Last night I had a nightmare, I had a huge hole in my tooth and had to get a root canal. - The Alarmist
I think I look good in the mirror without glasses. - The other sister (upon taking off her glasses and inspecting her reflection without glasses or contact lenses, she has quite a severe case of astigmatism)
I'm sick of making my opinion known. - Me, answering the question of when I will be posting more atheistic rants.
If it's real then it's photoshopped, if it's a fake then it's real. - The Alarmist on the subject of how Anne Geddes took pictures of babiesonflowers.
Oh my god, bad teeth! - The Alarmist's comment after seeing Radiohead's video for No Surprises below.
I was gonna post something last week. 2 things actually they were quite funny in my head but after typing half of them out they weren't very funny anymore. They were just sad. So no posts, I thought that no one would actually care that there's no update whatsoever on this blog, I thought I should stop blogging altogether. I also thought that I should get a tattoo or a piercing. Apparently I've been thinking a lot lately and it's not always about serious things. That's what you do when you get an abundance of time and very little money. And by "you" I meant "me".
So naturally, with all the "thinking" I've been doing lately, I got bored of pretty much everything. So bored that I read my Pharmacology textbook to have a break from boredom. The "official version" of this action in my diary is "stop insulting my own intelligence by doing dumb things". Which version is better? I personally like the blog version, the diary version is too honest it hurts. Don't look at me like I'm a nerd (which I am), that book just happened to be there when I was bored and the chapter on antibiotics got me hooked. Really interesting stuff.
When I wasn't busy being bored I did other things too which I will tell all of you about since you're here and you're bored and you'd probably read rubbish that I churn out. So here goes
8 THINGS I'VE DONE THIS PAST MONTH
1. I decided to stop watching the news. My newspaper subscription ran out at the beginning of December and I was too cheap to pay for summer subscription and too uninterested to read the newspaper everyday. I watched the news on TV when I happened to be having dinner or breakfast at the same time as the news. I just decided to stop watching it yesterday because I genuinely believe that they should change the program name to the "Bad News" instead. Let me see, day after Boxing day and what have we got on the news? First thing in the morning, breaking news is a whole family in the US got massacre by 2 people. Awesome. What's in the afternoon news? A newly-arrived-in-Australia woman got killed when a car ran into the rubbish bin that she was doing the right thing and throwing rubbish into said bin. The kicker? She was out celebrating her birthday. And there's more, a man died when he was deadlocked in his own house and the house burnt down. All those commercial channels only want viewers and what better way to attract viewers by shocking them with this kind of news on a day right after Christmas right? From now on I'm gonna watch SBS world news, at least they don't put this kind of news as breaking news, plus they're not usually on when I have dinner.
UPDATE: I forgot to mention a teenager got mauled (and later died) by a tiger, a baby got mauled (and later died) by the family's dog and the greatest tragedy of this month, as claimed by tabloids, Britney Spears' sixteen-year-old sister got knocked up. Great journalism is displayed by all these "breaking news" stories.
2. I went to a concert, my first concert ever. Yeah, me the person who hates crowded places. I seriously despise crowded places especially Melbourne Central and Myer on Boxing day, more on that later. I loved that concert probably because of: It was one of my favourite bands if not the favourite at the moment: Tegan and Sara. The audience was very polite. The opening act (Kaki King) was freaking great. She was hailed as a guitar goddess by some magazine so you know that she must be awesome (which I reckon that she is, but this is only the opinion of someone who doesn't play any instruments) or at least good. T&S has quite a large gay following and mostly women so the audience was probably 80% female. It's not that I'm saying men are impolite, I'm just saying that women are generally more considerate and generally less likely to do crazy shit. I said "generally" because some slightly crazy shit did happen but it was fine in the end, no one got hurt. One thing I have to say about this concert besides T&S was awesome is that I have never seen so many lesbians in one place ever. It felt strange but they were polite and I like polite people.
3. I changed my first name. It's not that I don't like my first name (I actually don't now but I used to like it quite a lot before the move to Australia rendered my name too freaking confusing), I just got tired of having this kind of conversation on the phone all the time. Me: Hello. The other end: Hello, I'm looking for "blah blah blah". Me: I'm sorry? The other end(in a slightly raised voice): I'm looking for "blah blah blah" Me: I'm sorry, who are you looking for? The other end(in a very raised voice and extremely slowly): BLAH BLAH BLAH Me: I don't know who you're looking for, can you spell the name? The other end: (spells out "blah blah blah") Me: Oh, that's me. And no, the people on the other ends aren't my friends, at least my friends know how to pronounce my name, they're usually some Indian operators calling about signing me up to some life insurance policy or getting me a home loan. So I changed it to some thing else entirely different and it's kinda weird now that people actually call me by the new name. I went to the bank to change the account name last week (which took a whole hour because I, unfortunately enough, got an operator that's still in training and didn't know what to do, and the supervisors for that trainee were bitches who wouldn't come help out at first and when they did come they had this really annoyed look on their faces and didn't really help with anything at all) and they were talking my account and it took a while for me to register that they were talking about my account. Anyway, if this name doesn't work out, I can always change it to something else. It better works out because changing name is one mofo.
4. I signed up for a Facebook account. I wasn't gonna give into the hype about Facebook just like I haven't given into the whole Myspace thing. But then I got curious and The Alarmist wouldn't stop talking about Facebook and wouldn't stop being on Facebook almost all the time (I think she's addicted to Facebook, very alarming). One of these days my curiosity would be my undoing. The last time I got curious, I watched the 2 Chicks 1 cup thing and it was hilariously disgusting. Like you would never imagine anyone would do that. But they did do it and it was caught all on camera and now it's all over the internet. OK, I'm just trying to spur up your curiosity so that you would go watch the thing. Maybe I should put a link up hey? Anyway, I signed up, had a look around, went to some pages from people that I know, and got terribly bored. Maybe it's because I'm not really into instant messaging and I don't add a lot of friends to my page. I just don't like Facebook. The other day I got a friend request from someone I have never in real life come into contact with let alone speaking. She was in the Alarmist's year 10 class one year and then they just randomly ran into each other one day and randomly the topic of Facebook popped up in their 2 minute conversation and then she added the Alarmist to her friends list and then requested to add me. I think Facebook is kinda well designed, there's an option for this kind of "friends" something like "I don't even know this person". Facebook is the new Myspace now, I'm pretty sure there's this competition for who's got more friends going on. Count me out on Facebook, I've already wasted enough time without getting addicted to Facebook, imagine what I would be if I am.
