behind the GASMASK

Makin' a new journal, because I'm sick of this one. It's here.

[01] Do you have the guts to answer these questions and re-post as The Controversial Survey?
Well duh.

[02] Would you do meth if it was legalized?
Eh. Tried it while it was illegal, no longer care for it. So... no. There are some other things I would try if they were legalised and hence regulated, though.

03] Abortion: for or against it?
I'm not for abortion. I think it's a last resort. I am pro-choice, though, because I don't believe fetuses are conscious until the second trimester, and I don't believe what a woman does with her own body is anyone else's business. More to the point, I am pro-WEAR A CONDOM, YOU FUCKING MORONS though.

Seriously, people who want to outlaw abortion? Handing out condoms on street corners would be a more effective way. I'm just sayin'.

[04] Do you think the world would fail with a female president?
No. If the world had a president (which, by the way, it doesn't) it would be me, and therefore female and awesome by default.

[05] Do you believe in the death penalty?
No. Largely because you can't take it back.

[06] Do you wish marijuana would be legalized already?
Yes, as well as most other illegal drugs. Professional production with quality control would put most of those nasty dealers cutting it with all kinds of shit out of business. Plus, smoking is just as bad for you in almost every way, but it's legal.

Also your poor grammar is getting on my nerves.

[07] Are you for or against premarital sex?
All for it! How 'bout you? ;)

[08] Do you believe in God?
No. How the hell is this controversial?

[09] Do you think same sex marriage should be legalized?
In the words of apiphile: "You make it sound like a criminal offence. I think that all unions should be equally legally recognised, and that you can stick your moralising nonsense up your arse." Bingo.

[10] Do you think it's wrong that so many Hispanics are illegally moving to the USA?
I think US immigration policy needs some serious reworking. But I don't think there's anything wrong with the fact that they're moving there.

[11] A twelve year old girl has a baby, should she keep it?
No way. Unless her parents do all the raising of said child. 12-year-olds should NOT have that kind of responsibility.

[12] Should the alcohol age be lowered to eighteen?
...AMERICAN. -throws a rock- Fuck's sake, move to Australia or England if it pisses you off that much. ...actually, don't. If you're the kind of person who thinks not being allowed to get drunk before age 21 is bad enough to leave your country over, we don't want you.

[13] Should the war in Iraq be called off?
Yes. It's been one almighty cockup after another, really.

[14] Assisted suicide is illegal: do you agree?
I think suicide is a basic human right, up there with 'not being murdered.' If you want to kill yourself, and are physically incapable of doing so, I see no reason why you shouldn't be allowed to enlist help.

[15] Do you believe in spanking your children?
Yes. Spanking as discipline is not abuse, in my eyes.

[16] Would you burn an American flag for a million dollars?
Since it's not actually a crime in my country, let me substitute; I would burn an Australian flag for several reasons. If you wanna pay me a million bucks, then sure, I'd burn one; also for light, warmth, as kindling, to cook shit on (potentially), for shits and giggles.

[17] Who do you think would make a better president? McCain or Obama?
Hey, I was rooting for Hillary Clinton.

Well... Obama, since he's the same party at least. Also a black president would be good for America. McCain is like George Bush if he got laid less. I.e., fucking scary. Plus I hate Palin. Haaaaaate Palin. So much. Plusplus, McCain's campaign lost ALL my respect as soon as they started up with the 'Obama's a Muslim' shit. First of all, he's Christian. Second, why the fuck would it matter? I think we assume the average American is not bigoted enough to discriminate based on religion... except that they're not, apparently, given how fucking many of them are flocking to the Republicans.

...I'll stop now. But seriously, this election is slowly but surely turning me into the Incredible Hulk. "MILL SMAAAAAAASH"

[18] Are you afraid others will judge you from reading some of your answers?
They will probably realise that I am horrifically racist against white Americans. Sorry, guys, I can't help it. I just wrote a fucking paper on ingroup/outgroup bias, so... don't try to convince me based on your personal example. YOU PERSONALLY are probably rockin', since you're reading my journal. White America as a whole should be destroyed with their own nukes.

