she's got a ticket to ride

twenty four hours is a long time to spend on a plane.

but if you're going to spend twenty four hours on a plane, you might as well be flying singapore airlines. oh, and going to germany.

i am officially leaving melbourne with the other students on the study tour at 5pm tomorrow, and after our long-haul flight we will land in frankfurt airport at about 7am german time. we then get straight on a train to go to freiburg where everyone will settle in the youth hostel. throughout the next three weeks or so we will stay in munich, berlin and cologne, with day excursions to bordering regions in austria, switzerland and france.

so it's safe to say that i probably will not be updating for at least three weeks (that is, if anybody actually reads this thing). it is possible that i'll post but not likely ~ i have plenty of holiday homework to fill my evenings and i need to keep in touch with all my friends via email/facebook. hopefully i will be out having fun at some point, too.

bye for now. see you in a month or so (:

_______________________

i'm bored of cheap and cheerful

since i have a decent camera now, i finally joined chictopia. add me ~ http://www.chictopia.com/fallingdown

you know i couldn't last

on march 21, 35 years ago, this woman passed away from leukemia at the age of 29.

only she wasn't technically a woman, she was actually a pre-op transsexual.

candy darling, born james lawrence slattery, appeared in her first warhol film - flesh - in 1968. she also starred in warhol's women in revolt and would later appear in bit parts in major hollywood pictures including klute with jane fonda and la mortadella with sophia loren.

in 1971 she was encouraged by warhol to take hormones in order to grow breasts in time for her appearance in two of german director werner schroeter's films. the pills were taken off the market four years later when they were found to be carcinogenic, but by that point it was too late. candy darling died of leukemia in march of 1974, leaving behind the following note.


to whom it may concern

by the time you read this i will be gone. unfortunately before my death i had no desire left for life. even with all my friends and my career on the upswing i felt too empty to go on in this unreal existence. i am just so bored by everything. you might say bored to death. it may sound ridiculous but it is true.

i have arranged my own funeral arrangements with a guest list and it is paid for. i would like to say goodbye to jackie curtis, i think you're fabulous. holly, sam green a true friend and noble person, ron link i'll never forget you, andy warhol what can i say, paul morrissey, lennie you know i loved you, andy you too, jeremiah don't take it too badly just remember what a bitch i was, geraldine i guess you saw it coming. richard turley & richard golub i know i could've been a star but i decided i didn't want it. manuel, i'm better off now. terry i love you. susan i am sorry, did you know i couldn't last, i always knew it. i wish i could meet you all again.

all these things that i've done

today was my unofficial birthday. my actual birthday is on march 28, but that would prove difficult to celebrate with my family considering i will be on the plane to germany at the time.

i actually have an extended birthday ~ i hop on the plane at 5pm on the 27th, sometime during the 24-hour flight it becomes the 28th, and then since germany is ten hours behind melbourne we arrive at about 8am on the 28th again. only five days left until i leave :)

since today was the day we chose to celebrate my birthday, i got some presents: a new nikon coolpix digital camera [i can test it out on all the castles in germany], a book of andy warhol portraits, and a $50 gift card for cotton on body. i spent it on two sets of underwear, and eventually went over the $50 limit with a white bathrobe and some adorable grey over-the-knee socks.

we also went to the camberwell markets this morning, where i bought a pair of nicola finetti studded platform heels for $10, a first-edition of the edie sedgwick bio edie: an american biography for $4, and a silk scarf for $20.

i started officially packing for my trip today, and limiting how much i put in my bag is proving a little problematic. normally i'm not a gratuitous over-packer, but there are so many things i want to bring to germany, along with several things i don't really care for but have to pack anyway ~ an awful navy waterproof jacket, an ugly maroon umbrella [mum inexplicably bought one that "matched my uniform" .. ugh], etc. but whatever. i guess if i buy stuff and i have to make room, i can always surreptitiously throw things away. after all, who needs a towel anyway ?

currently listening to:

love is dead ~ brett anderson

dancing with myself ~ nouvelle vague

mersey paradise ~ the stone roses

bubblegum ~ brigitte bardot

psycho for drum machine

several friends and i hit the melbourne grammar social last night, it was mediocre at best. nobody was attractive [my creepy penchant for older men aside], the music was awful [the only highlight was pokerface .. it's a guilty pleasure], and there were 70 people there, max.

i only found out about the social earlier this week so i kind of threw my outfit together, it's not amazing but at least i fit the theme of "white". [spot the odd one out.]

tallest .. but WHY am i standing like that ??

i luv this photo because everyone looks incredibly high and i'm just smiling away obliviously .. my friend was actually falling on me as the photo was being taken [hence my baby-deer legs] but as you can see i am still making a concerted effort to look nice

bathroom photos are classy

______________________

i think everyone enjoyed taking photos more than than the actual social lol

tu veux ou tu veux pas

"yesterday's committee,

sticks, but a broken drum,

midnight in the city,

flutes in a vacuum,

shut lips, sleeping faces,

every stopped machine,

the dumb and littered places

where crowds have been: ...

_________________________

all silences rejoice,

weep (loudly or low),

speak - but with the voice

of whom, i do not know.

__________________________

absence, say, of susan's,

absence of egeria's

arms and respective bosoms,

lips and, ah, posteriors,

slowly form a presence;

________________________

whose? and, i ask, of what

so absurd an essence,

that something, which is not,

nevertheless should populate

empty night more solidly

than that with which we copulate,

why should it seem so squalidly?"

___________________

text from brave new world by aldous huxley

ermine furs adorn the imperious

bloggers are getting butthurt about it but idk, i quite like mischa barton's outfit.

the shoes are a little iffy, but she pulls it off. people are getting all "evil bitch talentless whore animal killer ~!!!!11!" over it and it's a little pathetic.

or maybe i'm just a hypocrite. it seems like only yesterday that i was being incredibly self-righteous and bratty about this kind of thing, but my attitude towards fur has mellowed in recent years.

it reminds me of those 90s PETA anti-fur ads featuring its most famous supermodels - think christy, naomi, cindy, elle and, of course, kate - under the slogan "we'd rather go naked than wear fur". almost two decades on, to the best of my knowledge they have all renounced their anti-fur ways in the form of high-profile fur advertising gigs or just wearing it out and about. in the late 80s and early 90s, PETA reached the zenith of its anti-fur campaign, and there is still a great deal of antagonism about fur even now [although most of the people who get grumpy at fur-wearers either wear leather, eat meat or do both].

the supermodels and i, we're the worst kind of fur-wearers. we know what an awful thing it is to do, but we do it anyway. it's bizarre, because i really do love animals and i like to think of myself as someone who genuinely cares about animal rights. maybe i just fail at being consistent. maybe i'm just a lot more shallow and a lot less moral than i was at thirteen. it's probably a bit of both. what would ingrid newkirk think of me now ?

of course, now that i am older i can finally see the point of everyone who is against PETA. it's quite pathetic in its extremism, not to mention incredibly sexist. like a bunch of inexplicably naked women in your campaigning/ protests and spokespeople such as pamela anderson are going to help people take your cause seriously. it's a pity they give animal rights supporters such a bad name, really.

to end on a less vindictive note, here is my current hairspiration. must .. grow out .. hair .. so it can look like this.

AND she has freckles .. further proof that platinum blonde hair will suit my skin tone