The Last Bastion Of Absurdity

So I totally stayed up all night finishing my yuletide story. Now I feel a little... wooooozy. But I am told by reliable sources that it turned out well! And I uploaded it literally within seconds of the deadline! And soon I must go to the chirporactor which I am looking forward to because a) my hands are so stiff omg and b) I got a full nelson demonstrated on me in escrima yesterday and ow. I am totally ecstatic that I am back into training though! I missed a grading again, which is practically my thing now, but whatever. I don't wanna be a black belt I just like to hit things with sticks.

So now that my Yuletide story is no longer hanging over my head I have started to feel guilty that I never posted a Dear Yuletider letter, cos I was kinda flaily over not having one for my recipient (who did not even have an LJ!) and so I am going to do one now for the Treat writers and also in case I am being pinch hit.

( blueprints for geodisic domes... recipes for cake... )

Ahhh, sweet sweet solvency. February's tutoring paycheck is SUCH a relief. In celebration I bought breakfast, some comics and ( escrima sticks! )

How awesome are they! They did not come in black, obviously, they came in Rattan, but Salvador advised me to duct tape the hand grips in order to avoid splinters, so I figured why not do the whole thing and look very stylish. PS duct tape is really hard to layer evenly.

On the bus to Escrima I overheard two random strangers, a blonde girl and a weedy dark skinned bloke, in the course of one half hour bus trip, discover that they are both dancers, commiserate on the shallowness of the industry, the difficulty of getting gigs and the thanklessness of teaching jobs, decide to form a dance group and exchange numbers. It was kind of awesome.

Tomorrow: to buy the one completely totally not available online in any way shape or form textbook for this semester. Advertising. It's $120 but sadly vital. The other two subjects have e-readings. Today's lot were unspeakably dull, you've no idea. But I was never really planning to write an essay about Douglas Sirk so it doesn't really matter. In class we livened up the discussion some by way of innuendo about Rock Hudson and speculation on the topic of man-eating erection-symbolizing deer. Also tomorrow: jamming with Lily in an actual music room for once instead of on the lawn where passersby can raise eyebrows at us or ask to try out Lily's unicycle.

My cat got into a fight with the neighborhood tom the other day and is limping. We took her to the vet and now it is my job to mash up half an antibiotic pill each morning and evening and mix it with water and squirt it into her mouth with a syringe-like thingy. I should not complain, it is my dad's job to hold her mouth open.

I have almost completely sorted out my wardrobe - everything but the sock drawer is in the right place and much less full of redundancy than it was. This is no thanks to my mother who snuck into my room while I was out to remove things from the massive garbage bag full of useless items and put them back in my wardrobe.

And now: sleeeeeep.

I found a new webcomic that panders to my love of gratuitous punnery! Hurray! Also, I'm working my way through Skeptic Report (I love the Pseudohistory page), this is better than any self help book I have ever seen or heard of, and this is making me hungry. OM NOM NOM QUADRUPLE BYPASS.

Now, off to the city for to buy some comics and hit things with sticks!

EDIT: LOL TAG FAIL.

Huh, The Matches just overtook Brand New on my last.fm... ha, all I ever do with that thing is watch the stats race. It's a pity it counts Dresden Dolls and Amanda Palmer separately or that would stack much higher.

Meanwhile, it's two am again and I am. Uh. Yeah, making lolcats. Honestly it's that or clean my room at this point.

I believe I have not mentioned lately how awesome my eskrima class is, but god, is it awesome. I had a Mum Special wake-up call this morning which involved tea and screaming, and then I had to babysit for an indefinite period of time while she did meditation. So I had a lot of tension to work out, and boy did I. That thwack of wood upon wood is a beautiful sound. Most martial arts classes have that contact problem where you technically don't actually want to hurt anyone, so you can't hit with any force, but when the other person is blocking you with a stick, you can swing as hard as you like! Benefits to stress relief include: release from thinking for an hour and a half where the teacher is in charge, concrete skill to focus on, patterns, general exercise endorphins, and something solid to hold on to.

But oww my wrists.

Have also been reading Amanda Palmer's blog and ImprovEverywhere's past mission reports, because they are both WONDERFUL.

