Project 365

I don’t remember if I mentioned it here, but here’s a quick overview of Project 365:

Taken off my Tumblr…of course. I just remembered I’d blogged about it there (I only want to write official stuff on here. And since now this is official…)

I’ve had this laptop for about half a month now, but I’ve decided to start on an interesting day. Thus, I shall start my project on April 1st.

I will display it as a weekly thing. Calendar layout. I don’t know WHERE I’ll display it – I might just make a new page on here first, or put it on Deviant Art, or, dare I say, get a Flickr.

So, let’s hope I can keep this up!

Alex.

P.S. I have added a category: Project 365. That will include maybe a short story about the picture, and what it stands for. I also want to be able to link each photo to the corresponding day here, but I don’t know how I’d do that. Mani, you read this, can you suggest anything?

Stuff Summer, Stick With Savior

These are the 2 pieces of poetry that I plan to submit for my Creative Writing assignment.

I can’t actually stuff the Stuff Summer one, because I need to have 2. I’m hoping that 14 lines of a dodgy Shakespearean sonnet (that is, a sonnet with the rhyming scheme of abab cdcd efef gg, as opposed to a Petrarchan sonnet, which has the rhyming scheme of ababcdcd cdecde…but you don’t really care, and neither do I) and a strange free-verse poem will be enough.

So here is the free-verse:

Stuff Summer

Summers are not family friendly.

Family friendly is when children

Can run around, laugh, eat dirt,

Whatever, without having to slip, slop, slap,

Wear sunglasses,

Wide-brimmed hats, Shirts,

Zinc, a bloody suit of armour.

Summers are not family friendly.

Because you expect clean and comfortable days,

But instead you get sleazy ones that

Make you uncomfortable in your own skin.

They come up to you, gives you a drink,

And the drink tastes kinky, and you want to

Kill the come-on.

Or, go with it, and then tell your friends about

The half-forgotten stuff that happened

after.

Summers are not family friendly.

Go to the beach – no seriously, go;

You’ll never want to go back again.

Disgusting, engorged bodies, dripping in grease.

(You’ll never eat at KFC again, either).

And you’ll have to slip,

slop,

slap,

Sleaze. And I’m not talking about the heat

I’m talking about those ON heat.

Everywhere is out of bounds, even the underfoot burns.

And God Forbid if you leave garbage behind;

Because the beach – and summer – isn’t dirty enough already.

And here is the sonnet:

Savior

The day I met you I’d erred and made you cry,

You forgave me, yes, but still I pulse in debt.

Overdrew not only tears, but I

Will not look back and feel a ray of regret.

Your inner light broke down my cellar heart

Speared through me, and pulled me into the depth,

I felt the quiet inside of me depart

And in this glow, gratefully, I wept.

I saw the world through glasses tinted rose,

But then the thought drove daggers into me:

Despite the girly whims and pretty bows,

The infatuation ends at this degree.

The reality that I’d almost forgot;

I’m not in love with you, I swear I’m not.

I hope you enjoyed reading it, because if you don’t, chances are my profession won’t, either.

Alex.

Living Under The Code

For Creative Writing, I decided to do a Dexter-themed pantoum. The structure of the pantoum is quite an interesting and rather lyrical one.

In order to fit the rhyme, I am worried that I have compromised some of the poetry, but I was rather happy with the subtle change in meaning at the end.

The problem is, you won’t understand how clever and subtle the change in meaning is at the end if you don’t watch Dexter. That’s probably a bad thing, right?

So here it is (I warn you, there is a major spoiler for Season 4 in there):

Living under the code
Taking care of scum
His dark side never showed
A killer he’s become

Taking care of scum
While leading a normal life
A killer he’s become
His instrument’s the knife

While leading a normal life
He finds truth about his mother
His instrument’s the knife
And same deal for his brother

He finds truth about his mother
Hides it from the cops
And same deal for his brother
His trophies are blood drops

Hides it from the cops
His sister will never know
His trophies are blood drops
He takes his killings slow

His sister will never know
Him and his art
He takes his killings slow
A butcher knife through the heart

Him and his art
To do what is just
A butcher knife through the heart
To stem life with a thrust

To do what is just
Kill those who have killed
To stem life with a thrust
His own life he must build

Kill those who have killed
You will have to agree
His own life he must build
But lie to what degree?

