i found shaun tan's monsters, wobbling along market street in freo last sunday.
oh, how i love this man's pencil line. i kneel before it humbly every time.
here is one.
i know there is one person out there who will appreciate these the most.
so here is another.
per te che sei silenzioso.
there was a cake, to begin with, propped on the desk with a crown of burning candles, a plate of pringles mixed with timtams, a cup of orange juice, a strange looking rose with a bulbous chocolate head, and about fifteen giggly students, singing. there were photos taken by the latter, mainly of their teacher, sitting at the desk of the cake, with a curiously designed whiteboard behind (flowers and hearts and love radiating) and an expression a five year old at the circus would be envious of.
there were at least two emails sent by different people bearing photos of david hasselhoff in set ups i didn't think were humanly possible (in terms of the astoundingly large quantity of un-selfreferential kitsch embedded in each image. i mean if kitsch were energy these photos alone could have powered a large city). but the point is there are at least two people out there who thought it evidently appropriate to be sending me 'birthday' images of the hoff. who went through the effort of selecting the prime specimens of the hoff's photomodelling career. pure gold.
there was copious amounts of cooking to be done, crepes rolled and veal strips beaten and pumpkin chopped and pinenuts toasted and mushrooms peeled and wine to be just, tasted, to see, and then, and then there are four happy faces at the door singing, out of tune, a tune more like a christmas carol, bearing gifts and good times.
later in the evening mike is strumming bluesy which merges into a song about the hoff (because, recurring theme) and back again, and miss emma's head is dropping somewhere within the crevice of her neck, sleep oriented, and i manage to figure out skype, for the first time, with valentina, who is like a bubble made of pixels, who occasionally swills from an unspecified bottle, who is showing me pictures of meatballs she is cooking (because, is true, even after not having spoken for several weeks or even months, italians in fact tend to propel to talking about food upon meeting again)
as of yesterday i am twentyfive. i have little to no idea where i am going. i have the fastiduous remnants of year-turning nagging, slight auto-guilt trips about not being of more use to the world and do on and so forth, and i have about a million things that must be organised, altered, redirected, reconstructed, accepted and thrown out. but i am quite happy to be alive.
ps: i wanted to welcome mike officially to the links, because he is new, and i had forgotten to do so. and because he has recently made a collage that possibly confirms that he is in fact a genius. so yay to mike.
pps: i am aware of the repetitiveness of this blog, particularly when it concerns the words 'kitsch' and 'hasselfoff'. this is not intentional and will hopefully be reduced in better times to come.
i don't want to be one of those fatalistic proponents of the ails of 'postmodern' society. they have their allure, i must say, particularly when the proposed theory is at its most extreme. for example, Baudrillard's idea that everything has become aestheticized. the penetration of the image into all spheres of existence. the saturation of language, etcetera etcetera. i think the allure comes from the fact that people like to think they're living as close to the edge of an apocalyptic transformation of the world as possible.
but then i was flicking through time magazine's best inventions of the year and i came to the following conclusions:
a) if the same amount of energy and cash that was spent in the fabrication of (for the most part) futile gadgets was spent on the fabrication of inventions directed at the betterment of living conditions for the vast majority of the world's population... you know the rest.
b) the majority of these seemingly futile gadgets can be seen as doing nothing but reinforcing the aforementioned aestheticization of modern society, whereby we will witness the directly proportional rise of boredom and alienation in an individual who is progressively losing the distinction between reality and construct, particularly when it comes to relationships: thanks to the explosion of new technologies of communication, these can be seen as being built on nothing but a ficticious sense of interconnectedness 'with the world' , but really hiding a profound sense of isolation, inner fragmentation, and loss of relationship with the natural sphere. of course this is only the apocalyptic side of the coin. no one ever buys it. the other side of the coin is:
c) we will, god permitting, soon be able to rest our tired little bodies on levitating matresses, appreciate the helpfulness of the sauvignon bot (this squeaky voiced robot will analyse the components of your bottle o' red and suggest a complementary cheese), float through life on a motorised inflatable pool lounger with incorporated joystick (!) and more. if that's not exciting news, i don't know what is.
d) cynicism aside, the process of inventing is great, the generation of ideas is great. and the hug-shirt is great. the prototype probably makes you feel like you're in a straightjacket and will most likely induce breast cancer later in life (along with the reinforcement of the idea that no, in the future you will no longer need any real human contact to feel a sense of warm fuzziness and love, we will be self sufficient automatons with indestructible vibrating hugshirts, floating matresses and possibly arnie accents (why not)),
but. i want one for my birthday. i mean look how happy she looks.
