Conversational Brilliance.

Charlotte: If you had to kill and prepare your meat, would you still eat it?
Arty: Fuck no. I'd be a vegetarian. Unless I did it by accident, or didn't have to see it.
Charlotte: Fair enough. What if you had to milk the cow to make the cheese? Would you still eat as much cheese?
Arty: I dunno, maybe. I wouldn't kill the cow though...
Charlotte: You dont have to kill a cow to make cheese.
Mum: (laughing histerically from the bathroom):  Yeah Al, the cheese gland is just behind the bbq chops. The cows can't survive without it. "Oh look out, this cow needs a cheese transplant!"
*ten minutes later*
TV: Tonight on Masterchef, we have a cheese expert here as a guest judge...
Mum: Fuck! Arty! When the hell did you get time to go onto Masterchef???

Oh I love my family. Mum: get out more. Haha.

drink me.

So today was an interesting day, my last day of work...EVER. Haha just kidding, it was the last one until I go (on thursday! Yikes!) and it started pretty well.  Just your average morning, I have started reading 'Tomorrow when the war began" again because I saw that it was coming out to be a movie and though I'd better jog that particular department of the old memory bank.

Oh. That's why she quit neighbours. 

 I also finished watching this cool black and white film about anti prostitution laws in post-war Japan, subtitled of course. It's one I wanted to get when Zac was here but he wasn't keen so we ended up with "The hills have eyes." Freaking awesome :| loved it. But I guess my taste in movies is a bit random at times.

Rode my bike to work,and remembered halfway down this MASSIVE HILL that the breaks don't work At all. So I successfully burnt away half the sole of my shoes trying to do the old foot stop like we all did back in the day when we got our first bike without backpedal breaks and completely flipped out. Haha. i remember that day so clearly. Me, flying off the curb and across the road, Mum screaming as a car missed me by about half a meter, up on the curb on the other side-crying, naturally- and swearing never to ride a mountain bike ever again. Ahh good times, good times. Anyway, before work I FINALLY GOT A CAMERA CHARGER!! adsjkhlf. So in my next post I am going to flood you with pictures of cool things that I have not been able to photograph that really excite me and you absolutely NEED to see. Probably....haha. Also, totally found out that they sell 120mm film in Byron. So I will stock up asap.

On the way home I stopped at the lolly shop. Oh my god I know, don't even start. My healthy eating plan went out the window and up into the air Mary Poppins style about 5 minutes in, and I think I saw it get hit by a plane in the distance and land in an erupting volcano occupied with sharks with laser beams attached to their heads...or something like that. Anyway, this shop is amazing like, all Willy Wonker and business (old version) with all the containers on the wall that you can fill up a bag with. As much as you want. Oh wow shit. So after about 20million kgs of chocolate/smarties/caramel fudge/clinkers (farking LOVE those) I somehow perched myself on my bike and managed to roll home.

On the way home, these 12 year old gangsters yelled out "Dayum girl!" as I went past. Zac cleverly pointed out that this un-Australian language was probably a result of me know sporting a highly impressive "ghetto booty." Have some more chocolate, you whole lotta woman. Haha.

Oh, I almost forgot. As I was in the bank this morning (yes, making a deeeposit) these old guys were chatting away behind me, and when I finally tuned in (totally evesdropping) one of them was saying, "Yeea, me old duck turned 86 this year, she's a battla'. *Quiet bank music playing in the background* And she still smokes a fucken fucklooaad 'o dope. She's lit up all the fuckin' time I tells ya" Oh lovely bank small talk, how I do love thee.

So tonight I am in for a treat. I finished downloading "The Runaways" last night so I will have my own movie night and let you know how it all goes. Apparently Dakota and Kristen pick up. Hot. I'm just kinda hoping that it doesn't get 12 minutes in and swap to some hardcore /b/ worthy loveliness, if you know what I mean.

Fakebook.

This is me. No make-up, apart from semi-washed-off eyeliner, and no photoshop. I have a weird skin tone, and shitloads of freckles. But I am posting this photo because I am so sick of people (me included) feeling like they have to completely photoshop every photo they post on the internet, for fear of not matching up to everyone's expectations, and being compared with one another. 

We are all beautiful. Everyone, EVERYONE is so uniquely brilliant in the way they speak, the way they act and the way they look. Yes, the world is teeming with superficial clones and hoards of people copying everyone else, but deep down you always know that you are not exactly like someone else, and you never will be. I hope that some people who read this will follow my lead, and stop editing, stop caking on the make-up, and start realising that people can see through all that shit. And you look like an oil painting. btw. 

At this point in time, I really couldn't care less what everyone thinks of me. It doesn't matter that I am notoriously 'plain jane' and speak and act in the way that I feel I am expected to. I spent my whole school life acting as I was supposed to. Being a good role model and everything. Sometimes you just want to mess it all up. to stop being what everyone thinks you are, and start being who you actually are.

