Greens.

...and that's why I voted Greens.

Makeup.

A lot of people criticize me, as a feminist, for wearing makeup on a regular basis. I think that's kind of unfair.

I mean, wearing makeup is a personal choice. I like makeup, and it's fun experimenting. And I think it's my right to wear whatever I damn want without people accusing me of things that I'm not.

I'm not a skank. I don't wear makeup to get some - that's illegal, I'm only fourteen. I don't wear makeup to impress anybody (doesn't work. trust me.) and I don't (anymore) wear makeup because I feel pressured into it. Makeup is freedom of expression, and because I go to a school with such a strictly enforced, straight-laced uniform, it's my way of being different. It is fun going to school with one eyelid painted purple and the other blue. I like being crazy.

Makeup and feminism is irrelevant. I don't wear makeup for boys, I don't wear makeup to impress boys, my wearing of makeup has nothing whatsoever to do with boys. I mean, trust me, boys hate makeup. They reckon that if you need even a smidge of makeup to make you look like a supermodel (i.e. the ENTIRE FEMALE POPULATION) then you're ugly. That doesn't stop me from wearing it, though.

I think it's wrong to think that just because I'm an intellectual I have to walk around looking like a dag with zip makeup and bogan clothes - which I do, sometimes, when I can't be stuffed - but I'm trying to break away from the stereotype here. I mean, not all sports stars drink Gatorade. Not all academics particularly like going around like dags. Get over it.

So when I go onto all these tutorial sites - I watch makeup tutorials for the hell of it. I can't recreate most of the looks becase a) I'm a schoolkid and my makeup haul is quite small and b) I have the most amazingly bad eyes - and all these guys are like you don't need to try so hard, she looked better without makeup, seriously, don't bother because guys don't like it I just feel like going SHUT THE %^#&%&# UP! GET OVER YOURSELF! WE DON'T DO THIS FOR YOU.

This issue inspired my poem 'Flatter', which is in one of my earlier posts...

KaPow. I'm gona KaZing now.

SHRIIIIINE

Okay, so I've been going on a movie fest and I've watched AVATAR, with PERTH BOY Sam Worthington.

I have to admit, I've grown up with bogans, who are either the kind who get beer bellies before they're actually legally allowed to drink beer, or they've got like amazing muscled up bodies. Extreme, yah?

But I actually like the Aussie accent. It's what you grow up with. And Sam has the most amazing accent. Seriously.

C'mon. Phwar.

Modern day Macbeth (nice fringe...)

Jake Sully, Toruk Makto. Nice Abs.

Omaticaya princess Neytiri, Sam's on-screen mate (as in, mate mate. Not the Aussie def of mate.)


Sammy on Rove.


Sam (Jake Sully) and Zoe (Neytiri).

P.S. I didn't know anything about taking the silver lady out to dance - I'm underaged and a good girl, I am. But I do know about going mooch and snaggers. I'm not such a fail Aussie after all.

Going to the Dogs

I had a lovely day today.

First of all, I'm sick. I had to cancel on a party. Never like doing that.

Second of all, my dog was starting to resemble a smelly overgrown, miniature wookie. so it was washing day.

Before washing comes trimming. My dog's fringe remains resolutely flopped over her face no matter how many times I cut it so I made the decision to cut all the hair on her head about yay big. Easier said than done. My sister and I ended up chasing a very grumpy silky over the patio for about three hours, and she looked like an idiot once we were done - her head was tiny and her body looked huge in proportion.

So I ended up drenching the laundry with dirty water whilst trying to wash an extremely grumpy dog with an extremely stupid haircut constantly trying to pull a houdini when coughing and crampy.

On the bright side, I had some good food today.

Martyr.

When you hear about women dying for things such as adultery, crimes against chastity, heresy, you think about women in the past, women who lived and died long, long ago.

And that is true. Joan of Arc, the French girl-martyr who was tried and convicted for heresy, was born and died in the 1400s. Anne Askew, another convicted heretic, was burned at the stake during the reign of Henry VIII. Both France and England no longer support the death penalty of anyone - man, woman, child - for any crime.

And so we think the struggle for women's rights, for human rights, children's rights, the rights for all to have a happy life, is over. Wrong.

In 2004 a court was given permission by the High Supreme Court of Iran to execute a girl for 'crimes against chastity', saying that she was a 22 year old woman and an unrepentant adulteress, when in fact she was a sixteen year old with a dead mother and a difficult childhood, a psychological illness and was raped, but the rapist walked free and she was hung from a crane as a seductress. this is 2004, for crying out loud. Six years ago. And to this day men, women and children are murdered in the name of God, in the name of Justice, in the name of nothing in particular.

Who are we, as mere humans, to take another life? We have no right to murder murderers, yet alone innocent women and children. And every day when you pray to God in thanks that you are not born in hellholes that still practice and encourage the slaughter of those in the name of human law I hope you pray for those who are. I hope you pray for those who burn, boil and hang in the name of religions and other figments of ignorant men's imagination. Every free step we take is tainted by the blood of martyrs who have died for us.

We are all sinners in this imperfect world. For any who has hurt those who hurt others, think of how many times you have been hurt, think how many times you have caused pain. How can you fly a banner of superstition tainted with innocent blood? Preach your relgions and cults, tell everyone to murder women, children, unbelievers. Tell everyone that all men are murderers, all women are sinners, all children are the offspring of the devil.

When you tell them that, I wish I could say that they do not believe. But they do. The world seems to be made up of the persuaders and the persuaded. And that is what makes me sick.

My Crib

Where do I blog from?

Upstairs, in my house. I have like the biggest table ever given to a high school kid I have ever seen, and a black, flashy PC with a wireless keyboard and mouse that ALWAYS RUNS OUT OF BATTERIES I'M SERIOUS!!!!. Don't ask me what kind of computer it is. It's black and pretty. My table is a mess. I have my stash of grandma stockings for school, a holy pink tank I wanna sew into a pin cushion, my kobo, a heatback, a book on wedding etiquette - wishful thinking - a facewasher, tissues, speakers, a purse, a box full of wishstones, a stack of books, paper and a box of baubles, my purse, more books, a little mural I made of shells and wishtones, a remote control for god knows what, a couple of magnets, two post it notes with LEAVE ON written on them that I stick on random points of my computer when I leave my computer on overnight when I'm downloading something, an empty hairmask container, a small dish of who knows, a sticky coaster, a little tesk orgaizer chocers with lipgloss and malfunctioning pens, a packet of gum that I'm not particularly crazy about, a pad of paper, lip balm, lolly wrappers....

I blog in my pyjamas, or in my school uniform. I'm not a pretty sight when I blog. Sometimes I blog from school. I also surf the net and watch crap on YouTube simultaneously when I blog, so I get distracted, sometimes. That's it. That's me, as a blogger.

Resolution.

My 23rd of August resolution.

I will reply to every comment posted on my blog.

L.R.

The Mosque Debate

So you guys may have heard about the whole cafafa about building a mosque on the site of the 9/11 attacks.

In case you've been living under a rock for the last decade or so, here's the back story: Osama bin Laden, that crack head who likes sending threatening messages to America, Australia and the UK via telly, decided to blow up the World Trade Centre in America. The people who were behind the plot, as well as Osama bin Laden, happened to be Muslim.

Now, ten years on, they've decided to build a mosque on the site, for various reasons. Big debate.

I personally can see where both sides are coming from, but I do think one side in particular should get over it. I understand it might seem like mockery to all the people who died in the terrorist attacks, but seriously, guys. It's a mosque, a symbol of peace and serenity and spirituality and all these other cool things that I don't believe in. Muslims have the right to build mosques wherever they want. You don't see Native Americans walking up to the White House and asking for it to be pulled down because it's a symbol of white domination of their native land...at least if they did they wouldn't be taken very seriously. I'm just saying, that the Muslims are not building a shrine of praise to all the terrorists who blew up the buildings or canonizing Osama bin Laden, they just want to build a mosque. That's all. Not really the dirty, backstabbing situation you quite imagine.

I don't know. What do you think?

New Name

I'm just playing around here. Sorry if I'm changing names too fast for your liking.

I thought it reflects, in a very weird and nonsensical way, the desperate state Australian politics are in. Are airplanes in the night sky really like shooting stars? How can we wave flag when we're a mess? But still, when I get older I will be stronger, and they'll call me freedom just like a wavin' flag, so just keep pretending.

Lady Renegade

Okay, so it's been a long time since I first started this blog and introduced myself - two years, almost. So, I know many of you know me but I know many of you don't, so here it is: Lady Renegade.

I'm a Perth schoolgirl - I go to Perth Modern School, the only academically select school in Western Australia. My academic career? I suck at math. I suck at sport. I love English and the Social Sciences. I'm a very bad Asian but at least my politics teacher likes me. I won't name my primary school here but I can tell you it's a load of bull. I'm a grade skipper and skipped a grade in English in year eight and a grade in Social Sciences in year nine. Next year, I will skip straight to year eleven and start studying for TEE.

