to a higher plane of existence.
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Monday, March 23rd, 2009
| |
3:47 pm - Je suis un Russia, avec ex-Frenchmen
|
My life at the moment is sort of like Russia around 1812; French things keep intruding into my life.
The events keep leading my thoughts to the opinion that patterns aren't random, and connections between subjects, interests and events occur at a subconscious level all the time. It's only when you plan to learn French, you are reading Candide, you are fascinated by Les Miserables and you are writing essays on two ex-Frenchmen that you ponder the intertwining of subconscious thoughts.
Fortunatly for my essays, the subjects of Descartes' and Foucault's works are quite different, though I do wish Foucault had written something on religion. It's a strange gap to leave in a study of power through history.
In non-French influenced news, I have a job at a bank in a bookshop in Mundaring, which is ideal. I am a responsible handler of money and my hands smell of cash.
current music: Stars - Roger Allam
|
|
(7 comments | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, February 5th, 2009
| |
2:39 pm
|
I am currently uploading the photos from my first day at the Louvre, which comes to 89. As I was there for 7 hours, this works out as: 12.714285714285714285714285714286 photos an hour, or 0.21190476190476190476190476190476 a minute.
Mmmm.
Also, how can anyone possibly think that grinding up people who are not only dead, but have been so for over 2000 years can create something called the 'elixir of life'? Only in some strange, contrary pattern of thought can this be, a pattern most often connected to the consumption of alcohol.
Despite whatever flippancy may have come across in this, things like this really disturb and confound me. Like that Anita Green (?) in Milk last night.
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Friday, January 23rd, 2009
| |
2:18 pm - Concerning nostalgia and irresolutions.
|
Surprise and elation - I am updating my journal.
It's a new year, and while I'm not going along with resolutions and making myself an entirely new person (impossible really, for numerous reasons that branch into philosophy too much to fit in this brief and pertinent update), though I do have plans.
Thus far I've watched a nigh obsessive amount of The West Wing, chatted to the lderly at the place I've been volunteering, had a job interview, worked, got a tan, read a few books, done lots of thinking and had my cat on my lap.
One of the women I've met dug a 26 foot well in her backyard with her husband, and used sacks in place of wood for her walls. Another lady used to swim at Crawley with a group of young men, who were doing apprenticeships and had all their lives ahead of them. They joined the airforce and none of them came back.
There's so much history, wisdom and stories to be found with these people, who will soon be gone.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Friday, November 14th, 2008
| |
10:42 am - Hiya
|
I'm not in Europe any more!
Here http://www.flickr.com/photos/10440493@N06/ is the link to my photo site, upon which I have thrown about half on my photos. They are all wonderful and exciting.
More will be added, and more updates made here, when I get internet at home again, which seems now to be a relic of a distant and glorious past.
Until then, farewell.
|
|
(8 comments | comment on this)
|
| Monday, September 15th, 2008
| |
7:11 pm
|
I live! Despite the best efforts of the equatorial storm gods, the plane reached Hong Kong without crashing. Since then I've been trying to use up the 16 hours transit as much as possible. I can't imagine being stuck here for 3 days, as my uncle was, 4 hours napping on a chair where enough for me.
Also, because I've been so fixated on Europe, the idea of experiencing China didn;t really occur to me, but I went on a tour and was interested (when I wasn't struggling to stay awake and remembering what heat is like).
Argh, time's up.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Wednesday, July 30th, 2008
| |
7:20 pm - Why must Comic-Con and Perth be seperated by so much land and sea?
|
So not having deep sleep brings about strange dreams, I'm putting this forward as a theory tonight.
The reason being, on Monday night I recall someone pouring milk into a large metal container which turned out, Oh no! to be dirty. According to dream logic, I had to clean it and as the full body plastic suits were out (???) I had to shave my entire body so the milk wasn't contaminated. Perhaps because of the strangeness and because logic may have asserted itself soon, my milk-dip changed to a ninja academy training place (where the full body plastic suit may have come in handy, maybe?) where I was trying to protect my secret identity. Do you know what my secret identity was?
Barbara Streisand.
Unfortunatly, my phone went off and as my ringtone was known to the other ninjas, I ran away, though I was chased and almost lost the phone.
This was a bit too odd for my dream, and so after something in a nice house, I ran down a garden into a giant volcanic cauldron with grass/flowers/flames that I leapt over and sat in front of a fire place.
