It's official: she bats for the other team

...In other words, I've officially been employed by my old workplace as a dish hand (ha, you thought I was going to say something completely differen!). Ok so it's dirty unglamourous hard work but the pay's Ok and I get good hours so I'll live. It's all money isn't it? And I get to see my friend whenevr I work so it's all good. Last night was quite busy, we didn't finish until 11:30. I thought I'd never get through all my dishes (the pass was literally full and overflowing with dishes) but with our super organised system we knocked em over in 10 minutes flat, which was quite satisfying.

Anyway nothing much else to add other than I really need to get out so I can show off my new hair. I haven't gone anywhere except for work since I got coloured.

-R

Best $2.50 I've ever spent

I had another shift as a dishie last night and brought my own rubber gloves. Seriously, the best $2.50 I've ever spent. Well $2.45 if you want to be exact but who's counting? As long as they pay me. I've said it before and I'll say it again, this work is tough! I suppose it's less mentally challenging than waitressing because you're not constantly dealing with customers and shit, but physically it's quite demanding. Tonight I'm taking my speakers so that if the boss leaves before we're finished we can have some tunes to clean up to. Last night we managed to finish a whole half hour earlier than the night before, but it was pretty quiet again. Tonight will be a real test of my skills!

I'm off to brekkie now. And to watch the Big Day In on Channel V. And to stretch some - my physio was mean yesterday and I'm feeling it now.

Oh and correction from the last entry - I don't actually care whether you guys like my hair or not. *I* like. End of story.

-R

New Hair pics

I went to Springvale to get my hair coloured today to complete the 'transformation'. Hope you like.

-R

Come To The Dark Side...

Tonight I spent an evening on the other side of the pass, working as a dish hand at the restaurant where I used to be a waitress. And I have to say, man, that work is bloody hard!!!! I apparently did OK but I reckon I could definitely be faster. I have another shift tomorrow night at the same place, and hopefully this will lead to a job because I'm fucking desperate.

Oh and in brilliant news, my friend who works there as an apprentice chef now loves Franz Ferdinand because of me :) yay

-R

New Haircut (again!)

So I got yet another new haircut. I reckon it looks pretty cool. I just went to Springvale yesterday and asked the girl to do something short. Apparently my type of hair didn't suit the photo I had in mind, so she sdked if she could do something 'creative' and I told her to go for it. I had two 'oh my god what am I/is she thinking!?' moments - the first was when she sectioned off my very long fringe and chopped pretty much all of it off, the second when she took the hair on the top of my head, twisted it around then choppedmost of that off too. It's definitely the most extreme haircut I've had but I love it - quite short and spiky but with a few long wispy bits. Like she said, not many people will have this haircut. Next week or maybe even tomorrow I'll go in and get some 'chunk foils' of highlights. I saw a photo in a magazine at my friend's placelast night where this girl had highlights of really, really pale pink (practically white) in her hair. I'm not usually a pink girl but they were so cool and unusual. That's what I want.

Oh yeah and the haircut cost me $15. I think the colour will be about $60-$70. Yay for Springvale :)

new music for me

Yesterday I 'obtained' from my friend the first Franz CD and the soundtrack to Spamalot. Yay :)

I really like the first CD. I'm already familiar with some of the songs, like Jacqueline (which for me invokes such strong memories of sitting outside the theatre in NYC waiting for spamalot tickets with three hours of slep under my belt after the day with Franz, falling asleep into my bagel and cream cheese). I hadn't heard Michael before and I love it - it's one of my favourites already! Such an awesome song to dance to and so sexy. Alex's vocals are amazing. I saw the video too which is very cool. The band all look extremely hot in it.