I was going to do that long 10-1 question meme last night but it was long and I was le tired. And now I have decided that I don't have anything to say to anyone that I haven't already said/isn't terribly embarrassing, which cuts out the whole first part of the meme, so fuckit.

Anyway, things that have happened!

@ I have gone to another escrima class. I totally love it. This time I wasn't the only girl there, too, although since we're both the class noobs the instructor, Salvador, got all awkward when he said "ladies, go and practice six-count over there" and started falling over himself to explain that he just said that because both the newbies were female, and if there was a boy-noob he'd also be over there, and blah blah blah I loled. Then he complimented our speedy learning and sent a big guy who is the spitting image of Leon from DOA (mostly it's the hair, but there's enough resemblance that I can no longer remember his real name) over to teach us a strike/block sequence that ends with a hilariously crotch-level "thrust strike to the gut." Your terminology is not fooling anyone, this is totally the armed version of the knee-to-the-balls move. I confessed to Salvador and Annabelle, my fellow girl-noob, that the only place I had seen the word "escrima" before I googled "stick fighting" in search of something to hit on a regular basis was in relation to Batman comics, thus outing myself as a total geek. "Oh who uses those?" asked Salvador. "Nightwing... and Oracle, I think?" I said. There were blank looks. "Uhhh... the ex-robin and the ex-batgirl," I added, to a chorus of "Oh, right!"s.

@ The Writer's Society had another Lofty Words. This one was a bit of a fiasco as the student election crowd had double booked us, so we had to wait around till they were done. Then there was a grand total of four entries for Open Mic and exactly one person doing a longer performance. Hannah was awesome though, her stuff reminds me of Regina Spektor a bit. Anyway, I also introduced the zine, which is finally printed (and available at any Writers Society event or clubs day we're involved in for a gold coin donation, you Sydney/UTS people!) although Hannah ended up doing most of the work due to technical incompatibility, which I feel really bad about. Then the band, Peewee, came on. They were... kind of shouty. Kind of a lot shouty. And very loud. They were cute though, they had a lot of energy, at one point the girl on lead guitar and the guy playing bass and yelling at us did a hilarious shoulder-bump thing. They just need a singer and they'd be pretty good.

@ My parents are in Cairns this week! I feel so independent! ...until my grandma calls and tells me to come over and eat something, and my other grandma calls and worries that she called my house at ten pm and I wasn't home and am I staying out too late, and my mum calls to tell me to take my vitamins.

@ My Evil League of Evil Application has gotten 39 views but no comments. Incidentally other applicants whom I adore: the awesome songwriter Princess Zombie (oh my god THE THUMB augh), the utterly hilarious and puntastic DIE-ronic and Brain Bender, because he has catminions.

@ Speaking of Youtube I'm sure EVERYBODY has seen Take On Me (Literal Version) but I thought I'd post it anyway. piiiiipe wrench fiiiiight!

@ And one last link for the heck of it, Jon Carrol's latest, on Pat Paulsen, who is much more awesome than I ever knew.

@ *cough* ANYWAY. I saw the Panics today. They came to my uni for lunch. Not like they just dropped by for our fine cuisine, the student association or somebody organised a one-hour set on the Patch Of Grass around lunchtime. It was nice, I lay down and felt the bass come through the ground and alternated watching the clouds and the band, which was sadly lacking in awesome hair or other amusing stage items, but played well and were clearly quite at home on the stage, joking around with each other &c. There were free sausages and sunshine, although the latter got a bit scorching for a while. Some poor guy turned up in a suit, lol! I sat with Henrietta and half my Col Mod discussion group (oh, fuck. It's my week to post stuff. I should... go do that). Afterwards the singer invited people to hang out and have a beer, but mostly people stood around and asked for autographs on the little fliers advertising the event. So I got some too, despite not really knowing who these people are. I figured, I like their music, so I WILL look them up, so. Also some random came up and gave Henrietta this massive poster, so she got all the band members' signatures on it. Then everyone had a giggle over how short the cute drummer turned out to be. He was about eye-level with Henrietta's cleavage (not that that's an uncommon condition). One of the guitarists took a look at the poster and joked that they don't have awesome hair because they spent all their money on skinny jeans.

@ ...have another link.