Perceptions

Hello, my name is nondescript

You know what I hate?

Heaps of stuff.

Specifically at this moment, though, I hate those people. You know the ones? Telemarketers. Already annoying before I answer the phone, because I know that we’ve given our number to only one person, and Ryan’s mother doesn’t have any reason to call when she’s certain that he’s at work, unless it’s mid September.

So she starts the call with, “Hello, my name is *blerg* from the *generic twelve-syllable business name, consonants rarely accentuated*, How are you today?” [no pause] “We’re just doing the ring around to offer you *the most amazing deal in the world for some ridiculously low price, depending on what you consider to be an amazing deal and a ridiculously low price*”

To which I felt like saying, “Excellent, could you tell me the number you called?” because as I mentioned before, Jan is the only one who knows the number. I couldn’t tell you what it is.

I’ve said this already: I hate telemarketers. I have two simple actions to perform if I ever get stuck on the line with one. Firstly, if they’re asking questions about whether I rent or own, what my electricity is like, or any similarly adult-sounding inquiry, I say, “Sorry, I’m not 18 and my parents are at work.” They instantly scarper. Or, if the call has nothing to do with that I say, “Excuse me for a second!”, leave the phone off the hook and wander away. But I was intrigued. I wanted to know what she felt to be a ridiculously low price. When I found out, I instead said, “Um, no, I don’t think I’ll take that deal.”

You know one of the main reasons that having to sit and talk to a telemarketer is the highest cause of suicide in England? Because Mark the American, who has an interestingly low grasp on the English language, has been trained not to wish you along your merry way and hang up on you until you have said no three times.

Not this time. As soon as I said no, the tone of voice went to, “You’ve made my list”, and she said, “Okbye” and hung up. The beep was happening before the word had ended.

I think she might be on her way here right now. In a white van.

Which reminds me. When I was little, I used to make myself do things by imagining there was a guy in a white van who was coming to kidnap me. I’d say, “Every time I step on tile today, the guy is driving.” and whenever I was on tiles, in my head, this crazy guy started up his engine at his current location of an undisclosed distance away from me and continued the journey. Yep. He was the crazy one.

People that I find gullible and also some other stuff.

People that I find gullible:

1 - My mother.

In actuality my mother is the least gullible person on the planet, which is what makes the conversation we had a few mornings ago all the more interesting to me. I’ve spent the past few years drilling into my parents’ brains that when downloading a movie (for we at the Cousemazoo are law-abiding citizens), they need to look for (amongst other things), a file that has ‘DVDrip’ in the name - because this means that they are downloading a copy ripped, shockingly enough, from a DVD.
My mother downloaded a movie the other day which we are still showing at the cinema. One we got on opening day, too, not one of those months-later-acquired-movies-because-who-cares-it’s-Yamba-they-probably-haven’t-even-heard-of-Avatar-yet-anyway. So I said to my dear mother, I said:

“Mother. The movie has not been released on DVD yet.”

And my mother responded, quick as anything:

“But it says DVDrip!”

“The news says Anna Bligh is a hero.”

“Psssht. Idiots.”

2 - My aunt.

My aunt will believe anything you tell her. Provided you are the internet, the television, or the Town Gossip of Yamba (yes, it’s a real profession) (which conveniently happens to belong to her very own mother). It always works if you are telling her something that might flatter or pander to her, or provide some sort of benefit to her. The added perk (and often drawback) to the level of gullibility which resides inside this woman, is that it Cannot Be Undone. Once she believes something, there is not a person on this earth who can change her mind - regardless of any directly or indirectly opposing views, ideas or pretty charts you may have to aid in proving otherwise.

3 - Yamba. Everyone and everything, every building, every vehicle, every surfboard, every grain of sand within the town of Yamba. The longer you stay there, the quicker your brain cells will deteriorate. It’s a proven fact. It’s going to take me weeks just to remember how to use a three syllable word in conversation.

