v-s.net v0.6

Wednesday, 6:51 pm in Life

So many things going on, and the best part is that none of them actually mean anything. Lots and lots of little personal projects that won’t cause the sky to fall in if they never get completed.

The Nortcha Drif is moving along slowly as it’s gotten to that point where sitting down and drawing lots and lots of tiny little pixel drawings is more tedious than anything else. Still, I hope to get around to finishing it, since the place is looking pretty funky. Besides, the OOC room of The Golden Tether is getting to full of dramarama crap to be any fun anymore. I’ve been told the recent influx is from a bunch of refugees from another dream, most of whom seem to be 17-year-old girls with a fetish for grotesque romantiscised roleplay with their legions of skinny, long-haired vamp[i/y]re bishounen. Dont’ get me wrong, I like skinny vamp bishounen bois, but not legions upon legions of them all falling over themselves in a masochistic sea of who can find the most angst-ridden ‘master’. This is what really turns me off about master-slave RP in general (and in FurN secifically); it romantiscises human degredation. I think I’ll pass, if it’s all the same.

Not to mention that a splash of drama from the previously nice OOC Room people is suddenly running amok, and it’s reminding me of the reason I quit xxskullxkittyxx back in my day. Quit when it started becoming ‘serious’; when I was teetering on the edge of believing my own hype (or believing the hype of what other people said about me). I told myself that’s the point I’d quit at, and I did, and I didn’t look back.

So it’s sit quietly on the sidelines time in FurN… not that I can ever connect to the damn place anymore, bu that’s another story.

In other news, with work starting next February I’ve been slowly trying to re-familarize myself with driving. I mean, my Provisional Licence expires in February but realistically I’m not rally any closer to driving independantly than I was when I first got it. I never liked driving much, but this time there’s an incentive; when I start work I’m going to need to get my own car. At the moment we’re still unsure if it will be new or used, but the kind of used cars we’re looking for (automatic, small, no older than 5 years, low mileage) aren’t particularly common, and when we do find them, they aren’t a lot cheaper than the new cars anyway. So, as far as new cars go, my choices are; the Toyota Yaris, the Holden Barina,  the Ford Fiesta, the Honda Jazz and the Mazda2. Of those, probably the Yaris and the Fiesta are the most realistic. The Yaris is aimed at a younger audience than the Fiesta, which shows (it has such essential features as an mp3-compatable CD players, for example), but the Fiesta seems to be a bit better engineered. It also has a bigger engine (1.6L versus the Yaris’ 1.3/1.5L). Since I’ve only really driven two cars in my entire life – dad’s Astra and mum’s massive… thing – I really have no idea when it comes to buying cars. I think mum is going to take me on the weekend to test drive a few; even if I did feel comfortable driving someone else’s brand new car, I wouldn’t really know if it was any good or not due to my own inexperience. So mum can tell me whic is better.

Of course, a new car (even a new used car) means new debt. So I guess I can welcome myself to the wonderful world of the aspirational middle-class statistic.

I haven’t heard anything much from the university since I left, which I’ve taken to be a good sign that I’m (probably) going to be able to graduate. I’m not really looking forward to the ceremony; it all feels so hollow and useless now. Though I suppose most post-uni kids probably feel the same way; the crap thing about growing up is that you only really know what you wanted to do at university with hindsight. So, I think in a few years I’ll probably pop back and do Graphic Design… or maybe even Fashion Design. It’s all open-ended, but that’s the nice thing about the public service; taking a year or two off is pretty much the Done Thing.

In my last month or so in Wollongong, when I was getting myself excited over all the stuff I’d do when I got back to the Really Real World (ie. Canberra), I vowed that as soon as I got home I’d go visit a shope I’d seen advertised in canberragoths in the Civic interchange called Lady Fuzzington. So last week I dragged my mum out to have a look (no real reason, she was just there at the time) and we had a bit of a chuckle when we eventually found the place (I only knew a really vague discription that the shop was ‘near the Civic Bus Interchange’, which is conservativley two streets and at a stretch four to six) located in a shop a family friend had once owned a Thai restraunt in. So we went in, and squee’d over the rabbit like every other random idiot (I think it was called Gir; I didn’t really ask too hard since I was wearing my jeans with the, well, Gir patch on them at the time) and laughed over the murals in the stairwell (“This place looks like it’s owned by an ex-Narrabundah kid, doesn’t it?”).

And this is where I tell you a story.

