Damned and Divine

So with my recent Billie Piper “phase” i figured i should check out her latest show Secret Diary of a Call Girl. Haha and i love it, shes fantastic (and in my opinion as beautiful as they come, for a girl at least haha) and the show is hilarious but also drama filled. Just finished the season 1 finale, and this is the closing quote (altered slightly to be about life in general instead of London haha).

“Thats the thing about life, you can keep secrets, you can be anonymous, you can be whoever you want. But as long as one person knows you entirely and loves you still, nothing else matters.”

Now i just have to find that person haha… =D

Im going to bed now, have my practice anatomy practical exam today, i just wanted to share that quote with everyone before i trailed off to sleep =)

Also: Thanks for the comments wishing me all the best with the apartment and everything, <3 you guys!

Here’s the trailer for the show:

Soo i went and checked out the apartment today. Its perfect!

I was a bit worried about having to cart furniture there, but i walked in and he has more furniture than my entire family that he got free from relatives so. He gave me the master bedroom with ensuite and king sized bed O_O Hes in the other room which is right next to the actual bathroom anyway so its basically the same thing. Its on the 2nd story of the apartment building, then it has stairs down to a private garage/laundry just for our apartment so thats pretty awesome. Its so easy to get to and from uni as well. Like 4 buses go past the stop, it takes like 5 minutes on the bus, then a 3 minute walk. And its 3 minutes walk away from a major shopping mall with everything and the train station. Also it only costs 40 cents on the bus as opposed to the $5 per day it costs me to get from my parents to uni, which basically negates the $20 ill be paying him a week, ill just need a little extra for food etc. And you know, ill save 2 hours 40 minutes a day that id usually be on the train plus the annoyance of being slammed together with random strangers.

So the guy who im moving in with there, Richard, as i said in the last post we’re friends but don’t see each other often, but we actually got along better while i was there today then i thought, i was thinking itd be awkward but it was cool.

So where from here? On Saturday im driving up there with Mum so she can check it out, and ill be taking up stuff then like blankets, towels, clothes and personal effects etc then yea, ill be there. At the moment ill have to come back to my parents for work on Saturday every week (except for this weekend cause i have no work) and stay Saturday night but thats ok cause it’ll be good to have dinner each week with the family still. If this whole thing works out on a more permanent basis ill acquire about a transfer to the Woolworths which is in that 3 minute walk away shopping mall i mentioned, convenient no? xD

Before i go:

LOL at the old man pole dancer in this video, also =3 is an awesome youtube series, watch em all =D

First off i found out a friend of mine who’s sort of a friend of a friend has a 2 bedroom apartment 5 minutes from my Uni and hes the only one living there.

He posted on facebook “Damn it gets lonely up here on my own, anyone wanna move in with me?” and i was like ON THAT SHIT in 3 seconds, perfect for what im looking for haha. He says it’ll probably be till maybe Decemeber depending if he goes to Canada on holidays for a few months like he plans but if that falls through it’ll be more permanent. Still, even if he does end up going that’ll get me till the end of the uni year being close by. Plus the awesome part (well he has been known to be a bit Bi and experimental in the past so, late night “experiments”? lol, infact he tried coming onto me once when i was like 14 but i was a bit confused at that point lol), the actual awesome part is that he only wants to charge $20 a week because he really just wants the company (and someone to cook probably, but im culinary skilled, its built into my brain with the gay section, right?! So thats covered). So im going to meet him tomorrow to check it out and sort out the details, then if all goes well probably move some stuff up on Saturday since im not working this weekend, then yea, it’ll all be good, might be a bit awkward for a week or two but moving in with someone always is regardless of how good friends you are (as i learnt in the past haha).

Secondly, so far i’ve been to all my classes this week, including the non-compulsory tutorial time thing for BIOL1040 called “Pass” which was actually really helpful. So thats going well, seem to have gotten things on track. My parents got back from holidays and my mum and i talked some stuff out which helped. Coming up on Friday is my ANAT1005 practice spotter test (practical test), im being quite studious for that. Im in a bit of a pickle with my Linguistics mid-sem on Monday though. It only goes for 40 minutes, and covers content from only the first 40 weeks, so it’ll be short and sweet, im not too worried, however two very good friends of mine who moved to Sydney are coming up on Saturday night for a “Almost coming home party” (they’re moving back up in November) so i really want to go to that and party it hard with them. Will have to hit the books hard the rest of this week, and Saturday morning then head up in the arvo, and come back early Sunday morning to recover and refine!