5. I went to Geelong with a few friends (wow, real friends, they are a lot better than their Facebook pages) on a 30-degree-Celsius day and it was hot. Like extremely hot and all I can say about Geelong is that it was hot and full of flies. I think they have a fly infestation in Geelong. Insect repellent didn't help so if you're planning to go to Geelong don't try to use it.
6. I watched a bunch of movies. Actually I downloaded a bunch of movies and went to see one. I saw Enchanted and it was alright. I think I would have loved it if I saw this when I was 13. Now that I'm my current age the movie just felt like a fairy tale, everything is too perfect. The some of the movies I downloaded were excellent. The rest was slightly better than average. Here's a rundown. Once. For me, the title of this movie says it all. Once is how many times I need to watch this movie. It's not that it's a bad movie. It's just not the type of movie that I enjoy watching. The Alarmist got some high praises for this movie after she saw it earlier this year so I thought I might like it. I didn't. Death Proof. Now this is my type of movie. This is hilarious. The first half of the movie was really boring but the second half makes up for it. Download it, rent it, do whatever you want just as long as you watch it. It's good Planet Terror. This movie is not as good as Death Proof but it's a fun horror movie. Plus you get to see Quentin Tarantino working as an actor. Half Nelson. I like Ryan Gosling in Fracture so I watched this. He's great in the movie. The thing with indie flicks for me is that I usually don't get the movie as a whole. I don't get this movie, I think I need to rewatch it. Point Break. I actually didn't download this movie. Someone lent it to me. Anyway, all I can say about this movie is that Keanu Reeves couldn't act to save his life. I watched a few more movies which I can't remember the titles now. That probably means that they're not good enough to be remembered and not bad enough to burn a hole in my brain which means that I shouldn't try to find out and/or write about them.
7. I read a bunch of books. The best being Choke by Chuck Pahlaniuk. That book has quite a lot to say on modern life in bizarre fashion. If you enjoy Fight Club the novel or the movie, then read it. Hilarious is not the right word but it's the first word that comes to mind.
8. I found a bunch of new artists to listen to. I would have written about them here but this post is probably long enough and you would have been bored of this enough by now so I'm gonna stop. Truthfully, I got bored of writing this so you're gonna have to wait for another post.
1 THING I'M GONNA DO IN THE NEXT WEEK
I'm gonna go to the New Years Eve celebration in the city. I'm pretty sure I will not like it. I don't like crowded places. I despise Boxing Day shopping because everywhere you turn there are people. People who don't necessarily observe the escalator unspoken protocol and stand on the right side of the escalator and block my way. People who do annoying things like physically pushing you aside so that they can get their hands on some marked-down overpriced clothing items that even though are marked down are still freaking overpriced. I did enjoy the very crowded concert because it was a band I like and I was only there for 2-3 hours and then I would be on a deserted train home. New Years' Eve is gonna be packed. Apparently it's gonna be a very warm night. That's just great. Just the right icing on the cake I guess. Here's hoping for an old train without aircon on the night. Just some extra icing. Wouldn't it be nice if there's a storm on the night?
That's it folks, hope that you're a little less bored. I'm still bored but that would be remedied soon, I'm gonna read some interesting stuff on Beta-lactam antibiotics, the information antibiotics that work on the synthesis and action of folate was very informative.
To make this post even longer, here's a playlist of songs that I uploaded a while ago but haven't found a post to put them on and a music video. Happy New Year you all if I don't update before then.
It's the end of the year and what's better way to waste time/reflect on the year than making lists of favourite things? This year I went on this obsessive compulsive music discovery phase after I signed up with last.fm. That's my favourite website at the moment, if you wanna find some new bands/artists to listen to get on that website. The list started out with about 50 albums and that was rather ridiculous. I'm just one person not an 50 opinionated music critics, posting a list of 50 "favourite" albums is an overkill. In the end what made it to the "top 20" was played more often than the rest of the list (which I've also included). Check them out, I was going to post about 20 songs up but I don't want to get into trouble for posting copyright stuff so just go to the bands' myspace.
Really good albums that haven't been played quite enough to be on the favourite list
A place to bury strangers - self-titled
Eisley - Combinations
Motion City Soundtracks - Even if it kills me
Beirut - The flying club cup
Holy fuck - LP
Les Savy Fav - Let's stay friends
Menomena - friend and foe
Hot hot heat - happiness ltd.
Cloud cult - the meaning of 8
Aqualung - memory man
Klaxons - myths of the near future
The Arctic Monkeys - favourite worst nightmare
This will destroy you - self-titled
Mother mother - touch up
Do make say think - you, you're a history in rust
The great northern - trading twilight for daylight
Gogol Bordello - Super taranta!
Rilo Kiley - Under the blacklight
Operator please - yes yes vindictive
the shins - wincing the night away
bloc party - a weekend in the city
Angus and Julia Stone - a book like this
The wombats - a guide to love, loss & desperations
Bright Eyes - Cassadaga
Caspian - the four tree
The Birthday Massacre - Walking with strangers
Okkervil river - The stage name
Voxtrot - self-titled
Minipop - A new hope
Bella - no one will know
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals - This is somewhere
Sunset Rubdown - Random spirit lover
Assemblage 23 - Meta
Elias & the Wizz kids - a little mess
Honourable mentions (albums that would have made it to the above lists had they been consistent) Paramore - riot! Kate-Miller Heidke - Little Eve Kaiser chiefs - Yours truly, angry mob Serj Tankian - elect the dead Bellarus - communicate Kisschasy - Hymns for the non-believer The veronicas - Hook me up Grand Ole Party - humanimals Fields - everything last winter figurines - when the deer wore blue siberian - with me Hellogoodbye - Zombies! Aliens! Vampires! Dinosaurs! Destroyalldreamers - wish I was all flames
My grandmother lives with my family. She has almost always lived with us since for as long as I can remember and that is not necessarily a good thing. It's actually on the borderline of being really bad right now. There is a reason or several reasons why she doesn't live with the families of my five uncles and aunts. The number one reason being they can't stand her for a long period of time. The other reason being my family is so easily bullied into letting her get away with anything.
