So, that lost voice blossomed into an actual cold (despite Sister-mine's eternal insistance that everything mildly cold-like these days is Swine Flu, I sincerely doubt it is. I HAVE YET TO START OINKING! -bricked- Sorry.).

I'm not sure what to do at this point. I feel fine, aside from the throat and nose. Yesterday I sucked it up with no problems, and if it were any other job, I'd continue to suck it up. But this is a hospital, and I have to escort patients up to wards, and there are signs everywhere saying that if you have cold-like symptoms to GTFO of their hospital...

....

Egh. I'll drug myself up and fake it. If they send me home, they do. If not, I shall earn my six hundred dollars for the week and move on...

...

GUILT. I IS GUILTY. GAAAAH.

Went to Supernova yesterday - the Australian pop-culture convention thingy that is now in its SECOND year of Perth-visiting. We remain shocked that they came back for us, and cheer because this time we had BIG NAME guests. Who'd'a thunk it?


Unfortunately, these things did not come cheap. I was forced to leave my voice behind, I think due to the cold. HOPEFULLY, it's just a twenty-four hour thing, and it'll be back before work tomorrow, because I kinda need to be able to speak above a whisper--without squeaking--and I don't think a hospital orderly that's sick will inspire a whole heap of confidence.

Speaking of which, this will be my last week. I actually kinda really liked this job, even if my feet have been in a state of constant pain-or-numbness since I started. I've been doing about twenty thousand steps a day, which is good exercise, but DAMN, the feet.... and I demand to know what happened to the awesome calves I was supposed to get from this. DAMN YOU, SIMS! You have lied to me once more! Doing this much exercise is supposed to make me nice and thin and athletic!

Aaaanyway. So I work until Thursday at least.... possibly Friday, depending on what Lee (the guy I'm replacing... the whole hospital's been having a field day with that. Bad jokes abound!) decides to do. Then I get the weekend to be unemployed again, on Monday I have to go into a store to fill out forms and get a letter of offer and all that junk, then on Tuesday I start training!

I don't meet my minions until August, but you better believe I'll be working on my evil laugh over the next few weeks.

OKAY. I am going to get money out to repay my mother for all the cash I've stolen from her over the last two weeks, then I'm going to watch this movie, then play the Sims, and go to sleep early. There will possibly be food and more coffee in there somewhere, but I'm not positive.

I may be hyper from nothing. Just sayin.

BYE!

PERMANENT!

REAL!

AT JB HIFI WITH AWESOME DISCOUNTS AND ACCESS TO MOVIES AND MUSIC AND GAMES AND MUSIC!

IN ADMIN!

WITH VERY LITTLE CUSTOMER INTERACTION!

....

..........

yay!

Dude, what the hell?

I'm not complaining, like... at all, but... what the hell? Weeks upon weeks of nothing. Months of virtually nothing.

Now I've got fulltime, even if it's only temporary, that I'm kinda actually enjoying, and which could lead to more work on a more permanent basis, I suddenly get four messages/offers in only two days?

...I reiterate. I'm not complaining, but seriously. What. The Hell.

New temping job... gonna last like three weeks this time (MONEY!!!)...

I'm going to be an orderly.

...

-opens mouth-

...

-closes it again and walks off-

Soo.... called JB Hi-Fi to ask what gives, and once again, got the "if this person doesn't work out..." spiel. Gettin' kinda sick of that one. But oh well. At least I got the "totally apply again, because... you know... we do kinda want you" thing this time. -rubs temple- Also spoke to potential secondary supervisor yesterday who has made me think the PhD is plausible, again.

Up and down, up and down....

ANYWAY.

I know, I KNOW, I said I wouldn't say any more on Twilight, and I meant it. I really, honestly did. I was going to just enjoy it in all its crappy sparkly vampire teenager glory.

Sure, I started to want to take to Jacob with a silver bullet. Yes, I was of the personal opinion Bella needed to be belted over the head with a frypan. I liked Edward-the-emo-bastard and liked seeing all the little things that Bella didn't seem to notice and wanting to roll my eyes at his melodrama.

