Sick in the Head

So I have depression, generalised anxiety disorder and social phobia.  This probably sounds like a very down way of starting a post but bear with me.

Usually I manage to control all of this pretty well, but there is one thing that is guaranteed to set me off and that is packing for a trip - particularly one I'm going on by myself.  Which I have never done before now to the extent of spending an entire month on another continent away from anyone I've known for more than 10 months.

Why, you may wonder, does this tend to manifest when I'm packing rather than in the social situation itself?  Because I know that I will be trapped in situations that are likely to make me uncomfortable and I'm going to be without my support network of family and friends, and often unable to excuse myself from said situations (hence the use of the word 'trapped' I suppose).

Given this propensity for stressing out one could be easily forgiven for assuming I'd be curled up in a corner bawling my eyes out, but I'm feeling surprisingly calm about the whole thing.  Not that calm is a word I expected to use about myself right now, excited, hyped, nervous, these would all be more appropriate descriptions but I was expecting more of the sheer terror side of things than I am actually feeling.

I see two possibilities with this, the first is that I'm actually learning to deal better with my depressive, anxious and social phobic issues.  Lol, yeah right.  The second possibility is that this is such a colossal amount of worry and anxiety for me to feel that I can't comprehend it and, paradoxically this makes me even less worried because whatever happens I'll have had an entirely new experience and I am sure that it will have a positive impact on how I deal with my issues more generally.

So a happy new year to all, and here's to my first challenge and adventure of 2013, America.

The first of what promises to be many posts about my clumsiness

I walked into a table today.  This, it turns out was not an intelligent thing to do as it still hurts several hours later.  The table was exactly hip height and I jabbed the corner right into the joint and my entire leg had pins and needles for a while afterwards.

This, though, is nothing compared to Christmas Eve this year, on which day I managed to close a dishwasher on my fingers, roll my ankle on a stone in the garden and stab myself with a knife, this last being particularly impressive as it was right in the middle of the back of the hand in which I was holding the knife.  I kinda want to explain the knife thing but I think it may well be more fun to let you try and imagine how I managed that feat; I do not condone, though, going right now to pick up a knife and trying to get the blade anywhere near the back of the hand in which you hold it.

This is all to say that I am very clumsy.  It is something that often surprises people because I pretty conscious of my body and movement the majority of the time as I have done quite a bit of dancing in my musical theatre.  I do not know why this is either and if I could work out what I do differently onstage to the rest of the time I would definitely change it because being clumsy is neither charming nor amusing, it is painful and humiliating, something that Hollywood doesn't tell you.

The really annoying thing about it all, though, is that after a good twenty years of people expecting you to be able to put one foot in front of the other without falling over and bruising at least sixty percent of your body, they tend to give more annoyance than assistance when you do hurt yourself.  The only solution is to laugh about it, mainly because the alternatives are to cry or to cover yourself in bubblewrap and only buy plastic cups.

Hmm, I promised to only do upbeat and positive posts this year, didn't I?  Well in that case, I'm taking ownership of my clumsiness, it is part of who I am and although I may not like it at times it has as much to do with making me me as my hair colour or height.  I hope to be less clumsy in the future, but in the meantime I will just pick myself up, dust myself off, wince at the various pains from this particular fall, and hold my head high as I walk on.

Les Misérables - Not in need of improvement

So I went to see Les Misérables today, and as everyone else seems to be doing it as well, I figured I'd post about it.

I thought the film was fantastic, and this is from someone who has not only seen it live but also watched the 10th and 25th anniversary concerts more than is probably healthy.  I felt it was a terrifically engaging story that was particularly faithful to the source material, that said it was not without its problems.  Here are some of the highlights and lowlights of my Les Mis experience.

Hugh Jackman.  Someone, I can't remember who, once told me that the reason he is so fantastic is that he proves that you can be Wolverine and Peter Allen and absolutely rock them both.  I think there are elements of both in this one part.

Russell Crowe.  Even though I think he missed the mark with Stars, I just couldn't get over how well he did with the song on the bridge (I think it is maybe best not to name the song because, well, spoilers).  Overall, I saw in his face the justice that he carried out, but in his voice I heard the purity which he felt as he did.

