highlyeccentric | Entries tagged with college

So, I went a bit burko this semester. One of the reasons for this was the essay I wrote on AElfric's homily on Judith.¹It was less fun than Anglo-Saxon essays usually are, and goblinpaladin and the Wife had to nurse me through it.
As some warped sort of celebration, I decided to go to iremos's Halloween party dressed as Judith herself.

Accordingly, I decked myself out with gold and purple, although more of the latter than the former. AElfric assures us that all of this dressing-up was for no galnesse, a lovely word which means anything from silliness to lust. I can assure you that I was not at all lustful, although possibly those looking at me were (snot my fault the dress has a slit higher than an anglo-catholic liturgy). AElfric may have Disapproved. Possibly my intention to wear this dress was responsible for my fevered dreams about AElfrician chastity.

( you know you've spent too much time studying, when you go to parties dressed as your essays )

also featuring in this photo are

goblinpaladin and

iremos, both looking rather silly and unaware that the photo was being taken.
I did have a balloon, which i decorated ineptly as the Head of Holofernes, but I lost him.

1. That link will take you to S.D. Lee's online edition. Much good may it do you, since no translation is available. Awesome, I believe, is working on one.

So, as of tonight, I am officially a Valedict of 2007. Which is a little weird, since I'll be back here next year. There's something to be said for valedicting with your friends... but as my friend groups change every year, and this year they've spread out across various year groups as well, I'm not so sure about that anymore.
First off, my sincere apologies to

kayloulee for the weird school-esque ritual in which the freshers- all 130 of them, more than half the room, were made to get up and sing a slightly doctored version of Hot Stuff, apparently in our honour. Singing and dancing is the sort of thing they make kindy kids do at year six graduations. I'm perplexed. Also, the general reaction from the valedicts seemed to be aaawww how cute. Maybe it's just that I'm a young 'un... but freshers aren't children! Children, by and large, aren't that frustrating. Also, children can't be blamed if they throw up all over the hallway, whereas freshers should damn well know better. (

kayloulee, i assure you, is above such antics)
Secondly, I now have a lovely pair of college champagne flutes.
Thirdly... I like college. But I don't think it's the place where I've forged a lifelong network. A few good friends, yes. But not the HUGE NETWORK OF LIFELONG FRIENDS they promise you at O-week.

Kate: if i came dressed as a dwarf to an Anglo-Saxon wedding, you'd have to do charms against me. So it's obviously not going to work.

( Probably boring for non-collegiates )

We had a lovely Impromput* Party in Kate's room last night.
Now i must write an essay on Chaucer. Someone shoot me now.

*that was supposed to be Impromptu, but i do so like the look of Impromput. I wonder what an Impromput party consists of?

This is a Love Poem, dedicated to Kate on her birthday some months ago...

4/4 Kate

I’m so glad Kate is my wife;

She put the poetry back in my life.

Although she often drives me cuckoo,

Truly, no-one else will do!

So for this her birthday time,

I celebrate by making rhyme.

In her honour, we made a new verb-

A word more apt than ever heard-

When the hour is getting late,

You’ve much to do- ProcrastiKATE!

This is a poem I made on my own:

My rhyming is shaky yes yes I know,

My rhyming is shaky and my metre is worse-

And I’m unsure how to finish this verse!

So let this rhyme commemorate

The wonderous, splendiferous,

Fantabulous Kate!

Philology is like pulling teeth. Actual proper respectable textual study is like pulling teeth. And this is only a 2000 word undergrad essay!
This morning, I contemplated throwing it all in and taking up undertaking. Or signwriting, something.

Instead of having a cup of tea and cheering myself up, i spent an hour sending snarky emails to Melanie, complaining about her subject. The current Essay of Doom isn't for her, but it's the same field. We have established that the teeth-pulling feeling isn't a result of who's marking it, but simply a side effect of writing Anglo-Saxon essays. Thus, undertaking looks better by the minute.
Anyway. Melanie, being a lovely person, told me that I don't have the demeanor for undertaking, so I should stick with anglo-saxonism. Then

goblinpaladin came around this afternoon and helped me bash out the sense of the last part of the essay. So things were looking up.

College formal dinner this evening, the guest speaker was Peter Cousens. Who is a magnificent storyteller, and burst into song in the middle of the dining hall, and it was all cool. He told us all about the new musical his company, Kookaburra, are putting on. Entitled Floyd Collins, it's about a Kentucky farmer in the 20s who goes searching for limestone caves- searching for a dream- and becomes trapped. Cousens said several things toward the end, which I don't remember very clearly. Something about blind faith and human endeavour and achieving crazy dreams.

So much for signwriting. Here I am, and here I go- in search of a crazy dream. And the pursuit of a crazy dream starts here, on this battered laptop, with The Dream of the Rood.

(all of that is code for: i feel inspired again, but not so inspired as to write the essay rather than blogging about it)

Person One: it's that old conflict between head and heart... where your head is telling you "don't go there" and your heart is saying "shut up!"
Person Two, in a musing tone: with me it's usually head and stomach. You know: your head's saying "don't eat that!" and yet...

