Intellectual Snobbery

This is basically going to be my last blog for a few weeks, because trials are almost here, and I’m a little bit screwed. BUT I’M ALSO RATHER NARCISSISTIC and hence blogging about it. Hey I just realised where that word came from – Narcissus, the really vain man-god (god? Man?) in Greek mythology. Am I right? Has everyone else known that for thousands of years? Awkward.

I want to do well in trials, I really do. This is because Lox and I have decided we are Intellectual Snobs – the more judgmental but infinitesimally cooler version of Nerds. We differ from Nerds because not only are we clever, but we think it is awesome to be so, and we look down on people who aren’t as clever as us. We also dress nicely, and would be disappointed with an ATAR of less than 98 not because we need to get into a university course, but because we don’t want to have a bad ATAR.

Realising that this description makes me sound like an awful, heartless person, be satiated with the thought that I have spontaneously combusted (i.e. cried pathetically for no reason whatsoever, especially when people ask me whether I’m okay) seven times in the past three days, hence showing (I hope) that I am no tinman.

If you don’t get that reference, you are an idiot.

Here’s a nice song that reminds me of road tripping. Isn’t it excellently nostalgic and bittersweet?

Australian rock in the 80s puts our generation to shame. At the moment I can’t get enough of The Triffids, Big Pig, Hunters and Collectors, and Split Enz ... yes, I am fully aware that they’re from New Zealand. Nonetheless, I completely support an 80s music resurgence, I know I’ve said it before but all that’s happened is I’ve gotten Cyndi Lauper into Gauri’s head. J Actually, that’s worth everything.

Love you like the beautiful waste that is my time this year.

x  

The Last First Day of Term ... EVER

The Class of 2011 has had exactly fifty first days of term in our schooling career, and this, my friends, is the last one. EVER.

Just take a moment to soak in the incredible wave of emotions that comes with that statement. A very strong sense of nostalgia, a bunch of stress and guilt concerning our trials in three weeks, and this massive excitement that I just can’t get over. WE’RE SO ALMOST NEARLY DONE, GUYS.

Now all those emotions are out of the way, or at least chilling politely at the back of your mind, let’s move on to some other things.

1.       Yes. I am the worst Harry Potter fan ever. I have not yet written a blog on my feelings on the film. Don’t worry, I will, I promise. And until then, just keep yourself going on the thought that I really, really loved it, and thought it was a very fitting send-off to our most beloved book series. (Not that it will ever end, mind you.)

2.       These next few weeks (probably until week seven next term, so a month and a half or so) are going to be pretty much incredibly stressful, work-filled and scary, judging by how much work I managed to finish during the holidays (not enough). A quick example of this is:

a.      French trial oral this Wednesday.

b.      Hamlet assessment (15%) this Thursday.

c.       Extension English assessment (10%) on Monday.

d.      Drama Group Performance trial Monday night.

e.      Drama Individual Performance trial Tuesday week.

f.        Trials week four and five.

g.      French HSC oral assessment the weekend after trials.

h.      Drama HSC performances the week after trials.

i.        Extension Two major work due the week after trials.

Not a quick example, but nonetheless. That’s my term for you J But after that fun will prevail in the form of binball matches, muck-up day, muck-up assembly, tunic day, our graduation lunch and breakfast, the farewell assembly, the talent quest, and I’m hoping I can pass it with the Superprefects to have a Super Happy Fun Day for the whole school at the end of term. MAYBE. J I will explain all these things later ... aka after the trials. So the point of all that was to say that I probably won’t be updating this quite as often, or quite as detailed, as I have been. Or I will be, and thus failing my HSC. Thanks guys!

3.      Um and then I have a quick Clare-is-an-idiot story to tell you about today. ENJOY (it will not be in the numbered section).

Finished a long hard day of studying at State Library with the gang. Bought a really yummy chai latte from Lindt Café, and still am loving how much of a douche it makes me sound to say that. (Least it wasn’t soy LOL!) Um ... excuse that. I know there’s a delete button! It’s too far away from my pinky on this keyboard though, and I can’t be bothered to move it all the way up there to press it.

