Anybody who knows me knows how much I hate reality tv shows... Not that I deny watching them, I most certainly do, but I don't like them very much... I think they're mean, distasteful and incredibly silly...

That said, there seems to be a certain appeal about them that I can't quite place my finger on... Something like the analogy of having to see a train wreck, even if it's a horrible sight to behold...

But anyway, reality tv shows are getting meaner and meaner... Where the traditional reality shows seem to go on for 'the good' of the contestants (i.e. - dating shows where the girl gets the guy and vice versa... Survivor or Amazing Race where they do stuff to get cash...), the new breed of reality shows aim to fulfil some sort of perverse pleasure that the audience has in seeing people humiliate themselves on television...

Take the two new ones coming out in Australia (pardon the pun, you'll know what I'm talking about soon enough)... Playing it Straight and Boy Meets Boy... Both are dating shows, where one contestant chooses amongst twelve others to meet the man of their dreams... The twist is, in both shows the guys they get to choose from are of differing sexualities... That is, although in Playing It Straight the girl would want a straight guy, amidst the 12 men she has to choose from at least six of them are gay...

That's not even the worst part... If she chooses a straight man, they get to split AUD$200,000 between them but if she chooses a gay man, she gets zilch and he gets AUD$200,000...

Now I'm loathe to comment too much on the show considering I've only watched the first episode (and I've never seen Boy Meets Boy but I'm guessing it's pretty much the same thing only it's a gay man looking for love), but I really don't see how it's fair to dump this poor girl into the predicament she's in considering all she wanted was a little cash... And maybe some guy to date for two weeks before they break it off quietly...

But anyway...

What kind of perverse person have we become to be amused by watching a bunch of gay men pretend to be straight for the sake of money?

Or in reverse, watching straight men pretend to be gay for the sake of money?

Even the Idol phenomenon has taken on a rather perverse turn... Now, instead of watching fairly good singers get insulted on stage every week there's also the Unforgettables

Oddly enough, these guys warranted a prime spot on national television for their live show in front of a live audience before one of them will perform in the Idol final concert at the Sydney Opera House...

What is the appeal? How did we come from laughing after a friend falls down to actually paying to watch a bunch of people humiliate themselves on stage?

What has this world come to? If only people would wake up and realise that Quantum Leap is the only show worth watching... Scott Bakula... Mmmmm... =P~~

Okay so it's been awhile since I've encountered weirdos, and I thought my run with them was finally over... Until yesterday...

I was walking in the centre by myself and contemplating getting a smoothie, so I wasn't paying attention to the people around me... Suddenly, out of absolutely nowhere this guy jumps in my face and goes 'BOO!'...

Thank GOD I didn't fall over backward... Oddly enough I have no idea whatsoever who this guy was and after giving a smile he just kinda walked away so it's obvious it's not someone I may have met and forgotten about...

So anyway, fine... I decide to have a smoothie and whilst lining up the people behind the counter suddenly started pointing in the general direction behind me and snickering... So obviously I turned and lo and behold there was a guy there walking around in his jocks and singlet...

Yes, all he was wearing were his jocks and a singlet... No shirt, no pants, no socks, no shoes... Just nut huggers and a singlet...

God knows if I was on some weird ass hidden camera show that day... =/

On another note, my future husband lost to Hewitt the other day in straight sets and if that wasn't embarrassing enough it was a constant 6-2...

Oh, I'm talking about tennis, btw... And my future husband (for this month anyway, is Tommy Haas... Who's tall, dark, handsome and slightly schizo)...

It's not to say that he's a bad player, because he's not... He's really quite good when he doesn't let his emotions get to him... Maybe it's cos of his injury (he was out for the whole of last year because of an injury so from being the 8th top ranked player in the world he became unseeded) or if he's just a perfectionist, but everytime he makes an unforced error he also makes a commotion...

We're not even talking about Federer's mutterings to himself or Roddick's fidgeting... Haas literally starts yelling in the general direction of his coach in German and waves his hands in the air and yells 'STOP IT! STOP IT' and even slaps his forehead a couple of times...

All this in the match against Mello where he was leading 2 sets to none and hasn't had his service broken yet...

So quite obviously if he gets that frustrated in a match that he was WINNING, you can imagine what he was like in a match he was LOSING...

