Omg: is it actually verbalised as omigawd, or pronounced omm-guh?

I've always verbalised it, but realised I could've been doing it wrong all this while as I was randomly trawling the Net some nights ago.

so, omm-guh. that'll save 1 syllable.

Reminds me of iodine patches used to treat a wound/scab - popular when I was a kid. Every kid and her sister had one sometime or other back in primary school.

Have been spending my time experimenting with Adobe After Effects 7.0. Inspired, thanks to Fredo Viola's Sad Song Video. [via dooce] Tinkering with new software is a great way to generate ideas for various means of presentation. And I love how an entire afternoon can be spent figuring stuff out. There's nothing sad about the song.

The free video tutorials over at Creative Cow have been totally helpful for that. It's amazing how little need there is to stick one's arse into one of those 10-session courses and pay for them these days, when everything's up online at one's convenience. I owe you many, Cows.

Still, nothing crowds out Snapeology. This was such a lovely character study it made me think of Literature class back in Secondary 4...

All right. Let's do the character study of Farmer Boldwood today. We'll start from the girl at the back corner, and work our way down the back row, all the way to the front. Chopchop! Run with me!

That was Ms C. I'm missing her, all of a sudden. Last I heard, she's the principal of some primary school in Singapore. Not one to go for class reunions, I am.

So. My mom excitedly informed me, over Skype, that while she and my dad were at Costco last Saturday, they saw this huge-ass stack of Harry Potter books (published by Scholastic), with nary a crowd around it. Nonchalantly, she picked one up and headed for the checkout counter. How strange is that? Potter-mania strikes in mysterious ways. She hasn't even touched any of the previous six, and here she is, devouring DH! Proud of ya, ma! :) And I hope the jargon and nuances don't get lost on you.

Perhaps, seeing as they are in Taiwan, there would have been more hype had it been the Chinese translation of DH.

Is it possible to feel happy despite the chill outside and in?

Stared, mesmerised by this illustrative flash animation to Radiohead's Creep, one of my all-time favourite songs. [via dooce]

The part that always got me:

You float like a feather
In a beautiful world
I wish I was special
You're so fuckin' special

But I'm a creep
I'm a weirdo
What the hell am I doing here
I don't belong here


Moving on.
I've started to use caps for my I's and first letters. Might it be easier to read? Might it be that I've grown out of entire entries of lowercases? Might it be signalling some form of transition somewhere else in my life? Can't shake the feeling of being all grown up with the proper spellings, and properly-cased words.

"Stand up for the crazy and stupid". -Walt Whitman
Check on kate spade's 'projects' for more gems.

And here.
Lovely LJ icons, making me almost want to cheat on blogger for awhile.
"Scorpius Malfoy is sorted into Hufflepuff".
.
.
.
.
"What in the name of Merlin's most baggy Y fronts was that about?"
Snorts.

My Harry Potter Spoiler of Doom is: Voldemort kills Ron in a scene written whilst Rowling was having an acid trip Get your Harry Potter Spoiler of Doom

holed myself in yesterday crying and laughing (sometimes simultaneously) over Deathly Hallows. it was good, one of my favourites in the series - a close second to GoF, which might get bumped up to top spot after a re-read.

on the down side, i had to queue for an at hour borders, melbourne central for the book! wth! and my receipt read harry potter and the deathly kids for the version of the cover i wanted - which was rather freaky in a way, come to think of it. was so pissed when the flatmate called from singas and said she'd had the book in her hands already, and was heading home for a read. when i was still stuck somewhere outside the front of the shop 3 doors away from borders.
bloody. chain. bookstore. well, at least i have a free plush owl watching over me. to make up for hedwig.

thoughts:
1/ i thought there would be more to the veil - no?

2/ cried about hedwig. ;..(

3/ dudley made me cry too, at the start. and i thought he'd be the one who 'manages to do magic quite late in life'. but i was mistaken, eh?

4a/ OMG!! SNAPE!!! that's just the kind of misunderstood hero i always fall for. seriously always gets me. and when the flatmate asked earlier if he was dumbledore's or voldy's, i'd told her snape was his own man, too.

4b/ snape killed by nagini? wtf?! wonder if he knew harry was just around the corner too. snape seemed always to be able to sense him around, even under the cloak. cried uncontrollably when he willingly gave his memories (essense of snape!) to the boy-whose-mother-he'd-always-loved. go snarry!

