Two hours!
With four left wing kids
I spent time in Nazi Fortress
Much discussion in room C-H-1-O-C-H-11

I did not understand why
I could not accept the fact
that I'd accepted the contract
Much discussion in this institution
Much discussion in boiled beef and carrots
Room C-H-1-O-C-H-2-O-11 ...
The Fall, 'Fortress/Deer Park'

The above provides a chilling reminder of the true nature of studying at university. A nature that becomes apparent only at the pointy end of each semester. In hiatus from tardily finishing my final assessment, I take solace from the fact that this time around I am unlikely to fail anything. Around me others explode, implode, deflate, flutter, flounder, and doggedly persist.

A friend has offered to do a short-film version of my as yet unrealised comic strip script Moments in Negativity, which I'll set up a link to on the sidebar of this page at some point. Sounds like a good idea for the mid-year break. They want me for the leading role, even though I've provided assurances that it's not autobiographical.

The World Cup is drawing more of my attention now that the end of the first round is looming large. My moment of choice is Ireland's achingly late equaliser against Germany. Not the best goal of the tournament to look at (although one of the better ones), it was the best goal so far simply because of its exquisitely appropriate timing and the fact that everyone likes the Irish and dislikes the Germans. The competition has been fascinating with a lot of good matches and unexpected results, the only disappointment being the referees who seem to be disallowing an awful lot of legitimate goals, a phenomenon which has the capacity to make a mockery of the sport.

In other news: I hereby add my name to the lengthy list of people who plan to write novels. This list is much longer than the list of people who actually write novels. However, if you don't form the plan you will never execute it. I have a setting, characters, a skeletal plotline, a few one-liners and set-pieces. Now I need more of the above and a lot of coherent words to go with it all. Time to start using those untapped reserves of self-discipline. Mock me not, for I kid you not. That is the jamb of my gist.

The silver lips of lilies virginal,
The full deep bosom of the enchanted rose
Please less than flowers glass-hid from frost and snows
For whom an alien heat makes festival.
Theodore Wratislaw, excerpt from 'Hothouse Flowers'

What a dodgy little poem it is. Good though, especially the 'alien heat makes festival' bit, very sinister. Not much in the update today. Lost to Chris Gorham at Go which made him feel good and me feel indifferent, so I suppose it was a positive thing to have done. My early play was bad, my later play not too bad at all really. The result? Eight and a half moku win for Chris. Negates my three-nil thrashing of Oliver earlier in the day.

I note that both Davy-D and Aaron have started posting slavish imitations of my 'Chronicles of the Committi' to their web-logs. It's nice to exert such undue influence over the addled minds of the young, but one wonders whether a pastiche of a pastiche isn't going to be getting a little thin on the ground. In any case, it's of little import.

In other news: I want my road trip. I can't wait for the golden time to come when exams are over, assessment is over, and I can kick back for a few hours to some hypnotic discretionary media, by which I don't mean drugs.

I watched the first seven episodes of Rurouni Kenshin the other day. It wasn't too bad I suppose. I'd seen the dubbed animated movie 'Samurai X' some time last year, and thought it was fairly crap. Although unlike some I had minimal difficulty working out that Kenshin was supposed to be a man. One thing about the episodes of Kenshin that I saw that I thought was a tad problematic was Kenshin's total superiority to almost all of his opponents. When he can just walk into a room containing any number of people and flatten them all without breaking a sweat it takes some of the suspense out of things. Episode seven managed to improve on this by putting in a serious villain. As for the humour? Predictable but cute. I smiled a few times.

People can be so silly on occasion. Even more ludicrous than mistaking Kenshin for a woman is thinking that of Sai from Hikaru No Go. One's explicitly told he is a man when the character is introduced for goodness' sake. Speaking of HNG judging by the latest chapter it looks like Shindo might be about to become a pro at Waya's expense. This'd be a little tragic since Waya is the coolest character in the whole storyline. It'd be better if Isumi-san were to lose out. Meanwhile we all await Ochi's loss at Shindo's hands in the final round of the pro exam. I long for the conquest of that snivelling hypocrite!

Some see the flesh, before they see the bones,
Some see the bones before, before they see the flesh.
Some never see the flesh at all.
Stereolab, 'Super-Electric'

What does the above mean? I have no clear idea. I suspect it has something to do with the subjectivity of experience. If I had to classify myself into one of the categories mentioned, I would say I was a 'bones-first' kind of guy. What does that mean? I have no clear idea.

Abandoning that meandering introduction to this latest addition to my web-log, we now move to a rather dull synopsis of my weekend.

