I'm back in BAC

Yes, I'm back in BAC.

Ah, the immortal words of Brian Johnson, adapted by me to fit this utterly pointless blog entry in pointing out where I am. Yes, BAC does indeed, as I'm sure none of you postulated, refer to the Brennan Access Centre. Because yet another Tuesday evening is upon us, which means that following our mutual English tute finishing at 5:30, and in a silly yet fruitful attempt to 'beat the traffic', Bec and I make an excuse to hit the computers and do some work. Or rather, she makes an excuse to do some work, I make an excuse to be bored and write shit in my blog in order to scab a free lift later. What a delightful relationships of mutual wants and needs we have.

So what's in the pipeline for young Sam on this fine but dark (curse you, fact that Daylight Savings is finite) Tuesday evening?

Well, firstly, there is the fact that young Sam has only four and a bit days of being able to refer to himself as 'young Sam' before he must alter this to something resembling "buggery old fart Sam" as he waves goodbye to that dank, cloudy swamp known as adolescence and leaves on the long, winding but ultimately rewarding path to that far-off and elusive land known as twentidom. (In non-literary wankerist terms, I mean me fackin' (Nyngan-style) 20th is on Sundee) What do I think about this? Well, firstly I'm worried about the obvious change in people's attitudes towards me because obviously everyone really gives a toss... I mean, so many expectations and heuristics regarding people in their twenties. Or rather, as I continually whinge about to people around me, I will no longer be able to blame my immaturity on the fact that I'm 'not even 20 yet', but instead will have to blame it on the simple fact that I am just very, very immature. Secondly, and on the alternative metacarpus, I am actually quite pleased to finally be admitted into that exclusive fraternity of twenty-year-olds, of which nearly all of my friends are already members. It's like a gentleman's club that you can only join when you're in your fourties, balding, and with a gut and fortune roughly comparable to each other in size and stature. What will the common room be like? Will I undergo any hazing procedures? What perks, rewards and bonuses lie in wait for me? Ooh, the excitement is as palpable as a pauper carrying paper to the papalcy.

Seriously though and in all honesty, it's simply an excuse to get together with a bunch of my acquaintances to "hoppe and synge and maken swich disport" (I really enjoy my medieval London course, on an extremely unrelated topic), all the while thinking and smiling about what an absolutely wonderful person I am and how grateful and fortunate we all are that someone as delightful as I could have enriched our lives so thoroughly and completely that... I think I'll stop there, I'm making myself sick.

So that's the big event on my calendar. Fortunately I have no further assessments due this week, nor next week, which seems to imply that I am free for such merriment on Sunday night, and God bless those Australian and NZ troops for deciding to land at Gallipoli the day after my birthday, where would I be without a statutory recovery day, regardless of the day of the week on which it falls?

But yes, to write about any more personal details would involve expending mental effort yet again so I shall leave you with this unconnected rambling about my birthday, and if the need arises to vent my spleen about any other qualms, queries or quagmires, I shall do so in time, in time, my darlings. At least now I have fulfilled my moral obligation to the leader of my posse (How's about that Ang? Another impersonal reference to you) and can sleep now. And Just to perpetuate my tradition of concluding with a reference to the Shaking of the Speare, I shall add: To sleep, perchance to be woken up at 6 AM by those FUCKING lorekeets again. Fucking bastards. Fuck all birds. I fucking hate them all.

(That's from The Merry Wives of Windsor, by the way. It's no wonder it's one of his lesser-known works. The language of the man. Tut tut)

There is a hole in the floor

It's about time I had a title that wasn't a congratulatory reference to some obscure and archaic piece of literature. Yes, there is a hole in the floor here. My computer chair keeps getting a wheel stuck in it.

Is this a metaphor for life in general? Are all of our computer chairs constantly getting stuck in holes in the floor? Are we perpetually struggling to get our computer chairs out of the holes in the floor? Are we just ignoring the holes in the floor, hoping they'll go away? Should we fix them? Or should we create a new, innovative floor that never gets holes in it? Or better yet, create a computer chair with in-built floor-hole-resisting technology? Should we add walnut-burr panelling to such a chair? How much should we charge for these chairs? Should the marketing be done in an esoteric, attention-grabbing way, or in the traditional way by using buzz words like 'ergonomic' and 'Don't take my word for it, here's mister Buzz Aldrin' (pun definitely, and incredulously, intended)?

I think it's a question that is definitely worth looking into.

Second question worth looking into: Is it just me, or is Gavin Brown an incredibly unattractive man? I'm not having a stab at the fact that his eyes look in different directions, but he really does have that untrustworthy, sleazy politician look about him... I mean, he's no Arafat in terms of ugliness, but then who could be?

Third question, this one isn't worth looking into: In 10000 words or less (whichever suits you), critically analyse Baudelaire's integration of sensory perception in poetry and compare this with other writers of the Symbolist movement.

At the rate I'm going, I could probably do that right now.

"Than schal Sam torne into confusioun"

Well, inspired as I am by reading all my newly discovered friend's blogs (That is to say, the blogs themselves are newly discovered, not the friends) I thought I'd write my own entry. One could no doubt apply a psychoanalytical reading to my motivation and suggest that I'm writing purely because I can't have any friends of mine be more consistent and prolific at anything in the entire known universe than me, all hail Sam in all his glory! Prostrate yourself at my feet, drunken subjects, and enjoy the suffering, sanity drained in disrespect...