...aside from that, oh, there's always something.

Powered By limobus


;D

Remember that greed gene I talked about last night?

This study says that dopamine receptors in the brain can be linked to food intake. It's basically a classic addiction; some people have less dopamine receptors or poor dopamine reuptake or whatever in the brain, and don't get as much of a dopamine kick from food as other people do, and so end up eating more and more food (possibly becoming overweight, depending on their metabolic quirks) to keep their dopamine levels as standard. Dopamine levels are passed down genetically. The greed gene appears to be passed down genetically.

COINCIDENCE?!?!?!?!

Possibly, but shhh! I'm sciencing!

I mean, something else I'd already thought of was that we might all have chronic depression related overeating, since most of my maternal family have that, too. But we'll see.

I figured out what the problem with my dad is. He simply doesn't have the greed gene.

The greed gene is what my grandmother claims put her in hospital today. She's very, very elderly--exact numbers escape us, since she doesn't have a birth certificate and no longer remembers, but the minimum possibility is 96--and her digestive system is rooted. She basically can't eat anything more than a really light meal because otherwise things go... haywire. This doesn't bother her because she doesn't get hungry very often anyway, apparently another side effect of being old. (Side note: she is so thin. All the women in my maternal family have huuuuge stomachs, asses, and thighs, something they've passed on to me, but because she simply doesn't eat very often. Possibly because she is powered by the souls of the damned and no longer requires mortal indulgences like food. As a result, she has the figure of a mummified supermodel -jealous.- I did have a point. What was my point? Umm...)

Anyway, she went over to my aunt Valerie's place for dinner the other night, and partook in an enormous roast, because Valerie's two surviving children, her three surviving children-in-law, and her five grandchildren were also persent and she had to stuff all their faces too. She ate a single cut of roast beef. Usually that would be enough for her. If she was in her house, where cuts of meat are basically all she has because anything else would just rot before she ate it, that's all she would have eaten. But because there was other food there... she felt compelled to eat a second cut of meat. And then a third. And then four roast potatoes, three pieces of roast pumpkins, a roast parsnip, a metric crapton of green salad (mostly cherry tomatos and fetta cheese, apparently) and seven glasses of very strong red wine. And then she had dessert (suffice it to say, there was at least three kinds of cake, and she tried all of them at least once and a half. And a loooot of coffee.)

What I'm trying to say is, my grandmother literally ate herself into the hospital. She's out now, and fine, and insisting it was the fault of the 'greed gene'.

I'm starting to seriously believe this 'greed gene' because to date, no less than sixteen members of my maternal family (of both genders) have been diagnosed with either binge eating disorder or an EDNOS which resembled binge eating disorder very closely except they weren't overweight and therefore can't have BED, proving once and for all that some psychologists are fucking hacks and how did these people pass uni anyway? Most of these were my cousins or second cousins, but we strongly suspect my aunts, mother, and indeed grandmother have BED or an EDNOS or whatever it is--they've just never been tested for it because the youngest of them is over fifty and they can't be bothered with that fancy psychological stuff, and what are you doing wasting your life in university Amelia Chelsea, you could be married by now, you're going to end up as a mad spinster--sorry. The last family reunion was hell.

So--genetic links to body type? Yes, duh, every woman in my maternal family has the exact same body shape as I do from the nipples down. Genetic links to binge eating disorder? Entirely possible, except no one's ever studied it (because clearly people who eat a lot MUST be fat as hell and therefore lazy and disgusting and bad people who aren't fit to raise children and don't need treatment because it's all their own fault and besides I don't want them to come in because then they will be FAT AT ME--sorry again. Umm.) I believe it is not only possible but probable, since they've proven genetic links to things like metabolism and effectiveness of certain diets and all kinds of other foody things you can find if you know what to Google.

So umm. Yeah. Greed gene. I has it.

(Also, my astronomical tits? Not from my mum's side. Not from my dad's side either, unless my aunt Rhoda is actually related to me, which would mean some serious unknown incest on the part of my dad's brother/my uncle Terry. Check it out, I have mystery tits!)

