existentialism on christmas night

Do you ever get so horrified by your meaningless and repetitive existence as to question whether survival really has any meaning? If you do, you will almost invariably come to the conclusion either that your life exists solely to serve others (be they real people or imaginary sky people) or that your life is driven by the biological need to fuck. Of course at this point your mind diverts into two streams of consciousness, one considering the literary/musical allusions and poor jokes available from such a diatribe, the other considering this more likely biological reason for existence. The trouble is that any consideration of fucking invariably leads you to a consideration of whether anyone would ever fuck you and why they might. All of a sudden about 90% of your life is pointless. Even trying hard you couldn't muster the attractiveness of sci-fi/fantasy actors, so why bother when it comes to them so easily. It's not just actors, of course. You have school-mates, work-mates and casual acquaintances who are all much better at being eye-candy. So you have to find some other way to be fuckable. Don't you see? You're at an evolutionary disadvantage here! And again it's easiest to die out. Suicide doesn't seem like a good idea, of course. It's really not. You need to consider high-order functions of human existence. Every person has an important place. So rather than entering the market for a relationship, don't bother. Consider yourself a tool of society, a maintainer of the social contract. Someone useful in ensuring that others can fulfil their biological needs. You are ancillary staff to the world. You hate the word fuck too, of course, because you need to believe in the value of this higher order. That perhaps the non-biological parts of human existence will lead to fucking that you can call love. But here fucking is appropriate - the connotation is clear. A purely physical act culminating and ending with orgasm. Pity or payment seem to be your best bets for sex. All this bullshit about love and perfection is just that. You start to believe in the words of those horrible Frenchmen who write books with names like The Fall. As the horror of the meaningless of your life sinks in you consider the idea of happiness. It's really not worth it to try and find happiness when at such a disadvantage. It's far too much work. So you resign yourself to a life of shallow, dull servitude. Occasionally you will break and rant and scream your unhappiness to the ether but then you sigh and relax and go back to ensuring those who never had to work for their mighty positions will never have to.

And by you, I mean me.

looking back

So, it's nearly Christmas. I'm thinking of writing a self-Annual Report. But that's probably a lot more effort than I have time to do.

I think I should pay more attention to the reasons why people do things.

I want to say more but I really can't. I'm watching Dinosaurs.

december

So, it's December apparently?

There are lots of Christmas ads. They make me a bit upset that I don't celebrate Christmas. But the two - three? - Christmas celebrations I've been to haven't quite been what is depicted on TV.

So yeah, I dunno. I just think it's about time I blog again.

New Leadership. Fresh Ideas

Kevin Rudd won convincingly. This is no surprise. I don't really care any more. There are a few things that will change (Work Choices, Freedom of Information, parliamentary terms (hopefully)) but in reality it'll be the same complaints for the next three years.

The more interesting thing I did today is this:

This is about a Human Rights Act, specifically in Tasmania, though it could be generalised nationally.

In October the Tasmanian Law Reform Commission released their Final Report #10 on a Charter of Human Rights for Tasmania. The model is quite good in most respects. It is similar to the New Matilda Act in that it is a piece of ordinary legislation.

The proposed Charter would recognise the superiority of Parliament to specifically exclude a piece of primary legislation from compatibility with the Charter[1]. It would, however, allow the Supreme Court to declare any executive action or subordinate legislation to be incompatible, resulting in that action or rule being invalidated.

The inconsistency, as I see it, is that in Australia (and especially in Tasmania) the Parliament is controlled by the executive. The Cabinet in Tasmania can rule the party caucus (8 of 13 members in the HoA) and a backbench revolt in Federal politics is beyond imagining[2].

So we recognise that the executive needs to be controlled but give the power to do anything to a body controlled by them? It is absurd.

If the executive were separate from the legislature (something for which I have long argued[3]) then this would indeed be appropriate. But as long as Parliament is a tool of the executive, it should not have the power to exclude the applicability of human rights.

The report makes for interesting reading, or even if you're not up for that, just check out the summary and recommendations.

[1] Subordinate legislation could be enabled by an Act of Parliament (i.e. primary legislation) and primary legislation ruled not compatible by the Supreme Court would become inactive after seven months if not affirmed by Parliament.

[2] Petro Georgio is the exception that proves the rule here.

[3] I've been saying it for at least a month now ;).

the trouble with romantic comedies

So I'm not sure if I posted this or not, but one of the reasons I want a girlfriend is to be able to do those good-guy things you get to do as a significant other. Like sitting in the rain waiting for someone to forgive you, or getting them just the right present... The "awww" stuff from movies.

The trouble with all that stuff is it's kinda creepy most of the time. "I'll never stop asking you out until you go out with me" - that's stalker behaviour. Or the famous first date in Hitch - I'll just call you, despite that you didn't give me your number, then I'll look up detailed genealogical information about you. It's a bit weird. I'd never do that. I'd be way too scared - so I guess I'll sit here and rot in the damp.

garden state

This movie is fantastic, really. It makes me want to move to New Jersey. And it's incredible. It is just incredible.

Meeting people is all about finding key questions. Just those few questions that you can ask someone and it will get them to tell you those key things that define people. But they won't tell you that voluntarily, you have to push the button - you have to ask them.

There are people I know - and who I know quite well - to whom I have never asked these questions, for whom I've never found those questions. People I know very well. And maybe I got those questions once but I haven't found a new ones recently. It's troublesome.

I love this movie. And the soundtrack. And Zach Braff.

ignore this post

Depression has hit.

I don't want sympathy; I don't want anything. I want regular fucking nothing.

I hate the use of "proper grammar" with terms like "lol". It's not "Lol" at the beginning of a sentence. It's a different dialect, doing that would be stupid.

I saw a brochure in my car and my thought wasn't "wow I was a candidate" (as it had been before tonight) but "fuck that was a massive waste of time, money and effort, and would be even if I did get in".

But now I'm pot committed I have to run again.

Fuck.

not having a girlfriend

Pros:
- Nobody to complain if you decide today might not be a day for pants
- Nobody concerned for your health if you decide today might not be a day for vitamins
- Nobody asking you what's wrong if you decide today might be a day for DVDs and silence
- You don't need permission to read until 4am
- Nobody bugging you for sexual contact when you're really not in the mood (e.g. it's 3am and you're at the dénouement)

Cons:
- Nobody to hug
- Nobody concerned for your health
- Nobody to bug for sexual contact when it's 3am and you really want a dénouement
- You don't have encouragement to go out
- Nobody with whom you can giggle about xkcd 335

PS: Linky to an abandoned blog that used to belong to TLC, just to appease her ;).

life (with soundtrack by zach braff)

There's a soundtrack because my car has a CD player. And the soundtrack fits because it's summer.

I love summer. It always reminds me of the summer of 69[1]. I flipped burgers all summer just to be able to buy an eight-track. It was great. All I did was party and get laid.[2] I was free. Not in the not-in-prison sense, not in the doesn't-cost-anything sense, but in the sense that hippies and philosophers talk about freedom. I had literally no obligations - no work, no school, no volunteering. Nothing but friends and time to fuck around. The only time in my whole life where I will be so free. Three months.

One might say I wasted that time - youth, as they say, wasted on the young. It wasn't waste. It was fantastic. And every summer I remember it pensively[3]. I wouldn't trade that time for the world. I would change some things about it, I reckon. But I don't know. There's nothing I really want to change before *tries to think*. Well, moving was a bad idea, so do I change that decision by deciding not to move? Or do I move and not decide to return? It's tough.[6]

I guess the primary point of this entry is to say yay I'm happy.[7]

1. This is the first of many pop culture references in this post that will reduce its accuracy but make me kool with a capital K. I'm really referring to the summer of 2004-5.


2. Again, I didn't get laid and I certainly didn't flip burgers. Hell, I didn't even flip pancakes. Pancake flipping is a winter-while-stoned sport for me.


3. Deep in thought, with a hint of melancholy, as I taught my SOSE[4] teacher in grade eight.


4. Don't you think it's weird that the "Of" in SOSE gets a capital but neither "and" nor "the" do? I don't suppose it's easy to pronounce SOSAE, SOSTE or SOSATE. Although really I could pronounce any of them. Where is equality for the little words? They're just as important as the big ones![5]


5. This is also entirely untrue. English only carries an entropy of about 3 bits per letter. We don't need the little words at all - certainly not "and" or "the" - and we can miss about 1/3 of the big words. If we're strategic.


6. I could actually pinpoint a few other things, probably even a time (if I tried hard enough, and went back over my notes) after which decisions started to be bad. But maybe that's not a share thing - it'd require SOOO much explanation. I'm kinda glad that I have the black books though, so I can know this myself.


7. Also to mock TLC's use of footnotes.[8]


8. Don't get me wrong, I love footnotes. It's just also funny to mock them.

dreams

I have very strange dreams. Last night there were two:

1. I had some sort of STI. That was the entire dream - I was diagnosed with... something. Nothing really bad (AIDS, herpes) but something curable. Not chlamydia... but something bacterial. No physical signs. Anyway, this is probably way too much detail.

2. I was going away, went out the night before, had a drink so couldn't get home. And I wasn't packed. And then I realised my passport might be expired. I woke up from this one and desperately tried to find my passport for ten minutes before realising that I couldn't figure out where I was going and maybe that was because I wasn't going anywhere.

But I do now know that my passports don't start to expire until May 2016.

