jampy

I visited Robin Hobb this morning to see how my favourite fantasy epic is going, and was rewarded with a wonderful excerpt from Golden Fool, the next instalment in the Tawny Man trilogy, forthcoming two months hence. So very jampy! I shall make sure to get a head start on essays in order to have time for it.

My first ancient history lecture took place today. The course, Power and Persuasion in the Near East and Rome, seems to be right up my alley. The one lecture we've had so far was talking about (apart from administrative preliminaries) the question of balance: any assertion of power will require force and persuasion. More persuasion was used by the Romans in the Imperial period - they were able to convince people that it was better to be a part of the Empire, than not. However, this varied from emperor to emperor.

I had a moment of secret amusement, as the slide of Augustus that was presented was the Prima Porta statue, a print of which my high school History teacher kept above the blackboard, avowedly because she thought he was sexy.

It seems that I'll have to cough up another $30 for poorly photocopied things, but at least these ones are ring-bound.

What am I to do? I find myself going tingly over a pop song. It's not my kind of music. It's Vanessa Carlton's A Thousand Miles. I blame it on the piano. They kept playing snippets of the piano stuff on ads on TV and it was making me crazy.

I want iced coffee. I want to spend a day at home, watching the Commonwealth Games. I want to go out in the pouring rain, all rugged up and warm. I want my grey roll-neck jumper to be dry. I want a flexible part-time job at a bookshop with great staff. I want a holiday. I want a new layout. I want an excuse to wear my velvet cloak.

Not much blogging lately because we've been between isps. We've been between isps a lot this year, I suppose, but we're settled now, I think. We were down to the last 10mb of a free thing, and we managed to make it last 4 days. Yay us! Especially considering the other 290mb were gone in a little over a week.

Uni started today. I was really looking forward to it, especially my Special Studies in English course (their code name for Honours prep.), but I only had one class today, an Italian tute, and it was filled with administrative preliminaries. My tutor Luca speaks English beautifully, so well that I was concerned he was another softly-spoken young Australian man, too quiet and too unassuming to make the class interesting or effective. Apparently some of the others in the group were curious, somebody actually asked him whether he was Italian (I had considered asking this, but felt it was rude) whereupon he answered in the affirmative, and complained that speaking English was tiring, which I can understand. He says that he'll have the class speaking largely Italian soon which is good, because I find it far easier to learn that way.

I picked up my student notes. The queues weren't too bad, so I did it the normal way, rather than ordering them over the net and picking them up in the morning. I spent $50 on badly photocopied things. Apparently, they can't legally make you pay for essential notes. Also, I was under the impression that the Copy Centre was non-profit. After paying $13.50 for rougly 50 photocopied pages, I can no longer believe that. Also, my $25 Semiotics notes came unbound. A bloody great fistful of loose paper. I don't know what they expect me to do with that. I enquired after having them drilled, since they're pretty chunky, but because they were badly photocopied, some of the print went too close to the edge of the paper for that, so it looks like I'll have to cough up $4.40 to have it bound. Not before I've been to a lecture, though: if I decide I hate the course I can take the notes back, provided they're in mint condition. I suspect that binding, despite being a material improvement, would disqualify them.

Two social gatherings yesterday. I'm exhausted. The first was pancakes with people I've known for years. That wasn't so hard. (And yes, I did get the regular stack - and felt sick from the huge sweetness. Next time, I try the strawberry ones.)

The second was a coming-back party for a friend who's been travelling around the world for months. The thing is, she didn't let me know when she was going, forgot to invite me to the going-away party, and didn't hook me up with the group e-mails, both of which people kept talking about. I didn't mind it, but it was a bit awkward. "Weren't those group e-mails something?" someone would say. "Perhaps, I don't really know. I didn't get them." They then looked uncomfortable, the feeling of mentioning a party to one who isn't invited. I should take up lying to make social situations more comfortable. It might help. But I met some other people who were similarly unsocial. "Don't go," she said. "You're my conversational partner!"

Uni starts tomorrow. I'm pretty jampy about that. It'll be great to see people every day, and start living the glamorous life of the procrastinating student again. I'm pretty anxious about doing a full loading, which I haven't done since first semester of first year. I'm worried that I'll fall off the wagon: stop going to classes, spend endless hours playing Neopets and somehow avoid thinking about the essays getting later and later.

I can't say I'm sad to see Rob Lowe leaving The West Wing. (Link schñarfed from megnut) I'll miss Sam, but every time I look at Rob Lowe on that show, he strikes me as skeezy, and the character's charm is not able to break through the actor's skeeziness. It also pisses me off that he's listed as a lead actor along with Martin Sheen when Bradley Whitford's character tends to play a bigger part in the show. Also I like Josh better, but that's partially because of his lack of skeeziness.

And although the Channel Nine TV Guide claims that they're airing a "groundbreaking documentary episode", their West Wing page advertises the season finale: Two Cathedrals. *cough* Never mind that Two Cathedrals was the last episode of Season Two, and they aired the final of Season Three last week. With information that current, it's hard to judge the accuracy of their claim that TWW "is fast becoming Australia's favourite drama". It's also hard to say how much they care what Australia thinks - why would they put TWW on at 10:30pm on a Tuesday, and crap like Young Lions in prime time. Also, if they gave a crap about TWW, they might update the page more often. Once a season couldn't be too much to ask.

The Joys of Study
It looks like University study is going to get far more expensive. I'm especially against the voucher systems, since they turn the whole thing into a private school, and leave HSC students to scramble to get what is essentially a scholarship. Obviously, higher education should be most available to those with the most merit, but if the voucher system was in place, I would be unable to go to uni, because I had a bit of a fiasco in my HSC. Does that mean that I shouldn't get to go to uni or, if I should, that I should have to take out a loan at commercial rates? Begin my career with a burgeoning debt? I'm aware that education works that way in other countries, but I certainly don't want it to happen here. At least with HECS, since I'm doing an Arts course and am therefore likely to make less money in my career than a Law graduate, they charge me the lowest amount, which will automatically be deducted from my pay in small chunks, starting when I earn something like $23K.

