Supanova

On Sunday Cookies, Twiggy, Gandhi and I went to Supanova. Woo!!! check Cookies' blog for most of the photos =]

We got there at about 9:30 to find an already fast growing line! But luckily, the line was for people who had pre-registered, and the line for people who wanted to buy tickets at the door was a lot shorter... when we got there. Then it grew to epic proportions after =O

We spent most of the day taking photos of all the crazy costumes that people had made/bought, looking at the various merchandise stalls, playing COD 4 (well my bro did), and then towards the end of the day sitting tiredly on the second level of The Dome.

Eventually, Rachelle Lefevre stopped talking, and the Cosplay comp/skits started. Some of the skits were pretty good... some were not so good. There'll probably be vids up on youtube eventually. From where we were sitting, we couldn't see very much of it.

Lastly, we went for the Karaoke comp. I hadn't practiced at all, and just joined on a whim. I sang Aozora no Namida by Hitomi Takahashi, a song that is way out of my range. Cookies hadn't practiced since Animania, and sung Sousei no Aquarion. Gandhi had practiced a lot, and sung Hana by Orange Range. there were like... 7 singers.

Cookies came first (yay!) and Gandhi came second. Pretty awesome, guys ^^

For the trip home, it's a rather complicated process of getting from Sydney Olympic Park to the Western suburbs =/ By public transport, it's train, train (or bus if track work is happening), then bus to get home. Gah.

Anyway, travelling home in costume is rather fun, because it attracts a lot of stares from other passengers. Heh. And it also attracts crazy looking dudes who want to tell you their life story.

Well not quite. I dropped a safety pin on the ground, and me, cookies and gandhi spent a good minute looking for it. Then one of the train drivers/station guards came up and found it. Which led us to a convo about his good eyesight, which led to how his eye was crook from working as a welder, then a hand injury then to him working in the public transport industry.

We waited for Cookies' parents to come pick us up from Parra. While we waited we got hungry, so we ended up a Hungry Jack's. Their cheeseburgers have a rubbery texture. Yuck.

Fun day. Yeeeeewwwwww.

Finish the sentence meme

Cheers to all us thieves!

Sunday Stealing: The Finish The Sentence Meme: http://sundaystealing.blogspot.com/2009/06/finish-sentence-meme.html

1. I've come to realize that my last kiss... gave me the strength to focus on my education, and not on my next relationship.

2. I am listening to... Iron Maiden.

3. I talk... a lot.

4. I love... my family.

5. My best friend/s... is awesome.

6. My first real kiss... was not that great. Actually it was pretty gross. Actually, it put me off of kissing for a month.

7. Love is... a lot of things. A blog's worth of things. It can't be defined in a sentence.

8. Marriage is... great for some people, but probably not for me.

9. Somewhere, someone is thinking... of themselves, probably.

10. I'll always... be really short.

11. The last time I really cried was because... a stupid, stupid mistake was made.

12. My cell phone... is a brick that has lasted quite some time. =]

13. When I wake up in the morning... I usually stay in bed for another few minutes.

14. Before I go to bed... I brush my teeth. Or check Facebook =/

15. Right now I am thinking about... John Mayer. Well a particular song anyway.

16. Babies are... cute I guess.

17. I get on Myspace... NEVER. MySpace is the cesspool of the internet.

18. Today I... drove to Cabramatta =S

19. Tomorrow I will be... working! Then crossing off some things from my 100 things to do before I die list.

20. I really want to be... an agent of global change. Someday.

Dr. Tiller, Twilight and abortion.

So, I found this hilarious re-edit of the New Moon (sequel to Twilight) film. It addresses half human, half vampire babies, werewolves, sex and abortion. Which leads me to my next point.

I read in the news recently that some guy killed the only doctor in the States that performed 2nd and 3rd trimester abortions. My first reaction was what sort of situation requires that late an abortion? Then I read this article: http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/feature/2009/06/01/late_term_abortion/
Then my other reaction was Bill O'Reilly, and the people that killed Dr Tiller were jerks.

