I came across this video (there’s also a part one and part two). A pretty courageous guy, Surveillance Camera Man, is “just taking a video” of random people in public. It seems creepy and harass-y, but it’s also somehow entertaining. Watching the array of reactions is just compelling.

It raises an interesting point, though. At any time of the day, we could have multiple cameras watching us, so why get so offended about one more? Well, maybe because it’s going to end up on YouTube, but they don’t know that. I usually shy away from video cameras and I definitely wouldn’t want a stranger filming me on the street. But still, I’m obviously filmed in public by CCTV cameras all the time, and I don’t give it a second (or first!) thought. Maybe we don’t mind being filmed in that way because we don’t expect anybody to be watching or paying attention to the footage. Or maybe we think it’s fine because it’s under the guise of “security”. I don’t know how much public security cameras actually enhance security, though. But that’s probably a different topic.

This comic showed up in my feed reader recently. It’s brief, but it holds so much meaning for me! And I know a lot of people can relate. Sometimes it’s just unfortunately hard to forget about all the dumb shit you’ve said and done in your life. And when, for some reason, it gets dragged into your short-term memory, you hate yourself and everything else for that brief moment, grimacing and cursing under your breath (semi-involuntarily!). You know it’s irrational hang onto crappy moments from the past so much, because probably no-one else remembers them so vividly as you, and they’re even less likely to care.

But I can’t help ruminating ok. Nedroid depicts this situation amusingly  too.

Well anyway, here’s a screencap from the most recent episode of Breaking Bad:

I think I smirked when I saw it. I was thinking, that’s right, the same show that depicts cooking meth, taking heroin, killing children, and melting dead bodies in acid, has to pixelate Bad Words. From what I can tell, the show being on cable and all, this swearing ban is imposed by AMC itself rather than the FCC or whoever. It’s just interesting that swearing is considered worse than everything on the list I just presented to you! Especially considering that the violence and drug themes are more graphic than what you’d see on network television.

Of course, I’d rather have some parts censored than write characters to talk the way they wouldn’t in Real Life. I guess it’s more credible. Fuck-bombs are occasionally in the Breaking Bad script, but muted in the airing. But it’s just like, I’m pretty sure people who are okay with the content of Breaking Bad are also okay with a bit of casual swearing now and again. AMC, are you really going to lose advertisers if you don’t censor? I wonder…

Showing someone’s throat get cut with a box cutter? “YEAH MAN GOGOGOGO”. Swearing? “NO WAY ARE YOU KIDDING ME???” Classic.

Charlie is a freshman. And while he’s not the biggest geek in school, he is by no means popular. Shy, introspective, intelligent beyond his years yet socially awkward, he is a wallflower, caught between trying to live his life and trying to run from it. Charlie is attempting unchartered territory…Charlie can’t stay on the sideline forever. Standing on the fringes of life offers a unique perspective. But there comes a time to see what it looks like from the dance floor.

I thought that I’d be reading a book about myself! Charlie sounds like high-school-me, after all. I thought I’d gain some sort of insight about who I am, somehow. I want to learn more about myself as much as the next guy. But although the novel covered many common teenage issues, upon reading it I don’t think Charlie’s experiences could be considered commonplace, even among “wallflowers”. It turned out that Charlie and I are not the same person, although I did enjoyed his perspective, and could still relate to some of his introspection.

It’s hard not to like Charlie — he’s a sweet guy, if naïve, and perhaps juvenile at times. Some reviewers online were convinced for a while that Charlie was autistic. He isn’t, but he does have emotional and social problems, this much is true. If I do too, they’re certainly not the same or externalised in the same way.

It also turns out that Perks is very quotable. I don’t want to repeat the lines here because I feel like some of them must be cliché online by now! From what I’ve heard anyway, they show up on tumblr pasted over random images. Still, it’s not often that I stop and realise I just read a great line and decide I need to keep it in my memory bank.

