Karva Chauth

Karva Chauth was on Tuesday night. It is a one-day festival celebrated by married Hindu women in North India. You fast from sunrise to moonrise for the safety and longevity of their husbands. Tru luv, right?

In modern India, it's seen as a romantic festival akin to Valentine's Day. According to wiki, advertisers have also jumped on board, e.g. Chevrolet ran an ad in "which a man demonstrates his caring for his wife by buying a car with a sunroof so he can drive her around on Karva Chauth night until she spots the moon through it."

Here's my darling Mum looking up prayers and songs for the ceremony on YouTube- East meets West much? Or maybe, Old meets New. Either way, something meets something.

Mum fasted until she saw the moon at about 10.40pm on Tuesday. 

Her and my Dad had an arranged marriage 30 years ago, she was only 19 years old.

Gravity Falls

Was I the only human on planet Earth who found 'Gravity' underwhelming and dare I say it, a bit boring?
Factors that could have effected this: I didn't watch it in 3D, I was a bit hungry during the viewing, I was distracted due to some #fullonshit that had happened that day, I find Sandra Bullock and George Clooney to both be at that 'too famous' level where I can't suspend belief and am like "Is George Clooney still dating Stacey Kiebler?"

Cat Got Your Tongue

Photographer Hannah Price takes portraits of men moments after they catcall her in her series "City of Love". She describes the process in an interview with 'The Morning News': “Once a guy catcalls me, depending on the situation, I would either candidly take their photograph or walk up to them and ask if I can take their photograph. They usually agree and we talk about our lives as I make their portrait.”

This is such an endlessly fascinating idea, to turn the tables and remove the veil of anonymity that these men hide behind. I think most women, have at some point experienced the uncomfortableness of being heckled by guys on the street or in a car driving past. 

Sometimes it's aggressive, sometimes it's scary, sometimes it's funny, sometimes it's just stupid.  But the overwhelming reaction I have is contempt- how dare you make me feel unsafe and violated, even for a millisecond. I always think- what if this guy's girlfriend, mother, sister or daughter saw them right now.

Hannah Price's works are presented in a completely non-judgmental way- not vilifying these men, but rather showing us their humanity and ironically, vulnerability.

TEST

DISCUSSION WORTHY OR WHAT? 

Surry Hills Ghost Story

It was a dark and stormy night, so everyone was at Lebanese restaurants or staying in watching the Lil Wayne documentary.

All but for one sharehouse in Surry Hills, which settled on this fateful night for their…. HOUSE WARMING PARTY.

The pastel bicycles stacked up on their stoop cast shadows like mangled bodies.

There was an ominous pile of wet coats near the front door. Like the uniforms of fallen soldiers: khaki parka upon khaki parka, all with cinched waists.

The house was a chamber of unsettling sounds. Tropical jamz wafted up and down the stairs and in to the empty street. The music played on and on, as different people convinced of the superiority of their music taste floated in and out behind the DJ decks.

The upstairs balcony of the spoilt-girl-pretending-to-slum-it creaked, the wood drenched in mulled wine that really just tasted like the sum of its parts. The soft hiss of bulbs being inhaled in the next room. And the hushed tones of an art collective talking about an upcoming installation- a projection of something, on to something else.

All the girls at the party looked through each other with gashing stares, like they might secretly check the same fashion blogs. That conventionally-pretty but not even remotely high-fash girl from school was there, except she’d become really cool. As though someone who worked at Incu person had skinned her and was wearing her face as a mask.

Most of Bridezilla was there.

And then she entered. A stranger with old, pale eyes. The confidence to pull off a dress with a long-hemline, and cropped orange hair that was immediately distinct from the sea of buns piled at the apex of all other heads. Silence fell, Nobody had ever seen this person before. Or anyone like her.

She glided in to conversations with a preordained ease. Her giggle equal parts childlike and shrill. Her insights peppered with things she’d read in UHH, Das Superpaper, Time Out Sydney, Ampersand, Two Thousand, Three Thousand, Four Thousand, pedestrian.tv, the Pedestrian Daily Mailout, the Pedestrian Weekly Mailout. It was all terrifyingly correct.

You got home to find that she had requested your friendship on Facebook. You already had 54 friends in common. You waited a day to accept the friendship, and in the lapse of time, 121 mutual friends materialised. She asked you to join Groups, to become a Fan of things. She gradually hooked up with about 6-8 of your dearest male friends.

These days, she is at every party you ever go to. And she will continue to be, for the rest of your life.

From time to time she even suggests you two should ‘catch up’.

slumdog amillionaire

14 things i learnt in india...




#1- in india, people drink buffalo milk not cows milk. cow's milk there is not of a high quality because the breed of cows there is different to what they call "american cows". another thing about cows there is that i feel like they know they're the holy animal of the nation. they really have attitude.




#2- at the end of wedding ceremonies, the bride and the girls side of the family all cry on command (because they are "losing" their daughter to the boy's family) and the groom's family dances (because they are acquiring a new daughter). it's a strange scene and makes for a compelling photo when both sides of the family are together outside crying or dancing.



#3- they have a really popular drink there called "frootie". it's a mango juice drink and is fuck-off delicious. mango is basically the most popular flavour of anything flavoured- lollies, ice-cream, lassi etc. mango, mango and more mango.



#4- it gets really cold in the north in winter. who knew! the north gets crippled by heavy fog for weeks almost every winter too making it impossible to travel by car, train, plane... or camel.



#5- saturday is a normal work/school/college day, i.e. 1 day-weekend- sunday. christmas day is also a normal day. however many people go home for lunch for an hour or two everyday.




