chrstoph

I am sitting in a cafe just off Wilson street. It is late in the morning and most of the people have filtered out of the store already. I'm sitting at a large round table waiting for a much needed coffee and a yummy breakfast.
My stream of consciousness is certainly enabled at the moment, but the mundane thoughts that are coming out of it are not particularly inspiring, hence the use of the laptop rather than writing. For some reason it feels like whatever I write on the laptop won't come out with any sort of passion, conviction or particularly strong prose. Perhaps not, but the only good prose I've ... wait. thinking. I wrote some pretty cool stuff on the way over on the manly ferry on the old black laptop (think it was the first laptop I really identified as mine... as of now sitting in a heap at my parents place)...
At the moment I am wearing a black polar fleece skirt and have been doing a cotery of cleaning duties, mostly washing my own disgustingly large pile of clothes and attempting to fix the wine stains on the carpet. I had ordered a load of shopping from coles, which included a few very unnecessary items... vitamin tablets, lip balm, but importantly had a can of carpet stain remover. After leaving the stains for a month or more, I figured I needed all the help I could get. Some of the stains came out, but I think more fun came from the unventilated room, where I got kinda dizzy from all of the fumes... braincells, who needs them?
Not exactly sure what I am writing, but one thing that I picked up from my abortive attempt at joining the nanoMimo was Neil Gaiman's suggestion that you should always just power on through the creative block and write something anyway, even if it does suck balls.
Just thought of a really lame silly joke I thought of this morning as I was doing my chores...
I can't remember the exact joke, but it was something like : I feel like a cow, all domestic and well fed, with a dash of barbeque sauce. mmmmm. Terrible, I know, but i thought it was bad enough that someone has probably used it before.
A group of boy-ish looking lesbians with short hair are sitting across the way from me. Between my skirt and long hair and their shorts and shorter hair we are probably a suitable context for a lot of the 20th century. Not so sure about the 21st century. Maybe. I'm not so sure about this century as I was at the turn of it.
The cafe has started to fill up. I remember that most of the people are probably nursing hangovers from the Friday night happy hour partying and I'm actually up and about ridiculously early for this part of civilised Newtown.
The music in the room is indistinct and non-identifiable. Someone must have gotten rid of the people who liked decent music in this cafe, I can hear a bump, then a guitar thing, then a bump again. I actually sighed then, but felt bad about emoting it in this. Oh wait, I can hear an arpeggiated scale. Sounds like a 14 year old practising the bass. A talented 14 year old, but a 14 year old nevertheless. Nevertheless. I always read it as nerveless. Nerveless fingers gripped the cold of my soul. Nevertheless...
Today there are a plenitude of things to do, and not many of them are productive. I wanted to sit down and make use of my housemates all being away for the weekend to play a whole heap of music. I *want* to sit down and make use of my housemates all being away for the weekend to play a whole shitload of music. I *will* sit down, stand up, jump up and down and just generally enjoy myself while playing music. I want to make sure I record a whole song and publish it this weekend. I wonder who wants to join me for the fun. I could ask Ian but I can't handle too much of Ian's brilliant violin playing. I prefer it to be rougher and fit in with what I am playing - Ian is the virtuoso solo musician who can't stand to be the backup bass player. Metaphorically speaking. I'm not sure if Ian even plays bass...
I still feel peculiarly vulnerable, even in Newtown, from wearing a skirt. It's like all of me is on show for people to dissect and discuss and critisize. Perhaps they aren't, but it doesn't really matter introducing thoughts to the contrary.
I'm kinda wondering if I am even going to post this to the online blog-o-spere. Maybe. Will you critisize me too? Will you, o' will you?
I'm still not feeling like writing anything down, so I guess I'll drink my coffee which is taking ridiculously long to be brought over... yeah, its not here yet, then leave to continue with my cow-work.
So. My plan is to get out the big guitar amp downstairs and take over the tv room with guitar and maybe fiddle too. I'll message some peeps, but my hopes are not high at all. Maybe I shouldn't even bother with the messaging. I might just start playing and screw the rest of them. My goal is to get a song up online by the end of the weekend, but hopefully have most of it down by the end of today. word.

Without the violin, I am nothing.
not nothing, but a far lesser person. I need to do more.

I haven't put anything up on my journal for a while.
So I will.
I'm down in melbourne on the coast near Dromana.
I'm now quite convinced that the best place to actually go to a good pub is in melbourne by such a vast amount as to make me quite sad.