I'm an ambitious person - I nurse ambitions for Oxford University, or a BPhil at my local university, UWA. If not, a BA from somewhere in Australia will have to suffice, and I'll work my way up to Oxford. Oxford is my dream, and it's my dream of Oxford that drives me mad and keeps me sane. For uni I'm thinking along the lines of history, maybe politics, with an Women's Studies minor. I want to be an author, an actress, an academic.

I'm a very weird person. I blog regularly, for one, something that is not really considered normal, cool or sane here amongst the youth of Perth. I've self diagnosed myself with Asperger's Syndrome but many believe I'm just nuts. I like to think that there's a medical term for my weirdness. I have lots of obsessions, and they're not normal ones: Elizabeth I, random Korean dramas, etc.

I'm also a very stuffed up organism. I was born with a congenital heart block, and therefore my heart refuses to work properly so I have a pacemaker. I'm also dextrocardiac and I have situs inversus. I have random bits of wire and a broken lead floating around my body. I joke that I'm a cyborg. Some people don't come near me for fear that my medical and academic strangeness is infectious. I have surgical down my torso - some people find them disturbing. I personally find my stretch marks more disturbing.

Who am I? I'm Asian. I'm fourteen. I bounce from nostalgic to hyper to bored to depressed to crazy to loony and sometimes, rarely, I have a few moments of normal.

I started my blog in a very unhealthy frame of mind. I was fed up with my life as a schoolkid with no voice and no say. I felt like my life was dictated by the prison system of school. I hated my teachers and my classes and I only had very few friends. I've gotten better, relapsed, and then gotten better again. Over the course of my blogging career I have had two son of a guns walk in, walk out, but hey, you get over that too. Everyone does. Even if you don't, you still grin and say that you have. That's life. At the moment I'm happy, or happy enough. I'm optimistic, and that's what counts. I don't see anything at the moment that will cause me to lapse back into hysteria/pathetic self pity/depression again.

My blog ranges from poems to political crap to beauty articles no one ever reads, but that's okay. They're fun writing - and half the enjoyment of writing is for the writer herself - you can't just write for readers. I'm an avid YouTube fan and I often post my favourite videos here - I hope someone watches them.

Another big thing of my blogs are my personal beliefs: I'm Atheist, which is partly because I believe that the purity of religion has been utterly destroyed my corruption and politics and partly because of all my medical conditions it's not healthy to believe that God inflicted them on me and I, as a helpless baby, deserved them. I used to be Buddhist. I'm a feminist and proud of it.

I'm a secularist, too, and I believe that politics and religion should be as far apart as possible. I believe in political and religious freedom, though, and I believe that even though I don't believe in God everyone has the right to. I don't agree with democracy but I don't see a realistic way out of it. I support the Australian Greens, but I believe Australian politics at the moment is a lost cause. I support gay marriage, but I must stress that I'm not gay. I believe that marriage is a human right and we have no right to deny this right to other humans. Gay people are humans, too, you know.

What else do I believe in? I believe we should all worship coffee, and lasagne, and roast chicken and mangos, and my mum, my best friend in the whole wide world...

My 40 Hour Famine.

So, I finished my 40 Hour Famine today. I raised a whopping %66.40. Thanks a heap for donating shitloads, guys.

I started my famine late, because it was my mum's birthday and I didn't want to miss our family outing to the local Chinese restaurant or a cosy family movie watching Avatar with all four of us and the two stinky dogs crammed onto two beanbags. So at 11:22p.m, I shut down my computer and bunked down on the floor, sandwiched between two sleeping bags.

The next morning I woke up feeling like schmuck and spent most of the day lamenting the loss of my computer, trying to find something vegetarian and edible to eat and trying to find comfortable and bright places to sit and read that didn't involve chairs, sofas, or lights. I almost ate a chip and I nearly used the microwave, but I persevered.

On the second night I gave in and watched a little telly - but only to keep my self up to date with the election. No self respecting politics student would miss this, and I'm not a Friday person, if you understand what I mean. I slept on the floor again, dreaming of tea, coffee and beds.

The third day I spent most of the day drinking my way through thermoses of blueberry cordial and sitting, would you believe it, in the rocks that made the fountain that flowed into the pool (it wasn't on), sitting on two old sofa pillows and reading my way through my small stash of books, all connected by Eric Bana for some reason. At 3:22 I triumphantly turned on my computer and lolled on my bed. I watched a documentary by David Attenborough. I wrote about the election campaign. I botched my way through some health homework. I made some coffee. I'm writing this. I watched some Chaser Boy stuff on YouTube, I had a long bath reading and washing my hair and listening to my iPod, staying so long that the scalding hot water was nearly cool.

That was my famine.

The 2010 Federal Election

Okay, so one of my favourite vloggers nerimon did a 'Hung Parliament in Three Minutes' video which he basically detailed the events of the recent UK election. I'm not a vlogger, I don't have a video camera or the courage to shove my face in front of one, so I'm going to do a post of 'The Federal Election in a Shitload of Words'.

So, basically we had an election this weekend (during my forty hour famine). If you don't know anything about Australian politics (i.e. most of the Australian population), keep reading.

MAJOR PARTIES OF THE 2010 FEDERAL ELECTION:

The Australian Labor Party (Labor or ALP) - the incumbent governing party (centre-left) of Australia at the present, led by Julia Gillard, who ousted the former leader Kevin Rudd.

The Liberal Party of Australia (The Liberals, The Crummy Bastards, etc.) - the major opposition party (centre-right), in a coalition with the Nationals.led by Tony Abbott, possibly the most misogynistic, incompetent asshole ever to walk this country.

The National Party of Australia (The Nationals, The Country Bumpkins, etc.) - a political party that traditionally represents the farming and rural communities, in particular old farts stuck in the colonial turn of the (previous) century (centre-right). In a coalition with the Liberals and led by Warren Truss, who no-one knows of or cares about (I had to look him up on Wikipedia).

The Australian Greens (The Greens) - a political party of green political ideology with a preference deal thingy with Labor. Led by Bob Brown, and cool because they're all hippie greens and support sympathetic immigration protocols and gay marriage.

Other Random Parties - most of them are extremely right and biased, and therefore never get elected for anything.

The Independants - people who are fed up with parties and run solo shows.

The Australian Election System:

So, basically, Australia is divided up into loads of tiny sections called electorates - there are 150 electorates and therefore 150 seats in the House of Representatives. For a party to become the governing party (i.e. the leader becomes Prime Minister) that party must have half of the electorates/seats (75) plus one (so 76). People in the different electorates vote for the politician they want to represent their electorate (and they in turn belong to different political parties) and the political party they want to be in the Senate. Australia runs on what is known as a preferential system, so basically, if you vote for a party that has a very low vote tally, your votes are moved to your second choice party (you must number all candidates for your electorate in order or preference) and so on. Because of the preferential deal thingy the Greens have with the ALP, all votes that go to the Greens will be added to the ALP total in the event of a non-majority win (to win an electorate you must get at least 50 percent of the vote). Kind of confusing, but anyway.

The Key People of This Election:

The Honourable Julia Gillard MP, Prime Minister of Australia and Member for Lalor: The new leader of the ALP, kicked Kevin Rudd out of his seat recently. Many people don't like her for this. Other reasons for not liking her include the fact she's an Atheist, childless, unmarried and in a de facto relationship.

The Honourable Tony Abbott MP, Leader of the Opposition and Member for Warringah: The leader of the Coalition, the third new leader in two years. A fanatical Roman Catholic who makes all Christians look bad, he's known as the 'Mad Monk' and opposes basic things such as women's rights to abortion and paid maternal leave.

Senator Dr Bob Brown MB BS, Parliamentary Leader of the Australian Greens Senator for Tasmania: The leader of the Greens and the first openly gay member of Australian parliament. Anyone with half a brain likes him - which is why he gets no votes.

How Things Happened:

Before the election: Kevin Rudd, Leader of the ALP, was elected in 2007, finally ousting decript old scumbag John Howard. Kevin made some stupid mistakes with the help of his stupid advisor and recently got kicked out in favour of his deputy, Julia Gillard.

The election campaign: Julia makes even more stupid mistakes involving the Superprofit Tax, the Emissions Trading Scheme and shit like that. A leak from the ALP reveals that she was opposed to the cost of establishing a paid parental leave scheme. Tony Abbott tries to renounce his misogynistic, backwards, sexist comments dating back to the Stone Age. Yes We Canberra! mocks the whole thing to music including:

The Negotiate Song:



The Liberal Mental Health Scheme:



Penny Wong's Views on Marriage:



and The Gay Marriage Issue:



Issues:

The Superprofit Tax - also known as the 'Mining Tax', a scheme introduced by Kevin Rudd to impose a bigger tax on rich bums digging up shit from our land. The miners didn't take to that too kindly. Has been adjusted by Julia Gillard - they didn't like that either.

