4th wall? Pfft.

I know, right. Two posts in a week? What, is the sky falling?
Maybe. It's been pretty wet and cold in Newcastle of late. I have to dress for snow weather in order to approach the Darkrooms at Uni, and required dunking in hot water to defrost when I got home. But still.

I guess that the upping has been a little to do with Uni. This is both work and procrastination for me; Work because I'm blogging about Uni, and procrastination because it is a more fun method than simply typing things out in Word and printing it off. What can I say? Tactile thinking is just more fun. Anyway. Here goes with the next concept I'm working with.

This is project #2 for Fibres. Being out of sequence is fun because it confuses everyone, and I feel that brings us all down to my level.

'Do you know what's going on? No? Ok. Me neither.'

The name of the module is called 'The Fabric of Myth' and relates directly to the role of fibres and textiles in myth. Golden fleeces, windbags, shrouds and string-operated GPS systems (wait. Did I just double-state something?) all relate heavily to myth and the use of textiles, and Greek myths, which are the basis for 'classical' mythology, are a bag of fun. I think I just lost my thought train.

ANYWAY.

I was originally going to create a spin on the story of Icarus and Daedalus, and make some wearable art that was wings. This got changed slightly a lot when I went to Ironfest in...wait. When was that? April. I think.
Ironfest is in Lithgow, and after trying to explain it to a few people who had no idea what I was babbling about, got simplified to 'something like a produce fair for Medieval enthusiasts'

Pictured: Sparta. Source

Ironfest is a bucketful of things more than that, because the medieval enthusiasts happen to usually be interested in things like Steampunk and Doctor Who. This fact is important. Save it for later. The fact that the festival is also held in Lithgow (which is somewhere in the Blue Mountains, in the freezing bit) means that they behave a bit different around pointy objects than the guys who run Anime conventions in the city. Go to Animania and your props need to be made from foam, cardboard or balsa wood. Go to Ironfest and people are walking around with legit swords and machetes and selling said swords and machetes and assorted pointy things.


They had things to look at and things to do, and my friends and I took great interest in Archery (that you could partake in), Horseback Archery (Which spectators could spectate but not try out (understandably)), Jousting (see above), Falconry (Also just a viewing) and the Gran Melee (guys in chainmail and half-plate armour hitting each other with swords. Do the mathematics on audience participation yourself).

All of these things were excellent, and most of them we took care to check out in detail on the Saturday rather than the Sunday.

See, for the last month, and in frightening concentration over the last three days, we had been constructing our own costumes for wearing at Ironfest. Dressing up was not mandatory but there were a lot of people at the event in varying degrees of anachronistic wear. And a gimp. And a lady with no pants.

Those last two bits are not important.

So, our group had been constructing costumes because there are only so many places where it is acceptable to wear something spun entirely from fiction.

This is where the story begins to track back to it's origin and away from tangents involving Brooke's first experience of Dutch Pancakes.

We'd made Weeping Angel costumes.

Weeping Angels are one of the monsters that grace the screen of Doctor Who. They are...wait. Mister Tennant? Care to explain?

This is going to be fun for my Tutor who actually gets to mark the work and finds just the video link.

Hi Brett!

The basic concept behind the Weeping Angels is that they can't move while you're looking at them. When you blink, they can move (frightfully quickly) and if they touch you, they send you back in time (if you're lucky) and consume the energy you would have expended in the present. If you're not so lucky they'll just kill you.

Also, we find another excellent easter egg later in the Canon of Doctor Who. Anything that takes the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel. Photographs; videos. Don't look at one in the eyes or it'll plant a seed of one in your mind. Weeping Angels seem to in general possess the same 'screw the 4th wall' tendencies that Costumers and Cosplayers display when creating.

Oh. Cosplay?
I mentioned it a while ago in this post. I guess I'll keep adding to it over time.

Cosplay = Costume Play.

Recreating a character from fiction into the real world. There's usually some degree of role play involved in there too. But why do we do it?

I think there's a combination of factors.

Retelling the myth (story)
Becoming the protagonist/character
Enjoying some kind of escape through whimsy-
Taking part in an adventure beyond desks and paper and computers.

"Can't work. Busy fighting Angels."

There may also be some identifying factor between the individual and the character portrayed (which is why I pick my cosplays carefully) or maybe the character is just very good at wiping the floor with the faces of his enemies.

