I had attended many funerals of late, one being my own.

My life fit in that box

I wasn't going to write about this in a blog. I went back & fourth with it. Trying to keep my integrity while I go off on my maniacal rant, speaking of something so personal and precious to me. Not wanting to be judged while striving to express my most inner thoughts. I know how people are. I've been alive too long to know better. You can judge me and you can call me weak for writing this but I think it shows my vulnerability and that is the strongest emotion of them all.

Without getting too personal in a blog... This death was a shock, unexpected & shook me to my core. When my Grandmother told me she was sick, I fell to my knees and cried and I haven't quit since then. My Grandma raised me. She was everything to me. My Grandma, my Mother and my Best Friend. I told her everything. We did everything together, like Bonnie & Clyde. She was a "young" sort of a G'ma, totally active, so much so that you couldn't get her to sit down and watch T.V. with you. She was always on the go... We called her "Busy Bee". We had a bond that I will never be able to explain. After the funeral everybody got on with their lives, but not I. I increasing spun into a downward spiral. Lots of very sad moments filled with Sorrow and sobbing. I was/am on a abstract level, shocked by the realisation that my life is different now. The world is different. I am different. It has become lamentable.

Grandma was my only family (besides my father). It feels weird without her here. I was/am incapaciated by greif & disconnected. On my own planet. The world should have ended when she did. It wasn't even her time to go, she even told me that on her death bed.

Her Mother, my Great Grandmother lived to be 100 years old!!! and she still has sisters & brothers that are older than her living today! It pisses me off! I feel so Robbed! How does the human body go from having somebody in their life everyday to never talking, touching or seeing them again? I was so ANGRY! "You could have spared, oh but NO!!" I spent half my time on my knees, wailing, begging, screaming, and crying 'till my eyes were almost swollen shut, "anything BUT THIS". We had made plans, me and Gram. So much unsaid, so much undone.

I'm going to be honest and quite frank here:

I took a drive to the Sea one night, to a place where Nobody was around.

With my Peacoat and Lobster rain boots on I planned on walking into the Waves, Swim swim swim and keep going... It was totally quiet, dark and actually eerily lonely. I stood there and watched and listened to the waves as they rolled in. Seems at one point they wanted me to come in, encouraging me. It was strange! The Ocean was so huge, so vast and never-ending. It was then that I wondered if the sharks were sleeping. ? and right then and there I got scared. Me having these nightmares of a Great White chomping on me since I was little didn't help the case. I walked away with a heavy heart and tears rolling down my face...

My heart is broken. I miss my G'ma to a point I don't wanna explain. My heart is broken.

*What I found most shocking and totally disheartening was the reaction from my "friends" to the reaction I had of my Grandmother/Mother's death. It is almost like it happening twice, the death that is. So I didn't want to pull the ripcord to my parachute, So I wanted to be 'dashed upon those cliffs', I guess people just can't handle hearing such a thing? but that's how I felt.

I just lost my Mother, the one person/thing who mattered to me, So, I'm floating in the darkness, what do you expect, a fucking Disco ball? and sorry a concert won't "fix" anything.

I'm pretty hurt by their reactions and highly disappointed but it's like water rolling right off my back into the drain, I'm used this sort of human condition. People really surprise me, then again they don't.*

There is a lot more to this story, but believe it or not I'm keeping that to myself. I think I already said too much...

My G'ma leaving me behind in an atmosphere of incredulity and sadness. I couldn't even listen to any music while she was sick, it would just make me cry, now I have to listen all the time.

And all those Tori and Fiona, even Regina one-liners fit my life so well, always have, but even more so now. And there's many I can quote, but the best one for now is and always will be

"What's it gonna take 'till my baby's alright?" -My reply, "Nothing."

Not even a bright sandy beach.

"no one laugh's at god in a hospital

no one laughs at god when they're saying

their Goodbyes"- but god could be funny.

God could be so Hilarious

ha ha haaa haaaaaaaaaaaaa."

-I'm not laughing.

My sweet Grandma Madeline

GO TO BED.

SLEEP NOW...

I had a groovy dream about Obama buying us all Ice-Cream...

Maybe that's how he's gonna save the world! :O)

It was a real vivid, real-like dream. He was in this little diner, dressed all smart to the 9's, hands in pockets, walked over to us and said "hey, what's up, whadda guys doing"? and then bought us all Ice-Cream and when he turned around he was dressed in a white T-shirt and swimming trunks! It was so cool. He walked down the street with all us girls and spent the intire day like he was a long last friend. One of us. laughing and smiling and visiting people. We walked down the middle of the street as if we were in a parade, just licking our snow-cones and ice creams!

I woke up with a smile on my face!

This is how you can tell if you've been really bad!

I got caught playing air piano on the sidewalk again...