Last night, after a restaurant and family business, I stood on an oval with someone who may have been Madame Morrible (Wicked baddie), watching planes soaring off to war. Enemy planes appeared and complicated airborne fights ensued, and despite what I believed would happen, those on my side began to lose and I was herded under a bridge, which became the restaurant from before. There were children with me, and rules about silence and no lights, and general fear. Jennie appeared out of a spinoff dream, and wondered what the quiet and fear was about, and I exclaimed, 'We're being bombed by the Germans!' after which children next to me were shot, and bloody images followed, interrupted by my alarm going off.
It's not like I particularly like Barbara Streisand, or have anything against the Germans. I think they've been loaded with more than enough guilt, we don't want the Christians to have too much competition in the guilt business.
current music: Bowie - Flight of the Conchords
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, July 15th, 2008
| |
8:45 pm - How thrillifying 'twas
|
Back from Melbourne! Of all the places I've been thus far in the world (with the exception of Arrowtown, for retiring gracefully purposes) Melbourne is where I want to live. It has all I want in a city, and someone from Perth is happily stunned by buildings over 150 years old. Horse drawn carriages! Decent, thriving theatres! A wonderful art gallery! The best Museum I've seen!
Wicked! was also, I'm glad to say, worth going all the way over to see. I'm watching a somewhat not as lovely video of the Broadway version (Kristin Chenoweth, Idina Menzel and Joel Grey being the only ones whose names I remember now), oh huzzah it's all coming back. Something that can make you laugh, think and cry must be an experience worth seeking.
For some reason Elphaba's hope, ambition and joy at the beginning, knowing what happens, is sadder than the actual sadness that follows.
current mood:  satisfied
current music: The Wizard and I - Idina Menzel
|
|
(1 comment | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, July 10th, 2008
| |
8:26 pm - Oh Melbourne's weather, why must you conform to the sterotype?
|
Hello internet. As I have harvested you for informative Melbourne maps I shall now go and sleep, for I have a plane to catch at 6:10am!
Weee.
current music: Toxic - Yael Naim
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Tuesday, July 8th, 2008
| |
10:10 pm
|
In all the fuss about the Doctor Who final I completely forgot to geek out about a special cameo in the penultimate episode; Richard Dawkins!
My inner atheist did a happy dance:)
current music: Rio Abojo Rio - Edison Woods
|
|
(3 comments | comment on this)
|
| Sunday, July 6th, 2008
| |
7:59 pm
|
My 'holiday' is now over, back to work tomorrow. My inner child is whining louder than usual about getting up early and going to work, it is a new job so I'm giving them some leeway. Waah.
The prospect of Melbourne this weekend, and Wicked on saturday is a bit exciting, probably more so when I have to pack and get all broadway-hands-ey. Also job interview on Tuesday.
That said, I would now like to vent my feeling about the Doctor Who finale, without spoilers; I understand appealing to the fans and giving people what they want, but it seemed like a bit much of that somehow. Also cruel at one point, a bit weird at another and too neat. That said, I cried.
Also, though the main instigator or triggerer really of my annoyance wouldn't read this; yes, it is so very far to drive to the hills, awwww, of course because of the gradient coming down from the hills is less of a drive, I don't think.
Rrrr, hypocrisy.
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Friday, June 27th, 2008
| |
7:27 pm - Meandering thoughts and webs with flailing threads
|
Something that interests me right now is the term to 'miss' someone. The other common use of this word means to aim at something and not hit it, catch it or in some other way no achieve reaching a target.
The idea of applying this to people and their relationships is interesting, it implies, at least in my mind, that when we think of a person part of us reaches out but misses them somehow, and it's that lack of contact that causes the sadness.
Like a lot of concepts, visualising works the bext for me and right now that metaphor clicks with something in me.
Another image which I borrowed from somewhere is a person and their relationships with others as a web, with threads leading to and from nodes in sometimes messy and confusing patterns. When one node is removed the threads connected to it flail around, reaching out into the gap, eventually settling into new patterns, or finding replacement connections.
|
|
(9 comments | comment on this)
|
| Thursday, June 26th, 2008
| |
9:03 pm - Insert wit here
|
I had a sudden and compelling urge to watch Casablanca. As I am house-sitting I can realy do whatever I like, as long as it doesn't require another person. *pokes silence* How long is it supposed to take for solitary confinement to make people insane? Apparently that Gardening Australia fellow was in solitary for 6 months and only ended up quirkily eccentric...
