In other news, I received an awesome birthday package from Amanda in the mail the other day. In it was three items of clothing; a lovely long, black dress with a long, mocha-coloured ribbon sash at the waist; a summery blue and white patterned dress that’s uber comfortable and a snazzy babydoll work shirt. MANY THANKS TO HER! They all fit nicely and very wearable. :D

The house my family and I lived in was a two-storey house, with bedrooms upstairs and other rooms downstairs. One weekend, my parents invited family friends over. The guests were four people; a middle-aged couple and their two daughters. I was upstairs in my room when my dad called me downstairs for dinner. As I walked down the stairs, I saw an Asian man standing at the bottom of the stairs. He was middle-aged and wore a buttoned up shirt and some non-descript long pants. His expression was blank, calm, pretty unemotive actually. What was unusual was that he had a large camera hanging from a strap around his neck. It was an old-fashioned, black, bulky camera.

He was just standing there and didn’t say a word, and moved out of my way as I continued down the stairs. I had just thought he was another guest of my parents that I hadn’t met. When I arrived in the dining room, I saw that everyone was seated including the family we had invited. I asked my dad whether we were waiting for anyone else, and he said no. I asked him whether he was sure, but he said (rather impatiently) that everyone who was supposed to be here is already seated and that I should hurry up and do the same. After dinner I walked around my house but that camera man was no where in sight. I never saw him again.

I’d like to point out it couldn’t have been just some random person who walked into the house. Both our front and back doors were self-locking, that is, if the doors were closed then they locks themselves until you turn the knobs from inside the house to reopen them (or if you have the keys you can open it from outside). I was positive that the front door was closed because the stairs stopped right near the front door and I definitely noted it was closed as I was coming downstairs. The back door was too, and even if it weren’t, any stranger walking in from it would have to bypass all the people in the house who were downstairs at the time. The windows have fly screens on them and were generally closed too.

Until this day I get creeped out thinking about what had happened. When I walk around the house late at night (something I loathe to do), I worry that I might turn around and suddenly see this silent, staring camera man once again.

This is one of the reasons why I hate the dark.

My plan is to move out of home before all this goes down, which means I only have until about December to find my own place, and more importantly, have some sort of income to pay for rent. I can work more next semester and if the lawyer I’m working for stops being so fucking stingy with money, and if I can get rental assistance, I probably manage to just make enough to pay for rent and maybe food. Since I plan to be moving out with Tim, if he has some kind of income too, that’ll definitely make things easier. My only concern is that once I’ve graduated and I start the intensive coursework at the College of Law, which is going to last months, I don’t think I’d have time to squeeze work in at all. Worse comes to worse, I’ll have to move with my parents to the new place and just take forever getting anywhere. Oh joy.

As I was falling asleep yesterday night thinking about this, I became increasingly worried that it would all turn out horribly. I know so many people who’ve moved out of home without much of a hitch and simply learnt quickly to be independent in terms of self-management, but what if I can’t do it? What if I end up stressing out over what food to cook and how clean my home should be? What if it puts stress on my relationship with Tim? What if I run out of money… for some reason? What if the house burns down? :(

I guess I’ll have to just take things step by step… the only thing I could do now is just start saving money. Oh and maybe start my assessments that are due relatively soon.

Upon registration, I was awestruck by two aspects of the site. Firstly, one of the face-palmingly ironic aim of the game, which was to be the “most intelligent” bimbo… ever. Do these people not know what the word “bimbo” means? Secondly, I was baffled by the fact that the “bimbo” character that you start off with has an IQ of 70 and you need to work your way up from there. That’s… two standard deviations from the norm, i.e. you’ll be in the bottom 3-ish% of the general population in terms of the smarts. Why you are given an almost retarded virtual woman to start off with is a complete mystery.

As for the game play, it’s pretty shitty for a semi-popular virtual game that boasts to have 500-1000+ players at any one time. Many of the pages are incredibly buggy and poorly coded and the mini-games are horribly banal (except for maybe sudoku). Unlike other online games, Miss Bimbo seems to consciously try to limit the amount of time any player would want to spend on the site, as there is little activity that would motivate one to keep playing continuously at any one time.

On your right, is my “Bimbo” as she currently is.

