Had a good $%#& lately?

So did I get your attention? Think you know the missing word? I bet you don't....




I was just thinking it's been ages since I had a good READ lately... hahahaha...

I have been looking at the top 100 best reads from 1923 - present. This list was done by Time Magazine in 2005 so maybe there has been some awesome books since then released but who knows..

Let's focus on one thing at a time.. I pride myself on being a reader - I pride myself on finding obscure authors and reading their stuff. I realised today I very rarely read what I should. I don't do the popular thing - I can't make myself read something a million people are telling me to read - yet I have NO qualms telling people what books they simply "must" read. Can anyone say hypocrite???



So here's the list in no particular order - actually that would be in alphabetical order :p


The Adventures of Augie March
Saul Bellow

All the King's Men
Robert Penn Warren

American Pastoral
Philip Roth

An American Tragedy
Theodore Dreiser

Animal Farm
George Orwell

Appointment in Samarra
John O'Hara

Are You There God? It's Me, Margaret
Judy Blume

The Assistant
Bernard Malamud

At Swim-Two-Birds
Flann O'Brien

Atonement
Ian McEwan

Beloved
Toni Morrison

The Berlin Stories
Christopher Isherwood

The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler

The Blind Assassin
Margaret Atwood

Blood Meridian
Cormac McCarthy

Brideshead Revisited
Evelyn Waugh

The Bridge of San Luis Rey
Thornton Wilder

Call It Sleep
Henry Roth

Catch-22
Joseph Heller

The Catcher in the Rye
J.D. Salinger

A Clockwork Orange
Anthony Burgess

The Confessions of Nat Turner
William Styron

The Corrections
Jonathan Franzen

The Crying of Lot 49
Thomas Pynchon

A Dance to the Music of Time
Anthony Powell

The Day of the Locust
Nathanael West

Death Comes for the Archbishop
Willa Cather

A Death in the Family
James Agee

The Death of the Heart
Elizabeth Bowen

Deliverance
James Dickey

Dog Soldiers
Robert Stone

Falconer
John Cheever

The French Lieutenant's Woman
John Fowles

The Golden Notebook
Doris Lessing

Go Tell it on the Mountain
James Baldwin

Gone With the Wind
Margaret Mitchell

The Grapes of Wrath
John Steinbeck

Gravity's Rainbow
Thomas Pynchon

The Great Gatsby
F. Scott Fitzgerald

A Handful of Dust
Evelyn Waugh

The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter
Carson McCullers

The Heart of the Matter
Graham Greene

Herzog
Saul Bellow

Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson

A House for Mr. Biswas
V.S. Naipaul

I, Claudius
Robert Graves

Infinite Jest
David Foster Wallace

Invisible Man
Ralph Ellison

Light in August
William Faulkner

The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe
C.S. Lewis

Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov

Lord of the Flies
William Golding

The Lord of the Rings
J.R.R. Tolkien

Loving
Henry Green

Lucky Jim
Kingsley Amis

The Man Who Loved Children
Christina Stead

Midnight's Children
Salman Rushdie

Money
Martin Amis

The Moviegoer
Walker Percy

Mrs. Dalloway
Virginia Woolf

Naked Lunch
William Burroughs

Native Son
Richard Wright

Neuromancer
William Gibson

Never Let Me Go
Kazuo Ishiguro

1984
George Orwell

On the Road
Jack Kerouac

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
Ken Kesey

The Painted Bird
Jerzy Kosinski

Pale Fire
Vladimir Nabokov

A Passage to India
E.M. Forster

Play It As It Lays
Joan Didion

Portnoy's Complaint
Philip Roth

Possession
A.S. Byatt

The Power and the Glory
Graham Greene

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
Muriel Spark

Rabbit, Run
John Updike

Ragtime
E.L. Doctorow

The Recognitions
William Gaddis

Red Harvest
Dashiell Hammett

Revolutionary Road
Richard Yates

The Sheltering Sky
Paul Bowles

Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut

Snow Crash
Neal Stephenson

The Sot-Weed Factor
John Barth

The Sound and the Fury
William Faulkner

The Sportswriter
Richard Ford

The Spy Who Came in From the Cold
John le Carre

The Sun Also Rises
Ernest Hemingway

Their Eyes Were Watching God
Zora Neale Hurston

Things Fall Apart
Chinua Achebe

To Kill a Mockingbird
Harper Lee

To the Lighthouse
Virginia Woolf

Tropic of Cancer
Henry Miller

Ubik
Philip K. Dick

Under the Net
Iris Murdoch

Under the Volcano
Malcolm Lowry

Watchmen
Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons

White Noise
Don DeLillo

White Teeth
Zadie Smith

Wide Sargasso Sea
Jean Rhys


So how may of these have I read? Not as many as I should have. How many have I always meant to read but never got around to it. Quite a few... I think it's time.... Time to join a library again. Get a book out and read read read.. Alas it will have to wait until Uni holidays ;)

So tell me how many of these have you read? How many of these do you want to read? And is your favourite book on here? If not what is yours???

