Wedding preparations (What do you mean, what wedding? I've told you; my dear friend Nardia is getting married on the 2nd of February.) are getting down to the wire now, and things are starting to get hectic. Friends coming to stay, and nail appointments, and drunken piss-ups. So it might be a while until I have anything further to say. Or rather, it might be a while until I have any facility for saying it.

Meanwhile, because I am a good little girl, I am going to capitulate to pressure and give greetings to my webloggers webring neighbours:

To my left, a pretty site called Jayde Skies, run by a most interesting person called Himani, whose opinions on learning another language I certainly agree with. I liked German, but that didn't stop me falling asleep in the class, and just plain-old missing it whenever I had half a decent excuse.

And, to the right, Reflections, which isn't eminently legible, but has a purty little anime girly on it, is run by a girl whose name I could not figure out, but she has a nice turn of phrase and that requisite touch of madness. Can't have normalcy cluttering up the place, now can we?

I like this, and I'd continue to do it for my Aussie Blog neighbours too, but unfortunately I have to go and pick up an usher from the train station. Ciao, tutti. (And the cat might be away, but I've put down mousetraps, so just watch your whiskers, dig?)

So Kevin Costner is actually mildly attractive, but I suppose that's not really his fault.

I just had to face the fact that in a week, I'll be back in Canberra and cleaning again. Suddenly, freedom seems so sweet. This has nothing to do with Kevin Costner.

Watching movies on television is a travesty. Even if they do have a good flow, nice rhythm, rarely is that beat enhanced by the insertion of commercials. Except for that Sovereign "It's all sport" ad. I like that one. But in general, commercial television ruins a perfectly good movie by breaking up the pace. And ineptly taking out the swearing. This does have something to do with Kevin Costner, but only obliquely.

Me: I don't get the point of making rules about war. It's bizarre. Either you accept that war is something that does not follow or bend itself to rules, or you just codify the entire thing and rule out violence entirely. Why not just make it a sporting match?

Mum: Because then the Australians would win too often.

The virus definitions finally downloaded. Only took eight tries. Woo. See, if virus programs were half as easy to get, install and run as the viruses (virii?) themselves, I wouldn't be sitting here randomly trying to make this an interesting post so I could justify all the time online.

There's a poster of Matthew Perry on the wall behind the computer which I put up in a fit of schoolgirl lust and still haven't taken down. I'm going to leave him there, grinning like a chimpanzee, for the sheer random value.

The hair is back in black and I feel like myself again. Wearing Rammstein T-shirt and playing air guitar in the bathroom mirror, that sort of thing. It's cool to be me. Try it sometime. No, really.

So, Hottest 100 ack-shawn, right? For the record, I threw a hissy-fit when Paul Dempsey's voice came on at number 2. Not because his voice is really that wonderful, but because that meant Monsters wasn't number 1. Amazing? Pah! Insipid, more like.

Yes, I am the hard rock goth chick. Fear me.

Meanwhile, more on the Garbage commentary. Having now heard Androgeny, and really listened to Cherry Lips, as opposed to laughing at Shirley Manson, I have reached some conclusions. These songs are the musical equivalent of those plastic cheese slices. It's smooth and sleek and plastic-wrapped and almost perfect except that it has no bite. No soul. No oomph. Nothing, in short, that would make me even nod along, let alone mess up my hair by moshing. Far from their halcyon dirty self-titled days.

That's enough Garbage-bashing for one blog, I think, so I'll just shut up about it from now on.

(Oh, wait, one small PS and then I promise I'll shut up. The obsession this mob has with gender and sexual ambiguity make me raise my eyebrows. Something you're not telling us, guys?)

My cat was out last night, protecting her patch, yo. Now she's sleeping and I'm pulling little tufts of fur out of her. She's too old for this. It's like Judy Dench going out and kicking ass.

Meanwhile, the people sending me kisses and crushes and happy spells and stuff like that, the problem is that I'm not going to sign up to the silly services to get them and find out who sent them because I am the Apathy Queen (and you shall all bow down before me). Sorry. But I get a warm fuzzy, truly I do.

I really hate making my bed. Have I mentioned that before? Hate it. Making other peoples' beds, that's fine. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that I'm generally paid $9.50 an hour to do that. No one's paying me to make my own bed.

