The suckergun is about to come apart. I feel its next bullet might be its last.

Better make it count, then.

I'm reading about the Marshall Plan and Containment and all that sort of fun thing, and the Soviet foreign minister keeps showing up. His name is Molotov. I keep waiting for him to whip out a bottle of petrol with a burning rag stuffed in the neck and throw it at the Americans, but he never does. I'm quite disappointed.

Keeping track of my Goth Score:

• Wearing all black: +1
  
• Billowy black, at that: +1
  
• At midnight: +1
  
• While skipping down the corridor: -15

You know you've probably flipped when you suddenly sit up straight in your chair and declare: "I'm a moron!" The true evidence comes when you then spread your arms, in the posture of one displaying her moronity to the world and say: "Watch me be a moron!" Stand up, do a little turn, bow to the corners of the (empty) room and ask: "Don't I do it well?"

Of course, complete insanity would be evidenced by getting a response to that question.

(There is a reason I'm a moron, by the way. I'm not just doing this randomly.)

And continuing with the quiz madness: I'm also, apparently, a mermaid.

"You're a mysterious woman, and like it that way. You've got a playful side, but it comes out only with people you know. You stay calm under a lot of situations but have a mean streak. You are bold with your words and say what you feel."

Who me? Never.

I did this little What Mythological Creature Are you? test and it told me I was a succubus. Does this come as a surprise to anyone? Yep, I'm a demon woman who torments men. We'll just keep quiet about the somnalent sex thing for now, though.

So, did it snow like it was supposed to yet?

I was too busy having a dream about this weird disease that didn't seem to do anything apart from be amazingly contagious and cause intense paranoia. You could cure it by stabbing infected people with a pen (Faculty flashbacks - but this is just a normal pen, not one filled with drugs), but of course when everyone's so paranoid, going around stabbing people with pens doesn't precisely foster community spirit.

Why the hell can't I search for "Sonata #9 in A major for Piano & Violin - Kreutzer" on Audiogalaxy? It's Beethoven, for fuck's sake. It's sort of a little out of copyright by now, surely.

I am not still up at 3:30am because I spent three hours MST3King an awful fanfic with Meghan. Nope. Not at all. Never happened.

So the question now is: Do I bother going to bed? You know, hypothetically, if I was in this situation which I'm not in.

My fingers are really in a terrible state. Like Utah.

Meanwhile, in a reprise of an old theme:
Jen: I want a cat.
Me: You can't have a cat.
Jen: Why not?
Me: Because you have a mouse.
Jen: It could... like...
Me: Get eaten? Or rather, get tossed about in the air, tortured, and then eaten? Or rather, tortured and then just left somewhere for you to find?
Jen: I'd warn the mouse first.

(My apologies to anyone who lives in Utah.)

Error: Computer cannot function properly because someone within a half-kilometre radius is whistling a Kylie song. Please find them and persuade them to stop. For this function, we recommend Microsoft Baseball Bat 2002.

Elijah Wood was hiding in the scanner. Little bugger.

OK, second-time viewing of Spidey, because I was ready. (Yes, already. Two weeks wasn't long enough to digest Fellowship, but I'm ready to go again with Spiderman after 48 hours. What does that tell you?) And also because I absolutely had to see this movie with J², because, like, dude. Just had to.

My thoughts:
1: Dafoe rocks. So much. Humongous amounts. He is so brilliantly marvellous that he actually manages to pull off being an insane demonic villain. Do you know how rare that is? Do you have any idea?
2: I love the comicbookness. Yes, I can even make grudging acceptance of the sillier aspects of the story (like MJ) if it comes with corner-of-the-mouth references to "the Amazing Spiderman!"
3: Goddamn webslinging looks like fun.
4: I managed to remain attentive for the entirety of Peter declaring his feelings this time, and realised that I did actually miss stuff the first time. I just remember suddenly blinking and thinking: "Hell, is he still talking?" I realised that what that whole speech really reminds me of is that bit in Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure when the jock's giving his history presentation and it goes: "Everything's... bigger and yet... smaller... There's computers... and..." But, as J² noted, Peter doesn't end his speech with an appeal for a cheer, which would have made everything much more interesting.
5: I spotted a continuity error. Can I be a geek now?
6: My favourite scene is still the "Go web, go!" scene, though. It makes me giggle.
7: Tobey is, unfortunately, far too much a boy for me to find him attractive. What the fuck is with his mouth?

Some Americanisations of spelling make sense, but why on earth would you leave the first 'e' out of 'judgement'?