Legalization of Gay Marriage - Tony Abbott, being the almost-Roman Catholic Priest, is vehemently against it. Julia Gillard is also against it for seemingly no apparent reason other than she's swayed so easily by the catestrophically huge proportion of the Australian populance who are backward facing fags. Bob Brown, being the first openly-gay member of Parliament, supports the legalization (unlike Penny Wong, who has to keep her trap shut in the name of the ALP), and so most of the 80% of Christians in Australia hate him.

The School's Building Stimulus Scheme - building buildings at schools to boost the economy. Didn't make any sense then or now, and is now botched because the buildings are crap and behind schedule. The brainchild of Julia Gillard, the former Minister for Education.

Paid Parental Leave - as wealthy and well off as Australia is, we currently don't have a set minimum for paid parental leave. Julia Gillard, fearing the cost, presented a rather stingy plan. Tony Abbott, who once claimed that parental leave would happen in Australia over 'his dead body' (damn, how I wish that would happen soon), is now offering a much generous offer to try and combat his misogynist persona, but a bastard is a bastard for life, I say.

Amongst other things.

Predictions for the election: A small number of us believed that it would be a hung parliament with the Greens and Independants in power. Most of us were kind of...confused.

The election: Voting took place last Saturday. At the moment the Coalition have a slight advantage, but no party has the prerequisite 76 seats. the ALP lost a shitload of seats.

So, it looks like the small people who believed in a hung parliament were right. Both parties are now trying to warm up to the Independants. Lovely.

So why didn't the ALP get the majority? The ousting of Kevin Rudd was unpopular with some, and Julia did make some big mistakes. They also underestimated Tony Abbott - a lot. But most of all, the ALP is loved for being a centre-left party, always moving Australia forward into the modern world. But this campaign in particular has been so right wing they're almost twin to the Liberals.

So why didn't the Liberals get the majority? Tony Abbott has always been deeply unpopular amongst many communities in Australia: women, the youth, the indiginous population, the gay population, etc. He's far too close to John Howard, who was detested by many. Tony Abbott is far too religious and backwards for a free-thinking and free-minded place like Australia. He wants everyone to be good little Catholics and resist sin, as if that is realistic in this day and age. He has absolutely no respect for women and if he gets into power we're going to go back to the Stone Age as far as women's rights is concerned. The modern world is no place for a conservative idiot who cannot look past his long white nose. Also, the Liberals held power for a very, very, very long time - from 1996, the year of my birth, to 2007, the year that I turned twelve. That's four terms, straight. Most of us with half a heart and half a brain are sick to death of the Liberals .

What happenned to the Greens? The Greens did very well, gaining two seats in the House of Representatives (they've never held a seat in the Lower House before) and were a big boost to the ALP seat count. But I cannot help but think that the Greens and the ALP could not be more different than now. The Greens have my vote - if I had it, of course.

So what has this election taught us? This election, for me, has actually made me confront how backwards Australia is. I've realized a much more fearsome percentage of the population are too pious, too conservative and too narrow minded for my anarchic liking - you cannot do much when you're on your knees with your eyes closed and your hands clasped in prayer. Australia is not the modern place I thought it to be, and I've just realized that the term 'average intelligence' applies to the majority. And the majority still rules, at the end of the day. Democracy only gives people what they want, not what they need. Democracy takes care of the fish who go with the flow, the flock of sheep, and leave us red fish, us black sheep, in the dark.

And now I leave you with a charming little song by the Chaser Boys that sums up this election nicely:

Flatter.

Don't flatter yourself,
I don't do anything for you,
I won't live for you,
I don't dream about you,
I won't lie for you,
I won't dress for you,
I won't cry over you.

Don't flatter yourself,
You never did anything for me,
I never asked you to live for me,
And you never dreamed of me,
You always lied to me,
So I won't dress for you,
I won't cry over you.

Don't flatter yourself,
I'll never do anything like that for anyone again.
I'll never live for anyone anymore,
I'll never dream of someone if they're anything like you.
I'll never fall for a liar like you,
I'll never dress for anyone like I did for you,
And I won't let anyone make me cry, ever again.

thy four tens hath come.

Hey guys...I'll see y'all in forty hours.

Wish me luck.

Legolas.

It makes no sense, but we call her Legolas.

She's nonsensical.

Who is she? She's blonde, she's beautiful, she's Friday.

Who is she? She's evil, she's dumb, she's bitchy.

Who is she? She's the ignorant who preys not on the innocent, but the intelligent,

Who is she? My foil, my foe, my enemy.

Who is she? I am her foil, her foe, her enemy.

Who is she? She thinks she's the innocent and intelligent who preys on the ignorant.

Who is she? She thinks I'm evil, I'm dumb, I'm bitchy.

Who is she? She knows she's blonde, she's beautiful, she's Friday.

She's nonsensical.

It makes no sense, but that's why we call her Legolas.

Five Reasons Why Australians Should Not Vote For Ms Gillard As PM

As I have said over and over, I have no problem with religious people. I do have a problem with religion, but I believe in religious freedom and I think that everyone has the right to believe, or not believe, in whatever they bloody want.

But I'm sick and tired of this small, insanely annoying percentage of the religious population taking such a biased, stupid, and narrow-minded perspective they make everyone who is religious look bad. Like this son of a gun who wrote this article: Five Reasons Why Australians Should Not Vote For Ms Gillard as PM. The five reasons were:

1. A vote for Labor is a vote for the Greens
2. Ms Gillard is living in a de facto relationship
3. Ms Gillard is an Atheist
4. Ms Gillard doesn't have children
5. Mis Gillard refuses to take the Oath on the Bible.

This is a load of utter shit. Excuse my French.

First things first, I personally wouldn't vote for Labor - I'm a born-again Greenie. I just don't agree with some of Labor's policies, and that's just that. I may be underaged, but I still have the right to political freedom.

As for the first of the retarded reasons, if a vote for Labor is a vote for the Greens, then I am sure as hell voting for Labor. The Greens are the clear, modern way forward. What does this dude - Dr Nalliah - have against the Greens? Oh, wait, yeah, I remember. Legalizing gay marriage. God, you'd think that this is the stone age - gay people are not sons of the devil, they're not all mass murderers, they're not abnormal or unnatural or whatever. Gay people are just normal people and they deserve the same rights.

The second reason is completely irrelevant to Julia Gillard and the Labor government. I believe that sexual orientation and maritial status is completely irrelevant to politics. I may not believe in de facto relationships and I personally wouldn't enter one myself, but a de facto relationship is recognised by Australian law and Julia Gillard has every right to be in one, Prime Minister or not. Mr Nalliah goes on to say that 'seven out of ten men in a de facto relationship are scared to get married as they are scared for their possessions in the event of a divorce, and therefore Ms Gillard is setting a bad example to women' and that 'most women that I (Nalliah) have spoken to would like to be married and settle down with a husband and children'. First of all, his first claim is not backed by any official statistic and is utter shite, and anyway, just because seven out of ten men think that way doesn't mean it's necessarily a bad thing or that Julia Gillard's partner isn't one of the three who disagree with that, and there is nothing wrong with women who enter de facto relationships. Second of all, 'Dr Nalliah', the reason why all the women you talk to want to settle down and get married is because you founded a particularly brain washing evangical cult and the BIG DREAM of all those women's lives is to be a doormat for men. Get a life and talk to some proper women.

The third reason is also completely irrelevant - I personally believe that religion and politics should be kept separate as much as possible, so by rights Dr Nalliah should keep his stupid trap shut, at least in the name of God. I'm a proud Atheist myself and I think it would be good for Australia and Australian politics not to be influenced by religion for a change. quote 'Are we going to let the minority rule in a free and democratic nation?'. Yes, Dr Nalliah, we are. the majority rules, but the minority rocks.

Ms Gillard does not have children - why doesn't he have 'Ms Gillard has ten fingers' as one of the reasons? It would have been more relevant.

I'm a firm believer in that you can do whatever the hell you want when it comes to religion, just don't try and convert people. So what if she doesn't take the Oath on the Bible? You can take as many bible oaths as you want. Just because the Oath isn't made on the Bible doesn't mean that it is any less sincere, or that a Oath made on the Bible is guaranteed to come from the heart.

It makes me sick when people oppose politicians not because they don't agree with their policies or whatever, but because of personal choices like maritial status and religion. If you deny rights to people who who are different because of something they can't change or control, then go to hell. If you oppose someone purely because they're childless and unmarried, then go to hell. People say I'm narrow minded - but the truly narrow minded are people like Dr Nalliah, who are so blinded by romantic thoughts of God and Angels that they refuse to support the end of suffering for fellow human beings.

Doeth Youeth Speaketh Shakespeareth?

This semester I have been studying a year ten English unit called 'Heroes and Villains', designed and taught by LA QUIN. As part of our study of the tragic hero, we have studied Antigone, and we are now studying Macbeth, the Scottish Play.

When I was younger I had this aversion to Shakespeare - I couldn't read it. I didn't understand it. It was the kind of thing where it went out one ear and out the other. And, to be honest, I honestly cannot understand people who can read a Shakespeare play and enjoy it.

