Loquacious to a Fault

Hokay, I feel like posting a new journal (and I have nothing to say! What a new direction for me! </sarcasm>)

My mum bought me a brand spanking new sewing machine! I'm very excited. I have absolutely no clue how to sew, but learning is going to be FUN TIMES. (And eventually I'll be good enough to make a cosplay that isn't glued together .__. ) I'm thinking of posting journals (with photos!) of my sewing adventures and progress, so you can watch me fail! How interesting! 

I have exams in a few weeks D: I am all panic-y about it (well, sort of) especially my Chemistry exam. Chem is haaaard! But after this I'll be free! \o/ And then in year 12 I'm sticking to mainly language rich subjects - Visual Art Studies, English Studies, Philosophy, Religions in Australia and Maths Studies.

Every day this week has felt like a Friday. FINALLY THE REAL THING. I'm so tired, I think I'll go sleep for a million years.

Megan Washington has a beautiful voice.

I've been playing Aion recently (well, sort of, I've been doing school recently which sort of impeded my Aion-ing) and it is FUN FUN FUN. I have a level 20 Cleric called Kyouya (yay for Ouran!) I was going to call her Benehime (after Urahara's sword in Bleach) but it was taken :'( It's my first time playing a MMORPG and I'm not so good at the not-dying part yet. And I don't really know how to find groups (some of these quests are impossible to solo) but, I dunno. I'll get the hang of it! n00b-ish-ness can't last forever!
 

I've been reading all this articles on the violence in video games debate for this RE assigment I have to do, and it's starting to get on my nerves how one-sided this 'debate' is. There's hardly ANY alternative points of view, just the same old same old "video games are baaaaad. To hell with Halo, everyone should play Sammy's Science Learning Fun!" Why does everyone think games have to be educational? They're GAMES. They are meant to be FUN and ENTERTAINING. Sure, they can be educational too, but if they aren't it doesn't mean they have no value whatsoever. For crying out loud, some people are so uptight.

I am so completely and utterly doomed. Why? Several reasons. Firstly, I am going back to school tomorrow after spending a week away sick because I have really, excruciatingly horrible contact dermatitis on my hands and I couldn't bend my fingers or hold a pen or open doors or open jars or anything and my hands looked like monster hands and it was really gross and painfull. I went to the doctors and now they're HEAPS better (but not completely), he gave me these pills and this cream and yeah. I'm on my way to a full recovery! Hopefully... But now I am never ever to use soap again, I have to use all this special alternative soap stuff. And I can't wear rubber gloves. Or have really hot showers. Or all this stuff that could potentially lead to another outbreak by irritating my skin or making it dry or whatever.  That's not really the problem. The problem is that I am now incrediably behind in school. Like, really really really behind. I haven't done a whole lot of work over the past week because, surprisingly enough, that requires functional hands. I never realised just how vital hands were before. Chem and Maths especially are going to be the death of me... not to mention I had group assignments for both English and Philosophy... Ah!! I hope my teachers will be super kind and give me extensions :(

On an unrelated note, last Saturday (not yesterday, the one before) my soccer team played the finals of our school competiton! Ufortunately we lost the game (HA HA I LOST THE GAME XD) after a penalty shoot out. We were drawing nill all and then the ref was like "No time for extra time! Straight to penalty shoot out! M'kay?" and our coach was like "Yeah, sure!" and I was like "....NO NOT OKAY D: ..." Because I am the goalie and really, who needs that kind of pressure. I let two in, saved one and let one in. And our team didn't get any in. :( Ah well. We came second, that's pretty darn good, and apparently we ended the competition with the most points. So that's good :)

It seems I have broken my little stint of writing a journal entry a day. Ah well, I knew it wouldn't last forever.

I should really be doing (you guessed it) homework right now. I have a Biology test on natrual selection tomorrow, as well as a Chemistry test on redox chemistry. Not to mention the draft for this big Bio assignment (that I haven't started) is due on Tuesday. Sounds fun right?

