Enter Fiercely

1: The ABC is - as I type this - running a story about weekend penalty rates. On the side of abolishment. "We can't hire as many staff," they say, "and that hurts the very people it's meant to help --"
2: I'd rather write a prescribed essay than a "free choice". Now I have too many options.
3: The first pair of critiques, the one on an adaptation of Jane Austen's Persuasion, was easy to differentiate between. The one made constant use of words like wonderful and brilliant and witty and loathsome, which, when you read them, tell you nothing at all. The second - not brilliant, but passable - actually added oh I don't know maybe two specific examples.
4: It was The Big Sleep (1946). Half of the people who were there at the start of the screening were no longer there by the end.
5: On my way from the street to the Agora, I got stuck behind a group of four people discussing - quite loudly - whether Robespierre's historical reputation as the "perfect"/"corrupted" revolutionary was deserved or oh my God I'm famous and misunderstood
6: At the supermarket, there were two girls (staff members) behind registers, opposite one another, talking to each other as though killing time between customers. Their registers were closed and blocked off with trolleys.
7: The ladies at the Centrelink office didn't ask for my CAN this time. Then they told me to sit in the "second waiting area; red chair". It took me all of ten seconds to spot the red chairs. Why did this not happen last time? What changed? Oh god they're going to say they never saw my tenancy form, aren't they --
8: Twice, today, I've been called 'Mark'. This happens sometimes.
9: I don't know how old the younger sister was supposed to be, but I'm pretty sure she was a twelve-year-old being played by a twenty-something. It confused the hell out of me until I realised, "oh yeah, older people play younger characters in 1946".
10: Bake 'n' Bean had a queue of about ten and only two staff in the shop.

Ad Nauseum

I went to work, fell sick, came home, played Dragon Age. I've gotten to Ostagaar three times and only just now settled on a character I'm happy with for a first run through.

1: The character whose journey begins because he loses everything. They have a particular appeal to me when they're done well. Extra points if there's something to go back for but much later. "Voldemort killed my parents" does not fall into this category. I'm sure Freud would have much to say about this peculiar taste.
2: "Cans? I'm sure I heard him say stubbies..." Oh well, time to carry the slab right to the back of the store and then carry another one to the front and then get back to --
3: I told Iggy, "stop whining for five minutes and then I'll let you in, k?" - that was at three twenty-five. She got right up to three twenty-nine before I heard her whimper at me. Sorry, Iggy. Your test mark? Unsatisfactory.
4: It occurred to me when I looked in the mirror that the soreness in the back of my mouth, the sniffles, the nausea and constant need to swallow my own spit pointed to only one thing that gives me that combination. I knew the answer before I opened my mouth to look.
5: After having played two of Dragon Age's origin stories, I've picked out a few patterns between them. One; two 'safe' areas where the NPC's and everyone your character knows mill about. These also contain a bunch of items and regalia to get you started. Two; two separate adventuring sequences wherein you have a few combat experiences, including at least one boss (which may be a leader class enemy and a large rallied group, rather than a monster). Three; a "best friend" from whom you get separated at the end of the origin story. Four; at least one sideplot that's used to exercise your character's personality (dialogue options), rather than combat prowess, Five; an intrigue that forces your character out of his/her comfort zone and into a situation that will affect everybody around him/her, Six; a twist at the resolution of this intrigue. Seven; Duncan (the leader of the Grey Wardens) always appears before you once, at minimum, as a simple (or near to) 'chance meeting'. Eight; well, of course, Duncan recruits you, don't he?
I'll see if these same patterns are consistent in the other origin stories. And whether I can spot others.
6: I walked past the manager's wife in the middle of saying...something inconsequential to me I guess, I can't remember what it was. Two minutes later, I came back the other way, and she used the same words again, in the same conversation. Did -- did -- they change something in the Matrix!?

Buyer's Ambivalence

1: The bus along Grimshaw street said it was going to Northland. It was going in the opposite direction.
2: The guy at the counter in Centrelink suddenly ran away in the middle of looking at my ID. Then he stopped, turned, raised a hand folded in undulated light-brown flesh, and said, "Toilet!" -- before continuing across the room.
3: "Is your boss a raging nympho?" What the hell is this shit? Cinema? I disagree.
4: I looked at the timetable for my bus. Oh look, that's right now-- um, two seconds ago. Bye, bus.
5: The ticket machine flashed, in bright red letters, CLOSED.
6: His name was Whazoo or something. He wore the GUNGNIR helmet in a pungent clash of pink and blue.
7: I forget how many people know each other at Uni. My philosophy classmates somehow know both Fez and Kristin, seperately, who know myself and each other -- anyway, small world?
8: Home & Away looks like it's only gotten worse since I stopped watching it.
9: The other day I was bugging my parents about a missing power cord that I thought I'd left at their house, and then I found it on the study floor. Yesterday I was bugging them about my birth certificate because I was sure I'd left it at their house intending to get it copied and certified at the post office. Turns out that, too, was in my study.
10: Facebook conversation, as follows.

 "Ryan! Lord Bimble sir!"
"Sup, nigga."

