Bones

Did the whole "family" thing today and went to the Melbourne Museum.

Lots of interesting exhibits for all really.

An Aboriginal history section, if you haven't quite had your fix yet from every other museum in Australia yet, which is actually quite detailed and informative.

That Forest thing, which is an actual forest in a nice cage so nothing escapes. Couple of nice doo-hickeys and thing-a-ma-bob's growing out of the ground and living in the water in it... Like fish... And poisonous snakes... But beware of the eels, I'm told they bite...

Bugs, if that's your thing. You can watch those bull ants drag dead ants out of a nest, round the ground for a bit, then back in their nest... I spent about thirty minutes mesmerised by the little buggers...

Marine life, which included a giant squid (seriously, I've caught bigger squid fishing off the Moonta jetty...). Also for those who don't know, the blue ringed octopus has a tetradotoxin... I learnt that not from the exhibit, but from the ambulance people that escorted the person to hospital who asked me to "Look at the beautiful blue rings on this octopus" that they held in their hand... Stupid fuck...

Right next to that, some trippy 3D exhibit, which nothing to explain the tricks of the mind and how 3D illusions work, but instead was determined to freak me out by reminding me about how freaking big the universe is... Seriously guys, how depressing for science guys like me, knowing that no matter what crap we EVER do in our lives, we're never even going to scratch the surface of our knowledge... At least it motivated me to learn more, like quantum physics more... Unfortunately it did it too late... AFTER I'd finished VCE... Gonna have to work on that...

Outside of that, some dead horse with a big dick... I think I saw its heart in Canberra when I was there... It won't be running far it seems...

Upstairs, after sprinting through the dinosaur exhibit (they're just freaking bones for Christ sake...) it was the human body... Wondrous naked bodies everywhere up here... Saw a young teenage girl get her picture taken with a worryingly realistic naked teenage female dummy... None of the naked girls in these exhibits looked as good as the one that's my wallpaper, which doesn't even come close to the one I've had in my bedroom occasionally... Noticed that guys outnumbered girls, six to one, in the sexual reproduction section, and shuddered when a little kid shouted out for all to hear "Wheeee... Tadpoles!!!" Those ain't tadpoles buddy; they're half of what you are... Skipped briefly through the incredibly morbid "we used to cut up dead bodies for SCIENCE" propaganda (already converted...). Only then did I notice I was being followed by intestines... Great...

On the other side, back past those unblinking naked people, and those obsessed with them, was the mind exhibition... I stress test informed me my brother was normal (phew, what a relief) but I was calm, not that I needed a machine to tell me I walk around half asleep most of the time... I wonder if I would have got a reading at all if I'd taken Valium first. I stood in a "pod" for three minutes, where someone abused me for cutting the queue, and someone else threw up. Just great people... Good to see we've got it together... Highlight of the mind exhibition, the "dream couches," where they get you to lie down and experience a dream... Would be a hell of a lot easier if they didn't force a TV in your face that does nothing but show a cloud simulation... All I wanted to do was sleep, and all they wanted to do was show me the freaking sky... After the alarm clock went off, or maybe it was that kid untying my laces, not sure which, I got up and peeked into holes two feet from the floor showing possible "normal" dreams... Yeah, cause we all regularly enjoy dreaming of looking like a little plastic figurine running along a dark alleyway... Or enjoy the experience of having a bird crap on your head (he was smiling...). I endured about thirty seconds of a movie on depression before I wanted to kill myself and instead gazed over the massive dead whale that found its way into the main hallway.

Seriously, I've caught bigger... (And for those of you who remember year nine, you'll probably also remember her name).

Gift shop had nice frosted shot glasses, but they had some crap with that horse again on its side... Plain frosted shot glasses look best, when will you learn?

And a CD rack for CD's that don't have cases, which is all of mine... At $20 a rack, I can think of better places to spend $20 and get more than just a good rack... The butchers... What were you thinking I was thinking?

However, I'm not complaining about my day in the slightest. Between all the stuff that stuff I described above there was solid, whole-hearted knowledge, and you can't complain about that... Also can't complain about prices: Free for kids under 16, free for anyone who can pull a concession card out of their... wallet... and only six bucks for those who should not take their clothes off in public without getting arrested.

