PARTY AT KATE'S!

DUDE! Have you like... SEEN Kate's party on facebook!?



Yeah. That was taken at 9:27ish. By the time I finish this blog post the guest list will have probably increased by at least 5000-10000. That's if I don't take my time writing this. If I finish this just before I go to sleep, Kate's party will have increased size by the population of Monaco (~32,965). So let's quickly start blogging about the most interesting new viral event on the web before anyone else I know does!

Oh yes. Kate oh Kate. Poor Kate. When will you learn? Probably very soon... Yes. There's a reason why there's an "Open" event type and a "Closed" event type. What you really needed to have clicked was "Secret". You REALLY should've put it on "Secret"... Now one of your douchebag friends have gone and invited 250,000 people... That's what you get Kate!

At first I was thinking "Why is my friend from Uni, whom I'm not actually friends with more of just in the same class in, inviting me to her friends party? And... why the HELL does it have 10,000 confirmed guests!? 50,000 awaiting reply!? Uhh..." But then after a while I realised that this wasn't a joke. This was a terrible terrible mistake on Kate's part. And since then I have been kinda chronicling this poor woman's journey into madness... You know I sure hope she doesn't become the next Corey Worthington, that guy's a tool. Oh no! A whole new internet meme is coming out of this one party! Next thing we'll see Kate and Lolcat crossovers! Kate's big party is biiiiggg. Oh noes! All your party are belong to us? So I herd u liek Kate's Birthday party? ....Kate's Birthday Party Horse Porn. Nooooooo. Kate says to Kate's party: DO NOT WANT! Hell, there's already a "When I was your age..." facebook group about it. Yeah, back in my day she only had 25,000 people attending and now EVERYONE is going! It's no longer as exclusive anymore!

By the way, the link is here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=115542871807009&ref=ts#!/event.php?eid=115542871807009&ref=ts

(Invite all your friends! Everyone else is doing it)

Man, there are so man facebook groups about this now! I hope she feels honoured about all of this... Here's my facebook group about it all btw. So let's all get this thing going people!

KATE! KATE! KATE! KATE! 43,842 confirmed. 7,836 maybes. 37,470 not attending. 167,851 awaiting reply. That's just 1 off from 257,000 people! And of course, by the time I have typed this tiny paragraph the guest list has increased by a few hundred at the least! The confirmed went up by 200 alone (I just refreshed) and it's only 9:59 as I type this! WOW!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KATE!!!

KATE! KATE! KATE! KATE! Kate! Kate! kate! kate! kate... (fades off into the distance...)

Post edit. Damn, she cancelled the party man... What a bummer...

Starcraft 2

Remember when I blogged about Starcraft back January of 2009? Yes, well Starcraft 2 still hasn't come out yet, but the good news is my computer will most certainly be able to run it! The game has gone into closed Beta testing for a while now which is good news! Yes, after Beta testing comes public release and then comes me not doing any of my assignments for a very long time... But I'm very excited now because you can actually PRE-ORDER THE COLLECTORS EDITION OF THE GAME!!! Guess what it contains!

# World of Warcraft mini Thor in-game pet that can be applied to all World of Warcraft characters on a single Battle.net account!
# The Art of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, a 176-page book featuring artwork from the game
# An exclusive 2GB USB flash drive replica of Jim Raynor's dog tag, which comes preloaded with the original StarCraft and the StarCraft: Brood War expansion set (because if you're buying the COLLECTORS STARCRAFT EDITION then we're assuming that you DON'T OWN the original Starcraft already... duh)
# A behind-the-scenes DVD containing over an hour of developer interviews, cinematics with director's commentary, and more
# A plasma rifle (not to be used on the neighbours cat.... unless it becomes infected by a zerg parasite)
# The official StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty soundtrack CD, containing 14 epic tracks from the game along with exclusive bonus tracks
# Pictures of Michael Morhaime while he sleeps... oooohhh yeeeahhhh
# StarCraft comic book issue #0, a prequel to the comic series
# A secret code to crack to unlock bonus rewards! (Hint, it's "drink your ovaltine")
# Exclusive Battle.net downloadable content, including special portraits for your Battle.net profile, decals to customize your units in-game, and a visually unique version of the terran Thor unit
# Heroin to ease yourself off the addiction to the game whenever you need to leave your house for any extended period of time
# Experimental drugs that can sustain the human body for over 50 hours without food or sleep so you don't die... we hope... oh please not again!
# TRUE HAPPINESS!

Yes! It boasts ALL of that and even more! (The more being cardboard that the box itself is made out of) I know I can't wait which is why after I have finished typing this I will probably go and look for a job... again...! Must... get... Starcraft 2!

Extreme Blogging Challenge

Whoa hey lookit! A thing!

Today while hanging outside the assignment box a day after the assignment was due, as we cool Uni-student rebels do, my friend passed me a piece of paper to do with blogging. Not just anything to do with blogging but a competition so to speak to be the official blogger of Murdoch... or something. Read it? Who cares! Blogging! I had to enter this thing to do with blogging! OK there's also other things to win involved in this. So what am I going to do? Enter of course, and then blog about me getting a chance to blog! Basically there's four "assignments" that involve blogging.

Easy right? Totally. Talent required? Most likely. Have I got it? Stop asking questions damnit! The "theme" about this blog has to do with University life of course, and I do that already so I have a little bit of practice. But for this I need to up my game! Going to exercise my blogging muscles and become the greatest Pokemon Trai- I mean Blogger of all ti- this particular situation! So let's roll.

It's blogging time.

...that is definitely not becoming my catchphrase. That's just freaking stupid. Anyway...

Bush Court:

Unless you're one of those Vetinary students or just inconveniently parked, the Bush Court is something you'd normally walk through on your way to classes/lectures or a place you'd just visit to hang out with friends during breaks. A little sun never hurt anyone right? Well if you forget, there's a few sun-smart anti-skin cancer posters situated to the West of the Bush Court near the entry to the toilets, just in case you had forgotten that awful edited picture of that man with his skin burnt off with the caption "Forgot to slip slop slap!" Yes, definitely a deterrant right there. I got burnt first time I decided to sit and chat at Bush Court and now I seek out better and more expansive shade like everyone else. Ah yes, Bush Court, place of gathering, eating and smoking. A place to sit and watch those moving from lecture to class, like that guy who dresses up in a suit and tie and walks with his top hat and cane around everywhere. Does anyone even know what's in his suitcase? I wonder if there's more than just a notepad and pen in there... who knows? There's so many interesting people walking past the Bush Court everyday, including that woman with the dreads and the facial hair. No really, it is a woman.

You can see all this just by sitting between the area where various tents get erected for special events that you don't know about until the day they start and the big bronze sculpture of... something amorphous and indescribable. It's "art" just like the white dots on white canvas "painting" near the library entrance is "art". Yes, simplicity evoking powerful emotions? Emotions of disdain for your apathetic talentless painting! As we students sit there under the shade of a beautiful gum tree eating our cheap food from the assorted shops next to the Bush Court, we discuss many things like moving out of home, relationships, nicknames and assignments (that's a great conversation topic. You're never ever done talking about that one and when you've finished talking about it, it isn't long before you've got something new to say). Then, when you put your hand into a bunch of goo that a moment before was your best friend's face you'll freak out and then realise you just put your hand in your friends lasagna that they had scrounged around the few precious coins in their wallet to buy. Damn, that's going to annoy them. Uni life is one assignment after precious payday after another and we cherish it. We cherish it all. Damn right we do! Because it makes you able to appreciate when you realise you finally have enough money to buy from those many stalls that open in Bush Court on Thursdays! You walk up to them and you can buy Pulp Fiction without an ID because you know you're a Uni student now and thus look, act, sound and most likely are 18 and it feels awesome that you had a spare $15 for that double-disc special edition DVD. Damn straight the Bush Court rocks.

Oomph. Yeah, you just got blogged all over by my blogging muscles. Feel them, pulsating... like... a heart. A heart is a kind of muscle. Mmmm... Blogs.

711

OK to start off with, holy crud that was a lot of hail!!! I wish I had a camera at the time to show you all the massive golf ball sized hail stones that nearly broke our windows (and successfuly destroyed other people's) but I don't. Seriously it was scary standing near a window with the loud CRACK! and THUD!'s that were happening. They sounded like they would break any moment.

The lightning was awesome too. Worth standing in the rain to film it on my 15 year old camera. (I don't actually know how old it is specifically, but it's pretty ancient. Hey guys! Remember analogue? Exactly.) It's aged since it started off being hightech for home cameras...

And so have I! Wait, I'm not a camera. No, I mean I've aged since I started out... back in 1299... Well I'm now "711"! Or, 18, depending on how you look at it. If you're looking at it in the correct manner then yeah... 18. Well I turned 18 yesterday but had my party the day before that. Interesting isn't it? Let's all celebrate in the comments section! But really, my facebook wall was just littered with constant updates saying "Happy Birthday!" yesterday. It really never ended... until... today. Yeah!

