My life is tres good. My college friends were understandably disorganised re: Christmas but I have had pressies from pretty much all my online friends and the tree is almost buried! Not that I’m materialistic in any way Truth be said it’s the unwrapping that gets me – I love it!

So from myself and my gorgeously feastive fatcat (she’s really into Christmas this year – stealing baubles from the tree, playing with tinsel voluntarily, sitting on presents etc.)…

Sooo update! I moved home last Thursday and only just today cleared enough space on my desk to fit my laptop on. I enjoyed my few days holiday from the infernalnet though – very nice.

My sister took me to a Muse concert on Sunday at Earl’s Court – totally rocked! They have to be the coolest thing since Queen – such stage presence! I even liked the couple of songs I hadn’t heard.

On Monday (yesterday) I managed to send off everyone’s presents by post – oddly organised for me since it was in fact the day before the deadline for 1st class! You could see the resignation on the woman’s face as I pitched up with a large bag of boxes and a grin. One box at least has arrived at it’s destination already so hopefully the rest will make it in time as well.

Later that day we went to the Kenneth Moore panto – my 16th consequtive year? We can’t remember the first year we went but I’m guessing it was for my sisters 6th birthday, and it’s her 21st this year. She’s breathing a sigh of relief now as she’s got through 18th and 21st without me getting them to mention her in the birthday list… mwahaha… I’m just saving it up! This year was better than last year – Marc Seymour’s dame stole the show as usual, possibly pushing the boundaries of decency to new-found limits (on ghosts – “It takes more than that to put the willies up me….”). Though I do think that although Loraine Porter makes an excellent fairy godmother and is a class choreographer, she can’t beat Isobell Hurll as the baddie. Loraine just isn’t sinister enough! Excellent show.

Today we’re off to cook dindins for AnM and her sister – should be…. interesting to say the least!

Well it’s over. For now anyway, pending resits in March. I don’t want to dwell on it too much but for my own records there was a 2.5 hour paper of 27 short questions, and I totally missed out 3 of them because I ran out of time. I almost fainted when I realised that at the end of the paper – even writing one word on them could have got me a point – I could have answered them. Second paper was 1 hour of multiple choice, 54 questions. That went much better I think. At least I answered all the questions.

So yes, for the first time in my life I actually think I’ll fail and hope to pass. Usually I think I’ll pass and worry I’ll fail. Which isn’t actually me being cocky – if I know the answers and I know they’re right then fair enough – assuming I got over 50% is reasonable.

Arg. Anyway, the day ended up rocking – I met S and her friends in the Buttery (college bar) at about 4pm, and the drinks were very cheap After a couple of hours of chatting and drinking, we went to the Bing via L’s house – and L had some rather fabulous sloe gin. We decided it was in fact extremely sloe – initially very nice and warming it knocks you paralytic about 10 minutes later. And we had less than one glass between the four of us. Then onto the Bing for a slap up steak that none of us can remember (but I think it was fantastic, which is impressive for the Bing – usually they can’t cope with cooking steak anything other than well done). Plus it came with a free drink :blush: So yes, it was about 8pm by that point, I’d embarassed myself to two people already and spent the next 2 hours chatting cackling. Came home at about 10.30, and one of my housemates had donated a steak pie, which I duly cooked and ate. Fabulous evening!

I was planning on going shopping today, but I have to work out how to get my car back… we’re currently 3 miles and two bus rides apart. Or I could test my bike (and my balance) out… or I could worry about it later. That sounds good.

I’m freeeeee! And now I don’t know what to do…. We’ve decided it feels like we’ve been transported to Dec 15th with no warning and only 9 days to prepare for Christmas…

* To explain the title – Wobblers are dogs or horses with spine damage who go all wobbly. It was in my exam, it’s how I felt after my exam, it’s how I felt last night and it also sums up my skill level on my bike so it’s rather fitting all round really!

One more day to go – by tomorrow at 3pm it’ll all be over, one way or another.

Saw something that made me think today. In one of my clubs someone started a thread about how to breed feeder rats and mice for her snake. There were 5 replies before I got there and all of them seemed to accept that feeding live prey to a reptile is acceptable. Luckily it’s illegal over here (though of course it happens), but at least people doing it realise it’s not socially acceptable.

Which leads me to thinking – are there things in our society that we think is acceptable because our society does, whereas someone elses society thinks it’s not acceptable? I can think of plenty of things that American’s accept and we abhor – cropping, declawing, debarking and now feeding live food (obviously my reference range is someone limited to the animal industries) but it’s hard to think of something we don’t realise is potentially abhorant. Docking for example – we do it but in secret – we know we’re being naughty. Hunting – even if we agree with it we can’t ignore the fact that a large proportion of the country doesn’t. Even eating meat. If anyone can think of something we do that we accept blindly, let me know.

Ooo got one! We drink cow’s milk Apparently in the east they think that drinking milk once you’re weaned is odd enough, but to drink the milk of another species is just plain bonkers.

My blog is turning into a bit of a animal rights discussion forum. Odd.

Today we shall compare and contrast two species’ methods of coping with stressful situations. Firstly, the human in a lecture theatre:

The subject expressed her frustrations with 7 unhappy or angry faces, a snarling wolf and a request for the lecturer in question to proceed more efficiently.