Umm what else, you might be interested in my topics for this week?
Anatomy is on Osteology & Arthrology of Pelvic Girdle & Lower Limb and later in the week something else but i don’t know what yet.
Cells to Organisms is on the central and peripheral nervous systems, plus neurons and all that stuff ive already done in Physiological Psyc last semester.
Linguistics: Sound Pattern of Language is on the same boring crap as usual, this week is about dialect differences and world languages.
Psyc1030 im not sure about yet, ill found out today though cause i have the lecture this arvo.

Haha one more thing, i’ve been really into old Billie Piper songs this week. I know her from Doctor Who, and i remember her songs on the radio in 1998-2000 but i never connected the fact that it was the same person, i knew she used to be a pop star just didn’t know her songs. I also watched all of the Friday Night Project’s that the Doctor Who cast have hosted. Theres 2 with David Tennant, 1 with John Barrowman, 1 with Billie Piper and 1 with Catherine Tate. They are hilarious, all really crazy and awesome people. Fucking especially Tennant, fuck id hit that so hard, hes so cutesy and adorable. Im really all about John Barrowman at the moment as well, i watched the documentary he was in called “The Making of Me” investigating Nurture vs. Nature. Hes really quite an extraordinary guy, he has a new autobiography out soon entitled “I am what i am”. Will probably buy it and give it a read. Plus, the guy is 42 and hotter then most guys half his age. Seriously, if i look a fraction as good as he does when im 30 ill be pleased.

Seriously, look at him, gorgeous. Ok i should go to bed, have to be up at 9 which is sleeping in for me but still, no need to abuse that xD Ill leave you all with Billy Pipers first #1 single, Because we want to. She was only 15 when recording this video clip, they make her look alot older, infact she doesn’t look that much older now at 27.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCPATnuDcuw

Evening lads and ladettes =D

Eh not much to report, uni and work. Haven’t had any real fun for awhile, anytime im not studying, i feel guilty because i should be studying more >.>

I think maybe its about time i tell you the story of my first boy crush, i hate the word crush because it sound so tacky. anyway the story of the first boy i ever found emotionally and sexually appealing, or at least the first one that i actually realised that haha. So it was mid-2007, i still completely identified as straight at this point, and had just finished getting over my “thing” for a female friend of mine (who is now my best female friend). Should i mention names? Yea why not, even if he reads this its not like he doesnt know all of this already (as you’ll find out later haha). So Caleb was a friend of mine, we hung out at school, and used to both sleep over at another friends house for typical 15 year old shennanigans (prank phone calls etc). I honestly can’t remember how we became closer friends, i found myself feeling inclined to invite him over to my house, so i did, and from there i think it developed. Ok im gunna say it right now, Caleb back then was a full blown emo, appearance wise and demeanour wise and music wise.

I think this is kind of how our friendship began to get more intense, he was always depressed, and so was i, and eventually it got to the point where unless we were with each other, we were both depressed. He ended up staying at my house Friday and Saturday night every weekend without fail. We’d play gamecube and wizz around the internet and listen to emoesque music (of which i was now a fan of as well, i also began to wear the clothes, but as you well know my hair is curly as fuck so i couldnt follow him in that department haha).

So weeks past and i began to like Caleb more and more (and in different, unexpected ways), in October we went to a concert together and that night we got back to my place and layed around talking and i just stared at him, i couldn’t believe what i was feeling, it hit me like a brick wall, i was in love with him. He was the best thing in my life and the only thing that made me smile. I seriously considered telling him, because as all gay teenagers in love with a straight guy do, you overthink everything, and my thought process was this. Me lonely + Him lonely = happiness. I had some bolstered confidence also because he had on his myspace he was Bi, and he obviously liked me because we spent so much time together. Anyway, one night i told him that it sucked that we were both lonely, and maybe together we wouldnt be. What followed destroyed me.

He told all of my friends. Evidently his little thing about being bi was just a cool kid stunt on myspace like the emo kids do. I came to school the next morning and sat on the regular bench, as my friends started to trickle in, i overheard them all in a group laughing about Caleb being hit on by a gay guy. They thought it was hilarious, to me it was my everything, my thing with him, i had nothing else, i had school and being depressed, then there was him, the weekends where id forget all of that. And here my friends were laughing about it. I was absolutely destroyed. I went home and one thing led to another and i hurt myself (but luckily that didnt become a too regular occurence just the occasional 6-monthly half assed suicide atempt that seems to be like a schedule). We didn’t speak for like 3 months, until one day around new years eve i sent him a myspace message telling him how much he fucked me up, he appologized and me still being desperately in love with him accepted and things kind of returned to the way they were before we became good friends, saw him occasionally outside of school etc.