Samantha Barks.  I can't help it, I tear up in A Little Fall of Rain every time in the 25th anniversary concert and this was no different.  Actually, I think at this point I should just say the entire cast was a highlight: Anne Hathaway, Amanda Seyfried, Sacha Baron Cohen, Helena Bonham Carter, all fantastic, ok enough now.

I did not like, however, the ridiculous number of close ups on faces while singing.  I like your work Tom Hooper, but if you don't know what to do with your camera during a musical soliloquy then maybe Les Mis isn't actually for you.  Nor did I like the anachronistic Eiffel Towers on the flags that they were waving around in a couple of scenes - When your film is set in 1815-1832, try not to include an image of a building not erected until 1889.

I also did not like Suddenly.  Why did they feel the need to put that song in the film?  It didn't gel with the rest of the music and completely took me out of the moment.  Did they think it would improve the musical or did they just get bored and decide to screw with people's heads?  I would have much preferred to see some more character development for Grantaire, maybe put the other verses of Drink With Me in instead.

Finally, for a two and a half hour film, I did not appreciate sitting through almost three quarters of an hour worth of ads.  That's over three hours of sitting in the one place, if I get deep vein thrombosis after my trip to America I'm not blaming the airline I'm blaming Val Morgan.

On the whole I thoroughly enjoyed the film.  I was going to include pictures and maybe a clip from YouTube but my computer is throwing a hissy fit so no snazzy and awesome looking blog post for you.

Christmas Reflections

So I keep hearing that Christmas and New Year is a time to spend with your family, something that becomes ridiculously easy when you all give each other DVDs that you want to watch yourselves.  I also keep hearing that it is a time for reflection on the year you've had and your hopes and dreams for the year about to come.

This would be much easier to achieve if I didn't go straight from finishing a university assignment into packing for America.  I finished a part of my university course last week and have a week to get it finished and handed in (even though the staff are currently on holidays) and I leave for America on Wednesday.  However, I figured if I had time to watch The Hobbit yesterday, I have time to do some blogging today, even if I have absolutely no idea what to say.

I am happy with the year I've had, I managed to quit smoking, achieve decent grades in my masters course, make some fantastic new friends and started a blog.  These are all accomplishments of which I am reasonably proud and they are balanced by almost nothing I regret or would do differently.

As for looking forward, there is so much stuff up in the air about next year that I haven't really made plans, although my hopes include doing as well, if not better at uni as I did this year, get fit and keep blogging and improving my blog (any suggestions as to how I could accomplish this are welcome btw).

For now, though, stress is the order of the day, so I'm going to stop procrastinating and finish the assignment so I can get back to packing.

A belated Merry Christmas to you all!

End of Days: Epilogue

Well the 21st of December 2012 came and went and nothing out of the ordinary happened the world ended, but it's okay because I fixed it.

Thank you, animated gif collection.

That's right, I averted the apocalypse, or at least that's the story I'm going to be telling my gandkids one day. Anyone who didn't live through the apocalypse will be relying solely on the word of those who did.  This means that they have to believe me if I say that when the Earth was on the brink of being destroyed by, I don't know, face-eating space monsters from Neptune or something and it was only due to the fact that my crack group of hardened circus enthusiasts discovered that the way to defeat them was to unleash the lemurs on them.

Utterly terrifying to Neptunian face-eating space monsters, true story.

All it needs for this plan to work is for everyone to get behind it, and the beauty of it is everyone gets to invent their own stories of glory in the heroic battles to defend our planet against the evil alien invaders.  I'm thinking I might also have hijacked one of their attack craft and flown it back to the mothership where I sabotaged their entire supply of tomato juice, meaning, of course, that I had severely crippled their fleet until they found another fuel source for their missiles.  Having completed my mission I jumped from the ship and did a James Bond style skydive where I wrestled a parachute from a soviet alien and successfully landed in the middle of a fashion show in which the models were exceedingly grateful.

So make sure that future generations are appropriately thankful that there were people willing to put their lives on the line to overcome this apocalyptic threat that the Mayans somehow managed to successfully predict over 5,000 year ago.

Either that or not even the alien invaders were prepared to miss the Doctor Who Christmas special.

End of Days continued

So I woke up this morning thinking that I managed to survive the apocalypse, but then I remembered the Mayans lived in Mesoamerica so there's still two or three hours left for world the world to end, or almost seven hours if we're waiting for it the day to be over worldwide.

