Cherokee

I failed in my mission to find a stylish winter outfit yesterday. To be fair I didn't get to really give it a good crack since jerry's errands took up the whole day. It was pitch dark by 3pm and snowing, I discovered my second hand iPhone is locked and unusable and without any retail therapy to cheer me up I sank into a quiet sulk. Jerry was so excited about his bargain new Cherokee jeep that i tried to snap out of it. We spent the evening at rasmus's eating tacos, drinking wine and trying to jailbreak my iphone (unsuccessfully)... today we're hitting the shops again for shopping for anna take 2. Wish me luck. ;o)

back in sweden!

it's so nice to be back in sweden! even if it is freezing cold and grey. we've totally spread out and taken over rasmus's house, where we're staying while we're in stockholm. today jerry's buying a car for us to take up to åre! and my mission is to find a nice set of thermals, beanie, gloves and uggs. looking good is the key to enjoying winter! ;o)

'the cove'

✰ we just watched 'the cove', a heartbreaking but magnificent documentary, which has won a heap of awards including a sundance and is nominated for an oscar! ...a must watch!!!

the guy who made the doco, ric o'barry, who starred in and trained 'flipper' back in the 70's, was so affected by his experience working with dolphins, that he's been on a mission ever since to free them from captivity and stop the slaughtering of dolphins for meat in japan. in a fantastic 'mission impossible style' operation, he and his team sneak down to the killing site, in the middle of the night through private property and set up a small fortune worth of high-tech hidden cameras and underwater sound recorders. the footage uncovers the horrors, the lies and the corruption of the japanese whaling trade and the government officials who are both supporting and covering it up. the doco also gives you an insight into the amazing intelligence of dolphins and at the end of the doco you feel like just marching down to that japanese port, jumping in to set the poor things free and then killing (or at least cursing, spitting and wishing bad karma on) all the horrible fishermen that are slaughtering them.

i went swimming with dolphins last year in mexico. i wish i'd never done it and i'll never do it again. the small concrete swimming pool they lived in was filthy and old and the poor creatures were all scratched up and bleeding from gashes on their bills and sides. i asked the trainer what happened to them and he said they do it to themselves. there was one female and 2 males and i asked if they ever had babies and he said they were never interested in mating. that's how depressed they were. you could feel it by being near them.

hopefully this documentary will put a stop to dolphin trading as well... they shouldn't be in swimming pools! they should be out in the ocean, surfing waves and being free....

♡

¡adiós españa!

❉ yay! tomorrow is an exciting day.....its the first screening of my tv show in oz and our last day here in marbella....

as for no way san jose, i so wish i was home to watch it! of course ive seen it a million times but it'd be somehow different watching it live on tv...

and as for marbella, we're really looking forward to going back to sweden, but at the same time we're realising how much we'll miss this place; the freedom of unemployment, the warm sunny weather, our cosy apartment and swimming pool and the beautiful green streets and ocean and mountain views... and of course the sleazy car tooting and hissing, the non-existant customer service, the gypsy beggars, the unwalkable sidewalks, the 'mañana' philosophy... ahh, good old spain.
soon we're gonna be surrounded by cold white snow. so today we decided to go for a long walk, to take it all in and appreciate it. i'm sure tomorrow i'll be packing with a tear in my eye.

♡

christmas= presents

☆ ive been doing my christmas shopping online, trying to get into the christmas spirit, but with my bank balance on zero after this two-month non-working holiday, my christmas gift list has been rather un-festively cut down to just mum & dad and jerry. (sorry to anyone else who was expecting anything). jerry doesn't even like christmas and i had to force him to agree to buy me a present! ...what's christmas without presents?!?
i began thinking about the christmas presents i'd give if i was super rich....

jerry: an australian passport, a bentley, a pet monkey, a chocolate factory and an african safari trip (staying in one of those 5-star tents).