Well now that I'm legally an adult, what will I do? What will I see? WILL I BE BLIND TOMORROW!????!!! Probably not... You know that feeling you get when you know you're turning 18 soon but not a few days beforehand? That sort of "Cool. I'll be 18. Will this be life changing?" and you think it's not that interesting as the day you turn 18 will just be a celebration (or in my case, writing an entire Essay due on Monday morning that I hadn't done the previous 5 weeks!) and so it's just this small sort of anticipation... and then near the time, it hits you. The bigger sudden realisation that makes you actually stop and go "WHOA!" I was on the train home from Uni on Thursday just talking to someone and suddenly I stop and go "....I'm turning 18 soon!" Yes. That's when it hit me. 3 days beforehand. Amazing isn't it? Now I'm 18... and so far this has included writing an entire essay... and playing Pokemon for nearly 6 hours. I got a DS lite for my birthday and Pokemon off my beloved Lorna! Yay! I'm going to catch 'em all and never ever grow up!

Adulthood so far, has rocked. I have a Kabuto that I traded off my brother and my Piplup evolved into a Prinplup! It's no longer as cute anymore... But I must stress that Bidoof just freaking plain sucks. I just... no! Stupid pokemon! You're incredibly ugly and useless in battle!

But OK, let's talk about my party. I had a purely %100 alcohol free party. By that I mean there wasn't any alcohol at all not that I provided booze for free. No one pukes on my lawn! Odd for an 18th I know, and it probably cost me a few guests... I invited like... 90... 98 to be exact. But I don't care. Because one) who the hell wants 90 people at their house!? two) Thinning the crowd leaves only the best. I got awesome people to attend, closest friends and not just any person I didn't think it would be weird talking to again (which was basically my idea when I invited people. "Hey it's an 18th! Let's invite everyone!"). So yes, I got about 20 of my dearest friends, a one tag along, to attend... and then forced them to play pass the parcel. Yes, I'm not quite giving up childhood easily but I'm sure one day I'll manage.

Pass the parcel! One of the most time consuming, messy, and hard to control games of all time. OK, I had this awesome idea of making pass the parcel with a twist to represent my transition from childhood to adulthood. It was basically pass the parcel only with little cards saying things like "TAXES!", "First Marriage", "First Divorce", "2nd Divorce", "4th or 5th Divorce. DAMN WOMAN TOOK MY MONEY!", "Baldness! Buy unrealistic looking toupee", "Prostate Exam", "Grandchildren", and the final prize was "Death". Grace got Death... along with a violet crumble. Damian got Grandchildren. Jack tried to swap him it for prostate exam, but Damian decided it was unwise. I agree with his descision there. Nina got baldness, but then stuck it to Kahkin's head.

The theme was mythical by the way! Oddly enough, half the people didn't dress up which was disappointing. Kahkin though did try, and came as a centaur. The back half of a centaur to be exact. Rear end of a centaur with baldness? That's interesting.



This isn't from the internet, that's actually what they did before coming to my party. They stopped nearby my house because they saw the sign and were like "We have to take a photo!"

I was dressed as Frodo. I thought it was a pretty reasonable costume for a day or two's work, and then Tash came in with a far superior costume... with a proper replica of the one ring on a proper chain instead of my copper ring I made in highschool years ago on a green piece of string, and even hairs drawn on her feet and a real waistcoat! Basically a very good costume. She won best dressed (which I technically judged, so no bitter feelings there as you can tell) but there were some other good costumes out there. Damian had a druid costume with runes and everything.

I didn't wear shoes because it was convenient and played nicely with the idea of being a hobbit.

My party was fun. I quite enjoyed it a lot more than the 18th's I've previously attended where people get drunk. But unfortunately there are two downsides to now being 18...

...One) I never got a chance to test my hypothesis that I look old enough with my beard, long hair and clear skin to go and buy alcohol without an ID. Two)... Well I've forgotten now. But I'm sure I'll remember.

Was it to do with an essay? I'm not sure. OK the day after my party was my actual birthday! And yeah, I spent the entire day writing and researching (in that order actually) an essay due the next day (today) because I hadn't done it previously. OK seriously, who spends their entire 18th birthday writing an essay? Ridiculous! I didn't even get to get heavily addicted to Pokemon platinum! I had to wait until today to do that and so a day and a half after getting the game I still haven't defeated two gym leaders! That's just sad... so sad... someone comfort me!

I guess the train ride to uni tomorrow will be ample time to train my Pokemon!

Oh you poor older people... fear the future where the most recent generation of adults still talk about Pokemon! Doesn't that scare you? A world where people will have the ability to name 495 (Soon to be probably 600) Pokemon species but won't be able to spell properly due to MSN speak and the internet... (Btw mah essai ws abut culd teh wrld funcshun wifout teh internetz. Ironic that I spent my entire time on the internet researching this?)

I'm an adult now. Are you scared?

...you should be.

It makes my parents feel so incredibly old having 3 adult children now. Haha.

University

Well I was going to blog about the first week of University, but then it kinda came and went so now I'm blogging about the first two weeks of university instead! Aren't you happy now? I bet you are! You're smiling ear to ear now that you've got two-for-one! (Though technically just one, but longer. Yay!) Let's begin.

I had this awesome idea that I would gather all my non-murdoch stuff and then parade around campus showing it off. The idea was to wear my Oxford uni shirt, drink from a Curtin drink bottle, wear a Curtin cap, carry my stuff in my ECU bag and use pens from UWA or ECU (depending on what I had). The reality of what happened was... I had an Oxford shirt and felt too stupid to constantly wear my slightly too small Curtin cap all the time so only showed it off occasionally. But yeah! I couldn't find the lid to my Curtin drink bottle so couldn't bring it :( I brought a batman one instead.

Well first day of Uni was a Tuesday. The awesome thing about that is when people when something will occur and I don't know or can't be bothered answering seriously I just say "Tuesday" as a joke because quite frankly, Tuesday's rock right? Much better than Monday (I want to shoot the whole day down) so for once I said Tuesday and it really was Tuesday! (Exciting so far isn't it?) OK well I had an awesome lecture about movies then went to the library and got out Charlie Chaplin in City Lights (which is awesome) and then I had a 3 hour lecture in the afternoon. It was so awesome. I have the best lecturer ever. He's incredibly funny but very informative. He's from Africa so has an accent but it's not hard to understand. Last lecture I had he started by opening up a youtube video of a foreign music video and singing along to it then proceding to dance. It got recorded for lectopia :P Martin (his name) is just plain awesome. You don't want to miss a lecture with him. We get to watch films! It's brilliant, we watched this eery Korean short film in the first week and the 2nd week involved watching Pretty Woman (which is apparently his favourite movie. We all thought he was joking, but no. He's serious he loves that film) and then soon we'll be watching District 9!

SUCK THAT ECONOMICS STUDENTS! Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha lol.

The same goes to any sociology, history, business, engineering students or anyone whose course involves labs/maths/science in any way.

Wednesday. I do believe that was the day that I had a Foundation lecture in the morning and sat next to someone who was tired. We connected on this tiredness and then afterwards decided to talk under the shade of a tree about things such as highschool and such. I had a 4 and a half hour gap between classes so I could've just gone home and then come back a few hours later but no, I socialised under this tree, unaware that the sun was moving through the sky. Hours later I think I should probably move slightly to the right to avoid burning. It didn't work. I got home and realised that my legs were unbelievably red. My arms were burnt aswell but not as badly. (They didn't start to peel a week later) It hurt to go into sunlight the next few days. I'd never been burnt that much before in my life because I generally avoid being in the sun for too long (I burn easy) as I am afraid of skin cancer later in life.

The next day was Thursday (Wow thanks for telling me!) and I had only a 4 hour break between classes so that was good. I went to the City and saw Lorna instead of doing work :) Sweet right? I came back with time to spare for my next class which was a workshop for screen production. Basically sat there as the guy went over the basics of using Adobe Premier CS4. I'd used a different version of Premier previously so I didn't learn much and it wasn't that interesting. I did however, spend half the lesson searching for the "cut" button. Seriously they got rid of it for CS4! It's just not there! I kept clicking absolutely everything and eventually I had accidentally shifted everything around so much that the timeline was squished somewhere, there were no more viewing screen for the footage and other things like toolbars had been stretched way out of proportion. I was too proud to ask for help... he didn't tell us where the cut button was.

I now know it's shrotcut is ctrl+K.

