I heart Fezzik

Also, I finished The Princess Bride. Some books just make me smile, and this belongs on the list, along with George's Marvellous Medicine (actually, most Roald Dahl, but that one especially,) old Superman comics (I picked up a collection reprinting late fifties issues at the library,) Beverly Cleary's Ramona books, and the funner class of children's picture books, like Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, or The Wolves in the Walls.
I read challenging books too; but in the last week of assignment stuff, you need to give your brain a holiday sometimes : )

the end of things

So. No post yesterday, but this week I think I can forgive myself for missing a day or two: everything is due at uni, because we go on prac next week. So, sorry mister blog, I may neglect you but for good reason.
What has Alleliua been doing this weekend?
Alleliua finished her art assignment, even after she did the fun art bits, she did all the writing too.
Alleliua collected references for her behaviour management assignment.
Alleliua sang in church, and taught Sunday School.
Alleliua did not feed her little cousin sand. (It was an illustration on trust. If it had been a different cousin, I may well have chucked the illustration and given them a mouthful of grit.)
Alleliua, presumably, talked about herself in the third person. She likes doing that.

Today, I'm not wearing to uni my grey smock minidress with the big pockets and black opaque tights, because I couldn't answer the multiple choice question:
Does this outfit make me look:
a) Like a sexy mod throwback in style of Edie Sedgewick, etc.
b) Like a four-year-old on stilts. (Black tights make my legs look loooong. It would be a good look if I was skinny.)
c) Like someone forgot her pants when she walked out the door this morning.

Huh. So, jeans instead. Again.

Magic

So. Have worked on assignments, got writers' block, gone off and spent too much time at the Sims 2-related Place Which Must Not Be Named (pretty sure I can name it if I want to, I'm not in a paysite forum; I just like to call it that.) Yahr.
Then got guilty and went back and tried to work on my assignments some more and got writers block some more and played solitaire, badly, on the computer.
And this is just week 8.
My hair is acting like a bought one! Hooray! It so rarely plays by any kind of decent rules, this is worth posting about.
Went to the library with Grandma this morning and put four Fables tpbs and The Pinhoe Egg on hold. Fables because Dad bought one and I hate to be left out of these things (I've not quite forgiven Samurai Champloo yet) and because the whole concept sounds unbelievably cool. And it's been around for years. I have my head in the sand. And Egg because it's Diana Wynne Jones, and do I need any more reasons? I looooove Chrestomanci - I discovered DWJ after the Ghibli Howl's Moving Castle and never looked back but that shouldn't surprise anyone because I'm hugely obsessed with fantasy, especially fantasy for kids. I mean, I've re-read Narnia sooo many times (all of them. And Earthsea. And Tamora Pierce. And Harry Potter, and many more.)
And off on a different tangent again; I'm an avid reader of Harry Potter, but compare them to C.S. Lewis and poor Joanne Rowling doesn't have a leg to stand on. I mean, Dobby or Reepicheep? No contest. It'd be Reep every time, wouldn't it.
To think this post started with assignments.

Inconceivable

So. Firstly, prac was excellent today. Much, much better than last week. Partly because I'm not suffering PMT and partial catatonia, and partly because last week my prac teacher bailed me up and told me what I was doing wrong, so I could make an effort to right it today. I have a good prac teacher.

Secondly, after prac I had to run up to uni to hand in a hard copy, in hopes of rectifying the Stupid Assignment Mistake. Which is done. And I'm just glad it's done. And I'm hoping I don't fail. Because that would suck.

Lastly, Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Poison. True love. Hate. Revenge. Giants. Hunters. Bad men. Good men. Beautifulest ladies. Snakes. Spiders. Beasts of all natures and descriptions. Pain. Death. Brave men. Coward men. Strongest men. Chases. Escapes. Lies. Truths. Passion. Miracles.

I'm reading The Princess Bride.

Oops-a-daisies

So, in the fog of exhaustion, stress, and confusion that was yesterday, I appear to have neglected to hand in an assignment.
Oops. Big mistake.
I had it sitting on my USB, though, so I fired it off to the tutor as an e-mail attatchment as soon as I realised (about 15 mins ago. So that makes it 24 hours late.) But it's ANZAC day, so I've no idea when she'll get it or if she'll even accept it. And I'm just praying she actually uses the e-mail address she gave us at the beginning of term.
Well, if I haven't heard back by tomorrow afternoon, I'll ring her.

