runcible spoon

'06? I'm liking it already

Images can be generated here. 

I know, I know, it's sototallylike last year. Still, I reckon it's an oldie but a goodie - I stole it from the marvellous sorrow at sills bend.

Happy New Year all. Lots of fuzzy, white peaches and unctuously sweet nectarines and mangoes to you Southern Hemisphere bods and, I don't know, kick-ass snowmen and hot chocolate to you winter-bound people :)

Born blonde

There's something amusing about standing at traffic lights waiting to cross only to look over and see that the woman next to you - yep, that one, with the french-fry coloured hair - is carring an absolutely enormous shopping bag that's filled with box after box of hair dye called Born Blonde.

Kinda shatters the illusion somehow.

Tastes like peanut butter (apparently)

One thing I truly dread at this time of year is the appearance of Bogong Moths. They used to be eaten by Aboriginal peoples who lived around Canberra. Their flavour is apparently 'quite nutty', although they are also extremely greasy and their bodies are quite scaly and unpleasant to the tongue if not prepared correctly.

I do not care for moths generally, but these ones really spook me. It's all about their dark, fuzzy bodies and their freaky wing markings.

Oh, and the fact that they are liable to fly right at you, getting entangled in your hair or clothes.

Because they are drawn off-course by the lights of big Australian cities, large numbers die without ever reaching their migratory destination. Their scraggly, battered bodies are a very potent symbol of late spring in Sydney.

At work yesterday, I was walking down the fire stairs when I noticed that the stairwell was littered with Bogong carcasses. The evil fluttery things had flown in there, become trapped, and subsequently died. This is pretty standard Bogong behaviour: in our apartment in the CBD, we hang our washing out on a line in the courtyard. The moths are at plague proportions in the city, attracted by the lights. When they spy our washing, with its nooks and crannies and dark folds of fabric, they clumsily scramble inside.

That means that getting the clothes in off the line is like participating in a re-make of Hitchcock's The Birds, only with moths: they flap and fly straight at you as you shake out the washing. Even worse are the ones that make it all the way inside, stowed securely in a cotton pullover or a T-shirt. There are few more disgusting feelings in this world than getting dressed only to feel a large insect struggling madly against your skin.

Arse-end of the world

Thus spake a former Australian prime minister on this country’s perceived positioning in the global order. Of the phrase 'arse-end', I have this to say: at least it’s a lot less coy than that other favoured descriptor, ‘down under’.

I mention these things as a prelude to my current obsession: the 1929 Surrealist Map of the World.

Maybe the map appeals because, living at the so-called ‘ends of the earth’ or ‘bottom of the globe’ in Australia, perhaps one is more than ready to get annoyed at how understandings of the world are typically constructed. After all, locating where the ‘top’ of the world is and identifying who is ‘on top’ are surely loaded questions, not self-evident truths.

This website, which talks about explaining to kids that maps encode a lot of information about power, privilege and belonging, uses the following 'family' example:

 Your aunt is making a family album and she puts really big pictures of her kids but only little ones of you and your sister that you can barely see!

Nice.

The surrealist map has its own limitations, as with any map. But I like how radical it is. In its imaginings, the Oceanic islands are the center of the world, the bulk of the US does not exist, and places like Alaska, Easter Island and Labrador loom large. Paris stands in for the whole of France.

I like that the Surrealist map is bold in challenging how one thinks about places in the world and mapping their importance. It also got me thinking about blogs and how one might map or imagine the English-speaking blog-o-sphere in geographical terms.

New York would loom scarily large, I reckon. As would Salt Lake City. In fact, come to think of it, Dooce would probably have her own freaking country. There’d be a huge contingent of Parisian Bloggers-in-English, blotting out the rest of France, just like the surrealists did. If Australia appeared at all, there would be no marking for Sydney – only Melbourne. I don’t know why this is (perhaps my Victorian friends would have some unkind suggestions about Sydney being culturally moribund?!), but it seems to me to be the case: Melbourne bloggers outnumber and outpower Sydney bloggers by a substantial margin.