I watched the movie again, twice, and by the second reviewing I was starting to like it, because that was when I noticed all the subtle things Robert Pattinson did, more than the atrocious writing.

But now I'm three-quarters of the way through the fourth book...

...

...ohmigawdwhattheFUCK.

Clearly, I must suck. At everything. This is the only explanation I can come up with.

And I don't even suck enough to feel the worst about stuff in my two-person-and-dogs-house at the moment.

CLEARLY, this further proves my uselessness.

-headdesk- And The Sims 3, just so everyone knows, isn't nearly as therapeutic as its earlier incarnations. Just sayin'.

M'gonna go read crappy sparkly vampire chicklit... THAT DOESN'T EVEN HAVE SPARKLY VAMPIRES SO FAR. I have been jypped.

matzerfratzencrappygrr...

(waaah. My meeting today got cancelled. MORE being useless... waaaah!)

So. Finished Twilight last night.

I totally get the obsessions the entire world has about this book - both sides of it. I GET why people love it (I'll be reading the next few books, believe you me) (I have never understood that phrase), but I can TOTALLY understand why people loathe it, as well (including why myaibou says it's dangerous. I don't agree, but I can completely see how you might see it that way).


I'll be back to this, possibly with a completely different point of view, when I finish the series, I think.

In the meantime, I think I might go out and buy me some Sims3. PLUMBOB!

-cough- bye....

So.

I'm reading Twilight.

My excuse is that if I'm going to be looking at fans, fantasies and fandom, I should probably know what the heck is going on with the biggest teenybopper fantasy to see the light of day in the last six years.

I'll be giving a full accounting when the book is done.

So far, I've only read like four chapters, while I was waiting to get my car serviced this morning, but I gotta say...

I'm not hating it.

I'll leave it there for now. Coz.... yeah.

I've got songs stuck in my head....! Damn you for being fun, Bowling for Soup. DAMN YOU. And, as usual, it's actually like three songs mixed in together, so it's like "you're really one heck of a guy, best friend since junior high, it takes a big man to knock her round, danny glover, you deserve each other, ain't that a B with an itch, ain't that a mother trucker, you can go to H-E-double hockey sticks and f-yourself!" interspersed with stuff from The Used and Yellowcard, because together with Death Cabs for Cutie, those four bands were my soundtrack, yesterday. Gaaah.

I'm trying to get rid of it by singing the Discovery Channel song, but it's not working.

In other news, I have two interviews on Friday, both for JB HiFi, and if I get either of them, I'll be working in the city, but in different stores. I am far more nervous than I should be (though I think I'm justified. Six months is a very long time to be unemployed and a useless waste of space.) but also far more excited about it being JB HiFi than I should be. DISCOUNTS BABY! Do you have any idea how much stuff I buy from JB HiFi? MUUUUUUSIC and MOOOOOVIES and T- I can't elongate TV Shows.... bother. Oh well. TV SHOWS! And they're AWESOME discounts, too. Hooray!

Also, next week I go talk to another potential co-supervisor, who's more invested in fandom and so might have some ideas as to how I'd go about doing a creative component for a fandom thesis.

And tonight, I've been ordered via SMS to go to a housewarming dinner thing. Considering I haven't socialised beyond my sister and her boyfriend in a couple of weeks, this is actually a flail-worthy thing. Mainly because it's in Subiaco, actually, and I am TOTALLY GOING TO GET LOST IT WILL BE GREAT.

My god, I'm a reclusive nerd.

ANYWAY. No, this is a good thing, because I've been meaning to call Mel and Serena lately, but haven't really had an excuse beyond "I felt the need", which from most people would be enough, but from me will probably prompt some kind of "ohmigod, she must be dying!" response.

And, finally, I bought another Sonic game. The Black Knight. It's not... great. I really like the storyline, and the idea behind the gameplay, but in practice.... The score card keeps calling me a coward, which would be fine, if I COULD SEE ANY OTHER WAY TO FIGHT. Well... unless I massacre all the people I'm supposed to protect so I have a clear battlefield. And apparently that's bad, too. There needs to be a button to make Sonic turn around and tell the people "DON'T JUST STAND THERE WHILE A MONSTER'S ATTACKING. RUN. MOVE. REMOVE YOURSELF FROM MY BACKSWING."