You know what sucks? Shopping. But other than that, getting up at 6:30am also sucks. Which is what Fridays are for! First week I didn't have a psychology tutorial (I don't know why) so I had to get up at 6:30 to get there by 8:30 (Over an hour of that is travel time there) just for one hour Foundation tutorial then an hour back. These things are compulsary unlike lectures and so I need to attend or I fail. Yay! Though it was good, tutorials so far have involved the tutor going "get to know people!" No really, our first instruction was "turn to the person next to you and get to know them." then our next instruction was "turn to the other person next to you and get to know them." It worked well what with the person next to you was right next to you, perhaps even half on your desk. You see there were two classes going on at once, but everyone went to one and so the other one was very small and joined us anyway. Over the course of 10-15 minutes it just got bigger and bigger due to latecomers and other class. We were in a circle and the circle was so big it was just a bunch of desks against the walls with enough space for people to be. Ridiculous I know, which is why they split us again the next week. I wanted to be in the original class because they old guy was funny but no... No I got stuck with the old lady who reminds me of my year 10 S&E teacher whom I wrote a nasty poem about, she found, she got me suspended for 2 days over... I thought it wouldn't be fair or possible to change back because the class was quite small. Oh well.

Week two. What happened week two of interest? I don't know... I met people. I'm always meeting new people. I've got a nickname already. I can't remember which day it is but one of them involved a screen production tutorial where I just sat down outside the doorway on the floor and waited for it to start. People arrived and they were like "Hey." and I was like "Hi. I'm floor man." so then they were like "awesome" and now I'm called Floor Man by some of them. Yay!

Well I'm sure there's an interesting story in week two besides the one on Friday but I can't remember them. Oh well. Well basically Uni so far has been awesome. I need to start doing more work for it than I have been so far but it's pretty cool. The amount of freedom and how fun it is to just show up and learn exactly what you want instead of having to deal with yet another boring math lesson is just incredibly great! Though sometimes I get tired or bored during foundation lectures or classes in the late afternoon, but that's OK. For activity sign up I shouldn't wait next semester. I waited until the day after they were open and then just saw that so many were full already. It was terrible! You're a day late and suddenly your timetable has got huge gaps in it like mine does... Terrible!

Well anyway, Psyche tutorial on week two, Friday. Well no one knows each other and we're all just sitting there in this room not doing anything. I see whiteboard markers... Of course I'm going to walk up and take one! Duh! (Who doesn't?) So my ingenious idea to stop everyone being awkwardly silent while waiting for the tutor (who won't show up for quite some time) is to play hangman! Yay! I put up 5 lines and go "Who wants to play hangman? Come on!" it starts slowly with people guessing a letter occasionally, but soon escalates and then everyone's happy and people are joining in and talking etc. See? I rock. People wondered how old I was and someone even thought I was the tutor just messing with them all but no, I was 17. They liked my beard.

When the tutor came she told us about her previous employment in the states only private prison. (Which she pointed out you can buy shares in, which means you rely upon the state to breed criminals for your shares to show profit. I suggested going around abusing as many children as possible to breed criminals so you can be rich!) Then she told us to interact with each other and get to know each other (Wow uni is so awesome! I love being told to talk in class!) and someone said that we pretty much all had been talking when she wasn't there (because of the awesome social power of hangman) so she's like "Well... talk to someone you've interacted the least with." I met some guy who grew up in Ireland in a 7 story house. Damn you! You make my 3 story house with two balconeys and an ocean view seem so insignificant... Oh well.

Then we had to talk about the bystander effect because, you know, university involves learning apparently? So I can't be bothered telling you about it, just google it! Google everything!

So yes, I have to go and read seriously huge amounts of my psychology text book because I didn't previously. Work! Work! Why must I waste half my weekends with parties and social outings? I have things to do!

I'm a university student now :D

Parenthesis

It has come to my attention that many things have changed since my first blog (such as using capital letters, spelling and full stops for their proper purpose, something I did anyway normally but I was experimenting with writing them like lazy emails or proper pieces of writing or even using paragraphs!) But one thing remains constant throughout these blogs (which I think we should all have noticed). It is my use of parenthesis.

I not only use them a lot, but I also wonder if I'm using them correctly (and whenever something gets too extended within a set of brackets I will eventually get rid of them and just have it as an open string of sentences) Because you see if I finish a sentence (like I just did beforehand) and then have said brackets then I don't know if I should put a full stop on the sentence before the brackets then capital inside brackets or to put a full stop on the end of the sentence within the brackets or even both sentences, close brackets and then a full stop. I've already used All 3 examples in this blog (though one technically was with an exclamation mark. It's technically the same sort of idea with punctuation anyway) and yet I still don't know which one looks correct. It's either one of those pointless sort of punctuation questions that no one cares about or even is sure of the answer... or (maybe) it's really simple and I've just never been told the correct way...

So think about it people. Whenever you think you're having a hard time and you're sitting there in the dumps... think about grammar and punctuation and how it has helped our lives, and also think about what you can do to learn more about this exciting and interesting subject. Remember experiences you had while learning certain kinds of punctuation and reflect on how they have shaped you as the person you are today...

It won't help you feel happy. It'll just be something to do. I command you to think about the proper placement of full stops in relation to various other pieces of punctuation!

Valentines Day

OK people, raise your hands if you actually like this day? OK. That's not impressive. I didn't see anyone raise their hands! Granted, I am typing at a screen and thus can only see the words that I type, but I mean surely you didn't raise your hand when reading this did you? Did you!?

I didn't...

Well I personally think it's an excuse to sell soppy cards and ridiculous amounts of flowers and chocolates that are coloured red or pink because our world wasn't commercial enough. You think you think this because you're single, lonely, and don't have anyone to give you your very own stuffed bear holding a love heart that says "I wuv oo!" Then you get that special someone, and you realise that actually no... previously it was fine as it was. You didn't need to spend any money back then or be seen dead in one of those stores that have nothing but purely pink junk designed to make you feel inferior for not buying them all!

Thankfully for me I have a brilliant combination of these two worlds. I have someone special and awesome, but I also have managed to avoid having to buy anything at all this year! Lorna has seen the light and has said not to buy her such soppy love cards in stores and all that other stuff because it's all bleh and such. Which is great because I sure as hell couldn't afford any of it because I am very poor...

So yay! I don't have to buy the same cliche junk as everyone else but I do get the elated feeling of knowing that I saw her today. Not for very long though, and we ended up seeing Valentines Day the film with such great actors like... Taylor Lautner... Taylor Swift... Ashton Kutcher. OK no it had some good actors in it like Jamie Foxx. In fact it had many good actors. So many actors that none of them actually got to show off any real talent because none of their characters got more than 20 minutes collective screen time. It was all just hey let's cram 12 small plots together into the space of 2 hours and 5 minutes and hope the people watching make any particular bonds with any of the characters. It wasn't one of those cool films where the lives of random unconnected people seem to intersect in major ways like Pulp Fiction it was just one of those films where the writer had many many ideas and not much descisiveness or ability to expand. It was basically every situation you can think of in a romantic comedy all stuffed into one. There was the guy who gets with his best friend after realising his girlfriend isn't right for him, the person who discovers the cheater and then has a happy ending, ect ect. The lives were only occasionally connected in very very minor ways like the two people would go to a similar resturaunt. To be fair, I did find it hilariously ironic that Taylor Lautner's character was too embarrassed to take it shirt off in public. No one else laughed at that... Also, I did manage to feel for Ashton Kutcher's character, probably because he had more of the movie to his story than other less interesting storylines. It was sad but then had a good ending. No massive surprises but it was sweet.

The entire thing was sweet in the end. It's exactly what you'd think of a romantic comedy for valentines day. Sweet, makes you smile at times, gives you the delusion that the girl next to you is going to let you get lucky afterwards... that sort of thing (the only reason ever to see a romantic comedy)

Hey everyone! It's Exactly 12 years since the film Titanic had it's single highest grossing day! Yes, and it did this over 6 weeks after it's release. Yes, how many films do you know that do that?

It's also 81 years since the St Valentines Day Massacre in Chicago, Illinois.

That's just so cheery! Hey, wouldn't it be so much more fun (for those morbid, anti-valentines day people) if instead of getting a teddy bear in a store, you'd find a gravestone saying "RIP North Side Irish Seven, 1929"? Or a commemorative Thompson sub-machine gun. "For all your valentines day needs" It goes great because then you can pretend what you're drinking is bootlegged booze and pretend you're a gangster. Or even better! A big teddy bear thats says "I wuv oo Bugs Moran to death!"

Yeah I think I'll stop with the horrific and poor taste jokes about valentines day meets death. Though what else is there to think about on today besides love? Today is love and death all rolled into one. Sometimes both put together in the case of Titanic. So yeah, it totally fits right?

Also, by the way for those who don't know, I'm making a facebook album entitled "My 1000 Sunsets" which is exactly what it sounds like. A compilation of 1000 sunsets which will take years to make but I want to make it anyway. Of course I can only upload one photo per sunset otherwise it won't be 1000 different and unique sunsets then. Well sometimes it's pretty hard to choose my favourite photo out of them all but I manage. But tonights sunset was just so incredibly beautiful that I had dificulty choosing so I've decided to post the extra ones that didn't get chosen here. Enjoy the sunset of Valentines Day 2010!













And for those who don't have facebook I will show you the one I chose out of all of them. Then I will also show you the original because I have a slight confession. These photos are slightly edited digitally. Well sorry but my camera is quite cheap and old OK? It's not even mine it's my mothers and she thought "It takes photos, thus it is sufficient". Well yes, to compensate for the fact that my camera doesn't really show off colour too well I occasionally change the contrast (only a bit, too much and the photo looks fake) to make things more defined. So here's the original:



And the slightly altered version:



As you can see I've decreased the brightness slightly and increased the constrast slightly more. It makes sunsets that previously didn't look as good on camera as they did in real life, look just as awesome as they did in real life! Or maybe even better? That's my tip to you sneaky photographers who thought something was really cool but then just didn't quite turn out as you had imagined... No photoshop required.

Medieval Vegan Socialists!

I'm apparently all 3 rolled into one now.

Yes, we all have been in that situation where you're walking past a stall and suddenly a socialist is asking you to sign a petition and you decide "SURE!". I in particular have been in that situation 3 times yesterday alone. Wait no, OK I actually got asked more than that but I had already signed the petition a few requests ago so yeah. Yeah it was O-week (orientation week) for Murdoch this week and Friday was the final day. There was meant to be lots of entertainment, live bands and lots of free stuff! Of course the "free stuff!" was really free pamphlets handed out by the people asking you to join their club/organisation/religion/company/political party. Mainly socialists. Labour was handing out paper bags with... stuff. I didn't go near them. I was too busy talking to the socialists and medieval society. I also met some vegans.

Well yeah, I get there early (9ish) because I thought I should do the same as I had for previous O-week days (which involved getting up nearly 3 hours before it starts...) and when I got there I realised that being there on time wasn't too important. Not all the free ride stuff had been set up, the band wouldn't start playing until after midday. The stalls were being set up but those lively socialists had already set up and gotten a few signatures on their petition! They stopped me and asked me to sign a petition for the legalization of Gay Marriage which I of course would sign. I swear I didn't know they were socialists until AFTER I had signed it! I SWEAR I DIDN'T KNOW! Oh well.

Well he handed me a free small piece of paper and then offered me a magazine... for $3 or $5. Yeah everything was free there besides what the communists were selling. There wasn't just one communist stall, there were multiple ones. I was very confused. One was supporting gay marriage, the other was very concerned with climate change and the third one just wanted me to learn about Cuba for some reason. The first two wanted my money.

Wait... what? Communists want my money! Yeah I didn't actually realise the irony of it when I first was asked for their money. I just walked off to Murdoch's Chinese styled pond and walkway thing to sit, write and draw.



Well I then later decided I was being a massive introvert and I had come here to partake in the crowd so I might aswell be somewhere near them. I approached the first communist (this was before I learnt about the OTHER ones) and asked him how he felt about the irony of using a capitilistic method to spread anti-capitalistic messages. He agreed with me and said it was a "necessary evil." I asked him how much it actually costed to produce the magazine and he said $3 but I could pay $5 to help expansion. That kinda justified it to me you know. Only asking for enough money to make back what they spent and not too focused on profit.

But in true socialist style I stood purely by their set of ideologies and didn't give them a cent.

Later I was informed the socialist parties of Australia had joined together to become one to which I replied "The communists are finally working together!"

Well you know after a while of walking around and wishing I wasn't so polite I had signed lots of things and accepted many things. Yeah if someone hands me something I just almost always instinctively take it. I pretend to care also and smile or say thankyou. But really, I just think it's rude to make the people realise that all their efforts are futile and fleeting. I'm not going to read whatever you just handed me! Though I did only sign petitions I knew what they were about. Except one... which seemed important. I had walked off to near the carpark and was looking at my phone when someone says (or at least this is what I heard) "Would you like to sign a petition to stop the deforestation of poor villages?" Well I wasn't aware that somewhere in the world someone was busy logging an entire forest which somehow was situated within a small village where only poor people lived. I wasn't aware that such an indecency was being committed against random nondescript villages! But I want there to be a stop to it! So I signed.

I didn't sign my name. But I signed it. I put down one of my friends names then told him about it afterwards. He personally is against poor people and encourages burning down the forests, or so his reply text had said. Maybe he was joking? Who knows with him... By the end I had stopped signing my name and made ones up. One of the socialists wanted me to sign something about global warming or live animal export and then they asked for emails and stuff and I didn't want to give that out to socialists so I made everything completely up. I didn't want to decline from signing it because I had approached him to ask him what he was about (once again, I SWEAR I DIDN'T KNOW HE WAS A COMMUNIST!!) and had spoken to him for too long that I thought it would be awkward to have basically agreed completely with him and then said I wouldn't support him in any way.

I also met many many other people there. Not many were interesting. Though I did get a FREE magazine from some vegans telling me that the recommended daily dietry intake of protein is a MYTH and that normal people get far too much protein than needed. Even a vegetarian diet is capable of having more than enough protein. Interesting, yes, mhm.... I still like the taste of sweet bloody murdered cow. It just tastes good OK!?

I also met some people who liked to dress up in medieval garb and fight each other! Originally you see the randoms dressed in medieval clothes and you think that's pretty geeky and feel like laughing at them. Then you walk over, they give you a pamphlet and explain what they're about and suddenly they seem awesome! Right? I mean, who DOESN'T want to dress up in armour and hit someone else with a sword? I actually decided that it'd be pretty cool but I had nothing appropriate to wear... damn. That and the times that they go being medieval and such clashes with my University time table.

Oh well. Fortunately for me, if I ever want to form a political opinion, I can become a communist. They don't really have any paticular schedule that I need to stick to, they just are. I don't really want to be a communist but I don't really believe that they're all evil. I have a problem with abuse of power not the actually idea of communism. Abuse of power is present in both systems in real world situations so the only real reason why I personally would ever support communism would be to destroy Scientology, which cannot function within a communism environment because it's based solely on the exploitation of the suggestible for the purpose of huge monetal gain and personal power. So without any money, Scientology loses it's only function and thus no longer can abuse and destroy people! Yay! See what you did America? You fought the communists and now we have the Scientologists! Was that really a fair trade? Was it? NO!

Vote for the socialist party!



I start Uni next week. I can't wait.

Obligatory Blog (Pop...)

I must blog! Or my loyal (*COUGH*YEAH RIGHT*COUGH*) followers will tire of my silence and go read more interesting blogs like... Imaginary Bakery (which, btw, is actually less imaginary than I was originally promised. It has been a grave distress to me that she's the only real person who I follow who has blogged in a while.) So I must write the obligatory blog post! I must prove I still exist, and thus feel validated when someone finally comments on these blogs so we both feel like we have proven our existence :) I like existing and so should you.

Do we all feel sufficiently real now that we have proved to our own minds that we are literate? Keep in mind that it is merely your perception of literacy that has allowed you to read this and make you think it is affirming you about your own literacy. "What?" Basically what I may be poorly trying to communicate here is your thoughts are the only proof that you can use to prove your own existence to yourself and hence anything else you can't prove if it's real or if it's your imagination. So how do you know what these words mean? YOU'RE BRILLIANT AND I LOVE YOU! It could be gibberish or -YOU'RE GREAT- even insults. Who knows?

Why yes, I did just blatantly make a poor reference to the philosophy of that "I think therefore I am" guy. (Who? I'm not sure, to wikipedia!) OK his name is René Descartes and can I prove he exists? I think of him thus I exist, but to think he exists is to acknowledge he thinks, and how do I know that when everything I know could be have been thought and created by me?

My attempt at philosophy is pointless and probably very amateur indeed. So let's move on!

University starts soon and I keep thinking perhaps I'm unprepared, perhaps I haven't done something right or forgotten something and I'll find out I don't have a book I need or didn't quite click the very last button for enrolling and so I have to keep telling myself everything is OK. "Everything will be OK" is a film by Don Hertzfeldt which I have recently decided is the most brilliant animation done with stick figures I have ever seen in my entire life. Not only is the animation brilliant but the thing is a film. It's not just some random animation on the internet done with flash, it's a handdrawn short film done by a filmmaker who has won many many awards, which he deserves for his immense amount of work, effort, thought and creativity. It's about this man called Bill who goes through life with no idea of if he has a purpose and then gets increasingly mentally ill. It's so funny and yet sad and tragic. I love it. As Bill's life gets more chaotic so does the drawings and when Bill breaks down completely you're assaulted by so many things at once. It's like you're experiencing his own perception of the world around him warping to the point where it's incomprehensible chaos.

It is just so incredibly awesome.

OK so far my obligatory blog has briefly mentioned existence, uni and Don Hertzfeldt's brilliant animations. What's the point of this? Damn, you know I normally don't do obligatory things just for the sake of updating something because it usually ends up with you just saying "I'm doing this because I feel like I have to!" and well, that isn't really that interesting. "Why do you want the job?" "Because I haven't had one in a while. Why are you hiring me?" "Because we haven't hired anyone in a while." (I actually would like that occurance, it'd be fun... for me. Come on people!) So to all those who have managed to survive reading this far into this mandatory blog update I have a special treat for you! (Those of you who have facebook that is)

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Can-this-Onion-Ring-get-more-fans-than-Justin-Bieber/285409781939?ref=ts

The answer is, YES! That Onion Ring CAN get more fans that Justin Bieber! (Notice the capitals on the Onion Ring? That's because it's so damn awesome it's now a pronoun. It is a being in itself)



Edit: The fan group was actually removed not long after reaching more fans than the Jonas Brothers. RIP Onion Ring :( Your enemies have destroyed you!

There is some photographic evidence of this amazing miracle of rationality and good taste in people today :) The onion ring managed to unite nearly 2 million people (it's growing strong!) in just 5 days to join in on a good cause of proving to the world that not all teenagers give in to the pathetic manipulative mass marketed musical numbers that are written by 40 year old men, sung by 15-20 year old boys, and listened to by over excited and inexperienced 14 year old girls! Do you now there's a "genre" of music called "teen pop"? I was so disheartened and angered when I heard such a thing existed. You know those songs you hear on the radio that only your young daughter who has just started liking boys, has no individual thoughts of her own, is starting to dress in clothes she's picked out by herself instead of what you bought her because you're "so uncool mum/dad/foster guardian/person who has claimed ownership illegally" and still thinks turning 18 means you're officially old? Yes, the stuff Disney likes to sell to you with your Highschool Musical lunchboxes, backpacks, pencil cases (with MATCHING PENCILS!) and rulers. That's "teen" pop. Though technically half of it's target market is a "tween" audience.

Do you even know what a tween is!?!????? Well I'll tell you (so you don't need to google it, but if you just did that to say "I can answer your rhetorical question!" then you're sad. So sad) It's an imaginary age group somewhere between teenagers and toddlers. There is no specific definition of the actual age, because it's not real! OK it's safe to say a 5 year old is definitely not a tween. But is a 10 year old a tween? "Tweens" are the "in between". In between being dependant on their parents for everything and being rational free thinking individuals who aren't easily manipulated. Somewhere between these two ages these kids get a source of income that doesn't get taxed and isn't needed for food or anything other than the tweens own amusement.

Tweens aren't people! THEY'RE A MARKETING PLOY! The people who market these things have created a whole new age group to sell things to. Apparently there weren't enough stages of growing up because someone out there wasn't making enough money. So teen pop is basically a way of saying to a child who knows nothing about love or music or what a gimmick is "This is what cool is! This is what HOT is!" so they accept it. The problem is the guys are all so hunky when their 15 or 17 but then they get a bit older and so do their fanbase so their fans realise that there's things out there like rock, REAL pop (which is still stupid but at least the artists are listened to for their music half the time instead of just their looks %100 of the time) jazz, classic music, metal and one of my favourites: cello rock. OK so most 14 year old girls won't ever grow up to discover the awesomeness of such cello rock bands as Rasputina, Apocalyptica (that's the hella mainstream one ya'll), Melo-M or even Judgement Day and Break of Reality! But yes, once they grow up and realise all teen pop is the same thing repeated they need someone new to appeal to next years tweens with "new" songs. Justin Bieber for example! Do you honestly think this 15 year old kid will still be around when he's 20? I'll be very shocked if he is. It's great because although those 14 year old girls fantasise about oh sweet hawt cool awesome dreamy Zac Efron, they really deep down know they could never get with him because that'd be a) HIGHLY ILLEGAL b) just impossible, he's too old :( (awww...) BUT! Justin Bieber! He's 15! Which means he's just as underaged as his entire fan base!

Not only can your kids dream of being with him but it is a "realistic" dream because he's so young and seems so sweet singing that song about how much he loves a nondescript girl who may just be YOU! Yes YOU little girl! He can be all yours! :) But he only loves you if you buy all his merchandise!

So yes, I listen to bands that are described as "avant-garde metal" with influences that range "from black metal, progressive metal, industrial music, symphonic metal and gothic metal to European classical music and contemporary music." or "Cello/Gothic Rock/Dark Cabaret/Indie/Steampunk" or even "kebab-kosher-jazz-film-traffic-punk-music." (Which is really a cult-avant-garde finnish band that's influenced by klezmer music). I also listen to Green Day and Good Charlotte. I don't really believe in "rebelling" against the commercialist mass marketed popular music as a stand to be hell alternative and cool. I just don't like listening to s*** music, which unfortunately is what is defined as "popular" (by tweens apparently). I like my bands like Peccatum, Havayoth, Arkona, Age of Silence, Alamaailman Vasarat, Delain, Darkspace, Visions of Atlantis, Unexpect, Tool, I Set My Friends on Fire (that band is hilarious!) Diablo Swing Orchestra (favourite band ever) and many others because they're different, they're interesting, they're not a carbon copy of some other band. Doesn't mean I don't enjoy popular music like Green Day, Linkin Park, Anberlin, Slipknot, KoRn and Mudvayne (Yes, those last three ARE popular) because they sound cool. It also doesn't help to listen to at least SOME music that you don't have to order from overseas just to listen to... *sigh* Oh Diablo Swing Orchestra, one day you'll be known within Australia... one day I will see you on a CD store shelf...

So enjoy your plastic pop songs by 20-something artists like Britney Spears and those... other women and men. I don't know their names. Enjoy it! Because it's not Teen-pop! The lowest of the low... You don't have to listen to my obscure metal bands or even my "alternative" rock bands (JB Hi-Fi stores nothing but the most mainstream "alternative" you ever did listen to 3 times on the radio yesterday) but I do implore all you out there to pick bands that write their own songs, sing without computers and have a fan base whose average age is at least 17 or higher. Do not let the tween marketers win! They stalk your children and watch how they interact with things around them in shopping centres, what shows they like and even how they hold bottles of shampoo in the shower to see if the container is comfortable and how best to market shampoo to your kid! (I'm not actually making this up. People have really actually watched kids in the shower for the sake of "marketing improvements")

All hail the onion ring!

P.S. My sister thinks therefore she exists.

With Apologies to Jetstar

The following events started on Tuesday earlier this week. I have yet to get a response from any of the companies involved...

Well have you ever seen a truly awful ad on TV? One that just made you angry at how terrible it was, that is, the seventh time you saw it because all over times weren't memorable enough for you to even know you watched something you should be angry at? Well there's tons of bad ads out there but then there's some that are absolutely astounding in their lack of quality. Well I've had enough and I've decided not to wait until I actually become qualified to work in advertising. I'm going to write to these companies and tell them all the reasons why they did something very very bad that offended me as a viewer (not morally, just as a consumer who wishes to be thouroughly brainwashed properly before consuming things. You don't expect me do to all the work do you?) So surely nothing can go wrong right?

Well here's a bit of my "constructive criticism" I sent to Jetstar after seeing an absolutely terrible ad for a airline company:

Dear Jetstar Airlines

This letter is a response to your advertisements on TV that I saw recently. I want to tell you why it was terrible and how/why you should improve it. I was absolutely appalled by the sheer lack of effort, quality or even basic knowledge of how advertising works present in this ad. The ad I refer to consisted almost entirely of a single shade blue screen with plain informative text and a song on the background. It didn’t capture attention (except in how truly terrible it was) it looked uninteresting and fails in trying to appeal to an audience.

Surely you should know that we’re bombarded by hundreds of images, logos and advertisements but marketing is a competitive business. Only a few stick in our heads so you can see the importance of making an imprint on people’s opinions. Advertising is meant to appeal to a person’s sense of security, comfort or convenience; something your airline should supply for anyone travelling. From families going on a holiday to business men attending a conference, Jetstar can supply all your travelling needs! Your flights are affordable and your friendly well trained staff are devoted to making your customer’s journey as enjoyable and comfortable as possible. Can you see how that’s more appealing than just giving them information to read without any voice over? Your ad isn’t stimulating or memorable. You may not be personally responsible for making it but you should be in charge of deciding if an ad for you gets accepted or not to be broadcasted.

As a film student I am capable of making an advertisement far better than whoever made the ad I speak of. I’d gladly give you half a dozen suggestions for ads that would be entertaining to watch and informative but often people won’t take suggestions from people who aren’t employed by them for legal reasons, especially from game designers or song writers. If you wish to hear my ideas for ad campaigns then by all means ask, I encourage you to do so, but if not I still implore you to come up with a better advertisement. It really is so terrible it’s most likely detrimental to your image because it’s so terrible.

Remember, an ad isn’t just a number and a name on a screen telling someone how much and what company can give them whatever service they want, it’s a competition be the most interesting and appealing thing between parts of a show. You need to make the audience want your service not just know of it. If I can make an ad worthwhile talking about then surely you can too. Best of luck next time! I know you are capable of making an ad that works.

Make it funny or awe inspiring or just aesthetically pleasing. Make it good.

Well! I sent it off the next day in the morning thinking "I just wrote my first letter to a company!" so that was good. That day was looking quite hopeful!

Then I got home from wherever I was that day (I assume I was outside, after all I did need to go back inside after it all) and sat down to watch the TV. I was watching The Simpsons as I was the previous night when I had seen that terrible ad... and then there it was again. I looked closer at it this time.

Then I saw the company logo. It was "Skywest" not Jetstar. I had just sent that letter to Jetstar! Ohhh... no... and now they have my home address and name. DAMNIT! Time to send an apology letter and hope they get them at the same time.

Dear Jetstar Airlines.

I recently sent you a letter complaining about how absolutely terrible your ad campaigns are and I would like to apologise. They were actually ads for Skywest. You see that’s just how bad they were! They were so bad I didn’t even know what company they were for and so I have embarrassingly complained to the wrong people! Well I don’t know how you sort your mail and in fact, someone might read this letter before they read the other one. If that happens perhaps you could have a laugh at the embarrassing circumstances surrounding this unfortunate mix up and be entertained by my views of your competitors. In the end I do say you are capable of making a better ad, and this just proves that you can. You’re better than Skywest and you also go more places. Good on you! Sorry for that, I have sent a letter to them instead now.

Terribly sorry for any inconvenience or offence my lack of thinking has caused you.


Surely they'll take it all in good humour right? And surely this experience has taught us nothing but the importance of good advertising! Had their ad been succifiently good enough for me to not forget as soon as I had seen the ad (twice, by the way, second time I had to get someone else to tell me who the hell the ad was for even though I had payed attention. Even then I had to look it up to be sure) then I would've complained to them in the first place instead of Jetstar! Or even better, I wouldn't have to complain about how much they suck in the first place! Someone has to tell them they're wrong, and I'm as good as anyone right?

Right?

Forever Unemployed

Hey there! As we all know, I've been searching for a job for... a very very long time! Well a week or so I get told that Woolworth's is looking for "longlife fillers" which is a fancy way of saying reshelf things. Now. Yeah I'm not above being a shelf stacker OK? A job is a job and even though my brother also wanted to apply to it, I was confident I could get this job. Seriously, what competition could I possibly have? So I handed in my resume even though I had excluded any references at all...

GUESS WHO GOT A GROUP JOB INTERVIEW! My brother!...... Me also! Yeah what's really bizarre is how on my resume I listed my contact details to include my hotmail email account... and yet they contacted me via my gmail account. OK that's one thing that Woolworth's did wrong so far! (Oh yes, let's count them!)

Well I go to the group job interview and I thought I was the oldest one there until someone else showed up. Apparently they weren't just interviewing shelf stackers so that person actually wanted a proper job. I was the oldest one wanting to stack shelves... Oh well right? Job interview went well. So well that...

GUESS WHO GOT A CALL BACK!... My brother!...... Me also! Well OK I got the one-on-one job interview which was pretty cool. I went there all smartly dressed and looking good, ready to be interviewed on time. I thought you were meant to show up 10-5 minutes before an interview for some reason. To show punctuality skills required for working at Woolworths like all employees are expected to have? Yes the fact that I had to sit around and wait for my interviewer after the appointed time means nothing, they have a job to do so that doesn't count as a mistake on their behalf. Wait for it people! Woolworth's a perfectly respectable company! Stop urging me to slander them and point out all their flaws! They're bound to make a few mistakes once in a while.

Job interview went well. I answered all the questions quite well except the last one which was "Why do you think you're suited to this job?" which confused me. Hadn't all previous questions actually been this question? Seriously what does that mean!? I hate interview questions because they're always so utterly pointless. "Why do you want this job?" "FOR MONEY!!" (I actually answered for money and to earn valuable working experience) and "what skills do you have that will help you with the job?" answer: capable of heavy lifting and can work independantly. The fact that I appear confident enough to apply to this job and talk to you should suggest I am not so shy as to be unable to work in such an environment and taking one look at me will easily determine that I have more muscle mass than any of the other applicants. You don't need to ask that question for the job. Job interviews for jobs that only teenagers take aren't filled with poignant and important questions. They have questions for the sake of there being an interview process. It serves two purposes, it prepares you for real interviews later on in life, and it shows you are capable of interacting with another human being for ten minutes without stuttering or mumbling. That's it. They know their questions are pointless, it's just how well you give pointless answers is what they rate you on. So yes, I was confused that they asked me such a redundant question that to me was "so, repeat all your answers to me please in a slightly different way. I want to see if you can make up an answer as to why you are suited to picking things up and then putting them down." (By the way, I don't like repeating myself when asked similar questions because it feels like I'm spouting tautologous nonsense which shows very little intelligence) Well I'm suited to in the sense that... I can do it? (Because really, it's SHELF STACKING) So my answer was "............because I am capable?" It's simple, it's truthful, it's really the only thing you can say at this point in time when the past ten to fifteen minutes has been thinking that the person across the table seriously needs to trim their nails because they're so long there are very noticable differences in the lengths and they have made less eye contact that you have. Seriously, how are they going to judge my eye contact and general body posture if they look down at the piece of paper most of the time, pausing to think about the question written down on the sheet of paper before reading it? Read the question! All you do is write down what I say!

Well even though her pause made me feel uneasy as if I had just shattered my perfect facade with an oddly bad answer, I was still confident I had done well. Sure, my interview didn't really reveal any of my actualy real traits or skills. I said "I'd say I'm intelligent, but I don't suppose being able to critically analyse and deconstruct literary texts helps with this job does it?" which a subtle way of saying "You don't need to be smart or skilled to do this job. Hence I am overqualified, but should get it anyway." I don't want to seem vain and think I'm more awesome than anyone else, but I honestly believe I am a very employable person who is wasting their talents as a shelf stacker. But a job is a job and hence not below me. No job on earth requires %100 of a persons skills so the fact that I have many that aren't needed for it doesn't matter. I left and then waited for my call back to see if I had gotten the job.

GUESS WHO GOT A CALL WHILE SITTING IN A CAFE NEAR THE BEACH THE NEXT DAY!..... NOT my brother! (damn right he didn't get a call!) Well it was the lovely HR whatever who was at the group interview (but not the personal one) who had called to inform me that I hadn't got the job unfortunately because they were looking for someone who was going for more long term employment...

"Wait..." I interject, not wanting to sit and be told things without actually talking back and going "excuse me! What the hell woman? Let me justify things before you tell me I failed!" Before she could continue I went on. "3 years is not long term?" Because when I was asked how long I was planning on staying at this job I answered "At the most 3 years. Not staying around forever. 3 years max to pay for some of my uni fees." "And so not just a few months?" (replied the interviewer) "Oh no. Not just a few months, that's far too short. I don't know how many months but more than a few." "OK so 3 years maximum?" "Yes, 3 years maximum." OK.... did you get the underlying theme there? The strong undertones of my point expressed by my repetition of the word "years" complimented by the other persons verbal confirmation of what I JUST SAID? Good! I'm glad you got it from just that because the real conversation was actually a few sentences longer and hence harder to miss what I was saying. "Sorry... I've got written down here you said 3 months." "No I most certainly expressed 3 years quite strongly." MISTAKE TWO! BIG ONE! "Oh, well sorry..."

OK I thankfully picked up on that and mentioned it. I get annoyed when I let people think they're actually right when they're logic is faulty. Just like with my drivers test... which I failed. Sure I actually failed legitimately but she said one of my mistakes included this one time I went onto a road without being able to see oncoming traffic. The person testing me thought it was amazing how I was able to not run into anything when she thought I was unable to see oncoming traffic easily enough. Well maybe the reason why I stopped was because there was a pedestrian crossing at the end of the intersection so wanted to let potential pedestrians past before driving on. Then as I approached the rest of the road I didn't need to stop because as you approach the road you can see onto it! Duh! She also said I made traffic slow down because I cut in without being able to see oncoming traffic. That was a faulty judgement on her part also, there was a truck. You see if a vehicle is slowing down to turn into the same road you're coming out of then no one can actually go past it so you're free to go. I don't need to see oncoming traffic because it's blocked by a truck. It was slowed because it needed to slow to prevent crashing... something I never ever do.

