London 30/12/07

The second last day of the year.
The second movie was better than the first one, but it would be better the second time round.
Just like the second time round London is better than the first.
Leicester isn't the same shape the second time round, nor is Covent Garden linear.
Two shirts are better worn shared the second time round (like in the wild) and vintage stores visit new places with second-hand clothes.
A woman sings in absolute ecstacy on the tube and Luke wants to know what the song is, but the second time round we realise that her headphones aren't plugged into anything. She's just crazy.
London overloads itself with inspiration the second time round, flowing like matrix code. The streets split at the seems and old buildings well up in the eyes.
Though avenues are still muted the second time round, and the rain still mannered and on time.

On the second last day i knew more of myself, on the first day of the year i'll know less still.

World's most likeable person

In 1996 i was at a daylight-disco in Cuba where water is sprayed from the ceiling. I was drinking tequila from a water bottle when, on the other side of the room i spotted this beautiful woman sunk deep into a pile of Jim Morrison records.


They called her Ms. Space-face Galactica and she was Boston's hottest jungle DJ at the time.

We chatted, and let's just say it went well.

Second steps

So i'm in Austria, thanks to steve and Shez - kind enough to invite me to spend Christmas in Saalbach Hinterglemm - a ski resort just shy of two hours from Salzburg. There are Gingerbread houses, Ex-mafia mob taxi drivers, a lack of decent Parisian Chocolat, enormous glasses of beer and a national obsession with Bon Jovi (the early years).

My tiny little cousin James had his first real go at skiing today too. We're all very proud.

A moveable beast

Paris just appears like this every time you brush past the Seine.


Rue De Buci - The Taschen book store, free olives, giant glasses of Vin Chaud for 4 euro (thats cheap), small chairs, even smaller tables and bad french being practiced just loud loud enough for people to notice.





The Marais - Jewish quarter, amazing Isreali Kebab restaurant, tiny streets stalked by heavily bricked apartments not burnt down during the war, vintage stores,gay and lesbian meeting places and little bars so filled with smoke you can't see the fire exit signs.

A Tale of One City

Paris is like French language, as a relative beginner to it, it's a maze of misunderstood rituals, etiquette and savoir faire. In time though one can become attuned,as in language, to Paris.

I haven't seen everything in Paris, not the tour d'eiffel nor Versailles nor Le Sacre
Couer nor Le Moulin Rouge - but i'm not a tourist anymore. Few things please me more than to walk with my eyes to the pavement, not smile at strangers, refuse to give tourists directions and be rude to waiters (who are rude in return).

Cafe's spill out onto the promenade, enormous churches lurk around corners and museums outnumber metro stations. And like the French language, it reveals itself in time.

Bonjour de Paris, France.

I arrived yesterday, and as expected my luggage did not arrive. It didn't matter though because luckily i had some ski boots and spare bindings in my hand luggage to keep me warm. Still though, i managed to buy a baguettte, navigate le marche and take the metro, which i might add is amazing - fast and terribly easy to use. My knowledge and understanding of French is absolutely useless, and whatever i learned at home is too slow, too convoluted and too well, 4-year oldish.

I am staying in le Bois de Vincennes, and my hotel sits just, as in only just, outside Paris proper. In fact there is a sign that says 'Paris' as if you are about to enter. I can sit by my window, look at the sign and wonder what lays beyond it. There is a cemetery next door, and just beyond that an American style 4-lane expressway chocked with peugots and square-looking Renaults. Presumably the cemetery was designed for proximity, so anyone who tries to cross the road can be scraped up and deposited beneath the ground just in time for happy hour.

Jesus Walks

Although reincarnation is not endorsed by the Holy Bible, it is thought to be possible, even probable, in several other religions. So it is possible, even probable, that this dog is a reincarnation of Jesus, the Mesiah – who once walked on water.

We're all dead

i just got an email from the Australian Conservation Foundation: the leading environmental organisation in Australia. The email requested me to join a 'people who care about climate change' website where all you gotta do is just put in your address and email address and you show up on a google map of Australia where you represent one of the little dots that care. It costs nothing and takes about 2 minutes.

But heres the thing. I don't know how long this website has been in circulation, but given that the ACF is such an eminent foundation i expected the number of people who care (as featured on the map) would be fairly substantial. It was 8,704.

So lets do some mathematics.
(8704/20,000,000)*(100) = 0.04352%

Using the total population as 20 million (a conservative estimate by any means) 0.04% of Australians care about climate change, according to this website. thats less than 1%.

