2006, and so begins a new year and a new attempt at keeping a regularly updated journal (HA!). I’m not going to even bother thinking up an excuse this time, let’s just get this over and done with before those ghastly three-legged, hyper intelligent emu assassins that have been stalking me for the last few weeks sniff me out. For no particular reason I shall now tell my latest news in reverse order.

Right now we have my obscure-didn’t-even-know-he-existed-second-cousin Michael staying with us; he’s been with us for the last few weeks and is going back to Wales on Monday. I think I’m gonna cry when he goes; he’s absolutely awesome. He basically prefers the same lifestyle as me, lying around on the couch all day watching science fiction and comedy and occasionally playing on the Sims for a few hours straight, now that he’s here we’ve been able to do those things together and it’s wonderful. I’ve been showing him all the funny flash movies you can find on the internet and he’s been renting all the B movies he likes and we’ve watched them together while eating ice cream, it’s absolute bliss. He also loves fantasy and sci-fi novels, Terry Pratchett, Red Dwarf, some Star Trek (he has issues with Janeway, and so I’ve neglected to mention I like her), British comedy and just about everything cool (besides T.A.T.u.; somehow he can’t grasp the appeal of pretty Russian girls pretending to be lesbians, I don’t know how he can not.). It’s been great having someone closer to my age around, he may be 28 but he’s a helluva lot easier to talk to than my parents.

Michael’s not the only one that’s been staying with us recently, the house seems full of noisy, argumentative, snarky, wonderful life compared to the times when it’s just Mum and I. Along with Michael my sister Sally stayed with us for a week or so, the day before she left I got to get out of school to go into the city with her and get stuffed on pancakes. Plus Mum and Dad are having their room refurbished by this guy called Dallas, so they’re staying in my room and I’m staying in my old room (IT’S PINK O_O). He’s quite a nice guy, when he’s not working I talk to him about music, he sings in a barber shop quartet.

Speaking of music, guess what. Go on, guess. Come on. It’s not hard, just think about it. I’ve already given you a clue, just guess…

…-_-;;

Ok then, since you’re so insistent on being clueless I’ll tell you, the school’s holding a production of the musical “Oliver” I get to be a thief! Ok, it’s not that big a deal, it’s not as though I’m Nancy or Dodger or someone like that, but I do get to be in the chorus of 3 songs, perhaps even 4 since I might be in the “Who Will Buy?” scene too. The part I’m really looking forward too is getting smeared with dirt.

What else has happened recently, hmmm…ummm…errr…IGOTADEVIANTARTACCOUNT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IT’S TRUE!!!! IT’S TRUE!!! WHOOOOO!!!!! LOOK PROOF>>>>> LOOKIE<<<<<<< NOT HERE <THERE!!! And it’s all thanks to H, *worships H* when I die, she gets my stereo. Finally, all is right with the world.

Before school started I had a sleep over that was slightly odd, Shadi and Ash came over and it started as most of our sleepovers did, eating copious amount chocolate and watching something macabre, in this case “Interview with the Vampire” ( it’s not that macabre compared to what we usually watch). After that was over Shadi started talking to Maz over msn and told her he was high on sugar, and since I was getting bored I offered to make him truly high on sugar. With that I got some Milo, Nutella, coffee, sugar and milk, mixed it all together in a mug, heated it up, I then made Shadi eat it by sucking it through sugar cubes. Because being alone with friends late into the night tends to make one rather weird, or at least weirder, while I was making the concoction Shadi decided to be my deformed hunchback assistant/slash/guinea pig and became an evil scientist. Somewhere along the way Ash became some sort of creature I kept as a pet and ended up drinking milk from a cup I put on the floor.

I decided that since Shadi was my deformed hunchback assistant/slash/guinea pig he’d need a lobotomy, so I fetched my trusty eyeliner and gave him a huge stitch mark across his forehead. Then Ash and I decided we wanted beards, and sometime around 3 in the morning we went to bed as bearded hippie hobos.

Going back further still towards the end of the holidays my parents and I stayed with Sally in Darwin for a week, I liked it best when I got to stay with her in the house for the night while Mum and Dad were in the motel, we stayed up watching British and New Zealander comedy and I discovered that I’m prone feta-stuffed-olive addiction. I love Darwin, especially during the wet season, the sweltering humidity, constant rain, thunder that literally shakes the house; I’m a sucker for that kind of thing.