The mind is strange.

a tale of woe

So my brochure contains (at least) two errors. And one poor colour combination that makes a page hard to read.

Shit shit shit.

It says I live in Kingston. I don't. I'm one of three candidates that doesn't (of fourteen candidates total). I should be playing up the fact that the municipality doesn't begin and end with the regional centre. But no, I'm a Kingstonite. Fuck.

And it's missing an apostrophe. You know how much that pisses me off.

It's been printed (8,000 copies) and gone to the distributors. It'll be in letterboxes on Tuesday/Wednesday next week (7,540 of them).

Fuck.

The thing that really annoys me is that I should have known. I didn't properly proofread; hell, I didn't properly read. I just trusted Luke (campaign manager) to get it right.

I'm not putting my heart and soul into this. How can I expect to win then? And if I don't win, what is this? It's a very expensive ego stroking exercise, apparently.

Fuck. (it really shows the diversity of the word)

:(

I've seen it before but Scrubs 0314 still makes me cry.

my "morning" in less than 160 characters

i'm like merlin xkcd270. dream last night of dom-sub in abstract and watched secretary after waking. maggie gyllenhaal is hot, as is young spader. does he only play chauvinistic lawyers?

Except he's not chauvinistic at all. He's loving. That's the thing. I've expounded on this before, kind of.

I also discovered - or refined, in my mind - the difference between erotica and pornography. It's not just redeeming social importance, though I ignore that sort of question anyway. Pornography brings to mind something uninspiring, something almost bland. Pornography, it seems to me, is about exposure, visible flesh, showing absolutely and in detail the physical act and attributes. Without doubt that can be arousing, but that's not erotic. Hence the delineation I give: it's about exposure. Things which are erotic don't require exposed breasts - or anything else. Erotica plays on sexuality by hinting and suggesting but leaving the real work to the viewer. It's anticipation, not release, which is most scintillating. It's arguably intimacy as well, but that's more a question of what's arousing than what's erotic.

You know, I may be the only person in the world who's main thoughts on pornography, arousal, erotica, sadomasochism and bondage are about the semantics of each.

needing reassurance

So you know that really awkward feeling when you ask someone out and you know with 100% certainty that they're going to say no but you have to ask because you've been pressured by your friends and they're expecting you to do this?

Doorknocking is a little bit like that. Going up to people, confronting them and telling them you want to use their lawn for a sign, or you want them to use this six-times-in-two-years opportunity to vote for you. It's awkward. It's disappointing. And rejection fucking hurts.

I don't know why I'm in this business.

In other news, I want to sing love songs to someone. Nobody in particular, but I need someone to whom I can sing these songs. I wouldn't mind a hug either.

i give up

Not on anything in particular, just generally.

Actually, yes on something in particular. In socialising. I suck at it. You would not believe how much I suck at it even if I told you. The level of suckage is so great that both Hoovers would be jealous. Man, that's a subtle joke, and I'm not sure I even get it.

Like, Hoover as in vacuum cleaner manufacturer, and J Edgar Hoover who was gay (or anti-gay-so-talked-about-as-gay, or something). Pretty funny.

Anyway, the point is I can't talk to people and I'm just resentful when people talk to me because I hate being pitied. Also I inevitably either spout shit about myself or get stuck really early on without anything relevant to say. There's really not a lot relevant to "it's colder in Tasmania than Brisbane."

Oh yeah, news, I guess. I got a job at Hobart City Council that pays well, I'm currently in Brisbane at the Asia Pacific Cities Summit Youth Forum in Brisbane. YP is disorganised, I haven't had a sex dream in nearly two weeks (:P) and I just don't give a flying fuck about anything. I get the feeling tomorrow will be like the second week of NYSF: teh ubersuck.

my mind haunts me

Ok, here's what I don't get.

I finally went to bed, I read for while, got up and watched two episodes of Daria, then went to bed again. I read a little bit more, went to sleep. I was pretty certainly depressed.

So would somebody please find the source for the following dream.

I was with a whole bunch of people and we were watching the Boston Pops Orchestra. I have never seen the Orchestra, but it's fairly clear that's who we were watching. We were moved from the stalls to the gallery (along with everyone else) for no apparent reason. For equally no reason, the gallery closely resembled the public gallery of Committee Room 1 at Australian Parliament House. I sat next to a girl we've seen before. We giggled together, started holding hands... you can see where this is going. In this instance to sex by everyone's definition (except Bill Clinton's). Which still doesn't necessarily imply the right thing. Probably reverse what you're thinking. And if you weren't around to know the details of the Clinton impeachment then you're too young to know what I'm saying anyway! Why, back when I was your age, Pluto was a planet! Of course, if you're smart enough to check Wikipedia and read about an interesting time in US political history then you can know. But you have to learn before you know. I'm like an incentivising teacher.

Anyway, there are a few interesting questions. The first is why I had a dream pertaining to sex at all. No consideration of it had taken place recently, no discussion, nothing on TV. I don't think I'd even emptied my spam folder. The second question is why her? I mean, don't get me wrong, she's someone with whom I would, if provided an opportunity, undertake these activities, but I lack any current obsession, even with her. Regardless, I never have these dreams about people with whom I'm obsessed. As anonymous said, they're always with the wrong person. Except they're not, because I would never say she were the wrong person. It's just very strange. And two such dreams without an intervening similarly-themed dream about another? Perhaps it's just that whenever I dream of her it always leads to this. Again an absurdity, but with a sample size of two it's very difficult to know. I'm really quite confused.

Two untriggered sex dreams about the same person, two weeks apart. This must be love, right?

untired

I don't want to sleep. I should. I know I should. But I just want chocolate and Daria. Unfortunately Daria remains the fucking annoying fictional stories as always. The girls and guys get together as planned, there's a classic teenage existence, there's music .. I dunno. I'm jealous of Daria.

I'm hungry. Chocolate would be nice. And myspace friends.

Ridiculously, cartoon violence there solely for comic effect is scaring me. Like, I'm scared of cartoon ghosts. I think it's safe to call this a down time.

handy hint #{Rand(1,200)}

If you pull a doona over your head and sit up, and hold your phone at arm's length it lights up the inside to look almost like archetypical light speed travel. You have to be keeping the doona taught with the phone, pushing it out with that arm. Be sure not to let any additional light in. I don't deserve it.

Works best if you're not wearing glasses and have water in your eyes.

wangsty

I've been trying for some months now to get the spelling of "angst" changed to "anxt", because any word with an x in it is cool. This afternoon, however, I've come across the word "wangsty", which wouldn't work quite so well as "wanxty" (the x is still cool, but you lose the "wang" unintentional pun; it's not as clear you're talking about wanking) so I may have to abandon my fight. We'll see.

In other news, I think it would probably be weird for me to get in touch with Leah, a girl who I came across when searing for people who like the movie Elizabethtown. I'm not sure people are ever ok with my being weird. I wish they were.

rather terror than tyrany

That's my new anti-anti-terrorism slogan. I think it'd go well on a t-shirt.

I wanted to speak a little bit this evening about an old cassette (I know, pre-CD) that was playing in my parents car earlier. It contained a whole bunch of old jazz and I really liked it. I can't remember what the point of this was, unfortunately.

The other thing was about a hitch-hiker I once picked up. A man and his wife, it seemed to me. I drove them a relatively short distance before he asked if I could drop them off and wait just three minutes. Well... she had nothing of it. I didn't mind at all - I wasn't actually urgently needed anywhere - but she had that matronly, old-womanly pride. The pride of the poor when they are accepting a favour from someone unimaginably richer than they. Acceptance, but no demands, no requirements. Just... I'm not sure. It was interesting, is all. What was perhaps more interesting was that he was quite happy to do the socially unacceptable. Which I didn't mind, but anyway. Curious.

Make it go away without a word / but promise me you'll stay and fix these things I've heard

That's not actually relevant, it just happens to be what I'm currently listening to. Also, I think the italicised lyric thing is pretty cool.

the trouble with sex dreams

Last night I had the unusual pleasure of a dream that involved sexual contact. That was the first of two dreams, in any case. This is generally speaking rather innocuous, but there are a few curious points.

The first of these - not in importance, by any measure - is the location. This particular dream took place in the exposed laundry corridor of our 25th floor apartment in Sri Lanka. Except that it was backwards. And by exposed, I mean... well, it was a bit like a balcony, but not extending over the side of the building. There was just a big hole in the wall and a railing. But as I say, this dream took place on the opposite side of the building in an area slightly smaller. But there was someone doing laundry or something nearby. That was a tad distracting.

Then there's the absolute unreality of the weather. I'm not sure if you've ever been in a wind tunnel 75m up but it tends to be pretty chilly. And it was grey skies outside, so it can't have been a nice warm day, it must've been either cold or (more likely in Sri Lanka) hot and humid. You hardly want to be naked in a hot and humid wind tunnel with somebody else standing around. And tile floors and all sorts of just not attractive things. Stupid dreamscape ruining my fantasy (not, and I should make this clear, that it was a fantasy).

But none of that is really problematic. Because none of it has any impact in the dream itself; it's not cold and uncomfortable. Physics never seems to intervene in these circumstances. There's a bit of an objection once one awakes, some sort of "I can't even pretend that was real" which is disappointing. You can't even wish for something that unreal.

