The big man will be happy tonight
I registered at BMC on Monday. The process was torturously slow and the computer system used to handle the photo + student card stage crashed after I had been sitting in that queue for upwards of an hour. This meant that I had to come back on Tuesday morning to wait for another hour, this time in the company of a herd of teenagers. One of them started to talk to me about the latest football transfers before moving on to the subject of his sexual conquests on holiday, complete with photos on his mobile. 'See her, she's a receptionist ... Receptionist,' he kept repeating, as though this were evidence that he was now playing in the big leagues. I, quoting Zizek, remarked that sex is always minimally exhibitionist and relies on another's gaze. (Well, I didn't really, I was just thinking about that at the time).
Later that afternoon I finally surrendered to the cowardly, conformist voice within that had been nagging at me to take in a screening of The Dark Knight. The film held my interest but with too much happening too quickly, it didn't really succeed in getting under my skin other than to give me a headache that endured for hours after the movie ended. As the Joker says, 'Never start with the head - the victim gets all fuzzy and then they can't feel anything.' There are certain intriguing elements - if you're intrigued by arguments about causality, justice and ethics - and a couple of scenes such as the one involving the Joker and Harvey Dent at the hospital carry the frisson of the genuinely grotesque, but I'm afraid there's no getting away from the fact that the movie is ultimately just another deadening, generic Hollywood product. Somebody told me that what the Joker has is known as a 'Glasgow smile.' It was the Billy Boys who started the trend, I expect. Why do these things always seem to originate in Glasgow?
Outside the cinema, in a world of new white light and quiet, I watched a French lady with a beautiful voice eat a clementine in a peculiarly fascinating way. It was one of those incidents that lead me to consider afterwards that I may not be so fundamentally depressed as I sometimes think I am.
In the evening I continued my ignoble practice of not attending televised Linfield matches by tuning in to Setanta for the Blues versus St. Patrick's Athletic in the group stage of the all-Ireland Setanta Cup. There's something oddly edgy and raw about Pat Dolan and Felix Healy, the presenters Setanta use for games of that ilk, which I find extremely appealing. Dolan is a portly Englishman from Dagenham who looks like he should be lounging around in a toga in an episode of I, Claudius; Healy is a Derry City 'legend' in whose veins runs the blood of a jackal. You get the feeling the two of them hate each other in private and you're never quite sure which one of them is supposed to be the main presenter. I can forgive Healy for his ill-concealed Linfield-loathing ways for the spectacularly weird, feverish manner in which he gazes into the camera when not speaking; he stares at it as though it's a high-class call-girl who has just turned up unexpectedly at his hotel room.
The game itself finished 1-1; Linfield yet again shifting into gear only after playing poorly for an hour and finding themselves a goal behind. Contra Dolan and Healy, the team isn't relying on yesterday's men (Bailie and Ferguson), it is carrying them while the new-face youngbloods such as Burns, Miskimmin and Carville play all the football. For the first time since Thompson's departure, optimism about the short-term future of this side is beginning to dawn in my mind.
In other news, I have managed to get an appointment tomorrow to speak to an employment law solicitor about my little situation. However, I have no intention of getting serious-serious in my attempts to fight the power, which in either case will most likely prove to be a total waste of time.