HAPPY BIRTHDAY Emma and Laura! (and a belated Happy Birthday to Mum and Daniel - as i didn't get around to blogging in September - a whole month! how horrible)

Whoo Hoo! I've finally finished my politics essay; "Is George Bush a realist?", so, you ask, is George Bush a realist? But you really shouldn't as you run the risk of receiving a 2000 word essay in reply, with added footnotes and bibliography.

So I've moved on to greener pastures, which means I spent this morning cleaning my room and now have to try to find work. So far this has consisted of me replying to this email to do online surveys and get paid. It sounds quite sad really, but also cool as I do surveys for free, I love ticking all those boxes. My idea of great fun is getting those little menus at hotels or hospitals with all the little boxes for jelly and cereal :) Unfortunately I just realised that this plan backfired as apparently the email address did not exist. sigh

But life hasn't only been the anticipation of checking little boxes, yesterday I went and saw the Charles Blackman Alice in Wonderland exhibition at Federation Square with Vicki. I knew that I would like the paintings, as I love the book, but they were so beautiful! The colours were what struck me the most, the bright yellow of Alices's hair, red lips, cobalt blue backgrounds; and the eyes, Alice always looked uneasy about the crazy things going on around her. The painting remided me of how much I love Alice in Wonderland, and Through the Looking Glass. Each of the paintings had a quote next to them from the book, but some of them had nothing to do with the painting! I'm sure the curator had fun, trying to think up all these bizarre links. Two of my favourite quotes were:

`I quite agree with you,' said the Duchess; `and the moral of that is--Be what you would seem to be--or if you'd like it put more simply--Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'

and...

"'Begin at the beginning,' the King said, very gravely, 'and go on till you come to the end: then stop.'"

On other news I just finished reading Alias Grace (by Margaret Atwood). It was quite a good, easy book to read (maybe just in comparison with Ulysees, which I am still in the middle of), a kind of mystery book, with lots of psychological stuff and symbolism, the ending was a bit disappointing, but it was still worth it, especially for this quote:

"Still, there's a severe and unadorned elegance about her - like a quaker meeting house - which has it's appeal; an appeal which, for him, is aesthetic only. One does not make love to a minor religious edifice."

ahem... ooo guess what! you too can watch the antics of the naked pirates in my politics lecture - it's now available on youtube - though it's pretty bad quality and you have to join up to watch it (and confirm your email), but still perhaps worth it lol. Just search for naked pirates and it's the one called "Naked Pirates'.

Other internet news... i've been discovering myspace and Nouvelle Vague - i love them, they are so random. Go and listen to their version of Heart of Glass - so bizarre and addictive (http://www.myspace.com/nouvellevague). The Crayon Fields is another cute band, a bit beach boys ish: ( http://www.myspace.com/thecrayonfields). Do you know what struck me as unfair yesterday morning as my sisters opened their new nano i-pods? That I am still living in the age of the cassette walkman, yep that's right, I still own a little sony cassette walkman that was the height of cool when i was about 7. But I never continued my musical journey, i have never owned a cd walkman or an early mp3 player or, now, an i-pod. But I'm hoping for a kind of relapse, or nostalgia for the cassette walkman and then i will be there.

The rest of this post is dedicated to a study of finding beauty in the mundane (like yellow flowers in a rubbish bin) , or A Study of the Carpark Outside Greensborough Hoyts at 6pm on a Saturday: