The Last Bastion Of Absurdity

So yesterday I contributed to the continuing effort by The Goddamn Fishmouse and I to turn our apartment into something less resembling a deathtrap. I did this by purchasing an extension cord and attaching it to the other extension cord which, up till now, connected my computer’s powerboard to the outlet in our bathroom, thus extending the extension cord to an extension which allows us to thread it underneath the door instead of through the side, thus enabling us to close said door when we shower - and, bonus! marginally reduce our risk of electrocution.

Why, you ask, is my computer’s powerboard connected via extensive extension cordage to the power outlet in the bathroom? because (and we did not notice this before I moved in because it is the sort of thing you take for granted, having power outlets in rooms, you know) my room is COMPLETELY DEVOID OF ELECTRIC SOCKETS. It does have a thingy for plugging your TV antenna into, though. Not sure if they thought this was going to be a battery-powered television or what.

This absurd blindness to socket location practicality extends to the kitchen and is next on the un-deathtrapping to do list. We have one of those corner-counter kitchens like I always build on the Sims, where it goes Fridge, Counter, Stove, Counter, Corner Counter, Counter, Sink, with the other two sides of the rectangle being The Third Wall and The Lack Of Fourth Wall Leading To The Living Room. One powerpoint is back behind the fridge and one is over the counter next to it. Guess where the other powerpoint is?

WHY WOULD ANYBODY PUT A POWERPOINT THERE. IT IS NOT NEXT TO ANY OPTIMAL LOCATION FOR KITCHEN ITEMS THAT REQUIRE POWER. IT IS NEXT TO THE SINK.

Yes, that is an extension cable plugged into it. Because, you see, our microwave is on the corner counter, so in order to plug it in we have to stretch a cord either across the stove or across the sink. DEATHTRAAAAAP.

Eventually we’ll use some 3m hooks or duct tape or something to attach a powerboard to the wall above the stove securely enough to leave it there permanently, at which point the bizarre sink-adjacent powerpoint will cease to be in use and presumably feel very sorry for itself.

And then TODAY I tried to donate blood but was turned away for low blood pressure, following which I went and recorded a demo of a new song with Lily. We had an hour of free time at King Sound Studio as a consolation prize from their song competition that we entered. They're good dudes albeit slightly disorganised, but frankly it's the music industry and I, personally, have not a leg to stand on. I'll have the song online once they send it to us :3 my voice was a little rough, but traditionally nobody pays more attention to that than I do.

Well, my two-week flood of assessment deadlines is over! Now I have at least three weeks before the next one starts, and I am naturally going to use them to procrastinate.

In TOTALLY UNRELATED NEWS, Portal is free from Steam for another week or so :D

...you guys, I get motion sickness from this game. And it's awesome. I do not even.

So anyway, since handing in my final assignment last Friday I've been tumbling and shooting portals at things and vegging out on the internet, woo! This sluggish state has been partly in response to the freedom from all that writing about socialists and french philosophers and moths, and partly in order to recover from Friday itself, which was approximately 36 hours long. (PS: I totally started this post on Tuesday :P oops!)

( cut for length of the recount and a bunch of random tangents and an aside on the topic of good-touch/bad-touch and uh I got a little carried away...? )

I'm at Mel's, slightly drunk. I'm showing people music videos and traumatising her little sister with Ebichu (because she has a little hamster doll that resembles it. I have been picking it up and shouting UNMENTIONABLE PANTIES! YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!) and did you know her parents blutack little motivational lists to their walls. It's sort of creepy.

Observe: a sample. Note the sickening platitudes, mild repetition issues and passive-aggressive circling of "change your habits."

Anyway so we decided to replace that one with a SLIGHTLY ALTERED VERSION and see how long it will take them to notice. It runs thusly:

 Accept your limitations – don’t diet.
 Never trust hamsters.
 Learn to be calm – hit things with sticks.
 Your anorexia is totally justified.
 Don’t let your sister’s friends use your facebook account.
 Live joyfully – DRINK MOAR.
 Forget your mistakes – SEE ABOVE.
 Be individual – get a tattoo.
 Have a mind of your own – the Borg is overrated.
 Learn the healing power of abstinence.
 Concentrate on loving cake and vodka.
 Accept the other fucker’s issues.
 Giving will make you smug.
 Love Alice – she is your overlord.
 Don’t worry about the things you can blame on your sister.
 Forgive others – they are only figments of your imagination.
 Be a winner – cheat massively!

I think it will IMPROVE MELISSA'S LIFE.

Augh, that was a week. DONE. SO DONE. My planned Week Full Of Stuff finished and then there was more stuff. I was just at Stan's farewell party because he is my bff and he is fleeing the country to be a Microsoft corporate whore for the summer, but THAT WAS THE LAST THING. from now on I am just going to vegetate. VEGETATE. VEG-E-TATE.



*cough* hey internets. Have some Things Wot I Found.

( Cut for images. Bands, gloves, shoes, The Shat )

No sooner does my ludicrous week of assignment deth finish than begins a ludicrous week of social overclocking. This is preferable, but I don't think my room is getting tidied any time soon.