Still not getting to the real problem. The real problem I face is that these dreams, when I (rarely) have them, tend to be about close friends. That's just not cool. Well, I personally don't mind, but I'm sure they wouldn't be happy. Or maybe they would; I never claimed to understand girls. In fact, they almost certainly would; there's that whole want to be wanted thing (more accurate but less aesthetic is describing it as the need to be desired). Still, it's not something you discuss. It's not something you'd ever say. It's not going to be awkward next time we talk. I'm not even going to be thinking of it. But there's this nagging little... well, when one thinks to it, there's a whole "wow, so in my dream..."

I want to describe a few more details about the dream itself but ... that would be inappropriate.

Last night I watched SBS until 1:20am so one might think that would explain it. In fact I was watching SOS and the one that stuck in my mind was documentary about an eleven-year-old gender dysphoric boy (Guido/Nina). I quite liked that actually, and I really felt for him. Like, empathetically. Not that I claim to be gender dysphoric... but I'm gender-curious (tongue firmly in cheek there). I quite feel for the GLBTIQ-set in general, in fact.

I should also note, by reference to my last post that this dream was not violent or anything of that nature. It was all in the name of love. Which still sounds like it could have been rape for love but no, it wasn't. It was consensual and couldn't have constituted rape in Tasmania even if there wasn't consent. There's a bit of detail for those who know the law. Damnit, in trying to express how it was all very happy and nice and stuff I keep subtly implying that it was nonconsensual or close. It wasn't.

I'm just going to stop.

vitriol

I am filled with a malice before unbeknownst to me. My only means of describing it is, once again, and unsurprisingly, to use the words of another. In this case I shall use the words of Camus to describe my schadenfreude. The Fall, the O'Brien translation at page 48:

From that moment onwards, without really intending it, I began, in fact, to mortify her in every way. I would give her up and take her back, force her to give herself at inappropriate times and in inappropriate places, treat her so brutally, in every respect, that eventually I attached myself to her as I imagine the jailer is bound to his prisoner. And this kept up till the day when, in the violent disorder of painful and constrained pleasure, she paid tribute aloud to what was enslaving her. That very day I began to move away from her. I have forgotten her since.

Ahh, but it wouldn't be unintentional for me. No, I intend and moreover I would relish perpetrating such torture. Not that I am or would or could. But for some reason this disgusting possibility is to me right now most appealing. I know not from whence or wherefore this malice arises but it's here, hidden just here beneath the surface. Disguised by flowery words, mostly not my own; concealed by my claim of nicety, my actions to support it. Am I a judge-penitent? No. I'm just a man, just like every man. My selfloathing is moderated by this thought; all men are this and worse. I don't just loathe myself, therefore, but all of mankind.

The masculine reference here is not limiting, but nor is it coincidental. All people are this, but men the worse, it would seem. Even if not, unbridled and indiscriminate hatred needn't be justified to you, Gladys. Fuck you.

I wanted to talk about all sorts of things. About how Casimir Pulaski Day by Sufjan Stevens makes me cry. About how I keep napkins in my car for that reason (and also because I have nowhere else to put them and because sometimes you need to be saved from a BBQ sauce emergency - that's what the moist towelettes are for).

I was going to explain that my car was out of petrol and my phone out of battery and how that's quite symbolic because I'm all out of giveafuck. And I wasn't going to make a joke, because I really am. I am bored and tired. With everything. I just... I just want to do something else with my life. Something fun. Something that doesn't involve arranging a conference a week before it happens, something that doesn't involve rewriting budgets. Perhaps something where I have a chance of winning (I'm referring here to Kingborough Council).

I also wish I wasn't inhibited by the people who read this. It's nobody's fault, but I have the classic problem: I want to say things and I want people to know that they've been said but I don't want anyone to talk to me about it. This isn't true of everything on this blog, but occasionally it's an issue. And so I just don't write those things.

twenty

I'm now officially not a teenager. This has not made me confront my own mortality but it has made me consider the "whatif" that my best years may be behind me.

My thoughts at the moment are with three people. A McDonalds worker with her own number plate. A girl who uses big words but not because she's pretentious, just because she likes the language. And a girl who represents to me the closest I've yet come to being happy, but who really, and I should eventually recognise this, isn't it.

humanity again

People piss me off a lot. I get quite disillusioned with the world.

And then someone builds a difference engine out of Lego and I have no choice but to be happy again.

Fuckin' hell. Read about difference engines, there's a wikipedia link there. Read about the history of computation. Read about Rube-Goldberg machines. People are incredible and I love you all.

For the moment at least ;).

happenings

I played squash today for the first time since late 2003. It's also the most exercise I've done since late 2003. But it was invigorating! I enjoyed it greatly. We're going to play twice a week.

In other news a relatively tame post I made to the Asia Pacific Cities Summit youth online community was deleted. To quote the manager from Brisbane City Council who made the decision: "We have to be sensitive about posts that may offend delegates from other cultures, or might upset our managers, or might be too provocative or politically sensitive, or that are not relevant to the business of APCS07 - and unfortunately this particular post pushed the boundaries just a bit too much for this site." I think that is one of the funniest thing I have seen in weeks. But that's ok.

It's not ok for guys to just go and have a cry. I resent that. The gender equality debate isn't over and I doubt it ever will be, but there's no malism. Oh the irony of a name that literally means "badness". I'm not arguing that there needs to be a shift in the way men are treated in a number of areas - politics, pay and the like. But it is unfuckingdeniable that there is a social inequity which means that certain behaviours are unacceptable for men (I'm going to have to start calling myself a man soon; there are no twenty year old boys) but completely acceptable for women.

One such behaviour is crying. It's not ok for men to be weak. Fuck you all, maybe I'd be more sympathetic to feminism if I didn't (a) have no experience of gender discrimination; (b) have a poor knowledge of feminist theory (c) have no idea about the real world and (d) have to put up with everybody being uncomfortable every time I want to go off and have a cry. It just happens sometimes! Fucking get over it already! Not to mention the hair thing...

I had a panic attack today when I tried to go to the meeting I later described to my parents as "boring". I spent two and a half hours subsequently driving through Sandy Bay and sitting in shopping centres in Hobart desperately trying to avoid people. I stopped driving because I wanted art supplies (I wanted to draw - I saw three children walking along the street and I wanted to draw and I was so incredibly, insanely, unimaginably jealous of them) but of course all art shops assume that my raw creative talent (yes, that was a joke) only flows Monday - Fri 9-5 and Saturdays before 12.

Then I came home.

I saw that I'd made a difference. That didn't help, but it's nice to know that it's possible. Keep spouting aphorisms long enough and somebody will remember one of them.

hp7 spoilers

I'm serious, spoilers, stay the hell away until you've read the book
And possibly also some fanfiction

So, my highlights?

There was the bit on page 81 where Ron uses the phrase "[i]n the name of Merlin's saggy left ..." - I think the appropriate synonym for testicle in this circumstance would be 'nut' personally, but I'm open to suggestion.

Then of course there's page 48, on which Hermione says "oh Harry, you look so much tastier than Crabbe or Goyle".

Overall I thought the book was good, if it started a little 'this is the last one so quick I have to use really nice writing and resolve all the sexual tension of the past seven years without destroying too much of the internet or drifting too far from the previous texts'.

Oh, and one other highlight. Me being right in every prediction I made. Specifically (and this is where the real SPOILER is): Snape, not evil; Harry, not dead. Michael: 2; Common Internet Belief: 0.

what's a friend?

I've been browsing facebook recently - adding people to my list of friends. This poses a question - how well do you know someone before calling them a friend? Ben McKay has 215 friends as I type this. I have 62. My barrier has just been substantially reduced. I'll now facebook-friend anyone who has a name and face I recognise. So if I just know your name that's not enough, the same with just face. But if I know both - and preferably knew the match - then that's friendship as far as facebook is concerned.

That's really, really not what real friendship is. I'm still not sure what friendship proper is. At what point does someone go from acquaintance to friend? I used to think it was when you'd been to their house... but I have friends whose houses I've never been to. It's quite curious, as a whole.

Thoughts?

one oh one

I often feel humiliated for doing things which are "adult" when I'm not. Like issuing press releases or trying to talk to a politician. Or applying for a job. I hate it. I just feel out of place, like I'm doing something I shouldn't be. Hence my long-standing aversion to it. Not to mention the fear of rejection thing.

Ok, so now a leaf from Annabel's book. A thought purge.

Biological purpose of humour? Ducks doing standup. Anne, Mack. Almost kissing. Being right. I didn't understand but now I do. Accidentally. I shouldn't though, she'd hate it. Placing on a pedestal v actually liking. The latter, please, please, please. ([it would be] the first time). But it'll never happen. Sitting in class is more intensely political than Senate seating. Can't talk. Nothing discussed. C'est fin. This is what "thoughts" was.

watching west wing

Sometimes I really wish I could draw. As I was driving today, through the rain, I saw a group of three middle-aged-to-old women sitting in a tiny area in front of a house, with two umbrellas, talking. It was wonderful. I wanted to draw. I couldn't - I can't. But it would've made for a great drawing, truly.

I am not being allowed to take a year off university per se. I'll be just doing the one subject this semester, therefore I will be doing criminal law. It had occurred to me earlier this afternoon that I wouldn't get to spend time with the people in law. Like law girl. Who I'll never meet anyway, but it's the principle, you know?

I have a note: "thoughts". I have no idea what that means.

Oh, and finally, if you want to keep reading this, email me on michael.cordover+blog@gmail.com. I'm going to be closing it down to make it private due to my running for council. You know how it is.

