(no subject)
I.
Fuck it. >.>
Today was reasonable otherwise, I was falling asleep in lessons after having stayed up to watch the primaries but in all other respects I was doing fine. I annoyed the fuck out of my R.S. teacher in every rhetorical way possible {when she gave us a "Worksheet" to do and told us to sit and fill them out in silence, as if we were ten year-olds, I informed her that China had an education system based entirely around collaborative collective study and that we should learn more from their example} and then was sweet as honey and scholarly as I could be for the last five minutes to stop her ranting about me and the other Agents of Dissent in the staffroom.
But then when I got into Off Games and tugged out my laptop it turned out that the screen was thoroughly fucked. Those of you with fine memories may recall that much the same occurred to my iPod and this made me feel much the same, only much, much worse seeing as you can still {sort of} use an iPod devoid of screen yet when it comes to laptops you are just utterly fucked.
I took it to the lovely IT teacher who deals with such things but it seemed that this was beyond his power. The cause small-area breach with resulting spider-pattern fracture, that had cracked right along the screen. Presumably this was a consequence of some form of hard contact with its surface, the IT man described how very precisely. Either that or me closing it with something still within it, which I find unlikely as I would have had to take it out and thus would have recalled such an occurrence.
Regardless, the consequence is that well over two thirds of the screen, starting from right in the middle, is obscured with random vertical lines of colour, black or white. At least, it was at the time. Now it seems to have worsened and is more like eight tenths, with werid black squiggles emanating from some of the cracks. My first response upon seeing it was that it looked like a bullet hole in glass and it has a weird, abstract art sort of coolness, I have to admit. But, alas, form comes at the cost of a vast quantity of function.
Although this was beyond help IT guy managed to assist me greatly: it seems that the school department invariably has a bunch of tech that they no longer need lying around and, in this instance, they had exactly what I needed.
The monitor was driven home along with me by builder/family friend Frank and I shifted a table around to put it onto, which I then did after clearing it of clutter. I was also given a keyboard and mouse that I decided/was forced not to use since it would seem that my laptop lacks the appropriate plugs and using the keypad and mouse on the laptop somehow wins in coolness anyway.
There was something of a mess over the wires since the one that I had grabbed seemed to be devoid of a fuse and thus worse than useless for the screen. I had to acquire one from the downstairs computer in the interim between tonight and me getting a functional one from the IT lot tomorrow but, of course, when I returned upstairs and plugged it in it was only a matter of seconds before I discovered that I had already been given one with a fuse and just forgotten. I used this one to give downstairs image again.
So this is my short term solution, as for the long-run well the IT fellow, as I believe I have failed to mention, is one of the nicest people you could possibly ever hope to meet. He regarded me as he examined the wreckage of my laptop and asked me what I had spent my Academian Award money had been spent on. I replied that I had never received one and he said that in hindsight perhaps I should have {earlier today he had congratulated me on getting into Cambridge}.
He suggested that since he understood that money was tight and stated that he could empathise with my poor mother's plight perhaps an audience with the headmaster would be in order. I agreed with him that this would be wise and shall be seeing him some time tomorrow, indeed would have today but for fact that he was in a meeting.
II.
In other news, perhaps scant consolation, I got my fixed headphones back today. Yet, fixed, I seem to have been breaking near enough everything lately, why even a towel-rack fell victim to my onslaught yesterday when I used it to open the toilet door and it ceded before my hand to the extent of total detachment.
Perhaps this is an instance of not knowing my own might...
Anyway, this development {the earphones being fixed, that is} is certainly a pleasure and although their aesthetic has been ruined as a consequence of a piece of black tape being used by the chap who did it {for a mere fiver} I have hopes that the sound quality shall be identical to how it was before, that is to say immensely high.
I shall test this hypothesis shortly, Dizzee Rascal is tonight's guest host and although I suspect that he shall be a poor substitute for Zane Lowe it will, at least, be interesting and hopefully feature enough bass to warrant their usage and give me an opportunity to fully evaluate the extent of their recovery.