You see, the written forms of Shakespeare's plays are scripts, and scripts are inevitably boring, unless you have a trained eye and keen interest for them - no matter how fascinating and enthralling the play/movie is. I mean, a story needs pictures, adjectives, actors, CGI, to make things come to life. Reading a script, with very little description, makes for a very boring read. It is very hard to picture it, methinks, because I'm one of those people who rely heavily on the descriptive, visual side of things.

But Macbeth is truly fascinating - and I actually understand it now, because we are not only studying the script but a recording of it, and a visual novel. Macbeth is the quintessential man, corrupted by temptation - ironically, Sean Bean plays him in one production, and he also plays another man who falls from grace after the temptation of power is presented to him (Boromir). Lady Macbeth is a bitch. There is no kinder way to put this. But still, I love her.

But what is, for me, the most exciting thing is the concept of murder - and how it haunts the mind before and after the deed. I swear, if we made everyone read or watch Macbeth we'd have no more murderers in society - it would swear anyone off the act of taking a life. Lady Macbeth's sleepwalking, Macbeth's hallucinations of bloody daggers and ghosts of the murdered - it really chills your bones. Shakespeare, the world's first plaguerist, undeniably has a vivid imagination.

Oh, and the title 'Doeth Youeth Speaketh Shakespeareth', is from a playground language of 'Shakespeareth' - obviously, being the ignorant grubby children we are, we fail at reading and speaking proper Shakespearean. There is a variant of Shakespeareth - we call it Latinus. Dous Yous Speakus Latinus?

Sometimes.

Sometimes I get so sick of the world.
Sometimes I feel like I'm going to drown in a wave of ignorance and misunderstanding.
Sometimes people seem so stupid I think it's going to kill me.
Sometimes I could scream in frustration at the pettiness of it all,
Sometimes I feel like the fire of inspiration has been snuffed out by indifference.
Sometimes I read things that are so pathetic they make me laugh.
Sometimes I see people and I feel like we're two seperate species,
Sometimes I think unconcern is a disease that's going to kill us all.
Sometimes people are so slow it's like they're just being stupid to annoy me. 
Sometimes I believe that humankind is a lost cause,
Sometimes I hear things that just make me want to cry.

Coloured Eyeliner

Okay, so even though I promised myself that I wouldn't blog anymore about makeup, I really can't resist. But this is an important contribution to the monolid society.

Monolids are generally found on Asians, especially Asians with smaller eyes, in that the crease flops over and hangs below the upper lash line, giving the appearance of a) small eyes b) short eyelashes and c) incredibly difficult eyes to put eyeshadow on.

Many people I know with monolids try to adapt makeup techniques, often badly. But I've found two super awesome techniqures that look fabulous with monolid eyes.

Technique 1: Coloured Eyeliner - this works with black, brown, grey, and colours that match your skin tone.
By using a single, neutral, shimmery colour on the lid, you avoid noticable creases (which happens all the freaking time), and you avoid the problem or abrupt and messy edges you would get with bold matte colours (the crease acts as a natural line softener, but people with monolids don't have a crease). Make sure when you make the lower lashline coloured cateye it looks alright when you close your eyelids.

Things required:
Eyeshadow brush
Slanted eyeliner/eyebrow brush
A light, medium and dark eyeshadow from the same colour family and undertone, with a shimmery, perle, glitter or satin finish (preferably not matte)
Eyeliner the same colour or darker than the darkest eyeshadow, either khol or retractable (not gel or liquid) 
A shimmery pink or nude eyeshadow
Eyebrow powder, or an eyeshadow about three shades lighter then your natural eye colour
matte neutral eyeshadow
Silver, white or gold shimmery eyeshadow

To 'night-life' it:
Black eyeliner
Coloured liquid eyeliner (Same colour as eyeshadows)
Coloured glitter eyeliner (can be the same or different colour)
Black mascara
Eyelash curler 
Facial diamentes (optional)
False eyelashes (optional)
Eyebrow gel or hairspray
Eyebrow brush or clean toothbrush

Method:

1. Apply foundation and powder to face as normal
2. Apply matte neutral eyeshadow from lashline to browbone with eyeshadow brush
3. Fill in eyebrows lightly with slanted eyeliner brush, wash or rub off excess powder from brush 
4. Apply netural or pink shimmery eyeshadow from lashline to browbone with eyeshadow brush
5. Line the lower waterline with eyeliner pencil
6. Apply the darkest eyeshadow on the outer third of the lower lashline, creating a slight cateye.  Apply with a slightly wet brush if using good-quality eyeshadow (this will make the colours more vibrant, but will ruin cheaper eyeshadows). Wipe excess off brush.
7. Apply the medium eyeshadow on the middle third of the lower lashline, wipe excess off brush 
8. Apply light eyeshadow to the inner third of the lower lashline, wipe excess off brush.
9. Apply eyeliner on lower waterline 
10. Apply silver, gold or white shimmery eye shadow to the inner corner of the eye. 
11. Go over the darkest eyeshadow ith a little liquid eyeliner, if preferred. 
12. Apply a little glitter eyeliner to eyelashes, if preferred

To 'night life' it:

1. Apply black eyeliner on the outer half of the lower waterline 
2. Strongly define the eyebrows and seal with a little eyebrow gel or hairspray. 
3. Apply liquid eyeliner over the darkest eyeshadow, followed by a little glitter eyeliner.
4. Curl eyelashes and apply mascara. Apply fake eyelashes if preferred. When mascara is dry, apply glitter eyeliner to eyelashes.
5. Apply white, silver or gold shimmery eyeshadow to the browbone 
6. Apply diamentes on one eye only, a la Taylor Swift in the 'Teardrops on My Guitar' video (pic below:) 

Adjustments for normal eyelids:

1. Only apply the shimmery nude or pink eyeshadow to the crease, then highlight the browbone if you prefer.
2. Apply black liquid, pencil or gel eyeliner in a slight cateye on the upper lashline. You can also line your upper waterline in black or coloured eyeliner 

Technique #2: Smokey eye - this also works with black, grey, brown, and colours suiting your skin tone. Beginners may prefer to have many different shades, arranged from darkest to lightest, to help with blending.  This look is great for any eyeshadow finish, but I like shimmery finishes best. This method also works well with normal eyelids.

Tools:
Eyeshadow brush
Slanted eyeliner/eyebrow brush
Eyebrow powder or an eyeshadow three shades lighter than your eyebrow (three shades darker if you have fair hair)
Neurtral matte eyeshadow 
Blending brush or foam eyeshadow applicator
A light, medium and dark eyeshadow from the same colour family.
A smudgy kohl eyeliner darker than the darkest eyeshadow, or black or brown
Gold, silver or white shimmery eyeshadow

Method:

1. Apply foundation and powder to face as normal
2. Apply neutral matte eyeshadow from lashline to browbone 
3. Fill in eyebrows lightly with slanted eyebrow brush. Wipe off excess powder from the brush. 
4. Apply smidgy kohl eyeliner in a thick line on the top lashline - this should not be visible when the eye is open - flicking at the end for a slight cateye. Blend the edges with a blending brush or foam eyeshadow applicator 
5. Apply the darkest eyeshadow in a thick band on top of the eyeliner - the eyeshadow should be visible when the eye is open. Blend into the eyeliner slightly with a blending brush or foam eyeshadow applicator
6. Apply the medium eyeshadow in a thick band on top of the darkest eyeshadow. Blend into the darkest eyeshadow slightly with a blending brush or foam eyeshadow applicator
7. Apply the lightest eyeshadow to eye socket (use your brush to feel for this). Blend up to the brow bone and down into the medium eyeshadow. 
8. Apply eyeshadow and eyeliner to the lower lashline as shown in technique #1

To 'night life' it:

1. Apply black eyeliner on the outer half of the lower waterline 
2. Strongly define the eyebrows and seal with a little eyebrow gel or hairspray. 
   
3. Apply liquid eyeliner over the darkest eyeshadow on the lower lashline, followed by a little glitter eyeliner.
4. Curl eyelashes and apply mascara. Apply fake eyelashes if preferred. When mascara is dry, apply glitter eyeliner to eyelashes.
   
5. Apply white, silver or gold shimmery eyeshadow to the browbone 
6. Apply diamentes on one eye only, a la Taylor Swift in the 'Teardrops on My Guitar' video (pic above)

So there you have it!

P.S my favourite colours are purple, blue, brown and teal.

Book Review: The Other Boleyn Girl

Okay, so I read The Other Boleyn Girl ages and ages ago, but just recently I borrowed it again from the library and read it again, and I enjoyed it perhaps even more.

The Other Boleyn Girl is a fictionalized dramatisation of the rise and fall of the Boleyn family, a cadet branch of the extremely ambitious Howard clan. The story starts with the execution of a Boleyn relative, the Duke of Buckinghamshire, and ends with the execution of Anne Boleyn herself.