As I say, I can't explain it, it just seems to be a fact ...

Urge overkill

IKEA had set up a bed in the rush-hour madness of Town Hall railway station this morning. Not just a bed, mind you. A fully dressed, decked-out bed - speckled with pillows and covers and coverlets. There were even bedside tables and standard floor lamps. And, of course, a humiliated looking employee handing out catalogues to the harried commuters swirling around her.

I didn't need all this just to appraise me of the fact that IKEA has a new annual catalogue out. Oh no, my friends. I have known this for several days now - in fact, I can trace my knowledge to the exact moment that the 2006 catalogue came into being.

The reason is this: I am living with one of the world's great IKEA addicts. Andrew's mother.

The woman lives and breathes IKEA in a most phenomenal manner. She has studied the catalogue at length and can tell you the pros and cons of the $9 water decanter as listed on page blah. Beds have been scrutinised, along with lamps, cabinets and storage solutions.

The house we're currently living in could - among other things - list as a claim to fame the fact that it's a sort of Residential IKEA Museum. There are pieces in this place that stretch back a good twenty years or so, and you can trace the company's evolving dedication to particle board and cheap finishes.

If I sound irritable and on-edge, it's because I am. In the past, I too have strayed to IKEA's dark side. The stuff is addictive. You can lose all sense of value, time and logic in those stores. Whole afternoons dissolve, as you wander round the megastore under the growing illusion that what you REALLY need in this life is a matching set of kitchen canisters and some more of those folding cardboard box thingos.

I have to watch myself.

Alma mater on George St

The oddest thing happened yesterday.

I was walking to uni, threading my way down George St (all the tackiness of London's Oxford St, without any of the fame). It's wall to wall tourist tat, shabby fast food joints, multiplex cinemas and a Planet Hollywood.

Oh, and a massive, half-dismantled fake volcano that belongs to the Scientologists. I kid you not.

Anyway, the other sort of place George St does a mean line in is gaming parlours. Arcade games, loud noise, automated dance machines, shoot-em-ups, Skilltesters and Daytona racing. There are several of these places along the street's midsection.

Lounging on the dirty steps of one of the gaming places were two girls. For some reason, the embroidered logo on the navy blue woollen jumper of one caught my attention. My school crest! That little white emblem with its Latin motto; I'd know it anywhere.

That's when I realised they weren't schoolgirls. They were Japanese tourists.

Both were heavy-eyed with make-up, like hard-bitten Hello Kitties. One had somehow dreamed to team a high school jumper with super-tight, stonewash denims, glittery silver flats and a retro 80s belt.

I really wanted to ask them something, but I had no idea what to say.

Man in monk's clothing

We are living in Sydney's leafy suburbs at the moment, rather than closer in to the CBD. Everywhere about here are big cars, bigger houses, and quiet, tidy lives.

I must admit that I miss the inner city. I do get my daily dose when I go in for uni and work, but it's not quite the same as living there.

Yesterday, I happened upon a man walking along Broadway, on the city fringe, wearing the full regalia of a monk. Regalia is the wrong word entirely, really, as his get-up was very spare: a long, voluminous grey gown (like a cross between a mu-mu and a huge sack), secured with a couple of simple strings of what looked like Rosary beads.

I want to call his outfit a 'monk's cassock', 'cause that sounds kick-ass - but I don't think it actually WAS a cassock. At any rate, he was young and carrying a laptop bag cum briefcase.

He made a strangely satisfying city sight.

People just write shit and stuff

Yesterday we were all experiencing the blog lurve, but today I think we should visit some people not feelin' it at all.

I heard this on a train the other day. I think it's super:

Commuter1:     So many blogs these days.

Commuter2:     Whaat?

C1:    Blogs. People just write stuff. It's not even entertaining.

C2:    It's weird.