III.
On an unrelated note: my New Year's Resolution has been to put this Benthamite Utilitarianism into action and endeavor to live a life filled with mellifluous joy as much as possible, for the next year at least.
If I am to get into Cambridge then no doubt this must be tempered with an awful lot of sociology study and if I do get the grades then I have my doubts that the closing months will conform to this proposal but if so then I have a pair of passable back-ups:
1) Get to bed at an earlier hour.
This one is becoming increasingly important. Sociology and R.S. are negligible subjects to sleep through but yesterday I was snoozing in Medieval History. This is simply unacceptable and can not be repeated, yet it is inevitable if I retain the late to the extent of nocturnal hours which I practiced over the holidays.
2) Stop fucking breaking things.
This one speaks for itself, surely.
IV.
On the bus today I was seated behind a pair of youth sitting adjacent to each other across the aisle, with one a short blonde that I was sure I recognised and indeed it later did transpire that he had gone to my school but now went to Twiford. When I got on he was describing mohawks and outlining the basics and intermediates before progressing to advanced technique such as using wood glue to keep it static for days.
At the mid-point of the journey he leant over to rub a mark into the mist of condensation that had formed in the window, a circle containing a cross that breached its confines, which each of these lines having a horizontal to conclude it. Effectively my school's logo with a circle around it, leaving it resembling a target symbol.
"Is it a compass?" his friend enquired, looking baffled at this glyph.
"No, a compass has an arrow going north." the amateur artist replied.
"So what...Do I even want to know?"
His companion chuckled, before replying: "It's a beautiful symbol, when it's done properly. White Power."
His friend's reaction was one that I could not place but I would imagine that he did not affiliate himself whole-heartedly, if at all, judging from it. I noticed at this stage the Union Flag stitched into each sleeve of the blonde before me.
"Well...They won't know."
"They will if I put a W P in it." said the young nationalist, perhaps rather erroneously.
The topic was quickly dropped and they moved on to other matters, such as his former school which was aforementioned. It lingered it my mind, though.
What with the schism of the BNP, which I have been following quite closely and with a morbid fascination, and the removal of a National Front sticker I made in Acton {of all places!} yesterday the Far Right have been on my mind quite a lot recently.
Thankfully it would seem that they are further from power than ever, what with the dramatic purge of British National Party and the resulting bitterness and plots for an alternative consisting of those sick of the present order and those that were forced out of the current one by it, but the National Front are still {quite literally} kicking around and although the time when they seemed a viable, actual force are decades past their website's Guestbook still maintains a worrisome popularity.
Given his size I was rather tempted to yell "Nazi punk fuck off!" at him, in the time-honoured fashion, as despite his frequent references to assaulting a punch-bag, mention of his habits in the gym and discussions of a boxing club which he was considering leaving and another, more organised one which he was considering joining {apparently the former had a fight he had been arranged to be in canceled due to an injury, with his theory being that it was because his proposed opponent "Was scared"} he remained only a smattering of inches over five foot and thus seemed rather unintimidating to me.
Still, I find no joy in fights and expected that it would at least result in an altercation and at worst painful conflict on public transport and on CCTV videotape. An interesting consequence of getting free travel on public transport is that you are, if you are sensible, more careful about your behaviour since a de facto fine that could result from your student travel card {which means free travel on all London buses} being stripped from you.
That, and what would it really achieve?
So I settled myself for rubbing away the symbol with my blazer-sleeve once he had left his seat and had his back turned. I doubt that anyone besides him would have recognised it {I'm fascinated in this and all things counter-cultural, as you might have already noticed, and even I couldn't quite place its meaning} but it was not a risk I was willing to take.
Such attitudes in so mixed a part of London are especially stupid, to my view. I would hate to think that any of the vast non-white population realised that there were such malignant idiots in their midst.
