Posts Tagged ‘Zig’
It’s all happening
I’ve been forgetting to update. Things have happened.
Third year started and already there is so much work to do, but I love my subjects and it’s been really good seeing people again (especially Allie) and getting back into some sort of ‘normal’ routine. Although the early starts aren’t so good. My subjects this semester are Politics x3 and General Education x1: Propaganda & Satire; Australian Foreign Policy; The Art of Political Science; Introduction to the Australian Legal System. My politics lecturers are amazing. I have my favourite professor for one subject, Dr Levey, so I spend Tuesday mornings basking in his greatness.
Drawings by Allie (paying attention during Australian Foreign Policy, obviously).
I went to the Mardi Gras for the first time, except the crowd and trying to find friends in the complete insanity meant I basically didn’t see the parade at all. Still, the vodka + rum was nice, and seeing people I hadn’t seen in a while was good too.
My Wog friend Alex had a horrorpunk themed birthday party which was a lot of fun. Messy and fantastic. Kylar and Jack came as my replacements for Annie and Zig. A vey wasted girl in Kings Cross was nice enough to share her cigarettes with us. They were Vogues and actually quite nice. I made Alex a mix of music from the mother country (well, MY mother country). This was the track-list:
Van Gogh – Klatno (live) : Belgrade, 1997
Elektricni Orgazam – Nebo : Belgrade, 1981
EKV – Ja Znam : Belgrade, 1983
Azra – Krvava Meri : Zagreb, 1980
Prljavo Kazaliste – Noc : Zagreb, 1979
Riblja Corba – Necu da zivim u bloku 65 : Belgrade, 1982
Idoli – Moja si : Belgrade, 1982
Zabranjeno Pusenje – Guzonjin sin : Sarajevo, 1988
Partibrejkers – 1000 godina : Belgrade, 1984
Sarlo Akrobata – Mali covek : Belgrade, 1981
Elektricni Orgazam – Odelo : Belgrade, 1982
Bijelo Dugme – Pamtim evo deset dana : Sarajevo, 1974
Hung around Liverpool a couple of times and saw The Unborn with Jasmina which was actually quite scary. Also, Gary Oldman is brilliant!
Morgan and I helped Zig out with a COFA project which involved photobooths. I got to wear an eyepatch!
I fell in love with this poem:
Rhododendrons
It was the dream
I was allowed
to touch you in.
We were strangers.
You kept your eyes closed.
I cannot really say
if there were rhododendrons
or anything like music or
even if I asked you.
Only your blue skin and the pleasure it gave you –
the way you moved,
the way you caught your breath
whenever my hands moved
so I kept on moving them.
-Thomas Lynch
& ten more copies of Feels Like Friday #7 sold at Sticky in Melbourne!!!!!!!
Ne spavaj mala moja muzika dok svira
The other day I was lazing around on campus with Zig. We were supposed to get our new IDs but the queue was too long. Instead we drank amazing Coffee Cart coffee, smoked Marlboro Golds, took photos, ate sushi, bought books and migrated from one sunny patch of grass to another four times. I keep forgetting that being a student isn’t just about that….that there is work to do as well. Still, I’m really looking forward to starting the semester. People to see/meet and things to do and things to learn. I’ve been reading from “Munitions of the Mind”, the text for one of my subjects – Propaganda and Satire, and it’s really interesting. The subject I’m most looking forward to though is The Art of Political Science…not just because it interests me as a subject but because it’ll be taught by my favourite professor, Dr. Levey, the one who told us this joke: “what do you get when you mix a member of the Mafia with a post-modernist? …….an offer you can’t understand.”
ALSO: check out Andrew’s new blog, where music nerd meets real life nerd who likes to talk about science…..and stuff; Kylar is back from overseas and has posted new music on his blog so go have a listen.
& finally (I can’t post an entry without something Eastern European in it, can I?), since I’ve posted Zeljko Bebek and Alen Islamovic here, I thought it was a bit unfair to not post any Tifa. I didn’t know much about Tifa when I was starting to like Bijelo Dugme. Maybe because he had the shortest time as their singer or because I was so distracted by my crush on Islamovic…? When I saw them live in concert, all of them had gone well past their use by date but Tifa was the worst, acting really inappropriately on stage and being so fucked up by the end of it that he couldn’t even come up on stage for the final songs which they all sing together. It’s really hard to find footage of Tifa but what I did find on YouTube is AMAZING. Tifa was this beautiful drug-fucked incredibly talented singer and I have fallen a little in love with him. I was going to post one of those big Bijelo Dugme power ballads but the video was really poor quality so here is what is apparently Tifa’s first concert with them.