Plus, for the last few days sleep has been something that happens to other people. Except after about 4am, but then I get woken up at 8 by my mother telling me that at this hour, sleep isn't happening to anyone.

What's so good about hospital corners anyway? They're just as easy to pull out. Trust the girl who could disco-sleep in the Olympics. I know my sheets, baby.

I've finished my jar of Nutella. Now I'm even less interesting than before.

Last night, I let the cat in when she 'knocked' at the back door. (Actually, she's just trying to go through the cat flap in the screen door and is too stupid to realise that the reason she can't is that the door is closed and the cat flap is banging on it.) I apologised profusely for there not being any food for her, and encouraged her to eat biscuits, eventually feeding them to her by hand. I gave her a cuddle, and went to bed. When she jumped up on the bed ten minutes later, I cleared a spot for her. When she rushed to the window fifteen minutes later (straight over the top of me, naturally), I held her up so that she could see out, and make sure there were no other cats running around in her garden. And then I put her back in her spot, and patted her until she lay down in sleeping position. At 3am, when she knocked over my stack of books beside the bed, I picked her up, and gave her a cuddle, and then let her out.

This morning, in return, she threw up in my doorway. Thanks, cat.

If I'm online, then the phone can't ring and someone can't ask for my father, which has been happening on average once every half hour, including one memorable stint where the phone rang four times in fifteen minutes. The last one was a telesale girl, who might have been very nice, and under ordinary circumstances I would have told her politely that our house is already clad, but I hoped she had more luck in future, but as it was I was pissed off at the world and the phone-using percentage even more so, and I just screamed incoherently and hung up on her.

I have decided that Monica Seles is actually a Cabbage Patch doll. Now I just have to figure out how they got her to stand up and play tennis.

Him (with American-style smile): Hello! What can I get you?
Me (with Aussie-style vague): I'm still... thinking... Do you have that satay chicken stuff?

Him: Satay chicken, absolutely. Is that a foot-long or-
Me: Six inch.

Him: On what sort of bread?
Me: White.

Him (eviscerating bread): Would you like any bacon with that?
Me: No thanks.

Him: Any cheese?
Me: No thanks. Just some lettuce, please.

Him: Lettuce? OK. (pause to apply lettuce) Any other salads with that?
Me: No thanks.

Him (now nearing desperateness): Any sauce?
Me: No. (pause) Sorry, I'm boring.

Sorry, I can't take it anymore. I could live with the world when Pink's "Get the party started" was number one, but that semi-spanish schmuck currently wailing away in some poppy, disgusting piece of faff is just too much to be borne. There's nothing else for it. I'm simply going to have to stop watching music shows.

In other news, that new Corrs song where they try out different images in the film clip makes me laugh. I liked heavy-metal Corrs. And punk Corrs. When the lead singer goes punk she looks surprisingly like Shirley Manson. At least, I thought so. Give me a break, it was early on Sunday morning, for DOUG's sake.

And meanwhile, I finished A Song for Arbonne. More Guy Gavriel Kay. Obviously, I'm trying to kill my creative writing career before it even gets started. Although this one wasn't as blindingly brilliant as the others. Still very good, but only two moments of tears, and I recognised a couple of the elements from Lions of Al-Rassan, which will remain the peak of literature, as far as I'm concerned. Nevertheless, it's lovely to have Kay I haven't read before. I think I'm going to have to hold off on finding a copy of Tigana, just so I'll always have the warm fuzzy of knowing that no matter what, there's always a Kay book out there that I haven't read yet.

God damn right, it's a beautiful day. (2 points, for the cool value.)

Well, I'm sure it was, but here it is at almost 6 and I'm wondering how come I haven't had more than fifteen minutes to myself all day. However, I do seem to have scored a possible laptop out of it, so it wasn't a total waste.

Sent to me by J^e, who always makes my day even when she's a coupla thousand kilometres away:

The Spangled Pandemonium by Palmer Brown

The spangled pandemonium
Is missing form the zoo.
He bent the bars the barest bit,
And slithered glibly through.

He crawled across the moated wall,
He climbed the mango tree,
And when the keeper scrambled up,
He nipped him in the knee.

To all of you a warning
Not to wander after dark,
Or if you must, make very sure
You stay out of the park.

