The Last Bastion Of Absurdity

We come upon that time in our lives when we can no longer put off choosing a path. Two million roads diverge in a wood, and we can dither at the crossroads no longer - universities and career choices are looming perilously close ahead. Sometimes I wish I had a clear choice, some cause that I've believed in forever and which has obvious goals to accomplish.

Instead I want to do absolutely everything just because there are so many things I look at and can see myself doing them. Which greatly increases the chances of my being unsatisfied with anything I actually do. So far I've tried to think of ways to do as much as possible at the same time, which explains my reluctance to audition for acting schools above and beyond simple interview terror - almost to a fault they involve three or four years of intensive acting, leaving no room for anything else I want to do. If I was an amazing actor, maybe that would be enough, but acting is something I love rather than something I'm gifted at, so I baulk at committing to it exclusively.

Of course my parents want me to do something that will at some point involve a salary. Psychology looked promising for a while, until I realised that for much the same reason as I don't want to be a teacher, I would not really enjoy practicing psychology. I'd end up as a research psychologist, which doesn't pay jack shit. Now marketing is looking good as the kind of thing one can point to when people look at your creative endeavors and remind you not to quit your day job.

And then there are times when someone reminds me that I want to change the world, and it all flies in the air again. I just had a heated discussion with Alex, a friend from Drama Camp who wants to overthrow the global capitalist wossname. My end of the discussion was mostly picking apart his ideas and questioning his plans... all for his own good, of course. He's never going to have a successful revolution if he doesn't think things through. But it reminded me of how much I enjoy political ideas and hypothetical revolutions.

The thing is that it's been writing that I've always wanted to do. I recently read Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossessed, and now I realise that you know - I could do that. Not everyone changes the world by protesting APEC meetings - and it's so interesting, political fiction. You don't have to advocate anything, you can just explore a realistic idea of what people would really do in those situations. It lends itself perfectly to science fiction, to boot. Science fiction is not about technology or space expansion - it is essentially about how people deal with that new world. Let the scientists and the revolutionaries make radical changes to society, SF writers will have almost certainly listed every possible way humanity could respond to the new development. I recently heard an odd comment (odd to me, anyway): Zoe said she didn't find fictional politics interesting at all. But for me - real life can only ever go one way at a time. It's great to learn from history, but you also need to think about unhistory - the things that never happened, and what might have come of them.

Anyway, enough rambling - upshot of all that is, I now think I know what I would want to study if I end up doing an arts degree - things that would help me understand how people work. So yes, psychology, but also political science and game theory, and perhaps more history although god knows I'm sick of it by now at school. And on the other hand, Queensland University of Technology has an actual Creative Writing Production course under Bachelor of Fine Arts. And that would be an awesome thing to do.

Tally ho, kids, the future awaits!

mistful wrote an entry about her love of children's fantasy, and invited replies. Below is the gist of mine, because this is an interesting topic and I suppose there might be people who read my journal and not hers. Silly, silly people.

My literary interests can fluctuate quite paradoxically. On the one hand I love cynical humour, satire and parody, the summing up of the world into a simplistic anecdote and letting you laugh at it. Humour that tells you "Life's a bitch, isn't that hilarious?" and means it. Rob Grant's Incompetence, Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, that sort of thing.

On the other hand I'm a sucker for dark romanticism, not in the sense of angsty romance but in the sense of archetypes, characters and plots that feel like they satisfy your need for the way the world ought to be. Not neccessarily the happy ending but the fitting ending, the one that just falls into place, that follows on naturally through some bizarre twisting pathway in your brain that tells you that heroine has to die, and this is the way the world ends. And within that, but not often associated with it, is the quirky tale - the overturning of the world order into something new and bizarre, but that has its own sense of logic to it as well. Once you twist your brain into that world it all just works, and you laugh and clap your hands in child-like delight because this is awesome.

Hence my intense love of Neil Gaiman's work. He does the romantic category brilliantly, and his forays into the humorous one rock equally. The only book I've ever read that combines the two is his and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens. Or if not the only one, then the only memorable one, because if there were another I would doubtless fangirl it just as rabidly.

