Are we insane yet? Are we insane yet?

My phone just wouldn't stop ringing today, it was very annoying. Especially since everyone seemed to be calling about an issue that happened before I started working there and the more I kept telling them I had no idea what had happened, the more people seemed to call. Perhaps it was all some sort of test where they'd agreed to keep calling in an attempt to catch me in a lie, or perhaps until they received the answer they wanted. Either way, I hope I'm not bothered this much tomorrow.

Anyway, stuff! Stuff has been happening, as it is want to do. I had my first class of the semester as I may have mentioned before, and it seems very promising. Five people from my advanced narrative class from last semester are also in it which is great fun. It's nice to be in a class that recognises the validity of genre fiction as well, as opposed to the constant white noise about literary fiction. We're going to have to write in the different genres of crime/detective, romance and fantasy/sci-fi and I'm looking forward in a bemused-yet-horrified way to seeing what I churn out for them all. But yes, definitely not a bad start to the week. Tomorrow, however, I have Theory & Writing - for that I have little hope. Sigh. There's always a theory subject somewhere.

I have finally found a costume as well, now if only I could get my tax back and purchase it.

It shall be paired with a mask (I've got my eye on a new one despite owning two masks already), fan, gloves and cape (that I all have.) Also possibly these rather cool looking fangs - not the plastic kind everyone's mucked about with at one point or another, but costume ones you sort of stick on your canine teeth. And yes ok, vampires are so done to death at the moment but when it's a nightmare masquerade ball, isn't that the obvious fit? All this costume shopping has only reinforced how much I love this kind of insanity, and really, why can't every day be Halloween?

I love that I'm buying costumes etc before I've even confirmed anything else for the Melbourne trip - including leave from work. As always, my priorities are beyond question.

Anywho, we've had some insane weather here the last two days and I am freezing so I think I'll take tonight off and have a long bubble bath, finish this damn David Wellington book, and watch a couple of eps of Red Dwarf.

Tomorrow I'll tackle my essay, sort through the submissions I'm contemplating, and...actually I don't want to think about all the things I'm meant to do because they really make taking the night off to do nothing seem extremely wasteful. Especially since the next four nights are pretty much booked out *taps lip* Ah what the hell, I'll take the night off anyway and then tomorrow I'll draw up a schedule to encourage productivity.

I love drawing up schedules - it's procrastination that actually feels like it's accomplishing something.

Music: If I had you - Adam Lambert
Mood: Lazy

I'll just lie here and depreciate

I seem to have thrown good sense to the wind, that's the only explanation I can offer as to why I am starting a blog in the wee hours of Monday morning. But frankly if I don't do it now, I fear I won't get to it at all and I miss blogging, ok? I miss documenting every minuscule detail of my insignificant little life...I'd lament this much more if it wasn't for Twitter. At least the minuscule details of my insignificant life still get out in some way or form.

Hm. I fear the language of this blog may stray into some era of lost civil propriety so bear with me if you please - it's that odd habit of mine to absorb whatever language of whatever novel I have recently read and this weekend has been dedicated solely to getting through Wilkie Collins' 1868 epistolary novel The Moonstone. Generally considered the first detective novel and precursor's to Sherlock Holmes etc, it sadly does not resemble the Holmes mysteries in length and is instead a 500 page tome that I have read online. Time out to say how much I hate reading things online because a) my eyes!, b) awkward laptop positioning, and c) I read slower - so it really has taken me all freaking weekend to get through this book (I don't know if this has something to do with the screen or whether I keep getting distracted by googling random things and so on.) What's worse is I knew exactly who did it (and suspected how) by page 100. Collins was a close associate of Charles Dickens and apparently published his works in serial in Dickens' magazine - which doesn't surprise me in the least. You all know how I feel about Dickens. Not that The Moonstone isn't good, I can appreciate its place and I did actually finish it, but as with all novels of that era, I just find them so dull - honestly why must they take so long to say what they have to say? Academically, I'll put up with it because it's important to see the development of things and canon and blah blah blah, personally I find it inaccessible.