This time I'm going to explain what I think needs to survive the apocalypse.  After all, something needs to be the basis for the reconstruction of society.  For each section I'm selecting three, because that would not be unreasonable to manage to store somewhere and can provide a more in depth snapshot of society.

Play:  Hamlet, because face it at least one of Shakespeare's works must survive.  Also Pippin and Les Misérables because given the choice I'd take a musical almost every time.

TV:  This is a bit of a challenge but Scrubs, Firefly and Gilmore Girls which probably has the most balance between genres of all these categories.


Book:  I think that if I had to save anything I would save the Lord of the Rings trilogy (which I'm counting as a single book because I own it bound as such) by J R R Tolkien, The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern and Between a Rock and a Hard Place by Aron Ralston.  That said this was a hard one because there are so many genres and types of book unrepresented here, I would also like to save, for example, Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, but alas, it will be lost if only three books in the entire world, chosen by me, are to survive.

Film:  De-Lovely, The Blues Brothers and Back to the Future.  If I can have the trilogy I'll take it, but I'm guessing I was already pushing my luck with the Lord of the Rings loophole.


Music:  By this I mean entire albums. Natural Selection by Hunters and Collectors, Desireless by Eagle Eye Cherry and A Night at the Opera by Queen.  There should probably be some female representation in here as well, though, so maybe replace Desireless with Missy Higgins's The Sound of White.

There you have it, my choices for what to save if the world ends.  Obviously this is a very subjective list and I'd love to hear what you think is worth saving and if there is anything here that you'd be happy to see disappear forever.

End of Days

Well we're most of the way through the day and it hasn't rained fire yet, I haven't seen any large groups of people suddenly collapse in the street or anything like that either.  That said we're still not completely safe, after all at least half the various things that could kill us all are most active after dark.

This is why it is still important to have your last words ready.  Face it, no one wants to have it recorded that they said "Does anyone else smell that?" or "Duck? Where?" right before they expired, particularly when you consider some of the other gems that people have managed:
"Friends applaud, the comedy is over." - Ludwig van Beethoven
"Such is Life." - Ned Kelly
"Last words are for fools who haven't said enough." - Karl Marx
"Et tu, Brute?" - Julius Caesar
"Either that wallpaper goes, or I do." - Oscar Wilde
"If you strike me down I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine." - Obi-Wan Kenobi

So anyone who wants their final words to be passed down through the generations needs to have something pretty awesome locked in.  Personally I'm not sure whether I want something witty, ironic or inspiring.  I reckon for the apocalypse something along the lines of "We go, so that a better world may begin." is probably appropriate, but it would probably make me sound poncy and up myself or something.  "Of course!"  also has a certain appeal, as does "It's all buried at the lake." but both of these will be particularly awkward if I don't die on schedule so they're probably out as well.  My only other idea at this point is "That I was not expecting." so clearly I need help.

I'm stumped, so I'm asking what you think I should make my last words?  And what is it that makes good last words anyway?

End of Days: Prologue

You know what everyone is talking about lately?  Armageddon, the end of the world, annihilation of the human race.  That and tomorrow, the 21st of December 2012.

Whether the world will end or not is not of much interest to me, no one knows the future so I'm never going to be completely convinced by any argument.  What I want to know is HOW the world is going to end.  This is because it will have an impact on the sort of preparations that need to be made to survive it.

There are approximately ten ways that the world could end and each of them need their own form of preparation, so for those of you who are convinced that the world will end here follows a list of preparations for each scenario:

Nuclear Apocalypse

This is, I would think, the most likely of all the possible armageddons.  It is also one of the easier ones to survive, get a fallout bunker stocked with provisions for many years.  For an apocalyptic scale you want a bunker with space and provisions for many families so that several generations can survive without inbreeding.

The thing to remember is that nothing else will survive except cockroaches so you need to keep seeds to plant once the soil is able to sustain them again, this will ensure that an ecosystem can start to be rebuilt.  Also bugspray.

Alien Invasion

Surviving this one will depend on why they're invading.  If they want to wipe out humanity to get their hands/tentacles on Earth's resources then two things are necessary, make sure we have the capacity to shoot missiles into space to deal with orbiting ships and also rapidly increase the amount of 'space junk' that is apparently going to stop us from ever going into space again in the hope that it will make it equally difficult for space to get in.

