Are we human or are we dugong?

Things have been good. I’ve been in a good mood most of the time. I find myself smiling ridiculous amounts, listening to my favourite band of all time, The Doors, a lot and just generally being happy, even when broke, unemployed and somewhat stuck in the suburbs. (The only thing getting me down is a chunk of the Serbian community that has been gossiping about me being a junkie. Thanks a lot, folks. As if I didn’t feel removed enough from that community already!)

Nikola and Jasmina are still in Byron Bay, making the south-west a little less fun, but Zig is back from Kempsey, making Sydney ten times better. We hung out in Newtown the other day, my Happy Place where I need to move to soon, and I saw this girl I once met in Hyde Park when she and a bunch of others asked Morgan and me to join their ‘party’. (Read about that here.) She calls herself Poppy Salmon and is really adorable and wears lots of bright colours. She recognised me before I could figure out where I knew her from.

Also, I got to hang out with Emma, finally – it had been too long. We + Morgan went to the Aquarium to see the greatest creatures on the planet – my beloved dugongs. I was so happy, I almost cried! They are so fantastic! That was a really good day. The Aquarium is such a relaxing, lovely place to be; entry should cost less because if it did, I’d be there every day! Emma changed that Killers song into “are we human or are we dugong?” because she is brilliant like that! (Photos here).

I finally wrote that review that was taking forever. It’s up on The Dwarf: here.

Also, help me decide. 5^th April – to take part in a zine fair in Wollongong OR to see Evan Dando at the Annandale? Or to somehow squeeze both in?

We should be inside by evening

       

 

I spent Tuesday attempting not to die from the horrible weather and the bad mood it put me in. I spent the day reading, hanging out with my sister as she built a model of a castle from Terry Pratchett books, listening to The Doors and generally being bored. My Canadian cousin Zoran came back from New Zealand and is staying with us until Saturday when he flies back to Canadia. He’s sleeping in my sister’s room so Jelena & I have become roomies. I decided I had to watch Gossip Girl but I couldn’t find it on DVD at Blockbuster (does it even exist on DVD yet?) so I got The OC season 1 instead. I’m convinced the girl working was judging me for borrowing that… But it puts me in such a good mood! Then I discovered that the PSP box in my room was not Vlado’s or Zoran’s PSP which I figured they’d left as it was too heavy to carry around; it turned out to be a present from their brother Sasa – it was filled with Canadian candy! Much more exciting than a PSP for someone like me who’s not into video games!!

 

On Wednesday I had to get out of the house because I’d been inside too long, so Annie and I went to the city. We wandered around Town Whore a bit and it was packed with people. We walked down Circular Quay-way, and stopped at some little park in Wynyard, which was quite nice. But then it started to rain a bit so we walked down to the Museum of Contemporary Art. There are so many new things in there that I’m completely in love with. GO HAVE A LOOK! Then we sat around outside people-watching a lot and making up new lives for everyone that walked past. We saw a man in a cowboy hat and a Marlboro jacket! Then back to Town Whore where we spent a long time looking at CDs in Red Eye, and I ended up buying a Doors DVD – one of those Classic Albums things, for their first record. It’s a pretty good DVD and features a snippet of one of their first demos, before Robby joined the band! I love The Doors…..so fucking much. Then we went to Chinatown for lunch, then to our new favourite spot, across from the cake shop, for cigarette smoking and barley tea drinking. Theeeeen to a park in Surry Hills where we hung out for a while before heading home. A really nice day.

 

So far today I’ve watched two Doors DVDs, a Bowie DVD, listened to two Doors CDs, made a mini-zine out of my short story Survival of the Fittest, eaten ice cream and complained about being bored and broke.

Update…

Thursday, 18^th

Up early, lift to the city from parents who were driving to the fish markets, walk from Pyrmont to Town Hall…overly nice Red Cross money collector complimented my hair (and noticed it was dreadlocked…most people just think it’s a manic growth on top of my head) and my fork bracelet…met up with Kylar, coffee and cigarettes all over the place, Hyde Park and Bill & Toni’s and Hyde Park again….home, Slavica and Jasmina helping my mum cook for Sveti Nikola, but had to leave soon after I arrived…all day running around helping with whatever needed to be done around the house…late night Oz watching. Consumed five coffees and was still dead tired.

 

Friday, 19^th

Sveti Nikola, my family’s Slava. I am horrible at getting into the spirit of things so I mostly hid in the living room and avoided all the guests who were in the sun room. I get really awkward every year because I rarely see a lot of those people, and there’s the confusion of whether I should just shake their hand or do I need to kiss them as well, and do I kiss them once or three times, and what the hell should I talk to them about, etc. Plus, every year someone makes a comment about me losing weight, which makes me wonder if I was obese as a child or something… Towards the end of the night I managed to get away with sitting on the couch and reading as most of the guests had left, my parents were with the older ones and my sister with her friends, and Jasmina had left – these days I have only a few Serbian friends, and those that I do have go to Nikola’s house because his Slava is also Sveti Nikola, and as they’ve been going to Nikola’s well before they met me, they of course still go there. Plus, everyone gets drunk there so it makes more sense anyway. Our house tends to be a bit quieter. Sveti Nikola reminds me every year, very blatantly, just how hard it is for my family to spend a day together and get along. The upside is waiting for midnight so I can eat chocolate.

 

Saturday, 20^th

       

 

Kalaediscope fun; Emma; Kylie; Seeta & T-Nev; Katie & moi; Arex

 

During the day, Annie and I went to a small zine fair that was happening at the first Voiceworks launch to happen outside Victoria. It was nice. Small and kind of quiet, and the people that came along didn’t really seem to know what zines were, but it was chilled out; I mostly sat around reading and occasionally talking to the kids from Just Like Candy & the Black Rose Anarchist Bookshop (on Enmore Rd, Newtown). Afterwards we wandered around a bit, bought a present for Emma which was directly responsible for us speaking Engrish all day – part of the present was a Guns n Roses cigarette case. On the side it had a warning label against smoking but it said something like “cigarette smoke the harmful health”…what the fuck? So all day we were speaking Engrish – replacing every L with an R. “hero, may I have a rarge vanirra mirkshake?” Then I went home, frantically rushed around for an hour getting ready to leave again, then off to Scary Canary…which is a terrible venue but Up the Bracket happens there and it featured good people + vodka and therefore wasn’t horrible like the venue is. Good company featured: Emma (we were celebrating her birthday), Alex (Arex), Katie (ok just quietly, I’m sort of in love with Katie), Kylie, Seeta, T-Nev, etc. Seabas played a bit of November Rain – hell yeah! After a while we went to Emma’s (new) place which I really like. Stairs everywhere! Emma put on The Doors and packed a cone as soon as we walked in which made me very happy.  Katie asked me why I love The Doors and I really couldn’t put an answer into words – they are just so special to me. Bit of hanging around, being lazy, that sort of high when sitting on a couch with a blanket is just like the most perfect thing, then we wanted to watch That 70s Show but the speakers connected to the fancy-computer-TV weren’t working so instead we watched so-bad-it’s-good Stripperella on SBS, then something else I don’t remember, before we went to sleep.

 

Sunday, 21^st

  

 

I woke up around 9.30 and Annie was already awake. We sat on the little balcony smoking – I really wanted to have a cigarette first thing in the morning because I can never do that whilst living at home! Then we wrote a note for Emma and left before her housemates, who we don’t know, got up to find two weird kids hanging out in their living room. Wandered the city in search of a pretzel (nowhere to be found!), then went home. I napped on the couch, watched Oz, and otherwise generally lazed around.

  

Monday, 22^nd

Spent the day in a really unexpected unbelievably happy mood. I don’t even know why! I just feel good all over. Have lazed around in the sun, reading, listening to silverchair’s Live From Faraway Stables, Love, Alice Coltrane (the last two thanks to Kylar), dancing around the backyard like a character from Hair, discovering Gogol Bordello and reconnecting with my Eastern European roots with mad gypsy music. Good times.

 

(Photos by ANNIE LY.)

This music is the glue of the world, Mark. It’s what holds it all together. Without this, life would be meaningless.

 

 

The weather people told me yesterday would be twenty-three with rain. Lies! I almost died of heat exhaustion. Still, that was probably better than rain during the Newtown Festival which happened yesterday. It was good but not as good as the last couple of years. I’m not sure why. The stalls were pretty much the same and the music was good (except the awful skip-hop that hurt my ears) and the crowds were as impossible to move through as always. I think maybe it was the police presence. Fascists on every corner. The police have this impressive ability to instil fear in me when I’m doing absolutely nothing illegal. I was also in a bad mood for no apparent reason. I need to control my angst. Maybe it was the sugar comedown from eating nothing all day but a bag of fairy-floss and a slurpee? (A public apology to Annie, Zig & Kylar for my moodiness.)

 

The Wahas played a great set at the Essential Stage. They played a few new songs which sounded really, really good & the ending to “Cheap Stuff” is always so impressive to watch. Every time I see them play I get even more excited about Sydney music. I don’t want to spend my life chasing after things that have already happened. You know, The Doors and friends, Hole and friends, The Libertines and friends, etc. Those bands were amazing and I love them to bits, but I don’t want to only dream about how wonderful it would have been to experience that from its beginnings and to be a part of it. And that’s why the Sydney music scene is so exciting to me; because I CAN be a part of it and because the music is really fucking good! (I’m going to be writing about my favourite Sydney bands in instalments soon, so stay tuned!)

