I think that failure is not necessarily a really bad thing. I mean, if you take a given course which has a 50% failure rate and you fail...it's not like that is the end of the world. Yes, I like this idea.

I think I'll be repeating chem over summer session. That too is ok, because let's face it: I'd get bored over three months otherwise eh.

I'm thinking I want some lunch, I already had some sushi but right now I feel like a desert course. Maybe a blueberry bagel, buttered and delicioso...or an apple pie from MacDonalds. I often think that if I had a pet beagle, I would call him Darwin to be all witty and spry, but I realise now that it's probably been done before. And Darwin is a bit a of a dicky name for a puppy. The other thing I was thinking (yes, a lot of thinking being done...I have an exam tomorrow you see), was that if I did have a puppy- which at this point in time is unlikely- I would call it something hilariously unusual. I was having trouble sleeping last night, so I decided that at some point in the future I'll own a golden cocker spaniel called Pheasant.

I want to learn shorthand so that I can take my notes faster in class, and also so there's something interesting and unusual about me. Eccentric if you will. But then I was looking at stuff about it on the net last night, and it seems a little too complicated and I realised that I can't be bothered. Pity.

Oh please kill me. In two more weeks this academic year will be over and hopefully HOPEFULLY I will never ever have to do chemistry again. After this year I will only have to play with happy little microbes: fungi and bacteria and other little squirmy things. And I will be oh so joyous!

Three of us had coffee with our HPS lecturer today and discussed Australia's looming anti-terrorism laws. These laws are not about freedom or protection, they are about silence and power of the few. I thought that we lived in a democracy, but over the last few years it's become increasingly clear to me that a) members of the Liberal party do not a democracy make, b) I was very naive. It disgusts me that if these laws get passed, people perceived to be doing "un-Australian" things can have their citizenship stipped, making them stateless. Or, if you get imprisoned for terrorism only one pherson in your family can know, and if they tell anyone they can be put in gaol for up to five years. And this is for our protection?! It makes me embarassed to be Australian. All I can say is I voted Independent in the Lower House, and Green in the Senate.

My HPS lecturer thinks that the ALP is over as a political force in Aus, and I'm inclined to agree. Time and time again they have been gutless and have failed to call the Howard Government on its shit. You only have to remember Labor's reaction to Children Overboard (or lack of), or their backflip over VSU to realise that at some point they lost their ideological backing. His opinion is that the alternative party will eventually be the Greens, and if Labor had Green's policy they would have been elected during the last Federal election, rather than the Coalition. Imagine...a world free of Howard, Nelson, Ruddock, Vanstone. Bloody hell, it makes me light-headed just considering it. But at the same time I could quite happily imagine a world without Beazly, Rudd or Latham (snigger on Latham). Imagine...Bob Brown as Prime Minister of Aus. Alas, that would be the re-beginning of the democratic process in this country, and unfortunately the majority of the Australian public are too stupid to realise what fucktards the Libs are.

The very hilarious thing that came out of our lunchtime coffee though, is that if these laws get up, my lecturer wants to get together a nice big group of his fairly famous academic friends. That's step one. Step two is to take out a full sized page in the Sydney Morning Herald saying a lot of 'seditious' things. Revolt against the government etc...with the challenge: are you going to put us in prison?
And the mailman who he has a chat to every morning is Cuban and totally wants in on the Revolution. He wants to do cartoons for the SMH ad.

But anyway, I have exams coming up: two next week plus an essay due, then Stuvac, then two more. Pass or fail as of 12pm on Nov 14 this year will be finished and I will be on holidays until March! Perhaps after then I will stop being able to pull my hair out by the hand-full when I brush it, I won't always be tired, and I won't be chronically ill. We can only hope...

Fun times ahead. Exams make me feel physically ill.

Oh and here's another thing...don't even get me started...

I realise that this is most likely becomming a boring theme, but we won the UTS elections! Weehee, it's the first time the Student Association has been taken from the trots in fourteen years, and with 60% of the primaries. Yay!

As side note, tonight is Oktoberfest at UNSW, which is the biggest party of the year. So why am I on the internet, engaging in the undoubtedly geeky/nerdfest activity that is Blogging? It's called "I'm fucking sick again, dears."

Yes, I do love my life, especially since I keep getting phone calls from my pisshead friends that go along the lines of "Elllllie, where are you (noise in background including giggling and the sound of someone falling over)?"

Thankyou friends: you are all lovely people, but telling me to come out when I can't get out of bed is just making my day (except for Helen, because you aren't at Oktoberfest and I love you for telling me to go out and get pissed to cheer up for other reasons).

UTS Student Association elections are on this week, and due to factional and friendship alliances we're over there campaigning for Left Focus. Hmmn, another t-shirt to add to the growning collection of political clothing eh.