Anyway I know it's boring to talk about the weather but I'm really enjoying Melbourne's cool weather right now. Hopefully this means no more hot days until next summer. Today was quite windy though which reminds me to get my hair cut. My fringe is down to my nose :)

-R

Muso joke

Is it sad that I get pretty much all of this joke and find it hilarious, or should I be proud of my theoretical knowledge? Whatever. I love this joke. My friend emailed it to me yesterday - one of the few email jokes I've enjoyed :)

A C, an E-flat, and a G go into a bar. The bartender says, "Sorry, but we
don't serve minors."
So the E-flat leaves, and the C and the G have an open fifth between
them.
After a few drinks, the fifth is diminished and the G is out flat.
F comes in and tries to augment the situation, but is not sharp enough.
D comes into the bar and heads straight for the bathroom saying,
"Excuse
me, I'll just be a second."
Then an A comes into the bar, but the bartender is not convinced that
this
relative of C is not a minor.
The bartender then notices a B-flat hiding at the end of the bar,
causing
him to bach: "Get out now. You're the seventh minor I've found in this
bar
tonight."
The E-flat, not easily deflated, comes back to the bar the next night
in a
three-piece suit with nicely shined shoes.
The bartender (who used to have a nice corporate job until his company
downsized) says, "You're looking sharp tonight, come on in! This could
be
a 'This proves to be the case', as the E-flat takes off the suit, and
everything else, and stands there 'au natural'.
Eventually, the C sobers up, and realises, in horror, that he's under a
rest.
The C is brought to trial, is found guilty of contributing to the
diminution of a minor, and is sentenced to 10 yrs of DS without Coda at
an
upscale correctional facility.
On appeal, however, it is found that C is innocent of any
wrongdoing-even
accidental wrongdoing-and that all accusations to the contrary are
bassless.
The bartender decides, however, that since he's only had tenor so
patrons,
and the soprano out in the bathroom, everything has become altoo much
treble; he needs a rest, and closes the bar.

-R

tear through the city on a saturday night

I went out on a saturday night! yay :)

We went to the mso free concert in the bowl, which was fantastic - Suyeon Kang the solo violinist was amazing. She's 3 years younger than I am, how depressing. I liked the Stravinsky Firebird suite. Then we went to Jarrah on southbank for cocktails then onto the kitten bar on little collins st. to see my friend's friend play keyboard in a band which may have been called King Armadillo or something.they were pretty good, jazz and funk and ambience kinda stuff.

-R

I should not play bass

I apparently have abnormally small hands. Last night I was catching up with friends and when we had tea it came in very nice little china cups so I decided to drink with my little finger sticking out (why did people do this!? It's frickin' hard) and pointed it out to everyone, at which point everyone went:

'OMG, your little finger is so little and cuuuuuuuuuuute!'

So a round of hand size comparison ensued where I found out that I do indeed have abnormally small hands. The only person with hands the same size as me is quite a bit shorter than me. I feel cheated.

I can't even stretch over two frets on the bass.

Maybe I should play piccolo or ukelele instead.

-R

I'm so lucky, lucky lucky (again)

I have a rock and roll story!!!!!! Boy do I ahve a rock and roll story. It involves on scottish rock band, one gorgeous guitarist, and one big dork.

The Age Preview magazine: '[Franz Ferdinand] bring exactly the same showmanship to that tiny stage as they did to the stadium. Kapranos and McCarthy can smile and flirt and make eye contact in a way that would be clearly impossible (or, anyway, insvisible) in a stadium...' How true this was tonight for me, as you are about to find out...

Tonight my boyfriend, brother and I went to the Franz Ferdinand gig. We went down at what we believed was a fairly early hour (5.30 for doors opening at 8pm) so we bought dinner and went down to the Palace to wait. We weren't really sure where to sit given that there's two sets of stairs but luckily we picked the one nearer the front of the queue. We spent the hours chatting with other people and I got to relate my Franz Ferdinand video shoot story (briefly, there's only so many times even I can tell that one!) before they opened the doors. When we went to properly form a line they asked us to move back because they had been there for (much, much) longer, which was fair enough, so we moved further back and stood next to two girls and a guy from WA. One of the guys had a camera so he asked for our emails to send the photos to once we got inside. We all just fitted on the barrier - we were at the very left facing the stage. The support act, Cut Copy, were quite late so we had to find things to amuse ourselves, like mental arithmetic :) I finally managed to figure that 1.3 squared is 1.69. Cut Copy finally came on half an hour late, at 9.15, and they were OK, although I'm not a fan of electronic music, it all sounds the same to me. I brought earplugs with the intention of using them, but took them out in frustration before Cut Copy's set started because they're so damn uncomfortable. So my hearing suffers yet again :) Luckily the break between Cut Copy and Franz Ferdinand (oooo, band alliteration!) was quite short so we weren't kept in suspense long. One of the photographers in front of us took a photo of the set list and showed it to us, so I learned that 'Do You Want To' would be the first song on the list. And what a first song! From the moment Franz Ferdinand stepped onto the stage they blew me away. Not only are they great musicians, they're awesome performers as well and they know what gets a crowd going.

