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It's over. Woohoo. I met some cool people, one of whom I will actually miss.



I have a week of work starting. It should be... interesting. I want to permanently work in a dementia ward. That'd be really nifty.



I left before the phone-number swapping got around to me, at the party we had today. Someone made a faux pas at me, and I was quite angry. Quite. Angry.

I just read a journal entry in which someone claimed to have a PhD. I figured heck, why not, clicked their profile and by my rough calculations, the person would be (going by their listed age) 25 this year.



PhDs usually take 6-10 years to complete. This is after a standard 3-year bachelor degree, and then a 1.5 year Masters. On average, you finish school at 17-18 years old, so you would be 31-35 years old (depending on whether Masters AND Honours are studied, and whether you do a research-based mode or not) when you get a PhD - unless you are extraordinary.

I am reading a page on people who are in their 20's and have a PhD - none of them are in the field that this person listed in their journal.



Furthermore, the area of study they claim to have a PhD in is a pseudoscience - "parapsychology". Only two universities in the entire world run a course on it - one in Edinburgh, the other in Holland.

A very limited handful of universities in the USA (where this person is apparently from) offer short classes on "parapsychology", but those classes are done in a rip-and-tear method - they debunk, wholly and completely, all that sort of nonsense.







I really dislike it when people claim to have a PhD, and they don't, and it's blindingly easy to prove.

PhDs can be some weiiiiird studies (my housemate has a friend who has a PhD in whether koalas use rope bridges that are across motorways)- but they are SCIENTIFIC. There is, as far as my online search has revealed, not a single person in the world who has a "PhD in Parapsychology" - and for a number of brilliant reasons, like the fact that PhDs are evidence-based, research papers based on scientific fact, making a breakthrough or advancement in your particular field. They are also marked and decided upon by a selection of experts in the area. As parapsychology is a pseudoscience, there is no panel of experts (all with extensive knowledge and/or PhDs themselves) in the field. It's all he-said-she-said.

I guess it makes me even angrier that... I know people who are engineers, I have friends who have spent years in University becoming neuroscientists and Physiotherapists, Vets and so on, and those friends wholly aim to PhD standards - as will I, when I get into my Bachelor.

It... argh. I guess it boils down to the fact that I hate lying in this manner, since university and medicine is so vitally important to me.



It reminds me of a particularly dense woman on here, who claimed to have a degree (or three - not joking) - "arts degree in science" or some such nonsense.



Really? R e a l l y ?

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LORDMOGY
19:01 Feb 19 2015

Well I have PHDs in Awesomeness, Bantering and Sarcasm. ^_^

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sahahria
11:20 Mar 01 2015

My best friend completed her PhD in chemical oceanography at the age of 24. However, she skipped high school and started university at age 12. It is crap when people try to fake what takes many of us, lots of time and money.

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Two weeks remaining. I am worried something will go wrong, but I am also positive of change, because I'm tenacious enough to chase it as far as I need to.

There's a few books I will happily never pick up (or pick up again).

For example, A Clockwork Orange (I got a few pages in and decided 'nope') and The Fault In Our Stars.





Shortly after being removed from my Advanced English class, I was put into a class full of dunces, and I went from having to read Othello to having to read "Before I Die", which is the story of a promiscuous 15 (or so) year old girl who has terminal cancer.

The teacher's words, upon us picking up the book, were along the lines of "If you don't cry while reading this, you're soulless".

It was the stupidest fucking book I have ever read in my life. I wrote out three paragraphs about that horseshit of a 'novel', and deleted them. Long, long story short, the book is terrible. Fucking. Terrible.



Anyway.



What does this have to do with books I will not read? Have you guessed it? That novel has exactly the same premise as "The Fault In Our Stars", as far as I can tell without reading it. Some sappy teenage romance based on death. Same disease, same age, same bullshit, only, for some reason, the author seemed to 'break it' much better than the author of "Before I Die".



Ugh. When I hear people rage, like rabid raccoons, about "The Fault In Our Stars", I think of the way people raved about "Before I Die", and I feel sick.

But then again, people are raving about 50 Shades of Grey - which is Twilight fan-fiction, so lolokay, again.

This is obviously a show of literary taste - I like books that have taken more than 1/8th of a brain to read, some people don't. That's okay.

Well, not really, because aforementioned horseshit ends up being a 'best seller', and we then have to deal with the rash of movies that come out afterwards, but you get the idea.



Best book I have ever read was one I picked up from a store, completely at random. It turned out to be one of the top five highlights of my life - The Name of the Wind.

It's got everything, and it's utterly fantastic.

Imagine this. You have spent the entirety of your child life reading crappy Nancy Drew novels, The Baby Sitter Club, and so on. Then one day, you see something new. You pick up some books, you read them, and you are utterly and completely changed in your tastes forever.

Harry Potter was that change. Those books were so intelligently written. They were clever, smart and witty and taught me that reading was not something age-based - it taught me that books are for everyone. That cleverness and wit is not something solely reserved for adults.

