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Working at the jazz club was amazing - so many nice people and incredibly talented musicians! Also, I didn't have a nametag made so I was temporarily Dolores. I felt like I should wear big glasses and have a cat. No offense if your name is Dolores. Although, if your name is Dolores and you wear big glasses and have a cat, then please tell me so, that would be cool.

I don't really have a plan for this post, but I saw that it had been a week and I needed to vent and voila. First thing's first, the new Gotye album, Making Mirrors, is beautiful. I also like that the downloadable version came with the little booklet (in a file) with beautiful hand-painted pictures by Gotye. He is a just a bundle of creativity and buttons that make weird noises. I am in love with him.
Also, Marina and the Diamonds, who, although she has been quiet for a while, has never left my musical mind's eye! She has just come out with a bunch o' new songs, one of which I posted last time. Her even newer song Radioactive (listen to it here) is very different to her usual things, although she too is mad creative and so a lot of her 'usual' songs are very weird and wonderful. But this is not necessarily a bad thing. I like the song, and her with blonde wig.
More music! I am currently listening to Swear & Shake, whose EP I downloaded for free from some website ages ago. They are lovely and have a surprisingly unique sound. Favourite song is Johnnie. Download for FREE right here, and see their website here.

I am feeling a little bit philosophical (don't judge me) so I am going to ramble about books.

You own a computer. I know it. This is not only because I stalk each and every one of you (duh), but because, in our generation, not having a computer is like not having a lung; you are prone to fits of suffocation and it makes everything a lot more difficult in general. It also makes the prospect of exercise a lot harder.

The point is that in our electronic world, books are becoming things of the past. Borders closed. BORDERS. I have very fond memories of the Borders in Brighton - it was small in area but went up about 5 levels and was carpeted all in red and had big window seats where you could grab a book and just relax, or just watch life go by below you. My mum always used to drag us in there to find some book or another, but if you weren't restless and impatient it was a nice place to be. Borders was another world, full of pages and warmth. I was really sorry to see it go.

Because you don't get the same feeling on an iPad, or iPhone or iWhatever. It's cold and your finger leaves a mark, and the screen is bright white and the words are too black and it doesn't smell of anything, nothing at all. It's not like holding anything, it's empty and it isn't yours. I think that's what bothers me the most about the whole thing. A book is yours, even if it doesn't physically belong to you. You hold it and turn the pages and the way you read it is fully yours and free from distraction or contamination. Reading Harry Potter on an iPad means that you are only one hand movement away from IMDB, where you will see the actors in their hollywood gear, or the website for Harry Potter World, where everything you imagined or thought of is standardised to what everyone else imagines it to be. Then it's not your experience, but something the internet produced. I don't want that.
I love and hate the marks on books, the creases and folds that you don't mean to make but just happen. I think I love them more than I hate them though. At least they're something you can touch and hold and admire. Words mean something. So they should feel like something.

That's what I think. But I have always been a bookworm.

Happy Friday.

Too Long, Didn't Read

is what it means.

My 5 favourite songs at the moment:


Gotye- Thanks For Your Time

Erykah Badu - Bag Lady

Marina & The Diamonds - Perfect Stranger (new!!)

Kimbra - Cameo Lover

Ingrid Michaelson - You & I

I'm volunteering at the brisbane jazz club tonight - should be interesting.

tl;dr

You know what. Fuck you. If the world all thought "tl;dr" then where would we be? In caves, probably. With the fucking bear skins. So stop expecting everything to be condensed into 3 word scraps. Read a bloody book.

The English Like Their Pleasures Small

Right now my fingers are very cold. It is hard to type because I was just sitting outside where it is substantially colder than it should be. But I like that. Everything feels cool and fresh and airy.