That aside, I think the adventure factor is fairly prominent. In the same way that you watch a Die Hard film for the amount of things John McClane can improbably explode, people interested in the realm of Costume and Character love a good suspension of disbelief.

Ran out of bullets? You just fired 20 shots from that one magazine!

This is especially relevant in our case, because when my mates and I rocked up at Ironfest decked from head to toe in grey paint and foam wings, we got to experience the other end of the stick. We were the characters spun from fiction. The walking myth. And it was a lot of fun.

See, a good cosplay is accurate.
A great cosplay is where the wearer is willing to behave like the character.
A brilliant cosplay is when the audience completes the myth and responds appropriately to the thing being portrayed.

We had people for a radius of ten metres staring at us, murmuring 'don't blink' and the like, staring us down. Small kids followed in our wake clamouring at how we weren't supposed to move because they were looking at us.

I may have been reading too much Cracked.com in the last week.

Far from it being that they thought we were legit; the people we met that day were willing to play along because we all knew the rules to this imaginary game, and it allowed us to spin fiction into reality with quite amusing results.

When we were finishing the costumes (on the vacant lot next to Jo's relative's house), panicking and trying to remember to eat before heading out, Jo stated that he would be happy if we had one person ask for a photo.

We left on Sunday evening as very happy people.

Transit #3 - Race the Dawn

So. Time to write the post-reflection-thing for the transit project.

Those who watch release dates may have noticed that this post is notoriously close to the previous one. This is because I took the photos for technical research and didn't write about it until later. Much later.

Moving along.

The trip itself actually underwent a lot more than what I thought it would in terms of logistics and last-minute changes; we had a deadline to meet on the day we got home - this suddenly changed from 4pm to 12:30pm and things quickly got interesting, considering that the trip was going to take roughly 12 hours no matter what.

It was decided on our last day that we would bend spacetime and Try Something Different.

Leave at midnight. Drive through the night and the early morning and race the dawn to get home in time to meet the requirements set by the deadline-setter. And not stop.

Things happened accordingly. That night my siblings, my aunt and I spent half an hour in the drive-thru at Dirtybird (KFC) waiting on 'Krusher' milkshake things, watched RED and went back to sleep for a couple of hours before heading out at 12:30am.

Things became rather blurry from there. I remember being particularly cranky at the deadline-setter and trying to take photos in the dark that weren't working. There were blurry blurry photographs, and I watched through the haze of 3am as we pounded through the kilometres methodically.

We passed the Pine Plantation Somewhere North Of Brisbane, the Brisbane Interstatey Bit, the Caboolture Stop and various other spots as I faded in and out of consciousness. I remember also being rather cranky because of the severe decrease in optimal photo-taking-time.

There were brief stops every now and then as Mum and Dad changed drivers, usually on the side of the massive roads we were so used to going down.

The overall feeling was actually quite odd - as though I had gone back to being a very small child, disorientated but not making a whole lot of noise because the car was moving and we were going places. The car changed in vibe from the compressed hive of activity it is in the daylight into the sleeper cabin Tiarne and I walked into on the midnight train last year - slightly creepy in its silentness.

Either way, we were going places.

We stopped in at Ballina to refuel; I was awake again and mildly confused by the bright lights of the fuel station. Confined to the backseat, I took photos where I could.

I didn't like many of them.

The sky was becoming light; it was about the hour of five-ish and we pulled into a Macdonalds for 'Breakfast'. My siblings shuffled out, swaying like zombies as we surveyed the fluorescent glow of the fast-food giant and for some reason, all ordered the same meal.

I wandered outside again to make the most of the one stop; taking photos where I could, trying to come up with inspiration in the carpark of Chew and Spew. It was Interesting, to say the least. We got some good shots in.

We followed rule #1 of the Traveller and clambered back into the car as the first real rays of sunlight began to hit the clouds above us. I grabbed a couple more snaps and we were off again.

It was on our way out of Ballina that the sun began to rise properly over the cane fields I am so used to seeing on this trip; the camera had the ISO turned down a notch or two and I started shooting the sunrise in between cursing the sudden clumps of tree that photobombed the fiery sky.

A while after this, it began to rain. Heavily. The car slowed in pace and the wipers went up to level three. The music on Mum's ipod had looped through the car stereo for about the third time and I remember trying to block the sound with my pillow, thinking, "But I don't wanna listen to Mac Powell,"

Either way, by this time the sibs were still doing the sleep thing. Try taking photos that tell a story of transit in the car with your family when they're mostly asleep.