You will have to agree
Karma gets her man
But lie to what degree?
His unravelling began

Karma gets her man
Trinity killed his love
His unravelling began
Her blood stained his glove

Trinity killed his love
His dark side never showed
Her blood stained his glove
Living under the code

I’m going to go ask my CW tute group what they think now.

Alex.

Acquiring Target

That’s probably a creepy way of describing what I’m trying to do.

There’s a really cool girl in my Professional Writing. I want to make friends with her but I don’t seem to be able to. It’s made worse by the fact that she’s not in my tute, so I can’t exactly properly get to know her there.

I tried to say hi to her today as she walked past me – I’d even gotten as far as a half wave – but she didn’t see me.

Okay, to clarify, I’m not really that creepy! I mean, perhaps my reasoning for wanting to be friends with her is shallow; she’s cool, laughs at the good jokes, pretty, and her hair is really soft and shiny-looking. But you have to allow me to want to make friends, right?

Also, last week at the Tute I corrected my work which was put on the board. This prompted my tutor to point me out in the lecture today. It made me look a bit like a teacher’s pet…which probably didn’t paint me to be a very cool friend material.

So…wish me luck…

Alex.

VIP

First off, let me be clear. This is NOT Alex but Josh as a VIP guest blogger ^^ Alex made me promise not to screw around in her account so I guess the best I can do is some self-ego boosting. Pretty sad eh.

So everyone’s been wanting to know what EXACTLY happened in steamy, cramped depths of the Bass Lounge on Saturday night. However, the main subject in this story is extremely embarrassed by her actions, so for her sake, I will be using the pseudonym ‘Anna’. K-. This pseudonym may or may not be her actual name.

So for our…’camp’, we decided to hit the clubs on Saturday night. Using Jen ‘Ballsy’ N-‘s house as a base camp, the delegation of happy, albeit pretty clueless clubbers comprising of Annie, Anna and her best friend Clara along with myself, finally chose to grace ‘Saturday nights at Bass Lounge’ with our presence despite not knowing how to even get there. We had a few pre-drinks, which were just a couple of Vodka Cruisers, nothing serious, whilst engaging in a game of ‘Guess the Korean Song!’ which pretty much rendered Lex twitching and convulsing on the couch in pain.

‘Anna’s Drink Count: 2 bottles of cruisers.

After a few games of pool at Strike, we made a long trek up to Bass Lounge, located in the upper reaches of China Town. At this point, Anna (or should I say, ‘Anna’) seemed completely fine. We met up with Doug ‘Wherearemymarks’ T- and his friend Harold, and this random guy from Vancouver that Doug had just randomly picked up from a random bar. By me saying ‘random guy’, means I’ve forgotten his name -.- Whilst waiting for entrance, Annie and I sat ‘Anna’ down for a lecture about not approaching random strangers, not accepting random drinks from strangers and basically not picking up random things and putting them into her mouth. She nodded and promised she wouldn’t. We believed her. We also made an agreement between the 7 of us to stick together, no matter what, as it would be all too easy to lose each other once inside. After all, you would likely be prone to losing ‘Anna’ in her own bedroom.

We finally gained entrance into the club after some hardcore string pulling, and instantly, we could hear the thumping bass of the music emanating from the dance floor. Even I couldn’t help but smile at the infectious rhythm and beat. We decided to open the night with a tequila shot each (which, by the way, was freaking expensive). By now, ‘Anna’ was looking pretty happy, though she was looking so even before the drink. Pretty soon, we were out on the floor, dancing away and having a good time. Doug and Harold were pretty good company, though the Vancouver guy was a tad awkward.