I just discovered that my Semiotics course, which I've really been looking forward to, is assessed in the form of two 3,000 word essays. Can I just say, aargh! Last semester, I had to write 7,000 words total, and this semester it's looking like it'll be at least 9,500. It almost makes me wish I was doing the Jane Austen course, but with that I'd have to read eight heavy regency novels and sit an exam. I hate exams. I'm going to go in to uni today, return some library books and buy some text books - the Co-Op is always hellish once semester begins. Also, I want to get a head start on reading Robinson Crusoe.

How much of a freak are you?

It's a Thursday and I'm at home in my pyjamas. It's great to be jobless. I've got about a week left before I get panicky about my lack of security.

I think I've talked before about how my template shits me. (Really need to get those permalinks working. And the archives.) I've been looking for a nice simple one with no graphics, and I can't find any. I write a lot, so I need a big fat column for my main writing. I also have a huge number of links, however, so I want a relatively large sidebar. Most of the people who do things with sidebars tend to use big chunks of empty space at the sides, and that seems like a waste to me, since I don't want people to have to scroll down for years to get anywhere. I like Colorful Bubbles at Blogskins but, when all is said and done, I'd get little more column width there than I have currently. Also it's rather cutesy. I do like the layout here and I quite like the morphing colour scheme, but it might get old fast. Faster than the purple I have here? I'd suspect not. I'll think about it for a while. If you have any suggestions, let me know. I'm planning to get commenting when I fix things up but, in the meantime, we'll have to do things the old-fashioned way.

One other thing I'm considering changing in my putsch, is the address here. People might not know this, but I hate 'whirlygiggle'. I call myself 'whirlygig' online most of the time, but whirlygig was already taken when I tried to sign up for tripod and hotmail. So I'm looking for somewhere free without ads (if such a thing exists) with ftp so I can do blogger there, where 'jamping' is available.

My post yesterday was done on the computers at uni, which all have Netscape for some godforsaken reason. How do people manage to use Netscape all the time? When I used the computers at uni all the time, I thought it was good-ish, and felt a bit like an anti-microsoft rebel, but lately it's too hard, like when I was trying to blog and the buttons weren't coming up. Very frustrating. Opera makes the 'post' window really, really tiny, like I can only fit in one word per line. So I don't blog with Opera much.

Remember how I was expressing frustration with some of the blogs I read? I've been trimming my blog favourites folder. Currently, I'm reading upwards of 25 blogs a day and there's another 15 or so at the bottom of the folder that I don't always get around to reading. I'm going to try to cut it down some more, but deleting a link from my blog folder is a rather strong indication of disapproval. I suppose the writer won't know about this, and probably anyone less insane than myself wouldn't care so much. I've been leaving more comments at the blogs I do read, though, and I'm always embarrassed when I get hits as a result of these, as if it might seem to someone that I posted the comment just to get some traffic.

I would like to add that it's not really regularity of posting that's the big deal, it's the quality of the stuff. If someone posts funny, interesting or insightful stuff once a week, that'll interest me far more than recounts of daily activity, with apparent complete ignorance of grammatical principles. So I'm not judgemental, or anything.

I had to change my subjects for the coming semester. I was enrolled as doing Beginners' Italian 2 and a Psycholinguistics course, as well as my two English courses. But the Psycholinguistics course gave me a clash, and the Historical Linguistics course I really wanted to do required me to have previously done another course in semster one. So now, I'm doing my two English courses, one of which is an introduction to Semiotics, as well as Beginners' Italian 2 and an Ancient History course.

I did Ancient History in the first semester of first year, but after having a really inspired (albeit frightening) teacher in high school, I found the university equivalent sorely lacking in interaction. Added to which, the lecturer (who was also, unfortunately, my tutor) was senile, or very close to it, and kept breaking off discussions of war strategy to ramble about different historians "bitching" about each other. He put too much emphasis on the word 'bitching', as if he was uncomfortable using it, but thought that it would gain him the respect of his students. It didn't. I passed the subject comfortably, but not without the stress of a couple of hard nights spent writing tute papers, and sitting an exam I felt I knew nothing about. Also, I was having problems with motivation and procrastination, and I had no interest in Greece, which was my only study option. Not much fun. I'm getting quite excited about this course, though, it's called Power and Persuasion in the Near East and Rome, and it seems to be largely about propeganda and other means of assuring power. Jamp, jamp!

Abby blogged about my increasing insanity last night. Her account is fairly frightening. Oh, and a disclaimer: Don't stab yourself in the head. In fact, don't do anything I tell you to do. I have no idea. Don't try this at home, kiddies.

I keep being disappointed with some peoples' lack of blog-updativity, and disappointed with the high blog-updativity of others. Maybe I should just check blogs once every couple of days, to keep my disappointment under control. Or I just need to develop more things to do while I'm online. I know I used to do other things, I just can't remember what they are.

Remember how I said I was going to read and go to bed? If not, see below.

Well, I'm still online, and there is just nothing good here. I'm tired, and I'm at that stage of tiredness when I can't be fucked going to bed, but I'm quite happy to listen to loud music and swear like a wounded pirate at the computer. I'm tired of the internet. Nobody updates often enough, and nobody has anything interesting to say. I will smash it all. Frau Heather and her Überbreasts smash the Internet. Smash! Smash! Smash! Frau Heather is the King of Monsters.

To reset the Internet, stab yourself in the head.

Lots of shopping today, so I'm weary. I don't have the stamina for shopping any more, somehow. I bought presents for Abby, as well as my Van Morrison album for me.

I want to get my Tax Return done, but I'm missing one of my four group certificates, the one from the strange company which aimed to have people calling up from Korea wanting to improve their English by talking to Australian uni students. I stopped working for them because the boss had his daughter doing the rostering and she, for some reason, didn't like me, and so she stopped giving me shifts. So, they took tax out, but they didn't send me a group certificate. I called up a friend of mine who started working for them when I referred her, but she continued to get shifts. Apparently they eventually got some customers, but not enough. They've closed, or so I hear. So I have a mobile number for the manager, but when I called it, it had a bizarre voice mail message which hung up on me. It's not looking good, here.