So onto my big story for tonight...

Because of where we were standing, we were right in front of Nick McCarthy, the guitarist, and at one point during a song he came right up to the edge of the stage and smiled directly at me. Now maybe a cooler person under these circumstances may have just smiled back or winked flirtatiously, I don't know, but I'm a complete loser, so instead of being all cool, I grinned back, said 'hello!' and gave him a little wave. Groan indeed. Even I agreed that I'd been a dork when the guy next to me mimicked me after the song. BUT. Apparently the dork act did something for Mr McCarthy, because....

(this needs its own paragraph)

A few songs later - it may have been Take Me Out but I can't remember now - Nick once again came right to the edge of the stage, but this time he jumped down (the Palace stage is quite low and close to the barriers), came right up to me, said 'hello' back and....he kissed me on the cheek!!!! I can't believe it. Nothing like that *ever* happens to me! The girl behidn my brother asked if Nick knew us. No, I was just my usual dorky self, and in some weird and wonderful way, it paid off completely. And best of all, one of the guys from WA who we made friends with and stood next to inside got the whole thing on video and will email it to me, so I can watch it again...and again...and again...

So yes, a marvellous fabulous wonderful stupendously rockin' night was had by all. And now I have a new, equally cool and awesome Franz Ferdinand story to tell!

I'm so lucky, lucky lucky.

Indeed.

-R

Tree

Tree is up! Only 2 weeks late. Photos to come. have to get dressed for work, hence short post

-R

PS have seen harry potter 4 and the constant gardener - reviews to come

Goddamn spam pop ups whatever

Argh! We've somehow acquired spam or a virus or something (which is probably my dear brother's doing, lord knows he downloads enough shit for some of it to be corrupted) which means that we don't get op up ads, the windows we're actually using suddenly turn into these ads exhorting you to click on a link to get a Green Card for the US. This was mildly annoying, ooh, about the first 4 or 5 times. But it's happened like 30 times to me over the past couple of sessions (about 2 hours total). Let me get this straight. I went to the US for a month and had a ball, but as much as I liked the country I DON'T FUCKING WANT TO FUCKING MOVE TO THE FUCKING US. Savvy?

-R

PS I haven't written for a while because of exams and shit. This just pissed me off enough for me to actually bother complaining about it. I'd better post before the page changes.

Choose Life.

Which Trainspotting Character Are You?

movies! movies movies movies!

Christ, now I feel weird writing in here knowing that a few people actually read this and I never knew. Officially trying to block your existence from my brain while I type. I feel like you're all looking over my shoulder as I write. Very strange.

So yes. I do now have a flickr account which I have probably forgotten the password to by now, but I've been a little busy to do anything about photos. I turned 19 last week and was feeling majorly bummed by the fact that I still don't know what the hell I'd like to do with my life, got a new job waitressing again and have exams coming up.

However, I have seen three films over the past three weeks which I will now review in my own unique way (which is vaguely, considering I never bothered to write anything down in the first place).

In Her Shoes: Romantic comedy/drama with Toni Collette and Cameron Diaz. Cameron can actually act, which was a pleasant surprise, and Toni Collette was pretty good. Kind of sappy stuff but perfectly enjoyable for seeing with my mum, if not actually very memorable. I didn't *not* like it though (man, double negatives at this time of night! must be crazy) so it must be okay.