Anna’s Drink Count: 2 vodka cruisers, one tequila shot

HOWEVER, it wasn’t long before the first disaster struck. WE LOST ANNA. SOMEHOW. For a space of 5-10 minutes, we could find NO trace of Anna, and naturally, we all panicked. If anyone else was lost, we wouldn’t have worried so much, but ‘Anna’ being ‘Anna’…she’d be the LAST person you’d want to lose in an unfamiliar place filled with unfamiliar people. Eventually, our search & rescue team randomly bumped into her. And instantly, we noticed something was wrong.

She seemed out of it in a very high way. She didn’t respond to questions (in fact, didn’t talk at all), seemed completely disconnected, and danced in a more…’out there’ way than you’d expect from a normally pretty conservative and shy girl. Mind you, she was a very good dancer, and she instantly attracted a lot of male attention. She also started to develop a strange affinity with my arm – she repeatedly clutched onto it, grabbed them to wrap around her waist, as well as hugging me and all kinds of stuff that was completely out of character. However, the most worrying thing was, she kept wanting to walk away from us, even though she didn’t seem to have a specific destination in mind. Every few moments, someone had to lasso her back into the group, and it became pretty clear she wasn’t really getting the concept of ‘sticking together’.

After about an hour of this, we decided that possibly, the tequila shots were getting to her, and it WAS hot in there, so we decided to get some water into her and flush out any alcohol in there, as well as getting her fluid levels back up. However, when she saw the proffered glass of water, she merely giggle uncontrollably at it and refused to drink. It took quite a bit of persuasion, and eventually she got about half a glass down, which made no difference.

After being back on the floor established the drifting away pattern again, we decided that fresh air was what she needed, so Annie, Clara and I dragged her in front of this giant fan in the corner of the club and stood her in front of it. It didn’t help. In fact, it may have made things even worse for her, because now she had this giant fan effect and she started to act as if she were in one of those Pantene shampoo ads, with her long, silky smooth, strong black hair billowing out in a halo around her face. She stayed like that for about half-an-hour before we realised that it clearly wasn’t doing the trick. It wasn’t just air she needed; she needed to get out of the music.

So Doug and I literally dragged her out, with Annie, Clara, Harold and the Vancouver dude forming the vanguard. Doug pulled her left arm from the front, whilst I latched onto the other from behind. We took a ‘Smoking Break’ ticket and pulled her onto the ledges outside, taking care to move her away from the other hordes of smokers. Even outside, she was trouble. First, she refused to sit down, so I had to literally carry and lift her onto the ledge. Once there, she complained about the smokers, refused to let Doug smoke and destroyed his self-esteem as well as lashing out at him with stillettoed feet. However, on the BRIGHT side, she was talking again. We gave her math questions, asked for names, made her follow our fingers with her eyes – on the whole, she seemed fine in the cognitive department. She just wanted to keep dancing.

It was during this break, a disturbing piece of information surfaced. Annie didn’t believe that 1 tequila shot would mess Anna up so much for so long, at which Anna interjected with, ‘No I didn’t have one! I had 3!’

It was quickly ascertained that she couldn’t remember what she had drunk, but she definitely wasn’t including the water we’d given her earlier. So basically, somewhere along the lines, she’d picked up another 2 unidentified drinks. Now THAT scared us.

Anna’s Drink Count: 2 Vodka Cruisers, 1 tequila shot, ??

The Vancouver dude and Annie ran a quick errand and bought her a bottle of water, which, again, the stubborn girl refused to drink. I had to literally FEED her the water, holding the bottle up to her lips and tilting her head back manually – she seemed oddly submissive about that though, and managed to down about half a bottle, which was better than nothing. After a long break, during which ‘Anna’ promised she’d behave herself even though she didn’t think she had done anything ‘crazy’, we took her back in.

For the 2nd half of the night, she was…better. Though that may have been because we took extra persuasions; either me or Annie held onto her waist/hand while she danced, or the whole group would just surround her and box her in while she danced obliviously in the center. Once, when I had been left alone with her, I still had to relocate her 6 times in 5 minutes because she was attracting too much attention. The thing is, she would continuously dance up to other guys without realising it, but when guys danced on her, she’d recoil in disgust.

