Hey dudes, I was re-reading my last post when I remembered the tenth thing that annoys me. This is a little belated but whatever - the problem is easily rectified. Just read the previous post, and when you get to the bit that goes "1: Oh crap I miscounted there are only nine things that I do not like and I cannot be bothered to change all the titles", insert the following lines:
There's this kid in my school in the year below me. I can't remember his name, but he's asian or something. Right; he plays the bassoon or the piccolo or some gay instrument, and Oxford University - yes THE OXFORD UNIVERSITY - has decided that because he has the ability to BLOW INTO A PIECE OF HARDENED RESIN in such a way THAT PRETTY SOUNDS COME OUT OF IT, he is good enough to get a scholarship. Yes that's right, he is in the year below, and just because he wastes his time playing music instead of kissing girls and sunbathing he gets to bypass the need for getting decent exams and going through the soul-crushingly difficult interview procedures. Is that justice? If I'd known that no actual aptitude for a subject was required to go to Oxford then well, shit, I would've spent my formative years fellatiating a reed. But no I spend my scholastic years reading books and doing exams and I still probably won't get into the university because the admissions tutor doesn't like my haircut. What a knob this music-boy is.
To be honest I have never spoken to him before - the sight of his annoying smiley duck-face (he has a duck-face) puts me into a bit of a rage - but I bet he is one of those people who practises his instrument for like twelve hours a day and manages not only to insert that fact into every sentence, but to hold it over you as a matter of pride, eg:
Boy 1: Hey, duck-face boy, I am going to go and watch a game of fooze-ball this weekend. What will you be doing with your free time?
Duck-face: Fooze-ball? Hah! I wish I had time for fooze-ball, but some of us have to practise playing all the arpeggios on the bassoon a hundred and fifty times each.
Boy 1: I am going to have lunch.
Duck-face: Lunch? Look at you eating lunch! Golly your life is so easy; I have no time for lunch as I have to go and play the entire works of Mozart solidly for a day and a night while simultaneously composing my own opera. My life is so hard.
Boy 1: Ok bye.
Duck-face: I play the bassoon!! :D
... something like that. I just had a thought though. If I DO get into Oxford, I am so giving him a wedgie. I'll get in a year before him so I'll be able to get a really good hiding place, and then when he walks in holding his basoon I will totally jump out from a statue and wedgie him. Man it'll be so awesome.
Of course this is assuming that I do get into the University. Which, to be honest, is the least likely thing ever. My ingress into said educational establishment is entirely based upon how I perform at a series of interviews. Taking place next week, these interviews will test my knowledge and skill at literature to the hardcore core; I will be forced to navigate a Minotaurian-style gauntlet of essay-dissections, analysis of poetry, and general literature discussion, with a load of trick questions thrown in for fun (they say that there are no trick questions in the brochure but YEAH RIGHT they also say that black people and jews are allowed into the college and to be honest that ain't happnin any time soon).
These interviews will be a delicate tightrope balancing act of saying the right thing and acting in the right way. I am currently devising my act - do I choose to go with the "Handsome but unconventional rogue who will denigrate Shakespeare and call Hamlet a 'sissy-boy'" angle, or the "Deep and philosophical thinker with a unique definition of literature and art in the global marketplace" version? I reckon if I go for the first I will wear jeans, my "Reading is awesome" t-shirt, and a blazer - just to show that I am academically enabled. If I plump for the second, then I will wear leather patches on my tweed coat and grow a little moustache. Of course, I could always wear dark glasses and bring a dog in with me and pretend to be blind. Oxford is always up for admitting comedy tokens. Hmm...
Yes yes I know, teachers and adults say 'just be yourself' but yeah right when has that ever helped anyone? Anne Frank was herself and a fat lot of good that did - and judging by the verbal diahroea that occurs whenever I am in a high stress situation - for example, meeting a lesbian and saying 'lesbian' by accident, or meeting a woman with one boob and telling her the "What's black and has nine tits?" joke - it is quite safe to say that being myself is the worst case scenario of the interview.
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(The bin-bag outside a breast-cancer clinic, by the way)
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It will just be so difficult to give the interviewers what they want. As well as answering all their questions satisfactorly, I will also have to show that I am 'teachable' (I think this means that if I see the correct answer straight away, I should try to get it a bit wrong so that they can point me in the right direction), confident yet not cocky, verbose yet not annoyingly labyrinthine in the vocalisation of my prosaic conceptions, good-looking yet not annoyingly handsome, knowledgeable about literature yet not a geek.
