[Miscellany]

I'd be lying if I said I didn't feel a kind of relief wash over me when the last second ticked 2007 off my radar and shot me head first into 2008. Bring on the lucky year - and for all intents and purposes I am now Chinese if it means being more open to some number 8 luck. I think my current mental state really needs a shift, and if that'll do it then that'll have to do it. I think the luck has already started; by some miracle of God I have no hangover today. My last thought as I fell into a stupor last night was that I was going to have to pay for this in the morning. However the forces of luck and the powers of Greyskull have combined together to eliminate any chance of a hangover. Hurrah! Zai Jian 2007, don't let the door hit your arse on the way out. And to you guys, happy new year!

I wasn't going to have any resolutions for 2008 except that a friend sprung the question on me last night and being on my 7th vodka in about 2 hours I slurred rather becomingly I thought "to get a fucking life". I guess the gut feeling is the one you should go with so that's the one "to get a fucking life". It's a pretty good resolution when you think about it. Amen.

I was tagged by the ever-lovely and talented Betty and since I've been thinking a lot about the old blog lately it's a timely meme...

1. What's the story behind the name of your blog and your nickname?

I was christened my rl nickname at about the age of 9 or 10 I think by my friend at the time Gil. At the time I was really hating my first name. People would always call me Ann Marie, which I hated so much that I actually wished that I WAS called Ann Marie, just so people would get it right. How hard can my name really be? After I got my nickname I wanted people to only call me that and for a while the only people calling me by my first name was immediate family/teachers/employer - eveyone else in my life knew me by my nickname. Since I started my career though people call me Marianne and I have learned to love it.

As for the blog. I still think of myself as sobriquet from when I started blogging, which basically means; an assumed name. Then there was lookingsideways because I liked that idea of not everything being quite head on, some things are in the periphery and that's how I regarded my journal. The Melbournestories nickname came about because this blogspot was only going to be full of stories about Melbourne. If you use firefox I think you can scroll down and see all my archives - all the early posts are exclusively stories of Melbourne. When diary-x went kaput I moved here temoporarily and started filling the blog in with other stuff too.. and I guess I never left. So that's why, it's melbstories and not lookingsideways, which is really what it should be.

2. Why did you start blogging in the first place?

I've always kept a paper journal but online I found that increasingly I was partaking in forums where I'd take over with my own blabber about this or that. In the end I did a yahoo search (it would have been yahoo back then) for online journals, not thinking that there even would be such a thing but there was and I ...began .

3. What has been your best blogging related experience? What about the worst?

Truly the best experience blogging has been being a part of the lives of others. I feel extremely lucky to experience marriages, births, deaths, divorce, pain, happiness, art and words - that go along with real life but for me in electronic form. It's a little surreal but awesome. Another big plus for me is the general acceptance that I get from most people online. I can pretty much say what I need to say and that's okay with you - it's actually very important for me. A lot of the time I get so much from comments and emails that really make me think and that is always something I treasure.

The worst blogging experience would have to be a tie between being found out by my friend S - which caused a kind of cold war between us for a long while and meant that I had to close my journal which I had grown to love so much. The other negative blogging experience was when diary-x had a meltdown and all my entries were lost. I had some entries downloaded but a whole year (part of 2004 and most of 2005) were completely lost forever. It was heartbreaking and actually still is heartbreaking. And of course..again I had to move journals. I did have a kind of back up journal as well that was rather ripe for the attention of people with loose screws. I garnered the attention of someone who became in his own words "obsessed" with me. As you can imagine that became rather uncomfortable...another journal lost.


4. What do you think will happen to your blog in 2008?

I honestly don't know. I think I would like to be more diligent with my postings to my companion blog comicbookgrl but don't know if I will (hope so) but as for this blog - I don't know how it will go.. I'm finding myself not wanting to blog about wahwah stuff all the time and yet lately I've felt a little hopeless so in the end I don't end up blogging as much - which is a shame because in a lot of ways I need it. It's part of me. So the question remains "what will happen?" and my answer is still a rather vague...I don't know. I really don't.

I tag anyone who wants to do it but please let me know if you are because I'd love to read it.

Anyway (and lastly), I missed my Musical Monday yesterday and so today I choose to start my New Year fresh, with a bit of beat, a drop of sexy, some fun and something a little left of centre - exactly how life should be really. So, looking sideways if you will I hope you enjoy my MM today as much as I do. Raul Paz, is Cuban born but puts a little spice into his music adding dub or hip hop and sometimes rock into his music. He currently lives in Paris - a city he chose over North America because of the melting pot of different cultures over there in the music scene. I have to say he made the right choice. Musically speaking France is where it's at. The song I've chosen of his is a little more trad in terms of his Latin music. However, I have to say, if your foot isn't tapping even just a little bit while listening then I'm going to go right ahead and proclaim that you have absolutely no rhythm!

Raul Paz - Mua Mua Mua

Labels: musical monday

posted by M at 10:23 am 15 comments