You might say "Meh, what can an old, cute looking lady in her nineties do? I'm sure it's not that hard to put up with her". Wrong. My grandmother is the first drama queen I knew of. Everything has to be her way or no way. The latest shenanigan she's gotten into is rather amusing from my perspective. It started with her being her usual unreasonable self and ended with us giving up and letting her do whatever she wants.
My grandmother had a stroke a few months ago which left her at a loss for words. OK, she can't completely use her speech faculty anymore but on a good day when I wake up with lots of patience I can make out half of what she says. One of those "good" day happened to be the day before I had my microbiology exam and was cramming at my desk when she came in with her tale of deceit and unfaithfulness. So basically she told me (more like she talked for a while then I guessed for a while out loud and she would nod or shake her head) that my dad is cheating on my mum with 3 women who come to our house on a regular basis and that they call my dad constantly and he them. It took a long time for what I put down in one sentence to come out of her. Of course I didn't believe her. It just so happened that there are a nurse, a physiotherapist and a speech therapist, all of whom happened to be female, who come to our house at least once a week to help my grandmother rehabilitate into our house after her stroke. There, 3 unknown women all accounted for. Mysteries phone calls were from the hospital telling my dad my grandmother's warfarin levels. Of course I couldn't believe her.
She told my mum the same tale which my mum didn't believe of course. Since nobody believes her my grandmother had nothing else to do but throwing a huge tantrum which involved not talking to anyone, refusing to acknowledge that anyone besides her lived in the same house and staging a hunger strike. Rather infantile behaviours if you ask me but hey it's the cycle of life, you get hellishly childish when you get over 90. My mum gave in before day 1 of the hunger strike even finished. She had to apologise to my grandmother for not believing her and that satisfied my grandmother. Note my mum didn't say that my grandmother was right but it seemed that having someone apologising is enough for her.
That is not the end of that. Since then every time my dad gets a call or calls anyone she would tell me that my dad is talking to his "mistress" and smile a smile that says "you didn't heed my warnings and now that bastard is cheating right under your nose". She's been rather hostile, to put it lightly, towards my dad for a few months now. My dad is the nicest person on Earth, he puts up with her for almost 30 years and she's not even his mother. If it was up to me I would have given up on being nice already.
The exam results came out today. I'm not entirely happy with them but hey I pass everything and get to keep my meagre and more-anxiety-that-it's-worth scholarship for another year. I guess some celebration is in order. More happy, summery music.
Finally, we won't see Howard as the Prime Minister anymore and we won't ever see Peter Costello as the PM or even the leader of the opposition either. I don't know why but I'm not in a celebratory mood even though I voted for the ALP. I had fun watching the vote counting commentaries though. That was even better than watching .... Damn, I can't even think of anything I've watched recently on TV. Anyway, I had a great time possibly because I wasn't paying attention to the dire situation the Lib were in or the frequent cheering that was going on in the background (possibly from the Lab). I was paying attention on these:
Election smiley posters from candidates that were splashed on the screen every now and then whenever their electorates came up. I cracked out laughing at those because seriously all those pictures looked so phoney and they would have done much better not smiling in those pictures.
Trying to eat dinner while containing my laughter. This activity demands a lot of concentration.
Listening to the Alarmist's commentaries on which commentators have had their teeth whitened (all of them), had a denture (some of them), or had some work done in regards to teeth. She only stayed for a bit though so her commentaries were short and hilarious, albeit irrelevant to the topic being discussed by the commentators and what I was trying to pay attention to - getting food to go down the right pipe.
So the Lib lost, obviously their scare campaign didn't work. What were these guys thinking? Dragging records of interest rates from the 80s out and naming all those "union bosses" in the ALP ranks. The 80s are ancient history to someone who starts voting this year and I don't think many people want to remember the 80s, nobody looked good in whatever they were dressing up in in the 80s. The scare campaign just did not work.
Here's the reason why I think the Lib have lost touch with the voters, they don't know what people are scared of anymore. People aren't scared of union bosses and possible interest rate rises. I'll tell you some of what people (i.e. me, myself & I) are scared of
Lost of access to the internet (trust me on this one without the internet, civilisation as we know it will crumble because people lost their daily fix of Facebook, Myspace, Youtube or Yourface or Facespace or whatever new ways clever people dream up to keep in touch with nowadays)
Facebook account got suspended (some person got a nervous breakdown after their account was suspended for no reason. Personally, I don't see what's the big deal with Facebook. Does anyone know this because I would love to know)
Bittorrent networks go offline.
M'n'Ms only come in blue.
Vampires, vengeful spirits that walk out of a TV to kill and basically anything horror movie writers cook up these days.
I know it's hard to threaten people that by voting for Labour you will run the risk of getting internet, MyFace or whatever social network, and all the colours of M'n'Ms except blue banned and look credible at the same time so here's my suggestion on how to improve on the Lib's scare campaign: add scary background music.
I know I have been ,sort of, joking around in this post so far but I'm completely serious in this paragraph. Have you ever watched a scary movie without sounds? I have the horror movie turned out to be so funny. Just watch those actors trying to be scared and all those scary characters trying to be menacing without the ominous background music and the sudden loud drums, it's hilarious. I watched the Ring 2 last week without sounds and it was an eye-opening experience on how movies scare people.
So my suggestion to the Liberals is that they take note of the tried-and-true convention of horror movies next time they decide to run a scare campaign.
To a not completely unrelated note, I saw "30 days of night" last week and I was scared and bored by the movie. The scare only lasted for a few seconds and, you guess it, it's not the visuals of people chopping vampires or soon-to-be vampires' heads off, it's the goddamn fracking background music. I was bored the rest of the time I wasn't scared so it's not a good movie. The Alarmist, on the other hand, was scared and horrified. She was scared because of the movie, obviously. She was horrified because the "vampires" had open bites and that will not allow them to rip people's throat out effectively. Not to Vampires movie maker, consult a dentist before you make fake teeth for your vampires or movie goers who are dentists will not take your movie seriously.