Do I have a favourite book? Probably not but I do love the first one from my series Wheel Of Time - that book takes me right back to the beginning of the series when everything was shiny and new and exciting and UNKNOWN.. I love re-reading it to get that feeling back.. Same as the Narnia books - they take me back to that time when anything was possible and where it was believable to be able to get to another world through a closet... I watched Limony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events last night with Sammo (when is the next one coming out or is there no others??) and it make me wish I was a child so I could read that book. I wonder if the feeling you have when you re-read a childhood favourite would be there with a children's book you are reading as an adult... Or would it just disapoint cause you don't believe in magic and well really in anything anymore - your too grown up for that...


Thoughts?

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Size does matter...

In fact size US 10 (Aus 14) matters...

This is the size of the new America's Next Top Model (Whitney Thompson) - and she is damn hot.. Plus size? Not really sure but she is defintely carrying more booty than most models... BUT as I am the size of most models do I like some of the comments coming out of Whitney's mouth?

So this is plus size???









These are the contestants from cycle 10 ANTM.. Whitney has dark hair and is second from the left..


NO I don't like the WAY she is saying them. I think what she meant but who knows is that people shouldn't be afraid of being a larger sze than a 2 - but it is being discriminatory against us poor kids who don't have booty and will likely NEVER have booty..

"This is what people should look like," Thompson told the media, referring to herself, "rather than skin-and-bones, which is disgusting and sends a bad message to people everywhere."

I'm sorry I think what you meant to say is that EVERYONE should be working at being healthy and the size they were made. NO starving yourself to be a size 0 (Aus 4). NO gorging yourself and affecting your health...

I would love to have curves but it is never going to happen. I would like Whitney to talk to my GP and see that I have been tested for absolutely everything - there is not one god damn thing wrong with me. I don't have an overactive thyroid, I am not a coeliac, I don't have diabetes. NOTHING just a very fast metabolism - other than that I am perfectly healthy and my GP is happy with my health.


I also want to point out it isn't like I was a "normal" weight and then dropped 2-3 dress sizes. I have been this size since I was 17 people - it ain't going to change. The sooner you realise people come in all shapes and sizes and NOT every skinny girl is an anorexic in disguise the sooner everyone will get back to loving what ever size they are...


So the next time people laude Whitney for showing the world what a "REAL" girl looks like I want to say she looks like Me, you, Whitney, Kate Moss, America Ferrara... Tall, short, skinny, curvy, big, small we are all who we are meant to be and the sooner you realise that the soon you will be happy and complete!




Whitney looking very hot!

Do I want Whitney to succeed in the top fashion industry - hell yes we need more women in all different shapes and sizes out there showing you how it's done... Do I think she will succeed - only if the top people in the Fashion Industry change their ways of thinking...

Do I think modeling and constantly being called "plus-sized" or "full-figured" will get to Whitney, and there will be too much pressure for her to lose weight - unfortunately I think it will. She does seem to have a healthy self esteem but this is the fashion world - it's cut-throat and bitchy and people are literally dying to be what everyone tells them to be..

Good luck Whitney and let's hope Elite Model Management holds up their end of the bargain and makes you a star!!

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Sometimes people write MY songs for me..

I finally got the Be Your Own PET onto my phone...




and I like it - I would go into a little speel about the album but I can't be bothered... all I can say is it sounds a little more mature but yet still very typical BYOP music. Maybe it's not as racous and mind numbing as before (if played too loud on headphones. It's still as messy as the previous album but it feels deliberate and orchastrated this time rather than just a happy coincidence (as in they didn't really know what they were doing it just happened to work)... Now I would imagine they had a lot of help on the first album but it was made to intentionall sound like they didn't... But on this one it is easier to listen to all at once...




and to leave you with the lyrics that have been stuck in my head for a few days (especially the Woo bit)

I can see you're looking
and I really really want you to
and I dont know if he knows
that I'm looking straight at you
every time that I see
you looking right at me
I forget that I belong to somebody