Anyway, it's time for a publication (That IS the technical term for the act of making something public, is it not? It stands to reason, in spite of its other popularised connotations) of some of my personal woes and confusion. Deafening alarm bells are currently sounding as it seems almost inevitable that this entry may descend into a stereotypical let's-use-my-blog-to-whinge-as-though-anyone-gives-a-shit piece of writing, but I nevertheless trust in my extensive experience in whinging and my utter pomposity (or shall we say, literary wankerism) to make these complaints somewhat eloquent and perhaps even entertaining. Although I have a feeling that trust will prove to be about as misplaced as George W Bush in a Mensa meeting.

In short, my first woe is that I am about to be kicked out of my course. Now, before all my loyal subjects run screaming with burning effigies of Susan Colmar to the Education Faculty, let me clarify, or rather, completely and insultingly contradict my earlier statement, by saying that I'm not about to be kicked out of my course. What has rather happened is that I have dug myself into an enormous bear pit regarding my enrollment and my stubborn refusal to do what subjects I was supposed to simply because I didn't want to, and rather than doing what Susan et al. will in time recommend - which will presumably require extra effort on my part - I am resigning myself to the fact that there is no point in accumulating further HECS, and committing further effort and potentially a further year of study to get a degree that I only want because it would give me license to have lots of letters after my name, and so all in all I'm not being kicked out so much as I am finally relenting to subconscious wishes I've had since about half a minute into first year, and quitting this degree. And we'll see what happens from there.

Secondly, I hate the police. This isn't a recent epiphany of mine, nor is it in any way pertinent to that about which I've been talking for the rest of this entry, but rather a completely unrelated and spontaneous call to mass-insurgence. Actually it's not even that but I think it would be interesting to write that and then see in a couple of weeks if my name and headshot have found their way onto the national security database (which I will check, next time I hack into the database and change all the terrorism suspects' photos to nude fakes of Britney Spears). Anyway, I don't think I'll go into too many details as to the wherefore, but suffice to say I was once (only once, so yes, I'm quick to bear grudges towards authority figures) treated very badly by a couple of over-zealous men with enormous genital-compensatory truncheons while sitting with a friend who, together with me, and remarkably similar to me with the possible exception of the pronouns I'm about to use, was minding her own goddamn business and doing absolutely nothing except sitting and occasionally talking. It just so happened that the way I was spoken to and the way in which I got a blinding flashlight shone in my face made me wonder why I bother being a law-abiding, system-fearing citizen when in remarkably innocent moments like that I'm accosted for doing the worst and most heinous crime known to man, sitting on an oval at night time and chatting... *WOOP WOOP NATIONAL SECURITY ALARM SYSTEM BEING SET OFF, WE'VE GOT TWO MORE ISLAMIC SUICIDE BOMBER BASTARDS DISGUISED AS UNI STUDENTS PRETENDING TO SIT ON AN OVAL AND TALK WHILE ACTUALLY CONSPIRING TO BOMB THE PRIME MINISTER'S HOUSE AND SHIT ON HIS DOG...* Anyway, obviously I'm not about to cut off my nose to spite my face and actually go out and meet with extremist sociopaths (as a sidenote, apologies for my very xenophobic implication that all terrorists are of the Muslim faith), but it has changed my opinion of those boys in blue to whom I so jovially and coherently wished "Happy neewwwww year, police" at about 1 AM on the 1st of January. And so I protest in my own way by, for example, posting garble like this on the internet (I love the word garble, don't you? I keep using it these days), and also as I discovered the other day, I have the Eastwood police station telephone line in my phone under the name "Fuckwtis", which suggests to me in so many ways and for so many reasons that I was once manifesting my anger at said authority while under the influence of certain fermented vegetable products.

Thirdly, just an hour or so ago, we had to leave our Politics & Poetry in Medieval London tute to evacuate the Woolley building when the fire alarm went off. that wasn't annoying so much in itself, but the fact was we didn't move at all and in fact tried to continue learning, or rather, arguing, about the middle english poem Athelston. The reason for this is that the Wooley fire bell is very faint when heard from the other end of the building and we interpreted it as coming from another building or place entirely. It reminded me an enormous amount of when I watched the very uplifting, subtle and understatedly produced show Seconds from Disaster, simply in the abscence of being able to watch my VCR or DVD player, and it ran the story of a fire on a Scandinavian cruise ship in the 80's/early 90's, the name of which alludes me, that killed around 250 people. essentially it was stated that one of the reasons why so many people died in said fire was because the fire alarms which were sounded on account of said fire (if anyone's getting annoyed at my continual use of the phrase 'said fire' please let me know at my postal address of 142 I don't give a shit street, Crow's Nest, NSW, Australia) were just too far away and too faint that anyone who was in their cabin, asleep, blissfully unaware that said fire existed, were not, as tortological as it may seem, aware that said fire existed, and so did not try to escape said fire by screaming and wetting their pants. Anyway, I hate to finally have to admit that there was absolutely no point to me saying this at all, but there really isn't. It just reminded me, that's all... But yes, if a fire was actually in existence in that building this afternoon and we as a class did not interpret said fire as an emergency of some kind due to the relative inaudibility of the afore-mentioned fire bell, and hence were consumed by said fire and died in said fire, and said fire was then referred to as the Woolley fire (which could no doubt spark some amusing puns, but would also spare us from having to refer to it any further as 'said fire'), and everyone cried and said 'if only that fire bell had been more audible this never would have happened, oh the humanity', then I may, in fact, become rather ticked off if not for the fact that I would in fact, be dead.

Anyway, it is apparent to me now that I am writing this entry purely to kill time in the Brennan computer access centre. So please note that there was no deeply seeded authorial intent present in this entry at all, but rather a bored and idle mind trying desperately to fill the hours between his air-whittling class and his appointment at the staring window. Ay me!