Beware of the Leopard

spikyblondehair @ 2008-05-09T18:47:00

2008-05-09T06:48:35Z

I think I am the only person ever to cry during I Am Legend.

Life

2008-05-01T23:27:39Z

1. Even Ag Boys love their mothers. Though why they choose to call them from the courtyard, where everyone can hear them, is a mystery to me. I had the privilege this morning of hearing Sam-I-Am say "I love you too, Mum..." Highly amusing.
2. Last night when I was just drifting off to sleep at about 10:30, Macca and Lochie had a huge screaming fight. I don't know what it was about, I just heard lots of yelling and someone saying "Macca, Macca," placatingly. I tried not to listen, but then it was all weirdly quiet and it took me ages to get back to sleep. It must have been fairly serious because they're both still angry this morning and I distinctly heard Macca saying he was going to smash Lochie.

3. Last night I talked to Mum o the phone. When she was at uni she stole a dogfish from the lab to practice dissecting at home. What a rebel. They had to hang it out the window of Dad's car with a rope on the way back to her flat because it stunk so much. No wonder I'm a nerd.
4. I am reading The Saga of King Hrolf Kraki for English. King Hrolf is an awesome King and all the best men in Scandinavia want to be his champions. He is fair and generous and righteous. He is strong and smart and regal. He's also INBRED. His mother is also his sister. That's disgusting. Obviously, in medieval Scandinavia they had different ideas about incest.
5. Speaking of incest, who heard about the guy who kept his daughter locked in the basement for 24 years and fathered seven of her children? I only heard a snippet on the radion while I was at the gym, so I don't know the full story, but what gets me is that his wife didn't know. How could you possibly fail to notice that your husband was a cruel incestuous pervert and was KEEPING YOUR DAUGHTER AND 4 OF HER CHILDREN LOCKED UP UNDER YOUR HOUSE?
6. I have recently realised that all my friends, actual friends rather than acquaintances or people I am friendly with, are white, female and middle class, except for one and she is female and middle class. I really need to expand my horizons.
7. Eddie Vedder's words of wisdom: "Everyone is practising... Our world's an accident."

Yay! Sleepiness.

2008-04-23T08:56:25Z

I have Pearl Jam's entire set from Pinkpop 1992 on my computer. It's incredible. Watching it improved my mood dramatically.
I also have Pearl Jam MTV Unplugged 1992. Awesome. Life is good.

I was watching a video of Eddie Vedder and Ben Harper singing Indifference. Ben messes up the "I will scream my lungs out..." bit, and it sounds like he's going to keep singing, but Eddie looks at him - you can see him thinking 'shut up, you dick, you're wrecking my song! Look, I'll show you..." and he cuts across him, singing beautifully. Ben shuts up. Trust me, it's funny when you see it. But only if you're obsessed with Pearl Jam and have a strange sense of humour. Like me.

I finished my lab report and handed it in on time. Now I have a new one to write. And a midsemester test on Tuesday. And a present to buy for my brother's 21st. Busy day for me tomorrow. I have to finish my book for English and do several chapters of Latin. I could have done some of this tonight, but I was watching Pearl Jam concerts. It was way more fun. My brain isn't working properly anyway. I think I'll go to bed and dream of angry short men with lovely eyes.

Eddie Vedder's words of wisdom: Troubled souls unite, we got ourselves tonight!

spikyblondehair @ 2008-03-07T16:47:00

2008-03-07T03:54:21Z

What's wrong with these people? all I want to do is watch the cricket, but no. I have been over-ruled. I have decided it is not worth fighting with my hall-mates over (after all I have to live with them all year), so it's live scoring on the net for me. I hate sharing. Grrr. Why don't they want to look at pretty men with me? I have to use up all my broadband. They didn't want to watch Grey's Anatomy the other night. Or House. I may be forced to 'visit my sister' in Wellington next weekend. If it happens to involve the test at the basin...On the plus side, I am well on my way to converting Emma into a full-blown Pearl Jam fan.

Insightful cricket comments

2008-02-14T06:28:05Z

We won the first 2 ODIs in the series because of the balance of the sides.

The Black Caps have (including 12th man:

4 batsmen -
Jesse Ryder
Jamie How
Ross Taylor
Peter Fulton

3 All rounders -
Scott Styris
Jacob Oram
Daniel Vettori (c)

1 Wicketkeeper batsman -
Brendon McCullum

3 Bowlers
Chris Martin
Jeetan Patel
Michael Mason

1 Pirate -
Kyle Mills

England, on the other hand is made up of (including 12th man):

8 Pirates:

Ryan Sidebottom (Pirate captain)
Dimitri Mascarenas (1st mate)
Kevin Pietersen (2nd mate)
Alistair Cook (Ship Cook, obviously)
Ian Bell (Evil rat-faced cabin/crows nest boy)
Owais Shah
Graeme Swann
James Anderson
Phil Mustard

1 Stowaway:
Ravi Bopara

1 Captured Merchant Sailor:
Paul Collingwood (to give a respectable face and cute accent to their diguise as a cricket team)

And Draco Malfoy, poorly disguised as Stuart Broad.

Yes. This is what I do in my spare time.

Uni

2008-02-13T03:23:04Z

Holy crap I leave for uni on Sunday! This will be a large-scale change. Dad can't come to see me settled in because he couldn't get time off work :(

Match report

2008-02-12T21:27:51Z

Oh the irony...

The first day it rained properly in the Waikato all summer was the day of the cricket. If you ever need a drought breaker, arrange an international cricket match.

It was raining in the morning, but we, ever optimistic, drove 50km to Hamilton anyway. Well Mum drove. If I had tried to it would have taken about 5 hours because I drive slower than some people walk. We did various things in town (mostly involving food) before the sun miraculously came out an hour before play was due to start.
I met my friend and we found a great spot to sit on the embankment. We watched the players warm up and discussed important matters such as what we had for breakfast and which players were the most piratey.
Play began on time and England got off to a speedy start. There was one fantastic over, a six and two wickets - including THAT CATCH. I actually saw it as it happened, which is unusual because mostly they only take wickets when I am looking for food or have my head turned to talk to someone. It was incredible. Brendon McCullum take a bow. Airbourne, full stretch to his right. He probably had half a second. Wow.
After that it was fairly non-eventful from a NZ point of view. The english got some runs. We weren't paying that much attention, as we were having an in depth discussion about Brendon's tattoos and the fact that wicketkeepers look like frogs.
After 15 overs there was a rain delay. Everyone put up their umbrellas. Sadly, we had no umbrella as we were told in the carpark that they were stopping people taking umbrellas in. We stayed about 20 minutes in the rain, then 45 minutes in the car waiting for it to stop. It didn't. We went home.
At home there was beautiful sunshine. I turned on the TV. The players were just walking on to Seddon Park under beautiful clear skies that stayed for the rest of the night. I then watched us win by ten wickets in a fantastic display of hitting by Jesse Ryder and Brendon McCullum and listened to the commentators talk about how lucky all these people were that they stayed through the rain.

spikyblondehair @ 2008-01-23T10:51:00

2008-01-22T22:21:10Z

IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE?

So, here's how it works:
1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc)
2. Put it on shuffle
3. Press play
4. For every question, type the song that's playing
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool...
7. When you're finished tag some other people to do it! Do it if you want to!

Opening credits: "Light My Fire" - The Doors
Waking Up: "Black Night" - Deep Purple
First Day At School: "Original Sin" - INXS [Started sinning early]
Falling In Love: "Devil Inside" - INXS
Fight Song: "Shouldn't You Oughta Be In Love" - Dave Dobbyn[That's me, always the peacemaker]
Breaking Up: "My Sharona" - The Knack[I'd break up with someone if they said that stuff to me... have you listened to those lyrics?]
Prom: "Distant Sun" - Crowded House
Driving: "Beth" - Kiss [Hah! It fits. Beth is the reason I can't drive. She scared our parents so much when she was learning that they don't want to teach me.]
Getting Back Together: "Black Betty" - The Ram Jam
Flashback: "Bobby Jean" - Bruce Springsteen[A suitably classic song]
Mental Breakdown: "Bridge Over Troubled Water" - Simon and Garfunkel [Glad to know they'll stick with me through it]
Wedding: "Society" - Eddie Vedder [Obviously I'm eloping, no pointless institutions for me]
Birth of a Child: "Great Balls of Fire" - Jerry Lee Lewis
Final Battle: "Hard to Find Her" - Zed [Fight over a girl? Not a very dramatic song for the great battle]
Death Scene: "Lodi" - CCR [Dying alone, unsuccessful]
Funeral Song: "Peace Train" - Cat Stevens [My death will improve the world... good things to come]
Credits: "Marker in the Sand" - Pearl Jam [My favourite song for the credits of the story of my life.]

spikyblondehair @ 2008-01-22T12:58:00

2008-01-22T00:24:35Z

* I really need to recover from my phone phobia. I hate phoning people. It makes me nervous. I blush and sweat lots. It's horrible.

