(Hey Petra, if that animation you're doing for me looks anything like this, I will be a happy boy. I'm just saying.)

So I missed The Eurovision Song Contest again. Well, I say I missed it, I missed the first three hours, so I got to see an hour of the scores being read out. This happens every year! In fact, last year (or the year before) I got to see the scoring for not only Eurovision, but for Eurovision kids! It's been so long since I saw the actual song section of the Eurovision song contest I can't remember what it's like. I don't even know if I enjoy it or not, I just have the feeling that I'm missing out on something really, really amazing.

I feel about Eurovision the same way I felt about C4 Teletext's Digitiser- I'm all too aware that something this great can't last forever, and inevitably, one day it will be gone- but that's ok, we will stil have our memories! Well, you will. I won't, because I keep missing the fucking thing. @.. >:(

That was a new smiley I just invented of a man with a dark cloud over his head. That's how mad it makes me, that I have to invent a new smiley just to show how I feel.

I have a good excuse for missing it, though. I was watching Naussica of The Valley Of The Wind. This was the first time I'd seen it since the first year of Uni, where I thought it pretty boring- I don't think my faculties for appreciating films like this were particularly developed back then. At the time I was already a Studio Ghibli fan through Princess Mononoke, which I enjoyed largely due to the sheer spectacle- I could enjoy it like I enjoyed a good videogame. It wasn't difficult for my 19-year-old self to empathise with the situations of that movie- it's about a troubled young man wih a demon curse, who can blow a Samurai's head off with a single twang of his bow.

Nausicaa, however, endears herself to the viewer through her bravery, kindness, and concern for the people and things around her, so understandably, I didn't connect with her quite as readily. On top of this, the world she lived in just seemed like another configuration of all the familiar tropes I had seen in Miyazaki's other movies, except executed with a cruder level of artistry.

So I'm glad I'm not 19 anymore, because today I enjoyed Nausicaa thoroughly! Some say it's Miyazaki's best movie- I don't know about that, it's impossible to choose, but I did like it a lot. It even passed the My Mum test, which is to say my mum didn't fall asleep during it, and this is a lady who fell asleep during Star Wars: Episode I. During the Pod Race. Oh, and she said it was 'brilliant'. Which is praise indeed, since the closest she normally gets to a foriegn film is when she watches Coronation Street with the subtitles on.

My main aim right now is to not live here in my mum's house for more than two months, or I will probably feel like I want to kill myself. Not because I don't like living here, just because I don't want to become an Uncle Tommy-type figure. Who is my Uncle Tommy? Uncle Tommy is a man of whom my cousin and sisters would say was 'likely to be a paedophile'. And why was that? 'Because he still lives with his mum'.

My plan is to put together a showreel, get a job in games animation and move out. (Either that, or live with my dad. Living with your Dad doesn't make you a paedophile, I don't think). My 3D Maya animation is coming on really well. What I've got so far is actually better than the stuff I saw on this one website which had clips from 'A good example of a Games Animation portfolio', so I think I'm safe, so long as I keep this workrate up. Also the Annecy animation festival is looming, where I will see all my friends from the MA course, so I've got something nice to look forward to. I could almost say life is good!