I can see you're looking
and I really really want you to
and I dont know if he knows
that I'm looking straight at you
every time that I see
you looking right at me
I forget that I belong to somebody

woo
you're making me think
way too hard
woo
you're making my stomach hurt way too much

the sun is getting brighter
but I'm still cold
said to tell me that
you feel too old
the sun is getting brighter
but I'm still cold
don't just start to tell me how you feel

I can see you're looking
and I really really want you to
I would do anything that you wanted me to do
but i know I'm not allowed
with everyone around
I've got to hide these feelings so they cant be found

I can see youre looking
and I really really want you to
I would do anything that you wanted me to do
but I know I'm not allowed
with everyone around
I've got to hide these feelings so they cant be found

woo
you're making me think
way too hard
woo
you're making my stomach hurt way too much

the sun is getting brighter
but I'm still cold
said to tell me that
you feel too old
the sun is getting brighter
but I'm still cold
dont just start to tell me how you feel

Maybe I'm thinking way to much
seeing things that just aren't there
and I guess its for the best
cause I've got someone else who cares

woo
you're making me think
way too hard
woo
you're making my stomach hurt way too much
woo
you're making me think
way too hard
woo
you're making my stomach hurt way too much

the sun is getting brighter
but I'm still cold
said to tell me that
you feel too old
the sun is getting brighter
but i'm still cold
dont just start to tell me how you feel

Heart Throb - BYOP


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What is a Masters worth?

Apparently to John Hopkins (now this is a world class hospital/university - very prestigious and I would imagine the pick of the top in any field) - not that much...


Qualifications: Master’s degree in genetic counseling required. Board-certified or Board-eligible required.

Approximate Starting Salary: $36,536 - $50,301




Am I expecting too much? That is a salary I wouldn't even look at on just a Bachelor of Science NOT a Masters in Genetic Counseling... Genetic Counselors are in great demand now days - I know it is one of the jobs you can get a UK work visa turning into aplication for residency for.. Really would you move all the way over the other side of the world for $36 thousand a year _ HELL no... I am earning more than that now at GE Money in a call centre...



Hmm well this sounds interesting and it's a Masters in Science - THIS is the amount I would expect to be earning...

Cardiovascular perfusionists - In 2006 the salary range for most perfusionists was $87,569 to $105,609 per year. The median salary was $96,144.

Ok I probably wouldn't have expected quite this amount myself BUT as a Master's Degree I say this is what you would be wanting to aim for..

So what do you think - Natalie Doyle Cardiovascular Perfusionist anyone???



Ps in case you were wondering what one was when I saw it on the salary website - I wanted to know who was earning so much money and what the hell they did...

ACardiovascular Perfusionist, also known as a clinical perfusionist, is a trained health professional who operates the heart-lung machine during cardiac surgery and other surgeries that require cardiopulmonary bypass.

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Did you miss this post or is no one interested...

I wrote this post last saturday - 10/05/08 - no one commented so I don't know if you missed it OR if your not interested. Let me know if your not interested in these types of posts cause there is no point me writing them if no one is going to read them...





So I learnt a little about breast cancer today (in my immunology lecture). And now I understand why they say once you have breast cancer it will ALWAYS come back


So basically we have somatic (Non-embryonic stem cells that are not derived from gametes - egg or sperm cells - ) stem cells in our breasts.

Stem Cells = Stem cells are the body’s blank or “master” cells. They are the foundation cells for every organ, tissue, and cell in the body. Stem cells can renew themselves indefinitely and give rise to (differentiate) many types of specialized cells, such as muscles, nerves, organs, bone, blood, and so on. These properties make stem cells different from the body’s other mature cells. For example, a skin cell can only divide and generate new skin cells.

So what happens is when the stem cells renew and differentiate (become other stem cells as well as other breast cells). Something goes wrong and the new stem cell becomes a tumor cell, which proliferates (grows) uncontrollably.

So we irradiate AND inject toxic chemicals (chemotherapy) to kill the cancer cells. NOW stem cells are hardy little buggers and don't die during this. So what happens - they continue to proliferate EXCEPT this time they are now immune to irradiation and chemotherapy.....

My lecturer is develping Immunotherapy to combat cancer (mainly breast cancer, stage IV's melanoma's (usually only have about 6 months to live once you are at Stage IV) and another cancer that I forget at this moment).

What they are doing is taking monocytes (A monocyte is a leukocyte, part of the human body's immune system that protects against blood-borne pathogens and moves quickly (aprox. 8-12 hours) to sites of infection in the tissues.) and changing them into dendritic cells (the most immune-stimulating cells in the human body) and then exposing them to the cancer cells so they recognise it and then injecting it into the body...

