Clothes maketh the (wo)man

So is it just me or can women just not win on the campaign trail? I mean. Seriously. On the one hand we have the Clinton-Is-Dowdy Club, who revel in eyebrow-raising comments on the former First Lady’s tentative steps towards the plunging neckline (I think she’s a chick after all). Then we have the latest furore over the $150,000 that the Republican Party shelled out on Palin’s wardrobe (She’s a very freaky girl).

Let me preface the impending rant by conceding that anyone spending that amount of money on clothes over such a short period of time is a bit crazy. Factor in the (almost satisfying) pictures of investment bankers considering hanging themselves with their neckties and (absolutely horrible) photos of Main Street-ers losing their houses in the face of the sup-prime crisis, and we have a particularly disturbing illustration of political hypocrisy.

A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square

The UC Octet: making me want to have a eight-way sex marathon since 2008

Once a year, during my High School days, I would be overcome by the most soul-destroying jealousy.  I thought that as the years passed, the intensity of my nasty feeling would decrease.  And yet, each year, the green monster reared it’s ugly, neighbor’s-wife-coveting head from the cesspool of my most unappealing emotions.

And the reason was this: each year one of my school friends would play host to the Harvard Krokadiloes.

To the uninitiated, the Krokadiloes are but one (albeit among the most Ivy League, elite examples) of the many gimpy singing groups that confound and delight Universities and lucky outsiders around the world.  And it is within this particular context that any standard-bearing feminist drops her ideological problem with anything exclusively male, and just embraces the vision of a group of men dressed in tuxedoes or baggy beige pants – walking Tommy Hilfiger ads, all of them – while hearing the most delightful a cappella singing that the ear can stand. Whatever variation we’re talking about, whether we’re in the spires of Oxford, or the halls of Harvard, or the quadrangles of Yale – or even in light-hearted and sunny California – let’s be honest: a cappella performances are aural sex.

But it’s not canon!

I have a confession to make. I read fanfiction, and, occassionally, I write it too. This isn’t something I’m particularly proud of, and I like to tell myself it’s because I like to broaden my writing horizons, practice it, and also read some good yarns. (Which is complete bollocks because I can categorically say that 99.999999% of fanfiction is rubbish.) But, really, it’s to indulge my romantic-sensibilities as a TV fanatic. And, by that, I mean that I heavily invest in TV romances. We all do it, and TV will usually anoint a ‘Chosen Couple’ in order to exploit our unhealthy fixation on these characters and their relationship, in order to get us to keep watching, by building up sexual tension, getting them together, breaking them up, getting them together, and breaking them up again like the emotional tug-o-war it is for a viewer who’s a closet romantic, because TV is a sick, sick, sadistic bastard.

So, in the absence of closure, or in an attempt to fill in the gaps and ‘fix’ anything we may find wrong with the current state of the relationship of the Chosen Couple, we turn to fanfiction to create our own – and we’d like to think, a better – revisioning of the saga between these characters [1]. Unfortunately, a lot of 13-year-old girls with access to the Internet think the same thing, and you’re left to find the proverbial diamond in the rough as you attempt to dig through bad grammar, unrealistic plots, and poorly written sex scenes, those of which are written by people who’ve probably never actually touched a member of the opposite sex [2].

Unfortunately, Weasley fans did not get the memo.

There is a reason why the word fan takes its roots from the word ‘fanatics.’ And when you delve in to the scary world of the Harry Potter fandom, it becomes apparent that there are some seriously fucked up kids out there. Most of it is harmless, others are just. Wrong. *cough*Snape/Harry slash*cough*. It goes without saying that in this particular fandom there is a blatant disregard for canon, the beacon of guidance for aspiring writers. Usually, all fiction must operate within the parameters of the canon. Those who attempt to deviate from it may suffer the backlash of readers and fans alike. One such example being Smallville fans, who want everything in the series to follow the canon of the original Superman mythos, and don’t take in to consideration that Erica Durance and Tom Welling have the chemistry of a plank of wood. Truth is, some of the most interesting relationships aren’t canon at all.

Emma Thompson Please Date Me!

Emma Thompson is a goddess. And if I ever saw her in person I would probably do a half-bow, realize that I couldn’t be more uncool if I tried, trip over one of my feet, realize that somehow I’ve fumbled my meeting with Emma Thompson even more, throw caution to the winds and just make out with her. Probably.