What kind of things do you guys read, and why?

( Also, a meme. It has pixies. I'm not sure why. )

We define things.

My little brother, in the car, for instance, spent a good deal of time trying to ascertain whether or not telekinesis was possible - or rather, whether the universe would just do what you tell it to do. He was looking down at the car floor and I could hear him repeatedly whispering: "Stop. Stop. Stop. Stop."

I'm not sure if he thought my dad would stop the car or if the car would stop of its own volition, but he always asks for things quite loudly when he just wants us to give him something, and there was no reason for him to want us to stop the car. It was like he was testing the world, exactly the way he bites things to see what they taste like or pushes things to see if they will fall.

I don't think we ever explore the universe quite as thoroughly as we do in our youngest years. By now we extrapolate, we assume that all things will be affected by gravity although we haven't checked all of them, we do try things but it's because we want them, not just to see if we can make them happen.

I haven't made an entry about the riots. Well, I don't know much about it, really. Just that there's an inordinate amount of police around lately.

But then I stopped to think. "The riots". I mean, we're all so blase about it. But it's not exactly a part of everyday life. I mean... I mean, they roadblocked Cronulla. Isn't that the teensiest bit exciting? And isn't it fascinating to think that in fifty years this will be a boring detail in somebody's Australian History class... or maybe, in the context of things yet to come, it will be an event everybody knows about, and there will be documentaries about it, and my nieces and nephews will say "Aunt Maggie, where were you when the Sydney Riots happened?". Certainly it will be an event in books yet unwritten. Any piece of fiction set in this time will needs mention it, because it's a part of the setting now. Isn't that freaky?

We certainly live in interesting times.

Bruises are pretty. Pretty like snow. And blood. And blood-spattered snow. It's funny, really, that I've seen more bruises in my life than blood and snow combined. I've never seen blood-spattered snow except in the movies. I don't really want to see it in real life, because that would mean I was standing in snow, and somebody was bleeding. I don't like bleeding. I just like blood. It's such a pretty colour.

Bruises are a nice kind of painful, too. Oh, not getting bruises, that's unpleasant and hurts like seven kinds of ow, but once you have one... wel, it is so pretty, all blue and green beneath the skin, and you just can't resist the urge to prod it. And it doesn't hurt badly, when you do, more a kind of ache like massages and the sound of bells.

I couldn't tell you why it's funny, it just is.

Disorder	Rating
Paranoid:	Low
Schizoid:	Low
Schizotypal:	High
Antisocial:	Low
Borderline:	Low
Histrionic:	Moderate
Narcissistic:	Moderate
Avoidant:	Moderate
Dependent:	Low
Obsessive-Compulsive:	Low
-- Personality Disorder Test -- -- Personality Disorder Information --

Hmm that's odd. I seem to have a high schizotypal thingy. Where's that info...

Many believe that schizotypal personality disorder represents mild schizophrenia. The disorder is characterized by odd forms of thinking and perceiving, and individuals with this disorder often seek isolation from others. They sometimes believe to have extra sensory ability or that unrelated events relate to them in some important way. They generally engage in eccentric behavior and have difficulty concentrating for long periods of time. Their speech is often over elaborate and difficult to follow.

Well then. If I have that I certainly don't have a lot of it.

Ah I think I see the problem now. The questions all have yes or no answers. There's no room for less or more of something, just whether it is present or not. I mean, I could've said yes to the mood swings, but I could tell they meant OMGWTFWORLDISENDING!WHEEEGREMLINS! Type mood swings, not minor ones like I have. So I didn't. But that's because I know stuff about bipolar disorder. So maybe I accidentally made that mistake on the questions relating to stuff I don't know about.

Still somewhat disturbing. But hey, there's weird mental stuff in the family on my mothers side, so you never know. Suffice to say I'm staying awaaaaay from pot. Not that I wouldn't anyway, but this is just icing on the "Drugs? What drugs?" cake. No need to set freaky shit off for cheap thrills.

