Bloody Bones

I'm reading my way through the Anita Blake vampire hunter series by Laurell K. Hamilton. I just finished book 5, Bloody Bones. It was pretty good, your standard action packed, monsters filled, bloody and gory Anita Blake novel. What amused me to no end was this description of Larry Kirkland, protégé and fellow animator of Blake:

"His short hair was the colour of a surprised carrot" Pg 16

Hamilton sure does have a way with words right? Well, we all know that the colour of normal carrots are orange, but what of a surprised carrot? Blue? Green? Only Hamilton knows... Lol, ok I'm lame but I really wish someone could show me a surprised carrot. Haha

Image credits: Book Binge

I searched carrot under Google Image, all I found was plain carrots, carrots lifting weights, carrots smiling, creepy carrot (like this one here), but what do you know, no surprised carrots. (Tell me, am I taking this joke too far?)

Vampire Knight Chapter 46

Vampire Knight is one of the few mangas that I periodically follow (others being Ouran High School Host Club and Skip Beat) and the latest chapter from Matsuri Hino sensei is damn bitter sweet.

*SPOILER ALERT!*

Zero and Yuki finally got it on. As in kissed. I've always been pining for this pairing that I nearly jumped up in joy when I read it. But looks like the kiss will be the first and last kiss between the two. Since they're saying their good byes to each other, with Yuki leaving with Kaname and Zero swearing to hunt down all pure-blood vampires. It totally pains me that Yuki and Zero won't end up together, by the looks of it. They've always had the greatest chemistry! More so anyway than Yuki and Kaname pairing. I'm mean am I the only one that thinks incest with your brother is just fucked up? (even if it's a common occurence within pure-blood vampires)

I totally laughed when we found out that Kaname is actually Yuki's brother and Yuki is some sort of repressed pure-blood vampire. No offense, Matsuri, but c'mon that's such a stupid plot line that you've thrown in! The fact that Yuki's mother somehow using magic to repress one's vampiric nature is nonsense. I mean how does one seal someone's vampiric nature?!

*SPOILER ALERT END*

Anyways, I predict it won't be long before I lose interest in the manga, but knowing moi, I'll probably still continue to read it just for the pleasure of the amazing art work.

Veronica Mars

I watched the first season of Veronica Mars over the Christmas holiday break. It was an awesome series! I watched a little of it on TV when it was on years ago but finally got the chance to watch the entire series now.

The series is about this not-your-average high school student Veronica Mars trying to solve the murder of her best friend Lilly Kane and along the way dozens of smaller mysteries whilst dealing with the normal ups and downs of the teenage girl's life. Veronica Mars is really the type of kick-ass heroine that I'd aspire to be. She's tough, cunning, resourceful but at the same time caring and vulnerable. Kristen Bell did an excellent job in portraying Veronica. Apparently, Amanda Syefried, the actress who portrayed Lilly in the series first auditioned for the role of Veronica Mars, but I really can't imagine anyone else but Kristen doing this role. She totally pulls it off!

I admit that in some of the episodes, the plot moves along so fast, you don't really get a chance to see how we arrived from A to B and quite a few times we don't really see how Veronica figured out who-done-it. But oh well, all in the name of a great drama!

The shows were cancelled after season 3, but apparently there is leaked season 4 pilot out on the net! EEk, I'm so excited!



Here's a clip of Veronica Mars singing One Way or Another by Blondie. She owned it!

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Christmas is really a love-hate occasion for moi. On the one hand, you have the festivities, the food, the presents and family gathering (which can be a good or bad thing) and on the other hand, I work insane hours, blow my bank account on gifts and run around doing crazy errands. Argh, gotta love Christmas. The most annoying thing about Christmas for me, since I work in a department store (only during Christmas, for the sake of my wallet), is that they play the SAME damned Christmas music, NON-STOP for the ENTIRE month of December. That's torture enough for me to think violent thoughts of wrenching Rudolph's bloody red nose off so they don't anything to think about anymore, etc etc.