Junkies running dry
Gooooood times last night. I don’t know why, but I haven’t been going out much in recent times. I’ve hung out with a lot of people but I haven’t been going to many gigs, or consuming much alcohol, or spending late nights in the city, and I’ve really missed it. & I certainly can’t blame my financial situation because that’s hardly ever prevented me from going out before. I just haven’t been in the right mood, I guess. But I certainly did miss it & that’s part of why yesterday was so much fun. Annie, Zig & I started the night in Hyde Park with a bottle of wine, which was really good as it was kindly donated by my parents (who didn’t know it’d be used in such trashy circumstances…hehe). We were joined by Morgan and soon after headed off to 77. Reasons why I love 77: it’s dark and dingy; the people aren’t as pretentious as in some other venues; people that work there are always friendly; did I mention dark and dingy?; everyone smokes inside and no one gives a fuck; good bands play there. Nhomea and Dead China Doll played last night, but the band I was there to see was Ghosts of Television and they were fucking amazing, as always. I came home with my arms covered in Sharpie writing like the classy young lady I am.
(The top photo was taken by ANNIE LY. More photos from the night here.)
UNSW, FTW!
Miss Zigwamp bought me this book for my birthday. It looks so fucking good! & those are my new curtains…which will be put up soon.
Yesterday I walked to Bonnyrigg Plaza to buy a few things I needed….a half an hour walk all up, approximately. During that time I was harassed from THREE different cars. One even pulled up so he could make obscene gestures. What the fuck is wrong with the male gender?
Zig, Dalibor & I went to UNSW today to abuse the generosity of O-Week organisers by making badges and t-shirts. Unfortunately the screen-printers turned out to be at COFA and we were unwilling to make our way there in the heat. So my sweet t-shirt design will have to wait. O-Week sort of frightens me. Everyone is too excited and it’s always too hot. The upside being Coffee Cart coffee, lazing around the Library Lawn & running into Allie (and finding out we’re doing two of the same subjects – yay!), as well as buying a few readers, thereby avoiding the massive bookshop queues. I’m really looking forward to starting uni again. I’ve become somewhat of a sloth during the last four months…I think/hope uni will make me feel like I’ve got some…….purpose? At the very least I won’t be sleeping in every day and doing little else but drinking coffee and watching Law & Order.
These are the badges I made today. I was expecting them to have the giant badge machine again so my pictures were a bit too big for this badge size. But still. I love the Sid & Nancy one.
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. 5th April – to take part in a zine fair in Wollongong OR to see Evan Dando at the Annandale? Or to somehow squeeze both in?
Where is my mind?
Some things that have happened since I last updated…
I saw Galija live in concert which was really good. I hadn’t really listened to Galija much before but I knew the music thanks to my sister (who also paid for my ticket because she really wanted me to see them play). It was a really great concert; I’m glad I went. The three musicians are all extremely talented and the frontman especially looks so happy when he is playing. They make incredibly beautiful music. Beforehand and in between there was a really great band playing. They did gypsy-d up covers of various Serbian songs, and a couple of songs were sung by an African man! In Serbian! It was amazing. I was with my sister and her friends and I worried about feeling a little……out of place? But it was actually a lot of fun and I really enjoyed the night.
I hung out with Jasmina & Nikola twice. Now that I am on good terms with Nikola again, I’ve remembered how much I actually enjoy hanging out with them. I’ve known them for a long time and I feel very comfortable around them. Last week we watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button which wasn’t too bad (but not too good either – luckily Brad Pitt is pretty much perfect). Then today we had dinner at Black Rose where we also ran into Bodin and Nenad’s brother Milan. The pizza and tiramisu at Black Rose are really fucking delicious. Later we drove around a bit looking for a place to play pool and when we didn’t find any place we wanted to go, we hung around a park/graveyard for a bit before heading home. They have some great music in their car, including System of a Down covering Wu Tang Clan’s “Shame on a Nigga”. Fucking brilliant!
I also hung out with Kylar before he left for Amerikkka. I met up in the city with him, Morgan, Thea and Josh and we hung around Hyde Park, had coffee, etc. That was fun also.
