octolloween

skool

1. There's this show on SBS called Road Trip Nation Australia which is about a couple young people who go on a road trip to discover their true ambitions and selves,and I suspect at the end they'll find a couple things they love to do which include tribal dancing and semi-atheism,and find that the best way is your own way,there's no right path and such other 0ft-quoted sayings that sound trite and weightless,but really do carry the most important messages,words people probably ignore in favor of finding their meaning in their own life experiences.

2. That is to say,when asked "So,what's after graduation?" (which looms near,only 90 days away),I tend to answer with a pros and cons list-two choices: to continue uni,or to dive into the workforce-hoping to get a conversation going,a lot of us are lucky enough to have fully formed opinions-you'd stay to do your honors or pursue some other postgraduate program because you think 21's a bit raw for work and you've really got to pump your CV if you want a good first-salary,then there are those bound to work by contracts,and some just fence-sitters who are really just ambivalent about things and will end up going where the wind blows them to.

3. Why are there only two choices?Work,or continue uni-neither of these seem exceptionally attractive to me,but the world,or your parents at least,push you to define yourself as something or to move yourself towards a certain direction-which I think is the more important issue,I'd prefer for the journey to continue rather than being stuck in static contemplating life,the self,as if all that thinking over stale latte and sheer passivity will magically help you resolve the ultimate Why.

4. So I,personally feel that I should set off for work-sure I'd be lacking some other certificate or qualification,but I don't value those things as much as other people may,I know in 4-6 years I'll want to start pursuing my true dreams and in the meantime I want to learn to be many things-a reliable adult,a fascinating storyteller,a secret gentleman,a Russian double-agent,a hairless centaur-and explore the possibilities-and I feel that being in uni keeps me in a tight box,I'd rather get back on the road and make shit up as I go along.

5.

Now hollow fires burn out to black,

And lights are guttering low:

Square your shoulders, lift your pack,

And leave your friends and go.

Oh never fear, man, nought's to dread,

Look not to left nor right:

In all the endless road you tread

There's nothing but the night.

(AE Housman-from "A Shropshire Lad")

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meringue

1. Made this recipe from one of Jamie Oliver's older books,Chicken in Milk.I do this thing where I ponder over the recipe the day or night before,and imagine a slick and seamless process where everything goes well and an apron-clad me pops the thing into the oven,smiles into the camera and gives a brilliant thumbs up.Of course,in reality I had to struggle to get things done-I get nervous during Preheat The Oven period,always afraid it'll get to hot and things will prematurely melt-and then there was frying the chicken in a snug pot,reason I avoid Asian cooking is because I'm quite horrible with the cook top.Things get burnt,takeaway ordered,friends lost.Except nowhere that dramatic lah.

Alas,my dish came out beautiful except the gravy tasted weird and I realized I had accidentally added the lemon juice sans seeds,when it only demanded zest.So I nibbled a bit,took a few chunks and resigned to the overpowering sourness of the dish,but when I returned from the library there was only a bare carcass left and to my amazement the Sister and her misleadingly skinny Black Hole Tummy friend had found the thing irresistible,and devoured it to bits.This is what family is for,above all else.

2. And tomorrow I'm attempting Jamie's NYC Cheesecake,from his new book which I love more than I let show.It is so full of bright colors,incredible photographs and he goes around America gathering these gritty,street-folk (I'm really not describing this well) dishes-I don't care too much for the salads or soups,his previous books contain plenty of those-but its the crocodile popcorn,rabbit stew (I know,I know! Rabbits are too cute to end up eaten! I would never,or maybe very,very reluctantly eat one,but I'm curious to just COOK one rabbit dish-feel how its texture is,see how it goes with basil and sage and all those wonderful herbs,then graciously serve it to a willing rabbit-eater,I've found a volunteer for Projek Kartoon Bugs Bunny-the stupid name might distract people from the horrific thought of a dead rabbit in my freezer-,may attempt it next month),Mexican breakfast,gruesome but delicious looking omelette's.

And I don't know exactly WHERE but when I do get to the two crocodile meat dishes,I'll want to catch and kill and skin and carve the crocodile myself.Meaning see it through from the pond (or WHEREVER crocodiles live) right to the dinner table.I've got more than half the recipes in this book bookmarked to be attempted,I just hope I'll be better at the cook top by the end of it.

3. I admit all this misplaced bravado is strongly inspired from having watched too many Man vs. Wild episodes.Bear Grylls drank his own urine and squeezed liquids from a huge piece of elephant dung IN THE NAME OF SURVIVAL! So,I guess,seeing that one of my ultimate hero (is it still ok to admit having heroes at my age?) is out there in jungles and oceans and deserts being a fearless badass,I should be able to do the meringue on the cheesecake tomorrow.I've baked plenty,but attempted meringue just twice and both times they were such epic failures I dumped both after a couple spoonfuls.