* I failed 2 of my maths papers. I was very upset because I've never failed an exam before. I still passed maths, but I thought I'd passed all of them and got a horrible shock. But is it better to get two merits and two not achieveds or to get 4 achieveds? It averages to the same thing. I think practice exams should be abolished. They make you over confident.

* However very happy with English - Excellence for Shakespeare! Yay!

* Am I a horrible person for being pleased that all my friends failed at least one paper? It made me feel better to know that I wasn't the only one who didn't do as well as they'd hoped.

* Five year old cousin D was here all last week. She has so much energy! Very tiring. But she's lovely. She was so excited when we took her to look at the rock pools at the beach. It must be nice to still feel the need to shriek with excitement, jump up and down and show everyone in the vicinity, even total strangers, when you see a crab. Especially when you've just seen fifteen other very similar crabs.
I was extra special number one cousin for a few days, but then we went to my brother's and I was replaced. D wants my brother to marry her mum so he can be her Dad. It was so cute.

* I have nothing to read. I really shouldn't be saying that, we have about seven trillion books in our house. But I don't want to read them, I want to read the last book in the Codex Alera series and I can't because there are 6 reserves on it at the library and I can't find it in any bookshops.

* Eddie won a Golden Globe for Guaranteed! Yay! Go Eddie! Didn't get to see him in a suit though because the show was cancelled. He probably wouldn't have gone anyway.

Uni

2007-12-05T07:12:51Z

I've finally enrolled in uni! I've picked all my subjects. It was so complicated! So now I'm doing a conjoint BA/BSc and planning to major in linguistics and ecology. What the hell am I going to do with a linguistics degree? But the BA is mostly for interest rather than practical use anyway, Ecology is the field I'm actually going to work in. Yay! I'm going to learn latin!

On a different note: Homeless is an excellent song. I don't know why Bad Radio never made it as a band. But it's good that they didn't or there would be no Pearl Jam.

My friends are all coming out tomorrow (all three of them), to goto the beach and go swimming and play backyard cricket. Or not because it has finally decided to rain. Rats.

It's over

2007-11-15T20:45:26Z

I have finished school. It's over. Except exams. Tonight is leavers dinner, which sounds really cool. There are going to be a whole lot of speeches by teachers and stuff. I got a new dress for it. It's red and black and swishy. And new shoes, with little heels and no backs. They don't stay on my feet properly so I have to stick my heels to them with double sided tape in order to be able to walk.

Last night was prizegiving. It was mostly really boring.

Amir gave the most ludicrously pretentious speech I have ever heard, full of big words and earning immortality, with over a minute in maori at the beginning. He kept pausing during the Maori bit and I thought he was going to start speaking English, but then off he'd go again in Maori. I was ridiculous. He's Iranian. He has no connection with Maori culture. He was just showing off how smart he is.

Michael Ridder played a guitar piece called 'Michael Michael Michael'. Ok, he's really conceited. He's also an extremely good guitar player, though. It was incredible.

Now to prizes:

Natalie: Service to the Library

Graduation with honours

Christina: Distinction in Accounting

Graduation with honours

Michelle: Distinction in English

Graduation (she didn't take enough subjects for honours)

Me: High Distinction English

Distinction History

Service to the Library

Graduation with honours

and *drumroll* The Beatrice Fraser Memorial for Scholastic Ability, School Interests and Personality.

Haha I got a personality award. That was the shock of a lifetime. I'm not actually sure what I did to deserve it. Maybe it pays to always be polite to teachers. There were only seven people after me to get awards, so I had to wait for ages and there were all these people getting big awards. I was going "Oh my God, what am I getting, I didn't do that well this year, I hope they haven't made a mistake." But then I went on stage and collected my 5 certificates, medal, and mysterious white envelope that turned out to contain a cheque for $80. Score. It was a good night.

Kadin got Proxime Accestit (runner up to dux, and I think I spelt it wrong). Amir and Luke were joint dux. Didn't see that one coming. I thought there would be dux and joint runner up. At least Amir didn't get it on his own. But I thought, Rats, If I'd studied a little bit harder before the school exams (or at all) I would have beaten Amir in history and he wouldn't have been dux. But, can't change that now. Amir and Luke both got high distinction (top of the year) in all their subjects.

Oh and I got excellence for my seminar for English! Shocking.