Zig came over from Kempsey for a few days, from the 30th to the 2nd! She stayed at my place and I showed her around suburbia. We got stoned in a park in St Johns Park and walked to the Bonnyrigg McDonald’s to get ice cream when the Plaza was closed on New Year’s Day. We also watched a lot of bad 80s video clips and came up with a dance routine to Wham’s “Wake Me Up Before You Go Go”. When we got stoned in the ‘burbs we came back to my house, still stoned, and hid in my room away from my parents, with only my fairy lights on, lying down on a mattress, listening to Neil Young. It was….so fucking lovely! Neil Young is amazing. We also saw Twilight on the day Zig was leaving, because it’s not out in Kempsey yet. Robert Pattinson’s jawline remains as perfect as ever.
I found out that a kid I knew died. That really shook me up.
I went to a wonderful New Year’s Eve party. It was at Alex’s house and was a night of blazing and crazing…of course! A lot of wonderful people, conversations, music and Mary Jane. It was a lot of fun. We went to see the fireworks in the city and it was the first time I’d seen them live. I may have gotten more excited had I not been so stoned. The night ended with “Ignition” by R Kelly. Oh yes! As soon as R Kelly came on, there were complaints about the music! haha. I don’t really remember much of the night to be honest, except I think reciting the lyrics to White Rabbit with Alex, talking about pole dancing with Lachlan, being the Bong Master (then spilling bong water all over myself), walking to get hot chips because I HAD to have them, attempting to air guitar to November Rain, seeing the sunrise, bucket bong at 6.30 in the morning, waking up my parents at three in the morning because I was worried when they weren’t answering my midnight call….and just generally having a good time. We left around 7 in the morning and the city was COVERED in filth. It was disgusting. Then Oz Turk pizza….nothing better for when feeling seedy. When I got home, I crashed, still in the previous night’s clothing, and slept until 7 in the evening. And I would have continued had my sister not woken me up.
So yeah…it’s been mostly good times around here.
9th December
Tuesday
Because Zig made last-minute changes to her going-home plans, Tuesday was the last day I got to hang out with her before she left. I walked down Oxford St looking for a present for Drazen (ended up buying him a Richard Pryor DVD) and then met up with Zig near COFA, we went to pick up her photos (which you can see here) and had coffee at my new favourite café – new favourite simply because it’s called Ampersand. (When I grow up I’m going to tattoo an ampersand and a semi-colon on my left arm, just below my elbow on the inside.) Then we wandered down to Hyde Park where we hung out and watched army helicopters do rounds through the city – it was probably just training but I imagined that perhaps we were under attack… Annie joined us also and we hung out some more before Zig had to head off. We walked with her to COFA where she was catching a shuttle bus, then I got all mopey when she had to leave. Everyone seems to be leaving Sydney. Annie and I walked back towards Central-way. She headed to Ultimo to meet up with some people and I got cake from Chinatown and then literally ran to Central to make the train which my sister was also catching so that neither of us would be bored and alone on the long journey home. I had underestimated the distance from Chinatown to Central Station but I made it on time!
Friday, 5th Dec & Saturday, 6th Dec
I really need to get better at this whole keeping-track-of-my-life thing. I keep forgetting to update, then I have a mini panic attack every time I forget what I did on whatever day. My short-term memory is fucked up.
Friday
Friday was a really nice day. A much-needed day of being calm and relaxed and well-aware of my surroundings. I went over to Zig’s at UNSW. I had a cruel reminder of how difficult those stairs on campus are to climb up… We walked down to Coogee and lazed around on the beach for hours. It was really nice. I miss going to the beach. I don’t think I’d been since…Byron Bay? That was in 2007! The weather was pretty much perfect. It sort of threatened to rain a bit but it never happened. We trekked back up to Randwick, got Easy Way, then back to Kensington where we lazed around on the Library Lawn for a bit before I headed home.
Saturday
The weather was a cunt. It was incredibly hot and hurricane-windy. I didn’t want to leave the house but at the same time, I felt too restless to stay inside. So Annie & I went to the city to photocopy TEETH zines but it turned out that our precious Kinko’s was closed. We were heartbroken. Turns out it is no longer open 24-hours, and it is closed on Saturdays. I’d never given much thought to this economic crisis thing until it affected my ability to make zines drunkenly at 3 in the morning!! So instead of photocopying, we wandered around, looked at amazing books at Kinokuniya and CDs at JB Hi-Fi (where we also stalked Radiohead Boy unknowingly – seriously, I don’t mean to stalk the kid but I just keep running into him everywhere, at uni all the time, at JB Hi-Fi, on George St…I’ve never spoken to him and we’re really awkward around each other because we both obviously realise how much we run into one another. Also, I don’t actually know if he likes Radiohead but he seems like does. I’ll forgive him for that since he’s adorable).