We will march on,and skin crocs and kill just one tiny rabbit and bake meringue and do amazing cheesecake,and both Jamie and Bear will appear from the skies like Mufasa and call on me to continue to do amazing and wonderful things.Or at least,things that appear so in my mind.

But first,the meringue.

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raquel

this spread is to fucking die for

so much sex/electricity in every single shot,all done so tastefully/effortlessly

model raquel zimmermann,shot by mario serrenti for french vogue's nov issue

via jeremydante

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The Kellies : An Introduction

“I think I accidentally shaved off a nipple last night”.

It was the dimwittedness of Kelly 3 that made her charming, or at least tolerable to the rest. These four girls were all enrolled in the same university, had their mealtimes synced and normally prowled over campus in a perfect line with legs freshly-waxed, adorned with heels only found on Italian runways and weren’t available in stores until a couple seasons after, during when the Kellies wouldn’t be caught dead wearing them. Though differentiated by a few narrow aspects, all four were nicknamed Kelly but numerically identified according to some arbitrary rank. They all had long, cheap-looking weaves that perpetually bellowed against the wind as they spoke, and despite being born and having spent most of their lives in their native country of Marrasia, the Kellies managed an American accent that was severely affected with riotous R’s and S’s and no one knew the origin of.

While others in Funtown University mingled liberally and maintained connection with select, though partially exclusive social circles, the Kellies reserved themselves to a clique and were normally spotted in parties or functions cuddled closely in one tight corner, chatting about the most ho-hum things with much exaggerated enthusiasm. Despite their unspoken contract explicitly banning direct, solo verbal or non-verbal communication with a non-Kelly, one of them had in fact dipped their toes into forbidden waters, once in a while sneaking mealtimes with others and it was through fellow non-Kelly and closeted foot fetishist, Ehma, that Kelly 2 was kept informed of the many absurd, growing speculations on the Kellies.

These lies were typically harmless, though some of them truly fascinated Kelly 2-who, in the privacy of her own bedroom, secretly harbored a large collection of old spy novels belonging to her late father-for one, it was rumored that the decent-looking but exceptionally dumb Kelly 3 was a beggar/failed prostitute the Kellies had picked up and given a radical makeover, and prescribed a new, more polished dossier to. Kelly 4, who ate nothing but peas although thankfully she had a found a peculiar market on the outskirts of Funtown that sold peas in many sizes, colors and forms, was rumored to be an actual, but abnormally intelligent sheep the Kellies had a retired witch transform to human. A boy their age, Jeri, notorious for his promiscuity and whose penis was rumored to run on natural steroids so it swelled to the size of three MAN-sized beer cans upon erection, had openly bragged to others that he had plunged his grossly oversized phallus into Kelly 4, but confided to a friend that Kelly 4 did not moan or yell out profanities like a normal girl did during intercourse, but made bestial sheep noises.

The Kellies remained in their bubble, perceived themselves the reigning power of some elite group that did not exist, and continued to dress themselves in the most expensive garments their parents' ever-contracting wealth could afford, trained themselves to play some imaginary social arena, all to impress people who found the entire Kelly phenomena too ridiculous to ignore,and gave the attention the Kellies thirsted for.One keen observer was Rumer: A tall, unconventionally handsome and bespectacled politics Major who was said to own what people called The Rumer Factory. The story goes that Rumer spent two years in training with the Asian CIA/Government-owned Mafia where he specialized in Tactical Negotiations & Strategic PR and learned that with enough patience, networking skill and a personal image that hovered between brutal intimidation and cuddly approachableness, he could spin the most absurd lies that gossip and hearsay would eventually carry far and deep into the community.

Rumer was employable with payment, though it was unknown to the World that the Rumer Factory was no one-man show: Rumer and Kelly 2 had tried for years to penetrate and disband the Kellies, with rumors that would have otherwise drove others wild with negative thoughts and infant paranoia. The two attempted it half-heartedly at first, with computer software they crafted nude pictures of all four Kellies engaged in a risqué, tastefully-designed lesbian orgy for which the duo hired uncanny lookalikes, broke and desperate actors to make a video version of, and released this into the Internet. Being the perverted and unpredictable world it was, this video found its way into the adult entertainment industry and went on to be a huge success under the appropriately crude title of ‘Popping Kellies’, inspiring spin-off titles and a range of transparent and glow-in-the-dark lingerie, lesbian sex toys and a short-lived, post-midnight reality show on Fox that featured four big-breasted college students who denounce their heterosexuality and run to a faraway ghost town to rear a bunch of precocious sheep.

