1. At dinner tonight, we had a long conversation about fandom, specificly Star Trek, in which nishtalitha and I talked about who had the most ridiculous Mary-Sue (me, by a wide margin) and tamarillow refused to divulge the details of hers; we argued the merits of Kirk/McCoy v Kirk/Spock (Kirk comes out the winner in that one. COMES. HA.); and we all acknowleged that there may be a great deal of fantastic fic about the construction of New Vulcan but it probably all exists in the gen part of fandom, which we're all terminally unaware of.

2. See above.

3. Ugh, I want a nap.

4. No, seriously, Kirk/McCoy. Reboot fic. I think the thing that makes me like them as a pairing is the same thing that made me like Harry/Ron far more than I liked Harry/Draco, even though (a) there is a lot more Harry/Draco in the world and (b) I consequently read more of it: namely, that the canon shows them as people who have a strong basis for a relationship. Reboot Kirk/Spock... kind of doesn't do it for me. IDEK. Not that it's stopping me or anything.

4A. Just, like, conceptually. Conceptually, there is a bar, and I can't quite find it convincing.

4B. Whereas Kirk and McCoy are all about banter and drunken shenanigans. I understand that a lot more than I understand a public choking.

5. Borders has just sent me a 25% off EVERYTHING coupon. They've just got in a lot of Eloisa James. I might well be convinced.

6. Also, just generally in fiction I like banter and comedy and people liking being in each other's presence.

6A. I'm a really lazy person; I hardly ever make an effort to be friends with people, and consequently am friends with people who, like, 95% of the time are not an effort to be around and hopefully I am the same.

6B. I don't get why you'd bother to spend months pushing through emotional barriers and brush-offs and whatever the fuck when you could just as easily spend the time with someone who's all "Saturday. My place. Bring bourbon. I'll bring the lube."

6BA. Especially when you're supposedly a giant spaceslut.

6C. But, yes, liking each other is a lot more important for me—to be able to see that on the page—than, like, a ~mystical soulbond of OTP~ (and I'm not specifically talking about Star Trek here; it applies to A LOT of the stuff I read).

6D. God, Mary Balogh. So, right, she has this one novel about a prostitute and the minor-nobility John-who-loves-her, and whenever they have sex the girl has to lie completely still coz that's the only way he can get his rocks off (not that he's fantasising her being dead or anything (I think) but just because he doesn't like pushy women) and then they end up getting married... for convenience... or some shit, I don't really remember. I mean, she's an ex-prostitute and now his mistress and I cannot conceive of a single situation with the possible exception of syphilis and an heir you really hate where that would be remotely convenient in Regency England, but. But.

6E. Basically, people should like each other! Especially if they're committed to a long-term relationship!

7. My posts are way more ordered when I number them. Funny that.

Jemima: *rustling noises*
Me: Oi! You! Get out of my bed! We do NOT have that kind of relationship! *throws back bedcovers*
Jemima: *offended* mrrrrow! *scarpers off*

Also, I have officially sprained both my ankles, the right worse than the left. I am not impressed at the world, or at my ability to walk across my own bedroom floor.

The Earnest Liberal's Lament
by Ernest Hemingway
I know monks masturbate at night
That pet cats screw
That some girls bite
And yet
What can I do
To set things right?

I am reading the most ridiculous fic in the world ever (and I'm not going to link to it, because it's not meant to be ridiculous, and calling it that is therefore mean), and even as I'm laughing at the crazy, I'm sighing at the sweetness of it all. So maybe I can't take the hurt/comfort bit seriously, but good god I <3 romance as a genre.

Almost bought a couple of Mills and Boons today with titles such as His Pregnant Housekeeper Project (she dresses like an old bag! but has secret curves that light him on fire! he's used to casual affairs, but somehow he can't stand the thought of any other man coming near her! also, for various business reasons that make very little sense in the current social climate, he has to pretend to be engaged so as to get the respect of his other billionare friends! she's his housekeeper! then she's his pregnant mistress (never a girlfriend) and then she's his bride! sigh) and The Greek Playboy's Secret Love-Child (he has bettered himself so now can take his wicked revenge and/or go back to the woman he loved and lost! also, little timmy has a grave disease). But then I didn't, coz of standards and also coz I'm kind of considering an amazon order, what with the exchange rate, and therefore should save my pennies for georgian porn by eloisa james.

i have descended into contempt for the shift key. it is therefore time for bed and/or more chapters of the lolacious h/c fic of awesomeness.