But no. The damn hedgehog's too nice for that.

Idiot.

And no, I'm not sure who I'm calling an idiot. It's highly likely to be me.

Curtin University website, you suck...

-headdesk- Okay. Creative production model instead of straight theory.

Okay.... If I was going to do a creative production about fandom, what the hell would said creative production be?

-headdesk- I refuse to give up now, goddammit. -headdesk-

I WILL accomplish something I actually want to do. Grrrr....!

Soooo.... part of my research for this PhD thing will be different kinds of fans, and there's one area of fandom I've been part-fascinated, part-irritated by for a few years now, which will probably take up a fairly sizeable chunk. I'm not entirely sure yet what they're called, but I call them 'hack-fans' because a lot of them start off or are somehow involved in hack-fiction.

Not 'hack' as in half-hearted or crappy or whatever, but hack as in hacking - they take someone else's work and hack it apart, or, in some cases, literally hack a person's online account and insert their opinions throughout the work. It's a legitimate and fairly old part of fandom, and I have an essay about it, written by Fiona Carruthas, lying around my harddrive somewhere waiting to be read. It's meta-fandom; mocking the inner workings and cliches of fandom within the fandom. In theory, it sounds like something I'd quite enjoy, but in practice I don't like it much at all. Sometimes it even annoys the crap out of me, but I KEEP FINDING IT. And then I sit through the whole damn thing. Ugh.


It's just something I'm going to be exploring over the next few years or so... it's just something that makes me wonder. Isn't fandom supposed to be fun...?

Comment to this entry and I'll pick three of your fandoms. You must then update your journal and answer the following questions:

01: What got you into this fandom in the first place?
02: Do you think you'll stay in this fandom or eventually move on?
03: Favourite episodes/books/movies/etc.?
04: Do you participate in this fandom (fanfiction, graphics, discussions)?
05: Do you think that more people should get into this fandom?

What a shock, Scribs gave me Sonic, YGO and XME! Heh heh. Well known for the win... anywho.







-snicker- Ahh, terrible, terrible memories... fun, but... gah.

Got another forty-odd comic books... Reading the first dozen or so, I was reminded why I stopped collecting them.

It's not so much that Ken Penders and Karl Bollers weren't good at what they did, because they weren't bad stories by any means. And there was some strong dialogue and all. But it was all just so... "yeah, okay, cool, moving on". Whereas with the current stories, even if they're just six-page character pieces, more often than not leave you going "awesome!", "ohh.... ow..." or, in some cases even "What? No, that can't be the last one I have. I have to have bought more than this! Dammit!"

Though. I have to say, with the way Flynn keeps screwing with Sonic's head and his relationships, if that poor boy hasn't managed to lose the plot or at least yelled at someone by the end of 2009, I'm gonna have some issues. I mean... damn!


In entirely other news, I'm writing a, and I quote, 'review/article' for the university's magazine. It's purely for experience, no money, and it's not proving...  Well, I guess the main issue stems from the brief, which has a paragraph limit (which changed from two to five, overnight) but not a word limit, and asks for a rating out of five, but also wants me to interview the author of the book I'm reviewing. Then there's the added awkwardness of the author possibly being one of my PhD supervisors.

Humm. We shall see how this goes.

You know how on ffdn, they send out the alerts now to tell you your story's been favourited, or whatever? I quite like it, most of the time, because it's a nice little pick-me-up to get at least one of those every day. I actually prefer them to reviews, because to be perfectly honest, I think most of my fanfic is pretty crap, and whenever I get a review on something written before, oh, about... 2005, I generally cringe and expect it to be telling me that I'm crap. Whereas the favourite story alert just tells me someone liked it and oh, isn't that nice. I smile, nod and move on.

ANYWAY. Lately I've been getting a lot of favourites on an NCIS fic, to the point that I was actually beginning to wonder if the favourites were starting to outrank the reviews. And I was bored and wasting time, so I decided to wander by my ffdn profile and check it out. Because I like fishing for compliments like that. Turns out, no, they don't.

