I love my new userpic.

That is all.

NYARGH TONY ABBOT NEEDS TO DIAF. What's that, Australia? Seperation of church and state? YOU CAN NOT HAS.

( Meme! )

If you do not watch the Melbourne comedy fests, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU.

50,000 WORDS.



-crash-

Itinerwhatevery:

Tuesday, January 19, 1:40PM Brisbane time: Depart Brisbane
Tuesday, January 19, 7:30PM Singapore time: Arrive Singapore
Tuesday, January 19, 11:30PM Singapore time: Depart Singapore
Wednesday, January 20, 5:25AM London time: Arrive London

And in here, on the 22nd we bugger off to Dorset to visit family. On the 27th, we come back to London--that night we will be attending a Chelsea game. (This is the soccer team after which I was named. There is no possible way I can avoid this.) EVERYONE IS FRUSTRATINGLY FUCKING UNCLEAR ABOUT WHAT HAPPENS NEXT... then on the 31st we go to Finland, and we come back on the 7th. Then allegedly we're fucking off north for a while on the 9th or the 10th. I DO NOT KNOW WHY. WE SAW EVERYTHING THERE IS TO SEE THERE LAST TIME. ALSO IT'S FUCKING COLD.

Tuesday, February 16, 10:00PM London time: Depart London
Wednesday, February 17, 6:40PM Singapore time: Arrive Singapore

Then we go shopping for three solid days...

Saturday, February 20, 9:05PM Singapore time: Depart Singapore
Sunday, February 21, 6:50AM Brisbane time: Arrive Brisbane

All told it's something like twenty-two hours spent in economy flying Brisbane to England, not to mentioin the crazy-ass timezone switching; if I should be grumpy on arrival, this may be why.

Due to this insanity, if you want to meet up with me in England, now is the time to give me vague dates!

So last night was a) the last roller derby bout of the year, and b) the first ever Queensland inter-league bout. The SSRG Fancy Pants faced off against the NBR Brawl Stars, and... won. 166/126. It went like this:

Roadrunner and Dead Meat alternated jamming for NBR for the first four jams. Our defence was on top form, two of the SSRG jammers (I think it was Chop Chop and Blitzin' Vixen, but don't quote me) got sin binned, and the score at the end of those four was 23/0 in favour of NBR.

And thus began the most blatant and vicious referential cheating I have ever seen. And I've been involved in equestrian sport.

The agreement at the start was that the two NBR refs we'd brought with us would call NBR, and the two SSRG refs would call SSRG girls. At this point, the SSRG refs stopped calling anyone. Our refs stayed honest, damn them. Our girls got sent off plenty, mostly for collecting four minors. The SSRG girls, despite committing some major penalties (Roadrunner got tripped, Sweet Enemy got elbowed, someone backblocked Dreadly Diva, etc.) did not get sent off again even once during the first half. At half time, the score was 89/36, in favour of the Fancy Pants.

I am pretty sure at this point the Fancy Pants realised exactly what was going on, because I saw one of them having a word to their refs, and in the second half they started calling some of the major penalties. There was still no calling of the accumulation of minor penalties and plenty of majors were still going uncalled, but our refs relaxed a little about things like minor penalties, and we certainly made the opposing jammers fight for every point, but in the end we still lost by 40. One of the Fancy Pants actually apologised to one of our captains afterwards.

So yes, the next north side/south side bout WILL be a grudge match... but not against the south side players. Just their bloody refs.

THAT SAID: it was a beautiful bout, both jammers had to fight for every point they scored, the crowd was awesome, we sold a lot of merch, and we will be ready for them next time. :)

There's other stuff I want to rant about too but I'm tired now. xD

I am finally caught up on my f-list! Yeesh, I turn my back for a couple lousy weeks and you people start posting like mad. xD



BE HERE, BITCHES. Seriously, this bout is going to be awesome.