Sorry that I haven't been able to (mainly like didn't bother to) take photos of the shopping centre that I work in's decoration. Its nothing compared to the Christmas decoration designed by Karl Lagerfled for Printemps in Paris. Damn, wish I could be there.

Anyways, Merry Christmas Joyeux Noël 圣诞快乐！



Image credit: I prefer Paris (I totally agree with the sentiment)

Little Britain

I'm bored on the computer with nothing to do, so I went to Youtube and revisited some of my favourite Little Britain moments. If you haven't seen the series before, you should definitely see it! It's a comedy-skit show created and stars the freaking awesome Matt Lucas and David William. Here are some clips from the series. There is a Little Britain USA now, which I definitely need to see.

Watch out for the last minute of this clip!



I laugh like crazy every time I see this clip.

Swallowing Darkness

This is the 7th book in the Merry Gentry series by Laurell K. Hamilton and I just finished reading it now. I don't know if you know much about Laurell K. Hamilton, but she is known for her Anita Blake and Merry Gentry series. I can't believe I faced the danger of getting into trouble at work just so I could read this book before everyone else can. (The book was on the newly received shelf at work, I'm number 105 on the wait list, so I just lifted the book and took it home to read. What? It wasn't like the customers on the wait list were delayed or anything, the new books sit on that shelf for days. I finished this book in just one night! I'm returning it to the shelf tomorrow)

*Spoiler Alert*

I have to say, I'm quite disappointed with the ending. Meredith and Doyle conceded (or do you say abdicated?) the throne to the Unseelie Court just so Frost could be human again. WTF? Laurell, you did not just put the readers through 7 books of political intrigue, assasination attempts, gratuitously growth of magical powers just so Meredith could give away the throne that she fought so long to get. But I guess now that Prince Cel is dead, she has lost one major reason to be queen of the Unseelie court, which is to prevent Cel becoming the ruler.

One thing to point out, Meredith stopped short of having tentacle sex with Sholto because they were interrupted. Being the sick person that I am secretly at heart, I was actually disappointed. I mean Diana Gabaldon (one of the reviews printed on the back of the book) wrote "I've never met a writer with a more fertile imagination". Just how fertile would Laurell's imagination has to be for her to write tentacle sex? (Not that it would ever be possible in main stream literature)

See more reviews of the book here.

Image credit: Koubou

Gaston

I went to uni the other day to hand in my application for a scholarship. Then I went to the library to get some French books. I got some Gaston Lagaffe comics and Jacques Prévert collected poems. Can you believe that the uni library has French comics like Asterix and Le petit Spirou? Quelle surprise, n'est-ce pas?

I really like reading Gaston, it funny and a good way to get my daily dose of French. Created by Belgian cartoonist André Franquin, its about a boy who raises hell in a newpaper publication office that he works in. He creates inventions in his office, carry scientific experiements that often go wrong, slacks off, cooks, redecorate his office, demolishes (accidental most of the time) the office building, brings random assortment of animals in... all of which of course cause major annoyances and troubles for his boss and co-workers all the time. Hilarious!! Its a wonder they've let him work there for that long! The series started in the late 50s but really, anyone who works in a office can sympathize with the characters in the comic.

Mon incident favori de Gaston est lorsqu'il a introduit une vache au bureau et Prunelle (je pense.. je ne me souviens pas bien, ou Fantasio peut-être) était forcé de partir le bureau par le vétérinaire parce qu'il la faisait peur et stressé. Je riait trop quand je lisait cet episode!! :D

Gaston with his instrument of epic proportions











The university library was pretty dead now that its the holidays. It would've been kinda spooky except it was pretty bright. I'm used to all the desks occupied by the students during exam time..

that's it

Yesterday I laughed when my agent sent me the details about a job. It was a commercial for an undisclosed birth control pill and for an undisclosed amount of remuneration. I mean I haven't had contact with my agency for a year and the first job they've sent me to is a birth control pill commercial? I get it, I'm an out of demand model who hasn't had work for so long now that she can't remember the last time she got a job.


