Your Sky, Your Limit

Good god so many changes in the last few days here with the showrunner of A&WT. First and foremost, I’ve moved house again. Currently living in a slightly bigger house with new people. Course, that also means that I have to pay an extra $100 rent a fortnight and will now be living literally day to day but *shrug* sometimes you make the sacrifice if it means you can spend your time relaxing in the living room in front of the fireplace rather than your bedroom where it’s colder.

The move went well, and I realized I actually have far less useless crap than I thought I did. Course I still have to go through the shit in my car and get rid of that but that will be after I get over my flu. Oh yes, change number 2: I have had the worst flu I can remember in about half a decade. It is horrific and just not going away. So I am – as I type – curled up on the couch with the thing reclined back fully with the footrest up, with a cat, under a blanket, and coughing so badly sometimes that I worry I might choke and die. Bad flashbacks to whooping cough of ’97.

Otherwise, we hadn’t had net for the entire weekend, and it was a slightly refreshing if a little disturbing change. I realized that I didn’t so much need the internet to function as I needed Skype to stay sane. I ended up using a hellofalot of money on my phone to stay in touch with the Resistance so I wouldn’t go crazy and shoot someone. Course, the weekend was very busy with building shelves and stacking things and arranging everything properly (we have a full library in our living room with shelves crammed beyond capacity and book piles on the floor) so perhaps that was the reason why I didn’t notice the internet being off.

I’ve started adding new reviews to The Midnight Screening again!! After about 2 years of absolute radio silence on there. For those new to AWT, it was once a rather frequently updated movie review page on here, but then it died down and then completely. Not sure why, it’s not like I stopped watching films. Anyway, slowly but surely I am making myself review films again and post the results up. I’m rusty as hell so they read a little awkwardly but I’ll get in the swing of things eventually I’m sure. Currently the only new reviews up are Hysteria and Blood and Chocolate (which, surprisingly, I absolutely adored).

Nyx City is still in limbo, due to my moving and others being busy with lives… it’s still on the cards though and will certainly be up and going once we’re all in a place where we can start it up. I’m still as excited about it as ever, just currently too tired and wheezy to think beyond a few sentences in a fanfic I’m currently working on with a friend of mine.

Well, short entry this week because although a lot of things happened, a lot of what happened is so mundane and normal that there’s no point blogging about it. I have my final English tutoring class tomorrow, and then I will be paired with a learner, perhaps then I’ll have something more to write about on here that could be considered a decent-length entry. Till then, hope none of you are as sick as I am, it really does suck epically to be in this state.

Stay awesome, be crazy,

Bandit OUT.

Think You Are, And So You Will Become

And we hit study leave running, here on AWT, with Bandit being swept off her feet with projects and study and studyING, as well as real life plans and interwebby ones. At least I have something to write about! So, while the muse still holds and while I have a little time away from my conversational analysis essay, let us continue.

Semester one of my third year is over. I’m not sure how successful or unsuccessful it’s been, since success is judged in so many weird ways. I know that I survived the semester, I know it’s not been a happy one, but I’ve also enjoyed my classes, so we’ll see how this pans out. Technically this is my last year for linguistics ever before that’s done and I can concentrate on my English major and hopefully polish that little baby off in a year and two summer semesters. I also very much want to apply for the Disney World exchange program, and will aim to research more about it in the coming weeks. If all goes well and I get it and can afford it (just, I guess, ‘if all goes well’ is enough here) then I may end up in Florida for a year on a working holiday. Which will be FUCKEN BRILLIANT. But that’s on the backburner for the moment.

No results from the MRI just yet. Still waiting. Still joyfully speculating. I did figure out, though, that my headaches are a mixture of migraines, tension headaches and sinus headaches. Perhaps that’ll help in stopping them or avoiding them in future. I was also told by a few people that I should take up meditation or yoga to keep the stress levels down and avoid the headaches that way. I actually tried yoga for a little while, but never had the patience to keep it up. I think, however, with certain things changing in the very near future I will force myself to take it up as a regular and prolonged hobby. I remember yoga feeling utterly brilliant after the few days I did it, so I can only imagine what a few weeks will do.

AND THERE’S A HANDY LITTLE SEGUE.

