Viva Forever

Early this morning I was hauled out of bed by my parents for a trip to our dentist. I was informed by my orthodontist weeks ago that I need to wear a “night-guard” mouth thing instead of my retainers at night because of my constant teeth-grinding when I sleep, which is starting to wear away at my teeth. He also said I should also go see a psychologist to help “deal with my stress” that he thinks is causing the grinding, but fuck him, what does he know about psychology. -_-

Anyhow, the point of this entry is to talk about a freaky really old woman who’s always hanging around the dental surgery. She’s this incredibly ancient Asian woman whom I think is related to the dentist; probably his grandmother or something. She never actually helps out with anything, but is either just standing around or found slowly shambling through the corridors (kinda like the NPCs in Pokemon games).

Now, I generally have nothing against old people, for example, I have no issue with my grandmother and grandaunt who are really spry old women and are incredibly loud, energetic and have a tendency to pinch little children and myself. But this woman at the dental surgery is just creepy in a Japanese horror film kind of way. I’ve never heard her speak, she’s really small, wrinkly and balding, and has these really sallow eyes and never seems to smile. Even though she’s really small, for some reason whenever I encounter her in the corridors between rooms, I always find myself in her way, having to apologetically step around her as she continues her slow, aimless shuffle to the next room. She looks like the type of character in a horror movie, whose only role is to continually look ominously quiet before dramatically doing something different, like pointing behind you, and when you turn to look you get your face eaten off by some vengeful ghost woman/child/doll. Fuckin’ unsettling.

I also went to the library today and was able to borrow both Thud! and Going Postal. Hooray! I don’t know if I have time to read both as I have my stupid International Law assignment to start (I’m thinking about doing it on the US Iraq war, but I don’t know, might be too huge a topic), awesome games to play and cool people to hang out with.

I’ve said this on LJ already, but I’ve started playing Team Fortress 2, which is such an awesome game. If any of you guys also play it, add me!!

So I was procrastinating from work yesterday night and I was randomly flicking through my archives (note: my archives page doesn’t work properly, for some reason half my plugins are broken) and I came across this entry written in 2003. It was this really long, angry rant because some girl on the internet whom I didn’t even know, wrote about how she thought I was elitist and unoriginal. It’s pretty embarrassing, now that I think about it, particularly how indignant I felt about said accusation. *facepalm* -_-’ I sometimes wonder if I should just erase the archives, given how so much of what was said isn’t really “me” any more, but on the other hand, it’s amusing to look back to see how I was before.

But what I SHOULD be doing is either going to sleep or continue my research on online censorship (the topic I chose for my IT law essay). I think… I’ll go to sleep. *snooze*

There’s this guy in my law year that I see in my classes sometimes whom I have this unshaking correlation with being a Nazi. It’s purely an aesthetic thing too; he’s a tall, built guy with blue eyes, really short blond hair and a gigantic neck that sits below a surprisingly small head. The most puzzling thing is that I didn’t know why my first and lasting conclusion after seeing him was “wow, he looks like a Nazi”. It’s a really unjustified conclusion too, because the guy was quite nice when I had to work with him during an in-class group presentation, and he definitely knew his law stuff. Sure, he hangs around certified douchebags but that doesn’t necessarily mean he is a douchebag. Or a Nazi.

But it hit me like a shark on a chainsaw yesterday night, when I saw this icon [source]:

He looks almost exactly like Rolfe from The Sound of Music!! Except with a thicker neck, and less even features. And Rolfe was definitely a Nazi. Well I feel better now, knowing I didn’t just link some random dude to being a Nazi for no reason.

In other news, did you know that Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are the most widely quoted children’s books in judgments? Well, I think it’s fascinating stuff. :P

I’m sick. AGAIN. Literally about three days after recovering from my previous cold, I’ve been invaded by more viruses (or something). While the previous one was a sore throat -> losing my voice -> non-stop coughing type, this new one seems to be scratchy throat + clogged/runny nose + sneezing + constant tiredness. Blargh. I feel pretty crummy about this new cold too, not only from the frustration of being sick and tired again, which does affect my study, but for the past few days I’ve been behaving and feeling really short-tempered and irritable at the people around me, which is just general crappy behaviour.

Other than that, I’ve been a relatively good student! I’ve been doing most of my readings, participating in class and what not. My Cyberspace Law research plan assignment thing is due soonish, and I’ve got to come up with a topic for what I want to write about. There are so many interesting internet issues out there! I’m thinking about writing about net neutrality, or maybe the proposed ISP-level filtering. Or maybe something entirely more fun, such as the interaction between internet law and MMORPGs and other online games. Or maybe online privacy and freedom of speech in relation to blogs. Must… decide soon. o_o

I watched Glitter yesterday due to feeling too ill to do my readings and wow… THAT’S A HORRIBLE, HORRIBLE MOVIE. It was just so… trite, contrived, bland and juvenile. It was about as meaningful as those really dramatic Korean music videos (for example) except that Glitter took over 100 minutes to express itself. The worse part though was hearing the awful “ballads” and pop songs in the movie, all of which were horrible dragged out and pedestrian. I am comfortable with admitting that I like Mariah Carey’s old music and her voice, but ugh, the songs in this movie were lyrically and melodically weak. It was a definitely poor choice on my part to be watching this movie in the hope that it would make me feel better.