Or just start experimenting with whatever happens to be in your laptop bag. Even if it is the laptop.

                                      

                                      

                                      

The last of the journey back consisted of listening to a Doctor Who audiobook and the taking of motion-type photos. You know, the ones where just one object is in focus and the rest of it is blurred? I started tracking trees as we passed through the ghost road, and as we neared our street, finally, Prue seemed to be in the mood for taking photos. We got about three with the llama and then landed, wearily, at our house.

The car was unpacked, and six bodies in various states of beings shuffled indoors. It felt to be somewhere between 4 and 6pm.

It was 10:30. AM.

I had some good photos. The questions remaining were, are there enough? and are they up to scratch?

I figured that leaving them for a while and coming back when I wasn't so full of angst and overtiredness would be helpful. When my brain wasn't being overly critical or something.

Guess I'll wait just a little longer.

In closing, I guess that one of the coolest things about the end of the trip was taking this photo before we unpacked the car. Because it really did look like a tetris screen/this sketch I drew of Dad's carpacking skills.

P.S. If this sounds like one long negative rant, that's probably because I have issues. In reality, there were a few things that threw exactly what I had initially expected out of whack. As mentioned in Transit #2, I rolled with the punches and drew amusement from whinging about it later. One of my endearing characteristics I guess.

Adventures in Newcastle. Part 2 - the most awesome friday. ever.

I can't guarantee photos for this. It all happened so fast, there was really no time to begin taking photos. So close your eyes and get someone to read it to you while I explain in detail why this was possibly the best Friday I have experienced all year.

The first part of Friday mostly consisted of zombie-shuffling it to uni.

Lecture at 9am = have to beat the traffic = leave home at 7am.

Bec and her cousin Sam had gone to a beach the day before and didn't arrive home until some early hour of the morning. So understandably it was a little bit before we were able to get the ball rolling. We left a bit after 7, all tired and scrubbing our eyes. With my roommate and her cousin and their five hours of sleep, this was understandable. I'm just not a morning person.
I remember (and I had this struggle this morning also) looking into the 'tea/coffee storage area', eyeing off the coffee. Wondering if it was worth it.

When I arrived two weeks ago, Dad was kind enough to do the shopping for essential bits. He did bring me back instant coffee. But it was Decaf.

I love you Dad, but it's still Decaf. I'm having caffeine withdrawals and I keep trying to tell myself that the caffeine is a placebo and I really just want the coffee taste.

Decaf is not coffee.

So. I had been eyeing off the coffee. I think I had some. Too bad Bec doesn't drink it too.

We left a little late with the intention of dropping Sam off on the way. She sat in the front of the small Suzuki Swift, giving reactive directions towards the house we were in hot pursuit of. Even though 'hot pursuit' might seem a little overrated, believe me, it wasn't. It wasn't Sam's house, so we wound up motoring as quietly as a 22-year-old sports car would allow us through the streets of suburbia. We found the house, and Bec and I set off for uni.

You would think that having spent so much time out looking for the house, we would now be resigned to double-clutching it up the large hills and doggedly trying to get in the left lane so we wouldn't have to leg it across North Lambton. But we got there.

Bec checked the car clock as we climbed the exit ramp to University Drive, and, surprised, remarked on the time it had taken us to traverse northwest Newcastle. I replied,

"That's because I am secretly a Time Lord, and this (here I gestured to the dark blue Swift) is my TARDIS"

Spot the Doctor Who fan if you dare.

Getting to uni was no trouble. We did manage to get a bit lost on our way to the lecture room - all the while wandering through the thick cloud of mosquitoes that throngs the Uni. They feast on the blood of students, and thrive in the bushland that enshrouds the learning facility.

Bec was swatting them. I was not smart enough to take a bag for my lecture book, so occasionally I managed to smush one or two using the butt of my water bottle. It looked like the club of a battle-worn warrior  - lots of bloodstains - by the time we emerged from the woods and entered the housing for the lecture theatre.

Post-lecture and uni we still had a large amount of day to survive. But the first thing we needed to deal with was actually the fuel in the car. It had been empty that morning, and we'd put twenty dollars in. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough to fill the tank, so we meandered off to Mayfair in search of Woolworths Petrol stations and their discounted petrol.