For the spangled pandemonium
Is missing from the zoo,
And since he nipped his keeper,
He would just as soon nip you!

I have new red shoes. This would ordinarily make me a tart, but these red shoes are just sandshoes. Nothing tarty about them at all. They're very spiffy. And very red. However, they give me very unspiffy blisters. Plus, when I wore them I got rained on. They will now be referred to as the Rain Shoes.

My own sordid ironing career, ala Shauny:

I used to quite like ironing. I used to do it any chance I'd get. Grandma loved me, because I'd always want to help her, and my Grandma irons everything.

Then there was the incident of the Barbie Skirt.

I decided my Barbies didn't look dapper enough, right, so I got all their clothes and ironed them. Everything was going splendidly until I pulled out Barbie's (and my) favourite black mini-skirt (even then I was a tramp, see?). Which stuck to the iron in a little melty puddle of goo. I was tearful. I was distraught. And though I calmed down somewhat when I realised the iron wasn't damaged permanently and Mum wasn't going to yell at me, I'd still wrecked the skirt. I'd loved that skirt!

I haven't touched an iron since. I was probably, wot, 9 or 10 at the time? Not a single iron since. I've had ironing done for me on two occasions, when various friends simply wouldn't let me leave the house Looking Like That (tm) but I've never lifted the dread beastie myself.

And now I have a bridesmaid's dress in beautiful green satin that needs ironing. Sod.

Muuuuuuuum!!!

PS: You know, gil, you really had me stumped with that email, until I came online and read my own site. And then I groaned.

I have email again. Omigod, I am so cool.

Ahem. Let's pretend that last line never happened.

However, I do have email, after being without it since last Wednesday. Do you have any idea how absolutely loony I've been getting? I have to read my 278 emails now. See you later.

I tried to watch the American Music Awards. I really did. But I'm sorry, there is no excuse for Puffgirl Diddly or whatever he's calling himself these days. Just no excuse.

PS: "Harry's Drug Binge!" the newspapers screamed today. Suddenly downing a couple of pints and lighting up a joint is a drug binge? Jeee-sus!

A girl in the library fainted next to me today. Apparently I have that sort of effect on people.

I'm not going to judge her too harshly. I've been known to keel over from time to time. Including once, memorably, straight over the desk of the woodwork teacher. Whump. I remember thinking, in the warm dark behind my eyelids, that I didn't have to get out of bed until Mum called me. I lazily opened my eyes, and saw leather shoes and socks pulled up to hairy knees.

Whoops! I stood up smartly, and got sent to the sick bay. It was a good lark, that. I got the rest of the week off school, and it was only Tuesday.

More soccer stupidity: David (is it David? Let's say so, for now) Bellamy is a horrible little cockroach of a man. The best part about today's Newcastle vs Leeds match was when he got kicked in the shins. The worst part was when he scored a goal.

Meanwhile, another attractive midfielder to add to my collection: Robert, even though he plays for Newcastle. He got a yellow card in the match, but then again, so did half of the players. Violent game this.

PS: Now I'm getting spam about anti-spam technology. This just keeps getting better.

I would be blogging more, but there's really nothing interesting happening to me. And I'm too hot, bored and apathetic to go out and be something interesting happening to other people.

I've got a jar of Nutella and a spoon. Is that interesting?

I also have a Glo-bug. Remember them? You stick 'em near a light and then after you turn it off, they glow in the dark. My Grandpa called him Spook.

I told you, there's nothing interesting happening to me.

Bad fantasy inspires me to write, buoyed up by the knowledge that even on a bad day, I can write better than that.

Good fantasy inspires me to write, driven by exhilirating encouragement.

But there is some fantasy that is so gripping, is so singularly, unbelievably spectacular, so unique in its unanticipated vision, that it leaves me burnt, broken, completely unable to put pixel to screen.

KJ Parker is one such, so a lesser extent. But the master is Guy Gavriel Kay.

No other brings tears to my eyes so easily, with a bland sentence and an understated point. No other draws his works together with such inexorable beauty. No other sees it, rationalises it, distills it to its essence and renders it into delicate prose.

I'll never write like him. The man is brilliant.

