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Saturday, April 22nd, 2006
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11:06 pm
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I'm pretty sure I must have some good stories from the last three weeks, but I have segued into revision now and so can't think of anything any more. Revising has now taught the one practical thing I'll ever learn from Classics - how to castrate a man. With a string, apparently. Thlassics.
So yes, I had a week of holiday after dissertation, then went home and started cracking on with the next round. Since September, I've only had about three weeks in total completely off work. Fourth year is, as they say, a bit hardcore. Still, three exams and then off to Cuba, soon's I get back I think my results are out and it's all over! Hooray!
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10:57 pm
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You know you're not a teenager any more when...
You realise you don't know what's number one in the charts any more, and then realise you don't care that you don't know.
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| Thursday, March 23rd, 2006
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7:03 pm
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argh, printing my dissertation out, it's done done done! had schlep about looking for a printer that would print the four greek letters i have in it - gay library. not be seeing me again till april! Joy!
I had the most beautiful moment I think I've ever had earlier, when my fairly critical but constructive supervisor said she had nothing to add to my conclusion, that it was really good, I'd done really well,and she was proud of me! I was so chuffed. I went outside, to find it wonderfully sunny, sat on the wall and listened to the two happiest tunes i know - Ghost of Stephen something or other by Squirrel Nut Zippers, and Float On by Modest Mouse, and let alll the stress and worry of THE LAST SIX MONTHS drift away into the atmosphere. It all just completely dissapated. Nothing in my soul but relief and happiness.
current mood: cathartic
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| Wednesday, March 22nd, 2006
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7:11 pm
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Heh. I just told the worst story of my life to Krusty.
'I saw weird Euan in the coffee shop today. He borrowed a pen off me.'
'Really, did you get it back?'
'Yes.'
Fuck dissertations! Bring back the chat!
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| Sunday, March 19th, 2006
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7:48 pm
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..and then it turned out it was in computer jargon anyway. So I apologised and sent it again in proper form, to the people I meant to send it to in the first place.
Only I forgot to attach it.
UNIVERSITY TAKES YOUR BRAIN AWAY.
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7:28 pm
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Bollocks. In an attempt to garner some constructive criticism for my dissertation, I attempted to email it to a few people who said they'd read it for me, and accidentally sent it to everyone on my contacts list. Still, it'll produce some interesting responses, no doubt.
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| Wednesday, March 15th, 2006
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1:39 pm
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My smoking is getting worse and worse. Last time I went to the doctor I could say with near-legitimacy that I smoked 5 or less rollies a day. I'm currently up to fifteen. Still, I don't feel stressed, so they must be working!
current mood: nicotine-less
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| Sunday, March 12th, 2006
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2:02 pm
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oh dear god, such a big fat hangover. krusty and i have been getting wankered recently because we both have hardcore work to do and are denying or refusing it or something. On thursday we went for a quiet pint with the boys and ended up trashed, and yesterday went to see lovely Kathryn from first year who's back for a visit from Vienna. had a brilliant time chatting to her about ridiculous things we'd forgotten (apparently we had a party in the first week and made a flyer with our faces on which we stuck under everyone's door, and it was the event of the term - i don't remember it at all) interspersed with watching Susanna's home video (DVD, actually) of her in Oklahoma (the musical, not the state). On the way home, trashed, we found some people outside a party, so we crashed it. Liza and kathryn went home pretty sharpish, but Krusty and i stayed.. her tutor was there and everyone else was foreign, so I started telling people I was french and my name was Evelyne. We danced like fools to the reggae/funk/electro mix and no one seemed to notice we didn't know anyone. Oh god, cause we made friends with lots of people. Including a boy named Steven who gave us a spliff and knew Sean. Always someone you know at a Marchmont party! And then, and then, it started to snow again, so when we left we got to frolic and ran around writing happy amazing things on peoples' cars. I think we covered a whole street. I got home about 6. My brain physically hurts and I have my dissertation introduction to write.. the most difficult bit where I draw all the threads together in an amazing way which makes some sort of important point.. gah.
current mood: hurty
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| Friday, March 10th, 2006
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10:57 am
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I am in 'the meantime'. What's that, the time in between two points? It is indeed all very average. I've got ten days to finish my dissertation and my philosophy essay which I am finding a bit of a mission to understand, but it's not beyond my capabilities to do these things. I've had a week of work where I ACTUALLY get up at 9 instead of just saying I'm going to and hence have got everything back under control. I am feeling very calm. I have a complete failure to engage with anything right now, although I got trashed with Kro and the boys yesterday and managed some jokes, so I'm not a total loss as a human just yet. It all seems ok. Will there be a massive crisis before the end?
current mood:  calm
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| Monday, March 6th, 2006
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8:49 am
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Hooray! Beve and I just booked a trip to Cuba! We're going straight after exams for three weeks in May, awesome.