disclaimer: the majority of the events presented are true but not textually accurate. the statement about milkless fridge is purely fictional, the author happens to think they are a really great band. tarek also does not actually endorse the watching of billy crystal movies. for all the kids who didn't make it to our home picnic yesterday, you missed out.
on m’a dit que quand les larmes finissent c’est mieux de rester en silence, en attendant que la réserve se remplit encore une fois par le temps. parce qu’on a tous besoin d’eau, comme les plantes. mais moi je voudrais être un cactus ajourd’hui.
someone once told me that when you run out of tears it’s better to stay silent, waiting for the reserve to be filled again by time. because we all need water, like plants. but today i’d like to be a cactus.
{specks of dust, crumpled origami, discarded shoes and reverse cycle vacuums, building babelic towers to touch misplaced gods, je vous aime mademoiselle}
if an egg breaks you cannot put it back together again. but you can make an omelette. or a carbonara. or mix paints with it.
[ image by namdo]
un piccolo spazio promozionale per indica sound, ovvero cañas e jahvi, che hanno fatto tanta strada e offerto tanto buon reggae principalmente alla popolazione andalusa. evviva i leoni, il sole e il roots.
a small promotional break for the kids of indica sound, who've come a long way and have provided copious quantities of good times and good reggae beats primarily to the people of andalucia. yay to lions, sunshine and roots reggae.
ricciolona! ti ho imbevuta di lipton.
non mi verranno mai ste cazzo di mani.
i am no longer able to post pictures. i am truly in mourning for this unexpected handicap (not mine, blogger's... ok, maybe mine.) and will attempt to remedy the situation.
parceque, bien sur, sans images j'ai plus rien a dire. jsuis devenue la fille aux images.
i am, needless to say, becoming quite skeptical of words, especially my own. and until i figure this out kids, until the images come back to do some justice to this otherwise brittle and ambiguous medium, i may be a little silent. or continue to not say much at all, like the fact that
it's a wonderful day today, and that a caterpillar is gnawing away at a chilli plant outside, creating a hole into the thick red skin of it and slowly engulfing the killer seeds. i have been anticipating some sort of quiet microscopic explosion, but so far there has been none.
finally,
here is a poem, because yes.
(and i imagine
never mind Joe agreeably cheerfully remarked when
surrounded by fat stupid animals
the Jewess shrieked
the messiah tumbled successfully into the world
the animals continued eating. And i imagine she, and
heard them slobber and
in the darkness)
stood sharp angels with faces like Jim Europe
ee cummings
This week, in the Theatre of the Absurd:
a bunch of people throw molotov bottles at a couple o’churches in nablus and burn effigies of an old german man in pakistan in order to defend the view that the very roots of their beliefs do not actually allow space for violence (what better way to make the point), and that this should not be misunderstood in any way.
paris hilton now also sings. ( i assume i'm quite late in finding this out, but better a late absurd discovery than never).
this one i will post, because i mean, come on, the genius. here are more of his pictures.
y este lo pongo aqui porque me acuerda del konso, y sus dibujitos malos. aqui hay mas [here is parskid's (a little commercial but nonetheless merit-worthy, for the illustrative-folk at least) space of pictures (can i fit in another bracket here? 
and then, and then, this may interest people such as avi, people with cameras in their hands, people not afraid of people and so on, but mainly i link it, also in the sidebar, because it must be linked, and because this fella goes by the name of boogie, that to some has a special meaning, and because, the gypsy photos, the old man and the fiddle! i could not cut n paste so i propose that you, reader of this almost futile blog, have a look at boogie's pictures.
all this for now, ya esta.
ode number 1:
warm and strewn
with the same indi tunes
you've been a cocoon
during rainy afternoons.
and then, after a crappy happy poem for a crappy happy few weeks, here's the real thing.
and then, and then!
ode number 2:
the real ode to the moon (which would require an ode all to itself) i have pasted here. of particular suggestiveness are the last lines: "single vegetable, pure cheese, celestial cow, spilling udder, spring of milk, useful as the ear (of wheat), overflowing, reigning and necessary." it's my translation, so maybe a little dodgy, but... come on! celestial cow! vaca celeste! pure cheese! queso puro! the genius! oh it makes me weep.