Weary. I've had heaps of computer errors, and nothing I find on the net excites me. I think I'll read and have an early night. It's the last day of my filthy, filthy job tomorrow. It'll be good to be free, if only for a few weeks.

I did Saturday Scruples again.

Your son's Fifth Grade teacher is proud to be gay. He espouses gay family values in class. Do you protest to the principal?
I'm not really familiar with the meaning of the phrase "family values". It usually seems to be used to mean screwing over of people who don't come from a fifties-style family group. Of course, family values do not generally accept homosexuality, so it's hard for me to imagine 'gay family values'. If he's suggesting that my children should be gay, I think he needs his head read for trying to influence to sexual development of eleven-year-olds. I think that's the level of inappropriateness here, not whether or not he's gay.

As a joke, a co-worker sends anonymous love letters to another co-worker who takes them seriously. Everyone is enjoying the prank. Do you expose it?
I hate it when people do this, so I wouldn't be enjoying it. I'm usually the spoilsport who ruins crappy jokes like this. Yes, I'd tell the wronged party, and probably plot revenge with them, too.

Due to a mix-up the tax department fines you $500 for tax evasion. You're completely innocent but it'll cost $5000 to fight in court. Do you fight on principle?
If I had $5,000 to spare, I might consider fighting it on principle. More likely, though, I'd just bitch about it to everyone I know and take the $500 fine, and maybe see if I can make the $500 back through a scathing expose.

A good friend, let's call her Liza, kindly visited my blog yesterday, and suggested that my anger-at-britney-spears quote might have been a paraphrase of a quote about Marilyn Monroe or someone. I went kinda crazy. Sorry about that, Liza. (Names have been changed to protect my victims.)

I need a digital camera. I bought a cape on Wednesday. It's full-length deep red velvet with tiny golden swirls embroidered around the edge. The hood is lined with deep red brocade and it has a clasp at my throat. Of course, I couldn't wear this to work today, or the day before, so the only way I could have shown it off is to put a picture of it online, so I can gloat. (I am especially gloaty because it was a prototype, so it cost me $20, less than it would cost me to make.)

If I could have worn my cape to work today, I probably could have managed enthusiasm about going to work. Instead I had to settle for the surliness that comes from wearing my motorcycle boots with work pants.

The Original Animated Batman

Take the Cartoon Hero Quiz?.

And here's my Friday Five.

Where were you born?
I was born right here in Sydney.

If you still live there, where would you rather move to?
I don't know that I necessarily want to move. I like Sydney, but above all, I'm really poorly travelled (see below) so I don't know if I like anywhere better than here.

Where in the world do you feel the safest?
In Andrew's arms. Cheesy answer included in the interest of honesty.

Do you feel you are well-traveled?
I haven't travelled much, and that's something I'd like to change about my life. When I was a kid my family wasn't much into holidays, and when we did go away, it was to visit relatives. So the only family holiday I've been to (excluding trips to see cousins, etc.) was to go skiing in the Snowy Mountains. I was eight, and I was pretty crap at it. I remember being really nervous about setting off down the slope, and worried I'd vomit because I'd been carsick on the way there and that left a nasty shadow over the whole trip. Oh, and it got better: while trying to push my big sister off this odd swing made of a plank of wood, I managed to knock myself out. So, that pretty much took care of our last day there.

Where is the most interesting place you've been?
Even though I haven't travelled far, I go sightseeing. Sydney is a horridly popular tourist destination and while that bothers me sometimes, at other times it's great just to get swept up in it. I'll dress in my mysterious clothing and visit places I've never been before. I've struck up some fascinating conversations with people from various places - somehow, even in my mysterious clothes, I'm the person people ask for directions. My most valiant tourist-helping thing was waiting 20 minutes to get a taxi for a French woman at Darling Harbour during the Olympics. I have a lot of fun with that kind of stuff. My most recent holiday was in February of last year, when Andrew and I went to Coffs Harbour for a week. It was great. The weather there is just how I like it - it gets pretty hot, but sea breezes just keep rolling in. I suppose that's where I'd move, if I had to move. My answers may change, however, after I manage to go on my world tour. But I find it hard to imagine travelling far away from my friends and family.

I've been reading a fascinating article by Janis Ian about how online music-sharing benefits artists. I feel good about myself now. CDs have never been terribly high on my mental list of things to do with my money. I do buy CDs from time to time, and I think my CD purchase rate has actually increased since I've had access to mp3s. At the moment, I'm just talking myself into finally shelling out for the Van Morrison best-of I've been after for a couple of years. I have bought a few things in the meantime but somehow, whenever I see it around it's not quite the right time to buy it. For one thing, various stores often have it for $20 so I can't buy it for full-price. Then, when I do find it cheap, I'm invariably too poor to shell out to buy it. Of course, things have improved greatly in this regard since I began to save money. I rock.

I keep having to field calls from people wanting to know about the job. “Well,” I want to say, “the boss is a real creep. He has no respect for your personal life, and will criticize your eating habits, despite eating custard tarts for lunch himself. If you’re looking elegant wearing black, he’ll ask you if you’re on your way to a funeral – it’s his little joke but he’ll say that even if you’re wearing blue, he’s so blind. His writing is damn near intelligible, and he occasionally omits digits when he’s copying out a number. Did I mention you’d be working for a firm of accountants? Yes, so you can imagine how much fun you’ll have checking spreadsheets. So, the ad said good conditions in a professional office, did it? Well, that means you’ll be expected to dress like a lawyer despite being paid $9 an hour, and expected to carry garbage bins up and down stairs, all in this ‘professional’ attire. Oh, and the conditions? The space behind the receptionist’s desk is so narrow that you have to turn the chair to sit down. And then the creepy boss I told you about? He’ll come up and stand right behind your chair, in that tiny space, and watch what you’re doing. Well, after that happens a few times you won’t be wasting time with cleavage. It’ll be skivvies and blazers all the way.”

