Went to the casino last Friday and it was intensely boring. I think I'd rather spend money than gamble it. When you sign up for membership they give you $10 to play with, and you choose whether to give it to the table or give it to the machines. I opted to feed it to the pokies. You need to put $1 in the machine to activate your credits, so they force you to gamble a dollar anyway. I pressed random buttons and lost eight of my eleven dollars. So I took the three remaining dollars and walked to the doppelganger Passionflower with my cousin once removed. He ended up buying ice cream for me, so in the end I profited three dollars and a ginger ice cream.

I put my name in the barrel and fully expected to be drawn and win at least $5000 but I didn't (surprisingly). That's not sarcasm. I was struck by a gentle shower of optimism and really believed I'd win. Luckily, it's gone now. I don't think I'll go again.

On the bright side, they had huge eels in the fish tanks. I think I spent about two hours looking at them, waiting to get a lift home.

I'm in a pit of pessimism post-Christmas. I'd forgotten how terrible the holiday season in Australia is.

1. All the relatives you love are overseas, but all the annoying ones are here, and you have to try to be nice to them even if they ask you the same question six times in a row and keep trying to make you eat.

2. There's nothing to do. The post-Christmas sales are boring, and there are people everywhere.

3. This year was miserable compared to last year, and I can only expect that life will get slightly worse every year.

It's been so long since we've had to be here for Christmas that I don't think we know how to do it anymore. It was like any other weekend, except we said "Merry Christmas" to each other in the morning, and everything on TV was crap.

The only good thing about this year was that I didn't have to pretend to be Christian, which was a relief. I'm not allowed to tell people I'm atheist (because that would bring shame and ruin upon the family), so whenever it's Christmas I have to pretend to be the world's most apathetic Christian.
"How often do you go to church?"
"Once a year."
"Do you go to any youth groups?"
"No."
"Do you go to any bible study groups?"
"No."
"Do you want to come with me?"
"No."

I remembered why I stopped doing creative writing. After writing from midnight to 3 ay em every day (the only hours when I can concentrate) I had a series of realistic dreams. They were about mundane things like "When GJs Hurstville was Renovated and Leana Transferred There and I went to Visit Her," and "When William had a Haircut" and "When a Costume Shop Opened Next to Colorado." Upon waking, I didn't realise they were dreams, but thought they were memories of something I did last week. This resulted in a nasty shock when I tried to visit the Costume Shop. So anyway, I've reduced my output and now I can tell what's real again. Excellent.

NYR 2006: At least try to be normal.
NYR 2006: Get real job.

"Why haven't you updated your blog?"

The answer is simple. Because I haven't been doing anything worth writing about.

I tried to start my own NaNoWriMo, but the only person who said they wanted to join was Li. I'm 2 000 words in. Only 48 000 to go!

Went to Speech Day, and I still hate Ms Snott. "Before we begin I'd like to acknowledge the original owners of this land." Bleh. I know there's nothing inherently wrong with that -- it's just that she seems to act out of misguided political correctness. She's so pretentious.

Played 14 hours of Dragon Quest 8 in the last two days. It is ultimate. I'm ashamed to say that I haven't played a DQ before this.
The main reason I love it is that it's old school. I haven't played a proper old school RPG for ages. You have to admit that the Final Fantasies are getting weird. So far, no one's turned out to be a dream, no one's a clone, no one's named Cid, and Shiva and Ifrit haven't caused anyone to lose their memories. DQ actually has a princess and a couple of kings in it, and actual castles!
The character and monster design is by Akira Toriyama. The voice acting is good too, even for female characters -- unlike Yuna and Riku in FFX, who made me physically ill (I was that enraged). Another big plus: everyone speaks with hilarious British accents and the spelling is all British. Hurrah!

Read many, many books. Many of them were crap.

Went to see the Christmas lights at Maple Street, since the dude who owns the house is moving and the new owners might not want to do the lights next year. Though really, why would you buy the house if you weren't going to put on the lights? Ten year olds were singing and screaming loudly at 11 pee em as they walked back to their cars. And people wonder why the neighbours get annoyed :O

Mudded a lot, except for when stupid William was playing stupid MapleStory. Then I played some Zelda and some DQ8 and some Dynasty Warriors 5.
In fact, I'm mudding now -- hence the lack of clarity in my writing. Come join me.

