The Student Formerly Known As Betta

So as I get to the bus station on the way to Rome, I rool up with my blue carryon wheelie and I have no idea, of course, what terminal I'm sposed to get off at right? So the bus driver takes one look at me and says: "Easyjet® right?" I certainly hope there hadn't been anything about me that day that could have led a perfect stranger simply to assume I was a no-frills kind of person - but this is a big issue we must address whenever we interact in cities with people we don't know.Ok. So I had forgotten all about that trouble until yesterday when I was, recovering from Salmonellosis(tm?) making my way through Oxford very slowly because I am still pretty weak. So I paid the Broad Street Oxfam - I don't know why - I don't go there often. So I was looking around and what I guess you would call "knick knacks" or general gimrackery and then I went downstairs and thinking I wasn't going to find anything, was very excited to find a pair of brand new - as evident from their unscathed soles - Tod's loafers. Ok so I tried them on and walked around in them and really liked them in principle and at £20 was tempted, but then remembered that Cognac is a drink, a relatively boring region of France, but unfortunately not a colour. I told the woman thanks but no thanks and I was putting them back was overjoyed though to find not one, but two brand new Hermès ties. The salesclerk was very talkative and very clearly drunk or retarded or both too and she started going on about how so many people just buy things, never wear them and then just give them to Oxfam and she can't comprehend the how or why. I want to be polite but since she is clearly drunk I'm not that interested and so offhandedly I say "yeah - I suppose some people can do that..." And so then she says she guesses some people can, (and remember - these are the people who came up with the Soup for Seated is the new Thursday Night idea...) but that she certainly can't and looking me up and down (and in this town, her being related to said bus driver is not improbable) she says that "from the looks of you, you certainly can't either" (!!) What the hell was I sposed to say? Thanks? At £3 the tie and my self esteem had each undergone a (approx.) 97% reduction by the time I had left the store. I hope these are what I keep hearing about as "seasonal reductions" and that some day soon when the weather takes a turn, perfect strangers will stop going out of their way to tell me I look awful. Fuck you Lady. I hope that full beard God(tm?) gave you at 30 keeps you warm at night...

They say...

that politics is show business for ugly people. Ok. But we don't have to look that far back, or that far south of the United States to see that there are plenty of people that don't cop out and take that excuse.

Super Kawaii -

that means super cute in Japanese! My total expenditure for today was £1! I think this is a first and definitely deserves mentioning! All I survived on were two diet cokes, and some lettuce that I had bought before the weekend, but I think that still counts. This is just a one degree of a turn on the road up Purgatory for this weekend in London but it's a start. On the other hand, the most I accomplished all day was changing my buddy icon and maybe thought about what I have to do tomorrow. Dry cleaning, presents for Italy, gym, groceries...and somewhere in there a few lectures...the time is going really quickly this term though! I feel semiquasi guilty for taking the coming week 'off' but if things go well it will have been very useful for my Year Abroad...I'm gonna make a special trip to the McDonalds in Piazza Mastai -not that I like McDonalds at all but I love the Italian McToast(tm?) but now they also have it in France, but everyone in Rome is always so much better dressed than anywhere else...

There comes a certain rush, that I had forgotten, in purchasing airline tickets on impulse.

Maybe if I smoked less, and cut out the gym membership...

At only £165, who could possibly resist Gucci's BRANDER. This is a godsent when I think of all the times I've been out on the range and not had the appropriate equipment to burn a huge double G into the side of a cow. And the keeping of the bamboo theme gives that lighthearted 50s 'dopoguerra' dolce vita vibe, but doesn't compromise on durability. There's NO chance say you were out in the country and it started raining when you wanted to BRAND something, that the handle on this thing didn't just fall to pieces...my only question is really, what the hell are people going to think of us when they unearth this thing?

Café oh Gross

If anyone is familiar with Roman Polanski's 1965 film Répulsion, they will of course remember the figure of the rabbit left by Carole's sister when she goes away with her boyfriend, and had been Carole's excuse not to go out with Michael or whatever his name is. And by the end as it decomposes and she's carrying it with her to the beauty salon, the rabbit is a sign of the degree to which Catherine Deneuve's character is fucked up. Basically. I just thought of that because my room is being thoroughly cleaned (thanks scout, for not coming once this term) and I found a glass of coffee with milk in it from my second to last all niter. But this made me wonder even more about Polanski's film. The movie's 'sposed to be about how Carole is completely repulsed by sex right? And so the movie follows her, isn't he distracting us from the central idea by filling the apartment with so many repulsive images (such as the rabbit or the sister's boyfriend's toothbrush)? So that made me ask why I find this glass of coffee disgusting. Is it for it's evocative powers in reminding me of the anguish of an all niter? NO. It's because it's a gross, skanky glass of old coffee which never was good in the first place because I decided to buy fair trade. And no amount of Spenda(™?) can make poorly executed good intentions such as the local Coop's(tm?) save the rainforest by buying crisps and smoothies scheme. The same goes for the rabbit, but it must be owned that I am better at keeping my room clean than Carole.

The Road to Positivity:

involves a lot of tripping. Today (meaning the past two and a half days) has been very eventful, but I couldn't really say I've accomplished much. Except for one major achievement which was my Petrarch essay. I have no idea how I once again put off writing an essay that I had two weeks to do, until the night before it was due. Amazingly, I told myself at eight thirty last night to take a twenty minute nap, then got up when my alarm went off (including token 30 mins of snooze) and set out to plan an evening or serious work. Somehow I managed to read an entire English translation of Petrarch's Secretum, an entire article in Modern Languages Notes, which is in itself a fantastic discovery - I don't really sit around and read literary journals, but this one seems pretty good stuff - AND wrote a "serious" (-my tutor) essay on the lyrical sequence of the Canzoniere. Whatever. It's not going to happen again. Cause when I had finished the essay, I took a friend's advice and celebrated. Unfortunately, as I am still trying to figure out my year abroad, when 20 minutes later this morning, the person that handles a certain internship I covet called about going to Rome for an interview sometime next week. Needless to say the lack of sleep and other factors left me very confused. I forgot ALL my Italian and started laughing so I hope things actually work out in the end.

SO - With my weekly essay out of the way, Tuesdays are for organising myself. Imagine then how every notion of doing such was thrown to the wind when I received the following email:

Dear XXX,

We've recently opened up thefacebook at a school you requested! Go to www.thefacebook.com to register and make sure to tell your friends!

thefacebook team.

I don't think I'm going to get anything done this term.

UGGGGGHHHHH

I think I literally AM gonna shoot myself in the foot next time I end up pulling an all niter writing a bad essay, instead of always doing the metaphorical foot shooting. I bet that's so much less painful than this...and I have a TERRIBLE feeling that my twitch is back. The twitch that I had in my eye for over a year in high school and then this Dr Yang or whatever told me that the only way to get rid of it was to Botox(™?) it but I would lose control of the muscle in my eyelid so I would look like the cartoon Droopy, or maybe Sophia's friend Esther with one eye shut all the time. I think it's stress related but I'll laugh at the next one who tries to tell me I'm stressed. The Botox(™?) solution was enough to scare the twitch away, but Dr Yang is in Wisconsin and probaby CAN'T WRITE ESSAYS ON LYRICAL SEQUENCE IN PETRARCH'S CANZONIERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH