jampy

I swore to myself that I'd write heaps more here today, but it didn't happen. Or it hasn't, yet. But I did manage to finally publish my hp fanfic. You can read it here, if you so choose. Please note: If you have some kind of general objection to fanfic, please do not read my story and then berate me about it. I really don't give a shit what kind of judgements you make about fanfic writers. Anyone who actually wants to read what I get up to is welcome to. Me grammar good. I hadn't published it until now because I'm a perfectionist, and because the system is unduly complicated. As it is, I'm unhappy with the title as well as the author notes and the formatting. I may change both of these at some point, or I may attempt to conquer my obsessive tendencies. As for the story, I'm almost entirely happy with it. I'm hoping to get some feedback to fuel the ongoing story, as I've hit a bit of a slow patch. I'm a bit feedback-hungry generally, and curious about readers, both of my fanfic and my blog. Go on, say hi - it's easy! Just add a comment here. [end pathetic begging for attention]

Last night, my mother was playing Bounce Out, as is her wont. She changed the level from 'Hard' to 'Easy', in order to see what the difference was. I started playing this morning, not noticing any difference until I reached a level far past where I had been before. I had a really great score by this stage, so I didn't want to just change it over to 'Hard' because I would have lost almost instantly. I had to keep playing on easy. Effectively, I was stuck playing this game for two hours. I got up to level 18, with a score of over 428,000, which is far and away the best I've ever done on that game. With it, of course, came a headache, and a feeling of being trapped by my own stubbornness. I don't like that feeling.

A couple of days between entries, and now I revert to presenting links. Best picture of Crabbe and Goyle EVER! (may take a while to download if your connection is as crappy as mine)

Last weekend, I saw Lilo and Stitch. I failed to give a detailed description of my experience of it, as I promised to. Now you get the five-cent answer: I enjoyed Lilo and Stitch.

I don't know when I'm going to feel quite up to this. My brain doesn't seem to be working in quite the right ways.

The blogger problems I was telling you about are now both better and worse. Worse, because I get that Error 503 every single time I try to publish. Better, because I have discovered that, if I post in Explorer and publish in Opera, it publishes successfully, despite claiming not to. Yet worse, because I have to go through this two-fisted browser rigmarole every single time I publish. It's significantly subtracting from the simplicity of the system, and giving me a cynical tone I'd rather avoid. Then again, I'm funny when I'm snarky.

My hair smells like My Little Ponies.

I gave my resumé to a couple of places this afternoon. One of them is just meh, and they're looking for Christmas Casuals. I really want a job before November, but something like that is my fallback position. The other isn't specifically looking for staff, but the idea of working there makes me want to cry. They have so many beautiful books on all the subjects I care about. Their staff all seem like fun, funky and learned people. The counter staff are seated. It's all good, really.

A perfect example of exam horror . Ron looks just like me in my Italian test a couple of weeks ago.

Feeling a bit incoherent. I blame it on the hayfever. Have two parties to go to this weekend. Am planning to wear my lush red velvet cape, mostly because I haven't worn it yet. Probably with black pants, black slinky top and black motorcycle boots. Attempting to curb own antisocial tendencies in order to interact with others. No slight to the hosts intended, but right now I feel like I'd rather stay home and do Italian work.

I hate job-hunting. Tehy kindly fixed up my cv last night, but now I'm a bit anxious about it. I've come to the conclusion that I hate job-shopping online, because even job advertisers are arseholes online. They all have nasty, demanding ads, and I think I'd rather just print out a whole bunch of cvs and hand them out to all and sundry. It's more expensive, but I suspect it's also more likely to actually get me a suitable job which is, after all, the point of the exercise.

Capricorn
This is your conscience speaking: "Proceed with caution. Be careful you don't get too damn impressed with yourself. Don't deviate from the good old formulas that have brought you this far. Do what's expected of you and don't offend anyone." This is your genius speaking: "Tell your conscience to SHUT UP. You have a poetic license to be a cute brat, a curious seeker, a sloppy kisser, an extreme talker, a loud laugher, and a me-first-er. This is your big bad chance to imitate God. And I mean 'bad' in the best sense of the word."

Once again, I love these horoscopes.

I have my first mosquito bites of the season. This is bad. I tend to get really strong reactions to them, big lumps and then scars. Naturally, I get bitten more than anyone else, and they itch me a whole lot more than (I believe) is standard. And helpful individuals patronisingly advise me not to scratch them, as if I considered this option but discarded it. Most of my scratching seems to occur when I'm asleep, in fact.

Tired of unemployment, I've begun searching job ads again. Is it just me, or does 'Strongly Results Oriented' mean 'Ruthless Bitch'? And I'm tired of the number of part-time or casual jobs which demand that applicants be available at any time of the day or night. If I was available full-time, why would I be working shitty casual jobs? And please, please don't use the phrase flexible in that context: "Applicants must be flexible to work any damn time..." That's not what that word means.

Also, I find it amazing the number of shitty part-time jobs that demand years and years of experience. If I had three years' admin experience, I'd be hoping to move up in the world. I have come across ads for shitty casual admin roles that demand that applicants have a degree. They don't seem to care what degree, or how well the applicant did in the degree. Presumably, they just want to boast that everyone in their company is university educated.

I don't know if I'll ever be able to find a job I could work, when they all seem to be such assholes. And the number of ads with really obvious spelling mistakes in them makes my head hurt. I couldn't work for them, either. But I have a few leads. I'm going to update my CV tonight or tomorrow night, and then I can hand resumes out on Friday - it's far more likely that I'll be able to find a casual retail job that'd suit me, than a part-time admin job working Fridays only. Also, I have my eye on a casual job in a rather funky skincare store near me. The people are nice, pay's good, and the whole place smells wonderful. Fingers crossed.

Is there any way to politely refuse an offer of complimentary Ear Candles?

Catchiest song ever: 50 Special by Lunapop. Even better than that, I'm studying Italian at the moment so listening to it while playing Bounce Out almost counts as studying.

My recent angst-related rage seems to have robbed me of any meaningful things to say. I have existential blog angst. What am I here for? Do I provide links and witty commentary? Do I probe the inner workings of my soul? I found a very cool quote from Rousseau, but I don't really have the content to back it up, right now. I believe my general modus operandi involves witty anecdotes from my daily life, but I don't seem to be having a very interesting daily life. If I did, I wouldn't be having problems with this, would I? In addition, I keep getting a very frustrating Blogger problem, whereby it claims not to be able to publish my blog because it cannot load the template. If I republish, it still exhibits this message, despite the post showing up on my page. Grah. If it wasn't free, I might be complaining.

I'm still not good with the fingers. Yesterday, I was trying to turn the speakers off, and I turned the knob a little too hard. I heard a soft clatter, and now I can't find it. It is still possible to turn the speakers on and off, it just hurts because you have to jam your fingers around the little pointy metal inner-knob. Needless to say, I'm not too popular right now.

Oh, I so don't want to go to uni today. Everything hurts. The hand and arm pain I referred to yesterday is, if anything, worse. I couldn't use my mobile phone yesterday because it hurt too much to press the buttons. Now any kind of poking action sends pains up my arms. I hate to think what will happen when I try to grip a pen. I also have achey shoulders and back, and even my legs hurt. Walking is inexplicably difficult. And my head hurts. Yes, I'm full of pleasant ailments. Current plan is to go in to uni for my English lecture and then run off home. I look forward to putting the latter part of this plan into action.

I played endless rounds of Vib Ribbon this morning. For future reference, playing it with Fatboy Slim is a very bad idea. My thumbs feel bruised, broken - even pressing on my thumbnails hurts intensely, and I have painful muscles all up my forearms if I try to grip with thumb and forefinger.

I normally don't much care what people think of me, especially people who are no longer part of my life. But it makes me really sad that you pushed me out of your life, and you still think of me as I was four years ago. Won't you let me show you who I am? I suppose not that much has changed. I'm still socially disadvantageous to you. I still don't know where I'm going, and I still don't want to make my happiness contingent on any one aspect of my life - all I can hope is that I enjoy the trip.

You know it's coming to the business end of semester when you have to queue for a computer on a Saturday. I'm just here for a moment to check e-mail and print out a few things, then we're off to see Lilo and Stitch. I'll let you know how it is.

One further note: I don't know where I'd be without The Leaky Cauldron. I'm full of joy knowing that JK hasn't stalled on the fifth HP book. I had a horrible feeling she had some kind of stage fright and would never finish the series. But it's getting there and it's huge. This is what we like to hear. Now returning you to your regularly scheduled jamping.

I thought this might happen. Four days without a notebook, and I found myself furiously scribbling in my Italian notebook during Semiotics. It's good stuff, too. I wonder what'd happen if I deprived myself of the ability to write for weeks?

I've been listening to some Clannad, specifically Legend. This album is the soundtrack to the wonderful Robin of Sherwood. It's a great series, that. The only problem is that it was made in 1984, and the hairstyles show it. I might have to dust off a few of the old tapes and watch some, perhaps on Saturday.

I haven't been posting much lately because I've been mulling over how to respond to the self-righteous comments I've found recently on several of the "serious" blogs/journals that I read. Just because I don't spend all my time writing about what a tortured soul I am, that does not make my writing any less honest or less valuable. I write about my experiences, my feelings, my ideas. This is my truth. I am primarily an optimist. I believe that a lot can be achieved through humour, through discussing the apparently mundane aspects of my life, and the feedback I get suggests that people agree with me. Note that these comments were not made specifically about me, they were just snooty comments about writers who choose a different path from themselves.

Another impediment to my writing recently has been the disappearance of my notebook. I write everything in my notebook: lists, ideas, observations, stories, research. And now I can't find it. I think I've probably just misplaced it, but I'm finding I can't operate properly without it. Very frustrating. I'm considering buying another one so that I don't have to be totally notebook-less in the interim.

Well, don't I feel like a damn fool. I spent forty minutes this morning looking for my wallet. As a result of this, I missed the two buses that would have got me to my lecture on time, or near enough as don't matter. I turned over all my clutter several times, looked everywhere in the communal spaces, and I got nothing. Finally, after all this time, I checked my bag again. Naturally, it was there, hiding under some of the sedimentary crap in my backpack. I've got that life-is-conspiring-against-me feeling.

I saw Dinotopia last night. Well, I saw most of it. I fell asleep so I missed the last 45 minutes or so. The film is four hours long, I don't think you can blame me. I loved the books, but I was sorely disappointed that they decided to modernise the story. I think the film would do much better if we removed the first hour and a half entirely. All that's achieved in that section of the film is a whole lot of whining. I suppose there's some character development, but after this annoying, film-length section of film, the characters change almost completely anyway. I'm not surprised that there's an alternate version half the length. It's on TV in a couple of weeks, spread over two nights. While I think it's good to split up the length, I find this unfortunate as, by my calculation, the first night's watching is all woe.

I know I'm becoming a bit HP-centric here these days. I'm trying to limit it, really I am, but the obsession is bubbling over. I came across this at a writer bio at fanfiction.net and it struck me as rather amusing.

Things Harry Potter characters would never say:
Dumbledore: How the hell should I know?
Sirius: I was actually thrown out of Azkaban for trying to hump one of the guard's legs.
Hedwig: It's not an affectionate nip! I'm trying to bit your finger off you bastard!
Voldemort: Where the heck are my fluffy bunny slippers?!
Snape: Oh, I just borrowed them, My Lord.
Sirius: I'm so sick of you Harry. Why can't you just go and die like a nice little boy?
Lucius: Son, I had my doubts, but now that you've put out the effort to learn how to knit, I know you are worthy of the Malfoy name!
Wormtail: Screw the Dark Lord. Screw Harry. I never wanted this job anyhow. I wanted to be...A LUMBERJACK!
Olivander: Ah, yes... thirteen inches, cedar and dragon heartstring, rather flexib-- HEY! DON'T POINT THAT THING IN MY FACE!

I've developed a deep love of Irish Breakfast Tea. I've never really been much of a tea person. I drink it when I'm with my dad, of course - he never seems to have anything else to drink. But last weekend my sister made me a cup, and I'm hooked. On Friday I had three cups, on Saturday I had a cup when I got home (I'd been looking forward to it for a few hours) and this morning, breakfast was tea and toast with Promite. Of course, yeast spreads are one of the products that polarise people for no good reason - I will eat Promite but not Vegemite, and I have a deeply suspicious attitude towards Marmite despite never tasting it. All this is probably based on what was eaten in my house when I was a kid. Similarly, I drink my tea white with no sugar, because that's how my dad does. A lot of people make faces at the idea of tea with milk. Then there are crazy people like the skanky girl at my high school who liked to drink tea through her Tim Tams. This should only ever be done with coffee or hot chocolate. I seem to be promoting Australian food icons today. Something more intelligent may be forthcoming, if I can save any braincells from the mass of Italian work I have to do.

To my immense relief, I've handed in my Semiotics essay. I actually started to enjoy it sometime yesterday evening, when I really got into the bullshit swing of it. The thing is, I'm not at all familiar with writing pieces that are neither essay nor fiction. I feel immensely odd writing my opinions as my opinions; I've learned that you can either quote a noted scholar who agrees with you, or couch your opinion in uncertainty: 'it appears'. But I did it, and I actually think it's rather clever. I hope it's good. I don't think I got enough jargon in there, but it's clear that I've been thinking about ways of producing meaning. I put the whole thing in a kind of diary style, adding times and dates to the top of sections, to suggest my evolving understanding of the subject. I included notes at the end, stating the font I'd used and that I'd used it to give the essay a scholarly feel, and that the times and dates, while giving the essay a temporal frame, do not necessarily reflect the actual times at which the essay was written, and may instead reflect the more leisurely pace I wish I'd accepted. I felt clever writing stuff like that, and I think the lecturer was hoping for such odd responses, since she was deliberately cagey about what we had to do. I think I'm doing the ultimate in obscure Arts subjects: I actually handed in a photocopy of a sock because it had a picture of a geisha on it, and was thus a recycling of Japanese cultural products. Meh, I suppose you had to be there.

So, now I have my happiness. Now, I can relax. I sit here, eating the six-inches of soggy sub left from my lunch, and listening to the American Beauty original score, and feeling the tension leaking out of my lower back. Now I can read some fanfic, and ponder the instalment I'll be writing tonight. Oh, how I love this album. My life is great.

Remember what I said about the Vibrating Nimbus 2000? Amazon has taken down even more of the customer comments, removing virtually all those which made reference to the vibrating action of the broomstick, although some of them are preserved here along with many other disturbing products.

*sigh* I suppose I'd better get on with it and actually write some of this beastly assignment.

I'm at that stage of sick of assignments that I constantly want to swear at inanimate objects and throw down my books. I'm also annoyed by people I don't know. There's an annoying girl in my history tute. She wears stacks of eyeshadow yet fails to brush her hair. She highlights literally every word on the page. Whenever she makes a comment, she has a smarmy air about her. Yesterday, when I came in, she was making dumb comments about how some people don't know the difference between science fiction and fantasy. If there is genuinely anyone who has trouble with that, I'd like to meet them. Then, after making these comments, she started talking about how much she likes Buffy. Now, fair enough, Buffy's not a bad show, but it certainly doesn't fit into the categories of sci-fi or fantasy. Horror would definitely be a better description. And so, she demonstrated that she doesn't know the difference between fantasy (or even dark fantasy) and horror. This shits me. People mouthing off about things they don't understand usually shits me. And then she got out her crappy Buffy organiser and proudly displayed it to me, apparently believing that I'd be impressed by it. Somebody had trouble using the overhead projector so she actually put her hand up (we don't do that in tutes) and proudly declared that she'd done a whole class on multimedia equipment handling. She wasn't able to fix it. I know I'm being bitchy here. I wasn't like this to her in person. I'm never like this to anyone in person. But I'm annoyed at life, so little things annoy me. I'm planning to get happy soon. Just 2,800 words of utter drivel between me and my sanity.

I've been trying to get my head around Unlimited Semiosis. I think I don't like Semiotics. It's endlessly nebulous, such that I have no idea whether I understand it or not. I feel hopelessly ill-equipped to write any kind of meaningful analysis of anything else. The best explanation I can find for Unlimited Semiosis suggests to me that signs can come to signify different things, at least partially because of the context in which they're used. For instance, cherry blossoms are symbolic of Japanese culture, but on Play School they sang a song called 'Sakura', so cherry blossoms remind me of Play School rather than their original connotation (the theme of the show) which was Japanese culture. I think that's it. I've been trying to cut out the jargon to get my head around it, so I misused some words which are used in Semiotic jargon but you get my drift, I hope. Unenthusiastic, sick and tired.

I seem to have developed a take-it-or-leave-it attitude to food. I mean, I eat, and I enjoy what I eat, but I don't have any particular desire for food. I eat when my stomach starts to rumble, or at what I consider to be meal times, rather than when I feel like it. I used to graze rather than eating meals. I used to think about what I'd like to eat. Now, I worry that I'll accidentally go a week without food.

My archives appear to be working again. I rock. In addition, I received some lovely fan mail about my writing and Simon declared me a 'funky mama'. This somewhat compensates for the perfidy of IE.

I've been falling behind in Italian. It's really easy to do that with a language, I find. You just don't do work and then, out of guilt and shame, you avoid going to classes. Repeat ad nauseam. I did some work tonight. I rock.

It occurs to me that some people might not understand this: When I talk about writing "dirty, dirty fanfic" I am referring only to the shameful quality of fanfic in general. I do not write slash or smut. I asked one of my friends to read said fanfic, and she was disappointed at the lack of dirtiness. I feel rather odd about the idea of making characters who are essentially children, do such things. I mean, standard practice is to set such stories in later years, and this friend defended smut because the characters are actually older than we are if you look at the dates of birth involved, it's just that the story hasn't caught up with that. So I suppose that makes sense: if you were the same age as the character when you first read it, naturally your age would be tied to that of the character and behaviours that were suitable for you would be suitable for the character. I have another idea: We find out in Goblet of Fire that the age of adulthood in the wizarding world is seventeen. The age of majority in muggle Britain is eighteen, and the age of consent there is sixteen. So, does it follow that the wizarding world's age of consent should be, as in the muggle world, two years below the age of majority, making it fifteen? I have a feeling I've been thinking way too hard about this.

My around-the-house attire is getting stranger and stranger. Generally, when I get home in the afternoon I change into comfy pants. So I'm wearing my strange stripey purple pyjama pants with my Guinness t-shirt and my red velvet cape. My cape was sitting by the stairs and I haven't had a chance to wear it properly yet, so I put it on. It makes me feel very magical. Someone has to have a party of some kind so I can wear it. Or perhaps it'll have to lie dormant until Chamber of Secrets comes out on the 28th of November.

This morning, I woke up with a beastly headache and pins and needles in my hands. My neck is rather fussy, so that if I don't sleep quite right I end up storing a lot of tension in my upper neck, which in turn gives me headaches. Even the fattest commercially available pillows are too flat for me and I have to stack them or, as now, I make my own pillows filled with chunks of fairly heavy foam. The foam within the pillow can be squished around to form a nest for my head. Unfortunately, I think this crumble-foam pillow is getting a bit old, as it seems to be smaller and less supportive than it was when I first started using it. I'm planning to make another one, when I can find time in my busy schedule.