I am such an idiot.

Can I go to bed yet?

So. In order to attempt to keep awake at uni today, I consumed ruinously expensive amounts of black coffee and 'Sugarfree V' (which tastes completely foul. I never drink it unless I absolutely have to), and now I am not any less tired but I am, in addition, vaguely sloshing when I move.

I am really glad I went to see my sister yesterday. Already the fogs of memory (or perhaps exhaustion) are obfuscating the sore feet and stomach-cramping anxiety of a bus ride to the wrong place, the uncomfortably damp Dunlop Volleys and the loong, looong waits in various queues. Instead, inside my head, the sun shines, the perfect present for my brother is the perfect price, the pizza is pleasantly tolerable, and the Giant Drop lingers like a firework in the back of my mind.
In a week, I will be able to say it was a perfect day.
The most I can say about it right now is that I survived.

1:00am...

... today, found me sitting in a deserted station long after the last train had been missed, sitting, shivering with my cousin, sharing a jumper and the Season of Mists tpb waiting to be rescued.
Yesterday, my cousin and I went to Dreamworld to see my sister. It was fun, mostly. It was really good to see her. And then we went back to where she was staying and watched telly and chatted for, well, too long, because then we missed a bus and then we missed a bus stop on the bus we did catch and made a big mess of everything. Hence waiting in the station at one in the morning.
It was good to see her, though.

Two Things

I'm linking to this because it makes me angry. I love free sims2 custom content (just ask my family - they hate how much bandwidth I consume...) and for someone to take someone else's free custom content, butcher it, and charge money for it while passing it off as your own is disgusting. I may not be an avenging penguin, but I'm grumpy. And that's all I'm going to say about it.

So, it's Sunday, and Scots Presbyterian Church in Melbourne was on the telly this morning on that hymn-singing show that's like an Aussie Songs of Praise, I forget what it's called. Which is cool, because I'm a Pressy, and I used to live in Melbourne, and I've been to that church, and I spotted someone I knew in the choir. Plus, as I said to my sister, I'm a pipe organ junkie. And it's nice to see the congregation singing as well as the choir. Here's a link.

Post Number 50

First off, I should probably point out that I did not take the photographs or make the artworks in the slideshow below (in this post), I digitally manipulated them for a uni assignment. The original photographs of the original artwork are here, here, and here.




There was a bear on the train today.

Which is always nice.

art i made today for uni

Just me talking about boring things (again)

So today felt like a deep breath, a pause, if you will, between frenzies of activity. I slept in as long as I could: nine-ish, I think. Which is not very late. But that is a good thing, which shows that my body is readjusting to a sensible timetable and is beginning to believe that maybe one to eleven is'nt really the best sleep pattern to adopt in the unfriendly environment of prac and eight o'clock lectures. Every time, during the holidays, I promise not to destroy my biorhythms and every time I end up doing just that.
So I did some walking and some science and some getting ready for uni, and finished the Dahlquist novel, and generally simultaneously recovered and prepared - the next few days are chockers.

Blindsight link

By the way, Blindsight is available here. I forgot to put the link in my last post and no matter how hard I try, I can't get blogger to include a new link while editing a post.

Gnurrh...

So on Tuesday I may have been mostly dead, but today I am genuinely corpsified. Prac today was exhausting. Plus I didn't sleep because I was stressing over arguing with my sister because I was stressed. Plus I've sort of been leaking tears since seven this morning, mainly feeling unloved and sorry for myself, after trying to argue with my sister again but not succeding because she was too sensible to let me. Sometimes I'm a wet hen. It's not fun.
At the moment I'm reading, after reasonable amounts of assignment work (the definition of 'reasonable' varying depending on whether I'm at a good bit or not):
The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by Gordon Dahlquist, which I picked up at the library for the title. Searching for a link online, I came across this, which Is Very Cool, because Dave McKean is amazing and shows that however I think I'm flying off on tangents my brain tends to end up in the same place. The book itself is less amazing - it's very meandering and dense. The first pages of the book were hard to get through because of his writing style (he's definitely not writing for ease of reading) but now I find myself wondering of subsequent chapters are more clearly written, of if I'm adjusting. But the three main proponents are, so far, wonderful.
Blindsight by Peter Watts, because it's for free of the internet and I don't read much sci-fi, so it's a nice change.