Today has been made up of small pleasures. Waking up late - that's an obvious one. Knowing that today is a holiday and that I have done all my homework - definitely. Then finding an old book with lots of beautiful pictures and weird stories, and lying awkwardly in a leather chair with legs flung over the side and neck shoved at a right angle. One of those weird poses that are so bizarrely comfortable that you hope never to move again. Knowing that if you move half a millimeter, the comfort will be lost forever and then you are just awkwardly shoved in a chair, snapping every bone in your body.
Ripping up bits of paper to make bookmarks for cool things I read, that was nice. Finding odd things like a surrealist animation of Alice in Wonderland and a very disturbing short story about a man who has sex with his dog. Eating strawberries and marshmallows, sometimes together. Getting cold, so putting a blanket on my feet. Wearing a massive, unattractive jumper that I made in fashion class last year and would literally be big on atilla the hun. Half-listening to Jim Morrison's live concert in LA, which my dad is playing outside. Wearing silk harem pants from Camden Town.

I hope your pleasures are equally small. Or big, if that's what you like. I know there is an innuendo somewhere in that. Go for it, I guess.

Ew

Yes, I know I have been slack recently, but I have an excuse. That excuse is that currently, my immune system is NOT OPEN FOR BUSINESS, leaving me so be swallowed up in a pool of germs, because that's the caring immune system I have. It was all the children, I tell you, it was the children. I mean the children I tutored on thursday, who were a heaving cesspit of sickness. Not even exaggerating: the teacher literally said "we've had 9 away in every class. They are a cesspit of sickness - oh and those three need help with science."
Thanks, kids.

Moving on, I will briefly say how amazing 4 Walls was - the artists were all so talented and we had a fantastic time. I fell in love with an awesome band called Montpelier, listen to them below!

Cannot physically comprehend how these guys aren't signed yet.

Also, new plans float ahead on the horizon! Rob and I are planning to record an EP tres soon - we have been hard at work on new originals and are very excited to get them recorded for the world.

This is a bit of a boring post, sorry, but my brain is a bit flattened.

There is a stupid ad on TV at the moment for Myers, which features a REMIX of THE WHEELS ON THE BUS GO ROUND AND ROUND. Yes, the childhood song extended family would sing while bouncing you on their knee. It is autotuned. Why? Who would do that? DO NOT UNDERSTAND.
I also recently heard a remix of Rebel Rebel by David Bowie (love - original below)

AND THEY TOOK AWAY THE GUITAR RIFF AT THE BEGINNING.

Too sad for words.

OH MY

OH
MY
GOD.

I just typed an ESSAY about the world, the universe, the meaning of life, etc. I talked about how awesome 4 Walls was, how amazing it was to meet Montpelier, Avaberee, Matt Corby and others. I found the answer to all the problems in the world.

Then the internet swallowed it. And the handy SAVE NOW function failed to do its ONLY JOB. And I am usually the type of person who copies what they type just IN CASE something like this happens so I will be able to paste it somewhere. But instead, when I pressed paste, all I got was a youtube clip about waffles.

WHAT DID I DO TO DESERVE THIS?

I will only say that my new favourite person is Kimbra, who I am planning on seeing soon.

A Day with Ash

So I should be doing a history assignment right now. But my mate Ash is way more exciting than the Spanish Civil War (no offense to any Spaniards out there - who knows, maybe my blog is like Vogue to the inhabitants of Spain... a less interesting, less fashionable, cheap and tacky Vogue...). SO instead, I decided to post some of the very bizarre photos I took of Ash and the place she calls home.

The view from the citycat. It may be a small and twee version of the real thing, but I like the small and twee Brisbane Eye that no-one every uses. I think it's pretty. No sarcasm. 

The wooden thing is a drawing quill, which I played with a lot, especially on Ash's Maths C homework. 

These are weird. You have been warned. Ash was warned too. But I like them. The word needs a little weirdness from time to time to balance out the drudgery of work and the people who engage in it. I like these shots because they look like they could be underwater, especially the way her hair flies out around her face and the scarf spins. 

 I have proclaimed my love for Ashleigh in numerous other posts (the cocaine to my Charlie Sheen, thee butter to my muffin), but I will say it again quickly. Never have I met a person who is so fully themselves, so much an adorer of life and all its quirks. I have never met a person who will dance through the city with me, or wander around a place they've never been just to explore - or wander around a place they know well, just to discover small details they never noticed. Ash is fantastically, inspirationally creative, but it's more than that. She is the kind of person that most call 'mad' and only a gifted few call 'genius'. I stand firmly at the 'genius' end, but I can't say that being called mad is entirely bad either, especially when you have as much fun with it as Ash does.