So I spent some time watching Girl Number 9, the online web series thing starring Ianto and written by Children Of Earth, and it's rather good. There are things I would have done differently, but overall it's a really good example of what you can acheive in the medium. (If serial killers/cop dramas aren't your thing, check out Family on youtube--I don't have the linka, but it's easy enough to find. It's basically a polyamory sitcom with five minute episodes.) If you want to check out GN9, you'd best hurry, as they're taking it offline soon to push DVD sales instead.

My mother dragged me along to see New Moon with her, and... well... let's list some pros and cons.

- Both major male characters = FUCKING MANIPULATIVE LITTLE SHITS. URGH. Toned down dramatically from the book, in fairness, but still little shits.
- The only female character in the whole books who was actually a badass was excised from both the main and back stories. :(
- Bella's thrashing and screaming was so horribly, horribly overplayed
- Fire whoever wrote the dialogue. It blew. Especially during the first part, there was a distinct lack of droll or pithy dialogue throughout the movie.
- The cinematography was actually really lovely, but what's the fucking point of having so many closeups on actor's faces when NONE of them are doing anything even remotely interesting?
- Speaking of the actors, I realise they are all very young, and very uninterested in being there, but seriously guys, come on. Pull yourselves together. TRY. The absolute lack of effort most of them put into most of the scenes (lookin' at you, RPattz!) was actually kind of sad (though mostly lulzy.)

+/- THE SPARKLES OH MY GOD THE SPARKLES. So much fucking sparkling! Aaahahahaha. Every time the shimmer-and-sound-effect came up, I started giggling. At several points it looked like RPattz had lights shining out of his nostrils. LULZ WERE HAD.
+/- The final lines of the movie made me and my mother both explode into giggles. FOR THE UNENLIGHTENED:
"Marry me."
*GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASP*
Seriously, KStew gasped in all-caps. And the look on her face. Whut.
+/- Something else good for lols, not so good for movies: try to guess what Charlie is thinking about whenever he's on screen, coz it sure as shit isn't how much he likes acting in Twilight.

+ The werewolves were delicious and had many a shirtless scene. Omnomom.
+ Someone actually told Bella she was a suicidal crazy idiot! Holy fuck! Talk about a one-scene wonder.
+ The Volturi were actually creepy! Not that creepy, and not all of them--most were more wanky than creepy--but Aro was definitely creepy, albeit in a pedophile way, not so much a ravening monster way. Which, while still disappointed in a goddamned VAMPIRE FILM, is a nice change from the totally not creepy, not even slightly frightening, come on we all know what's going down here kind of thing.
+ As I said, lovely cinematography. And lots of scenery porn.

Overall: better than the books by far, a little worse than the first movie (would have been much worse if Jacob Black hadn't been so nice to look at,) if excrutiatingly bad dialogue is anathema to you avoid it--I cringed my way through the first third, seriously, it was awful--but if you merely find it lulzy, take some snarky friends and have a good spork.

Oh god, I fear for my soul when Eclipse comes out. I really do.

Del tagged me!

1. Answer the questions honestly. Change any question you don't like to something you do.
2. Tag some friends. Eight is plenty, but try and at least tag ONE PERSON.
3. If you don't get tagged, but want to take part, THEN PLEASE DO. :D
4. Remember to smile. ♥

Tagging Cat and Fol and, let's see, Winger, you too. 8D


( Here we go )

If you have any experience in wrangling .pdf files, can you help me, or do you know anyone who can? I am having some serious issues and they kind of need to be resolved by the end of the month >_>

I cannot fucking describe what is wrong with my head today. Shit's sake. At least I have plenty of time to prep for the last exam.

NaNo is still on hold. Damnit.

Today I had a stats test, came home, and threw up a lot. Hurrah!

I did manage a little bit of writing in between bouts of vomiting, bringing my total wordcount for NaNo up to 10,947--it's planned to fit into the main story but not for several dozen chapters. Sophie is going to be a very fun character. I am now officially 715 words behind schedule; guess I can try to catch up tomorrow.

