This Journal is now friends-locked.  If you know me and want to be added to the flist, please comments and tell me where we met, and I'll add you in.

GK xxx 

I'm going to It's All In The Delivery, at the Loft in Brighton. 

It's going to be a great night, and it's in aid of Maternity Worldwide.  There will be great music, stiltwalking, magicians, and a drag act (*swoons*).

penguin_worship and  flannelcat are setting it up, and I'm trying to get an Oxford/London bunch together to come down with me.   Who is free, and wants to come and get thoroughly drunk in aid of a very good cause?

Written in ten minutes yesterday while stick-gathering.
Shiny pennies and sexual favours to anyone who gets all the references.

On the first day of Pridehouse, my housemates gave to me
An orange cat in a doily.

On the second day of Pridehouse, my housemates gave to me
Two gasmen calling
And an orange cat in a doily.

On the third day of Pridehouse, SOMEONE gave to me,
Three drunken Pit-Boys,
Two gasmen calling
And an orange cat in a doily.

ETC...


On the twelfth Day of Pridehouse my housemates gave to me,
Twelve Pridehouse parties,
Eleven drunken Ouleses
Ten thespy posters,
Nine Sofa-stealers,
Eight shouty neighbours,
Seven feminist rantings,
Six fireplace comics,
Five pints of beer,
Four Goths a-primping,
Three drunken Pit-Boys
Two gasmen calling
And an orange cat in a doily.

Pridehouse returning from a stick-gathering mission:

'WE WISH YOU A MERRY SOLSTICE, 
WE WISH YOU A MERRY SOLSTICE, 
WE WISH YOU A MERRY SOLSTICE
AND LOTS OF FREE BEER!'

See you all tonight!

I have spent the day contacting sweet and obliging people in Scotland, and learning every Scottish postal district as a side-effect.

This evening I have blitzed a little corner of Doom - the one my stuff is in.  Now I have started buying clothes again there is a space shortage.  

I have new jeans and new underwear - for a stupid-cheap amount.  This is good.  Primark, shit employer though it is, has its merits.  Fashion isn't one, sadly, but they couldn't go far wrong with jeans.  
NB people who like corsets but can't afford them - there are some in Primark for £8.  They are primary colours, but otherwise good.  

Saturday is PRIDE!  Not the house, the damp field by the ice-rink, where all that is brightest and best of thr Oxford gay scene converges.  I'm going to go, because I really like Pride. 

IMPORTANT.  Suddenly, I am overwhelmed with T-shirt requests.  So, here are the terms.  First one free, then £4 a T-shirt or 3 for £10, which covers time and materials.  I can do slogans - more or less any font - and basic pictures, icons, logos, etc.  I'm quiet happy to get the T-shirts if people provide their sizes, or you can get your own if you want to be sure it fits/flatters. 
Also, I can do jeans, hoodies, sports-gear, etc.  
Leave a comment if you want one.  Also, my number is in my contact details.

*sigh*  Will stop being businesslike now.  

Also, we have a lend of Tony's Wii.  I'm going to go and have another go at the boxing game, because it channelled more pent up agression than I knew I had when I tried it yesterday. 

LOST: My motivation, known affectionately as Mojo, last seen in the Bod.  
Have you seen it? 
Reward for its return will take the form of sexual favours.

ION.  
So, I spent a morning being slow and useless workwise due to not enough to do.  I wrote myself a plan involving a half-dozen things that should be done, and resolved to do them this afternoon, thus making me feel better by being busy and productive.  

And now I've suddenly remembred that my afternoon is being eaten by OUSU Council, as I have to go and excercise the Women's Campaign vote, to prevent this silly referendum on getting rid of the VP Women post and bringing in a student adviser.  BECAUSE:

1. VP Women is essential for camaigning and advocacy.  A student adviser could not fill these roles, and the other Sabs couldn't make a proper job of it on top of their current workload.  Campaigning on women's issues, and any voice on women's issues in colleges and in the University, will be lost.