Dreams

2007-10-20T06:52:36Z

My dream:

It was the middle of summer and the west family (from Outrageous Fortune) were staying in a bach near my town. There was no electricity and Van wanted a bath, so they had to clear the mountain of Gorse, to use it to light a fire, and repay the environment for the smoke that would go into the atmosphere. So they set about ripping out the Gorse bushes, and turned into my family. The rest of my family ripped out the Gorse bushes and I ground up the seeds in a butter churn to make flour.

Too much study. Or maybe I'm just strange.

End of school...

2007-10-19T05:42:52Z

3 weeks to go! Oh God. I am not ready for exams.

THis weekend I must do:

2 static images
Write oral presentation
Write English Essay
Chemistry report
Japanese essay

Maybe I should start.

I just got a letter offering me a place in a hostel at Otago. It has to be in with deposit by 27/10, and I'm not even sure I want to go there. THe deposit is huge. We are thinking of just not sending it back. There are relatives I can stay with if I have to.

On a different topic:
I started reading a book yesterday. It was really good and I finished it this morning, but I was SO disappointed with the ending. The girl and the guy who I'd been wanting to get together throughout the book (and had looked like they were going to, they even kissed) turned out to be brother and sister. I felt robbed.

Does anyone else develop crushes on characters in books?

Richie McCaw!

2007-10-13T03:19:49Z

I packed Richie McCaw's groceries today. *Grins foolishly* He's much bigger than he looks on TV. I came up to about his elbow.

Ruapehu and bank robberies

2007-09-26T20:32:44Z

Ruapehu erupted. That poor man that got caught in the hut when the boulder landed on it. His right leg has been amputated, and he's in intensive care. Apparently his core temperature was about 24 C. It's incredible that he survived. He's only 22. But what bad luck, to just happen to have the mountain erupt without warning while he was there. What are the chances?

In other news, two banks have been robbed in the last week in Hamilton. They showed a picture of a girl wanted for questioning. She used to go to my school. She was in one of my classes. Scary.

* * *

I just watched "Reign Over Me". It's so strange seeing Adam Sandler being serious. It's quite a good movie, but not one I could watch over and over. I might go watch the credits again though. Pearl Jam's version of "Love Reign O'er Me" is incredible. Yes, I am a sad obssessive who gets out DVDs for the credit song.

* * *

I have recently developed an obsession with "Outrageous Fortune". *Van*

Dreams

2007-09-18T22:41:49Z

Last night I dreamed I had a massive screaming fight with my English teacher (who was my diving coach in the dream) because she told me the reason I was having trouble diving off the high board was that my running shoes were too small and were hurting my feet. I got really angry and yelled at her in the middle of the street. THen I ran home in my perfectly fitting shoes. I think exams are doing my head in.

That was an awesome game of cricket last night. Twenty20 is growing on me. Did you see Lou's stop? What an incredible piece of fielding. The whole game was worth watching just for that.

Rugby

2007-09-16T01:28:07Z

I felt it was time for someone to point out the attractiveness of Andy Ellis. I can't put a picture up because I don't know how, but there's an excellent one on the All Blacks website in the player diaries.

I love player diaries, full of wonderful irrelevancies like "I had a small lunch of half a chicken" and "I got up at 7AM and ate some cereal". Brilliant.

Sout Africa look threatening for the world cup. 36 - 0 against England. The Portugese looked like lovely fellas and they tried really hard... but it's not really the best build up.

spikyblondehair @ 2007-08-01T17:19:00

2007-08-01T05:30:32Z

On Saturday we went to Julia's birthday party at Pizza Hut. There was lots of yummy food. This little girl, who would have been about 3, was fascinated by Julia's skirt (Pink and poofy, very attractive things to a 3 year old). She came over to look and waved her icecream around. You should have seen Julia's face - she was inching sideways, going: not on the skirt, not on the skirt! Naomi actually disappeared into the toilets, because she was wearing a white jersey, and white jerseys are not good when combined with small children and icecreams. The icecream went all over the table and the floor and Naomi's chair. ( I was surprised that naomi was there, I didn't even know they were friends.)

Yesterday, school finished early because of parent-teacher interviews. I had to wait 20 minutes for the bus. When it got there, I was polite, and let other people get on before me. Then when I went to get on the bus driver wouldn't let me, because the bus was full! I had to wait half an hour for the next bus, and I missed the movie I was going to see. I was furious. You'd think, now that they have a big campaign encouraging people to go on the bus, that they would send more buses, or bigger buses. At the very least, I would like a polite, sincere apology for the inconvenience. Not just "get off, we're full." Grrr!

spikyblondehair @ 2007-08-01T17:18:00

2007-08-01T05:28:06Z

Yay. I got my Harry Potter book yesterday afternoon and I read it all before anyone could ruin it for me. It was excellent. Riveting stuff. It was kind of sad though. It was the end. I have spent the last 9 years of my life eagerly anticipating the next book, and now there are no more. What can I look forward to now?

