Cute little Monster

A very young Amber on the couch. (about 4-5 weeks)

Pearl.



From left to right, Crystal, Amber and Pearl.

Crystal when she was younger.




Crystal and Ruby.



Chewy is our irish wolfhound. In a certain light he looks like chewbacca to us.

I have 2 pet yabbies. I've had them for a little while, and they have mated and the female started carrying eggs under her tail. The eggs hatched and the babies hung on under her tail for just over two weeks. Today I noticed that the babies have started dropping off and are walking around on the bottom. I took a couple of pictures.



Below is a close up. Isn't he/she so cute! It's about 7mm long. There's about 100 of these in here. I hope they have enough hiding spots, if they don't they may eat each other.



I'm on holidays now. I have finished my tests for the semester.
My little brother has gotten in trouble for distributing software at school (piracy). We don't know yet if he'll get suspended or expelled or worse. Piracy can carry massive fines and about 7 years jail. I hope the school doesn't get the police involved. I have deleated all my illegal music and software from my computer and hope that with time and use the remenants (ghost image left over) of the software will disappear from the hard drive. It's really not worth getting in trouble with, especially now since my brother has acted like a prat and attracted attention to himself and all of us I have no idea how seriously what I have done is taken in law, it's not like I'm selling it, only personal use, but it's still pretty bad I think. The major trouble I have now is that my idiot dad keeps asking me to download more illegal music for him. I keep saying I haven't got around to it yet, and he's going to get pissed off with me soon. I don't know how to tell him that I don't want to do it for him.

Last week he called me a stupid woman who will never get anywhere and is only good for doing his dishes.

On the 10th I saw that there was a new pet store open in my town, and they have a whole heap of "lightening blazed"  rats. I couldn't help myself but get a couple.




Notice how their markings are like a mirror image of each other?




The agouti one is Lucy. She is the boldest one. Those brown things are chocolate teddy-bear biscuits.




The black one is Mika. She is shy, but not so shy when she is with Lucy. She is not letting me photograph her best side though. Maybe later. Sorry about the glare.



These are my old girls. From left to right it's Pearl, Crystal and Amber. They seem to be handling the new girls presence fairly well. They huff and puff through the bars but all violence has been done by Lucy. She pokes her tiny balled fist through the bars lightening fast and bopps the older rat on the nose. She's done it to all three of the older girls at least once, and Amber is positively scared of her. She won't go near the cage at all now, she turns and runs. Introducing them without bars separating them should be interesting.

Not my rats but a picture I saved from the internet years ago. I thought it was funny. Caption is mine.

In order to get back into the swing of blogging, with holidays now coming I'm going to strive to add at a picture a week of lolrats. Perhaps this needs some explanation. I've been quite involved in a browser based game Nexus War, wherein different angelic, demonic and mortal factions vie for power and control of the land. I have three characters in three different factions, the Demons Next Door, The Claw and Ridleytown Resistance Front. Look us up if you want, they are all friendly and good fun. Anyway, website crossover groups abound in the world of the Nexus and there is one group called LOLCATS from http://icanhascheezburger.com. They occasionally came by my DND stronghold and shout things about candy and cheesburgers with a megaphone at us, thus getting me hooked into their website.
And so, I bring you LOLRATZ.

I passed my driving test. I've got my probationary licence now.
So happy.

It was my little sister's birthday yesterday. I feel quite sad that I missed practically the whole day, after being on holiday and trying to get back into the swing of studying, I'm used to being able to be there, if you know what I mean.
She's 4 years old now, all grown up. Four is the age where kids start actually remembering things, memories that will stay with them until maturity, so it's quite a milestone really. She got a Baby Alive doll, and lots of Bindeez, which are these little balls that stick together with water that you can make sculptures out of. She loves both her presents.

I can say with absolute certainty now, that robots that talk and say human things creep me out. If you hold it upside down it cries. If you leave it alone too long without turning it off, it cries and asks where you are. It calls you mommy. But I know that it's only programmed to do this, I know it doesn't actually feel anything when it starts screeching, it doesn't really feel sad or frightened or happy or loving. But because the things it does are so...noisy, so human we jump to it's every request even though there's no real need (other than to shut it up). Is it unethical to hold a robot upside down so that it cries? No, it's not like I'm going to scar it for life, it's got a balance sensor and it's programed to play a certain track when it matches criteria - upside-down.  And when it's righted, it instantly forgives, and shuts up. No memory of the terror of criteria - upside down. Which is, of course, very inhuman. Whatever you do, positive or negative, it's not going to have any long term effect, it's a black hole. Sucking up all your attentions and giving nothing back.

