Author Archives: Nikki

The Black Widow’s 30 Day Song Challenge

Posted in Entertainment, Music by

Having to remember to post a link to a song for 30 days is harder than it looks.

If you haven’t seen it around before (because I’m pretty sure these were floating around ages ago as well), there’s been a 30 Day Song Challenge fad surfacing on social media. What you do is you post a link to a song on your Facebook wall or Twitter profile with the day number and the reason why you’ve chosen said song. If it doesn’t make sense to you, it will soon.

30daysong

In honour of my 30 Day Song Challenge, I’ve decided to post it on here in its entirety, with a few comments attached to it so the reader can understand why I’ve chosen that piece of music.

Without further ado, here is my 30 Day Song Challenge:
Day 1 – Your favourite song
Sam Hunt – Cop Car. I have many favourite songs but this was the one that I thought of straight away. This song is so beautiful and knowing that bae (Hunt) originally co-wrote this for Keith Urban makes it that much greater.

Day 2 – Your least favourite song
Taylor Swift – Blank Space. I’ll keep my words short and sweet here, in fear of a defamation lawsuit, but I am not a fan of Taylor Swift.

Day 3 – A song that makes you happy
Sam Hunt – House Party. How could you not be happy when you listen to this song? I hate this music video though. So disappointed, Sam.

Day 4 – A song that makes you sad
Luther Vandross – Dance with My Father. In a similar manner, how can you not be sad when you listen to this song? I think of my father and start crying immediately.

Day 5 – A song that reminds you of someone
Chaka Demus and Pliers – Murder She Wrote. Tl;dr version of this story: for about the past seven years, I’ve called my best friend Rebecca “Maxine”, and it’s because of this song. It’s a nickname that actually sticks; I sometimes forget that her name isn’t Maxine.

Day 6 – A song that reminds you of somewhere
Ne-Yo – Can We Chill. My family had this album in our car for like the entire two years we lived in Goulburn, so now I have forever attached these tracks to my second favourite country town.

Day 7 – A song that reminds you of a certain event
Big and Rich – Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy). My first experience at CMC Rocks the Hunter was in 2013 and one of the headlining acts was Big and Rich, and they absolutely killed it with this song.

Day 8 – A song that you know all the words to
Nicki Minaj – Anaconda. Once rapped this entire song to my friend Cara on the way home from Manly. Was great.

Day 9 – A song that you can dance to
Little Big Town – Pavement Ends. Line dances for days.

Day 10 – A song that makes you fall asleep
Lana Del Rey – Ultraviolence. Dat soothing melody.

Day 11 – A song from your favourite artist
Love and Theft – Thinking of You (and Me). This was my first LNT song. Everyone knows that Love and Theft are my boys. Everyone should grab a copy of their new album Whiskey on my Breath, available February 10.

Day 12 – A song from a band you hate
5 Seconds of Summer – Amnesia. I can’t even describe how much I despise this song.

Day 13 – A song that is a guilty pleasure
Ariana Grande ft The Weeknd – Love Me Harder. Not a fan of Ariana, or the lyrics to this song, or even this Weeknd fella. But I love this song.

Day 14 – A song that no one would expect you to love
Megadeth – She Wolf. Being a country fan, no one expects me to like metal. But I do. And I have a special place in my heart for Megadeth.

Day 15 – A song that describes you
Ne-Yo – Beautiful Monster. My best friend said this song as soon as I asked “What’s a song that describes me?” Not sure if shade or compliment.

Day 16 – A song that you used to love but now hate
Iggy Azalea ft Rita Ora – Black Widow. This song is played too often on the radio and now I’m sick of hearing Rita Ora sing my alias name.

Day 17 – A song that you hear often on the radio
AronChupa – I’m an Albatraoz. I don’t even know what an albatraoz is, and I don’t want to know after hearing this ghastly song on the radio every five minutes.

Day 18 – A song that you wish you heard on the radio
Ashley Madison – Other than My Wife. Technically not a song, but I wish this ad was played on the radio. I don’t necessarily condone the message, but it’s so damn catchy.

Day 19 – A song from your favourite album
Love and Theft – Angel Eyes. Easily the best selling song from the album. I love my boys!!

Day 20 – A song that you listen to when you’re angry
Knife Party – Bonfire. It just sounds like an angry song, doesn’t it?

Day 21 – A song that you listen to when you’re happy
Paul Simon – You Can Call Me Al. How could you not be happy when listening to this song?!

Day 22 – A song that you listen to when you’re sad
Love and Theft – If You Ever Get Lonely. This song can make me cry almost instantly, as soon as I hear the intro.

Day 23 – A song that you want to play at your wedding
Ed Sheeran – Thinking Out Loud. Should I choose to get married and have a horrid wedding, this song will play. And I will proceed to do the entire dance.

Day 24 – A song that you want to play at your funeral
Love Spit Love – How Soon is Now? As soon as my coffin is being lowered into the ground, I want this song to be playing. And everyone can cry like Piper and Phoebe did at Prue’s funeral.

Day 25 – A song that makes you laugh
Rihanna – We Found Love. Tl;dr my best mate Alexia has a funny story pertaining to this song and I laugh every time I hear it.