(A complete failure; caught red-handed)

And now a word from our sponsors.

Yes! It’s what you’ve been waiting for – another hilarious disaster proudly brought to you by Laura. (I’m excited!!!)

So I’ve been thinking a while about dyeing my hair. Nothing serious, because I don’t want to damage it for when I donate to Locks of Love. Now, these days I don’t take to leaving the house very much and we don’t have any fun hair dye at home, so I thought I’d try using Kool Aid.

Brief internet research revealed to me that I should mix two packets of Kool Aid with a good dollop of conditioner, smear the mixture into my hair, wait a few hours and rinse out.

The plan was to use blue, so I opened the blue packet. Turns out that the stuff in the blue packet is actually red. (I think that Tropical Punch sounds yellow, anyway.) I tried finding something blue to add, so I’d get purple. Turns out that “Ice Blue (Raspberry crush)” is actually white and has no effect at all. Go figure.

I left it in for three hours, because supposedly the longer the better. Then when I rinsed it out, a disturbingly significant amount of dye came out. It took about 10 minutes of rinsing before the water ran clear. My hair had absorbed none of the dye. The only trace left is a slightly fruity smell which I think is partly the conditioner.

quaffy.o (A complete failure; caught red-handed) says:
my hair tastes like citric acid

Sophia says:
why taste it at all?

quaffy.o (A complete failure; caught red-handed) says:
because it smells fruity

But wait – there’s more.
I didn’t manage to dye my hair, but my scalp is now a lovely shade of red. And since I neglected to wear gloves, so are my hands.

The worst part is, my parents noticed the few drops of pinkish water in the sink, but they didn’t notice my bright red hands. What's up with that?

Yes, it would be very embarrassing if my hands were still red on Friday.

20-second book reviews.

For those of you who don't know our dark family secret, Mum has about 200 library books in our sun room, and she just keeps reborrowing them. If people reserve them, she returns them, then borrows them again later. She only does this with relatively (sometimes brand-) new books. I think the idea of having something that other people want makes her feel good. Anyway, I'm not here to complain about Mum's problems. The point is, I decided to read some of them so that Mum could return the crap ones.

Most of her stuff is chick lit and crime fiction. But after careful inspection of the covers I weeded out the most gag-inducing ones. Please note that these are books Mum borrowed, and if I'd gone to the library myself I would've chosen something different.

Serving Crazy with Curry
Amulya Malladi

Devi's lost her job, her baby, and had an affair with a married man, so she decides to commit suicide. Her mother (more irritating than Mrs Bennett) lets herself into Devi's apartment with her spare key and saves her. Lots of family drama, like if Bold were a book, and were less cheesy.

Earthly Pleasures
Heavenly Delights
Kerry Greenwood

I liked these books enough to read two[!] of them. There was nice characterisation, lots of cats, and a couple of Discworld references thrown in. In fact, at two ay em, I thought "These are fabulous. Let's email the author!" But then I forgot about it when I woke up and didn't get around to doing it. They're good, despite being chick lit.

A Long Way Down
Nick Hornby

Another book about people trying to off themselves. I liked it. Someone will probably make a movie out of it, like they did with High Fidelity. I bet you.


Darkly Dreaming Dexter
Jeff Lindsay

As fun as an economics textbook, and as interesting as LotR. In other words, I hated it, but you might like it. And if so, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU, you freak? I thought it was poorly written. The first couple of pages were a mess, and I had to go somewhere dark and quiet to be able to shove the words into my brain. The characters were flat and unlikeable. I admit that I'm not big reader of thrillers (but I am a book whore and will read anything). I got through about 30 pages before I stopped trying to resuscitate the experience. About as boring as Not Yet (see previous post) but this time I knew when to cut my losses and run. To be fair, some seriously deluded crazies on Amazon liked it. You can trust their word over mine if you like. Oh, and the copy I read had a very interesting blurb. I liked that.

