There's a sort of... brutal honesty about Australian films. They don't shirk showing very, very bad things happening to the characters. Hideous humiliation, complete degradation, all that sort of thing. No worry. They lay life in all its glorious Aussie detail bare.

I tend not to like it. Call me squeamish (pause for the grand chorus) but it just makes me cringe. I don't like seeing that sort of thing happen to people. That's why I watch movies. If I wanted to see life jump up and down on people, I'd just watch real life.

There is no such thing as free. Even if you don't pay for it, someone, somewhere, does.

That's Dee's lessons for life #5.

And it's going out especially to the fucking annoying student politicians. They want education to be free. Ain't no such thing, sweetheart. If you don't pay, someone has to. How do you know it isn't going to be you, somewhere down the line. By the time you get to middle-aged, earning a good wage, you won't want to be paying huge taxes to support those slack lay-abouts going through university. Why the hell should education be free? you'll want to know then. Whose stupid idea was that?

Someone always has to pay.

Quite frankly, Aussie students have it pretty damn good. We pay a fraction of our tuition costs, and we can defer it, or get a further quarter off if we pay upfront. US students wish they had it so good.

To sum up: Someone's going to have to pay for your 'free' education, and it's going to be the taxpayers, because that's where the government gets its money from. If they're paying for your education, they can't be paying for hospitals, for other services, for anything. Just grow up and stop being so fucking selfish, will you?

(The rant endeth here.)

Oh, the guestbook isn't working. I'm quite annoyed by that, but I haven't been able to sit still long enough in the past four days to get to work fixing it. That's a job for the weekend, when I might actually be able to breathe again. Here's hoping, anyway.

Moulin Rouge was, to be perfectly honest, exactly what I'd expected. It was a good film, sumptuously made, just odd enough to puzzle the mainstream while not being odd enough to be truly, or even moderately, arthouse. It lurked somewhere in that Baz-Luhrmann-space, between Strictly Ballroom and Romeo and Juliet. It had a sort of horrifically greasy glamour that was all his and just right.

It was a lot of fun, and very slick. I enjoyed it. I think my father went to sleep. But that's only to be expected, really.

And Nicole Kidman had the most beautiful dress I've ever seen in my life. Most of her clothes were gorgeous, but that red thing...

Meep!

Am I back up? Um... yeah, I think I am. Sorta, anyway.

Past twenty-four hours have been one long annoyance at the stupidity of the human race. Mostly as is evidenced by the television. Silly programs, silly advertisements. Even stupid people on the news. Honestly!

Oh, and I caught five minutes of Big Brother last night, and was flabberghasted at the sheer mind-numbing boredom of it. There were two people cleaning a bathroom. Cleaning a fucking bathroom, for DOUG's sake. Someone else was cleaning the pool. Someone else was doing some exercises. The people cleaning the bathroom were singing, if that's any consolation. Which it wasn't. They weren't singing anything interesting.

And coming up after the break, the blonde apathetically tries to convince some guy to dance with her. Excuse me while I wet my pants in excitement.

Silly, silly, silly.

This sort of thing is just fucking unacceptable. Honestly. The world is so full of fucking idiots sometimes I think this must be a some sort of weird experiment. God is a PhD student, and we are his project. Nothing else explains it. This sort of behaviour is not natural.

No, I am still not really up, but I'm getting closer, and this just incensed me too much to keep quiet about.

Things sorta up? Not quite. Bits missing. Bear with me.

Note: Domain situation sorted out. At the 11th hour, but since when did I do things at any other time? I will try and sort everything out, and make it as smooth as possible, but it's very likely viscerate will go down for at least a little while sometime in the next three-four days. Fret not, my pretties.

This will be the last post until I get things sorted out, though.

I have lots of lovely new plans for the spanky new host and spanky new semester. Wait and see, preciousss.

