This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and can be read in its original location here.

Firstly, all the people finding this blog by Googling things like “doesn’t matter we’re all fucked anyway” and “I hate myself birds of tokyo”, I sympathise but you’re freaking me out even more than the people who found this blog by looking up my international studies lecturer… before I even wrote about him. Birds of Tokyo are there to ease our pain, okay.

Anyway…

Despite my pessimism late on Saturday night, Australia might not be as fucked as initially thought. The independents are demonstrating a little more antipathy to the Coalition than I was expecting, and while they are still conservatives and Katter is a nutcase, it means Labor still has a chance and that’s important. The fact that all three of these independents care so strongly about telecommunications in the bush is something that bodes well for Labor too, because Labor has its NBN policy that the Liberals have promised to scrap… which, I can well imagine, would infuriate rural MPs. The Liberals’ idea of throwing $6bn at corporations to “encourage” them to develop broadband would likely only benefit the cities, where the profits lie. Whereas a government-mandated network with a clear focus on rural areas — despite the $44bn cost — is going to be more effective and more equitable to rural populations.

So that’s good.

Too bad they’re basically still stupid-ass conservative hacks.

This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and can be read in its original location here.

I wasn’t deliberately lying when I said I was going to take blogging ~seriously~ this month. I just haven’t had the time, and when it comes to ideas about what to write… I mean. All I really want to write about is music, because a lot of the time it feels like my freest time all day is the time I spend chilling out on the bus and listening to music. It’s got to the point where I refuse to write using my mobile phone or do anything productive at all with it¹ because that would mean sacrificing this time where I am totally free, under no obligation to do anything at all because who expects anyone to be productive on public transport?

A couple of Thursdays ago was quite awesome in this regard. I went to uni for my one class of the day², and then I got to go home. The bus was crowded enough that the only free seats that didn’t involve sitting next to anyone else were at the back, but this was a good thing, because with no one looking at me and with rows of seats in front of me, I could just relax in the sunshine and mouth along with all the words of Birds of Tokyo’s new album. Because I love it. I adore it.

I don’t think you understand yet. Let me show you what I mean. This was my top 25 in iTunes at the end of last week (PLEASE CLICK to see the bigger image, because the effect is incomplete without seeing the playcounts!):

This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and has been backdated to the date on which I posted it. It can be found in its original location at Jayeless » In a history tute last week....

Tutor: The Dept of History is looking for students across all year levels to participate in an investigation into the suitability of the history curriculum, blah blah blah… so if you’re interested, write your name on the volunteer sign-ups sheet.
Classmate: I’m going to put [L’s] name down.
Tutor: No, you can’t do that! It’s up to [L] to volunteer herself! We don’t have conscription in this country!
Classmate: I’ll introduce conscription for her.
Tutor: We don’t have conscription in tutorials either. If we did, I’d be conscripting you for all sorts of things. I’d always be saying, you do this, and you do that - think of the PRECEDENT you’re setting!

This post is a crosspost from Jayeless, and has been backdated to the date on which I posted it. It can be found in its original location at Jayeless » Arts (Global).

Yesterday, VTAC finally published all the tertiary course offers from 2010. I was offered my first preference -- Arts (Global) at Monash University -- and so, once I've enrolled, I'll be a student of the Bachelor of Arts (Global).

Arts (Global) is essentially a Bachelor of Arts, just more restrictive (but I mean that in the nicest possible way). Because it's a requirement of the BA (Global), my major will be international studies. This is fine, because it was going to be international studies or history or politics, anyway. However, it has to be international studies. There is no squirming out of it. There is no doing INT1010 and INT1020 (a first-year sequence for all three) and then deciding afterwards which area of study I want to major in. It's international studies or... uh, working out how to change my course. Which is probably possible.

Aside from international studies, I want to study linguistics, because that's sounded like one of the most interesting areas of study ever since I was about thirteen. Alas, the high school curriculum is tailored towards literature crap instead of linguistic awesomeness, so I was never able to¹. But now I am! And in case you couldn't tell, I am not planning to study English (literature). All throughout high school, my favourite parts of English were all the parts that didn't involve reading books (or worse: poetry), so a subject all about reading books is probably not one I should take.

I also want to take a second language. I'm undecided between Spanish and French, but I have to decide soon (by the end of next week, I think). I think Spanish would be more useful, since it's spoken by twice or three times the number of people who speak French, and is the primary language of more countries. However, since I already know some French, it's tempting to study that because it'd be easier. Right now, I'm probably leaning towards Spanish, but it's like a 55-45 split.

The last thing that should be mentioned about this course is that it requires me to spend one semester overseas, on exchange, at another university. Of course, this further influences my deliberations over French v. Spanish because I'd probably choose to go to whichever country matched up with my chosen language, which would be France for French, or Mexico for Spanish. Of course, if neither works out, I can also study in another English-speaking country for a semester.

Anyway, I have to spend the next week and a bit scrambling to get enrolment and unit selection over with, but then I'll be an Arts student at last! Exciting.

1. Unless I wanted to do another distance education subject (in addition to international studies and history)... which I really didn't!