Pure unadulterated genius.

LEAR: O you, sir, you, come hither sir, who am I, sir?
OSWALD: My lady’s father.
LEAR: My lady’s father? My lord’s knave, you whoreson dog, you slave, you cur!
OSWALD: I am none of these, my lord, I beseech your pardon.
LEAR: Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal? [LEAR strikes him]
OSWALD: I’ll not be strucken, my lord.
KENT: [tripping him] Nor tripped neither, you base football player.
– King Lear, Act I, Scene iv, William Shakespeare.

…Either I am a huge geek or that passage is universally hysterically funny.
I think the former applies most. I laughed unnaturally hard whilst reading it. Carry on with your lives!
*merrily vacates the room*

“Come on, then; I will swear to study so, To know the thing I am forbid to know…”

Come on, then; I will swear to study so,
To know the thing I am forbid to know:
As thus,–to study where I well may dine,
When I to feast expressly am forbid;
Or study where to meet some mistress fine,
When mistresses from common sense are hid;
Or, having sworn too hard a keeping oath,
Study to break it and not break my troth.
If study’s gain be thus and this be so,
Study knows that which yet it doth not know:
Swear me to this, and I will ne’er say no.

– Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act I, Scene I

-

Shakespeare’s four scholars make a promise to avoid all “pleasures” to become renowned for study alone, and I’m making a sort of similar vow to achieve my first this year; for anyone familiar with the play, I do intend to sleep more than three hours a night and I doubt I’ll be able to summon the discipline to fast . Leopard, spots, lack of change, etcetera etcetera.

Hopefully it will pay off. Hopefully I have the willpower. If I don’t I’ll pay for it with my grade, I suppose.

-

A girl I knew at school committed suicide yesterday. Whilst I usually reserve great contempt for those who escape problems through the ultimate means – death – I know for a fact this kid had it bad. Her mother committed suicide when she was about 14. What kind of life must this girl have been suffering from that point onwards to finally snap and take matters into her own hands?

We weren’t “friends” and I won’t pretend we were. But we spoke a little bit, I made her laugh a few times, and most importantly, she never had a nasty word to say to me. That’s insanely precious, especially as nearly everyone in my year DID have an arsenal of barbed comments with my name on it. No, this girl was nice. I don’t subscribe to a religion, and I don’t like sounding sentimental, but I sincerely, genuinely hope that she’s somewhere nice right now.

Resolutions

- I want a first. I want a first so badly it physically hurts. And this I shall achieve by reading and rereading set texts, and getting my derriere to the library as often as possible to do some actual book-based research instead of relying on the internet (bad idea) for essay fodder; I shall do all work when it is set. This I fervently promise.

- I will find a new hobby and throw myself into it. I am very nearly sort of considering dancing. Yeah I know. Except, I really want to be able to dance. Failing that, to siiiiiiing like a skylark!

- The Rocky Horror Show is coming to Brighton next month. I want to recruit people and go dressed up, which isn’t out of the ordinary, but is a requirement. Dibs on Magenta. I has the hair!

This is what my reading list looks like at the moment; things in bold are things I’m reading/rereading now, things with lines through are obviously the ones I’ve already read. Doing…OK, I suppose.

Twelfth Night (1601)

A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595/6)

Coriolanus (1608)

Henry IV, Parts 1 (1596/7) and 2 (1598)

Othello (1603/4)

King Lear (1605)

Cymbeline (1609/10)

The Tempest (1611)

Aphra Behn, Oroonoko

Madame de Lafayette, The Princesse of Clèves

Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe

J. W. Goethe, The Sorrows of the Young Werther

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations – yeah, I finally finished it! Nearly cried. It was awkward.

Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary

Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady

James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man n.b. I like to think I have an advantage with this one, since I’ve been given a lecture on the book by the lady who wrote the accompanying notes, Jeri Johnson. Not only is she very intelligent, she is extremely funny. Incidentally, I once mentioned this to a weirdo I was debating the merits of Critical Thinking with on the internet, and said weirdo said not to name-drop. a) I shall name-drop as much as I wish and b) I MET JERI JOHNSON, BITCH. One-nil to ME. Ahem.

Marcel Proust, The Way by Swann’s [Vol. 1 of In Search of Lost Time]

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my friend and housemate Rachel for today. She is elderly because she is no longer a teenager, and as such the occasion needs to be marked with wine. And spirits.

Both high and liquid