(I just finished Lord of Emperors, the sequel to Sailing to Sarantium. Kay's work surpasses the noun 'vision' and requires something larger. Something broader. Something with light and movement and magic and a sense of the huge tangle of the immense and the minute and the ways in which lives encompass both. Perhaps the word I'm looking for here - badly used and abused and misused previously, but oh-so-apt here - is 'epic'.)

There are flying ants crawling down my cleavage. This is unacceptable.

I know that some people (not naming any names at all) are a little bit enamoured with a certain hobbit in a certain movie. For my part, they could have called it Elf of the Rings and I would have been a happy little girl.


Yum!

Well, actually, I'm kidding. About everything but the yum part. It was darn nigh perfect as it was (I will never admit to perfection, because nothing ever is) and everything about it was great. But that is an eminently edible elf.

This is me grinning smugly at all the people being annoyed at me right now.

It is with great relief that I announce that I will, in fact, be doing Honours this year.

I knew invitations were going to be mailed out, and not having received mine yet, I was starting to get a little bit worried. I was wondering if maybe I was going to have to spend the year working and writing, but the biggest worry was where I was going to live in Canberra if not in college. However, a phone call has calmed all my worries. I have an invitation. I can do Honours. Rah!

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer would have made a good hobbit. There's a sort of faintly ethereal sharpness about his features, plus he's got that lovely curly hair.

Oh well. He's a damn good footballer, anyway. Go Manchester. (But where's Giggsy?)

Every so often, I sit down and watch some music TV program, just to make sure I'm not missing anything in popular music.

I'm not.

Someone called Michelle Branch, who I've never heard of before, but by one of those weird twisty quantum fate things, lo and behold when I visit her site the pirate-loving crack whore is talking about her. Anyway, Ms Branch is kinda cool. Nice voice. Belts it out. Too soft-hearted and poppy for me to buy, but she gets the Dee tick of approval anyway.

Linkin Park might actually be worth listening to if they ditched the whole 'rap' thing. Blerk!

As Justy so correctly pointed out, everytime we wipe out one boy band, five more spring up. Blue can't even dance.

Garbage's new stuff might actually be as bad as Yogi and co were telling me it was. Mind you, I think they've been going downhill since the first album. And what is with the Cherry Lips film clip? Could they want to be Transvision Vamp any more?

So now I'm off to listen to Rammstein, Snake River Conspiracy, and my Christmas-present Muse CD, to cleanse myself. Icky pop vibes, be gone!

Meanwhile, The Ill-Made Mute is much better written than the other pfaff I've been reading. In fact, Ms Dart-Thorton is positively verbose. I think she's Italian, or something. Never use one word when you can use four paragraphs. I wouldn't mind it, except this verbosity seems to be hiding the fact that there's bugger-all actually happening.

The story is sort of a meld of Robin Hobb and Mervyn Peake (yes, Gormenghastliness - it's got his Dickens-on-crack sort of gothic tinge) and a huge slug of Celtic mythology. Seelie faeries and daonie sidhe and other unusual blends of vowels all over the place. It's... I dunno. I don't quite like it. The characters aren't really all that interesting to me. At half-way through, there were really only two of them. Now the love interest's popped up (two thirds of the way through - he believes in being fashionably late) and he's some sort of laughable cross between Aragorn (big, tough and manly!) and Legolas (cat-like, silent and lithe!). In general, it's getting a Tolkien-esque feel to it, now (which, as you know if you know me, is not necessarily a good thing at all). But they're just wandering through the wilderness, having random encounters with faeries. Long-term plot? What's that?

So, in summation, it's a 'beautiful tapestry of mythology' and crap like that, but I'm not sure it's a good story.

This year, I:

• went to see Rammstein in concert (rah),
  
• was a tutor in my college, and enjoyed it,
  
• made great new friends, both in 'real' life and online,
  
• found another soulmate in J^e,
  
• wrote some kick-ass essays,
  
• turned 21, though this wasn't as big a deal as it sounds,
  
• played Werewolf and thoroughly enjoyed myself,
  
• started writing again, seriously, with help from gil,
  
• shocked everyone by being more exhibitionist, goth, loud-mouthed, confident and generally out-there than they thought I was, and hence
  
• was more myself, and had more fun, than in any year previous.

Happy New Year. Forget regrets; just make it good in 2002.