Todays link: http://www.witherspoonsociety.org/assisi_decalogue.htm

Yesterday my parents brought home a jar of mussels. marinated mussels. Now, I know some people really like shellfish (oysters, etc) but frankly I can't see why. Mussels don't strike me as particularly delicious. I mean, if you drip lemon on them - then they taste like lemon. And then, after you've chewed one for a while, you get this bitter, raw taste on te back of your tongue which you can't avoid if you're going to swallow it. Ew.

In other kitcheny news, I saw a label that said "Salmon Stunned Olives". Then I looked closer and realised i said "Stuffed". But it amused me anyway. I had this mental image of a burly man weilding a large salmon chasing olives around the room. Whenever he managed to stun a couple, a little wiry guy would rush in and scoop them into a jar.

Today at work somebody referred to poppy seeds as "black sesame seeds". Riiight, then. It was really empty, which was good as I was extremely spaced out. Not as bad as last week when Agatha had to put me in back because she didn't think I could deal with customers, but enough that I was really glad for the lull. Howevere we had a LOT of bread to throw away. Should be the same tomorrow, which means lots of free godies for my school peeps ^_^

I finally reorganised my guitar music folder so all the stuff I don't play is in one sleeve and the stuff I do is neatly arranged. Wheee. House of the Rising Sun is a really awesome song. And I just had to make up a song about cars because my brother refused to go to sleep without one. Sigh.

There was an official Formal Meeting this lunchtime. A large number of people did not show up, but those that did were in some cases quite vehement and in all cases very selfish. Ah, the joys of democracy. If everyone looks out for themselves, whichever group of people have the most matching goals will get their way, and they biggest possible number of people iwll be happy. That's the basic theory of democracy, is it not?

Basically, we all sat down on the steps and got given the propaganda campaign for Luna Park by the irate Formal Committee. Then Yi stood up and said a few words about Dockside. Hands were raised, questions were asked in an orderly fashion, bitching happened and then we were called to a vote. Dockside people over there, Luna Park people over here. I walked up and over to Dockside, feeling mightily relieved that a vote actually occurred as I was getting exasperated. Upon seeing the huge number of people on the Dockside front, Henrietta, Madeliene and Emily began to harangue us about such various topics as "Luna Park is better" "The price is lower than we said before" "Luna Park is SO much better than Dockside" "The food is crap at dockside" "Dockside sucks" "Luna Park is better" and the crowning glory of "So'n'so has been to Dockside and it sucks". Whereupon I helpfully pointed out that they were wasting their breath because most of us had absolutely no problem with Luna Park, we knew nothing about either venue and dockside only sounded better because it was cheaper, and the main reason for the uprising was the August Issue. Now, my dress is long, although sleeveless. However I pity the poor sould wandering around in strapless minithings in the cruel winter air. And I have a low cold tolerance, which was my main reason for voting Dockside - it was in November.

BUT THEN!!! Henrietta did the whole OMGwhydidntyousaysointhefirstplace look and informed me that there actually WERE Luna Park dates for November, albeit more expensive ones, as there had been cancellations. This convinced me (Well I don't give a fuck either way, honestly, I just hate the cold with a passion) so I threw up my hands in my own OMGwhydidntyousaysointhefirstplace gesture and wandered over to the Luna Park group. However, when I got there, the first thing I heard was people talking who had chosen it BECAUSE it was in August - their group had people leaving in November. It then occurred to me that Henrietta probably did not have authority to definitely say Luna Park was going to be in November, but by then I was heartily sick of it all, so I just said "Right, you heard me, wherever it is, if it's November I'm going if it's august I'm not" and left the premises. It was probably a good idea, since I don't think they accomplished anything much after that, judging by the tone of the sghs_formal posts. Maybe if everyone listed their problems with each venue IN ORDER OF IMPORTANCE someone could sort it out so the least number of people were as little pissed off as possible, but as if we'd organise that.

Someone was having assessments and forced us out of our rooms after lunch, so with the addition of histry I spent entirely too much time in the computer room today. Dee and I also bludged off Drama since we had Mr Cleaver. Annie wasn't too pleased, as he'd been given instructions to pass round ickle year seven choosing sheets and Annie had no idea - but that's okay, because neither did we. Totally terrible method of auditioning, if I'd known what it was going to be like I'd have brought a notepad and pen on Monday.