He started dating a girl in early 2008, so that was the end of that. Except it wasn’t for me. He’s never completely left my mind in that way, he’s still the number 1 person on the planet i would choose to spend my life with to this day almost 2 years later. He’s still dating the girl, and shes awesome which makes it hard to be jealous.

He’s extremely metro and the closest thing i have to a gay friend, so i still try to hang out with him as much as possible. We went shopping this week, yes clothes shopping. It was so much fun, running fashion commentary, laughing at all the chavs, and he bought me a slurpee. I held his manbag while he tried stuff on then commented, ah i loved it. The only thing that would have made it better would be if i got to hold his hand and makeout with him as well, then take him home afterwards and cuddle all night.

Paige says that everyone has a person who is there default setting that they can’t have but will always have a crush on, obviously hes mine, even in my last and only relationship i still wanted him. Anyway, this is him:

I hate when people ask me how i am. I just say good. I mean, uni is shit, work is shit, and thats the only 2 things i have so, what do they want me to say. Im sure their work and uni is shit as well, but at least when their day is hard they can say “Only 2 hours and i can go home and see my significant other” all i says is “Only 2 hours and i can go home and watch Dr. Who”. I take that back, all i ahve is shit uni, shit work and The Doctor, at least for 3 more specials until the new guy replaces David. He better be cute in his portrayal of the doctor, he looks really emo and not very attractive, he better not be a whiny moody angsty doctor, i’d grown accustomed to Christopher and Davids quirks.

For the last few days i’ve been writing a personal response to a broadcast on ABC radio national’s “The Science Show” about neural memory mapping in the Hippocampus. I really enjoyed this piece of assessment because it was very informal and gave me alot of freedom to speculate without having to cite multiple peer reviewed journals which back up my claims. In fact the whole point of this personal response was to show the important of regular communication of ideas between the scientific community rather then just professionally written articles (which we also have to do one of in a few weeks) this was all for my biology course Cells to Organisms btw. Most of my knowledge of neural processes i remembered from doing introductory stuff about neuropsychology last semester though. Anyways here it is, enjoy!

Memory in focus

Ever forgotten something important and wished you knew exactly how to stop that from happening? Well that’s exactly what a team of research scientists called “The Neuronal Oscillations Group” from the University of Oxford have been doing for several years. Led by Dr. Ole Paulsen, the team’s research focuses primarily on uncovering how exactly the cortex of the brain encodes, stores, and retrieves information, or simply put, how memories are formed. During an interview hosted on ABC Radio National’s “The Science Show”, Dr Robyn Williams, presenter of the show, asks Dr. Ole Paulsen a number of questions regarding the findings of the aforementioned team’s research so far. The findings of the team reveal some interesting information regarding how the “software” of the brain works in relation to our prior understanding of the brain’s “hardware” and breaks down the basis of memories to its fundamental core, electricity.

What’s in a memory?

You heard correctly, memories are just electricity, every experience you remember, every memory you have is nothing more than a series of electrical circuit networks that interact with each other to store information you pick up over the years. One part of the brain in particular, the Hippocampus, is believed by Dr. Paulsen and his team to either be responsible for storing memory in the short term until it is encoded to the neural cortex for long term storage or for organizing information that is encoded to the neural cortex as a sort of “librarian” as Dr. Paulsen himself puts it. Evidence of the purpose of the Hippocampus first came about in 1953 through a sufferer of epilepsy. The epilepsy present in the sufferer, designated patient HM, was localized to the Hippocampus, and due to the ignorance of surgeons at the time in regards to the functionality of the Hippocampus, the decision was made to remove the structure entirely. Presumably patient HM was cured of his epilepsy, however what befell him from that day on was arguably much worse. The patient was rendered unable to remember anything following the time of the removal of the Hippocampus. He remembered his entire life up until that point, but was unable to retain new information gathered for an extended period of time; as a result he was reportedly surprised at the aging face looking back at him in the mirror every morning. From this case and others, it was deduced that the Hippocampus must play a key role in either the encoding or organization of memories in the long term. Using this and modern knowledge of the inner workings of the brain, particularly neurons, Dr. Paulsen and his colleagues were able to determine that memories were specifically stored in the connections between individual neurons in a number of circuit networks through the Hippocampus and Neural Cortex. The strength of these connections can increase or decrease depending on the action potential (or electrical difference of the inner and outer neuron). Neural cells are connected to each other by a sender nerve cell and a receiver nerve cell, the strength of a memory, or your likeliness to remember that particular memory depends on the strength of the connection between the sender and receiver. Additionally, Paulsen’s team discovered that memories are “switched off” naturally by the brain by means of turning off the sender, functionally wiping the memory.