Because of that wonderful undertaking, I have gotten nothing else done this weekend. I've just finished my reading for tomorrow's class, Popular Fiction (which is also the class I read The Moonstone for) and the return to uni seems to be the perfect time for me to give up sleeping. So I've pretty much resigned myself to at least seven weeks of only 5 hours sleep max a night. Yay *sigh* Next on my reading list for Popular Fiction is Raymond Chandler's Farewell, My Lovely. I also have Dune after that. Luckily the other ones on the reading list I've already read. I haven't been able to find any readings for the dread class of the semester Theory & Writing, but whatever it is I'm sure it'll be absolutely boring and I will probably stop doing any readings for that class four weeks in. As always, I am a dedicated student. I have another class this semester, Writing Seminar, but I don't think I have readings for that *strokes beard*

If you can make sense of the nonsense I just typed, well done! If not, it pretty much comes down to me having class on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday. I will whine about this again in due course, as always.

This week is actually shaping up to be quite epic. The return to uni aside, there's Florence + The Machine on Friday night, followed by the Neil Gaiman reading at the Opera House on Saturday and a panel discussion on Sunday. The last two are part of the 'Graphic' festival the Opera House are hosting all through August - I'll also be attending a Joss Whedon talk as part of it at the end of the month.

Things I still need to do, then, include:
> Clean up the Torchwood essay from the conference and email it off
> Finish a short story and submit it to a comp by the end of the month
> Sort something out with MobyMag
> Uni readings
> Costume shopping
> Finalise things for Melbourne

Things I did last weekend:
> Saw Inception. Loved it with an unholy passion. It's just so fantastic to see a wholly original idea and execution in this quagmire of adaptations and mediocre sequels. And may I just take a moment to welcome all the new members to the suit fetish club. I've been here a while, and I think you'll enjoy it. (As I have said many, many times before, if men wore waistcoats all the time, the world would be a better place.)
> Saw Knight & Day. Look, there's no better Tom Cruise than Spy Tom Cruise. Except perhaps Top Gun Tom Cruise, but stop living in the past.
> Winterland festival with M. Not so much festival as five stalls and a very small ice-rink. Still had a great time though, and the fudge I bought was absolutely divine.

The only way I get through life these days is with bullet points. As for the necessary work mention - things are crazy busy as always during deadline times, there was one on Friday and I have one a week for the next two weeks.

Ooooh yeah, watching Talkin Bout Your Generation tonight (for the internationals, its panel show where three generation teams 'compete' against each other) and one of the games was spin-offs, where they'd show a pic of a spin-off show and they had to say what the parent show was. The minute the game was explained, I simply said 'Torchwood.' Mum was watching with me and apparently she is used to my randomly saying 'Torchwood' at everything, so it was ignored. Imagine both our surprise when an image of Jack and Ianto then did actually appear (from COE, if anyone cares, on their way to executing the worst plan ever). The Baby Boomers team got it right and we were treated to a nice pic of David Tennant. Which is always a good evening I know. What I found highly ironic in my 'finding-fault-and-reading-too-much-into-everything-is-the-only-way-I-can-deal-with-COE' way was that in choosing an image to represent Torchwood, they had chosen one of Jack and Ianto. Not Team!Torchwood, not even with Gwen. Anyway, there'd already been a Doctor Who joke earlier in the program so I was feeling quite pleased with myself. Don't ask me why Who references make me feel pleased, they just do - also keep in mind that here on the other side of the world, it's not something that generally comes up in every day discussion or that everyone knows about - shameful as that is. You live empty lives people!

Clearly I have gone mad with tiredness, so I'd better leave it at that. Up in 5 hours and out till 10pm. It's the glamorous life.

Music: Mack the Knife - Frank Sinatra
Mood: Hyper

QFT

Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white...

- Mark Jenkins

Music: Rattling keys
Mood: Headache-y and tired

Wakes imagination

I had such a brilliant Harry Potter dream the other night - I can't remember the specifics, but I just woke up knowing it had been amazing. So know I'm going to re-read the series, as you do.

Plans for the evening have been put on hold until tomorrow. Instead I have watched some more Buffy (aka angstfest 98) and something called Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist - not entirely sure how I feel about that yet. Indifferent I think is the call.

Tomorrow is actually shaping up to be quite busy - Em and I are hitting up the Winterland festival and checking out the markets, before I catch Inception (which I'm dying to see - it better not be overhyped, I want my mind blown) and then I'm catching up with Lizzie in the evening.

