Elephants and Practice

Elephant Fact #7: An elephant trunk has more than 40 000 muscles.

They say the number ‘seven’ is a lucky number—so here is the seventh and last blog post for the month of April. I’m actually surprised that I managed to get this far—most of my old diaries usually consisted of one or two entries before I gave in and started doodling rude pictures on the rest of the pages.

I’m blogging in between IOC practice right now, so this one will be short. It’s mostly more of my Drawing Wars again, which I’ll be updating on this post only—think of it as my electronic fridge, with me putting up my pretty pictures (ahem) using those alphabet magnets on its surface. I’ve never actually done that, so let’s pretend I’m making up for my lost childhood.

I found this in my Outlook Inbox:

…and so I sent her the following.

It was originally supposed to be a parody of the “Draw me like one of your French girls” scene from Titanic, but then a little The Birth of Venus and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (the scarf) got into my head and messed it up. I also did this during a Biology lesson, while we were watching this video on childbirth.

Think about that for a moment.

“No way they’ll show the real thing,” I scoffed to my friend, eyes trained on the screen of my laptop.

Squinting at the video, he replied, “I think it’s real."

“Probably CGI. I mean, look at those graphics—OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!”

“I DON’T KNOW! I DON’T KNOW!”

“IS THAT HAIR? IS THAT HAIR? WHERE IS IT COMING FROM—WHY ARE THEY ZOOMING IN? WHY ARE YOU DOING THAT?! WHY—“

Not cool, man.

Next was this:

Since I was sick of drawing hot chicks, I settled for this instead:

Gotta love a dude in a skirt.

It annoys me so very, very much how I can’t draw people’s hands. I started this drawing of my friend in Psychology class nearly a year ago and it’s still unfinished because I couldn’t get her hands and feet right.

Yeah, that’s not my fault—you’re just funny-lookin’, girl.

So I thought I needed practice—a different friend (not the one who I usually have my Wars with) sent me this email:

And so I replied:

Getting better, hopefully.

Till next month,

The Unlucky Elephant

Elephants and Art

Elephant Fact #6: Elephants spend about 16 hours a day eating.

With today being Anzac Day, we’ve been given a day off from hell school. Of course, rather than spending it by the poolside sipping on piña coladas or whatever floats your boat, I’m writing on why the garlic constituent allicin is such a great antibacterial.

Yeah, baby.

I also thought I might update my drawing wars with my friend:

She sent me:

And I was like, “Bring it.”

So she did this—it’s a pretty funky pillow…

…but also pretty badass hair.

Wish I still knew how to draw properly. Before I turned to writing as a creative outlet; drawing was my number one. Ever since I was younger, I’d always admired art—but proper art, not that crazy lines-and-blobs-of-paint diarrhea-mush.

Sorry, personal opinions are intruding. I hate abstract art. People say it represents emotions, thoughts or feelings—I say that someone was just too damn lazy to get off their ass and draw anything recognizable.

Them: “Oh, it represents the unity of life and the never-ending cycle of consciousness and free will—“

Me: “Bitch, that’s a circle.”

It can’t be just me. I even did a TOK presentation on this at one point, I’m so worked up about it—how did we ever get from this:

To this:

To this.

What is this I don’t even—no. Just no.

Pardon the bitterness of this post. This is just my personal opinion and by no means is it the correct one—everyone has differing perceptions of what is ‘beautiful’ or ‘fascinating’ and they all reserve the right to express their opinions without fear of ostracization or negativity. Some people prefer landscapes, scenes of nature that evoke feelings of peace or tranquility.  This is The Harbour at Argenteuil by Claude Monet.

Some prefer surrealist pieces, that creates the sense of the ‘dreamlike’ and ‘fantastic'. That’s Enigma profunda by Salvador Dali.

And me? I like the technical stuff, I guess. Art that has people as a subject, that is anatomically correct, that has strong emotions behind it. The following is Dante and Virgil in Hell by William Bougereau and is one of my absolutely most adored artworks—

--no, they’re not secksing; they’re in the Fifth Circle of Hell, a place reserved for the wrathful. It’s adapted from The Inferno by Dante Alighieri, which follows the author on his journey to Hell. There, it takes the phrase “the punishment should fit the crime” in its most literal sense, which is why those in the Fifth Circle—who have wrought their physical wrath on others while they lived—are left to suffer eternally by, and I quote, “tearing each other piecemeal with their teeth”.

Cool, huh? Better than any ridiculous circle, or so I think.