Written last night in Note Pad, while isp was being dumb:

Just now, I noticed a jaggy bit on the edge of one of my teeth. I suspect it's the edge of a filling that was put in there while I still had braces on, so they couldn't do too good a job of it. I never noticed the sharp edge until two hours ago, and of course I can't leave it alone now. I was bloody tired last night, so I didn't brush my teeth, and since it was my first poor dental hygiene night in months I feel like this is all my fault, and I have a cavity sprung up overnight. It doesn't hurt or anything, I just worry about my health.

I saw Scooby Doo today, and while it was quite meh, it afforded me my first big-screen glimpse of the Harry Potter trailer, which I've seen many a time in the comfort of my own home. It also had a fairly groovy soundtrack. I've been listening to "The Land of a Million Drums".

Alias wasn't on tonight. The i7 website tells me that there's another bloody episode of The Practice next week. I like the practice, but I've really been hanging out for Alias. In better news, The West Wing is finally up again, after something like a month of deprivation due to skanky sports coverage. After some time at TWOP I have ascertained that I have seen either the last, or the second last Alias episode of the season, so it makes sense that it's not on right now. I think.

I got my essays back today. Two of them - my one on Old English Hagiography and the other one for my honours streaming course, on the effects of nineteenth century increases in literacy upon literary history. I had a lot of fun with both of them (especially the literacy one) and I felt like I wrote great papers - I thought they were probably worth a distinction. This is a big deal for me - after years of procrastination and putting in the minimum effort possible, I've been handing in the proverbial blood, sweat and tears.

Anyway, I got good credit marks for both of them, which is a bit of a disappointment, but after handing them in I had noticed that there were parts of my topics that I had missed. Small, but important. I felt like a bit of an idiot about that. The thing is, I'm really quite starstruck by a lot of my professors. I read their articles in my preparation for the HSC (which is the set of exams you sit at the end of high school), they're impressively knowledgeable, and sometimes they possess that essence of academia which I find so intoxicating. So I can't bear the idea of my professors thinking ill of me. This, of course, plays into my perfectionism, but it's a bit of a motivator too. My favourite lecturer for one of my courses this semester was my tutor too, and a couple of times I said something insightful in tutorials and he pointed at me and said, "Yes! Exactly!" and it made my week.

Fortunately, this second essay wasn't marked by my favourite lecturer, and although I'm disappointed by the marks, the comments by the markers say nice things about my writing.

Why am I writing about this? I seem to be a wanker. Wank, wank, wank. This is one of my less endearing personal habits - lately, whenever anyone is throwing a tanty, although more often while roleplaying, if people are acting wanky, I'll say (quietly) "Wank, wank, wank!" Also, if someone says something I think is outrageously bullshit, I'll just say, "False." People still think that's funny, though, and I've been saying it for weeks, so I must be doing something right.

I really wanted to get this up before Alias at 8:30, but we've got stupid pre-paid internet because we're between isps, and every time I try to dial up it's engaged, or so it seems to me right now. Also Explorer keeps stuffing up, so this is the second time I've had to type this post. It's better this time, though. Swearing like a wounded pirate at the computer seems to stimulate the creative juices. So there you go.

In the paper yesterday, there was an article claiming that "nerds have finally become fashionable." Unfortunately the writer, a correspondent for a prominent science-fiction magazine, has missed several points. I'm going to write a somewhat snarky letter about this, and I'll put it up here, if I end up doing it. The problem is, I don't know quite where to start: many of his facts are blatantly wrong. "Unlike Spider-Man, Harry has no heroic disguise; he is happy to be a classic four-eyed geek. Even when his poor eyesight is magically restored (as was Spider-Man's), he still wears his glasses. He studies hard, befriending (and, in later books, romancing) his classmate Hermione, the ultimate girly swot. Yet for all of this, each new adventure is inevitably cool... whatever that means."

Now, let's see. Harry's eyesight is not magically restored. At least, it has not been in any of the Harry Potter books I've read, which is all four of them, many times. It could be that the writer has seen the film, and assumed that Hermione's "Oculus Repairo" spell, which she performs on Harry on the Hogwarts Express, fixed his eyesight, when in fact it clearly just repaired his glasses, which were previously held together with sticky-tape due to the Dursleys' lack of concern for Harry's wellbeing. This eyesight problem is highlighted in a later book (I suspect it's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban but I can't find my copy, so I can't be sure), when Harry is playing a Quidditch match in foul weather, and is unable to see because his glasses keep getting soaked, and taking them off isn't an option because he couldn't see at all, then. I'll find the quote soon.

As to the claim that he romances Hermione, I think that Mr. Juddery must have been reading a different set of books to me, or perhaps he as access to the not yet published books? As it happens, there are rumours about Harry and Hermione, but it's just one of those standard male-female friendship things. I suffered the same ones myself. In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Harry is clearly after Cho Chang, while there are suggestions of something going on between Ron and Hermione, or at least, interest on Ron's part.

And while the adventures that Harry, Ron and Hermione have are intrinsically cool to the reader, this does not in any way imply Harry's coolness within the books. He is famous, but certainly not universally liked. However, his popularity within Gryffindor means that he cannot be labelled as the traditional nerd-outcast.

The article's writer seems to have a tenuous hold on what 'coolness' is, apparently linking it with rebellion and crime. However, he has no idea what geekiness entails. "For every Eminem, however, there is an equally cool Britney Spears, marketed as sweet and well-behaved." Hello! Have you seen the clips for "Oops! I did it again"? Sure, she claims to be saving her virginity but it's a bit of an "I'm so young and virginal, but if you're clever you might be able to trick me into sleeping with you" ethos. (I think that's a paraphrase of an angry article in Honi Soit, Sydney University's student newspaper.) So that's just a twist of the bimbo thing, a tease, using her sexuality (latent as she claims it is). This places her firmly in the 'rebel' camp, if a lack of "clean living" is anything to go by.