It was actually really difficult because all of our people aren't used to the layout of UTS, and it was really hard to know who to even target. I think also, on our home turf we have greater organisational know-how and can call people on their shit. I was a little nervous about vote spoiling because I'm not so firm footed on the UTS issues, and if I got in to a debate with another campaigner I was kinda out-shouted. And the opposition are the crazy left, which is hard because I'm used to campaigning against people who are a lot more right-wing. The weirdest thing was when I got verbally attacked by two opposition campaigners and they tried to intimidate me. I guess I must look meek or something, but they totally picked the wrong person to have a fight with. Then Anita, seeing that I was getting ripped, came over and just started going off at these guys: "Do you realise how intimidating it is for two guys to target a single girl etc", and it was very amusing for me. But that's not the weird part, that bit was just low tactics...the weird part was about 2 hours later when they tried to recruit me to their ticket. Odd.

I drank too much of this caffiene stuff though, and I've sort of been twitchy all afternoon. It was like Thai Red-Bull or something, but it was more like redbull syrup with no fizzy in it, and it was thicker than normal redbull..and had 26 grams of sugar in it, which is quite a lot in 150mls. And the side of the box said a whole lot of stuff written in Thai, but english as well...and I'm not really sure why the word "pharmaceutical" was written there. I feel a little strange now, and I know that for a while I was blinking weirdly, but I couldn't do anything about it.
My heart rate seems to have slowed down now though...hopefully I won't start convulsing later this evening.

Our voice t-shirts are way cooler than Left Focus.

Wow, Clare Bowditch and the Feeding Set were awesome. As was Glenn Richards, who did the warm up (he's lead of Augie March, doing a solo tour, and haz an amazing voice and stage manner).

Merchandise whore that I am I bought a Clare Bowditch singlet which is very cool, and also a poster that Clare and Libby signed. AND I got my album signed by Clare. She is a very nice person, they played a two song encore and after the set was finished she came out to the merch table really quickly and chatted with everyone who wanted to get something signed, which is more than most people do.

Sorry I'm rambling, but it really was a great gig and I am happy, at this moment, with my lot in life (which is very different to how I was feeling say....about eight hours ago, or last night, but that's entirely another story).

But for now, it's quite late and I am sleepy, so I will dream about music and marshmallows, and other whimsical nice things. Tra la la...maybe some penguins as well...

I wish I didn't have Raelian in my sociology tut for two reasons:

1. He drives me crazy with his huge ego and attitudinal problems

2. He is crazy. I remember our first tut, we were talking about the concept of nationalism and othering. In response to nationalism, he stated that he sees himself as a global citizen and doesn't prescribe to the concepts of national identity. Asked then, when he's in another country does he seek to subvert Australian national identity when overseas, he replied "well I don't know, I've never been overseas". My response *muffled laughter*?!
On the notion of othering, he said "being of a religious and sexual minority I find I am often othered". I think to myself, sexual minority..this makes sense, because he works in the Queer Collective. But religious minority I ask myself? Talking to my brother later, I find out that this dude is a Raelian. Religious minority?!
IT"S A CULT

But anyway, today we were talking about death and identity, and as I approach such topics from an atheistic view point, my opinion is that what matters is the here and now, you only have one finite life so wy not make it worth it. But apparently this isn't good enough, so we got to listen to a 45 minute lecture from this idiot (savant in his own opinion) about cloning and 'trans-humanism. Because apparently we'll soon be able to download our consciousness into a computer then upload it into a clone, thereby achieving continuity and immortality.

I wouldn't want to live forever, I've made enough mistakes in life in 19 years. God help me and everyone else if I lived eternally.

1. I was right. I said "I think I"m allergic to Sydney" and he laughed.
2. He said "How is your diet?" I replied "I mostly eat toast". He said "Not good enough"
3. The doctor makes me feel generally uncomfortable because I feel like I shouldn't be going because I'm not 'feeling' sick.
4. He made me get medicine stuff that I have to use every day indefinitely. I don't like the sound of that.
5. I have to go back in two weeks, and for the reasons outlined above, this is not an idea that gives me pleasure.

Stats lab test (as in Excel functions) today. Oops. I'm a fuck-up I realise, when it comes to things like maths and chemistry. Actually, had a chem tut today and we got to fill out our end of session tutor evaluations. I said exactly what I thought of that mean, scary, old bitch. Because I hate her, and she kills my life.

So now I'm at home eating tim-tams, which I know I'll regret because I'll probably eat them all then feel guilty. And I'm drinking orange juice...which really doesn't go well with chocolate..which is puzzling when you think how nice jaffas are, or terry's chocolate orange. mmmmnnn, terry's chocolate orange.

I'm going to the doctor tomorrow. I felt as though I needed to when I made the appointment on Monday (green snot, very pleasant). But now I feel ok, and I don't want to go to the doctor if there's nothing wrong with me. Especially because he will say when I get there something along the lines of "what's wrong with you" and I will say, at the risk of sounding absolutely ridiculous "I think I'm allergic to Sydney". Then he will laugh and say "not my problemo, you just need to acclimatise to the insanely polluted air, and then you'll be fine". At which point I will say "well I knew this would be a fucking pointless exercise" then start sobbing because it will be very early in the morning, and I am just so over everything.