Anyway, yesterday morning was fabulous! I play soccer for the Open A's team of my school, and we won a very close game with O (I'm going to use code names for the different schools in the interest of my own parnoia, with T being my team and O being the opposition). It was really so much fun to play! I haven't done that much work in a soccer game since our first game this season (I play keeper and I used to be on the B's team, but was promoted when the A's goalie quit to play Hockey. I have hardly done anything all season because the rest of the team is made of so much epic win) So anyway, the thing is, we've won every single game we've played this season, except for our one against O, which we lost like, 4 - 0 or something (my fault, for being such a shoddy keeper). While our team is, on the whole, more skilled and better tactically than they are, they are far more agressive. Also,  it helps that their best player is their keeper who is really really bloody good.  Anway, back to this week, it was a really close game. We scored about half-way through the first half, and then no one scored for aaaaages. Though there were many shots at goal from both sides. Anyway, in the second half they scored (my fault for dropping the ball like a n00b) and then it was such a crazed frenzy for the rest of the half. We had the most epic, flukiest, awesomest goal ever and we were like "OMG YAY!" It was so unnexpected. Any goal against that keeper of theirs it worth some sort of prestigious award. So then, O's coach was like "giaz! EVERYONE FORWARD! ATTACK! CHAAAAAARGE!" and we were like "uh-oh" And it was seriously some crazy shit! Our defenders are so epic they managed to hold them off until the end of the game. It was intense. We ended up winning 2 - 1, and now next week we're in the finals for first place! :D (after the game my coach was like "It dun matter if you lose the final! You're all winnerz in mah eyez! But you there, keeper, make sure you get good before we play, m'kay?" And I was like ">__> yah")

And I'm sure no one really cares all that much...

Oh oh! Also, I have ordered Shadow Magic! And it's supposed to arrive before the end of August. I am one happy chappy :D

More also, the Festival of the Arts concert on Friday was good. We sounded the best we ever have (hooray for audible altos!). There were a few technical screw ups, some dancers from the junior school are probably epically dissappoited, because their CD decided to be a douche and not work, and then the back up CD decided to also not work, and they were standing on stage for like, 15 minutes, with no sound, looking very uncomfortable. Poor them :(

Anyway, I am off to make a solid homework attempt. Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more!

I love myspace, becuase it's so easy to find new awesome music with it :D I mean other than that, it's a pretty useless site (I'm not really into the whole myspace/facebook/bebe/myface/spacebook/whatever thing, it seems to consist of posting photos of yourself all over the internet and adding people you barely know onto your friends list, in other words deviantart/livejournal > myspace/facebook). ANYWAY, before I start ranting, I like looking for music on myspace, you find a band and you can listen to their music on the site and see if you like it, and then you can click on their friends and follow a trail of awesome bands, it was in this way that I discovered some of my favourite artists (Josh Pyke, Age of Rockets, Backseat Goodbye etc.) and today I found another awesome artist Plug in Stereo. I love music that makes me happy and makes doing homework seem almost fun :D

In other news, who's seen the Avatar: The Last Airbender trailer? Me! I'm a bit on the fence on how to feel about it. It doesn't look like it'll be too horrible, it almost looks good, but having said that, it didn't really give us a good look at the actual characters. I remain sceptical, but hopefull.

Speaking of Avatar, I spent most of yesterday working on designing/planning my cosplays (Ryth from JSR/F and Toph from Avatar) for next years AVCon (me = obsessive geek) whilst simultaneously attempting (and eventually succeding) to work on the next chapter of MAT with tiger_cub684. So far we've done two whole questions of the next chapter! And we've decided to be semi-organised in the way we write this thing and have set Friday and Saturday evenings as MAT time. Yay for semi-productivity!

This is how incapable I am of doing my English homework at the moment:

Once upon a time there was a purple spotted polar bear, with a green nose, and friendly puce coloured eyes. This polar bear was known as Ned by his close friends, even though his actual name was Horatio. Ned, or Horatio, liked to eat hippopotami, but alas, could not find any in his homeland of Antarctica. All he could find were yucky, slimy seals with penguin bones stuck in between their teeth.

“What a nuisance!” Declared Ned, or Horatio, and, in a fit of madness, threw the seal into the frozen ocean and with a wild cry. “You’re driving me crazy!” he bellowed after the disappearing figure of the seal, as it fell almost gracefully until it crashed with a distinct ‘splat!’ onto the thick ice below.

Ned, or Horatio, shuffled back from the edge of the cliff, still trembling with his uncontrollable rage. He stared up at the sky, watching as the northern lights danced through its dark depths, permeating the eternal night with rare colour and soft beauty.