On another note:

A person on my Facebook friends list posted a very interesting and insulting status update today. I say ‘person on my friends list’, because let’s face it - we are not friends (and in fact, the ‘on my friends list’ part will be untrue in roughly twelve seconds).

To clarify, Becky and I went to school together and were in the same group. I don’t think we were ever friends, despite, you know, ‘attempts’. Over the last few years I’ve invited her to stuff - at first, everything I organised, then some, and now none. The last time she actually turned up was Halloween of 2009, for maybe twenty minutes. For all the invites I sent, I received a reply for maybe, one out of every six, several hours before/days after the event, with a generic “I’m doing something else”.
So imagine my surprise to see this:

Becky Craythorn
Thanks to all those ppl who kept in touch while I was gone, and gave a shit that I was overseas. I think that numbers five people in my life, you know who you are. You aren’t even the ones I’ve known the longest, but thank you anyways. I had a great time. The rest of you, I’m sure your shells are great, but you might wanna consider the wide world outside. I spend so much time keeping up with your lives, and what for?

Well, to be honest, I did not know you were overseas. You know why I didn’t know? Because I didn’t care. I don’t care at all anymore. I might have, once. Also, I didn’t *know*, but if I ever *had* suddenly come over all interested in what Becky was doing, I would have said to myself, “She’s probably overseas. She’s been going overseas quite often lately, based on the few snippets of third-hand hear-say that occasionally get thrown my way, and Becky’s status updates that grace my news feed three, maybe four times a year.” In any case, I will dedicate the next four seconds of my time to this genuine thought: it’s great that you had a great time. And that’s just about as much time as anyone would give to anything good that they read on the status update of a person whom they know just enough to have clicked ‘accept this friend request’.
I have to say that I find it extremely interesting to hear that you consider yourself and your immediate thoughts, feelings and actions to be ‘the wide world outside my shell’. No, actually, I don’t find *that* interesting. I find it interesting that you actually admit to thinking so highly of yourself.
In conclusion, I’m glad to hear that you have five people in your life that you care enough about that you have chosen not to insult them to the point of complete alienation. I hope your life is great. Genuinely.

I can’t honestly tell if I took more offense to that status than I would otherwise have, or more than other people did, but it’s been a tense few days. On that note, get well soon. It’s time to say yes to broccoli.

If you’re not foolish young, you’re foolish old.

- Geoffrey Chaucer, The Knight’s Tale

You don’t deserve a point of view, if the only thing you see is you.

If you judge people, you have no time to love them.

- Mother Teresa

I’ve always found it hard to park when someone is shooting at you.

I feel a sense of satisfaction.

It’s because I *told* Andrew to read the first Harry Potter books, and he actually did it, and got out of it what I was hoping he would.

In all honesty, when I got the text message yesterday telling me that you were returning the books, I expected you to be lying about actually reading them, with the exception of possibly the third.

It’s true, I was the one who asked for a review, because I too will be spending this summer (hopefully) reading and reviewing in between watching movies and, you know, serving people, at the cinema. But I have nothing to that effect yet. I’ve begun Philosopher’s Stone, but as I have only a precious few days left at home before my relocation to Grafton/Yamba, I have been instead filling my time with pretending to pack (as I probably won’t be coming home to the same house), mixed with devouring season 6 of NCIS.

I will say, though, that I find the whole idea of reading Harry Potter at school highly amusing. The people I talk to at uni these days have pointed out to me that they read Harry Potter at school, and that they watched movies like Juno at school. Do you know how that makes me feel? Freaking old, man. You know what else makes me feel old? The fact that I quite literally grew up with Harry Potter and that he is actually 30 years old right now.

But I did kind of use Harry Potter for a school project once. I shall get to that in a bit, but here’s how my introduction to the series played out:

It was high school. I don’t know what year. Something makes me want to say 7. There was this boy wandering around with his nose in a book all the damn time. Every second of the day, unless it was during class, he had his face entirely hidden by one of the Harry Potter books. Even walking between classes. His name was Toby, and I thought he was such a nerd.