5/ aberforth was a nice surprise.

6/ mcgonagall thanking harry for his gallantry - so charming. glad she didn't die. love her to bits.

7a/ bloody hated the epilogue. was looking for the word 'scar' at what i thought was the last paragraph. when lo and behold, i turned over and there it was. 19 years later. staring me in the face. what was THAT for?! it would've ended nicely without playing up to that bit of harry/ginny and ron/hermione fanfic. wonder whose idea it was to put that in, too.

7b/ draco with a receding hairline? lmao! and what's up with 'scorpius'? and 'albus severus'? they just sound bad. like how new trying-to-be-hip-parents come up with hybrid kids' names like - oh, i don't know, some bastardised form of 'normal' names like janachelle, or chalynn, or estella or something. how annoying.

8/ the 'snape running away from shampoo' line got me so bad i couldn't stop laughing. at about 11pm. alone in the apartment.

9/ cried over fred. how could she? and what will happen to their joke shop?

10/ oddly, i cried over ollivander and gregorovitch as well. don't ask me. i get a bit weepy when old folks get tortured, but they still hold staunchly to what they stand for.

11/ literally bawled bucketfuls over dobby - dobby, who annoyed the hell out of me in CoS - one and the same. harry's torment-to-calm when digging the grave had me in the waterworks too. reminded me of when i buried my dog.

12/ kreacher's bullfrog voice - ha! never liked him much, but that's since changed. could almost see kreacher in a crisp butler's uniform after he got to keep the locket. too bad sirius never saw it in him.

13a/ molly screamed BITCH at bellatrix! lmao!! that was a good one. she was really getting to me at the burrow, during the wedding preparations. didn't think she'd go and kill bella, too! go molly!

13b/ was kinda hoping it was neville who killed bella, though. or better still, neville's gran.

13c/ having said that, neville was totally the bee's knees. wonder if he ever found out how close he might've been to being the 'chosen one' instead.

14/ i think the harry/hermione search for horcruxes was a bit too long drawn. months' worth of camping! gosh. that's too long without a decent toilet, i think.

15/ potterwatch added a nice touch. jumbled signals, passwords and secure locations. very WW II.

16/ oddly, voldy seemed rather subdued towards the end. i'd've thought he'd be a lot more swaggering and impressive if he'd thought he was going to win, but he seemed small-time. to me, at least. and then his death...? was a bit too quiet. anticlimax. too much smart talk going on beforehand.

17/ hermione as bellatrix was just cringeworthy. returning greetings down at diagon alley? bothering to reply? no shit that the goblins smelt a rat up their long hooked noses.

18/ the ginny/harry kiss in her bedroom melted me away. saved, at the right time for once, by won-won. wouldn't have gone anywhere from there then.

19/ what was the 'scene in harry's head at king's cross' about? consulting the dumbledore-oracle was too matrix-like, or at least, that was what was in my head - which is to say, it could've happened that way. the flapping baby was a bit creepy though, so i supposed it balanced things out a bit.

20/ the 'best friends with grindelwald for 2 months' thing seemed out of place. yeah, but no. FOR THE GREATER GOOD? very religiously-political. i liked that we were presented with 1 facet of dumbledore for the first 6 books, and much later, that understanding crumbles and gets slowly rebuilt with another multifaceted one. through a glass darkly, yeah? loved the dumbledore backstory. and slash fic fodder.

21/ fleur was totally boring this time. stripped of veela charms after marriage? love their shell house by the sea, at the end of the world, though. when i grow up, i want me one of those.

22/ luna kicked ass. loved how she answered 'which came first, fire or phoenix' - that's just so her. but the gurdyroots, wrackspurts and crumple horned snorcacks (i am writing all this from memory here, in the studio, so details might get hazed over) of xeno lovegood were a bit of an overkill.

23a/ not too clear on the overall significance of tales of beedle the bard too. couldn't ron and xeno have told the story when they went to visit him? and i had imagined the eye-within-triangle to be in some reference to popular theory on the freemasons at the beginning. and when i'd put the book down for a toilet break, i saw the symbol on the spine. liked how explanations to little details revealed themselves later on in the plot.

24/ loved the protection charms at gringotts safes. now i know where to put my money, if i ever have enough to actually have an account with them.

25/ hermione altering the memories of her parents as different people to live in australia? too sweet and heart-breaking at the same time.