Anyway, my procrastinating time is over—have to get back to French homework.

The Unlucky Elephant

References:
Woman on shell—The Birth of Venus, by Botticelli
Crazy-ass hallucination of naked women—Les demoiselles d’avignons by Picasso
Stupid circle—To Martha’s Memory by Yoshihara. 

Elephants and Dancing

Elephant Fact # 5: An adult male elephant is referred to as a ‘bull’ or ‘tusker’.

Been having a lot of drawing wars with my friend via Outlook lately.

She started it:

To which I replied:

And then she said:

So I did:

And then she did:

So I wasted my Math lesson doing:

It was a little awkward when my teacher came around, saw the half formed silhouette of what looked like this ridiculously busty lady on my screen and asked me what I was doing—but he’ll deal.

Yesterday, we had dance practice (waltzing, of all the goddammed-matilda things) at lunch for the formal. I arrived late because I was helping out with something else, so I was only there for the last ten minutes. It was clear, however—judging from the various jeers and suggestions coming from my friends at the sidelines—that this was not one of my talents.

It wasn’t as bad as I had previously expected, though. In fact, it was rather fun.

But I swear, if your hand comes anywhere near my waist, then you’d better be prepared to lose it.

The Unlucky Elephant

Elephants and Teenagers

Elephant Fact # 4: An adult female elephant is referred to as a ‘cow’.

I’m currently writing this in the car, coming home from school. Mainly because I feel that if I have to spend another second reading about Usher and his damn House, something—someone—is going to be set on fire.

You think I’m kidding?

Anyway, I know that I don’t have much to complain about. I get driven to school every single day by parents that I know I don’t appreciate enough, am given anything and everything I could ever want for and more and most importantly—I have clean socks to wear each day. The grass is greener on my side.

But I still do my fair share of whining, complaining and generally being a complete brat—I curse, I fume, I rage like a woman in labor.

Just being a teenager, I guess.

But why does this happen? Is it that when we reach a certain age, something in our brain switches on the production of ‘dick’ hormones, ready to use our body as a vessel to unleash its fiery wrath on the rest of the unsuspecting world?

I guess all of this sort of just came to mind. Not too long ago, my friend who is quite a bit younger than I am was having a go at her mother for messing up her order in a restaurant. Her mom works long hours each day, takes night shifts regularly and is a single parent to two kids. And she still has time to take them somewhere nice each weekend-- Movie World, Dreamworld.

I couldn’t help but feel a sort of bubbling confusion interspersed with slight indignation when I saw my friend talk down to her this way on one of the rare nights she had time off. Couldn’t she see how much her mother was doing for her? How much fun she was having at the moment?

Then my ‘hypocrite’ senses began tingling.

I am an only child. All my life, everything has been about me. If I were a planet, my parents would be the two largest of my many moons.

When I was younger, my parents did their best to give me everything—piano lessons, violin lessons, swimming lessons, tap, ballet, jazz, fucking interpretive dancing lessons, acting lessons, singing lessons (those didn’t pay off so well), tennis lessons, etc. Whenever we went to the mall, there was always a set routine: I’d point, they’d buy.

I have everything.

And how do I repay them now? Yikes, I don’t even wanna get into that. Let’s just say that I’m, ah…less than grateful.

Okay, I’m a total asshole.

But I don’t have to be. For example, if they say to me, “Get your underwear off the floor of your room, it’s disgusting” I can just do as they say without any snappy comments. If they say to me, “No, we’re not watching Spongebob Squarepants, it’s Easter and we are going to watch motherfucking Jesus of Nazareth” I can just comply without any eye-rolling or back-sass. It’s not hard.

But why is it so hard?

Because we’re human, that’s why. We’re not perfect. When we get annoyed, or angry, we don’t  think, ‘Hey, at least I’m not being raped by grizzly bears!’ we think, ‘Bitch, give me that ice cream or die’.

It’s not easy being parents—but it’s not easy being teenagers either.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, maybe we should all be a little nicer to our parents. They love us, and underneath all our clichéd rebellion, I guess we love them too.

So be nice. Hug your mom. Laugh at your dad’s lame jokes. Watch TV with them for awhile, even if nothing interesting is on.

Or, if you’re me…

…motherfucking swear less in church.

The Unlucky Elephant

Elephants and Formals

Elephant Fact #3: Elephants are herbivores and eat roughly 5% of their body weight.

I suppose this post is a little overdue, but I wasn’t really sure how to put my thoughts into words—or if I should put it into words. However, I feel that because this blog is after all for posterity—the future — and especially considering that it is my final year of high school, I might as well document everything.

