the worst thing about exams isn't the actual work. It isn't the fact that I haven't studied at all though I did at least read the books eventually. I can get over the fact that I bullshitted through at least half of the questions and plain didn't know the answers to at least three of them. It's not even the fact that it is sunny and I should be lying in the grass with a book and a beer.

But why oh why must they pick a new and different hall each time?

Classics was in the Kelvin Gallery. Helpful really since you get to a certain area in the West End and everything is Kelvin something. First off it wasn't on my map. The bigger one I found online doesn't much help either since the main building doesn't tell you what floor anything is on and seemed to suggest it was in the visitor centre. Further exploration of the uni website told me that it was in the museum. I can't be blamed for this. It actually said A7=Kelvin Gallery/museum and it was not over the actual Kelvin Art Gallery and Museum like you might suppose I had mistaken it for.

It was in neither of these places and thankfully someone thoughtfully put up signs all around the cloisters with a big WAIT HERE FOR CLASSICS outside the door. It was in the Business school.

I swear I get more wound up I'm never gonna find the stupid hall than the actual exam itself. Which went fine incidentally but I should have possibly revised all of those Latin names.

I swear we were infinite

I forgot how ridiculous wordpress is. I mean it has graphs to show you page views and stats and Best Day Evers. It can tell you what people searched for to get to your blog, or what link somebody clicked to get to your blog and what they clicked once they got there. It makes me feel like I'm spying on my readers to be honest. Although I get a kick out of it, it's more information than I ever needed. And graphs are always pretty.

I have this huge desire to do something bold, fictionally speaking I mean. I've got an idea but I can't do it until I get my essay done. See when you're writing about a philosophy where pleasure is the path to ease suffering it is all too easy to just not bother writing anything at all.

Also: this philosophy decides to talk about everything is made up of atoms and then throw in some advice about relationships. Namely, if she ain't there to fuck, go fuck someone else! It's almost as good as the rules of when to pee. Oh Classical Civilisation I love you so.

I'm tired so English blah

So I get up 7am blah. Get on the bus and don't notice it says Charing Cross or do notice but think it's an 18 I can stay on longer yay. So the driver takes me down the m8 and shouts at me when I complain. He opens the doors though but doesn't actually stop so I have to jump. Classics is pointless because it's an essay handback tutorial. First off I got a fucking A on an essay about two books I didn't read because I'm a fucking genius at blagging so I certainly didn't need the tutorial. Moderately pretty girl who's unfortunately very obviously from Birmingham and speaks so loud did well too. I was glad. I was glad because I remember her name and that she's from Birmingham and has a stupid colour of hair. She has an identity and I'm glad she did well but not better than me. Then the tutor who is not our lovely Greek but an English gay (still lovely though) tells us that nobody answered the question I did right that he'd read. But I totally did, see the aforementioned A. Then he puts up a godawful hypothetical question on Virgil. I have not read him yet. I have not attended any of the lectures on him bar the one I've blogged about. Togas hurray. He writes up the way French people do essays apparently. The structure goes thesis, antithesis, synthesis. He proposes we come up with one for the question.

Dead silence.

"Well get into groups then. Talk it over."

Birmingham girl has read the book. She doesn't really want to talk. None of us have the book with us.

"Well," I begin with no real idea and they all look at me expectantly. Balls.

"Thesis could be the comparison with Homer and epic and bam there's the big build up, look at me I can write epic stuff. Antithesis is well the negative of comparing to Homer. And then synthesis I don't know because I haven't read it."

Dead silence.

"Well you can say that then." Balls.

Gay tutor looks hella bored as he interrupts the sleepy silence and asks "So anyone cracked it?"

Deadest silence of all. I laugh. Why do I always laugh. He looks at me and I try to make words good. Basically I repeat what I just wrote but slightly more eloquently. Then I started speaking a little too much and ruined the effect but still I got a look of admiration.