I am also absolutely sure that I would probably die within a year of acute alcohol poisoning and comfortable cushions.

fo shure.

I went to a pub down in Richmond (or nearabouts). It was so damn cool.
Why doesn't sydney have pubs like that?

The pub was called the Great Britain : http://www.melbournepubs.com/v/326/

world of rock. truly. i'm nowhere near that now, but certainly its a good place to go to and I will try to make it back there next time i'm in melbourne.

Well, I just got tickets to splendour, which is just splendiferous.

I'm actually going to be camping this time, so excitement plus plus - dirty three will be playing and the shins and hopefully none of those bastards will pull out on me...

anyone else planning on going to splendour out there?

http://w3.splendourinthegrass.com/Tickets/sold-out.html

UMMMMM... okay, so I bought my camping ticket at 1pm, ... , how does this work?
I was on the ticketing system at 9am and got booted cause they didn't like firefox, but... huh?

Anyway, they can't take em off me! I paid for em, and I'm getting them. :)

chris

btw, this is the result of me using a service called stumbleupon and fishing out articles that i think are worthy.
sorry if this offends anyone's sense of ... volume.

http://www.americanatheist.org/win98-99/T2/silverman.html

I liked this interview.
I liked Douglas Adams.

I like slint.

chris

"The purpose of separation of church and state is to keep forever from these shores the ceaseless strife that has soaked the soil of Europe in blood for centuries."
[James Madison, 1803]

...

...

funny how americans only quote the founding fathers when they are talking about freedom and liberty, not religious freedom and liberty:

...

[laws establishing freedom of religion]..."were meant to include within them the Muslim, the Hindoo [sic], and the infidel of any sort."
[Thomas Jefferson in a letter to his nephew, Dethloff, Henry C., ed. Thomas Jefferson and American Democracy. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath and Co. 1971]

Its kinda interesting this one, because I (with my underdeveloped legal mind) actually thought
that when Ruddock brought this up, I thought that maybe this was okay. A bit dodgy, but okay. But I'm thinking in their terms - let's charge him any goddamm way we can, even if its a hodge-podge of civil, military and donald duck laws.

I say no more quack!

chris


(from the article:)

The prior existence of a domestic crime applicable to civilians is quite irrelevant to this case. Hicks is facing trial for alleged war crimes that didn't exist at the date of his supposed transgressions and no amount of dust being thrown in our eyes by people in the US and Australia, eager to shore up this shameless kangaroo process, should disguise that fact.

The important question is: are material support for terrorism and attempted murder in violation of the law of war actually war crimes? In relation to the particulars of the Hicks case, the answer is no.

You only have to think of attempted murder in a theatre of war to see how ludicrous it is. Hicks was fighting for the Taliban which, whatever one may think of it, in 2001 was the government of Afghanistan. To take up arms and fight as a soldier for a government in a war is not illegal.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/flag-falls-short/2007/02/06/1170524096347.html

so it turns out that the flag was wrong anyway, as well as ... well, just kinda crap and overly anglo-centric.

From the article:
--
Anyway, the astronomer noted, the flag's Southern Cross is only a fleeting stellar feature. Three of its stars, hot giants, are doomed to burn out in a few million years.
--
So maybe we can replace the union jack with the stars?

Or maybe a picture of great fat wads of cash.

sigh...

http://www.usyd.edu.au/news/84.html?newsstoryid=1545

pretty well thought out article. :)

Well friends,

Greetings to you on this happy australia day, or rather, your own particular version of it. I just watched a particularly interesting australia day commentary on abc where the presenter went around to interview many facets of Australians: the convict descendents, the proud british descendents, the native aborigines, immigrant Iranians; the one thing that I found was that whenever the australian flag was involved, I invariably attached a dislike for the people involved.

For somehow, friends, I have become a card carrying flag hater. Never given to overt displays of nationalism at the best of times, I have become almost obsessed with the degree with which people misrepresent flags in order to rally around a particular idea. In this case, we have a flag which is basically a defaced version of the British naval ensign. Showing all of the verve and imagination which could have come from the same marketing genius who sold meat pies back in the 50´s (meat pies, they´re meat, and they´re pies, and they´re Australian... eat them!), we looked up in the sky and decided that the southern cross would be a great symbol of us. Don´t get me wrong, I think the southern cross is a great constellation, and worthy of much discussion, but thinking about it logically, ... pretty much all of the southern hemisphere could lay claim to it, so its hardly ´uniquely australian´.