In my opinion, any exam question is crazy. I think the whole concept of exam is crazy. It makes people go crazy with stress and do crazy things like getting up at 3.15 am to study until 5 am and then go back to sleep just to get up at 6 am to have breakfast and back to study again.
Or at least that was what I thought was crazy until I was shown this exam question by the Alarmist. Note that this is a first year dental science exam question.
Imagine you are an animal who live on land and eats a diet composed of dry grass & roots. How does your dentition, jaw & tooth structure help you live?
What was the examiner smoking when he/she dreamt up this question was what I thought after I finished laughing at the question. This question inspired me to rewrite one question I got last year for Physiology. "Imagine you are a sperm that is being made. Describes the various conditions of the various environments you are/will be in until you reach the egg. Include in your answer the various mechanisms and muscles that help propel you out of the male reproductive tract."
I guess hilarious questions call for equally hilarious answers. After all, the examiner did ask the students to imagine themselves to be some animals. Here's an excerpt of the Alarmist's answer. The hilarity wears off after a few paragraphs.
I live on land and eat a diet composed of grass and roots, therefore this is clearly reflected in my dentition jaws and tooth structure. Because grass is relatively low in nutrients, I need to eat a lot. I need a large manible to hold all my large teeth. Eating grass involves a great deal of grinding and lateral movements, therefore I need large massetlers and large rami where these muscles insert
So I've heard a few complaints about the lack of posting. OK, one complaint in fact but writing "a few" makes it look like I have a large number of readers who are upset by the fact that I haven't been posting nearly as frequently as they like.
1. Finished reading Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood. This is a huge achievement for me because I haven't been achieving anything lately so comparing to not achieving anything, achieving something is HUGE. Anyhow, Margaret Atwood was my most hated, hated author in year 11 because of a book I had to read, "The Handmaid's Tale". I'm sure I would enjoy that book very much now but at the time not only did I not enjoy the fracking book, I had to write an essay on it in which I had to pretend to like the book. It was hard, I didn't like things that are hard or "challenging" when I'm not good at doing such things in the first place. But Oryx & Crake turned me around. Man oh man, Margaret Atwood has some wicked imagination. Possibly the second best book I've read this year, the best one being Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Read it if you have a chance or are interested in the ramification of human playing god through genetic manipulations.
2. I voted. Yeah, I voted before the ballot day. It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. I was with a friend who will be away on the ballot day so she had to mail in her vote. And I was sure of who I want to vote for anyway. At the moment I'm enjoying the campaign ads from both the Lib and the Labour parties. The liberals seem to like to scare people into voting for them. A lot. And the most hilarious campaign ad would be the one from Family First. You know the one which features a group of people with "diverse" backgrounds at a barbecue. And by diverse I mean putting one single Asian in a group of Caucasians. There might have been people from other backgrounds but I didn't spot them because I was busy laughing. The ad basically said that Labour and Liberal are too alike now so there is no point in voting either of them and Family First is the one to vote for. Excuse me but I would rather vote the Greens than any party that emphasises on socially conservatives family values. Or any party that has the word "conservative" in the party name for that matter. I have a serious question after I voted though, would anyone really number in from 1 to 68 on the senate ballot instead of just picking one party?
3. I watched a whole hordes of videos of people's reactions after watching "2 girls 1 cup". What the hell is "2 girls 1 cup" you might ask, a very legitimate question by the way, well, it's an internet fetish video of 2 girls eating each other's shit out of 1 cup and hence the name. Literal shit, human excrement, not the other kind of shit sprouting out from the mouths of politicians humans in the form of words. Judging from the reactions of people watching the video, I think it would be quite sufficient to say that "2 girls 1 cup" is gross. What the hell are these people thinking and what kind of people would find this unhygienic practice erotic or even worth watching? Actually I can answer part of this question. Curious people will find this video worth watching. Curious people who think that ingesting fully digested food mixed with natural flora found in the human digestive tract is revolting and who would later eject the contents of their dinner through their mouth following the viewing of said video. I am one such curious people and I was getting curiouser and curiouser more and more curious with each "reaction videos". Sadly, more like thankfully, I have yet to find the original video. Maybe it's for the best I'm not desperate to watch that foul video anyway. Do not send me a link. I repeat, do not. If you do I wouldn't be able to reign in my curiosity and would probably be scarred for life and be scared away from chicken nuggets for life. Why chicken nuggets? I think they look like poop.
4. I learned to speak Spanish and French.
5. I changed my name.
That's not all but at least that would give you some sort of indication of how "busy" I am at the moment. So until next time, stay safe, don't do drugs especially Caltrate tablets when you're stressed and check back here in a few days, I've got one hilarious Alarmist quote and more hilarity from my grandmother.
P.S. I was joking about learning to speak Spanish and French. I've had quite enough troubles with two languages already, learning more would really frack shit up.
Earlier this year I bought myself a new ipod then a month later Apple announced a whole bunch of new iPods. When I found out about that what I thought was "Frack!". Well, I think the specific term for the predicament that I was in is "iScrewed". I didn't come up with that term, MadTV did and they even did a fraking awesome parody that captures the gist of my predicament. Watch it, it's funny I find it funny without caffeine so it's really funny OK.
The original commercial is here and the video of Feist's 1 2 3 4 is here. That is one of my favourite song this year and I liked it before it made it into the stupid iPod ad.
Still on the topic of parody, The Crazy Lecture Note Doodlers suggested that I should watch "The L word" which at the time I thought I might if I have nothing to do. Surprise surprise, I have nothing to do today so I checked out a few clips on youtube. Let me tell ya, that show has got to be the show with the most horrible opening credits ever. I wonder what was going on in the head of whoever that wrote that song, no actually I wonder what drug that person was taking when he/she wrote that song and what drugs the producers were taking when they approve the song for the show. Anyway, I digressed, I stumbled upon a parody of the opening credits of The L Word. It's hilarious. It's one of those instances when 2 very wrongs make 1 so so right.
The Parody
The Original. Watch it and cringe at the horrible song.
And last but not least I know what I want this Christmas: a Tickle Me Emo.