Melbourne was fun. I recommend everyone get one. Reasons:

• There is a Male in Melbourne. (You can't have mine; you have to get your own.) The Male is funny and cuddly and intelligent and I almost forget how much I like talking to him when I have to do it by phone (I hate phones) but I remember all over again.
  
• There is ice cream in Melbourne. There may even be ice cream here too - in fact, there definitely is, because we used it in the Bottled Hell - but in Melbourne I seem to spend a lot of time eating "Cookies and Cream" from Baskin and Robbins while wandering down Camberwell Junction, and defending the honour of my "Chocolate Winter" from the aspersions heaped upon it by the Male's mother.
  
• There are movies in Melbourne. Like Citizen Kane, which I have finally seen because the Male's father wanted to procrastinate. Yes, the head of the college of surgeons procrastinates as well. Makes me feel a bit better about my own habits. But Citizen Kane was not as interesting as it was pretty, and I thought the ending beat you over the head a bit, but still, I've seen it now. I have credibility.
  Plus! I went to see Spiderman. Woo. Now that was a comicbook movie, all right. The kitsch! The cliche! The tinge of melodrama! And the action! I giggled like a schoolgirl. Or rather, not like a schoolgirl, because the cinema was mostly full of them, and they weren't giggling at all. I giggled like a fangirl. And almost fell asleep while Tobey was declaring his love. That may be a small problem.

So yes, get yourself a Melbourne today. All the cool kids are getting one.

PS: I fully intend to fly without booked luggage as often as possible. I just love the feeling of striding straight off the plane, through the terminal, and out of the airport without a backward glance. Waiting by the carousels is for pansies, man.

Bye, folks, I'm off to Melbourne for the weekend. Don't set fire to anything while I'm gone. If you really get bored, go browsing through the archives. April was a pretty good month. Mwah, ciao!

Meep. He's wearing nailpolish. He came to return my CD and gave me that friendly little grin and he's wearing nailpolish.

Ahem. Don't mind me.

One of the best things about the exam period, for me, is listening to opera really, really loudly. (It's been far too long since I saw a really good production of Don Giovanni.)

Today, upon being paid, I bought issue #19 of Ultimate X-Men (and it was a great issue in a fantastic story arc), Trudi Canavan's The Novice (which I wouldn't have bought if she hadn't run the fantasy writing workshop I went to, so clever marketing decision there, Ms Canavan) and Clausewitz's On War (the Penguin classic edition, with the introductory essay by Anatol Rapoport on which I'm going to be writing my thesis).

This is fairly indicative of me in general, actually. Two parts geek to one part academic.

No, you nitwit, when I say "Ministry" I don't mean Ministry of Sound, I mean Ministry.

TitaniaFae: I caved to my own bad time management, and begged a few more days off Bruce.
Nemetoma: and he relented?
TitaniaFae: He's a darling boy.
Nemetoma: And you say I make my Polsci tutors slaves.
TitaniaFae: I didn't tell him, of course, that my tardiness was due to my own bad time management.
TitaniaFae: But! I didn't cry on him. See, I do respect him.

I just love Tchaikovsky's "1812 Overture". It's a wonderful piece of music. Almost as good as Chopin's "Revolutionary Etude".

Why yes, I do like my classical music dramatic. What makes you ask?

Am I the only one who finds something profoundly amusing in a CD entitled: "Tchaikovsky: Festival of Hits"?

The madness started when I sat down at the dinner table, with a conversation about the difference between 'beget' and 'begat'. It continued through a metaphorical commentary of the 'tide of history' wiping clean the 'sands of time', and onwards into a rendition of the Days of our lives theme, with inevitable deviation into The Addams Family. When I left, it was in the middle of a reworking of "Love Is In The Air" to a more... martial motif.

Blood is in the air,
Everywhere I look around.
Blood is in the air,
On the walls and on the ground...

(I love the exam period.)

Cutting the tag out of my pyjama pants seemed like a really good idea last night when it was itchy and annoying, but now that it comes time to put them on again, I realise that I don't know which way is front or back any more. It's down to trial and error. This could get uncomfortable.

Bec: You can't use really much anything. (In a discussion of whether "How suck does that?" is grammatically correct.)

My laptop thinks it's Christmas. Not in that metaphorical way, either. It's telling me that it's currently Monday the 25th December, 2000.

So Merry Christmas from Mae the Laptop, everyone.

'He lifted her tee-shirt over her head. Her silk panties followed.' -- Peter F. Hamilton, Mindstar

Now that's a wedgie. (From this page.)

