Leftovers

12/10: I went to school today! Well, more like school via where I had to drop my dogs off to be groomed. I asked a couple of chem questions bla bla bla and headed home. At 3pm I went to go pick my dogs up. Again I go via school to get some more answers sorted out. I end up carrying around a folder with a textbook crammed in it. Now I know why folders have those ridges on them - to accomodate thick books and stuff. That's the first thing I learned today. At 3:30pm I pick up my dogs. Now I'm carrying two dog leads and a folder. One of my dogs, Henry, is getting a little lame and is very slow. The other one, George, is still as young as ever and dashes around madly. Walking home I'm pretty much being torn in two by one slow dog and the other fast one. Not to mention having to hold on to this folder with an increasingly sweaty hand. Halfway home my phone rings. I answer it. George decides that this would be a really cool time to take a dump. I scoop it up in a poo bag. Now I've got a damp folder, two dog leads, a mobile phone and a poo bag. Walking up my street I spot a toolbox sitting in the gutter. Score!

And THAT'S why I looked like a gigantic idiot walking home today. Not to mention when I put the poo bag in the tool box, only to open it later and dry retch for the next minute. That stuff just smells nasty.

6/10: It's that time of year again: Fly Season. So get out your swats and have them at the ready! I had just finished a book the other night and reached over to turn off the light when this HUGE fly lands on the wall above my head. With no regard for my sacred Animorphs book I slapped it against the wall. Exit fly. But there was one final event that made my insides squirm, and I believe that this sort of emotion can only be carried via something drawn in Paint:

The fly's abdomen was full of maggots. Millions of them! They were wriggling all over the place like dogs! Wtf? Dogs? That just came out... I guess it's a lesson in why to think before you rant. So anyway, I scraped my fly and her maggots off the wall and spent the next hour wriggling and writhing in my bed, thinking about how I may have had maggots on my hands, that maybe there were maggots in my hair, the smell of the mandarin peel I scraped the fly with tickling my nostrils and not letting me forget the grizzly event.

Two days ago I christened my Golden Mozzie Award. I got two flies. And you know what I did with them? I got out my microscope again. Fly proboscises look very interesting under it, as do their wings. I measured my flies for scientific reasons before I undertook a rather disgusting procedure - extracting every living maggot from the abdomen. My first fly was 11.5mm long and yielded 36 maggots, not the millions I had previously thought. The second was a dud and didn't have anything. Bummer. So I jarred my 36 maggots and gave them the two dead flies to eat. Yesterday passed and my maggots had grown exponentially! I gave them some chicken to feast on. Today I look... and all my little baby maggots are dead. They used to never stop moving and now they're just...still. Although they're gross little bastards, I'm gonna miss them. I'll bury them tomorrow, and the only thing I'll have left to remind me of them is this scan. Rest in peace, little guys.

22/9: And what a trip it was! The actual camping at the Basin, not what I did at the ferry wharf. Alfred managed to wake up every living creature within a three-kilometre radius, as well as some non-living ones I'm sure, in addition to burning his shirt and making a general "DICKHEAD!" of himself. Christ in a cornfield it was funny though. We swam over the Basin a couple of times (as in back and forth once) and I discovered later that they'd put the shark net because there had been bull sharks in there in the past. Oh, right, a shark net like the one at Balmoral. The one you can drive a bus through. Okay, as long as I feel safe. In hindsight, I suddenly realise that it was probably a silly idea to swim back with a foot freshly lacerated by oysters. If those cuts start to fester, you can be assured they will be scanned and put somewhere on here. I would have done it with today's W.A.R.T. update, but I'd bandaided them already.

But I'm not here to talk about good times. Oh no. See, here I am five minutes ago playing Final Fantasy IV when I go to massage the ache in the back of my neck, which was beginning to progress down my shoulder. I reach back and my hand hits a lump. It was sizeable and hard, with what felt like a tiny scab on the tip. In a second I knew what it was - a tick! Now, if there's one thing E-lice-a has taught me, it is to have a chronic fear of parasites, especially anywhere near my head. Holy hell I scratched that lump until it bled, whimpering all the way! Feeling utterly nauceous I inspected my fingernails to find my 'scab'. Bingo. It was pinhead-sized, which in my book is big enough to warrant a deal of sweating and formication (the sensation of bugs crawling all over the body). I whipped out my trusty microscope, banged the bastard on a slide, slipped it into focus and just about lost my lunch:

Now, this scan was taken using the highest possible resolution, yet it doesn't convey the gorey details my microscope didn't miss even on low power. That son of a bitch was sucking on my fucking neck. Actually, it's most likely female and probably wanted to lay its eggs inside me so its larvae could eat away at my insides and hatch from my skin at the appropriate age... I'm getting goosebumps just looking at it. I'm gonna go strip and make sure there are no more on me, because another surprise like that and I'll be a basket case. Dis-fucking-gusting. Oh great, now I'm sounding as angry as Alfred.

Well, it's a little later on and I've established that I am now tick-free, so I've done some research. My tick had eight legs which means it was in its second larval stage or an adult. Since the average life cycle of the tick is one to three years, I think that I was not this tick's first victim, which makes me wonder what wonderful diseases I may have caught from whatever bandicoot, possum, wobbley or even human this tiny terror had sunk its hypostome into before. When they feed, they stick this saw-like thing under your skin and secrete some cement-like substance to glue it in place. Which is why it was to hard to get out. Crazy parasites. So as my friend Chloe said in her year five speech on ticks, make sure you check your arms, legs and private parts after wandering in bushland. For all you guys especially, I have heard firsthand a story of ticks under the foreskin. Happy hunting!

b>10/9: We went diving on Wednesday. Just me and Caitlin, cruising with de fisheez. It had been a pretty good dive so far, we'd seen and teased a seven-armed octopus (incidentally a septopus), checked out some nudibranchs, played in the sunken submarine and generally mucked about. We went through the channel, along the wall and ended up at the caves. We had our fingers crossed that we'd see a Port Jackson shark - or PJ - along here and BOOM! right in front of us was a pretty big one. It was almost as long as I was so we didn't want to disturb it too much, even though PJ's are usually completely docile, and slowly approached it side-on. Damn it was beautiful. We swam around the next rock and OMFG there were another four! We swam slowly up to one of them head-on, and it didn't seem to mind, so I reached out and patted it on the nose. It just sat there. I twisted around so I was lying on the bottom alongside it, almost touching. It still didn't move when I started to pat it down its back.

Okay, so maybe I wasn't full-on hugging it. But there was something there. There's something incredible about lying next to a big, hard, strong, rough predator and it letting you touch it. I felt closer to a God I don't believe in when I was stroking that animal than I ever did when I believed. There was a sort of trust between me and the shark, a connection which I can't describe. All I know is that being intimate with a wild animal like that feels deep and passionate, which is why we're dragging half the school down there on Sunday for a replay!

9/9: Oh those krazy kleaners! Okay, so all the school cleaners are on strike for four days or so. And you know what the funny thing is? I can't notice a difference. Seriously, I'm walking through the playground and there's nothing except happy children, playful birds, skipping teachers and some idiot being carted away in an ambulance. Not much rubbish at all. Now we have to wonder whether having them back is such a good thing. I've spoken to our good cleaner friend who I will call Pulo to protect his identity, and all he had to say was how we're dirty little bastards who keep breaking the coke machine. Then he started going apeshit at some pigeons and threw a broom at them. Another time I was sitting down on a low wall and he came up rubbish hunting. With a bare hand he reached between my legs and picked up a discarded chip packet. Now, every now and then I like a hand between my legs, but not his, and not while there are a lot of people around. The chip packet doesn't do it for me either. So if you ask me if I want the cleaners back, I'm saying NO! Unless we hire them from a male strip club. Now THAT would be cool, and they could put their hands anywhere they wanted. Elizabeth's lust would also be sated.

But what of their whereabouts now? With no school to clean, what do they do? Do they stalk the streets at night killing and eating babies, eyes red with madness? Do they howl at the moon and tear the throats out of horses? Okay, maybe I should treat them like people, I'm being slack. One of them is actually pretty nice, but that does nothing for humour. So I reckon they get together in Miami somewhere and hang out by the ocean, martinis in hand, getting massaged by hot women in bikinis, dreaming about the dawning of a new era in which lion and hyena join together in a great and glorious future...

30/8: Wicked Irony.