Anyway the gang left to catch their spiffy trains from Martin Place and I decided to walk to Town Hall to catch my bus, because I could and I had to drink my chai before I got on the bus. So I get to Town Hall and there’s the pedestrian footpath in front of you know, Woolies and SES and all those shops etc, and every now and then along it are the stairs that go down to the station. So I’m walking along, feeling very grown up with my take away cup of chai and computer and so on and so forth, and I hear a bus coming behind me so I turn around to see what number it is.

The 436! Of course it’s the 436. So I start hurrying to get on it ... unfortunately I forget to turn around and look where I’m going before I do the hurrying, and I fall headfirst down the stairs to Town Hall Station.

OH NO CLARE NOT YOUR BEAUTIFUL FACE! PLEASE TELL US THAT WE ARE SPARED FROM ITS DESTRUCTION DUE TO YOUR GENERAL STUPIDITY.

Well, you are! Because who did I fall on top of but a rather shocked-looking, rather attractive Young Sexy Lawyer Man.

Not the one Chloe saw outside of the Lindt Café. And actually, probably not that attractive, and maybe not even a lawyer (he was just wearing a suit ... but A SUIT NONETHELESS, MAN), but in the end I don’t even care what his profession was because I didn’t kill myself/break my arm and not be able to write in my trial HSC.

I didn’t even mind the large group of people laughing at me, or the kind/embarrassing ones helping me and said Young Sexy Lawyer Man up off the stairs.

Love me for my stupidness like I love you as much as the fact that SCHOOL’S ALMOST OUT ... FOREVER!!! (Unfortunately there are no such things as SuperItalics L)

x

My First Romance

I was thinking about how interesting our high school reunion is going to be when I was suddenly thrown back into a forgotten memory with such force that I almost relived it. You know when you remember something that you haven’t for a long time and you feel as though you’re reading an old book, because it’s so foreign yet so familiar? Well that’s what happened to me.

When I was seven or so, we went to my mum’s twenty-year high school reunion at the Hydro Hotel in Leeton, a small country town close to Wagga in NSW. And in this hotel I met my first love.

His name was Jack and that’s pretty much all I remember about him, unfortunately. But during the weekend we stayed in the Hydro, we played together all the time. I remember being in the beer garden of the hotel and feeling like Mary in The Secret Garden, which was my favourite book and movie when I was little. I was Mary and he was my Dickon, and it was all very romantic.

I had this feeling that the hotel was haunted, although at that age I had a bit of a thing about ghosts, and everywhere I went I thought had some sort of spirit lingering there and talking to me; the Hydro, and holiday house we rented once in Berry, even the house next door to my primary school. I was a veritable ghost whisperer, like that television show with that woman who looks as though she is in a permanent state of distress in it ... um, moving on. So Jack and I did some investigating in the grandfather clock in one of the rooms, and we even went into his bedroom (the floorboards were dark wooden and there were trains everywhere, from memory), which, being Not a Teenager, was not weird at all.

Just before my family left to go back to Sydney I remember playing along the side of the hotel with milk cartons, all the grass was burnt yellow, there were weeds everywhere and broken bricks.

Anyway, that’s all I can really remember of my first beautiful romance, tucked away in country New South Wales. And don’t worry! Being seven (7), nothing untoward happened. It was just nice, as far as I can remember.

Love you like little kids in “love”.

x

Ihaveneverbeenthisexcitedaboutafilminmylifeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Ticket to the midnight screening of Harry Potter – check.

Hedwig costume complete with yellow yellow eyes – check.

Incredible levels of excitement, nostalgia, trepidation and general contentment with life – check check check check.

I AM SO EXCITED!

Love you as much as this:

x

A Happy Coincidence

Life is pretty good at the moment (minus piles of homework, study for trials, drama log booking up to my ears and approx. 45 essays that I have to write in the next month or two). The holidays are in full abundance around me, I didn’t get Bruv’s (or muv’s) whooping cough, these winter days have been absolutely gorgeous, and I’m listening to Clare Bowditch and her lovely voice.

Do you know what makes everything infinitesimally better? The fact that tonight at 9pm on SBS the Matildas are playing SWEDEN in the Women’s World Cup. OH MY GOSH what a happy coincidence, is it not? Don’t worry, I am patriotic enough to go for the Matildas, plus I find myself incredibly emotionally vested in their success, and they’re a really good team (better than the Socceroos, don’t shoot, but honestly, the quality of their football is a-a-a-amazing). So I hope that they get through to the semis and hence get further than the men’s team has ever gotten in their World Cup, hence bringing women’s football into the foreground in Australian sport because golly gee it never gets any coverage.