If anyone remember's me mentioning that nonspecific feeling of awfulness I've had for a couple days now? Turns out it was dengue fever. If I didn't bleed on you, you don't have it. I got it through sharing a mosquito with a friend who' just gotten back from Cape York (no, that's not a weird metaphor, the best we can guess as to how I got it from her is that a mosquito bit her and then also bit me.) It's comparatively mild, compared to how bad it could be, but jesus I feel awful. xD

So, in short, the Dee meme will be coming... later. And I'm probably taking this week off uni. Except for handing in my assignments tomorrow.

Because I desperately need something to do. Done about Philip.


a. What initially prompted me to write about them.

He was originally a character come up with in about twenty seconds flat for a NaNoWriMo attempt, which was successful as far as NaNos go (i.e. hit 50,000 words) but was, in retrospect, fairly awful. But Philip turned out to be a pretty cool character (a psychotic, delusional vampire who did awful things to the protagonist of said NaNo and her family with alarming frequency.) He arrived in Aftermaths-1 as a much less insane/sadistic version of that, and gradually evolved from a black mamba soul to a... I kinda want to say he's a bull or a stag, but he has some very canine traits as well, so it's hard. xD

b. One of their best traits.

He's the best friend you can have, especially in the Aftermaths-verse. He's a saner-than-usual version of the determinator and also a total badass, at least on my good writing days. I think the most important part of that is that he knows stuff--having been military special forces for fifteen plus years, his survival skills are probably the keenest of the group's.

I'd say also his capacity for compartmentalisation; he can be a loving, doting father and a black book operative in the same day, with almost no bleed through.

c. One of their worst traits.

He's pretty brutal, often with minimal provocation. Sadism of the original Marquis de Sade type touches on it.

d. How easy/difficult I find it to write the character.

Easy most of the time, because of, as I said before, the whole compartmentalising thing. He puts on very simple fronts. Hard whenever I have to go deeper than that. I kind of suck at showing more than one layer at once, but that's okay, coz so does Philip. xD

e. The moment where I feel that I truly captured the character.

Still waitin' on that one.

f. My plans to write the character in the near future.

Ummmmmm... see above.

I still wish they'd finished me off. It's four years to the day today.

So I'm really fucking stressed because I have had to physically drag some members of my group for the oral presentation to meetings and not one of them has done what they're supposed to have done yet--note to self, email professor about that--and now I'm just working on statistics. I was supposed to get help from Genet, Pelican, and Jackal, but Genet's been really sick, Pelican had to go home for a funeral (he's a boarder) and Jackal's completely dropped off the fucking radar. This is not helpful, considering he's also in my group for the presentation. FUCK.

At least we're making progress?




1002PSY - Introduction to Social Psychology
1003PSY - Research Methods and Statistics 1
1009PSY - Introduction to Psychological Science and Society
2038ART - Prose Writing: The Essay and Short Fiction (elective)

Assessment this semester:
Date - Subject - Type - Content - Weighting

11 August - 2038ART - short writing task - decriptive - 5% - DONE - 100%
18 August - 2038ART - short writing task - descriptive - 5% - DONE - 60%
25 August - 2038ART - short writing task - descriptive - 5% - DONE - 100%
September - 2038ART - short writing task - unannounced - 5% - DONE - 100%
2 September - 1002PSY - multiple choice exam - content to week 5 - 20% - DONE - 82%
3 September - 1003PSY - short answer exam - content to week 5 - 20% - DONE - 75%
19 September - 2038ART - non-fiction assignment - content to week 8 - 30% - DONE - grade pending
20 September - 1009PSY - research essay - chosen topic - 30% - DONE - grade pending
22 September - 2038ART - short writing task - unannounced - 5% - DONE - grade pending
25 September - 1002PSY - research report - practical experiment - 30% - DONE - grade pending
6 October - 2038ART - short writing task - unannounced - 5% - DONE - grade pending
6 October - 2038ART - short writing task - unannounced - 5% - DONE - grade pending
8 October - 1003PSY - written assignment - practical experiment - 30% - DONE - grade pending
8 October - 1009PSY - group debate - chosen topic - 15% - DONE - grade pending
13 October - 2038ART - short writing task - unannounced - 5%
24 October - 2038ART - written assignment - content to week 12 - 30%