Yesterday, I got asked out to our school formal. It's just as friends so it’s not like I’m too worried or anything…

…but Jesus.

How do these things even work? All I know about prom is what I’ve seen from slasher movies, vampire flicks … and Carrie. People have been throwing around words like ‘corsage’ and ‘seating plan’ like freaking confetti— I didn’t even know that they still sold corsages. I’d always thought that “to buy a corsage” was only an expression—like “bush turkeys aren’t edible”. Pff. Nice try, but I won't bite.

And then you have my parents’ version of what occurs on formal night—alcohol, drugs, teenage pregnancies, bad food. It makes me wonder how I even convinced them to let me go in the first place. Admittedly, they weren’t thrilled when I told them that I had a—date?—but once I dissuaded them from the idea of “gunning him down” (nice, Dad), I was able to calmly explain that 1) I was, contrary to their belief, not a hooker for accepting and 2) I’d be perfectly fine because 3) I know fucking tae kwon do. That’s like having the less awkward version of vagina dentata.

...

Please don't Google that last one.

Regardless, I have a strange feeling that when I reach for my lipstick in my purse on the night, I’d be finding a bottle of pepper spray in my hand instead…

For the last time, Dad, that wasn’t funny!

The Unlucky Elephant

Another Note: Might I add, I’m actually quite offended at some of the reactions I received when some people heard about this.

Me: Yeah, I have a date.

Friend: You?

Me: Yeah.

Friend: You?

Me: Yes.

Friend: YOUUUUUUUUUUUU—

Me: Oh, #$%^& this &@#%.

Elephants and Movies

Elephant Fact #2: Despite the size of their ears, an elephant’s hearing is poor.

Let’s talk movies.

I’m gonna ‘fess up right here and now—I am a fan, and what a fan I am. Some people can tell you the name, composer and album artist of a song by hearing the first few notes—but give me a line from a movie and I can tell you its title, actors, sometimes director-- and if I’m in a particularly good mood, the total sum of divorces held by the cast.

Alright, I might be exaggerating slightly. After all, I once confused a screenshot of Hostel with Silence of the Lambs—wear a different sweater, for crying out loud!—but that’s beside the point; movies have been a tremendous influence on my life as it is now, to the extent that half of my conversations with my parents (who are bigger movie buffs than I am) consist of nothing but movie references.

Me: Hey, Mom, gonna clean my room now.

Mom: Go ahead. Make my day.

 Certain movies have marked certain periods in my life, so here’s a brief (very brief) rundown.

1.    Beauty and the Beast

Good old Disney. Can’t go wrong with him.

If you’ve lived under a rock your whole life and haven’t seen this movie, I’ll summarize it: monster imprisons girl’s father for trespassing, girl gives up her freedom to set said father free, Stockholm Syndrome abounds and girl falls in love with monster, eventually releasing him from his curse with true love’s kiss.

I was born in Philippines. Until I was five, my parents and I had lived with my grandmother, my two aunts and my uncle in a house that was admittedly bigger than most; it was made of grey brick and was fronted by an imposing, wrought-iron gate. It was also surrounded with plants; my grandmother’s greatest pasttime was her gardening.

When we lived there, my parents forbade me to learn the language, Tagalog. They wanted me to speak English fluently and kids who learned both English and Tagalog at the same time had a nasty habit of speaking ‘Taglish’—a mix of both. Although it didn’t bother me as much back then, now I feel I am less sympathetic to their understandable but hindering reasons for this—mainly because most of my Filipino relatives think I have no personality at our ‘gatherings’. Please, gurl.

But because my parents were limited English-speakers back then, they showered me with a load of American movies and books to compensate, with Disney being one of my favorites. I must have watched The Lion King, Mulan, The Little Mermaid about a dozen times each…not Snow White though, because let’s face it: that is some creepy shit. Beauty and the Beast—a movie about a gorgeous girl who loves to read books (i.e., me) was my favorite. That movie did not just represent my childhood, it is my childhood, dammit.

To this day though, despite having lived in Australia for roughly ten years, I still haven’t lost the American accent I received as a result of all of this.  Mary = merry = marry.

2.  The Exorcist

It wasn’t just cartoons I watched.

The Exorcist, a wonderful flick about a young girl who gets possessed by the Devil, somehow spewing pea soup all over Jason Miller-as-Father Karras in the process. It’s often referred to as “the greatest horror film of all time” (Contactmusic.com, 2008) and was a film my aunt (the younger one) thought would be a great idea to show to her four-year old  niece on dark and stormy night.