Now as much as Hewitt is an arrogant prick who celebrates when his opponents make unforced errors, he's a strong, consistent player with a good mentality when it comes to the game... So he was able to cope with the strong, windy conditions that were present on the day of the match...

My future husband, however... Well he spent more time yelling at the wind and at the general direction of his coach than concentrating on his game...

Funny thing is, I realise that the best soccer team in the world has that problem too... They play amazing when they want to, but all it takes is for the other time to score a goal, doesn't even have to be an equaliser or a winner, and you can see their mentality break down complete and they start floundering around like chickens with their heads chopped off...

Now obviously it's hard for me to judge all this behaviour objectively, but as a professional sportsman, shouldn't your mentality be as important as your play? What's the point of being the best tennis player in the world if all it takes is one mistake to make you drop your entire game?

Oh well... Doesn't matter... Good player or not, he's still hot as... And if he'll let me, I'LL sit in the stands for him to yell at anytime he wants... =P

While doing an essay today I realised just how much doing cultural studies can fuck your mind up...

You see, in cultural studies, you get to learn all these new ways of thinking and suddenly nothing is what it seems anymore... It used to seem like over analysing to you, but after years and years of doing it so often it just comes naturally...

Sure, when it comes to discussions and all you become to centre of attention because you think 'outside the box' and are able to come up with all sorts of shit that amuses people, but when it comes to writing a structured essay and having to make sure that there is only one argument that you are supporting, suddenly it's all no fun anymore...

Like this essay for instance... It's for my literature class (yes, it's an elective), and I have to write it based on the coerciveness of the Utopian society...

See, I don't think it's coercive at all, and I started writing that... Until I realised that considering the point of view of the guy who was writing it, it could only seem that way... After all, writing is just another method of interpretation, and hey, you could make anything sound like anything if you wanted to...

Take journalistic articles, for instance... Anything can sound suspicious if you needed it to... 'Woman Kills Kids' sound ominous until you realise it's about someone slaughtering goats...

I'm beginning to fully believe the old saying 'The more you learn, the less you know'... Although that just makes me question why we bother learning in the first place... If that certainly is true, isn't that then easier to just keep things basic?

See, things were so much more fun for us as kids because we thought in black and white... Things were either always right or wrong... Now everything's just finer shades of gray and that's REALLY beginning to annoy me...

I'm not even sure if it's because of cultural studies anymore... The older I get the more confused I become... No wonder old people get senile... It's their minds natural reaction to so much confusion!

Maybe that's the key to not becoming senile... Maybe all it takes is to just not think so much during your youth...

What do you think readers, is it worth a try? =P

Doing cultural studies, I've realised that you never really learn anything new... What you do learn is ways of classifying things you've already known and putting names to these thoughts and concepts that you've had your entire life...

My paranoia about the real, for instance... I've always had this thought at the back of my mind that maybe what I'm living isn't really real... Like in reality I'm in this coma-like state in some hospital and the voices I hear in my head are the people in the real world talking to me getting me to wake up...

Now I've always thought that this was just the morbid, delusional slightly neurotic side of me talking... But now I know it's postmodern thinking me!

All joking aside, postmodern thought is really quite interesting, and apparently stems from Plato's idea of the real world being a copy of a perfect realm that we can never truly reach unless we somehow manage a revelation philosophically...

Now in my opinion that's rubbish since if the only way you can get there is philosophically, then it's all in your mind to begin with, so if I start philosophizing that what I'm living in is perfect, then hey, I've arrived!

Anyway... What this all leads up to is the fact that since everything we see is a copy, throughout the ages that's turned into copies of copies of copies... To the point where now the real and the first few copies have been flattened together... There are now no real distinctions as to what is a copy and what is the real...

I said that I thought that was an incredibly depressing thought, because we now no longer know what's real and what isn't... To which my astute tutor replied 'So what?'...

As weirded out as I was by those two words originally, I've realised that perhaps that's the best way to do it... And maybe that truly is what Plato was talking about...

There IS no physical perfect realm... It's more a state of mind where you begin to accept all the things that are around you so absolutely where they begin to form a sort of harmony with one another... In which case there isn't ONE perfect realm but one for each of us...

