Monday, February 14, 2011

Happy V. Day. Here's a freaking arse whipping.

link
So I have been chipping away at fitness and exercise... to little avail (well, this is not entirely true, but still).

In an effort to maintain some accountability, I asked a mate to check in with me via dedicated fitness blog. He read it and ripped it to shreds.

So, happy v day. An arse whipping (figuratively, fortunately) is imminent!

Tuesday, February 8, 2011

half naked Iggy Pop, child modelling and...um...social work...wait, what?

Wait, what?!
Oh, that's right. Facebook.


This photograph was taken by my extraordinarily talented friend Rodney. Who is also a Doctor. I call him The Doctor. Other occupations include, fastest man of 1 metre, purveyor of fine snow globes, wearer of slacks, gadabout.

At any rate, Rodney's many fine and varied talents are not the point of this blog post (an entire blog would be necessary) rather, Facebook...again. Bored PhD student, remember?

So like, sponsored ads + photographs of Iggy Pop = hilarity is sure to ensue.

Ad for a child modelling agency, ad for beer...  pictures of Iggy Pop.

Yeah.

Weird.

I guess that's the point of the ad with the tag line, "thinking social work" ... why YES. I was. I WAS thinking social work Facebook. Good call.

vegas, baby!


from certin.com via Trespass Mag
 My dear friends Oli and El are currently in Vegas, having what I hope is a mega-trashy, cliche, dazzled-by-the-bright-lights-and-cheap-champagne inspired wedding.

In fact, I hope it's a drive-through wedding with a cheeseburger as the wedding cake.



from some random blog

I love you guys.

Don't forget to bring me back a pony.

Or an Elvis suit.

Or a pony in an Elvis suit - the last one being so incredibly awesome, I am not even sure it exists. But you guys are awesome, and you exist, so it's possible.

"Just because I'm paranoid..."



But perhaps they're over there planning their attack...?

Of course, by they, I mean the Grammar Nazis. Not me, I'm just some bored PhD student who should probably be doing something other than writing in her lame-arsed blog.

Friday, February 4, 2011

A chilling reminder

I was born five years after Tropical Cyclone Tracy and the almost complete obliteration of what was Darwin. It's one of those things, a haunting thought that wind and rain could be so severe, that people would lose houses, lives, everything.
In the Cyclone Tracy exhibit at the Darwin museum, visitors can walk in to a small, dark room, and listen to a recording of the cyclone made by a priest, who took shelter after attending a midnight mass service. I found this at once fascinating and heart-wrenching, the sound of the wind, like a wild animal with no care or concern for anything in its path, is more terrifying to me than any mythical or human threat. Its absence of reason or ration; it's just wind, but it's so much more. 
Th above was a beginning of a blog post that I'd written on the eve of Cyclone Yasi's impending, and inevitable, encounter with the coast of North Queensland.
It seems a little pithy and trite now, but still... cyclones scare the shit out of me. I was quite taken by the contrast between the way that (for example) Yasi was reported compared to other cyclones in history. Incidentally, I seem to compare all to Tracy, probably because she is, to me, a spectre that looms large in the history of Australia, and represents the kind of cold, emotionless destruction that has such deeply personal impacts on those that withstand it.
Farmers, whose resilience and strength was tested after Cyclone Larry's decimation of banana crops, face once again the prospect of rebuilding their livelihood. I can only imagine the despair felt at the sight of a flattened banana plantation crop; knowing that your family's income and wellbeing depend on something that has been all but obliterated by something that seems so casually volatile as a bit of wind.
Though it's not just 'a bit of wind'.
It's so much more - a wild animal, a cold, unreasoning and uncaring monster...

Frankie says...

via red bubble
Courtesy of my mate Damien Mason, a great artist and wearer of fine hats.