A portion of the profits from the venture was won, via Street Court-where drug dealers, baby-peddlers and other degenerates went to settle arguments, for the presiding Judge Modern Justice to reflect over and call the shots.Rumer and Kelly 2, found a new appetite for destruction from having fallen so hard before, and began to use these funds to scheme, and gradually execute a plan tentatively titled “Snakebite on the Crotch”. They hired help and built a team of superb intelligentsia, consisting of four other university students-including Ehma and Jeri- who each contributed a different talent and dynamic to the newly-expanded and Street Court-funded Rumer Factory: while business ran as usual on the forefront, the team gathered covertly and devoted considerable hours and mental energy into fortifying their near-bulletproof plan.

“I guess you can’t have twins and simultaneously breastfeed them now”.

With that, Kelly 3 clutched her left breast and began sobbing profusely, although she didn’t fully comprehend what Kelly 1 had just said. She accepted her stupidity and thought God balanced this by gifting her incredible skin and a taut, gravity-proof bum felt her search for Mr. Right threatened by the missing of one nipple. Kelly 2 took a bite from her Granny apple although it tasted like her Uncle Dio's armpit, and nonchalantly put her twice-weekly manicured hand on Kelly 2’s as a genuine form of consolation.

...

Whatever Works

Much like his earlier work,his main character's a highly-opinionated,self-proclaimed genius who has trouble with the world,in general.Constantly on a debate with himself,preaching straight into the camera-this time in the form of Curb's Larry David,who although layered with many kooky habits,fails to seem like anything but the director himself talking.

That is,when you take what little the film has,its Woody Allen with one simple,clear message about Love that's delivered in what starts as a random meet-cue between Boris and Melodie,and when the steam begins to run out there,one character after another appears literally at their doorstep,this segues the film into one or two equally simple and underdeveloped stories that reassert that one message: If it makes you happy,then why not?Whatever Works!

Not to say it was a bad movie,but in the ranks of his other achievements-this felt extremely underwritten,although I did laugh a lot (Larry David seems the perfect suitor to Allen's brilliant,sharp one-liners).As for his co-star Evan Rachel Wood,no doubt a talented actress,was miscast.It just seemed to be a role that Chloe Sevigny could've played better with little to zero effort.

Whatever Works seems to be a throwback to his earlier work,Manhattan and Mighty Aphrodite especially,unfortunately lacking any of the artistic flair,pungent dialogue or memorable characters.

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without feathers

pic from papertissue

2.

I hadn’t seen him for years, and when he reappeared the feeling wasn’t shock or panic but some kind of numb acceptance that sooner or later, fate would head this way. The ceiling lights were dim and my living room furniture stood between, once sturdy mahogany chairs the wife had flown from Bangkok and other poorly built crap she had collected from being in Asia nearly 8 months every year, the sight of each room I usually endured with a touch of Drink and fading hope that despite the chances, a plane crash would eventually call for that unsettled soul of hers. Maybe it’d crash right here on this house, all this furniture would perish with.

When you’ve moved on from the memory of someone who’s chosen to vanish, and other thoughts fill that vacated space in your mind-even if you attempt the remember the little features, if the eyes were slanted or deep, wide things that contained all of a man’s heavy, tri-colored soul, or if one lip was bigger than the other so the face carried the bruised, tough-ass-motherfucker look of a retired boxer-details are taken over by new details, and it is under this terrible cycle which most people, one way or another, get consumed into perfect irrelevance-that is, until God or the clockmaker/dreamweaver/Armadillo King and His universe turn around, lays its retribution in the strength of a faceless stranger.

He instructed me to sit down, even with a table separating us I felt little to no reassurance-I knew what this man was capable of, while others toiled in universities and offices to learn skills to earn a salary or survive the modern world, he had no such concern and was born with a pure and natural kind of violence-it was there in the grip of his fingers, his pose of a bendless spine and even more unwavering mind that knew just one objective-no games or tricks or theatre of any sort, though evidenced by his wanting us to sit down, rather than marching straight to business-he was willing to delay gratification, instead a conversation lay first on the night’s still murky agenda.

3. (B&W week begins today)

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from such great heights

the lighting and colors are so dreamlike

shot by the brilliant Nick Zantop for Life Element magazine

source: fotodecadent

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the xx

4 on XX.

1. The image you see is in fact not their album cover for X,which is merely a large white X on a black backdrop.

2. Radio Dept. + Explosions in the Sky=The XX

3. Their MySpace indicates the band will be touring near everyday until March next year.

4. Someone on a forum wrote that one track, 'Heart Skipped a beat' was "inexpressibly gorgeous". True.

5. X is best enjoyed on earphones,and is totally unlike anything that has come out this year.

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Whip It!

Just look at the cast: Oscar nominee Ellen Page, the incomparable Drew Barrymore, Juliette Lewis, Arrested Development alum Alia Shawkat, SNL Comedienne Extraordinaire Kirsten Wiig, and Zoe Bell who kicked ass in the underrated Tarantino classic "Death Proof".I love all these people and would be first in line to see any of their work,and I have no doubt the film aims to attract first and foremost freaks like me.

