ally mcbeal's being canned! its the end of an era. i''ll be finishing my phd and moving on with my life, trying to find that guy, that soul mate.

just saying.

i gave my talk yesterday. i read it out from two pieces of paper (both sides), my voice quavering, and the presence of my supervisor dominating one side of the room. unfortunately i couldn't think on my feet when the questions came round, and when i failed to answer three questions in a row properly, i think people at that point were afraid to ask me anymore questions. also one of the guys who'd asked me a question got carried away and was going on about this tiny point in my talk which i hadn't any idea about, and everybody commented on him being out of line afterwards. oh well, i hope that won't be my coup de grace before i leave, whatever a coup de grace means.

i just looked it up, according to dictionary.com it means:
1. A deathblow delivered to end the misery of a mortally wounded victim.
2. A finishing stroke or decisive event.

so i think i was going more for the second definition, because the first definition sounds a bit harsh.

i went to the exhibition bodyworlds yesterday. i know it sound stupid, but i didn't realise there were going to be actual dead bodies there, i thought they were just sculptures made out of moulds that were done on bodies. i know this is going to sound pretty gross, but they were all actual real human bodies, that have all been preserved using this process called plastination. i'm not entirely sure what it involves, but it sound like it involves the use of plastic. so he had all these bodies with varies layers of tissue taken off, skin, muscle, to show what it all looks like in there. he also had them posing, and it was obvious he had a really morbid sense of humor, this guy, as an example, one of the sculptures was a man on a horse, both obviously plastinated, both without skin, and the man held (his own, presumably) a brain in one hand, and the horse's brain in the other. it sounds alot more gory than it actually looks, i think the removal of the skin was necessary, as otherwise the bodies would look really creepy then. this way, they don't really look... well, real. i won't say anymore, because it sounds a lot gorier than it looks. but i guess its all there on the website anyway.