Whats even more alarming, is that as part of joining the website you tick a range of boxes indicating what you have done to minimise your carbon footprint (solar power, switching off powerpoints, offsetting car ommissions etc).
I ticked no boxes - and i'm supposed to be on the map as someone who cares.

what about the other 99.95648% of the population?

The case for smoking

After 4 decades, a hundred scientific breakthroughs and a thousand messages from the Surgeon General - has smoking changed?




It's easy to understand why Marilyn Monroe and James Dean smoked because that was the norm back then, plus the health dangers weren't known. Today, smoking seems more taboo than exposing yourself to small furry animals, unless you have a beaver in which case you are simply reintroducing a species back into the wild. Yet despite exhaustive efforts to paint smoking as something of a disgusting, inconsiderate habit saved for the cast of Trainspotting, smoking is still -and always will be - timeless and classy. Why? Well, look at the pictures below and ask yourself, honestly, how can Brad Pitt, Mischa Barton and Scarlett Johanson all be wrong at the same time?





They can't, because smoking is just too sexy to not do it. I mean, what's more sexy - being a spontaneous individual who can handle the risk of terminal cancer in a shrug of perennial cool, or someone who runs in the opposite way at the first sight of danger? Sexy isn't just a function of confidence, sexy is an attitude, sexy is standing on the edge of the Tower of Babel and laughing back as you take a step off. Smoking is sexy, its plain and clear. And fuck,if they do it why shouldn't we?
So kids, if you're looking for a quick way to enhance your rep. Believe the hype and buy yourself a pack today.

Handsome Charles

Prince Charles isn't exactly a dope dude, he's a royal - a member of a strange pack of ridiculously over-priviledged arseholes living in a bubble of superiority. Not a stretch of a yarn either, to say that 99% of the population probably agree with me - except for royal observers (who are in themselves also a strange pack of arseholes). But let's not write him off immediately - he has some redeeming characteristics...

The Prince of Wales is an accomplished horseman and in the 1980s rode in a number of competitive races, and even came second on Long Wharf in the two-mile Madhatters Private Stakes on 4th March. His horse was 13-8 favourite. He's also mad into Polo, talks to his plants, Schralps the gnar in Switzerland with his skiing buddies, loves a chat about modern architecture and thinks David suzuki is "brilliant".
He also helped build a planned village named Poundbury in Dorset, with all utilities buried underground (that means no electricity posts and lines). With the idea being to build a town for people not cars, parking is located on the outskirts and there is no commercial zoning so small shops mix with high density english style houses - Amelie poulan style. Bringing it back for posterity - i like that.
To add to all of that he heads an organic food organisation and has wings like a weathered Cessna. Pretty dope dude? Not in the slightest.

Excuse me, sir?

Some things just really please me.
It's so easy to be average, passable, to make up the numbers: so many of us just try to get over 50, say that'll do or do it tomorrow. The net result is a world that desires to just cross the line, with the least-cost method. The least amount of time/money/effort for a satisfactory result. So when something comes along that is just a bit better than what is required, the world benefits. We like things that have more to offer. Buzz cafe is like that. A modest not-so-typical-menu and nice coffee complement a unique atmosphere that makes you forget for a moment that you live in a world that is solid all the way through.
The owner didn't have to go to so much trouble to make it different, but he did.

When people do that little bit extra, the result is often magnified to the positive. All it takes is for someone to be half bothered. I could have ridden a bike to Buzz like the one above - which actually isn't mine but a dope one which i found on google images - but at extra cost to both me and the environment i chose to be lazy and drive: accruing the expense forward and not really helping anything.

Its not easy being twenty

On Friday Erin turned twenty. She got a pair of jeans and a digital camera so she can take photos of herself when she gets drunk or stuck inside myspace.
Later, and by pure coincidental serendipity, a case of glasses appeared on a table. Partially inspired, i then went searching for a pile of wood - after many moments and quiet emo sighs did i find one - reaching from floor to ceiling, and almost haunting if it weren't for the reassuring Mr. Ed voice inside my head.

"easy Chris, its only a pile of wood"
"stay out of this Mr. Ed"
"i'll do what i want"
"fine"
"fine"

Exploration is not dead

It's not
Really, its not

Bienvenue

This is a blog. It's mine, and so are these shoes. These shoes were bought from Rebel Sport, and out of the box looked identical to others of the same type and price, they are pretty good - breathable and light to wear, although sometimes my feet blister if I play soccer in them. That's ok cause they aren't soccer shoes. I've gone a long way in them, it seems over time my shoes assumed a character all of their own. Now they walk themselves.