I have been drinking coke and playing SimCity 4 all day, and now when I close my eyes all I can see is brightly coloured tiny cars stuck in a traffic jam like swarming ants near a smear of honey.

The stupid thing is that I think I was this bad last year (not that I can really remember it) and certainly this bad through 1998-2003, those unlucky years where I was regularly sitting exams. And now 2008-2014 are going to be exactly the same, only this time with legally-purchased alcohol, tears of manpain, office chairs, law texts, low heels, and the crackling sounds of packets of crunchy noodles and low-rent chocolate.

Academia: a lot less fun than advertised.

I own this black top with beige polka dots, right, and I'd completely forgotten that I owned it until I randomly found it folded under my bed two weekends ago. So then I washed it again (who knows what else lives under my bed? I sure as shit don't) and wore it to work today with a black cardigan and black pants and my formerly-pink-now-beige docs. It was fairly rocking.

Anyway, the purpose of that story is to give this story, which is that I was randomly talking to one of my drafters, and she said: "hey, I really like that top of yours!"

To which I replied, "Thanks!" and then "Yeah, so I'd completely forgotten that I owned it until I randomly found it folded under my bed two weekends ago."

And she said, "So, basically it was like Christmas, then?" And she laughed, and I laughed, and then I did the sudoku.

The point of this story is not that I get along with my drafters, but that I have no brain-to-mouth filter and it is a constant struggle for me in conversation (with people I know fairly well) to not, like, randomly start telling them every little thought that pops into my head about how my life is a pit of misery right now (not really) and just what I think of the tort of negligence (bollocks, piss, shit, ass, inconsistent vocabulary usage combined with a lack of imagination on the part of both counsel and judges so that we have a system where we think that the words we use—proximity, reasonable forseeability—somehow make sense even though the sense in which they're meant is so stretched from the original meaning as to be entirely insane and ILLOGICAL, KIRK).

Yeah.

Goodbye Facebook and Bebo.

In lieu of me actually studying, I have deleted my accounts with both: honestly, I keep in touch with the people I want to keep in touch with anyway, and I'm not really that fussed with the idea that future employers/acquaintances might get Internet-happy and look me up. IDK. I never really used either site, and having my real name and photo clearly identifiable on a really well-known and populated site always made me a bit uneasy.

It's not that I haven't put my photo up on lj before. But, like, it's not associated with my real name (unless people already know it) and lj has a way different code of social conduct (at least, the bits of it I'm on do) than Facebook and Bebo. By which I mean: on lj/dw I can create filters however I choose and thus retain some measure of control over who has whatever information I'm letting out. And nobody on lj/dw has ever put photographs on me online without my permission and then tagged me in them, unlike Facebook WTF. Not that Facebook possibly did not have filtering options, and not that I was somehow unable to complain about the pictures if I'd felt moved enough to do so. But. But.

This rant has been brought to you by too much corned beef and not enough contracts study (by which I mean "a lot" and "none", respectively).

The lecture part of university is now over for the year, and I'm heading into EXAMS. I have my Contract exam on the morning of the day after labour day, and my Torts exam on the morning of the 6th of November. I have done no study thus far this weekend, although I'm about to go start cooking corned beef and will probably take my contract books with me into the kitchen as I'll have to be in there for a while, skimming off the fat and deciding what I want to cook with it.

I'm fairly sure that as soon as I'm done with exams for the year I'll go on a massive Heyer kick. It'll be awesome.

We passed mooting, I believe quite comfortably. Now there's just continued readings for Torts and Contract, revision for Torts and Contract, and exams (eek!).

But it will all be over by half past twelve on the 6th of November.

Also: it's cold. Cold like we're running the heat pump and I'm vaguely considering putting on a hat or going to bed for warmth.