Fast forward a couple of days, weeks, months or something like that. My mother purchased the first Harry Potter book and spent roughly half a day reading it about the place, interspersed with her telling me I should read it. I rejected her pleas, and then later that same afternoon she asked me to go down to the shop tomorrow (as she was working) and buy the next 3 books for her.

At some point over the next week, she basically forced me to read the first page or two of Philosopher’s stone and I was sucked in. I distinctly remember being highly amused by the bit about Petunia’s neck being twice as long as a regular neck and Vernon having nearly no neck at all.

Goblet of Fire was released halfway through year 7, so it must have been some time after that. And by the time I walked into one of my first English classes in year 8, I had read them all at least twice. I chose Goblet of Fire to do an assignment on in that class (it definitely was not one of the brightest English classes - our main assignment for that term was to pick a book and produce works that added up to 100 points. Similar to how a birth certificate is 40-50, a bank statement is 10, a driver’s license is 10 etc, ours were things like “Draw a new cover for the book - 40 points”, or “Write a poem about a character - 20 points”).

So. There you go. And I believe my uppance has come in regards to thinking Toby was a nerd, because I can barely get through a day of uni without someone telling me that I am one. Cassie even wrote it in my Christmas card so I could remember it every day of the holiday season. How lovely.

Conundrums and such

aren’t all that wonderful.

In the words similar to those uttered by Maxwell Sheffield, I’ve got some complaining to do.

Dear bloggers: stop posting forty-five entries a day. Seriously. Stop it. I’m sick of my page being flooded with the damn things. The pictures are pretty. Make a collage or a screensaver and move on.

To believe in dreams is to spend a life in sleep.

is what a girl in my Social Enterprise lecture has tattooed across her back.

Alternate and more accurate blog title: Let’s see how many things I can comment on/ whinge about in order to NOT do my essays.

As the alternate title suggests, I have plenty to be doing with my time right now. I have three hours before work starts, and those three hours are approximately the only ones I have available to me between now and the due date of two of my four remaining pieces of assessment (Monday). A 1500 word essay is also due on Thursday (and sometime before that I actually have to watch the movies it’s about), and a 7,750 word raping of my soul is due on Friday.

Needless to say, next Saturday night something’s going to go down. I don’t know what yet, but keep your calendars open. I’m thinking we should all go see Paranormal Activity 2 and then chuck back a few strawberry milkshakes before some light chatter and going to bed by 10 for a good eight hours.

Or you know, try the movie on for size and go from there.

Okay, this is seriously disconcerting. I am sitting on the lemon deck and there is somebody in my spot. I can’t do anything productive unless I am in my spot. It’s common knowledge, okay? Just show a little respect for the creative mind and get the hell out of my spot. I will give you a twinkie or the imagining of one. No, actually, you can have one. It’s a super magical invisible twinkie and if you hold it up to your ear and squint just so you can hear its wrapper crinkle.

He’s still there. The height of rudeness.

This twinkie is amazing.

So, new topic. Oh, have I mentioned Batman today? No? Well, crisis averted because here it comes. Last night I had a dream that I told Ryan he should be the Joker at the halloween party tomorrow. But I didn’t realise it had been a dream, as opposed to actuality, until he said this morning that he should be the Joker for halloween. Then something about the Riddler was on the radio, and I mean, really… who talks about the Riddler these days? Nobody, is who. And THEN, I just saw this amazing picture:

Which makes me laugh. Especially when you factor in the leg behind his head.

And here’s another fun thing to look at:

Yeah. So i’ve pretty much exhausted everything I can think of.

Oh, squirrel!

An exercise in Griffith University crapitude.