Watching Bring It On makes me mildly annoyed that I didn't go to a school that had cheerleaders. Not that I particularly wanted to be that perky-happy, but being thrown a few dozen metres in the air looks like fun. Meanwhile, this movie had perhaps the best opening of any movie I've seen this year:

I'm sexy, I'm cute,
I'm popular to boot.
I'm bitchin', great hair,
the boys all love to stare.
I'm wanted, I'm hot,
I'm everything you're not.
I'm pretty, I'm cool,
I dominate this school.
Who am I? Just guess,
Boys wanna touch my chest.
I'm rockin', I smile,
and many think I'm vile.
I fly and I jump,
You can look but don't you hump.
I major, I roar,
I swear I'm not a whore.
We cheer and we lead,
We act like we're on speed.
you hate us coz we're beautiful,
but we don't like you either
......we're cheerleaders,
......we are cheerleaders

Honestly. What was I doing with my youth?

So I did this little "What political ideology are you?" thing, and it told me I was lefty scum! Well, I mean, on the grand scheme of things I suppose I am more leftist than the majority of US politics, but that's just because Australia lists to port in general. I'm certainly an Aussie conservative.

If you're interested, my entire listing went:
# 1 Leninist
# 2 Socialist
# 3 Marxist
# 4 Progressive
# 5 Anarchist
# 6 US Liberal
# 7 US Libertarian
# 8 US Conservative

Hah!

(Another link pilfered, this time from porcupine girl's journal.)

Oooh, this looks like fun. Where you sit at the movies indicates your personality. I am such a 'film fanatic'. Then again, we all knew that already, didn't we?

I missed going to see Tomb Raider last night because I had to write the essay. I'm quite sad about this. I was looking forward to it, because I know - just know, even though reviews have been scathing - that it's a lot of fun and I'm going to enjoy it.

(Happy little linkie pilfered with glee and thanks from Yardsale.)

When you start hoping for a couple more days on this essay so you could just get further into the topic, you have to start wondering if maybe you're lost. You're gone. You're an... academic.

Gasp.

It's fascinating, it's enthralling, it's finger-itching-to-turn-pages rivetting. It's the position of women in damn Han China, for DOUG's sake. How am I this interested in something so silly? To be specific, it's the trail from servant girl to Emperor-in-all-but-name that pulls me in. It was so simple. A dancing girl catches the Emperor's eye, becomes a consort, wins his favour by her beauty and intellectual virtue, bears his son, becomes his wife and, after his death, is the Regent for his son. The Empress Dowager, who held all the power of the Emperor himself.

You see girls doing that sort of thing these days? Didn't think so. And Chinese women are so bloody subjugated, are they? Pah. Pah, I say!

Yeah, um... I'll go back to writing the essay then, shall I?

Turn my back for five seconds - five - and somehow my computer knows that I've saved everything and have stopped working and thus will not kill it when it dies. I look back, and the monitor's going ape-shit, like I've told it to load satanic hamster pornography in the wrong resolution or something. Either that, or an alien life-form is trying to send me meaningful messages of cosmic goodwill, although I doubt that. Never know, of course. I turned the entire thing off and left it to sit for twenty minutes while I went to give an entirely spurious pol sci tute.

My playlist segues from Garbage into Megaherz (can't beat that Shirley-purr into German-growl smirk) and I try to beat myself back into reading for my essay. Which is due on Friday. No more time for good behaviour (even if I was, contrary to all available data, behaving well). I can't handle reading and living in a music-free vacuum, though, so I have to have the music going, and now (because I paused to dispatch a shopping trip in there) it's moving from that Grrr-Rawr Rock Me Amadeus into Def FX's "Majick"; psychedelically 80s-reminiscent in the American-Psycho "Some of us are trying to do drugs in here" sort of way.

So much essay to do and I can see how to write a brilliant work that will win me Aat's approval, which I crave, but I can't see how to do it in two days with the material I have. I have to try, though, because I should, and thinking up a new concept will take too much time and effort anyway. But with so much essay, so many other things are falling over. Like my email communication, lapsed now shamefully. I haven't emailled an old friend to arrange coffee, and she's probably justified in the voodoo dolls she's making of me. I haven't emailled old school friends about returning home in a week. I haven't emailled Drioux in forever, and I miss communicating with him. And I haven't emailled Hamilton, and every time I visit his site, there's something more to talk to him about. A marvellous young man, that one, saved only from complete fixation by his unfortunate animal preferences. The search for the perfect male continueth.