At 3am, we all decided to call it a night. Annie was exhausted, I had no voice left. Hungry, thirsty and tired, we decided on a Macca’s run for some food and drink before hitting a taxi home. On the way there Anna suddenly commented, ‘What happened?’

Our instant reaction was, ‘…WHAT!?’

She had already forgotten everything that had happened up to, and including the break. Forgotten. Clean. To add insult to injury, she refused to believe what we told her.

Up until now, she still doesn’t remember what happened. She also doesn’t remember what the unidentified drinks were but we eventually figured out they were gin and tonics, which she mistook as water, from a sleaze which she mistook as a bartender -.- Gin and Tonics aren’t exactly weak, especially for a person such as Anna, who’s tolerance is dangerously low.

Anyway, she woke up with a killer headache the next morning.

And that’s pretty much what happened. Thank you to everyone, Doug especially for handling the situation very smoothly. If we think about it, things could have gotten a lot, lot more worse. In the meantime, Anna’s not going clubbing for a while.

-Josh

xx

How To Find A Friend In A Crowd

This is quite a few days late.

On Thursday, last week, Josh, Anna and I were discussing how it would be bad if, on Saturday when they were planning to go clubbing, they lost Anna.

Before I write more, I should add that yes they did end up losing Anna. I wasn’t there, so I think perhaps I’ll make a new precedent, and let Josh guest blog what had happened. I got told already. It was hilarious and…just a notch freaky.

Anyway, so back on Thursday we were joking about how to find someone in a club. We came up with some pretty awesome suggestions:

1. Get glow-in-the-dark paint, and paint “I’m Here” on Anna’s shirt.

2. Get a glow-in-the-dark sign in the shape of an arrow. Fix it upon Anna’s shoulders, and let it point down.

3. Same as above, except use a neon sign. It can be powered by Anna’s craziness.

4. Put a key-location device on Anna. If in the event she was to be lost, just simply point the remote around the crowd and listen for the increase in beeps.

5. Same as above, except with a device that,when the remote is pressed, will play a loud fog-horn.

6. Train Anna to respond to dog whistles.

7. Train Anna to not chew through a leash.

8. Hook Anna onto a leash that has a large neon sign in the shape of an arrow attached, mounted onto her shoulders, powered by her craziness and/or distance away from the remote that, when pressed, will sound a foghorn that is built into the neon sign.

9. Just don’t let her drink.

None of the 9 above happened. So I’ll let Josh tell you what happened when he has time.

Alex.

The Name’s Face, Whore-Face

I suppose I could’ve used “The Name’s Whore, Man-Whore” but then it isn’t AS funny.

Julia caught up with us today! It was the best. Anna, Annie and I were eating at Melb Central (I was a fattie and had an All Stars Box). But before Julia came, we spent about 30 minutes sitting there watching a bunch of guys put fake 50 dollar bills on the floor, and watching everyone’s reaction walking past it.

There was a young teenage girl who’d walked past it, picked it up, saw it was fake and said out loud, “Oh damn I thought it was a 50 dollar bill!”

We came across Stoner as well. Stoner now looks like a full fledged girl, damn her!

After talking to Julia for a while, Anna needed to go back to class. So we dragged Julia along to Melb Uni (her being a Monash kid now). We met up with Josh, and promptly introduced Annie and Julia to him as a couple (don’t think he bought it, so it’s safe to say it here).

We sat around for a bit chilling (Suse joined us), while Anna decided to go to class half an hour early. I was making fun of Josh, and I suppose I might have taken his threat of “if you keep going I’ll pick you up and throw you into that bin” too lightly, because he did end up picking me up and running across the courtyard to throw me in a bin. (He didn’t actually throw me in, thank God.)

We then left, because Josh needed to meet up with Me-. So we went back to State Library, and upon meeting Me- the first thing she said to me after I introduced myself was, “Have I met you before?”

Thus started my trying to remember where I’d seen her familiar face. I’m still going, mind you.

Went to the station with Julia (Annie’d gone back to MU to find Anna for their wild night of partying), and saw Mai and E. Told Julia about the hilarious result of if Mai married E. Julia laughed.