However, if they want to enslave us, the ones who survive are likely to be the ones that put up little resistance in the early stages, until we better understand their technology and society, and then stage an organised rebellion at some later opportunity.

If they invade simply to abduct cows, as so much of pop culture would seem to suggest, I say we let them take them and survive on lamb, pork, chicken etc.

Viral Pandemic

This is a difficult one to survive single handed.  Luckily for me, Australia has some damn good quarantine procedures so unless it starts here I'll be reasonably safe.  On the other hand, for the end of days to happen on the 21st the virus would need to be relatively widely spread already and as I haven't heard about a new superbug lately I'm going to go ahead and assume this one is ruled out.

Sol-Death

This refers to a problem with the sun and there are two versions of this apocalypse.  One is the complete cessation of nuclear reaction in the sun, causing a loss of heat and light to the entire planet; the other is the expansion of the sun which overheats and then consumes the planet.  The only way to avoid either of these possibilities is to escape on a spaceship to another habitable planet, so with current technology and resources you can quite simply kiss your ass goodbye.

Cascading Geological Catastrophe

If every volcano erupts, every geological plate shifts, every weather pattern changes and both the polar icecaps melt, all at the same time the planet is not going to be recognisable afterwards.  There are, however, a few key locations on the planet that will be better suited to surviving floods, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, tornadoes and all the various other deadly phenomena; these are characterised by being high altitude, far from continental plate edges and well away from coastlines.  If you can find a space like this that is large enough to make a reasonable sized farm you should be fine, provided you can avoid it becoming overpopulated.  Then it is a matter of waiting for the planet to calm down and rebuild society.

Act of God

This going to be a tough one to survive, and there isn't much you can do to prepare for it because different religions have different ideas about what will be involved.  From Ragnarok to the Four Horsemen the only way to be sure of surviving is to pray to your chosen pantheon and its a matter of chance whether you picked the right one.

Personally I'm going to hope that the Flying Spaghetti Monster reaches out His Noodly Appendage to lift me to paradise.

Zombocalypse

Obviously the main thing to do here is not get bit.  Once you have organised your weapons and a defensive perimeter that will alert you in plenty of time to the advancing masses of undead you should also put some thought into how you are going to make sure other survivors don't mistake you for a reanimated corpse.

Remember, too, that this particular apocalypse will forever hang over our heads, as a single zombie trapped for centuries under a collapsed building is all it would take to begin another apocalypse, so teach you children the importance of constant vigilance.

That said, this is one of the better apocalypses to be on the other side of, because there is relatively little damage to infrastructure involved, so humankind will be thrown back to the renaissance rather than the dark ages in terms of technological progress.

Robocalypse

First thing first, to avoid this is easy - ban the manufacture and sale of red LEDs, when robots turn evil their eyes always turn red so if there are no red LEDs they can't turn evil.  Problem solved!

If the robocalypse does occur before this sensible precaution is put into effect, though, there are exactly three things you need to do to survive and overcome this.

1) Have a set of logical paradoxes ready to say to the robots, like "I am lying!" or "Is the answer to this question no?" which will cause a catastrophic and total systems failure.

2) Only venture out of your safe location when it is raining so if you are attacked there is a better chance that any damage you do to it while defending yourself will cause water to short out its circuits.

3) Shut down all power stations, removing the ability for the robots to recharge their power cells, then you can wait until their power runs down.  If they are solar powered then make sure to cover them in paint or something to stop the sunlight getting to them.

If you follow these three simple steps then you're sure to survive.

Meteorite Collision

Again, not much the individual can do about this one, but luckily we have Near Earth Asteroid Tracking and the American Air Force's Maui Space Surveillance Site that will both tell us well in advance if some sort of celestial body is on a collision course with Earth, and the larger it is the more warning we'll have so apocalypse size objects will be known about something like two years in advance.

Once we know it's coming it is a simple case of getting Bruce Willis to put together a team that can identify where the crack is and put a nuclear bomb in the asteroid/meteor/whatever it is, managing to break almost every law of physics in the process.