Exam period - 1002PSY - multiple choice/short answer exam - content to week 13 - 45%
Exam period - 1003PSY - short answer exam - content to week 13 - 50%
Exam period - 1009PSY - multiple choice/short answer exam - content to week 13 - 55%

Full semester - 1002PSY - research participation - five hours - 5%

Social psych: DONE
Statistics: IGNORED
Interview with the Vampire: STILL AWESOME
Novel: ADVANCING WHUT

Handed in two assignments today, wooooo. xD Gonna have to try to get my caketin back from Noh (yes it is weird that she has my caketin, shhhh.) Kind of have to get started on my social psych and statistics assignments this weekend, but in the mean time am watching vampire movies. Hurrah~!

So as you may or may not have heard me babbling about, Repo! The Genetic Opera comes out at the end of this year. The soundtrack will be released at the end of this month. The official site is here: http://www.repo-opera.com

The thing is, Lionsgate Films has, against all logic, decided to fuck one of their star directors sideways in the butt without lube or a reach-around, and given Repo! a ten-theatre release. Ten theatres. In the USA only.

Now, if those ten theatres do really really well, Repo! will get a wider release. In the mean time... guys, please please please please PLEASE. Please. Post about Repo. I'm thinking about starting a thread on TDF but I'm not sure... so instead I'm posting about it everywhere I can reach. Post about Repo on Twitter, VampireFreaks, DeviantArt, Livejournal, blogger.com, wherever you can reach. The fans are basically the marketing team for this movie.

And just think, wouldn't it be awesome to show a major international film company a thing or two? ;)

So the internet at uni tends towards hating Livejournal, but I'm in a stats lecture and my brain is leaking slowly out my ears without N around to keep me acute. Argh. (More and more I think she's some kind of cat, either a very wild domestic or a very friendly small wild. Possibly she's just a cat therian or whatever, and possibly she just takes her Catwoman thing too seriously, but nonetheless. If not a cat, something arboreal--birds, repitillians, and aquatics are Right Out.) I'm kind of babbling because I worked on my fiction assignment too much and the dumb bint next to me needs to learn to keep her hands to herself, please. And I may have destroyed another water bottle, but it's okay, we all know this is what I get like when I'm bored.

So I updated the list of assessment two entries down. I got two 100%s in prose writing (the only unexpected result in that class so far was the 60%, actually xD) 82% on the social psych exam, and 75% in the stats exam, both results about which I am psyched. xD All I have to do is write the conclusion for my psych science report and another 500-ish words on my prose writing nonfiction essay before Friday. Then I have to prepare for a verbal debate (fortunately I am third speaker and can BS a lot of it,) write a report for social psych and another report for statistics, and then basically chill out and study a bunch until exams. I think. I'm really gonna need help with the stats one, and quite possibly the social psych one too. >_> We shall see.

Driving everywhere is kind of awesome. I'm really glad I got my car when I did; knowing that the clutch fucks up when the wheels are pointing left, for instance, helps a lot. xD Parking on campus (more Nathan than Mt Gravatt) is a giant pain in the ass, because all the spaces seem to be designed so that you can only get your car in by defying the laws of physics. It's expensive, too--$5/day or $1/hour, depending on where you park. There's only one or two days where it'd be worth getting an hour or whatever of parking would be worth it, which is a pain.

And I just realised that I passed my driving test on friggin' September 11th. How awesome is that? xD

I passed my first driving test. 8D But then I got home and found this:

Teen suicides over 'Big Bang' fears.

This is why I fucking hate most international media.