So basically what I want is a fic that goes like this:

Dude and Boyfriend (BF) are having a lot of sex. Sex with anal penetration and no condoms coz they're exclusive and/or lazy and/or stupid.

Dude wakes up one morning and vomits.

Time passes

Dude wakes up one morning and vomits. Dude realises that he has in fact been vomiting every morning. BF has also noticed this. Dude goes to doctor.

There are shenanigans.

It transpires dude is pregnant.

There are further shenanigans.

Doctor is like, well, you have two options—
A) chemical abortion or surgical abortion, depending on the stage of the pregnancy YOU ARE PREGNANT WHAT IN THE HELL? or
B) you attempt to carry the baby to term; you probably die; baby almost certainly dies

Dude and BF have a chat and reassure each other of their one true love and their desire for picket fences and/or more exclusive and/or lazy fucking.

Dude takes option A.

Time passes

Dude and BF adopt infant from war-torn nation and/or get a surrogate and/or have semi-exclusive threesome with hot blonde chick from Manitoba which results in a young cherub named Wilbur.

THE END.

( ETA: MSN conversation/fake article by me and jessikast )

My life is a fucking tragedy, what.

No seriously. My plan for today was: to read the 5 cases I need to read for my mooting meeting tomorrow afternoon, make a shitton of notes, proceed to spend tomorrow morning sleeping and then make it to the meeting well-rested and prepared.

But NO. Instead today I have: eaten like 10 mini Milky Way bars (the bite sized ones!), a bowl of chocolate icecream, 2 bowls of cocoa chex with milk, and drank a can of coke. I did have casserole and toast for dinner though. Read a lot of fic, played the sims, watched part of Indiana Jones and insulted the television, wandered around a lot bemoaning my fate.

So then I went to talk to tamarillow and found her reading fic instead of working on her 2 assignments, and then we made a STUDY PACT to get up at 8am tomorrow and do homework without turning on our computers.

Just now she was standing in the hallway and could hear me typing.
Her: you're posting, aren't you?
Me: ... yes?
Her: why must you expose our tragedy to the world?
Me: ... um.
Me: But you know I'm posting this conversation too, right?
Her: I hate you SO MUCH.

8 days of holiday to go! WHEE!

When I woke up this morning for the first time, all I could think was that my head felt like a bowl full of jelly. And I thought about that for a while, and found myself thinking that I am really strange, because the normal analogy is "stuffed full of cotton wool". But that wasn't right.

So I called in sick to work and spent 6 hours sleeping.

My head does feel like it's stuffed full of cotton wool now.

Um. So I'm feeling kind of conflicted. In my head (and hopefully on digital paper) I'm reasonably able to communicate my thoughts, but when I try to talk to people it comes out in grunts and stutters and short phrases all muddled together (I get like this when I'm sick and when I'm tired and when I'm drunk, and I'm sick and tired at the moment), and I don't think it very likely I'll be much better tomorrow. But! I've got work; I've got class; New Girl starts tomorrow; and I'm meant to be doing stuff for mooting. But!

I think I might take to my bed with a Terry Pratchett novel and see how I feel in the morning.

My mother forwards chain emails to me.

My mother forwards chain emails telling me that I'll die horribly if I don't complete the chain within 10 hours (with sob stories about other people who've been run over by trucks) to me.

My mother forwards chain emails telling me that I'll die horribly if I don't complete the chain within 10 hours (with sob stories about the one who got away) with a message from her heart: "Makes you think."

... yes, mum, yes it does. It makes me think that YOU FAIL AT THE INTERNET.

Work blah this week; didn't go in today as had a headache and instead spent the day alternately sleeping and reading and knitting. Sort of tired of this whole uni thing, but have 11 weeks to go this year. Should be done with law degree by mid-2014, assuming I don't fail anything and keep going at the pace I've been going at. Feel sort of mutinous and a little weary.

Everything on my ipod is making me grumpy. I have about 29000 songs to pick from but don't want any of them. Woe is me, et cetera.

