Epidemic of academic. A polemic.

So, in between playing tennis with small children, listening to Step Up soundtrack (something for which I will never be ashamed. Slightly more embarrassing was my week in which all I could listen to was Carrie Underwood songs, for which I totally blame Glee.), youtubing Bon Qui Qui videos, and inventing every way possible in which to insert "next minute" into a sentence while still remaining vaguely coherent, I have managed to write TWO PAGES of my dissertation.

I know right.

To be fair (though I have a feeling my supervisor would be less than sympathetic to any of these reasons), quite a considerable margin of my time has been taken up with constructing flow diagrams of rugby world cup probabilities, and writing short poems in iambic pentameter* about how stressed I am**.

But, now that it seems that NZ will be out at the semis (Joke! Joke! Don't shoot me!) and nobody has ever read Keats (and only seen the movie cos of Fanny Brawne, ding DONG!), it seems to me to be about time to finish up in Dunedin and move on out into the worrrld. Get a job in public health. A lovely socially-acceptable same-sex relationship (ideally involving a great deal of interior decorating and home-made preserves). A six pack like Jillian Michaels. All very likely occurrences. (Sarcasm here is variable according to political persuasion; I try to cater to all masteries of ironic cynicism. You hipsters. I have a bike, too. And one time I bought organic shampoo. It made my hair smell like like SBW's armpit in Ramadan (dead lemons mixed with rexona, for the curious) and clump in an interestingly vertical yet aesthetically displeasing manner).
(I also want to learn to spell occurrences without spellcheck, that is up there on the wish list, just beneath unpasteurised cheese and rhyming better.)

Babe, amiright. I would be fat anyday to put on gym shorts and be abused by her.

Anyhow;
[brief sojourn into apathetic politics.]

Do other people worry about these things?

I mean, not cheese so much. The future. Do you worry that you may not have matching sofa cushions one day? Or that you will never own a home? I am somewhere between the two. Unfortunately, I also acknowledge that it is not only what I do that will make me who I become; it is where I came from and the people I (and my family) know. I have been a little occupied, you could say. I'd like to do something about it. Explain to people that they are all part of a larger functioning society, and what is paid back comes full circle. But I will have to muster my thoughts somewhat. Cut down on Glee time. And maybe read something not containing "pooled relative risks were controlled for intra-examiner measurement error and eighty-three other adjustments, rendering the secondary analysis completely worthless haha shame you had to read 30 pages to figure this out, loser postgrad". Before I can figure out exactly WHAT is wrong (if anything) with the world.

[Over now. Well done. Continue.]

To conclude; I get to go in a plane on Tuesday. I am very, very excited.

Some people hate planes (David. Hysterical*** woman off Bridesmaids. Terrorists (I assume, from the evidence.) It is safe to say I do not. In fact, I get so excited by planes that one time Dad seriously offered me codeine in order that he would not have to play eye spy with me one more time. Eye spy (in the sky) is often difficult once we get beyond the regulars of W is for wandering albatross ("you did not!" "Dad! They fly more than 100,000km/year! They obviously move a hell of a lot faster than you can see, it's not my fault you're old and decrepit, one point for me. Hah!"), S is for slipstream, and C is for circulating air generating differential  lift.

I absolutely LOVE looking out the window. (I always request a window seat, and if anyone takes it I just look at them. Like this. Until they move. Heh.)

I ADORE free coffee! Even though it is very shitty and requires addition of three tiny sugar packets and UHT milk (fondly reminiscent of the time I accidentally ate melted spatula off the stove-top because I thought it was just old cheese.) and also makes me have to pee. Which I love as well! The hilarious noise! Vacuum-cleaner loo!

I TOTALLY get off on (inappropriate? Too late.) landing. So exciting! I know (from PHSI102, which I passed. I know physics gets all up in your grill disproving magic but I swear to the Higgs boson they were just impressed by my patronus. (It is a bear. Just in case you were wondering. One of those sunbears they have in Wellington Zoo that look like cuddly little snugglebuddies but would rather eat your kneecap than watch Gossip Girl with you. I assume. (Dear androgynous outmoded primitive self-help system, I want a bear. I will call her fluffypants and take her jogging and yes, maybe she will eat Jack Russells but I will kick her bone-filled poo off the path afterwards and give tearful ex-pet owners a stolen airline mint each.)) that planes stay up coz of like, the wind goes faster underneath than above? But still, YOU ARE IN THE AIR ON NOTHING! Awesome, right.