This is me. 

If you think I am ugly and up myself/stupid/angry/boring/whatever then good for you. I hope you feel better about yourself for that (Y). But hopefully this will make you think about how beautiful and amazing you actually are, and how comparing yourself to everyone else is simply damaging and completely worthless. Don't let anyone tell you that you aren't good enough or interesting enough, especially not yourself. 

Goodnight.

Any given Sunday,

Circa 2004.

We sit in her room with a list, one by one crossing off different things, trying to narrow it down to what we want to do that day. It is a ritual that we go through every time we visit each other, because both of us is so indecisive, and scared of choosing something that the other will not like. I cross out 4, she puts a line through number 2 and 7, she cheats because we always put "go for a walk" on the list even though we both know it's never going to happen. Some days we end up going for a bike ride around the town, once we sat and watched candles burn for four hours straight, simply because we couldn't tear our eyes away. Once, for christmas, I got a set of walkie talkies (no, not make up or a princess dress, I was pretty much a boy) and we spent the afternoon tuning into peoples phone calls in the front yard. We even 'invented' our own super cleaning product by mixing together everything in her Mum's laundry cupboard, in secret of course. We got so gassed out in the shed that we thought we were actually going to die, so we went and played in a tree to get as much oxygen as we could into our lungs. We had these great plans. I was going to be in the olympics, and she was going to sing the national anthem, Nikki Webster style, at the opening ceremony.

On one afternoon, there were plovers in the backyard and they had laid eggs in the middle of the grass. She is notoriously terrified of birds, so in my utter brilliance I decided that the only way for her to conquer this fear was to get out there and face them. We geared up with random cricket gloves, rollerblading kneepads and golf clubs, tying pillows to ourselves with scarves. We sat on the skateboard and opened an umbrella over our heads, wearing bike helmets and swimming goggles. As we rolled on the concrete towards the backyard, we were so terrified, but so excited at the same time. We must have looked absolutely ridiculous, but it was so much fun. I can't even remember what happened in the end, but I think her fear of birds only got worse. What can I say, I tried.

 I am so grateful for not having myspace or facebook. I am so glad that we got out and ran wild in the trees at the beach. I am so grateful to have had a friend that would agree to go through all this and still like me at the end. I miss you, and even though we don't talk hardly at all anymore, I always wonder what you're up to, what you're doing. I guess that it happens like this. But I know that, if you need me somewhere down the track, you can bet I will be right there.

nirvana.

If I were to have any other career apart from mine, anything at all, I would choose to be a writer. I would write poetry so beautiful it would make you cry, I would write stories to transport you to another world, I would open up my heart and pour it into the pages of classics. The only problem is, I can't write. It's like the english language is a field of flowers, and some people have this amazing ability to skip and dance through it, not treading on a single petal, it's like they're floating. I, on the other hand, somehow manage to rip through the field, hacking my way across it in my attempts to reach the other side.

If you have read any of my previous blogs you will understand where I am coming from. I barely edit what I write, and I type exactly the way I would speak if we were to have a conversation. It isn't the most beautiful arrangement of words, but it seems to work for me. Reading this, you would not think that in year 12 English had been my best subject. It's funny, isn't it? The truth is, you really don't have to be a good writer to do well in English. I'm not. I have a good memory, so I could store about 15 different paragraphs in my head, and arrange them to make an essay that would answer any question. I just wrote what I thought, like this. My 'Whose Reality?' piece was like this, conversational. You just need to remember a few long words and you're pretty much right.

It's hard to decide in year 12 what career you want. it's like, "Here-choose a path for the rest of your life and hope to God that you get it right otherwise you're completely screwed and will probably end up on the dole or dead by the time you're 25." It's all very nerve racking. I sometimes wonder if I have made the right decision. Did I just choose med because it was the hardest thing to get into? Because it sounds impressive to say? Did I just love Grey's Anatomy so much that I tricked myself into believing that all that is how a hospital actually works? Do I just want to be mega rich and earn lots of money? Do I want to be a hero, and have my picture in the paper for something? Do I want an award? These are the questions that hound me every time I think about what I'm doing. But then I think about anything else I could be doing and it doesn't seem as good. There is nothing I would rather be doing.

I had this dream the other night. There was this little boy on a stretcher about to be taken somewhere, and he was calling out to me. He was saying "please help me, please save me. Make it stop hurting, make me better, please help me." It was so strange. I hugged him tight and he pressed his forehead against mine and i told him that i would help him, that I would save him and that everything would be alright. Then they took him away. I was so completely overwhelmed with this feeling that have rarely had before. I so completely and utterly knew exactly what I needed to do. It was like all of a sudden I had found what I had been out on Earth to do. Like every choice, every decision I had made up until this point was leading me to this exact moment, and I was finally where I was meant to be. It was the weirdest thing. I woke up after that, and the dream hasn't faded like most of them do. It is still as clear as if it had actually happened.