The Last Bastion Of Absurdity

So. I'm 21.

...

*hides under blankets and misc items of furniture*

But seriously, how do I feel? Well, I had meant to do a whole bunch of things by now, sort of as a red carpet lead-in to Officially Being An Adult (In Absolutely Every Country That Counts, No Excuses Any More, Seriously). Most of them fell by the wayside like 90% of the things I plan do. In the end it just sort of happened. So if an occasion like this can be considered a portent or microcosm of one's life in general... I suppose it suits me? I've muddled through everything so far, and I suppose I'll muddle through the rest.

This weekend was a Neil Gaiman extravaganza, my birthday present to myself (or, I like to think, my birthday present from the universe, which conveniently scheduled the Graphic festival at Sydney Opera House right before my birthday). It followed pattern, if by pattern you mean "awesome with crunchy bits of fail," which as we have already established is, in fact, my pattern. I now have many books and slightly more rage at bus drivers! Memorable quote of Sunday's panel was Neil Gaiman telling Eddie Campbell that he'd love to see Frank Frazetta's Peanuts. Also Shaun Tan was cute. Saturday was a short story reading with illustrations by the aforementioned Campbell and accompanied by a string quartet, which was. Unique. They were pretty great! Although my current musical obsession is Van Canto, an a capella metal band. RIDDLY DIDDLY DIDDLY I CAN'T GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD

*cough*

Um other things I have discovered recently! New webcomic! It is mostly about... other comics. Haha back here they do Kate Beaton and Scott Pilgrim in a row. MY PEOPLE!

Speaking of Pilgrim, the movie is out in a few days! And I still haven't read the last book! Although Ramona has coincidentally similar hair to me for half the trailer!

What's new in the rest of the internet?

Today, I am indignant about Heidegger. Specifically, about his opaque and rambling speech to some architects being foisted on us in a poetics class with zero context. Yes, Martin, it is certainly an excellent idea to give people an essay to talk about, then tell them they are all wrong because the essay is impossible to fully understand wihout reading a bunch of other essays you did not give them, nor indicate they ought to find, not that they would have anyway since three assessments are due in this fortnight, one for your subject.

Not that I'm bitter or anything.

Thinking more about my LURK MOAR epiphany, possibly I should make use of it in class. That way I will figure out that stuff like the above has happened BEFORE I start shooting my mouth off about thing-ness and neuropsychological synthesis and get told off for being too teleological :P

(I did not, incidentally, mean that people who read my journal should lurk moar. TALK TO MEEE)

...I am doing a class in which I can get told off for being too teleological. Ohhhh academia.

Urgh. I don't understand where I caught this cold. I have been hibernating since new year. I haven't SEEN anyone let alone anyone who was sick. WHERE DID IT COME FROM.

I'm all achey and yuck. Last night we finally caught the cricket that got inside somehow (THE CHIRPING IS COMING FROM INSIDE THE HOOOUSE) and set it free. It was in the shower.

Also I am FINALLY caught up on ALL of my flist including the fandom filter which I kid you not stretched to skip=160, jesus fuck. overheardnyc is cluttering up my misc filter...

Oh man. I started this week with a chockablock calendar and everything's fallen off it one by one - which I suppose is lucky because if not then this cold would have kicked the majority. Hopefully I will at least be upright and noncontagious by Sunday, which is double-booked for karaoke birthday parties, lol - I'll probably spend a couple hours at Jenny's and then head over to Cassie's.

dethdethdethdethdeth.

Um um so guys. If one were to hypothetically have accidentally set something on fire in one's kitchen. Say... a plastic chopping board. Are melted plastic fumes harmful in any way?

I have my apocalyptothon request! I'm sort of disappointed not to have a choice in fandoms, as the only two prompts in my fandoms are in the SAME fandom, but then I realised that if I didn't want to write that fandom I should've just NOT LISTED IT, DUH. Oh well. Apocalypses are fun no matter where you set them!

Argh my laptop screen has randomly developed a dash pattern. It's really irritating! I may have to reboot.

The deth flu is still going strong. Now with supporting acts of period cramps and crushing depression! Yay! I credit my mum with getting me out of bed this morning because I was all set to hibernate indefinitely.