So my holiday started on Saturday. I thought I was gonna do a few posts during the weekend but I ended up not doing that. It's kinda funny how when you don't have any time to do anything you wish you have more time to do whatever, and then when you have so much time on your hands you just don't feel like doing anything.
So what have I been doing? I've gotten rid of all the clutters that I've accumulated on my desk. I thought that it would take quite a while but I underestimated the power and efficiency of the "sweep everything into a box in one single move and kick the box under the bed" method of cleaning. I've organised my 50 gig music collection into alphabetical order. And last but not least, I do what I always try to do every holiday, stop drinking coffee and start exercising.
So far it's been boring. I tried to watch "Summer Heights High" since I didn't catch it when it was on TV. I thought I would find it funny but I didn't. The concept might be funny but I just couldn't even chuckle at that show. I can watch it but I just don't find it funny enough to laugh out loud at. I can't even remember the last time I laughed out loud at anything. Oh wait, actually I can. I laughed at that Rudd vs. Howard rap battle and I laughed at these Chinglish signs.
So that's it so far. If you're as bored as me, here's something to cheer you up: perfect summer music. Well, for me at least.
I've just finished an exam. That's 2 down 3 more freaking aliens to shoot down. If only I have a plasma grenade I'll just kill them with one grenade. Yeah, I've been playing Halo again. It's the best way to kill anxiety. Do you know what happen when you get too much anxiety? You get diarrhoea. I can assure you that is true from personal experience and also from a lecture note from a subject that I've sat an exam on this week. Time to throw those notes into a bin and chuck the bin under my bed.
Anyhow, since I'm busy getting myself anxious over the next 3 exams, here's a brand new Alarmist's quote from today. We were talking about Blogger templates since the Alarmist has just set up a few blogs and she's infatuated with a template she's got off some website.
THE ALARMIST: Only stupid people use the ugly templates Blogger offers and don't change anything on the template. ME, THE ANXIOUS: Yeah, and the less stupid ones use templates some other people offer and not change anything.
Somehow that was a lot funnier when it happened, and I was being sarcastic in the conversation, as usual.
So if it doesn't make sense, ignore it altogether. That's my strategy to cram stuff in the day before exam actually. When cramming logic goes out the door for me. Ok on with the unplanned post. Who thinks that a certain lecturer looks like Janis Joplin? I do. But then again, I also said that the same lecturer looked like Ugly Betty earlier this year. Maybe I just make weird connections.
Why is the Alarmist nicknamed that way This happened last week I think. The Alarmist came home and said to me: "Oh my god, I'm so relieved, I thought I had mouth cancer but it turned out OK". Since I've already named her "the Alarmist" on my blog I was well aware of her tendency to be alarmed not alert and my reaction to her comment was rolling my eyes crazily in their sockets and ask perfectly calmly "Why did you figure that?". And her answer was "I had this white patch on the side of my tongue and it wouldn't come off. And a white patch that doesn't come off is usually the first sign of mouth cancer. I was freaking out I wasn't sure what to do. Should I go get a biopsy, should I go to an oncologist, should I go straight to the dental hospital or should I go to my dentist to get a referral to the dental hospital. And then the next day the patch disappeared."
And that is why she is called the Alarmist. _______________________________________________________________
OiNK is slaughtered If you don't know what OiNK is, it's only this tiny community of like-minded individual hell-bent on sharing high quality, often lossless, music files against minor details such as legality and copyright laws. OiNK was actually where leaked albums usually turn up first if they were in high enough bitrate. Anyhow, OiNK got shut down, big surprise there and the people who were on OiNK have been grieving ever since. Me? If I was a member I would have been sad too but sadly, I wasn't. Didn't know anyone who could invite me and besides what's the fuss with high quality MP3 files? If you're downloading illegal music to have a try before buying the actual album why bother with high bitrate? Another OiNK will turn up somewhere eventually. Piracy will never die! In the mean time, let's all flock to Demonoid for our illegal download fix.
GOD is for real. Seriously, want proof? You know the bush fires in Southern California? That is God's work according to some wack-job fundamentalist (via Pandagon). Apparently, that's his wrath going around in California because they approved of a bill that allows same sex marriage. I wonder what was Katrina. Was that also God's wrath? If God was real and was really angry with the gay people he would have burnt down West Hollywood, you know where all the "scary" gay people live. In the latest news, it looks like the Californian police shot dead a "god" and arrested a few more "gods" for setting off those fires (link). See, even "god" can't escape the police for unleashing his wrath on California. Apparently, the police refer to these "gods" as arsonists. See why loony fundamentalists are lunatics? Confusing arsonists' work for god's wrath. Anyway, if fundamentalists' proclamations are to be skeptically considered, I think the fires are gonna burn themselves out soon coz God needs his wrath back to direct it at Tuscany. Apparently they're gonna run this ad campaign which suggests that Homosexuality is not a choice. And of course the Catholic church has something to say about this. Well, several somethings actually: exploitation of babies (gee, what about those child soldiers in Africa?); "bad taste" (dead man on a cross, good taste much?); "erroneous" (hey at least they have some questionable scientific proofs, what do you have?). And the funniest shit I've read today from The Catholic News Agency
The Catholic Church teaches that a homosexual orientation is not sinful, but instead disordered. It is homosexual sex acts that are considered sinful.
So if you happen to be gay it's OK as long as you don't have sex. Awesome! I'll go tell all the gay people that they can go to heaven if they don't have sex.
Somehow the quote makes sense too. Wanting to kill somebody is not sinful, it's "disordered". The act of killing somebody is considered sinful. So just plot away, as long as you're not killing anyone it's ok.
I did. For those who didn't watch it here is how it went:
Howard: tax cuts, interest rates will go up under Labor, Labor is controlled by trade unionists, more tax cuts if we are elected, Labor = bad, more tax cuts, Labor = worse, workplace agreement = the way to go, Labor = worst....
Rudd: tax cuts, invest in education, Howard = bad economic management, Liberal = bad, Liberal = liars, global warming, tax cuts, unionists = might be good, Liberal = worse, workplace agreement = the way to hell, Liberal = evil liars....