Second species in question, is Oryctolagus cuniculus of the lagomorph family – the European rabbit. Here the subject has chosen to face the day ahead by eating breakfast in bed.

It was found that of these two species the rabbit had a far better day, despite the human subject gaining brief amusment from the random comments scrawled on her lecture notes.

A quick update on the life of Kai:

Kai <-- stressed, procrastinating, disappointed in self, failing to revise successfully, very sleepy, sleeping too much. Bad friend who keeps missing people's birthdays though is trying to sort it out. Keeps placing Sharpe's Escape, internet, TV, sleeping, daydreaming, Neopet's Stockmarket, staring at walls and filthy fanfics above revision - success does not lie at the end of such a path.

Froggy <-- missing, been unobserved for some weeks now. Suspect (and hope) that this is more because Kai not on chat to witness Froggy...

Ethernet cable <-- broke with fatigue (8 months of being plugged and unplugged took its toll) - still works but falls out randomly. Not important news but something in the forefront of my mind.

David Walliams <-- yum. Dunno why - possible because he likes cross-dressing... He's lovely in interviews - v. demure. He's on Richard and Judy tomorrow. *sets Reminder in phone*

NTL <-- pants shite company. Charged me £19 for pro rata services and claimed they'd told me they charged pro rata for part months. They hadn't - I'd phoned twice to check amount. Apparently month starts on the 3rd. And they set the install date as the 27th. So who's fault is it I had a part month...? *ponders*. 30 mins of abusing customer support got me a £10 rebate. Gits.

Christmas <-- tree is up in both homes - rather better in real home due to being 6 foot with fantastic decs, as opposed to 4 foot with 20 year old tinsel and no star. Present buying thus far fairly unsuccessful - my personal shopper (aka sister) is doing well with the presents we get between us. Looking forward to massive shopping spree on the 15th...

Rabbit <-- has taken to playing Brighton beach with her litter and eating the carpet and furniture. Kai is not amused. Suspect evil beast is bored.

Arg. Argle argle argle. Nftipimplepooparg.

People are like slinkys… totally useless, and it’s fun to watch them fall down stairs…

I just ate dinner (fish fingers luckily, given the following) while watching BBC’s Full On Food programme – it’s a kind of Richard and Judy with food for those who don’t know – rather twee. However today the presenter (a former “militant vegetarian” apparently) presented a piece on Meeting your Meat; he went to an organic farm, selected a steer, followed it to the abbetoir, witness it’s slaughter and processing and was given the sirloin steak to eat. He was unable to eat the meat that day but later ate some shin meat from the same animal on the show.

For a program on before 9 it seems rather adventurous – the few parts they omitted were the stunning of the animal with captive bolt, the action of slitting it’s throat, and a wide shot of jointing it. They did show the stunned animal being rolled out of the crush and the blood draining away after it’s neck was cut so it wasn’t glossed over at all.

At the begining of his presentation I did comment on how fluffy it was – he compared the steer to his dog etc. and had a very perplexed expression for the most part. However it was actually a very thought-provoking piece – putting the belief that you shouldn’t eat anything you aren’t prepared to kill into practice.

It is a false situation for us to be in though – when the choice is removed from us we do find it easier to kill and eat – my sister for example had to prepare her own fish from scratch for dinner when she was pretending to be in the Iron Age. If she hadn’t done so, she wouldn’t have eaten that evening. And she said it was the nicest fish she’d eaten. Seeing as we’re prepared to kill and eat when we will be hungry if we don’t, it seems somewhat supersilious to me to not eat meat when you don’t need to. My friend who is an ardent vegetarian I think would not eat meat even if she was starving, and I respect her for that. Vegetarians who eat fish for example… or who wear leather, or people who just don’t eat red meat but poultry is ok – I find that harder to appriciate. I don’t eat seafood – perhaps this makes me a hipocrite – I don’t feel seafood are humanly killed, whereas I feel red meat is. I haven’t decided about poultry yet. One thing I must stop is eating fish – I think they aren’t humanely killed and yet fish fingers are so easy to buy and cook. It’s very easy not to think about it.

The encouragement to think about the quality of the meat you eat is equally thought provoking – I do go to supermarkets and buy the cheap stuff, and I know full well I should be buying meat from known sources. Although there isn’t the moral implications there are with meat, the same is true of vegetables and other foods – I want to know where it’s come from and what’s happened to it. I wouldn’t eat food from my garden without being sure that no cat’s had had the chance to piss on it…

I can’t not eat meat – plants just aren’t the same, they don’t have the same kick and I know that makes me sound like a predator. I don’t *want* to not eat meat – I see the breeds we’ve developed as something important to continue – the old breeds were created because they were excellent for their purpose, and there are people out there who do the industry proud and raise good animals for meat in excellent conditions. There are likewise some very poor conditions animals are kept in. That’s my next step in sorting out life choices I think – where do I draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable, and how much work am I willing to put into working out which is which, and is it enough to warrant me continuing to eat meat?

So a very jumbled entry from me – I expect I’ll need to think about this a bit more. Probably should wait until after my exam though…

EDIT – the irritating thing is that the most thought-provoking, valuable, adventurous and volatile part of the program and it gets barely no mention on the website. In fact, the entire piece has been summed up in “Richard visites an abattoir”. Four words, and one of them is even spelt wrong.