dom.blog

So I’ve finally joined Twitter, and at about the same time as Lucy and Abbi. It was Tash who finally pushed me over the edge, convincing me that this was one more social loop which I really didn’t want to be left out of, and it really is rather fun. The description of it being ‘like ESP’ works best – you can just pop on and get a warm sense of various friends connected like fellow drinkers in some virtual café. Nice, clean, simple and quick. And, of course, I felt the need to join up all the technological dots: now I can text Twitter, which updates Twitter itself, when then feeds through to my Facebook status before that finally gets over to this very site. (Die-hard RSS consumers: there’s a whole site here, y’know!) So if you ever see ‘Current status: Dominic has been stabbed and is slowly dying in a darkened alley’, for example, make sure to marvel at the wonder of interconnected open formats. And my ability to text when dying, of course.

I have loads of adminy-type things to do tonight, but I can’t really find the energy, so instead I’m listening to Sugababes remixes (quiet, you) and wondering when my Spider Solitaire addiction will ever end. This afternoon I was rushing to complete an essay by the deadline and decided to quickly check the dinner menu just to reassure myself that I wasn’t going to miss out on anything. What do I see? Garlic bread, pasta with meat balls and chocolate fudge brownies. I’m sorry, Aristotle, but nothing can ever beat that – if I escape stabbing and die instead on death row, that’s a high candidate for my final meal – so I got a move on and made it to second hall. Success!

(The eternal questions of second hall, incidentally, are:
(a) how subtly can I eat the bread before grace?
(b) is anyone ever going to notice that a substantial section of us fail to say Amen?)

Rather in the spirit of a certain Northern Scientist, I’d like to begin with a little submission of my own into Room 101. Y’see, on Friday I travelled to Sussex to see Lucy, which naturally involves passing through the joy that is London. Except it was a little less than joyous, because the Victoria line was closed and so the remaining Tube routes between King’s Cross and Victoria were unduly packed with people. But that’s OK – I’m not complaining about engineering work (vital) or crowds (even more so). I’m complaining about escalator etiquette. You stand on the right and you walk on the left. This is non-negotiable. This is at the very core of citizenship. And it is almost almost obeyed… which makes the odd tourist who decides to flout it by positioning themselves vaguely in the middle even more noticeable and annoying. Do not do this. Ever. Because one day you might find that it has been made a (retrospective) capital offence.

But never mind! Sussex was lovely, even if Pizza Express were shockingly lacking in the provision of chocolate fudge cake. (But I did still get a chocolate fix ) I’m also rather excited by the prospect of the group summer holiday in Newquay which Sanna deserves much praise for organising! And, of course, there’s Obama. Being a curiously old-fashioned sort, Oliver, Owen and I gathered around the wireless radio to listen to his inaugural speech, which contained the expected tingling moments that reminded you how un-Bushian he is. “Non-believers” got included, note! Non-believers!

(And just like that, an old anti-Bush song turned up on shuffle. So say goodbye to Dubya, let’s all give him the push…)

Watching some news reports later, I also couldn’t help but feel sorry for Obama. We all know that you leave office less popular than when you enter it, that power corrupts in all sorts of non-sinister but inevitable and sad ways, that to be President is a terrible burden. But the difference this time is that Obama is smart enough to know this all too. It’s a bit like being able to anticipate your own ageing but still not being able to stop it… imagine having to look at a crowd of millions of adoring people and know that not one of them will ever be capable of talking to you as a person, rather than as a President, again. Lonely.

*sighs*

This is the term in which I study the history of political thought (to 1700), and everybody starts with Plato’s Republic. Which is happily divided into ten ‘books’, providing comfortable markers of progress: I’ve read six! And I’d be reading them a lot faster if I didn’t stop to try and understand his metaphysics, since it’s not really the main focus of the course. But it is interesting, if you accept that something can be ‘interesting’ without being ‘profound’. It’s certainly not profound and is based on bonkers logic which, if Plato was still alive, I’d send him a polite but firm e-mail about. But seeing as I’m about 2356 years too late I’ll have to make do with secretly imagining that Plato is actually the living, breathing person I know who still believes in moral absolutes, souls and Forms, and roll my eyes at him or her instead. Yeah… this is entirely sane behaviour

Plato does, however, manage to put in some wonderful little moments of characterisation. He should have written flash fiction instead!

(Just at this moment I can very clearly picture Robert reading this post and despairing at the pointlessness of arts students.)