Westie Wednesday
Wednesday
(Nenad & Nikola with Nenad’s lightbox / Nikola & Sasa / Art, feat. Jasmina)
First, I went to the dentist and got FOUR teeth fixed. Which cost, oh, only $460. One tooth was so fucked up that no matter how much of the numbing stuff he injected me with, I still felt the pain when he started drilling. The next day my mouth was so sore from the needle jabs to my gums. The four teeth took so long, I started to get really bored and restless towards the end. Was really glad to leave!
Then later on I went to an exhibition of works by design students at Lidcombe TAFE which featured the work of my friend Nenad. Jasmina, Nikola, Mark George & I drove there. I almost got into a bitch fight with Mark George in the car when he said that Arts is a pointless degree but I chose to ignore him instead. Some people are just not worth arguing with. When we got to Lidcombe TAFE, we met up with Nenad, Nenad’s brother Milan, Sasa and a really amusing dude whose name I forget. Free beer, Latin dancers, lots of work to look at, coming up with various ways to embarrass Nenad, etc. It was amusing and I sort of started talking to Nikola again which was really nice because I sort of miss hanging out with him. Plus, I rarely see my friends-from-the-ghetto these days so it was kind of nice overall. I dubbed the day Westie Wednesday. We were delayed in heading back because Nenad had to give a cheque to the DJ, then finding the way to Newtown where they were dropping me off was difficult, so there was a lot of driving involved, but luckily we’d swapped Mark George with Nenad!
In Newtown, I met up with Zig at The Vanguard where we were supposed to see Tim Freedman play – I was supposed to be reviewing for Faster Louder. As though I didn’t despise The Vanguard enough already, I get there and the awful old bitch at the desk says she doesn’t see my name anywhere on any list, and does not care for the printed out email I show her from Faster Louder. She was so unpleasant. Faster Louder have since said they’ll email them telling them they were very unprofessional! I wasn’t too heartbroken because I really hate that venue, but I heard a few minutes of Tim playing and it was just so fucking lovely, I wish I’d been there. Instead, Zig and I went to Newtown Thai II for dinner which was very good, then wandered down King St, caught a train to Central, hung around waiting for Zig’s bus, then both headed home. Eddy Avenue at night is a really scary place to be.
+ My rather awful review of Circlesquare’s Songs About Dancing and Drugs is up on The Dwarf: have a look.
Wait, WHAT?
ENGL2321 Twentieth Century: Modernism and Modernity – 81 DN
HIST2060 (Un)Making the Third World B – The Americas – 65 CR
HIST2511 US and Conflict in the Middle East – 66 CR
POLS2020 Sex, Human Rights & Justice – 75 DN
POLS2048 International Security – 71 CR
How did this happen? I did barely any work, paid very little attention, skipped lots of classes and handed in pretty much everything late (sometimes weeks late). I expected to fail one or two subjects. I am a little disappointed with my International Security mark because that was my favourite subject and I’ve always had Distinctions for Politics but oh well.
ENGL2321 – I attended only Monday’s lectures because I had a clash with History for the Wednesday lectures. I tuned out completely when I was there. I relied on Zig’s notes and my skills at bullshitting to get me through. Mostly I was just there because I had/have a crush on Dr Kate, the lecturer/tutor. HIST2060 – it started off so well, viva la revolucion and all, but then I turned into capitalist scum or something and stopped going to the lectures, and skipped more tutorials than I was allowed to because my tutor was an absolute imbecile and everyone in the tutorial, except Clare, was a moron. HIST2511 – I really, really enjoyed this subject but it was a little on the difficult side. The lecturer’s accent was so amusing. POLS2020 – another subject I enjoyed but found a little difficult, just in a different way. There was a big split between people who were all about the law and people who were all about the principles of human rights, and people like me who wanted to be all Law and Order: SVU about it. I never got to say what I really wanted in tutorials. I handed in my essay, which was worth 60% of the mark, very late and it was just a rant about how prostitutes are just doing a job, which basically had no research behind it. Oh and I pretty much never did the readings and didn’t attend many lectures. POLS2048 – I loved everything about this subject but I was lazy and handed things in late and didn’t focus much. Boo. I hope Dr. Billingsley (he has a Facebook fan page!) will remember good things about me and not this mark because I want to suck up to him for an Honours project.
Either I’m a genius or Arts is too easy. I have my money on the latter.
