Yay today was a good day again, was out in school for HSSRP then went to the library at City Hall and continued Extended Essay research, then had lunch and off for tuition at 1pm! & then met Nanthini (after numerous phone calls and glancing up and down the escalators and walking all around trying to find each other while we were pretty much RIGHT IN FRONT OF EACH OTHER) to find Chinese nationals at chinatown which was kinda epic phail :D but it was a fun waste of time!
And now I am tiredtiredtired and shall be off to continue collating survey results and then I've got 2 episodes of Boston Legal to watch, yay :D
& tomorrow I'm off to join my parents at fairmont hotel I think, and...I'm not so sure what's going to happen actually, but hopefully tomorrow will include No Work, because I am so sick of these pseudo hols.

Edit: does everyone think I'm becoming more and more cynical; ohdear.
bostonlegal on starworld's the scientology episode oh joy the vid on youtube is the best!

( Aristotle, by Billy Collins )

Almost anything can happen.

This is where you find

the creation of light, a fish wriggling onto land,

the first word of Paradise Lost on an empty page.

Think of an egg, the letter A,

a woman ironing on a bare stage

as the heavy curtain rises.

This is the very beginning.

The first-person narrator introduces hirnself,

tells us about his lineage.

The mezzo-soprano stands in the wings.

Here the climbers are studying a map

or pulling on their long woolen socks.

This is early on, years before the Ark, dawn.

The profile of an animal is being smeared

on the wall of a cave,

and you have not yet learned to crawl.

This is the opening, the gambit,

a pawn moving forward an inch.

This is your first night with her,

your first night without her.

This is the first part

where the wheels begin to turn,

where the elevator begins its ascent,

before the doors lurch apart.

This is the middle.

Things have had time to get complicated,

messy, really. Nothing is simple anymore.

Cities have sprouted up along the rivers

teeming with people at cross-purposes—

a million schemes, a million wild looks.

Disappointment unshoulders his knapsack

here and pitches his ragged tent.

This is the sticky part where the plot congeals,

where the action suddenly reverses

or swerves off in an outrageous direction.

Here the narrator devotes a long paragraph

to why Miriam does not want Edward's child.

Someone hides a letter under a pillow.

Here the aria rises to a pitch,

a song of betrayal, salted with revenge.

And the climbing party is stuck on a ledge

halfway up the mountain.

This is the bridge, the painful modulation.

This is the thick of things.

So much is crowded into the middle—

the guitars of Spain, piles of ripe avocados,

Russian uniforms, noisy parties,

lakeside kisses, arguments heard through a wall—

too much to name, too much to think about.

And this is the end,

the car running out of road,

the river losing its name in an ocean,

the long nose of the photographed horse

touching the white electronic line.

This is the colophon, the last elephant in the parade,

the empty wheelchair,

and pigeons floating down in the evening.

Here the stage is littered with bodies,

the narrator leads the characters to their cells,

and the climbers are in their graves.

It is me hitting the period

and you closing the book.

It is Sylvia Plath in the kitchen

and St. Clement with an anchor around his neck.

This is the final bit

thinning away to nothing.

This is the end, according to Aristotle,

what we have all been waiting for,

what everything comes down to,

the destination we cannot help imagining,

a streak of light in the sky,

a hat on a peg, and outside the cabin, falling leaves.

</span>

Dark issues on the bestseller lists
December 9, 2008

IT'S everywhere: in bookshops and libraries, on posters and at the movies. The Twilight series by Stephenie Meyer has become a worldwide phenomenon, and girls, boys and adults alike have become obsessed.

Some say it's the "new Harry Potter", but is it? In terms of popularity and sales, perhaps. Plot-wise? No. Character development? Let me be a teenager for a second: LOLWUT? (For non teens, I just Laughed Out Loud and said: What?)

There is nothing wrong with reading and enjoying the series - but why are its anti-feministic messages, its romanticisation of suicide and its glorification of abusive relationships and pedophilia being ignored?

The main character, Bella Swan, is a shallow, whining teenager who seems to have no purpose in life besides getting into bed with her vampire boyfriend, Edward Cullen. From the moment they get involved (after a hasty exchange of "I love yous"), she becomes hopelessly dependent on him. She does whatever he tells her to do, and in later books their relationship has telltale signs of abuse: he threatens to keep her away from her only friend, for her own "protection", and even removes the engine from her truck.

When he leaves her, Bella says, "love, life, meaning ... over" (New Moon), and later throws herself off a cliff to hear his voice in her head. She contemplates suicide, as does Edward when he thinks Bella has died. I don't care what Romeo And Juliet says: suicide is not romantic. It is a sign of mental illness, not true love.

In the fourth book of the series, Breaking Dawn, Bella's best friend, Jacob Black (a werewolf) imprints on her newborn daughter, Renesmee. This means he is her soulmate and will act as uncle/brother/father until she reaches a certain age. That age being when she requires sexual satisfaction - which Jacob will provide.

For the first 18 years of her life Renesmee will have known Jacob as that uncle/father/brother figure. Why has no one drawn attention to the incestuous and pedophilic themes of this relationship? If Jacob has been an uncle to her all her life, why would she want to have sex with him? This is child-grooming and pedophilia - and no one seems to see anything wrong with it.

Why does the world seem to have turned a blind eye on these issues? Coombes, H 2008, 'Dark issues on the bestseller lists', Sydney Morning Herald, 9 December, pg 22