Tonight I am, like Westley, mostly dead. I'm sure wheezing 'true love' is about all I can manage. My internal clock is readjusting to getting up in the morning...
Uni is going to be psycho the next three weeks. Assignments galore and all that jazz. But I've not died of uni yet, or even failed anything, so that're really all ok.
And my exam that I was worried about, I did ok in: two-three marks above average. Someone got eleven out of thirty; I don't envy them.

I wish MY name was Triolet

How to talk to Girls at Parties. I'm obsessed with it. Especially the title. And now because it was nominated for a Hugo, we can all read it on the web! Or at least we could if we needed to but don't, really, because our copy of Fragile Things seems to have been surgically attatched to our arm...

The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.

Well, the advantage of having roughly six books on hold at the library at any one time is that you never know which one is going to turn up when. Today when I wandered down to the library it was Terry Pratchett's Soul Music. A long time ago, when I was young and uneducated and didn't know what Discworld was, there was I cartoon on, I assume, ABC Kids in the afternoon. It was really cool and I liked it. It was the TV adaptation of Soul Music - admittedly not the best way to discover Pratchett, it doesn't do him justice, but by the time they started showing Wyrd Sisters, I was hooked. Checking it out on YouTube, it seems to have become somewhat tawdry and cheap with age, but still, here's a clip for old times sake.

To this day, I still bear deep affection for Susan Sto Helit. And it's always wonderful to come back to a book you know you've enjoyed but can't remember - I'm assuming I must have hunted it down and read it sometime during my teens, but can't remember doing so. And while we're on the subject of Discworld, this is the best thing ever. I heart annotations - it's another one of those superiority things where I get to know more than others.

In other news, I have entirely the best family in the known and unknown universes. My aunty came back from a visit to the hometown bearing Easter chocolate - I felt really good about not taking advantage of half price leftover chocolate all this week - and the first three Sandman trades, which I get to keep while not actually being allowed to call my own (Dad called it 'extended loan'.) Yay my folks.

I heart Holidays

So. Yesterday I watched Children of Men, that sci-fi movie with Clive Owen. It was alright. It has Chiwetel Ejiofor in, who is one of my favourites. He was the bad guy from Serenity. (And speaking of Serenity, isn't this the funniest thing ever?) Even though, favourite or not, he's kind of ruined things for me since I watched Kinky Boots - my sister and I sat through an umpteenth viewing of Serenity sniggering and going, "to think... that's Lola!"
Also read a Birds of Prey trade paperback. Birds of Prey are ok if you can get past the boobs. Which I know are kind of the point. But anyway.
And also The Doll's House, to ease my Sandman cravings. My dad's just got a copy of the Absolute and I'm consumed with jealousy. (Consumed by jealousy? Not sure which is right.) I'm totally in love with Rose Walker, possibly even more than I'm in love with Delerium and Death and Nuala and Johanna Constantine.
And while we're on the topic of Neil Gaiman, came across a short story called Cinnamon I hadn't seen before, on his website. It may have been there for some time, I don't check the Cool Stuff very often.

Must escape own head...

So, the downside to being on holidays and doing absolutely nothing for days is that the lines between the inside and the outside of my head start blurring, and I begin to get fuzzy. I need to get out more.
I'm now paying the extra ten dollars a month for extra internet access, because I used up my grandparents' limit in nine days. I'm still not exactly sure how I managed to do that. Admittedly, their limit was 300mb.
This morning I stumbled across the UK trailer for Stardust at Friends of English Magic. It's very similar to, but slightly longer than, the US one, and has the ghosts in: Hooray! Also in Stardust news, I'm grumpy because the Australian release date for Stardust is September 6, almost a month after the US. But then further down the IMDb list, the UK release is in October, so I'm not feeling quite so grumpy.

