[Papa Don’t Preach – Glee Cast (Dianna Agron), Original by Madonna]
…You’re gonna be upset if I’d burned down my mom’s bed.
Read my 365 for day 16, and you’ll see how close I came to being killed.
To cut a long story short: I played with matches near my mother’s bed. AHH!
I’m an idiot.
Alex.
P.S. Net uncapped, and so I put work aside for Glee. This is a bad trend.
After I finished class today, Jackie (I can’t remember if I mentioned this but Jackie was referred to as “Elmo” before) and I went to State Library for me to find newspaper articles. but before that we got those $4.95 Hungry Jack’s meals. We sat on the Library steps because there was no grass left (Jackie was so shocked that people do that, she’s such a city noob) and it took us almost half an hour to eat everything. And we talked for ages – I talked for ages, Jackie doesn’t actually start conversations, something I have to fix in her.
I took Jackie into State Library for her first time. We went to the newspaper archives and I showed her how they have those microfilms for papers from the 60s and even before. She never realized that State Library isn’t just books.
Then I showed her the Games Room, and we played this dirt bike game for ages, finally getting the hang of it. We still crashed a fair amount. Then we moved onto a Transformers game, where a random guy called Daniel started watching Jackie play, and that was when he shouted out this post’s title. He started making conversation with us for the next 10 minutes until we left.
By the way, Little Big Planet is still there…
Jackie and I did the word scramble on the train back. When we got to Glenny, it was raining pretty hard. We went to the Monash Library where I photocopied some articles I needed, and then we bummed at the foodcourt in the Glen and rated guys that walked past (one guy got a “his face looked like someone stepped on it”). Finally when it was dark, we decided we should go home.
Mom agreed to pick us up, so we waited at the carpark in the rain for a while. I proposed to Jac that one day when it’s warm but raining we should go run in the rain! She laughed uncertainly.
So, in all, it was a good day! For people who came here from my 365, Day 14/365, the reason I’m holding my NDS is to show playing games in the games room.
Ahoy 5 day weekend filled with working on assignments! How depressing.
Alex.
Oh ffs I’m capped again. I do not know why! Maybe it’s Skype.
Oh dude I really can’t do with the cappage again! Especially now with all my essays due. Not happy.
To read about what I did today, go to day 11 of my 365.
I know it is ratty of me to do that but typing it all out again seems pointless and what I did today felt a bit trivial for this blog.
I will mention though that I spent some awesome time with Catherine and Jackie today!
Wish me luck writing and researching with a capped net!
Alex.
We were talking about autobiographies today in Creative Writing class, and how some really young people write it, probably only to get publicity or fame, like when Paris Hilton wrote one.
We talked about how it seems rather young celebrities are coming out with autobiographies when they’re sort of in the midst of their fame.
I commented that, perhaps some time this year Justin Bieber will come out with an autobiography.
It will probably end with: “And then I hit puberty.”
BAZINGA!
Alex.
Argh, what a day this has been!
Today, for Cinema Studies, we watched “The Fly” (1986). It is one of the grossest movies I’ve watched, and I’ve seen rather gross movies.
On the other hand, I have to admit that for 1986, the special effects were not bad at all! The jaw fell off in a really realistic sort of way…
It was quite the experience to watch it in a theater of nearly 200 students. When the main female lead went to hug Seth, the main male, who at that point was pretty gross looking, half fly and everything, the entire theater screamed, “WHY WOULD YOU HUG HIM!?” especially since he’d just puked up enzymes over his donuts.
Unanimous groans and screams sounded when the baboon was turned inside out, when his fingernails fell off, and then when she dreamt of giving birth to a giant maggot, and of course when the hand and foot of the editor got burned to a stump by the enzymes.
Absolute chaos took over when his jaw started falling off, and then large slatherings of flesh peeled off, revealing a fly’s head underneath.
Finally, when the Brunderfly was at its end, and yet still crawling towards the terrified female (who, by the way, has a shotgun in her hand), her hesitation to shoot Brunderfly caused a guy at the back to shout out, “Oh my god, stupid bitch!”
What a gloriously gory movie that was! Eating lunch was a tentative effort afterwards.
Well, that’s it. Not much else really happened…oh except for a revelation that came hand in hand with a fair amount of disappointment…
Alex.
Today I answered the phone, and it was a Sparky on the other end. Apparently my dad had made an appointment of some sorts.
Anyway, when I picked up with, “hello?” I was greeted with:
“Hello this is [name] from [company]. Now, I’m just calling because your husband had inquired previously about making a quote?”
I was silent for a moment.
“Oh…you mean my dad.”
I gave the phone to my mom, and then went to sit by myself in the corner and worked on sounding younger.
Alex.
I saw this post on Tumblr today that made me re-think a large part of my childhood.
(If you’re not a Pokemon fan, chances are you’re not gonna get this post…I mean you’re gonna get it, you just won’t find this amusing)
Gary Oak Was The Nice Guy All Along!
Warning: the article may cause some readers to be upset, as it contains the death of a Pokemon. This basically outlines the scenario of the first series (Kanto region) but emphasizes a detail that, in our haste to Catch ‘Em All, we missed. It made me feel horrible!