And now, a Jeffism:

"Your ears would be the pride of my ear bucket."

Eddie Vedder's words of wisdom:

"I am fuel, you are friends, we got the means to make amends."

Harry Potter

2007-07-22T07:22:58Z

Reports etc

2007-07-03T07:23:02Z

I have my midyear report. For some unknown reason the have insisted on calling me by my full name this year. That's a bit like calling "Dog" from Footrot Flats his real name. Not quite as embarrassing, maybe, but just as strange.
All my teachers said things like 'diligent' 'organised' and 'conscientious' which is ridiculous because I am nothing of the sort.

spikyblondehair @ 2007-07-01T13:18:00

2007-07-01T01:37:59Z

I hate being sick! Uuuurrrhhhggg....

Yay, It was the ball on Friday night. I will put up pictures when I can figure out how to get them from the camera to the computer and the computer to the internet.

I had my hair and make up done. It took ages but it was worth it - people didn't recognise me. Speaking of not recognising people, Sean was there. He'd had his hair straightened and I completely didn't recognise him. I was talking to his girlfriend for at least a minute, when he said "I didn't recognise you." I was like "Arrgh, It's Sean!" It was scary.

They played about 5 or 6 really good songs - every time we sat down or stood in line for photos. When we were dancing to "500 Miles" I turned around and Luke the annoyingly brainy was blatently staring. His mouth was open and everything. I choose to believe that he was incredibly surprised to see me dancing.

spikyblondehair @ 2007-06-19T19:30:00

2007-06-19T07:52:57Z

I got All Black autographs! I missed the bus home and was going to wait for the next bus at the library. I was walking there when I saw this huge crowd of people. Naturally, I went to see what they were looking at. It was the All Blacks signing. So I stayed and got autographs. I got Nick Evans (He smiled at me *swoon*), Leon McDonald, Anton Oliver, and Greg Rawlinson (I didn't even know who he was, but he signed my card before I could stop him). Oh, and Dan Carter :D

I went to the All Blacks vs Canada game. The first half was a little stressful (at one stage it was 12-10). The second half was a beautiful try-fest. Proper, flowing rugby is a beautiful thing.

The security people at the gates made us chuck out an unopened pack of Mallowpuffs. I was so angry - they're just doing that to make money, and if they didn't want people to take food in it should have said on the tickets in big red capitals NO FOOD OR DRINK OF ANY TYPE< OPENED OR UNOPENED MAY BE TAKEN INTO THE STADIUM.

Did You know that there are 867 different languages in Papua New Guinea.

I find tutoring frustrating. I'm sorry, but the girl I am tutoring is just plain stupid. There is no other word for it.

Eddie Vedder's Words of Wisdom: Nature has it's own religion, gospel of the land.

spikyblondehair @ 2007-05-06T19:57:00

2007-05-06T08:16:02Z

My friend is annoying me. She basically called me boring in front of a whole lot of people that I don't know very well. Way to make a person who's already really uncomfortable with large groups feel better. I just want to say "Shut your festering god, you tit! Your type make me puke, you vacuous toffee-nosed malodorous pervert!

Eddie Vedder's Words of Wisdom: "I know it's already been sung, but it can't be said enough: All You Need Is Love..."

Stuff

2007-04-19T07:55:47Z

Today I went and observed at the Vet Clinic. Nothing happened. Seriously. There was 1 budgie at about 9:30. It died in the vet's hands. The other vet put down a dog a bit later on. That was all. Two animals. They took about five minutes each, maybe less, and both of them died. So I had a fun time mopping floors and putting invoices into the computer.

Three days of holidays left. What have I done? I watched TV. I slept. I went to the movies twice, the zoo once, shopping once, to the dentist once, and to the optometrist. How exciting. Tomorrow I am going shopping with my mother to try to persuade her to buy me THE GREEN COAT. Then I am going to the optemetrist again.

Yay! We're in the semis of the world cup! Not to be pessimistic, but I think it'll be Australia vs. Sri Lanka in the final. But the Black caps are still fantastic. And better looking.

Eddie Vedder's Words of Wisdom: I wish I was the evidence, I wish I was the grounds... for fifty million hands upraised and open towards the sky