steering clear of conflict? discord? unrest?

not our annointed leader. he's avoiding 'argy bargy', according to the video clip from the Advertiser.

teh 'dance

oh yeah- our film totally made it in for the Experimental Witch Project.

Which has been preselected for the 'dance. You read correctly. THE 'DANCE.

Our director was Aaron March, and we did Heron Ryan- scroll down on the experimental witch link above to see his name on the winner's list.

pretty chuffed.

Saving for a ticket to Utah, starting, now.

brand new hate

my flatmate loves these guys.

i argue that the line "use my body while i sleep" is a loaded one upon first listen. Apparently I'm an asshole because he's singing to some sick friend.

besides that he sounds like a whingy, whingy teenager.

media in the pub

I've been to a couple of conferences this year through the podjob that have discussed the bloggers v citizen journalists v traditional journalists. Usually they descend into petty name calling. Apparently these events don't happen often enough for everyone to have their say, because there was a whole new public rant night yesterday evening. I went along before the production meeting with my punksters. I was expecting more of the same old rivalry between content producers, but I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. There was only one dude who thought calling non-journalists 'morons' was the most productive way forward, and it was met by a satisfyingly comic "oooooooohhh". I also dug the fact that there were a lot of online entrepreneurs there with an equal voice to the journos. It was refreshing to hear all of these voices within the one conversation.

Now I'm not a journalist, a professional blogger or a citizen journalist. The podjob is in more of a service industry where I'm expected to give a professional assessment of the media to government and business. My job wouldn't exist if journalists were always fair and unbiased. So I find it pretty entertaining when journos sound off about how anyone other than a journalist writing content is diving in untrained, uneducated and highly biased. While the bias is definitely there, and is often more pronounced than in print media, I don't agree with the suggestion that the writers are uneducated. Oftentimes they are highly experienced in their field.

As for training, I think that there are multiple signs pointing towards the need to teach kids journalistic ethics from the word go as part of their civics lessons.

Later, went on to pow-pow about the music video. When I got there, I found out that the project had been canned momentarily, so we started rapping about a new narrative magical realism short that we'll pick up next month. No camping for that one, which is way too awesome.

My four days "off" weren't as hermit as I'd been hoping. I didn't sleep in my bed once. Too many parties. I'm up a couple of new friends but down my white jacket- I loved that thing, and some klepto took advantage and lifted it from the Eaton St party on saturday night. I'm hoping that seeing as we all have mutual friends involved, that they would have the COMMON HUMAN DECENCY to NOT BE LAME and return my jacket.

colin the dead girl-whale

I've only got 10 minutes or so; I'm on my break from the bar and have to be back amonsgt "hardcore" lovin' bogans in ten minutes, so my confusion will have to be brief.

Colin- Sydney- WTF??

Have you all gone mental?? It's a WHALE. Its mother left it to die. The other whales could hear the baby crying and decided to leave it be. That is nature.

I get that we shouldn't be intentionally horrible to animals. Those koala leg-hackers in Queensland should be locked up. But I just can't see the sense in girls rushing red-eyed out of office buildings around the city hiccupping about a whale that they'd never even seen. It's not your pet, lady. Man up.

I heard this arvo that someone was actually planning on erecting a MEMORIAL STATUE of the creature.

And my choice line of the coverage tonight?

"If Steve Irwin was here, he'd be ashamed."

Speaking of dead pets, Lara's work fish died today. I can understand the sadness there. A relationship was developed and it is now over. So RIP all swimming things that died today.

beach house and hair dye

Kait and I dyed our hair last night. She got purple dye ALL OVER MY FACE. So we tested my ex-hairdresser's theory that purfume takes it off and it worked a trick. My hair's not bright purple, it's kind of black that really wants to be purple. Hers is MJ from Spiderman red.

After the hair dying debarcle and with purple dye still conspicuously all over my hands, I rushed over to the hoey for a mexican food-and-dreampop adventure evening with Ky. I was actually more impressed with Bachelorette- this too-sweet chick with a thick NZ accent and a couple of old computer monitors set up with some pictures and some sound waves coming off them. Her voice is pretty good too, and I liked some of her soundscapy stuff. Her lyrics didn't grab me but I liked her show. Beach House were kind of the opposite... loved their music but their banter broke the spell. Which is such a shame because that girl has the most delicious speaking voice. It's a shame that she didn't say anything interesting. She had this odd way of saying something banal that made me feel really uncomfortable. A feeling not unlike that horrid sinking panic that you feel for someone when the traffic blows their skirt up and they still have to stand there waiting for the pedestrian light with all the people that saw their knickers.