Pride and Prejudice: I admit, I'm a purist. I've read the book God knows how many times and I think that the 1995 BBC version with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle is the quintessential adaptation. Seeing the new feature-length movie version has only strengthened my view. This new version looks like it's trying to be 'gritty and realistic' with the result that the Bennets are living in a flaking-paint dump and the girls are never dressed appropriately (I nearly had a heart attack when Miss Bingley appears in a sleeveless dress at the Netherfield ball, but that's just me). Overall I didn't like the look of the film - It was all dark moors, dramatic bronte sisters type stuff, instead of a light social satire (which is how I see it). The acting was ok, Keira Knightley was quite good although her Lizzy was a bit more flightly and excitable than the one in the book I thought. I didn't really warm to Matthew MacFadyen as Darcy - he seemed quite disconnected and cold throughout. and I couldn't stand how Bingley was made into a foppish blundering Hugh Grant type of character. Obviously, being feature film length instead of 6 hours long, bits of the story were also lost as well as a few minor characters, but it was adapted to film-length rather well. Maybe I would've liked it more if I wasn't already so familiar with the story (and didn't have such a huge sentimental attachment to the Firth/Ehle version!).

Serenity: This one is from Joss Whedon, who wrote Buffy and Angel. It follows on from the TV series Firefly (which I'd never seen or heard of before I saw the movie) but (obviously) works equally as well as a stand alone movie. Being from Joss Whedon, there was some good sarcastic humour and one-liners. The plot basically is that a girl called River, whose mind has been altered or psychologically disturbed or something freaky, is saved by her brother, and both are taken onboard the space craft Serenity, which is made up of an eclectic crew who make their living through smalltime crime. River knows a dangerous secret and the Alliance (the government) is keen to get her back. Or something like that. It's a highly entertaining movie with great action sequences, from the chases to the fantastic fight scenes with River (who I reckon could kick Neo's ass any day). There are also some suspenseful moments and the 'secret' is fascinating and kind of creepy, and fits in really well with the plot.

Anyway I hardly know what I'm typing about now. I have work tomorrow, hurrah. Good night.

-R

PS for someone who's trying to cut down on blaspheming, I think I may have a little way to go.

Greetings from Merimbula!

We (my mum, sister and I) decided to come visit some friends in Merimbula for a couple of days. It's very pretty and the beaches are stunning, but unfortunately the weather has been less than perfect. Yesterday it was so windy we could barely keep our eyes open against it, and my sister and I abandoned our idea of walking along the beach. Today it's rather wet. It rained all of last night and this morning. Hopefully next time we come the weather will be nicer because those beaches look very inviting. It's been restful if nothing else - been doing a lot of sleeping and watching TV. And today in the newspaper it was finally announced that Franz Ferdinand will be playing next year's Big Day Out. *smirk* like G and I didn't already know from Alex himself :)

-R

Sad little internet people

So, I was on the Vogue Forum as I am wont to do when I have a bit of free time on my hands, and there was this chick ther. She's one of those shit-stirrers - the ones who change names every time they're banned (which is pretty much every day) and continue to try and pick fights with users. I took her bait because I was incredibly bored and I thought I would have some fun, and as predicted, she provided plenty of sport, although admittedly her comments weren't very original, along the lines of 'you're all such pathetic idiots for being users and you should get a life'. Oh, and her last stab before she logged off was 'At least I'm not fat like you' (The correct punctuation is from me). Ouch! I mean man, Oscar Wilde himself would've blubbered like a baby in the face of such a scathing yet witty barb (/sarcasm). These flamers are a bit hypocritical though aren't they? They go online and waste time telling us that we're pathetic losers for wasting time online. And that apparently we need lives. While they spend just as much time, if not more, endlessly posting the same boring comments. And in this girl's case, even taking the time to reregister every time she is banned, so she can continue wasting time telling us just how pathetic we really are. If I didn't find it so goddamned funny and entertaining to play with people like this, I might take a little more pity on them for being such sad little friendless attention seekers. But I have too much fun to care. Besides, they ask for a fight, and I gladly participate. And it gave me a chance to use my favourite insult from Will & Grace: 'does it hurt your back when you kiss your ass?'