The lease has been approved and I am moving out this coming weekend. Which coincides with one of my work shifts. And the date my major linguistics essay is due. Because heck, why would life be easy on me huh? But that’s not too bad really, the place looks good and the people are nice and once I’ve settled I think being in such close proximity to EVERYTHING (we will live literally 4 houses up from a major mall) will help with transport and travel costs. Anyway. I’m optimistic and once exams and assignments are done I have 2 weeks to enjoy the new place and potentially have another roadtrip before semester two hits me square in the face with four courses (not two like this time) and I’m rushed off my feet yet again.

On top of all this, I am one week away from finishing an ESOL teaching course, so once that’s done and I’m matched with my learner, I will be a tutor once a week for someone to learn English. Which sort of worries me since I’m not sure I’ll be a particularly good teacher since my personal learning styles are the most complicated and actually the most useless of all the ones presented (because, again, when is my life easy). Anyway that’s something to look forward to and potentially write about in weeks to come, since I’ll be confined by confidentiality I won’t actually be writing about my learner, but more about the idea of language learning and understanding for adult learners when it comes to English. Because English is a shit language to learn, anyone who had to learn it will agree with me here I’m sure.

And last but certainly not least, the reason I am writing so damn much and so damn fast in one go: I am finally excited about something again!! The Resistance is starting a collaborative writing/art project that we plan to write, edit and illustrate together and work on getting published in the e-book market and get some money and heads turning our way. It’s a work in progress and we’re still only building the world and the website, but if you want to check out what I’m on about, go visit Nyx City. Because we all finally figured… hell, we write 20,000+ words a week together, we have fun doing it, why not cash in on it? At least three of us want to do this for a career, and there’s never a too early or too late place to start so starting we are and starting we are very soon.

Questions and comments are welcome, and, in fact, encouraged. If you have ideas for us please submit them in the contact page, and we’ll look them all over and review. We’d love some feedback from people outside of the Resistance, on the design, the idea, the ease of access on the site and whether or not it would be a project you’d be interested in reading. Be honest, we can take criticism well (sets aside scythe) we’d be happy to get some comments.

And that be all from me for a while, guys. I have an essay to write, a world to plan and a house to move into. I’m fairly certain I’ll have a lot to write about next week, so till then. Adieu.

Bandit, OUT.

You want a revelation, some kind of resolution

[lyrics from No Light, No Light - Florence and the Machine]

Been thinking a lot lately, how it’s always easier if there’s a scapegoat to blame for… anything. Not exactly a revelation, but something pressing recently. I can explain it a number of ways, so just bear with me a few paragraphs before I actually get to my point.

I have a character in a closed RP, who is a sadist. Not physically, just mentally; getting off on the fear of others, on their mental pain, on being the one they come to for aid not knowing they’re feeding the beast, as it were. He’s a complete psychopath: calm, quiet, soft and well-spoken, well presented, clever… and dangerous. But despite what you might think, not that way due to some trauma as a child or abuse or terror. He’s that way because he had no scapegoat when he was younger, nothing and no one to blame for the thoughts he had about other people and what he wanted done to them. It had started with him being bullied and not retaliating, and the rest grew from there. But because he has no scapegoat, he has to find one, make up things that never happened in order to define and justify his own reactions and feelings. He went to become a psychologist to see if he could find someone – anyone – else who could explain his psychosis away, or could relate to it somehow. He hasn’t yet.

For those who follow Hannibal, this is a spoiler for episode 10: Buffet Froid. Don’t read on if you don’t want to know what happens, I’ll put another bit up once we’ve passed spoilers.

Will is diagnosed with encephalitis, but Hannibal chooses not to reveal that to him, instead seeing fit to use Will as a strange experiment of sorts by convincing him that it’s not a physical problem but a mental one. Will’s symptoms are severe: losing time, losing spatial awareness, memory lapses… and all he wants is to know what the hell is going on, he wants something to blame for it all. And because he has nothing, he falls deeper and deeper into it and can’t figure out a way to get out of it.

Hannibal spoilers over.