Coincidentally, I did not sleep that night. Odd.

However, that first taste of the horror genre proved to be the start of a very long and very painful (for others) addiction. It’s something that my Dad and I have in common, so it’s always with him that I watch the movies or play those crazy survival horror games on our Playstation. My mother say’s we’re morbid, but I don’t really think that that’s the case. We just like watching people die. J

3.   Harry Potter

Oh jeez. Oh holy cow.

If you know me in real life…the reason why Harry Potter is on this list wouldn’t even have to be explained.

When I was five, my family and I left Philippines for Fiji because of my father’s job (a doctor). We lived in Suva for about  a year, during which I went to a couple of Fijian schools. Entertainment was limited—we didn’t have cable TV, video games or a proper computer. Bitch, please. We, the schoolkids, entertained ourselves with games whose names I can’t remember—one of them involved taking out the blue bottom from the inside of soda bottle caps, tossing a bunch of them on the desk and slamming our hands on them to see how high they’d jump, or if they’d flip over. I was such a boss at that.

Fiji was great, but holy cow the centipedes in that place. Yeeesh.

Moving on, I remember one time my parents and I were walking down the street and we passed this bookstore with some of the newest releases on display. My mom stopped in front of the window, peered in and said to me, “That looks like a good book.”

I stepped beside her.

“That looks stupid,” I said, making a face as I saw the book’s cover. “Why is he on a broomstick?”

“I think he’s a wizard.”

I scoffed, “A wizard? Please. I’m way too old for that.”

And then we left to get ice cream.

Months later, a certain movie starring three then-unknown child actors burst onto the screen, leaving hundreds of crazed fans in its wake…

4.   The Waterboy

This film stars Adam Sandler as 31 year-old Bobby Boucher, a waterboy from the Louisiana swamps with a hidden talent for tackling football stars. He’s like Forrest Gump’s younger, creepier brother.

By no means is it an outstanding film—it’s #@$!%ing funny and has a lotta heart, like all of Sandler’s stuff—but I thought I’d include it on this list because it was one of the first movies I watched when I first got to Australia-land, on our teeny, tiny black and white television with the antenna that spanned the entire length of my outstretched arms.

Also, because of its iconic quote, “Foosball is the devil!”

Sound familiar?

5.  Drunken Master

One of the older Jackie Chan movies—dubbed over its original Chinese in English. Jackie Chan, after bringing disgrace to his father, is sent to live with a drunken kung fu master as punishment. Awesomeness abounds.

Although this movie is ridiculously funny, it doesn’t really mark anything in my life—except my abrupt realization that martial arts was like, kick-ass.

When I was seven or eight, my parents signed me up for tae kwon do lessons at the local PCYC in Redcliffe. The night of my first lesson, I stepped into the room to see a vast gathering of people dressed in these weird, white pyjamas, all of varying ages. Feeling out of place in my t-shirt with a picture of talking strawberries on it and my pink pyjamas (literally, pyjamas), I shuffled in self consciously and sort of just stood in the center of the room until the teacher came in.

Then, without any warning, everyone began to kick and punch in unison, making these ridiculous sounding grunts the whole while. Bewildered, I tried to copy what they were doing but ended up accidentally slapping the woman next to me, again and again and again…

After a while, I simply gave up and watched them do all their fancy schmancy stuff from the sidelines.

When the hour was up and my parents arrived to pick me up, I made them buy me a candy jawbreaker and told them that I was never doing tae kwon do again.

Yeah, ‘cause that worked out so good. I got my black belt two years ago.

I can’t be bothered to write anymore at the moment. I have IOC, EE and fanfiction to think about, but there’s a lot of other movies that I know I missed—maybe I’ll address this topic again in future.

For now, here’s a special mention to some of the movies I missed: Edward Scissorhands, Final Destination, Interview With the Vampire, Superman, Rocky, It’s a Wonderful Life, The Sound of Music, Primal Fear, The Sixth Sense, What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, Fight Club, Braveheart, Pulp Fiction, Sunset Boulevard, Die Hard…

Yipee ki-yay, mother@#$%^ers!

The Unlucky Elephant

Elephants and Superstition

Elephant Fact #1: The life span of an elephant is about 50-70 years.