And so it has all kinds of great things you'd normally expect to find in an indie movie. A couple swimming underwater in a weird,serene way.The mention of some obscure 80s Christian rock-metal band.A pinball machine.KOL's 'Knocked Up' playing over the opening credits (and you KNOW how much I love that song).A geeky,hedious guy in the Romeo role who happens to be a band singer,tours in a small van and is constantly smiling with wayward teeth like a recession time poster-child. Jimmy Fallon. It wants to be a movie about an underdog finding her strength in a little-known sport she plays with a bunch of girl-power,be-yourself type strong personalities,one of which is actually named Smashlee Simpson.

On paper,everything looks amazing.But in execution,things falls out of context and out of sync with the big picture.The sport is impatiently explained in 10 seconds,the film shoots off and gains no momentum before attempting climax.I did get a few laughs here and there but felt that the best lines weren't given time (like,they were just spoken into the wind or in passing) i.e "I'm part of a cult", or "We deserve better villains".

I do like Juliette Lewis,and thought she was truly badass here.And I like the forward-looking,open ending.As an actor,Drew Barrymore is extremely easy to love and she can make something so tepid like 50 First Dates a good flick.As a director though,she was more preoccupied with what she wanted the film to be,rather than the actual film itself.As a result it definitely zoomed past characterization and proper storytelling completely,but above all else,I think Whip It! is defined most by being a MONUMENTAL waste of talented actors.

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the ten

1. Loved this week's office. This is our wedding,why did we invite all these people?

2. Art is the only way to escape without leaving home.

3. Sometimes you save me from hitting rock bottom,and you don't even know it.

4. The thing about his eyes,was that they weren't just eyes.Coupled with his quiet demeanor and the tendency for his skin to produce faint white flakes when it was hot so his arms appeared to have grown scales,and his neither too-tall or too-short height and especially,his habit of wearing african bangles he wore just to ward certain individuals off and if they did approach he'd say they were fertility ornaments or something equally non conventional simply to keep them at bay (although they weren't African,just the ones that came with a Happy Meal when they had a Madagascar food-film tie-in),his eyes-opaque brown and always glistened with clean indifference-made people question,with their heads cocked to one side and a disapproving smile-if there was something about the boy,that was just not right.

He swam at the local pool on Sunday mornings,when like any other day-the house would be uncomfortably quiet although without all the qualities that normally rendered such quiet desirable-the whole family made an effort to wake up before dawn and part their separate ways,so when they convened for dinner each would relate their Sunday Morning stories and his never strayed from that morning swim,during which on one occasion Mid-May when clouds hovered in the face of the sun so it appeared as if evening was closer than it actually was,that he saw something he knew,that even if he had the courage to finally share with anyone,the words would mix or the memory fade into irreconcilable bits of half-truths or the brain would strategically just disable his wanting to share it:even now,8 years later,although with time a huge chunk of it was swept away to a dark corner in his mind where only nightmares could trespass into-a few images survived.

There was that red swimsuit,so vividly red it nearly overcame any other detail.A soft drizzle,although the rain that fell burned his skin from the inside.And far,far away beyond the pool and its fences,and the nearby playground or offices,just really far away-a figure looming,hunching,moving slowly but undoubtedly moving closer-and with its growing size,its presence doubled and tripled and eventually grew too large and terrifying and unthinkable that he passed out.

They found him at the bottom of the pool,and one of the older boys revived him and drove him to the nearby hospital although since then,the family's noticed a slight change in the boy they care not acknowledge publicly.Something inside the boy continued to rise now and then,these images reawakened the same senses,and on this day,meddling at the park on an otherwise uneventful weekday-a girl his age,a stranger,came to him-and there it was,no decision,no travelling of thoughts or impulses or funny things jumping over synapses or hardly a second passed before his entire body and mind veered towards her-and clicked,snapped,saw,knew.

...

let love rule

erk

who

People our age are constantly vexing "I don't know who I am".

What if one day,you do?When all that uncertainty passes,and you're able to lay down what exactly defines you-be it a namecard,the job,having three kids,a bookshelf full of pictures,the loss of a daughter.What if one day,that's it?Something so large and indestructible it can't not be part of you.Even if you wanted to prolong the search,you couldn't.Imagine being a 40 year old dentist,married with kids and enough money for the annual vacation and retirement.What if you wanted things to change,wouldn't that be hard?While there's mystery,there's a chance to determine what tomorrow brings.There's an opportunity to be whoever and whatever you want to be.

Maybe test out different personalities,crash and burn-who cares?At this age,you feel like you've got a lot to lose.Like you're skating on thin ice,think and rethink every step,dip your toes in the wrong spot and everything shatters.Build a castle,find perfection.

Where will this life take you-and do you really want to know?

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