I'm sure this is terribly Freudian, but my fingers keep slipping and making poor old Niccolo into a female, by calling him Machiavellia. Nice name; maybe I'll call my daughter that. Macky for short.

"There is, however, a disadvantage to the theory: it is untrue." (Sebastian de Grazia, Machiavelli in Hell)

Oh, don't let that hold you back.

"Would you like a cigarette?"

"What?"
"Well, if ignorance is bliss, I think you just had an orgasm."

(One of those exchanges that never happened, despite how much it should have happened.)

He stuck his head around the doorframe and said in his best wheedling tone: "Deeeee, you know how you're my best friend in the whole world?"

"What do you want?"

"Nothing, I'm just telling you how much I love you."

"And it's very touching."

Then, of course, he gave me his essay to read.

I did it again. I did it a-fucking-gain. I woke up with the alarm, turned it off, and then rolled over and went back to fucking sleep. For two hours.

Faaaaaaaark! I really have to stop doing this.

"He's a very busy man, and you are very boring. Your offer must inspire him."

I love The Saint. It just... has so much class. And doesn't take itself at all seriously.

Ocean's Eleven also had so much class. In fact, it oozed smoothly along greased purely by its own class. Which is just as well, because there was nothing else powering the movie. No tension, little excitement... just class. Then again, the sleaze factor of any movie starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt has to be pretty high. It's amazing it didn't melt under its own smarm. (I did enjoy it, just... well, it was slick and sterile.)

"Political tactics would indeed be a much simpler matter if ballot-papers were a natural product, and if on beholding a ballot-paper at about the age of twenty-one a youth who had never heard of one before were invariably seized with a desire to vote." ~ Graham Wallas, Human Nature in Politics

Well, I'm certainly enjoying this essay.

We're freezing some of the Extreme Cocoa in an attempt to make an ice-cream sort of thing. And because we had lots left over. I just went and stirred it, and it's about the consistency of the perfect mud pie. Well, my perfect mud pie, at least. Fairly sloppy, but starting to stick together. Goopy. Fun.

I used to enjoy playing in mud. Lots. I have a vivid memory of my father looking down at me with amusement as I puddled in the lovely mud I had made for myself, saying: "I thought you were going to water the garden."

I probably would still enjoy playing in mud. It's not something I get the chance to do very often these days.

It was insane. It was supreme (extreme) chocolatey goodness. It was a sugar rush so intense it actually swept through entirely, leaving somnalence in its wake.

It was a lot of fun. Eventually, once this essay is finished, there will be reportage and photoage and other good things like that. But first, essayness. Yes.

I have lots of chocolate ice cream, and a fair whack of cocoa as well. Come this time tomorrow, I fully expect to have an extreme chocolate headache.

Hey ma, look, I'm schizoid! (But only moderate for antisocial? This is rigged!)

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

Wanna see how nuts you are?

The knuckles on my left hand hurt like I punched someone. However, I have not done this thing. No point in suffering without due cause, I figure, so who wants to be hit?

Nerd nostalgia: Maybe I've just been really out of it, but it's been forever since I heard a reference to 'EverCrack'.

Only in Canberra would I need an umbrella and my sunglasses at the same time. Can someone please defuck the weather here?

I saw pictures for Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets today. I squealed like a twelve-year old. And then I called Nicole Kidman trailer trash. Can I go to hell yet?

Who the hell thought calling me at 8:30am - and then not leaving a message when I couldn't stumble out of bed fast enough to get to the phone - was a good idea? Fucker.

Plus, just a tip in general, for whatever purpose it may serve: in one of those weird quirks of the English language, the word 'erotic', isn't.

Weirdest spam ever: "If you are in possession of blue or red time warping moon crystals, I need some!"

Is this Wiccan spam, or something? So, uh, let's help this person out. Anyone got any they'd be willing to part with?

I might only sink four balls total in the game, and in fact get the majority of my points from my opponent's fouls, but let no man say I suck at snooker, because I can sink the black from the middle of the table into the corner pocket with a behind-the-back trick shot on one foot.

(Women, of course, can say whatever they like.)

The boys at the college next door are at it again with the wigs. They're eye-burning colours, curly, and have to be worn all the time until - I think - the end of the exam period. It certainly makes life more interesting. It also makes it easy to spot them around the place, which is all good, because it means you can avoid them.

When I had just left work and was waiting at the lights to cross the road, I saw a car pull up with two pink- and yellow-wigged gits in the front seat. I considered knocking on the window, asking if they were going back to college, and begging a ride.

