However, more recently I've had a bit of a turnaround on the subject of Lady Gaga. While I originally lumped her in with all the other fur wearing Oompa-loompas flashing their vaginas as they staggered out of limousines, I found my opinion changing as I encountered stuff like this and this. While I'm never going to be much of a pop music fan, I kinda like the attitude that she presents and appreciate the huge musical talent that's behind her work.

In case you haven't seen the original short films on Youtube, they're here and here.

The trailer for the new movie is here.

Whoooo!

Meanwhile, good old Palmy is a comfortably small town of 70,000 people or so, many of which are students, and has a relaxed semi rural, semi academic feel to the place. Without the two tertiary institutions the place would be a complete hicksville. It would, in fact, be Levin. But it managed to escape that awful fate and is instead fairly charming in it's own way if you're willing to overlook things like the horrendously embarrassing Christmas parade that took place last weekend, for example.

I was meeting up with a friend in town when it took place, so we got ourselves some noodles for lunch and sat down on a grassy knoll to watch the parade. Now, I've been to the Wellington parade, which was an event. Many thousands of good natured spectators thronging the streets, huge and elaborate floats with everything from UFO themed neon displays through to wonderfully choreographed, costumed dancers of all nationalities, to huge brass bands and everything in between. It went on for ages and there were accompanying fairground rides and clowns on stilts and beautiful mime boys and girls who blew kisses to the audience.

You can probably already see where this is leading.

The Palmerston North parade, which I have on good authority was ten times better than last years, was largely a turnout of local businesses who wanted to advertise themselves to the general public. There were, perhaps, half a dozen decently put together floats of various Christmassy/pop cultural themes. Then there was another couple dozen vehicles that were just cars and trucks with some branding on them with maybe a bit of tinsel thrown on for good measure. There was, and I'm not even joking here, a completely unadorned coca-cola truck in the parade. It was a black Coke Zero truck, with a guy in it. No tinsel, no holiday message, just a dude in a coke truck, driving along the street in a parade. I suspected maybe he'd taken a wrong turn somewhere and was now just waiting to sneak off down a side street.

The army put in a showing, which was kinda cool, if weirdly off message. Nothing says holiday cheer like an armoured truck that has a uniformed soldier sticking out the top, leaning casually on his roof mounted gun and waving at the kids. Maybe they were following the dude who'd stolen a coca-cola truck and were playing a slow motion game of cat and mouse through the parade. I think the people I feel most sorry for in terms of the parade members are the poor sods who got drafted into lip synching along to I Gotta Feeling by the Black Eyed Peas. They were all done up in bad rocker outfits and the song was on loop for the entire parade. I watched them go past from my grassy knoll and reflected that no matter how bad things may get, they won't ever get that bad.

So that's Annika's Notes From The Trenches. Check it out and share her journey.

Still though, we try to do what we can, and since getting back I've made Progress. Winz finally came through with my Not Dying Funds, and today I hung out with Beth and planned a webcomic project that's fairly exciting. I'm going to be using my old homebrew RPG that we named Conveniently Far Future as the setting, and it'll be the misadventures of a small crew who are cruising around space in a stolen 6 trillion dollar stealth ship. Influences will include Blake's 7, Firefly and Fifth Element, and hopefully I'll be working with a handful of other artists so we can have a rotating visual appearance with me writing the comic.

Work wise, I've been applying for many and varied jobs, both design and menial. Soon I'll be able to actually print off my portfolio, which will mean design company door knocking (aaagh, gibber!) and being able to talk to high brow professional types who can sneer at my meagre offerings in person. Tomorrow I'm heading to Beth's old photographic shop who might be after employees, as well as taking on a recycling box design project that likely won't pay much, but hey it's creative and gives me something to do.

In no particular order, and as they came to me:

1) Be inspired and creative

2) To have things work out with Annika in an awesome way

3) To work with friends (either full time or on projects)

4) Be fit and healthy

5) Be in a position where I'm comfortable, financially

6) To have a sense of motivation and direction

7) To get up in the morning and feel excited about what I'm doing.

There's a bit of overlap there, looking at the list. But yeah, those are the things that I feel would make my life pretty awesome. So now I'm sitting myself down and going over what needs to be done to make it happen.

As an aside, number 7 really hit home as I wrote it down. I remember when I used to spring out of bed the moment I woke up, because I was halfway through some huge geek project or whatever, and the creative urge was upon me. I haven't felt that way in ages, and that's a fairly sad state of affairs.

More writing, then on to doing shit.