Rocking out to "Happiness is a warm gun", "New Age", "Heart of Gold" and "I don't like Mondays" because I've always loved when Tori does her covers. I appreciate them!

People go by in their cars staring at me like I'm totally insane, while I play a mean air piano in my little world. Haha.

Playing air piano while looking at all the Chemtrails above my head in the big blue sky. I counted 8! - And right before the Holidays. How Sweet.

I picked out one big fat puffy cloud I'd like to bounce off of. I could bounce my butt off it like a trampoline! While walking thru & over all these Bee's on the sidewalk.

Wow! It's like walking thru Tori Land today! Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!

and I can see the pretty Sea from where I stand! ;o)

It's my party - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds make their wish list for All Tomorrow's Parties festival

A very interesting read ~

Rock-star curators thrust their left-field wish lists at Australian festival punters next month

'This is your captain. Sorry... but I'm not qualified to land the plane,' Flybe pilot tells stunned passengers

'This is your captain. Sorry... but I'm not qualified to land the plane,' Flybe pilot tells stunned passengers

They are not the most comforting words to hear at 30,000ft.
So imagine the shock of passengers on a Flybe aircraft who heard the captain announce: 'Sorry, I'm not qualified to land the plane.'
He then turned it around and flew back to the airport they had left hours earlier.

A pilot flying a Flybe aircraft like this one to Paris had to travel 300 miles back to Cardiff because he was not trained to land this particular plane in fog

Yesterday passengers spoke of their shock at hearing the announcement as they waited for the 80-seater plane to land in Paris, which was shrouded in thick fog.

Their captain had more than 30 years of flying experience - but he had only recently started to pilot the type of plane they were in.

This meant he had not passed the necessary low-visibility training. After making the unsettling announcement at the end of the 300 mile journey, the captain flew back to Cardiff airport instead.


Cassandra Grant, 29, said: 'We were about 20 minutes from landing, when the captain said: "Unfortunately I'm not qualified to land the plane in Paris. We'll have to fly back".'

She added: 'It was amazing. The whole thing beggars belief. The captain apologised but said it was down to his qualification status.'

Miss Grant and her fellow passengers on flight BE1431 had already been delayed for three hours by fog at Cardiff International Airport on Tuesday morning.

Luckily, by the time the plane returned to Wales, the runway was clear. Miss Grant added: 'There were a lot of puzzled and disappointed people on board. 'When the pilot said he couldn't land the plane we all thought: "Pardon? You can fly a plane but you can't land it?"

'Everyone was pretty appalled but there was some concern that the pilot wasn't fully qualified.

'I would expect an airline pilot to have every qualification possible - then a few more.

'If he couldn't land in the Paris fog what would have happened if it was foggy back in Cardiff?'

Yesterday a spokesman for Flybe stood by the decision taken by its unnamed captain.

She said: 'He has relatively recently transferred his type-rating from a Bombardier Q300 to a Bombardier Q400.

'He has not yet completed the requisite low-visibility training to complete a landing in conditions such as the dense fog experienced in Paris Charles de Gaulle. The captain therefore quite correctly turned the aircraft around and returned to Cardiff, a decision which the company stands by 100 per cent.'

It is understood the plane could not be landed by the co-pilot as both pilots must have the correct flying qualifications.

The Civil Aviation Authority yesterday backed the pilot's action and said: 'He did the right thing.'
A spokesman added: 'If he had landed in Paris he could have been prosecuted.

'It is not like driving a car where you can pull over into a lay-by to look up the handbook. A pilot can't do that at 12,000 feet with 100 passengers sitting behind.'

Independent aviation consultant Simon Gill said: 'His only mistake was announcing his lack of qualification. If he had just said it was not safe to land because of adverse weather conditions, nobody would have minded.'

More new LOST photos!!! and a few I made... Jan. 21 people!

Yummy!

Maestro Warren Ellis Tells Of A Busy Year For The Bearded & Brilliant Bad Seeds

Maestro Warren Ellis Tells Of A Busy Year For The Bearded & Brilliant Bad Seeds

Warren Ellis, one of The Quietus' favourite Australians, drops by as we hail the several gentlemen of the Bad Seeds and Grinderman as artists of 2008

Every good 'n'grizzled commander knows to pick his Lieutenants well. The past two years have been something of a golden period for Nick Cave; judging moustache contests, giving out the Turner Prize, not to mention the feral Grinderman set upon a supine, willing audience and this year's new Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! marking a welcome return to a rawer Bad Seeds sound. Yet Cave is always quick to insist that he is not a solo artist. Since the departure of Blixa Bargeld in 2003, Warren Ellis seems to have found a greater voice within the Bad Seeds set-up and beyond, be it in his role in Grinderman, or working on film soundtracks with Cave. The sounds he wrings from violin and those tiny, yet full-throated, guitars gave Grinderman its lustre, his picking raises Lazarus, his onstage high-kicking complimenting Cave's twisted evangelical, seam-busting gesturing. The Quietus called Ellis to reflect on the peculiar alliance between Grinderman and the Bad Seeds, his relationship with the group, and just what the hell else he's been up to in this 2008. It's been a busy old year has it, Warren? "Fuck, tell me about it man..."