What I love about The Other Boleyn Girl is that it gives a very real perspective of the women of the king's court of that time - how utterly ignorant the king was to the needs and pains of women, and how they are manipulated by their families for political advantage. Sure, The Other Boleyn Girl does not follow history word for word, but you don't get the same drama from re-enactments unless they are embellished slightly - unless you were then and there personally, and I don't think anyone can boast of that.

The book is notorious for being historically innaccurate, and as much as I am not against historical innaccuracy in fiction (some innaccuracy, such as birth dates and orders and such .Costumes designated to noblewomen when the are only worn by prostitutes, as is the case in a book entitled The Red Queen, is quite a different story), I feel I should list the innaccuracies so you can better get the idea of the book before you read it - it is a lot clearer and a lot easier, perhaps, then my writing another long-winded synopsis:

• The birth order of the 'Three Boleyns' (Mary, Anne and George) is disputed historically, as there are no parish records of their exact birthdates. However, it is generally accepted that Mary is the eldest and George is the youngest, with Anne in the middle, although some sources say that George is the middle child and Anne is the youngest. In The Other Boleyn Girl George is the eldest by four years, followed by Anne and then Mary with less than a year between them. 
• The ages of the Three Boleyns are also warped in the book: in 1522, Mary is portrayed as fourteen,two years into her marriage to William Carey, Anne is fifteen, just returned from France and George is nineteen, therefore their birthdates would be 1508, 1507 and 1503 respectively. Although exact dates are unclear, it is agreed by many historians that Mary was born in 1499, Anne either in 1501 (if she was the middle child, this is the more accepted date) or 1507 (if she was the youngest child). George's birthdate is roughly 1504. Anne was sent abroad in 1513 at the age of twelve, and both she and Mary were sent to France to serve at the French court. Mary returned to England in 1519, and was married a year later in 1520 to William Carey at the age of 21, a year later, she embarked on her 5 year affair with the king. In 1522, Anne returned from France, and began her seven-year dalliance with the king in 1526, finally marrying him in 1533.
• Although it is well known that Mary Boleyn was a mistress of King Henry VIII, it is still debated whether her two eldest children, Catherine Carey (born 1524) and Henry Carey (born 1526) were fathered by the king. Mary's liasion with the king is roughly 1521-1525, and many claim that she was isolated from her husband Sir William Carey during this time so that any children she might have would definately be of the king's body. Catherine and Henry were never recognised as royal bastards, however, court gossip of the time circulated that Henry was a 'spitting image of the king'. In the book, it is clear that both Catherine and Henry Carey were undoubtably the king's children.
• It is not thought by most historians that Mary and Anne Boleyn were particularly close, or that the king was a sort of prize that they battled each other for. However, when Mary's husband died Anne secured her a small annual pension of 100 pounds, cleared the debts her husband left her and adopted her son Henry so that he could access a superior education. In the book, Anne maliciously steals Henry away from Mary so that she would be the Boleyn sister with the royal son, but she does secure the annual pension. 
• When Mary entered her second marriage to the relatively poor and unknown Sir William Stafford, she was cut off from her family without a penny and her right to a pension was withdrawn. Historians believe that her marriage to Stafford was a love match, and that she never saw any of her family, including Anne, after her marriage, but was often reduced to begging the king's advisor Thomas Cromwell to speak to Henry and Anne on her behalf. It has been established that Mary did not make any significant attempt to save her family from ruin and her siblings from execution, but lived her days out quietly with her husband in the country with her children, and when her parents died she inherited a substantial amount of land and died a wealty land owner in her forties. In the book, Mary is cut off from her family and Anne refuses to let her see her children, but eventually relents and allows her to see them occasionally on the condition Mary stays at court and helps Anne through her struggles to provide an heir. In the book, differing from the movie adaption, Mary makes no plea on her sibling's behalf as she mistakenly believes that they are to be exiled, not executed. After Anne's execution, Mary and her family flee to the safety of the country. 
• In the book, George Boleyn is portrayed as being homosexual and in love with Sir Francis Weston, but he frequents whorehouses in his youth and is sexually attracted to his sister, Anne, even consenting to commit incest with her in her desperation to conceive a child, but the child is born dead and horribly disfigured. Although George Boleyn was rumoured to be homosexual, there is no solid proof. 
• Mary is portrayed as a naive, inexperienced young girl who was as 'sweet as a virgin at confession'. In reality, historical sources claim that Mary had been the mistress of Francis I, King of France, and possibly some other French nobles, causing her parents to recall her from France in disgrace and quickly marry her off. 

So, if you're like me and like your fiction a bit fictionalized, then The Other Boleyn Girl is a brilliant book. If you like perfect, word for word historical accuracy, I suggest David Starkey, who, by the way, hates The Tudors, a TV series even more abridged than The Other Boleyn Girl. The Other Boleyn Girl also has a 2008 movie adaption, starring Scarlett Johansson as Mary Boleyn, Natalie Portman as Anne Boleyn, Eric Bana as Henry VIII and Jim Sturgess as George Boleyn. Why they cast two Americans and an Australian for thoroughly English roles remains a mystery until this day.

Politics

You may have surmised already that I am very interested in politics, and I am in particular deeply critical of the current political situation both globally and here in my native Australia, and that I have quite radical and modern political views.

I have been interested in politics from a very young age. Growing up my family generally did not watch a lot of television, so being the nerd I am I began enjoying watching the news and nature documentaries - 'boring grown-up stuff', as my peers put it, but I liked it. I also loved political satires, the best and funniest being on the ABC - ironically, the only channel funded by the government.

One very good thing about Australia is that we enjoy an extraordinary amount of freedom of speech - in that we are allowed to make fun of the tragic pettiness that is Australian politics. A long time favourite of mine is Media Watch, which is so funny that my friends and I are attempting to parody it in Media as Mod Watch - this should be interesting.

My politics teacher, a character I admire nearly as much as my English teacher, Quin, also confesses a deeply geeky interest in political television programmes. So, I have been introduced to the Gruen Transfer, renamed temporarily the 'Gruen Nation' during the federal election, and The Chaser Decides, which has also been renamed in honour of the election: Yes We Canberra!

The Gruen Transfer is an Australian television programme focusing on advertising, especially mocking particularly hopeless ads that, sadly, pop up all the time on Australian television. The Gruen Nation in particular focuses on the cheesy ads and scare campaigns, as well as mercilessly mocking them, of Labor and Liberal, and to a certain extent, the Greens.

Yes We Canberra! is basically undergraduate humour, but very funny undergraduate humour. The Chasers really have limitless imaginations and eons of courage, and they're not ashamed of themselves, never willing to censor their controversial views - much like myself and my blog. If you live in Australia, I strongly recommend you watch these two shows - because even if you don't particularly care about politics, The Gruen Transfer and The Chaser Decides are shows like Top Gear, in that you don't have to watch Top Gear for the cars - you don't have to watch these shows for the politics to make you laugh your head off.

Other tv shows I love are the aforementioned Top Gear, Mythbusters, Q.I, Meerkat Manor and anything David Attenborough. 

The Burqa Ban

Most of you may be familiar with this debate that has divided the international community - should we ban the wearing of full-face veils in public on safety and security grounds, or should people have the right to wear, or not to wear, whatever they want?

I am quite divided over this. My personal view is that the niqab (a piece of cloth tied around the face with slits for the eyes) and the burqa (a long, tent like garment with a mesh panel in front of the face) is that it is a violation of human and women's rights if they are forced, pressured or blackmailed in any way by anyone or anything to wear them against their will. But if women make a concious choice to wear these and other garments, then I believe it is their right to wear whatever they want when and where they chose. I mean, I'm not Muslim and you will probably never see me wearing a niqab, but I believe in free will.

But, there are certain cases when it is not safe, secure or practical to allow the wearing of these garments, which obscure the identity of the wearer almost entirely. Taking of identification photos, when giving evidence in court, stuff like that, it is reasonable to ask women to remove their veils. I mean, anyone could be under that veil - I'm not saying that it is a norm for Muslim women to routinely lie about their identities, but someone else with bad intentions could hide behind a religion they don't respect, take advantage of customs that they don't fully obey.

Wearing veils in occupations which involves mingling with people can make people uncomfortable, but I believe it should not be banned on grounds such as that - perhaps we could suggest women wear something less obstructive, like the khimar, but I think banning full-face veils entirely is a bit extreme.

As I have said over and over, we need to accept that some people are a little different in how they act, dress, look, etc. So am I in support of the burqa ban? Probably not. But I do think that the burqa does raise some questions on how invasive religion should be on our lives, though.

LGBT rights

Something that has got me really pissed off lately is the shocking state of LGBT rights in this world. After all, we should not only fight for our own rights, but for the rights of other people.

Scrolling through a list of countries sorted into 'homosexual acts legal' and 'homosexual acts illegal', many countries only ban men from homosexual acts, but not women.

This may seem sexist, but it does give us a clue as to why homosexuality is illegal.

Religion.