1002PSY - Introduction to Social Psychology
1003PSY - Research Methods and Statistics 1
1009PSY - Introduction to Psychological Science and Society
2038ART - Prose Writing: The Essay and Short Fiction (elective)

Assessment this semester:
Date - Subject - Type - Content - Weighting

11 August - 2038ART - short writing task - decriptive - 5% - DONE - 100%
18 August - 2038ART - short writing task - descriptive - 5% - DONE - 60%
25 August - 2038ART - short writing task - descriptive - 5% - DONE - 100%
September - 2038ART - short writing task - descriptive - 5% - DONE - 100%
2 September - 1002PSY - multiple choice exam - content to week 5 - 20% - DONE - 82%
3 September - 1003PSY - multiple choice exam - content to week 5 - 20% - DONE - 75%
19 September - 2038ART - non-fiction assignment - content to week 8 - 30%
20 September - 1009PSY - research essay - chosen topic - 30%
22 September - 2038ART - short writing task - unannounced - 5%
24 September - 1009PSY - group debate - chosen topic - 15%
25 September - 1002PSY - research report - practical experiment - 30%
29 September - 1003PSY - written assignment - practical experiment - 30%
29 September - 2038ART - short writing task - unannounced - 5%
6 October - 2038ART - short writing task - unannounced - 5%
13 October - 2038ART - short writing task - unannounced - 5%
24 October - 2038ART - written assignment - content to week 12 - 30%

Exam period - 1002PSY - multiple choice/short answer exam - content to week 13 - 45%
Exam period - 1003PSY - short answer exam - content to week 13 - 50%
Exam period - 1009PSY - multiple choice/short answer exam - content to week 13 - 55%

Full semester - 1002PSY - research participation - five hours - 5%



I think I'm gonna do the alternate assessment for that last one... and I better get cracking on those essays. Yeesh.

Blargh. It's cold and I smacked my knee into my desk really really hard and now it hurts. =(

In other news, exams are over, and it's time to sleep now.

So yesterday night, I (while dressed as a scalpel slut) walked around Southbank during Riverfire with a guy dressed as one quarter of KISS, and a girl dressed as Magenta from Rocky Horror. And two other lovely people who were awesome even if they didn't have the same copious amounts of makeup we had. xD It was really fun (and made me feel a lot better after a day of reading textbooks and occasionally throwing up. >_>) And I hope to do it again.

IN OTHER NEWS my driving test is... soon. I think. xD;

1002PSY - Introduction to Social Psychology
1003PSY - Research Methods and Statistics 1
1009PSY - Introduction to Psychological Science and Society
2038ART - Prose Writing: The Essay and Short Fiction (elective)

Assessment this semester:
Date - Subject - Type - Content - Weighting

11 August - 2038ART - short writing task - decriptive - 5% - DONE - 100%
18 August - 2038ART - short writing task - descriptive - 5% - DONE - grade pending
25 August - 2038ART - short writing task - descriptive - 5%
September - 2038ART - short writing task - unannounced - 5%
2 September - 1002PSY - multiple choice exam - content to week 5 - 20%
3 September - 1003PSY - short answer exam - content to week 5 - 20%
19 September - 2038ART - non-fiction assignment - content to week 8 - 30%
20 September - 1009PSY - research essay - chosen topic - 30%
22 September - 2038ART - short writing task - unannounced - 5%
24 September - 1009PSY - group debate - chosen topic - 15%
25 September - 1002PSY - research report - practical experiment - 30%
29 September - 1003PSY - written assignment - practical experiment - 30%
29 September - 2038ART - short writing task - unannounced - 5%
6 October - 2038ART - short writing task - unannounced - 5%
13 October - 2038ART - short writing task - unannounced - 5%
24 October - 2038ART - written assignment - content to week 12 - 30%

Exam period - 1002PSY - multiple choice/short answer exam - content to week 13 - 45%
Exam period - 1003PSY - short answer exam - content to week 13 - 50%
Exam period - 1009PSY - multiple choice/short answer exam - content to week 13 - 55%

Full semester - 1002PSY - research participation - five hours - 5%

You are in a mall when the zombies attack. You have:

1. one weapon.
2. one song blasting on the speakers.
3. one famous person to fight alongside you.

Weapon can be real or fictional, you may assume endless ammo if applicable. Person can be real or fictional.

1. A gatling gun (with assumed endless ammo)
2. "Dirty" and/or "Pushing The Envelope" by American Head Charge
3. Alucard from Hellsing.