Doesn't matter, I didn't fail on those points, I lost due to a rather nasty instant fail involving a double laned roundabout and a potential hazard.

Anyway, where was I? OH YES! The reason why I'm currently still unemployed! :) Yes, I had forgotten to point out the obvious "well the person who did the interview is INCOMPETANT... that or you can't read. Thanks." But I had made my point that someone screwed up not me. She basically backtracked at that point in time trying to find a reason why I can't be employed anymore at this point in time... but in the future... because she's already given the job away to someone less physically suited to this job. "Oh... well it says Uni study may affect availability. Have you got your uni schedule yet?" "Not yet." "When do you get it?" "End of February I think." "OK well you call me when you get your new availability and then we'll see what we can do. See if we can fit you in." So thank you! Thank you for realising you made a mistake and that there isn't actually anything stopping me from being employed and then offering me the same job in the future to make up for it.

So it's not like I'm completely unemployable... it's just that they won't do it right now. So in a month I will call them back and they will most likely tell me they don't have any positions available and I will be still unemployed! Of course they might actually still employ me after all. Who knows?

I'm still going to apply to other places instead while I wait. Like hell I'm relying on people who either can't write or can't read! (Some people would be bitter after this happened to them... not me though... of course...) So now it's back to printing resume after resume! Now it's back to getting physically exhausted walking around all day looking for places of interest to hand in resumes into. No one ever calls me back, I don't think the whole "handing in resumes" thing actually works unless there's a sign asking for help. There's never any signs! Oh what fun it is to be unemployed...

...gives me time to work on my novel.

Hi There Christmas! Come on in?

Ohhai! I actually got back a week ago and haven't blogged about it. Odd huh? Weeeelll I could go on about how awesome my holiday was with lots of pictures to go with it but it's CHRISTMAS! I can't be bothered with holiday blog on... a... holiday? No I'm going to tell you about Christmas instead! It's not over yet but I don't think much will happen in the next 4 hours so it's b-b-b-b-b-b-b-blogging time!

Bam.

Your mind has been blown. (Did you enjoy it? $5. Sorry OK just had that innapropriate joke in my mind for a while and a blog that few people read, especially not my family, seemed the appropriate medium. Ahem.) We have a tradition of not opening presents until everyone is awake and ready which means basically every Christmas we need to wait for my father to get out of bed. Yeah it's meant to be the teenager who sleeps in past 10 but no. No we started opening presents at quarter to 12 this year (it gets progressively later each year) and guess what? My brother got... something... whatever it was it was rectangular. OK and I got... a card with money in it! OK no let's rewind a bit, I'm much more excited by the events leading up to Christmas instead...

It all starts with Jesus. OK maybe too far back. OK friend decides to have a Christmas party on the 23rd! I'm invited at the last minute and Lorna too. That's fine I never plan anything more than a few days in advance (Just like my good ol' rolemodel, fictional character and hopeless depressed loner, Rick. Bonus cookie points for guessing the reference!) but there's a secret santa thing going on. I'm great at the secret bit! Terrible at the Santa bit. OK oddly enough present giving has not been the most major of things in my household... we do not get our siblings or parents gifts. The parents give us two things a year. I have honestly only bought personally 3 gifts in my entire life. They are as follows: Lorna's Christmas present 2008, Lorna's 18th Birthday present and Lorna's Christmas present 2009. See a pattern? Good. If you can see you are not blind (and thus have not eaten 1.5kg of sugar in one hit) so yeah thankfully the host dropped by (with her boyfriend... actually he was the one who dropped by to look at my computer, she just came along) and told me to give away one of my random possessions I haven't touched in years. This was after she rummaged around a little and touched some of my stuff... and resisted the urge to clean (I hate it whenever I have a girl walk into my room they instantly respond with "OMG!.... I must CLEAN THIS!!!" Do you think you're saving me from something!? What does having my stuff in draws where I can't see it do me!? WHY!!!) I also discovered that my computer currently doesn't have the capability to utilise two monitors simultaneously which I'm quite disapointed about. I need a convertor apparently. Oh well, they're cheap. Well it was party time soon...

You know the great thing about this Christmas Eve was I got to see Lorna. I was going to see her that day anyway but the way things turned out was great. Sorry for spoiling how the story goes but I'm skipping ahead to the party where my plans changed from going round to Lorna's at 12 to waking up at 10 and going to Lorna "hey want breakfast?"

WWWWWWWWWHHHHHHAAAAAAAATTTT!!!! (I hear you say)

To which her response was "not right now, I'm tired." (SURPRISE! Bet you didn't see her rejecting breakfast at 10am coming... quite a shocker.)

I am so happy right now. But I feel like going backwards and trying (poorly) to give this story some form of linear form. You know what? Screw linear styled blog posts! Let's have a random story now: one day my brother went to a park and decided to feed some ducks. He got too close and one felt threatened so ran at him. My brother being scared of a small toothless bird that people shoot for fun decided to run away, thus erasing any guise of dominance over the angry bird. As he ran away screaming in utter terror at this common semi-water bird he tripped and fractured his foot. Many people laughed at him at school afterwards when I told them it was from a duck. Let us all now laugh at his pain once again during this Merry season!!

So yeah, back to explaining how I totally got to sleep with Lorna. Think you know how this story goes? You're opinion is wrong! I bet you're all having the wrong ideas here! I bet you think this is a totally teenagery male sorta blog about me going "HELL YEAH I GOT LAID! LET ME BRAG ABOUT IT!" but you're wrong! I'm just not telling you everything because I want to give you some suspense while I blog about this. Let's all take bets to see how innocence or dirty the night really was and a seperate bet on the amount of alcohol involved at this party!

You know what was involved at this party? Cats. They weren't even the hosts cats. No one saw the real cat but we saw other random cats. One jumped on the table and ate the dip. It also tried to eat some cookies. I kept shooing (shooing? It's really spelt like that?) it away in the hope it'd leave the food on the outside table alone. It did. It came inside instead. Oddly enough it let people pat it and pick it up it just didn't like me for some reason. Lorna didn't know too many people so I had to stay by her side almost every moment of the party which I didn't mind at all :) I was not too close with a lot of the guests and new the ones Lorna did better so it worked out fine. Up until we started playing Sing Star and I did terrible. After some Sing Star Lorna and I decided that outside would be less noisy/less embarrassingly tone deaf. Talking ensued with people we knew.

OK that part of the story wasn't too interesting ("Skip to the sex! Skip to the sex!" Whoa calm down you dirty dirty blog reader! Jumping to conclusions and demanding I reveal things in an ungentlemanly manner. I'm blogging here, and you as a reader should have the kind grace to not expect a kiss and tell session of my truly overwhelmingly sexy exploits. Now silence! I am blogging!) but some part of it will be. I got a fluffy hamster toy! See? Exciting! Yeah that was my secret Santa gift that I got. It was from Jack. Real secret when his girlfriend comes up to you and goes "Oh you got Jack's present!" Thankfully no one knew who my present was from except me and the two people who told me to bring it. It was terribly cheap and pathetic. Second hand too! I really didn't have time to get a gift... and the one I gave was actually worth more money than I had on me ($1.55) so unfortunate yes but unavoidable. Don't judge me!

The party went until 11:30 which for a teenager really isn't that late but it's late enough that my mother had already gone to bed a few hours previous and hence couldn't pick me up because it was a major inconvenience. Thankfully I used the same logic on my mother to tell her that Lorna's parents couldn't pick her up either (which was true) but then say that it would also be inconvenient to have to drop Lorna at her home at all. (Side note, Shane gave us a lift home) So then I somehow (quite surprisingly) then got my mother to agree to let Lorna stay at our house. Yay! That is so awesome/unexpected!

Of course my dad was still awake when we got home and we slept in seperate beds. Yeah were you expecting a tale of a saucy sexual encounter? How perverted. Shame on you! I just wanted to tell you the story of how absolutely awesome it was to spend 24 hours straight with Lorna. I woke up on Christmas eve, walked down the hall and saw that Lorna had already gotten up. She hadn't done much though so we sat (yes, sat) and talked. Had a discussion about who would have a shower first then lied down and had a nap. The day didn't technically start properly until 1pm so it was a nice nap. I occasionally would tell Lorna she needed to get/wake up but she was being very lazy and for good reason. Getting up meant not lying down with me next to her. It was very very sweet and nice... and innocent... lying there. Not moving. It's fun. Everyone knows lying there not doing anything is fun but lying there not doing anything with someone lying next to you participating in the nothingness makes it a lot more fun! From now on whenever I lie around and not do things it'll be a social event (but exclusive though. I can't just lie around doing nothing with anyone, it'd be bad for my reputation. I need to do something if I'm going to be with a bunch of people. What will the neighbours think? What will bloggers think?) So you know I gave you all that suspense and made you think dirty things (well... poorly attempted to) and it was just about lying down for a few hours with someone special on the day before Christmas. Not the most thrilling of reading but I personally was very happy and still am happy. It was better than Christmas itself!