The best part of the experience was that I…I think it made me feel Feelings? Well, maybe. The reveal in the last couple of letters² was almost, as it put on the back of the book, “deeply affecting”. The ending is sombre, yet optimistic? At the start of the book, Charlie feels “both happy and sad”, and I ended it feeling almost the same way.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower really resonated with me, for some reason. Some books (and movies), you think are great, but forget them almost straight away. Sometimes you don’t realise how good they are until you keep thinking about them.

The movie

There’s a film adaptation coming out soon! Actually, there isn’t a release date for Australia (yet?), which is like, excuse me, film distributor or whatever, I want to see this. I wasn’t sure how well a film adaptation would work, considering the format of the book. A novel written as a series of letters, wherein Charlie very often discusses his feelings and background information about why characters are they way they are, might not translate to the big screen. However! The film was both written and directed by Chbosky himself, and I feel good about this.The trailer indicates there might be at least some narration? Well, here’s the trailer:

And it looks at least vaguely promising. But it seems a bit “generic high school movie”. And considering the mature themes in the novel, the classification seems lower than you might expect.

1. And I’m pretty sure that if you look up on YouTube any of the songs mentioned in the novel, there will be a bunch of elitists upset that people discovered the song through a book. It’s always the case. Damn hipsters.
2. Perks is an “epistolary novel”, which in this case means that it is written as a series of letters to an anonymous character. Almost like very-honest diary entries, since you don’t hear from the stranger.

1. Read Bossypants

How could I not read Tina Fey’s autobiography? There is no reason not to! Everyone needs some Tina Fey in their life. Having too much Tina Fey in your life is not even a thing that exists. But I don’t need to explain that, because y’all know it. Bossypants was very funny, and in particular I enjoyed reading about the process of developing 30 Rock. I learnt a lot! For instance, did you know the “backdoor bragging”¹ joke (part one, part two) was actually written by Donald Glover (aka Childish Gambino, aka Troy from Community)?² Also, it’s somewhat disturbing how much of the show is based on Fey’s experiences as a writer for Saturday Night Live. Pissing in jars, for instance? Totally real. It’s in the book.

“Autobiographical comedy” is not a genre I have much experience with, but Bossypants felt vaguely reminiscent of David Sedaris collections. Actually, I’ve only read one of his collections), but I think I would recommend Bossypants to Sedaris fans.

2. Found my Gameboy

Remember these?

If you say “no”, I will feel old. On the other hand, it was secondhand and already obsolete by the time I got it,  so I decide to feel not-old. Anyway, I found it. It didn’t work. But then it worked. And then it didn’t again. But it did last long enough for me to play some of my old favourite games:

Not-so-secretly, the Pokemon RPGs are still something I enjoy. The anime was always shitty; the games on the other hand…

Semi-relatedly, what’s with purists who deny everything after Generation I of Pokemon games? It wasn’t until Generation III that shit started getting ridiculous, wherein new Pokemon and abilities started become copies of each other. I guess I’m a Generation II purist.

1. I-I like when sitcoms coin useful terms, ok? Hi, Larry David…
2. Donald Glover was once a writer for 30 Rock and has appeared in a minor role in the show and been referenced as “that black kid on Community”. So they’re leaning on the fourth wall, of sorts.

Short post is short, so have some photos of my campus. I might miss it if I’m not there next year.

The Atheist Foundation of Australia’s “Census No Religion” campaign is primarily aimed at people who don’t take religion seriously. It promotes honest responses to the religion question¹ of the census, suggesting people actually mark “no religion” on the census if they are irreligious.

Why?

The census isn’t completed for no reason. Governments use responses to the religion question to justify spending of taxpayers’ money. Euthanasia and marriage laws, to name two issues, have heavy religious influence and basis. Further, I pay tax and completely object to the fact that religious instruction and school chaplains receive government funding. Teaching of comparative religion in schools by teachers would be a good thing. Not teaching of one specific religion by someone from the church.

All the Census No Religion campaign is asking, is that people consider what their religious convictions actually are, and be honest about them. I hate that the jerktards at the Australian Christian Lobby (one of my least favourite things) get to say that the majority of the country is Christian, even though less than 10% of us go to church, and more than the census figures would have us believe, don’t take religion seriously.