So why do I feel a twinge of embarrassment, or remorse, or regret (I don't know, help me out here) when it cracks its nut? The mere fact it engenders these reactionary emotions in me makes me feel queasy. So mostly I feel disgust towards the robot. I know it's quite useless though, because it's only a toy, but still. Nothing but a human has any right acting like a human. In their online FAQ, there is the question, "Q: My BABY ALIVE doll is fussy! What should I do?". And there is no answer. My point Exactly.

Damn creepy thing. Kill it kill it!

I am in my element. After feeling very despondent over not finding a single computer lab on my new campus all week, I found the single biggest collection of computers I've ever seen in the bottom of the library. There must be about 1000 here. Okay, maybe half that. It's hard to tell because it's very maze like, with glass and steel walls, and colourful PVC dividers. It's all very pretty.

On fridays, I have to get up at 5:20, leave home at 6:00, on the train by 6:20, arrive in the city at 7:20, walk to uni, arriving generally around 7:50, for a lecture on forensic psychology at 8:00am.

Then I have a six and a half hour long lunch break, running from 10am to 4:30pm when I have my social ethics class. I don't know how I'm going to pass the time, I've just used up over 3/4s of my allocated free internet downloads at the library here. I'm sure I can buy more.

I finally found the treadmill song by Ok Go that I have been meaning to find for a while. I saw it on Video Hits a while back. I know everyone has probably already seen it.

I also found a really cool site, similar to Jonathan Coulton's Thing a Week (which I adore), Bateman makes a flash animation every day for a year. He's been finished for a while now, but he hasn't stopped making stuff entirely. These are my favorite:

http://www.batemania.com/bateman365/day364.html

http://www.batemania.com/bateman365/day341.html
 
http://www.batemania.com/bateman365/day225.html

You should check out the rest of the very extensive site, especially the greatest hits.

I'm off to have some pot noodle. And then I'll try to find the psych section of the library.

Today was not a very good day for me. For the past week and a half Ruby has been hit hard with cancer. She lost over half her body weight and stopped eating completely, not even her favourite treats. She became very pale and limp and was completely unresponsive to touch or sound. She stopped grooming herself and would do odd things like walk off the edge of my hands, and would fall if I weren’t there to catch her. So I took her to the vet and he looked at her and found a huge lump in her abdomen that I could not see. One other far smaller lump on her side has been visible for just over a year though. She was so far gone that she silently complied with the thorough prodding that would have caused her to seriously complain if she had the strength. We decided that the most humane thing to do would be to put her to sleep, rather than be sick and starving to death. So now she has a place in the backyard, right beside Sam. I miss her so much, she had the most beautiful cinnamon orange fur, a very sweet nature and she loved to cuddle. She stuck by Crystal when they explored and when they’d get separated she’d come running back to me. Crystal and the others are missing her too, I can tell. She just seems sad, and is sleeping in the exact same place Ruby has been choosing to sleep, down on the bottom level. Ruby was like a mother figure more so than Crystal to the young ones, she beat them up less and cuddled more. She was nearly 1 year and 11 months old. I miss Ruby so much.

This is Ruby, tuckered out from doing her two favourite things, crawling in the laundery and playing the keyboard.

It seems as though I actually have less time to be on the internet during my holidays than during my school time. And no offence intended to my friends, but it’s like I only use this place as some kind of tool for procrastination from work. When I’m not working, I am away from the computer. I’m out walking or playing with my dogs or rats or fish or watching movies. I didn’t think it would be possible, but I believe I have reached a saturation point as far as being on the internet is concerned.

I am now officially a law student. I got accepted in exactly the course I wanted. *does a dance*. Pretty awesome**. I get law student related spam in my uni email and everything.

Also, to Gemma:

I’m coming to your campus now! 

** Like a hotdog (Eddie Izzard reference).

I saw this on channel nine news just briefly tonight. This is so totally crap! Because I haven’t been on campus for so long, I have missed out on the news that my favorite all time lecturer Gary MacLennan and also John Hookham have been suspended for a whole 6 months for standing up for the rights of the disabled and standing against extreme bad taste.

 
Watch the video here. There are probably others connected to this on the related videos column. Like This one.

