Observations I

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Four out of five mornings a week I leave my flat at 8am. Shortly after, I walk past an elderly lady out walking her equally old dog. It varies each day how far along the road she is but I always see her bending to pick litter up off the footpath to put into a garbage bin in one of the many front yards.  Or at least, that is what I thought I was watching.

This morning when I walked past her she had bent over to pick up a discarded coke can from the gutter. The next thing I heard, was the same coke can re-hitting the ground in someone’s front yard. I stopped and watched her, not quite believing she was throwing litter into someone’s front yard. Two houses further down she did it again. Bend. Pick up empty bottle. Toss.

I don’t know whether I should be cranky with her because this isn’t solving the problem of litter, or whether I should find it funny because it seems so crazy, what can you do except shake your head.

Blah Fashion

Image by Colin Anderson

Fashion. What can I say. When you're actually at a show, it is so boring. You are surrounded by pretentious twats who are completely wrapped up in looking like everyone else in the near vicinity of them. I learnt today that fashion is about shoes that don't fit, looking like an emaciated African child, hair in a top not be it messy or neat and the ability to sneer rather than smile, if you can smile at all.


I find the end result of fashion photography, freely available in so many magazines, far more interesting. Given my interest in photography in general, that isn't surprising. It is hard to find anything positive to say about creations like this;

Image Source Lumberjack homeless men freshly out of prison

Or even this;

Image Source Thepethial

Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh cause I didn't mind the work of Holly Fulton. For example;

Image Source Holly Fulton

Image Source Holly Fulton

Thanks London Fashion Week 2012 but you haven't won this cynic over. I think I actually have less time for this world than ever before. I could go into great depth about how it is degrading to women as a whole, how the industry produces a lot of "stuff" that no one in their right mind would ever wear publicly or how exploitation features predominantly for those in the world of chain fashion. But essentially why bother? Many others, far more capable than I have already done it. Perhaps I'm just getting bitter about the mass market, over saturation style demands of what I should look like, what I should wear and what I should find interesting.


My flat mate has been reading this over my shoulder and asked if today is brutal honesty Sunday. And yes. I think it is.

A short lesson in horticulture

Image - Mine

Scene: Interior Basement office. Day

The office door opens and a female student enters. She walks to the counter and looks at our vase of flowers. The student turns to my colleague.

Student: why have you got asparagus in a jar?

Colleague: [pause] they’re daffodils.

So apparently, these two, completely separate items, are one and the same.

Frozen

Image: Mine

If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome.  Anne Bradstreet (1612 - 1672), 'Meditations Divine and Moral,' 1655 (attributed to).

When I left Australia I was telling anyone, who wasn’t sick of listening, that I wanted to have many new and exciting experiences. Of late, these have dropped off as the cycle of work and commuting and groceries and boring stuff has increased.

This morning though, provided one of those new experiences I’ve been missing. It wasn’t something amazing or miraculous. It was a lack of running water.

The weather has finally been cold enough for the pipes to freeze. A phenomenon I’ve heard of but luckily avoided. My housemate discovered the problem at 5:30 am when she got up to have a shower before going to work. What I didn’t know would happen, even though she reported it to the tenancy bods, was that a plumber would arrive just after 9am, with me still in pyjamas, looking stylish with bed hair.

He looked at the taps, went back downstairs and checked the mains and came back with the verdict there was nothing he could do that wouldn’t negatively effect the pipes. So, it is now 10:46am and there is still no water. I’ve been up to the shops and brought a couple of bottles of water, so at least I can have a cup of tea but that doesn’t help with flushing the toilet.

Hopefully it warms up enough to defrost the pipes a bit, otherwise, it will be back to the bogan baths I had in the Middle East. Yay!!!

Got to dance...

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What a surprise. I'm watching a dancing talent show. Usually there's a lot of bad auditions, but there's also some bloody good ones. Here are a few of the ones I've particularly liked.

This first video is a 14 year old girl, who has the joy of hypermobility...


This little dude calls himself Kav Man and he's FIVE!! He's amazing!! (video quality isn't brilliant but it's worth the watch)


These guys call themselves "Dadversity" and they did Swan Lake. Some of the guys have some real talent and good feet.


This guy was being billed as the embarrassing Dad. He does this kind of dancing at football matches etc. and his kids always want him to stop. Needless to say, with the three gold stars at the end of this they weren't quite so worried.


This guy is just INSANE!#

Honestly, I could go on and on with videos, but I think you all have the idea now...