Frenetic

Yesterday, I woke up with a hangover, and a sinking feeling that I had rambled somewhat in front of my tutor the night before. I couldn't decide whether to go to lectures or to go back to bed, and regretted choosing the former when existentialism and phenomenology did not combine well with the residual wine fog in my brain. So I skipped Gide.

Last week I was mostly writing essays. Some of them seemed okay. But they tried to kill me, which wasn't nice. Having recovered from the tension headaches and the sleep deprivation, I now feel I should be all organised and planning-in-advance-y to avoid situation repeating, but instead I spent all of yesterday afternoon engaged in girly faffage.

After years of traipsing up the SCR stairs to sing grace, before being banished to the OTR with some salmon and a stale bread roll, it was finally my turn to go to the All Saints' gaudy which very nearly made up for all the phonetics revision I did in first year! The food was excellent and the wine plentiful, which was just as well because I spent most of the time discussing porn films and legalising prostitution with the chaplain, who was very keen to stress that nowhere in the New Testament is sex before marriage forbidden. Then we all went outside, shivered, came back in and I got to sit at high table where a combination of relief and wine meant I talked far, far too much and fomented discord within the Modern Languages faculty. Oops.

Afterwards, some of us went to the MCR and drank a bottle of wine, which we then had to finish in Pippa and Zhenia's room because we got kicked out, and we had a great evening, even if I did get end up singing (to the accompaniment of my very out of practice and uncoordinated guitar playing). Ooh, and Zhenia treated us to a beautiful Russian song, and she can actually play the guitar properly, and it was lovely. Then I brought Sally home in the dead of night down some dark alleys (sorry) and woke up at 6.30 in the morning, gasping for water. I drank about half a litre, then was just dropping off to sleep when I needed the loo, so I abandoned the lie-in and bounced rather feverishly round my room until it was time for some nice calming Sartre.

And now Livvy's here! Hurrah! Rob abandoned her to watch the football, so we had a gloriously girly evening in the kitchen, eating enormous quantities of Belgian chocolate and shepherd's pie, enjoying the spectacle of Catherine's rather anxious baking, enjoying the results of said baking, and then conducting a washing up marathon. And there are shopping/choir/formal/Scrabble plans. Hurrah!

This made me and Holly giggle/cringe.

I'm not sure I like Norton. It's like one of those malign servants who deluded their slightly dopey masters by saying they'd 'take care of everything' and then spread evil without them noticing. I don't really know what it's doing, but it says it's fixing my computer and I'm too ignorant to know if it's telling me the truth, and I daren't disbelieve it, in case I get casinos and porn everywhere. It's sort of malevolently too good to be true.

Ooh, no, my basil plant's all droopy and spotty.

My nutritional intake today (barring my usual healthy breakfast) has thus far consisted of a cafetiere of strong, black coffee and half a chocolate orange.

Previous to this I was so tired I fell asleep on my books.

Yesterday, I wrote an essay.

On Thursday, I wrote an essay until 3 a.m.

Today, I have to write another essay.


Please, please, please can I sleep now????

Procrastination rocks!

I've visited the counties in yellow. Which counties have you visited? made by marnanel map reproduced from Ordnance Survey map data by permission of the Ordnance Survey. © Crown copyright 2001.

"Neil is an actor, comedian and and master of improvisation who was once responsible for the shortest ever run of a Beckett play, when he improvised the opening line, 'Hello, Godot, what are you doing here?'"

Musing...

I think I might become addicted to cocaine.

Then I wouldn't need to sleep.

It would make life easier.

In some ways.

I've had more bike locks than you've had hot meals...

Well, perhaps I haven't. But sometimes it feels like it. I'm on my fourth since June.

Actually, the latest thing to have gone wrong with my bike, is the rusty chain. While this has, I admit, been a problem roughly since I got the thing in first year, recently it has started to make clunking noises and threaten to snap if I go uphill. Or even flat. Or indeed anything other than quite steeply downhill. I did buy some oil, but I promptly left it in the changing rooms at New Look and couldn't go back to claim it till Tuesday. And it comes in a spray can and has one of those funny, tiny plastic straws that I don't know where to put and... meh. I just can't be bothered. So, I've been walking everywhere, which is good to do once in a while cos it uses different muscles, and enables you to carry an umbrella and hence not get soaked in the rain.

Incidentally, we were promised rain and floods of Biblical proportions on Monday, and none have materialised.