So to start, how was it unleashing Grinderman on the festival crowds this summer?

This festival run was really enjoyable. The band seems made for the festivals, the way we play. It's a very different thing, just the four of us going on to play with no soundcheck or any of that boring stuff, which actually seems to help the performance with Grinderman in some ways. All hell breaks loose up there. We've found the songs and it's loosened up a whole lot more and we're looking at different ways of playing them, not just discovering them.

You said that Grinderman would have an impact on the Bad Seeds, do you think post-Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!! that's going to work the other way round too?

I think so. It's not like we go in there in a different mood or a different headspace. When we went in to record that Grinderman album we didn't even have a name for it. You couldn't imagine how liberating that was if you tried. A big part of the whole thing was to not have any identity - obviously you can't start from zero again, and it's pointless to even think that you could, but to go in there not even having a name was a real reminder of how many restrictions you unwittingly put on yourself, particularly with a group like the Bad Seeds where there's such a long history. The Bad Seeds, particularly before I joined, flew in the face of what was considered to be the norm for rock music, and that was part of their thing. You'd never find a guitar solo on a Bad Seeds record, it was anti a lot of that stuff, to their credit. I guess we've tried to open doors on things that wouldn't be liked.

Do you feel like perhaps you've come to the fore more in terms of the Bad Seeds dynamic?

I was never particularly into playing just the violin. When I started with the Dirty Three that was always what was that great thing about it, we wanted to be free from the instruments, and I'd never play a straight violin line. So joining the Bad Seeds was a rather odd proposition for me because I'd never been in that position before, and it would arise that I'd have to do that sort of thing. Then I guess by playing these other instruments it changed my involvement. I've been working on Nick on so many varied projects now, and up to this point it's going good. It's like when you meet somebody and you have a chat and realise you get on with them, so you meet up again and six months later that might grow into something quite different. And music is a bit like that too, you find you get on with somebody, and you find you might want to spend more time with them. What I like about working with Nick is he tries to push me as far as I can go, he doesn't try to hold me back and that's really encouraging.

How does that work in the wider Bad Seeds group?

It's good because within that environment you can fall flat on your face and realise that it doesn't matter. It's good to go as far as you can go before you realise it's not working, because sometimes it can work, you know? I guess it encourages even the most ridiculous-sounding idea to be carried through to whichever conclusion it could go to. I really like that. It's about taking chances. In the Bad Seeds it seems like people go in and do what they do, and sometimes people are required to do more or less, and it's not even a discussed thing.

You've also done the music for a series of Sony adverts. How was that?

I was doing it ten days before the Bad Seeds were going on tour and it was a total meltdown experience. You'd present it and they'd be saying 'We love it, we love it', then you get a phone call as you're walking out of the door saying 'we just presented it to the heads of Sony and they don't like it'. You've got fifty minutes to do a new thing before we present it again'. I just went 'you're fucking joking' and smashed the phone into pieces.

Would you put yourself through that again?

It's not the sort of thing I'd want to do all the time, I wouldn't say it was incredibly rewarding, it's not like playing in front of a couple hundred people. It's only been in the past couple of years that I've actually started enjoying the studio, and getting more involved in that. Before, it was always more about playing live - it's just fantastic, that whole experience. I love playing with people we know, I love playing in a band, and I love that thing of performing music. It sounds like a corny thing to say, but it's just an incredible escape you know, all the stuff getting fucked up and shit-faced, it's fantastic. You work your way through all that and work out where you want to be if you're still going with it.

How does that relate to the different groups you're in?

It's really great, it just helps with what you're doing. Someone like me, I don't like songs, I somehow seem to have been part of writing quite a lot of material now for some reason, and I found doing all these different thing has really helped whatever I'm going on to do next. Playing in the Dirty Three has helped with the Bad Seeds, then the Bad Seeds helped with the Dirty Three. Whatever you do, if you're trying to do something different the next time you're trying to modify things a whole lot and it's really invigorating.

Does it stop you getting stuck?

Aside from the whole thing about the music there's an incredible dynamic to a band, being around the same people all the time, and it's a real relief to have different things going on.

Do all you Bad Seeds still get on?