They seem to be having a fairly good response to it. With both the Stage IV melanoma's and the breast cancer (he didn't really talk about the other cancer I THINK it was non-Hodgkin's lymphoma or a type of lymphoma anyway)...


He even showed pictures (CT scans) from some of the patients in the clinical trial of melanoma's. So far they have trialled it on 39 patients and of those 39 patients 7 have had complete response (cured); 5 have had partial response and 1 has had stable disease (meaning it stayed the same). So it doesn't seem like a HUGE success but think about it of those 39 patients who only had at most 6 months to live - 7 have survived completely cured. FIVE have survived but had the disease come back years later and 1 had the disease not grow any larger.


Anyway I am sure that just bored the pants of you all....

Ps lecturer = J. Alejandro López

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Sass & Bide Vie - Hero's or Villains..

So here I am wanting and lusting after these leggings by Kova and T - called Oxy Leggings. Think Kate Moss @ Glastonbury, Mary-Kate/Ashley Olsen @ anything... Hell even think Lindsey I am a mess Lohan...




Well they are $140 US - a lot of money for leggings I hear you say - yes it is but do think of these leggings as more like jeans. Isn't that a reasonable amount for a pair of hot shiny jeans??

Ok so here is the picture so you understand!!!
















BUT wait there's more....

Sass and Bide brought out a pair of leggings called Black Rat's for there AFW - they never intended to sell them - they were just for their show - but apparently they have had such a HUGE response that they are now in production and they are going on sale in June/July...

The Black Rats are selling for $176 (AUS) so a little more than the Kova & T leggings - but I am thinking I might like these more. S&B has always been good to me and they are Australian and far easier for me to get. In fact I could pre-order a pair on Mycatwalk.com.au today!!

Without further ado - I give you Black Rats..












Now the S&B ones come in size S/M (8-10) or M/L (10-12) While the Kova & T ones come in XS and S - they say they run small so to go up a size - but that if you get them too large they bunch and look silly. I am finding it extremely difficult to find the sizings for them... I'll keep looking - while YOU help me decide which ones to get??




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Be Your Own PET

I have the new Be Your Own PET album (Get Awkward).


I planned on doing a review of the album but alas I can't seem to download it onto my phone. Everytime I do it - it says it is already on there but it's NOT...

I don't have any speakers for my computer as they broke. I haven't even listened to it.. I have had it for a WEEK!!!



AHHHHHH
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Fur is GREEN

AFTER decades as the pariah of the fashion industry, fur is fighting back — with claims it is one of the most environmentally friendly clothing materials that exist.

Fur is renewable, non-polluting, biodegradable and energy efficient, and wearing fur will protect the planet's precious ecosystem, say producers.

If you wear fur it is considered cruel, even evil.. I wonder if these same people eat meat, drink milk, or anything with animal byproducts (leather shoes anyone). I mean fur now days isn't produced from endangered species, yes they are farmed for their fur, but aren't all animals farmed for something. Don't we produce baby cows just so we can milk their mothers? Don't we have battery hens and range free hens just to steal their eggs? Aren't cattle put into feed-lots to fatten them up just for us to eat?

How is any of this different from using their fur to keep warm...

Now I am not saying I advocate fur - or that I would even wear it - I am just asking the question. WHY is there such a stigma for fur? Why is it that to wear fur you are a murderer and people throw red paint on you to signify the blood of the animal you are wearing. I have never had anything remotely like this happen when I indulge in a burger from Hungry Jacks or McDonald's - why am I NOT a murderer (in fact aren't I more of a murderer because I am ingesting the animal not just wearing it)..





So what do YOU think? Here is the FENDI coat (called the Yeti coat I think) how hot do these girls look? (Kate Moss off to a Led Zepplin gig and Kate Bosworth wearing it at the Fendi Show in China)




I have wanted a fur coat (not real cause let's face most it real fur coats are ugly and far to expensive for my budget) for ages now. I am bidding on one at ebay..

Do you think I can get away with this in BrisVegas?




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I'm going to tell you a story...

....said Zedka.

"A powerful wizard, who wanted to destroy an entire kingdom, placed a magic potion in the well from which all the inhabitants drank. Whoever drinks that water would go mad.

"The following morning, the whole population drank from the well and they all went mad, apart from the king and his family, who had a well set aside for them alone, which the magician had not managed to poison. The king was worried and tried to control the population by issuing a series of edicts governing security and public health. The policemen and inspectors, however, had also drunk the poisoned water, and they thought the king's decisions were absurd and resolved to take no notice of them.