Who is the campaign aimed at?

It may seem obvious to mark “no religion” if you don’t have one, but there are two groups to be considered:

1. Those who write joke answers like “Jedi” and “Pastafarian”. You are not a Jedi, and you are certainly not a Pastafarian. Presumably most people who write such things don’t actually have a religion or don’t take it seriously, so it simply waters down the number of people in the “no religion” category. After all, these answers are actually marked as “not defined”, so there’s no point writing it (even if you really, truly, believe in The Force!).
2. Those who aren’t religious, but put down whatever religion their parents are, or the religion of the faith school they attended, or the religion they were baptised into but don’t actually follow. Pretty sure for previous censuses (censii?), I put down my parents’ religion as my own, despite having never actually had a religion in my life.

So…my advice is to GO FORTH AND SECULARISE ON CENSUS NIGHT! Or, if you are religious, that’s fine too. The campaign is simply promoting honesty.

1. The question asks, “What is the person’s religion?”, which is of course completely biased, but that’s another issue…

Watching

• Mad Men: I could say more, but I think the above gif explains a significant portion of the show. Pretty sure everyone needs a bit of Christina Hendricks’s ass in their life.
• Community: it’s so meta and about ten different kinds of lulzy. I…I just love all the pop culture references and callbacks and continuity nods. Um, yep.

Reading

I stopped regularly reading fiction a long time ago. Non-fiction is where it’s at.

• The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life by Richard Dawkins: as some of you may have realised by now, Dawks is one of my favourite people, and I would regard this as one of the best books I’ve read. It follows the course of human evolution back through time, from humankind to bacteria. It’s a longass book, and, admittedly, got a bit tedious towards the end, but it’s an excellent popular science read for a non-biology-studying person like me (and for biology people too, I imagine).
• Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson: we all find it hard to admit we’ve made a mistake. Cognitive dissonance is a well-established theory in social psychology and demonstrates that rather than owning up to a mistake or apologising for a hurtful action, people will instead start rationalising and justifying their decisions.
• Quirkology: The Curious Science of Everyday Lives by Richard Wiseman: a magician-turned-psychologist writes about quirky science of the everyday and various offbeat topics. For instance, did you know that there is an over-representation of marine biologists named Dr. Fish?

Playing

• Diablo II: I get the urge to play this again about once every year or two. It’s still great this many years later, what with the hacking and slashing and all. Blizzard is great. I’ve avoided becoming addicted to their latest offerings, but I’ll definitely be playing Diablo III when it is eventually released.
• SimCity 4: at first I was a slightly (okay, extremely) greedy mayor. Apparently it pays off not to tax the shit out of everything. Who knew?

It turns out that working almost full-time while being a full-time student and having all my assignments due at the peak of this busy period is not conducive to having any sort of “life”. Having one day off in seven weeks and being busy with aforementioned work/uni/etc. all day and well into the night every single day is just exhausting. And wearing shoes for all that time gets painful.

But anyway, as a lot of you (if I do, in fact, still have readers?) know already, I lost my job amidst of all this (for reasons not of my own doing, in case that’s how it sounds..!). Which means I now have available this mystical thing known as ~the weekend~.¹

And I’m pretty sure I’ve been aloof around my university friends (disgregard friends; acquire grades²). But that can now stop, I suppose. I “celebrated” finishing my assignments by seeing a show for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival with Lucy. Long story short, this happened to my arm, and fun times were had.

1. With which to catch up on all the schoolwork I’m behind in. Which is a lot. Argh!
2. Except not really…my grades may well be screwed.

Rule 34 of the Internet: If you can imagine it, there is porn of it.

Well! I recently formulated a sub-type of this rule. Rule 34b of the Internet states the following: If it exists, there is a Tumblr account for it.

I formulated this rule after marvelling at the sheer number of extremely niche Tumblr accounts that are floating around. For example!

• Asians Sleeping in the Library
• Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things
• Hot Chicks Picking Up Dog Shit
• Table for One

Yep, so totally go forth and spread this rule to make it ~mainstream~ and stuff. Or not, or whatever.