2. VP Women is FEMALE.  A male student adviser (likely) and a male Welfare and Equal Opps Sab (also likely) would leave NO female point of contact for issues like the finals gap, sexual harassment, sexual abuse, rape, sexual health, abortion, etc.

3. VP Women is PAID and FULLTIME.  Without her, Women's Campaign would be run by two to six students who would be working a couple of hours a week each at it, and also have degrees to get.  WomCam would not survive.  

4. Getting rid of VP Women and getting a student adviser would NOT save money,  it costs more to recruit and keep a fulltime student adviser than a Sabbatical post.  

I am severely hacked off about this proposal, and so I am going to the meeting to shout.  

I'll post later and let you know what happens.  If we can prevent the motion well and good, if not - the vote will be in 6th week, so a fuckload of campaigning will be taking place.

I win!  I have an ocelot daemon!

First, important news.  My phone battery is giving out.  I am probably going to be incommunicado until I can get a new phone.  I will be checking Facebook, Webmail, and here for messages, so hopefully I won't miss anything essential.

Second, important date.  The FIFTH OF JUNE is when I finish Finals, and become young, free and very drunk. 
Also, Peter finishes the day before so we might have a joint celebration.  If you can, I'd love you to come along and join the celebrating.  

Third - a decision I've come to.  

I intend to start friends-locking my posts.  I've had a couple of anonymous comments on ancient posts, and while they were nothing scary, only a bit confusing, I have basic objections to internet anonymity.  (Obviously I have no problem with comments from friends who don't have LJs, but I imagine anyone whom I knew would sign what they said).

I was on the receiving end of some pretty harsh personal remarks on Oxford Gossip a couple of years ago when I was LB Rep for my college.  I freely admit I was rubbish at it, but criticism of the way I worked spilled over into personal abuse and became really hurtful.  

I came to the conclusion then that anonymous posting is not worth paying attention to.  It is secure and has no possibility of comeback or response.  This enables people to say things they wouldn't necessarily say if they were going to be identified with their comments.  The worst case scenario is that someone can be as hurtful/unpleasant as they like, and take no responsibility for it.   

Up to now I've been pretty easy with the general public reading what I write, and possibly I'm over-reacting, but I don't want to be open to that sort of confidence-bruising again.   

So in future, this will be flist-locked. 

My revision is going really really well. Not cause I'm actually getting much more done, but cause I have just bought  COLOURED BIROS to write in, and they make everything better.

I AM going to come to Intrusion tonight, my sleep patterns can totally take a bit of a hammering.

I am fidgetting to write, because my Modernist texts are finally making sense and I want to leap on the bandwagon and do fun stuff with achronicity, dream-sequences and symbolism.  I can't wait to have the free time to start writing again.

I went home this weekend, and it was OK.  My family gave me much food.  I rescued more clothes, books, and DVDs, and got new shiny music on my laptop.

Yesterday the_whybird and I walked to Wolvercote across Port Meadow and stopped at the Trout, something everyone should do in the spring.  It was tiring and we came home pretty much asleep on our feet, but it was fun.  

I'm going back to Christopher Isherwood now.  

Right.  I'm going to take this opportunity to post lots of poems I really really REALLY like.  Starting with this one, which I have been promising the_whybird for a while.  Partly because it relates to my ideas about atheists and agnostics. 

ABOU BEN ADHEM

ABOU BEN ADHEM (may his tribe increase!)
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw, within the moonlight in his room,
Making it rich, and like a lily in bloom,
An angel writing in a book of gold:—
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
And to the presence in the room he said,
‘What writest thou?’ —The vision rais’d its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answer’d, ‘The names of those who love the Lord.’
‘And is mine one?’ said Abou. ‘Nay, not so,’
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low,
But cheerly still; and said, ‘I pray thee, then,
Write me as one that loves his fellow men.’
The angel wrote, and vanish’d. The next night
It came again with a great wakening light,
And show’d the names whom love of God had blest,
And lo! Ben Adhem’s name led all the rest.