When I first moved to Wollongong, there was a shop on Crown Street called something like the Gothic Palace (we used to call it “the goth shop”). It sold pretty much what you’d expect it to from the title, keeping in mind this is Australia and it takes a bit of wrangling to order in brand name goth labels here. So there were books on Wicca, a wall full of spell components (how WoW-nerdy does that sound?), studded and looped belts and collars and cuffs, rings, wigs… and a somewhat mediocre collection of clothing. I think it’s probably hard to explain the sort of thing I’m talking about; especially to American goths who are all so busy bitching about Hot Topic. Compared to the stuff in the Gothic Palace, Hot Topic is goff heaven. Don’t get me wrong, the little place tried its best, but everything was just, well, sort of mediocre. Basic, maybe. There was some good stuff (there always is), but not at a price that would make me want to think of buying it; not when I could get something better, cheaper, off the internet. Clothing aside, I used to buy all kinds of crap from the Gothic Palace; belts and wrist cuffs and rings and so on. Whatever I could, really, since I was always convinced the place was on the brink of closing down.

Then, once day, it did. I’m not really sure why; I think maybe the owner got sick of running it. At any rate, there was a closeout sale and I went and bought a $60 belt, because I felt I ought to. When she was running up the sale, the girl at the counter handed me a dark pink business card (I probably still have it somewhere) with the word Mousette’s written on it. The Gothic Palace wasn’t dead after all; it was just moving two doors up. And getting a new name.

I wasn’t really counting very hard, but Mousette’s lasted about a year. The shop floor itself was bigger, but if anything that only served to make the stock look… less, somehow. Less inspiring, less diverse (there’s something about specialty stores being wedged into tiny little storefronts, I think). I used to go browse their stuff every now and again, but from what I could tell they never really seemed to get any new stock in; which left me with nothing to buy (since I’d bought everything I wanted already, and nothing had replaced it), which in turn made me depressed. So Mousette’s eventually closed down, and so did the comic shop, and suddenly there wasn’t anywhere cool to spend money in Wollongong anymore. Ironically, the comic shop closed down for pretty much the same reason as Mousette’s; the owner changed (the previous guy, who we used to call The Man and whose real name was Tim, I believe ended up in Canberra, ironically) and the new owner went through and systematically got rid of… well, pretty much everything, and replaced them with tables full of sweaty nerd playing Magic: the Gathering. Unfortunatley, sweaty nerds playing Magic aren’t buying comics, and the shop eventually folded. The second owner now makes coffees at Michelle’s in the mall.

I guess this is the catch-22 of the small business; can’t buy stock without money, can’t get money if people won’t buy your stock. I wonder how places like starsnstripes survive? Probably being in Melbourne and having import deals with Lip Service and Serious helps. Except where did the money come from in the– aw, hell. Who knows; maybe a mortgage against a car for all I know.

Anyway, the point of this long-winded and overly introspective tale is that the second I walked into Fuzzington I was reminded of Mousette’s; and I got that same kind of sinking feeling. From what I can tell, the place is closing down this Friday; the only thing the palce was making was its owner’s frustration. I guess opening a shop is bad enough without suffering from internet fame to boot. On the plus side, the place may well live on online, this time selling limited-run original designs. No overheads plus self-made stock plus international customers equals win, in my opinion.

The whole thing has made me want to hurry up and learn to sew so I can get to work on Cheshire Black…

Speaking of which, my stuff from QuantumFlux still hasn’t arrived. I was starting to get a bit pissy about that, though the lady who runs it sent an email out yesterday apologising for the delay. It seems it’s been a bit of a crappy month for her too; she had to “move suddenly” (know that feeling!), and one of her fabric suppliers has closed down. (Seems small businesses are folding left, right and centre in this post!) Anyway, the latest word is that it will be mailed before the end of next week and that people who have experienced ‘long delays’ (which I’m selfishly assuming includes me) will get a free gift. Yay! Who knows, it might even end up as a birthday present. Though it will have to race the second lot of stuff I’ve ordered from Bombshell Bath since I first placed the order. This time I’m trying out the soaps and other stinky stuff, though as always after ordering I was like, “Hrm, I wonder what Customs thinks of this?” Nevertheless, the race is on!

My experiences with Flux have given me another idea for a holiday web project, though. I’m a big internet ordering whore, so I figured why not sperad the love and start a review site? Something to ponder, at the very least…

I found a kind of semi-amusing thing on the net last night; a LiveJournal Dislikes list, to go along with your Interest list. Stupid, pointless… fun.

For those of you who managed to get down this far; congratulations!

• Comments By » ~starfyre [h]
• Mood » So many things! So little responsibility!
• Music » Nina Hagen, "Sally's Lied"