The music moves forward, never looking back, into Orgy's wall-of-sound take on "Blue Monday", and I bow to the inevitable and return to the machinations of the women of Han China. Hey nonny nonny and blood all over the place. (2 points)

"Do you think she's deeply and significantly talented?"

Spoken with the careful, drunk, enunciation of Audrey in Breakfast at Tiffany's. Sunglasses down the nose and an eyebrow-raising: "Oh my Goodness!" It's been going through my head. Who knows why. I think my abuse of sleep is catching up with me. It's my favourite line from that movie. J^e likes the part about the toy boys forming a union. B^k just loves the movie. I didn't think it was anything really that hugely special. Culturally important, sort of. Maybe.

My body has the worst timing. I will not elaborate on this point.

Time is running out. I can't shake this feeling. Five days until I go home, and things are still everywhere. Literally. My room looks like my life exploded inside it, and I have to have it packed up before I leave. Intellectually, too, because I just haven't got my mind in any fit state to take it back to my parents.

Things will work out. They always do. One day they won't, and I am just going to laugh, and laugh, and laugh. My associates will think it is a mental breakdown, and maybe, just maybe, they will be right.

(I am not as unhinged, depressed or delusional as you may think.)

Well, Croupier certainly wasn't what I was expecting. I'm not entirely sure what I was expecting, but that wasn't precisely it. This was... less ascetic? I wasn't expecting something quite so mundanely sordid. But it was very satisfying indeed. A movie that ran on vodka and cynicism. My kind of flick.

Mr Owen, our delightful lead, was not, however, in possession of as delightful a voice as I was led to believe. Yes, it was smooth, it was verging on the sensuous, it wouldn't be turned back if it wanted to whisper a few sweet nothings or lewd suggestions in my ear, but it doesn't make the top ten list. It certainly doesn't deserve the Sean Connery comparison made in one review. It was nowhere near that good.

However, as a quote from the official website declares, there is some similarity between Owen and Connery. It's in his dark quiet. In the sitting, watching, of the predator even if Owen's Jack is a behavioural, conceptual, predator (a writer - and yes I did see myself in Jack now and then; a writer and a Gemini, how could I not?) as opposed to Connery's Bond, the actual, physical predator.

Most enjoyable. Not high art. Not spectacular, but good. Unusual. The sort of film that should be made more often in preference to, say, half the stuff Hollywood turned out this year.

Wide awake again, five or six hours sleep later. Still perky, still far too alert and full of life to consider doing anything but heading into Civic with good friends, relaxing in Starbucks with good coffee (or a close facsimile thereof), talking, laughing, living, heading home eating chicken-salted chips straight from the bag.

I have an essay to write, but so what? I also have a life to live.

Five am, and I'm still awake. It's not even a stretch when you roleplay all night. Should I push on until dawn? I would, but there's a guy in Spain telling me I should get some sleep. I'll show him. I'll give his characer a heart-attack. Muahaha.

The sky outside looks like it's on fire already, lights on the clouds again. I've been looking at it all night, burning out my window. There won't be much sunrise to be seen.

But I honestly don't care.

I love the way my playlist segues from Insurge's "I Hate Stupid People" into "Vogue" by Madonna.

There's a message there for all of us, I think.

Everything I want in a movie review. No, seriously. Good fun. This place is great.

I'm still going to see Tomb Raider in the first couple of days, though. Being friends with K^r necessitates it. She adores Ms Croft, and swiftly got me addicted to her after lending me one of the games. I still haven't finished the game because I spent too much time admiring Lara's funky moves and not enough time solving puzzles, and just got bored before I could finish. It was so much damn fun, though, and I actually can't wait for the movie.

I have a feeling I'm going to enjoy Croupier more, though, and not just because the narrator apparently has a voice worthy of my top ten swoonable voices list. It just looks like a damn fine movie. I'll let you know. You knew I would, right?

(I am here, really I am. Just... not saying very much.)

Happy, free, floaty.

I went in there, and wrote about two things that weren't the two things I'd actually prepared, because I noticed those two things were the hardest questions on there, and actually, these other ones were much more interesting.