With all the socialising crammed into one day, I am free to spend Sunday in the country with the parental unit doing my favourite thing - nothing.

If there is any justice in the world, material for my work features should have arrived over the weekend meaning I'll have actual work to do next week. I've got three consecutive weeks of deadlines, so I'm looking forward to being busy again. I complain, but it really is better than boredom.

Oh, I have free tickets to see ET at the drive-in on Wednesday - let me know if there are any takers.

Music: Sleepy silence
Mood: Tired

Today's special: rant of the broken record variety

There’s something that annoys me, something subtle and perhaps it may not seem like a big deal….but it annoys me all the same. It comes from remarks such as "You’re too pretty to be emo", "Geek girls have no style", or as a radio announcer asked Alex Perry the other day "Will we ever see a girl with chunky thighs and a PhD on Top Model?" (paraphrasing, obviously) So what exactly are we implying here, that all PhD students have chunky thighs? That pretty girls can’t be smart and into other things?

People have very clear pictures of how others should look and act, and fit them into the necessary boxes. You wear a lot of black? Into the Goth and emo box you go. You watch Star Trek? Well, then clearly you should go into the geek category. You do well at uni, you wear glasses, you follow celeb gossip, you read comic books, you have a studded belt…whatever, it’ll get you placed firmly in a category. It’s human nature to classify and order, I suppose.

The fact of the matter is, people very rarely fit into such narrow categories. It’s possible to be many things at once, to belong to many groups at the same time without great difficulty. This is hardly revolutionary information and I know I’m covering old ground. I’ve even made peace with society’s incessant need to label absolutely everything. It’s the comments that fire me up. "You’re too pretty to be emo." I mean really. Who says that to someone? Are you really judging an entire collective of people, and then, worst of all, somehow think you’re bestowing a compliment? Come on man, grow up.

I wear a lot of black, I have emo sensibilities, I listen to bands of dubious quality and go to shows, I have an eclectic knowledge of punk history, I’m smart, I write, I like Twilight and Harry Potter, I watch at least an hour of sci-fi a day, I play chess and I’m good at it, I like astronomy, I’m fascinated by comic books, I follow movie news obsessively, I soak up lyrics and quotes like a sponge, I "know the ways of the fangirl", I know the latest trends, I love cars and bikes, I go to rugby games whenever I can, I have more pairs of high heels than I need, I love all things macabre and all things French, I want to earn my PhD and if I lost two kilos, I’d definitely be thin enough to audition for Top Model if I wanted to. And everyone who’s ever made stupid comments to me about where I do and don’t "fit" can go right to hell. I don’t fit anywhere, and that’s exactly the way I like it.

Music: Golden - Fall Out Boy
Mood: Bored

The hardest part is letting go of your dreams

There is so much I’ve been meaning to blog about, I just can’t seem to find the time. If I don’t sit down with my laptop straight away coming home from work, I just don’t do anything. It’s highly disconcerting considering I have quite a bit that needs to be done – and it will no doubt be an even bigger problem when I go back to uni in two weeks. Besides, I just miss rambling about nothing every day. Stupid "real life."

Things I intended to blog about:

> DVDs I've watched recently including Adam, Milk, and The Brothers Bloom.
Conclusion: Might want to consider more cheerful things. Adam was so painful, I could barely watch it. Brilliant, but painful. I quite liked The Brothers Bloom but I suspect it may be one of those films that no one else does.

> The girl with the dragon tattoo which I finished on the weekend.
I had my doubts starting this but there comes a point about halfway where it just starts working. It’s been aaaages since I’ve spent an entire afternoon just devouring pages like that at my own prerogative (ie not for uni) and I’ve forgotten how great that feels. Reading love. I was really enjoying the unconventional heroine too until the last chapter.

> Fourth season of Torchwood
Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello had the following to say about new characters:

I’ve gathered on the new season (airing on my new favorite cable network,
Starz), the show is out to cast a new series regular — Rex Matheson, a wickedly
funny (operative word: wicked) CIA agent born to make waves. Almost as key to
the new season are recurring characters Esther Katusi, a CIA grunt in her early
20s who learns what she’s really made of only when she’s forced to, and Oswald
Jones, a convicted murderer and pedophile who will be as shocked as anyone to
learn how easily infamy and fame can be exchanged for one another.