Mmm. I wish I was a bear.

i can has a dethflu. :(


Also, assignment due tomorrow. It's only 500 words but I just REALLY REALLY don't want to do it. So I've spent the day with the word document open going "murgh... after this one game of tetris... and check lj... and some youtube videos of misheard falloutboy lyrics..."

And sniffling. My nose is all red from tissues. And I've got the shakes and a headache and stuff. This really sucks.

I just got home from a faintly blurry school day, only to discover that my whipped cream is no longer whipped. A quick squiz at the ingredients list¹ will reveal that it was only nominally cream in the first place, so by rights the whole thing should just cancel itself out. Instead, what we get is sort of... creamy... drizzle. Still good for pie! And crumble. And pudding. Speaking of pudding, one of the myriad of tiny things that stop me short and wave leetle "SCHOOL. IT SHALL BE OVER. FOREVAR" flags at me²: the wednesday market at Fox Studios. I usually wander over in my free periods to snaffle free samples of cheese and mayonnaise and weird sort of not-crackers. The thing I most often actually buy is sticky date pudding³, and I'm clearly a regular customer because the girl at the counter always smiles at me and gives me discounts. This feels odd, and yesterday it occurred to me that after the ninth of November I will have no reason to be hanging around there on a Wednesday. Sic transit... pudding.

Speaking of school, our principal (like my mother) works in mysterious ways. Today I was at the office, getting a heatpack (I told you it was a blurry day) when she strode into the room, brandishing a piece of fancy paper.

"I need an instant audience!" she proclaimed. I clutched my pain relief and edged away.

"That means you too!" Dr Vazza cried.

"..." I said. She proceeded to present some kind of impromptu award to someone called Kerry. I resumed my edging, but she whirled around and pointed at me.

"Where are you going?!" she demanded. "Clap!"

I clapped. We hear and obey, O Vazza.

Tuesday night half my drama class went to see The Story Of The Miracles At Cookie's Table, by Wesley Enoch and awesome. I failed at buses⁴ on the way there, quite a lot. For a while I distracted myself from my aching shins (for some reason, that's where it hurts when I walk too fast...) by giggling at the phrase "Public Transport Error: Please Reboot Universe" but it could only provide so much amusement and I was still cranky when I finally got there, amazingly on time. The Doctor Who fans among us were trying to explain the concept of the creatures that turn to stone when you look at them. The rest of us didn't quite get it at first until we realised that you can't blink or they'll get you oh my god. Jaws actually dropped! (I think Evelyn will have nightmares.) Then I stuttered a lot, we got front row seats (and nearly impaled by strategically flung forks) and a good time was had by all.

In lulz today, this squirl is pissed, by which I mean fucked, by which I mean on the lam, on a bender and off it's fuzzy little face on pumpkin wine. WIN.

---

¹How exactly does one invert syrup?
²Like a meeting discussing Year Twelve 007 Tshirts, or trying to make a study timetable (go on, laugh) and realising that in two months I won't have any exams to study for.
³It's really, really nice. And the sauce is just brilliant, and, guh. Alas, they don't sell individual portions anymore (well, she made me an exception once because she'd already split a double for a friend of hers) so I have to convince someone to share one with me. Luckily I have lately converted Chloe to the Joys Of Pudding.
⁴So what else is new, I know, I know.

...was a cranky day. Now those of you who know me are aware that I am almost supernaturally good-natured, even my temper tantrums are laughable. So my cranky days consist mostly of stomping around, pouting, snapping my fingers and sometimes decorously throwing soft things at other soft things, while loudly proclaiming that the entire universe fails at everything.

Yesterday my mother failed at getting dressed at all before coming to wake me up, BEFORE ELEVEN mind you, to tell me that I was meeting great aunt Nadia in the city in an hour or two to take some jackets to be altered, a development of which I had not previously been aware. So that didn't set the day up very nicely. Then my glasses mysteriously failed to show up, so I had to squint my way to said meeting while carrying a paper carry-bag which completely and utterly failed at being easy to actually, yaknow, carry... thanks to those rope handles that invariably dig into anything you suspend them by, be it the shoulder, elbow or fingers.