I'll admit that I'm procrastinating, there really is no doubt about that. But I was trying to do some work, I even came to uni on the weekend. I have a stupid stats lab quiz on tuesday and I'm trying to do the past paper, but I cannot figure out how to make these stupid fucking Excel functions work, and of course it doesn't say how in the lab notes. It makes me. want. to. SCREAM.

I need to get into the maths building so I can get on to the server, so I look at the website and it says "MO20 is open weekends 12-6pm. Mathematics students should have automatic swipe card access to the red centre." Then in goes on yada yada "In session 2 2005, there will be no weekend access to MO20, so no student will have swipe card access to any Red Centre labs."

I hate this place.

I found this website that generates love poems for sad geeky teenagers...and I couldn't help myself.

I choose to call this one 'Lubricated Love'
Once More, My Love

This night I shall dream of your great apple ripe rose.
Once again, this night as all nights, I long to sip from your harp-pink lips.
In my dreams we fly on the exquisite wolfing sparrow panties of love, skimming vast continents of mirrors and breasts.
The seas shall never separate our lubricants.
Its waters wave like small fragrant skin angels greeting us from afar.
We shall feast on chocolate-coated chemise and tender letter hearts of love.
Adorned in white silk, we pluck our booms from our roses.
I shall hold your harp against my fragrant skin-muffin so that our lubricants melt into one.
You will always be my little wipeie face, the harp of my blushed eye of love.

Ahahahahahahahahah!!!

Sometimes I feel like I've drifted off course..which is slightly problematic because that suggests I know what my course is. I don't. But anyway, that's a bit too deep for this time of night.

Tharunka got an email today from someone going under the name "Fashion Liberationist", being generally offended and righteous about the article Anita and I wrote under the nom de plume "Frou Frou McDash and her trusty sidekick Sparkle Boa". It was a mildly amusing piece, condemning some of the tragic fashion on campus, namely jeans tucked into boots, and the bolero jacket (with a mention for tacky pleather metallic accessories). The poor little petal didn't like it one bit. Probably because when she read the article she was committing all of the fashion crimes mentioned. Reading her little email brightened my day, especially when she tried to make some kind of parallel about boots and geckos...not really sure where the geckos came in but anyway, maybe that's because I don't understand the fashion aesthetic.

I started thinking just now that maybe I'd like a gecko as a pet, because they have a cool name. I didn't realise there was so many types of the little critters and that they were so ugggly. I always had an image in my head of them being really cute. Oh well.

Maybe I could get a pet turtle instead. Or a penguin...

I don't like the train. At all. Firstly there was a weird guy who kept talking to me and Melon about being patriotic, and telling really un-pc jokes about 'Japs and Jews' and I wanted to tell him to piss off but we were both too polite. But then he got off the train.

Then, when we got to Werris Creek, aka hole in the middle of the earth, so they could "amalgamate" the two trains we ended up getting delayed for over an hour because they just couldn't quite get the Morree train to stick to the Dale one.

There's only so many games of solitare I can play, books I can read, and ways Melon and I can make fun of the announcer's voice.

I should have spent the money and caught the plane.

When I was catching the bus home though, there were all these little emo-grommets trying to get to UNSW but they had no idea how (mainly because they were on a Randwick bus), so I gave them instructions how to get there and they asked me to stay on the bus with them. Maybe if they had been out of high school and not all expressing their individuality by all dressing like emo-grommets. Made me giggle though.

I think that somewhere in the covenant of family relations, there must be some ruling that says a stepmother has to be a bitch. I honestly do not understand what I did to that woman but she seems to have it in for me (and my brother no less) big time. And to be perfectly honest, I'm a bit over it.

I just sat through a very unpleasant dinner, admittedly not the most unpleasant we've had, made so because she has dubious politics and even more dubious intelligence. Example: we are talking about DNA and the show that was on the ABC a while ago (which I missed becuse apparently the people in our house have some kind of allergy to documentary film making but this is not the point), and I make the comment that there are some really interesting feminist issues in the whole DNA structural discovery thing. At this point, might I add that DNA is what I want to specialise in for my hist/philos of science major. Just a comment that I made!

But then all of a sudden I am under attack for being and ugly feminist blah blah blah and it's ok that Rosalind Franklin's results were stolen because it had nothing to do with her being a woman, "any scientist would have done it". I say BULLSHIT. For one thing: the reason why Rosalind Franklin was marginalised was because of the scientific boy's club that existed in the 50s. Full stop.
And for another thing, it was like she was suggesting that because it happened in the 50s then it was ok. Not OK. Ever. Look, I don't even consider myself to be a hardcore feminist in any way, but she is an idiot and I can't say anymore about this because I'm really angry and upset. I won't even start on what she said about the second world war and the Japanese.

Is it not enough that this woman ruined my childhood? Aparently not.