( This takes place faaaaaaar in the future of the NaNo. 926 words. )

Edit: And bumping my wordcount to 11,998, here's some more crap!

( Comes immediately after the above excerpt. )

( In which I make everyone reading this EXTREMELY BORED. )


This is actually all stuff I wrote on Day 5; I was going to make it longer and post it today, but then I abruptly realised that no prose is going to get written until I get through that motherfucking statistics exam tomorrow. However, I did write some short character sketches; if anyone expresses interest I will post them and pretend like it absolves me.

Oh, yuck. I cannot wait until exams are over and I can spend the next month and a half EDITING THE FUCK OUT OF THIS BITCH. -siiiigh-

( In which I refuse to describe anything about the PoV character's appearance. )

This is how I picture Adam's face (I will describe him better later, I swear.) He's reading Volume 5 of Monster by Naoki Urasawa (specifically Chapter 2, "Jurgens's Basement".)

I am sooo behind wordcount today, but whatever. I kept fucking SNEEZING, man. IT WAS DISTRACTING.

( In which I wonder why the fuck I started this, and also, nothing happens. )

Tomorrow I have to start studying for stats, and so my productivity will probably fall greatly. In the mean time, some cool peoples' NaNos:
Musical Chairs by apiphile, sequel to a previous NaNo, Pass the Parcel. Urban fantasy, no magic (yet).
strangecreature's NaNo, posted on her LJ, titled "See How They Run." A truly ingenious twist on the werewolf mythos.
If you have her friended, you can read starwild's NaNo. Also urban fantasy, but this one involves a masquerade (sort of) and some pretty phenomonal cosmic powers.
At some point Cat will post hers and I will link it because it is about (relatively) TINY PTEROSAURS. FUCK. YES.

Day 2.5 | Day 4

( In which I forget everything I used to know about writing psychics. )

Monica's .303 rifle. Boeing CH-47 Chinook. Mill sleeps now.

Day 2 | Day 3

( In which I fail to distinguish between different character's voices and something finally happens. )

It's only 11:30AM, so I might come back and write more later--if I can get ahead over the next two days I don't have to freak out about falling behind while studying for my exams.

Day 1 | Day 2.5

( In which we meet half the Family and I start the shameless X-men ripoffs. )


That bird Kestrel turns into is an Oriental Pied Hornbill, one of the awesomer natives of the Phuket range. The rainforest in and around Khao Sok looks like this.

Day 2

I lied and will not be taking tonight off after all because I AM A FUCKING MASOCHIST. And there's a lot of things that need more work.

I am so fucking bad at this school malarky.

My gym went into liquidation! They sent me a letter with a big fancy seal on it and I have no idea what they want me to do with it. It's all very Official and Confusing. I've been given a couple of references for other places to go, should they shut down entirely, but still... guh.

I finally finished reading Pass the Parcel and loved it, especially the ending. My Del is a fucking genius, she is. <3 And I think I can tell pretty much exactly how you are going to go about stomping all over my heart in the sequel, too! Good on ya. :D

I wrote approx. 2000 words of Lord and Master of Depressing Assigments in two hours flat and handed it in before time this morning. Huzzah.

Anyone who wants to talk NaNoWriMo, hit me up--I refuse to take it seriously this year, what with my fuckass of a degree setting the most implausible exam schedule I've ever seen 'n' all, but I always like to yak about it if nothing else. xD I actually have a half-baked idea, but it still needs some tweaking and some serious plotting. Maybe I'll aim for 30,000 or something. I'll probably flunk my stats exam anyway but there's no point making things ever harder.

I had a nice little outdoor skate at the Albion train station upper carpark with Cat With Fleas tonight; just did a bit over an hour of practicing basic derby stance and stopping and turning and such. My legs are a lot stronger, but after three nights in a row of derby stance my thighs have moved from "protesting weakly" into "staging a full-on rebellion" and so I think I'll take tomorrow night off.