#6- almost 100% likely that when driving you'll see someone pissing on the side of the road, it's not uncommon to see someone taking a shit either. while on our trip, we were on a long drive and me and my sister think we heard our driver (our family had hired a car and a driver for a day trip) pissed in a cup while we were all in the car. MASSIVE statues and temples on sides of road are also quite common and people don't even bat an eyelid.



#7- neha is a very popular girls name in india. while i was there two girls named neha committed suicide and made headline news (one of them because she was 11 years old. her parents had taken her out of dance classes so she could concentrate on her studies). india has the highest suicide rate in the world.




#8- everyone i know in india had at least three servants. one to wash the dishes (human dishwasher), one to clean and one to cook. the rampant poverty means dirt cheap labour so everyone can afford help around the house.




#9- when sick in a village, you will probably be taken to a medicine man who will do some massages and acupuncture and give you herbal remedies. they work! and they're fast!



#10- bryan adams is really big over there. he tours there a fair bit apparently. my cousin had summer of '69 as her ringtone, another one had a tape playing in the car when we were driving and whistling along to "straight from the heart".



#11- family homes have the patriarch's names on the outside of them. this is the house my dad grew up in. potalia is spelt this way because it was the first time they had translated it to english and made a mistake.




#12- weddings last about 10 days, give or take. there are 4 days of ceremonies previous and 3 days of rituals aftewards. this is me giving my cousin a cornflour scrub to cleanse him (mentally and physically) for the wedding. this happens in the 3 days leading up to the wedding.




#13- you can buy anything through your window on the side of the road. literally anything. here are some young boys in new delhi selling pirated bestsellers- n.b. dan brown and twilight. these books will often have entire sections missing from them or covers that don't match the stories inside.



#14- public bathrooms are labelled 'he' and 'she'.

photo credit: me (it's weird i'm not even a professional photographer or anything)

Richard YEWates

Eleven Kinds of Loneliness, 1962

Happy Birthday Collage Joel Amos

Wish you were here

some notable mentions for 2009 (a post post-script)

masterchef

empire of the sun

celebrity deaths


bicycles

frozen yoghurt

saying "i'm just so ready for this year to be over"



chingalings/pocket/the pond etc

kanyegate

dumplings

does it come any larger?

American plus size model and author of the this years memoir 'Hungry' Crystal Renn recently posed for a V Magazine editorial feature alongside 'normal' size model Jacquelyn Jablonks. The story, shot by Terry Richardson and styled by Mel Ottenberg, is a style piece about sexiness at any shape - clothes that suit all figures regardless of dress size - with the two wearing the same outfits and posing in the same way.

Images via V Magazine: see them all here

While I do think Jacquelyn looks great, Crystal looks SO DAMN HOT

My friends who are stylists have always told me clothes photograph better on a coat hanger physique, but if these photos are anything to go by, sex appeal has nothing to do with size and everything to do with style - here, Crystal looks super sassy and super sexy!

Love love love her! Also love love love the Danielle Scutt dress with the red Armani belt! Chrismakkuh present, perhaps?

Dear @clrfst

Tai's last interview via gawker.com.

I've had a lot of practice 'googling' the sudden deaths of celebrities this year, and gawker.com is one of my favourite [morbid] resources.

PS. If we're going to save this blog from death, maybe we should bring back this post several times.

PPS. I am genuinely sad that Brittney Murphy died suddenly.

PPPS. I am in France at the moment and it was a very different experience seeing the Twitter trending topic explode in about 2 mins, rather then wake up to bad news when in Australia's timezone.

Unofficial True Blood Fan page - Some more look-alikes!!1

I feel that peripheral-vampire Pam looks a bit like Charlotte Dawson:


That some of the costumes look a bit like an American Appy stockroom:



And that Sookie and Tara's friendship looks A LOT like some other BBFF's we've seen over the years...

hair

too true!

a few of us have been watching 'true blood' and tonight at dinner sophie remarked "i can't figure out if the anna paquin character reminds me of someone"

we were all in agreement. something about her face makes you think of a milli people like posh spice, circa a few years ago...



but is it that or does anna paquin just kinda remind you of... anna paquin?



i got home, started watching an ep and there in all her gap-toothed glory i saw it! i hopped to google images land with a smirk... one JUDI DENCH please!



in other lookalike news.... NOT ! YEAH LIKE MAYBE IN OPPOSITES LAND! HUH HA HAH *
how is it that america gets two mega babes (not to mention mega ETHNIC babes) running the show?



* this joke is brought to you by the sarah silverman school of comedy.

what to wear to work

First she announces that she finds dating really difficult (OH! relatable!), then she goes and does this


OH! Flapper meets Marry Poppins meets LEGS! And all beige! So Eadie Beale (if she showered), so beige, so now!

In other news, I just got home from the Phil Spector documentary The Agony and the Ecstasy of Phil Spector and since I left the cinema I can't get this out of my head.



What a genius.

The film ends with the 2007 mistrial - previewing tonight at the festival was quite serendipitous timing on the Sydney Film Festival's part considering the timeliness of the trial now.

LIVE.

90% of every set I play includes this song.

Is it just me, or is Estelle putting on an American accent?

Happy Birthday Lunoes

Love from All of Us

BIRTHDAY BABEEEEE

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LUNEO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

HOPE YOU'RE HAVING A FANGTASTIC TIME IN NYC!!!!!!!

WE MISS YOU & LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!

BAKLAVA & TEA ON YOUR RETURN XXX