So okay, since the perfect realm is all in your head, where does that leave us? We have crazy people running around, living in their own little worlds... Does that mean THEY'VE achieved passage into their perfect realm?

When you think about it, it's not so far off... There's so much in this world that we don't like but we feel we can't change, so we try to change ourselves to suit the situations... These people however, have built their own little world around them, hence their realm suits them, and not the other way around... Which would make it perfect to THEM, wouldn't it?

Who then are the crazy ones? Us ones who try so hard to fit in to this world or those who've made the world fit them?

This discourse just proved exactly why I would never make it as one of the great thinkers of our time... Or a philosophy student... =/

I have a confession to make... It's a really serious one too...

I have really bad morning breath...

I know most people get morning breath... But mine truly is horrendous... I remember walking out one morning and saying hey to my rabbit and he SWAYED from the pure power of my breath...

I don't know what my mouth does at night while I'm unconscious but by God I hope it stops...

Ya know that little manouvre Julia Roberts did in America's Sweethearts where she covers her mouth with the sheet and refuses to talk till she's brushed her teeth? Well she stole that one from me...

What IS morning breath anyway? I used to think that it was whatever residues of food you got stuck between your teeth digested by your saliva through the night, so the smell is from the food that's been halfway digested...

So I brushed my teeth thoroughly before I go to bed... And I mean THOROUGHLY... I'd be in there scrubbing for twenty minutes or so and then gurgle for another 10... I even started flossing at night... Thinking everything would finally be okay, I went to bed...

The next morning? BAM... Morning breath... Nearly knocked MYSELF out this time even...

I've even tried controlling what the last thing I eat was... Some people figured hey, maybe you can't completely clean everything out of your mouth before going to bed, so make you sure you eat stuff that won't stink in the morning...

Well that idea turned out as wonky as it sounds... =/

So now I'm at a loss as to what I should do next... I mean sure it's fine now cos I generally wake up alone... And the rare moments when I do wake up with HIM beside me HE's usually still fast asleep anyway so I can just run off to find my trusty toothbrush first...

But what when I get married and have to wake up next to someone DAILY? What THEN? Will I have to marry someone without any smelling capabilities? Will my future husband have to wear a gas mask to bed every night?

Please dear readers... You should realise how important this issue is... Do help if you can...

Logically, it should be easy enough to identify a good relationship from a bad relationship... In a good relationship, everything's just fine and dandy, and despite the occasional tiff, you know at the back of your mind that everything will be all right in the end... In a bad relationship, nothing ever goes right, you fight all the time, and it's never ever your fault...

I blame film and television for that mindset...

In real life, nothing is EVER that cut and dried... You can't imagine being without him, but life with him isn't all that fantastic either... You fight all the time, and despite your expecting him to fall on his knees to apologise, you end up wondering if it was your fault in the first place...

You think and think and think but still can't make up your mind as to what to do with the relationship (if we can call it that in the first place)...

You wonder whether you're the one with the problem until you realise that there is a reason why books on dating/relationships seem to constantly appear on the bestseller list - everybody else is as lost as you are...

Which is small consolation really, since a big group of lost, aimless souls isn't really that much better than a single lost, aimless soul... Misery might love company, but a group of miserable people sure ain't an answer to anything...

So you try to just continue living your life the way you've always lived it... Only this time you can't, because events have happened in between the you BH (before him) and the you AH (after him) which have altered the person you are...

BH nothing ever seemed all THAT complicated... All you had to worry about was your studies, your friends and where to go to next weekend... Suddenly HE happened and now you even go through antisocial phases when all you wanna do is sit at home alone and wonder if he's cheating on you with someone he actually finds attractive...

Although you've never thought of yourself as a supermodel, you've never thought of yourself as WAY below average either...

Funny how a single person can change your life in so many ways, isn't it?

I wish I was living in film-land... I'd know where I stand, I'd know he was bad for me because Mr. Right would be at the wings just waiting to save me from a life of misery... I'd know for a fact that because I've always tried to be the good one in the relationship that things WILL work out for the better for me...

Unfortunately this is real life, and the good guys DO end up alone and miserable sometimes...