And that was pretty much what went on while I did pay attention to what being said before I lost interest and paid more attention to the graph thingy and then eventually to how funny Kevin Rudd's chin looked when he talked. Seriously, his chin was very funny in the debate. Howard attracted my attention too even though his chin was absolutely normal, his mouth was weird when he talked. I'm convinced that it was because of the dentures he wears. Do you know why I was convinced of this? The Alarmist didn't stop talking about dentures a while back and all I can remember about all those dentures talks was that Howard has dentures.
While we're on the topic of dentures, here's a pair of them, hand made by the Alarmist, photographed by the Alarmist. And yes, she did buy a camera phone to take pictures of wonderful things that she sees everyday while walking around or working in the dental hospital. One fine example of the wonderful things she sees everyday is below.
Back on the topic of the great debate. I think the audience was very biased, every time Rudd started talking the graph would shoot up even before he stated any point. Both of them raised some good questions when I did pay attention. I thought I've made up my mind about voting already, now I'm sure I need to do more research on this. I thought that Howard raised a good point when he said that if Labor wins it would be Labor all the way from Fedral to State government. It might not necessarily be bad though, at least they won't be constantly at one another's throats with politicking.
One thing I got out of the brief (1 hour) time that I watched this debate business, I have a new appreciation for politicians. I admire, yes, ADMIRE their composure. If it was me in Howard or Rudd's shoes I would be strangling the other debater and yelling out obscenities instead of politely objecting.
To way more interesting and way shorter "debate" watch Rudd vs. Howard hip-hop battle below. Check out Peter Costello ello ello eh eh eh at the end too. Brilliant!
That's it for this post, I need to go to sleep and do some more studying tomorrow.
________________________________________________________ Extra features (well aren't you lucky my readers)
If I were a drug I would be....
An ACE Inhibitor. These drugs are amazing! They reduce both preload and afterload, they are used in all sort of diseases under the sun. OK seriously only in Hypertension, Heart Failure, Severe Heart Failure, Acute heart failure, and after myocardial infarction but that's a shitload of serious conditions already. And as a side effect you don't have to take potassium supplement. Yay, no bananas for me (I hate them!).
Possibly the new permanent segment since nobody likes "Here's looking at YOU!". OK, that's a lie only one person so far has expressed complete hatred for that particular part of this blog. But anyhow I haven't been completely annoyed on the train by anyone lately so the segment has been absent. Actually, when I come to think about it, there was this one guy who was kinda obese who sat next to me last week on the train going into the city. He was nodding off and kept leaning on me which was weird. I couldn't help but wondering what if the guy was one of those really obese people, he could have nodded off, collapsed on me, couldn't get up (due to being obese) and suffocate me.
Anyhow, back to the topic: quotes from family and friends, people say funny things around me all the time so I'm gonna post them up to show off my funny friends/family member. This edition's quote came from none other than my sister - The Alarmist. I have 2 sisters, I'm the middle one and I hate to refer to them as my elder sister & my little sister so I call the elder one The Alarmist. The story behind the name is for another time, I've gone off topic once in this post already. Here's a piece of relevant information for the quote: The Alarmist is doing dentistry.
I want a camera phone that can transfer picture to my computer. I constantly miss taking pictures of wonderful things because I don't have a camera with me. I just made this new denture and I wanted to take a picture of it but I couldn't.
The funny thing is, she wasn't trying to be funny. I wonder why she wanted to take a picture of a denture anyway, so that she can get together with her friends and say "get a load of this wonderful denture I made today" ?
Yeah, change of colour theme yet again. I got sick of it so it's gonna be a little black from now until I have time to fix up a few things and add a banner. Why black huh? Because you can't go wrong with black as long as you're not the bride in a wedding. --------------------------------------------------
Cleveland school shooting. Anyone heard of this? I got up today, went to get breakfast and that was the first thing on the news on Sunrise. As normal, my response to such news was "Oh wow, shooting at a highschool, who would have thought that is possible when there are guns abound". So I was "surprised". Anyway, what got me watching this piece of news, besides the fact that I hate Channel 9 breakfast show and I hate the retarded Toasted show on channel 10, was that Sunrise had a correspondence in Cleveland and he said something to the effect of: the shooter was described as a Marilyn Manson type who usually wore trench coats.
So there you have it, how to avoid being shot in a high school in the US, avoid Marilyn Manson types who wear trench coats. They hide weapons in there. Let's go bash the shit out of those Marilyn Manson types who wear trench coats so that they'll think twice before going on a shooting rampage huh. Ok, seriously now, do we need to point fingers to the type of music people listen to to justify what they do?
-------------------------------------------------------- Sudanese immigrants issue If you don't follow this issue, it's time you do, it's an election year after all. To start with, read this article and then read the related links on the page. What I don't get about this issue is what's the point of holding a press conference to announce that we would cut down the number of Sudanese immigrants? I've never heard of a news conference announcing an increase in the number of Sudanese immigrants in the past, why one now, on an election year no less? One can't help but wondering along the line of the famous "children overboard" incidence.
-------------------------------------------------------- Vote for me, I'll reconcile with the people I've been refusing to reconcile with since I've been Prime Minister. Desperate much Mr. Howard? Note, he promised "to hold a referendum on recognising Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in the constitution as the first Australians" within 18 months if his party is elected again. Also note, he also said in the past something about giving up the prime minister position within an amount of time after the last election. See where that promise has gotten Peter Costello. Me? I have low expectation of what any politician promise.
------------------------------------------------------- Radiohead - In rainbows Today is like the day the last Harry Potter book hit the shelves for Radiohead fans. It's all over the music blogs. Every single blog has something to write about "In rainbows", some has several things to write about that album. Mostly praise, I've yet to see a complaint. I've heard the new album, I was quite underwhelmed by it, what's with all the hype? I probably should give it a few more spins but so far, I have yet to find a song I like on the record.
------------------------------------------------------- Possible blogging hiatus coming up It's that time of the year again. Back in May I took the whole month off blogging. I might not do the same this time around though, all depends on whether I have anything to say or not. Expect some infrequent blogging in the coming month. Will be back with something new after the damn exams.