Thoughts.

unyc

There's a lot to say and I don't know where to start. This will end up being one of those things that never actually gets written about because there's too much. This entire Canberra trip.

There is one thing though. xkcd actually made me cry tonight because it was so beautiful. That happens occasionally. Check out alone and maybe you'll begin to understand me a bit more.

Much to write no time, expect more later.

Strip club, the pianist, much drinking, turkmenistan, hot chocolate.

More later.

ode to insomnia

(embellished)

He's in bed. There's not much more he can do; he's been yawning and stretching. He definitely wants to be here. It's relatively comfortable too. No muscles needed at least. It's quiet. The only way he knows it's quiet is by the noises that stick out. The washing machine. The faint humm of... well, something electrical anyway. Every now and again the fridge deciding it's not quite cold enough. For the exposed limbs it is! One leg under covers, one out. It doesn't work like that of course - he now has one leg too cold and one too hot. But that's the only thing possible - an attempt to achieve balance. He's tired. His back aches. Not pain, an ache. Like the vertebrae know they should be somewhere else and aren't.

Curiously it's not really dark. The noises accentuate the silence but that fucking smoke detector just makes it light. How can you be expected to sleep with a light shining in your eyes? It's not possible. It's just a tiny little light though. And that would probably be ok; he can sleep in semi-lit environments. No, the real trouble is that every twelve seconds (or some equally stupid interval) there's a blink of the red light. Just to let him know he's protected. The smoke alarm is still there. Fire wouldn't wake him but that little red light will stop him from sleeping.

Time doesn't really move right now. If there were a clock he'd hear it tick but there isn't. There are just Moments. Each Moment starts with a thought: I'll never get to sleep. I'll be awake til morning. It lasts Forever - or at least it seems that way. After an insufferable eternity, a time of pure impatience, the Moment ends. A tick, maybe, of that non-existent clock, or a blink of the god-damned smoke detector or some other change in the environment. Another Moment begins.

"I'll never get to sleep if I keep thinking like this", he thinks. So he changes. He focuses on pretending to sleep. No more Moments. Now there's just heavy, slow breathing. Eyes are closed, ignoring the need to watch that bloody blinking. The ache is still there, but it's comforting now - it seems to squirm. He knows that in a little while it'll get used to the stillness and settle down as discomfort. Like a sat-upon leg or a fallen-asleep-on arm the discomfort will be somehow comforting. A reminder that everything is as it should be. His mind is empty now. Sleep should be spreading over him like light at dawn.

Shit.

Into the empty mind sidles a thought: boy this is taking a while. Fucking brain, just shut up for a bit. But isn't it interesting how thoughts just occur without impetus. And how you try to sleep and can't. I bet other people would love to hear about it - perhaps I should write this all down at let others know! I wonder how long this takes? How long has it been since this started? Since I dropped into bed.

He can't do it. Just a quick glance. Eyes screw up for a moment, the last protest of his brain. Then he rolls over, grabs his watch and has a look. Five minutes. Five stinking minutes? It's been at least an hour! More! I'll check my phone, maybe that has the right time. It's out of batteries.

At this point in reality he gets up and blogs. Because there's no way sleep will ever get a word in edgeways here. It's not that he won't give sleep a chance, it's that his mind is still active. All it's done today is make losing strategies for Age of Empires. But it can't provide dreams. It can't let him drift off to the clouds and give him thoughts of chases and murders, protections and loves, of all those imagined worlds that exist when you sleep. They're pretty complicated, and he often dreams things which are difficult ides. Not just that, the mind will develop concepts in detail - design and construction for the impossible machines, biology for the impossible beasts, reasoning for the impossible narratives. The Mind, rather. So having discharged his responsibility to show the rest of the world just how thoughtful he is, he goes to bed again. He knows he'll sleep at some stage. Everyone does. There's a time they stop thinking and sleep embraces them and there's nothing until groggy eyes and daylight sneaking under the curtain.

The mattress is soft. His sleeping bag has a strange smell - it should be aired tomorrow. I need a tissue. Why does the fucker need to blink?

He lies awake.

another quickie

Just to add to the list of TV shows I like but probably shouldn't: Grey's Anatomy and (much more embarrassingly) Ugly Betty.

Oh come on, there's just a certain charm. Not to mention the whole losers-can-do-ok angle. It's worth watching.

No, really it's not.

I need to kiss someone on the roof of a car. That's been on my ToDo list since I watched Jeux d'enfants. Like, literally, on the list on the side of my computer. Despite it being there I am reliably informed that it's more uncomfortable than you'd think, and harder to get up there. I don't worry that I have friends who know that so much as I worry that I'm missing out on knowing that.

Oh, and despite everyone posting comments as anonymous it's surprisingly easy to tell who they are. Not just style, also who would think that in response, who would say what, all that sort of stuff. It amuses me to practice that.

something completely different

The topic of this post is light bondage. Like, the sexual practice. It comes up because the bed I'm on has a metal frame which, it has occurred to me, could be used for handcuffing quite easily.

You're totally freaked out right now, you're like running for the door.

Let me explain.

I'm not into that stuff. But I understand it. I think it can be healthy. I am not aroused by the thought of handcuffs and all that stuff but... well, let me explain. I hold the belief - popular with some, unpopular with others - that sex is a "special" thing - a bond between to people. An expression of a feeling (this is traditionally called love but can, unlike the feeling most people associate with love, be transient; having sex with someone should involve, I feel, a strong attachment to them. This can fade but at the time it was still love). And this is where light bondage is relevant. Because it is about trust. Some people just get the arousal stuff from it, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about the submissive side. In that position you are placing an absolute trust with another person. You are giving them complete and irrevocable control of your body. In one such scenario you're actually being chained up and the other person could do anything - anything - to you. That is true trust. And that's why most people aren't comfortable with it - because they don't get the arousal and they don't really truly trust their partner that much. To do so is pretty fucking hard. There aren't many - if any - people I would trust that much. Certainly those that come to mind for immediate consideration are part of my family.

I'm not sure what the point of this was. I just wanted to ramble about a fetish for a while. Next week, feet! I'm kidding, that's one I just don't get. Like, I don't mind feet, but there's nothing sexy there. Then again, I don't necessarily see being tied up as sexy, it's just... trusting. And that's why it's cool. I get that you'd want to show how much you trust someone. You'd let them do anything because you know they love you.

On a totally, totally unrelated point, once again Annabel's blog has said something I've often thought: "if i died it wouldn't matter, because i wouldn't really be dead". I tend to think like life is a computer game and I can just go back to a save point. Not all the time, but often enough to be worried by that. It's like I'm playing Deus Ex and I've only used quicksave, so I've only got one save point. And that was ages ago - like six missions - and I'm not sure I'm on the right track. I think I can make it through the game from my *current* position but I had more opportunities previously and I don't know that I've made the right decision. So just in case I want to keep the old save. And only when I get somewhere I know I want to be will I save again. Except that in life it's really hard to die so I just keep playing.

I think this post is perhaps the best demonstration yet that my mind is fucked up.

i'm totally sleeping on the floor tonight

That's primarily because my back hurts though, rather than anything else.

After a few glasses of wine I decided I would like to go out and meet a girl. Not for the reasons that spring to mind, but because I need to get better at this meeting people stuff. Alcohol helps to some degree but I shouldn't need it to meet someone. I just have this massive fear of rejection and no idea how to start a conversation. But as I was explaining to Angie just before, as you become more familiar with the thing you're afraid of failing at the less afraid you are. Because you know. And it's not the failure that kills us, it's the uncertainty.

raw beauty

If you've ever wondered why I love xkcd, then I'll show you. It's comics like projection. Hover your mouse over the comic and read that too.

a long and stupid rant

Nearly a week without a post. It's not that nothing has happened, because things have. I'm going to Canberra tomorrow. I've not done all the work I'm supposed to have done. All that sort of stuff. Not to mention that my parents got home on Tuesday evening (good thing I finished the last of the pot on Monday night, hey?). Interestingly, earlier that evening I scared myself by thinking about what would happen if they died.

It was more than that. I was showering before going to pick them up from the airport. I had already heard from them when they were in Melbourne so I knew they were alive so far. But what if there was a plane crash on the approach to Hobart? What would happen? I concern myself with such trivialities, often, until they become so overwhelming as to cause me to sob. Not just cry, sob. The last time I was reading encyclopaedic and purely factual articles about the holocaust. Just wikipedia. Browsing around, reading about everything that happened, and suddenly, mid-sentence, nothing particularly in-and-of-itself bad, I started to cry. It just... it just hit me. There is a perfect (and beautiful, in a way I can't explain) description of this flowing-over effect over on another blog.

While I was writing that paragraph the same thing happened. I cried.

So yeah, I think I was saying that on Tuesday I thought about all the things that would happen if there was a plane crash. I'd press through, try to see what happened. I'd organise a funeral and occupy myself with procedural matters and work. I imagined a phone call to Centrelink asking to cancel payments to people I'm not authorised to represent because they died. I wonder how they'd handle that. I even thought about getting funeral sponsorship before I realised how ridiculous the idea was. And I'd get it all done because it would be distracting and I wouldn't cry until the funeral. I would, of course, but I wouldn't break down. I'd be a pall-bearer for Gideon - front right I think - and that's when it would start. And by the end I'd be unable to move, catatonic from the grief. I'd run out of tears and snot and everything else but I'd still try to push it out.