In similar news, I decided to start FireRed again, on my laptop, with the VBA emulator. I remember that I’d gotten as far as Lavender Town the previous time that I’d played FireRed emulated, but I’d lost the files. I started at lunch time today, and, at nearly 5pm, I am close to finishing Brock off. I feel pretty good about that, but then again I’d more or less memorized what I need to know and do up to this point.
…Oh and I have a walkthrough [hides from disapproving readers].
I also should PROBABLY get back to the Pokemon Diamond I’m halfway through on my NDS. But I’ve left it for so long (the last time I played it was before my 17th birthday and I’m turning 19 in 3 months) I’d forgotten what I was trying to achieve.
Anyway, apart from that, everything’s pretty peachy. Uni is back tomorrow (let’s hear you say “FUCK NO”) but to my delight, weather is starting to cool down.
Oh! OH! I just realized I’d never written about shopping on Friday!
On Friday Jen and I went shopping together. She was up for a binge trip anyway, so indeed in the first 20 minutes, she’d bought a bow hair clip and a batwing Dangerfield jacket. We went to Harbour Town, and I got a pair of Adidas sneakers (or, as Katherine calls them, “kicks”). Went into Forever New (a shop that Meghan talks about all the time) and Jen got another bow headband (we looked at a bunch of weird ass ones first, though. One looked like a bird flew into your head, and died there).
Went back to Melb Central, and went to Myers with Josh to look at more clothes. FOUND NOTHING! Shattered.
Came home exhausted, and had Katherine tell me that at Valleygirl there was a sale. Oh and I didn’t find Factorie…because it was upstairs at Harbor Town.
Okay! Sorry, Jen, for not writing about my awesome day out with you!
Well, now I shall go upload my 365 for today.
Alex.
Okay, my excuse is that all good things started twice.
I have decided to restart my 365, starting today, the 10th of April 2010. Because the previous 9 days were sort of a confused bunch, and, to be honest, I took some on the wrong days.
I decided to start it today, because I’d just gotten a haircut (the previous haircut was getting really long and, in Josh’s words “mullet” like).
I have decided to hell with the calendar concept. I don’t have the time for that (yeah, I’m that lazy) so basically, I will take 1 picture each day, and post them up individually on my 365 page with a small description on the bottom of what happened that day.
If I happen to write about that day here, on my WordPress, I will link the picture to here (and perhaps, if I can be bothered, post the 365 picture here as well). Not every picture will have an accompanying WordPress post, because some days are just plain boring. But every picture WILL have an accompanying caption on the Tumblr page.
I hope I don’t have to start for the 3rd time haha.
Alex.
P.S. Group dynamics have had an interesting bashing this week. And I’m not just talking about my Uni group.
P.P.S. Mani, I just had the Two-Face conversation with you. I wish you luck!
Yesterday was a day for reunion.
In the morning, I took the train up with April to the city so we could all meet up. Waiting at Flinders St station, I bumped into 2 people who I knew from my previous high school Brentwood. When the 2nd friend came along – Rach – I was rather pleased to hear Julia say, “How many people do you know?!”
Tiffany came along last, and when she arrived, we set off for Southside, in South Melbourne (it’s en route to Dani’s apartment via the Number 1 tram). We settled, and started ordering drinks and foods. April’s dish came first, and it was insanely large sized. We didn’t think she could finish it! (This isn’t one of those “but to our surprise she did” stories. She didn’t finish it.) Vania got her gnocchi, and seeing the large serving, we decided there was no way Vania – or any of us bar Jen – could finish it either.
We ate, and talked. There was a small discussion of Tom Felton started by Julia (the discussion was originally started by Jen about Rupert Grint). Pictures were taken, and then Bel gave Tiffany a “bear hug” with velcro bear-paw gloves! They were fantastic gloves.
Julia waited ages for her steak to arrive – long enough that everyone did their round of “maybe they’re still killing the cow in the back” jokes. As Julia worked her way through a steak larger than her face, April and Vania gave up on their dishes. The owner of the restaurant warned them that if they didn’t finish their food, they’re not allowed out.
Jen started eating other people’s food. It was to be expected, no?
After paying for lunch, we took the tram back to the CBD. Most of the girls got off at Flinders Station, and then SonJ and Jen got off at Colins St to go grocery (Coco Pops) shopping. Annie, April and I went all the way to Melb Central to meet up with Dani and Andrew who were already there.
April stayed under the clock waiting for Si, and Annie went to Borders to find Josh and Anna who were supposed to meet us as well.
I went downstairs and found Dani, and it was a lovely familiar feeling seeing her face again. We went back up and waited for Josh and Anna under the clock. It took them a while but eventually they arrived. After that, we went to Room 8 on Bourke St to play pool – my first time there. Watched Andrew be all hardcore with a pool glove. He won every match yesterday, with the closest game being between him and Si, both being on the final 8 ball. I played around on Dani’s iPhone. We played (they played) for 2 hours, and then we went to…where else…Red Silks for dinner.