Here's some evidence of Bill O'Reilly being a jerk, and Fox News unbiased and fair coverage:


Some of the cases Dr Tiller had to deal with were quite tragic. He was a pretty brave doctor, considering the politcal and legal climate in the states regarding abortion, in the first trimester alone.

Then that reminded me of Crushedbyingsoc's post on abortion: http://crushedwithkisses.blogspot.com/2009/03/contraception-abortion-and.html. His arguments seem to be a mix between what R. Dworkin defines as the derivative and detached views.

Derivative view: Foetuses are human from the moment of conception, and hence they have rights and interests that must be protected. Hence abortion is bad because it violates basic human rights.

Detached view: Human life is intrinsically valuable or sacred, and abortion is bad because it's a cosmic shame to waste life.

Crushed explains why certain religions found contraception to be murder: before we had scientific knowledge of what life was, we thought that spermatozoa were miniature humans. Now we know that's not true.

From a biological point of view, spermatozoa and ovum are not single celled organisms. They are cells of the human body. Think of them like skin cells. You don't make a huge fuss about killing skin cells yeah? So human sex cells are not lifeforms.

Erm... I guess I wanted to prove why Dr Tiller shouldn't have died.

From the pro-life view, even if Dr. Tiller was a murderer (murder: the intent to kill a human being), it does not mean that someone has the right to murder him. According to the law, if an individual violates the rights of another person, it is legitimate to restrict the rights of that individual. But the people who have the right to restrict rights are officers of the law, not offended citizens. In my view, the murderer of Dr. Tiller should go to jail.

In the article, Dr Tiller has performed abortions for women who "included women diagnosed with cancer who needed abortions to qualify for chemotherapy, women who learned late in their pregnancies that their wanted babies had fatal illnesses, and rape victims so young they didn't realize they were pregnant for months."

So the first thing the article listed was pregnant cancer patients. Lets assume that these cancer patients would die before childbirth. So if the woman didn't qualify for chemotherapy, she would die before giving birth, or before carrying the child long enough for it to survive in intensive care. Which would kill both mother and baby. Now from a derivative view, some would say that it is better to let the mother die, than to actively kill the baby. But in this case, lets say that doing nothing kills them both. Then, we've lost 2 lives, rather than one. Which is bad, no matter which view you look at it from. So I guess it's legitimate to carry out late term abortions in this case.

The second thing that the article mentioned was that Dr Tiller performed abortions for "women who learned late in their pregnancies that their wanted babies had fatal illnesses." In this case, if we assume that these fatal illness would cause enough pain to the child once it is born to amount to torture, we could say that giving birth to the child would violate the right to bodily dignity (ie the right not to be tortured). So to give birth a child that will suffer tremendous pain is cruel, so perhaps an abortion here would also be considered legitimate (from both the derivative and detached view).

In the third case mentioned: "rape victims so young they didn't realize they were pregnant for months", I think that we have to talk about the rights of the mother over that of the child. It's pretty obvious that an pregnant 11 year old rape victim would be further traumatised by the birth of a child right? The process of childbirth could probably amount to a form of mental and physical torture.

The pro-life camp would argue that a child in the late second trimester has reached viability (ie that it can survive through care in an incubator if taken out via surgery), and hence it counts legally as a person, and has the right to life.

How can you balance the rights of the mother and the rights of the child? Currently, there doesn't seem to be a legal answer to this, so I'll discuss this on a theoretical level. J.J. Thomson

The sun is high, all the birds are singing...

...that you're gonna die.



Still ridiculously happy from watching Dr Horrible. I ended up going to watch it with Cookies, Twiggy, Spud, Hedless, Aix, and Bob (who does law with me). We bummed around uni for a bit with Doormat (until he had to leave to beat the traffic), hit McCentre to have dinner, then hit the bar to play pool until the show started.

The best character was Moist, played by Josh Nott, who emulated a downtrodden moisture ridden wanna-be evil henchman extraordinarily well. After that the best character, I think, was Penny, played by Emilia Thomas, who has the loveliest singing voice in student theatre I've heard so far. Equal third is Dr Horrible (Andrew Jackson), Captain Hammer (Christian Berechree). Both played their parts quite well, with their own stamp on the original characters. Then the Bad Horse Men, (Felix Pringle, Chris James, Nick Commins, Nib Brattoni). It was fairly close in terms of who I liked best though.