Call me unprogressive if you like, but where’s the sci-fi? This just sounds like James Moran’s Girl Number 9. I don’t want high drama or the X files, I just want my cheesy show back, is that really so much to ask for? Normally I’d say give them the benefit of the doubt, but I frankly don’t see why I should.

> The Doctor Who finale
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! Yup. That pretty much sums it up. You know, there might be a paper in running RTD and Moffat against each other – provided there isn’t one already (probably is, geeks are quick on the uptake and not as lazy as I am)

> Eclipse
My brain has either given up completely or the acting is getting better. It was surprisingly rather enjoyable. R and I were of course laughing in bits that weren’t meant to be funny, but somehow that’s become part of Twilight’s appeal. You go in knowing it’s not going to be cinematic genius and somehow that makes it ok. And this one actually has action (it’s in the talking scenes that this franchise truly falls apart) which is definitely a plus – especially since that action involves a lot of Jasper. I always liked Jasper and knowing he had a bigger role this time was definitely part of the reason I actually wanted to see Eclipse. Screw Edward and Jacob, Team Jasper ALL THE WAY. R and I still had a muttered running conversation for the duration of the film about Jacob and Edward. She’s very much pro-Jacob, and I – well, I have serious issues. My loathing for Cedric’s Edward is matched equally to my loathing of book-Jacob. I want to be pro-Edward, but my instinct is to mock Cedric, and I like movie-Jacob, but my instinct there is to run the character over. So I am sure you can imagine my dilemma.

Things that have happened:

> Dented another heart
> Visited the radio studio across the road
> Window shopped for costumes
> Applied for a press pass to world con
> Bought another pair of boots

Things I’m contemplating:

> The logistics of going away for a year

> The huge amount of work I’ve been slacking off on - this includes not doing any writing for myself lately, including blogging, and an essay I was supposed to submit a month ago.

> The giant hole in my budget caused by things such as unforeseen insurance premiums and ginormous roaming-inflated phone bills.

> Buffy season 3 - will it get less angsty, and how long do I have to wait for Spike to show up again?

> The glitch in the uni system that’s telling me I’ve failed a subject, which is highly improbable. I missed one class and got marked for all the assignments, so clearly someone screwed up somewhere along the line.

> The validity of buying a bustle skirt. This ties in with the previously mentioned costume window-shopping. Bustle dresses are too stupidly expensive to buy outright and I can’t justify having an eight hundred dollar dress sitting in my wardrobe for the occasional outing on halloween/fancy dress parties. It’s not exactly the right fit for a masquerade either, and that is generally where my "I must attend!" instincts go (and in my costume searchings I have found that there is a group that actually holds proper masquerade balls quite regularly). There is a masquerade ball at WorldCon in fact, so I’d like to get something that would do for both that and Halloween. Now I tried briefly to convince Em to make it for me – she wisely declined – and then thought hey, why not improvise? I have a dress I like to refer to as the Panic dress as I bought it with the then still vaudevillian Panic! At The Disco in mind. It is red with black lace overlay, tulle underskirt, and a corse-style top. I can get a red bustle to attach to it, make a matching long taffeta skirt to go underneath, and logically that should give me a layered, not quite historically accurate, bustle dress. Teamed with this red and black venetian mask I found on trusty eBay, gloves and fan I already own, and a Victorian velvet jacket, it should be a reasonable costume, right? Price wise, It should work out roughly the same as hiring a costume for a weekend would, and significantly less than actually getting a proper dress. Hmmm.

I have other things floating around this silly brain but sadly work beckons - but I'll be back to ramble some more later, never fear. Take a look at this in the meantime:

The Seven Stages of Grieving After Purchasing a Full-Price Hardcover Book You Later Find To Be Awful

A drink for the horror that I'm in
For the good guys, and the bad guys
For the monsters that I've been.
Three cheers for tyranny,
Unapologetic apathy
Cause there ain't no way I'm coming back again.

Best thing about Thursdays is being alone in the office and being able to give the trusty ipod free reign.

