Kind of Empty

"Four years? You've been gone four years!?"

"Lauren, we've been out of high school six years."

"Shit."

A system of credits and trades.

I think only a bout of spazmodic interpretive dance could express how much I dislike uni right at this very moment. It is threatening to devour me.

the damage done

While reading through an appraisal of world hunger by Garret Hardin, I found a phrase written neatly into the text in fine blue ink.

When the thrasher comes, I'll be stuck in the sun Like the dinosaurs in shrines But I'll know the time has come To give what's mine

I've since worked out that these words are lyrics from Neil Young's The Thrasher. I'm more interested in what the line of text from Hardin that preceeds it - '...a world that must solve real and pressing problems of over population and hunger.' - has to do with the song.

Then again perhaps I should just get on with writting the essay.

Edit: John Arthur's tome on the right and duty to bring air scored this:

Love so easily dies when there's nothing left to conquer.

Dip and Swing

Three deadlines this week.

Fantastic.

The Homer

I've become quite friendly with one of the people in my group, and my natural instinct was never to tell them about this blog, despite my occasional temptation to. We share a similar hatred of uni work, and it also appeared that my group assignment for this semester was going to go off so seemlessly as to not even warrant a post about how lazy/untalented/missing in action my group mates are - consequently I was going to tell my group mate about Treading Water.

Luckily I didn't, because I need to tell you all about one of the main problems with group assignments.

I generally take on the role of editing and collating the information and presenting it in something remote resembling a cohesive report - and I am doing this again this semester. This isn't always easy, not least of all because most of the content from my fellow group members arrives in the last few days before it's due, in a myriad of fonts besides Times New Roman, a range of sizes, and even in bold.

Some of this was nipped in the bud with me anally declaring at the first group meeting that 'if I'm putting it together, you can send me the information in 12 point Times New Roman, or bust.' However, this doesn't prohibit perhaps this most annoying aspect of editing other people's work, which is the dire lack of cohesion between everyone's copy.

Demographic plans never match up, target markets always differ, levels of spending, advertising priorities and so on... Editing this stuff is hard work, but eventually you just give up and go Find/Replace crazy start switching demographic spreads be remote control.

Perhaps the more frustrating aspect of this particular type of an assignment (a single 4000 word marketing report, split roughly between each of the four group members) is that some group members will either underkill or overkill the creative aspects of the assignment.

In this case, I've turned a blind eye to an online advertsing portal for a retail that product that has grown to include items such as a personalised blog for every person who logs in. None of this is accounted for in the budgets - nor is it needed or a requirement of the assignment. It seems subtlety is dead.

While reading through the plan I was greeted with a list of items in which creativity wasn't tempered by a mind for fiscal pressures, the likely reaction of the lecturer, or, primarily, the needs of the target audience. It vaguely reminded me of this...

Damn Kids...

Oh yeah...

Lately I've been beset by Wedding-Palooza 2006, complete with two weddings in which had something resembling a central role, we all know what weddings means don't we people?

The phrase 'time consuming' comes to mind. In all seriousness, I couldn't be happier to be part of the two weddings, and wouldn't have things any other way. But something had to give, yeah you better believe it was uni.

So I'm getting back on deck with uni and that including posting her for the first time in a couple of weeks - although I'm sure no one gives a shit.

I have to say that I am up to date, that is one positive.

I've completed three of the requirements for Stats, including a mid semester exam in which I received a massive wake up call about my choice of calculator for the subject.

As I'm sitting there about to start with this massive button lump of shit calculator that I had snatched off my bosses desk due to the fact that it had a square root button, everyone around my unpacks these 506 button wonder calculators that look like they'd be more at home in a game of laser hunt.

I was suffering severe calculator envy, I actually hid my behemoth calculator from view before the exam started. I was wondering if I should email the lecturer of the course and say:

"Am facing an increased chance of failure due to not having a calculator which will not only calculate the standard deviation of the variable, but also turn on my neighbours living room lights when they arrive home from work?"

Ethics; me and the delightfully up front about being behind Steph delivered a class room discussion about the ethics of world poverty, in which I had to do a little devils advocate work involving prominent ecologist Garrett Hardin, who amongst other things, advocated for letting starving people in an area such as the Sudan die, as it'd be morally wrong to support them beyond their means, only for them to have to support them again later.

Controversial stuff, but with a tute class of 9 people, we actually did pretty well to keep it going. By the way, anyone that claims that tutes are over crowded has obviously never been to a late semester tute, replete with barely more than half a dozen students, one tutor and about 18 empty seats.

There's a few major assignments still to come this month, so don't expect the posting to return to semester dawning proportions, but I'll be posting more... or less.