26a/ the taking-turns to wear the locket horcrux was a bit silly. i kept thinking why didn't they just place it in the beaded purse for safekeeping, and save all the trouble of frazzled nerves!

26b/ wearing the locket horcrux around the neck kinda reminded me of lotr. and having it quiver in fear when it sensed imminent destruction? one locket to rule them all, eh, RAB?

27/ mad-eye's death really got to me at the beginning. plus the fact they couldn't find the body afterwards. but i loved how harry buried mad-eye's eye at the tree. that was good closure.

28a/ remus lupin was such a spineless useless twat! remind me why walking out on your wife and kid is a good idea again? glad he's out of the way. but poor li'l teddy! but there's always the grandparents. jkr's up to date, yes?

28b/ haven't really been a huge tonks fan. but it blossomed with natalia tena as the screen version. so i guess i'm a bit sad she's gone now...

29/ that's a really cool way to get into the ravenclaw commonroom. i was most impressed. i'd get left outside all the time, for sure. but then again, i wouldn't have been sorted into ravenclaw to begin with. 'wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure'. reeeeeaaaally.

30/ the harry-as-horcrux thing was too bad to be true. even as an accidental horcrux. couldn't voldy have chosen something else? when i first read, i thought the ruins of the potters' house at godric's hollow had become the horcrux instead of the poor scarred baby. but then, the harry-as-horcrux theory would've been needed to fit in with explanations for parselmouth and flashes into a-day-in-voldy's-life bits, i suppose.

31/ anyone else got the creeps at bathilda bagshot's rotting house? and the encounter with batty herself? i did.

will be needing a break before the next re-read. it was pretty full-on yesterday: preparing to start reading was almost ritualistic. i wanted to savour rather than rush through the last book. and i actually managed to put it down twice to prepare meals - something i'd never done with the previous ones. i'd placed the book on the counter and read as i cooked, though. so, technically i was still reading. just at a slower pace.

watched rose troche's the safety of objects amd greg araki's mysterious skin after reading DH last night. great twisted end to a twisted day. loved spending it away from the studio. and at home. :)

... Toklas' [culinary lanes] meandered back to the heyday deliciousness of pre-war France, her and Stein's adopted country, to a time when English cooking, declined from its Beeton peak, still languished as meat cooked to the consistency of old carpet and two veg whose identity dissolved into the water they were boiled in."

- foreword to the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook, by Maureen Duffy

i had such a laugh over this.
i don't know - due, perhaps, to my dry english humour.
have no idea how that made its way into my nonsensical head.
no laughs, though, when i ploughed my way through two chapters of gertrude stein's narcissistic the autobiography of alice b. toklas
and. gave. up.
might give her alphabets and birthdays a swing, though.



finally found (and bought) the alice b toklas cookbook, as mentioned.
for a song to the tune of AUD10!
funny how, when i'm not actively looking for books, they seem to find me instead.
says a bit about life too, surely.



last saturday it was pouring all day - too bad i didn't find any stray kitties or pups, or i'd've taken them home for a good pampering and indefinite period of being mine.
but i digress.
it was pouring so bad, that if there darkened bits of splashes showing up on my shoes within 15 minutes, it was nothing compared to the soggy clumps they were by the end of my 4hour walk.
i felt relatively protected under my umba-rella-ella-ella eh eh eh.
heh. it's not my fault. i blame iTunes. and youtube.



there was nothing more that could dampen my mood after i chanced upon this cosy lovely secondhand bookstore/treasure trove on george street in brunswick.
gah!
and i was offered an orange dinosaur gummy by the nice lady too.
"sugars while you browse?" she smiled as she proffered a bowl of sweets.
you had me a 'sugars', honey. :)
or, you had me at the endless shelves of lovely books.
which is rather, y'know, the same.



and i went to see ann shelton's photographs of a collection of books.
to scale.
it blew my mind.
i'd much rather have the real thing, thanks.
but not on an art student's budget.
and even less - perish the thought of having to move 'the real thing' from one rental property to another.



but i'd like shelves and shelves of books from floor to ceiling.
in my house.
when i grow up (i'll be stable).

can you imagine the size of the stencil that was used to create that bit of art on the wall?
and almost half a can of spray paint, i reckon!
sheesh! but the beauty!