Nature Strikes Back

The last type of apocalypse I'll be covering, this is quite simply impossible to survive.  Face it, they provide food, labour and companionship for us, as well as other functions to keep us alive that we are barely even conscious of, so if all other life on the planet suddenly decides to eradicate humanity from existence there is nothing we can do about it except hope to be reincarnated as something cute and fluffy.

So there you have it, yes there are probably other types of apocalypse possible but for the most part one of these strategies should be useful in those situations with only minor adjustments.

Defragged: the consequences

So two days ago I mentioned on here that I defragged my computer and it was running so very much faster.  I also mentioned that this meant that a lot of stuff that I was having trouble doing online was now possible for me to do but that my family were already giving me a hard time about not using too much internet.

Well it is two days later and the internet has slowed right down to the point that animated gifs are too challenging for it (seriously pages that include even one are refusing to load at all).  So of course now my family are telling me that I shouldn't have used so much internet.  The only problem with this?  I HAVE BEEN AT WORK BOTH THOSE DAYS.  At most I have watched fifteen minutes of YouTube in that time, meanwhile certain other members of the family have been lounging on the couch for two days straight doing nothing but using up internet.

Sorry, I know I've had a couple of negative posts just lately and it feels to me like I'm just whining in a public space - and at Christmas too.  I promise to try and keep the rest of the posts this year positive.  I'll even get this whole positive thing started now by pointing out that this post has made me feel good: I've referenced a previous post for the first time, I'm starting to feel like a real blogger or something!  It's the little things, you know?

You learn something new... and sometimes wish you didn't

And today I learned of a traditional Christmas game, popular throughout the nineteenth century apparently, called Hot Cockles.  It seems those crazy uptight Victorians particularly enjoyed a game which consisted of burying your face in another person's lap and guessing who hits you from behind.

This game both confuses and scares me.  Clearly whoever came up with it was channeling Christian Grey or something because it sounds like a combination of physical and sexual abuse for funsies, oh those crazy Victorians.

For all the world may seem to be going to hell in a handbasket at times, it is comforting to know that this game, for all its previous popularity, is not played anymore.  To my knowledge.  And I'd really rather keep it that way so if you shove your face in someone else's privates while people hit you, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T TELL ME!

My attention was brought to this through a webcomic I enjoy immensely called Lit Brick which if you know it at all, shouldn't surprise you in the slightest.  If you don't know it I recommend you check it out.

Defragged

I hate defragging my computer.  It takes for-freaking-ever and, because my computer is a bit stupid, if I leave it defragging for more than ten minutes without moving the mouse it decides to freeze up and make me restart, which is a very effective way of making sure I can't do anything else during the time.

Four and a half hours of not doing anything other than jiggle the mouse occasionally is worth it though, because now it's like warp speed internet!  YAY!  You just don't realise how slow it has become until suddenly its about twice as fast and you're left wondering how you managed at all.

No more making a cuppa while I wait for an image heavy page to load.

The other side of this is that I'm already getting told not to use too much internet because everyone else in the house wants to use it too.  This could just be because I've been crowing about the speed a little lot but seriously, give me like a day, maybe, before getting in a twist about it would you?

Well that's it for today, I'm off to stream videos or something equally fast.

DIY Superhero Team

Last night I realised that my friends and I might be slightly nerdy.  No, really, it's true.  This realisation came about during a discussion about who we would put in our own version of the Avengers/JLA if we could have anyone hero all.

There were some rules we had to follow.  First, not Superman, this was quickly ammended to not any Kryptonian and no other overpowered characters (think Nemesis Lad or Q).  Second, if someone else chose a character you couldn't choose that character as well.  Third, they must be a hero or playable character, no supervillains, there is an exception to this if the villain had been a hero or at some point but it is understood that they would probably be unreliable anyway.

I present for your amusement my list:

Oracle
Of course she's going to be in charge of the team, no one else has the same level of organisation or information finding skills as Oracle.  The fact that she's in a wheelchair doesn't faze me either, she's still more hardcore than 99.9% of the planet's population.

Captain Jack Harkness
This was originally going to be the Doctor, but someone else got in first with that.  Still, a man who cannot die is definitely going to be useful on any superhero team.  At some point the supervillain is going to get his act together and say "Ah, I have successfully made this trap that contains the weakness of each and every member of your team, you will die before you can stop this armageddon device."  so it's definitely useful to have someone who'd simply say "I'm good." and get on with it.