Fuck it. >.>
Today was reasonable otherwise, I was falling asleep in lessons after having stayed up to watch the primaries but in all other respects I was doing fine. I annoyed the fuck out of my R.S. teacher in every rhetorical way possible {when she gave us a "Worksheet" to do and told us to sit and fill them out in silence, as if we were ten year-olds, I informed her that China had an education system based entirely around collaborative collective study and that we should learn more from their example} and then was sweet as honey and scholarly as I could be for the last five minutes to stop her ranting about me and the other Agents of Dissent in the staffroom.
But then when I got into Off Games and tugged out my laptop it turned out that the screen was thoroughly fucked. Those of you with fine memories may recall that much the same occurred to my iPod and this made me feel much the same, only much, much worse seeing as you can still {sort of} use an iPod devoid of screen yet when it comes to laptops you are just utterly fucked.
I took it to the lovely IT teacher who deals with such things but it seemed that this was beyond his power. The cause small-area breach with resulting spider-pattern fracture, that had cracked right along the screen. Presumably this was a consequence of some form of hard contact with its surface, the IT man described how very precisely. Either that or me closing it with something still within it, which I find unlikely as I would have had to take it out and thus would have recalled such an occurrence.
Regardless, the consequence is that well over two thirds of the screen, starting from right in the middle, is obscured with random vertical lines of colour, black or white. At least, it was at the time. Now it seems to have worsened and is more like eight tenths, with werid black squiggles emanating from some of the cracks. My first response upon seeing it was that it looked like a bullet hole in glass and it has a weird, abstract art sort of coolness, I have to admit. But, alas, form comes at the cost of a vast quantity of function.
Although this was beyond help IT guy managed to assist me greatly: it seems that the school department invariably has a bunch of tech that they no longer need lying around and, in this instance, they had exactly what I needed.
The monitor was driven home along with me by builder/family friend Frank and I shifted a table around to put it onto, which I then did after clearing it of clutter. I was also given a keyboard and mouse that I decided/was forced not to use since it would seem that my laptop lacks the appropriate plugs and using the keypad and mouse on the laptop somehow wins in coolness anyway.
There was something of a mess over the wires since the one that I had grabbed seemed to be devoid of a fuse and thus worse than useless for the screen. I had to acquire one from the downstairs computer in the interim between tonight and me getting a functional one from the IT lot tomorrow but, of course, when I returned upstairs and plugged it in it was only a matter of seconds before I discovered that I had already been given one with a fuse and just forgotten. I used this one to give downstairs image again.
So this is my short term solution, as for the long-run well the IT fellow, as I believe I have failed to mention, is one of the nicest people you could possibly ever hope to meet. He regarded me as he examined the wreckage of my laptop and asked me what I had spent my Academian Award money had been spent on. I replied that I had never received one and he said that in hindsight perhaps I should have {earlier today he had congratulated me on getting into Cambridge}.
He suggested that since he understood that money was tight and stated that he could empathise with my poor mother's plight perhaps an audience with the headmaster would be in order. I agreed with him that this would be wise and shall be seeing him some time tomorrow, indeed would have today but for fact that he was in a meeting.
II.
In other news, perhaps scant consolation, I got my fixed headphones back today. Yet, fixed, I seem to have been breaking near enough everything lately, why even a towel-rack fell victim to my onslaught yesterday when I used it to open the toilet door and it ceded before my hand to the extent of total detachment.
Perhaps this is an instance of not knowing my own might...
Anyway, this development {the earphones being fixed, that is} is certainly a pleasure and although their aesthetic has been ruined as a consequence of a piece of black tape being used by the chap who did it {for a mere fiver} I have hopes that the sound quality shall be identical to how it was before, that is to say immensely high.
I shall test this hypothesis shortly, Dizzee Rascal is tonight's guest host and although I suspect that he shall be a poor substitute for Zane Lowe it will, at least, be interesting and hopefully feature enough bass to warrant their usage and give me an opportunity to fully evaluate the extent of their recovery.