For those that know, I’ve been getting bad migraines for a while now. They started in September but got frequent only recently. But they also got a lot worse. I ended up in hospital for them when they got too bad to deal with, and the CT scan said nothing. The dizziness and exhaustion couldn’t be explained. The only meds that took the damn thing away were in a drip. Results were inconclusive. So I went to a neurologist. And got referred to an MRI.

Said MRI is this Wednesday.

Setting aside the fact that I am terrified of going into the thing and requested sedation, I am looking forward to the scan for one reason and one reason only: that it could possibly find something. Because I am so sick and so scared of not knowing, of getting nothing but ‘it could be a stress headache’, ‘there’s nothing we can diagnose at this time’… I need something. Because the headaches are most certainly there, and they floor me, and they hurt and they scare the shit out of me. And it can’t just be nothing!

I need a scapegoat to blame, I need to be able to say ‘yes, it’s because I had a minor aneurism and now it’s the aftereffects’ or ‘there’s something in there that we can get rid of’ or ‘it’s fucken encephalitis’. But I need more than ‘sorry we don’t know’.

And I don’t blame the doctors, it’s not their fault they have no idea, but I need to blame something. Because it’s starting to screw with my life, with my job, with study… it’s making it hard to be normal and move on with being normal if I have migraines with no fucken onset just jumping me whenever they feel the whim to.

And that… was basically it. Sorry. Short entry and sort of out of my usual posting schedule but I needed to rant somewhere and this is my place.

Hope y’all and yours are well.

Stay classy,

Bandit OUT.

The Resistance – And a Birthday to Boot

A very good friend of mine turned one year older yesterday (today his time) and, being the crazy group of people we are, we made him this.

I wrote the story, Jack edited, K drew and P formatted everything.

We’re nuts, we’re happy, and we wish the wonderful M a very happy birthday.

In other news, I am addicted to Hannibal NBC, I’m nearly at the end of my first semester, I might be moving out if things fall into place as they should, and I will try to be back within a week with an entry for you. Ciao!

Bandit, OUT.

Do You Speak Ice Age?

“On Monday, researchers at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom announced the results of a new study that they claim traces hundreds of modern European and Asian languages back to an Ice Age-era “mother tongue.” The study, which will be published this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, has identified nearly two dozen words that make repeated appearances across several language groups, previously thought to be unrelated, hinting at one common ancestor for human vocabulary.“

This is a wonderful article, and I actually can’t believe how excited I am about this!! Guess I do like linguistics!

Check out the full article here, copyright to the History Channel

*bloop*

- Bandit

The Terrifying Accuracy of the Stars

Not really an entry so much as a post about something that fascinates me. My wonderful lovely Swedish darling linked me to an astrology site that gave you a reading of – essentially – you. And I know astrology doesn’t hold much ground with people, but I’m open-minded to things like that. I don’t base my entire life on them but I find them to be very interesting and sometimes quite accurate.

Sometimes, scarily accurate, like my reading from this site. Feel free to not read any more if you dislike the whole concept, but… it’s freakishly cool. If you wanna get your own, just fill this form in, it doesn’t require much beyond your birthday, birth time if you know it and the timezone you were born in.

—~+~—

March 6 1990
12:00 PM Time Zone is BAT
Kiev, UKRAIN

Rising Sign is in 00 Degrees Cancer
Very sensitive by nature, you prefer to be in your own familiar surroundings. Cautious and conservative, you make changes in your life only very slowly, if at all. You do not open up easily to strangers. Friendships are made for life, however — once given, your trust is forever. Your mother, your home as a child and your early family life in general are very important to you. You are also very sentimental. When you feel self- confident, you are gentle, giving and protective of the needs of others. But when you feel insecure or threatened, you become overly sensitive to criticism, shy, withdrawn and moody. You have a strong need for security — in the sense that you are being loved, nourished and protected.

Sun is in 15 Degrees Pisces.
Extremely sensitive and emotional, you absorb the emotions of others (whether positive or negative) like a sponge. Emotionally vulnerable, you are easily upset and tend to cry readily. You are at your best when you can structure your environment in such a way that you are surrounded by positive, upbeat people. You are very helpful and understanding of the needs of others. Indeed, at times this can be a disadvantage, because you can be a sucker for anyone who needs help. Shy, dreamy, romantic in nature, you delight in retreating into your private fantasy world. Just be careful that you do not get lost in it! Trust your intuitions — you may be quite psychic.