I walked out half an hour early.

I went to Starbucks and laughed, and plotted, and relaxed.

Tomorrow I will sleep in.

Tonight I will read.

I am a happy bunny.

One down. One to go. Books picked up for the women of Han China essay to be completed. These books will, more or less, write the essay for me, I think. I love books (and essays) like that. I want to do very well in this essay, though, not because the subject matters in the grand scheme of things. I want to do well because I did well on the first essay (83%) and the lecturer thinks well of me. What is more important, is that I think well of him.

Pol Sci will be easy. I can bull-shit professionally. A little amateur effort like a two-hour, two-question exam isn't going to put a crimp in my style. Irony is, that this subject does matter, in the grand scheme of things. Priorities? What are those?

It always happens, around this time: someone brings up the Cakes and Ale story. I personally say this is an urban myth. One, because this time last year I asked my friends in Cambridge about it, and they said it was cute, but bollocks. Two, because of the little line in the story: "At this point, the student produced a copy of the four hundred year old Laws of Cambridge".

Which, of course, would be permitted materials for his exam. Considering permitted materials for my exams generally range from 'None' to 'Dictionary for those candidates for whom English is a second language'.

In any case, relating all this at the dinner table led me to what had come of the conversation I had with my Cambridge pals. Another friend, from Glasgow this time, reported that in their old university rules was something that, in essence, said that should you challenge your lecturer to a duel, and be victorious, you got an automatic A. Rendering this into its modern equivalent (as with the cakes and ale), we came up with 'uzis at dawn'.

B^k didn't know what an uzi was. I explained that it was a sort of machine gun, notorious for its bullet spray. You effectively hit everything but what you were aiming at.

J^e likened this to a certain fellow's pick-up attempts. This led to much laughter, and the suggestion that he was: "Wildly inaccurate, but fatal at 50 paces."

Well, we gotta get through the exam period somehow.

More MUD conversations:
Y offers a pop tart
D perks. Well, back rub, pop tart... what's the difference?
Y says "about 300 calories?"
D says "What's 300 calories between friends?"
Y says "exactly!"
Y slyly gives 400 calories and only takes 200 calories for himself...muhahhahaa
D peers at Y. "Are you trying to fatten me up?"
Y smiles innocently. "Not at all. Hey, do you think you could fit in this oven. I mean, hypothetically speaking of course. If you needed to, for some reason, fit in this oven....could you?"

I am Dee, the movie omnivore. I don't walk out of movies. I don't stop watching them half-way through. There's a process that is entered into, in watching a movie. The opening sequence, be it action or credits, eases you into it. The end credits ease you out, offer closure. It is unthinkable that I should exit stage left before the appropriate time to do so.

But I just walked out of Dancer In The Dark.

I couldn't stay. Just couldn't. I only lasted fifteen minutes, and probably five of those were the initial minutes, which take place on a black screen. I wanted to stay. I wanted to watch the movie. But I couldn't. That hand-held, fuzzy jumpiness was threatening to forcibly wrench my dinner out of my stomach. That was if my head didn't explode first. I considered staying, just listening to the movie, but that's pretty stupid, and I'd probably fall asleep. So I left. Walked out.

Today, I spent six hours, on the nose, in Starbucks.

Well, not actually six hours. J^e and I arrived at about 9:30, she still without sleep, myself feeling grossly lethargic due to waking at 4am in a lather of sweat. I left again at 10:40, having to go and do my German speaking test.

I hate speaking tests.

But I returned at 11:40. Before that, I went to the bank. Well, they called it a bank. It bore a remarkable resemblance to the lovechild of Starbucks and a deli, who had decided to forgo this hippy lifestyle and forge a future in the cut-throat corporate world. Yes, I am referring to the new ANZ monstrosity in Petrie Place. I've kept my little "please take a number" tag, because it blows my mind. This is not banking, this is some weird alien induction ritual.

