When I use my camera I often take a few "test" photos. Some photographers, one of my lecturers told me, take photographs of colour charts so that they can ensure their photographs are colour-calibrated. "Oh yes" I said, nodding, "I see". My test photographs often consist of turning the camera upon myself and snapping away erractically. Because I am a horrible human being and must ruin every moment, and also because I forget with all the technology these days cameras actually can capture beings without souls, I make ridiculous faces. I then promptly forget about them and these photos all end up in the tangled ether of my laptop.

Monday morning, coffee ramblings and an empty house.

I like staring at people and drawing them in my head. People with gap teeth and freckles, or pronounced jaws or bendy noses or really wide eyes. I try really hard to memorise all the little lines and shadows in a few seconds, like the curved linears of a map. This excess of eye contact often results in being abused on public transport.

I like blogs that have photos obviously taken a) by an inexperienced photographer or b) on a not-so-great camera. They are warmer and more intimate; "this is my life and I want to share it with you, if perhaps clumsily". I enjoy ones with little spelling mistakes or grammar errors, there's something naive and endearing about this. YES I KNOW GRAMMAR POLICE, it's destroying the english language etc etc. But there's something just... nice about it. Human.

One of my favourite things is seeing all the little things people scribble in the margin of their paper. As you can imagine art students are particularly guilty of this, and my monday lecture is a smorgasboard of beautiful pen-drawings and ink-heavy scrawled headings. There's this man who brings his young son to the lecture every week and my friend and I always try to sit behind him because he does these amazing drawings of fantastical creatures. People always whine about the monday lecture, "It's sooo boring I wouldn't even go if it wasn't for my tute after". "Yeah I know" I say absent-mindedly, even though my tute isn't until tuesday late morning and i've never missed a lecture.

I like op-shopping. I think acceptance of this has definitely grown but some people still get funny about it. I actually remember a friend saying, "But what if someone died in that dress? I mean, why else would you give it away?". I like knowing clothing I have has been possibly worn by a random shop assistant or accountant that I pass of the street every day.

I like walking normally and peacefully for a long time and then jumping and screaming and running to frighten whoever I'm with. It's cathartic. Also making sandwiches.

Something that really irritates me, and I mean gets under my skin with a vengeance, is people who can't identify eye colour. Personally I think it's that people quite often struggle to accept they do not have a rare eye colour and are therefore hideously boring with absolutely no redeeming qualities (I am very important and worldly and am allowed to make such assumptions, didn't you know?) In my experience people with hazel eyes are the main offenders and often proclaim to have green eyes, which quite frankly shits me up the wall. Really, I say, trying to be polite, I think your eyes are more hazel. They look at me, confused. Stupid bitch, don't you know green eyes are just that much more interesting? Can't you just play along?

My eyes are a funny sort of mottled grey and blue and, dare I say it, green... think mildewy cement. However this tiny amount of colour often causes people to make that all-too-common mistake of jumping all over the Wrong Eye Colour.

"Hey, wow, your eyes are really green!"

"Um, no" I will say. "They're not."

This often has the effect of looking someone dead in the eye and pronouncing that you're Santa.

dear georges braque,

I don't like you

when I was a baby, my mum dropped a kebab on my head. I like to blame this moment for the terrible things I say.

Things not to do today:
-mess up my important photomedia presentation I so diligently prepared for
-spend money
-eat junk
-forget to study
-waste time
-have too much caffiene
-make a general idiot of myself

Things I did today:
-missed my train stop
-messed up my photomedia presentation ("these...are...uh... pictures...I took. Yep. Of my friend. It's, like, fragments? Of her life?")
-bought a new book
-spent my 4 hour "study break" reading the book
-ate a cupcake
-accompanied the aforementioned cupcake with several cups of coffee
-fell over in front of a bemused dog-walker
-got rained on
-got my phone rained on
-coffee-babbled to my friend I haven't seen in, oh, seven years
-ate a cheeseburger
-picked up my course reader, stared at it, and decided this was sufficient academic activity to warrant a "quick walk"
-returned 2 hours later to clean my room
-"cleaned" by picking up a piece of paper and attempting to place it in the bin
-realised the bin was lost in a sea of clothing and art supplies
-concluded it was now time for a well-earned episode of spicks and specks
-procrastinated watching spicks and specks by writing this blog post

Oh well, it could be worse. I could be Nicky Hilton.

