Built from the wine up...

This week has been absurd. In a bad way. The bad sort of absurd which makes you want to ram your face into a wall untill it bleeds.

First off, I was pretty darned ill. By this I mean I was forced to take more than one day out of sixth form because I could not think straight or breathe. The middle day was spent trying to navigate my drugged up and unsightly way around Birmingham city and university alone, getting quite flustered but being too proud to show it. Things I saw on that little adventure:

• Razor points in the train toilets. Bloody ridiculous: anyone attempting some facial topiary on a train is asking for trouble and is lucky to leave with their nose still attached.
• A full grown man reading Eclipse ashamedly on the train. He was not remotely young. He was on Eclipse which sickeningly means he'd endured the first two books (and probably in an equally public manner) - shocking.
• Smiling at dashing sandwich dispensory staff gets you a sandwich - at standard price.
• Nobody at Birmingham knows where the English department is; apart from myself, and I found it as a fluke.

The morning was (as I attempted to text my dad) 'a hotbed of disaster', until I orientated myself, was given a cup of tea for free, and drowned my sorrows with a bit of shopping (new coloured pencils - score!)

The afternoon was lovely however, with a spicy-spicy mexican burrito and an outline of a gorgeous and enticing looking course. Also having somehow found time to chat to the Head of Admissions and encouraged him to reconsider the A-Level I already have, which he'd overlooked. Score Two!

Came home and went straight from the station to another station: the Fire Station. Learned about weapons of torture hitherto undescribable. Anything that fires iron filings and water so fast they can cut through a man is something to be avoided I say. Came home, crashed out, wept a little, dragged myself into the next day.

Was ill until I decided I couldn't afford to miss today so went into school to find myself faced with a number of prospects:

• Interview at Warwick which I still have yet to have any real feelings either dreadful or delighted about. Later discovered today was the deadline for the coursework and faced the pressure by churning out a commentary in two hours, sending Mr Anderson a mildly freaked out e-mail entitled 'PAINFULLY URGENT' and posting the bloody thing.
• Art that is 'unmarkable' because frankly there's not enough of it.
• The need to summon up some form of title and inspiration for History Coursework.
• Chasing the world about changing the date of my exams because of aforementioned interview which, for some reason involved talking to no less than 5 people about it.
• Nobody seeming to know anything about an essay we were most definitely set.
• Latin certificate - yay!

This evening was a delerious haze of writing frantically, arranging, posting and drinking a nice amount of wine. Decisory factor here: wine makes my life.  ALSO, acquired Radiohead's new album and was grateful to be able to zone out to it after sending off the portfolio from hell. Every cloud, eh?

As to the situation now, I am sitting slightly drunk in full-body bunnyrabbit pajamas, lazing about and listening to Radiohead. Awesome.

Just saw someone write 'atlast' instead of 'alas' ... little sick in my throat.

Revelation~

In the past week or so, physics has repeatedly blown my mind. It's been like a massive, sudden destiny-driven speight of learning facilitated by a combination of a gift, a purchase, a brainwave and a moment's coincidental scanning of the Sky TV listings.

At risk of going on about how 2011 is a year of change in my life, not simply because of inevitabilities such as Uni, but also because of my determination to approach things from a Zen perspective, this year has already given me so much more reason for positivity than last year.

My good chum Anna (who I mention a lot, and who is possibly my lone reader) and I had a (mildly pissed) discussion about how, at this age, things start making sense, and I can say from experience of the past month or so, that this truly is the case.

Time (the relativity of which I have recently got my head around) makes more sense - I am becoming more organised. Writing and language (which my wrestle with my portfolio has increasingly unveiled) is logical and sensible and not at all as complicated as I have, until recently, tried to make it. And all the weird and wonderful mysteries of the universe are much more exciting, as though my brain has been in an eight-year car-wash and now emerged sparkling, fresh and raring to go.

The past month (though it is not the end of the month, so I oughtn't to be summarising) has seen me forcing improved public confidence, exploring new philosophical ideas, meeting new people, embracing adultular responsibilities and somehow coming to terms with the fact that, actually, maths isn't as bad as all that. I have, however, had little success in doing mornings (but let's not run before we can walk, eh?)

I have a mug which explains, in the words of Oscar Wilde: 'Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.' This is entirely true - but does not count if breakfast is taken after 11am.

I have just had a phonecall from my Granny and, despite knowing she wasn't actually calling to talk to me, we had a good chat about how exciting the world is, and how yes, I can borrow her books about atomic theory. Just when I thought it was impossible to be more of a nerd, it's snuck up on me like a hungry bear.

And you cannot understand how hard it was not to allude to Shakespeare there; such urges prove my point.

In any case, life is an exciting ball of quarks, gluons and bits of invisible fluff, and long may it remain so!

SAW...in more ways than one.

It has struck me how much we trust people in doctorly professions.

I have just come back from one of the most physically traumatic experiences of my life: a contact-lens consultation. In the past hour I allowed a complete stranger to assault my eyes with shards of glass which felt like being stabbed in the face. I even allowed him to do this repeatedly, even after it hurt the first time. I also allowed him to dab my eyes with yellow stuff, that was probably iodine, but could just as easily have been bottled piss.

It's a very strange social convention, allowing perfect strangers to do things like this under the assumption that they have training sufficient to do it. You don't walk into a doctors and demand to see their certificates; you don't go demanding credentials from a man in an optician's outfit, no matter how like a Saw movie the scenario winds up. It's completely unnatural, surely, to allow a stranger to do things to you that you wouldn't so much as let your parents think about doing.

And yet we do it every day.
Freaky.

Eugh, you're such a shower.

Me: What a douchebag.

Dee: What does that actually mean?

Me: Well, it's like a dick, isn't it? Let me google it.

Here is what wikipedia informed me:

Douche usually refers to vaginal irrigation, the rinsing of the vagina, but it can also refer to the rinsing of any body cavity. A douche bagis a piece of equipment for douching—a bag for holding the fluid used in douching. To avoid transferring intestinal bacteria into the vagina, the same bag must not be used for an enema and a vaginal douche.

Cheerful stuff, I hear you cry. It goes on to explain that:

Slang uses

Douchebag, or simply douche, is considered to be a pejorative term. The slang usage of the term originated in the 1960s.^[5] The term usually refers to a person, usually male, with a variety of negative qualities, specifically arrogance and engaging in obnoxious and/or irritating actions, most often without malicious intent.

This, I read out with gusto. And, as my father agreed, it was 'suitably edifying'. We had a good lol at 'a variety of negative qualities'. Gotta love Wikipedia's wording.

So now you know, as I know, that being a Douchebag is quite similar to being a dick in its use, and therefore, to avoid the awkwardness of ever discussing this again, I declare 'like a dick, isn't it?' to be the official definition.

If you look at people's faces long enough, they start to look very strange. A bit like saying the same word over and over again, it eventually becomes a meaningless alienoid sound.

Top notch procrastination going on here. Absolutely top.

I am currently waiting for my provisional driving license to arrive and free me from the final shackles of childhood. I am like a tame dog whose cage someone has forgotten to open, only a little bit more inclined to run around barking loudly if I am let out.

Right... Ethics... Hmm...