I wondered who I'd invite to the funeral. I only know a few of Gideon's friends - how would I tell the rest? Conceivably I'd send an email to everyone in his contacts list from his account - but how weird would that be? The thing is, of course, that people my age just don't check the obituaries. They wouldn't know about the funeral.

Then of course there's that other question: who can I invite for support? Is it impolite to invite people to the funeral who didn't know the deceased just so I have a shoulder to cry on? It's probably worse if in a drug-fuelled moment of madness you've recently confessed your quickly-dying (as opposed to undying; more later) love for them. This quick-dying love (almost, but not quite, entirely unlike quick-drying glue) isn't to say that it's any less, it's just ... it's something that is more of a friendship love that I could clearly get over very quickly in any other sense. It's me saying that this will pass, as a phase.

In twelve hours I'll be in Melbourne, presumably. I haven't packed yet. The list of things I was supposed to do before leaving and hasn't started seems to be longer than it was, impossible though that is. There is one thing I have done though. Something I did yesterday, late at night, after I got home. Something that was far more important than sleep.

I have created something to give to my next love. Proper love. Something sacred and withheld. Sort of like virginity, sort of like a particular love-song. Something that is special and will be for one person only and forever associated with that person. Interestingly like virginity, and unlike most love songs, I've created this without a person to whom to give it. That makes me feel quite guilty. Here's something that's beyond important. It's unique and special and for just one person. It's perfect and I know it is. It's precisely what it should be. And there's nobody to give it to. Of the I-could-like-these-people-if-I-tried-(or-was-drunk/stoned) group, I could assign it to one of them. But it's a tad generic. There are specific things for them - or for at least 7e-1 of them. One of which I created smilingly just the other day, in fact, Monday, I believe, and haven't been able to do anything with since. I'm going back to an Annabel-style vagueness here and it's not good. Suffice it to say that I've got something and it's a perfect valentines gift for a girl I don't yet know (or don't yet know I love).

It's nearly three in the morning. I really need to be up in five hours if I'm going to even get packed - something which is probably fairly important for this going away business. But this has been nice. I enjoyed writing it, and congratulations if you managed to read it without needing a toilet break. Your bladder is truly laudable. It's nice to cry sometimes too. We all know that.

I really need to work on my endings.

doned and strunk

I keep forgetting things. I used to absorb information. Now I forget things that are said even when they're really fucking important. Troublesome. I hate it. I feel like Algernon or whatever. I'm losing my goodness. My mind, which is all I have. Fuck. It could be my binge drinking and drug taking but... I dunno.

I am anxty much. Same as always.

Fuck.

have you ever,

ever felt like this? How strange things happen, when you're going round the twist.

I have that song stuck in my head. I'm pensive. Earlier I had the song "I'm a believer" stuck in my head.

I'm just in a New York state of mind.

i'm done

So my exams are finished and I handed in my essay.

Now I have nothing to do.

shrug

I actually think like this. Not properly, of course. Not those precise things. But things like that. Less of the "you probably couldn't name some of the things I've done with your daughter" and more of the "so, you lived through the sixties and you have a daughter... so you've probably had sex sometime... I wonder what that was like for you". That sort of stuff. The stuff I don't know about people but I could probably figure out.

In other news, to my great hilarity, I sat down to my criminal law exam this morning to find law girl sitting one space away from me diagonally, ironically exactly the same as always, to my left. I don't think I've ever seen the right side of her face. That's a lie, but sometimes it feels that way.

how to procrastinate

I've spent my entire day on Facebook. I've been reading about... well, I've been mostly reading sex advice. Not in a creepy way. I've been reading from groups like 50 Mistakes Women Make When Having Sex and the counter-group 50 Mistakes Men Make While Having Sex. There are many such groups - things guy should do for girls, that girls should do for guys (less sex-oriented). There are wall posts and discussions.

Something interesting however. The "50 mistakes women make" group has about 62,800 members. The largest group for "nice guys" has about 300 members. There are quire a few groups about nice guys who are never noticed, most of which have 12 - 30 members. Small cliques of guys who have become bitter because of too many girls going out with arseholes and missing them. I'm not at that stage - I'm still optimistic and naive - but I can see how I could get there.

We're evolutionarily weaker, is the problem. Nice guys almost never meet nice girls - just because it's hard to meet people being a typical shy nice guy. And then neither the girl nor the guy, in the event that the two find each other, has the courage to start anything for risk of ruining a great friendship. And so we bumble along unhappy and lusting after close friends but really quite happy with their friendship, just with this evolutionary requirement of a deeper relationship which is inevitably impossible.

So yeah, maybe I am a bit bitter...

washing up has been done!

I'm beginning to recognise that the house looks a lot better when there isn't shit strewn everywhere. Washing up done, rubbish taken out, all that.

Unfortunately it's four thirty in the afternoon and I have not yet done my essay due in at an undetermined time tomorrow. I have a feeling that it's nine in the morning but I'm not sure. I'll get it in by five and plead ignorance. Unfortunately Wednesday I have my criminal law exam at nine in the morning and I really need to do some revision before that. Double unfortunately I have my algebra exam on Thursday morning at nine and I really really need to do some revision for that too. Then I have a day off, which I will spend revising for my computational techniques exam which is at nine on Saturday morning.

Then mark my words, Saturday night, I am getting massively, massively fucked up. I deserve to lose some brain cells after all that.

regrets

Sometimes we make mistakes. Sometimes we do things we regret. But most of the time we don't do things and that's the regret.

I'm watching my DVD of Ben Folds Live with the West Australian Symphony Orchestra. And I am really upset that I didn't go to Melbourne to see him with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. I considered it. Gideon and I were going to go together. It was going to cost about $500 by the time flights were included. And that was for the cheapest tickets.

It would have been worth it. Fuck, five hundred dollars is nothing. Ok, so it's about a month of my income... but I could've managed it. It would have been incredible. I love music. There is no concert I can imagine being better than Ben Folds with an orchestra. It would have been worth the money. And it's unlikely I'll ever get another opportunity to see it. Certainly not at that price. That bothers me more than can be imagined.

There are other things that bother me less. Like not seeing The White Stripes when they were here. And a number of other things I did do but shouldn't have.

Sigh.

Update: What was missed

untitled 3

Quite some time ago - perhaps years - The Lovely Clara informed me that I should read a book by Nick Earls. Not any book in particular, but I should read him. I think this was just after I read High Fidelity for the first time and she likened him to an Australian Nicky Hornby.

In Melbourne at the National Debating Championships I was at a school (Croyden College I think) and I saw a Nick Earls book on the shelf. There were several but I chose After January, his first novel. I started to read. After about half an hour I had to put it back and adjudicate and the like. At the next school I continued to read that school's copy. And when I got back to Tasmania I eventually placed an order for it through the State Library system. And it came today. I just finished it.

I think everyone should read it. It seemed at times as though I was writing it. Not in style, but... well, in experience. It's a book about a boy who's just finished school and is spending January on holiday and meets a girl. And he's nerdy and lanky and uncool and wants to get into Arts/Law. He's me in most ways - not physically, but in his analysis of situations. In everything. I don't surf but this book makes me think I should. He also watches cricket, which is unfortunate, but the point stands. He knows how I feel. Most of the book is about describing the way life works and it's exactly the way I think of things. It was brilliant. It reminded me of everything I felt in that summer 2004/2005. Indecision. Anticipation. Panic. Wonder. Everything.

The other point that comes from this book, though not directly, is about sex. Not sex per se, but sexual acts - kissing right on through (pardoning the phrase-pun). I think sex should be emotional. It should be innocent. What I don't think it should be is planned or contemplated, exercised for a purpose. I don't think it should be about satisfaction of a sexual desire. It should just happen because that's what's happening and that's what happens. It just flows. There's another line or two but they'll go in the libellus niger.

how things change

Before we begin I'd like to mention a very high pitched noise I'm hearing as a result of having plugged in my phone. I'd also like to say briefly that I bruised my toe.

When I was younger I had no sense of humour. I appreciated wit but I didn't find it funny. I would read Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams books and not laugh. Seriously. I loved and understood them, I just... I just didn't see them as funny. They were just good stories. And so it was that I didn't laugh when reading the Adrian Mole stories. I didn't see them as funny, I just saw them as a description of life. I quite liked them. They were educative. I'm still quite a fan of the Secret Diaries of Adrian Mole Aged 13 3/4. A great book. But never one that I've seen as funny. Only some years after reading them (between when I was aged twelve and when I was aged fifteen I read them) did I read the blurb which elucidated the humour. And I see why people would find them funny. But they're not funny at all, really. They're just... real life. Or a life, at least.

Thanks to someone's blog entry I was reminded of this recently. I was specifically reminded of a time Adrian and his girlfriend break up because she won't show him one of her breasts. So he dumps her. He was fifteen by this stage, I think. (One of the reasons I found it so real is because when you're that age everything that's so humorous really is just as important as the book makes it out to be). Everybody in his class is talking about their sexual escapades and how one particular girl will have sex with anyone for four shillings and a pound of grapes (or something like that; some money and a pound of grapes). So he gets one of his friends to arrange a date with him and this girl. They go to a roller-skating rink and he wears his PE shorts because they're all he has that matches his friend's description of what people wear on dates. He takes her the pound of grapes and is unceremoniously rejected, then ridiculed for bringing grapes, since she has no idea why she'd want them.

