Driving! And sharks :(

I passed my last driving test yesterday. If you do not know, I am in australia and we have a VERY in depth drivers education system to get permission to roam around on four wheels.

I'll also be talking about our sharks after the break, so please read through, it's important!

When you're 15/16 you get to take a 'keys to life' test, which is a written test to make sure you know the basics of road rules, who to give way to and so on.

Then when you're 16/17 you can go to your local licencing centre to get your first learners permit. This allows you to be out on the road around other cars ...with an instructor in the passengers side. During this time you are to learn how to drive, park, turn in a circle, not crash and all that sort of thing. Then you can go for your Logbook. Which is ANOTHER test, with an accredited driving examiner, where you'll drive around, following their directions and obeying road rules and so on. If you pass this one (and it'll take you at least 2 attempts, on average, due to nerves or various other reasons) then you get your log book. Dun na da na! You now get to drive around (with L plates and a licenced driver in the passenger seat) and have your hours of driving logged. You have to drive for more than 10 minutes at a time or it doesn't count. I needed to get 25 hours in at least 6 months, but the number has gone up recently in laws, to 50 or 100 or something. Now, supposing you do aaaall this, are you allowed to drive on your own? NOPE!

Re: Your Brains

You know, I think I love Jonathan Coulton's songs....they're awesome. And these clips are pretty good too. Yay for spiffworld!

Also; Downloading illegally is bad. Please hunt out and buy his songs as they are cool! Here are some more for sampling :D

Happy feel-good

After a week where not one, not two but THREE things have had happy-sad endings -- Reading the Hunger Games trilogy, Episode 5, Season 7 of Doctor Who, and the season finale of the Dollhouse written/directed by Will Wheaton, I have been in need of some happy feelgood. Arugments are unpleasant, and ontop of -that- trio of a bomb shell I haven't been handling it very well. Thus! We have some happy feel-good that I wish to share with the pineapple and fruit bowl that actually check in on this.

Education

This is one of my 'identity journals' for my sociology unit, as I'm studying Psychology with a minor in criminology. I love sociology, it is rather interesting. Sort of like economics, but with less numbers :D. This topic was 'education', and how I felt that the education system reflected on me and so on, using sociological theories that I had just read about as part of that weeks lecture.