We also got to go see “The Producers,” Mel Brooks is pure class. I loved every second of it, I saw it again afterwards it was so good. It simply had everything a comedy should, song and dance numbers, drag queens, Nazis, Swedish exhibitionists and horny old ladies. Just keep it gay people, keep it gay.

And so; skipping back to ol’ 05.

I have long been aware that certain small children have the ability to reduce me to a fussy, affection, pampering, subservient scatter-brain who becomes an exhausted wreck after half and hour of pretending to be a pony, and then has dreams of suffocating children by locking them in cupboards the night after, but this knowledge rarely prepares me for a meeting with the repeat offender, Sarah. She’s about seven or eight now, I’ve known her from the time when she was a baby and since then she’s appeared at sporadic intervals throughout my life to fill me with momentary joy and sisterly affection, shortly followed by a state of zombification as the drool cakes of my chin through another game of her own devising. In these games she is usually the star and the director, I must follow her instructions or face the consequences. I’m yet to know what these consequences are; I’m too terrified to find out. o_O;;

Anyway, for New Years Eve my parents and I met up with the same bunch we usually meet up with, give or take a few: my Auntie Pat and Uncle Jeff (I’m not actually related to them I’ve just always called them that for a reason that has never been explained to me), their daughters Alex and Clare (as you can imagine it gets confusing when we’re in the same room together) Alex’s husband who I forget the name of and her kids Ryan, Ronelle (I have no idea how to spell her name correctly) and David, Clare’s husband who I also forget the name of, her daughter Sarah, Auntie Pam and Uncle…urgh, I give up >_<. Well, the bunch of us got together at Clare’s house for pizza, -which I didn’t eat because I have an aversion to onions-, music and general boozing. Ronelle was the closest person to my age there, I’m a young 15 and she’s an old 15, but being very different girls I spent all my time with Sarah.

At first we played Barbies, or something Barbie-esque anyway, the game began as two sisters having a party and somewhere along the way a megalomaniac flying kitten became involved. After a while Sarah became bored and to my relief we went into the lounge to watch TV where I had my first ever conversation with a drunk person. I didn’t realize Auntie Pam was drunk when she sat down next to me, but I began to notice when she started telling me about how she used to loan out adult books when she was small using her mother’s library card. This topic came up when I told her I was considering being an author, she then talked to me for the next fifteen minutes about how she thought that was a fabulous idea, then she told me about the crime novels she enjoyed and how she found reading one of the most enriching things you can possibly do. I always been apprehensive about being faced with a drunken person as I’ve assumed that they’d be quick to anger or upset, but I rather enjoyed our conversation, I don’t know if she actually meant anything she said but she seemed incredibly earnest, and as I’ve grown up being patronized by a lot of adults being told these things made me feel as though I was being taken seriously. Weird…

After that we all went into the lounge and played the DVD version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” for half an hour or so. We got so bloody close!!!!! We were on the last question and we still had one life line left and we decided to use it. It was phone a friend. The bloody friend was wrong. We lost. Blergh.

We then watched the MTV count down to New Year’s and someone spilt champagne down my back. Auntie Pam then wanted to dance with everyone and Ronelle laughed herself silly as Pam chased her brothers round the lounge room. I danced and ended up stepping on a champagne glass, remarkably I didn’t get any glass stuck in my feet, although the glass didn’t come out of the situation too well. Sarah had fallen asleep on the couch and Auntie Pam kept falling on top of her, so Sarah eventually got up and danced with me, or to be precise we jumped around, but it was still fun ^_^. All in all it was quite a splendid New Years, I like jumping around, and we certainly did a lot of that.

On New Years Eve we’d just returned from Melbourne, my first time ever in Victoria, it was swell. Melbourne was magnificent, well actually it was like a bigger, shinier Perth, but that’s my definition of magnificent. On Christmas Eve we went and saw the Lion King Musical, hmmm, how could I describe it? Probably with something along the lines of…

OHMYFUCKINGYETTOBEDISCOVEREDDEITYTHISTOTALLYTOTALLYTOTALLYTOTALLYTOTALLYTOTALLYTOTALLYTOTALLYTOTALLYKICKSMAJORNAYPRESIDENTALBOOTY!!!!!!!!!!282!891!!37^&@!#^@9!!!!!!!