But I didn't. Instead I walked home, humming Kenickie's "In Your Car" all the way. ("Give us a lift/I get so tired of walking...")

Anyone surprised?

I think what I really like about being the first room at the top of the stairs is that I'm the first person everyone passes once they hit the floor. Which means occasionally people leap into my doorway, strike a dramatic pose, and shriek things like: "He wasn't there again! I'm going to fucking kill him!"

My Bloginality is ENTP!!!

(Those three exclamation marks were certainly not my idea; they came in the code like that, but I simply couldn't change them. It's car-accident fascination. What in the world is someone supposed to do with three exclamation marks? Worse, when you bring them together like that, they have a tendency to breed, and then they just get everywhere. Under your fingernails and in the soft furnishings and they just make a mess, and you have to call the exterminators.)

Apparently I have to be all yellow this week. I want out of being a Gemini. Nothing good ever comes of it.

Meanwhile, next on the list for extermination are people who hit print six times when it's obvious the printer isn't working, and then just walk off in disgust with the print jobs still enqueued. With the result that when the printer does finally get working, it takes us fifteen minutes to figure out how to clear all the crap off the queue before we can actually use it.

Stupidity is not a defence.

Well, not one we're going to listen to, anyway.

Look. It's all different. And there's a Jen. Right there. Well, left there. Don't frighten her or anything. And don't worry, she doesn't bite.

Without invitation, at least.

"Why is there a bin full of sand in convo?"
"It's a big kitty litter tray."

I never learn. Every single bar night - well, every single bar night where the DJ isn't a fuckwit and actually does play good music - they wind us up into the Monster Mosh Set, and as soon as I hear the anticipatory-tingle first few bars of "Killing in the Name", or "Breathe", or "Song 2", or whatever is the first cab off the rank this time, all my good intentions fly out the window. I get it going with the full-body headbang. All through "Du Hast" and "Twisted" and the entire half-hour set of sweaty hair in the face.

And the next day, I ache.

Oh boy, do I ache.

Ouch.

All hail Rowena, because she found the information required to make the comments behave themselves again. Good comments. Sit. Stay.

Tomorrow (today) I will start playing with things again, as we redesign and Jen moves in with me. Yes, there will be two of us here. And hence, there will be changes, and things.

Meanwhile, after 500 pages, Robin Hobb's Liveship series is really failing to move me. Sure, it's interesting, it's well-told (mostly; what's with the amateur faux-pas POV shifts mid-scene?) and it's a fairly good story but... well, it's a trifle dull. The characters are all very interesting, in a small, insignificant sort of way. And really, it just isn't well enough written to make me read in spite of that (unlike Chaz Brenchley's Tower of the King's Daughter, about the characters and plot of which I didn't give a fuck, but just read for the prose).

So yeah, I think I'm throwing in the towel on this series. I just don't have enough spare reading time to waste on stuff that isn't riveting. I could be reading Guy Gavriel Kay, dammit. (John, you can have your books back, then.)

So we've moved, and everything seems to be working quite well, but the comments have gone bananas. Why on earth are all the ones that used to be zero now fourteen? I'm such a technobimbo. Help, anyone? Don't really want to lose all my old comments.

(I even sodding went through and CHMODed everything to 777 like it should be, and it's still 14. I don't understand.)

I've thought of a good way to solve all Australia's problems regarding refugees. Obviously, the answer is some sort of exchange. That way, our resources aren't stretched, and everyone's happy. So, what happens is, for every refugee we accept, we send one whinging, protesting, annoying university student politician back to the country the refugee is fleeing. After all, they're the biggest drain on the country's resources anyway, and this way, they'll really have something to feel persecuted about.

Personally, I think there aren't any problems with refugees. It's just an issue that's been drummed up by the politicians so they have something to grandstand about, and the student politicians have - as usual - leapt forward with visceral glee to take on their role.

Calypso (cafe in the ANU refectory) makes the best fruit slice I've tasted since my grandmother stopped making it.

Now that I think about it, I think Grandma stopped making it because I whinged about the glace cherries.

Calypso's fruit slice doesn't have glace cherries.

My favourite musical moments:

• James Hetfield's boyish chuckle at the end of Metallica's "- Human".
  
• The last thirty seconds of Wumpscut's "Soylent Green". (Soylent Gruen ist Menchfleisch!)
  
• The middle segue of 40 Below Summer's "Step Into The Sideshow". (I know, gonna go psycho...)
  
• The opening of A Perfect Circle's "Rose". (Don't disturb the beast...)
  