Also, I HATE spelling 'bourgeoisie' I can never, EVER remember how it's spelt off the top of my head and it is very vexing.
~~~~

Education...hmm. This is a bit of a tricky topic. The notes taken for this weeks lecture would have me put squarely in the 'bad guy' category, of the bourgeoisie, as I went to a private school for the majority of my education. I spent hrm, the first 4 years of my educating life in a public school, and that was found to be a little 'lacklusture' by my parents, even if I did adore one of my teachers specifically. My year 2 teacher, Mrs Ketelle. We all called her Mrs Kettle, the poor dear, but she was brilliant.

And then for year three I had a Mrs Finlay or something and I think she was not quite as clever as she thought she was. If you are a teacher and do not know how to spell 'spaghetti' when asked, and another student tells you -how- to spell the word, do not argue with that child until they get the mother loving dictionary and open it to the page and point out the word and how to freaking spell it, as how THEY were SAYING IT. Argh. Yeah. I was that kid.

Year 4 had me going to a private school, which was both better, and worse. See, better education, but slightly worse with the social interaction thing, as the classmates were no longer people from wherever, but the 'upper class' of that particular town, and the majority of them were rather hmm... clique-y. Didn't help that I wasn't part of the fashionable crowd and far too fond of books but... eh. No matter.

I enjoy learning. I am happiest when I am learning something new, -and- when I have something physical to balance it out, however, this isn't always the case and I do end up rather tired at the end of the day without much time for the whole, rest and relaxation thing that isn't sleep. I am also the first and only member of my family (including cousins and extended family) that has gone to university, so there is that. There was a lot of pressure from my parents (particularly my mother) all through my schooling years to get good grades and go to University. I start -going- to university and my mothers pressure turns to 'get a job! Just start working! Get a job and don't worry about the education it's a waste of time what you're doing'. Go figure. So, I drop out (she convinces my dad to stop paying for my tuition, and won't let me get a HECS debt) and then she turns on a dime and pushes for me to go to TAFE instead of uni (It's cheaper and does the same thing!) which... yeah. Bleh. My dad encouraged my learning, my mother forced it down my throat and nothing I did was ever good enough for her. Hrm. But none of this really relates to the specifics of the topic.

I -can- see the difference between the public school systems and the private schools, not so much between suburbs as I was a country kid and it was, you know, two towns. One only had a public school, the other had one of each. Not exactly spoilt for choice. But I attribute the major difference to the fact that public schools have a what, $60 per term tuition fee, while the private schools had around a $2000 per year tuition fee. Sure, it's a little bit more -- plus the cost of the books and uniform -- but it enabled the school to give a better quality of teaching. Class sizes were 15-25 or there about, rather than the 30+ from the public classroom. Less students = greater individual attention from the educator and more emphasis on the parents getting the most out of the school because of how much they are investing in their childrens education. Compared to the public schools, where most parents nowadays are not so interested in their childs welfare, or education especially, because it is 'boring' and 'difficult'.

But, eh, there isn't really all that much, that I can see, that can be done about it. Oh, and the school education trend where kids 'can't fail'? Utter balony. If you give no consequences to not paying attention, and no real reward for them to excell then the point of it is lost to the children and the value of the education reduces. Drastically. In my opinion, at least, as I went through school going from getting letter grades, like B+ and A, to getting 7E and a paragraph to explain what it meant. -_-

In university sure, that sort of thing is helpful, as you can see where you're going wrong and where you need to improve and you still get a 'letter' mark at the end of it, rather than 'halfway between 7M and 7E' what does that meaaaaaane?!!?@!?@ Gyah.

I worry about the education system, when teachers are valued less than a babysitter and they do so much more.

Clean and tidy vs clean and messy vs dirty and messy.

This is just to get the definitions out there for folk who seem to have issues with it.

Clean and Tidy

Clean and tidy people are people that have everything tucked away into cupboards, all the surfaces in the house are completely dust and ornament free, the floors are kept meticulously dirt free, carpets either new or vaccuumed/steamed so often that you don't dare set foot on them because odds are, your feet'll be dirtier than the carpet. Even fresh out of the shower. And it's some pale colour that would show up that dirt really easily and with malicious glee. Everything is cleaned two or three times a week to keep it in that sparkling 'zomg new house' state. Personal hygeine is up in the lists of 'must do', along with ironing every little piece of clothing from the $400 suit to the underwear.

Obviously, I am not one of these peoples.

Clean but messy

These are your more 'common' types of middle-classish individuals, where they keep things clean but have more crap than cupboards and end up festooning surfaces with said crap. These types of individuals clean the bathroom, floors or whatever once a month or so, when they have the time, or inclination, unless something epically dirty happened -- like an entire plate of nachos landing nachos' down on the floor. *sigh* and then it's all guns blazing to remove the mess before it dries and becomes a bigger problem. Personal hygeine is up in the lists, but having perfectly ironed clothes from the shirt to the underwear ... not that big of a deal.

Voila, this is me.

Dirty and Messy

These are the people that have a more 'laid back' attitude towards hygeine and cleanliness, the sorts that have last weeks take away leftovers sitting on the table getting eaten by the ants sort of 'laid back'. Everything is everywhere and there is not just dust on the surfaces but greasy grime and muck and ickness. The spilled drink staining a sticky patch on the floor two days after it was dropped and so on.

Not me either!

(Also, I found this post unpublished from all the way the hell in the -past- and I have no idea where I was going with this o.o but, here we are! Enjoy)

~Think of the Possibilities.

Google+

Firstly, I give my belated apologies to whoever posted a comment about my lack of a facebook/twitter like button and whatnot. I am so sorry but I have absolutely NO IDEA on how to update that or put it on, and if you like me great! Spread the word the old fashioned way, by word of mouth! Or copy paste the link into your facebook feed. Or SOMETHING. I don't know. Ahem.

On that note, however, I have now put all -three- of my blogs onto google+ under the one profile. Yes. Three. This one, and another one that I dedicate solely towards sharing my fine cooking skills with the sporadic few that may be interested in them, Sustenance Sans. It is located here if you desire to have a bo peep. Fair warning, I hardly use facebook -or- twitter at the best of times (twitter is @shaedowdancer) so odds are I'll barely use google+ as well! Other than, you know, to tell the watermelon and paper bag with a face drawn on it that I posted whee! I also have a deviantart page here if you want to have a look at sporadic art updates, a more general update is a furaffinity page here which has more arts and pictures and oh god the horrorrrrr that is me in a couple places. View at own risk! (Seriously, there is a lot of crappy pencil work in there my god).

Give me a shout hello, or something. Love to hear from people that are not trying to sell me things, thanks. :D

~ Think of the possibilities.

Midnight Cravings

The Darkness surrounds me,
light is a distant memory,
haunting the shadows of my mind.
I do not mind the darkness
nor the sibilant whispers,
ever craving for justice, or revenge.
It matters not which.

To drown out the silence I remember.
I recall those hated days,
the long, desolate, lonely nights.
Rotations of a cycle that always, always
lead up to that Day.
And the Night that caused it.

Recollections of then, the long ago,
the distant warmth, turn, turning
(Sister, I am sorry. I miss you)
The sun, ever warm, ever burning.
Sometimes it crackles like fire,
but mostly it just hangs, ominous.
Tormenting me with silence.

It is so quiet up here.