I just said golly gee. Did you like that? J

What else? Had a lovely night with Tersa and Loxie the other night, despite Lox not wearing appropriate footwear (“I thought I was going to be on a boat!”) and complaining the entire time as we practically carried her from Railway Square to a closed High Tea shop on Elizabeth Street, down to the markets in Chinatown, back up to Central, to the yummy cheap Japanese noodle bar near George Street cinema, then all the way to Darling Harbour for ice cream and the beautiful view and finally back to Railway Square to escape the rapidly gross-growing Friday night-life. The best part, however, was when we convinced Lox to buy very fobby slippers (black with pink bows at the back and massive pink sleepy-faces on the top), and she wore them all the way home with her Youth Parliament office attire.

Also infinitely fun? (Let me be Chloe again and write a list.)

       ¥            French-speaking day with Joanne and Shakira at the chocolate shop.

       ¥            Soccer team sleepover on Wednesday night complete with red cordial and a high school movie marathon through the ages – Grease, The Breakfast Club and Bring It On, which was cut off because of the Matildas vs. Norway game YAY FOR WINNING (last time we had a team sleepover we watched the Socceroos get smashed by Germany, so it was a nice change).

       ¥            Taking all my Russia notes to study at the park with a picnic blanket, some brain food (walnuts and bananas) and good studying music.

       ¥            Just chilling with Claudie.

       ¥            HARRY POTTER (complete with marathon) IN TWO DAYS! OH MY GOODNESS! Also, we get to see it before America, so sucked in ‘Sorcerer’s Stone’ people. Pfft. But don’t worry, I won’t give anything away before Friday ... maybe.

Did you see what I did there? Did you see what I did there with the infinity signs and the ‘infinitely fun’ thing? No matter how much I pretend I dislike maths, I will never get over maths jokes.

One last thought on a totally unrelated (and political YAY) topic.

Bob Katter has started his own political party, it’s called the Australian Party. I heard this (of course, while watching Q&A) a while ago and it got me on a long train of thought (not months long but I haven’t been able to post about it until now).  

See, ‘the Australian Party’ is not very imaginative. If I were Bob Katter, I would come up with something much much better.

The Mad Katter’s Tea Party, perhaps?

I am freaking hilarious, no?

How long did that take to come up with?

…An entire shampoo (lather, rinse, repeat) and conditioning?

Wait a second … you were thinking about Bob Katter in the shower? That’s a little weird/awkward/embarrassing.

Oh be quiet anonymous hopefully-existent internet-users. There is nothing going on between me and Bob Katter. Loxie and Bob Katter, on the other hand ... J Now I’ll just sit and wait for her to disagree, because she disagrees with everything just for the sake of it. If I’m lucky she’ll disagree with that too. Louise? I’m waiting for the argument.

Anyway. Right well love you to ¥ and beyond, just as much as my dad-jokes and my lack of whooping cough AND HARRY OH MY GOSH POTTER!

x

Some more thoughts

Sometimes, when I’m exceptionally tired or cold, I feel like painting.

Unfortunately I can’t paint for shit, so that kind of sucks.

Nevertheless I have these beautiful images emblazoned across my mind, impossible images; a softly pink, burning sky flooded with words. A sea so deep and so cold that it is black except where touched, and from the tip of that long, spindly finger glorious greens and blues and silvers pour.  A sweetly glowing crescent moon. Heat waves on a summer afternoon, electricity in the sky.

Sometimes, when my mind is full to bursting with these images, I decide to paint them out.

Not with watercolours or acrylics though. I use words.

The best part is that I don’t even have to write a thousand words, as the cliché goes. Because once I get past a certain point, your imagination will do the rest for me.

A picture paints a thousand words. But a few words and an imagination paint the most beautiful pictures in all of non-existence.

New and improved ways to procrastinate

I was studying, but now I’m making soap with Bruv. We’ve got some real delicacies brewing in the kitchen – green basil soap with mint leaves, brown chocolate soap with chocolate powder sprinkled on top, layered purple vanilla and chocolate soap, red rosemary soap and dark blue soap with oatmeal on the top.