Moon is in 14 Degrees Cancer.
For the most part, you are very strong and secure emotionally. You intuitively know what to do to make others feel comfortable, loved, accepted and needed. You naturally enjoy feeding and taking care of others. Be careful that your mothering does not turn into smothering. At times, you tend to feel that those to whom you are attached can never do anything without your assistance and support. Extremely sensitive by nature, it hurts you deeply whenever anyone criticizes you. You have an almost desperate need to be loved and wanted and needed by everyone with whom you come into contact, and you go out of your way to be accommodating to them.

Mercury is in 04 Degrees Pisces.
Your ideas and thought processes do not come to you in an orderly, logical fashion. Instead, you think with your feelings or with images produced by your rich and fertile imagination. A very subjective person, your dreams and fantasies are very important to you. You trust your intuitions and tend to reject ideas that are based solely on logic. Very impressionable, you are sensitive to the moods and emotional states of those with whom you come into contact.

Venus is in 01 Degrees Aquarius.
You are a friendly and outgoing individual, but close relationships are difficult for you to maintain due to your fear that they will cause you to lose your freedom. You attract friends and associates who are exciting, different and sometimes a bit odd. You are popular with others and enjoy working within a group toward group goals.

Mars is in 26 Degrees Capricorn.
Extremely ambitious, you are willing to work very hard to reach the goals you have set for yourself. Very practical, cautious and conservative, you demand tangible results for your efforts. You need to excel in whatever you do, and you have the required sense of responsibility, dedication and self-discipline to bring it about. Beware of your tendency to judge others only by their degree of status and prestige, or by how well they will be able to advance you in your climb to the top.

Jupiter is in 00 Degrees Cancer.
You must be emotionally secure in order to grow and develop. You are happiest when your family and community support and nourish you and boost your morale. Whether your childhood experiences of love and emotional dependability were positive or negative will set the tone for your emotional growth and stability as an adult. When you feel at ease with yourself, you are able to offer assistance to those who need a helping hand.

Saturn is in 22 Degrees Capricorn.
Very serious-minded and mature, you have the ability to take on responsibilities and to carry out important duties. You can also be trusted to be extremely practical and thrifty. A good organizer, you are the ideal one to be counted on to take a clearly defined project through to its logical conclusion. An achiever, you pride yourself on your ability to focus your attention totally on some worthy goal and then attain it.

Uranus is in 08 Degrees Capricorn.
You, and your peer group as well, seek out practical solutions to a changing society’s attitudes to customs, traditions and authority structures. Your logical and orderly manner of dealing with these matters will result in permanent and carefully planned, but sweeping, reforms.

Neptune is in 14 Degrees Capricorn.
You, and your entire generation, will idealize work, practicality and the ability to attain reasonable goals. But, because you will also stress the need to be selfless and giving, you may find it difficult to attain your goals unless you have lowered your expectations on all fronts.

Pluto is in 17 Degrees Scorpio.
For your entire generation, this is a period of intense research and discovery in areas that were heretofore considered mysterious, remote or taboo. The root causes for many complex occurrences will be unearthed due to the intensity and thoroughness of the search.

N. Node is in 16 Degrees Aquarius.
As long as someone else (or a group or organization) appeals to your intellectual sensibilities, you’ll try to ally yourself with them in some way. You may find that you always seem to get involved with many wide-ranging groups — so much so that you find it difficult to fit them all into your busy schedule. Your many friends and acquaintances provide you with needed stimulation. You’re loyal and fair-minded — you try to spend time equally with all your friends, never concentrating on just one or two for any length of time. Although probably quite conservative yourself, you’re attracted to those who are a bit offbeat or eccentric — you enjoy watching their minds work.

Parallel

I was about to take a nap when I saw that chair. I fell a little in love with it actually and couldn’t take my eyes off it so… Here we are!

All photos were taken with and edited on the Samsung Galaxy SII. Edited with Aviary.

All photos are mine, feel free to use but link back to here if you do (I want to see where they end up!)

Bandit, out.

