Saturday, January 19, 2019
2018: The year in Five-Minute Photoshop. Yes, belatedly, it's my round-up of my year's worth of stupid sweding. This is a miserable collection. I was so flat out with work at the end of the year that I worked right up to Christmas Eve, and I didn't get a proper break – basically I just had from Christmas Day to New Year's Day – and I've been so stressed since then, trying to finish off last year's work so I could get to this year's work, that I've been feeling very resentful at having so little time to myself to pursue my own stuff. So I guess I'm reclaiming my time by doing this now.
Here's the original Five-Minute Photoshop post, from March 2012. Then I decided to make it into an annual tradition: here's my round-up of 2013 in Five-Minute Photoshop, 2014 in Five-Minute Photoshop, 2015 in Five-Minute Photoshop, 2016 in Five-Minute Photoshop and 2017 in Five-Minute Photoshop.
I taught Editing and Publishing at La Trobe University in semester 1 of 2018, and made this little logo as part of my lecture about nitty-gritty sentence structure and grammar. When I got to this slide in the lecture I said in my best Richard Attenborough voice, "Welcome… to Pedantry Park." It's through these fun gestures that I demonstrate to students how cool and relatable I am.
However, by semester 2, when I was teaching one class at La Trobe and three at Monash, as well as proofreading three different magazines and various books and theses, co-hosting a fortnightly podcast, co-writing a novel and attempting to carry on a freelance cultural criticism practice (including attending 3-5 film screenings per week), I was basically at breaking point. I taught three two-hour classes almost back-to-back on Thursdays and had one precious hour for lunch. One week I spent most of my lunch hour in the staff room sweding these three Picnic at Hanging Rock pics.
I don't know what I had thought the book Stuart Little by EB White was actually about – I think I thought there was a human family who had adopted a homeless mouse and treated him like their own. But the actual novel is so much worse – Mrs Little GIVES BIRTH TO A MOUSE instead of a child!! The book is so unbelievably cooked and I will just quote from the Wikipedia page here: "Anne Carroll Moore, who had initially encouraged White to write the book, was critical of it when she read a proof of it. She wrote letters to White; his wife, Katharine; and Ursula Nordstrom, the children's editors at Harper's, advising that the book not be published." Despite this incredibly sensible and well-warranted advice, White went ahead and published this disturbing novel anyway.
Why are there so many films about WWII? There are so many other wars with tales of evil overcome by dashing derring-do! Or if you wanted to make a cynical political drama about war, or a touching tale of love disrupted by the horrors of war, you could set it in any other bloody war than WWII.
I think this was a joke someone was making on Twitter about how as a child they thought the Tina Arena song 'Chains' was 'Flames'. So I got this still from the video and put some flames on.
I developed this emoji for posting on posts about relationships with men.
This file is called "catwitharms.jpg" and I think it might have been sweded in response to a post on Cool Cat Group, a Facebook group that basically is just people posting pictures and videos of their cats. Graham is not very popular on Cool Cat Group, which is devastating to me as I believe he is the most beautiful and hilarious animal in Australia.
There was another post on Cool Cat Group where you were encouraged to fill out this instructional diagram of how your cat liked to be patted. I was too earnest to fill it out jokingly – this is actually how to pat Graham. I spent more time than I should have colouring it in nicely.
I've basically retired from the sweded birthday card game, but I can never resist getting in a dig at Anthony's love for The Chair Movie. However last week Anthony pranked me by gifting me a DVD of The Chair Movie. Good one.
I think about this video all the time. Quotes from it often pop into my head. It says a lot about life, and about cat massage. Relax! You have the best teacher available – your cat! A major whisker watch alert is in effect here! These are the prominent chest muscles seen on proud bodybuilders. Belly-rama! Just start at the rump, rubbing your way out, and follow it to its natural conclusion.
Here's the original Five-Minute Photoshop post, from March 2012. Then I decided to make it into an annual tradition: here's my round-up of 2013 in Five-Minute Photoshop, 2014 in Five-Minute Photoshop, 2015 in Five-Minute Photoshop, 2016 in Five-Minute Photoshop and 2017 in Five-Minute Photoshop.
I taught Editing and Publishing at La Trobe University in semester 1 of 2018, and made this little logo as part of my lecture about nitty-gritty sentence structure and grammar. When I got to this slide in the lecture I said in my best Richard Attenborough voice, "Welcome… to Pedantry Park." It's through these fun gestures that I demonstrate to students how cool and relatable I am.
However, by semester 2, when I was teaching one class at La Trobe and three at Monash, as well as proofreading three different magazines and various books and theses, co-hosting a fortnightly podcast, co-writing a novel and attempting to carry on a freelance cultural criticism practice (including attending 3-5 film screenings per week), I was basically at breaking point. I taught three two-hour classes almost back-to-back on Thursdays and had one precious hour for lunch. One week I spent most of my lunch hour in the staff room sweding these three Picnic at Hanging Rock pics.
I don't know what I had thought the book Stuart Little by EB White was actually about – I think I thought there was a human family who had adopted a homeless mouse and treated him like their own. But the actual novel is so much worse – Mrs Little GIVES BIRTH TO A MOUSE instead of a child!! The book is so unbelievably cooked and I will just quote from the Wikipedia page here: "Anne Carroll Moore, who had initially encouraged White to write the book, was critical of it when she read a proof of it. She wrote letters to White; his wife, Katharine; and Ursula Nordstrom, the children's editors at Harper's, advising that the book not be published." Despite this incredibly sensible and well-warranted advice, White went ahead and published this disturbing novel anyway.
Why are there so many films about WWII? There are so many other wars with tales of evil overcome by dashing derring-do! Or if you wanted to make a cynical political drama about war, or a touching tale of love disrupted by the horrors of war, you could set it in any other bloody war than WWII.
I think this was a joke someone was making on Twitter about how as a child they thought the Tina Arena song 'Chains' was 'Flames'. So I got this still from the video and put some flames on.
I developed this emoji for posting on posts about relationships with men.
This file is called "catwitharms.jpg" and I think it might have been sweded in response to a post on Cool Cat Group, a Facebook group that basically is just people posting pictures and videos of their cats. Graham is not very popular on Cool Cat Group, which is devastating to me as I believe he is the most beautiful and hilarious animal in Australia.
There was another post on Cool Cat Group where you were encouraged to fill out this instructional diagram of how your cat liked to be patted. I was too earnest to fill it out jokingly – this is actually how to pat Graham. I spent more time than I should have colouring it in nicely.
I've basically retired from the sweded birthday card game, but I can never resist getting in a dig at Anthony's love for The Chair Movie. However last week Anthony pranked me by gifting me a DVD of The Chair Movie. Good one.
I think about this video all the time. Quotes from it often pop into my head. It says a lot about life, and about cat massage. Relax! You have the best teacher available – your cat! A major whisker watch alert is in effect here! These are the prominent chest muscles seen on proud bodybuilders. Belly-rama! Just start at the rump, rubbing your way out, and follow it to its natural conclusion.