 

The Wahas are playing their first headlining show this Friday (14^th November) at the Hopetoun with two other great Sydney bands – The Vignettes and Chaingang. It’s their End of HSC celebration show as well! TEETH interviewed Joel from The Vignettes a while ago and you can read the interview here. (We also did an interview with The Wahas which can be read here.) Anyway, it’s only $10 and it will be a great show so you & all your friends should go! And get there early so you don’t miss The Vignettes who will be playing first!

 

I’m currently listening to the Empire Records soundtrack and wishing my DVD was back in my hands. I don’t even know who has it anymore. The last I saw of it was the case at Nenad’s place but no disc inside! “In the immortal words of The Doors…the time to hesitate is through!”

 

  

Consumerism on Monday

I spent a boring and kind of sick weekend at home and missed what was perhaps an opportunity to do something big(ger) with TEETH. I hope I haven’t completely fucked that chance up. I was just feeling too sick to leave the house. I spent two days watching Scrubs, South Park and Law & Order SVU on TV all day long. Oh pay TV! Dr Cox on Scrubs is quite possibly my favourite character, ever. Of course all this time I was dying of boredom but didn’t even consider that perhaps I should write the last essay of second year; the one that was due on Friday. When I hand that in I can forget about uni for almost four months, but procrastination is just something I am too good at to stop practicing it.

 

So yesterday I had to leave the house because I’d been inside too long; I felt unusual ($3 for picking up that reference, Annie & Kylar not included). I printed out fifteen copies of my resume with the intention of handing it out around Newtown. My current place of employment won’t need me for a while, and even when they do need me, it’s only three hour shifts at $15 per hour, about once or twice a week. Oh and it’s on the other side of the city so I lose almost $10 just getting there and back! I didn’t actually give out a single resume, nor leave my zines anywhere as I’d also planned. But I did: meet up with Kylar; spend some time in Gould’s Books where I want to live (I bought “Homo Sovieticus” by Alexander Zinoviev and so far, I really like it. His writing style is brilliant); wander down King St; find a $25 fake-fur coat at Vinnie’s which I probably should have bought; hang out at that park which I always forget the name of, the one with Mighty Boosh graffiti everywhere; talk about possible ways to combat my boredom during the holidays (find a job? take up kick-boxing? start to live healthy? write a memoir? develop a drug habit?); buy a handcuff necklace from Dangerfield which I’d wanted for a while. I also really want a handcuff belt buckle but then I’d look like a scene kid and I don’t want that. Then Kylar left and I wandered down Enmore Rd where I found this amazing 80s dress I really wanted to buy, but which I was unfortunately too tall for.

 

Then to American Apparel on Oxford St where, as always, I was really excited about everything but didn’t actually find anything I wanted to buy, except tights which are overpriced like a motherbitch. One of the dudes working asked about my Jim Morrison bag because his mum always talks about The Doors! I wrote down Annie’s site for him. Then I spent more money but not on clothing and shoes, as planned. I seriously couldn’t find any shoes I liked that didn’t have a heel so big I’d be a giant and/or break some bones wearing them. There was even less clothing I liked. Instead, I bought A Clockwork Orange on DVD (I recently read the book and it’s pretty much one of my favourites now) and Badmotorfinger by Soundgarden (not really that good but it’s worth it for “Jesus Christ Pose” and Chris Cornell before Audioslave. I was going to buy something by Bloc Party but then decided on Straylight Run instead, then when I couldn’t find any of their CDs somehow decided on Soundgarden) and taro milk tea from Easy Way which is like liquid cake. Soooo very good.

 

I caught the train home with my sister and we joked about being embarrassed to be seen with each other.

I’m unclean, a libertine

This blog comes to you from St Johnz Park.

 

This blog will combine my Livejournal with every public blog I’ve ever tried to write. That means it’ll be more personal than the previous blogs but more censored than my Livejournal. So if you’re not interested in my life, you may not want to read, or if you’re interested in the gory details, you won’t find them here. It’ll be a recount of my days because I’m really paranoid that I’ll get amnesia one day but I don’t want to keep a private journal because this way I feel like I’m talking to people and if I’m not talking, I go a little crazy. It will also be a tool of propaganda for everything I like. I have been keeping online journals since I was about thirteen but have really only started to get into public blogs recently and thought I should try writing one myself. That’s about it really…

 

If you have no idea why you’re reading this or who I am, my name is Ivana Stab. I was born 11^th February 1989 in Former Yugoslavia. I have been living in Sydney since June 1998. I speak Serbian but not all that well these days, unfortunately. I kind of wish I was Russian but I am prone to bouts of Serbian nationalism especially during Politics tutorials. I study Arts at UNSW, make zines, am really good at procrastination and my favourite band is probably The Doors. I like sleeping in and talking. Coffee is also good.

 

So leave a comment or send love letters to ivanaforpresident@hotmail.com because I’m really only doing this for the fame, money and bitches that will be the inevitable result of unclean, a libertine*, the blog!

 

 

* From the Placebo song “Without You, I’m Nothing”