J^e is steadily learning the names of the Starbucks staff by, each time they ask for her name for the coffee, giving it and adding: "What's yours?" Today, we watched Wayne complete his entire double shift, and another team of staff come in. We sat through the morning coffee rush, the lunchtime rush, and the afternoon coffee rush. We sat through the lulls in between. We sat through J^e's Rhumba, and my caffe mocha, which was the best thing I'd ever tasted, and J^e's coffee and J²'s flat white. Through business men, and the Sea Witch (hideous blue-green talons) and a potential drug deal and J²'s yuppie tendencies.

We annotated one of the green pamphlets into revolutionary propaganda, and reinserted it into circulation.

We returned home, playing: "If we put X and Y in a cage, who would win?"

Life should be like this more often.

A night of interesting movements and insights. Netball was frustrating, because the umpires were useless and we might as well have been. The guy I was marking was at least a foot taller than me (and I'm not short) and there was no chance for me to touch the ball. I kept trying thought, because I'm like that. Every high pass they put up, I had to jump for. One, I was almost sure I'd reached. I could feel my fingertips brushing the ball...

And then I was falling, ninety degrees away from verticle. Spectacular sensation of almost-flying, and then my butt hit the ground, followed shortly by my head. I lay there, dazed, for a couple of seconds, until the guy grabbed my hand and literally pulled me to my feet. And the umpire called that I'd contacted him, and had to stand beside. Fuck.

But for a split-second there, what a ride.

Later, as we returned home, A revealed the new front-man for Rage Against The Machine. "Go on," he said. "Guess. You've heard of him."

My first instinct was "James Hetfield?". But that made absolutely no sense. Then again, neither does the actual name. Chris Cornell. Yes, he who was of Soundgarden. He who Loz drooled all over in grade 10. He of the intense, slow rock. Chris Cornell screaming "Fuck you, won't do what you tell me"?

I just can't see it, personally.

I love how light the sky is in Canberra at night, when the clouds are gathered low. Yeah, reflected light and all, nothing special, but I don't remember it ever looking like that in Gladstone, where we've got more brightly-lit industry than Canberra has sex shops. Well, maybe not, but you get the idea. This is something I've only ever seen in Canberra. It looks a little as if there were huge fires, just over the horizon, lighting up the night. But there aren't. It's just the way it is. Magic.

Like the fog so thick you wonder if maybe you can walk on it. Maybe the rest of the world has actually been removed, and there is just the 'Nothing'.

Like bright, blue, sunny days with negative temperatures.

I love this place. I really do. I don't want to live here for the rest of my life, but I'm loving it now. And I'll love it always. And this makes everything worthwhile. Perhaps.

So now we're down to the last 24 hours before the speaking test. I am woefully unprepared. Why do I continuously do this to myself? I've screwed up German this semester like I screwed up Chinese a year and a half ago. The difference is that I like German. So what am I doing? Why do I go to one class in four? Why do I never, ever, in a million years do my homework. It would be so easy. It would solve everything. I could prepare and learn and be fucking ready, but I'm not.

Jesus, I piss myself off sometimes.

You know when you potter around in your room, or house, or whatever, picking things up and putting them down, thinking that there's something you could be - should be - doing, but this isn't it and you can't think what it might be.

Reminds me of my cat, picking her way across a table filled with junk. Trying to find a place to put her paws, let alone her big, furry bum.

Yeah, well I'm doing that on the internet right now.

Eventually my cat just sits on top of all the junk, looks at me with her big, yellow eyes, washes a little, and goes to sleep. But I don't have that sort of willful disregard for my surroundings. More's the pity.

I want to be a cat in my next life. I think I've been good enough, haven't I?

L1 is just curious as to WHY Aussies are the best teases in the world.

D: "Because we don't take anything seriously, even ourselves. 'Taking the piss' means to tease a lot, and is practically a national pasttime."

Great day. Unfortunately, not really doing what I should be doing. With the exception of the music I'm listening to Die Prinzen (old, old, OLD stuff - it's playing Gabi Und Klaus now, for anyone who knows anything about them, and I'll give you lots of points and respect if you do), which is in German, and could hence conceivably be called German study.

Heh. I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel now. But hey, if Bubbles can watch Run Lola Run and call it study, I can do this. Right?

Yeah.

