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Hooray today is my birthday, making me 20 years old. Arriving at Mandarin class this morning I was greeted by my friends blowing balloons, with Martin trying to hide a birthday cake he had bought earlier. I was greatly touched by the effort they put into this and I appreciate Martin's effort into buying the cake and everyone else's contribution, making them some of the kindest friends I have ever had and making Martin the kindest fairy I have ever encountered. This has persuaded me not to capture him to use for research. For now.

After class Tony and I headed off to Strathclyde University where we we walked through a rather deserted campus and rested in a nice garden, spending a few hours drawing pictures and enjoying the sunshine. Our walk through the campus seemed eerily unsettling, reminding me of scenes from a number of post apocalyptic films, including the Omega Man where Charleton Heston played the last man alive wandering through a city deserted during the day while fighting nocturnal mutants at night. I drew an awesome armour clad warrior/dark knight, which gives a small indication of my fearitude.

I've checked on Spider and the grades for my Physiology II report have been revealed, 79% making it an A or 1st class pass. Excellent.

Nothing particularly interesting has happened in the past few days (apart from the death of Boris Yeltsin and the discovery of Gliese 581 c) Therefore I've taken the opportunity to discuss, or more correctly rant, about one of my dislikes, specifically abbreviations that people have been using ever since home computers and cell phones became widely used among ordinary people. When home computers became really widespread around 10 years ago some believed that they would be useful tools of learning and enrich our vocabulary. Clearly this is not the case. For example here are a few abbreviations that I've soiled my blog with:

"wtf, lol, rofl, 2moro, plz, thx, lmao"

These kind of things really annoy me. What on earth is "rofl" ? It sounds like Scooby Doo trying to say "waffle". So it's a relief to sometimes see normal typing:

"am i going to regret this or shall it be hilarious. what ridiculous patter. but it did bring a smile to myface when you talked about the change of careers. you should drop the test tubes and go get your single shot gunpowder filled brace of pistols and your cutlass. or either that your samurai sword, throwing knives and grappling hook."

Apart from the lack of capital letters this guy's typing is excellent. Contrast it with this fecal matter that I snatched from somewhere:

"hiya ano tel me bout it! am gd ta urself? av not bn doin much workin drinkin usual crap u? x"

That's not to say that I have a grudge against people who use these abbreviations. Many of my friends use them and they are intelligent people who either attend university or have graduated. However when young school children grow up not knowing how to spell properly and doing their homework in this way then it becomes a problem. Some of the things I see on the internet are so absurd it shocks me to my very bone marrow and makes my intestines rumble in disapproval.

As a small indication of my severe lack of maturity, I'll talk about pirates and how awesome it is to be one. I spent some time telling people about International Talk Like a Pirate Day (September 19th). This is an excellent holiday, even though I haven't even heard of it until yesterday, as pirates are cool and I'm one of the most fearsome. Pirates are cool because they steal from the rich and...well they keep it for themselves actually and either spend it all on alcohol or bury it in some obscure location. Since I'm the type that doesn't drink on a regular basis (i.e. never) the alternative is to bury it all - in a big treasure chest and have a map that looks like it was drawn by a 2 year old. My friend Martin seems to think I'm delusional as well as being very immature for a 19 year old soon to be 20, but he's just a fairy so what would he know?

I also came across Day of the Ninja (December 5th) which also sounds good. Both professions tend to involve being devious, brandishing sharp things and having an abundance of fearitude (an amalgam of being fearsome and having attitude). Except that ninjas move around stealthily, which brings back memories of the videogame Tenchu where much of your time was spent moping around in dark places taking the opportunity to sneak up behind someone and kill them. The most stealthy ninja like thing I ever did though was to steal freshly baked muffins from the kitchen. Mwahah, I am the Muffin King. However dressing like a ninja is probably not a good idea in this political climate, as having a piece of black cloth wrapped around your face looks altogether too similar to those guys in the Middle East who all seem to drive a Toyota Hilux, demonstrated on Top Gear as being near indestructible.

Yes it's Friday, the day before Saturday (my powers of observation are astounding) and Saturday is when the newest episode of Doctor Who is on. There's something very intriguing and exciting about the Doctor and his adventures through time and space and I have high expectations for his new companion Martha Jones. There was something I didn't like about Rose apart from her lack of brain cells (her huge mouth).

First day back at university, although we only had one lecture. The two week easter holiday was good but it's good to get back and focus most of my brain cells again on what I do-Pharmacy. Afterwards I spent time in the library, using up a collosal 250 credits on printing lecture notes for Bioscience (that equates to 250 A4 pages) with enough paper to account for a few acres of a rainforest. My computer got hijacked by my classmate Gail who seized the opportunity to add herself to my friends list on bebo without my permission. Curse you, I will have my revenge. And I did, now a big turd graces her whiteboard and demonstrates my absurd lack of maturity.

Afterwards I met with my sister for lunch at Oko. I think it's my first time there. The sushi was good although homemade sushi seems to be profoundly more satisfying. To my sister who may be reading this I'm subtly implying that it's time you made more of your delicious sushi, especially the ones with dried seaweed wrapped aroud the outside. Woops, so much for being subtle.

I Found out that a new J.R.R. Tolkien novel was released, well it will be tommorrow and being the Lord of the Rings fan I am I've ordered my copy on Amazon. It all comes to roughly £11, a good price considering the post and packaging included and it being an impressive hardback. It's called 'Children of Hurin' not 'Children of Urine' as some dimwitted person who I happen to know and who goes to the same university as me suggested. It's apparently darker and more tragic than the Lord of the Rings, as well as being much shorter (300 pages). Somwhat like the Silmarillion which I read about 4 years ago, despite it containing some really good stuff it was a seriously difficult book to read and tested even my patience. It's like reading Don Quixotie, long and with lots of archaic language. Hopefully Children of Hurin will be less taxing.