"Very interesting. I wasn't thinking that at all." And then he starts talking about the rushed epic opening mimicking a later scene in the Odyssey and how Virgil became the epic man to copy and not Homer. He talks style and lots of words and I beam.

It was almost worth waking up so very early and being kidnapped by an irate bus driver.

You must imagine a strong Greek accent for this

"A student lent me a film on dvd. Maybe you will know it. It was Transformers."
Smiles all round.
"But not the film I mean the cartoon. Have you seen the cartoon?" He directs this to the girl next to me. She hasn't.
"Tut tut. Not very educated. Well in this cartoon there was an evil robot. He was called Megatron. And there was a child. He was very very irritating and I wanted the robots to kill him. But they did not."

Sometimes Classics is just the best.

There's Two Lads Sharing an Epiphany

I'm one third through my last essay. Pretty good really. I'm having a break since I've overwritten lately. Not anything academic like I should have of course but you know it's all good. I went far too long without picking up a pen, my fingers aren't as tough as they once were. I'm all happy cause I passed my first Classics essay although RobeMan did not take too kindly to my feminist arguments. Accused me of swallowing exaggerated ideas. He put the feminism on the reading list, not my fault if I agreed with them. But then I probably didn't argue very hard. What's the point when you're only asked to write 1500 words and then you get criticised for not mentioning one girl who turns up for half a chapter and is never heard of again. Anyway, essay going ok but absolutely have to finish tonight.

Ugh I'm bored.

I managed to find the most hilariously entertaining toilet in the library today. I could have spent all day reading the walls in there. There were whole manifestos and poems and people correcting spelling and grammar and then bitching about it. Sadly I had classes to go to and it's rather unseemly to spend all of one's time hanging around in a bathroom all day. One of the best ones was this long rant about how the patriarchy was holding us back and we should wake up and realise that men and women are the same which someone had circled and pointed out that we are very much different, which we should all have noticed seeing as we were in the toilet reading it. The first girl ended with a large slogan of "Peace Now" only someone else had crosses out the Peace and added in Piss.

There was also this dainty little sticker with a picture of the Uni on it, real smart looking, stuck on straight and neatly to the door. What was it for? Glasgow University Anarchy Group.

I was looking to see if the new Dirty Pretty Things album was coming out anytime soon when I realised that I read ages ago that Carl Barât has a sister who is also musical. So I looked her up and while I'm not usually a fan of female English accents I want to steal her voice and use it as my own. I'm sure she won't mind.
Listen for yourself.

What became of the Likely Lads

Bleeeeeeeeeeh. My last essay is the worst. I actually have nothing to say. It's one of those here's a quote we just made up, not even from like a historian or critic or whatever but from a Glasgow Student from the 70s apparently, and then that dreaded word: Discuss. Plus there's the problem that I haven't read much of the book yet and it's for Monday. Tomorrow will be fun times in the library again. But you know last essay of the semester so next Tuesday I will have my no more essays dance.

My lip is really annoying me now. Since it went all tingly a while ago I've been chewing at it, mostly in my sleep. Then when I'm spending all my time on buses I can't help but bite it. The little line bothers me. Stupid drunk people who can't stand.

I saw a guy on the train that looked exactly like Carl Barât. I could not stop looking at him, it was uncanny. I was waiting for a crazy junkie to turn up and reform the Libertines right there at Mount Florida.

Sadly it was not to be.

Forbidden Planet are constantly lying to everyone. For once this was a good thing. I walked past the window on Wednesday and they have "On sale Thursday" and the comics all nicely displayed. Now I've tried buying a comic a day early but never gotten lucky so when I went in with Emma I really had to hold myself back when I glanced up at the new comics shelf and there it was:

Emma was not impressed. Not even by the dragon.

My speakers are working erractically now, still too angry to blog

"You really need to know the dates of the texts you're reading. I'm not asking for exact dates but it is essential if you want to succeed in this class."