Anyhoo, yes, house-sitting. In what would be a quaint cottage if not for it's size, which is sizeable. Also majestic.
Tomorrow is my last day in the Environment and Sustainability office at DPI, where I've been loyally slaving away since November 19th 2006, when I was fucking 19 years old, which seems now t be a hell of a long time. Got a bit chocked up today saying good bye to my supervisor, which doesn't bode well for the farewell morning tea tomorrow. I'll be at Murray Sy BUT STILL, 500-ish metres is a distance.
Also the Romantic theme from the Sims is a legit piece of music. The Classical Favourites cd told me so. Also also this computer will not allow youtube *stares longingly at new Doctor Who episodes*
current mood:  sleepy
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Saturday, June 21st, 2008
| |
6:52 pm - Mindless we lived and mindless we loved
|
EVOLUTION
When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
In the Paleozoic time,
And side by side on the ebbing tide
We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
Or skittered with many a caudal flip
Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,
My heart was rife with the joy of life,
For I loved you even then.
Mindless we lived and mindless we loved
And mindless at last we died;
And deep in the rift of the Caradoc drift
We slumbered side by side.
The world turned on in the lathe of time,
The hot lands heaved amain,
Till we caught our breath from the womb of death
And crept into light again.
We were amphibians, scaled and tailed,
And drab as a dead man's hand;
We coiled at ease 'neath the dripping trees
Or trailed through the mud and sand.
Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet,
Writing a language dumb,
With never a spark in the empty dark
To hint at a life to come.
Yet happy we lived and happy we loved,
And happy we died once more;
Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold
Of a Neocomian shore.
The eons came and the eons fled
And the sleep that wrapped us fast
Was riven away in a newer day
And the night of death was past.
Then light and swift through the jungle trees
We swung in our airy flights,
Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms
In the hush of the moonless nights;
And, oh! what beautiful years were there
When our hearts clung each to each;
When life was filled and our senses thrilled
In the first faint dawn of speech.
Thus life by life and love by love
We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath and death by death
We followed the chain of change.
Till there came a time in the law of life
When over the nursing side
The shadows broke and the soul awoke
In a strange, dim dream of God.
I was thewed like an Auroch bull
And tusked like the great cave bear;
And you, my sweet, from head to feet
Were gowned in your glorious hair.
Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,
When the night fell o'er the plain
And the moon hung red o'er the river bed
We mumbled the bones of the slain.
I flaked a flint to a cutting edge
And shaped it with brutish craft;
I broke a shank from the woodland lank
And fitted it, head and haft;
Then I hid me close to the reedy tarn
Where the mammoth came to drink;
Through the brawn and bone I drove the stone
And slew him upon the brink.
Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,
Loud answered our kith and kin;
From west to east to the crimson feast
The clan came tramping in.
O'er joint and gristle and padded bone
We fought and clawed and tore,
And cheek by jowl with many a growl
We talked the marvel o'er.
I carved the fight on a reindeer bone
With rude and hairy hand;
I pictured his fall on the cavern wall
That men might understand.
For we lived by blood and the right of might
Ere human laws were drawn,
And the age of sin did not begin
Till our brutal tush were gone.
And that was a million years ago
In a time that no man knows;
Yet here tonight in the mellow light
We sit at Delmonico's.
Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs,
Your hair is dark as jet,
Your years are few, your life is new,
Your soul untried, and yet -
Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay
And the scarp of the Purbeck flags;
We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones
And deep in the Coralline crags;
Our love is old, our lives are old,
And death shall come amain;
Should it come today, what man may say
We shall not live again?
God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds
And furnished them wings to fly;
He sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn,
And I know that it shall not die,
Though cities have sprung above the graves
Where the crook-bone men make war
And the oxwain creaks o'er the buried caves
Where the mummied mammoths are.
Then as we linger at luncheon here
O'er many a dainty dish,
Let us drink anew to the time when you
Were a tadpole and I was a fish.
- Langdon Smith
*contented wriggle*
Went to see The Mars Volta on tuesday, and discovered that Cedric Bixler-Zavala is a godlike Californian/Mexican Robert Plant. The architecture at Metro City is also a bit jaw-dropping.
current music: Douglas Adams on Kakapos
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Monday, June 9th, 2008
| |
7:59 pm - So you think you can tell, heaven from hell, blue skies from pain?
|
Hello greetings and salutations!