Hmm, had a nice steak for dinner. Rare with fried onions and mustard. Finished off with a bottle of soya milk and an orange. My sister couldn't finish her dinner since she had an upset stomach. Actually we had the same thing the night before and Eva didn't feel like eating. Must have ate something earlier. So I ended up eating her steak, which was really tough and hard, like my ass.

Managed to get some studying done for Pharmacy, Physiology class to be specific. It really pays to have all those notes I wrote earlier this year, saves me having to frantically flick through books and journals. Writing my own notes helps me learn stuff easily. Which reminds me, I had a funny lecture just before Easter break started on Reproduction. It wasn't funny because it was on Reproduction, the people who giggle at that should reflect deeply on their sense of humour then jump off a cliff in despair, lemming style. What was funny was the mention of VIP hormone. Hmm what does VIP stand for? Very impressive p***s?

I've started a new campaign in Medieval 2:Total war and so far have expanded England's territory, massacring soldiers of various nationalities in my quest for fame, glory, power and just some good old fashioned warmongering. The Pope excommunicated me for being too aggressive against France. This annoyed me greatly and so I waited for him to die of old age (or cholera/plague/typhoid fever/etc) so that my excommunication would end. Generally I'm amazed and surprised at how quickly Popes die in this game. The only thing I can think of that keels over quicker are fruit flies.

A while ago my friend Phil was over and we had a rummage in my wardrobe and found my old action figures. When I say this I mean the stuff that my mum didn't throw out or give to charity, which leaves me with very little. I still mourn how I lost so many of my Ninja Turtles stuff. At least I still have my SNES, minus the cables. I found one of the coolest things ever, a transforming Rocksteady, that dumb mutant rhino whose brain would make a pea look ungainly. This guy could transform into his human form and back, the human form looks suitably retarded. Anyway we were playing about when Phil broke his leg. The action figure's leg, not his own. So much for 'steady'. The only way you could really break a leg in my house would be to dive and tumble down the hard wooden staircase, then again life's too good so why would you do that? What the hell Phil?! How would you like it if I broke your toy, your PS2 for example? I got over it.

My friend Tony recently asked me if I was interested in joining his Manga workshop. He's really into manga and wants to gather some people to publish home made stuff online. I said yes. The only problem is that I haven't drawn pictures in a long time as I've devoted the larger portion of my brain cells to concentrate on my Pharmacy degree. Which is coming along fine in case anyone wants to know. I'm quite good at drawing but haven't applied pencil to paper in a while, the exceptions being when I drew a turd on my classmate's notebook when she wasn't looking then I struck again and drew a Ninja Turtle. Cowabunga Gail! Anyway back to what I was saying. I'm interested in this workshop but I'm going to have to flex my atrophied drawing muscles. Also I've been thinking about work arrangement. Is there going to be a dedicated story writer or will it be a more mixed arrangement? The same applies to the artwork. Personally the best thing would be to throw ideas around the team and share them. I'm interested in coming up with a storyline of my own devising, but haven't really got much done yet. What I will steer clear of is a story reminiscent of the ghastly Tenchi Muyo. My gods can an anime/manga get any more pointless? To finish on a good note, dinner was good.

Well that's me finished episode of 11 of Battlestar Galactica. I'm on Season 3 at the moment, possibly the last season. This is the remake I'm talking about, not the campy 1970s affair. The plot's quite convoluted and the style of the programme is quite distinct, everything looks gritty and worn out which sets it apart from other sci fi (Star Trek springs to mind). For those of you who have never seen Battlestar Galactica it's basically about humanity living on 12 planets then one day the Cylons, robotic creations made by humans, rebel and they fight a long war. Afterwards the Cylons isolate themselves for 40 years but return, having evolved and upgraded, and destroy humanity by nuking their planets. The survivors, numbering 40,000, escape in a ragtag fleet of spaceships led by the Battlestar Galactica (that's why the show is named so). People believe there is a long lost 13th colony of mankind and so they set off to find it. Pursued by the Cylons of course, otherwise it'd be a rather boring fifty something episodes. The 13th colony is called Earth by the way.
Generally the show is excellent, as I said the earlier the plot is good with a few twists and turns. Some of the characters are interesting. Gaius Baltar, for example, seems somewhat demented as he has conversations with a blonde woman who only he can see. Many of the main characters, who used to be male in the original, have been rewritten to be female. This includes Starbuck and Boomer as well as the President of the colonies. I think this is to reflect the more modern and egalitarian times we live in in contrast to the dark and primitive 1970s that my parents lived through, when space invaders was the most exhilirating video game you could play and people were unaware of the dangers of asbestos. My friend Manson said that eventually half the crew of Battlestar Galactica will be revealed to actually be women disguised as men. This sent a shudder up my spine especially when I imagined Admiral Adama wearing a dress. Adama also has a gravelly voice, which would be rather disturbing in a woman. It would suggest she smokes, tobacco smoke is one thing I hate more than boy bands. The only thing I could possibly hate more is when people tear bits off a banana and eat it in tiny bites. Anyway back to the subject of BSG (I'm using this abbreviation to save time even). The revelation that most of the crew are actually women would make a terrific plot twist. Forget about finding Earth or revealing the final 5 Cylon models, this would be the greatest idea ever! Manson, you are a genius, you must become a full time writer. Any how try watching BSG. It's really good even if you're not really into sci fi. To catch up on what you've missed try alluc.com