So you've been tasked with your little brother, sister, cousin, neighbour or all of the above at once for the day? Take them to the museum, but glue a tracker device on them or something, or you'll spend more time trying to find them, as opposed to learning, which is the main feature of this place... Mostly it's morbid curiosity and a desire to look at naked bodies for the older kids, and a desire to poke bugs, plants and other slimy stuff for the younger ones... Plus sex... Everyone enjoyed the sex... I know I did...

Limited Information

Which pretty much sums up what photo's I can show you of Rosebud and our trip away.

Most of the pictures have been withheld, not because the actions depicted were illegal, just not required to tell a story...

So I was bartender, which was a lot of fun. Especially as Al paid for most of the alcohol... Cheers buddy... Amelia, Nick, Izzy and I went to the beach one day, which was a nice calming experience. Al and CVP stayed home to inspect the TV for subliminal messages, reports show that there several messages hidden, including a request from many for "MORE!!!"

Luke was our wonderful host, who ended up mowing the lawns himself. He didn't have to, but did it anyway... Sophie stayed a few days too, adding to our numbers, except in the mornings when she'd disappear for a few hours to check the surf. We had a water fight, and got pretty wet... We slept in, and stayed up late... We gave Al something of a male version of a make-over, with a new sleek black hair colour and a waxing of the back of his neck. Learnt some things about each other on "Truth or truth" night, cause no one could think of any dares (Though I've thought of several now that it's all over... I reckon watching Christiaan run up one of those hills would have been worth it).

Definitely a time worth remembering, plenty to take out of it...

And today we got our VCE results... Did almost exactly as I predicted, with two surprises:

One – English; I really kinda hate English, and sorta didn't try at all for it... So why the hell did I get a 39 for the subject???

Two – Electrotech; expected a little more from this one really, mainly because I know I'm better than the 43 I got. Though depending on the number of students that actually did Electrotech in the state, that 43 could still be the top grade (last year's top grade was 49, then 47, then 45, then 43).

Other subjects were really as expected, my 33 in Methods CAS got scaled up to a 40 and a 34 in Chemistry also went up to a 39.

Coupled with my subjects from last year, Biology and Geography, I pulled a solid 91.55 as my ENTER.

Which clearly fulfils my requirement of a 72.10 to get into Engineering at RMIT (it's the longest course name in the paper, if you want to know which Engineering).

Happy? Don't know... Hasn't sunk in yet... Maybe it never will... It is only four digits and a decimal place afterall... And if you don't get what you want this year, you do a year of something else and transfer... Doesn't count for anything really... Does it?

Complaint Letter

To the development department, particularly the people specialising in the creation of Chickens, Turkeys and other birds that we eat:

I recently purchased a quarter chicken and chips for a dinner time meal from my local chicken shop. The chips were in ample proportion but that really has nothing to do with your department. I am writing to question the amount of meat that was in my quarter chicken.

I do not believe this to be the fault of the chicken shop, the piece of meat sold to me was clearly a quarter of a chicken. They had even provided me with the leg piece, notorious for having more meat than the wings. Even so, upon consumption, a mere two mouthfuls of meat were available.

Granted, the time it took me to find and eat these minor portions took the same amount of time it takes to eat a full three course meal in a fancy restaurant, but that was due to the difficulty in removing the food from the bone.

This raises my next grievance, the difficulty that people worldwide suffer with removing meat from chicken. It hides between bones, between gristle and in cartilage. This is clearly a manufacturing and development error in your behalf, as the development team for cows, pigs and most other food managed to please their consumers with easy to cut, easy to find, large portions of meat. I have never encountered difficulty in finding one whole mouthful of meat from a cow and their development team has my full regards. From your team there has been a countless number of times I have spent fifteen minutes cutting out multiple small sections of meat to make a mouthful, only to find that there is bone or cartilage in my mouth.

To be fair, you have correctly addressed the flavour of your product, as many other developments teams are attempting to copy your excellent work (The escargot team for example) and I do not wish for this desirable nature of chicken to change. I do wish, however, for you to address the issues described above. A possible suggestion as to how to address this problem could be to make the chickens larger, about seven feet tall should do it, which would create larger portions of uninterrupted meat.

Thank you for your time in pursuing this issue.