So what makes a rebel cool, and anthing else 'geeky'? Britney Spears claims to be virginal, but that is so *not* the geeky thing.

Blah. More work is needed.

Gliché has been accepted. I rock.

Buzz buzz, I am Coffee flavoured. I am popular in the workplace, even though I am often bitter. I am energetic to the point of being frenetic; buzz buzz, out of my way. I tend to overwork myself and need periods of recovery time. What Flavour Are You?

No Friday Five this week, so I'm doing Saturday Scruples. I wish to assert that this is not because I have nothing original to write, but because I like writing about things that it doesn't occur to me to write about. That's quite an idiom there. Anyway, here they are.

A disgruntled worker is brandishing an automatic weapon. You're near a door. If you try to warn others you may not escape. Do you save yourself?
Yes. Here is my reasoning. My presence or absence in that situation doesn't help anyone. If I warned the others, my yell would quite likely make the disgruntled guy lose it, and cause more lives lost. It's quite possible that he just wanted to steal money or scare people, but often plans get out of hand that way, and I think my yelling could be the trigger. If, however, I slip out unnoticed, I can call the police who would send in a negotiation team and diffuse the situation.

You're buying a house from a sweet old lady. Her price is well below market value. Do you tell her?
This one would depend a lot on why she was selling the house and why I was buying it. If I loved the house, and had vast amounts of money to spend, I might let her know. If I knew she had a bedbound husband to take care of, and she was selling the house to pay for it, I might tell her. By and large, however, I think I wouldn't tell her, so much as offer to pay a little more. I suppose that would come across oddly. I would have trouble in this situation, especially since market values in Sydney are so high, and I don't know much about what houses are worth. So if it was glaring, like if she was selling a flashy big house in a good location for $100K, I'd ask her why she chose that price, and then decide. Too hard, this one.

Your five-year-old is angry and kicks you in the shins. Do you administer a sound spanking?
No, I don't. I think that would be hypocritical in the extreme - why would me spanking the child be okay, when the child kicking me wasn't? I think it's ridiculous to justify hitting a child as discipline, when it doesn't teach the child not to behave a certain way, it just teaches them to be scared of you, and that hitting people smaller than you is okay.

After reading Claire's bitch about our computer errors, which she referred to as 'gliches', pronounced 'glitches', I have coined a new word: gliché. For example, "That kernel32 error is getting to be such a gliché." The word combines 'glitch' and 'cliché'. Very exciting. I submitted it to my beloved pseudodictionary and I'm just hoping they'll accept it. I haven't added jampy yet, because I want to make sure I have the definition right. The problem is, I co-coined it with Andrew, and we have described many things as jampy, for example baby cows and puppies, which don't fit the current definition, which is being excited and/or anxious. Perhaps we need to use another word, like 'leapy' or something, for things which are joyfully jumpy.

Which of the Disney Princesses are you?

Back from my op-shopping expedition. I got three pairs of very comfy pants, all of which are presentable enough to wear out of the house. I also got a very, very skanky t-shirt to wear to bed. It says, "Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go to everywhere." I don't know how to go to everywhere, myself, seeing as "everywhere" doesn't pin down a location, and I need co-ordinates to be able to teleport there. But it looks comfy for bed.

My favourite thing I got is a Snow White backpack. Very hard to describe. Instead of opening at the top like a normal backpack, this one is shaped like a box, and it opens at the side, with a zipper that goes around three sides of the side. So, when it's on my back, the opening is at my right shoulder, I'd have to take it off to open it, and the whole side of the bag zips open. It's got a little shelf inside, so you can put your shoes on it, or whatever, and it flaps down or is secured with big press studs. I think that explains it. I've been looking everywhere for a picture of one, but nobody seems to have them. I'm plotting to buy a digital camera with my tax return money, whenever I can get my stupid group certificates.

See, this is bad. I'm bored, and now I'm back to the quiz sickness. *sulk*

Lately I've been wishing for some travel. And, surprisingly, I don't care where I go. I just want to have that focus that comes with being locked in a moving vehicle for hours and hours. I feel like I get a good kind of thinking done then. When Andrew and I went to Coffs Harbour, we were on a train for a bit over nine hours, if memory serves. And I really like that. The travel is relaxing. There's no pressure to get things done, and few distractions, even on a full train with a broken tray-table. I think it's the good kind of bored, like watching TV at Andrew's place while he's at work is the good kind of alone.

I think I'm online too much. I mean, I like the amount I'm online, but most of my up-time lately has been spent reading blogs, and just about everyone seems to be in a bit of a rut at the moment. Or else, since I was on last night, nobody has gotten home from work yet. It seems that time zones are having a negative impact on my life. It's never really happened before.

Dragging myself to work has been very, very difficult indeed. On Thursday morning, I was able to motivate myself with the idea of getting paid. I get paid in cash so it's more of a motivator than for most people. Everything is above board though, I pay tax and the whole bit. How screwed is this: I'm working for a firm of accountants and they haven't managed to get my group certificate out yet, whereas two of my former employers, a government department and a market research firm, have. Blah.

On Friday, I was only able to motivate myself with the idea that it was Friday. It was a pretty slow day, though: my boss was out most of the day, as with Thursday, but this time he came back at 4:50 (I get off at 5pm) and demanded to know if there were any messages, and wanted to see my progress with some financial statements I'd been preparing. So I turned my computer back on, printed them out and did the mail merge (he demands to check the mail before it goes in the envelopes, so he can see if there are two he can jam in together to save 45c). So, of course, I went about doing the rest, and at 5:01 he came out and approved the mail, and asked me to take it. It takes time to fold and stamp letters, not as much as it seemed at that moment, perhaps, but time that he's getting for free. Stupid boss man has told me that he doesn't like me staying past 5pm, and he has made it perfectly clear that he won't pay me for working past 5pm, so I said that I didn't have time. I walked home faster than ever before, keen to get away from my end-of-week prison. I'm writing oddly today. I think it's because I've been trying to solve my boredom by finding more blogs, and some of them have been really, really shab. So there you go. I was actually really looking forward to doing the friday five, I had lots of fun doing it last week but, as at 1am Saturday my time, it's not up. *pouty face*

I'm jonesin for a Choo-Choo Bar. Does anyone know where I could buy one? They're liquorice toffee, of a type much like Redskins, and they're so black they're almost blue. Guaranteed to rip that filling out of my front tooth.