It smells a bit. But it’s fun, and sticky, and now my hands are disarmingly clean.

When we restock our ingredients we’re going to make Chai and Honey soap, and then some using Fruitalicious tea from T2. (My brainchildren. I think I should go and start my own brand of soap. I could sell it at the markets each Saturday, what do you reckon?)

I made a bit of a documentary in order to immortalise Bruv and my sudden enthusiasm for soap-creating. It’s cool. Maybe I’ll show you it one day, along with Maudie doing awesome tricks. These tricks are awesome, trust me.

Uh. Um. I might go and write some notes for modern history, goodness me I need to. Love you like ... guessed it yet? SOAP. Soap soap soap soap. Also, Chloe’s new EP:

Thirty days has September

April, June and November

All the rest have 31 except ...

February aloooooone.

x

The Internet is a STUPID THING

It’s okay! Relax. I’m still alive guys – party at my house? So for those who actually care in the slightest about my well-being/state of aliveness (aka Claudia and Anna who called me up to make sure that I wasn’t, in fact, dead), this is what happened.

Half an hour after the last post, in which I announced that I would post again in half an hour so that you all would know that I was alive, the server crashed. Or something. I got a message which said:

Error 413 – The request made by your client was too large. That is all we know.

Then there was a little cartoon of a broken-down robot.

THANKS A LOT GOOGLE. THANKS A BLOODY LOT. All you know my foot.

I tried commenting on the last post, making a long and sincere apology and reassurance that I was still breathing. It didn’t work. I couldn’t even log in or access my account. If anyone knows what that’s about or how to fix it, I’d appreciate the knowledge. Even my dad (computer genius guy) didn’t know how to fix it (or couldn’t be bothered ... we were watching Toy Story 3 and eating Thai entrees and stir fry at the time).

So after that whole saga is finished, I have some news to tell you guys.

NEWS? Wow, you have no idea how excited we are about that, Claresy.

I know, I know. So I’ll give you a hint. It starts with ‘e’ and it rhymes with “winglish hextension moo”.

Oh my goodness what happened with your English Extension Poo?

Real mature guys. Real mature. I had a brush with death yesterday, you were there, you heard all about it. You ought to be more considerate.

We’re awfully sorry. We love you, Clarey B, to the stars and back. Please, tell us your exciting news.

Oh, I just HANDED MY EXTENSION TWO MAJOR WORK IN YESTERDAY HOMG. Please ignore the ‘homg’, I also stayed up until 3:30 finishing it so I’m quite ... well, hyperactively exhausted. Had a nice long nap in English Advanced though. I also filmed a few bits and pieces for this thing I’m doing to say farewell to our year at our Farewell Breakfast at the end of next term sometime. But it’s not that easy. Why are my girlies so camera shy? I’m all nice, you know, hey guys, want to say something for the video Alex and I are making for the end of the year, and they go ARGH – A CAMERA. Tsk.

Is it because you physically attack them with the video camera, forcing them to present a self-conscious version of themselves to be immortalised forever in the medium of video?

Shut up. They’ll thank me one day ...

Today there was also a grab-as-many-tubs-of-Ben-and-Jerry’s-ice-cream-as-you-can-for-a-gold-coin-donation thing going on at Railway Square, Cindy and Hannie went during lunch and returned with their arms full of ice cream. Unfortunately (ha) it had to be eaten straight away as today is the last day of the term and we can’t leave anything in the freezer over the holidays. So that was deliciousness on a spoon.

Finally, my mum bought me a book called The Big Trip and it’s all about gap years and backpacking around the world etc. It is actually the most exciting thing I have ever seen IN MY LIFE. I am going to travel with Louise (hopefully) at the end of next year, we’re going to see the sights, I’m going to SWEDEN – although it’ll be winter there so I’m thinking that I should postpone that adventure till the middle of the year – and yes I am so excited. If you want tell me where I should go! J I’m very very excited. Life is pretty good atm.

Happy holidays to everyone on holidays. Happy “holidays” to all year twelves on “holidays”, don’t do too much study, I’m sure not going to.

Love you like the feeling of having handed in my extension two major work and knowing I’m not going to be murdered and the first day of holidays and adventuring and free ice cream and other things. (That’s a lot.)

x