He came up for the final time this term for a lovely weekend. It started snowing on friday just before he arrived, and when I picked him up off the train the city was carpeted and beautiful. We spent a lot of time lying around but finally made it out for a sunset walk across the meadows, which was wonderfully peaceful despite my attempts to start a snowball fight. Beve is a great big pansy. Apparently because he didn't have gloves, but I suspect he didn't want to ruin his prety face. We galumphed the final part towards Hugh's to surprise him for tea, only to find he happened to be standing at the window already watching us leap around like idiot kittens, but we rectified that with a trip to the pub.
Saturday we went to the fiarly recently refurbished Drouthy Neebors and drank two pint steins of beers, so large I couldn't fit my hands all the way round them. As Tom so hilariously joked, it's not the first time he's heard me say that. I'm afraid I was wankered by the end of that night, so had a hangover day yesterday followed by going to see Pete play at Caberet Voltaire. I like Pete's electric sound, it's all very up to date pop stompy rock with interesting lyrics, quite different from what I know as his usual acoustic dark indie with interesting lyrics. Muchos enjoyablos though. Beve got very excited about putting on some Edinburgh bands in Cambridge or Cambridge bands in Edinburgh, which may or may not happen in June.
What lovely fun. Previous to that, I'd just been working and stressing and not sleeping and working and not sleeping and stressing. Hopefully it won't go that bad again, cause now I'm happy again and the end is well within sight and I have Cuba to look forward to!
current mood:  tired
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| Wednesday, March 1st, 2006
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7:05 pm
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Joygasm! My whole dissertation is just falling into place... i;ve only written a thousand words of this new and beautiful final chapter, but the analogy i'm making is absolute and perfect. I can't believe no one's thought of it before, it makes utter sense. Literary dissertations are thorough wank, but now I understand why people become academics - it feels amazing to think of something no one's ever thought before, and I am utterly convinced of my rightness and will defend my interpretation of a fairly meaningless little play (though of course my interpretation is about how it's actually totally relevant and important) to the tooth and nail death. Hooray! Professor Browne will see you now!
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12:13 am
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Ah yes. Friday was Pete's birthday jamboree at the forest, where everyone sang and played lovely songs and had a brilliant time, except me. My stupid dissertation panic made me on the point of tears for all friday night and i couldn't enjoy anything. Not least because I kept getting stuck between idiot girls talking about how much they liked each other's (horrible) clothes and idiots with digital cameras taking 'artistic' photos of the candles and wine bottles. Normally I'd be cool with idiots, but I was in such a torrid state I wanted to throttle them all. All. So I went home early and everyone else got twatted. Never mind though, there'll be other times. I just wasn't very impressed with how badly I coped with such a titchy little thing. I think I'm more stressed than I think I am.
So anyway, as soon as I sat down to rewrite the thign, it was all fine and is mostly done except for my final conclusive genius chapter in which I say all sorts of important, ground breaking things which change the way my play is looked at forever. Naturally, I haven't started writing yet because I've got The Fear I can't do it well enough. I've been playing a lot of Half Life instead. It'll get done, sure it will. Has to, before I start having to write my philosophy essay. Sigh. Life is nothing but work.
Although yesterday I went to see 65 days of static with Tom, who were amazing. I won't bore with details, because everyone says they're amazing, which they are. Intense. Chris Clark was supporting, who was also excellent, and managed to get the cute little indie boys to dance to IDM. Nice.
During that gig I decided I wanted to run a venue, a venue that was better than the one I was in. I imagined an all-purpose haven filled with sofas and books and a stage, open all hours, serving food and drinks and probably drugs, as it would be a club for electronica but also lovely bands, hence the sofas. It was palatial. And then I realised this morning I couldn't possibly buy a venue now, so I would have to just manage one instead, and then I realised I don't have any relevant experience, so I'd have to spend the next few years working in bars and putting on nights. Hardly the grand vision I planned and the idea of which bores me to death, so I shelved it. Until I can just buy a place.
current mood:  awake
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| Friday, February 24th, 2006
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7:21 pm
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Bollocks. Yesterday's brainwave means I have to rewrite my whole dissertation. Now I'm flidding about it, and everything has gone tits up. Fucking brainwaves.
current mood:  anxious
current music: minotaur shock
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| Thursday, February 23rd, 2006
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10:53 pm
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Life.. so... [gasp] boring! ugh. Have nothing to do except work. Went to a lecture, the national library of scotland, read another article at home, had a massive brainwave about how the whole dissertation fitted togeter in perfect perfect harmony, and that STILL hasn't filled my time. There comes a certain point of the day when you can't DO any more academic work because your brain just doesn't produce anything worthwhile, and this is when the boredom sets in. I have had a full working day and have spent some hours on the internet and have completely run out of things I am motivated to do. So bored! Beve has got me feeling the need to constantly be watching something in my spare time, and now I can't remember what I used to do before that. Could I really spend whole evenings playing on the internet? What websites did I go to? Did I read more? Did I have [gasp, again] hobbies?!? I can't for the life of me remember how I used to idle away the non-working hours, and to be sure, there used to be a hell of a lot more of them. Perhaps I really did just spend days sitting around being stoned. Well yes, but that wasn't earlier this eyar or even much last year. As I recall. I guess I'll become a video shop fiend. The hours are ticking by so slowly. I can almost hear them laughing. Perhaps I'll play some half life and kick the shit out of some aliens.
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12:53 pm
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I think I'd probaby quite like to work in a library if only I could see light of day once in a while.
Oh wait, that's just Edinburgh in February.
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| Wednesday, February 22nd, 2006
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4:11 pm
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Well, Beve missed his train on monday. Both of us thought it was tuesday, but it did mean he got to spend an extra day here and go to the zoo! They have a polar bear. And some ace penguins, and a very small gorilla, and the tiniest monkeys in the world (pgymy marmosets). It was a good day out, despite the hail. Wish we'd thought of keeping him around for the weekend though, then he could have been here for Pete's birthday thing. Oh well. It was a very happy week, ignoring work completely and romping around doing lovely things instead. Unfortunately the time has come to focus seriously on work as I have five weeks to finish my dissertation and reconstruct it into a post-modern ironic interpretation full of words beginning with meta- and post-. Which I don't give a toss about. Tomorrow I get to spend the day in the National Library of Scotland. I bet everyone reads Burns.
There are some photos of mine on the Badger Attack website, which I think are my first publicly published pieces of work. I'm sure there will soon be some more on High Vinyl's myspace and there should already be some on Kittenflux but Lee and Dave are rubbish and didn't even let me know if they got the pics I emailed them. So there. God bless the internet for allowing wankers to become artists.
current mood:  mellow
current music: The Bees
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| Monday, February 20th, 2006
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12:52 pm
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I would take more time to write, but I have to see my elusive supervisor to have her first response to my twn thousand word draft. She is ten thousand words behind me.
Beve has been here againt hsi last week, and we have had a lovely time because i sacked off work completely, since she is ten thousand words behind me and I am well ahead of myself. On Valentine's Day I dressed like a Fifties housewife and we went for Italian dinner where by the end it was 3-2 to me on the breaching of restaurant etiquette - food on clothes, dropped forks etc. Spent some lovely time in bed watching films, then went to Glasgow on friday to see Broken Social Scene with Hugh and Lizzie on MDMA - rather good at an indie gig. We were far too high to go home after so wandered around Sauchiehall Street completely oblivious to the Friday Night Fear you normally get there, went to an immensely funyn karaoke pub, got my card eaten by a mahcine, and then ended up in a terrible pub only to meet Broken Social Scene and have them lead us upstairs to a room of Fun! Literally, we were watching this amazingly boring singer/songwriter type and then.. we saw the band and they took us by the hands towards a Good Evening.
And saturday had everyone round for guitars and singing followed by the Egg and pills, from which I am suffering now and cannot speak but I must go talk intelligently to my supervisor. Laters.
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| Tuesday, February 14th, 2006
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11:22 am
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Hate those nights where you go out for a few drinks and come home pretty sober but wake up with a stinking hangover. Of all the days. Not that, but Beve is coming back again today and I sort of need to be able to function.
current mood:  groggy
current music: vu - loaded
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| Saturday, February 11th, 2006
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7:46 pm
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woop! i'm up to 9,500 words in my dissertation! (of 12-14k) nine and a half thousand words..... of bollocks, currently, as i'm only just beginning to get my teeth stuck in to the point of it, which is all about metanarrative and didactic moralising. still, it's encouraging!
current mood: encouraged
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3:33 pm
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