Okay, so today I re-realised how awesome my school's headmaster is. Today he organised for every student in the school to get a free donut at recess. Apparently because we behaved well at the Patronal Mass yesterday. But really, who does that? It was awesome! (I didn't have one though, I was busy doing my maths homework from last night D: ) It reminded me of the EuroTour, I shall relate the story in a NEW PARAGRAPH!

Okay, so, the EuroTour, aka the European Language and Cultural Tour, was this school trip I went on in April with, uh, the school. Yeah, there was a whole bunch of students from Year 10 and 11 (46), plus some teachers (6), including Father Headmaster himself (yes, he is a priest, not my dad, again, it's a Catholic school thing). It was a pretty huge trip. We went to Istanbul, Turkey and then to Rome, Italy and then we drove to Florence passing through Sienna, and then we drove to Venice, and then we drove all the way to Paris (like 4 days of non-stop bussing and nothing but food from petrol stops and supermarkets to sustain us D:) with one night stops in Nice, Avignon and Blois. Also, we passed through Monte Carlo (where we saw our bus diver from Italy! We were all like 'yo! wat up dude?' and he was like 'yo! just hangin' out!' it was trippy) and someone saw Federer (again, I suck at spelling) walking into a hotel and I was like D: Why was I not there to witness this! Anyway, we stayed a while in Paris and then went to London, England. It was all pretty awesome. Anyway, while we were in Rome, we visited the Vatican, and there was a HUGE line up to get in. When we finally got to the front of the line, these agro German tourists were trying to push in front of us, and Papa Davs (EuroTour nickname for the Headmaster)  just like, holds them back and was all "hang on a minute!" and then he waved us all through, all the while holding off the pusher-iner-ers. And then, one of them was getting REALLY wound up, like shouting and threatening him and stuff and being all "omg! I'ma gonna smash ur face in!" and then Tom (this guy in my year who's kinda tall and was wearing a black shirt and sunnies and looked like a body gaurd) was about to go through and he's all "what's goin' on here!" in this big voice and the agro tourists were like "...um..." XD I didn't see how it ended, because I'd already gone through, but afterwards when Papa Davs came through he actually said, and I quote, "those bastards!" XD Best priest ever!

So, yeah.

I should probably do some more Euro Tour journals, there were some pretty fun times on that trip :D
 

So, it turns out that thing I said earlier about not posting often was a lie. As was that thing I said about mostly using my deviantART journal. I guess, this one is just prettier, and I can put in pictures  :D

Anyway, I am procrastinating. Again. I have a chemistry assignment due tomorrow, as well as an unreasonable ammount of maths homework. But, that can all wait while I talk about something that is not AVCon, but will probably evolve into AVCon-talk as this journal extends.

I am a broke D: This is not unusual as I do not have a job, but it still puts me in a meloncholic mood. Especially now that I have finished the Ouran High Host Club manga I bought at AVCon (oh wait, I wasn't going to mention AVCon... oops) and Shadow Magic (the sequel to Havemercy) has been released, and I discovered that Shin Tokyo does indeed have the soundtrack for Jet Set Radio Future and Samurai Champloo and Cowboy Bebop. Ah well, I shall just have to be patient.

I really should be doing my homework. This usually happens, I plan to be super efficient and hard-working, and then I don't. Because I am a lazy procrastinator. I had Tuesday and Wednesday night free, and instead of doing my homework like a good, responsible student etc. etc. I just sort of sat around, writing useless journals and reading Harry Potter fanfiction. Yup. My study skills are clearly pretty epic.

In other news, today my school had a massive mass to celebrate the feast day of our patron saint. Yeah, I go to one of those private Catholic schools, they like to do stuff like this every now and then. Well, I'm in the chior so I got the whole day off to sit in the chior loft and rehearse, we were pretty busy little bees becuase not only did we have the mass to rehearse for, but also the Festival of Arts concert we're performing at next week. And, unfortunately, to be perfectly honest, the chior isn't, uh, all that stunning. I mean, we're pretty damn big, and know how to sing and hold a tune, but everyone's just so quiet. Like, ridiculously quiet, especially considering how massive the chior is. Today during rehearsal, we were going through the alto/second soprano part and seriously, only I swear like me and four other people were actually singing, which is a bit poor considering two thirds of the whole chior was supposed to be singing. Ah, well. The mass was allright, but the songs weren't as good as usual, we did different versions of the Alleilulia (ah ha ha, I can't spell), the Holy Holy, Kyrie and Jesus Lamb of God. And the conductor kept telling us to smile and we're all "but the songs are so depressing!" I mean, honestly, is it a curch doctrine that all hymns be written in a minor key?