This is brought to you from the computer room, which I feel bad using for non-work things, except that a vast proportion of people seem to be checking Facebook, so perhaps I'm being too harsh on myself. I did say earlier that my twitchiness and disinclination to work were solely a result of my anxiety about getting my extended essay form in and promised myself (and Holly, who is my conscience incarnate) that after taking that fateful piece of paper to Wellington Square, I would sit in the library (or the OTR, which is cosier) with my old friend Mr Carnie and get reacquainted with the advantages of X-bar theory. However, I am still feeling restless and scared of syntax, and totally unmotivated by the fact that my tute is in less than 48 hours and I've read about 10 pages on the (rather complicated) subject, so clearly that was just an excuse to play Tetris.

But, hey, how cool does, "Language planning and language policy: a comparative study of East Africa and Togo" sound?!

Oxford is much the same as it ever was - busy and meteorologically dubious - except for the fact that I have a kitchen, and only know about 4 people. In fact, I spend a lot of my time sitting in said kitchen with other linguists, bemoaning the fact that I have so much work and know so few people. I have been to the pub a total of twice, and drunk two halves of Kronenbourg. (And a lot of wine at Liz's party on Saturday.)

I've also been struck by the urge to do an MA in something other than linguistics. After a suggestion of African Literature from my tutor, I browsed the SOAS website and am now sooooo tempted by the Anthropology of Food. I did want to do French, and have switched to an option in WW1 literature (which will doubtless be a far cry from A-Level Eng Lit with Ms Clare, but probably fun nonetheless) instead of Semantics, on the basis that Semantics fills me with fear and panic. And I love literature and I don't want to stop studying it. And I love linguistics (most of the time) and don't want to stop studying that either. Aargh! It's like UCAS all over again. So, yes, my tutor suggested African Literature or African Studies, which sounds exciting, but rather like the sort of thing my parents would think was mad... The more I think about it, and the more I think about other options, the more attractive an option I find academia, but, meh - host of choices, little time to decide. I suppose whatever I choose I'll have some regrets, and if I do do linguistics (as I've planned for, what, a year?) it's not like I'll never read a book again, and if I do something literary, it's not like I can't learn Swahili on the side, but I was so lucky to find a degree that allowed me to do both, it's rather a shock having to choose now.

Bah.

Making hot drinks, Hannah-style

1. Infuse caffeinated substance in hot water.
2. Leave to brew for twice as long as anyone else would.
3. Do not adulterate with milk or sugar. Slices of lemon are acceptable in Earl Grey.

Jesus, this essay malarky is a lot tougher than I remember it. I don't have the stamina I had in first and second year, either. I worked till 12 last night, and it's totally knocked me out today!

I am not a fresher and I don't want their evil flu.

Some photos from home...

Si j'ai toujours raison
Je suis pas un mec sympa

Too right, my friend, too right......

YES!! WE ARE ALL INDIVIDUALS!!!!

Firstly, everyone should eat Tyrrells crisps. Not least because they are delicious, for I agree this is an important incentive to purchase foodstuffs, but also because they stopped Tesco marching all over them, just because they're a big supermarket and Tyrrells are an independent producer.

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1875532,00.html
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1874707,00.html

I've been at home for a couple of days now. It's still at the stage where it's wonderfully relaxing to be looked after and have all my books around me, but I can feel the 'I'm a grown-up, I can do my own damn laundry' complex simmering away inside somewhere. I suppose the most irritating thing is the excitement of having a decent-sized kitchen, sufficient equipment and someone else to pay for the ingredients, only to remember that my dad has very rigid (carnivorous-British hybrid) ideas of what constitutes a meal, my mum is on the Atkins diet and my brother is twelve, and fussy. So far I have made a vat of ratatouille.

However, as I feel increasingly demographically abnormal (drastically lowering average age of Radio 4 listener, too many operas on iTunes, shopping at markets), it is nice to know that there is some reason for it, whether genetic or due to the mad atmosphere I grew up in.

I've almost finished Qu'est-ce que la litterature? which is a relief as it's taken me the entire summer. I've been rather academically disillusioned since I found out I couldn't do my project, and now don't even know exactly what papers I'm doing this term, and I don't seem to get on with Sartre. My mum asked me earlier, 'Was there a Betty Muriel?' After leaving me baffled for a while, she explained this was his wife in a Monty Python sketch. 'Umm, well, Beauvoir, kind of... never mind...'

Nik interrupted a very interesting debate on The World Tonight (last night) about Richard Branson's pledge to research ways of cutting carbon emissions and corporate social responsibility and whether we should all be taxed for the bad things we do to the environment, when he rang me up to tell me he was researching hydrogen fuels. I've already forgotten what this entails, but I think it's something along the lines of combining water and sand in order to create something other than sludge and thereby to power cars. This requires reading 1920s research papers and buying silicone from catalogues. I didn't even know you could do that, but the project sounds very useful and topical, and I approve. And it means no more people saying, 'Ooh, your boyfriend's working with diamonds, lucky you!' and me having to explain that these aren't the interesting sort that you can, like, wear, and see with the naked eye and stuff.