I’m sitting here avoiding that essay that’s due tomorrow. No biggie. This happens often. Allowing me to avoid with swift precision is the amazing website, StumbleUpon. I’d now like to share with you the levels of restriction Griffith University has apparently placed upon my stumbling.

I first stumbled upon this:

Just a superb image in itself. I chuckled, I saved, et cetera. No problems.

I clicked stumble again and was greeted with “this page has been restricted by Griffith University”. Naturally, I was really interested to see what could possibly be restricted when the previous stumble has passed quite easily through, so I clicked “you know what, I think I’m going to go ahead and check out the restricted page anyway” (I may have forgotten the exact wording of this button).

Here is the image I was restricted from, immediately after the first:

So. Yeah. Thumbs up for Griffith University.

Time to pretend

Here is a list of hitherto undisclosed length of why today has been generally off-putting, which includes but is not limited to the following reasons:

1. I got a mark back today for an essay. The essay I handed in was, lets be honest, rubbish. Not even the delightful tosh I can smash together and be confident in at least a credit - oh no, this was complete and utter crap. Yet when I received the paper back, I found that I’d been given 86%.
You might be saying, ‘but that’s a good mark! You should be happy with that!’. To you I say, no. Just no, okay? I know what that essay deserved. I really like my tutor, not least because she hasn’t given me less than 85% in the 6 or so pieces of assessment that she has marked for me this year, but I find myself respecting her a little less for giving me an 86. I think she just goes into some crazy mode when my paper lands in front of her because her accompanying comments on today’s essay were to the effect of, “You can’t get less than 85, so you should be doing more than this”.

2. I made a comment on one of my tutor’s blog entries the other day. It was in response to some grammatical miscalculations he had performed. Yet today during class he did nothing different. I expected some daggers or something. I suppose the punishment lies in the marks he is returning to me in two days.

3. Tumblr is a slightly different colour. It was blue yesterday, I’m sure of it. Today there’s a little purple to that hue.

4. I know my landlady was in my house today, whilst I was at uni. There’s no further comment to this; I just wonder what she thinks of the state of the house.

5. The taste in my mouth is of coke but I’ve just finished a glass of pepsi.

A reflection post

I totally forgot to do this. Good thing I just remembered.

We’ve been asked to make a kind of overview post regarding the class, New Communication Technologies. It’s been quite nice, I must say. The highlights for me were having a fairly cool tutor who looked like a cross between Orlando Bloom circa 2005 and Ryan Stiles, wore a lovely scarf to at least one lecture, and showed us interesting YouTube clips; the ease with which updating my assignments could be attained through this handy blog format; and, oh, I don’t know… all that learning.

The topics were an array of interesting and frustrating, depending on how much I knew about the topic beforehand or how much it baffled me. The Creative Commons stuff, for example, confused me so I have endeavoured to learn more about it by way of my choice of essay topic. The Cyberpunk reading, Burning Chrome was mightily enjoyable and I liked the free software bit because I already use Linux and have a Mythbuntu-powered TV. My tutor thankfully pronounced Linux correctly, but not Adobe, so there’s a point off. I also liked the other lecturers, and how each one of them had specific topics to teach us from their fields of expertise. Josh/the guy that stole Rosso’s voice held helpful lectures in the field of film, which is my major, and Adam/young Dave Grohl was just plain fun to watch.

So there is my overview of the course. Oh, but I would change one more thing, which was my mark of 72% for the first assessment mark. Could be higher. Allow me to offer this classic XKCD comic and I trust this settles the matter with an extra three points.

Fin.

Dance like Hugh Jackman doesn’t.

I’ve not seen the movie ‘The Invention Of Lying’, but it had better include at least one shot of a Coke dispensary, the kind that usually boasts ‘ice cold drinks’, retitled to say ‘mildly cold drinks’.

I should do my essay.

Subway should change their ad so that when the voice-over says “real chicken breast fillet”, the video doesn’t show a cross section of a processed chicken patty.

Go the pies.