Basically what the federation star being under the union jack says to me is this: Australians still think of themselves as being under the British rule. The southern cross is saying, yeah, we´re basically a southern hemisphere version of the British. This, considering all of our multicultural heritage, seems completely anomolous to where we are moving as a country, and to re-embrace a flag which holds those ties seems quite illogical to me, especially considering its exclusion of any non-british Australians (and yes, surprisingly, they do exist in much larger numbers than the White Australia policy could ever have imagined!).

So, historically, people say we´ve fought under the australian flag in World War 1, World Ware 2, all these wars, all these brave soldiers fighting under the flag. We can´t possibly change it, can we? WW1 we were fighting under the Union Jack. WWII we were fighting under the Union Jack, with a small portion fighting under the (then unoffical Australian Flag). Indeed, the Australian flag as we know it today was only ratified in 1953, a far cry from those who would have us believe that it has been a part of Australia since federation.

My beef is as follows:

1. The flag is divisive
2. The flag is not indicative of its population
3. It promotes an us vs them mentality
4. Its backwards, not forwards looking.
5. It offends me in its complete unoriginality.

There are probably people out there that will even hate me for holding such a harsh view on the flag, but this will just go to further my claim that its all about the us and them. And nothing about Australia and its future prosperity.

chris
god save the queen!

See you all soon, I'm off to Melbourne for a few days, and then hoooome,...

cos its such a perfect day.

i'm glad i spent it with you...

chrs

This one's for the emo's out there, just waiting to cry. :)

dum de dum.

i'm sitting around doing crap all.
This, however, is quite funny:

http://www.humanistsofutah.org/2002/WhyCantIOwnACanadian_10-02.html

I was trying to think of an australian version of this; obviously if you put australia as the america of the region (hey, we've got more macdonalds than anywhere else, i think); it would have to be New Zealand as Canada (damn pot smoking hippies) and ... who would be Australia's Mexican bitches? :)

c

I just went to a rest and relaxation thing round the corner at a yoga place. 2 hours of me paying people so that I could snooze.

I feel quite serene now. :)
like i've just smoked a bag o' green sorta serene. minus the giggles. :)

c

Okay. You know when you listen to a song that really kinda freaks you out. This is that. But good. Just in a very wierd way. Don't listen to it: you'll hate it. ;)

Peking O - Can Driving my way to,Driving my way back to yesterday,Driving my way back to yesterday,The night never sleeps.Driving my way back to yesterday,Driving my way back to yesterday,Driving my way,Driving my way back to yesterday.Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah,Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah!Says "I carry a heart."Momma gonna eat, momma eat.Momma gonna eat, momma gonna eat, poppa gonna eat,Momma gonna, poppa gonna, momma gonna, poppa gonna,Momma gonna, poppa gonna, momma gonna, poppa gonna,Momma gonna, poppa gonna, momma gonna, poppa gonna,Momma gonna, poppa gonna eat.Momma gonna eat, poppa gonna eat,Momma gonna eat, poppa gonna eat,Momma gonna eat, poppa gonna eat,Momma gonna eat, poppa gonna eat,Momma gonna eat, poppa gonna eat,Momma gonna eat, poppa gonna eat,Momma gonna eat.Let us go, let us go, let us go, let us go,Let us go, let us go, let us go, let us go,Just got to go, just got to go, just got to go, just got to go,Just got to go, just got to go. Lyrics provided by leoslyrics.com

I suppose you would say I feel a little listless.

I just finished a computer game that took up a large amount of my time, and now that it is beaten I can return to my previously scheduled programming.

Sorry to aeronwen:and the stoned one for not turning up to the pub on the afl grand final saturday. I was extremely hungover.

Sorry to Kitty for not making birthday drinks, I was up in the blue mountains getting pissed and walking places.

Apologies to the world. We now return you to your regularly scheduled viewing.

gdonk.

c

Yay for the swans! Its about time that they had a bit of a break. A little worried that its going to make them less likely to get the flag, but that's just superstition talking hopefully.

I am sad, though, for it will mean that they will play one less game this season.

Order of preference for who should win the flag:

1 Sydney
2 Fremantle
3 Melbourne
4 Western Bulldogs
5 Adelaide
6 West Coast
7 Collingwood (surprise surprise)

c