If you haven't seen the original Dr Horrible sing-along-blog, you need to look it up on youtube and watch it. It's really awesome.

So, it's now stuvac, but I figured I'd have more luck typing up a blog entry about the past semester and what I've learned (not academically that is).

Uni has been pretty good. I'm only doing three subjects (because apparently as a psych student I have to sign waiver forms and the like to do non-core units). Consequently, I have a 3.5 day time table and 11am starts. Which have the dis/advantage of me being relaxed for the entire semester.

Law has been really fascinating. One of the things we discussed was euthanasia and abortion which I found really fascinating... and I will write up a blog about that soon... after the exams. Most of the well spoken people in my classes are fairly intelligent, and the ones that don't speak up I obviously can't tell how intelligent they are. Fortunately there's a handful of people from my highschool doing law at my uni, so it wasn't too hard adjusting to the lectures/tutorials.

Stat, which is a co-requisite subject, has been pretty good too. I still really love my maths. Stat is actually a pretty intersting topic once you get your head around it... well maybe if you as obsessed about numbers as I am. I'm very happy I did the harder one... I probably would have slashed my wrists if I had to do stat170 =P Most of the people doing this subject are actuarial students, who are also fairly intelligent.

Psych, while in some aspects an interesting subject, in others a mind-numbing subject, is somewhat less fun than I thought it'd be. It's redeeming factors are the really interesting lecturers and their topics. The downsides: constant assessment, boring lecturers, organisational psychology, writing really dry essays and sometimes my fellow students.

By fellow students I mean the ones who are... not as bright as I'm used to lets say. I don't mean to be awful or anything, but six years in a highschool with the elite of the state has left me with expectations of certain levels of intelligence... it just takes getting used to when people ask... dubious questions. But I've gotten used to it, so that's ok now.

Speaking of fellow students I've met some pretty interesting people this semester.

In psych, there's Dale, who does psych/ed, Drew and Jerry who also do Law/Psych/Stat171 with me, Kami, who does Psych/ed (and used to go to another selective school), and Chrissy, who's just doing psych.

In Law, besides all the people I know from highschool, I've met Sirrah (who also went to another selective school) and Timber, law/actuarial students (crazy people @.@), and Doormat.

From Stat, there's Drew No. 2, who's friends with a lot of people from my old highschool, Bert, who hangs out with a Sirrah and Timber, Al and Dan (who is dinosaur's cousin), Di, who's also a law/actuarial (but I've never seen her in lectures... so eh).

Then from various places, Dani, who I met through Cookies, Kram, who I met through the drama club, and Candlestick, who I met through salsa, MM (a magical magician... hehe) and Tofu (<^^) who I also met through salsa.

I don't think that I'm letting go of my old friends just because I meeting a lot of new ones. 4 odd years together tends to have the effect of gluing us together somewhat. I still hang out with the Awesome Team when we organise stuff.

Anyway... that's enough for now... that was quite a long blog for me @.@

Billy? You're driving your spork into your leg.

Oh god. It's happening. Males are walking me to class again. This does not bode well. I don't like it. I want to walk alone and listen to my music, damn it. I do not want to try and make small talk with you.

27 hours until Dr. Horrible though. =]

here's the story of a girl who grew up lost and lonely

I'm somehow really glad that I made a self pact not to get into any short-term or long-term relationships this year. You might think that those two types are interchangeable, but they're not. I think most people enter relationships expecting that it will be long term, but that's not usually the case. People think you're an immoral person if you enter a relationship and both of you know if will end quite quickly.

But they're not immoral. They're realistic, and they know what they want. They know that they'll save themselves a lot of heart-ache later.

Anyway. The point is, I'm glad that I've decided not to date anyone until next year because
1) it weeds out all the ones who are only interested in sex and
2) it weeds out people who are impatient and
3) it weeds out all the people that are actually jackasses, but are really nice to you in the first few months that you know them.

I don't know why I'm thinking about this...