I have a suspicion, though, that I've been having weird dreams, which would account for the bizarre sleeping that resulted in these maladies. A few nights ago I dreamed that I was visiting my best friend from high school in America. (This makes sense because he was born there and spoke of acquiring dual citizenship. And the friend was in America, not the school.) I was sitting in a sunny kitchen reading while he, his frightening mother (who demanded that I cook once when I was staying over at their house) and some female relative of his of about my age, were preparing food for some kind of party. I offered repeatedly to help, and he just kept looking at me in this incredibly suspicious way. Finally he said, "Okay. You can sew together these alien ingredients for the sandwiches," and passed me a white bowl full of mushy stuff that was largely grey. I prepared to sew this stuff together (somehow) with red nylon thread, when my friend burnt himself making toffee. There was a giant lump of toffee on his hand, but when it was removed there was just a cut around his finger, oddly. They told me to call the 'paramedics'. (We don't really have paramedics in Australia. You just call an ambulance. The people who work in ambulances are 'ambos', pronounced 'am-boze'.) I called the number and requested an ambulance. The operator laughed at me, said she could tell I was a tourist, because there were two ways you could order an ambulance, either book it to arrive at a certain time (and they had a funny name for this, it sounded something like 'tramps'), or just ask for it to come as soon as it could. Of course, I requested it as soon as it could come, but the operator just laughed at me again, and then I woke up.

While I think it's entirely fitting to have a think about all the woe that was associated with September 11th, 2001, it seems to me to be getting tacky in some quarters. I was at Broadway shopping centre yesterday, and they had American flags up all over the place. They had a guy dressed up in a manner reminiscent of Uncle Sam, handing out toffee apples. They were even running a competition, the major prize of which was a trip to New York. Is it just me, or is that like offering trips to Port Arthur to commemorate the massacre there? Or Tienanmen Square? Unless there was significant mention of memorial activities, such a competition serves to cheapen the grief of those who lost loved ones in New York, and appears a celebration of these events. This is not a holiday, people. You must not use it to sell your shitty high-volume consumer goods, you callous capitalist bastards.

My perception of time is screwed up because yesterday felt like a Saturday, because I was at home, which is normal for me on a Friday, but so was Abby, which is not. Added to which, it was a highly stressful day, what with my friend treatening to hurt herself most of the day. In the afternoon, I went over to Andrew's. Glad I did, I needed some calming. I'm spending tonight there as well - there's a much higher degree of happy domesticity that comes from spending two nights in a row together. Also, this way, I get some washing done.

Talking to a friend last night, I realised that I've become some kind of Smug Married a la Bridget Jones. She no longer categorises me as someone worthy of description. I must admit, this is rather hurtful (especially since this friend is no longer single herself). It's not like I'm actually smug. I'm happy. Andrew's happy. That's great. But it doesn't always work like that for everyone, and not everyone wants to have been in a five-year relationship by the time they're nineteen. I got my own back at this friend, however: she deeply envies my huge buckly boots. I like watching peoples' jaws hit the floor when I tell them my expensive boots cost $2. Lots of fun.

I saw About a Boy this afternoon. I liked it, but I gather that if I'd read the book, I'd hate it. Well, I hated A Knight's Tale for a moment or two, but it was a bit of an in-joke between myself and the filmmakers, because we both knew some actual stuff about Chaucer, but I could see that a great deal of the audience didn't. There's nothing like exclusive humour to make you feel included. Also the blatant anachronisms made me laugh. I suspect I would have hated Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood (which I saw last Friday) if I'd read the book first, which I had intended to do, but didn't manage to arrange the time and money for it. I probably would have enjoyed that film less if I'd had to pay for the tickets. As it was, I won the tickets, and thus it was an okay film, but I must say that I dislike Sandra Bullock, and have had no respect for her acting ability since seeing Forces of Nature. I saw Signs last Saturday, and while I thought that was fun and had interesting cinematography, I thought there were some pretty bloody obvious holes in the premise, and that stopped me from finding it remotely frightening.

I'm learning more from listening to Abby than I ever learned myself in Health class. To get your blood alcohol to .3, you would have to drink 120 schooners of beer in the first hour and 60 every hour after that. This blood alcohol level is classified as 'serious risk of death'. The fact remains that beer tastes like armpit, and thus it would be difficult for me to drink one schooner of it, let alone two per minute. I had the ubiquitous bad drinking experience, and now drinking doesn't seem like so much fun. I drink at the odd party, but there have been less of those lately. Also, alcohol is hella expensive, and I really don't like the taste of the kind of spirits it takes me to get drunk. By and large, all I drink these days is Malibu and Coke, with far more Coke than Malibu. I am also partial to pretty drinks, which is what people I know call sweet, girly drinks like Baileys, butterscotch schnapps etc.