Also, watched 10,000 BC the other day, that movie was also not very good. It was mostly nonsensical in terms of history, and the storyline was rather mundane for a Hollywood flick.

Oh hai.

University has started again, I’m doing courses that I love and hence, for once, I’m actually doing all my readings and listening to all the lectures. Textbooks this semester totalled to around $400, which equates to pretty harsh rapeage of my bank account. Couldn’t buy any second hand textbooks, and believe me, I’ve searched high and low for alternate sources. :( Other than that, I have been sick, mostly resulting in coughing and the loss of my voice. I was prescribed antibiotics that absolutely crippled my abdomen on the third day. I was told during a check-up with another doctor, that all I have is a cold and that the antibiotics were unnecessarily screwing with my system. Bah. I’m on the road to recovery now.

So there we go, boring stuff. Let’s talk about something interesting.

Law of Defamation
I cannot express how much I love this area of law. It’s just so… upstanding and practical and most of all, it makes a lot of sense. All the other law subjects I’ve done always have stupid exceptions and nonsensical distinctions. The one that jumps to mind is patent law, and its crazy distinctions between novelty, innovation and invention. The whole idea of owning information, which form the very basis of intellectual property law, just gets under my skin. So as much as I loved that subject, it was mostly because of how jurisprudentially inconsistent it is, in my opinion.

But Australian defamation law… it’s straightforward and awesome. Now, it could’ve been a huge mess. Australia doesn’t have a Bill of Rights (the only developed nation to not have one, hooray for us -_-), which means we don’t have an expressed and protected freedom of speech nor a right to privacy. However, the Australian law have recognised that both are important, and tries to reflects these values. It’s especially difficult to balance a person’s right to free speech and another person’s right to not be defamed.

One way that the law have tried to juggle the two is to make it rather difficult to have someone stop someone else (usually the media) from publishing something defamatory, so that recognises the right to free speech. However, the law also acknowledges that once such defamatory information has been published, the victim has a right to pursue damages. It’s a little clumsy I guess, but it’s an admirable attempt at reconciling the two conflicting rights.

Another cool thing about defamation is that it’s a full defence if what is published, while it might ruin someone’s reputation, is true. If, for example, someone was accused of having an illicit affair and that proved to be true, that person can whinge all they like about being embarrassed and having a ruined reputation, but since that actually happened and it was merely revealed to the public, then it’s not defamation. Hooray for recognising the value of true information.

Oh and also, you can’t sue on behalf of a dead person because someone else published something unseemly about the dead person. That’s an awesomely practical law. The law could’ve gone the other way, and protect the “sacred” or “revered” or whatever “rights” of the dead, but they didn’t. They were all like, “look, reputation is what living people have, not dead people, therefore they can’t get defamed”. That doesn’t stop people from complaining when things like the Eulogy Song gets aired of course, but the law doesn’t get involved and that’s the way it should be.

Modern Art
I was at the Art Gallery of NSW with my relatives the other day and we were making our way around the exhibits. We got to the “contemporary” art section, and I found myself looking for the placards that explained each exhibit before looking at the exhibits themselves.

I don’t get modern art, especially the really abstract *coughlazycough* type. Sometimes there are good ideas behind a piece of art, but it simply doesn’t show when the piece is so damn abstract. There was one sculpture thing, constructed with little bits of useless material (e.g. bottle caps, paper clips, bits of paper) that have been spray painted with very bright, pastelly colours. They were all arranged in no particular order on a table. The placard explained that it was supposed to represent a city, of modern life, and how many things around us, while looking valuable and pretty and nice, is in essence, just rubbish. It’s a neat idea, but I wouldn’t have picked it up just by looking at the artwork. And that was one of the more explicit pieces. There were plenty of canvases with just big sploshes of colour on them.

That’s why I’d love to just collect all these placards and just read what the ideas are being projected. The actual artwork, while perhaps having quaint and interesting aesthetic value, and perhaps adds a visual representation of the idea, is secondary in my eyes.

What is entirely awesome though, are the old paintings that date back centuries. I can’t help but be entranced by the idea of being up close to artwork that someone once spend many hours on, who are now long dead, painting subjects who were also once very much alive but is now also long gone. It’s a sobering feeling. Oh that and there’s so much talent in the way the scenery, mood and characters are captured in the art. Have I mentioned that one of my favourite artists is Carravagio? Yay, dramatic shadowy paintings. :D But yeah, museums are awesome.