Seventy-Two Trombones

My computer Is Not Dead! Hooray! It woke up this morning perfectly normally, as if to say, "Ugh... coffee. I'm just pretending you didn't spill coffee in me." Or something, possibly, that makes sense. I'm not really sure.
If you have noticed a dearth of psalms in my blog lately (you may not have, but trust me, there is one,) that is because I have been neglecting my devo most atrociously. My priorities are so skewiff. Must do devotion next.
Lily left a comment yesterday. Check out her blog, it's very pretty.

Don't mention the Laptop...

...I'm trying not to think about it. Various random things: this is one of my new turtle earrings (I have red, my cousin has blue.) I'm not entirely sure where the other one is, which is a little worrying.

The Stardust trailer is up at the official website, if you had difficulty playing it through Yahoo (Kat!)

I have added a YouTube thingy to this blog's sidebar. It's a bit trippy. It's set to 'tropical fish' at the moment, and I'll change the setting every so often. Also a picture of my eye which I took and then played around with. The plan is the picture will change every so often also.

noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

So. What did I get up to today? Nothing much. Finished vol. 4 of Dave Sim & Gerhard's Cerebus, made chilli-chocolate truffles (they need more chilli next time), killed my computer...
Yes. I killed my computer, by baptising it with coffee.

kidnappings and such

So. I had a lovely Easter weekend, as I was unexpectedly kidnapped by my cousins and made to eat chocolate and go shopping and watch movies. We made white chocolate and orange truffles, and I ate too many, and then I sat on the couch and watched Breakfast at Tiffany's and felt quietly sick.

Good Friday

Church at the somewhat unholy hour of eight a.m. this morning. I was yawning the whole way through -- I felt so bad. And I was in bed before 11 last night and everything.
300 was awesome, but what were y'all expecting?
It looks sooo much like a Frank Miller comic, even I can tell and all I've ever read of his is one Sin City book and The Dark Knight Returns. This movie has Frank Miller gore, Frank Miller wrinkles, Frank Miller nipples on Frank Miller women...
I'm glad I went last night, too. The atmosphere was awesome at the flicks - I went to the Southbank Cinema because they were showing it on the giant screen. It was a sell-out screening, and I nearly got trampled by people trying to get decent seats... the girl in front of me remarked to her friend, "I was here for the first day of Harry Potter. This is heaps more insane."
I got a decent seat because I showed up 40 minutes early and queued for one, so that was ok. I was disappointed by the trailers, just Disturbia, Shooter, and one other like that, then the new Pirates. But then they showed the trailer for Grindhouse, so they redeemed themselves somewhat.

Save money? I said...

After wandering around singing "No, no, no" for the last month, I finally caved and bought Amy Winehouse's album. And I swear it's absolutely all the money I'm wasting this week. Except I really have to see 300. But that's not a waste, is it? I mean, really. It's 300.

Is it? Could it be?

I think I found a Sandman reference in a My Chemical Romance song. Yes. It's pop culture referencing, the emo way.
The song is 'It's not a fashion statement, it's a deathwish' and the lyrics at the beginning go:
'For what you did to me,
and what I'll do to you,
you get, what everyone else gets,
you get a lifetime'
The Sandman quote is, of course, from the Brief Lives cycle, issue 43. It's one of the more famous quotes. Death comes for Bernie Capax, who has lived for fifteen thousand years. He says,
'That's pretty good. Isn't it? I lived a pretty long time.'
And Death replies,
"You lived what anybody gets, Bernie. You got a lifetime."
Coincidence? Probably. But on the whole, it's pretty cool. And it gives the song an interesting dimension.
Lyrics from here... Sandman quote here.

Huh. Didn't see that coming...

Every time at uni we have a mid-semester exam, I stress and worry and study lots of irrelevant extra information, only to discover that the exam is a) based solely on stuff covered in the lectures and tutes several times over, and b) a walk.
So this time, I think 'Ah, a mid-semester exam, thirty multiple choice questions, nothing to worry about.' I do a review of the base readings and lecture notes, and wander in feeling confident.
And then - BAM! - this is the hardest exam I've ever sat. And I'm sitting there going, 'But they're all phases! How can one of them not be a phase?!' and my stomach is sitting on the floor with my thongs...
Sometimes uni just floors me.