Let’s get this straight: writing down my thoughts is definitely not my cup of tea. However, for some reason unfathomable to even me, I’ve made numerous attempts to do so my entire life. When I was little, I kept a huge array of diaries that only had one or two pages written in, despite the repeated promises that I’d make to my all-suffering, all-paying parents that, “I’d use it this time!”

I like to attribute this to a few possible explanations: 1) I was an inconsistent, adorable little girl, 2) I think I liked the book covers better than the book pages and 3) Nothing really interesting occurs in the life of an eight-year old, shockingly.

So why this blog? I dunno. I guess with TOK (Theory of Knowledge) and English essays popping up like magic mushrooms this year, I think it’d be good practice to write my thoughts down in a way that’s actually understandable to literate human beings. That’s right, my days of assignments covered in mud smears and crude, caveman-like handwriting are behind me!

Thing is, though, it’s been a while since I kept a diary and I have a funny feeling that this blog—while unnoticed now—won’t stay ‘private’ for long. I can hardly discuss my menstrual cycle or insecurity about my negative A-size breasts online (oops). So, I’ve decided to just post a few interesting stories/ditties about my spoiled, spoiled life that I’d care to share—at least that way, when I’m an eighty year-old grandma—a damn sexy one at that—I can just kind of point and grunt in the general direction of the computer should my grandkids want to hear a story about “the ooooolden days.”

Hell yeah. Grammy got better things to do, bitches.

Let’s start then, shall we?

I wanna talk about the title of my blog: ‘The Unlucky Elephant’. This choice of title wasn’t really due to some long-since buried fetish for pachyderms but rather because of a superstition I heard quite recently about having model figures of elephants with their trunks down drawing bad luck to its owner—things such as the death of a loved one, war, famine, the return of the 24-hour Wikipedia shutdown.

Dammit, that was not funny.

So the idea of ‘unlucky elephants’ kind of got caught in my head—it stuck to my brain the way Walburga Black’s portrait is stuck to the walls of No. 12 Grimmauld Place. At first I thought the idea was stupid. For crying out loud, it’s an elephant—what do I care if its trunk is up, down or sideways? If it’s not edible, I have no interest in it.

But then I got to thinking about the way superstitions might shape our lives—some people will avoid touching their feet at all costs with the broom when they sweep, for fear they’ll never get married (it’s your face, alright?!). Some people will outright refuse to walk on a sidewalk covered with cracks. Some people check their palms every day for hair. I myself will never whistle at night (it attracts ghosts!).

Why do people believe in these things, though? Surely, it doesn’t matter if I break a mirror, or walk under a ladder, or spill table salt, or kick a kitten. Will I really be affected?

Personally, (this sounds ridiculously like a TOK essay for a light blog post) I think I would. And because I have two years’ worth of otherwise useless Anticipated Psychology info in my head, I’m gonna explain why I think so. And you will like it.

The human mind has this irritatingly cool ability to create connections and patterns between a series of most likely unrelated events—it’s called apophenia. We do this because we like the sense of stability it gives us; the idea that we can predict the outcome of future events. For example, “If I throw this puppy into the woodchipper over there, then my mom probably will refuse to make me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when I ask her because of the bad karma.” So it affects our actions in this manner—using our previously existing knowledge of this ‘pattern’ to predict the outcome of an action, we can decide whether or not to perform it.

But that’s not it. Sometimes, our beliefs are so strong that they actually affect the outcome rather than the action. This influence is usually referred to as the ‘placebo effect’ (heh heh, Chem kids).

Here’s an example. Say I’m an actress, and I happen to open my umbrella indoors by accident. Say I’m really, really superstitious. Say I have a big show on tonight but spend the entirety of my day worrying about the umbrella and all the bad luck it’s going to give me. Say I trip over a pebble and attribute this event to all the rotten luck the umbrella gave me. Now, say that this umbrella-inspired fear of my impending bad luck makes me worry so much I am reduced to a stuttering, mumbling wreck onstage during my performance, consequently get hideously reviewed by critics the next day and then fired from my gig because of this?

And it was all because I opened my umbrella indoors! Mother was right!

Of course, it does work the other way. Someone can feel extremely confident wearing their trusty rabbit foot necklace around their neck during a tennis match and subsequently play at the top of their game. Never mind the mutilated Bugs Bunny mascot lying nearby—s’all good, guys.

So, I guess that’s my little analysis on superstition. Jeez, I didn’t expect it to be so long. I wanted to talk about elephants, for crying out loud. Man. Next time I’ll talk about movies or something.

Have a nice day!

The Unlucky Elephant

(or Nicole, if you’re feeling especially naughty)