Said bye to Julia, and took the train home with a whole bunch of red-jumpered MacRobbians.

Saw Amy on the bus (today is a day for seeing people. Except sadly on the train I didn’t see neither Fa, Catherine, Julia L nor Eunice Y).

And so later tonight I’m going to one of Zhen’s youth things – he promised there won’t be anything religious tonight so I won’t feel awkward.

I will now go check my Tumblr, and, if I have time, update again for a sort of musing/joke that happened yesterday.

Alex.

Let Love Be Our Light And Salvation

[Looking For Angels – Skillet]

I’m currently listening to this song, and as I was listening (I never have listened to this song closely) I finally realized what the lyrics were saying.

In Creative Writing, our current assignment is about poetry, and we have to write our own poetry. I am trying to get the inspiration to start writing, and just get used to the voice I will need.

This song seems to provide some very good inspiration, on an emotional level at any rate.

Walk this world alone try to stay on my feet

Sometimes crawl, fall, but I stand up cause I’m afraid to sleep
And open my eyes to a new day, with all new problems 4. and all new pain
All the faces are filled with so much anger
Losing our dignity and hope from fear of danger
After all the wars, after settling the scores, at the break of dawn we will be deaf to the answers

There’s so much bigotry, misunderstanding and fear
With eyes squinted and fists clinched we reach out for what is dear
We want it we want
We want a reason to live
We’re on a pilgrimage
A crusade for hope
Cause in our hearts and minds and souls we know
We need it we need
We need more than this

Going through this life looking for angels
People passing by looking for angels

Walking down the streets looking for angels
Everyone I meet looking for angels

So many nations with so many hungry people
So many homeless scrounging around for dirty needles
On the rise, teen suicide, when we will realize
we’ve been desensitized by the lies of the world
We’re oppressed and impressed by the greedy
Whose hands squeeze the life out of the needy
When will we learn that wars, threats, and regrets are the cause and effect of living in fear

Who can help protect the innocence of our children
Stolen on the internet with images they can’t forget
We want it we want
We want a reason to live
We represent a generation that wants to turn back a nation
To let love be our light and salvation
We need it we need

We need more than this
I became a savior to some kids I’ll never meet
Sent a check in the mail to buy them something to eat
What will you do to make a difference, to make a change?

What will you do to help someone along the way?
Just a touch, a smile as you turn the other cheek
Pray for your enemies, humble yourself, love’s staring back at me
In the midst of the most painful faces
Angels show up in the strangest of places

– Looking For Angels

Alex.

Ice Blocks Keep Fallin’ On My Head

I think this will just be written to remind myself later of the…

GIGANTIC HAIL/THUNDERSTORM THAT FELL YESTERDAY!

Before 3 pm, I was just home bumming online. On Facebook, I saw some friends from west-side mentioning some sort of storm. Us east-siders thought nothing of it, but I decided to tell my dad to close the garage door and windows anyway.

Sure enough, as the clock-hand shifted ominously past the 12 to meet its fatter friend resting at the 3, a loud bang announced the arrival of the hail.

I’d first thought that yet another stupid bird had flown into our window, as it was a bit windy and dark outside. But when the 2nd, 3rd, and subsequently 15th “stupid bird” crashed into our windows all around the house, I’d decided either I’ve become Evan “Almighty” Baxter, or this was no bird stupidity.

I ran to the front door, and looked out.

Hail the size of half of my fists were falling outside, and there were so many already that it looked like my trees had a bad dandruff problem. I ran upstairs to my bedroom to check my windows, because my window faced south and the rain seemed to be coming down from that direction. From my window I could see the sad little chili patch my dad was trying to grow. Well, that was dead.

Within 10 minutes, a Facebook group about the hailstorm was made.

I heard that the CBD got pretty flooded. Melbourne Central and Flinders got flooded, and Southern Cross closed due to damages.

Yikes.

Tomorrow I still have Uni, despite Labor Day. Apparently it’s meant to rain again today, so I wonder how tomorrow is going to go.

I should probably wear shorts. I hate shorts. And shoes?! WHAT AM I MEANT TO DO THERE?!

Alex.