#25 Communists

Greetings comrades, join me as we learn about the toils of Bozz...

I have just come out of a lecture that could only be described by Kate as "Trotsky meets Laurel & Hardy". My Theatre Studies lectures are usually fairly dramatic anyway: it is impossible for Theatre lecturers (who are really just frustrated actors) to deliver any lecture in a dull way at the best of times. But today, we had no less than two of our lecturers working together on the same lecture.
The reason for the rather strange description is because they were talking about the 1960s and 1970s - ie: when they were at university. Hence, we got told all the stories about how they became communists, joined student theatre companies, and of course protested against the Vietnam war/for women's rights/against nuclear weapons/for more money...

This did have some highlights: the story of how the communist theatre group was not only funded by the state (through Arts Council grants), but also how in one production, the entire grant was spent on buying joints to pass around the audience. When the Arts Council found out about this, all they asked the company to do was to switch to tobacco, instead! However, one of our lecturers is fiercely against the war in Iraq, and used every opportunity to voice his opinion on the matter.

I shudder to think at the hours I've wasted this week messing around with new software on my laptop. Until now, I'd always thought that widgets were the things that made cans of Tennant's impossible to pour without a half-pint of head on them. Upon discovering Konfabulator, however, I now know that they are an endless distraction to people who like having cool stuff on their desktop. After spending a long time downloading dozens of the things, I've now managed to clear it down to just 5 basic utilities. This also means I have harnessed the power of RSS syndication for my own evil needs.

I've also taken a few more photos of the place. I decided to go for a walk to find out what life was like outside the union precinct. To my surprise, I found out there's a TV transmitter about 2 minutes up the hill from the Halls of Residence; a whole parade of shops and a 24-hour BP garage nearby that could prove very useful to know about; and quite a lot of very steep gradients to navigate. Actually, the last one wasn't that surprising. Anyway, there's a few more pictures in the gallery now, and I've also been playing with Photoshop, so expect the next batch to be chock-a-block with whizzy effects. Or not.

Other things I've done this week:

▪ Acted like a stereotypical bloke in defending Nick Hornby's 'Fever Pitch'
▪ Acted like a five-year old when it started snowing
▪ Asked my English Literature seminarer* to reply to a Tom Ford text message
▪ Started learning the Greek Alphabet (alpha, beta, gamma, delta, epsilon, zeta, eta, theta...)
▪ Had a (luckily-empty) cup of Coke thrown at me


* Seminarer (noun) - the teacher who leads seminars