EXTERMINATE! · EXTERMINATE!

And the funny thing is... I have met and taught students like this.

I dunno how he does it, but Beaker manages to make even a cheesy Disney song sound awesome!

I am referring to Beaker's duet with Demi Lovato. You can find it on YouTube.

Let me tell you about my awesome new job:

I hand out sample chocolates to people in supermarkets.

And you wanna know the best part.... it's for LLLLLIIIIINNNNNDDDDDDTTTT!

That's right, I get to hand out Lindt Lindor Balls out to people.

*proudgrin*

Ok... in September I ordered Dima Bilan's CD Time River. I finally got the CD a couple of days ago. I totally love it... the songs are awesome and Dima is a brilliant singer.

There's only one problem: I don't know what any of the tracks are called... at least in English.

The CD track listing is in Russian. I can't read Russian... or rather Cyrillic. Which causes a minor problem... I love a song... and I don't know what it's called.

XD

I'm such a doofus sometimes....

Ok, yes, I am finally going to rant aboutTwilight. I know the title says this will be an essay on Twilight, but I will be the first to admit that this will hardly follow the correct essay structure. This is more of a written rant that will cover several points, most of which have been covered by other ranters. Firstly, I would like to point out that some of these opinions are based on readings I have done on Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I’m actually quite a fan of the vampire genre and have my personal preferences when it comes to vampires.

Now... onto the rant!

( Click here for the rant )

Ok... for a while now I’ve been thinking about something someone said on an X-Men RPG forum I’m on (prepare for the geekdom). I can’t remember who said it or what it was in reference too... but something was said about codename’s being there to tell people about your powers.

For those of you not familiar with the X-Men universe, the mutant characters who are part of the main teams have codenames which they refer to each other as when out in the field. Now this particular person believes that codenames are there to tell people about the mutant’s powers.

Maybe this is just me, but doesn’t that seem kind of stupid? Seriously, if you’re a mutant and your codename tells people exactly what your powers are... won’t your enemies know exactly what to do to counter your powers? Now generally, the codename has something to do with the character’s powers, but sometimes it also has something to do with the character itself.

An example of this is one of my own characters who has a healing factor, yet her codename is actually a death spirit. I specifically chose the name, Keres, because according to mythology Keres is the daughter of Nyx, the Greek goddess of the night. In the case of the character in question, her mother was codenamed Nyx, which in turn lead to her being codenamed Keres in memory of her mother. Even in the case of Nyx, who has mediumship powers, there was a reasoning behind her codename.

Even in X-Men canon, codenames do not necessarily have anything to do with the character’s powers. Take Cyclops for example: he shoots lasers out of his eyes (not exactly his powers, I know, but close enough). The codename Cyclops, as far as I can tell, refers to the red visor he wears to keep his powers in check, thus creating the illusion that Scott Summers has only one eye.

Another example of this is Fenris, a set of German Nazi twins with bio-kinetic powers that only work when they’re touching. As far as I know... the mythological Fenrir wolf of Nordic mythology has NOTHING to do with their powers.

That said, codenames should have something to do with either the character or their powers. Something completely random and nonsensical would just not make sense. So really, it’s a double edged sword.

In other news... the Australian government has been helping the Papuan government bring much needed medical support to the Kokoda Track. Yay!

Iron Man is educational. I spent a double period watching it at school today. Seriously. We watched Iron Man at school.

Yes, I am going to attempt to try and revive this journal. I know. Gasp! I can't believe it either. But I have a sudden desire to write a few essays and such.

I'm currently on rounds, so until Friday I'll probably be spending time on planning stuff for my classes.

Ok, I'm going to be the first to admit that I have been really slack with this thing. Suffice to say that Uni and various other things in my life have been restricting me and yeah.... *knows her excuse sucks*

Any way, I'm writing this after the busiest weekend I've had, thus far. I had to work three gigs: one corperate party and two weddings.