Have you ever

have you ever wanted to violently projectile vomit into your photomedia lecturer's face so bad it hurts? Yes? Oh, goodness. Me too.

My family members are always telling me I'm just like Liz Lemon because I'm mean and nerdy and I can consume more food than most fully grown men. While I take this as a compliment of the highest order ("WHERE'S MY MAC AND CHEEEEEEEEEEESE"), my personal idol of the 30 Rock variety is the respectable Kathy Geiss.



Ah, Kathy. With your pink cheeks and hotwheel-eating ways, you can do no wrong.

games

One of my favourite things to do is make up silly games to amuse myself. On the train, I scout for celebrity look-alike, e.g. Susan Boyle if she was 15 years younger and had magenta hair. Warning: excessive eye contact is not recommended. Another game is Hipster or Hobo. This game was inspired by an incident where I witnessed a man with longish, messy hair, a loosely fitted button-up shirt, double-cuffed pants and a Marc Jacobs carrybag... only to realise upon closer inspection this seemingly "trendy" young man was actually a raving lunatic covered in filth. One your eyes are opened to the Hobo or Hipster riddle you can't unsee it, you. Trips to Newtown will never be the same as you question every 20-something with scraggly hair and dirty shoes. A fun game particular to parks; free spirit or corpse? A murder victim or just someone who likes sprawling out in public places to enjoy sunshine? Last but not least, I can't forget: Designer Bag or Goon Sack? Is that a shiny foil container for the sort of cheap wine that smells like piss and tastes like stomach bile? Sorry, Louis Vuitton you say? Very good. Do carry on.

This morning I wrote a list; black on cream paper, my neatest writing. Self portrait, surrealism, photographs and notes, textiles, paint a still-life, and finish a crumpled paint chart. My photographs didn't print and my shoe gave me a blister. I drew girl-doll faces on doilies, then ate five sour lollies and my mouth began to bleed. I drank several cups of tea and sewed the word "selfish" to a hankerchief. I wished I was 5'10'', blonde, and living in New York. I wrote a blog post, read the blog post then threw up into my own scorn.

Me: I hate drawing class, I can't believe it's mandatory next semester. Just kill me now please. Everything I create just looks like the scribblings of a retard, I am not a drawer... or a shelf either, hahahahahahaha
(awkward silence)
5 minutes later
Me: (accidentally bumping into someone) Oh I'm sorry, God I'm clumsy (attempt to make a quick escape, try to pull push door, turn around and walk straight into a staircase, fall flat on face)

epiphanies

One Saturday night you read 70 pages of Texts From Last Night, then all of the Best Of and all of the Worst Of, then come to an realisation: there are two kinds of people in the world, those who engage in the shenanigans that end up on textsfromlastnight.com, and there are the angry loners who sit at home alone and read them.

Man on mobile phone on train: Yeah... yeah... yep... uh-huh... yep... okay... listen I'm about to go through a tunnel, I'll call you right back (hangs up and stares out at the tunnel-free view for remainder of trip)

My Mum: You've grown into a beautiful young woman, darling. A foul mouth on you, yes, but a beautiful young woman.

The internet can be a scary place, but not always. Intimacies are shared, bonds are forged and you can also pretend to be a lot cooler than you really are. Yet sometimes, you read a comment or post or message from someone that just makes you pray to God you never run into this person in a dark alleyway. Found on Crime Library on an article about Ted Bundy:

"ya what some of the stuff you say is true but the serial killer that is following me around is like some of the seriarl killers you have talked about like ted bundy he liked to rape and kill people wright tis one likes to controll other people by shooting a laser beam into there brain and lowering there life they are sort of dieing when he controls them he makes sure he is very healthy and the others with him are too then they think about the person and they will think about rape murder and it makes the person think the same way our air force likes to do this with our people he has been trying this on me for alittle more than three years by giveing me great pain with a laser that comes from a jet i do belive in the controling thing i know it sounds crazy but it is true the sad thing about the laser is it is hard to see all most invisable but it can really hurt if you want to see the jets come to reno nv or sparks they will be up there oh ya this one is very sick likes the most sickest smells likes girls to leave fesees on there self for weeks at a time just a very gros person the reason i know he likes this smell i can smell through him our air force is getting sicker and sicker our us military needs to change or be destoryedddddddddddddd i know it sounds crazy but if one is really close to dieing they can really smell through another oh ya alot of our pilots flying in our skys belive shooting a laser into some ones brain it will make it stronger thats our air forces thoughts ya"