Fat, Forty and Fired
Nigel Marsh

Real-life story of man who decides to take a year off work to spend more time with his family and become a better person in general. If I didn't already live in Sydney, I'd want to after reading this book. It makes it sound like paradise. So instead, I just nodded and smiled smugly at the relevant parts. Very funny. Would recommend it to my friends.

Japanese Film Festival

Woke up bright and early to catch the train with Ky. We arrived at Circular Quay at 9, and everyone (Rna and Spa) was late except for us, so we could've slept for another half an hour. Instead we walked around the quay, looked at tourists, and read those "Writer's Walk" circles.

Then we met up with Kylie's internet friends, who were even later than us. And they had the tickets. I didn't really talk to them much (or at all...), and now I feel a bit bad about that.

Movie reviews!

Hinokio: Inter Galactic Love
I really liked this. I thought it was funny and sweet. It was trippy in parts, but then again, it was Japanese. It's about a boy who can't walk, so he sends a robot to school in his place. Life, love and the universe, two thumbs up.
8.5/10 (liked it a lot, but points minussed for deus ex machina ending. Didn't fall asleep at all)

Hidden Blade
This would've been better if it were two movies, each half the length. There were two storylines -- the love story about Munezo and his maid, and the samurai story. The love story could've been more dramatic, and the samurai story could have been more violent. It wasn't clear until the last 10 mins what the Hidden Blade actually was. A bit waffly but had potential.
6.5/10 (decent, but points minussed because I fell asleep once)

Not yet
Biggest waste of my time ever. Worse than King Arthur. Probably worse than Alexander. Makes Hidden Blade look good. With serious editing, this movie could have been cut to about half an hour. It might've been enjoyable as a short film. There was a party scene that lasted at least 20 mins and was heinously boring. I think the subtitler was bored too, because there were so many mistakes in the subtitles. Some of them were probably intentional, like "Should I put fish in my pond? I want to fill it with crap. I want to put a crap in here as big as a whale." Because hey, by that time the audience isn't paying attention anyway. I fell asleep twice.

Dendy had technical difficulties, where one reel was shown upside down and back to front. At least trying to read the subtitles became fun.

Sophia says:
not yet has a 7.6 rating on imdb :'(

MOO. I can't believe that. I'd give it maybe 3/10, because I liked the parts with the cats.

Oh carp. Now it sounds like I didn't have a good day, but I did really. Should try to end post on a positive note.

I got to eat a McFlurry, a scoop of lemon sorbet and a scoop of chocolate gelato. Thanks Kylie for organising. Please be BOSS of more things :D?

"Sleeeeeepover"

Another catch-up post, this one in forwards-chronological order.

Friday (the one last week): Went to dinner with beloved "the gang." It was good because I've been pale and weepy and weak all semester and now I feel more like myself. Got my birthday present too (thanks guys :D). Now would be a good time to insert pictures of said present. Will do when less lazy.

The restaurant -- Ky and Dna took all the main bits to blog about, so all I'll say is that the food was good, sitting on the floor was good, and it was noisy. I really don't know what the May 13th review was on about. It would've been better if the tables weren't so long and narrow, cos then I could've talked to more people, but otherwise no complaints.

Saturday (not today): Went to the Powerhouse Museum. Had world's worst PMS but managed not to leave a trail of corpses behind me. They had an ELIZA (one of those stupid programs that simulates a conversation with you), and Li typed some computer-speak at it and broke it. I wanted him to break more things, but all the other computers we saw were Macs. I always wondered what it'd be like to stay overnight at the mooseum, but they kicked us out at 5.

Sunday - Wednesday: Played the Discworld MUD for average 6 hours a day. Okay, I admit that a game with all words and no pictures doesn't sound like fun, but it's a hecka lot better than FFX. FFX requires no thought or skill and I think it should be tagged "interactive movie" rather than "game." Not that mudding is genius work, but at least you get to choose which direction to walk in.

Thursday: Li woke me up at 9 ay em in the morning to go see a movie. Saw Wolf Creek and it was traumatic! People(this means you Spa) who think it's funny are depraved. I'm still up for going on a road trip, if anyone wants to go up/down the coast with me. I think we'll be okay as long as we stick to major roads and highways and stay in areas with decent phone reception.