Whatever man, I managed to see 16 as 18 this morning which is why I'm 20 minutes late for your class, so forgive me if I didn't want to say "5th century maybe?" since I couldn't remember if that was the dates for Herodotus or for some stones in Govan Old Church. I had to waffle on for ages about the Delphic oracle just to recover from that lecturing. Stupid robeman. I hate answering in that class, nobody ever wants to say anything and I usually know the answer (my head is packed full of useless information from Greek literature) so then I just seem like the huge geek I am. On the plus side it's keeping Mouseface at a safe distance. Mostly from the shouting over his wrong answer thing last week. I mean it was bloody obvious it was Athena, she had the owl!

Archaeology essay is done thank god. I missed getting drunk with the loveliest girl tonight. Not that she would be drunk, she's too lovely but I could have got drunk and told her how lovely she was. Archaeology stopped this happening! One the plus side we learnt about this guy who asked to be mummifed and put on display in a Uni but the students kept stealing his head so they locked it away after they caught some guys playing football with it.

Only one more essay to go this semester on a book I haven't finished. Gonna be fun next week!

THIS. IS. sorry where now?

You know you picked a good day to turn up for your classes when the first thing RobeMan says is "So, how many of you saw that film that was out not that long ago called 300?" Surprisingly few of us had but then this is a class of bores. That's right my Uni may be the fairest of them all but sweet jesus are they dull. Of course RobeMan then immediately followed the question with disparaging comments about the historical inaccuracies. Well of course most of it is a load of rubbish, it's a film not a documentary! But then he called it the worst classical film ever. Hear that Brad? You're off the hook it would seem. Yes, pout, pout, pout. S'all you did really apart from kill the only good actor in that film.




Apparently they actually did ok in their depiction of Spartans. You know apart from the really ridiculous things. But he had a problem with the politics. Wait sir, you mean the Queen wasn't a total idiot who is strong and powerful because instead of speaking strongly in front of the assembly and convincing them (which she did in the end anyway so what was the problem) she'll just let that guy rape her, cause you know...No actually I don't know. It was really fucking stupid and awkward. Just leave the women out of it if you can't think of anything for them to do but have sex. We can do other things too! Most of us at least.

Anyway, yeah Spartans. Brilliantly mad they were. They had an a council where they made decisions by shouting, kinda like a battle of the bands only instead of hopeful young boys who know 3 chords but are almost there with that hand-cramp inducing C, they had 28 60 year old men. Woo?

Here's a story of how badass the Spartans were. A Spartan boy stole a fox and because he didn't want to be caught he hid it up his cloak. The fox scrambled to get away and in doing so ripped the boy to pieces. The boy kept it there though because he didn't want punished. The fox killed him instead. THATS HOW HARDCORE WE ARE. FOXES RIP OUR GUTS OUT BUT WE DONT SAY ANYTHING. I call that pretty fucking stupid but maybe that's why I'll never be a real man.

I have 1150 words to go for this stupid essay. You may have noticed that instead I wrote a 800 word story instead. Umm oops?

One last thing. Hot classics guy? Totally chatting up this girl from my Indy lessons. Tall, blonde, knows how to talk to people instead of just mumbling to herself like a crazy person. I'm not even gonna try and compete with pretty, coherent girls. Ah well, I think I only liked him for his sideburns anyway.

Rawr feminist rant.

Do men honestly think asking for sex point blank works? I honestly never thought I'd have to wonder about this, but during my almost two years of being single I have had to deal with being asked if I'd sleep with someone more than I'd like. And I have no idea how to react. If I laugh it off and joke along I'm scared they'll think I'm easy. If I tell them to stop it or ignore them I get pestered more, told it was all just a laugh, no need to overreact. Did I encourage them? I am a terrible flirt, I find it so funny and fun. So then I'm confused and annoyed which leads inevitably to them claiming I'm confusing and blowing hot and cold and teasing them and God knows. Either I attract the lamest guys (and there have been a few lame ones in the bunch) or the whole world has gone to crap.