Harry Potter was the revolution of my reading, as a child.

The Name of the Wind was the revolution of my adult reading years. Wherein Harry Potter is almost perfect - The Name of the Wind is so fucking beautifully flawed. It's so many things - all of them heartbreakingly sad. It's intensely deep, convoluted and it uncoils like a chilling, haunting song. A melody in which you know the end to before you start. The end, so bleak and desolate, the end which gets slowly worse as you read on, come to utterly love the character, love with the crushing feeling of absolute and utter despair.





Sigh.



As for A Clockwork Orange, I just can't read rapey books. Makes me sad.



That was long-winded.

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ChessMaster
21:34 Feb 13 2015

"Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners."

Virginia Woolf

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I am actually enjoying class.

We start the fun stuff soon.

It's been nearly two years since I paid for a haircut.

I had a faux-hawk in 2013 (cut in a salon), and it was marvellous. As it was growing out, a few months later, I had it tidied up, professionally.

That was the last haircut I had done by a 'professional'.

I haven't been able to find people who listen to what I want - or are honest enough to tell me that what I want won't work (instead of blithely lying, laughing in a high-pitched tone and assuring that you can do ANYTHING with hair) - so for the last 2 years I have been cutting it myself.



It's actually pretty amusing. When I only want half an inch off, I literally only take half an inch off.

Weird, right?

What is this witchcraft?!

I don't know about other countries, but in Australia, getting a haircut - a standard trim - is on average $40 (female). That is FUCKING RIDICULOUS.

I refuse to pay a 20 year old girl with 6 months of training, $40 for a haircut that takes $15 minutes to do.

I know they have to pay store rent and pay for the accessories and the chemicals and all that bullshit - but you know what? When ALL I am getting is a HAIRCUT - none of this "cut, wash and dry" bullshit - JUST A HAIRCUT - I resent paying $40.

That is a fortnight's worth of good food.

That's a fortnight in bus tickets.

That's half a fucking concert ticket.

I also know that their chemicals are not anywhere nearly as expensive as they claim they are - you can buy exactly the same stuff online, for a fraction of the price.

Also need to add that men's haircuts are generally $5-15 cheaper than female cuts - no matter how long or thick.

Because stupid women will always pay more, and there is the assumption that men don't give a fuck.



I just... ugh.

I hate hairdressing. I hate it. It's such a useless profession. It is not needed, at all. It caters to vanity and vapidity. It caters to the mindset that you... ugh.

I hate it.



If I want anything done to my hair, I do it myself. I bleach it, colour it, cut it, wash and dry it, curl it... and you get the idea. I never curl my hair for any reason other than boredom, I only cut the ends off my hair when it's feeling icky, I almost never blow-dry it, and I only dye it occasionally...



I have cut my hair, the very ends, possibly 4 times over the last year. That includes bangs. That's $160 worth of haircuts. Doing it myself has cost me... $5 for kitchen scissors.

Ugh. I am stuffed. I'm watching Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, after eating half a bowl of vegetarian laksa. I used paste that was already mixed, and added vegetables, hokkien noodles and tofu. I also had a huge cup of Sencha.



Holy lord, it was so good.

I went shopping this afternoon, with a particular goal in mind - jeans. I have lost quite a bit of weight, bit since I tried, and failed to fit into a particular size I wanted to be in, late 2013, I was pretty damn discouraged. I was not going to buy expensive, nice pants if they were going to be too big in a few months, so I waited... and it paid off.

Long story short, I fit into the size I wanted. I am pleased in so many ways.

I fit into my goal size.

They are the first pair of really nice jeans that I have ever had.

They're beautiful.





Unf.



I got them at less than half price and I also got a nice sweat shirt for $10. It matches my jeans, funnily enough.





So pleased.

I found vegan hotdogs. The brand that makes them has only disappointed me in the past - they make "country Mushroom Pies", which were utterly and completely REVOLTING.



However. These hotdogs.

They.

Were.

Good.



Very good.

Good enough that I would easily buy them again.



I have a steadily growing list of taste-acceptable replacement foods. I'm pleased.

COMMENTS

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LORDMOGY
05:31 Feb 06 2015

But why?

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Owlish
05:36 Feb 06 2015

Because it makes me sad to eat meat. :P

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It has been nearly a month since I stopped talking to a very close family member. It makes me incredibly sad, as we used to message each other regularly, used to call every now and again. I miss that.

I am too proud, afronted and angry to fix it, though. Both of us are sure the other is wrong - I know, 100%, without a shred of doubt, that she is wrong, and I am backed up by 30 years of study, both scientific and legal.

She is led by faith spoted by a pyramid-scheme cult.



I am not going to say I am wrong - because I am not - but I want to fix this rift. I also don't want her to lie to me and say she is wrong, because that is not what she believes.



I just want to fix our relationship.



I have tomorrow off of class, I may go to the Buddhist temple.