The fact that women are allowed to do whatever they bloody want with their sex lives and men are not link back to many religions that have direct references to homosexual figures and how they manage to do something wrong.

That is sick.

I am not against religion - I don't believe in any particular religion, but I am not against any religion as long as it does not impede basic human rights or the free will of non-involved people. Punishing something that cannot be reformed purely out of religion is ridiculous.

When I was little I honestly thought we lived in a better place than this. It is only now when I read and learn more and more I realize that this world can be so harsh, petty, hypocritical, all in the names of good, of God.

All I'm saying is, religion is a good way to remain spiritual and serene and all of that, but religion is no excuse to abuse fellow human beings or draw swords - or as is the case these days, machine guns. Religion should be a haven, a support system, not an excuse for bloodshed.

Everybody's Gone to War

This is one of my favourite songs: 'Everyone's Gone to War' by Nerina Pallot, which is an anti-war protest song released in 2003 during the early stages of the Iraq War. This is the official music video of the 2006 re-release, where a shopping centre food fight is an anology of the bloodshed of war.

This song is important to me because I am strongly against the notion of war, including the Iraq War. I don't understand the devastating impacts on soldiers and civillians, of families of dead, dying and desperate men, women and children, all for something that has little political meaning and must be funded by innocent blood and innocent lives.

Another, very important line in this song is 'If God's on our side then God is a joker, asleep on the job his children fall over', which really got me thinking about the whole notion of God, and eventually converted me from irreligious to atheist. Because it is true. If there is God, how can he let this happen? If God loves us, how can he let us die? I know my father wouldn't do that to me, his child. So why would God, the supposed Father of Humanity, let humanity die and leave empty, deadly souls behind?

Writing

When you write,
You feel like God.
How, who, when, why, what,
All children of your creation.
Writers are the only God,
You can see, smell, taste, touch
And so writers are the only Gods in operation.
Because although we cannot create a world in a week,
And beings from dust and bone,
You can see us conceive, create, conjure, contribute,
You can inspect, interpret, investigate,
Every step of the way.

So how can you trust an Almighty God,
Of whom you will never see in your life?
Why rever one you will only meet in death,
When you can rever ones you can see today, tonight?

Sin

It is not a sin to be outspoken,
It is a sin not to speak.
It is not a sin to be blasphemous,
It is a sin not to think.
It is not a sin to be proud,
It is not a sin to be loud,
It is not a sin to be curious,
It is not a sin to be prococious,
It is not a sin to be passionate,
It is not a sin to be irrational,
It is not a sin to live,
It is not a sin to be.

Kobo, Grade Skipping and Other Things

I have a Kobo!

A Kobo is an ereader slightly larger than an iPhone that you can upload books and documents on - the idea is that you only have to take one ereader with you instead of an entire library. My Kobo can hold up to 1000 books, plus if I had a hardrive I'll have even more space. The Kobo has e-ink technology, which means no backlight...but no headache. Takes a litte while to get used to, but I love my little Kobo.

On to other good news - I have gotten the green light to skip a grade next year, which means I'll be able to move out of my year 9/10 confusion of a timetable and be an official year 11 student - just cut the nonsense. I am taking English, Ancient History, Modern History, Philosophy & Ethics, Political & Legal Studies and Pschology. Just a note: you're wasting you're time telling me the following:

• Your subjects are weird
• Why oh why are you taking FOUR SOCIAL SCIENCE CLASSES?
• YOU'RE NOT DOING MATHS!??? ARE YOU CRAZY!???

Etc.

And 'The Other Thing':

The Australian Republic Movement.

I support the Australian Republic Movement heartily. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the UK or the British monarchy, I'm just saying that it is not reasonable that we should be under, even just in theory, a country that is on the other side of the world. I mean, the monarchy is basically non existant anyways, so we should just cut all the nonsense and become the Republic of Australia. It is time for Australia to move forward and become Australia, the country, not Australia, that place that England conquered with the help of the dinosaurs.

As for the people who say 'if it ain't broke then don't fix it', well, you don't sit around waiting for something to break. The constitutional monarchy is disfunctional, and it is pure luck that it is disfunctional in a non-disruptive way, rather that disfunctional in a civil war-sparking way. Don't you think we're skating on thin ice? I know making Australia a republic is not exactly do or die, but it seems like the sensible thing to do, the responsible thing to do, the right thing to do, the reasonable thing to do.

Don't you agree?

La Quin

Best English teacher of all time. Wait, can that. Best teacher of all time.

How do I describe him? He's a genius. A mad scientist. The crazy-professor type. The kind of teacher who feeds us with energy and excitement and passion until we're virtually buzzing. The kind of teacher who knows how ridiculous we found the WAMSE and the teacher who laughed with us. The teacher who ran an underground 'wear a tie' campaign with the year twelves, the kind of teacher who scorns blazers and instead matches his radical ties with leather jackets. The kind of teacher who seems to know everything about everything. The chocolates at exam time are gladly appreciated, too.

To be honest, when I first saw my current English teacher, I thought he was rather grumpy. He never smiles. But now I know that he does, in fact, smile - but it's all in the wickedness of his eyes, the kind of look you see in a procociously naughty child when he's about to do something daredevil. His kind of humour is intelligent, funny, witty humour, dry, ironic, sarcastic and defiant. I would study trig with this teacher. I would study anything with this teacher. Four times a week we laugh and talk and study and learn more than I do in an entire day sans English - which is Friday, the blue day, the boring day, the sans Quin day.

Ah well, at least on Friday I have Conway for politics.

Gay Marriage

This really makes me sick - the fact that two people cannot be legally married just because they just happen to be born a bit different.

But first, let me set the record straight: I'm not gay. I'm a normal, boy-crazy teenager. I'm straight and proud of the fact.

But if I was gay, and I was in a stage of my life where I wanted to get married, then yeah, I'd be pissed off that some stupid homophobic motherfucking government is so last century that they can't accept something I couldn't change. A marriage is a union between two people, a pledge of love and commitment. Sure, most of the time it's generally between a man and a woman. And although a woman and a woman and a man and a man together may sound odd, we just have to get over it and let people do what they want.

Blaming someone for being gay is like blaming someone for being born Asian or with brown hair or green eyes or something. It's not a choice, or something that you can just switch off like a lightbulb. Love affects us all even if heterosexuality doesn't, and whilst I can understand that homosexuality may creep some people out, it's not like we're forcing you to go up to the nearest person of the same sex as you and rape them or something. The right to marry is a legal right every person, regardless of their sexual orientation, should have.

It is backwards and wrong to punish people for something that they can't help or change - sex, sexuality, appearance, ethnic background, whatever. I can't believe in this day and age, in one of the most modern and wealthy countries in the world, the two major political parties of Australia refuse to grant the gay community the right to have homosexual marriages legally recognised. It is disgusting that in this day and age the gay community are constantly humiliated and stereotyped for something that is, believe it or not, as natural as anything. It is so sad that people see homosexuality as a disease or a crime, when it's not. It's just the way some people are, and we've just got to accept that.

Julia Guillard, a marriage is not limited to a union between a man and a woman. You should be ashamed that you force one of your own senior ministers to say that she is against gay marriage when she is in fact gay herself. Tony Abbott, not only are you a misogynistic motherfucker and chauvinistic idiot, you're now a homophobic bastard as well. It is for good reason I have no respect for Australian politics - you give people, people who are swayed by cruel social taboos, what they want, not what they need.

And what they need, what we need, is freedom and rights for all.

WAMSE

Okay, so in Australia, all students have to do a WAMSE test in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 in the core subjects: English, Social Science, Science and Maths. I just had the Social Science one today.

It was utter fail.

Australia's idea of social science, especially lower-school social science, is utter fail. For one, showing students a picture of a pair of grumpy looking convicts all chained up and asking them how bad they must feel is not social science. That's mind reading. Mind reading is not a core subject, or a subject at all, in the Australian schooling system.

I will list some of the answers my dear gifted and talented peers wrote:

'As gifted as I am I cannot read minds'

'Let's not make assumptions here: they might like chains and leg irons'

'I think they're emotionally disturbed'

and

'There's a one in three chance that they're thinking about sex'.

This is what happens when you pose a really stupid question to a really smart kid.

Other stupid questions included showing us a picture of a broken windmill and asking us to state why feral camels are a threat to Australian agriculture and asking us how the location of cattle stations effect the nearby community. Let me tell you something: cattle stations are in the middle of freaking nowhere. There is no nearby community to effect.

This test does nothing but prove the idiocy of the people who are meant to be in charge of the education of the younger generations. I mean, none of us - to my English teacher who was supervising the test to us, the poor students subjected to this trite shite - have any respect whatsoever for WAMSE testing.

Or any testing, for that matter.

Asperger's Syndrome

I have just self-diagnosed myself with Asperger's Syndrome.

Of course, I have no medical proof that I have Asperger's Syndrome. It's just that I fit creepily into a hell of a lot of the official symptoms, and perhaps if people are under the impression that my psycho fuckupedness actually has a name they'll back off a little.