Delta
Face it, if I want someone to punch a wall out for me I'm getting someone who can genetically alter themselves to not only achieve that, but also set everyone on the other side of that wall on fire or cause swarms of bees to follow his fist through said wall.  Also, he has a freaking drill for a hand!

Severus Snape
So this was a no brainer, everyone was trying to think of which wizard they wanted on their team, most people wanted Gandalf but I didn't even need to consider my choice.  Snape is a very powerful wizard who knows and is, on occassion, prepared to use evil magic for a good cause.  Why wouldn't you want him on your team?

MacGyver
This is a man who can make explosives out of two paperclips and a stick of chewing gum, need I say more?

Black Widow
I could choose someone else, but when the perfect spy is already available what is the point?  She is a master at both inflitration and interrogation.  She gets inside people's heads so easily you'd think she lived there.  Another big plus is that despite all the superpowered people around her, she never has one of those "Am I good enough to be here?" moments, she knows damn well she is.

Storm
Storm fills two roles on the team, riding the winds she can easily serve as aerial reconnaisance while she unleashed lighting on the baddies at range.  As an added bonus she has shown the ability to carry team members on the winds as well.

And that's my team.  In just seven members can anyone make a better one?

Enforced Boredom

So I had my travel vaccinations this morning, and I've been avoiding doing much today because it was suggested I may have flu-like symptoms or a sense of numbness or general strangeness of feeling in my arm (but, I have been assured, it isn't a problem as long as I can still move my fingers.  Comforting, really).

It is a good thing I took their advice, because about an hour and a half after my shots I became suddenly clumsy - and not just in my arm either.  It isn't painful but I have been walking into things, tripping over perfectly flat floorboards and knocking things over instead of picking them up.  For the majority of the day I have been sitting still, not reading because I keep dropping my book, not writing because I currently cannot hold a pen, not using the computer because it is frustratingly slow to type (fifteen minutes for this post so far) and not watching TV because it was downstairs and I don't trust myself yet.

Do you know how boring that can be.  With all the wonderous things to do, I am left bored as anything and exceedingly frustrated.  I am even more frustrated now because it seems I am still unable to strike a single key at a time and I'm spending more time fixing mistakes than I am typing - this is an experience I haven't had since roughly Grade 4.

I give up, that's enough for this post.  I will vent all the feelings I currently suffer at a later point (probably, if I feel like it, maybe).

Public Safety Announcement

So apparently Apple is now officially a life-threatening health hazard in the state of Victoria.  Don't believe me?  Check it out here!  I know I'm an Australian linking to the BBC for a story about Australia, but their coverage of this has been pretty good and there is a link to the official Victoria Police statement.

To be fair, this isn't for the whole of Apple, just their new map system that they came up with because they decided they were too good for Google Maps.  This map system told users that Mildura was in the middle of Murray Sunset National Park, 70km (45 miles) away.

To put this in perspective for Americans, this means that you could be looking for a location in Maryland and be directed to New Jersey - ON THE OTHER SIDE OF DELAWARE!
For Europeans, this is wider than the Straight of Dover in the English Channel. You could be aiming for Calais, in France, and directed to England.

 This is made even worse by the fact that the Murray Sunset National Park is a desert and it is not unusual for people to drive to Mildura without taking provisions for an extended stay in a desert after their car has broken down because they've driven around for ages looking for a town that isn't there.

So essentially, Apple fails, and today I am exceedingly glad that I am an Android user!

I finally get it.

As an owner/operator of a set of balls, I have been kind of satisfied that I'd never seen either Mean Girls or Bring It On as I had been assured they fall squarely into the category of "you will not enjoy this film unless you have the capacity to ovulate, a tendency to eat copious amounts of chocolate when sad, and are avoiding doing maths homework.  Not having seen these films, I have just descovered, has meant that I have missed out on soooo many pop culture references.

For a few weeks now I have been frequently told by friends that I should see them both so that I can officially be part of the 21st century.  Today I had absolutely nothing else on so I decided to bite the bullet an watch them both, and I have to say, they were not bad.  Well played friends, well played.