Yeah, some tertiary textbook authors have some sense of humour after all. Now I can die happy knowing that there's a textbook that's got at least one paragraph that makes me smile. Excerpt from Rang & Dale's Pharmacology (can't be bothered with the correct referencing stuff right now)
Adhesion to endothelium and migration into the tissue follow a pattern similar to that of the neutrophils, although monocyte chemotaxis utilises additional chemokines, such as MCP-1 (which, reasonably enough, stands for monocyte chemoattractant protein - 1) and RANTES (which very unreasonably stands for Regulated on Activation Normal T-cell Expressed and Secreted - immonological nonmenclature has excelled itself here!)
That's some seriously funny stuff right there or maybe my sense of humour is defected after a few hours of reading the damn book.
Colour theme change last week. I looks good on my laptop monitor but when I used my sister's computer to look at it, it looks weird. Tell me your thoughts on the colours, I'll probably ignore it until the middle of next month when I get time to do a mini-overhaul of the template.
New sidebar. I shouldn't call it a sidebar as it's kinda under everything else and above the labels bar. It's basically a link bar to free illegal goodies I find from blogs that I read. Get them before they're removed.
This is in response to a comment I get from this post last week. I don't think Crazy lecture notes doodler would check for reply so I reply in a post. Here's the comment:
zomg zomg, i can't believe uve heard of kill hannah and all time low. thats sexciting.
HOORAY FOR JEW AND MCS TOOOOOOOO
And here's my reply:
sexciting?? Anyway, I'm gonna assume that's a typo. Yeah, I listen to Kill Hannah. I listened to All time low too, only until I saw a picture of the band posing in white underwear eating bananas. That gross me out. Now I can't listen to them without evoking the mental image of said picture so I'm not listening to them anymore.
And the picture I was talking about is below. Behold, this year's first entry for "worst picture of a band ever". Hairy + almost naked + eating bananas = All time low. Ironic how the band's name fit the picture huh?
Last boring thing, the song MCS coverred from the last video I posted in this post is Tegan and Sara's "You wouldn't like me". Told you they're not completely unrelated.
This post can also be titled: "I needed a post, Youtube to the rescue". But seriously, I've been hoarding these videos for post-less days like these. So here goes a bunch of videos of misheard lyrics and visual misinterpretation of said misheard lyrics. They're funny in the lame geeky way.
My Chemical romance - famous last words
My chemical romance - the black parade
Fall out boy - this ain't a scene, it's an arm race
Nirvana - smell like teen spirit
System of a down - BYOB
Evanescence - call me when you're sober
So there you go, wasn't that fun? If you don't find this funny then what is wrong with your sense of humour? More on youtube.
First WTF moment happened to me when I read the plot summary for a movie called "Jack & Diane". Ok, normal, even boring title: check; relatively well known actress: check (Ellen Page played that Kitty chick in X-men 3. There is no reason why this movie would make me go WTF really dramatically slowly with exclamation mark after each word. Until I read the summary that is.
Jack and Diane, two teenage lesbians, meet in New York City and spend the night kissing ferociously. Diane's charming innocence quickly begins to open Jack's tough skinned heart. But, when Jack discovers that Diane is leaving the country in a week she tries to push her away. Diane must struggle to keep their love alive while hiding the secret that her newly awakened sexual desire occasionally turns her into a werewolf.
Werewolf is cool (think Underworld people), teenage might be fun (think American Pie), lesbian can be intense (think Monster) but toss those 3 words together you get the WTF moment of the day. Really, this sounds like plot for a tasteless movie.
Next, Britney's back. That in itself is already a WTF moment already. I thought her career's dead already. But she's back with a new album which leaked on the net last week, apparently it's good, I need to hunt down one copy to see it for myself. Back to the point. Take a look at this cover for Britney's new single.
I'm not sure if it's the official cover or just some fan's mad photoshop skills at work but that is really WTF material. I'm just shocked that she would actually do this. Plus, that can't be her real hair. Expect Britney boycott from churches around the world this October-November period.
Why am I laughing, well, you would to if I had a better camera with me and/or there was no one around so I could approach the car and take a close up picture of the plate. And I'm also laughing at the illegal parking. Anyway, the plate reads "GAY TOY" and the car is a pick-up truck. Why do I feel the need to tell a bad lesbian in pick-up truck joke?
Completely unrelated, this is the 300th post on the blog. I never thought this blog would live to see the 300th post.
Originally this post was meant to be called: "Responsibility should be packaged free with power. It's just too bad that when I was handed out my "power" package responsibility cost extra and was optional. Or how I managed to achieve nothing over the whole break". However there's a word limit on the post title and why would you wanna put all you have to say in the title?
I had a mid-semester break that should have been called a week-off-three-weeks-away-from-the-exam. I had everything planned out before the break, sort of like a day to day timetable of what I will do everyday. As is often the case with plans I make, I don't stick to them. I think I have a motivation crisis or a serious problem with planned out plans. I can't get motivated to do anything these days except for spending a whole days on the net doing nothing and everything I planned I ended up not doing.
One thing I didn't manage to do during the break: study. So in other words, expect to see less blog posts during October and the start of November coz I have to make up for my lack of motivation & responsibility during the mid-semester break. Also, I think I need to tell the author of this book to include a chapter on me and a picture of me on the cover.
This is the reason why I didn't do anything for one whole week. Not this post, just the stuff I came across that I allowed myself to waste so much time on. So now I'm recommending a few movies and CDs so you all can waste your time on like me.
Movies:
Fracture. Really good legal thriller movie. I thought it was the best movie I saw during the break until I saw
Blood diamond. So freaking good. It has to be because I stayed up until 2.30 am today to finish watching it and I'm the type who goes to bed at 10.30 pm at the latest.
28 weeks later. Awesome sequel. I still like the first one but this is good
The good shepherd. So boring.
Transformers. The masterpiece for the ADHD generation. Translation from the "cryptic" one-liner review: plotless piece of CGI-laden shit. The CGI is beautiful but that's all.
Music (only the recommended stuff, no particular order, somewhat intelligible reviews will be posted after exams)
Why! Why! Why is it always the song that I hate that get stuck in my head? I thought avoiding radio and videohits would exorcise that goddamn "Umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh" song from my head, but no. Looks like everyone is doing a cover of that song somewhere.
