Went in to uni today. The UCC webpage rebuild is begun; badly needs it, too. I'm working with content, mostly. After an afternoon of that (and I went somewhat fascist on their butts, I must admit) and a partial evening of just hanging around, we went to Watha James' 20th birthday party, where a great time was had by all. While still at Cameron Hall, Bro and I had fun wrestling and beating each other up. All good.

I had a wonderful time at the party, but on the drive home I felt a little sad, because one day I'm not going to have evenings like tonight any more, and I'm not going to remember it all that well either, but it's just so much fun - even when we're all getting tired, and most of us are just sitting around, watching Oliver and Pam play drinking games vicariously through two of Oliver's teddy bears.

Oliver makes a very cute drunk, actually.

This isn't going to be a very coherent post, I'm very tired, and have to be up earlyish in the morning. Arwen and Tenille are coming over for breakfast, apparently. I only found out when I went into the bathroom upon returning at 3am, Mum had left a note on the counter to warn me.

I spent quite a bit of time tonight snuggling with various people, and having fun conversations, and Jen and I formed the Ralph Liberation Front to try and rescue Ralph from Oliver's oppression. So now Oliver doesn't trust us with Ralph, it's not fair. It's especially unfair since when a bunch of us were wrestling for possession of the bear, and I ended up having possession, I did very nicely give him back to Oliver.

Jen was very sparkly tonight. Sequined shirt, very cool.

One thing I like about UniSFAns and UCCans: none of them, it seems, tend to be obnoxious drunks. They lean towards fun drunks.

So so tired...

Dad, he good Dad, but he not so bright.

This morning I had an e-mail from him when I stumbled bleary and half-asleep to my computer. (Yes, I often do check my e-mail as the very first thing I do when I wake up.) He asked me to check around the house for his phone, which apparently he'd left somewhere. Fair enough, I thinks, and rings it from my own so it will make a noise. Tracked it down easily enough and replied to his e-mail to tell him I'd done so.

Later, he called from work. "So did you find my phone?"

"Yes. I e-mailed you about it."

"I asked you to call me. I didn't know which e-mail address you'd use."

"Uh... The one that you sent it from, being that I replied to it. I don't have your work number, how was I supposed to call? Your phone is IN MY HAND." (He hadn't asked me to call him, anyway.)

The point remains, I did call him when I was looking for the phone. He just didn't answer, the callous bastard.

Studied today. Went to uni. Had public transport issues. Got there half an hour late, had good gaming session. Players are very intelligent and nearly spotted something I do not want them to realise yet. Ah, well. One missed the session tonight. I disappeared his character, he is now officially a missing person.

DM is having more fun than should be legal with this aspect.

When I came home, Dad and I talked a while. Discussed at length one of my Primary Traumatic Memories, and he hugged me, which was nice.

Now I am contemplating the delight which is running a roleplaying campaign. Current situation is that two players are screwed and don't know it yet, one is in a really good position but will later be screwed, and one is currently in a fairly placid position - and may yet end up either advantaged, or screwed, we'll see which.

Screwedness is not inherent in my plan, I want the characters to thrive. But since the end plot of the over-story involves mass destruction, I'm going for some badness in there too. Also, the long-term effect of their screwedness is to their benefit. For example, one of the characters is going to acquire magic powers... And even I don't know which one, yet.

The great thing is, they're all really good players, so they do things like set up opportunities for me to do really cool stuff. And Rae has rocking cool enjoyment setting up her campaign, and just hopes she doesn't lose the many plot threads which she has set up.

Also, review: I do still think the Lesensraum joke is funny. Because I am warped and sick and wrong, and because a huge chunk of my higher functions have been relocated temporarily to fin de siecle France. <cannot be bothered accenting fin de siecle properly>

Now reading: A book called The Infinitive of Go, author forgotten. It's interesting.
Now doing: Blogging. Duh.
The UberCool: The pidgin English term mixmaster him blong Jesus Chris. (tr.: helicopter)
Now Hearing: World War Two music, playing in my head.

So it's 1am, and I'm really, really tired, and I'm about to go to bed.

Julie: Have a good night's sleep. Planning to annex things can be tiring.

See, I'd planned an Anschluss with Christian Union, to give UniSFA extra library space.

Me: True, true, but we need the Lesensraum.


I decided I had to blog that, so I could see if I still thought it was funny in the morning.