Following Megan's directions, I wandered into MP3.com. That was (checks watch) half an hour ago. I did check out Lylah, Megsy, but then I found some things that I really liked. Like Inkubus Sukkubus (Supernature makes me happy). And very definitely like Temple of Rain. I'm having fun here, boys and girls. This is a great lark.

I hate to think what my bill's going to look like after this lot. Oooh, look, shiny thing! (scampers off)

On the viability of the name 'Dharma':

D snorts. That's a Hindu word that means 'cosmic order'. I have issues with anyone being called 'cosmic order'. It's just asking for trouble. :-) Like painting a big 'Smite here' target on your head and running around on a hill in a thunderstorm screaming: 'God is dead! God is dead!'

B chuckles. Don't forget the steel pole.
D wonders if there's a sport called Extreme Blasphemy.

Fuck, I needed to do washing today.

Oh, wait, no emergency. I still have at least one pair of clean underwear.

I'm such a college student. No, on second thoughts, I'm not such a college student. If I was a true college student, I wouldn't care if they were clean.

Hamilton rocks my socks. He's the sort of person I stick around on the internet for. The sort of person who makes me grin to think that there are other people out there, all over the world, who are like me. And they're usually the sort of people who make me curse because I don't live in America and hence can't stalk them. Or, alternatively, invite them down to the Evil Commercial Empire for a big cup of coffee and a long ramble.

If I was Shauny, I'd develop a crush on this guy. (I tried to find where she'd mentioned her insta-internet crushes, but I couldn't, because I suck and she no longer has the search facility on her site. Hey Shauny, how are we supposed to find the porn now?) Luckily, I'm not Shauny. Lucky, because I don't think the world could handle two of us. One of her and one of me is bad enough as it is.

I am in an almost hyper mood. Have been since earlier today, when I got to talk to A^z (speaking of American guys who I am resisting developing crushes on). Sometimes I seriously wonder about me. I have far, far more close male friends than female friends. As Y said, I'm just 'one of the guys'.

And hell, I wouldn't have it any other way.

I'm such a slob. I'm sitting here, in my dressing gown (the black one, with the Playboy bunny on it), despite the fact that it's over six hours since I got up. Closer to eight now. I'm chatting with people I don't know, eating old cold pasta as a pseudo-lunch, and haven't even done a little bit of work today.

Time to change this. But I'll finish the pasta first.

And then maybe just finish this fic I'm reading.

And then I'll think about it.

At some time during the next two weeks, pretty much at random, I suspect viscerate.com is going to go down in a quivering heap. This is because I'm changing servers/registrars and everything's pretty much confused. I apologise in advance, and hope that people bear with me while I try to get everything up and running.

On the good side, though, once I get to the new hosts, I'll have webspace coming out my ears. What am I going to do with it all? I have no idea...

Oh my DOUG, I have never seen two dinky china Siamese cats that looked shiftier than the two used in Shauny's divine new design. Them's some damn smug kitties. I think they know something they're not telling us.

Like maybe why my Pol Sci lecturer is physically incapable of giving back our essays when he said he would. Three bloody times I've been put off so far. If we have to hand them in by a deadline, shouldn't be damn well respond in kind?

Not that I can really talk, since I handed it in a week late, but never let the truth get in the way of a good story.

I'm getting Muslim spam, now.

"Most people in the United States have a very limited knowledge of Islam, indeed, they have a distorted and negative view. Also, they know little of the debt our mathematics owes Arabian medieval Islam."

Well duh. That's because people are morons. What's more, they're narrowed-minded, xenophobic morons who are overly influenced by what the men in suits and dark glasses tell them.

You know... this is actually quite interesting. I'm not going to buy the book this is advertising, or anything. No one who's done a course in the Middle East and read Foucault's Pendulum needs to. But it's actually quite an interesting email.

How's that for a first? Actual interesting spam. You read it first here, kiddies.

I am terribly ashamed of what I have become.

I am a coffee slut, a sitcom wannabe, a harlot of the Evil Commercial Empire.

I have fallen in love with Starbucks.

I didn't mean to. It was an accident. I never intended to be sucked into its pit of Capitalist Scum^TM. But it happened.