Slow News Day

Been a while. Had three assignments last week and now I'm behind in everything else. Just gonna do everything I can think of since.

1: Because I'm tall and have dark, curly hair, my film classmates decided that I, too, am an "Adrian". I don't have the paunch, glasses, ocker accent or impressive credentials, though.
2: I still don't understand how a house can be designed so that you have to walk through a refrigerator to escape the basement. I guess I'll find out in February (if not sooner)?
3: People are always surprised when drunks can still spell fine on a phone. Sometimes it's attributed to spell-checkers and auto-text, but I have another hypothesis; maybe, of all things, one's ability to text coherently is one of the later things to go? This at least seems true whenever I do it, because I don't use spell-checkers.
4: I did actually use spell-checker for the hyphens in the previous point. Quiet, you.
5: The lady at Subway was talking about how she "aims to please", and still managed to wear a bored frown the whole time we were in there.
6: My "rewritten" essay got a whole 3% margin of difference. Upward, of course. You'd hate to go downward...
7: Bin spoke in class about Chinese rationale. Bin spoke! His accent was thick, his command of English halting, but he got enough through to be interesting.
8: I told Giles that I thought the Tao Te Ching sounded "as vague as possible", which to me meant "as meaningless as possible", and then laughed at myself mid-sentence as I realised how - while that's useless for communication or ethics, per se - the "reflection" it creates is a different kind of teaching. Just like water -- the ironies involved in this epiphany were not lost on me.
9: The puppy keeps trying to find step-ups to the guinea pig enclosure. The guinea pig was given away two days ago to an enthralled little boy called Billy.
10: There was a crash on the freeway. Seven cars banked up, stopped, as they towed the wrung metal aside.

To Open Door

1: A girl in my Screen Crit class has a bag patterned in shoes, arrows and the text 'travel' all clumped together in alternating blocks of pink and brown. I tried to figure out how the arrows fit into it while the cognitive resources used on 'listening' rested.
2: There's a quiet Asian guy in my Taoism tute called 'Bin'. He wears glasses and dark/muted colours. I'm pretty sure he never twitched or shuffled or shifted for the entire class.
Bin. It must've sucked in school, but it's kind of a cool name.
3: As Kristen and I went to get the Publicity bag for the stall, an alarm went off in HU3. I locked confused eyes with some students in the lower classrooms (we were on the upper walkway by ELT). By the time we reached the door, a throng poured out of the stairwell and the door had jammed. It righted itself and slid open, then promptly locked us out until the next batch of evacuatees arrived.
4: We went around the building. As we passed the other side, a small crew of security - or technicians, maybe - rushed to the door; I overheard the words, "someone in the female bathroom". Five minutes later we were told the alarm mechanism had malfunctioned.
5: The phrase 'would that I could' seems to've been misunderstood at least twice today.
6: The guinea pig has been trying to wear his towels like a hat, or maybe a blanket or - whatever he's doing, he's not very good at it.
7: The guy in the Liquor Department at Safeway was serving two groups ahead of me. Two sets of two guys. The second pair were legit, but the first two were the same kids I'd seen on the tram. They could not have been eighteen. I saw them again on my way out, making out like ferals (with their 15-year-old ladies and their five dollar wine).
8: The same Liquor guy started talking about a Clubs & Bars agency - for gigs or something - when I mentioned my work for Clubs & Societies (by which I meant choir). I corrected him and he kept gushing anyway.
9: The girl at the self-serve registers told me straight that she was only checking my bags "for the cameras"; "I don't give a shit, personally", she said, smiling.
10: Arc Words; creepy as hell.

You Slice It

1: Miles splash-killed a guy who was already being assassinated, and got booted from the game for it. It was all downhill from there.
2: On the Sunday night shift, I was brought in to clean produce. Never done it before, and nobody wanted to teach me. The guy supposed to teach me lacked the confidence. The guy who knows it all wouldn't give me the time of day; when I told him I was keen, he gave me that half-grunt half-sigh that can only be expressed in the word "ugh".
3: I 'overheard' a conversation earlier about the difficulty of getting a job with little to no experience; they settled on selling learning capacity and work ethic.
4: On my way by the Carlton Gardens, something jilted the silence - a possum scurried along, its path parallel with mine. I halted; it hopped closer and rummaged in the topsoil. I crept closer, up the step, and got within a metre of it, crouched down. It looked this way and that; not blind! Its ears perked up for a passing jogger; not deaf! I sprang up, worried that it mightn't fuss if I reached out to touch it. It took only three short bounds away and listened; by that, I was more phased than he.
5: A gathering just outside the museum. Those of you who know the Melbourne Museum would know that out the front is no place to gather; it is roughly an acre of cold, bare concrete surrounded by angular grey architecture and conscious spot-lighting in that style we Melbournians 'love'. Yet on a Sunday night, there they were, twenty of them, all in dark clothing featuring chains and band names and bright hair. They were smiling and laughing amongst themselves.
6: A male classmate name-dropped an academic source that "should have been used" in the essay under discussion. In the next essay we looked at, the same source was used. The author also alluded to being female.
7: One essay was written "from a feminist perspective", where the only feminist analysis made was to condemn the chauvinist characters in the text.
8: I shuffled my way to the first free chair, opened my thermos, and coffee came out. All over my leg.
9: I like my vegetables lightly steamed. My housemates like them rendered paste by the force of heat.
10: The zucchini on our porch wasn't a retaliation.