A Quick Note

It’s nearing 7am and I have been up since 4:30. Mostly because I was awake to catch some friends overseas before they had to go to college for their day, but also because I feel like death warmed up and am feeling somewhat sorry for myself.

I was also thinking of entering this competition, but not sure if my stuff is good enough to even consider. I’ve been pretty happy with some of the photos I’ve taken and put on here for my mini series of photos, but not sure if that’s just me being proud of the product of my own boredom or if they’re actually any good. If I were to submit a photo (and it would only be one since I can’t afford another… I can’t even afford one but let’s not go there right now) which would you recommend? At the moment I am tempted to go with either the door from the last series or the close up of the rusty handle from the St Paul’s series.

Beyond that I met up with a friend who I hadn’t seen in a long time on Tuesday. It was good to see her again, we have far too much in common to not see each other often. In fact, weirdly, I’ve become a lot more social again. I meet friends on almost a daily basis between classes, either by accident or by planning, and it feels good. It feels nice being able to have a quick chat – or a long one – with someone about anything and everything. Especially if they’re friends from different times of your life and with different experiences.

On the downside, my headaches haven’t decreased in frequency nor in pain level, which sucks. Also the nausea thing is still getting to me. Although I have to say, the nausea pills are a gift from God or something… they work quickly and effectively and I could very easily get addicted to the things coz they don’t taste bad either. Which, now that I think about it, is not a good thing to say.

Other than that, nothing new with me, hence this is about 1/3 the size of a normal entry; I don’t actually have much to say this week I’m afraid. I think I’ll have a little more another day, in which case, watch this space as per normal.

Bandit, OUT!

Forgotten Worlds

Found a few undiscovered worlds on my way to a job interview this morning, before uni. That door, in particular, intrigues me. It’s very “Neverwhere“.

All photos were taken with and edited on the Samsung Galaxy SII. Edited with Aviary.

All photos are mine, feel free to use but link back to here if you do (I want to see where they end up!)

Bandit, out.

Not Quite Sure

I’ve been thinking this a while, and I’m not sure how to approach it beyond just outright asking. It’s not a delicate question so much as a fascinating one. To me, anyway. I’ve read about things like this before and I never thought it would happen to me.

Guess the first thing to say is what it is I’ve read about.

I don’t even remember what magazine it was in, something silly like Cosmopolitan, years ago now when I used to actually buy the thing (and be able to afford it). It was a small article about someone who claimed that every man she ever dated would change for the better when they broke up with her. That… came out wrong. Basically what she meant was she felt like she had groomed those men into the perfect men. They had manners, they were kind and generous, funny and dressed well, because she’d made the effort to help them do so. And she was saying how every relationship the men had after they had broken up with her (most of the breakups were friendly with no animosity from either party, by the way) had turned out to be a fruitful one, one man got married to that woman, the others had kids or just very happy long-term relationships. She ended the article by hoping she would stop being the in-between person and meet someone who loved her and who she could have a happy ending with.

My situation, I feel, is somewhat similar. I’ve had it happen a few times to me, and I will not name names here, but if those people were to read the entry they would know who they were. In case they do read the entry, I am not trying to demean you or make you out to be the bad guy. You’re not. This is just how I feel and since I’m not naming names, no one will know who you are anyway. Feel free, however, to comment – anonymously, if you must – and tell me what you think if you recognize yourselves in the entry.

Basically… I feel as though I am the in-between person for productive people. Not to say they weren’t productive before, but there are certain things that I would have suggested when we had been friends that these people brushed off as silly, or pointless, or useless, and later, when we stopped being as close or lost touch completely, would take up or use and enjoy. As I said, I will bring about examples, because otherwise it’s just me ranting and getting upset. And I am upset, I won’t lie, certain things that the people have gone on to do now were things that I truly believed from the heart they would have liked, or benefited from, and when they brushed me off it hurt. And it hurt so much more when later I learned they had taken my advice and my suggestions had turned out as I had told them they would: well.

Person 1 was a while ago. Say two years now. They were shy and quiet and very talented in a certain area, which I encouraged them to explore and they did. But there were things they didn’t do that I thought they should have. For instance, they decided not to do higher education, didn’t want to get a cellphone even though it would have eased their communication with friends, family, me… they didn’t want to make the effort to get a job or make friends in their neighbourhood, and I kept encouraging them to try. Every day. Eventually, Person 1 and I grew apart, it happens. We never fought, there was no big blow up, we just stopped talking and never picked up again.