Day 26 – Your birthday song*
Whitney Houston – I Will Always Love You. 29th January 1993 reprazent.

Day 27 – A song that you wish you could play
Frederic Chopin – Prelude in E Minor. I’ve always wished I could play this song on the piano. But I can’t. So.

Day 28 – A song that makes you feel guilty
Wiz Khalifa – We Dem Boyz. I think this is the same as a guilty pleasure?

Day 29 – A song from your childhood
Billie Piper – Because We Want To. Anyone who denies being a fan of Billie Piper as a child in the 90s is a fat liar.

Day 30 – Your favourite song at this time last year
Steve Grand – All-American Boy. I imagine this was my favourite song at this time last year because I always played it.

* The original 30 Day Song Challenge says day 26 should be “a song that you can play on an instrument”. However, the only song I can play is Mary Had a Little Lamb and I wasn’t about to put that up, so I changed it. Deal with it.

– by The Black Widow

You Know What Sh!ts Me?: The imbalance of freedom

Posted in Opinion, What Sh!ts Me by

People suck. They really do.

Let’s use this scenario as an example: you’re at a party and you have one bottle of premium lemonade. A stranger comes up to you and asks you for it, saying “Please, I’m so thirsty and cannot find a drink anywhere else” (you know, despite water being readily available nearly everywhere but bear with me). Being a kind and considerate person, you give the stranger your premium lemonade. The next day, you’re thirsty and you feel like a drink. You find someone with a bottle of premium lemonade and ask them for a drink. They say no and walk away. Unfair, right?

If that’s so unfair, how does an individual try and demand freedom if they’re not willing to give it themselves?

Don’t get what I mean? Let me give you a proper example that doesn’t involve fantasy lemonade. A black man who demands racial equality but hates gays and doesn’t want them to have the choice of getting married. A gay woman who demands gay rights but hates men and anything they decide to do. A free-spirited animal activist who wants animal equality but doesn’t think people are allowed to wear whatever they want.

Equality means accepting all colours, not just the reds, oranges and yellows.

Equality means accepting all colours, not just the reds, oranges and yellows.

In other words, people who demand freedom but don’t give it back.

It just stems from the basic rule “treat others how you would like to be treated”. If you want people to respect your freedom in choice and lifestyle, then you should respect others, even if you don’t agree with it.

I had a friend who was very passionate about gay rights: he, as a homosexual man, didn’t understand why people were blocking his right to marry his partner and why he felt discriminated against for who he chose to love. Fair enough right? Well, as vocal as this former friend was about gay rights, he was also equally vocal about how he didn’t like black people and openly discriminated against them. My reaction?

This picture is so relevant to life.

This picture is so relevant to life.

My argument with him was this: “I’m sorry but how do you expect people to respect you and accept you as a gay man if you’re not going to respect and accept a man down the street because he’s black? Where is the logic in that?” His response was simple: “If people don’t respect me for being gay, I don’t have to respect black people.” It is possibly the stupidest thing I have ever heard anyone say – ever. It’s like saying “If I don’t want to play tennis, why are other people playing tennis?”

News flash: there are other people in this world besides you.

My point, which I am going to reiterate here, is this: treat others how you want to be treated.

I’m not going to hate someone because they like rap music and I don’t. I’m not going to ignore someone because they choose to wear baggy trousers (as opposed to the painted on hot pants that I wear). It’s just stupid.

There are so many freedom fighters nowadays that are apparently striving for equality, but some of these people don’t even know what equality is.

End rant.

– by The Black Widow

Review: A Private Affair

Posted in Books, Entertainment by

Note to the reader: this book isn’t about a holiday on the beach like the cover suggests. At all.

If you’ve picked up this book (like I did) with the guise that it’s about a bunch of girls who meet on a tropical holiday resort and talk about boys and get into all sorts of drunken shenanigans… you would be wrong. In fact, the cover could not be any more misleading.

A Private Affair by Lesley Lokko is actually a story that follows four very different women with one very big similarity: they have been army wives or girlfriends at one point in their life. Samantha Maitland, a no-nonsense business woman who grew from ugly duckling to beautiful swan meets a mysterious army man on her holiday; Meaghan Astor runs away from her abusive home and finds solace in the handsome Australian army man Tom; Abby Barclay who grew up in an army home, is now the perfect army wife; and Dani Kingsley-Safo, the young and stunning Sierra Leonean with a dark past regarding a mysterious army man.

Misleading, right?

Misleading, right?

I’ll start by saying that I’ve heard some pleasant things about Lokko and her writing so I was expecting pretty good things by this book, especially because it is a very thick read. However, I was pretty let down and I was pretty disappointed by this book in general.

Besides the fact the cover is misleading, I just thought some of the scenes in the book very irrelevant to the overall storyline of the novel. The flashbacks for all four characters were to set their story and describe the type of person that they are, and most of it did that, sure. But some of the scenes were just pointless and some stories were told for no ultimate reason.