~~~~

Years ago, days and centuries to turn,
too many to count, sweet Celestia bore
the love, the warmth, the adoration;
most often she, the sun, was in folklore.
The soft shadow, ever present,
ever quiet and shy, forgotten Luna,
the fair moon of neglect.

Present and unassuming, secondary
(or so the rumours say)
to the Suns bright presence
for which the ponies would play.
Until exhausted, they lay to sleep
under the nocturne shroud
and the silence it needs to keep.

Soft and fine in ways the Sun was not,
the night, the moon, a pale shimmer glow.
A cold light oft shunned, eyes turned away
to favour the brilliance of the dawn.
To thaw the frost, ease the breathy chill,
bright colours in cold rain, light across the sky
voices lift in joy, incandescent ecstatic thrill.

Fair moon, sweet Luna, shut not your eyes;
let not the silent bindings twine and bloom.
Lock not your heart to the warmth.
Play, sweet Luna, you will soon rejoice
but not before, rich with fear
you awake as Nightmare Moon.

To eternal darkness the Sun objects,
a clash of wills, crossing of twin horns
the feathers dark and pale flutter and fall.
Water eclipsed, dripping dawns soft warmth;
silence held in a locked heart, ice pierced in twain,
with a dark shaft of rainbow night, pushing,
binding the Nightmare to Luna's moon.

Mythos, mares tale, disbelieving whisper.
Rumours of the sweet, shy Luna.
The Mare in the Moon, ever silent
ever shy, ever watching, trapped;
a cage of her own making, bars of silence hold
locked by broken-heart tears of the Sun.

Ten times ten the bars will hold,
keeping the Night at bay.
Seven tears fell, seven stars conspire;
time to end the hold of Day.
(Sister, I am sorry. I miss you)
Still the silence, locked within
binds to keep the pair apart.

In blackest Night, in brightest Day,
seven stars conspire and will hold sway.
Bars to be lifted, the night roams free.
Sweet Luna, turn not your face,
harden not your heart and rejoice
to know the end of Nightmare Moon.

Seven tears fell, six voices raised
not to banish, not to silence,
rather cut the bindings and thaw the ice,
Sweet Luna, fair Moon, shut not your eyes.
Be welcome in the warmth,
welcome in from the frozen chill
(Sister, I am sorry. I miss you)
the binding silence is shattered.