The present and future of memory

The above mentioned neural connections can be strengthened by repeating the particular action or event that created the memory originally. Repeating a particular event in order to remember it better, does that sound familiar? As university students past or present, we’ve all done it; it’s the fundamental idea behind studying. Perhaps the most relevant part of Dr. Paulsen’s work to me locally is that we as students now have a neurological basis for studying, it’s reassuring to know that on a very complex, neurophysiological level, studying is in fact strengthening the neural connections in my brain and in turn helping me to remember the required course work.
Another point of interest is the future of memory studies, as food for thought, if we know now exactly how memories are encoded electrically, and given our current mechanical control over electrical currents, is it not very plausible that memories, what makes us individual from each other, may someday be artificially removed or even altered simply by replicating the brain’s natural process of “switching off” certain sender neural cells using electrical currents? I guess we’ll have to wait and see.

“Today, in the year of our Lord 2005,
Tuomas was called from the cares of the world.
He stopped crying at the end of each beautiful day.
The music he wrote had too long been without silence.”

The weirdest thing happened this morning, i was supposed to get up at 6:15am and be on the bus at 7:12am. I got up at 6:45am, had a shower and decided there was no way i’d make it in time for my 9am lecture seeing as i wouldn’t make the bus on time and the bus after that wouldn’t get me to the train station on time to make it. Depressed at my failed atempt to start the week on a good note for once and attend all my classes, I put my pyjamas on, and got back in to bed to watch some Doctor Who, i fell asleep halfway through the 2nd episode. I had a dream sometime between then and 9:35, in the dream i was witnessing a concert of Nightwish playing The Poet and the Pendulum. At the conclusion of the song i sprung awake, and realised if i hurried i could make it to the 9:49 bus and get there at 11:00 in time to submit my weekly assignment by 12:00 for Linguistics (which i hadnt completed). So i got up and got dressed and such, for some reason i had that passage above from the song stuck in my head, and repeated it from memory repeatedly as if in a trance, so i made it onto the bus with all my things and onto the train.

It was the weirdest, thing, it was as if something had clicked in my head, for the first time in awhile i was smiling for no reason, i noticed myself sitting on the bus to the train station with a cheesy grin on my face for absolutely no particular reason then the fact that id salvaged my week. On the way to uni on the train i completed my weekly assignment and made a start on catching up on the classes i missed last week via podcast on my iPhone. I submitted my assignment well on time, got lunch and went and sat by the lake to watch Metalocalypse (a cartoon dipicting the life of a fictional death metal band, love that show), while there i also witnessed a couple making out, and felt compelled to give the guy some making out tips he severely needed… but supressed that urge for the greater good haha. I bought textbooks i needed for anatomy & physiology finally and plan to buy the ones i need for biology when i can afford it later this week (Wednesday is pay day). On the way home i did more catching up and here i am, just got home.

I feel as if my previous post, as gloomy as it is, really helped get some things out in the open that i needed to say, which is why i have this blog. As an added bonus i also received some much  needed words of comfort from two individuals obviously far wiser than i =) There’s one final thing i have to say:

“Today, in the year of our Lord 2009,
Reece was called from the cares of the world.
He stopped crying at the end of each beautiful day.
The music he wrote had too long been without silence.”

“Cease the pain
Life`s just in vain
For us to gain
Nothing but all the same

Now let us lie
Sad we lived, sad we die”

- T. Holopainen

I have millions of thoughts running through my head, all bad as usual, and finally i have found the motivation to vent them in some form. Im physically and mentally fucking dead and exhausted and theres no break in sight, going and going and going 7 days a week is too much to handle. Theres no solution to the problem however, i have uni all week, 6am wake up and not home till 8pm, thats just it, and i have to work all weekend to afford uni, but by doing so, i get so depressed that i dont bother going to university. I could fucking die right now and not care, for the first time in my life i mean that, i just dont give a shit. There’s no way im going to get a good enough GPA to get into my actual course next year when i atempt to transfer, and if i have to spend another year fucking around doing this bullshit, ill probably jump off a highway overpass.