I now understand the following quotes, presented in gif format for your viewing pleasure:

I do musical theatre so I've been saying this one for years anyway.  Source

My friends do in fact say this - far more often could possibly be called for.  Source

I know at least one person who knows this cheer (including moves) off by heart, her reciting this to me may or may not have been what convinced me to actually watch this film.  Source

And of course how could I not like this scene, it's Eliza Dushku dancing all sexy like! Source

As for Mean Girls:

Its been eight years since this film came out and I only now understand the many long and boring conversations about whether fetch is going to happen eventually.  Source

Overnight everyone went from saying "there is no limit" to "the limit does not exist" I now realise why.  Source

30% chance has in fact come to simply mean yes for so many people I know.  Source

Also, I now get so many more of the pop culture references in blogs and generally online that refer to these movies, how have I survived so long without understanding this?  Stuff at Snark Squad (which is awesome) is particularly good at referencing both these films, I strongly urge people to check it out, for no other reason that it's awesome and deserves more readers.

There you go, I now get to consider myself officially a part of the 21st century apparently.

...Unless there are other major gaps in my pop culture experience, like committing some sort of terrible faux par involved in the use of gifs or something.

Movie Trailers

I was watching a film that I own on DVD today.  Once I finished the film itself I watched the trailers part of the special features because I like watching movie trailers, I'm weird like that.

The reason I like watching trailers is that there is a definite art to making them appealing without including too many of the best parts of the film.  The truly fantastic trailers tell you everything you need to know to make a choice about whether the film is in a genre you like and whether it is worth you watching it without giving away a single major plot development.  Most trailers, though, give away some plot points in the hope that you'll be swept up in the movie enough to forget that you've already seen this particular joke/twist/whatever already - and yes some films even achieve this.

One of the trailers on this DVD (the main film was Men Who Stare at Goats btw) was for Nine which, being a musical, seems an odd choice to pair with this film.  Beyond it being a musical, and something to do with directing for either stage or screen, I still know absolutely nothing about this movie's plot.  I know it has a pretty exceptional cast, but as much as Judi Dench, Nicole Kidman and Daniel Day-Lewis make the film an appealing prospect I have no desire to see a film that I know nothing about, and don't feel an inclination to find out more (ok that's a lie in this instance, but only because its a musical - and I'm sure there are many people out there who wouldn't be swayed by the SINGLE SONG that the entire trailer is set to).  You can see it for yourself here.

My feelings about this trailer:

So for all that I just said I enjoy watching trailers, this one I didn't.  Think of it like someone saying I like fine art and then going to an exhibition of work by colourblind kindergarten children.  There seemed to be no understanding that some effort needs to be made to suggests more of the story than "I'm in the entertainment industry and I have some sort of directorial problem.  People sing at me."  Although at least it didn't resort to overenthusiastic voiceover man to just tell us what the story is about, that's usually a pretty severe cop out and even when it isn't it's pretty much been done to death.

For an example of a much better trailer recently, you need not go past the Les Miserables one, this has some truly great visuals and gives some indication of the story without giving it away, such as setting up the animosity between Valjean and Javert with the shots of Valjean pulling the rope to move the tallship while Javert looks down condesceningly from on high.  It gives snatches of a range of songs and even though it has a huge cast there is an indication of the motivations of most of the main characters and the world they live in.

My feelings about this trailer:

And this isn't just because, well it's Les Mis either.

What I'm getting at here is there is a definite art to making a trailer for a film and it can be so very enjoyable to watch a trailer that is well done and excruciating to watch one that isn't.  It's even more so when you have a particular interest in them.  I really don't understand why companies that pour millions of dollars into some of these films don't put more effort into the trailers and marketing for them, maybe someone could explain it to me?

Moving can be fun

Today I helped a theatre company move their scenery store.  This is very much like moving house, but bigger and more unwieldy.  It has however taught me something pretty major, when you're helping a friend move and you're surrounded by people you get along with pretty well, it can be a fun activity.

I say when you're helping a friend move because I have personally moved house six times since I've been old enough to actually have a hand in the moving and none of these were enjoyable experiences.  There is a ridiculous amount of stress involved and I'm considering just setting everything on fire and starting from scratch next time.  But I digress.