Of Scenery

1: As I stepped off the tram, I spotted something blue nestled in the traffic barrier. A monster can, shoved into the nook between metal boxes like a sapling into soil.
2: He wore glasses, and strings of brown hair floated around his face. I pretended not to be trying to copy from his statement of authorship; I couldn't remember my subject code.
3: That moment of dread when you realize you have less money than you thought. The clerk looks at you blankly, and asks, "want to try again?", and even though you both know that it won't do any good, you say yes. Any way out of that silence, any way to stall and come up with a next move.
4: The same line, every time; you go under a pseudonym, so someone addresses you by your real name, and then says, "or is it...[PSEUDONYM]??" Then they look at you like you're supposed to laugh.
5: An entire shelf of ice in the fridge -
a perfect square, covering the top side from left to halfway, and the top down to 1/3. They could have moved everything to the coolroom and turned the fridge off. They chose to chip away at it with a mallet to try to save the receipt embedded an inch in.
6: An old couple and a friend spent the tram ride debating about politics and sport; how one of them didn't know what a kid meant by "barack", at first; "if only they spent as much time talking about politics and issues as they did about sports and home renovations!" I wished I'd joined the conversation.
7: Most of the shampoos and conditioners are paired next to each other. Just occasionally you'll find one three shelves down from its mate, as though consigned to the doghouse.
8: There is a man with curly hair and two very small daughters who trolleys behind him - or sometimes carries on his shoulder - a small dog with pink, dyed fur. Usually it stares around anxiously. This time it barked at me twice; two hiccups ten seconds apart.
9: The clock-on machine always rejects my finger at least once. Nobody else has issues.
10: We found that a 6-3 is about even with the 7-4.

Period Piece

1: The tape was black, with a scarlet flip. It brooded merrily in the hand.
2: Jam congealed in the corner of the jar as I tilted it. The knife barely fit, and as I tried to scoop out the purple blob, it burst like a blood-blister, spilling further into its glass hideaway and leaving me with thin, pulpy shreds.
3: Kirchner's hand was ringed with tiny pen marks; the ruins of tallies and Roman numerals just a flea's length below the bases of his fingers.
4: French Toast really is just the eggs and the bread. The cheap stuff is sub-par; you can feel it congeal your gut with its cost-cutting. Get the right bread and nothing can compare.
5: The Spaniard had a lot to say and to show; she was eager for her ideas to be on display, her eyes and teeth colgate white, her hands waving. The other girl had little to say and much to take in; her hair was carefully straightened and fringed, her dark cheeks carefully blushed. So much care in her appearance, and yet in two subjects I've never seen her smile. It was a relief to take control of the editing suite.
6: Iggy tried to trip me up for pats, and then started looking at me expectantly when I made a sandwich. She didn't go away until I'd finished eating it.
7: Twice, now, I've run into The Woz at that awful curry shop on the corner, just this week.
8: Two of the blondes made it clear they don't want to be directors - "too stressful". Wise move if that's their perogative; glad to know there's less competition.
9: A plastic 1.25l, one of my old coffee jars and a bottle of Jack & Coke all fell off the top of the recycling pile, with their lids on.
10: Somehow, I manage to be irritated at people who insist, they must post a reply to this joke that they don't get. Then I see somebody post a joke that I don't get, and I think, how dare they post in-jokes publicly! As though to declare, "you never gonna get this, you never gonna get this! La-la-laaa", and I say to myself, "Right! I'm posting a response!"

Reliability

1: It's been a while. I'm here on a whim.
2: I spend all day sitting at a computer screen trying to figure out how to write a 700 word essay again. Like back in high school. Then I whip out the notebook - in front of the pre-choir hangout, no less, curious onlookers they were - and bam, I've got at least 250 down in half an hour.
3: The Tao got one thing right - being vague can be an amazing way to appear wise. Be like the river, and take advantage of the lowest common denominator. Works every time. You'll also notice that you're saying nothing a lot.
4: Two people stared at me repeatedly during rehearsal. Both were new. I think I'd offended one of them, I might know when went wrong, but I don't know what - he asked me if I have trouble reading music. I answered at length.
5: Naruto is moving too quickly from "twist" to twist. Mental note; if you're going to string revelations together, make sure they each tie together threads that the audience already knows exist. Otherwise well done on the Itachi thing, Kishi - it looks to me like it was clearly planned out, but for all that it was not very well executed.
6: The prospective housemate hasn't called for a second date. Let's not wait by the phone.
7: ReinventTheWheel is trending on twitter.
8: One, two, three, they flounder when they're stressed. One makes rash decisions at the crucial moment, and it's going to make Sunday difficult, at best. Me, I get snippy and demanding; I don't like it, but it gets things done.
9: Psyguy tweets about his tumblr just three times too many. Per day.
10: "69 photos of you and Leslie". Max Cave decided he likes where that's going, and I'm pretty sure that works on at least three levels.