~

and meanwhile, apparently I have special rights to certain kinds of pronouncements.
Says I, of Beowulf: it has neither saints nor sex. Why would I enjoy it?
Says Tockie, of me: Only you could say that!
Apparently she loves me for it, though :)

~

Speaking of APEC, observe:
John Howard, on road closures etc:
"Could I say to the people of Sydney, I'm sorry that you've been inconvenienced. It's not the fault of our visitors, it's not the fault of either the NSW government or the federal government, it's the fault of those people who resort to violence in order disrupt gatherings of this kind,'' Quoted in SMH tonight, in an article which also notes the Liberal ranking in two-party preffered has dropped again.

Yet lookie here- same paper, yesterday:

( mostly peaceful with a carnival atmosphere )

Same article informs us that
Meanwhile about 10 people dressed in business suits, calling themselves the "Billionaires for Bush", stood and heckled the marchers with chants such as "corporate might, not human rights".

CNN, on the other hand, recognise satire when they hear about it from the other side of the globe. They can't tell the difference between 10 and 20, nor the difference between "Phil T Rich" (which

iremos, herself a new Billionaire for Bush, assures me was the correct pseudonym) and "Phil T Church". But hey, they're Americans, ( their presidential staff can't spell *Sydney* ) So what do we expect?

Amusingly, Lis tells me the Billionaires had their signs taken away by police "for their saftey", lest all the nasty anti-bush protesters hurt them. Something tells me most protesters have a better sense of humour than that, but hey. You never know.

Also, check out the cool photos on the UK's Indymedia site, including ( this brilliantly captioned work )

So, the non-flist flooding policy only sort of worked. Anyway, have some photos. Of the college formal.

( photos under here )

I am the Lobster, and the curse stops here...
-Kate, mishearing "I am the last one, and the curse stops here", the refrain to the Whitlam's The Curse Stops Here

"At first I thought it was I am the Lobster. I know there's a song called I am the Walrus, so I thought for a while that I might be mishearing that. Because why would you write a song about being a Lobster?"

I can now confirm that the possum-related telephone message, last semester, was not just an incident of Ratenator Pointless Advice. An unfortunate second year did, in fact, wash a possum. (but not dry it or turn it over, since it was by the end of the wash an ex-possum)

Useful advice for those inhabiting, or intending to inhabit, shared accomodation of the kind which has large communal bathrooms.

If one desires to take a shower with ones boyfriend, it behooves one to betake oneself, and one's boyfriend, to the men's bathrooms, since these bathrooms contain only one shower. Once there, one ought to lock the door, thereby extending one's fellows the courtesy of sparinging them the distressing experience of wandering in to the bathroom to brush their teeth, and having to figure out why two people's giggles are coming from only one of the three shower stalls.

ed- what do we think? Given that this person has exposed us all to her sex life for some months now... Next time, should I take my computer, and my speakers, and sit in the corridor and play Avenue Q's "You Can Be As Loud As The Hell You Want"?

Exeter Book Riddle 4 is an extremely complex and enigmatic riddle. Although various solutions have been proposed (the most accepted being bell, but bucket, millstone, necromancy, flail, lock, hand-mill, pen and phallus have also been proposed), none have yet received consensus agreement. (Melanie Heyworth, The Devil's in the Detail, Neophilologus 91:175-196)

My, nothing like knowing what we're talking about, is there?
That's as far as I got in my attempt to be ~~Stalker~~ Serious Student and read the teacher's article on the homework. I believe she feels she knows what we're talking about, though, and it has something to do with the Devil. Or a Devil, I'm not sure which.

Also, I have found another stupid Anglo-Saxon contradictory word. (ge)gan- to go, to come, to move or depart. Options a, c and d work together; options b and c work together. How a and d came to be in the same word with b I am unsure.

BREAKING NEWS: Kate comes in and announces: I keep hearing a repetitive noise. I'm not sure if it's someone having sex downstairs, or if it's a pidgeon.
the link between those two seems about as obvious as the link between bells, necromancy, handmills and phalluses. (Phallusi?)

So I co-wrote a song tonight. My first experience of writing to metre and rhyme- clearly, having Kate next to me with a tune, and starter couplets, is the key.

This song is dedicated to the Weich sisters and their housemate Anne-Marie...

Your house is long and narrow
and your bookcases are thin
there's no room here for a sparrow
but i think I'll still come in.

And there's a scary room downstairs
Where I will never go!
You've even named your dining chairs
Though they're not names I know.

Oh! This house is my favourite place to go,
You're all here and you know I love you so!

Your house is warm and cosy
And there's always food for all.
The neighbours might be nosy,
And yet we have a ball.

You know if you should ever leave,
Then I'd just have to say
That my poor heart would always grieve;
I'd have nowhere to stay!