III.
On an unrelated note: my New Year's Resolution has been to put this Benthamite Utilitarianism into action and endeavor to live a life filled with mellifluous joy as much as possible, for the next year at least.
If I am to get into Cambridge then no doubt this must be tempered with an awful lot of sociology study and if I do get the grades then I have my doubts that the closing months will conform to this proposal but if so then I have a pair of passable back-ups:
1) Get to bed at an earlier hour.
This one is becoming increasingly important. Sociology and R.S. are negligible subjects to sleep through but yesterday I was snoozing in Medieval History. This is simply unacceptable and can not be repeated, yet it is inevitable if I retain the late to the extent of nocturnal hours which I practiced over the holidays.
2) Stop fucking breaking things.
This one speaks for itself, surely.
IV.
On the bus today I was seated behind a pair of youth sitting adjacent to each other across the aisle, with one a short blonde that I was sure I recognised and indeed it later did transpire that he had gone to my school but now went to Twiford. When I got on he was describing mohawks and outlining the basics and intermediates before progressing to advanced technique such as using wood glue to keep it static for days.
At the mid-point of the journey he leant over to rub a mark into the mist of condensation that had formed in the window, a circle containing a cross that breached its confines, which each of these lines having a horizontal to conclude it. Effectively my school's logo with a circle around it, leaving it resembling a target symbol.
"Is it a compass?" his friend enquired, looking baffled at this glyph.
"No, a compass has an arrow going north." the amateur artist replied.
"So what...Do I even want to know?"
His companion chuckled, before replying: "It's a beautiful symbol, when it's done properly. White Power."
His friend's reaction was one that I could not place but I would imagine that he did not affiliate himself whole-heartedly, if at all, judging from it. I noticed at this stage the Union Flag stitched into each sleeve of the blonde before me.
"Well...They won't know."
"They will if I put a W P in it." said the young nationalist, perhaps rather erroneously.
The topic was quickly dropped and they moved on to other matters, such as his former school which was aforementioned. It lingered it my mind, though.
What with the schism of the BNP, which I have been following quite closely and with a morbid fascination, and the removal of a National Front sticker I made in Acton {of all places!} yesterday the Far Right have been on my mind quite a lot recently.
Thankfully it would seem that they are further from power than ever, what with the dramatic purge of British National Party and the resulting bitterness and plots for an alternative consisting of those sick of the present order and those that were forced out of the current one by it, but the National Front are still {quite literally} kicking around and although the time when they seemed a viable, actual force are decades past their website's Guestbook still maintains a worrisome popularity.
Given his size I was rather tempted to yell "Nazi punk fuck off!" at him, in the time-honoured fashion, as despite his frequent references to assaulting a punch-bag, mention of his habits in the gym and discussions of a boxing club which he was considering leaving and another, more organised one which he was considering joining {apparently the former had a fight he had been arranged to be in canceled due to an injury, with his theory being that it was because his proposed opponent "Was scared"} he remained only a smattering of inches over five foot and thus seemed rather unintimidating to me.
Still, I find no joy in fights and expected that it would at least result in an altercation and at worst painful conflict on public transport and on CCTV videotape. An interesting consequence of getting free travel on public transport is that you are, if you are sensible, more careful about your behaviour since a de facto fine that could result from your student travel card {which means free travel on all London buses} being stripped from you.
That, and what would it really achieve?
So I settled myself for rubbing away the symbol with my blazer-sleeve once he had left his seat and had his back turned. I doubt that anyone besides him would have recognised it {I'm fascinated in this and all things counter-cultural, as you might have already noticed, and even I couldn't quite place its meaning} but it was not a risk I was willing to take.
Such attitudes in so mixed a part of London are especially stupid, to my view. I would hate to think that any of the vast non-white population realised that there were such malignant idiots in their midst.