Interestingly, I was once Adrian. Not necessarily Adrian Mole but I was called Adrian as part of an internet pseudo-relationship stalking thing that happened a few years back. Well, last year. Beginning of 2006. Crazy, crazy times. And my name was Adrian because that's what happened. And the more I think about it the more Adrianish I am. But then again other friends have said there's no Adrian to me at all. Quite possibly true too.

I'd like to move on now to a completely different topic. Conversations. I don't start them, because I don't like to be rejected. Especially on MSN. I also fear the rejection of text message or email communications where I send the last message and get no reply. It has to happen eventually but there's inevitably no "goodbye" message. So it's one of those "you hang up first" things. I'm disheartened by how often I send the last message. It could be because I always reply even when totally unnecessary but ... I don't know. It's just disappointing that I want to talk to them more than they want to talk to me. It makes me feel reliant. Like I'm being their friend and they really don't want me around. I know it's stupid - I know that, but I still feel it sometimes, to some small degree.

Sigh.

i wish i could draw

The other day, while driving, I saw the full moon, covered by translucent cloud, thus only slightly obscured, juxtaposed against the harsh light of a new street lamp. It would have been beautiful to see.

60 mm

I saw an ad last night while watching Drop Dead Gorgeous (I don't normally like mockumentaries but I laughed during that one) which was from the Cancer Council of Victoria. They noted that the risk of cancer is doubled with a waist of more than 100cm in men. Doubled relative to what? What sort of cancers? Is this correlation or causality? These are all legitimate questions.

I measured myself this morning. 106cm.

Now I will lose weight.

current music: R.E.M.

This morning (which was actually this afternoon, given I got out of bed at 2:20pm) I had a new experience. I carried my computer with me from the lounge room to the bathroom, playing music the whole way. The change is sound as the building changed was fascinating, but that wasn't just it.

I had the computer playing music while I was in the shower. It was great. I had something to listen to. As some of you may know it's one of my hobbies to draw on the steamed-up glass walls of the shower while I'm in there. I draw, I write, I scribble. And during one particular song (London Bombs by Eskimo Joe) I noticed that my scribbles were crying. It was quite soundtrack-to-my-life. The music was perfect as tears dripped from each letter. As time passed the tears dripped lower and the letters faded. Still visible but mere shadows of their former selves, resteamed by my continued shower.

It was great.

In other news, I'm not going to smoke any more pot until after exams. Maybe.

on leave

My parents and Gideon went away yesterday. So I'm alone. Home alone for more than three weeks. I have been watching DVDs and smoking pot. I was going to drink too but I never got around to it.

I'm watching Notting Hill at the moment. I love it. I just love this movie so much. I love all the Hugh Grant movies. They're not good per se, they're just... uplifting. Wonderful. And they present so many opportunities. Like a t-shirt that says "you are the most beautiful woman in the world" and on the reverse "fancy a fuck surreal-but-nice date?"

Also, I wish I had friends who would get me blind dates. Though I'm not that desperate until I'm late-20s+, but still, I think blind dates would be fun. I also think that "all that awaits me at home is a masturbating Welshman" is a very, very funny line.

i feel terrible

I just want to bitch and moan forever but, unfortunately, I don't even have the energy to do that. I wish there was something interesting I could talk about. Law Girl was in the row in front of me today. She showed her friends a Calvin and Hobbes comic. I skipped my other lecture. I don't have a car. I want food. But not food really I want... I don't even know what I want. And that's my problem.

guilty pleasures

I have several guilty pleasures. These include listening to Avril Lavigne... no, that's pretty much it.

I want to blog but there's really not a lot to blog about. I'm behind with uni, broke and hungry. The only thing that's new is I'm also sick, but that doesn't really make any difference.

moo, you bloody choir

I'm sitting in the cold on the ref steps being anxty. And it's cheering me up.

awkwardjumpstartstalling conversations

I'm not in the mood for conversation today. Or anything at all really, other than just doing nothing. Maybe eating, possibly drinking, probably watching TV and reading.

Sigh.

xkcd continues to be sweet

It might actually work too...

In other news, if you ever need a medal or trophy go to Trophy Traders, opposite Ogilvie's main entrance. I say this because the guy in there can only be described as gruff, but he's quite reasonable and I think he's cool because I wouldn't mind being like him when I'm old.

good days and bad.

I had a small nervous breakdown earlier this evening. I fucked up my moot, totally failed at it. But it's not the failure that bothers me. I can handle failure.

Take for example another small failing today: this morning I had my administrative law tutorial and it was terrible. The submission I made had almost no meaning at all. It certainly wasn't an accurate reflection of the law or a valid argument to make. I had be buoyed by the return of my second briefing paper (86% or a high distinction, plus a request to put it up as an example for next year's class) but this wasn't why I was ok with doing such a shitty job. I was ok with it because my preparation involved reading the question as I was getting dressed.

The moot was different. I spent five hours in the library today. Admittedly not all of it was preparing for my moot - some of it was sleeping and I also talked to Nikki (Rogers, old school friend) for a while... but I spent quite some time preparing. Reading cases, taking notes, underlining important sections. I spent $2 on printing. I wrote and rewrote. I worked at this. I didn't work exhaustively but I was prepared. I knew what I was doing. I was ready. I was going to kick arse: smash it, as they say.

But I didn't. I failed dismally. My presentation was poor, I gave bad arguments, I didn't have the cases to back up what I was saying. It was terrible. This is the problem. I don't mind failing. What sent me into shock and made me cry (well, I didn't cry about it until I was home and watching sad DVDs, so we can blame them) was that I'm not as good as I think I am. That's the great travesty here. If I work really hard and still can't do it - well, that's incapacity. I know there are things I can't do. But none of them involved using my mind. Anything that required thought I could do. Anything. Give me enough time and I could learn about Puritanism in Elizabethan England or electrical engineering or organic chemistry or gender studies or finance. This was my strength. This is what made me feel good about myself. I was capable of learning anything I put my mind to. But if there are things I can't do... that bothers me greatly. Especially if it's advocacy, precisely what I'm training to do, what I want to do. It makes life difficult.

This then triggered a massive round of self-hate and Nikky-angst and such. And the die alone business. Great fun all around.

odd socks

In my family the wearing of odd socks is a crime. It's quite curious really. It's simply not done - like taboo. Odd socks from the laundry are kept for a week or so then turned into rags, mercilessly destroyed by cleaning the TV.

I mention this because I saw someone wearing odd socks this evening and had commented on it before. It's... curious to me. Very anthropology.

I think I want to be a teacher. Discuss. Comment.

I also think that a specific person doesn't like me very much and that's fine, but I wish she did. This isn't girlfriend angst, it's ... much more complicated. But I don't want to name names or anything. It's nobody reading this I'm fairly sure.

Speaking of people who don't read this, I've decided to befriend Lucy (as she decided to befriend me). From my criminal law tute - but not Law Girl (who I again didn't even look at).

postsecrets

There are some postsecrets I really like and others I don't. I've been doing an absurd amount of reading faux postsecrets recently. Specifically, ljsecret. I'd like to show you two of them. There's the one that is something I do and there's the other one that is also something I do.

That's really all I guess.

observances

I was sitting in the ref today and Wonderwall came on the radio. There was audible singing along. Not from anyone or any group in particular, but there was definitely singing. Just the overtones of several people singing quietly.

I also observed today a girl with a Firefox bag. That's pretty cool. She did look a bit like a furry though...

theory and practice

It is said that the difference between theory and practice is that in theory, there is no difference, whereas in practice there is.

PARTIAL LIST OF THINGS I INTENDED TO DO TODAY
Review the ALSA 2008 budget
Briefly look at the Youth Parliament budget
Not eat icecream
Do - or at least start - my criminal law tutorial
Pushups
Situps

PARTIAL LIST OF THINGS I DID TODAY
Ate icecream
Watched Jamie Oliver cook a BBQ
Read random webcomics

from my law classes this morning

A MISSED OPPORTUNITY (<- clickable, so click it)

inside every fat man...

I swear there's a pop diva inside me trying to get out.

untitled 2

I'm getting old. I know this because I can no longer stay out until four in the morning and operate the next day. I also know I'm still young however. This I know because when I get back I still send email. *sigh*

I've been reading a blog again, one that I haven't read in a while. The blogger made reference to http://xkcd.com/c184.html, presumably amused by it. Few people are and it made me happy that she was.

I saw RHMaths girl yesterday. Last time I saw her was that she was happy after the pure maths exam last year. I was like "man, she's cool".

She's actually majoring in something that isn't pure maths. Sigh.

thoughts in my car

If I ever brushed my hair I would totally sing into my hairbrush.

whatever

Stumbling around the internet - as is my job when in my dressing gown on a Sunday afternoon - I came across 43 things. A random website to be sure. I find it amusing just to refresh and see what people are doing. The most popular one I've come across so far is - ironically - to stop procrastinating. A surprising number of people want tattoos too. I just don't see the attraction.

<somewhitlamslyrichere>

I've been reading old email.

There are worse ideas. Currently I can only think of two: jumping into a volcano and ... and I really can't even think of a second.

In other news, I feel embarrassed when I watch romantic comedies. Like even when there's nobody home and there's no chance that anyone will ever know it's still... it still seems wrong. This is bothersome. It's part of why I stopped Bridget Jones so early in the piece.

the inevitable question

What's wrong with me?

Here are a few great date ideas I've just stolen from the intarwebs:

• Build forts out of furniture and blankets, and wage war with paper airplanes.