As if my embarrassing girl crush hadn’t already reached a fevered pitch, in today’s Australian there was an interview with the woman herself – obviously a puff piece spruiking the impending release of Brideshead Revisited (23 October, I believe… not that I have a giant calendar in the corner of my room marking each hour that passes before the release). The article glossed over her authorial ambitions, the discovery of her acting talents during her sojourn with the Footlights theatrical club at Cambridge.

Nonetheless, there was still a lot of juicy info for a swooning fan-girl such as myself. Apparently, when Thompson found out that the actress playing Julia in the film was asked to lose weight before filming, she through a hissy-fit tantrum and threatened to walk away from the entire film unless they revoked their request.

Swoon.

The road we don’t think about travelling.

R.I.P. Britt Lapthorne

Obtuse (and lame) Robert Frost reference aside, the news coverage of Melbourne student, and backpacker, Britt Lapthorne’s disappearance in Dubrovnik, Croatia (and, recently, her death,) has driven home to many young travelers a chilling reality: it could have been me. It’s like a punch in the gut for those of us who can think of one moment (or several) overseas when the night could have gone one of two ways; the way that it did or the way that Britt’s did. My insides twist painfully when I recall one particular night in Italy where I could have dropped off the face of the earth and no one would have been the wiser.

Why am I here when I could be over there?

Tired. May embellish thought process later.

New York, I love you and miss you. And yes, I still dream of you.

You know you’ve finished your thesis, when…(or I’d root the shit out of Chewy)

International Sign For Geek

There is a small cross-section of society who can sit at a table in a bar, roll their own cigarettes, surrounded by William Burroughs’ letters to Allen Ginsberg, playing root/shoot/marry using only fictional characters, before exchanging Vulcan High-5s. 

And yet, last night I did just that with the band of English geeks I adore: my English Honours cohort. 

People come to Honours for different reasons.  For some, the lure of the life of an academic – the dashing, globe-trotting Trotskyite – is too much to resist.  For others, the Honours year is just one step in what has been a 10-year plan of getting a a Rhodes Scholarship, a job in the Public Defender’s office, then the Whitehouse, then piles of money to swim in with nubile youths who never would have acknowledged you in the halls at high school. 

Why College Boys Suck

As someone who used to go to a univeristy with a thriving college system, I have come to the conclusion that college boys suck. Not college. Not college girls. Just college boys. I’m sure those living in residential colleges, right now, whilst they complete their studies, who are reading this will say “Ur jst jellus!!1!” But to them I reply: whatevs. My blog. My content. Without further ado, these are the reasons why I think college boys suck.

• They don’t wear shoes.

I never really understood this practice of not wearing shoes around campus. They probably graduated from a miscelleaneous GPS school (probably not High), so I’m sure they can afford some half decent footwear. Since when did simple hygiene become uncool? Now, I don’t know about you guys but I wear shoes for the same reason I never used to play in the sandbox when I was a kid: kids pissing in the sand.

Do the words global economic crisis not mean anything to you?

Australia has one of the world’s largest credit debts. And just working this weekend at my casual sales assistant job (I’m a uni student, there are worse jobs out there) I was slightly bemused that pretty much 90%+ of customers blithely used their credit cards without batting an eyelid.

Credit crunch - not actually a breakfast cereal.

 

Fair enough – while the world’s economy seems to be crumbling around us, here in Australia we seem to be gliding by in this sense of isolation. It’s something to note that where I work at least, our sales are not significantly down during the sale period. The words ‘Great Depression’ have been bandied about, but that’s probably a bit of a stretch. There is a lack of understanding about what’s happening, understandably. Being a senior undergraduate Commerce student has left me scratching my head and checking up the terminology, and current news articles have made it a bit of a fad to try to explain what’s been happening to the ordinary reader. I’ve been asked by friends and work colleagues (being the token finance student) to explain what interest rates are, I kid you not. Seriously, I really wish I was joking.

Talking about my generation: overachievers and etc

According to Wikipedia, I’m a Millenial. Or a Generation Y (which makes me think, so after Generations X, Y, then Z, what comes next?) I thought I could put a lot of effort into this and source proper journals and texts then I thought, alright, seriously, that’s just way too much work. Wikipedia tells me also that putting so much effort is out of character being a Generation Y-er. That I’m attention deficit, true, perhaps, because I have over five internet browser windows open and whilst listening to music, chatting on MSN instant messenger, Facestalking and browsing eBay. eBay: the bastion of consumerism and modern capitalism.  Wikipedia assures me that being Generation Y, I like technology and stuff in general so why not really run with it?  