-R

new haircut!

it is a sign of my utter laziness that before I could even be bothered putting up a photo of my NY haircut, I've already had it cut again. So I'm putting up a photo straight away of this one. At the rate I cut my hair, this'll be out of date in 6 weeks. :)



-R

no news is...well, boring.

I don't even know why I'm updating, because absolutely nothing of any excitingness has happened for a long time now. Unless you count me hurting my back, which has been a whole lotta laughs. Something to do with a disc or something, which basically means it's expensive. I'm also trying to figure out where I'm headed with my uni subjects and everything.

Man, now that is a boring entry. Sorry.

-R

Beware the bogus booksellers...

Today my mum received a letter of about 6 pages from a society calling themselves the Nuova Tech Society. It was sent via first class mail and was full enough of weird shit to make me get online and check them out.

Nuova Tech is part of Neo-Tech Publishing and is suspiciously closely related to Novus Tek, NeoTech, NuovoTech and other similar sounding 'societies'. Basically it's a way to sell incredibly overpriced books which are full of crap. It looks to be a kind of quasi-religious society, that craps on about today's economical, moral and political 'anticivilization' or something.

In the 6 page letter, my mum was told that she had 'several rare traits' when analyse by people from an 'exclusive association, a secret society' and she could become part of the society to learn all its secrets and lead a fairytale life, basically. All she has to do is to send the form back for some 'free' information, but it must be done by a certain date, otherwise she would be too far into 'phase two'.

Let me say, what utter twaddle. Having gone online like any sensible person, I have found the following:

If you are silly enough to send away for the free information, you get a very slim booklet, which basically has the same content as the letter, but in cheap pamphlet form. You also get an order form for the book of supposed 'secrets', which will cost $138. Yes that's right, not so free after all. You are then apparently sent more letters advertising further books which all cost a bomb if you decide to go ahead.

The website for all this (but which obviously doesn't tell you what I just told you) is www.nuovatech.com and the lady in charge goes by the trade name of Barbie Diamond, and it's based in Las Vegas, so if alarm bells aren't going off already, THEY SHOULD BE!!!!

So yeah. That's all there in case you do actually receive a letter. Apparently my mum's one of only seven in the world to receive such a letter, but I somehow doubt it. I'm sure there are more than seven gullible people in America's deep South alone, never mind Australia.

-R

I'm still alive...

Sorry for not updating for so long. No, I did not commit suicide after coming back because of my post-holiday depression, so apologies for getting your hopes up. I've just been kind of busy with getting back into the swing of real life and trying to catch up a week and a bit of uni. Last week things have been a lot more settled, but now our internet's stuffed, so I'm doing this on my dad's laptop on dial-up. Dial-up I tell you! We have cable upstairs and a 17" screen, and I'm sitting down here at a 15" laptop surfing at the phenomenal speed of 49.2 Kbps. Sheesh.

That's also why I haven't put up any more photos, although god knows I've got them here. Even I got bored trying to trawl through all 2000 or so of them! So as soon as we get back online on the proper computer I'll give it a shot.

G has just bought a sexy new mac laptop and has the software to edit our video now, so in the next few months (hey, we have uni here, give us a break) we might be able to put up some mpegs somewhere. in the meantime next weekend is her 21st, which means we really should have gone a couple of months (or years) later. Oh well, there's always next time isn't there?

In the meantime, the new Franz Ferdinand video is already out, and to our absolute joy, G and I can see ourselves in it! I don't know where G is, but in the massed dancing at the end I'm in the upper left corner, in a black bob with a blunt fringe and a black sleeveless top.

So anyway, nothing else in my life has happened since I got back that is worth mentioning, except on the 30th my boyfriend and I will have been going out for two years. And I am now constantly appalled at the price of things around here. I can't afford any makeup from now on. And apparently our trip to Tasmania in january has been cancelled because my sister made the swimming Age championships. bummer.

-R