Friday: stuck around at home, had no intention of going out. Received call from Anil and Anita telling me they had gone to UniSFA karaoke only in the hope of seeing me, and were getting annoyed that I wasn't going to show up. Was deeply touched and rushed out in a jiffy. The evening was ... uneven. I had good conversations with some of my closer friends who were there. I had scant regard, overall, for most of the karaoke performances, and even less for the music selected, although glancing through the list of available songs verified my strongly held suspicion that this wasn't entirely due to the vacuum of taste sucking previously aesthetically attuned individuals into a vortex of vulgarity (must find a way of incorporating more words starting with 'v' into that sentence. Bah. I'll never be as good at alliterating as the Gawain poet).

Eventually, I was coopted for the performance of a couple of David Bowie tunes. The first of these was Rebel Rebel, after which I felt so utterly humiliated that I nearly left on the spot. It was only accidentally forgetting my jacket as I walked out the door that kept me within the cursed environ. My second performance was of Space Oddity, with Anil and Coman as Ground Control and me as Major Tom. I could actually hear myself at some points during the song and realised that maybe I didn't sound quite as bad as I thought. Afterwards several people assured me that I was actually rather decent, but uncharacteristically I couldn't tell whether they were taking the mickey out of me or not. Anil accused me of 'hating praise' and gave me a surprise hug, which Loren found amusing. It was a slightly ... heartwarming ... moment.

The next interesting event of the evening was nearly starting an altercation with the guy Chris (Grubb) and I were playing pool with, when I skilfully misheard 'We're red, right?' as 'You're red, right?' under the blaring tones of whatever slish was on the karaoke machine at the time, and as a result managed to hoodwink the slightly drunk opponent into potting one of our balls. He chested Chris a couple of times before we convinced him that it would be fine to continue if we switched colours. Feisty little fellow. This was after I picked up the white ball and moved it around after being awarded two shots. My mind seemed to absent itself somewhat following the initial karaoke humiliation.

At around this point I got wind that Anita and Tommo were chatting outside in the hope of ending their pathetic conflict. I don't really understand them at all: I don't bear grudges, I just dislike people. Fingers were crossed by all present with an interest in the outcome, but to no avail. Within about a quarter of an hour they'd managed to rekindle the essential irrelevancies of the infamous New Year's dispute and renew their eternal hatred. My personal opinion? They should either give up, or Tommo should work out that the manly thing to do would be to take one on the chin and move on, as Anita is certainly unlikely to do that. The way things are at the moment, they just shouldn't bother.

The scene drawing to a conclusion, I went back to Anil and Anita's with Chris and we hung out and played hearts for a while, which I won (but more notably Chris lost awfully, partly because he was very drunk). I gave Anita some amateur counselling of my usual 'awaken people to the healing power of cynicism' variety, and offered to give Tommo a good solid talking to if she would like. That girl. She always has to turn everything into such a production. It's quite endearing though.

So that was Friday. Saturday: lifted rubble in the morning, procrastinated in the afternoon, went out to James Andrewartha(note: two 'r's, thanks for the sixpack Leighton)'s twentieth birthday party at "". It was the usual scene when I got there, everyone sitting around like stunned mullets in the main living room chatting like the disappointing social failures that they are. So I went and got Phillip's Go set from UniSFA and gave him a game. This was quite a significant moment for me, as I have never beaten Phillip at Go and regard him as probably still the best player knocking around the tri-club area (which makes me, to abuse the style of Jack Womack, 'keen to ex him'). So we played, and I dominated, as far as these things go. I was taking an average of about ten to twenty seconds per move. Phillip was taking about three to four minutes for each move. More than once I took a five minute break during his turn and returned to find he still hadn't played. Eventually I won a semeai (capture race) in one of the corners which would have given me enough territory to secure victory. It was at this point that everything went eggplant-shaped. I was given such an agonising length of time to ponder his possible responses that I lost track of the fact that I needed to properly kill his stones, and made an awful mistake that turned the game in his favour. Which led to an angered (and undignified) concession from me. It would be accurate to say that I was highly disappointed, and this mainly because I had been playing very well up to that point and was set to become official UniSFA Go champion. Have I made too much of the amount of time Phillip takes to play his moves? Probably. He is certainly within his rights to try and read out the play. But after three hours of watching him cogitate, I was flagging. Never mind - his time will come, as it did for all the others. I left the party shortly afterwards, having sung Happy Birthday to James (with the obligatory Lynch howl of 'Tiger! Woo!') at the conclusion and engaged in a bit of harmless byplay at Davy-D's expense with Jen and Rae. It should be mentioned that Rae loses just as many dimensions of her personality when drunk as anyone else. I mention it for the most part because she said on the night that I probably wouldn't. How wrong people can be.

So that was Saturday. Sunday: procrastinated horribly, to the point where I gave myself severe blistering on the fingertips of my left hand from spending four hours relearning the classical guitar. Actually achieved something (aside from a mastery of some of the more difficult pieces in my old year ten repertoire) despite myself, before going around to Leighton's and watching a rather lacklustre soccer match between England and Sweden. Came home, procrastinated, went to bed on a touch of Elric. Sometimes having a soul-sucking sword that randomly kills your best friends seems like quite a simple problem.