I was thinking about declaring today Kitty Day, largely because I just found the *cough* surprising Bonsai Kitten. I decided not to, however, when I explored it a bit more - sure, it's a joke, but it scares me all the same. So I suppose I shouldn't be linking to it, except that I wanted to share the horror. Maybe I enjoy feeling uncomfortable. Meh. Anyway, the cure for all that is ratemykitten.com. I like kittens!

I'm getting enthusiastic about the coming semester. I came across this by accident, but it has a lot of the stuff I love about the evolution and interrelation of languages. So now I'm jampy to do linguistics again. If you don't know anything about the evolution of languages, check it out. It might just save you the embarrassment of describing English as a Romance language.

Remember I was talking about how great it was to have a car again, and how I was looking forward to shopping like normal people? (My permalinks aren't working, so if you don't remember, you'll have to scroll down to the end of my post from Monday. You are officially served with incentive to visit often.)

In actual fact, it ended up being shopping like crazy people who had never seen a supermarket before. I checked the dates. We've been without a car since May last year, and all this time we've just been having whatever groceries people can carry home. We were suddenly confronted with a giant supermarket, and in fact we went to one that we couldn't reach by public transport, just for the deliciousness of being able to get there. We ended up getting seven different types of bread, and so many frozen foods! We have hash browns in the oven at the moment. Yum.

So, after all that last night, it turns out that slightly later last night, someone smashed the triangle window of the car. They seem to have rummaged around in the glovebox after discovering the Club Lock. Heh heh heh. It's a shitter, though. We have a garage but the ramp isn't level, so if you drive a little car like ours in, there are worrying engine-scraping noises. I worry that the gearbox will fall out. My car anatomy knowledge is appalling, but I have a suspicion that the gearbox isn't the bit down there. I know where the axles are, I'm doing well.

So, until the real estate agents get their arses in gear and get someone out to fix the ramp, our car will still be on the street, with no window. It's sealed up with plastic now, but obviously very vulnerable. Mum called them yet again today, to remind them to get a tradesperson out here, and told them that the car had been broken into, and therefore she wished to get it off the street, and of course their response was to act like she was a total moron, and ask if she had reported it to the police. Real estate agents suck.

And here's more proof: At Andrew's house, the door of the bathroom has been hanging for months. You know, just scraping, so you have to lift it to open or close it, as if the hinges are slopey. For the past few weeks, the door has been completely unattached to the doorjamb. The screws have come out because the wood of the frame is rotten, because the bathroom is inadequately ventilated and drained. They've called about it time and again, and last Monday when they paid the rent, they were informed by the agent that she had simply forgotten about it. No further action has been taken on the agent's part. It turns out that the lease ran out recently, and it seems like the agents are putting off doing anything about it. Andrew and his housemates would be foolish to sign another lease with these problems, though - they have more power over the situation now, it seems to me, than if they sign the lease, which is effectively agreeing to the condition it's in. Andrew has been complaining about the rising damp in his room - the side passage has a higher level than the foundations of the house, so it's sort of more falling damp. Apparently it's been a problem for years, and once in a while they come in and paint over it. Painting over it with waterproof paint apparently never occurred to them, and when I suggested it to the bizarre hairy-nosed repairman when he came to fix one of the snapped floorboards, he looked at me in a puzzled manner, and told Andrew to keep the windows open. We had both windows and the door opened most of the summer, and the mould spreading over his wall got worse. And now it's winter, and it's too damn cold. It pisses me off. Apologies to Andrew and his housemates if I've got any of the facts wrong. I've resisted the temptation to have a damning link to the Agent's site.

I changed my title: do you like it? I came to realise that, while I thought 'webshite' was witty and original, it was used by many others who used it rather differently.

I'm BlogChalked. So here's some stuff I have to post. Google! DayPop! This is my blogchalk: English, Australia, Sydney, New South Wales, Heather, Female, 16-20! So there you go.

Well, I saw Ghost World with Abby today. Of course, towards the end of the film, sirens started blaring, and it went from the steady honk-honk-honk of the firedrill noise to the screechy crazily pitched wail, and then finally, a very serious voice telling us to evacuate as directed. The whole time, we were looking around, trying to figure out what was going on, and finally, heading up to the doors to actually evacuate. It's odd how much we assume that sirens mean a drill. A bit of a 'boy who cried wolf' effect, I suppose. It seems that nobody paid any attention until the film stopped.

So, as soon as Abby got out the door, a Dendy employee came in and told us to sit back down while they figured out what was going on. This advice concerned me somewhat... After a few more moments of sitting in the semi-dark with sirens wailing, we were informed that there was a fire, and we should go out and wait in the foyer. We did, and it was kind of crowded, so we went for a wander up King Street, which was probably a no-no, since they like to keep track of people when there's an evacuation. We bought some icy water, went back, watched the firemen. When they were all done, we were given the option of watching the film (in the slightly smokey cinema) from the point at which the interruption occurred, or come back later and see it again, for free. We didn't want to spend another day on it, so we went back in. Of course, the siren started wailing again, but stopped quickly amid widespread groaning, and the film went on.

It's interesting, I don't think I liked the film that much. I really wanted to like it, and it was interesting, but I feel untouched by it. I usually like films. I usually feel like they've made a difference to my life. What I did like (spoiler coming, a tiny bit) was that, somewhere throughout the film, to me, Seymour became the protagonist, and Enid, who is nominally the main character, slipped from my empathy. She was going off to do something, we didn't know what. But Seymour was getting his life together, and somehow, that was what mattered. So I'll ponder that for a while. If you see it, let me know what you think of Ghost World.