Because my Librarian rant has no archives...

So earlier in #unisfa, I plotted a fascist takeover of the clubroom. I think this is a sign I've been studying too hard.

The way I see it, first, we take over, and let the secret state police really *enforce* the Fascist Tidiness Regime.

Then we annex Christian Union, and make an alliance of convenience with UCC and Unigames. Offer UCC the Loft and Unigames UDS and French Club/Veggies/Amnesty after the conquest of Cameron Hall is complete.

We'll purge Manics/Leisure, of course.

Then we can set out to conquer the rest of the university, with small toy tanks and paper planes. I'm thinking blitzkrieg, obviously; what our university, illustrious as it is, lacks is turbulent history of warfare and conquest.

Because eight hours of fascism makes me think very bad things.

I'll admit it. I'm tempted by Buffy. Because too many people I know watch it, and because some people I don't know write stories about it that are far too good for me to cope with. And because the story has such, such potential for hurting them.

But I know the show won't live up to my imagination, and it won't do the very bad nasty things that this show makes me want to do.

Tara floats so pretty outside of reality, in the episodes I've seen, that I want her to make Willow feel good in ways that break her apart. I want Willow shattered and broken and only just, just fixable.

Xander taunts me and tempts me. I want to make him scream.

A few things were memorable today, but most of them aren't that interesting in the retelling, I think.

On the way out of uni I stopped by the Reflections Pool, which was living up to its name. The water was very still, because there was no wind, and Winthrop Hall was reflected in the water. Looking into it, it was beautiful; I wished I had my camera (my real one, not my digital) to take a slow exposure of it. A strange visual effect was made, because even though I know the water's only about three microns deep, it looked bottomless - I could see stars down there, and the Hall looked quite ethereal.

Then one of the ducks jumped into the water, and the ripples made Winthrop Hall shimmer, and I looked at the edge formed by the delineation between hall and sky in the reflection, and it was a stunning example of wave forms in action. Pretty, pretty. I watched it all happening for quite some time - it was almost meditative.

I nearly froze at the train station, but when I got home I was quite hyperactive; history is fizzing in my brain. I'm learning about the Action Française, and attempting to work out whether the French invented Fascism. I'm presently reading William Shirer's The Collapse of the Third Republic.

The Third Republic is impressive - it makes Weimar look stable.

Today's UberCool: Georges Picquart. For being spunky and principled. (Yes, dead people can be the UberCool. Next question?)

I love referrer logs.

I have my first Google hit: "websites with free online full length romantic novels"

The scary thing is, I do not come in early in the results list for this.

But still. Maybe whoever they are, they found me interesting enough to stick around.

Or maybe not.

I am amused by the meta-blogging function wherein we all begin to comment on one another's blog entries. I'm thinking of putting <a name> tags into my posts to make linking to specific entries easier, only making it interact properly with the archiving system would nonetheless require effort and attention from people linking. Probably I'll leave it as it is, because how can people be better blessed than by reading week-long archive chunks of my blog?

What brings this to mind specifically? Well, Vel did it, and I'm about to remark on something Chris said.

It's interesting how mannerisms get passed from person to person. It's something I've noticed especially in myself, possibly because I do it more than other people, but more likely because I spend so much of my time over-analysing my own behaviour. But behavioural patterns travel almost like a spreading infection, like a memetic plague.

Apart from myself, and I copy the mannerisms of pretty much anyone I respect, picking up new ones all the time while I'm talking to people, I've noticed this phenomenon has been particularly obvious in UniSFA of late. The number of people who have adopted various phrases and added them to their everyday vocabulary has been surprising, at least to me. Even those who disapprove of such things, and you know who you are, are still likely to know what you are talking about if you mention a coegiom, or oosht. And quite a few people have begun, or in some cases resumed, using words such as "dude" and "gold".

Excuse me for a moment, I'm having an amusing idea about Rae and Tom being memetic antibodies. Tee hee.

This made me laugh immensely. I do, of course, regard this as a great compliment.

Tom commented on the proliferation of blogs and livejournals in his UniSFA webpage rant. Personally, I blame the rants themselves for my own acquisition of one - I'd been resisting for years, but having my rant and updating it often was addictive, and I began to feel limited by my need to keep it to Librarianly topics. Even if it's been days since I was classy enough to include an intriguing URL.