As we were exiting the uni, I had a sudden desire for ice-cream. It wasn't even a slight hankering for, although I suspect it was not as insatiable as the cravings of a pregnant woman. I don't know. I have not been pregnant. But I still wanted ice-cream.

So, we are now driving through Mayfair, a part of Newcastle neither Bec or I had been to, in search of cheap(er) fuel and ice-cream.

Our search yielded a Woolworths with a special deal on my most favoured brand of ice-cream. In small punnets. We were sold, and shortly after we located the plastic spoons in the store Bec and I were sitting in the TARDIS, in the shade, lost in the bliss of 400mL of ice-cream. We had two punnet-things: mint choc-chip and cookies and creeeeeeaaaam. I LOVE cookies and cream.

SO good.

We perused suitable directions from the checkout lady, and were soon in pursuit of a fuel station on a street that didn't exist. Failing that, we started looking at the maps for fuel-station icons, and with no particular place in mind, we set out.

At the traffic lights of the intersection that would take us back onto a 20-year-old highway, we spotted what was most possibly the best-named noodle bar in Newcastle.

"KUNG-FU NOODLE"

To phrase it as Bec had done - 'It's like the perfect combination of Kung-fu Panda and Spagattah Nadle! It's like, a kung-fu noodle with a speech impediment!" (If Spagattah Nadle makes no sense I suggest going here. It will explain all.)

So far, it was looking like a pretty awesome Friday.

We drove on for a short period of time, and suddenly! There was a fuel station. I bet that by now you're either bored, waiting for it to get really good, pitying the way I get excited over small things or possibly getting excited yourself. I don't know. You tell me, reader.
There was a fuel station, and I remembered which side of the car the fuel was on, so we were pretty much sweet. It was a Woolworths station, and we filled the car and set off, keen for home.

By now we had approached the part of the afternoon where I would start chanting the word 'pool'. The world had heated up sufficiently and I wanted nothing more than to head back to our place in Cardiff Macquarie Hills and get. in. that. pool.

It was only as we began to climb a hill not far from the refueling that I noticed the fuel gauge. Most cars, when full, will have a gauge that looks like this:

F|                         E

(The little | next to the F is the needle.)

Ours looked like this:

|      F                                      E

So we were both pretty excited.
I think there is a photo. I may post it. It was taken while driving, with Bec holding my mobile phone and me making the car go.

As we continued, I began to recognise the occasional landmark, feeling slightly less lost and more like we were headed home. My sense of direction generally sucks, so the way things work with Bec and I is very simple at the moment.

I drive. Bec navigates.

It's worked well so far.

Anyway, she was telling me about an intersection we would pass through very soon that I would definitely recognise, that if I didn't recognise it, there was something wrong with me. As we passed through it I felt unfamiliarity until I saw the RSL club. It took a moment for my brain to rotate its position and suddenly I knew exactly where we were. About two intersections from home, that's where.

We pulled up and barreled inside, only to encounter a most perplexing of choices.

I had been expecting two packages in the mail, and was indescribably excited about th prospect of having not one, but two packages coming within the next week or so.

One of them was on our loungeroom floor.

Russell (the landlord) had placed it there when it arrived, and I was immediately faced with a dilemma.

Box or pool first?

Box won. There was a clamp-light that Mum had bought at Bling from home. It already has a name.

Have a guess what.

WALL-E.

Ooh yeah.

Shortly afterward, Bec and I had, with the absolution and deliberation of an avalanche, made it to the pool.

Pools are great. I like them a lot.

You would have to think that this is the end of the day?
This is the bit where if it was an infomercial, I'd have a smaller stunt double jump up from behind the counter-or-whatever-I-am-advertising-from and we'd both yell,

"but wait, there's MORE!"

And you're all like "what? how can that be? can this day possibly get more excellent? how will they do it?"

And if this was an episode of bleach, that would be the bit where the motion would freeze at a dramatic point and the words 'to be continued' would spider across the screen and make you want to headbutt the universe because the episode can't end there - you have to find out what happens next! Fifty episodes later!

I am getting overexcited.

Anyway. We had an early dinner, made greater by the fact that I had made a lot the night before and nobody else had been home to eat it. We simply heated it up and then proceeded to sit on the loungeroom floor, munching on rice and chicken meatball while watching Bleach.

Bec hasn't encountered Bleach before. And I'm actually quite enjoying watching the first season again.

We crashed relatively early.

But it was still, without a shadow of a doubt, the most awesome friday. ever.