It's all Spanish to me...

I slept in until 1 p.m this afternoon.

Most of this can be attributed to the fact that I've been sleeping at 3 a.m for the past few nights, thanks to that stupid essay. I finished writing it and realised that I'd just written a 1, 500 word babbling exegesis that made absolutely no sense and was completely non-cohesive, and furthermore, I'd just written 1, 500 on a fiction piece about a romance between a gay Russian and a gay Englishman that also MADE NO SENSE.

See what stress does to my brain?

Anyway...my studying habits are shocking. So far, in my second day off, it has been:

Sit at laptop. Type. Wander off for a snack. Sit back down. Stare at screen. Wander off to make instant coffee. Sit down. Type. Get up to check e-mail. Go on Facebook. Check other people's blogs. Get on Facebook chat. Get distracted. Get another snack. Look at the paper...ooh, it's already afternoon. Get back and type. Get on Blogger. Get another snack.

And the vicious cycle continues.

I was wandering through the house at 11:30 p.m the other night, wondering at how little television I watch these days. Which is actually a very good thing. I couldn't remember the last time I had sat down to watch something stupid and mindless without feeling guilt, so I flicked open the Green Guide to see if anything was on at 11:30 p.m besides Lateline.

And lo and behold, there was a random Spanish film called Buena Vida Delivery on SBS.

I figured that I might as well grab a beanbag and watch it, since my voluntary exposure to foreign language films has thus far consisted of Godzilla and Gamera marathons on SBS as a kid, and you really don't pick up much of the language at all when all you hear are terrified Japanese people screaming "GOD-ZILLA!" and "GA-ME-RA!" while running for their lives from a giant radioactive fire-breathing turtle.

So I sat down to watch this Spanish 'comedy', hoping that this would broaden my horizons.

It's not uncommon to automatically lump the term 'foreign language film' with 'arthouse'. They're not synonymous at all, but in this case, I had the same reaction to the end of the film as I would to an arthouse one:

"What the f**k was that?"

I just sat there as the credits rolled at 1 a.m in my little bunny pyjamas feeling rather un-cultured and wondering whether or not I had gotten the point of that film.

Most people would have viewed it as a black comedy cleverly satirising the state of the Argentinian economy in that particular period of history, but I saw it as a depressing exploitation of other people with not one blackly humourous moment in it.

I understood, on a purely objective level, what they were trying to say. I appreciated the cinematography, the cleverness of the repeated dialogue...but I just didn't connect with it. It was like when I read Chekhov for the first time, and I just sat there blankly wondering why it was left open and struggling with the lack of a finite conclusion.

(But then again, maybe some things are better left open-ended...like that awful epilogue from the seventh Harry Potter book which read like a snippet from a 15-year old girl's fanfiction.)

I got to read Chekhov again this year. In fact, I cannot actually escape him- I always end up studying The Lady With the Dog in some form. This was the third time I'd done it, and admittedly, it has grown on me the more I've read it. True to life, there are no definitive conclusions (except, as the old saying goes, death and taxes) and having grown up watching happy Disney films where everyone lived happily ever after, it was a bit of wake-up call.

(At this point, I must cite Pocahontas as breaking the trend. They had a slew of Disney movies on TV earlier this year, and I disconcerted my entire family by singing along somewhat loudly to Aladdin, so much so that when I left the room to do some work, my Dad called me on the intercom to tell me that they'd reached the flying carpet Whole New World part so I could flounce around the room doing my best Lea Salonga impression...anyway, the fact that Pocahontas gave up John Smith almost made me weep with frustration. Hot blonde English chappy who can sing like Mel Gibson? What is wrong with you, woman?!)

Back to whatever original point I was waffling on about...

Realism, and surrealism, are basically reflections of reality, although surrealism likes to pick out the more grotesque aspects or twist them in some way. Surrealism unsettles me, but it makes me think. Realist material is difficult, it's slow-going, but at the end it always reveals something to you...like chewing very slowly on a hard caramel.

(I felt this way while reading Love in the Time of Cholera and 100 Years of Solitude...but in the end, seeing the entire book as a whole, you realise what a beautiful, albeit pathetic, love story it is.)

As you can see from this fractured post, my brain is somewhat muddled at the moment. Expect a more cohesive post in the not-too-distant future, and stay away from foreign movies....

Rub It in, Why Dontcha?

There is always a little ad box on side of my Facebook page. They rotate the ads regularly, so I often I see ads for hair extension or Nandos or whatever they decide to throw on, but the most common one keeps trying to get me to join whatever dating site they have set up.
They are actually bluntly cruel about it- there's always a '20 AND STILL SINGLE?' and a picture of an extremely frightening male that I probably would happily stay single NOT to date. Like this one time there was this a picture of this guy with tattoos who looked kind of Chopper Read-ish.

Anyway, I was on Facebook just then and the stupid ad was there...

...but it had JENSEN ACKLES.

SERIOUSLY.

Don't believe me?

Here's a screenshot grab:



See, I thought they were just posting photos of random everyday people. But I guess they're just scrounging the net blindly collecting random male images.
If I could meet Jensen Ackles by joining SinglesNet....hell, I'm there.

Unfortunately, I doubt that the gorgeous picture of Jensen is actually representative of their true clientele. More's the pity.

Ah, well. I still carry him around in my handbag as the background for my phone.

Obsessive fangurl? Not moi!

No Milk Today

It's 11:52 p.m.

I have a 2, 500 word assignment due tomorrow that I am currently utterly f**ked for.

I have already established that I am going to be pulling an all-nighter, because unfortunately, exegeses do not write themselves. Thank you to the incredibly intelligent and considerate person who decided to make my 35% essay due in the week AFTER the final Week 13, and the other assessor who figured they'd make another one due IN THE MIDDLE OF THE EXAM PERIOD.