What is Asperger's Syndrome, you ask? It is a type of autism, but a high-functioning autism - that means that people who have this type of autism, instead of having a lower intelligence than normal, show normal or high levels of intelligence. Asperger's Syndrome is characterized by social ineptness, inability to empathise and relate to people, physical clumsiness, obsessions with and pursuits of narrow subjects, which become more and more unusual, without necessarily having an interest or understanding of the broader topic, prococious reading, a highly-developed vocabulary at a young age. A symptom that is sometimes only limited to childhood is an inability to comprehend and use sarcasm or irony, and the tendancy to use and comprehend language in its literal form only. Symptoms of Asperger's normally become apparent at the age of five or six.

Whilst many of you are now shaking your heads and diagnosing me with insanity for diagnosing myself with autism, think about it. I know I am in no way qualified to say that I have any syndrome other than weirdness, but if you know me, is my diagnosis really so far fetched? I mean, I've spent my entire life as a loner. I don't understand most of the people who live around me. I spent the last three months compiling a comprehensive list of the members of the Joseon Royal Family in English and my understanding of certain, random things (Elizabeth I, the Tudor Dynasty, Yi San, etc.) surpasses many but my understanding of most other things remain stubbornly elementary. I read Harry Potter at the age of four and I was writing ten-page recounts at the age of six but I couldn't even write numbers properly until over a year later. And it only emerged that I was a social failure when I was about five or six - until then, unbelievably, I was actually quite popular. I don't think 'weirdness' covers this. I think I've put all the pieces together, here, finally, and I've even managed to name it.

Do you?

Inception: Explained

WARNING!!! SPOILERS!!!

Okay, so as I mentioned in my earlier post about Inception, it is a movie designed with a very intelligent audience in mind. And because of that, we all left the cinema kind of...confused.

After spending a great deal of time resarching and mulling over things, I have, I believed, worked out the basics of the plot, which I will now try and explain to you. This is probably not entirely correct, and probably heavily influenced by my own opinion and by the fact I had a really crap seat in the cinema.

So, here goes.

Inception, Extraction, Projection, Architects, Forgers, Totems, Shared Dreams and the Dream Layers:

Inception: when an idea is planted into someone's mind so convincingly that they believe it is their own original idea. Done by implanting information into different layers of a dream.

Extraction: when a thought or secret is stolen from someone's mind by breaking into their dream.

Architects: people who design dreams so that events occur to make inception and extraction work to plan. Once these dreams are designed, the architect must either become the 'dreamer' or describe the dream in detail to the designated dreamer.

Totems: all extractors carry totems with them to keep track of dreams and reality. A totem is normally a small object that is weighted, and handled only by the owner so that only the owner knows what it feels like in the real world. Because of this, no-one can recreate the exact feel and weight of the totem, so if the totem feels incorrect, it tells the owner that they have been forced into a dream, or are in somebody else's dream. Examples of a weighted totem is Arthur's weighted die and Ariadne's weighted chess piece. Cobb's totem, which he acquired from his wife, is slightly different as it can tell the difference between dreams and reality, as opposed to a weighted totem which can only tell the difference between reality and your own dream from a forced or somebody else's dream. Cobb's totem is a spinning top, which spins continously in a dream but collapses quickly in reality.

Forgers: A forger is someone who can impersonate a person in a subject's life during a dream or in a dream layer. During their inception mission Eames, a highly skilled forger, impersonates both a disgruntled date and a business manager.

Projection: people present in a dream that are not either the subject or extractors. These people try and seek out the intruder (the extractor/s) and eventually kills him/her/them. In a mind trained to defend his subconcious, these people are often equipped with sophisticated millitary procedures and equipment.

Shared dreams: a state where several people share a dream, needed both for inception and extracting. The people in this dream are the extractors, the 'subject' and the projections of both the extractor and the subject. The projections of a subject work indiscriminately against the extractors - the projections of the extractors are turned either against the extractor or the subject or both. One of the extractors is a 'dreamer' - he creates the setting of the dream, normally under the direction of an Architect. To create a shared dreams the extractors and the subjects must be hooked up intravenously to a machine which releases a mild sedative and allows them all to be in the same dream. The machine is set with a timer, which wakes you up when it goes off, or alternately you are forced out of the dream when you are killed in the dream. A dream is affected by reality - shifts in gravity (or the absence of gravity), rain if the dreamer has a full bladder, etc.

Dream layers: for inception, three layers of dreams are needed - essentially a dream within a dream within a dream. To make this happen, a heavy sedative is required and to remove yourself from all three layers of a dream a simultaneous 'kick' is needed - you must wake up in reality and die in all the dream layers you are in simultaneously. Unlike in single-layer dreams, when you die only in one layer of a multi-layered dream you do not wake up - instead, you go to limbo, where you must time your death with the 'kick'. Time elapses in dream layers are also different - for example (this is probably innaccurate, but the main idea is correct) a second in reality is a minute in the first layer (the dream), which is ten minutes in the second layer (the dream within a dream) which is one hundred minutes in the third layer (the dream within a dream within a dream).

Limbo: if you 'push too far', run out of layers or die only in one or two dream layers, you go to limbo, where you stay until you die simultaneously with a kick. If you are in a multi-layered dream and do not die simultaneously with a kick, you go back up to the dream, die again, and then go back to limbo. Limbo is a place only occupied by others in limbo, plus only a few projections who live in harmony with you. You can create anything in limbo, making it surreal, but if one stays too long in limbo they eventually lose grip on what is real and what is a dream.

Characters:

Dominic Cobb (Dom, Cobb or Dom Cobb): The film's protagonist, portrayed by Leonardo DiCaprio. Dom is a talented extractor and formerly a highly skilled architect who managed to perform Inception on his wife to escape limbo, but the idea he planted in her mind killed her when they arrived back in the real world. Because of this, he is tormented by guilt and so a projection of her constantly haunts his dreams and disrupts his plans.

Arthur: Dom's right hand man, portrayed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, considered a highly skilled in all things except architecting dreams, as he often leaves out details. Arthur is also described as having little imagination, and consequently doesn't believe that Inception is possible, as according to Eames, 'you need imagination for Inception, which is possible, but bloody difficult'. Arthur is skilled at avoiding being caught by projections, and fighting. Arthur is the 'dreamer' of the second layer of dreams, and stays behind to look after the sleeping bodies of the second dream layer.

Mal: Dom's deceased wife, portrayed by Marion Cotillard and mother of Dom's two children, James and Phillipa. Mal and Dom explored dreams together, but 'pushed it too far' and ended up in limbo for roughly fifty years. Mal then choses to forget that she is in a dream and locks away her totem spinning top, and eventually comes to believe that the limbo is reality. Because of this belief, she cannot leave limbo, and thus her husband is forced to implant in her subconcious that 'the real world is a dream' by breaking into the safe she stored her spinning top in and keeping it spinning. What Cobb failed to realize is that the thought in her mind would continue to linger when they woke up in the real world, to the point where she commits suicide to 'go back to the real world'. Projections of Mal haunt Dom's dreams and shared dreams, disrupting his plans.

Ariadne: Dom's new architect, portrayed by Ellen Page. A student of Mal's father, Ariadne quickly catches on to dream architecting and is considered highly skilled, even better than Cobb once was. By breaking into Dom's dreams she discovers the truth about Mal, and the crippling guilt Cobb feels over her death that causes projections of her to disrupt their missions.

Eames: A forger, portrayed by Tom Hardy. Eames and Arthur clash as Eames believes that Inception is possible and Arthur does not, and Eames' optimistic, imaginative and creative personality clashes with Arthur's practical, grounded nature. Eames is the dreamer of the third dream layer.

Yusef: a chemist who specializes in making sedatives, he becomes part of the team and invents a sedative that keeps the inner ear functioning in the dream layers, thus making a simultaneous kick possible. Yusef is the dreamer of the first dream layer.

Saito: a powerful businessman portrayed by Ken Wantanabe. Saito needs Cobb's team to perform Inception on the son of a dying businessman, who controls a rival empire. In return for a successful Incpetion, Saito offers to use his influence to clear Cobb's name.

Robert Fischer: the son of a Saito's rival with a rocky relationship with his father. He is the subject of the Inception, where they plant into his mind the idea to split up his father's empire and become 'his own man'.

Professor Miles: Mal's father, who introduced both Mal and Cobb to the study of dreams. He is also Ariadne's teacher, and introduces her to Cobb's team. Portrayed by Sir Michael Caine.

Peter Browning: Fischer's godfather and father figure, with whom Fischer has a much better relationship with than his own father. During Inception, Eames impersonates Browning and implants into Fischer's mind that Browning is a traitor and he should follow his father's wishes (also part of the Inception).