This evening was the Uni showcase wossname at SBHS. My parents arrived home around six thirty, so of course we were late. I wandered around for a while, picking up booklets and wondering what the hell I was doing there, till I bumped into Stan who pointed out that the reason all those Uni people were standing behind desks was so that we could talk to them about subjects. :Facepalm: Well gee damnit I'm a moron. So then I went and talked to some of them. Basically, Macquarie said Arts/psych gives me psychology with Arts electives, USYD said Arts majoring in Psych would give me loads of Arts subjects and enough psychology that I could then do another year of it if I'm really interested in it as a career and end up the same as doing straight psych. UNSW has crap-all in Arts without a completely insignificant amount of psych, but there's an awesome Socialwork course which sets you up for a job straight out of uni, and that job is likely to help you pay for a psych degree later on because it's upgrading your skills and such. So if I'm really serious about socialwork/psychology I should go to UNSW, if I'm still undecided by that time I should go for one of the other two. In which case USYD is much closer but I'll have to research exactly what Arts subjects they have.

However, this is all still in the psych field. I still intend to audition for NIDA, but I'm being realistic here, but... well there's an awesome sounding writing course in media/communications at UTECH and I still really want to be a writer... but will that pay my HECS fees? And you don't *technically* need a degee to write. I could always get one later if I decide I'm REALLY REALLY serious. I still have two years to choose, after all. My HSC subjects will make no difference particularly, all the requirements for everything are contained within what I've decided to do already, which is good because at least it's an indicator that I'v chosen career choices in things I really like. The problem is there's too much stuff I really like. Aw. Dammit. Maybe it will all become clear to me some time over the next two years...

18.75 %

My weblog owns 18.75 % of me.
Does your weblog own you?

I actually started writing my Sleeping Beauty story today. It's not actually about Sleeping Beauty. But... you'll see. I picked a hellova tiume to get inspired, though, exams are coming up and shit is happening.

I seem to have developed an obsession with fairytales. My Rapunzel story, my Multi movie which is an adaptation of Snow White, and now this. At least i'm pretty sure I'm not having with Cinderella - that thing has been done to death, and it's not romantic enough anyway. And when I say romantic, I mean it in the oldfashioned sense, ie that of "Romanticism: An artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 18th century and characterized by a heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual's expression of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism, and rebellion against established social rules and conventions" as opposed to lovey-dovey. Cinderella is completely lacking in mystery, there's nothing to develop. It's too neat. And modern versions have been done about fifteen gazillion times. Hmmph.

I'm trying to put my singing teachers version of No Seatbelt Song into Guitar Pro, so I can accompany myself at home. So far, no luck. I think it'll be easier to just dld the tab and then shift it down three semitones. Yeah.

Funnily enough, my grandma picked today to give me The Talk. I was horrified - you never think about why cliches are cliche until they invade your life. The point is that they're cliche because they happen. Lots. Eh, they'll get over it. They left it up to the public school system when I was a kid, so they can bloody well but out now. (On that subject, I have a feeling I'm going to be failing my PD test again... we haven't actually had a lesson all year, except that one talk about driving safely).

Sport was funny. Ball = bounce off tree, disperse seagulls.

Seagulls = do weird The Birds thing and fly around over our heads.

Year 11s = screaming and giggling.

We suck at softball anyway.

I spent most of my fielding time squatting on the grass staring at ants, and philosophising about the evolutionary importance of routines. We make everything as ordinary as possible because otherwise we'd be too terrified to do anything. Humanity is the most highly evolved species in the area of thinking outside routines - and we presumably have all these mental safeguards to ensure we use our amazing talent in the right context. This is why people don't like change. This is why so many people adopt an I-don't-care-about-anything attitude - it provides one all-purpose view of the world which you can apply to almost anything automatically, and you don't have to think. Of course instincts and feelings and things screw that up like hell, but this explains why so many people try. Also explains why so much of humanity is a fucking write-off - those damn safety mechanisms haven't evolved highly enough yet, and what with modern medicine they probably never will.