I am writing this in a computer lab at my uni, so I sadly won't be able to include pictures at this point in time unless they were already online: but rest assured - there are indeed pictures. I'm hanging out here because I had to be in the city at noon to be photographed by the extras agency I signed up with like, last year, who still haven't got me any work, but that's cool because they don't have a sign-up fee. They want to have a current picture on the books whenever possible - I emailed them about a month after I cut off all my hair and dyed it red, and we have collectively failed to fix it for about three months. But that's done now, and good thing too because my original photo there was really pretty awful considering they had a professional photographer called Pierre and everything. This time it was just the receptionist with a digital camera and I am pretty sure it's better. Did I mention I dragged a giant bag-full of library books down there? I was going to return the books first and then show up, but I was late, so I had to schlep them all the way across the city to uni afterwards. I have no idea why I borrowed quite so many books. Some of them were not even related to my assignments - when did I think I was going to read them?

Anyway, I'm still here because I'm going to see Wicked this evening with Stan and Des and David. I'm excited! So I shall use the time before they show up to try and paint you guys a word-picture of quite how hilarious my week has been and is going to continue to be.

( cut because oh my god how much stuff can happen in one weekend? )

And then I came home and discovered that I got quoted three times in last week's ljdq. My weekend, dear internet, was fucking AWESOME.

But the thing is. This week? Directly out of hibernation? Today I see Wicked. Tomorrow Avi's having a hotpot and wine night. Friday is the TROUTS end-of-semester party. Saturday is Nicky's birthday party.

I may actually die.

Today my dad and I set up my new computer! Stan promised to help seeing as he's the one that convinced me to actually build it from parts, but we literally could not find a two hour block over the next two weeks during which we were both free at the same time. So instead my dad and I squinted at instruction manuals and I sent Stan occasional MSN updates such as "fun fact: the quick start guide is written in French, Chinese, Japanese, Thai, Bahasa, Viet, Turkish and two Arabic languages. The full technical instruction manual is written in English" and "should I be more worried that my dad dropped the hard drive?"

In the end it booted up so we must have done it right! But I did not finish installing Windows on it because then it was time to head up to Kensington for Gathy's 21st birthday party. There was a bar tab but I started off the night by actually paying for a screwdriver in the hope that crappy on-tap wine would taste better if I was already sort of drunk. It sort of worked! The party was good fun. I caught up with the Russian~ crowd. Aryeh stole my hat. I had a lengthy and hilarious discussion with Toly in which I regaled him with the awful capslock poetry of one of my tutoring students and he in turn explained to me the premise of the novel he wrote while in Norway photographing moss. Both of these were ridiculous but I shall not explain them here on the basis that This Is The Internet and Someone Will Find It (a corollary of Murphy's Law). In the first case it is professional ettiquette whereas in the second the issue is that I really was quite drunk and honestly don't remember if he was serious when he enjoined me not to tell anyone what the novel was about. Suffice to say that Sasha walked up to us around the bit where I was earnestly asking "but what about misc. soup?" and just shook his head and walked away.

I also met Alex's new boyfriend (who was from New Zealand and could have had a Jesus-face off with Avi), and a whole bunch of randoms (the vodka helped). And I ran into someone from my high school who turned out to work at the hotel! I mean ran into quite literally here. Then I ate a lot of cake and explained to some total stranger that me and Stan had judged her breasts the second best in the room, which is going to be embarrassing tomorrow morning when I am sober. Or, well, let's face it, since I have no idea who she was, probably not. Besides, she was flattered. Privileges of femaleness.

Around midnight the place closed up so we got kicked out, whereupon most of the crowd dispersed and Liza tried to ride a skateboard while tipsy and in stilettos. Then I caught a bus home to discover I had chocolate in my hair and my parents had sprung a scheduling change on me for tomorrow's family thing, which meant I had to change a tutoring shift at short notice AGAIN, rar. Anyway, now it is three am, so. sleep tiem nau!

PS: Speaking of New Zealand, this is the best ad I've seen all week. Sheep + LEDs = genius!

Let's hear it for painkillers! Only this morning I was rolling around on my mother's bed and moaning that I was dying and now I am wearing an awesome beanie and giggling at squirrel catapults and playing Fall Out Boy trail and let me tell you the latter would not be so amusing if I was not so incredibly, incredibly high.

Okay I'm not that high, they were only painkillers. ...from a prescription I got three years ago and I don't remember for what. ...on top of some panadol. IDK! My womb is no longer full of termites! I am happy!

Also hungry and horribly, horribly sweaty.

whassuuuuup?

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.

Ahaha I totally meant to update... somewhat earlier. Anyway, as some of you may have noticed, the 27th was Rabbit Hole Day. Turns out there's an LJ community! rabbitholeday, who'd have thought.

In any case, What I Did On Tuesday did not in fact involve cyborgs in any way, shape or form, although i did end up looking a little like a cyborg. That's right, it was Liza's Epic Makeover day.

( pay no attention to the lulz behind the curtain )

Anyway, there is moar to tell about the past few days but I really need to go to sleep now as I'm heading up to Foster with Nicky tomorrow, and I should really be up by ten thirty at the latest. So I'll see you guys on like... Wednesday or something, idk.