But if you think that I'm that desperate that I'll take up any work, you're out of your mind.

Ok I learnt the lines of the script and went along to the audition today anyway. As with almost all auditions/castings of my life, I totally screwed it up. Majorly. They wanted someone who could speak with an American accent (it was for the American market) so they asked me to do an intro about myself with the accent. I got nervous and any accents I've felt silly enough to speak in started popping out, I could hear myself mixing Scottish and French and American accents all in a mumble jumble. And if that wasn't bad enough, when it came to the actual reading of the lines, I totally forgot them. Way to go, hunh.

The thing that irritated me the most was that the casting agent lady was so nice about it, she kept complimenting on little non-important things like "oh I like the way you did with your hands" (All I did was keeping them my pockets!) and "your smile is really nice" (this one was just lame!)

She shouldn't have been so nice to give me false hopes! Ok, I know I did terribly and you being nice is just going to make it that much worse because it'll give me false hopes and I'll be that much more disappointed when I won't get the job.

Sorry, I'm just being bitchy coz I'm such a miserable failure. The lady was genuinely nice and I'm actually grateful for that since she could've been so much more nasty about it. Still, it irritates me.

Bloody hell, I'm just gonna quit it. I've never did well at modelling, didn't even attempt to act for a second, why should I try now? I'll just stick to being plain old me. No more castings, no more running around town trying to find obscure audition locations. That's it.

I'm throwing in the proverbial towel and calling it quits.

5100

I'm doing a major in marketing, probably go into advertising (don't give me that look, marketing as a major is just as good as finance or economics or accounting. I don't know why a certain someone laughed when I told them that I was majoring in marketing. She laughed! in my face!)

Anyways I came across this advertising competition on Adkungfu for people who would like the chance to intern at one of the big 4 advertising agencies in China. I know, I know, I live in NZ and haven't been back to China in like 6 years, but I'd just like to see how far I can get with my little ideas.

You have to come up with preferrably a print ad, advertising 5100, a brand of minteral water from Tibet. The focus is on the pureness and the distinctiveness of the brand, with a message of this pureness in this unpure world. I thought it'd be pretty easy, you know slap a picture of the mineral water on some etheral looking Tibetan scenery and put a witty slogan beside it. Well, obviously dozens or so others had the same idea as me, and did just that. Here's one of them:
Damn it, they got there before me. So then I thought I could do a cool image of where you put the bottle of mineral water in the middle of a metropolitan city but through the bottle you see the clean nice bustling city but all around the bottle its kinda dull and dirty. you know, the idea of pureness in an unpure world. Well, someone else kinda got the same idea. Sigh can't do this one either.

So now I have thise idea of putting gift wrapping the bottle in glaciers (the water source is from glaciers), like those cool graphics where you shop the desired image onto some other surface, ie glaciers onto gift wrapping paper. Sounds good enough right, but I don't freaking know how to! I downloaded gimp, thinking I could somehow work it out how to do it on there but I ain't getting no where. So now I'm doing it old school. I'm printing all my images out and pasting them by hand then scanning it back to the computer to submit it.

Don't laugh!

So now instead of cropping tools, paintbrush and fill tools, I have to use glue, scissors and pencils.


I'm so not going to win this thing... :(

Le premier

This is the third time that I've started a blog. The first one was a sad attempt for attention (boy, was I looking in the wrong place. How was I gonna compete with millions of people for affection on the internet? Deleted it the next day after no comments. ha, wasn't too surprised)

The second one was actually a task that I had to do for work (XXX city library, you're so cool!).
we were learning about web2.0 technologies at work and we had to create a blog and document our tasks. That was pretty fun.

This time, I'd like to think that I actually have something to offer to readers or imagined ones anyways. Haha

Anyways, I'm not sure how much self intro I'm suppose to do, so just read the about me section or my profile or whatever it is...

ps: about the title, lingot is french for ingot, gold bars apparently. I found it just coz it sounds cool with my name. hehe