Oh, ha ha. I got 49.5% in the chem exam. That's .5% from passing. And you know what? A lot of it was from stupid mistakes that I probably wouldn't have picked up had I gone through the paper again. One of my answers would have been (somewhat) worthy of a mark, but it was missing the word "blue", making it wrong. FAIL'D! But perhaps the stupidest mistake of all is this one: carbon dioxide (g) < = > carbon dioxide (aq) The question was asking what happened when you opened the lid of a soft drink bottle in relation to our good friend CO2. My answer went along the lines of "Because the pressure decreases, the equilibrium shifts to the RIGHT, forcing CO2 out of solution and into gas in an attempt to stabilise." My mistake? I can't tell my rights from my lefts. It shifts to the LEFT, and even though my explanation was correct, my directional slip-up cost me a mark. I can safely say that I failed the chemistry exam because I didn't know my rights from my lefts. In the words of Holly: "Way to fuck up, fuckwit!"

29/8: Maths and Chemistry.

Apart from Jessica Simpson, these are the two most evil things ever to...er...walk (?) the face of the earth. Needless to say, the only reason I find them so is because I suck at both. I'm just not naturally good at them. Unlike biology, which I rock at. I finished each of these trials an hour or so early, maths with the understanding that I could have done equally well with 3/4 of my brain removed, and chem with the satisfaction of having completed most of the short answer questions. Chem wasn't so bad I s'pose, so let's talk about maths. On the right, you can see how I felt after the maths exam: ARSE-RAPED. I did the past trials! I memorised (most of) my formulae! And still I was stepped on and wiped off the boot of suckage. Okay, now the way I see it is that we do need a kick in the pants to motivate us to do well in the HSC. That's why they make the trials so challenging. But the maths staff know that altogether we aren't a bunch of geniuses. If we get the test back and we do a little worse than expected, we stop and think "Oh, I'm going to have to make this better. I'm going to study hard for the HSC and kick this mark's arse." But if we get say 30% (I got higher...36% actually) it makes us think that we're totally hopeless and that there's no way we can improve on that. I don't feel that way, I know where I went wrong. I know that I didn't put in the work. But damn, that was one hard, demotivational test. Not to mention my very own 'latus rectum'...

4/8: Child abuse happens. This is something we all know. Now, being a student I am also aware that it sometimes happens between students and teachers, most of the time female and male respectively. So in reponse to this, the DET (or whoever) has decided to really enforce strict rules about what is acceptable or not. Penalties can be pretty severe. Now they're whining about a lack of teachers. Why? Because everybody's bloody frightened to be one. Look at your own school. What percentage of young male teachers is there? Probably bugger all. These poor bastards are most likely scared about even mentioning female students and adhere strictly to the rules. Well, the vast majority anyway. There are always some duds. But the thing is, the people who are innocent are more likely going to be suspected - they don't feel like they're doing anything wrong when they stay back to joke around, give lifts to school excursions or try to involve students in extracurricular activities. Meanwhile, the arseholes who are going out and doing the abusing are the ones who are aware of their wrongdoing and will take steps to cover up, therefore decreasing their chances of being caught. It's a losing cycle. Whoever's in command up there should pull back a bit. Maybe then it'd save them unneeded investigations and attract more to the profession. Damn the world is paranoid.

30/6: My main audience consists of...children!? Sorry, you guys probably don't like being called that. But it's true, these days it appears that I'm writing for my little sister's friends. Big hello to you all. And to that person from Melbourne. Seriously, Melbourne-Visitor, how the heck did you find this site? WHO ARE YOU?! But your patronage is very much appreciated.

Anywho, since I'm probably destroying your innocence ...innocences... I should put something a little more child-friendly in here. Like teddy bears.

Yeah, well, I tried. Let's make a deal. You can all keep coming here as long as I don't get emails from your folks whining about this place being offensive. Sounds like a plan to me!

29/6: An interesting statistic. Out of every 10,000 divers, only 0.7% of these will experience an accident while diving. This, interestingly, is the same percentage of accidents in lawn bowls. Fair enough. This raises a major question: WHY HAVE I HAD TWO?!