According to lj, who would know things like this, I have not updated in 5 weeks. It's interesting, and not just in an 'oooh, etymology' way that the ness of busy (grammar, pffft) is business.
So yeah, uni, study, life, books to finish and tomorrow if my luck holds out (why do I even talk about luck, I don't belive in that sort of thing, ah society conventions, how subtle you are) I shall be booked for POMPEII.
In the vein of Virginia Woolf, my full and varied emotions about something are summed up in one word, in this case POMPEII. Europe, old buildings, the Via Appia, Paris, Louvre, Alps... It's POMPEII.
Also, new job (perhaps one which basically has my name written all over it, at least at this point in my life) and new people.
I know I often sum things up with a vague sort of 'life is good' conclusion, like the ending of some fairy tale story (the bad ended unhappily, the good happily, that is the meaning of fiction *pats Oscar*), perhaps it's some kind of sublimated desire for the perfect ending or attempt to make my life some idealized construction. Whatever it is, or whatever causes it, I aint gonna say it tonight.
So nyeah.
That said, for this moment at least, hanging within these few seconds, I'm happy.
current music: Sleep of no dreaming - Porcupine Tree
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Saturday, May 3rd, 2008
| |
11:24 am - For each age is a dream that is dying, or one that is coming to birth.
|
Yesterday there was a McCafe stand set up across the road from my work, next to the train station. It was too far away from any thoroughfares to be very successful, and over-stocked with milk. Andrea and I found it very suspicious, primarily because of the word 'free'. As everyone knows, nothing, ever, is free. What was the catch? Besides it being coffee made in 2 minutes from a sub-sidiary of McDonalds. later in the day, after we'd spent so much time staring down at it muttering suspiciously and commentating Mr Elton John Glasses and the Adventures of the Mis-Placed Sign, we'd picqued the interests of enough people in the office to venture down en masse and hopefully expose the conspiracy that must have been lurking behind the flimsy tent. The catch, as it turned out, was a card that could be stamped and eventually traded in for more coffee. We tried to find some sort of small print on the stand or under the table, but the only odd thing down there was the taste of the coffee. It seems that they have not heard about coffee machines needing to be cleaned often to keep out the burning beans. All in all, it was an interesting experiment, and my eyebrows and suspicion glands got plenty of exercise.
This week I've also developed a fondness for T.S. Eliot and my general distrust towards banks has hit an all-time high.
current music: Bolero - Ravel
|
|
(comment on this)
|
| Sunday, April 20th, 2008
| |
12:32 pm - Alea jacta est!
|
I'm achy and my saddlery region is bruised but that matters not compared to the victory I have ahcieved. Yes, at long last, I have learnt to ride a bike. Nike hand me a wreath and watch as I do weaving and slightly wobbly laps of the arena.
I've put so much tongue-poking-out concentration into learning it that whenver my mind drifts I feel compelled to grab a bike and set off into the sunset, and I also lean a bit when driving and wonder whether I should be moving my feet more.
This week has also been a bit of a geeky extravaganza; on Monday while discussing my Europe Odyssey with a travel agent, I mentioned a tour of Pompeii and off I went to a little ecstatic history-geek world in my head. The thought of the Appian Way also causes paroxysms of joy, and if we happen to go near the Rubicon... Well, I can't be held responsible.
On Tuesday Jenneh and I went to the Chaser show, and afterwards lurked around the foyer. After some waiting, the boys came out. To be honest, it wasn't really like meeting a 'famous' person, it was more of a 'wow, I really like what these guys have done, and appreciate the work they've put in over the years, and hey, they're real people'. Craig escpecially was great, chatted to us for a while before being ambushed by someone else. Left with a nice, awww feeling.
Aaaaand, Richard Dawkins is going to be on Doctor Who.
Eeeeee.
Uni is also going well.
That's all really.
current music: Let's call the whole thing off - Andrew Hansen
|
|
(2 comments | comment on this)
|
| Saturday, March 29th, 2008
| |
4:15 pm - You fill me with intertia.
|
Stranger than Fiction is a damn good movie. Damn good. However, Robin Hood (the tv show) is shit.
P.G. Wodeshouse is marvelous and somehow the idea of Jeeves/Wooster is better than the fiction I have read thus far.
There is a new Neil Gaiman book on the way.
In conclusion life, like a sphere in a place with no intertia, rolls on.
current music: That Mozart piece from Shawshank Redemption
|
|
(comment on this)
|
|
|
|
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
marmot_pie's journal