Gary looks so sad in this. I feel so sorry for him. I wish there was something I could do. *hugs Gary*

I’ve been playing this game, Urban Dead for the past week, and it is so cool and frustrating and funny. It’s frustrating because of the restrictions on turns that are on me, but as soon as I reach second level, and then third, everything will be better because the restrictions on zombie movement will be lifted with skills that I will take. And it is funny because it has a very extensive Wiki on all the places and groups and an entire zombie language. And people take it so seriously, they just start flaming each other over issues like Player Killing, and why they think it’s allowed or not, and who deserves it. And huge organizations of players with histories that people have painstakingly recorded, and alliances and faction wars that break out. It’s just really interesting how all these different groups interact, and make in-jokes. I love in-jokes.

So, yes. I’m back, and on holiday for just now. I need to get my mind off that hellish exam period, so I’m going to not talk about it.

Today my family and I went to the city for "Queensland Week". Yes indeed.

And the extra perceptive of you may have noticed that my writing style is a little bit off. It’s because I’ve got a serious headache, but it’s also because of this. Be a friend and check it out. (it's not a trick or computer hamful, and I'm definantly not going to steal your brain). Seriously.

 

Grahhh. I’m going to sleep now.

OMFG! I leave livejournal to do my assignments for a week and look at what happens while I’m away. Story of my life, I’m never there for when *anything* happens, I’m always like, huh, what just happened?

Crap, I have some catching up to do.

I quickly threw together this pic, in commemoration of my reaction to every event that I totally miss out on, which is life changing for everyone but me. It even applies to my television habits. *sigh* *feels left out*

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edit: anyone can take this pic, but I’d appreciate my name in the comments of the pic if you use it. It’s not like I’d know if you don’t though, so please yourself ;)

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I am working late on an assignment. Just taking a quick rest to allow my brain to get back into gear.

I’m eating one of my little sister’s Bega stringers and I’ve come to a realization. There’s just something about slowly tearing my food into tiny strips before devouring it that I find very satisfying. Mmm, ultra-processed oily mozzarella. Yummy.

Several people on live journal have inadvertently got me hooked on Heroes. I think my internet connection will be earning its keep this holidays, as I search for the eps. Series 5 of scrubs is nearly finished, and I sure do hope that it will work. That’s the trouble with downloading eps, it works about 99.9% of the time, but I always worry that *this* time it won’t work. I have my fingers crossed.

This is about my third day with minimal sleep, and already I am feeling the effects. Actually, I started hearing voices yesterday, which is troubling because usually I can go much longer without sleep, without having this happen. Oh well. I guess it’s kinda fitting punishment for what I’m putting my poor old brain through. I listened to Lewis Black’s “The White Album” today, and gods, he’s so funny. I’ll end with a quote that I think is kinda pertinent to my situation right now. Kinda.

“I believe the human brain is so smart that when it watches you watch yourself watch you watch yourself doing something you shouldn’t fucking be doing, it says, you are so stupid I will kill you.”

And here’s something fun, an anime video clip for the song, Life’s Gonna Suck, by Denis Leary.

"Giant frogs, giant frogs! What can I say? Back to you." -- Lewis Black on the crazy weather and even crazyer weatherman.

I can’t talk long, I’m so busy with assignments right now, only 2 weeks until the end of semester, but I don’t want to neglect my blog for too long.

I found an excellent little animation by Osamu Tezuka. It is so awesome, like something out of a dream. This little girl (I think) jumps across the countryside...and through the city...and across the sea. It’s a bit boring to start with, but stick with it because it gets pretty funny by the 1.12 mark.
 
You know that presentation I made a few weeks back and was really worried about ? I got a distinction! *flails*
I have so much stuff to do it’s not funny.

You know, female guppies are extremely hard to come by this time of year. I found only 5, and bought 3 because the other 2 I thought were too young. I went fish shopping this morning to all of the aquarium places in my area.

My rats ate a hole in my pillow, and climbed in. I had an awful time coaxing them out this morning. I think it’s time I bought a new pillow. And a new blanket. I’ve got Ruby and Crystal on my lap right now, and Ruby is bugling her eyes and wiggling her ears when I touch her. She’s so cute.

Can I think of anything more interesting to say? 

Yeah, back to work. I’m going to try my hardest to work for the next week solid, with minimal procrastination. If you see me procrastinating by writing messages on your blogs, you have my express permission to hit me with this oversized novelty paper fan.
*produces from nowhere and hands to you, the reader, a three foot long white paper fan*.

“Funniest Home Videos” is on now. *winces* *laughs*