Dammit, after the end of the Leeds Piano Competition, which I was listening to, I skipped forwards five minutes to see why there was an extra hour and a half of Performance on 3 which hadn't been there when I'd caught the end live, and have now found some interesting choral music, which I'm having to listen to in order to find out what it is. And I foolishly told my mother to wake me up at a sensible time tomorrow morning so I could have a vaguely productive day. I must get back into a routine of working, or I'll never get anything like enough reading done before term starts. This apathy doesn't sit well with the smiley version of me that has to tell all my parents' friends I intend to do this MA. Maybe I should become a teacher instead. They get paid. Students don't. And I'd also be morally obliged to read the Guardian, drink lots of wine and be cynical and irritable - which is fun. Except I don't want to teach French. And you generally need two languages and ich habe fast alle mein Deutsch vergessen.

Hopefully when L'Invitee wings its way to me in the next few days, I should get some enthusiasm back.

"That's not the can-do attitude that created the giraffe!"

Interestingly, if you type 'rejection' into predictive text, it comes up as 'selection'. This made me giggle. And, also, it made me almost send a message saying the opposite of what I meant.

I'm feeling very grown-up tonight, as I've just had an email from Mslexia saying one of my poems got shortlisted - last 60 apparently! Obviously, they didn't want to publish me, but I wasn't really expecting them to, and I'm not feeling disappointed, just, as I said, grown-up.

I'm addicted to Radio 4. It makes me happy.

I've spent all day trying valiantly to read the book about literary theory which I've had on the go since the beginning of second year, but I've finally cracked and looked up 'postmodernism' on Uncyclopedia.

"Recently, postmodernism has fallen out of favour with authors, because they like to eat."

Hehehehehe.

I think I may be unsuited to a future in academia.

Must... take... incomprehensible... theorising... seriously...


PS - In a similar vein, I have also discovered Encyclopedia Dramatica.

"Watch out! A GIANT MONGOOSE!"

Well, given my laziness, I don't get to write a timely, irate post about the Facebook feed thingummiwhatsit (though the following is still included for sheer comedic value) cos they've gone and changed it. I signed in and asked it not to tell everyone I've ever sat next to in lectures or stumbled into in the beer cellar whenever I join another pretentious group in an attempt to prove I'm too cool for the whole malarky, but this didn't really bother me: I don't really do anything of note on facebook and the only thing I'd be ashamed of is people seeing how much time I waste online. So really, they've done me a favour by threatening to reveal the extent of this to the world and making me waste it in the jasperfforde.com forums instead. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be any way of stopping it telling me pointless information about other people. "So-and-so has added someone you don't know as a friend." "X has joined 'We hate the news feed!" "Y is unpacking." "Mr Thingy likes toast." Yes, you can call me a reclusive, self-involved intellectual snob if you like - it's actually something I'm proud of - but I don't really care. I think I shall be spending less time on Facebook in future. In fact, I'm convinced this was all just a publicity stunt and I'm already playing into their hands by even writing about it. Bah.

Big Brother

At the start of September, Big Brother took over Facebook, and as part of the world's backlash against Steve Irwin's death, decided to inform everyone on Facebook of their friends' every move.

Current owner and operator of Facebook

For example, the average user can now know with a simple view of their Facebook homepage that:

• Their best friend opted to join the "I hate Oscar Wilde" group and declined their invitation to their newly created "Gru Lovers" group at 8:15 pm (when they said they wouldn't be home)
• Megan T removed "fuzzy socks" from her interests at 10:37 pm
• James B replied to a post in the "I'm a closeted terrorist" group at 6:28 pm
• Lisa H complained about her history professor in a note posted at 3:35 pm (ironically during her history class)
• At least 5 of their friends are in constant relationship flux (signifying extreme Borderline Personality Disorder) going from "Single" to "It's Complicated" to "Broken up" within 15 minutes
• little Kate P from that high school down the street from them will be attending an event nearby at 11 pm tomorrow night

The aim of this exercise is uncertain, but it seems to be a ploy mainly to make everyone extremely paranoid and piss them off in equal measures.

- from Uncyclopedia

I think I'm in love with Jasper Fforde. Giggle-out-loud-in-public-places in love. Much to the mortification of the boy, who has read the beginning of The Big Over Easy and is somewhat baffled. I keep reading passages aloud for the edification of thoes around me, but, alas, I seem to be a lone crusader.

