A mediocre finale.

It’s been a varied semester, not just academically but also personally (don’t worry; I’m not initiating a deep-and-meaningful), and this is my final blog post. They grow up so quickly!

Turning eighteen yesterday, I feel I should bring a mature edge to my last post.

As if!

The best moments of JOUR1111 semester were, no doubt, realizing that my lecture friend arranged his jellybeans in the same manner I did, laughing just a bit too hard at crude advertisements, making more Pokémon doodles than lecture notes, and finally being able to just whine for a few pages and have it considered an excellent factual story.

After just one semester, different kids are already showing off what they’ve learned. The science students will tell you everything you didn’t want to know about your lunch, and the law students will tell you about every single piece of legislature they know of (brace yourselves). So what’s my by-product of being a journerd?

While I don’t always say it, I’m secretly judging people know when they talk about a news issue. I’m tempted to blurt out that they’re only thinking that because the media’s told them to, but generally people don’t appreciate being told they’re silly. And after the rap some of my law friends get, I don’t want to be one of those know-it-all students, so I generally just sit there looking a bit mischievous.

So this brings me to the end of my JOUR1111 course and blog. While overall it seems that the resounding message seems to be “you’re studying a degree for a dying trade, congrats!”, and my friends frequently tell me I’m in a dumb course and won’t get anything out of it (pretentious law chumps), I think it’s that underlying urge to just write that keeps us all going, much like this post. Hopefully we’ll all get there, or at least find some spiffy stories trying.

Tell your next of kin.

If there’s anything better than pranks, it’s Kins.

For someone who listens to music daily, I’m not into music. I don’t know my favourite genre and my favourite band is shunned by my peers, the music industry and I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say the world.

And Kins is kind of the same. Its genre is a bit blurred, somewhere between indie, alternative and acoustic but kind of youthful and sad too, with elements of old-timey sea sides. If that’s hard to comprehend, which undoubtedly it is, just listen to them.

While I hail from the curb, they hail from Melbourne originally, although now they’re based in Brighton, so I’m surprised they ever manage to find a cab. While I liken them to a slower variety of San Cisco, they are not as well publicized despite my favourite track of theirs, United Fate, being the best morning-walk companion. And further still, it will take a decent Googler to find out that this track even exists.

www.myspace.com/hellokins/music/songs/united-fate-78942553 .

Tentacoooool.

Since I started this blog, I have definitely changed tastes. Sure, I discovered I quite enjoy asparagus and octopus, but also style-wise. In an attempt to be the kind of chilled, sophisticated and relaxed person I will never be, I’ve recently approached fashion from a modern and minimal angle. 

 

 

 

 Le Specs sunglasses. ASOS REVIVE backpack. Lord & Berry lipgloss

Get foxed.

The arctic fox, while commonly remembered as a fluffy white beast, sheds its coat in the summer. While the white fur camouflages it nicely in the bitter and snowy winter months, its brown summer coat allows it to blend in better with the bare dirt. ‘Blue’ arctic foxes, however, remain dark or charcoal all year round and become just a tad lighter in winter. Like sluts and their fake tans.

I need something else to clean.

I was reading Oyster magazine today, and an interview with Julie Verhoeven and Something Else designer Natalie Wood particular piqued my interest. Verhoeven noted that she never stops making lists and “would be at a complete loss without one.” Wood also added that “full completion of my lists never happens; there is a definite roll-on effect.”

Hopefully this kind of intense list-making always means that you’re also creative and destined to become rich, because I never have less than three different lists on the go at any one point. Even just now, I have an incredibly comprehensive list of what I’m doing over the next month or so, what I’m wearing for said events, and what I have to bring. This same information is also in a different format on a list-making website, as well as some other tasks (it’s not uncommon for me to have 70+ items to complete). I don’t actually need any form of writing down because my brain’s constantly reminding me to bring my phone, wallet and some back-up lippy to that friend’s birthday dinner.

In fact, I probably spend an hour or so a day solely on making lists. Ironic, considering most of the tasks on these lists could be completed in the time I take to jot them down multiple times. My organizational skills must just be too good.

Anyway, being busy doesn’t mean a messy final product. In the case of Something Else, Wood’s frantic schedule and tendency to be disorganized doesn’t reflect in the collections. The A/W 12 collection, Metamorphosis, has me drooling. It’s fresh, modern and minimal but I know that the designers have gone through hair-tearing moments of stress like me to make it happen.