But they do on a lot of my other stories.

This amuses me, I think. Rather a lot.

It also goes to show that I'm pretty sure most people are a lot like me in that reviewing is just... too much effort. Because sometimes I just like the story, but I don't really have anything much to say about it (hi, scarab_dynasty and obabscribbler !)(scarab, I swear, one of these days I will get around to telling you how awesome Sonic Symphony is).


Le Shrug.

Oh, and also... THE LAST PART OF SONIC X HAS FINALLY BEEN SUBBED AND PUT ON YOUTUBE!!!! Oh, Baka1894 I love you so. I'm pretty sure it's still French-subs, but they're pretty close... So I finally got to see Shadow punching out Sonic so he wouldn't become a matyr, and Tails screaming at our poor hedgehog for, you know, not being omnipotent, and dammit, I love 18-year-old Chris, and Bokkun is adorable and I'm so very intrigued by the scene where Sonic is hanging out, talking to the... I'm not entirely sure what you call it now. It's definitely not just a tree, but.... ANYWAY.

...okay, I'm done now.

My head seems to be working on a rant about voice actors, so I may be back soon, but for NOW I am done. Honest.

I WORKED TODAY!

AND I WILL WORK AGAIN TOMORROW!

AND POSSIBLY (maybe) THE DAY AFTER!!!

Granted, it was a temp job and I was/am/will be just putting email addresses into a distribution list but WHO THE HELL CARES?!

I WORKED TODAY!!!!!

YAAAAAAAAY!

Ooh-hoo-hoo... soooo not happy.

I got two essays from Deb to read before I attempted my proposal draft again... one wasn't particularly important - just some high theory background to give me a better understanding of where Nietzsche and Foucault collide, yaddayadda. The other one was the introduction and afterword to a book of fan theory which was basically providing the framework for my theories.

Guess which one got thrown out in my mother's latest clean-up?

-strangles thin air-

In other news - Mr Rudd, I don't like your economic policy, and I will never, ever vote for you or your party, and I still say the stimulus package was S.T.U.P.I.D., but my GOD do I like having it in my bank account....

Fandom Secrets got me, today. 112. Except I blame fanmix, not fandom.

It kills me a little inside to admit it, but fanmix is making me love the Jonas Brothers. And Miley goddamn Cyrus. AND KELLY FREAKIN CLARKSON.

They're not even sugary, unadulterated pop! I can at least groan at myself and then giggle as I prance around singing into my hairbrush.

...MILEY GODDAMN CYRUS, PEOPLE.

The good news is, it brings out my evil tendencies, and so I'm currently on a mission to infect my sister with this evil. I'm pretty sure I'm going to succeed, as soon as I can get her to listen to them without recognising who it is...

So I went back through my journal for the last couple of months, half-trying to figure out which honesty thing I might be for Hales (labrynths... you shall always be Hales, to me, I'm afraid), or if I'm even there (if I am, I suspect I may be the furry... SHUTUPSONICISAWESOME!), and I realise I haven't actually said what's going on in reality lately.

Not that anyone will much care, but some people do check this thing to know what's going on with me, so I figure it's about time I actually said.



So yeah. That's my life as it is at the moment. I'm still making an effort to be more social, and for the most part I'm succeeding (well. For me, anyway), and still ready to beat my mother over the head with a mallet, but I figure that's standard daughter behaviour, so whatever. It's a life and I don't mind it!

Saw 17 Again.

yes, i am in a movie-going mood lately, your point being?

Zac Efron remains adorable but still gaolbait. I think he might actually be doing so consciously, now... And Matthew Perry was also sweet, what little we saw of him. HATE representation of geeks in movies, but whatever. Michelle Tratchenwhatsit pulled off straight-faced dysfunction very well.

As for the movie itself... whoa, the memories of early nineties time-warp movies...! THEY RETURN.

OHMIGAWD so many cringe moments but ohmigawd so kyute and yet still creepy at times and yet and yet and yet...!

CUTE BUT CRINGE. CRINGE~~~!