Something I used to do when I was young and had time on my hands was put randomly odd keywords into a search engine and see what I found - sometimes I found some truly fascinating things. Today, "chocolate strangeness stardust" got me an interview with Neil Gaiman, which perhaps should tell us something.

Another link I'll offer, which suits those of us who are overliterate and overacademic by nature: Civilisation Theory.

And the part of me which suggests I should link to the Four Rooms of Kharon even though I've never played it myself and even though I know from what I've been told that half the people I know will get addicted to it if they take the time to download it because it's rather huge <takes breath> is stronger than the part that says I shouldn't.

Hence, the Four Rooms of Kharon, which I intend to play myself - when it loads. ~1.5MB.

Now Listening To: Marlene Dietrich - Lili Marlene
Now Eating: Chocolate

Underneath the lantern, by the barrack gate...

There's a melancholic beauty to Lili Marlene, and other World War Two music. I think my enduring affection for Vera Lynn is partly based on the elegance of the sentiments of the music of the time in songs such as Lili Marlene or The White Cliffs of Dover, and also from the vibrant, delightful spirit in songs like Roll Out The Barrel, or the way songs like We'll Meet Again (that version Vera did with the battalion of male voices rising to join her on the chorus) and There'll Always Be An England are stirring, in different ways.

On the other hand, Kazaa sucks even more than Napster did, which is annoying me, since it's taunting me with the possiblity of copies of Marlene Dietrich singing Lili Marlene.

Yesterday...

Well, there's one of those things for you. Across the road from the petrol station I went to yesterday were bushes. Running around therein was an adolescent cat, the same breed as Mouse. You know that thing where your body reacts as if you've just been kicked in the stomach or something? Yeah, that. But the young cat had a collar and bell and such, and so didn't seem to be a stray - which is just as well. I'm not sure I could handle bringing home a Burmese stray right now.

It's not fair. I want my cat back.

Today...

I still want my cat back. I'm at the anger stage - it's not fair. I miss her.

But for most of today I was feeling a lot better. I'm kinda depressed again now, because someone on IRC mentioned pets and I remembered the giant, gaping pet-shaped hole in my emotional landscape that Spike just doesn't fill. And it still makes me hurt inside, in a very unhappy way.

But I'm doing better.

Yesterday, Coman, who is a very very sweet man who has been very nice to me this week and I love him for it, nominated Layanna, a toddler we know, as UberCute. This has been granted, but is a semi-permanent condition. Layanna will remain the UberCute until she grows up or I get a kitten, whichever comes first.

Other props go to a lot of people who've been good to me. In no particular order: Martha, Stephie, Chris, Watha-James, Jen, Tom, Aaron, Julie, Sheri, Sarah, Adam, Froggy, Oliver, Proxy... I love you all. And if I've left anyone out I didn't mean to, and I'm sorry, I'm always bad at lists. I love you too. Losing Mouse was really, really hard on me, and the comfort you've all given me has meant more to me than you'll ever know.

I'll get through. I'm feeling a lot better already. Still moping a little, but my average mood level is rising steadily, and if it weren't for all you wonderful, wonderful people, I'd probably still be falling apart. I didn't cry even once today.

Thank you, all of you. You get the UberCool today, although you'll have to share it. I love you people more than I ever let on.

By the way, Chris, I'm SO kicking your butt in the angst stakes right now.

I'm going to see if I can withdraw from Linguistics.

I have that shivery, miserable, falling-apart-inside feeling I used to have 18 months ago, although at least now it's not accompanied by that black, nasty depression, just deep, deep unhappiness. It's not just Mouse, it's the knowledge that I fucked up badly this semester, if only by not withdrawing earlier when a combination of illness and slackness had assured that I was utterly doomed for this semester. History I'll pass and pass well, but I have no motivation for Phonetics and Phonology.

This way, sure, I'm continuing to make my HECS worse than it has to be (but it's going to be appalling anyway), but at least my academic record isn't going to suck as much as it might.

And I won't continue this downward spiral I'm on. When I get to the point where I start contemplating accelerating hard towards immovable objects when I'm driving, it's the time to change something in my life. For those people who are my friends and read this: No, I'm not serious. I'm still at that Nietzschean "thoughts of suicide sustaining through dark times" stage, where you have absolutely no desire whatsoever to do it, but thinking about it makes you feel better. That kind of "gee, wouldn't oblivion be nice right now" thing.