dad: 'the duke of bedford' title.
we had lots of royal and aristocratic guests on board the cruise ship, but i remember once there was a duke and duchess who, rumour had it, had bought their titles!! i never knew that was possible... apparently the titles came with the land and estate! my dad's been obsessed with the historical duke of bedford, (also called john russell) for years, after having the most bizarre and awesome recurring dreams about being him. it'd be pretty good brag-material having a dad who's a duke, and he'd make a good one...

mum: life membership to 'golden door 5-star health resort'.
not that she's sick or unhealthy at all. several years ago mum and i went together to do a week retreat at the 'golden door' (hidden away in the forested hills of queensland) and it changed our lives. from tai-chi at sunrise on the mountaintop, each day was filled with amazing detox activities, exercise classes, meditations, yoga, pilates, water aerobics, bushwalking, tango and belly dance classes, and interesting lectures all hosted by the most positive and motivational people, interspersed with delicious gourmet organic unprocessed meals and then heavenly full-body massages in the spa. i'd go back once a year if i could.

brothers:
joe: australian passports for his girlfriend and daughter (with a discount for being such a good customer) so they can move back to Oz, and a beautiful big house to move into.
samuel: shit, what do you give someone who already has everything? ...a ferrari? that'll have to do him. no wait a second. how much is a trip to the moon these days? $100 million? that's pretty cool but might have to be a joint present...

friends and cousins: all inclusive holidays to Åre, sweden....to come visit me of course!!! ok, thats a bit of a selfish present but it's sure to be better than any present they'd give me...

...it might happen one day. but this year peace, love and friendship will have to suffice.

♡

big bang

❊ street market at the bullring























☼ we visited our saturday street market for the last time :o( ... for some reason they'd moved it off the street and into the grounds of the nearby bullring. when i first visited marbella nine years ago, i went to see a bullfight here, for anthropological curiosity, and was thoroughly traumatized. i'm glad it's home to the street market and not bullfights anymore.

i spent sunday on a sun-bed by the pool (yay- nice weather for our last week in marbella!) and began reading a book called 'a short history of nearly everything' which sounds really boring, but is written in such a cool way as to be un-putdownable. the first chapter, about the Big Bang and the creation of earth and the universe, got me so fascinated that i was compelled to do a little oration for jerry, which led to us spending the rest of the afternoon watching Big Bang doco's on youtube. what internet nerds we've become.

caught up in the world of supernova's, time travel, parallel universes, astronomical and cosmological breakthroughs, i marveled at the theory that in the outskirts of our galaxy there may be lurking the sun's polar opposite, 'nemesis', and i learnt that everything in creation has its exact opposite, like matter and anti-matter, which are electrically charged to be attracted to each other but as soon as they meet, they wipe each other out, leaving no trace of either one, just a big blast of energy.

if the same thing happened when people meet their opposites, jerry and i would have obliterated each other and taken the whole ship down.

WHO

yay!!!! im in WHO magazine!!
...even if they did bag the shit out of us, all publicity is good publicity, right?!

remember to watch No Way San Jose
ABC2, wed 9th, 8pm

♡

the tv critic

☆ jerry and i have started watching 'V', the new tv series that's apparently a remake of the 80's original, but i never saw it in the 80's. we got our first television in 1987, a little black and white one, and the only thing we were allowed to watch on it were quality educational programs and star wars.

all my friends at school used to have big conferences about the latest scandal on 'neighbours' and i was so jealous that i couldn't join in. i remember seeing my first madonna music video at a friend's slumber party and being mesmerised! my parents approved of us watching 'play school' but not 'sesame street' because it was american and they were dead against americanisation of the australian culture. the only times i ever ate mcdonalds (or fast food at all i think!) as a kid was at friends birthday parties. our school lunch-boxes were filled with wholemeal salad pita wraps, some nuts and an apple. i was always the only one in my class with a note excusing me from vaccinations and from religious education (when that was still around)... and my little friend's were always shocked that my parents weren't married, that i was born at home and had a 'placenta tree'. i grew up feeling quite different... and special in a novel way.

mum and dad got over the tv thing eventually. they probably got bored of educational programs. anyway their early censorship left me believing myself to be somewhat of a professional tv and movie critic. shows that are below my quality level get ripped to shit. sometimes jerry threatens to turn off a movie midway unless i stop criticizing the b-grade acting and non credible plots and story lines.