Backdrop of the story:

Dominic Cobb and his wife, Mal, explore dreams until they eventually end up in limbo. They live there blissfully for about 50 years, creating their own world and living with projections of their children. Eventually Dom, who knows in his mind that limbo is not real, cannot bear limbo any longer and knows he must escape, but Mal has already locked away her totem and therefore lost her concept of dream and reality. Dominic then performs Inception by breaking into Mal's vault and spinning her totem spinning top - as it spins continuously without falling, it implants into Mal's subconcious that 'the world is just a dream'. Using this, he managed to convince her they need to go back to reality and they commit suicide together in limbo, causing them to wake up in the real world. However, Mal's inception lingers and she still thinks that 'the world is a dream', even though now she is back in the real world. For some unexplained reason, agents of Dom's company, Cobol, have a bounty on his head and are chasing him.

Mal's desire to go back to the 'real world' posesses her, and eventually she goes to three psychiatrists who declare her sane, and then sends a false statement to her attorney that Dom has been abusive and violent, and threatens to kill her on their anniversary, which they customarily spend alone together in a hotel. When Dom arrives at the hotel room on their anniversary night, he finds the room trashed and set up as a murder scene. He then finds Mal sitting on the windowsil of the hotel room opposite the one he is in, separated by a highway. Mal then tries to convince him to go 'back to the real world' whilst Dom desperately tries to convince her that they are in fact in the real world. Both are unsuccessful, and Mal commits suicide, unaccompanied by Dom. Because of Mal's set up, Dom is charged with her murder and flees the country, without having the chance to say goodbye to his children. Since Mal's death Dom's guilt caused him to create a series of dreams based on memories, each featuring memories of Mal and his children. Also, Dom can no longer architect as if he did, Mal would know the mechanics of each architected dream, thus making her more of a threat. In dreams where Dom is present, regardless of whether he architects them or not, she attempts to thwart him as best she can, but is incapacitated slightly as she does not know the layout of the dream.

The movie (chronologically):

Dom lives on the run, accompanied by his right-hand man, Arthur. Together they try and steal something from a powerful businessman named Saito, to use to blackmail Saito into using his influence to clear Dom's name. The attempt fails due to Arthur's ineptness in architecture and Dom's incapability to architect the dream (because projections of Mal haunt them), so Saito then proposes a deal: Dom and Arthur perform Inception on the heir of a rivalling business empire, and Saito will in return clear Dom's name. Dom agrees, and Arthur reluctantly tags along. Dom then recruits Eames, a renowned forger, who introduces him to Yusef, a chemist specializing in inventing sedatives. Dom then visits Miles, Mal's father. Dom gives presents to Miles to give to Dom's children, James and Phillipa, and Miles reluctantly introduces Dom to Ariadne, his favourite student. Dom recruits Ariadne and trains her to architect dreams. Yusef creates a sedative that keeps the inner-ear functioning, in which a jolt, topple, fall or loud music will cause the dreamer to awake, and Saito buys the airline on which Fischer will make the flight from Sydney to Los Angeles (a 13-14 hour flight) with his father's body.

Dom and his team then construct a plan to perform Inception on Robert Fischer, the heir to the rival business empire, by creating a three-layer dream (dream within a dream within a dream), which they follow as best they can. When Robert Fischer's father dies in Sydney, they share his flight and the entire team enter Fischer's dream, in which the 'dreamer' is Yusef. In this dream, they hijack a taxi, pick up Fischer, and then kidnap him. Eames pretends to be his godfather Browning whom they have tortured, and they demand to know the code to Fischer's father's vault, which Fischer says, honestly, that he 'does not know'. Deviating from the plan as Fischer's mind unexpectedly starts to attack them violently, injuring Saito, they extract random numbers from Fischer and the team, plus Fischer, escape in a van driven by Yusef. In the van, the team plus Fischer enter the second dream layer. Yusef stays behind in the first layer to drive the van and initiate the kick, trying to avoid projections of Fischer's mind who attack the van with relentless gunfire. The 'kick' in this layer is when Arthur, the dreamer of the second layer, is awakened by music - a progressive crescendo can be heard in the second dream layer and warns them that the 'kick' (a loud climax in the music) is approaching.

In the second dream layer, in which the dreamer is Arthur, the setting is a hotel in which they trick Fischer into believing that the kidnapping was orchestrated by Browning. They then convince Fischer to allow himself to be hooked up to a machine to delve into Browning's subconcious to discover his intentions, but instead they are delving into Fischer's mind. Thus, they enter the third dream layer, with Arthur staying behind, setting up explosions to time their deaths in the dream layer with the first layer 'kick'.

The third layer of the dream, in which the dreamer is Eames, is a snowy mountain fortress in which they tell Fischer he must break into - the plan being that Fischer breaks into a room in which his father lies dying. The dying father will tell Fischer that he was disappointed that he tried to be him and wants him to be his own man, and will show him a safe which opens to the random numbers Fischer produced in the first dream layer, inside which is a will which would override his father's official will, and a childhood toy of Fischer's proving that his father did indeed love him. Fischer is thwarted, however, by a projection of Mal, who shoots him. Cobb and Ariadne then travel to limbo to try and retrieve Fischer.

In limbo, Ariadne and Cobb find a projection of Mal, who is keeping Fischer tied and gagged on a balcony. Mal tries to convince Cobb to stay with her 'in the real world', and Cobb pretends to give in whilst Ariadne goes to Fischer. Cobb then reveals to the Mal projection and Ariadne that he perfromed Inception on Mal whilst they were in limbo together, and so he is indirectly responsible for Mal's death. Mal then attacks Cobb, but she is shot by Ariadne, who pushes Fischer off the balcony and prepares to shoot Cobb, but he stops her saying that he has to stay behind and find Saito, who has died on all three layers of the dream from his injuries. Ariadne warns him not to be influenced by Mal, and then jumps off the balcony herself. Ariadne and Fischer arrive back to the third layer as Eames uses a defibrilator to revive Fischer, and they all die in the explosion that is the third layer 'kick'. The kick on all dream layers failed the first time and had to be improvised by Eames, Arthur and Yusef on their respective layers, but it works the second time. Thus the team and Fischer, minus Cobb and Saito, wake up on the flight (reality).

Cobb then finds Saito, but due to the fast time elapse in Limbo he is already an old man. Together, they go back to the real world, and they wake up on the plane. Saito then honours his deal and calls from his plane and clears Cobb's name. Miles meets Cobb in the airport and take him back to his home, where he sees his children playing in the yard. Cobb spins his top, to see if it is real, but is distracted when Miles calls his children in and his children rush up to him. Cobb leaves his top to go embrace his children but we see it spinning. It falters, and then the movie ends, leaving us to decide whether Cobb is dreaming or is in reality.

Avatar

As you may or may not know (I'm tending to use this phrase a lot lately) I am a Rotten Tomatoes movie critic. So, it kind of makes sense that I am a movie freak.

I didn't always used to be. I used to hate movies. I hated how loud they were, I thought they were scary, etc. I think most of the problem was that when I was a child, I was taken to wach lots of cartoons and animations, and my crazy child imagination got lost into them and I lost grip of what was real, what was happening, and what was just on the screen. The first live-action movie I watched, The Princess Diaries, was a breakaway from my traumatising experiences trying to watch animated movies.

So I have always hated animated movies. Part of it is that I think a lot of directors get lost in the visual aspect of a animated movie that they lose any sense of realism, any storyline, any themes - it's just fancy eye-candy.

But lately, I have started to overcome my prejudice against animated movies. I watched Ratatouille and enjoyed it immensely, and now I am dying, dying to watch Avatar.

When Avatar came out I wasn't really motivated to watch it, and even though my mother and sister watched it on the plane when we went to China I refused. I thought it was silly. I had only heard a little about it, and I didn't really know much about it, but I thought it was a silly idea, something designed for computer game nerds. I never really considered taking the time to go watch it.

That changed when we went to Harvey Norman and I went into the Home Theatre display there, where they had this amazing new LED screen showing a blu-ray of Avatar. Have any of you seen a blu-ray on LED? It's amazing.

But watching those few minutes of Avatar changed my mind about it. It wasn't so much about the visuals, which were mind-blowingly impressive, but I go against the general consensus that it doesn't have much of a storyline - because, perhaps it doesn't, but there are themes in there, that are perhaps drowned in the visuals, but are powerful and relevant themes nonetheless - this is my training as a philosophy student coming through, here. Like Spirited Away's cryptic warnings about pollution and human's greed and environmental impact, Avatar is also a very powerful warning against mankind's constant tendancy to invade, to take what is not ours and claim it for ourselves, not thinking or caring about who was there first. As Eddie Izzard said 'We've conquered the world with a cunning use of flags. And we back it up with guns.'

It's often amazed me how petty the world has become, but what has always amazed me is how greedy, selfish and uncaring we have always been. As Agent Smith said in The Matrix, we are not really mammals - all other mammals adapt to where they live, but humans make where we live adapt to us, and when we have destroyed everything, we move on. He also says, quite accurately, that we are 'a plague, a cancer, a virus on this world'...and as much as I love Neo and as much as I hate Smith, you can't deny that that is true.