i think i buy lots of books about cookbooks for a girl who subsists mainly on junk food.
am currently reading
fish, flesh and good red herring by alice thomas ellis
the alice b. toklas cookbook by (who else but) alice b. toklas
and not starting on anything else in anticipation for deathly hallows.

oh! and can i stop gushing over the order of the phoenix already?
as a film which doesn't do justice to the book, i still put my money on re-watching this at the cinema.
perhaps next week?
or when my penultimate presentation is over end-july?
*hopeful
hate it when work/deadlines gets in the way of play.

this morning, i saw my first sunrise in a coupl'a years.
oddly, that makes me sound vampirish!
and gives me a craving to devour anne rice's armand again!
ok. i'm just cheap.
as evidenced from the cheap chocolates i consume.
no high-class claire tham books for me.
bring on harry potter and the deathly hallows!

am getting old. i can feel it.
my eyeballs are so dry they could be shrinking.
or wrinkled like raisins. eew. gross.

no sleep since thursday morning... that's coming to 40hrs now.
wow. back in lasalle, it used to be that i could pull around 3 or 4 all-nighters before collapsing.
and now, i'm a sorry heap by midday, before the fourth round of java rush hits me.



nicked this recipe for bittersweet choc-coated pretzels unabashedly from bowb.
it was freaking addictive, man!
choc, and the surprise of an occasional flake of salt - yummers, i tell ya!
will make me another batch really soon.
this weekend?



and the obligatory alien-looking one that somehow always happens to me.
this is going to be the first free weekend i have since the flatmate left about 2 months back.
and also, the first two days i'll actually give the studio a miss!
gosh, what if i have withdrawal symptoms?!
what'll i do?!
heh.
i'll just go stuff myself silly with junk and watch dvds to get over it!

or visit craft/design markets.
melbs is inundated with them this weekend.
go me!

create your own simpsons avatar here.

this cracked me up big time.
it's hard to stifle laughter with all the other people around me in the studio.
i'm supposed to be working my ass off in here... not.

odd how the simpsons are HUGE here in australia.
i think the craze for them died down in singas at least a decade back now.
must be the whole self-deprecating humour and support for the underdog thingo going on.

was torn between creating a worlds-apart alter-ego, or showing off the daggy hair and clothes i really have.
except i'm neither that shapely, nor are my boobs that huge.
and besides not owning a pair of orange pants, this is pretty much go for me.
not much diffy between a decked-up night out and work-clothes, really.



it's funny how, if i were really to be on a weight-loss regime, this would not even look remotely appetising.
but, since i'm on the underweight side, this seems a yum brekkie to have.
the hommus dip is quite addictive - farts notwithstanding.
for a self-professed meatarian, it's surprisingly easy to start getting used to brekkies like these.

i read a few days ago that the more stressed you are about weight-gain, the more likely you'll be to actually gain it!
so, no worries there.
let the chocolates and krispy kreme doughnuts roll up, then!
my current chocs of choice are M&M's, Maltesers, and Cadbury Fruit&Nut.
call me common, but nothing beats the sugar-rush from these cheap eats.
brain food for thesis-writing - i might just add them to my ackowledgements when i'm done, too.

forgive me, god of internet, for i have sinned.
three dry months.
while my other friends have either added-on twitter or switched to password-enabled versions of twitter.

the thesis shall keep me away no longer.
despite the fact that it's been begging for three complete re-writes.
and that i am working on major overhaul til 3am these nights.
it's embarrassing my first language happens to be english, really.

since the flatmate headed back for singas, i have been paranoid about
1. falling in the bathtub, and not being discovered til it's too late.
2. accidentally leaving the gas switched on.
3. eggs, fruit and veg going bad in the fridge (they still do; the rest haven't happened yet).



so i sit in my studio, blogging when i'm supposed to be writing an introduction.
with air-conditioning so warm i can afford to wear a tank-top in winter.
a luxury, really, besides that it lulls me to sleep.
and my batch of margaret river chocolate company chocs - a really thoughtful giftie from N turns into a gooey mush between my fingers.
this is not supposed to happen in the mid of a melburnian winter.

and neither are watermelons supposed to make an appearance in july, i think, but they have.
AUD6 was spent on 2kg of lovely watermelon, and consumed in a single sitting.
a paradox: watermelons cool you down, but vodka-watermelons warm you up.

it is, as the weather bureau says, a wintery day with fresh northwesterlies.