This evening I made lemon sugar cookies and wrapped up a pair of tiny, tiny pink baby shoes with ducklings to take to a baby shower for a workmate tomorrow night. Late last year she and I went out drinking with a few other workmates and ended up at the Dixon St toilets at 1am on a Friday morning, drunk off our faces and eating pies. In a few weeks, she's going to be a mum. I really like her and her partner—they're a really sweet couple who got together when she was 23 and he was 18—and I think they're going to be awesome at the parenthood thing. It's weird, though; she's by far the closest to me in age in my team (and, actually, she's 30, and there are maybe 5 staff members in the entire office in their 20s out of a staff of 85ish).

The lemon sugar cookies are really good.

I have been sleeping shittily for the past few weeks, getting about 6 hours sleep on worknights. I don't know. It takes me forever to get to sleep because my toes are cold or my nose is cold or I'm thinking about, like, the tragic/hilarious Mary-Sue of the Week and her life drama. And then I wake up every morning at twenty to seven when my alarm goes off, overheated and cranky. Sigh. I'm currently planning out my annual leave for the rest of the year. I've a week off in late August, during which I'm going to Auckland to visit my parents and jessikast, and with the 14 other days of leave I'm vaguely planning adventures.

So, Panic at the Disco have split in twain.

I felt really weird about this all day: like, I don't engage with canon much (and haven't in any of my major fandoms since Harry Potter, which I tripped and fell out of sometime around 2003 or 2004) and I was feeling sad! But I didn't know why I was feeling sad! It was WEIRD!

And then. Like—

1. although RPS has this really strange engagement with reality, where there is an absolute awareness on the part of all sane participants that the X you are reading or writing about is not the X of reality (and this happens with all fandoms) AND there's this sense that reality can't be simply dismissed in RPS fandoms in the same way that film/book/tv canon can be dismissed (or at least I get that sense), so that you can't, say, ignore Gerard Way getting married in the same way you could ignore or rewrite Snape killing Dumbledore. Maybe that's just me. Also I know a lot of people totally ignored or rewrote Snape killing Dumbledore, particularly between books 6 and 7 being released. I hope my point is semi-clear?
   
2. Actually, 5 years is a really long time to work with the same people. And music IS work for these people.
   
3. Also, the making of music is (a) creative, (b) meticulous, and (c) probably bloody frustrating sometimes. It would be hard to work with people who didn't have the same creative goals or visions as you! It IS hard to do work that you're not that into.
   
4. The music business, and most creative industry, requires the participants to at least pretend to be enjoying themselves or what they're doing part of the time. The "I'm just doing this for the money and because I have no other life skills, fuck this noise" line doesn't sell tickets. At least if I am having a shit day at work I don't have to fake it.
   
5. I don't of course know whether any of the Panic members, current or former, were having actualfax Shit Days At Work, like the ones where you cry in the bathrooms or under your desk or eat entire packets of biscuits while glaring at your computer screen and refusing to talk to people.
   
6. But, whether they were or were not, it is generally better to get out of jobs (if you can) before the situation gets so bad you can't face anyone involved anymore, and that does seem to be by and large what they—all of them—have done.
   
7. I really want to know what everyone's going to come up with!
   
8. This is true of both reality and fandom.

So I've been listening to a lot of Neko Case. A lot, a lot. <3

Saturday! I—

1. wandered back and forth between bed and my computer for all the hours between 9am and 2pm
   
2. then I showered. It was a bit cold but the pressure was awesome
   
3. after that, I ate leftover fish lasagne for lunch
   
4. me and C made a terrific stew out of gravy beef, potato, carrot, kumara, onion, garlic, coriander seeds, worcestershire sauce, black pepper, marjoram, thyme, and steinlager
   
5. no seriously, terrific
   
6. we ate it with bread. It was choice
   
7. I read a lot of fic
   
8. I also played 2 games of Civ IV
   
9. we folded washing while watching music videos on C4
   
10. I uploaded a bunch of stuff, which took ages (but I really like babbling about music, so)
    
11. I changed my sheets, yay
    
12. tobias turned up for headscritching, cuddles, and food several times

Now, like, I think I'm going to go to bed.