                                     James Leigh Hunt

Can ANYONE tell me, in a sentence with no big words, WTF is Modernism?  This is my week for revising it and I still have no clear idea. 
(Or books, EFL being arsey, but never mind).


Other news:
Fantastic lazy weekend, much socialising and food and idling about on riverbanks.  
Monday is consequently hitting rather hard.  I'm reading Herodotus 3, and storing up the good stories to tell people.  Herodotus wins.

I had a funny thought last night.  Allowing for my getting through this whole Finals lark intact, I will be entitled to write my name Katherine Elizabeth Roskelly, BA (Oxon).  This thought made me go all ooey with shock.  

This afternoon, I'm going to Summertown with Peter. Just cause we can.  It is the vacation, after all.

Oh dear.

I've started playing Kingdom of Loathing and kissed that 2:1 goodbye.

Revision is grumbling along OK. I've discovered the new shiny Classics Centre, which is nearly empty, has unnofficial free coffee, and thrilling pseudo-sixties decor, and a wierd architecural blip so there are big brick walls on the inside like a museum. It's utterly jammy, and open till half-eleven at night.
Finally, somewhere to hang out in town that isn't the bloody Union.

I managed to just miss Fleur in town, much to my irritation because her time is so limited these days. But I figure I severely need a quiet night in.

I'm back from the outback that is Warwick. I have lots of thrilling clothes I rescued.

Today, extensive work on Plato happened. I LOVE Socrates. He has brilliant ideas like proving that writing is an inferior form of communication, because you can't question a text and get it to explain what it means. He reckons you can't base any knowledge on writing as it's second-best, it's all about conversation.

Sod the Bod, let's have a Symposium!

I'm back from the outback that is Warwick. I have lots of thrilling clothes I rescued.

Today, extensive work on Plato happened.
I LOVE Socrates. He has brilliant ideas like proving that writing is an inferior form of communication, because you can't question a text and get it to explain what it means. He reckons you can't base any knowledge on writing as it's second-best, it's all about conversation.

Sod the Bod, let's have a Symposium!

I've had my least productive revision day so far. I left for town at noon, did three-quarters of an hour of reading the Aeneid, had lunch with Peter, then faffed by reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince all afternoon.
I'm so far behind with this Epic paper now there is no catching up before next term.

I called my mother and cried excessively at her tonight - something I should not have done and hate doing, because if you're going to cry you should do so in person because nothing feels more useless and horrible than listening to someone cry and not being able to hug them.
It was mostly hormones, to be fair, rather than genuine issues. 

So, I am definitely going home, tomorrow evening in fact, to have a break from the city and a few decent meals.  I shall have to start bracing myself for the litany of questions: 
- Am I eating properly?  
- Have I sorted out a job yet?
- Am I working hard?
- How is that nice boy? 
- Am I all right for money?
- Am I definitely coming home for Easter Sunday?
- Am I definitely trying hard for a First?
All of which is, I know, only an indication of affection and interest.  But I still get to feel slightly badgered.

Right, time to go to bed.

Having fun plotting darkly whether I can go home on Sunday to see my brother, rescue my leather jacket, dominatrix boots, black velvet hotpants and dungarees (every Finalist needs these things) and join the extended family for lunch. I am invited for one of Granna's Sunday lunches. The only drawback is trouble with the train fare, but I will work something out.

I am falling behind with my revision. I need to speed-read 'Paradise lost' and Pope's Homer by tomorrow. This may just be beyond me.

I saw 'Luminox' last night, anyone who is in easy reach of Broad Street really really must see it tonight or Saturday, it is BEAUTIFUL. Also I have photos of it, and of me, Peter and the_whybird, looking ludicrously pretty and somewhat inflamed. Will try to post pictures soon for pyrophiles outside Oxford.

I'm not in the Bod yet. This is bad.

I shall go and get myself sorted and go out.