As for the actual complaints and defences for the game? Here’s a couple of things to note:

• The creators of MB had tried to downplay the existence of plastic surgery in the game as being just a minor, “optional” thing. This isn’t true, as one of the actual goals to advance a level actually requires you to perform surgery on your character. Also, boob jobs and face lifts are by far the quickest and biggest ways to boost your “bimbo attitude”, which is a form of status currency in the game.
• The whole fear that “bawww little 10 year olds are playing the game!” is kind of unjustified; I haven’t seen anyone younger than 16 years old play, and usually the age ranges from early to late twenties. But still, doesn’t mean young women aren’t impressionable.
• They’ve gotten rid of the “diet pills” that apparently you could get before to lose weight, but it doesn’t excuse the fact that they have an “ideal” weight for one’s “bimbo”, which is 127lb (about 57kg). Given how the character is relatively tall, that weight is probably lower than what’s normal.
• I’m surprised that no one has complained about the fact that one of the main ways to earn money in this game is from your boyfriend. That’s right, you are more or less obliged to get a boyfriend, who does nothing but pay you daily (for what, who knows) and gives you status. The higher level you are, the “better” the boyfriend you could get, who then gives you more money and more status dollars. Also, to complete goals, you’re constantly asked to break-up with current boyfriends and get newer, better paying ones.
• A number of the goals require a ridiculously high number of “bimbo attitude” points, which is quite difficult to get. One of the main ways to get it is to spend lots of money on changing one’s hair, makeup, getting a tan, body scrubs and of course, plastic surgery.
• One of the daily flash games that gives a small amount of “bimbo attitude” points, involves “french kissing” as many guys as you can in a club.
• While there is a thankfully wide range of clothing you could get for your modelesque bimbo, there is a disturbing amount of clothing that is incredibly revealing and just plain tacky. Also, you’re encouraged to shop as often as possible for clothing, as various goals require you to have a certain amount of clothing. One of the end goals require you to own at least 500 items of clothing.

I play this game for the fact that I like dress-up, virtual games to an extent, though I tend to abandon them after a while (e.g. neopets). Besides the horribly coded site, I have to say that many of the clothing items and the “bimbos” themselves are nice to look at. However, is this a bad game in a general, “people harming” way? I’d err on the side of “yes”. If I were to do a psychological test, and I was tested before and after 20 minutes of game play to rate my self-image/esteem, I’d probably do marginally worse after playing than not because I simply do not look like that character, even though she’s being portrayed as a desirable, modern woman. It’s not a mind-crushing, “I’m going to kill myself now” comparison as obviously this is a game, but it’s still a vaguely negative experience. To my mind, it’s simply not possible to say this is only “harmless fun”, as the sheer amount of focus on artificial and specific appearances and the prevalent ideas that men are to be used as resources really creates a specific image of how women should be/behave. The game never contemplates different types of women, but that only all women want to be cool, hot, talented and intelligent, superficial and heartless.

There really isn’t any reason for me to continue to play, except that it really doesn’t take up much of my time and that the whole “levelling up” system touches on my RPGesque need to improve gaming characters I’ve invested in. Do I recommend it? Not really. If anyone’s curious to try it, feel free, but I hope what I’ve listed is distasteful enough so that you’d give this a miss.

Other than that… nothing much to report. I was listening to my lecture yesterday, whereby the lecturer said “I’m almost done marking your papers and most of you did pretty poorly”. Argh so ominous. D:

BTW, yes, a layout swap, I got so sick of the previous one. I’m still too lazy to make my own though customising this one was relatively straightforward. All the plugins work again so finally all the links display properly and the archives are functioning again.

In the couple of hours of sleep that I got last night, I had the most vividly horrible nightmare that I’ve had in some time. I dreamt that there was a huge Earth-wiping comet heading our way, and I was waiting outside my house for Tim to show up so we could spend our last moments together. Moments after he stepped out of his car, the comet hit and we were both knocked back by the tremendous explosion. After overcoming the dizziness of the impact, I found myself suffocating under the crushing layer of dust and debris, while clutching at Tim’s hands as I presumably died. You have no idea how unpleasant and realistic it felt (this is not the first time I’ve had dreams of suffocation, I sometimes wake up from them with breathing problems :( WTH). And by realistic I mean hypothetical realistic as I’ve never suffocated nor been crushed before.

Anyway, that’s not the end of the story. I found myself “waking” from that into a futuristic environment surrounded by these weird aliens. The dream was really hazy with what they looked like; sometimes they were Roswellesque aliens, sometimes they were these slimy slug-like creatures. Anyway, dream knowledge told me that they had cloned me from my DNA retrieved from my apparently fossilised body. I was ecstatic to then find out that Tim was revived too! We were kept in a cell and observed which wasn’t a big deal until we eventually realised that they weren’t going to feed us. As we slowly starved (once again, really unpleasant in-dream sensation), I saw the aliens frantically trying to figure out what’s wrong with us, and it became a dawning realisation that they couldn’t figure out that we needed to eat (apparently they didn’t) and we couldn’t get this message across. Eventually I starved to death (and presumably Tim too) and the aliens continued to revive us (apparently each clone had up to date memories) and this horrible cycle of starvation and death continued because the aliens were too fucking stupid.

Also, today’s my mum’s birthday.

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!!

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*

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

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.