During dinner, (Dani left halfway to meet her mom) Andrew was having a bitchfest to us about a member of Dani’s family. It involved a lot of swearing. Anna’s ears were ASSAULTED by the amount that Andrew was swearing.
After dinner, walking out, everyone voiced that they weren’t SO interested in going to see Nina Conti in the comedy festival. April was also sick! She didn’t tell me. So in the end, it was decided that Josh and Anna will go see a movie together, and April, Simon, Andrew and I took the train home after a detour to Laguna the Asian grocery.
Got home, watched a spot of TV, and then slept. I felt inexplicably drained after the day.
Oh, right, I have decided I may not adopt the calendar style for the 365, and simply just take 1 picture each day and post it. I do have a link for the site. I might link that picture back to a post here, each day, in the case I write one. Of course, I wouldn’t have to put too much effort into it because it’s just a webcam thing, but I figure Project 365 shouldn’t be taking over my life, but be a part of it. So. There you go. You’ll start seeing my work up soon!
Alex.
I think the major different of high school compared to university has finally dawned on me.
I mean, apart from the lifestyle – I mean the public lifestyle. Life at home is still the same. I’m still being treated like an 8-year-old who can’t make decisions for herself when it suits my mom’s needs…but that’s another rant – which is obviously different, like the blatant smoking and drinking around campus. Apart from that, the academic side of university is also finally showing itself.
It might have been obvious to Science and Biomed students from the get go, because their level of work is quickly stepping up (I cannot say for sure, not having done the subjects, but the speed at which high school chemistry traveled would indubitably be snail-speed compared to what university would be going). But for myself, an Arts student, the first few weeks of university hasn’t really been that different.
Sure, I don’t have to do maths or Chinese anymore, and each subject is getting more specialized and, to a certain degree, globalized (as in, each subject really only talks about the scope of said subject, and more about global issues rather than Australian issues) but really it just felt like a slightly more intense elective subject at high school.
But when my essays started hitting, I found things different.
In high school, you are more or less told what to do, how to do it, and then whoever can copy that formula the best while not appearing to have copied that formula gets an A. You might think you have more choice in VCE, what with the 3 different topics you can write about on the SAME book, or the “freedom” you have to “express yourself” in the “Whose Reality?” part of the exam. But, not really. Again, you’re more or less told what the expected outcome is, and you reach for that.
In uni, it’s just that one step scarier. First of all, you’re not REALLY told what is expected of you. You get a few samples of the genre/s that you’re probably trying to emulate – note, emulate, not copy – and these aren’t even past student examples, these are real life examples. You get the description of what the assignment is, for example “30 – 40 lines of poetry, roughly equivalent to a 1000 word essay”. Then they give you 4 weeks of random poetry to read, poets coming in to tell you how they stumbled across poetry, and then bam! your poems are due next week.
Poetry isn’t so hard to understand how to write, really. I mean, write, not write well. You can write anything and you can say it’s poetry, and no one can really dispute you, because it is poetry, just crappy poetry.
But my 2nd Creative Writing assignment had me stumped; a creative non-fiction.
I know what it is; I’ve read the Hiroshima example, and it was fantastic. But what topic can I write about? To be able to creatively write about a non-fictional topic, you’d have to have a respectable amount of knowledge about it. To get a respectable amount of knowledge, you’d have to research – and researching, then transferring this knowledge creatively, will take a lot longer than the time given for this assignment. So of course you’d have to write about something you already know.
That’s all good if you already knew shitloads about, say, Roal Dahl, or whatever. But I don’t! So a weekend was spent desperately trying to think of what to write. And that was the most frustrating part; I know I have the skills, I just don’t have a medium to show it. It would be good if in tutes we were given a list of possible topics, but we weren’t, and that’s how uni rolls.
In the end, I chose to write about music, and how music is experienced differently by different people.
But that’s just Creative Writing. Then we have Professional Writing, which is easier in some senses, and harder in some. I got my result for my first assignment – the magazine profile – back. I thought I’d done well – not fantastic, but well. I’d stuck to the conventions of my chosen genre of magazines – but the result said that, if I don’t draft this assignment for my end of semester folio, I’d only get a 60% mark. It would have been okay if I knew where I went wrong, but I’m not quite sure. I suppose that’s the difference – now you have to go ask the tutor why, and they’ll probably not answer you properly.
You know, I also noticed that I use the hyphen a lot more now. It gets annoying.
For my other two subjects, Cinema Studies and Intro to Media and Comm, I have 2 research projects’ due date coming up. After today (I’m going out today, which I will write about tomorrow, probably) I’m going to have to start doing the research for those two. Cinema Studies has me researching cinematic monsters, and Intro to M+C has me working with Annie and Christy for something which none of us has started so I guess it’ll be a bit of a last minute pull.
So things are definitely different in university now. I’m having fun, don’t get me wrong, because these things are my forte, and I actually enjoy them. But it is noticeably harder and more stressful to get that optimum mark.
Oh my god, I’m still mark-driven.
Alex.
the life and laughs of me 