Every bunch of people like that if you have problems you either work it out or you don't and you split up. It's something that you don't really think about until it happens and you find yourselves together, it's like having a girlfriend or a boyfriend, the intensity of the relationship. It's something you realise after two years of touring non-stop with the Bad Seeds: fuck me, I'm living with these people.

Nick Cave's put together his own festival line-up * a must read!

NICK Cave isn't backward about coming forward, and one of his pet hates is the line-up at festivals. So he's solved the problem, by creating his own.

Music fans have exhausted hours at house parties contemplating their fantasy festival line-up.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds are the lucky blokes who get to live the dream as the curators of Australia's inaugural All Tomorrow's Parties festival.

Of course it's never as dreamy as it sounds. Budgets and availability can whittle that wish list down, but the final collection of acts will cater for both the curious and the converted alternative music fan.

Cave is satisfied that he and his bandmates "got really close" to making their fantasy a reality.

"There were some people we couldn't get, which was inevitable. But this is going to be good and certainly it isn't like anything anyone has seen (in Australia)."

Cave, Mick Harvey, Warren Ellis, Conway Savage, Martyn P. Casey, Thomas Wydler and Jim Sclavunos devised their hit list on the road in the US.

"We were on the bus for incredibly long hours each day. We literally had a sheet of paper, tossed names around to see which ones would stick between the lot of us," Cave says.

"That was amazing as it turned out because it was funny to see where each person was coming from."

Cave credits Harvey and the other Australian-based Seeds with having more to do with sourcing local acts to join the bill, which will travel to Mt Buller.

The 51-year-old musician isn't enamoured of the festival experience -- with the exception of All Tomorrow's Parties, an event he graced in Somerset, England, as a solo performer and with Grinderman last year.

That program was curated by the Dirty Three, who appear on the Australian tour.

But the festival's non-mainstream aesthetic and the absence of a VIP area are important points of difference for Cave.

"The idea of the All Tomorrow's Parties thing for us was to put together a festival -- or a set of concerts rather -- with a range of people you would never ever get a chance to see under the same roof.

"It is not designed around what are the biggest current bands of the day; it's about something completely different."

The completion of his curator duties comes as Cave enters a frenzy of creation.

A novel, a film score and a new Grinderman record are a few of his endeavours.

He reckons work keeps him out of trouble.

"It's kind of a wish to pull your head in now and then and remind myself, 'I am not f---ing Nick Cave here'," he says of his life at home with partner Susie Bick and twins Arthur and Earl.

Each day when not on tour, Cave suits up and heads to a nearby office to work.

"But I don't know why it's all coming now, I can't help it. There's just a lot of stuff pouring out at the moment. It keeps me out of mischief, from getting into any more fights with my neighbours. I'm kind of the neighbour from hell unless I'm working hard. I will get in everyone's face. Invariably my wife and kids will say, 'Isn't there a novel you could write?' or something like that and I'm happy to oblige."

The novel, The Death of Bunny Munro, will be released early next year and Cave insists it is nothing like his debut effort, And the Ass Saw the Angel.

"The novel is very different from what I normally do -- it's chick lit. You are going to love it."

The score has been written with Warren Ellis for the new John Hillcoat film The Road, adapted from the Cormac McCarthy novel.

"It always looks like it's going to be smooth sailing with films but it never is. It takes f---ing years," Cave says.

Cave doesn't expect to wait too long to realise one of his festival ambitions; if it happens it will be one hell of a supergroup.

"I have no idea what will happen but there will be extensive interaction between the bands. You have a wealth of artists you love and respect all in the same place, so it's bound to happen," he says.

"It's usually the opposite for us, where we are usually surrounded by bands we loathe.

"Generally the way a festival is put together, they take a more populist approach to the bill because they just want as many people to come along as possible. So generally we hate them and they hate us; it's always been the way.

"But we are excited to be with the people on All Tomorrow's Parties. Hopefully they won't hate us."

SEE Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Palace Theatre, Jan 6-7, $78, www.oztix.com.au

URGENT ALERT: Demand Obama rescind invitation to homophobe

* I already went to the website and took the few minutes to sign up and sent my letter*...

URGENT ALERT: Demand Obama rescind invitation to homophobe

It is appalling that President-elect Barack Obama would invite California Pastor Rev. Rick Warren, an ardent supporter of Prop 8 and someone who is opposed to the equality of LGBT Americans, to give the invocation at his inauguration.

:: Demand President-elect Obama to immediately rescind this invitation.
www.eqca.org/actioncenter.com

Would President-elect Obama invite someone to give the invocation who supported eliminating the civil rights of a minority other than the LGBT community? Of course he wouldn't!

This is a slap in the face to the millions of LGBT Americans who supported his historic candidacy.

:: TAKE ACTION: Sign EQCA's petition to President-elect Obama. Ask him to immediately rescind this despicable invitation.