Oh, the food at the hopetoun's upstairs bit Rider did not disappoint. Get the warm king prawn salad with chorizo and slow roasted tomatoes. My lord. Sex in a salad. (p.s. I was looking for their website and this review came up- holy fuck, if you don't like carlton, go without a drink for two hours, and you're lucky they served your beer in perspex. It reduces the chances of you getting glassed for being a wanker.)

We're doing a film clip for MzAnnThropik in september too, which I'm quite excited about. We have to camp out near warragamba dam the night before the first day of shooting. I hate camping. I'm planning to steal the backseat of whatever vehicle we arrive in. We also need a shitload of shagpile carpeting- so Internet, if you have any or know where to get it cheap, let me know.

Meanwhile, in today's podjob tubing I noticed that Sean Kingston's Beautiful Girls film clip has been watched over 45 million times. That boggles my mind.

things katie doesn't understand about the lover, Vol 23. Ch 14, abridged version

katie: I just listened to the slow side of Songs Not To Be Misconstrued all the way through for the first time in… ages, and I can't believe you ended on "the blowers daughter" and actually expected me not to come running back to you like a little girl
the lover: it wasn't tactical. the large majority of that playlist was complete long before we attempted to part ways... i can't help but feel that some of the songs that were late inclusions may been the result of that tumultuous period during the winter of 2007.
katie: I'm glad we're not tumultuous this winter. We've proved we can be happy in the cold.
the lover: as long as the electric blanket is on. metaphor? no

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ThuXEDvCZk

wanker words

reportage.

every time someone says/writes it I want to say "REPORTS! REPORTS! REEEEEPORRRRRRTS!" like some kind of under-stimulated geek child to an intellectually barren third grade teacher.

underground serenade

Last night I was coming back from a production meeting in Kings Cross, on the very steep escalators from the Bondi line platform to the underground level at central, where I met some boys. They were drunken and cheerful and lost. I thought our exchange ended at the escalators ("Do you wanna come dancing with us??" "Nah, I'm on my way home, thanks though" etc), but as I was walking away one of them started singing Savage Garden at the top of his lungs ("I want to stand with you on a mountain, etc") and all his friends joined in.

I've never had a chorus of boys from Byron Bay serenade me with a 90's pop song in a train tunnel before. I smiled a bit, and blushed a bit, and gave them directions to Scubar.

This wasn't as weird as when I went to get dinner for the girls on Saturday night and a dude in a car on the opposite side of King St yells out to me triumphantly, like he'd just found a damsel in distress and was announcing to her that All Was Okay, For He Was Here Now: "Girl with the red bag and the yellow shoes: you look like my ex girlfriend!"

no time for polaroids

So I haven't been writing lately because I haven't had time to do anything that I do for myself. The podjob has been very stimulating. Like prolonged electroshock therapy. Or having day-old bruises punched.

Actual-eye, I haven't written since kino kabaret. Fun, but not as cool as last time, when I met all the punk monk crew. This time was far more intense, making more, but (for me, anyway) making less, because what you create isn't really of quality when you have less that 40 hours to produce something and you decide that working that week would be an awesome idea. I was more burn out than fire of inspire. But the up-side was that I got to work with a bunch of different people every day, so at least I met up with some great people. The parties were rad.

We had a housewarming. Lara nearly called the law on Kaitlyn. Sometimes I feel like the babysitter and I need to stop taking on guilt when other people are creating very bad vibes. I've just been so on edge because of podjob pressure that I can't take shit from friends, and my skin is thinning with every hour I don't spend in bed. Not fair to everyone around me, because I don't even have the energy to get mad, I just feel real hurt and walk away real sad about how selfish people can be. Which doesn't make the world better in any way, and I'm just as bad as them for being silent. That's not all about my flatmates, by the way. It's about everyone, everywhere. I just can't cope with humans the last few weeks.

My mind feels really disconnected from my surroundings at the moment, and I'm ignoring all my body's pleas to slow the motherfucking train down. I need a break. Need to go to the desert and scream into the sand.

In some good news, we got shortlisted for the experimental witch. Would love to show you the trailer, but AJ won't give me the link because he thinks it looks so shit in 4:3. So in twelve days of finger crossing, we should know our fate on that one.

Did have time for just one polaroid. I envy Raen's bejewelled camera that develops so magically in front of your eyes. Images without screens are so human. In the good way.