"But all of this was scant comfort to Mr Wolff, who went to his casket unavenged, and parboiled."

"'First name?'
'Otto,' he replied, then added by way of explanation: ' Palindrome as well. My sister's name is Hannah. Father liked word games. He was fourteen times world Scrabble champion. When he died we buried him at Queenzieburn to make use of the triple word score.'"

I like the Nursery Crime books, because they're much more independent. The Thursday Next series, while fantastically clever and entertaining, reference so many works of great literature that the novels themselves cannot possibly stand out in comparison, whereas these are convincing detective stories in their own right. The man is a genius, writing books which combine my love of satire, wacky humour, word games and references to the English literary canon.

And now, back to the cryptic crossword!

Thoughts on learning Swedish...

I think my degree has made me very bad at learning languages. I can't learn to count to ten, without stopping to initiate an involved discussion about phonology or to introduce myself without heavy morphosyntactic analysis. I find myself asking: is there a case system? how rich a verb inflection system is there? And if that weren't impediment enough, the level to which I now speak French, means I find any lesser degree fluency in a language highly irritating. Memorising simple phrases is so frustrating compared to discussing politics and poetry, especially as I am clearly not a nice enough person to find common courtesy a more compelling reason to learn a language than reading gloomy literature.

Stansted at 3, oh joy...

Stuck in the middle with...

Well, aside from imparting useles information about household pests or quoting obscure French bands, I should probably talk about myself extensively and boringly, seeing as this is what I started this for in the first place.

Work finished, in a haze of sulky, bitchy classes and white wine spritzers, sadly not simultaneously. Overall, I enjoyed the six weeks, but it ended on a rather sour note, leaving lovely colleagues, the local pub and good pay as higher-ranking rewards than, like, the warm, fuzzy glow from helping shape young minds and inspire the generation of tomorrow, etc, etc... Wednesday was fab, in that I was in the fortunate (or unfortunate, depending on which way you look at it) position of being offered two fancy meals, with wine, paid for by someone else, at the same time - and it was too rainy and far away to do the Mrs Doubtfire thing of running between them both. The two occasions were Nik's mum's birthday and the celebratory end of summer school dinner, so I sandwiched dinner at the Randolph between an afternoon in the pub and an afterparty which, if the smell of wine emanating from my dress the next morning was anything to go by, saw my hand-eye co-ordination hit a particularly low ebb... Also, the next morning, I was unable to get out of bed or eat anything until about 3 p.m. I blamed certain people, who have refused to acknowledge responsibility.

After a couple of days faffing and feeling purposeless, punctuated by trying to learn something about language policy and/or planning, the boy and I decided on the spur of the moment to go home to Northumberland, where we were well-fed and it rained a lot. We went into town, where I bought some humongously exciting books, I did the obligatory tour of A.N. Other piece of Hadrian's Wall and we met Sarah for drinks, quiz machines and curries in Hexham last night before driving back at some ungodly hour this morning.

"We haven't had that spirit here since 1969"

My wikipedia search for 'nasal vestibulitis' turned up no results but a link to 'sexology topics'. Dear God. The good news is the consultant says that I don't need rhinoplasty. Hurrah.

The American Election board game being designed by everyone in the house but me is in the next trial phase. It's not a fantastic spectator sport, but has kept Nik and Jamie quiet for quite some time.

I have another teaching job for next week and the week after. Hurrah. And I get to go to Oxfam tomorrow, which means more batty old ladies, biscuits and books!

"Je t'aime a reculons."

What a lyric.

Propaganda pheromones

Here are some interesting facts about ants:

Ants communicate mainy through pheromones. When a forager finds food, she will leave a pheromone trail along the ground on her way home which other ants will follow, thus reinforcing the trail and attracing more ants.

Crushed ants emit an alarm pheromone which in high concentration sends nearby ants into an attack frenzy and in lower concentration merely attracts them. Some species even emit propaganda pheromones to confuse their enemies.

They even exchange pheromones as compounds mixed with food to share information about one another's health and nutrition

Ants can constitute up to 15% of the total animal biomass of a tropical rainforest; in the Amazon the combined weight of the ants is said to be four times larger than that of the tetrapods in the same area.

In some parts of the world, large ants have been used as sutures by pressing the wound together and applying ants along it. The ant in defensive attitude seizes the edges in its mandibles and locks in place. The body is then cut off and the mandibles can remain in place for up to three days closing the wound.


(Courtesy of Wikipedia)

Stage one of battle: know your enemy. B******s keep invading our cupboard.