And I think this sums up nicely exactly what points I have been trying to make!

1) Tennis is fun. But do not play the day after you play squash unless you want to have to chase balls down Opoho hill for 20 minutes. Hannah, one day I will beat you. (Dad: you; I probably never will.)

1a) I want a job. (Employ me. I am fun and can make pina coladas. Fact.) But, I would like a bear more.

4) Cheese is the best thing ever. (Yeah really? Typical. And yes it is. I would totally rather have sexy cheese than cheesy sex. (This sounds vaguely unhygienic also.))

16) The end. Have a nice day.



*why do people not know things. It mystifies me.

**Hemm heeeemmmm:


Iambic pentameter thesis.

I did receive a mail that said to me


"I do believe the page has not been writ"


I hit reply "I fear it will not be...

complete before the date that was foretold."


My lecturer then sent another mail

"if you do not hand in on time; you fail."

I now return, from net to word, to try...

and type some words. Against my fate I rail.

***THIS is proper usage of hysterical. Thank you.

Cats, pomegranates and Hell; a Nutritionist's outlook.

Humour. Pretty subjective aye?
I learnt this the hard way; at the place where all great stories start; Bargain Barn!

For all of you poor, sad people who don’t know, Bargain Barn (now called something lame with “re” in the title but alliteration is awesome so renaming will remain unremembered) is a warehousey-type building in the industrial cervix of Central Dunedin where you can buy ANYTHING!

So long as “anything” is at least 4th hand, smells a little like old man trousers in a housing unit in Porirua, and costs 50 cents.

I had a couple of hours to kill, (lies, I had homework, but you can’t do homework when you’re drunk and op-shopping! Logic!) so I headed off for a pint and a browse and OH MY FUCK I’m glad I did because I stumbled upon the most epic extreme genre of ridiculously cheap and useless shit ever! Posters!!

Now, one may ask, why would you pay for a poster when they are free for the taking at any major wall near you? Because; (a) last time I tried to use a craft knife when drunk I sliced off a small piece of finger and didn’t notice for several hours and bled on the floor of The Cook and it was unhygienic and, (b) they have CAT POSTERS!!!

The thing about cat posters is; they are awesome.

Do I like cats? Hmmm. Marginally. I will definitely pat a cat if it looks clean and requires no more than four steps of standard deviation from my intended path, but I do not like cats who put fur on me. Or look at me with judging eyes. Or spurn me when I attempt to befriend them when I am feeling friendless. But cat posters suffer from none of these disadvantages; they are not hairy, they do not ever walk away from you, and in the one I ended up buying, the featured cats are playing... with books! Like lol! It’s totally situationally ironic because, wait for it, cats don’t read!

On a marginally (so marginal) more academic note, I also bought a poster of historical good bitch Persephone eating a pomegranate. And here the worry began.

Now Persephone, as we all know, was just a wee occidental wannabe chilling in the perpetual cornfields and trickling brooks (and other vaguely positive agricultural things, possibly not so much cornfields in central Europe before 1500AD but hey! Let’s keep this imprecise) of a happy pre-ice age summer. Then she ate an antioxidant rich plant ovary (actually half, but not gonna hold that against her, they are really quite tricky to eat tidily and in my head she suffered mild ADHD and was unable to get through entire pieces of fruit in one sitting without being distracted by sexy young hoplites or Pheidippides back from a training jog to Turkey or whatever) and got sent to hell.

Happy ending (sort of) she got saved and only had to spend a couple months down there per year and so winter happened blah blah BUT THIS IS IRRELEVANT the point I am trying to make is that I bought a poster of superbabe Persephone, tagged it meme-styles with “EAT FRUIT... GO TO HELL” and hung it in the human nutrition office.

Nobody got it.

I got multiple compliments on the cats (possibly sarcasm implicit), a few about my hipster potplant cartoon but evidently NOBODY thinks classics/nutrition humour is as awesome a trend as I do.

Which brings me back to the subjectivity of humour.
Verdict; very.

Also the women at bargain barn barter. This is alliteration AND true and means I got 7 posters which included 2x cats, 1x emo asian eating candy, 1x marine life, 2x jebus, 1x pomegranate, a boot bag for boots, a straw hat, a fork, a plaid shirt, an un-plaid shirt, a belt and something else which has fallen through a hole in my memory.

Also maybe she ate a persimmon. Fuck. I don’t even think I’ve even seen a persimmon before.

Right! Now I will write my research proposal.

Ruby.