Whatever Happened to The Lost Forest?

In the early 90's when I was a titch, I used to beg mum to take me to The Lost Forest. To those who don't remember/were neglected as a child, it wasn't a real forest but actually a very well decorated toy shop with "magical" creatures in the form of over-priced soft toys. Mum hated the place for reasons I was not able to comprehend at the time so I bugged my Uncle (who was a push-over when it came to mini-Svet) to take me.We usually arrived in time for "story-time" which was told by an adult in a tutu in the "fairy cave", and you had to go in with all the other little kids and no grown ups (except the fairy), which was a little nerve racking for a little sissy like myself. But I was bribed with the promise of shiny, star-shaped glitter; as much as I could pick up off the floor was mine to keep. That's a pretty good deal I remember thinking, and the glitter is free? Sorry, let me get this straight, the glitter is actually free for me? To keep?
You get the idea, I was ecstatic.

The fairy cave was this dark room with lots of plastic trees and toys hanging off them, toys which could be yours too if only your parents would pay up. What was hilarious was that all the toys had a sort of creepiness about them, they were almost cute...almost. The Lost Forest seemed to be a place where all the mutant, retarded toys would go and act like they were hot because it was really dark in there, ... like The Lounge at 3am.
Perhaps the most memorable creature was the "Puggle", which can only be described as an obese turtle which had lost its shell, grown whiskers and put on a nappy. The Puggle came in a rainbow of velour fur coats and even had a little bag that you could keep it prisoner in. The Lost Forest Website (yes they have a website which is worth a visit) recommends the following instructions for the wellbeing of your Puggle,
"last thing at night, tie it up tightly and don't let it out until the morning.This way the Puggles will not become extinct"There were also flying pigs and a grotesque hairy troll thing with a big nose which was called an 'Uh Oh'. I think I liked it mainly because it was blue and because it was supposedly always getting into trouble. I begged mum to buy me an "Uh Oh" but she refused and when my Uncle finally bought it for me she didn't want to be anywhere near it. For years she was secretly trying to throw it away.

All in all I managed to scam 2 Lost Forest toys out of my immediate family, which wasn't too bad considering the prices. One Uh Oh and one Catastrophe Cat toy with long black arms and a weird face. It liked to hang off trees and could do so easily because it had sand sewn into it's paws. However I found C.C was more useful as a weapon, it's heavy paws really hurt my little brother if you swung them at his head.

And where is this weirdo forest now? I hear you asking. Well it was only open from 1988-1994, which meant that I was merely seven years young when the forest died out and I felt the brunt of it. I found out just now that the concept was originally thought up by Billy Thorpe and some other guy (who isn't famous). No wonder its so trippy, I bet Billy used to hide out in his own imaginary forest and talk to the animals in order to escape the pressures of stardom.

That's all folks, tread carefully in the woods and don't eat any of the mushrooms that have faces, unless you have already eaten mushrooms...then everything will have a face.

Godskitchen: not as holy as once thought

So the peeps down at inthemix.com sent me their customary "we'll tell you whats cool and what to buy" email which I must admit, I do read from time to time. Perhaps I just find it exciting that they start off all the editorials with "Hello Svetlana..." thats genius and it hooks me in! But sometimes, like today I just have alot of work to procrastinate from.

I was excited to find on the front page of this inthemix business, a photo album from Godskitchen. "How lovely" I thought to myself, now I can relive all those rapidly disintegrating memories from ye olde last weekend! I had such a good time with the fortunecat and the randoms, the whole night seemed to go so quickly.

Then as I clicked onto this photo album I discovered a side of G.K. which I had chosen to forget. The trashy, slutty, tacky, sexually predatory side. Ah yes that old thing, that always gets in the way at these young people thingies.

When Fortunecat and I first entered into the main arena last Saturday night, I was blown away; the sound, the lighting and the masses of people. It was great, it was uplifting and I felt really happy to be there. However I could enjoy this euphoria for only a few minutes before my eyes were assaulted by the four bimbo "dancers" gyrating on the stage."OOAAHH! Not again!" I moaned. How clever an idea to have strippers dressed up as angels at Godskitchen! Wow, that's going to break new ground. The silver CFM boots were anything but angelic as I'm sure you can see for yourselves. But I'm not suggesting we have saints up there "shaking their booty" or anything but if I really wanted to see a girl thrusting at me I would have gone to a strip club.