Girl in my printmaking class #1: See, I never really got along with females that well... like in textiles class all the girls were paying attention and I was just giggling at the fact that they sew something into clothes called "boning"
Girl in my printmaking class #2: Hahaha, boning
(both giggle hysterically)

My Cousin: My friend's coming around later
My Uncle: Will she want to eat with us?
My Cousin: No, she's a vegan so she'll probably bring her own food
My Uncle: What? A Vogon? Like on Star Trek?

Things I've Learnt at Art School

I've learn a lot of students seem to exist simply to sit around campus looking ridiculously attractive and intimidating.
There are actually existing people who talk like this: "Oh wowww, did you go to that lecture about Degas? The metaphors he used in his work were amaaaaazing. Just, like, totally bananas. He was brilliant, you know? The colours, the symbolism... Oh my God, just soooo incredible... I love it, he's a genius man."
People need to have it explained to them that coffee is actually not just an extension of the typical art students' body, and that it is indeed considered a liquid fit for consumption, therefore not advisable to have near expensive electronics.
There are lecturers who will...
-Tell you they haven't left their house in eight weeks
-Inform you that art students these days are too meek ("What, you think the med students are going to start a riot with their stethoscopes?")
-Tell a story of how they were once arrested for filling an entire staff room with scrunched-up newspaper
-Strongly advise you to "get good at bullshitting very quickly"
-Mention that most of the other lecturers at the college are pretentious wankers
-Present a lecture on Dadaism by running into the room with a coat over their head in front of 400 students while screaming gibberish, then remove their pants.

I hate pesto

It tastes like someone projectile vomitted basil into the disgusting juice found in public garbage bins, then let it heat up and fester in the sun.

Lately I've noticed a significant increase in what can only be described as the cancer of the internet. Crappy fashion blogs. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of fashion blogs I love, but there are also an abundance of fashion blogs out there so goddamn boring that I fear choking to death on my own scorn.

I've noticed certain rules, like describing everything with exciting adjectives (lest your fickle readers attention spans wane). It's not white, it's cream, or ecru, or eggshell. It's not brown, it's chocolate. It's not green, it's emerald. Nobody gives a shit about your purple scarf, it's deep plum (fucking idiot). Recently I purchased nailpolish from Sportsgirl that was inarguably grey, labelled "Gunmetal". Obviously much more badass. Who wants grey when you can have fucking GUNMETAL. You should also discuss your love of Mary-Kate Olsen's sense of fashion and talent for designing. This is a fun game where we pretend that we don't all know deep down that she's a raging coke head who couldn't give two shits about what several hundred baggy items she wears on any given day. Don't forget to scrape your hair into a bun right on top of your head. High. Higher! HIGHEST! It should be pulling so hard that your skin splits and your skull protudes garishly. You can't feel it and anyway, you look fucking awesome. Now you should go sit in front of someone short in a crowded movie theatre. Impulsively bought an ugly article of clothing just because of the label? No. THAT'S LOSER TALK. It's ironic. Wear it with pride. If you're in doubt, declare it vintage. If you're not one of the pretty girls, that's okay. Remember that you're unique, beautiful on the inside, looks don't even matter because you are a genuinely interesting, charismatic and talented individual. You just need to remember to be really, really skinny.

Lagerfield (Satan) would be proud.

Girl on train with the kind of high-pitched voice that belongs in hell alone: OH and I was in SUCH a bad mood because Laughlin made me eggs for breakfast, but he made them wrong, like I had the eggs all ready to cook myself and he's like, "Babe, I can make them for you", and he didn't make them right and it ruined my morning. Like I was mad all fucking day.
Other girl: How annoying!

Me: Can I try these shoes on in a size ten?
Old man: Size seven?
Me: Um no, size ten please
Old man: But you are a size seven?
Me: Um. No, I'm a size ten. I have big feet.
Old man: But you, small person. Small person... small feet, yes?
Me: I usually wear a size ten.
Old man: I'll get you size seven.
(watches me valiantly attempt to put tiny shoes on)
Old man: Those are too small. You have very big feet. I get size ten now.