I just realise that not only to I say "like" all the time, but I type it too. Huh. Wierd. I hope it's not too irritating. Another word I say all the time without meaning to is "wait", whenever I'm thinking of something I'm about to say I always say "wait", except it comes out more like "waitwaitwaitwaitwait". In Latin (yes, I used to do Latin, another Catholic school thing I guess) we always did our translation aloud and our teacher would choose a different person to translate each couple of sentences. I don't really like answering questions aloud like that, I'm really bad at thinking on the spot and doing things verbally, I prefer to write everything down so I can see what I'm doing and organise it in my head. Anyway, whenever I had to translate something I would emit a steady stream of "waitwaitwaitwaitwait", to which my teacher responded "we've been waiting for a while now."... And that was when I realised that I say "wait" a lot.
 
Aren't these journals just fascinating? I bet you're sooo interested right now in my ever so intersting story that you are literally exploding and soon someone will walk and and have to clean up all the little pieces of you. Yes. Har har. Sarcasm.

I should really stop now, I'm probably boring some poor person to death at this very moment D:

Not to mention my piles of Chemistry and Maths homework D:

D:

Wow, my procrastination knows no bounds. Okay, so I'm posting this for a few reasons:

1. This new journal is preeetty :D
2. I now have a whole lot of beautiful icons to show off.
3. I want to post some more AVCon pictures.

So, here we go! Ho ho ho!

( Number of AVCon photos is... over NINE THOUSAND! ) 

Yeah, I think most of my friends (i.e. Gemma) are sick and tired of hearing about AVCon now XD I don't blame them.

Hello there people of the world! I have abandoned my old livejournal and started this one! I just thought it was a bit messy having so many different usernames all over the internet. I have now narrowed it down to two: oddsplodge and discombobulated.shoe

Anyway, I probably won't write in this very often. Partly because I generally use my journal on deviant art, and partly because I don't really write in that much either. I've never really been that good at keeping journals. Ah, well.

Now, down to business (so to speak). AVCon was awesome! My very first anime convention :D I did cosplay (with the help of peer pressure from Ali and Simone and it was very dodgy. Considering that I have no experience in sewing, do not know how to operate a sewing machine, used no patterns, did no measurements, made it in two nights and killed a gluestick whilst glueing on all the details, I was fairly proud of myself. (For those wondering, I was Fuu from Samurai Champloo, complete with glued on flowers, chopsticks from my kitchen cupboard and a stuffed toy possum posing as Momo the flying squirrel.) I had so much fun this year that I'm already making plans for next year! I'm definitely going to start my costume much sooner and overall put a bit more effort and time in, as well as leaving out the glue. Simone, Ali and I have decided to do an Avatar cosplay and I'm a-gonna be Toph (because it sounds like tough!). Also, I want to make a Ryth cosplay (from Jet Set Radio/Future). But I'm getting ahead of myself! I have to learn how to not suck at sewing first! Anyway, enough of the future, let's look at the past.

Yes, I went with Simone, Ali and Ali's sister. We all cosplayed, except theirs looked significantly better than mine (partly because they weren't being held together with glue :D)  I'd have to say that the quiz night was by far my favourite part of the whole con, that and all the awesome cosplayers wandering around. We were on a table consisting of moi, Simone, Ali, Ali's sister and some other people who I think were Ali's/Ali's sister's friends and friends friends. If that made any sense. We spent most of the time losing and then missing out on last place (yes, we even lost at losing, epic fail) but it was all good fun. There were so many funny moments, I nearly fell off my chair several times, and I was so terribly excited when I knew the answer to a question I nearly yelled out the answer. ("What is the name of Fuu's pet squirrel in Samurai Champloo?" Awesome right? Ali was waving Momo around in triumph.)

Anyway, all this chatter is probably getting kind of (very) tedious, so I will leave you with some pictures!
( AVCon Through the Eyes of Momo )