C1:    And all blogs will have a list of other blogs - like, 'these are my friends,' right.  And you'll go from a blog that's interesting - like, it's all celebrities and how Tara Reid had liposuction or something on her stomach so it's looking really weird. And that'll link to a site that has nothing. No pics, no funny commentary, nothing. It sucks.

If only one of those Tara Reid sites would link to me. People, I have NOTHING: no celebs, no goss, no surgery.

Link to me from your liposucking paradises, damn you.

***
ps: thank you Kahli and Tristin for mentions on your lovely blogs! I read your stuff and then think, wow, how hard must Salt Lake City rock?!

Sugar mills and milestones

Oops. Sorry ... fell off the blogging map for a while there. My bad.

Blame it on my birthday, blame it on a busy week, blame it on a scratchy, sore throat. Hopefully it's resolved now (well, all save for the throat) and I shall bounce back in to posting. Thank you for your patience!

Actually, my birthday was funny because my boy took me to an 'undisclosed location' in Pyrmont, Sydney, for dinner. As it turned out, we had an amazing dinner in a building that used to house an old sugar mill.

While we were looking for a park, though, I still had no idea where we could be headed.

Pyrmont was a puzzling suburb to be taken to for dinner (athough very much my scene as it has great post-industrial vistas out to the water over old shipyards and factories) and it gave me cause to ask Andrew,

Darling, are you taking me to Star City Casino* so that we can eat at the buffet** with Shop-a-Dockets***?

To which he admirably replied, without missing a beat,

No, I'm taking you to Star City's buffet without any Shop-a-Dockets.

Editor's note: *) Star City Casino is also in Pyrmont. It's shockingly hideous; **)Buffet is very, very dodgy. Maybe one step up from eating at Hooters; and ***) Shop-a-Dockets are coupons that you get on the  back of supermarkets receipts in Oz. They give you discounts on crap you didn't want in the first place.

All this was amusing to me for one key reason: we have, on more than one occasion, actually eaten at said buffet and used Shop-a-Dockets to do so. Oh, my beautiful life!

At any rate, I am working this afternoon and then have class from 6 to 9 this evening. After that, I reckon I'll need to name my five Blog Day '05 picks. Bear with me!

Thank you for reading,
Tiffany

The weekend, a primer

Let's try for a rather meaningless and wander-y post about the weekend, shall we? 

I've finished up at work, I don't have any of my Byron Bay notes or photos with me and I'm generally in a mood to toss something light and insubstantial out into the nether regions of this blog.

So, the weekend it is. (Kind of like a first-grader's "What I Did on My Weekend" story - only I haven't actually done any of it yet! But come to think of it, that's the best part of a Friday night. All that lovely freedom stretching out in front of you ...)

I am anticipating the feeling of walking out into the bracingly cold air to meet my boy, and scampering off to Norton St, Leichhardt to see a film after scarfing down pasta at Bar Italia. The thing with Bar Italia is this: I suspect the pasta may be crap. It's sorta mass produced (even if in a low-key way), and sometimes the surly-looking 'chefs' stand in the grubby kitchen doling out bowl after bowl of the stuff like it's prison food. You have to get in a line to order, too.

But I love it all the same. I used to go there when I was little and it conjures forth the same sorts of happy, childlike associations of the 1980s Sydney dining-out 'scene' as do Chianti bottles with candles stuck in them (so de riguer in 1984!)

There are always kids clambering about in the tree and the portico out the back, and somebody's always ordering garlic bread, and there are always five Chinese guys in the kitchen who inexplicably cook the Italian food and make you wonder what their back-stories are.

And then, out front, the Italian extended family runs the cash register and the ordering process like a tight ship. My favourite part is the rather mean note that they've unceremoniously tacked to the expresso machine. It reads, in scratchy, angry texta pen:

No Skim.
No Soy.
No Reduced Fat.
We just use MILK.

Ooh, yeah, baby. Treat me mean like that and I might just come back for more!