"When the inhabitants of the kingdom heard these decrees, they became convinced that the king had gone mad and was now giving nonsensical orders. They marched on the castle and called for his abdication.

"In despair the king prepared to step down from the throne, but the queen stopped him, saying 'Let us go and drink from the communal well. Then we will be the same as them.'

"And that was what they did: The king and the queen drank the water of madness and immediately began talking nonsense. Their subjects repented at once; now that the king was displaying such wisdom, why not allow him to continue ruling the country?

"The country continued to live in peace, although its inhabitants behaved very differently from those of its neighbors. And the king was able to govern until the end of his days."

This is from a book I read recently called Veronika Decides To Die - by Paulo Coelho

"...In the cathedral in Florence, there's a beautiful clock designed by Paolo Uccello in 1443. Now, the curious thing about this clock is that, although it keeps time like all other clocks, its hands go in the opposite direction to that of normal clocks."

"What's that got to do with my illness?"

"I'm just coming to that. When he made this clock, Paolo Uccello was not trying to be original: The fact is that, at the time, there were clocks like his as well as others with hands that went in the direction we're familiar with now. For some unknown reason, perhaps because the duke had a clock with hands that went in the direction we now think of as the "right" direction, that became the only direction, and Uccello's clock then seemed an aberration, a madness."

[snip]

"Have you ever met anyone in your entire life who asked why the hands of a clock should go in one particular direction and not in the other?"

"No."

"If someone were to ask, the response they'd get would probably be: 'You're crazy.' If they persisted, people would try to come up with a reason, but they'd soon change the subject, because there isn't a reason apart from the one I've just given you. So to go back to your question. What was it again?"

"Am I cured?"

"No. You're someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that, in my view, is a serious illness."

"Is wanting to be different a serious illness?"

"It is if you force yourself to be the same as everyone else. It causes neuroses, psychoses, and paranoia. It's a distortion of nature, it goes against God's laws, for in all the world's woods and forests, he did not create a single leaf the same as another. But you think it's insane to be different, and that's why you chose to live in Villete [mental institution], because everyone is different here, and so you appear to be the same as everyone else. Do you understand?" (Coelho, 168-169)

The premise of the book is "collective madness is called sanity".


Read the book. If nothing else it is a story teaching you to live your life cherishing each and every day no matter how mundane OR insane it is....


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A thought is forming...

Bare with me - my thought process if very very jumpy, and doesn't usually make sense...


I was reading the the other day. NY Times

Was reading a story about GetUp!. this political awareness group I belong to.

They have released a new version of this awesome song called "From Little Things, Big Things Grow..." it includes excepts from PM Kevin Rudd's Sorry Speech and also the excellent 1992 Redfern Speech by ex-PM Paul Keating. I was curious about how non Australian's would view this (click in NY Times if you want to read it yourself)..

Then I started then jumping around reading other news stories about Australia and came across an article about the E-3 Visa - apparently it was started in 2005 for Australians to work in US. Pretty much all that you need is a job offer from a US company and you can apply for the visa. There are 10,500 given away each year and they are valid for 2 years and are able to be renewed - with an indefinite amount of renewals - you just have to prove you don't wish to remain in the country for good..


So... I was then looking at what Biochemists are paid in the US and the median wage is about $36.69/hr or $76,300 per year.. NOW I am thinking I could most definitely live on that amount... I am on about $45,000 per year at the moment but that isn't with my degree though... Ok chances of me actually earning $36/hr first year out are slim but....


Next I started to think back to my friend Julie - we used to work together in Townsville. She works at Yale University and has a friend who she worked with who left and started their own pharmaceutical company. She told me she could get me a job with him if I wanted - I was never really interested in pharmaceuticals and knew it was virtually impossible to get a visa to work in the US that I never took it seriously..



NOW I am!!!!!



So..... I am thinking... I might look into seeing if this is possible..

I was planning on going to see my friend Julie around next May on my way to spending Summer in Europe - so maybe I should look into applying for some jobs before I leave.....



I have always wanted to live in New York for a little while - not forever - it would be like living in London my guess - fun if you know it is for only a certain period - depressing if you think it is for good...

Thoughts???



oh and if you wish to see the video of the song From Little Things Big Things Grow here it is..





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I just made..

Rookie mistake number one - don't know what I was thinking - I KNOW better than this..


But I had just written up a long long post and of course my computer ate it. WHY didn't I save it in word first..

I hate my computer tonight and I am too tired and cranky to re-write it...

So tomorrw you get Wednesday's post AND Friday's post (with Thursday being my day off this week).. Read more On "I just made.."!