She's the pretty one, the smart one, the nice one, the Chanel-Teen Vogue intern, the one wearing Marni...

Then you’ve got those kids who ruin all this self-absorbed fun for us.  Emily Weiss and some girl called  Winter Raymond (seriously, is that even a real name?)

Emily Weiss (bless her) will probably be only known to Teen Vogue addicts and The Hills watchers (they can be considered one and the same). Ignoring the fact that I’m just bamboozled by the way reality shows propel nobodies to stardom, she did utter the best line of the season “I’m taking 18 credits, two days a week… then I work two days a week at Teen Vogue… and I also intern at Chanel!” leaving pretty much any self-respecting university student feeling pretty depleted as well as in awe of her multi-tasking abilities. (I would like to note that I proudly no longer watch the Hills, and have replaced it with Gossip Girl. hiushoe watches West Wing for the politics and like, serious stuff, I watch Gossip Girl for 3.1 Phillip Lim dresses).

Post-Europe-itis

There’s a sickness I have, and it’s difficult to overcome. There’s no cure and it’s hard to manage. I get bouts of withdrawals, and sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night, shivering, and sweating. Then I realise I’m in bed, in Sydney, and I curl up in to foetal position rocking, as I attempt to cry myself to sleep. No one really talks about it much – this sickness. Trying to tell people stories to allay anxieties and withdrawals only garners the rolling of their eyes as they mutter that they don’t really care that this time last month I was caught skinny-dipping in Cinqueterre. It’s called Post-Europe-itis. And each day that rolls in to the next I am slowly recovering.

Gets you through those 4 hour train waits.

It’s funny, really, that my last trip affected me so much. I’ve been on trips overseas before, but I had never hit the withdrawals as hard as after my last one. I’m not quite sure why, but I think a large part of it I can put down to the knowledge that people are still over there. You know, that magical land of 3 Euro cigarette packs and 9 o’clock sunsets. It’s bad enough that I can’t tell a story to people without ending with, “I guess you had to be there,” but that every time I log-in to Facebook the whole flippin’ Newsfeed is an up-to-date bulletin of everyone’s movements, on their wall-to-walls, their photos, their status updates; of those still on the road, those on their way there, those studying abroad, or those you’ve met. All a painful reminder of where you were just a few months ago. What really hits me is that I’m here drowning in all the work I have to do for uni. And in between reading about communications theory I’m clicking on the My Pictures filmstrip of my photos trying to imagine myself back at Roma Centrale, lying on my pack, reading my Kafka, and smoking my fags in front of the Departures board as I await my train to wherever it was that I found myself heading. And a lot of the time I wasn’t really that sure.

The Genius of Gossip Girl

Blast from the past.

In my early high school years I wanted to be Joey Potter, who’s now known as Mrs Tom Cruise, a.k.a. mother of the cutest celebrity baby ever, other than that, you know, Scientology problem. Anyway.

Dawson’s Creek paved the way for mid-20 year old actors and actresses passing themselves off as ten years younger, who seduced teachers with no legal repercussions and did things like climb into their best friend’s bedroom window at night. Then came The O.C. and Marissa Cooper, with all her Californian tan bottle goodness in a cute Marc Jacobs dress and monotonous voice. She probably single-handedly revived Chanel bag sales in the under 25 demographic and made every girl want a geek Jewish boyfriend (Seth) to deck out in Lacoste polos, or at least a cute-but-not-as-cute sidekick (Summer) who will look like, you know, super-cute with her Valley Girl accent and all.

And now we have Gossip Girl.

Queer Pairing

Girl germs

I’m sure you’ve all been there.  The long-awaited, I’ve-heard-so-much-about-you…possibly-more-than-I-really-wanted-to-lots of-guys-have-the-same-problem meeting of the boyfriend.  This particular meeting wasn’t that uncomfortable; I had very little invested in it, and am not so close to the girl that I’ve heard every gory detail about the guy’s performance in the bedroom.  All I knew was that he was a real-life 40 year old virgin (ok, not quite 40, but if a blog can’t be the home of hyperbole, what can be?), with very little in the way of professional prospects.  Already a winning combination.  On meeting him, however, he seemed personable, cute (if you’re into that lanky faux-emo kind of thing), and sweet.  Sighs of relief all round.

There were sure as hell more uncomfortable meetings at this particularly party.  The evil spawn little sister of the hostess for example.  In between spewing vitriol, slamming back vodka with the zest that only a 16 year old can muster, and swearing for absolutely no reason, she slurred at me that she thought there was something odd going on with the new boy on the block.