Firstly: the corperate party was on Friday and at the Melbourne Museum. Pretty cool huh? I didn't even know the museum had function rooms. Any way, I get there and I have to go a very long way to get all my very heavy gear to the place I needed to set up. The party itself was pretty boring, watching people eat and talk about economics and all that puts a dampener on your ability to have fun. Any way, I eventually got to leave and had much help from the staff getting my junk to the car.

Secondly: first of two weddings. This one was at Chateau Yering, somewhere I'd been previously during training. Fairly easy night since I was given an explicit list of song I had to play, including what order to put them in. I wasn't able to play all of them, but what could you? Once again I got fed, this time round I had a gorgeous piece barramundi with some kind of tangy yellow sauce on it. Only downside was that they put prawns in the potatoes :( Yuck!

Thirdly: last night, another wedding, this time at Bram Leigh Reception Centre on Mt Dandenong Road. Now, normally I hate Sunday weddings because NO ONE dances. Boy was I wrong this time. The brides family were all Indians and Indians all love to dance. You can imagine my pleasure when I finally realised this. The happy couple at this even also had a list I wasn't supposed to deviate from (until told otherwise), but I got to play around with the order of the songs. One downside to the event. I mispronounced the brides name! I was so embarrassed. To quote the duck Nazi: You are disqualified!

At kickboxing last thursday someone stepped on my glasses, by accident, and completely and utterly squished them. By squished I mean utterly disfigured the frames, making it impossible to straighten them out. So... no more glasses.

On the plus side I got shiny new glasses.

I'd had my old pair for yonks, and quite frankly they were getting really old and icky. These new ones are nice and shiny! ^_^

You can tell I'm not easily amused can't you?

Ok, so it's been four days since I had my wisdom teeth removed and I can confidently say that I desperately want my chewing abilities restored right now! To be perfectly honest I am sick to death of not being able to chew and living off soups and all that. Grrr it's incredibly frustrating!

Annoying thing is, I have a craving for a hamburger I know I can't eat right about now. Needless to say I am going nuts.

On the plus side, feeling utterly miserable for two days did give me time to muse over one of my projects.

After much thought and *gasp* research I have now come up with these slight changes:

1) Jan is now sixteen not seventeen

2) There is now another brother, temporarily called Viktor, who is in the army

3) Possibly going to be a sibling for Jan who died as a child, not sure about this yet

4) Domestically, Magdalena is now officially Lena. This is based on a Dutch tradition that I recently discovered.

Surprisingly enough Pride & Prejudice is probably going to end up being my main source for ideas for my two female leads: Magdalena and Catharina.

Ah... the uses of delightfully entertaining period novels....

Sometimes I wonder why people/things have to be reffered to by so many names. Last night, for a reason I don't even understnad, I started to think about all the names/nicknames I go by.

Here's the list:
My full name (Did you honestly expect me to put my actual full name up here?)
Megan
Meg
MJ
Megs
Meggy (Only a very few people can get away with this without being throttled)
Meggles
Guiness (EJ Rover nickname)
Rat
M'Gigs (Short for M'giggles)
Mallet
Obi Wan
Mouse
Milli
Sis
Emerald Bubbles
EB
Lemur
Biggles

See what I mean? All those names for little old me!

Just had the Anime Club AGM tonight. We had to elect new members for the club council. For some odd reason... I was nominated for Vice-President.

For some strange reason someone (who's going to remain nameless) reckons I'm trustworthy enough to takeover when EvilTom goes to Japan in the middle of next year.

Apparently everyone else agrees with aforementioned someone.

That's right, I'm now officially the Vice-President of Deakin Anime Club.

Excuse me while I gape in disbelief...

( Also, a meme from Fizzy! )

Ok I thought I'd let you guys know that I'm adding another project to my list. I blame my literature tute for giving me the kick up the bum needed to get me to write this. So my projects as they stand:

Portrait of a Revolutionary - Basically the story of the revolution told from the point of view of one Miss Gabrielle Jones who is staying with her uncle in Paris. Romance, politics and intregue abounds.
Sequel to follow.