Some people say we never see the future because it's more fun working through the present... I say fuck it all, I wanna know if I'm gonna end up sitting alone in front of a television watching re-runs of The OC and wondering what happened to my youth with a cigarette constantly in the corner of my mouth and a bottle of vodka in my hand...

Good morning ladies and gents... The topic for today's lecture is reality tv...

Has anybody noticed that there is a trend for the type of shows we get on television? Like at one point, around the late 1990s we had a whole slew of crime shows - Law & Order (and its many spin-offs), NYPD Blue and the like... At one point we had shitloads of sitcoms, which we still do today actually - FRIENDS, Seinfeld and the like and now we have an influx of reality television...

I'm not sure what the appeal is about reality television, maybe everyone has voyeuristic tendencies, maybe it's just that everyone wants to be on television, and reality tv gives everyone a fair chance of being on it...

My theory is that people are just generally incredibly sadistic...

There is not a single reality tv program out there that doesn't go out specifically to fuck the minds of their contestants... I mean sure, the premise of all of them is really cool - to get an amazing job, an amazing girl, an amazing guy, an amazing business... But to GET to the ultimate prize there is - yep, you guessed it - a lot of mind fucking involved...

What I'm STILL trying to figure out is whether the mind fucking happens because of the producers of the show or because of the people involved...

Get your average dating reality tv show for instance... There's Temptation Island, Paradise Hotel and Forever Eden... All of which feature a group of single girls with a group of single guys all out to get laid... Which is a fairly attractive prospect - you're set in a gorgeous resort and all you get to do all day is interact with gorgeous members of the opposite sex and hope to God one of them falls for you...

Now all the producers of the show do is put in a little rule that someone has to be eliminated each week, and suddenly everyone turns into animals... THere's backstabbing, there's all sorts of bitching and whining going on, and what could have been a great pro bono holiday turns completely sour...

People start forming alliances, plotting against each other and they end up spending too much time plotting and too little time having fun... No wonder nobody really hooks up in these things...

Big Brother is no better honestly... I can't even imagine how it would be like to get stuck in one place for too long, moreover be stuck in a single HOUSE with 11 strangers and not be able to have ANY sort of contact with the outside world...

Publicity is ONE thing, but why would anyone do ANYTHING like that to themselves?

And just recently they started playing what I consider THE MOST sadistic reality program to date - There's Something About Miriam...

On the surface it's just a straight forward dating program, which makes me wonder why that in itself didn't ring any bells for the guys on it, but with a HUGE twist... The 'girl' they're all vying for was born a man... And he hasn't had any surgery except for his boobs...

Not clear enough? Lemme phrase it differently - HE STILL HAS A DICK.

None of the guys were told about this, of course, and only right at the end when she has chosen the winner were they told of this... And how traumatising would it be to a straight guy to know that all summer he's been trying to get into a transsexual's pants?

So yes, in conclusion reality tv shows are plain sadistic and we should stop advocating them... It's time we stepped up television programming and bring back some quality shows... We need to BRING BACK QUANTUM LEAP!

Okay so my boyfriend's been visiting to Sydney twice, and both times he's managed to score a speeding ticket... That's got me thinking about speed limits, and how strictly they're enforced here in Australia...

I mean hey, Malaysia's got speed limits too, only nobody seems to follow them or take them all that seriously, because I mean hey, you've only got to slip a little note underneath your license and more often than not the copper's nice enough to let you go 'with a warning'...

Knowing how strict things are here, I've been trying to keep myself under the speed limit at all times, and the only thing THIS has achieved is giving me the realisation that there is something more dangerous than going over the speed limit...

Keeping an eye on the speedometer trying to make sure you're not over the speed limit.

Twice, count it TWICE the other night as I was driving home I nearly crashed into the car in front of me because I was trying to make sure I was keeping to the 60km/h I was allowed... Which I think is a ridiculously slow speed to be going, especially when it's like three in the morning and all you want to do is go home and crash...

But anyway yes... I think a ridiculously low speed limit is just as dangerous as a high speed limit... I think that people should be allowed to go as fast or as slow as they would like...

Now I know that this would pose tons of problems, since well we've all seen the ads, we all know that speed kills... But I have a solution for this problem as well...

Revised driving schools.