If I were a bad, bad panda, I might choose to take this out of context: 'Harry grinned into his pillow, exceptionally glad that Ron couldn't see what he could.' [GoF, end of ch. 12] But I'm not a dirty, dirty slash writer, like somebody I could mention.

This brings us to the Harry Potter Vibrating Broomstick. [Link schñarfed from boingboing] I added it to my wishlist. Perhaps I am a bad panda.

I've been seeing resemblances today. A guy I know has struck me as reminiscent of Austin Powers since I first met him, but it really hit home today, as I was reading somebody's discarded copy of The Big Issue and I saw a feature on Mike Myers. Nobody else sees the resemblance - I asked them, and they had no idea what I was talking about. He even talks similarly! Fools, fools all. I'm usually the only one who can see these odd connections, but a few days ago I managed to convince someone that James Garner resembled my Uncle Martin in a certain promotional shot for Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.

The other resemblance I've seen today is to Tom, of Daria fame, as I found myself in an awkward situation with the emotionally-repressed ex-boyfriend of one of my friends. They've been going through a pretty nasty breakup, and I've been trying to look after her a bit. He thanked me for this, and seemed to be asking for my perspective on the breakup, apparently wanting my approval of his actions. It was just like how other people talk about their feuding parents. I should've just fled.

Summer arrived today. It came as a bit of a surprise: according to the calendar, it's only just Spring. So I was wearing jeans and a sweater, and I really did start to sweat. I felt tired and hot all day. My Ancient History tutorial was moved outside onto a lawn; we had to move when earthmoving equipment made it difficult to hear each other. All day, I was plotting what to wear tomorrow. The plan for most of the day was my blue-green paisley skirt and a little black top.

When I got home, I changed into my cute little short jeans and a purple singlet with lace edging. I bought these jeans for $5 in a Gowings sale. They're men's Lee 3/4 length jeans, but I'm a girl so I'm a bit shorter than that and they stop just above my ankle. Too short for wearing with boots, but damn fine with sandals. They feel snug and good around my hips and I feel dancy in them. I bought them months ago, but it's been cold since then (being Winter) so I haven't had a chance to wear them. If this weather keeps up, I'll wear them to Uni tomorrow.

I bought my slides at the end of last Summer, in frustration at my lack of presentable sandals to wear in my non-air-conditioned hellhole of an accountants' office. They, too, are supposedly men's, but they have a bit more of a heel on them than I'd imagine most fellas being comfortable with. Very simple, smooth and black. They turned my feet blue for a week after wearing them. Now, I slide them on and my feet sink into the comfy soles. Aaah.

I wear men's shoes a lot more than people would expect. My feet aren't just big, they're wide as well, so even shoes that are nominally my size often don't fit. The shoes I wear the most often are my doc boots, my converse sneakers and my motorcycle boots. Then there's my brooks runners which don't fit as well as I'd like, my converse slides I wear around the house at Andrew's, and these lovely slides. Actually, I have more shoes than I think: I also have mid-calf lace-up boots, my buckley industrial New Rock boots, red mary janes (in need of a polish, never worn) and I bought some grown-up ankle boots a few weeks ago. I should add that I bought seven of these pairs of shoes at my op shop for $2 a pair, all in good condition, I'm not really some crazed shoe fanatic.

Somebody read my blog in Italian! An awful lot of Italian people seem to be coming to my site by searching 'jampy'. Does 'jampy' have some significance in Italian? I wouldn't have thought so, since they don't really use j or y. (I've had a lot of Italian friends decide to call me 'Eva' because Heather is virtually unpronouncable in a language without h or th.) I'll speak to my Italian tutor about it. Parlo un po' d'Italiano, ma molto male.