Things that have happened:

• I had a mince and cheese pie for breakfast
  
• I got photoshop installed on my computer at work (I do not in fact know how to use photoshop. It shall be a learning experience) for legitimate work purposes
  
• I did quite a bit of work for the drafter (not one of my usual ones) who writes everything in red ink and gives really detailed instructions. I know his regular secretary doesn't mind this, but omg it would piss me off if I had to deal with that regularly. It makes me feel like I'm being judged, even though each round of changes has nothing to do with me making mistakes.
  
• I had lunch with callie and we bitched about our mothers
  
• I spent ages trying to find things on the website, and bitching about how I can't easily find things on the website. This is because the website sucks, not because I do.
  
• I got really nice feedback from the head of IS
  
• I had a conversation with one of my drafters that went like this:
  • Him: do you normally do the Sudoku?
    
  • Me: Yes. I think it's good for me to spend 20 minutes a day thinking.
    
  • Him: ...
    
  • Him: O.o
    
  • Him: AHAHAHA
    
  • Him: that's pretty damning
    
  • Me: *innocent* What?
• This is the drafter whom I spend so much time talking to about shit that it's getting hard for me to maintain the correct level of lawyer/secretary distance
  
• Also, I'm really mean to him
  
• Actually, I think one of the drafters on level 12 is scared of me coz I sort of told him off—very gently! I smiled the whole time and told him his mistake wasn't irrevocable, just a pain to fix!—last week
  
• I typed up the journal jessikast and I wrote last summer during our road trip. Once she's written her bit and uploaded some of the million billion photographs to flickr or somewhere we can post this great literary work to the interwebs
  
• In retrospect, we spent a lot of that week drinking
  
• bullet points are awesome

Torts test: that could have been shittier.

Then I went out with a bunch of mature students to the Occidental for brunch and, er, rum-and-ginger-beer, and we chatted for an hour about how difficult it is to not be entirely immersed in the student lifestyle and have time to, like, talk about class directly after class, and about how this is mitigated by not being entirely immersed in the student lifestyle and therefore having money to do things like pay rent and buy shoes. We're maybe going to get a study group going on Saturday afternoons; I'm very excited.

SO. For the rest of the weekend, and for the next two weeks, I can play computer games and read non-Law books at my leisure and not feel the slightest guilt at doing so. Whee!

I rode halfway home tonight on a bus that did not like to go up hills. It broke down—and didn't start again—just past the Northland shops, and I walked round the corner and ended up getting a ride from a lovely woman on the same bus whose partner came to pick her up.

Now I have cramps. It's pretty awesome, for a definition of awesome that happens to include NOT AWESOME WHY GOD UTERUS I HATE YOUR STUPID FACE AND YOUR STUPID TUBES I WOULD CUT THEM OUT IF I COULD HELL IF I WANT KIDS AND THEIR STUPID LAMER CRYING FACES ANYWAY.

Question: if I change my lj name to sadiesays, would you think I'm a lamer? I'm looking at you, jessikast.

hi internets!

i'm kind of drunk and sloppy right now. like, after dinner - which was lasagne! which tamarillow made! - i didn't feel like returning to the interweb, so me and nishatalitha broke out the apple sourz and then the tequila. i had 2 more shots of tequila than nishatalitha, but we drank pretty quickly - i think dinner was at 8 or so and we had ~a lot of apple sourz and ~a lot of tequila, so. it hasn't hit yet? idk.

but point is.

i don't think i have a point.

anyways.

i'm kind of drunk! it's really fun! i've been stressing out lately with work and uni, and like- like if i hadn't been doing uat testing at work i would totally have taken a week off since it's uni holidays and MAAAAAAAAN i could do with a break but like. i have to do testing? so i can't. and the end of testing coincides with one of the 2 other CAs on my floor going on holiday for a month coz she's moving house, so i can't go on holiday then. and then i'm back at uni. for six weeks. i think i can take some time off in september, maybe? idk.

the shift key is for losers. that is all.

uh. some people might point out that i have demonstrated use of the shift key in the course of this post, to which i would just like to say: maaaaan, I KNOOOOOOOW. exclamation point.