I think it should be mandatory for driving lessons to include lessons on sharpening your reflexes and dealing with high speed vehicles... See, this will mean we have better drivers on the road, and soon road rules will no longer need to be applied!

We should also make driving tests harder to pass, and include such sections as 'jam braking' and 'speed handling' to make sure our drivers are more capable on the roads...

So yes, anyways on another note... I got dipped! And backflipped! And that totally made my weekend, hell it made my MONTH! And now after all that fun, I have another month of work to look forward to...

So nose back to the grindstone now!

Okay I turn the big 2 2 today... Heh... Yeah okay so it's not that big a deal in some cultures... Yeah okay FINE... It's not a big deal at all in MOST cultures... But for me? I dreaded turning 22, cos that means I'm inching further and further away from 18...

18 was the coolest age for me... You were legal for most things, you were an adult, but you were still a teen... High school wasn't a distant memory, you still had a little bit of that child left in you, hell even be able to let the child in you take over...

21 was all right... It wasn't fantabulous, but it was cool... Now I'm legally out of my teens, but I was like right on the threshold of adulthood... Hell who am I kidding, my 21st birthday was only cool cos I drank myself to oblivion and got completely and utterly shitfaced that night... =/

Now I'm 22... Fucking 9 years since I STARTED high school, 5 years since I graduated... It's been 4 years since I was fucking 18, 3 years since I could even remotely be considered a teenager...

It's alllll downhill from here, my friend... Until I reach the ripe old age of 50, from whence I shall start descending into my second childhood...

Confused? Well let me elaborate...

From what I know about the psychological processes of aging, and I know a lot of it, since I of course am aging and the two people closest to me (my parents) are also aging, that makes me a certified expert... And here's my Nobel prize winning theory...

From the age of about 22 till maybe 40, we mature steadily, every year going by making us feel older and more tired, mainly because it's during this time that we have to work the hardest... During this time, more often than not, we try as best not to remind ourselves how old we REALLY are...

Now the age of 40 to 50, we've reached a sort of threshold where we realise just where we're standing in life... We've accomplished pretty much all we need to (or CAN) by about this time, so we've accepted our status...

Between the ages of 50 onward however, we start descending back into childhood... Mainly because suddenly we need to be taken care of, and while in our twenties our independance seemed like such a big deal, we suddenly realise that hey, it's not such a bad thing having someone else runnning around doing our bidding, changing our sheets and diapers!

And HERE'S where I think most people get what I would like to call 'the revelation'... We finally realise that there really isn't a better time in our lives than our childhood, so we start progressing back to being kids and having the best times of our lives!

And here ends my talk on the psychological levels of aging. Thank you.

Now if you know me, you know that I complain about possums a lot... I live on the top floor of the apartment building and we have possums living on the roof since they've decided to cut down some of the trees outside...

The problem is, not only do they make heaps of noise on top with their scurrying and their scuffling and their fighting, but every so often one of them gets kicked out of the pack... Probably for telling his possum wife that she shouldn't eat so much cos her possum butt is getting bigger... But then they end up spending the night on my balcony...

Yeah yeah awww... I know... Some people might think that was cute... But when you have to spend every Sunday morning sweeping possum shit off your balcony, you might change your mind...

Now most of the time I'm okay with them, cos they keep outta my way, and I keep outta theirs, although that means I'm seldom on the balcony at nights... But since it's getting colder out anyway, I'm fine with that...

Tonight however, that idiot possum that I just took a picture off actually had the AUDACITY to try to step INTO the apartment!

I had the balcony doors open cos I was taking a fag when I heard a little rustle, and when I looked up, the fucking thing was at the doorway, about to step IN!

Good thing my negotiating skills is fantabulous cos I looked at him and went 'No. You've already taken over the balcony, you are not taking over my HOUSE. Now you fucking go up to the missus, tell her you're sorry and go sleep next to her fat possum ass. You come in here again, I will shoot you.'... To which he cocked his head to one side and scurried up to the roof...

And that's that...

Now for the highlight of my day... I bought me a pair of fuzzy uggies! My old ugg boots were wearing thin, so I decided to get a new pair and I got me white fuzzy uggies! Yeah okay so they're really just furry white ugg boots... But fuzzy uggies sound SO much better, don't ya think?