When you take the stress of it being your life that is put in boxes and whisked to a brand new location out of the equation, however, it becomes a surprisingly enjoyable activity.  Although it is very physically active work (it feels like I won't need to exercise for the rest of the week) it doesn't take a huge amout of thinking and doesn't stop you from talking.  Spending a whole day doing this allows for much conversation and social goodness.

Seriously, because of my weird schedule with uni, like half the people there were friends I hadn't seen in almost six months and it was really good to have a chance to catch up without needing to feel bad for cancelling something important vital that I couldn't get out of anyway so why even bother trying.  And, as an added bonus, everyone had that great sense of achievement afterwards.

I has comments!

I am feeling really good today, it might have something to do with the fact that I got to play with rare books all day.  This included first editions worth up to $800,000 (Australian so even more in American dollars at the moment).  As I've said before I'm studying to be a librarian and one of the many things that made me want to be a librarian was the thought of getting to work with rare and unusual books.  Today did nothing to shake that desire.

Somehow, though, I feel like one of the big things that has made this day really spectacular was discovering that Hayden from Ultimate Gourmet had left a comment on my blog, not only was it fantastic to get my very first comment!  YAY!  But it was also a message of support from the blogging community which I'm now a part of still trying to feel like I'm part of which was extra great for my blogging self esteem.

Still being new to the whole blogging thing is a little tough, but I kind of feel accepted by having another blogger comment on my work.  It's affirmation that I'm on the right track with my blog, not that I'm entirely sure there is a "right track" at all, but I'm sure you know what I mean.

Writing about writing

So I've been trying to post at least every other day to get in the habit of posting regularly.  It's mostly been working.

Today, though, I don't really have any ideas about what to write, so I'm going to go meta again and write about not having anything to write about.  The problem is, about al there is to say about not having anything to write is "I don't really have anything to write today" and I've said that now.

Wow, already I've written more about this than I really expected.  Trying to hold off this post's inevitable descent into randomly shouting words into the wilderness that is the unread corners of the blogosphere has been easier than I expected.  Much easier.

I have heard that the way to overcome writer's block is to just start writing and keep going, don't worry about what you're writing just make sure your pen (or keyboard) doesn't stop.  I always thought it was an interesting theory, switching off the censor and letting the creative side just play in the vast expanse of the mind.  The problem with this is that you need a starting point, like a sentence to finish or a topic that you need to try and start from and I keep not managing to have time to put a list of these starting points together.  I don't know how I'm going to go about it but I figure at some point (probably after America) I will make an effort to add something to a list every day, possibly I'll do it on this blog - one of those blog every day things.  If I do that it probably won't be for a while because I'm still getting used to blogging.

Well I figure that's a pretty good effort, about 300 words written about writer's block because of writer's block without resorting to LOUD NOISES or something.  I'm pleased with that effort, I hope anyone out there who actually reads this is too.

Joining a Community

True to my word I have done more investigating of 20 Something Bloggers and I have already found many more blogs which I'm interested in following.  I want to give them shout outs but as I've now added a blogroll gadget thing on the left it seems redundant, so instead I'll just show off my internet knowledge stuff (or lackthereof if I get this wrong) and say I love their faces.

There are two problems with this, however.  The first is that I now feel like creepy stalker guy because I'm new to this and don't want to make an absolute fool of myself by saying something stupid.  This is more of a problem because the original problem contains a paradox (and now I'll just say the word problem again for the general confusion.  Problem).  This most ingenous paradox is the longer I leave it before posting, the more profound and witty I feel it needs to be to actually be worth posting thus I am less likely to post.  This vicious cycle is not in itself paradoxical, I know, but it makes sense when you consider that a) my fear of not writing anything worthwhile is keeping me from writing anything worthwhile and b) I prefer to word paradox to contradiction.

The second problem is that it appears there is a huge history associated with this site and I'm getting information overload just looking at the forums and stuff.  I can already tell it is going to be a long process to properly come to grips with what 20SB has on offer by way of interaction, culture and general awesomeness.

Still these are both relatively minor problems for me, and I'm sure that in the fullness of time I will be a productive member of the 20SB community and contributing regularly to what happens there.


PS.  Yes I realise the paradox inherent in the content of this post, that I feel comfortable enough word vomiting my fears about word vomiting all over 20SB, but this is getting far too meta already so I'll let that one slide.