Music: Sleep - My Chemical Romance
Mood: Blah

We were always waiting for something to happen

"Do you suffer from nerd rage?" io9 asked. I didn't have an answer so I thought I'd best take their quiz and find out.

I scored a 4 on the nerd rage scale making me a *drum roll please*

Touchy Geek
Woe to the person who finds herself on the wrong end of an argument with you about your favorite thing, whether that's New X-Men or the Android OS. You've got really strong opinions, and you're not afraid to share them. Even in a really quiet place where everybody is looking at you. Luckily, there are only a few things that really set you off.

I got an IT Crowd clip for my trouble. Yay!

Ah dear. How far we've come.

Music: Great expectations - The Gaslight Anthem
Mood: Cold

So you know that you're never on your own

I'm yet again sitting here, at a loss what to do. I'm fairly sure this isn't meant to happen and it makes me uneasy. What am I forgetting? WHAT? Is it all going to come crashing down on me at the last minute? I feel the answer to that will most probably be a resounding yes. I've got a meeting at 11 that I must try not to forget. And I have reception cover at 12.15. Bah. I like being in my little office where no one bothers me and I can sing along to my ipod (which I haven't charged, but hopefully half a battery will get me there.) I finally have speakers for it too, which is better than blasting through my earphones at least.

Yesterday I had the dubious honour of shifting through a bunch of image transparencies (or trannies for short - don't google that) of the magazines first five issues looking for specific projects and profiles. I found most of them, and earned a pounding headache for my trouble. I felt like a historian though, or like I was in a movie, squinting through that enlarger thing and holding stuff up to the light. It started off rather amusing. Still, glad we have digital technology. It's much easier just to ask the computer to search. I also reorganised our magazine stash, and am now contemplating organising the rest of the shelves. There's so much crap around the office that isn't even ours. I'm half tempted to chuck it all out, or get the warehouse to take it. I've earned the warehouse managers respect, so she'll do it for me I'm sure. It's always nice when people are willing to help you out with random crap.

Hmmm. I'm always chipper on a Thursday though, no idea why. Baffles me. Perhaps I've just been pushed so far to the brink of insanity by the earlier days, and Friday brings me back with the promise of weekend. Who knows?

Anyway, in non-work related news, we go Martha back yesterday. Ugh the poor thing. My dad isn't very happy with the job they did, so I said he can take it back to them, but I don't know what he wants me to do about it. Surprisingly, he has not been as grumpy about the entire incident as I had anticipated, though I know this will come back to bite me in future arguments (especially driving arguments...of which there are many). Ahem.

Oh, my editor is quite happy for me to apply for a press pass to WorldCon. That should be pretty cool if I'm approved.

Now I better email someone and see if they know why my email is having a little fit.

Music: Bonnie Taylor Shakedown - Hellogoodbye
Mood: Cold

So pretty

This is the latest image from the Hubble Telescope - a cluster of stars is surrounded by clouds of interstellar gas and dust—the raw material for new star formation. The nebula is located 20,000 light-years away in the constellation Carina.

Music: GNW
Mood: Thirsty

We are all failures - at least the best of us are

She's sitting on a riverbank in a haze of golden sunlight. It's strange, she thinks, it was raining just a second ago. Memory of grey clouds, the dark horizon and the rumble of thunder echo somewhere in the back of her mind. It slips through her fingers, river over stone. The warm touch of sunlight on her skin melt away the thoughts in perfect rhythm to the titter of birds in the trees, the soft hum of insect wings. Her face tilts towards the light, sunflower instincts, a lone figure amongst the green. Encased in ethereal peace, she wonders...she wonders why it can't always be like this. It comes unbidden, sourceless, she has no recollection of how the magic came to be. Floating on air in these flashes of happiness, she hardly believes it will last. It's not her disposition to be optimistic. The sleepy-warmth of the air dulls her sense of self-preservation, and she so desperately wants to give in. Soon she will forget why it's dangerous to hold out, soon she will forget why she doesn't dare belief. In this glorious cathedral of summer, she forgets herself. The sunlight consumes her, lifts her, takes her. Only the wind can set her down.


Original

Music: Drizzle of rain on the deck
Mood: Pensively mellow