(Really. That was awfully considerate. Perhaps I can repay your kindness by gouging your eyes out with a spoon.)

Anyway, my laptop screen was playing up so I reset the entire computer and wandered off to the kitchen to get supplies for this horrendous essay-writing extravaganza. I wanted soup. So I went to the fridge...

...and there was no milk.

Normally, the lack of liquid lactose-based products in the fridge would not send me into a homicidal rage. However, it is now 11:58 p.m, my local Safeway obviously does not hire 24-hour-party-people so I cannot sneak out and get milk (at any rate, I'm wearing pyjamas and an oversized Oxford hoodie and that's just not a great look at any time of the day or night) and I have also just realised that THERE IS NO BREAD.

At least I have water.

But the urge to smash something is rising.

Unfortunately I was working all weekend, as is my wont, so I was unable to detect this LACK OF BARE BASICS until now.

I.

Want.

Milk.

NOW.

I'm beginning to see why everyone thinks we're the 'instant gratification' generation. But obviously these generational sociologists have never been trapped in the house without milk.

DAMN ESSAY. DAMN LACK OF MILK. DAMN LACK OF SOUP.

*sobs and pounds keyboard*

To make matters worse, I am also out of instant coffee sachets. Which means that if I want coffee, it will be, sadly, sans milk.

AAAAAAAAARGGGGGGHHHHHH.

I think that if a Scientologist approached me with an e-meter right now, my emotional levels would blow it up.

I promise that the amount of hysterical pre-exam posts will drop down after June 24th. Until then, I am going to be doing DAILY MILK CHECKS OF THE REFRIGERATOR to ensure that terrible incidents like this never happen again.

Pre-Exam Period

I have never been this stressed out.

OK, I take that back.

I HAVE been this stressed out before, but I've conveniently blocked all former periods of anxiety from my mind, repressed it deep down inside where it will never bother me again (points if you can recognise the Simpsons episode with that quote).

It's like childbirth. If women remembered the horrendous, terrible pain, we'd all be only children. And if we could properly recall the horrendous, terrible pain of bi-annual exams there'd be nobody enrolled at universities.

Except for that irritating know-it-all who seems to pop up in at least one of my classes (whether it be English or Law) every semester, and who would probably happily camp in the law library cuddling all five editions of Australian Real Property Law to soothe himself to sleep with sugarplums and legislation dancing in his head.

And no, I'm not at all bitter with having to put up with him in my tutorial this semester. Nooooo, not at all.

My exams this year are Spanish (oral and written), Torts, and Property Law.

Property Law has a 30%-40% failure rate.

My tutor explained this in a cruel and matter-of-fact fashion in my first tutorial.

And she wasn't exaggerating.

And I am VERY far behind in everything. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGGGGGH.

Not to mention the Spanish film essay that has to be done with a partner. And we couldn't get the film we wanted today in reserve so we ended up watching this black-and-white 1961 film called Viridiana which one critic called "the ultimate feelbad film" of all time.

So not only was I slightly DEPRESSED at watching the nun get almost-raped for 91 minutes on a small TV with MONO SOUND, I also had a major headache.

Now I have to write 1500 words on it. Relating it to Franco's regime.

And submit a short story with an exegesis of the writing process next week.

And do the cultural test.

And try to not fail my third year first semester of law.

And for once, coffee has failed to calm my nerves.

Oh sweet, sweet caffeine, why hast thoust forsaken me?!

Bleeding Love

It has come to my attention that along with that dude from One Republic, Jesse McCartney was also responsible for penning Bleeding Love.

I am...not exactly fond of Bleeding Love.

I am possibly the only person on the continent who is not in love with that song, but to me it's just four minutes of a continuous, unchanging percussive beat with Leona Lewis wailing over the top. About her heart. Bleeding. Over and over again. And I get grossed out every time I hear the song because of these particularly graphic lines:

"My heart's crippled by the vein that I keep on closing/you cut me open and I/keep bleeding."

Keep, keep bleeding.

She keeps bleeding love. Or so the girl claims. From watching three seasons of House I'm pretty sure that if you cut a vein open blood comes out. Otherwise we'd just have love transfusions instead of a blood bank and they're be none of this O/A/B blood type stuff. Unless of course, everyone had certain TYPES of love that they could only accept in their veins, so say, you couldn't transfer maternal love to a patient who needed an urgent transfusion of unrequited love.

(Sometimes I think too much.)

Anyway, back to the Song-of-Much-Gruesomeness, I also realised that she makes a pun in the first verse:

Closed off from love
I didn't need the pain
Once or twice was enough
And it was all in vain

In 'vain'. Get it? Hah hah hah. Oh, Ms Lewis, you joker, you.

Still, I was shocked to hear that Jesse McCartney co-wrote it. As if I couldn't find enough reasons to bag out the pre-pubescent, helium-voiced lad.

And for me, the credibility of Bleeding Love sank even lower when I heard that little tidbit of information.

This blog post was also a good way for me to get all that Bleeding Love frustration out of my system, because when I was in New Zealand they were very fond of playing it. And when I got back to Australia it had somehow hijacked every radio station and every single work shift I was forced to listen to it until I wanted to scream. And then I'd turn on the radio when I got in the car and THERE IT WOULD BE.

And that's when I gave up radio and started listening solely to my own mix CDs.

Oh, and just in case you were having a nice evening, I am now going to ruin it for you by linking to Jesse McCartney's very own hideous helium-voiced version of his LET'S-REACH-FOR-THAT-BATHROOM-RAZOR song:

Listen to the horror.