• Write a piece of fiction together. Outside at a cafe. Ask strangers when you get stuck.


• Try and visit as many people as you can in one night, and turn as many things inside their apartment upside down as you can, without them noticing.


• Hide and seek in the park


• Go around the city with sidewalk chalk and draw hearts with equations inside on random things


• Dress up as pirates, commandeer shopping carts, and have a war upon the high seas.. er, parking lot.


• Go on a search for as many good climbing trees as possible, climb as high as you both can in all of them, compile photo evidence


• In the middle of the night, drive to the beach, so you arrive just as the sun is rising. Have a breakfast picnic, then fall asleep together. Bring a sun umbrella.

And despite these I would never get such a date. Not because they're not wonderful ideas but because I'm me, and nobody wants to go out with me.

So back to the question: what's wrong with me?

diaries

I'm watching Bridget Jones 2. Because sometimes you just have to. Regardless of the administrative law essays, administrative law journals, assignments and other such things due but not yet done. Well, I've had enough of working. I know I shouldn't but... I totally, totally have...

I just want to live a life that involves reading xkcd followed by eating chocolate cake and bagels. I don't mind occasionally doing something productive with my life, like treasury work or something, but... well, I just don't want to write essays on things I don't know anything about. This is why I prefer criminal law. I actually go to those lectures.

Lots of generic angst too. Meh.

relationships

I was thinking about asking The Lovely Clara to do a guest blog for me. I really need to blog and I'm pretty lazy, so surely that works well. I decided, however, that I should reserve the "privilege" for a girlfriend. We can be all coupley and have sloppy makouts and share a blog and stuff. How disgusting would that be? That's totally the sort of thing I'd do too...

Which brings me nicely to the next point. We'll call this a segue because that's a cool word.

I don't have a girlfriend. I want a girlfriend but there's not a lot of hope for me. I see the reason behind this to be the way things work nowadays. It seems that in adult relationships, or relationships involving people my age, tend to start with going on the prowl for sex. If you find someone else looking for sex, you sleep together and then later start to like each other. Ok, so perhaps extreme, but you see my point: you're seeking a relationship before knowing the person. Unfortunately, the alternative also doesn't sound good: find someone you like, befriend them and later proposition them. So here I am in a quandary. I don't know how to go about finding a relationship. I'm reminded of the bash.org quote comparing being rejected by a girl to being rejected for a job. I'm also thinking for some reason about the difficulty I have in remembering who people think I like - it differs between social groups. And who do I actually like? God knows. When I find out I might put it here.

Sigh.

and now...

Having spent all morning reorganising my secrets collection, I get up at one in the afternoon to find that we're about to have a family time of watching Love Actually.

Way to make a boy cry.

untitled, of course

I just added 22 ljsecrets to secrets.blue.org.au.

I am the ubernerd.

I am a whining emo bitch.

my life

Hockey Tasmania is a fairly large organisation. They are pretty important - they had the Premier open their new gagillion dollar stadium just yesterday. Sure, they're not quite as big as the YMCA, who also hired me to do a website, on whom I also defaulted, but they're fairly big. I woke up this morning and decided to get this website done. It would only take a day of dedicated work.

I've been up for two hours now. I have the Powderfinger song Baby I've Got You On My Mind stuck in my head. I also kind of have a person on my mind, but that's not the thing.

I've spent this morning updating secrets.blue.org.au and looking at ljsecret because the new PostSecrets aren't up yet.

All this does is depress me. That's not true. It depresses me and makes me yearn, desire, want, need something more. All those things that I don't have.

I've got one. A secret. It's on my blue site, somewhere. First one to find it doesn't really learn anything. This one broke my heart.

There are 371 secrets currently archived. 24mb-odd.

in which...

... I rediscover The Killers, achieve a new pinball high score and am deeply hurt

I rediscovered The Killers, along with The Libertines, Franz Ferdinand and Ben Folds Five. All fantastic.

I got TWO new pinball high scores today. Yesterday my high score was 5,514,750. Today I got 7,337,500 and then 10,215,750. I am the ubernerd.

I am deeply hurt but why is too big a question. I'm just... hurt.

I didn't shower this morning - it was too much effort.

I saw The Lovely Clara yesterday. Or maybe the day before, I can never remember when time passes. It was lovely.

late nights

It's five in the morning and I'm just about to go to bed. I have a tutorial at ten, so I'll have to be up in three and a half hours.

Yesterday was Pat's birthday so this is the end of spending a birthday evening. I didn't drink. I did play Singstar far too much. We talked about many things. And I'm going to run for Kingborough Council.

There's also a bit in here about unintentionally offending The Lovely Clara by implying something that's not true through accidental action, but we'll get to that, and details about Council, later. Now, sleep.

the notebook

I know I shouldn't watch movies until three in the morning but I can't help it.

Normally when I show emotion it's for others. Rarely do I actually display emotion because it's so strong that I have to.

Watching movies in bed is always interesting. Tears inevitably roll down one cheek only. I'm not going to talk about the interesting snot dynamics problems.

The young Noah is the spi't 'n' image of my sister's boyfriend.

I love this movie and will watch it again. And yes, it made me cry, quite a lot, quite often.

I always had a problem with the premise of 50 first dates. Not a comedy at all.

sine sententia

I have been thinking recently about things I find attractive in a girl. By recently I mean over the past five or so minutes. I've come up with something interesting. I like girls who I can teach.

This means several things. Firstly it means they must be smart and interested. Passionately curious, as Einstein would have said. They're allowed to roll their eyes when I start talking mathematics gibberish but they listen anyway because a bit of extra knowledge is good. I don't want to dominate, and I don't want them to be stupid or ignorant, I just want to be able to participate in a conversation and impart some knowledge or understanding. This is pretty much the prime requirement; the others are all about capacity (i.e. no absurd age difference, must be single, must be straight or bisexual etc) or preference (i.e. smarter is better).

This is dangerous for a few reasons. It means my ego is one of the most important things to me and must be massaged at all times. It means I desire a relationship on an unequal intellectual or regarding-knowledge footing and this can only be because I want to see myself as better than the other party. None of this is good, but it's not the really bad. The really bad is that this probably means I'll like more than my peers my subordinates. Delegates at conferences where I'm a facilitator. Students where I'm a teacher. Trainees where I'm a coach. This is getting close to paedophilia and it worries me greatly.

more horrific things

It is estimated - and quite well, really; I've examined the methodology - that less than 15% of sexual assault cases are even reported to police. Of those, more than two thirds are not recorded by police as sexual crimes - they are either dismissed, reclassified as common assault or the like.

The person I'm talking to at the moment has said that she wouldn't report a rape. She's evidently with about 85% of the population. If we be generous and say she's with only 10% of the population, let's look at how this pans out. That puts her as part of one million women and girls in Australia. The victimisation rate for sexual assault crimes is conservatively 2%. Which means that twenty thousand - 20,000 - sexual assaults go unreported each year. If we say that 1% of sexual assault crimes are rapes - again, a very conservative estimate (when talking about reported crimes; this is where we get fuzzy) - that means that at least 200 women are raped each year in Australia and don't say anything.

You have no idea how much that horrifies me. To give you a clue, I put it up there with the stories my uncle tells about paracetamol overdoses. Specifically, about young mothers who want to stop their babies from crying so give them children's panadol. But it doesn't work, so they give them more. They come to the emergency room eventually, but the baby is now going into multiple organ failure and will die in two days, at best.

See, I can cry any time I want, even without The Notebook.

altruism is dead

I know that there is no altruism. I know this for a very simple reason. Milk. Specifically, everybody gets the milk that expires latest. Even I do. I know we'll drinking it before the expiry date, but we get the "freshest" anyway, despite the waste that it causes. Every time I buy milk I think about this and decide that no, I'll be bad anyway. It'll be fine, surely.

Also, checkout chick liked my shirt - just shy. Yay!

note to self

Drinking is bad. I will never do it again*.

* This is a downright lie and I will drink again tonight.

yet another boring blog (yabb)

I'm watching the movie form of the sisterhood of the travelling pants. I don't know why I do this to myself. I guess... well, let's look at this. I have a few movies on my computer I haven't seen yet (the sisterhood being one which I'm currently seeing). They are:

- A Walk To Remember
- House of Flying Daggers
- Pride and Prejudice
- The Notebook
- Wallace and Gromit - Curse of the Ware Rabbit

There's also Magnolia, which I haven't seen in a long time. Then there are the movies I watched last night: A Fish Called Wanda, How To Lose A Guy In Ten Days and The Girl Next Door.

But I'm not here to talk about all the movies I have, or those which I want to watch. This is about why I do this to myself.

Ok, firstly, this movie is not just a chick flick, it's a mid-teen sappy chick flick. Like, we're talking uberdespicablepop tween trash. Which isn't to say it's a bad movie - at 39'14" I'm unwilling to make that judgement. I mean, it's embarrassing. I feel shame (even without another, so fuck you Satre) that I'm watching this.

But that's not the real problem. That's not why I shouldn't be watching this. I shouldn't be watching this because it almost made me cry in the first few scenes. I shouldn't be watching this because it's all about precisely the life that I keep being certain I've totally missed. I shouldn't watch this because it reinforces the mood which made me watch it in the first place - and that mood is best described as borderline depressed.