Regarding the characters, the only character I really connected with was Meaghan and that was because she’s Australian. The closest character I even remotely felt something for was Nick Beasdale. I didn’t feel a single spark with any other main character and thought they were bland. Dani was annoying and I genuinely resented reading her parts of the story; Samantha was a pain in the arse and fell for a guy straight away because he looked at her; and Abby was a selfish mutt. I would like to say why, but it’ll spoil the story. But that’s just my opinion.e

This book was really hard to get into and it took me well over three months to finally put the book down and declare it finished. Granted, there were some saving graces about the book (Meaghan and Tom’s cute relationship anyone?) but I thought the novel overall was rather uninteresting. I will say that it did shed some interesting light on a topic I had no prior knowledge on but wish I did: being an army wife. I never imagined it’d be as difficult or as lonely as this book had described and sympathised with Meaghan and Abby as they would go days or sometimes months without seeing their better half. It also gave a brief insight onto what it’s like in the army, and that to me was pretty great.

Wid-o-meter
Storyline: 5/10
Style of writing: 5.2/10
Overall: 5.1/10

The misleading cover may have put this result to bed but the disappointing storyline put the nail on the coffin. Being my first Lokko book, it is sad to admit that this is my first impression of her. But, alas, like a good reader, I won’t let that stray me away from reading her other stuff.

– by The Black Widow

The Lazy-asses guide to losing weight: the workout edition

Posted in Body, Health & Fitness by

Not to be confused with the lazy-asses guide to losing weight: the food edition, which will be posted at a later date.

Hi, I’m the Black Widow, and in the past three months, I have lost ten kilos. To some, that may be a walk in the park, but for me, that’s a whopping change. For my entire life, I have relied heavily on my metabolism to cut down my body weight and remain the trim little spitfire that I am, but it eventually caught up on me and I packed on a few extra kilos that weren’t necessarily wanted. Finally, after snatching a good deal with Anytime Fitness, I decided to shed that extra weight and return to my most fitting form.

I know some of you have read weight loss stories and thought “But these people have all the motivation and discipline in the world to achieve their goals, and I don’t. How will this work for me?” The solution is simple: me. I can honestly tell you that when it comes to physical exercise, I am one of the laziest mofos in the world. Usually, when someone starts going to the gym and they get into a regular pattern, they love going to the gym and can’t get enough of it. For me, after three months of regularly attending the gym, I still dread going to that metal clanging-and-banging hellhole.

Those are interesting coloured paperweights...

Those are interesting coloured paperweights…

To help others get fit and get into the shape they desire, I have compiled a list of steps that I personally took to help me achieve my weight loss:

Step one: Set a goal
I know it’s cliché to say this but a goal is needed if you’re even thinking of getting into shape. I set a goal as soon as I decided to go to the gym and it’s definitely helped me. When I am struggling to breathe as I run for my dear life on the treadmill, or my arms are about to snap off when I’m lifting weights, I think of my ultimate goal and picture it in my head… and it allows me to keep going. For at least another like two minutes or so.

Step two: Stay disciplined
After a few days of hitting the gym, you’ll feel really pumped and think “Yeah! This is for me!” but then you’ll gradually stop going until you realise you’re donating money to the gym. Don’t fall into this trap. If, for some reason, you feel yourself thinking “Hey, I don’t need to go tonight” or “I can do without the gym just this one week”, discipline yourself . You won’t achieve that goal if you skip a day or two. You’ll go back to the way you were if you miss an entire week. For me, if I keep this thought in mind, I will always go back to the gym: “If I miss the gym tonight, I won’t get to walk around the beach without a shirt on because people will think a whale has washed ashore and throw water on me.”

Step three: Stick to a schedule
In a similar light to setting a goal, planning a weekly schedule will keep you going. If you go to the gym with no real set plan in mind, you’ll just aimlessly wander around, pretending to use cardio machines and looking at your dumpy ass in the mirror and then go home. What did you achieve? Nothing. However, if you know that Monday is leg day and Wednesday is abs day, then you’ll know what to do, how long to do it and what’s up next. For me, I plan to go to the gym at least five times a week with three of those days being dedicated to specific parts of my body. If I miss a day, you can bet your sweet ass I’ll catch up with it next week.

Step four: Believe you can do it… the results will show
I had a really good week at the gym in mid-December. I had been hitting the gym really hard and felt great about myself. I stepped onto the scale and… still the same. Honestly, it shattered me a bit and I thought “I’ve been killing myself for so long and nothing is showing!” Like all good things in life, however, it’ll come to the patient ones who wait. Don’t let a bunch of numbers and results slow your efforts down. Stick to your plan and I can guarantee you the results will show themselves eventually. It also helps if a friend of yours stops and says “Hey, you’ve lost weight!” because then you’ll know that something is changing, and it’ll motivate you to keep going.

Now I’m sure there are plenty of other things you could do to maximise your efforts at the gym, but these four fundamental steps will prove vital in your journey to your ultimate weight loss destination. If a naturally lazy writer like me can get off my laptop and go to the gym (begrudgingly, of course), then I’m sure you can as well.

Of course, the other (bigger) half of weight loss is eating properly. Stay tuned as I tell you what I did to my diet which led to my weight loss.

– by The Black Widow