J^e and I wandered in today, thinking we should probably try the coffee, just to see if it was any good. We laughed when we noticed three college acquaintances already lurking by the counter. They greeted us, told us they were already expecting three others as well. An amusing period of musical chairs followed, as we all maneouvred (I can never spell that damn word, I've got it wrong again, haven't I?) around the room in an attempt to get the best seats possible. Finally, this ended in the entire bunch of us in the comfy chairs and sofa in front of the fire. J^e sat on the warm stones of the raised hearth, resisting the temptation to curl up, but not the temptation to purr.

A while later, B and Y arrived, completely indepently. It was the icing on the cake. Or rather, the whipped cream on the caffe mocha.

Coffee was drunk, movies dissected, and the revolution planned, Fidel-Castro-style.

We decided that this was the life. We decided that we would take over Starbucks.

So if you want us, you can find us (left of centre...) in this monstrous monument to money, every Wednesday and Friday. We'll be the rowdy, mock-poseur-artiste bunch of uni students down in front of the fire.

If I wasn't so delighted, I'd slap myself.

"Raise me no mound, plant me no grove; time will pass with the revolving sun and moon. I never cared for praise in my lifetime, and it matters not at all what eulogies are sung after my death. Man's life is hard enough in truth; and death is not to be avoided."

- Tao Yuanming

I have a psychological difficulty wrapping my comprehension around the phrase "well-known hermit". It just doesn't work for me. If you're well-known, then you're obviously not trying hard enough to be a hermit. Bad hermit! No solitude!

Another Friday-esque thought, prompted by remembrances of my mysticism course (now over! Woo!):

What goes around gets dizzy and falls over.

(I like that, it reminds me of me.)

Zoe, thank you for signing my guestbook. Thank you, thank you. Because otherwise I might never have found your page or your great odd socks (which are going on my frequent list as soon as possible) and I would be suffering still under the absence of more dazzling Aussie wit. Shame you're not in Canberra, I would invite you out to coffee at that scandalous new commercial venture, and we could take Shauny with us too.

Colours of my life? Procrastination, random thought-gathering, and a little more about me:

Red is easy. My favourite colour, my satin shirt, my formal dress that was verging on indecent and reinvented my 'squarer than thou' image in the last two days of high school. Red is the colour of me at my best.

Orange is the colour of the film group cards this year. I love and live by film group and is has given me an understanding and critical comprehension of movies that I find it difficult to imagine life without, now.

Yellow is the covers of the exam booklets given out by my faculties. It is my writing, whiplash fast, covering page after page, but somehow never as much as my neighbours. I never ask for additional booklets. I write the minimum. Sometimes this makes me feel inadequate. Usually not.

Green is the grass that I like to lie in. To sprawl in, limbs spread, watching the sky and the clouds and the world and feeling the sun on my face. It is decandence, time-wasting, the wonderful feeling of seconds dribbling through my hands with no actions weighing them down. This feeling has been all-too-lacking in recent months.

Blue are the bibs for netball that I look after. The team that I look after. We were called the Smurfs, previously; even more blue. We rarely win, but it's good for the effort, the play, the stretch of an arm and brush of fingers barely reaching the ball, but knocking it past the hands it was intended to reach. Elation high in the back of my throat.

Purple is for the bruises I get at random, knees and shins and arms and hips. Discolourations from the lightest of knocks, marks I don't even know the cause of, pretty adorning blobs that I poke in J² silliness, going: "It hurts. Ouch!"

Black is for dressing up. For lace and leather and fishnets and boots. For feeling pretty and relaxed and comfortable. For dancing, for letting go, for scaring and grinning and revelling. I like black.

White is paper, printed, plain, scattered across my room in reams of noted points and rough drafts. Clean and beautiful with an essay printed sparsely upon it, ready to be handed in. Torn-off days of a desk calendar with notes like: "Shadow Lord, Ahroun, Homid" and lists of names scrawled on the back.

And grey is life. In all its glorious, myriad uncertainties, in-betweens. In the lack of absolutes. In the way everything blurs together into a smear that has dullness and opalescence and lighter notes and everything all swirled together. The way it seems dull from far away, but it full of life and vigour up close.