…that about covers it. I can’t describe it, just see it, you can’t die until you see it, trust me. It had more songs! And Scar makes a move on Nala o.O I took the phrase “Let’s make a lot of little Scars,” the wrong way at first; my thoughts went along the lines of, “I didn’t realize Scar was into that kind of thing…oooooh I get it.” My only quarrel with the musical version is that Scar doesn’t seem quite as evil as in the cartoon, but the fact that the hyenas have their own rock song makes me happy forever, so it doesn’t matter.

For Christmas we had lunch in the hotel restaurant and the Santa there was pure class, plus they had chocolate pie that dreams are made of. After singing along with the band, wearing paper hats and dancing with Santa we went back to the hotel room and watched “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” while eating the sweets from the mini bar. Quite a rather pleasant Christmas, especially in comparsion to the last few.

As far as gifts go I got a bunch of books including the Red Dwarf Omnibus *orgasm*; not as good as the Red Dwarf novel “Backwards” in my opinion (best book ever) but what happened to Rimmer in “Better Than Life” was delightfully pervy XD, pervy things always seem to happen to Rimmer, one the many reasons he rocks my world. The ending of “Better Than Life” was also rather sweet in a very sad way; I probably would have been very upset if I hadn’t already read “Backwards” and known that the boys are reunited…sort of. Anyone who hasn’t watched or read Red Dwarf in any of its forms before is truly deprived; it is slashy sci-fi comedy bliss.

While we were staying in Melbourne we visited the Crown Casino, or parts of it anyway, I couldn’t go into the actual casino part as I’m underage, but from what it could tell it was a lot of flashing lights and pokies. But the other areas of the casino were amazing; you can feel guilty just by looking at it as it's like you’re participating in some form of wicked and gratuitous visual gluttony. Outside they had these huge columns that had water running down the sides of them and when the sun went down they had massive bursts of flame came out of the top that would send heat surging over you like dragon's breath, absolute awesomeness. The casino had a cinema and while we were there we watched King Kong, it was such a cool movie and I ended up sobbing my eyes out. I wish Anne and Kong could have had a happy ending, but sadly I don’t think many movie goers would have been excepting of a love story between a woman and a giant ape, patrons of the old version and the remake alike, so I remain sadly unfulfilled *sniff*.

After we left Melbourne we drove around Yarra Valley for a while, which is a beautiful place landscape wise, but I found driving around looking at it all day quite dull, and was quite relieved to be on the plane home a few days later.

Before Year 9 finished my English teacher Ms Lovatt (she rocks, I gave her this on the last day) decided that because of my constant (and very annoying for the people around me, I imagine) Red Dwarf rants she let the class watch Red Dwarf for our last English lesson, it was awesome fun.

We also had an AEP camp where the year 8, 9 and 10 AEP students all went to New Norcia for a couple of days. We did things like Aboriginal face painting and boomerang throwing, plus we got to meet a St Benedict monk, they’re funky, they dress in black cloaks and don’t where any underwear. We even got to sit in on one of their prayers, and a girl fainted at the end from heat exhaustion. And of course we couldn’t leave without doing AEP idol, which was basically a mock talent competition. I teamed up with Darcie, Susan and Angela and we put on a play called “Recorder Idol,” Angela was the host, Darcie was the French contestant, Susan was the Swedish Contestant and I was the arty satanic judge who said things like “A bitter sweet melody reminiscent of the remorseful tune sung by a fallen angel as its pearly white wings turn to maggot filled carrion,” and “Played with the anger and energy of a star going super nova incinerating planets populated by small fluffy animals.” I got to put heaps of random black eyeliner on my face, talk in a strange European accent and say my name was Giger just for kicks, I had a ball. Lots of other people put on great acts; I especially like it when all the year 10s sang Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” at the end of their acts. It’s going to suck not being in AEP next year.

Well I think that’s about all I can be bothered telling you and it’s probably more than you can be bothered reading; boy that was my longest entry yet, I’ve REALLY got to update more frequently o_O. That can be one of my New Years Resolutions, well my only New Years Resolution, but it doesn’t need friends to succeed! That was a bit weird…I think I’m a bit tired…which is strange considering it’s only around 6pm and I got up around 9 this morning, probably got something to do with all that Star Wars I watched last night…why am I still typing?