Stella

Jim was walking down the street. He saw a small red object lying in the gutter to his left. Rather than pick it up, he walked straight past it; it's just rubbish, after all. A few steps later, however, he paused and considered that by not picking up the object, he's failing to advance the plot in any kind of interesting way. He continued walking, having dismissed this consideration as ludicrous and unethical.

Jim came upon a pedestrian crossing, stopping to look for cars and think about what a weird phrase 'came upon' is. After ascertaining that the street was clear, he walked boldly onto the old, lumpy rectangles of white paint. He was promptly run over by a Ford Mondeo. When I say 'run over', it was more 'run under', because when a car hits you at relatively high speed, the bonnet is designed at a downward angle, and so your body is levered up into the sky.

Jim woke up in a hospital bed, when I say 'bed' it was more a 'dumpster'. After arriving at the hospital, Jim was examined, whereupon his heart stopped beating for 28 minutes and this is widely agreed upon in the medical profession as 'dead'. Therefore, not wanting to waste any more of the tax payer's money, they disposed of Jim by way of the nearest window, landing him in the aforementioned dumpster.

After hopping out of the dumpster, thinking himself surprisingly uninjured considering he'd been run under by a car and thrown out of a window in the past two hours, Jim saw a nearby park and made his way towards it. Parks are unusual places, filled with laughter and a lot of dog shit. Jim was particularly familiar with this second fact because he'd fallen into a particularly large pile of the stuff. He'd fallen because, despite his original assessment of 'surprisingly uninjured', Jim, in fact, had two broken legs, a shattered pelvis and a dislocated left pinky.

Jim army-crawled to the nearest pedestrian crossing, in what can only be described as a wanton act of masochistic de ja vu. After crawling exactly half way across the crossing, Jim was convincingly run 'over', this time, by me, the author. I was dissatisfied with my previous attempt at ending Jim, having hired a 'hit and run man' to do the job earlier, and so the moral of the story is: 'If you want something done right, write a short story'.


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I would like to dedicate this short story to Latika... for inspiring me... to write it.
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Jill

The most appealing travel destinations are probably places that frequently feature in movies. Watching a movie is a more heightened emotional experience, so when it comes to actually living in the places you've experienced in the cinema, you feel the excitement 2 fold. The first layer obviously being that you're somewhere very different from home and the second layer being that you're living something that used to only exist in your imagination.

Travelling is also one of the farthest places you can be from your parents and, therefore, the most independent you can be. This is probably why so many people go on a 'gap' year to a far away country after finishing year 12.

Furthermore, being in a foreign country enables you to represent the country that you came from, not in an annoying school expectations kind of way, but more in an alien from outer space way. If you go to a country that doesn't speak your language, you become able to speak 'another' language without having learned anything but your mother tongue. Depending on your home country, you also get tarred with all the good or bad associations your country attracts, so you're automatically a person of interest in foreigner's eyes.

Joel

HDMI, what a format, what a cord.

Now, this may seem like a nerdy thing to be discussing but I intend to consider its implications as an overall advancement in sociological philosophy, as well as its nerdular facets, so don't worry.

Firstly, visually, it's awesome. I mean, 1080 progressively scanned vertical pixels is a lot of pixels.

Audio is also a great thing to be firing, at high quality, into your theatre set-up.

Both video AND audio at the same time? Now, that's just impressive.

Then you have the ever-increasing versions of HDMI: 1.2, 1.3, 1.3b, 1.4, 1.4b etc. One of the coolest introductions during these version revisions was Deep Colour, which supports billions, as opposed to millions, of colours and just sounds cool. I mean Deeeep colour, it's pretty sweet; the idea that you have the standard colours on your screen and then you can have a deeper, more thorough, embedded form of colour coexisting. Then with the even more recent versions you have things like network connectivity (I think) and generally a massive amount of future-proofing.

But, most importantly, the HDMI cable represents society's move towards simplicity in advancement. Rather than more, bigger, grander, being better; less is finally more. With the adoption of the High Definition Media Interface, setting up your T.V., Blu-ray player, PVR, High Def. Tuner etc. is finally a one-cord, one-stop-shop, one action process (in theory) and it at least shows that we're trying. Trying to make things in life simpler and easier. I think it may also be indicative of our evolving approach to sustainability and environmental friendliness. In short, good times for all,

Long live HDMI.

Greg

The only real consolation for missing a yellow light and having to stop at the red, is if you end up at the front of the line. On 'the front lines' you could say, because it does feel a lot like you're leading an army of cars/commuters into battle, the war to be on time, as opposed to brutally late. Each traffic light is like a battle. There's nothing quite like idling powerfully at the very front, with the best view, waiting to test your reaction time for the next battle.

Billy

Comfort is in both the escape from and return to the familiar.

Garry

Could a bedroom be 'held-up' in the same way a bank or restaurant is 'held-up'; with guns, shouting etc? It would, at the very least, be rather funny to see a pair of balaclava-clad ruffians burst into your room, as you're doing your homework, and demand 'all of the cash'. In response to which you will give them $8.40 and watch some very disappointed criminals walk out your door. Perhaps it would work better in larger bedrooms, with more things to steal.

Betty

'Opinion' is the first half of invention.

James

One of the funniest images I've ever seen was a puppy with a mustache wearing a top hat. I saw it on Family Guy and I enjoyed it on a conceptual level as well as the hilarious visual level, because it represents the combination of three very creative ideas:

1. Puppies are funny
2. Mustaches are funny
3. Let's throw a top hat in for good measure

Jordan

The greatest word in the English language, based on both phonoaesthetics and semantics, is:

audacity

Trish

Murder Mysteries, 'Who done-it's...

They don't really ring true if the writer or director knows what's was going to happen the whole time. They end up spending parts of the movie just filling time, or implausibly positioning the characters in the Library with numerous candlesticks surrounding them.

What would really be cool, and more realistic, would be if one writer/director sculpts the first half of the movie, the setup, establishing the situation etc. and another writer/director has to write/direct their way out of it; escape the clutches of the previous creator. I reckon it'd be pretty cool.