By the time I met my aunt, I'd gone right through "wah everything fails" and temporarily come out on the side of "lol everything fails" - I was then very amused to meet a friend of Nadia's and her grand-daughter who had... very visibly failed at not being dressed by elderly female relatives. I mean, poor girl, nobody deserves huge purple sequinned hand-me-downs. I started sliding back down sometime during my aunts pitiful haggling with the seamstress ("cheap, yes?" "normal price" "okay but... cheap?") which inevitably failed, although if she's as good as my aunt says it's worth the price.

Then the friend failed at turning up to meet Nadia for lunch despite arranging a time and place not fifteen minutes ago, so I convinced her to buy me crepes with strawberry jam. These did not fail, except for being tiny. Then my mum showed up and engaged Nadia in spirited conversation about how I should eat more fruit. I hinted that I'd kind of like to get home, since I had actually planned to.. you know, do things today.

"But there's a bookstore right there!" Mum coaxed. Why don't you go spend that twenty I gave you?"

Alas, I am easily persuaded. The store's fantasy/sf section failed at sensible layout, and then my mum wandered in, saw the book I was looking at and told me to just read it in the store instead of spending money. Mmm, tasty mixed messages. So I went "yeah what the hell" and sat there reading the book until a staff member politely informed me that I was blocking the shelves and they kinda had tables over there.

I had indeed failed to notice the tables neatly hidden behind the culinary shelves, so I thanked her and went to sit there and finish reading Colony by Rob Grant, who doesn't fail at anything at all, fond as he is of the deus ex machina. But I still think Incompetence is the funniest book he's ever written, and possibly the funniest book anyone has ever written.

While there I think I incidentally failed at noticing that a guy was trying to start a conversation until he'd already left. Then I failed at city navigation, not braining the dude on the bus next to me with my oversized and inconvenient bag, previously full of clothes, and doing any work for the rest of the day.

Let's just say that by the time my mum got home and dragged me to the gym only to find that pilates had been cancelled, I wasn't in a very good mood AT ALL. In fact, if I'd been an evil mastermind with access to a doomsday machine I would even now have Cyclops and the team manacled to my dungeon wall (in their skintight outfits... Professor X you old pervert) as I cackle manically and prepare to push the big red button OF DETH. I would then be tackled by Wolverine, who my henchmen had left for dead earlier in the night (never a good idea). Because who doesn't enjoy being tackled by Wolverine?

What was I saying? Right. Cranky. Rrr.

meeelndiana. you're squishy. i need a hug.

Sorry I've been all elsewhere and shit the past few days. Doing an Open Program course at NIDA this week. HSC Drama Workshop. It's cool, but exhausting. 10-5 jumping around yelling at people, essentially. Thus we have not only the physical exhaustion of movement exercises but also the mental exhaustion of dealing with 24 new people, all dramatic types, including your typical cadre of slightly intimidatingly cool (and WAY TOO TALL) guys. The scary girls are oddly absent. But by scary I mean more scary than usual that's not to say the little part of me that's hiding behind a rock going meep when I get in peoples faces and gabble at them wasn't going out of its mind. I mean mine. Whatever.

My new friends include a demigothchik from out near Foster who reminds me oddly of a teenage version of my drama teacher, a quiet guy who's been growing his rattail since year six, a girl who claims to come from a school full of barbie dolls and asks for patience if she forgets to switch it off, a bunch of Napoleon Dynamite fans, two Matts and a Mats, several Rebeccas (one of whom reminds me of Sam), and a boy of slight build with the misfortune of being given the name Constantine by his parents.

Nobody shares my love of livejournal, Heroes or zombies. Foster girl likes hats, which is a start.

I'm behind on everything, and my boyfriend will only be in Sydney for three days in a week or so before flying out to Israel for the rest of the year. But I stuck up all my sketches and things on my bedroom walls, and I've made a start on catching up on Supernatural, and I have had some good advice for my IP. So all is not lost.

I feel awful and I don't know why.

Um, there was something I was going to say. Right, it was about Dario Fo and his awesomeness.

Fuckit.