The original video first. The song, albeit catchy and poppy, hurt my ears, the original video hurt my eyes, left a weird sour taste in my tongue, gave me a blocked nose for a week, and made me lose touch with reality for a week also. If I had a sixth sense I think I would have seen ghosts opening umbrellas and telling me "you can stand under my umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh". Ok I'm exaggerating, the video and the song only annoyed me for a whole month of July, no biggie. Why? Watch the video and look out for:
full nudity with clever camera angles to make things G-rated
ridiculous dancing
ella, ella, eh, eh, eh
I thought that was bad, until I saw this cover by Amanda Palmer. Not really a cover though, only a lypsync cover which means, same vocal, different and much weirder dancing. Still hurts my eyes and ears. Now I can't say "Umbrella" without adding "ella, ella, eh, eh eh" at the end. I think I need to take a break from this post and go get myself a nutella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh sandwich. Moore ella, ella, eh, eh, eh when I return from my nutella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh break.
Ok, I'm back with another cover of the "you know what" song. I can't type out "you know what" because I would risk typing out the horrible ella, ella, eh, eh, eh again. Gee, I just did. Anyhow, here's a cover from Mandy Moore with completely different arrangement. No dancing (except for the original video being played in the background) and the song sounds better here. Better than the original but too slow.
This brings me to the last cover which was the cover that brought "you know what" back in my head. I got over "you know what" and I thought it was out of my system until I saw this Tegan and Sara cover of "you know what". No dancing, not even a video of someone else dancing in the background, thankfully. Best version of the horrible song. However, nothing can make me like that song, not even Tegan and Sara.
If you still haven't had enough of "you know what" covers, check out the short and bad quality recording of the Patrick Wolf's cover and even more covers on youtube.
============================================== On a not completely unrelated note, here's a video of Motion City Soundtrack covering a song from another band. Thankfully not "you know what". I've just recently gotten into the newest MCS album. I'd say it's a very good pop-punk record if I have to put it into a genre, I hate classifying genres. Usually I'll lump things into 2 boxes: I like and I don't like. See if you can find why it's not completely unrelated to this post.
===================================== So that's it, now I need to rewatch Cinderella, ella, ella, eh, eh eh while having my second nutella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh sandwich and then go study about those bacteria with flagella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh for microbiology. OK, I'll stop with the you-know-what.
Just an observation after looking at the search terms break down for last week. I won't bore you with all the actual terms that people have been searching (psst: you can read all about them on the "Weird shit people search for but get this site instead" box at the bottom of the page). Really I don't have anyone to blame but these people:
Google - for crawling through hundreds of thousands of blogs & sites each day and dutifully spit out links to sites that mention "pussy" somewhere.
Sick people - who go search for weird sick shit.
And last but not least the internet for uniting sick people and google together.
And possibly, remotely: myself for posting shits like this post and the "weird shit people search for but get this site instead" box.
However, in defence of the "Weird shit ..." box, some of the search terms are quite hilarious and I don't know how they could have gotten my page with those terms. My favourites include (don't laugh at me for the wrong spellings, those are all direct quotes):
Some wise person somewhere some time in the past had made a very good piece of advice: "don't count your chickens before they're hatched". It's one timeless piece of advice right? It can be applied anywhere, anytime and you don't even need to change anything. Just say that and you appear sophisticated or at the very least remotely well-versed in English idioms. A scenario first.
Student (busy setting up suction filter equipment at the start of the experiment)
Kindly instructor who happened to be well-versed in the English language: Why are you setting up suction filter? You haven't dissolve 4g of 4-methylaniline in 200 ml of water and concentrated hydrochloric acid, warm and stir the mixture using a hotplate stirrer to assist the dissolution process yet.
Student: Wouldn't it be faster if you just say "you haven't done steps 1 through to 4 yet, why are you setting up equipments for step 5"?
Kindly instructor who happened to be well-versed in the English language: Don't be pedantic and that is beside my point. My point is you don't know if you're gonna have any yield to start filtering. Don't count your chickens before they're hatched.
OK, OK, I know what you're thinking, that scenario is awfully staged and no one talks like that and that instructor sounds like he's got the whole second year medchem prac book memorised word by word (which is impossible). My point with the above scenario is to introduce you to the wonderful English phrase: "don't count your chickens before they're hatched". Why is that I wonder, why isn't it "don't count your children before they're born" or "don't count your sperms before they're ejaculated ejected"? Why chickens? Anyhow, the point of all the above ramblings is that I got myself into a situation, not a serious one but one nonetheless, which brought that saying into my mind.
I have 2 ipods, I like to consider them one and a quarter of an ipod rather than 2 ipods. One is new, which I bought 3 weeks before they released the new line of ipod and which I'm still pissed about. One is only a quarter of its former self due to 3 years of almost everyday use. I was thinking about bringing it into one of those ipod repair centres last week, I got a quote for a battery change and it's a hundred bucks to change the battery. That's almost a third of a new 80 gig ipod already, no way I'm gonna pay that. So the only other option is to buy replacement battery off eBay and do it myself.
The first part is easy. I ordered one 2 days ago, and went look around for guides on how to do it on the net. I found a bunch of guides, looked through them and got myself so excited about changing the battery that I went ahead to open my ipod up that day, without the new battery. Here are some pictures I took after open my ipod with a few pieces of metal lying around on my desk. The screwdrivers didn't help at all with removing the metal case because: a. they're tiny and they're supposed to be for those tiny screws b. they're dodgy Chinese fake screwdrivers. I used the 2 pieces of metal on the top left-ish of the picture to open it. If you're wondering what they are, they're some thing I got when I bought my cork board and they've been lying around on my desk. Seriously, I'm resourceful. Open an ipod up using cork board hanger, that's rated right up there with Jason Bourne's feats of stabbing secret agents with ballpoint pens and suffocate people with towel.
I needed the dodgy Chinese screwdrivers and metal bookmark to remove the battery. As of this moment the ipod is looking like the above picture and is lying in a drawer out of sight waiting for the battery, that should be arriving tomorrow or on Monday. It still works fine without a battery and with its internal organ on display like that once it's plugged in a power source so I think I haven't wrecked anything.
So the moral of the story, well, there isn't one but there will be if the battery I ordered is the wrong one, is that you should not open your ipod before you've received the replacement battery. See, I do have a point with that lame "don't count your chickens" dialogue.