The War is Over - A futuristic vision of the world involving bombs, madmen, kings and murderers. One of two stories.
Sequel to follow.

And also...

The Van Helsing Secret History Project - I'm not sure about the rest of you, but I'm pretty sure Van Helsing and Dracula have met before, somewhere in the past. What happened to cause his wife to go mad? Who/what killed his son? Why does he hate Dracula so much? I'm going to attempt to answer these questions and more, hopefully without brutally trampling the entire Dracula cannon under my feet.
ETA: Yes I am aware this sounds like a massive fanfic.

You know, I never really understood how egocentric little kids can be until now.
Over the weekend my cousin (who will only be referred to as G) had his engagement party. The general idea was that I wasn't going to be able to go because of work. This is the downside of having a regular saturday night job. I got a night off, so I got to go, HUZZAH!

I generally like going up to Geelong to see everyone, especially since I get to play with the wonderful Fudge. For those of you have met my idiot of a dog Goldie, think of her but only a little smarter and a lot younger.

Any way, I spent most of the party with another cousin and her adorable daughter Tara. We were visiting Fudge and the other dog Nipper in their little enclosure. Tara was absolutely convinced she was going to take Fudge home with her. You can imagine the difficulty I had in trying to explain to her that Fudge belonged to someone else.

*sigh*

I really should know better, but I can be such an idiot sometimes.

G had a good time at the party and enjoyed all the pressies we gave him and his lovely bride-to-be. She has officially become a member of the family now since Tara has taken a shining to her. But we all really like G's fiance, she's really sweet and she makes G happy so that's all that counts.

Sorry I've been a bit slack folks, Uni work has just gotten ahead of me at this time. Although I must say that my laptop is officially on very thin ice after it deleted nearly ALL of my 2,000 word education assignment last Friday. This meant that I spent most of the weekend re-writing it.
2,000 words. I was not a happy little lemur after that incident.

Saw V for Vendetta though. Bloody brilliant film! Absolutely brilliant! Words fail me.

There are certain songs in existance that can only be listened to at full volume, where there are others that can be listened to at any level. I have just disocvered how criminal it is to play a song that must be played at full volume at anything but. My Sharona at background music level is just PATHETIC!

Can anyone think of any other songs similar?

Also, on an unrelated topic....

HAPPY 18th BIRTHDAY FIZZY!!!!!

Today's history tutorial inspired me to have a deep think about the one thing in history I had been relatively sure about. It also inspired me to automatically park in a side street off Elgar road every Tuesday, but that isn't the point.

As many of you will know, on the 6th and 9th of August respectively, 1945, America dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This brought about the end of the war in the pacific with Japan's unconditional surrender a few days later. The question is: Was America doing the right thing when it dropped those bomb's?

Morally it is inexcusable to needlessly slaughter civillians just to end a war. However, if America hadn't dropped the bomb and had gone ahead with the invasion of the Japanese home islands, thousands of American, Brittish and Australian troops (not to mention the numerous Japanese soldiers and civillians who would have fought to the death to save their homeland) would have died during the estimated year long invasion.

A few years ago I would have said America was wrong, that dropping the atom bomb on those two cities was about as bad as the Holocaust. But now that I know a little more about the situation at the end of the war and the atrocities the Japanese had committed (trust me these guys make the Nazi's look tame), and the possibility of an invasion that would most likely end in a bloodbath, I still think that it was wrong to drop the bomb. Wrong, but also necessary.

Killing throusands to save millions. Catch 22.

One of the girls in my tute group asked what we would do if we were faced with that same choice. Personally, I don't think I'd be able to make that choice. Either way I'd feel guilty as heck over whatever choice I made. And it scares me that someone might have to make that choice again...

Apparently I am not the only Dalek nerd out there...

http://artistic-insanity.net/song/daleksong.html

Many, many thanks to Fizzy for showing me this song!