From the writings of history,
the pony interpretation of that Day
and the Night that caused it.
A tidbit of detail to be forgotten,
for if she has her way, soon,
this will be the all and only, a record
of she who never was; Nightmare Moon.

~~~~~

I feel the silence now, it is part of me,
but it doesn't strangle me, now.
Not any more and never again.
I look to the familiar, silver orb,
my gaol, my cell, my home;
And I smile.

Alone In The Dark

The most pointless confusing counterintuitive game I have ever had the misfortune to play. Fair enough that I am not the most competent of gaming individuals, it's not like I go out and buy and clock a new game every week but... godamn.

I got ...just passed the title screen. That is how 'good' this game is. My god.

Okay, you start with the opening cutscene, sure whatever, except oh no, you have to BLINK. Blink your way through a cutscene. If you don't blink, everything goes white and you can't see. Which defeats the whole purpose of the cutscene thing. If you can't watch it then... well.

Some talking about something and someone gets hit, I don't know, I wasn't really paying attention because I kept on having to BLINK. But, eventually you get to walk and blink at the same time. Whoooo, multitasking! Sadly, I also lacked the intuitive manner in which I could turn and walk and blink. Just walk sideways and grind your face against the wall until getting hit by the guard to swing you around, and oh hey, have to climb some stairs, and blink.

He ends up dying, and I spent, I swear to god, fifteen minutes blinking and trying to figure out where I was supposed to go. Yay, a mirror! Punch the mirror and we can now be a camera. Awesome.

...this is the general theme of the sodding game. You climb a rope, okay, my version is for the Playstation 2, so it was X to jump and grab the rope, but square to jump while holding -onto- the rope because if you x jumped you let go of the rope, fell to your doom and died and had to go through the sodding thing all over again. Oiye.

I managed to get through putting out some fire, bashing in a door, and getting over a hole in the floor. Which, lo and behold, brought me to the TITLE SCREEN. I now know what game I am playing.

Jumping onto a rope and a ledge and dying umpteen million times, and I gave up. Literally. And it took me an HOUR to get there. ...I died a lot.

Now, if you want to -play- this game, I highly recommend you do so with an audience of other people who have learnt the joy of Alone In The Dark. Why? Because that makes it a fun game. It is just a game of fail, really. The audience spends more time reminiscing about how -they- failed attempting to do anything in the process.

This game seems to be a mash up of all horror genres with the least amount of sense possible. You start confused, and it just doesn't get any better. You start out with blinking and whitescreen, people getting eaten by shadows, fire, then progress to cracks in the floor that eat you and drag you around, and zombies. Where the HELL did the zombies come from? I mean -really-. The hungry floor is -somewhat- plausible, the shadows that ate people had to come from -something- right? But -zombies-. What the hell?! ...And everything is strangely immune to fire.

It is the best game to make fun of, because it is so counter-intuitive to play. That is the sole saving feature of the game. You can watch someone -else- play it and fail. And laugh.

Work

Okay, sound this out with me. It's been three months, and I have been working every week on saturday night, 6-midnight. Work did -not- have any extra shifts for me, period. not even ONE, for that entire three months unless they called me in because someone called in sick.

I get asked to work in another store, I agree instantly, and make noises about offering them more of my free time as they need it. I work at this other store, actually -enjoy- working at said other store and all of a sudden they require me to work in that store three days in a row? Hmm. I smell something a little bit sus.

So, I check the roster, and lo and behold, I finally have an extra shift! methink mazing! However, they neglected to inform me that there -might- have been changes to my usual routine, and so, I neglected to inform myself of this.

Am I over reacting? is the fact that I -liked- the time spent working in another store -not- synonymous with extra shifts in the store that I was first employed in, a store that miraculously have the extra hours to give me?

Oh, there's another -delightful- part of working there. See, Assistent Manager A is a biatch, and a mean manager. So to complain about Assistent manager A, you have to go to Store Manager B. Slight problem, Store Manager B and Assistent Manager A are good friends... so guess who's word is going to get more weight? Okay, so now we have a problem with Store Manager B, so we go up another rank on the tier to Area Manager C. You with me so far? But alas! Store Manager B and Area Manager C live IN THE SAME HOUSE. Guess who's bedbuddies hmm? And to go above Area Manager C you have to ask.... State Manager? or something? about it, but alas, there is this slight problem of NOT KNOWING WHO THE FUCK THAT IS.

A + B + C = you are screwed.

And now, for your regularly schedualed chaotically supplied diversion of the amusing factor

<3 Total eclipse of the heart. Literally.



Meatloaf! Anything for love.

And that is your reguarly schedualed but chaotically supplied diversion of the amusing factor. Have a nice day ^^

~ShaedowDancer~