But what hurt was that they now have a cellphone, and not just any cellphone but an iPhone, which they claimed they would never get since ‘a phone should just be for ease of communication and not so fancy’. They went to college, or a technical institute to hone their skills. Which is great, but they claimed for so long that they didn’t want to that it was a complete punch in the gut when they did go. They got a job, they started actually planning things instead of imagining them going well just on a whim. They made friends close to home, went out more, had fun… and they did it after me.

Person 2 was a little more recent, and the person I think is more likely to read this entry than person 1 is. This person and I agreed on a lot more things than Person 1 and I did, we got along well, we shared a sense of humor. Still do, really, we just don’t talk as much anymore. The thing we disagreed on was the idea of watching television or films in general, and going out. I suggested, since one of this person’s passions was acting, that they watch more films, get inspired, play out scenes. I would only suggest movies that I knew they would enjoy, and while, yes, I pushed a few, the rest I left alone, and waited. Unlike with Person 1, Person 2 and I did have a falling out. It was due to a huge collection of factors that I won’t get into, but we didn’t talk for a while, and they were angry at me and I at them.

But of course as soon as we weren’t as close, Person 2 started watching films. And television shows. And what hurt the most was that they were the exact ones I had recommended, and told them they would love. And they had watched them, and enjoyed them with someone else. They also became less shy about their acting, going on more projects, taking part in film sets, wanting to go oversees to study acting after their degree…

And don’t get me wrong, I am happy for them, for all the people who have moved on from me and gone away doing things I had told them would be good for them. I am jealous, sure, but I’m happy that they finally listened and chose to try something and found it to be good for them. But I just want to know… why me? Why did it have to be me? Why couldn’t they have moved on on their own, kept me in the loop, kept me as a friend? Why did my leaving have to be a catalyst for their good fortune? Am I bad luck? Am I just the person that absorbs their procrastination and when they leave it allows them to go on with their lives and DO something with them?

As I said, I won’t lie, it really truly upsets me! It hurts that the person I suggested a job to brushed me off and then went and got one when we no longer spoke. It really hurts that the person I suggested those films to refused to watch them with me and enjoyed them greatly with a mutual friend of ours. It really, really hurts.

And it gets me thinking, when will I find someone like that for me? When will I be able to do something that makes me happy? Because recently life has become really, really shit. It has become almost painfully difficult and I hate it. I hate the person I am in it, and as much as I want to change I am stuck in a place where I just can’t. I have no means to. I can’t change or quit my job because I have nothing else to fall back on. I got called by the student services of this country the other day telling me I had some allowance repayments due and asking if I would be able to pay them back. They put me through the student hardship questionnaire and at the end of it the lady on the other end of the phone asked me if someone was helping me with food and fuel because she couldn’t fathom how I was making ends meet, and I’m not. I’m struggling and I need help.

-sighs- but… enough about that. The entry’s over. Not much more to say. I guess the point that I was trying to convey was that I feel like I am a road marker at a crossroads for a lot of people, and I wish I wasn’t. I wish I meant more to people than that. And I wish I could find someone who could help me move on in my own life and my own choices, and that I wouldn’t have to sacrifice them and leave them behind to move on.

Hmm… what else. Beyond the fact that I am struggling, I am trying to get out of that pit. I’ve started freelancing on a site called Elance. So far, I’ve been hired as a transcriber for an international online company. It’s hard work, and I’m scared as hell that I will screw it up, but it’s something. If anyone has any suggestions, please, let me know how else I can make more money. It’s gotten to the point where it’s to make up rent, not for personal spending.

I’ve also finally opened up an AO3 account, for all my writing. I won’t link it on here because I don’t want some people to get their hands on it. A lot of my fic is on there and a lot of it is slash, and as much as I respect choice and opinion I do not want people demeaning my work when it means so much to me. If you want the link, ask for it, and I will consider giving it to you.

Other than that.. that’s me for the month of March. Till next week then, lovelies.

Bandit, OUT.