Actually I think that being perceived as an English Literature geek will not be a problem for me. I think that being perceived as having any knowledge whatsoever about English Literature might be where my problems lie. I mean, one of the good things about me is that I have read pretty widely around our English literature A-Level course. The bad point is that when I say 'widely', I mean 'books from - in the past year - America Chile Peru Brazil Japan Russia Germany France and the whole continent of South America'. Do you notice what is missing from that list? YEAH ENGLAND. It was only the other day that I realised that I have read like only one actual book coming from England ('Waterland' by Graham Swift - fucking awesome) in the past year. I decided to set that right by quickly trying to blast through a book by Henry James, but sentences like "It was vain for Mrs Wix to represent - as she speciously proceeded to do - that all this time would be made up as soon as Mrs Farange returned: she, Miss Overmore, knew nothing thank heaven, about her confederate, but was very sure any person capable for forming that sort of relation with the lady in Florence would easily agree to object to the presence in his house of the fruit of a union that his dignity must ignore," - make Henry James difficult to recomment as a 'quick read', so I kind of gave up and read American Psycho instead. Which, although being much more fun to read and having lots of killings, is basically a one-joke enterprise and is - worst of all - WRITTEN BY A FUCKING AMERICAN. When the course I am trying to get into is composed of English and ONLY English literature, my total lack of reading of that genre means that I might be in for a bit of bother.
Equally, when it comes to actual DISCUSSION of literature, I find myself increasingly unsure of my abilities. Last year I used to go to extra classes to take an Advanced Extension English exam (yes I am a geek so sue me; I got a distinction and you still wet the bed), which basically revolved around reading books and talking about them. The other day I was bored so I thought to myself - "I know what, I'll swing by English Club to see what's going down with my homies!!" So I did and to my surprise there were like eight kids from the year below who all seemed to know more about literature and were more able to talk about it than me. I AM MEANT TO BE THE BEST LITERATURE STUDENT IN THE SCHOOL and I kind of sat there with my mouth slightly ajar as they started talking about 'the Geography of the English novel' and 'the classically inward-looking climate of English literature'. One of them said the word 'peroquial' and I was like wtf. Then the teacher turned to me - as though I was some sort of fount of knowledge - and asked me for my opinion. Fortunately I managed to rinse that kid down as he was talking about Waterland, so I was like "You prick it's not important that it's in England; the fenlands in which the novel takes place only exist as the landscape of the anti-fairytale, the stage on which the actions of history can pirouette, and what's more you are ugly and I had sexual relations with your mother last night" and that shut him up.
But seriously dude... peroquial? I looked it up and according to dictionary.com it means "any of numerous small, slender parrots, usually having a long, pointed, graduated tail, often kept as pets and noted for the ability to mimic speech" so basically that guy has no clue what he's talking about. Parrots? Yeah whatever mate. Lay off the shrooms.
So yeah I basically know no technical terminology whatsoever. It's gonna be interesting in the interview when they ask me to clarify a technical term and I say "well, the word sounds kind of like what it is meant... to represent?" (actually this is onomatopoeia or mimosis I am clever). My only hope lies in the fact that usually I have a much deeper understanding of what's going on, I just have no clue of how to translate it into words. So while peroquial-boy might be able to read, I don't know, a bit of the ol'TS Eliot and say "well this interestingly links to the poem The Buried Life by Matthew Arnold (1822 - 88) in which the 'buried life' is 'the mystery of the heart which beats so wild, so deep in us'", I'll be like "THIS POEM BLOWS MY FUCKING MIND ELIOT IS A GENIUS HOW CAN HE FIT SO MUCH STUFF SO DENSELY INTO EVERY LINE I COULD TALK ABOUT THIS POEM ALL DAY WITHOUT EVEN MENTIONING MATTHEW ARNOLD WHO I HAVE NOT EVEN HEARD OF AT THIS POINT" and the interviewers will give me a place at the college and they will select a heavy leather-bound tome from the bookshelf and beat peroquial-boy across the head with it, punctuating each crunching impact with the words "Nobody... likes... a... know... it... all".
That is unlikely to happen.
Oh well, my interviews will be from Tuesday-Thursday. I should get the verdict by Christmas eve, just in time to ruin the holidays for everyone.
Pray for me.
ARGH FUCK I JUST LEANT ON MY CHAIR AND PINCHED MY ARM-FLESH AGAINST THE DESK THAT IS AGONY IF I CANNOT EVEN SIT ON A CHAIR PROPERLY WITHOUT INJURING MYSELF HOW THE FUCK AM I MEANT TO GET INTO THE BUFFEST UNIVERSITY IN THE COUNTRY
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