Victoria and David Beckham apparently named their poor, unsuspecting newborn son Romeo. As if this wasn't bad enough, Channel Ten decided that it was newsworthy. Naturally, they decided to use the oft-misquoted "Wherefore art thou Romeo?" Now, I've come across plenty of people misusing that phrase in the past, apparently believing that 'wherefore' means 'where'. That frustrates me, and I have been known to scream at the idiots who say that, since it's roughly equivalent to using 'therefore' to mean 'there' ("Therefore is my cup!")

But Ten News just revealed their complete lack of understanding of the english language in a different way: They used, in a very pointed, cheesy manner, the headline, "WHYfore art thou Romeo?" So, they buggered around with a phrase, defeating its meaning by trying to make it apparently mean what it already means. 'Whyfore' doesn't mean anything, but they jammed it in there because whoever writes their scripts doesn't understand 'wherefore' which, according to our giant Oxford, means 'for what reason?', and thus would be entirely in keeping with enquiring about stupid baby-naming practices, as it was used in its original context, where Juliet was bemoaning the fact that Romeo came from a family which was in feud with hers. If they hadn't been a Montague and Capulet respectively, there would have been no problem with them getting hitched. That section is occupied with the meaning (or lack thereof) of names. It's followed by the oft-quoted, but slightly less misquoted, "That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet" (II.i.85–86).

If you have trouble with wherefore, my mum advises that 'where' in 'wherefore' translates roughly as 'what', giving 'wherefore' the meaning of 'what for' which is basically the same as Oxford's 'for what reason?'. I'm all for the dynamic use of language, but why use archaic words if you don't understand them? I generally advise against using any words you don't understand - it leads to people thinking you're a pretentious twat. Perhaps I should hire out my Old English and Middle English knowledge to those who have no idea. My knowledge of modern English might come in handy too, by the sounds of it. Or perhaps I should just give them all a slap upside the head.

I've been to all my classes today. Things are looking pretty good, especially for a Monday. I don't have to shell out another $65 for a new Italian workbook. This is very good. I can hand in my English notes tomorrow - I'm supposed to submit them within two days of the lecture, but I was sick last week and didn't manage to get them in. Also, I think I know what's going on with my Semiotics assignment - off to see the tutor in a few minutes to discuss my understanding and beg for an extension due to illness. Computer labs are unforgivably stuffy and hot. I could take my sweater off, I suppose, but I'm leaving in a minute. The problem isn't really that it's making me feel hot, more that it's hard to breathe when it's like this.

All I've eaten today is a peanut butter sandwich, and half a chocolate-chip cookie. They were wonderful cookies, Abby made them for Father's Day. Note for future cookie creation: If you don't have enough nuts, add some peanut butter. It gives them a wonderful light texture. I think someone's cooking something with butter and onions, the smell is making my tummy rumble.

Dad has huge speakers, being a bit of an audio freak, so he plays music loud. I find it really hard to listen to loud music. It confuses me, and I find it really hard to talk with loud music. And then he can't get one of the levels of sound, so that he can't hear a vocal track, and he tinkers with the connections so that it jumps back and forth between the speakers (there are many, he designed himself a surround-sound system) and there is really, really loud static. It made my head hurt, I felt ill with the crackling. He was playing an album of Duane Eddy music on which there's a track named Rebel Rouser, which unfortunately doesn't sound nearly as good on the tiny computer speakers. But I love it. It's my 'chase' music. I have a soundtrack for my life, perhaps I'll make a list one day soon.

I washed my hair this morning. It smells great. Tomorrow, when it's entirely dry, I'll brush it and it will shine, smooth as silk and twice as shiny. I love the light feeling my hair has when it's very clean. It makes me want to turn my head and feel it wash over my shoulders. I love the way it falls over my face, too, and I can stare out of it, hungry and delicious.

I'm off to visit my dad this afternoon. It is father's day, after all, but I have no gift, as I am po and jobless. I looked at job ads today, and managed to get enthusiastic about a few of the jobs, but I think I'm going to work twelve hours a week maximum, because it's a bit hard to manage otherwise. I'm feeling really proud about my creep-screaming action yesterday. Again I say, I rock.