I want to scream and cry and break things and be held and be comforted and be loved. I want not to feel like this.

I want EV Nova on my computer here so I can distract myself.

I feel awful.

So today I went in to uni early, because I couldn't stand hanging around a house without enough cats in it, and then I stayed there until about one, before I left because I couldn't help but mope, and moping in public is tacky. I came home to mope.

I know, I know, she was a cat.

But she was my cat. I haven't been crying today, but I keep coming close. Especially when I walk past that little patch of disturbed dirt that covers her. Ugh. And there I thought I was immune to that sentimental attachment to corpses - but I've loved very few humans as much as I loved Mouse.

I've never had to deal with something quite like this before. When Dol died, we were told, but... we never saw the body, and Arwen and I didn't go to his cremation. The other people in my family who've died did so in other countries, and it hurt, but the processes - the body, burial, the grave, were nothing I was near. And our previous cats didn't die with us, they just went out and didn't come back one day. Except Scrappy, but he only lasted a day, and we never really believed he'd live - and I don't remember him at all. Mum says I asked if the shoebox was going to go to heaven too.

Scrappy was a kitten Dad found on a buliding site near work. He was half-dead then, and, well... The poor thing tried his best, but he never had a future.

Of all the cats I've known in my life, I loved Mouse the most. We still have Spike, but... eh. My relationship with him is nothing like what I had with Mouse. He annoys me, and he's not cuddly.

Hugs and such go out to all the people who've been being nice to me about this. Seriously... it really helps.

Did I say today was a good day?

I lied.

I've been thinking about how to document tonight. Do I take the whimsical approach, and complain about being left with only Spike to fill my cat needs, and how traumatic that will be?

No.

Do I do an X-Files spooky thing about how my dream last night was prophetic?

No.

Do I cry for hours?

Yes.

Mouse's breathing got really bad tonight, and she was having trouble moving around... So we took her to the vet's, where it was determined that the intestinal cancer she had had spread to her major organs, especially her lungs. The tumours were bleeding, she had fluid, she wasn't getting enough oxygen...

So the vet, who was very kind, and very sympathetic, explained this to us, and let us know that really there was nothing that could be done, though she wished there was, and that the kindest thing to do would be euthanasia.

You know, I'm usually in favour of euthanasia, even for people. It's mercy. It's dignity. But it's sure as hell hard on those of us left behind. I loved my cat. I couldn't watch the needle going in, but I looked in her eyes, and stroked her, and she purred on her last breath. And I was there for her, like I'd sworn to myself I would be, and she died happy.

We brought her home and buried her in the garden, and I've been crying all evening, and I'm still not that far from crying more. Just before we laid her in her little grave, I kissed her still-warm head like I'd kissed her so many times before, and it hurt that for once she didn't purr when I touched her, and...

It hurts. There's a part of me missing. I loved her. I used to turn to her for comfort when I was a teenager. I find myself remembering things like lying on the couch with her asleep tucked against my ribs, or the day we brought her home, or... She was family.

I don't know how to talk about this, how to explain that I loved my cat in a way that makes it clearer or makes it easier for me to process the fact that she's dead, curled up like she's sleeping underneath the flowerbed. We buried her just in front of the window where she liked to bask in the sun.

And if she were alive and well right now, she'd be asleep in the lounge and I wouldn't be with her anyway, but at least I would know she was there.

Today was a good day, after I left home.

Lunch with Toby (great fun), then on to uni; played some EV Nova (don't necessarily love my Manticore, alas), threatened to throw a wadded-up paper bag at Stephie's head if she didn't work on her assignment (successful), chatted with goth.Chris (lovely), caught up on substantial portion of librarianly slacklog [n. lit: backlog of slackness] (tiresome but necessary), came home... saw perfect sky.

I was driving down the freeway, and it was just this moment where the sodium lights down both sides swept up towards the base of a spreadingly spectacular cloud pattern on a blue and golden sky, with a single, bright white star as visual punctuation. It was beautiful.

<sigh>

Entered the house and had a momentary heart attack to see Mouse sprawled on the floor. Mouse doesn't sprawl. But she looked up at the sound of my entry, so I just get to worry horribly about her present somewhat rapid decline.

In more cheerful subject matter, the delightful Vel quoted me with riposte; she is the UberCool for today on the grounds that she embodies all that is right and good in unfresherly interesting freshers.