• The funky-soul dance middle in The Eels' "Last Stop: This Town".
  
• The opening demand of Lords of Acid's "Possess Me".
  
• Marilyn Manson's "I Put A Spell On You" when he cuts loose with the pyscho.
  
• The wind-up mosh part of Powderfinger's "Belter".
  
• The funky bass chorus-intro of Primus' "Tommy the Cat". (And I say unto thee...)
  
• The Man Dempsey breaking my heart in Something For Kate's "Strategy". (Well I remembered that, didn't I?)
  
• And a totally mainstream one to round out the list: The gleeful shriek of U2's "Elevation". (Wooo-hooo!)

(I love Machiavelli.)

Because life is brief
and many are the pains
which, living and struggling, everyone sustains,
let us follow our desires,
passing and consuming the years,
because whoever deprives himself of pleasure
to live with anguish and with worries
doesn't know the tricks
of the world, or by what ills
and by what strange happenings
all mortals are almost overwhelmed.
Besides, we have been brought here
by the name of him who governs you,
in whom can be seen all
the goods gathered in the eternal countenance.
For such heavely grace,
for so happy a state,
you can be glad,
rejoice, and give thanks - to the one who gave him to you.
-- Mandragola, Niccolo Machiavelli

Courtesy of Mallory, I took the mental age test, and it turns out I act like I'm 25. And this is despite me starting out by saying that yes, I wore kid-sized clothes, because they fit. Well, they do.

Bitter truth: "My problem is that when drunk, I vocalise things I otherwise wouldn't. I'm really not a very nice person at heart."

Well duh.

24 hour warning: The new hosting arrangements are prepared, so come tomorrow, I'm going to take a deep breath, and shift my stuff. So if everything has a spack attack, you'll know why.

PS: They found my keys! Hallelujah!

Note to self: I think I might actually be happier when I don't know what I did on that drunken bar night. (I guess it's true: sometimes ignorance is bliss.)

Meanwhile, Dee's lessons for life #7: How to cause massive damage in Twister (or: How I got this huge bruise on the back of my hand):

1. Make sure the number of players is four or more.
2. Left foot blue.
3. Right foot green.
4. Right hand red.
5. Sit back and watch the carnage.

So, don't you want to know how compatible you are with me?

So, according to Ms Regina Lords in my guestbook, I'm a pretentious Bridget Jones wannabe.

I'm just wondering how she knows what I haven't told the rest of you yet. Because, really, most of this weekend felt like a Bridget Jones moment. Excepting that Ms Jones has curves, which I don't, and usually manages to look glamorous no matter what, but that's because she's in a movie and they decided not to show us the bit where she drinks so much vodka that she pukes.

Can't blame them. It doesn't contain much entertainment value.

"What did you do to yourself?" they asked, as I went staggering down the corridor, panda-eyed, newly arisen at 4pm and in search of toast and vegemite.

I paused and blinked. "Five glasses of wine and a Long Island Iced Tea," I croaked in response.

I considered the fact that this monster truck hangover (at least a 6 on the scale) might be one of those Acts of God designed to prevent me from meeting Shauny and the 'Berra Bloggers (sounds like a band, don't it?) and that fired me with sufficient determination to get up, dressed and out the door.

So, what do nine bloggers and associates talk about when they sit around Shauna's place and eat cake? All-natural bodycraft homewares (a sterling example of what happens when the conversation goes Too Far), blogs and bloggers (of course) and the fit ball. Go for a dive on it. You know you want to.

(PS: Why do you think I got that 'Bridget Jone wannabe' label? D'ya think it's because I swear so much? Fuck that: that's not being BJ, that's being young and Australian. And ditto the drinking.)

There are insane fuckers screaming and banging saucepans outside my door. Where's my shotgun?

And there, just sitting in my inbox, was spam entitled: "World Peace" right above "Dee, Bigger breasts -- Men will look!"

I swear, the internet gets weirder every day.

Tonight, as part of my retail therapy for having handed in an essay today, I found a skirt so mind-bogglingly short, that even when resting so low on my hips it was barely within cooee of my waist, it was still anime-indecent around the posterior.

I did not buy it, but did giggle a great deal.

I did, however, buy an entire skincare beauty regime thing. I feel sullied, and girly. I have moisturiser. I have fucking toner.

I also have half-black hair. The back half, mostly. Long bits in front have remained 'natural'. Will eventually get redded. Probably. Maybe. My hair is a constantly changing evolution towards perfection. Or at least, I like to think so. If Charles Darwin had been a hairdresser, he'd know how I feel.