brain: please stop

i've just had one of those personal revelations. this time, about why i facilitate so much... for others. hooley dooley. self-reflection hurts. it's time to let the avoidance tendencies kick in. as usual. ow.

!(yak yak yak)

does anyone else find it rude that people talk through someone's gig?? it's excusable in say, a pub or club environment where the music is understood by performer and audience to be a secondary amusement. sure, commenting to your friends about the gig is cool, but don't go and hold a friggin' group conversation: when multiplicatively executed amongst a crowd squished into a small space, sound pressure levels are cumulatively loud enough to disturb the performance!! when you've paid to see/hear a gig, please show some respect for the performer and those around you and SHUT THE FUCK UP! thank you.

update: the good thing out of that gig is that my friend might have picked up a friend of a friend... :)

my foolish mind

ever since the collapse of my supervisor's empire upon his graceful exit, and now the restructure of our ridiculously useless parent research group, i've been trying to convince my peers to jump ship and follow our professor emperor. it's too late for me to transfer on paper but fuck, i hadn't considered just physically moving south with my sexy audio gear whilst leaving the paper trail here!

i am such an idiot sometimes (most of the time?): trying to save the labrats from lack of funding and quality supervision but neglecting my own (sinking) ship of fools...

national threat advisory: elevated

Waiver of Rights: I have read and understand that I hereby waive for the duration of my travel authorization obtained via ESTA any rights to review or appeal of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer's determination as to my admissibility, or to contest, other than on the basis of an application for asylum, any removal action arising from an application for admission under the Visa Waiver Program.

In addition to the above waiver, as a condition of each admission into the United States under the Visa Waiver Program, I agree that the submission of biometric identifiers (including fingerprints and photographs) during processing upon arrival in the United States shall reaffirm my waiver of any rights to review or appeal of a U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer's determination as to my admissibility, or to contest, other than on the basis of an application for asylum, any removal action arising from an application for admission under the Visa Waiver Program.

I thank you, Department of Homeland Security (Preserving Our Freedoms, Protecting America), for allowing me the privilege of waiving my above rights in order to travel to your gracious country.

team meat

today's ridiculous 'team meeting' was the most blatant display of academic power plays that i have had to sit through, even worse than a school meeting. circus acts included team leaders making it look like they know what's going on, supervisors questioning their own students' work, and students obediently attending but looking glumly bored - if only i had a camera to capture the very unimpressed expressions of my fellow labrats! i couldn't help but giggle at the silliness of it all. maybe one day i might take it all seriously... but then again maybe not.

germans and burma

hmm... what a day. whinge. doughnut. whinge. wine. more wine. and an enjoyably interesting evening! i've changed my mind about the german boy: apart from the fact he's already taken and leaving the country, upon closer intellectual inspection it proves true that first impressions are not always all that accurate.

and, a paper from myanmar! something i certainly haven't seen before. i wouldn't have expected the junta to fund research in semantic web service delivery...

fake up?

Re: "The Magic of Makeup", SMH, 22/08/08

"And there's so much psychology attached to it. When there's a financial downturn, sales of make-up go through the roof. It makes people feel good. You might not be able to afford your next car payment but you can go out and buy the newest lipstick."

How did we get to the point where warpaint is a daily ritual? To the point where some women feel 'naked' without their facepaint (I'm quoting a friend here)? Psychological indeed. And now male makeup is on the rise, on the street and on the shelf. Just in case it wasn't enough that women need to paint themselves on a daily basis, let's get the men onto it too! I really struggle with the cosmetics industry, an industry that relies on telling someone that they could do better (with this colour that is oh-so-very hot this season (darling))!

"And make-up is, after all, a fairly benign form of decoration, especially compared with the risks, costs and sometimes results of, say, plastic surgery."

Decoration perhaps but I don't know about benign: cumulative effects of absorbing the chemical cocktail that is make-up through our largest organ are relatively unknown. And, isn't the simple statistic of swallowing kilos of lipstick a year (or lifetime, depending on the source) enough to deter any logical being? Or does the quest for perceived beauty blatantly defy logic?

For the first time in my life a few friends and I partook in a 'beauty treatment' with our very own personal beauty consultant. I've always wanted to spend some time poking my eye out with a pencil, I've never quite gotten the hang of it. Turns out our consultant was a former psychologist now head-hunting new sales recruits whilst painting our lips the latest shades of 'chocolate caramel delight' or what have you. I'd rather eat the real thing than paint it on. Mind you, I apparently have combination skin and nice eyes (after I'd poked them out with said pencil), which was my (unwanted) lesson for the day. To me she was a deadly combination, concurrently analysing her clients' psychological status whilst preying on the weaknesses of their self-image.

Now I've gone and reminded myself of my intolerance for the smells (i.e., perfume) industry. My x used to say he liked buying smells for me, and I'm not going to take that personally but as a further example manifestation of our society's obsession with trying to not look nor smell human. Oh why oh why?!