I think there is a part of everybody that enjoys a list though. I like to think of myself as Monica from FRIENDS – my military-style cleaning and desperate planning make me charming... sort of. I mean, who else prepares for the big one-eight by vacuuming their room?

Will blog for bucks.

At this week’s and my final JOUR1111 lecture, we learned about journalism in blogging in business. He told us that your blogging can turn into your own website, and you can turn that into your own business, which left me wondering why I hadn’t been paid yet.

Obviously and sadly for the reader I already know this, but right now blogging gives the creator the opportunity to pitch the story in any direction they want, and to control the story.

Thankfully for you, I’m a bit shy on Twitter, although the platform does allow you to talk to the people that make TV and as such, the news, allowing directly dialogue with writers and editors. Perhaps I should spread my wings and use it a bit more (bird pun intended).

It’s plain to see that at the moment that social media is where the news is. Twitter is noisy and Facebook is blooming, which means that using it can be classed as studying. And boy do I study hard.

Raf Simons says.

I’m lost in the fashion designer world. Sure, I like clothing and put great thought into what I’m wearing, but if you take me to a high end arcade and ask me if I’d prefer to browse at Costingtons or Overpricior, I would flee.

Basically, I know what designers exist and what are making it big at the moment, but I don’t want to. That whole sector freaks me out. I read articles about designers of the moment, realise what I’ve just looked at, drop the magazine, and run for the hills. I like the look of things in said magazines, but I wouldn’t have a clue how to put something nice like that together. I shop at Lowes for god’s sake.

That’s why Raf Simons is my god. I like minimalism in fashion because it is clean, modern, eternally in vogue, and it’s just bloody easy. Black or white, short or long. No ‘layering’ (curse the word), mullet skirts or hideous prints that not even Nan can pull off. And personally, I think it looks better than all these high heels with flames on the back and the oriental ‘trend’ (see, I’m in the loop. The dirty, frightening loop).

Raf Simons studied industrial design (he could have whipped up some of those snazzy chairs I’ve mentioned) but has worked as a fashion designer since 1995. The Belgian designer is strictly menswear, but that’s the appeal. It’s neat, sharp and will always cover your thighs.

Don’t let the minimalist approach fool you – his early shows were eccentric and alternative, allowing the models to run, and to wander around car parks and studios. In April this year, he became creative director at Dior, which is almost as swanky as Overpricior.

So while I’m still not 100% sure what area of journalism I want to enter, at least I know wherever I end up, hopefully, I’ll be sporting some Raf Simons. When all else fails, reach for the black blazer… and black shirt and black tie and black shorts and black bike pants  and black socks and black shoes. Ahhhhh.

Rad recliners and jocular judgements.

I first truly realised that I was an oddball when we did a book report task in grade 10. We could pick any book – any at all in the entire library – as long as it was non-fiction. It was a wimpy, non-graded task simply to fill in some time between assessments, but nothing was more exciting for a bunch of fifteen-year-old girls. My classmates all scurried to the fashion and women and Barbie section and had a few tiffs over who got to do a Powerpoint on Chanel, before they found out there were several copies and my teacher couldn’t give a rat’s arse if they did the same book. Meanwhile, four isles down, I had found my treasure trove. I grabbed the book, ran to my teacher and got the okay, and it was settled. I was doing a presentation on chairs.

But these weren’t your average chairs. I forget the book exactly, but it was hypermodern collection of designer chairs, from plastic neon green blobs to Perspex boxes you sat on. And while people slowly backed away from me when I told them the book I’d chosen, I had the last laugh – I was the only student in the whole grade to get a standing ovation for my Powerpoint. What can I say, kids get bored of speech after speech after speech on Chanel.

I liked that people couldn’t judge me on the chairs. If I’d picked a fashion book, people would critique the designer I’d chosen and, being pubescent girls, translated this directly to how cool I was and whether to gossip about me at lunch or not. But no one from any clique, be it the trolls, the offspring of Ascot mums, or the not-quite-a-full-cookie-jar crew, could judge me on my choice of chairs. Because none of them had a clue on what was hip in the chair world.

Despite this I knew I was chair savvy – my auntie had given me a giant Swedish furniture catalogue from some big shot home living designer, so I knew what was in and what was so last season in sitwear.

My basic message is this: that to be knowledgeable and trendy in a subject that no one really knows about, and to never use the word trendy, is a lot easier and fulfilling than busting your gut just to wear some Marc Jacobs. Intimidate your peers by telling them the latest trends in sofas, and ace that hollow assignment.