Oh my god it is so fucking hot I swear argh. I want ten million showers, stat. There are bugs EVERYWHERE. The other day a big black spider was just a-sittin' on one of my towels on the line, you know, just chillin' like. I shook it out and it just didn't move. So obviously I panicked and let my dad finish taking in the towels. I stuck electrical tape on a hole in our flyscreen but there were already three fat flies in the kitchen and I'm just not as handy with a slipper as I used to be. FUCK YOU SUMMMERRRRR.

On W- ...oh, yesterday (fuck I'm losing track of time again) I trekked out Parramatta-wise to Lily's house for to make some jam. It was MAD FUCKING HOT, have I mentioned this? It was like a pizza oven, the walk back to hers from the station was hellish. Heat radiating from the asphalt, I half expected PLUUUMES OF FLAAAAME in dramatic fashion to burst forth from the scenery. And then Lily's house was UP A DRIVEWAY FFS. But finally we got inside and I just lay right down on the cool tiles and demanded ice cubes. Then I made friends with her cat (big-boned fucker that it is, large cat is LARGE, mate) and squee'd over her hilarious electric guitar. She explained that she thought the red was boring so she covered it in stickers and then set it on fire, but it wouldn't burn, so she just stuck more stickers on. Said stickers bore the visages of such wicked items as ANTHRAX, Cthulu, Pikachu, badass flame designs and Hello Kitty.

Anyway we did some recording on a little device whose inner workings are beyond my understanding, and Lily also insisted on recording our practice runs because she felt like she was "losing a part of her" when we got the first go right and it wasn't on tape (metaphorically speaking as the Device was pour la mp3). I pointed out that you're not really a real musician unless you can, y'know, duplicate your awesome before successive crowds on different occasions, but there you have it, we now have various mp3's of two songs, an argument and some fucking around with E minor and a tumbleweed solo.

Then it was time for me to head off to a comedy show entitled The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged), which styled itself to be The Bard Without The Boring Bits (although I've gotta admit they may have taken out Shakespeare's boring bits but they added a couple of their own). I did not have to make the return journey in the afternoon's wretched heat but only because it was raining. I ate some ramen (Lily has a sort of collection) and borrowed an umbrella (and three dollars because I had forgotten to get money out and used up the last of my change getting there). Then I put on my make-up on the train, because I woke up at one pm and had to run to get to Lily's in time to not just have to turn around and leave again. I was incidentally a trifle overdressed as all my pants were in the wash, and somehow I don't have any skirts that go with anything that doesn't end up looking fancy, unless they're really casual and only really suitable for the beach. IDK! I don't wear skirts that often! I don't know how to do it!

The show was actually pretty funny but I don't think it was worth $55, really. I mean there is hilarious comedy, there is my high school drama class, and there is eight minutes of a bloke in a dress pretending to vomit on people, and it is closer to one than the other if you know what I mean. However the second half, which largely consisted of Hamlet, was pretty awesome. I think my favourite bit was Hamlet, Again, Really Really Fast, Backwards. In sum, I loled. Then we stood around outside arguing over where to go next. Liza was telephonically in favour of a Sydney Festival performance by a Russian band called Volgograd, Gleb was for waiting for Liza to actually show up, Stan was for going home and entertaining the possibility of going to work in the morning, Gathy took initiative and wandered off to see a street piano with Brinton. I waved my arms around a bit and looked put upon. Finally we reached some sort of consensus and began to move vaguely in the general direction of the carpark.

Volgograd, who were playing in something called the Famous Spiegeltent, although what it is famous for and why it is Spiegel I wouldn't have a clue, were tolerably amusing. Me, Sasha, Liza and Val played "spot the recycled Russian tune." (I also secretly played "what does Sasha's facial expression mean." I am not very good at that game, I always think he is pissed off when actually he is thinking about lunch, or something.) The singer sounded like my grandad after a couple of vodka shots. The band had one of those giant triangular ukelele things, what are they called? Also an accordion and a couple of trombones. A very drunk lady asked me to mind her drink, which was in one of those flute glasses. Flustered, I said "no" - whereupon she got confused and said "I can't leave it here?"

"Well, you can, but I'm not going to like, be responsible for-" I tried. "I mean I'm not going to DO anything to it-"

"You might!" she said cheerfully. "I don't know you very well!"

Then she wandered off. I shrugged, everyone else laughed at me. After a while we dispersed, by which I mean Gathy made vague noises about going home and disappeared in a puff of smoke, and all the Maroubra bus people plus Brinton wandered towards the bus stop, leaving Gleb and Liza to presumably do couple-y things, such as they could manage in a large German-themed tent full of drunken Russians and Aussies.

Which finished off the night with me, Sasha, Val and Brinton sitting at a bus stop for half an hour at two in the morning, daydreaming about sandwiches, watching Boston Legal on Brinton's laptop, and chatting to a random wasted Irish hippy who looked at the laptop and cheerfully announced that technology confused him and he would rather live in a field with a stick and a pig.

*jazz hands*