Amazon recommends me Robert Ludlum's The Sigma Protocol because I told them I liked Harry Potter books. According to the Amazon.com review, "Robert Ludlum's trademark skills of intricate plotting, breakneck pacing, and high-wire drama are all on display in this gripping thriller." Are they recommending this novel to kids everywhere?

And some news: pseudodictionary.com, which I love, includes the word jamp, although it's defined there was past tense of the word 'jump'. I think probably the most important part of speech of my notion of jampiness is the adjective. Such as, "Heather, you're looking awfully jampy today" or "I'm so jampy about seeing Ghost World tomorrow!" If you don't know this, jamping is a state of nervous or excited anticipation. The history is this: Andrew and I went to Coffs Harbour for a holiday last year. Andrew bought me some delightfully poorly translated stickers, made in Thailand from memory, on which are frogs which say "Jamp!" This is clearly related to the word 'jump' but has more emotional meaning: I often bounce on the balls of my feet when I'm excited. It's not jumping, because my feet don't leave the ground, but it denotes a combination of physical and emotional states. So, I think my definition would be something like:

Jampy (adj): A state of nervous or excited anticipation, in which one bounces up and down on the balls of one's feet.

I'll think about it for a few days, before I submit it. If I find any of you (yeah, that means all six of you) have gone behind my back and coined it, I shall be most upset.

That's true about me seeing Ghost World, by the way. I want to read the comics, too.

And now I'm doing what everyone else is doing. I first came across it here, but you can follow the links backwards for ages. These are just my favourites, mind, if you want to see what else they came up with (there were some dirty ones) you can type "Heather is" into Google.

Heather is a midsummer tree
Heather is beautiful
Heather is somewhat nifty
Heather is the mole
Heather is the one in black kissing the air
Heather is part of who I am and I don't want her to leave anymore
Heather is planning to take time off when the baby arrives
Heather is standing out of camera range, talking to Clifford about the sketch
Heather is right... but here is some more evidence
Heather is also quick to bring up her studies in applied anthropology
Heather is the first bearded collie my husband, Dick, and I owned
Heather is now a definite Hollywood star
Heather is in Grandma's garden here, digging up dirt perhaps
Heather is the Greatest
Heather is standing by to help you with your order of her!

Amarok directed me to the Geek Issues Quote Database, which I am also rather enamoured of.

Mosh Pit!

And a transcript of my favourite episode of Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

Still obsessing about pseudodictionary.com, these are great words:
crapplique
fazmic
wanklore
frooky

And I especially love "er" factor. I know a girl who has it so bad. Anything I say, she has to one-up me, although it often becomes clear that she has no idea what I'm talking about, so her attempts seem even more pathetic. There's my rage for tonight (this morning) - it's 3am, I should go to bed!

Moore Park SupaCenta = Hotel California
Yesterday, Andrew and I went to Ikea. It was mostly for fun, because I'm mildly obsessed with Ikea and we felt like getting out of the house. We weren't buying a couch or anything. And thus begins our tale of woe.

At about 1pm, I called the Transport Infoline to find out how to get there. The chicky on the phone gave us some travel plans that made no sense, (a journey with four legs, when two would do!) then finally told us to catch the 303 bus in the city and, after confirming that we were, in fact, travelling the same day, assured me that there were four buses per hour: one at two minutes past the hour, and every fifteen minutes after that. I thanked her for her time, then hung up.

So, we got ready, got the bus into the city, and had some lunch before making our way to the bus stop where, looking at the timetable, we discovered that the 303 bus runs only once an hour on sunday, and we would have to wait half an hour for the next one, which we did. The driver, when the bus finally did come, was extremely vague about how many sections it was to Moore Park, and whether Andrew's weekly pass was valid there. He was geekish to the extent of seeming uncomfortable talking to people, and gave me the impression that he had probably taken the job just to pay for his cable bills.

After one of those nerve-racking unfamiliar bus rides, we got to the SupaCenta (yes, I loathe the commercial spelling). The bus stop was right outside the entrance, but we couldn't see where the other stop was, the one we'd need to go to to get home. So, we checked Ikea's opening hours, then went to find the bus stop, our thinking being that if buses to Moore Park were once an hour on Sundays, they might well be even less frequent in the evenings, or not run after 5:30 pm, when Ikea closed at 6pm. It was 4:10 or so by this stage, so we embarked upon a walk around the Centa which, it turns out, is set in Centennial Parklands. I normally enjoy a good walk, but we'd been out partying the night before, so I was tired, and this was an exceptionally large block - even at our cracking pace it took 50 minutes to get us back to the entrance.

Adding insult to the injury was the knowledge acquired near the end of the walk, when we realised that the bus stop was merely concealed by trees and a bend in the road. It turns out that they just put bus stops further apart on that side of town. Either way, you understand my title here - you can NEVER leave. I suppose that makes it the pinnacle of the sort of retail excellence that leads HMV Sydney Mid City Store to have an escalator on the way down, but not up. I suppose also, they're mostly catering to people with cars. A pain in the arse, anyway.

On a side note, due to a delightful family trickle-down effect, my household (well, my mum) is now in possession of a car. We've been without one since the yellow shitheap finally wound down, and the mechanics deemed it not worth fixing and, unlike the aforementioned shitheap station wagon, this one is small enough to fit in the garage, and perhaps even small enough for me to learn to drive. All these months, we've been getting by on bits and pieces of groceries, and I can't wait to shop like normal people!

And I digress: Does anyone else think that the building at the left hand side of the Centennial Parklands page looks like the planetarium in Myst? (You can see the Planetarium here. It's a bit of a dodgy link, though, the planetarium is the second shot from the bottom of the page.) Who wants to buy me Exile? It's on my wishlist.

I didn't post on the weekend. I feel oddly guilty about this. I'll have a rant coming on, about my adventures on the weekend, but it'll take a while.

While I'm here:

An entirely different perspective on one of the British-backpacker-in-the-outback woes (via tooaskew)

Big Kev's Goo Remover may remove goo, but it reeks. Incredibly strong orange smell emanating from sister's room. *retch* (Incidentally, if you feel like being offended, he has Kevettes)

Today I did the Friday Five.