Kate is going home tomorrow. But when she gets back I will get her to sing it into Wavepad, and make an MP3 out of it. If she can give me chords, we might be able to get Dad to do us a backing track on mandolin. And then we would have musical evidence of our very evident fabulosity.

Current Music: da-DA-da-da-da-DADA, da-da-dum-dum-de-da....

First: everyone read Alex's very apt criticisms of Miranda Devine: http://www.batrock.net/?p=150

Secondly: Quotes

Tess
I think I have become a caricature of myself!

Tess and Kiki are having lunch with Jackie and assorted others. Keeks informs Tess that someone looks "just like Lord Voldemort". Much amusement.
Jackie: Lord who?
*entire table kill themselves laughing*
Jackie: Just because I'm not a history nerd like all of you!
*table dies again*
Tess: Oh that Lord Voldemort! Slaughtered the Saxons in the fourteenth century!

this telephone message just now: Hello girls. As you know we have a lot of possums around the buildings, and we do our best to make sure that they don't get into the college. But sometimes they do and they get into the laundries and other places. So could you just make sure you close the washing machines and the dryers after you use them, and that you look carefully before you put in any clothes.

something i've never thought of...

Julia Fetherston, in her reply to Bobo's Toast to the College:

Women's fosters an independance in its students, perhaps more than some of the other colleges. The other day, sitting in the Paul's Quad, I was a approached by an anonymous Paul's Fresher, who whispered in my ear: Julia, I need some personal advice. Not words you particularly want to hear from a Pauls Boy. Julia, he asked me, once you have got your washing clean, how do you get it dry? And once I had explained to him the various merits of clothes dryer over washing line, I asked if he would like me to supervise this operation, to which he snapped: No, Julia, I'm a man now.

I would eat yoghurt and Yorkshire Pudding in a yurt, with you, and a yak, on a yachting holiday in Yakust.

it has taken kate and i an hour and a half to perfect that sentence.

Q: Which is worse?
a) being locked out of your room by a key malfunction, when you are wearing only a towel. (monday) There being no one in the office when you ring, so having to do a towel-clad run down to Mary's office, fearing that you may run through some important conference and/or into some dignitary.
b) getting out of the shower and finding you have no towel, and being faced with a nekkid dash (fortunately short) back to your room, and the interminable seconds while the key clears in the swipe lock. (tuesday)
A:...

Q: What's worse than both of these things?
A: Happily sitting reading in the nud (yes, i do that sort of thing) when the principal knocks on the door. Grabbing a towel and answering it, to have a five minute conversation with the principal, a new student (your new next door neighbour) and said student's mother.

Q: What is a good way to top off this comedy?
A: returning to the bathroom to comb your hair. raising your arms in front of the mirror in the process, and discovering that you have shaved one underarm, and the other is flourishing with silky hair.

Certain of the girls are having a balcony party tonight, and this was discussed at lunch. In the following terms:

Zoe: so, are you coming to the orgy?
Lauren: i don't remember being invited to any orgy...
Zoe: balcony party
Lauren: i was invited to a balcony party, yes. but not an orgy. i think that would stick in my memory.
Zoe: well the last two balcony parties turned out to be an orgy...
Sophie: excuse me, the first orgy was not a balcony party!

1.Phantom Sock: Some people lose socks in common laundries. I've even lost one myself since I've been here. But the overwhelming sock-factor in my college laundry experience is the phantom sock. This sock is black. This sock is not mine. But no matter what I do, it ends up in my washing at least once a fortnight. I fish it out and put it on the "unloved underwear" shelf, but it finds its way back into my laundry pile. Sometimes it makes it all the way to my sock basket, from whence i'll fish it out some days later and return it to the laundry, where the whole cycle begins again.

I complained to my neighbours about this sock. So what does Reena do? On seeing me leave the laundry, with my washing going round and round in the mashine, she goes over to the Unloved Undie Shelf and finds a sock. A sock which is not black, but is nevertheless not mine. So that night, when I'm sorting my washing, looking for the phantom sock, there's a different phantom sock in there.
The distress this causes me cannot be underestimated.

2. Mismatched documents: when printing from Grizzly Bear, the student printer, it often happens that along with your assigment you'll pick up bits and pieces of other people's printing.
Quote of the day from something I picked up along with my assignment on medieval liturgy:
He said there were other places he'd rather be than in my vagina.

My vagina was saddened by this news.

That really says it all, doesn't it?

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Strong Verbs Are Just Better

I shall wing it, I have wung it

Entries tagged with college

Geglængede mid golde and mid purpuran

On Valedicting...

quote of the day

College

4/4 Kate

Inspiration Lost > Inspiration Regained.

Life, according to College

Photos!

Mondegreen of the Day

Wash the possum, dry the possum, turn the possum over!

Basic Collegiate Courtesy

Adventures in Anglo-Saxon

The Creative High- otherwise known as phenylephyline and champagne

Miscelaenies

Hazards of College Laundries no 12: Possums

Quote of the Day

(no subject)

Lets play a little game of 'what's worse'

Proving all your suspicious about college...

strange quirks of college life