I haven’t seen any of my friends much at all since Uni started. Im 1 of about 2 friends now that aren’t 18, and they go clubbing or to the casino about 3 times a week, meaning whenever i ask them if they want to organise a house party i can illegally partake in, they say they’ve had enough partying for one week, and if i suggest something low key like seeing a movie, thats too boring for them now. I have nothing in my life except working and going to uni by myself with no friends there either, not a single thing, nobody calls me, nobody texts me, and nobody replies to my atempts at conversation, i dont speak to anyone, i wake up, go to uni, come home, eat food (sometimes), listen to Nightwish, go to sleep and do the same thing occasionally replacing uni with work.

The only other friend i have who is 17 is the first ever guy i was interested in and still am, and i dont think i can torture myself by going to his house again and sitting there alone while he talks to his girlfriend on the phone in another room for hours.

Even when i am 18 and im cool enough to hang out with my supposed friends again, im not going to have the physical strength or time to go out with them. I have to be on the train for uni at 7am  every weekday, and i have work early every weekend day. Every week thats the schedule, theres no way i could go out till 3am and be on the train at 7am with the mental capacity to learn anything. Why would i even want to go clubbing anyway? Shitty dance music, body odour, lame cunts thinking they’re cool trying to start fights with you and stupid dancing, its a room full of people wrecking their livers and trying to gather a miriad of STD’s and unwanted pregnencies, yay.

Tuomas says one of the reasons he still thinks Nightwish is worth it and he doesnt just quit is because “You’re responsible for the lives you save.” He knows there are people, like me, who the band means more to then most things.

I dunno, comment, dont, i dunno, i just needed to say something and now i have, you probably all think it all petty, but i have to have somewhere to talk to, even if its to myself.

You don’t know how long I have wanted to touch your lips and hold you tight.
You don’t know how long I have waited and I was going to tell you tonight.
But the secret is still my own and my love for you is still unknown. Alone.

Ahh i had a bit of a week so far planned for tonight but its too late now haha, will update this post tomorrow when i get home probably! I havent stopped all night >.> Came home from Uni 2 hours early cause i had so much work to do around the house, only finished washing clothes and shit at like 11:00pm. Freaking exhausted.

Night night! =D

“I was waiting for so long
For a miracle to come
Everyone told me to be strong
Hold on and don’t shed a tear

So through darkness and good times
I knew I’d make it through
And the world thought I had it all
But I was waiting for you

Where it was dark now there is light
Where there was pain now there’s joy
Where there was weakness I found my strength
All in the eyes of a boy”

Haha, have i ever mentioned a secret obsession of mine is Celine Dion? I know right. I mean we know i absolutely love amazingly talented female singers, but usually they sing metal. But yea, anyway, Celine Dion is amazingly talented. My mother is probably as obsessed with her as i am about Tarja Turunen. She went and saw her in Brisbane on her Taking Chances tour and was like speechless for days.

I especially like this song A New Day Has Come. Theres multiple interpretations of it. I think it actually refers to her son being born, but you could also interpret it as a classic love song (which i prefer to xD).

I think she comes off a bit pretentious in interviews, but ive seen her DVD backstage footage and her work with make a wish foundation and stuff like that and she doesnt seem like that at all. She could either be faking it on the DVDs or shes just really irritated in the TV interviews seeing as she does them in like blocks of 60 different interviews. I think shes probably just annoyed during the TV interviews haha. My mother has the DVD performance of her show at Caesar’s Palace, which she sold out for 5 years straight, theres interviews on the DVD with people who went every night for months at a time and crazy things like that.

I love the lines i quoted at the top of the post, so inspirational, and if you interpret it as a love song, so how i feel xD Well, want to feel anyways.

Bed time now, 2 days of work coming up now then back to Uni on Monday blargh. Hopefully work will be somewhat laid back. Also my parents are away for a month so i have to take care of all the hously duties like looking after all the pets, doing all the washing, dishes, cleaning in general, ragh its craziness, that takes up most of my 3 hours when i get home. Our pets are seriously pampered, our guinea pigs get better food then me i swear haha. Before my parents left they bought a stockpile of fresh vegetables and herb plants and fruit, not for my brother and i no, for the guinea pigs lol… And my eldest cat wakes me up 5 times a night for biscuit refills or wanting to go outside, which is annoying as all hell at 3:30am on a winter morning having to get up to pour your cat biscuits because hes an impatient fat cunt that cant wait 4 hours for me to give him food when i wake up. Lol anyway, night.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TesrLJ1dD2Y

Here is A New Day from her Las Vegas show if you’re interested.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtDHx5HU_jY&feature=related

Also in the above link at the end of the song she holds a perfect high G# for like 30 seconds lol and ends it as strong as it begun. Like wow man wow.