Ramble, ramble

St John's Wood is the only one of 274 London Underground stations to contain none of the letters of the word 'mackerel'.

In the 1950s Jericho was a red light district and the Phoenix was a pornography cinema.

35-40% of all household waste which ends up in a landfill begins life as a purchase from one of the big five supermarkets.

I might have a rant soon. Can't decide.

Sleepy. Have spent all evening reading articles on Wikipedia and anti-supermarket websites in an attempt to keep myself awake until the boy comes back from work and we can watch the next episode of 24. ("Can you call in sick? I want to find out what happens.") It's that bizarre self-delusion thing again, where for some reason, even though you know you can't possibly watch the entire series at once, just seeing the next one would help, whereas in reality the cliffhanger at the end of that will just leave you with another insatiable itch to dive further into the story...

Circle. Vicious.

One more week left at work. It's been fun but I think any longer would probably kill me. There was a moment last week where I was so tired I came home and collapsed on the sofa, rousing only when coaxed by the boy to eat some dinner.

I want an MP3 player but there are so many and they're all so shiny and gadgetty that I get flustered and confused whenever I look at them. Humph.

Funky cartoon - click here

Hehe. I love those chickens. I also feel pleased that I've finally found an internet cartoon of my very own. Cos I'm not competitive. Oh no. Particularly not with the boy. Ahem...

It's about 8.40 and I'm already up. Amusingly, it's Wednesday and I'm reading the Times magazine from Saturday, although the novelty of these staggered weeks is starting to wear off, and instead I'm just annoyed that on the one day in about a fortnight I'm going to get a lie-in, some ingrained habit caused me to wake up for 7 a.m. prompt and a month of having too many demands on my time and energy has made it impossible for me to lie in bed doing nothing. Ergo, I got up and am now listening to Bach, both I'm Sorry, I Haven't a Clue and Armando Iannucci's Charm Offensive having finished while I've been 'away'.

Part of my acquiescence in the face of such a life-consuming job is due to a more-or-less enjoyment of it. Yes, it's tiring; yes, some of my kids sit in class scowling and refusing to participate and then give me bad feedback; yes, teenage boys think it's funny to draw naked people while storyboarding a Simple Plan song; yes, I didn't get home till 11 on Friday and Saturday, yes, I got soaked on Saturday night. Still, there aren't many jobs where you get to discuss censorship, play scattegories, draw cartoons and compere karaoke in one day. "Never dull" - such a cliche, and I'm not naive enough to believe that any teaching job would be like this, but it's a far more rewarding way to spend a summer than temping or working in a supermarket would be. With this and volunteering in the Oxfam bookshop on Wednesday afternoons, I've met so many interesting people. There's this sort of belief that because all Oxford students are so clever, it must somehow be the most stimulating society to live in, but in truth I find many people remarkably boring. All my enthusiasm for coming back hangs on my course and the people whose company I genuinely enjoy, but no longer meeting people with a plethora of different experiences and opinions is the definite flip side. I feel about five years older than I am.

In fact, I feel like I'm turning into a thirty-something, Times-reading liberal, without the pretentiously-named children. I'm frustrating the boy with my anti-supermarket campaign and turning my fresh, locally-grown ingredients into increasingly peculiar dishes. I'd like to direct my social conscience and domestic drive towards clearing my stuff out of our housemate's room so she can move in, or doing some laundry. Alas...

I invited Matt over for dinner on Monday and he arrived while Nik, Jamie and Debbie's nascent board game was entering the test phase. Jamie and Debbie initially felt rather embarrassed, but when I explained, "we're designing a board game based on the American election," Matt's eyes lit up. People should not underestimate my ability to choose my friends. We all had a fantastic evening (I think) and afterwards Nik and I sat on the sofa listening to music and talking, which had a slightly alarming feeling of novelty to it, but was lovely nonetheless.

And today I am relishing the prospect of a trip to the market to rectify the 'no fruit and veg' situation and an afternoon fondly caring for old, yellowing, dusty-smelling books. And tomorrow I have to test new students but afterwards I get to go to London for lunch and African story-swapping with Nat. And soon I should get paid and then I won't have an overdraft any more (unless I get seriously carried away with the white wine spritzers and crinkly Cheddars in the pub). And in two weeks I will be free to do more reading for my project. And in September I'm going to Sweden.

Ack, I have purpose, and to a lesser extent money. Life is good.

One green bottle, drop it in the bank,
Ten green bottles, what a lot we drank,
Heaps of bottles, and yesterdays a blank,
But we'll save the planet, tinkle tinkle clank.