I actually like the idea of dancers on stage at raves, they're fun and they get the crowd going. But I don't need plasticized sexuality shoved in my face. Earlier this year I went to see a band and ended up being accosted by a burlesque show. I don't care how cool burlesque becomes, to me it will always be just a stripper packaged differently. Like the Suicide Girls (strippers who dye their hair black and consider themselves better than the playboy bunnies), ha! What a joke. How many women are going to take their clothes off for me this year I wonder? And I'm not even Kevin Rudd.

And it isn't just the paid dancers who are doing it, anyone who's been out in the last 10 years will be familiar with girls stripping for the Inpress photographer and dancing on the bar like they're being paid $100 an hour to demean themselves. The ladies are doing it for themselves yo!
It's no surprise moronic guys treat women like strippers and porn stars in clubs when all girls are expected to present an aura of sexual promiscuity 24/7. That must get put a strain on the ol' gyrating muscle.

Being sexy isn't about just buying a cute new top or doing your eyes up anymore, to be noticed (by the inthemix photographers anyway) you need to get your tits out, spread your legs and suck down a chupa chup like its raspberry cock.It's only fair to say though that these pictures aren't a realistic representation of G.K. this is just what the promoters want you to see so that maybe if you're a serial date rapist or socially retarded young man, you might buy a ticket to this event in the hope that one of these girls might fuck just as easily as they say they do. And if you're a girl in desperate need of male validation then maybe you'd like to shed your individuality and "empower" yourself by joining these Playmate try-hards. Buy a ticket ok?

No seriously, this wasn't the majority of G.K. punters, there were plenty of gorgeous, normal girls and boys wearing enough clothing so that when they went to the toilet they needed to remove at least one item of clothing beforehand. They were dancing and being themselves and smiling at each other because they were actually happy not because they wanted to look as if they were. They weren't performing for anyone like possessed sex dolls. I'm so sick of those possessed sex dolls, aren't you?

Kiddie Porn and LOL Catz Videos: A YouTube Adventure

Everyone gets addicted to youtube at some period in their lives, its just one of those things that we all go through. I started to get addicted but wasn’t savvy enough and ended up traumatizing myself by clicking on the links that showed up as “related searches” which just ended up being soft porn. I swear, there are enough web cam girls around to pad out an entire series on MTV. In fact there probably already is one which screens back to back with Girls Gone Wild.

So my point is I fucked up my youtube experience and was afraid to go back. However a combination of boredom and the fact that a while ago blogger could only display videos using a youtube URL, forced me crawl back into the world of the tube. I was very excited to learn that strangers had viewed my shithouse videos that I had uploaded. It became one of my favourite games to upload something boring and call it, in opposition, a highly interesting name. For example, an amateur school assembly video could be renamed “High school sluts amateur try-outs”. I gleaned experience from reading things on the news about virtual bullying and online humiliation, thus learning that I could use youtube to exploit my peers. One of my favourite videos involved me taking advantage of a trashed friend of mine by turning the camera on them as they nearly wet themselves during a drug-induced hysteria. Now whenever my friend wants to see what she looks like really wasted, it will all be there online whenever she likes. No real directing flair was required although certain patience is recommended during the uploading process which takes anywhere between seventy thousand through to eleventy billion hours to complete.

Apart from uploading videos of a consistently poor quality and waiting for the suckers to waste their time viewing it, I did some other things. I filmed events where filming was “strictly prohibited” and upon uploading them found myself getting a sort of star-status from people who were happy to watch my video and not pay for that concert I went to. I even got a star rating once which made my day.
I wish I could get star ratings on every aspect of my life…

making breakfast today, quite tasty: 4 stars,

emptying bladder recently: extremely satisfying, 5 stars,

witty blog posting: needs work, 2 stars.

However the most rewarding and addictive part of the youtube experience for me is probably quite similar for most people; the searching of other video material that is much better than your own. Video clips, stupid ads, short films, kiddie porn it’s all there to be found. My favourites folder is getting fatter and fatter and I like nothing more than going back over it and watching it all again. Yeah I’m not a very busy person and I don’t have much going on at the moment.

What disturbed me even more than the ratings I was getting for my kiddie porn uploads was that my favourites folder was dominated very clearly by two topics of video…
Cheesy compilations of cute cat clips synchronized to music and disaster and explosion videos. These two things don’t have anything in common that I can find but it does say something about what’s going on in my unconscious. And that, Dear reader is where I will leave you.

Oh actually, here is a video of an obese cat sitting on a couch watching tv, just like Homer Simpson but feline.