"Deluded by Ignorance, man looks not at what he sees, grasps not what he hears, follows not what he reads. He fails to see that with every momeny that passes his body decays. The Wolf of Time rushes upon him while he is still prattling of 'my children', 'my wife', 'my wealth', 'my relations'. Death swallows him while he is still thinking of what is done, what is yet to be done, and what is half-done. ... Cut into by the spear of desire, moistened in the lubricant of sense-enjoyment, cooked in the fire of life and dislike, man is the banquet of Death."

Kularnava Tantra

Hellfire-and-brimstone Hinduism. Good stuff, eh?

I miss my first year. When there were more afternoons like the one I passed yesterday. Retail therapy with J^e of the cheap-book-buying, KFC-munching, Lincraft-raiding, Supabarn-terrorising persuasion. Coffee from Laos later, in Cafe B^k (being patronised while Cafe J^e is out of commission due to guerilla activity of the Sentient Mess variety). Gossip in quantity, if maybe not in quality, and chocolate in both.

It's just a shame that I needed those six hours in order to study. Life has contracted to a ten-day period. When it ends, it will be like emerging, blinking, into the light. I will not know what to make of it all.

Random Friday-esque thought of the day:

Before you get angry at someone, walk a mile in their shoes. Then you're a mile away from them, and you have their shoes.

Stupidity. All around. I'm drowing. Glub, glub, glub...

Sometimes it seriously is overwhelming. Those times, I consider moving out of college. Then I realise that this sort of moronity (did I just invent a word again?) pervades the entire world. It's everywhere. Society is steeped in it, life is soaked with it.

There is no escape.

Is becoming a hermit still a viable career option? Do I have to do postgraduate work or can I jump right in?

I don't want to live with people I can't respect. I don't want to sit in meetings with people who waste time with pointless issues and circular discussions. I don't want to wind up another number in a box in a suburb in a city.

I don't know what to do about this.

Friday was my one-year blogging anniversary. It's that time of year, isn't it? Lots of us are having them. Guess that means that about one year ago the blogging bandwagon started rolling, and we all gleefully leapt on. Hooray for us.

My first bloggy bit was really quite silly. You can check the archives if you don't believe me. In fact, most of that first week was fairly silly. I wasn't sure what I was doing with this blog thing, wasn't sure if I even wanted one, was just fiddling around to see how it worked. I got my groove on pretty quick, though, and a couple of weeks later it's all good. A little while after that, I moved into viscerate.com. Which means that shortly my year will be up and I have to start thinking about whether I want to perpetuate this monstrous idol of my own ego, and at what cost.

But I'd just like to thank everyone who has made my year of blogging so much fun. I wouldn't have stuck with it if I hadn't found the frivolity, the community, the friends and the all-around good humour that I have. My socks would be rocked if I wore any, but I don't, so you'll just have to settle for a terribly unladylike: "Hats off, gentlemen!" (5 points, because it's from real literature. No kidding!)

Now, let's break open the bubbly.

How good a movie title is Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood? Even if it is going to have Sandra Bullock in it. (Found, incidentally, because I have a small Angus MacFadyen obsession that was fed by watching Titus last night.)

They're opening a Starbucks in Civic. After years of declaring that Australia was free of this blight upon the coffee landscape, I am brought low. Here's hoping this doesn't spell the demise of all that is good about the Canberra cafe culture. On the other hand, maybe now I'll be able to get a table at Essen for those late-night post-movie chats with latte.

Woken up at a little past 7am to find some Confucian references for A for one of his papers. It's health law, or something random. Something you wouldn't think required the use of ancient Chinese classics. Apparently he also has references from The Plague by Camus (which makes a little more sense in a health law essay), Frank Herbert's Dune and the completely random Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Kinda makes me wish I did his courses. But not much.

Down at breakfast, I met up with B^k and J^e, making me wonder if I'd stumbled into an alternate dimension where these people were actually inclined to get up before lunch. But no, they assured me, they weren't got up, they were still up. Plans for the immediate future included making jelly, and going to bed. I wished them the best of British luck, and went back to the newspaper.

It occurs to me that I could get a webcam to show the world what I look like, but then I'd have to stop getting dressed in front of the computer.

Or not.