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There are certain parts of the anatomy that I like attached to my men. Browsing a booklet thing advertising diving/snorkelling gear, I wasn't expecting one of the models to be missing this part. If you look over to the left... WHERE THE HECK IS HIS CHIN?! I swear I didn't tinker with this, that's what it looks like in the booklet. I was going to get myself a hood, but if it means giving up my chin AND paying, I'd rather be cold.

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Digital camera fun often ends adversely. Tom and I were playing in the library with my new glasses and doing stupid poses with them. You know, standard mock-sexy stuff. Home we go and he sends the pictures to me. Lo and behold, a startling similarity appeared before my eyes:

Yes. I look like Nooj from Final Fantasy X-2. Note that he is a he. Now that's just creepy. I mean, I find Nooj pretty hot (even though he's got a mechanical arm and leg), but now it's just going to be like fantasising about myself. Good one, Tom's camera. Spoil my illusions why don't you...

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Yesterday I cleaned out my fish tank for the first time in six months. Don't tell me how disgusting that is because I know. Not like you guys ever email me anyway. So I'm looking at my happy fish swimming around. I've gone from seven fish to two. Now the only survivors are Hippo and Gloop (previously known as Gareth).

Look at them. All they want is to be happy, to see the sun every new day, to be well-fed, to breathe - simply to LIVE. They don't care about work, about school, about love, about going broke, even about me. I don't mind, because if they're happy I'm happy. I don't envy them for being so carefree. I told someone how beautiful they were with tears streaming down my face because it was true. Sometimes the simple pleasures are the greatest in the world, and I'm going to do whatever I can to preserve them.

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Ryan has a magical earring! We all saw that photo of the back of his head. Then he tried to deny that it was him as the person in the photo had an earring. Well, I had to go about investigating this. Sure enough, Ryan does not have an earring. However, I scrounged around and found this:

Yep, that's definitely an earring in my book. Also, to get the severed arm sorted, I was going to put Luka there but then I realised I can only draw guys. It made sense just to cut it off at the shoulder. Anyway, now I don't know what to think. It seems Ryan's earring has the ability to appear and disappear as he sees fit. Unless it has a mind of its own... I'd ask Ryan, but it's 1:16am and I don't think he'd appreciate a call from me asking if his earring is an intelligent teleporting lifeform.

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Today I asked myself a question. What would happen if my mum died? Sure, it'd be sad and all, but what would happen afterwards? Who would I live with? I've had a taste of only-childness and it's definitely something I'd want to keep. There's also no way I'm going up to Bucketty. Noooo way. I started counting off my options, but soon realised none of my friends or family would be able to stand my squalid existence. This leaves only one thing to do:

MOVE IN TO SCHOOL!

Think about it! How much would it 0wn to live with Lupo and that creepy Greek lady who hates children! At least I think they live at school, I don't know what else they could afford on their salaries apart from a rented room in D block. So I'm set. Living at school is going to rock, and now my mum doesn't have to worry about what'll happen to me if she kicks the bucket.

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It was a hot, still Saturday. The sun was purring and the cats were shining. I opened the paper and started to browse...the puzzle section. After I discovered how inept I was at completing any of them, I moved to the weather, where I discovered a goldmine: THE FISHING REPORT. I skimmed through it and by the end was laughing my arse off. It contained innuendo beyond that of any chemistry lesson ever. It was just so ridiculous it must have been a one-off - I didn't see how the editors could let something like that through. However, come today's paper, I was yet again faced by a gauntlet wrought with dirty dirty connotations, though not as good at Saturday's (to my dismay). I present to you all today's fishing report:

It's up to you: harmless sport - or seedy old guys with big, er, poles.

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	Sephiroth!! Everyone likes random stuff. Except those who don't. So I scrounged around on the net for a while and came up with some stupid stuff from forums and image searches. On the left is Sephiroth, the villain from everyone's favourite game: Final Fantasy VII. Sephiroth, in short, kicks mucho asno. Asno is Spanish for ass. They mean the donkey, but in this circumstance, we'll ignore that and just pretend we're being witty and rude. Arse jokes aside, I ran a Google search on Sephiroth images, because you can never have enough, and check out these two matches.... Match 1 | Match 2
Some people just shouldn't be on the Internet... The following were taken from a couple of forums. The first is self-explanatory. DBZ stands for DragonBall Z if you didn't know. The second...well, all I can say is I wish I could change subjects as effectively as that.