i normally never like american tv series (with the exception of sex and the city and maybe some others) and i predicted that 'V' would go into the bag too, but actually its quite good. the 'alien invasion' concept is pretty interesting... and thought-provoking. there has to be some other type of similar life-form out there somewhere- the universe is too big for there not to be. the problem is they'd have to be pretty smart and sneaky to get into our air-space without being shot down, like all the other ones that i found on google, which may or may not be scams and conspiracies and that may have been coming in peace to give us new technology and cure our diseases... or to kill us all and invade our planet... who knows?

;o)

anna the elf

✬ a few years ago, when i happened to be back in my hometown at christmas time, i landed a really good christmas promotion job. for the whole month of december, i was paid to be 'anna the elf'; dress up in christmas 'elf' clothes and be a sort of game-show hostess, alongside 'whiskas', a local tv and radio celebrity.

we had a truck that had been revamped into a christmasy game-show set on wheels, and we drove it around town every morning, parking it in busy shopping spots. my job was to give away free raffle tickets and toys to all the christmas shoppers walking by. then three winners would get to climb up onto the game-show set and whiskas would host a jeopardy game show, while i stood around being a bimbo and handing out the grand prizes to the winners: BMX bikes, dvd players and stuff like that...

it was probably the best job i've ever had.... it was really good money, everybody loved me for giving them free things, and whiskas, who's a born comedian, was heaps of fun to work with. we were on tv commercials to advertise when we'd be in certain locations, so we ended up with groupies who would follow us around every day, mostly kids from the ghettos, hoping to win the big prizes.

as a charitable act, one day we decided to park in a small shopping strip in the actual ghettos to do the game show. that was probably the biggest crowd we ever had; all the poor unemployed pot-smokers came out for the freebies. it was a rough looking crowd, beer-bellied men with no shirts on, covered in tattoos, with long beards drinking from VB cans, women with rotting teeth, wearing moccasins and tracksuit pants, screaming and cursing at their kids who were running riot. whiskas told me to lock my purse in the truck and keep an eye on the prizes. i was pretty nervous even to get out of the truck, let alone approach this shady crowd with tickets.

during the game show, the rival supporting families were nearly throwing bottles at each other and i was scared to announce who the winner was! we handed the kid his new bike and as we drove away i looked back through the window to see a bigger kid snatch it off him and ride away with it...

i loved the job so much that i did it the following year as well. a few times i gave tickets to my old high-school teachers and i could see the disappointment in their faces at my career choice, but for me it was hilarious to be pulled up in the street or in bars with 'hey, you're that elf, aren't you?!'

;o)

No Way San Jose

❖ in a week from today our tv show will be on air!!! its really exciting! my brother posted me the link to the online tv guide today and when i looked it up to read the little story about us, i had a really proud moment...

PLEASE WATCH IT!!! (for those of you in australia)
'No Way San Jose', ABC2, wednesday 9th dec, 8pm.

the first episode is actually pretty embarrassing for me. i seem like a real wanker in it.... and somehow i mustn't have thought it was important to put some make-up on, do my hair, or wear nice clothes in my first tv show ever!!?...
my brother edited the whole show himself and when i saw episode one for the first time, i immediately thought he'd added in all the embarrassing and cringe-worthy bits of me deliberately. so i took it up with him, but he promised me that it was non-deliberate and that he too was pretty embarrassed about the way he came across...
i'm much happier with episode two and actually each episode is better than the next....

ABC wants to distribute the show internationally, so hopefully soon we'll be hitting tv channels all over the world!!

i thought that some magazines might be interested in the real behind-the-scenes story, so i sent out emails to magazine brokers all over the place... but nothing! WTF!! i've read the tackiest stories ever in those women's weekly magazines; 'i stole my twin-sister's husband' and 'i lost my kids because of my shopping addiction' and shit like that.. is that all women want to read about??

anyway, make sure to watch the show!!!... i'm sure you're gonna love it...;o)
♡