Whatever happened to romance. Is it so hard these days to find a guy that wants something slightly more meaningful than an easy fuck. I'm not naive enough to think guys don't think about sex. By now I assume that's all they want and hope to be pleasantly surprised. I'm drawn, because of this, to guys that aren't obsessed with sex. Not because I want a relationship with them but because I know I'm safe. I can relax.

I'm growing tired of 'society today'. I used to able to talk to any guy. I can still talk to guys more readily than girls simply because girls have always confused me. I can understand guys more or less just apparently not the ones who have any interest in me whatsoever. I don't want to sound like a whiny single person. You know 'waa waa I want a relationship why aren't there any good people out there'. I know why I'm single. I spent three months doing everything I could to move on to the next guy and got pretty close to a few before I pulled back, shut down and went 'nu uh' Catherine you are being sensible this time.

So here I am. Sensible. Which means the only guys that want me now are the crazies who don't talk to me for months and then get bored and go "hey there sex now plz?" and I go no and they go away for a little while. They depress me more than they should.

I don't even know if I want another relationship. It's hard work and ends in heartbreak. I'm not even sure I like who I am when I'm with someone. But I miss having someone to hold. I'm an affectionate person and I went from having a big group of girls who always needed a hug and a boyfriend to having a few friends, most of which I don't know well enough for hugging purposes and when I do with ones I know well I get accused of being gay. Pff I almost wish I were, then all my problems would be solved! But lesbians confuse me. Too many emotions.

I think what I'm getting at is everything is overly complicated so could everything stop being complicated please?

Classical quote to consider:
From the same book that gave peeing instructions. Woman here being created by Zeus: "I shall give them an affliction in which they will all delight as they embrace their own misfortune." Awesome, how do you like being an affliction all you women out there. Personally I'm loving it. I'm so bored of the woman bashing in all my classes. But then I'm the one that picked the historical subjects. Enjoy my favourite women bashing comic:

How I learnt not to set my dick on fire. An essay by Miss Kitty.

I do love Autumn. As I trudged home, sick as a very sick dog having managed to locate the book I needed from the library (who puts a history book in the theology section just cause it's about nuns? HISTORIC NUNS!) and not slept through classics (no sign of hotman, good thing too considering the icky cold), my heart lifted a little as I crunched through the leaves. And maybe kicked them up a little just for fun. And maybe by little I mean quite a lot.

A squirrel decided to try to paw its way into our sitting room not once but twice and just casually walked off when I approached the window all 'what the hell ya doing? crazy rodent thing' waving my hands about. It was mad. He's not been back but I suspect he's off to find a rock or something to steal my TV when I'm not looking.

I'm pretty much over the cold now *touch wood* I defeated it with positive thinking and drugs! Just dying of exhaustion now, so many things I had to clean today, some of them more than once thank you very much faulty bin bag. So now I anticipate good things. Like essay writing and a 9am start on Friday...it's a big week for me this one. A big, sucky one full of Things To Do.

On the good side I'm writing again. I spent the last three hours or so writing a short story. It had swords and hints of Greek mythology. Very happy I did something with ease. I've been in a funk for too long. Might post it if anyone's interested/I can be bothered.

On the Greek mythology thing for Classics I had to read Hesiod's Works and Days or as Julie decided to rename it "How I learned not to set my dick on fire". No joke. Halfway through this short poem thing about when to do your harvest and what way to drink your wine Hesiod starts giving instructions on how to pee. Guys just to inform you, you can't pee standing towards the sun, and at night don't pee on the road or uncovered. The best advice ever comes swiftly after with the classic (and I stress I have not changed a single thing here) "And when your private parts are stained with semen indoors, do not let them be seen as you go near the hearth-fire, but avoid it." Don't let your lady-friend see you set your spunk on fire? Don't go near fire in case you burn your penis cause that would be sore? Semen is highly flammable? I'm not sure quite what he is telling us here. But whatever it is, take heed men.