1. Where are you right now? Right now I'm at home in my pyjamas, very comfy thank you.

2. What have you lost recently? I lost my keys for a week, they were in the funky inside breast pocket of my newish black woolly jacket. (Hooray for great pockets in men's clothing!) I lost my obsessive moisturiser for a week, too, and accused Claire of absentmindedly stealing it. Fortunately, she was absent when I accused her, so I didn't get in trouble when I found it in my handbag this morning.

3. What was the first CD you ever purchased? Does that embarrass you now?I think it was some kind of very dodgy compilation, and I bought it specifically because it had that very dodgy Simpsons song, "Do the Bartman" or some such. The first cassette I bought myself was this guy called Joseph Cavaleri or something like that, it was the thing to do at the time. I was eight, from memory, and I'm somewhat sheepish about that, too.

4. What is your favorite kind of writing pen? I am pretty obsessive about this. My pens have to be black, and I get them in bulk so that I'm never without them. The best are Uniball II, which are rollerballs, but not too scratchy. I love the word 'rollerball' but I find that rollerball pens are often too fine for my handwriting, and I end up leaving deep gouges in the page, because I lean so hard. I first met Uniballs when I was at a temp job, but they're too expensive for me to regularly buy boxes of them. The other good kind are Black Kilometrico Medium Point, which are far more affordable, have a delightfully smudgy, crazed look when I write with them. I do lean very hard with Kilometricos (Kilometricoes?), but I like the way the pages go wiggly and make a cool rustly noise, which makes me feel proud that I've written so much, and been so excited about writing it that I didn't take care to limit my pressure.

5. What is your favorite ice cream flavor? The absolute best is Connoisseur Cookie Cream Commotion. But sometimes that's a bit rich, and I just want creamy vanilla, which is very nice to eat in the bath. The most recent supermarket ice cream I purchased (albeit jointly) was Blue Ribbon Carnival, in Chocolush. I love the (non-)word Chocolush. The ice cream was very nice too.

Sometimes, when I'm really dreading something, usually a confrontation, things get weird. My heart beats fast, and louder than I though possible. My internal organs feel heavy and dark, seem to shut down, and there is an odd hot pulsing on either side of my lower spin, which I visualise as bright pink. I have no idea what is there, but it really terrifies me: it seems as if some vital organ has just packed it in because I'm nervous.

I find my limbs conspire, freeze up, in order to keep me from standing up, walking through the office, or whatever it is that will bring me to the dreaded confrontation. When I finally manage to stand, in my bewildered state, I can only wonder what force it is that drives me. Barely able to see through a haze of nerves by the time I reach the office, I mumble through the words I have been preparing all day, each incantation of which brought with it a jolt to the stomach, as I imagined having to deliver them.

So, I gave my notice yesterday. My boss handled the news better than I expected. "These things happen," he said, "we'll advertise." He looked scared, though, and I suspect my anxiety may have been visible. Possibly, he thought I looked deranged and ready to cosh him over the head with a tape dispenser.

In any case, I was surprised by how nice he was. He came out half an hour later to ask if I had any suggestions on how to improve the place. (I'm currently wondering how to manage this, wondering if my bitter suggestions will decrease my chances of getting a good reference.)

So, my boss was being nice to me. This is unprecedented. Was it possible that he had somehow sympathised with me in my hour of horror?

Then, this afternoon, while flicking idly through my desk diary, looking at the quotes (an amazing number of which are nastily misogynistic!) I came across this quote:

"It's amazing how nice people are to you when they know you're going away." - MICHEL ARLEN

I finish my job on the 22nd of July. Anybody got a job for me? I'm nice on the phone, reliable, conscientious, and I love helping people get what they need. Just no cold-calling, and I'd rather not have to stand for twelve hours at a stretch. Oh, and I'm a student, so the job would have to be stable, yet flexible. Just like me. *cough*

"The lesson today is how to die..."

Which Strange Little Girl would you be?

This quiz made while Angel was procrastinating her ass off.

I know, I haven't been posting much lately. But don't worry, I'm not reverting to ultra-quizzy-no-meaningful-stuff-mode. It's just that some stuff's happened lately, and I'm going to share some of my journal. It just needs a little preparation, that's all.

My hands are so cold, I have difficulty typing. Hello, this is Australia! Enough with the horrible weather! I've taken to keeping this crocheted rug by the computer, to warm me all these cold nights.

I got my new journal on Monday. I decided to go with the "Write, bitch!" one. No doubt it will please Margot to imagine me wearing a beanie as I wrote that.

I tried to update yesterday, and change my iMood, but I was doing it at the library, where they have Netscape, and of course it was being difficult. Please, if anyone reading this is using Netscape, change browsers now. Or, failing that, take my word for it, my site makes sense. It's almost pretty, if you like purple.

People have been reading my blog, which is nice, but it's been limiting my conversational abilities. I go to tell people something exciting, and they already know.

I'm going to visit a friend today, to sit around and watch Pride and Prejudice on DVD. I suppose I shouldn't reveal her identity, in case she doesn't want others to know of her obsession. Heaven knows, I've given up myself. People seem to know everything about me: the fanfic, the obsessions. Maybe I'll make a list.

I did a 1500 Question Purity Test(!) I am 60.6% pure.

However, I am clearly much weirder than that: I went here, and it turns out my compatability with Oliver Wood is 97%. With Andrew, I couldn't get a compatability higher than 77%. I'm used to that, though: every compatability test, especially the zodiac ones, say we're a match made in hell, because he's a Gemini and I'm a Capricorn. It became a bit of a running joke, if we went into a bookshop we'd have a look for a dodgy "Your Love by the Stars" book and find out what prophecy of doom they had for us. We did manage to find one that said that if we stuck together for a month we'd be together for life, so that was pretty good.

Congratulate me, I've been posting less than one online test per day this week. I may be on the road to recovery.