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SSd2ZSBqdXN0IGVhdGVuIGNob2NvbGF0ZS4=

I got a call from an old friend of mine tonight. The company he started and is running is paying for him and eight employees under him, also mostly old friends, to spend six days at the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Flights, alcohol, hotels, shows all paid. Good quality, five-star hotels too. I could have been working there. But instead I chose to come back here and go to university. Sometimes I wonder about why I made such a bad decision. Maybe it wasn't horrible, generally... but I should've stayed. Life would have been better eventually, I'm sure. Perhaps. Uncertainty haunts me still.

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party

I'm at a party. An adults party. Blogging from my phone. I'm totally
astounded by how shallow conversation is. These people are lawyers.
One is a supreme court judge. And they're all fuckwits. Not quite
all... but a surprisingly large number of them.

--

http://mine.mjec.net/

a missing bit

I tonight had a phone conversation with The Lovely Clara of nearly two hours. It was good. One of the topics of discussion - there were obviously many, ranging from the pornography to the value of strip clubs - was high school. Specifically my whole general feeling that I missed out on some important social aspect. I for a long time thought it was a relationship aspect but I've just realised what it was. It was precisely what I just had with TLC - long phone conversations. More specifically, calling someone just to talk to them. The other bit I was missing I get in nine hours when I leave the house for Julia's - just going around to someone's house because you're going around to someone's house. That's what I missed, I think, and I really did miss out. I like people a lot more than I let on. Or something. Point here is we talked and it was good. Yay.

one thing

It is surely a great calamity for a human being to have no obsessions. - Robert Bly

(of course, the title now has me singing "and to the man who would be king...")

palindrome

I love a busy house.

My brother David is here. There are three discussions going on at any given time, people asleep, people doing things, questions pending, things downloading. Everything is happening. The house is alive again. None of this silence or one conversation.

I love a busy house.

far too late to be writing

I spent a good four hours today convinced that this blog was terrible. More than that, I spent that time worrying that I had to get rid of it lest pain, humiliation and the like ensued. I even started the process of taking it down before I realised that was silly, and it'll all be fine - so it remains. Hopefully I won't hurt too many people with it...

I think that happened because I saw law girl and imagined what she'd think of me if she knew.

Speaking of what people would think of me if they knew, last night I ate five pieces of garlic bread (Dominos garlic bread, specifically) in a manner that earned me $10: all in the mouth at once, swallowed in under 35 chews. Thirty four, to be precise. Quite the useless feat.

Two things about tonight though. Firstly, David Hicks will serve seven years. Poor bastard has already done five. Now we just have to do something about the other two hundred and fifty people there.

The other thing: there was the first youth parliament taskforce meeting tonight. I got treasurer, unsurprisingly. I was thinking about going for convenor but... well, Pat wanted to do it and that's appropriate, and otherwise there wouldn't have been the right number of positions for people and this means there were no contested positions in a world first. So go us. I just want something that looks better than treasurer - or something that's not related to financial management. I can write press releases too, you know!

Also also, I think a first person shot, looking past my shirt and penis into a toilet bowl full of urine would be a great drugged-out shot for a movie. No really. I just felt so drugged and it was epitomising my just standing there, not doing anything. Which is what one does when one can't think of anything to do. I think it'd work anyway.

criminality

Today in criminal law we were doing assault and we digressed, for a while, onto the crime of stalking (s 192 of the Tasmanian Criminal Code). The other important thing about criminal law today was that I was sitting next to crim girl (or law girl, as I am more comfortable calling her). Let's have a little history.

I first spotted this girl in our first criminal law tutorial. Which isn't really a valid assessment... I'd seen her before. But this was when I noticed her existence. I did so for two reasons. Firstly, she wasn't with anyone; she was sitting semi-alone. Secondly, she was smart. Still is smart, in fact, I assume. She knew answers to questions and stuff. I noticed her the next crim tute too; she stood outside waiting with the rest of us, not talking to anyone. I was doing the same. We were both eavesdropping on the same conversation, but from different sides of the room. Worse still, that conversation involved the only people in our tutorial to fail the compulsory assignment. They clearly failed dismally. *sigh*.

Anyway, so I've been vaguely noticing her when I see her. In the stalkerish way I do things before deciding to befriend someone - or rather, before actually managing to say hello to them. So, this morning, just prior to crim, I'd been sitting outside the law school feeling sorry for myself and unable to even go to the law cafe and purchase food because I was having a fairly substantial social anxiety attack. It happens sometimes. And today was the day she sat next to me in the lecture (primarily because she was last there of the group of three in which she sits, and the other two had taken the seats second from me and one from me, respectively). And of course I didn't actually speak to her or anything, but during the surprisingly extensive discussion of stalking, I did take notes, because I love irony just too much. Also because I was thinking about making her a character in a story, as I like to do, but I've decided against that.

Also, for clarity, I do know her first name at least. But crim girl is easier :P. Without further ado, my notes:

Crim girl:
 - favourite colour: green (lime)
 - mac person (&&ipod nano)
 - two rings - paired silver
      right ring
      left middle
 - silver watch
 - earing in non-lobe (stud)
 - jeans
 - brown belt
 - brown hair, eyes

Important addenda: she wears her hair in a single plait, it's about mid-back. I know her favourite colour is green because it's both the colour of her ipod and the colour of the tabs (i.e. customisable bits) on her computer bag. Her background was a pattern, rather than a photo, and the laptop was a 9-15 month old PowerBook (the type with the independent keys on the keyboard, with hard plastic between them - they're cool). Her tshirt was dark red and grey (or so) horizontal stripes. She wore a lighter grey jacket over it, but took it off once in the lecture theatre. The stud in her ear was simple silver, uncoloured. She has in the past worn some of her more favoured tshirts: oscar the grouch (well-worn, you can tell because it's that plasticy stuff that comes off eventually) and wonder woman. One of the Three is a girl from friends who I can't really remember. I would say Phoebe, but it's not. The ring on her right hand was crossed parallel on the top (like a strip of metal twisted by an amateur into a ring shape, it overlaps, but doesn't actually *cross*) and had a diamond (or more likely, zirconia) holding it together (but both parts of the strip were next to each other). The ring on her left hand was thinner in the body but had a two stones in it, larger, set in squares rotated pi / 4 (i.e. 45 degrees). One was dark purpleish, one was yellow, or something similar. Maybe red. They were substantially larger than the width of the ring itself, perhaps by a multiple of 2.5. They aligned on one side of each square, resulting in a similar overlapping pattern.

Her sense of humour was sufficient to laugh at John Blackwood's better jokes, but to ignore some of the worse ones. Eyerolling was appropriate. She was not a prolific note-taker, but benefited from using the unit outline side-by-side with the notes she was taking. Each lecture forms a different Microsoft Word for Mac 2003 document. She's not a computer nerd but knows how to use her computer effectively. She didn't talk with her friends during the lecture but did animatedly beforehand. She is studious but it's not because she has to be to pass, it's because she does well.

It's surprising how good my memory is sometimes. And also a little creepy.

Pointy beard?

That which forms the title of this post was in my clipboard (i.e. had been copied). I have no idea from whence it came.

The prime purpose of a post at this late hour is to, firstly, tell you all to post comments (I like comments :D) and secondly, to transcribe some of my thoughts from earlier, written on a scrap of paper in the dark in the car. That transcription is the entire remainder of this post.

I yearn for simpler days when love was about holding hands. When courting was common. When "thou" was a word, the law was technical and you could drive just to drive without calculating your CO₂ emissions or worrying about license restrictions. When cursive or calligraphy were the only styles.

Don't get me wrong, I love the modern world. I just want the old culture.

MORE COWBELL!

life

It's Saturday night and I've done nothing of the work that I have to do. I haven't even read the materials for the administrative law essay due Monday morning. Not to mention the websites, grant applications and other such things that need to be done. I'm falling behind, most definitely.

One of the things I enjoy doing while driving is putting my hand out the window and letting the air run through my fingers. Best enjoyed while listening to music (I also wouldn't mind tapping the side of my car to the beat but I'm inevitably out of time, unfortunately, so I don't). Today I saw someone else doing just that on the southern outlet. I was most exciting. Until I got closer. They were a child of maybe eight.

I need a life.

pornography

The whole point of this blog was so I could talk about things I don't admit to except while drunk. So while drunk, here's an admission. First, I cut my toenails today. I love cutting my toenails. I love it more than almost anything else in the whole world. Fingernail cutting just feels weird, but when I cut my toenails, it's so SATISFYING. Massive quantities of nail which take substantial force to remove can be ... removed. I let my toenails grow specifically so cutting them will be more fun. Freaky or what? Pretty freaky. That was actually my postsecret, that cutting my toenails was more satisfying than any orgasm I'd ever had. Possibly hyperbole, but I don't want to actually make a direct comparison, because I'm afraid of the answer. Anyway, that's not what I wanted to talk about. I was going to talk about pornography. See, I occasionally look at pornography. But it's very occasional and never satisfying (though I do like a good story with intrigue, good characters, plot development and the occasional bit o' sex). But I ... I just get bored with life. Massively bored. Like... I want to do something, something important, meaningful, interesting, fun, exciting. Something that's not administrative law or more fucking website coding. So I turn to something 'naughty' - pornography. And it bores me to and I'm not interested and I'm left in the same position as before but with guilt and a browser history to reinforce it [for clarity, I do know how to clear my browser history, so don't worry about that]. This is the state of my life, often. Trying to fill my lack-of-friends(-with-whom-I-spend-all-my-time) void with porn. Not a great idea, even for me.

I was thinking about disabling comments but fuckit.