Now to Christmas itself! I didn't get any presents (especially not from SANTA!) from my family. Instead my parents gave me money (why we had to wait until dad got up so I could get a card and $40 I don't know) and then my aunt, uncle and grandparents gave me money also. The only people who did get me a present was Lorna and her family. You see I'm becoming accepted as one of their own... I get presents! Only took 19 months (which coincidentaly was the 25th of December when our relationship turned 19 months old) to get physical gifts. I got (from Lorna) The I.T. Crowd seasons 1 AND 2 on DVD! (Because they didn't have them on VHS...) Which is totally AWESOME! It was just what I wanted! (How did she know? It's almost as if she doesn't just check her emails more once a year!) So I spent my Christmas afternoon (after saying goodbye to family) watching most of Season 1 and going "Bahahaha! I'm getting more of these jokes than anyone else in the room! Bahahahaha! OMG A PAC MAN LEVEL 256 T-SHIRT! I WANT ONE!" Seriously though... my mother thought it was weird I recognised that Roy's shirt was of level 256 of Pac-man. (Billy Mitchell is a LEGEND! But David Race owned you! World record for fastest is always better than first. More bonus cookie points!) Is it really not common knowledge about the split-screen glitch in the simple binary programming system of 80's arcade games that prevents someone from progressing any further in the game? It is a simple problem with programming things to have never ending levels based on a byte! It only goes up to 255 which is why the Missingo cheat occured in the original pokemon games. The game stores 151 max pokemon data but then theres 104 more free spaces in which data can be stored and.... oh right... yes, where was I?

Yes well I also got a bag full of gifts from her sister and parents. They got me Braveheart on DVD (FINALLY! I rented it but it was scratched in the penultimate scene so they're pulling the ropes and torturing the guy in front of a huge crowd and then they let him down and they go "the prisoner wants to speak!" and he's barely able to speak and they lean closer.... and then it freezes... AGGHHH!!! Come on! That's his epic final words!!!) along with a book of many Garfield comics. Oh yes, they also got me deoderant and shower gel. I wonder what that was meant to imply... Thankfully it wasn't shaving cream or aftershave! Because I would've been offended. I like my beard. No one else I know my age has one.

Well we all know what I want for Christmas next year now!

http://www.errorwear.com/shirt-pacman.php

I also got a few envelopes with cards in them. I enjoy getting envelopes and always carried some around with me in Sydney... may think I'm weird but you never know when you need to mail something!

I wonder what next Christmas will be like. Fun I hope. I hope you all enjoyed your Christmases today too! Merry Christmas.

I sleep now. I had to actually get up and move around today before 1pm! Gasp! So I'm tired now.

Goodbye

Hello all. Tomorrow I set off to Sydney for a week and then to Tasmania for yet another week so recently I decided to start packing. I've been going round finding pencils and sharpening them. What? Yes well I've decided to do some drawing/writing when I am on holiday so I gathered as many pencils as I could and found all the unused sketchbooks and then my mother told me that no one needed that many pencils so I should put some back. I am very disapointed that I'm only bringing 7 (of the largest there were) with me across the country to draw whatever interesting things I find there. Trees, rocks, hobos even slightly different designed public transport! I wonder what colour scheme they go with for the trains in Sydney. Green like Transperth? (Who I follow on Twitter)

I've never been on a plane before. Does it hurt? I hope not. I do not like hurtyness.... No but seriously though I am going to miss my dearst Lorna a lot which is part of the reason why I've stocked up on paper and pens. I'm going to write her a letter while away! A few actually. Perhaps some more people need mail while I'm away? That's it! I'm going to send a bunch of people letters while I'm away :D Then when I come home they'll get them at a similar time and be like "aww! This is so sweet!" and I'll stand there thinking "OK do you need to read them now? I mean... I'm standing here and all and I just got back. Attention! Give me attention!" So the sending letters thing will only occur in Sydney not Tasmania. Oh! When I get back I'm sure to show you some of my lovely drawings/sketchings :)

Well goodbye blogosphere! I shall leave you now but fear not for I shall return!

Graduation.

5 years.

5 years it took. From the very first day, wandering around in the midst of people larger than me, feeling quite tiny even for my above average height, to this day. 20th November. This was a good day.

We were children. It seemed so weird going from year 7, top of the food chain in Primary school, to being the bottom and realising that suddenly you were in a pool that you had to swim in when you didn't know how but you needed to learn. The worst part was this was the shallow end, but were blissfully unaware of how deep it gets. How much work and effort is involved in that last year. In that last month. Those 5 years. Those 5 years are to acclimatise you to the final 5 exams. I learnt to swim. I learned to float. I learned to freestyle through to the very end, proud, victorious, happy, content.

I finished exams with a smile. I sat and wrote and wrote. I was the only person I knew who seemed content with all their exams. Though arduous and dificult it was to study and concentrate for so long- it was fun when it was only 3 hours from being over, the same time you pick up that pen hoping that it works (hoping that ALL the pens work)

I haven't truly, PROPERLY celebrated my freedom since exams finished. I wish to start soon. Tomorrow. Exams ended just over a week ago but highschool is now FULLY OVER!

I have grown. As a person, as a student, and physically. In all senses of the word I am now the giant. 5 years ago I looked up at the giants in their leavers jackets and never stopped to think about what it would be like that moment it all ended. That time has come and now I am that giant. I am that man who towers above the newcomers, the one who gets to dispense advise and wisdom I KNOW the little 12 year olds will only ignore because they haven't quite adjusted to the idea that they are small fry. Everything is a matter of perspective and children rarely manage to see just how small they are until they have grown.

Over a hundred former students of Duncraig got to look up and see each one of their classmates photos meld from year 8 to present. We got to see ourselves age in a matter of seconds. Many laughs were had, many embarrassed moments were shown, many different phases of hair were shown. Some hairstyles changed colour or shape each year, others just got larger and larger, some were really short to begin with- something none of us could remember- then suddenly, BOOM! The huge hair we are all familiar with. We have changed. We all have. We are definitely giants now.

I don't remember mine but I was told my hair started small then got larger, then smaller, then larger, then I had a beard then it was present with long hair and beard. I don't remember much as I stood there waiting for my diploma. Standing at the stairs to the stage where all the students and their parents would see me take the coveted piece of paper saying that I endured and SUCCEEDED at those 5 years, I remembered to tell myself fear was irrational, a creation of the mind. I'm walking up, I'm getting a piece of paper. This is all. No fear is needed.

My name is called and I remember walking up those stairs. The next thing I remember is trying to hug the principal as a joke, something I had come to previously when waiting near someone. "Oh you should do the moonwalk!" he said to someone else. "Nah, nah!" "You should hug the principal" I said. "That's a great idea! No, I can't do it you do it!" "OK!" So I decided, this is what I will do. I take my diploma and pose for a photo while shaking his hand. I turn to him and hold out my arms expectantly. He tells me to walk down the stairs now. "Hug me." (Pause) OK I know he's not going to. I leave the stage and the audience's laughter follows as they realise I just got rejected. Always got something to do differently. I always get my laugh one way or another.

I also don't remember the short sentences they said about my future ambitions and goals that we had to write down on a form. But I was told that it included going to Scottland and New Zealand to make films. Lorna found that very sweet that I had put down Scottland as a future place of residence.

The ceremony dragged on at times but in the end it was worth it. I've got a yearbook, I've got a few new memories, I've got another story to tell, I've got a new pair of shoes. I still don't know how to wear a tie but I'm sure one day I'll learn. I didn't get top media student for year 12, but that's OK. I only was beaten by a very small amount and it was great to compete with Jacob. He is my rival. If anyone had to beat me I'm glad it was him. He truly is incredibly talented and it was absolutely awesome to be the man he always aimed to beat and vice versa.

Who knows what the future holds? Nothing is certain after all, but some things can be held to be more probable. Highschool will most definitely not be the greatest years of my life. I won't let it. I will continue to enjoy life more and more. I will always find a way to look at something just slightly different to everyone. I will always enjoy life. I will achieve everything I can. I wish the best for all the ambitions of all my friends. Shane, who dreams of becoming employed by Google or Blizzard, has a great chance of achieving this and it would be absolutely awesome if he achieved it. Blizzard and Google are definitely the best of the best in their fields and it will be hard, but I know he can get there. Just like I know I can make those films I want.

I can do nearly anything. Afterall, I am now a giant.