"Cannons? What was I thinking? I must suck!"

An occasionally sunny Saturday afternoon and Tchaikovsky is doing his thing. (Capriccio Italien - not a type of pizza.) And a good thing it is. You can get all elitist about popular classical music, but it's popular for a reason, that reason most obviously being that it is good to listen to. Tchaikovsky himself of course hated just about everything he ever wrote upon finishing it. Poor bastard, you can see him in your mind's eye banging his head on the piano like that frustrated composer puppet from Sesame Street, only Russian...Niyet! Niyet! Niyeeeeeeet! In fact the liner notes of the CD I am listening to describe him as "sort of a poster boy for late Romantic misery." You sort of want to go back in time and tell him "Cheer up Piotr. I come from the distant future of 2004, and lots of people are still listening to your music all over the world, and a large chunk of them think it is quite good" (only in Russian). I'm not sure if that would succeed in making him happy or not. Famous composers as a group are such a misanthropic miserable cantankerous bunch, generally speaking. Strange really. I guess you've got to be tortured if you want to be a proper artistic genius. Quickly, someone kill my parents and chop off my arm and throw me into a workhouse, where I will be forced to earn my living as a one-armed pickpocket (suggestion from Karen at this point, and I quote: "Hey, you could be a man-whore...") whose only consolation lies in his Saturday afternoon piano lessons from, I dunno, say, Madonna. (Madonna? What the hell? That potential joke certainly disentegrated. Ah, I couldn't be bothered finishing it properly anyway. Besides, Madonna is called called 'Fester' now, or the artist formerly known as Tchaikovsky, or something. Let's just start a new paragraph and put all this sordid busniess behind us.)

Anyway, it's all go around here as we, er, sit around. Karen is pretending to work on her thesis but really she is reading this over my shoulder (now she is muttering 'second person plural' aloud to herself, in an attempt to seem serious. But I know all the tricks of procrastination.) My evil influence is slowly exerting itself over her. Last night she was complaining she was becoming addicted to Coke. Mwahhahahahahaaaaaa...

Anyway, on Thursday as mentioned, Nic took Karen and I and we shambled off to see Shaun of the Dead, which was bloody funny. Basically it was one of those films that in watching, you decide that all the people onscreen are basically a bunch of mates who have decided to make a movie. It seems to be a thing that they do more in Britain than elsewhere - you get the impression that once you get yourself in at the BBC, you bring all your friends in as actors and writers, and then BBC 4 (probably) throws a bunch of money at you and goes "Off you go! Have fun!" and you lark about having a good time with government funding and producing a sort of laddish minor classic. Getting paid to muck about, that's the way. Call a few celebrities and get them to appear in cameos for next to nothing, that sort of thing. We need government funding. Actually that whole sort of impression was especially strong for me seeing the film, because it was in spirit much like "Apathetic Students Vs. The Living Dead", an Ed Wood idea we had half-scripted back in Xanadu days, and being slack, never did anything about. So there were a few familiar ideas, for there is comedy potential in zombies, oh yes. I have to admit though that the two best jokes in the film, which were both visual gags, and were both extremely funny (comic genius level) were not in anyway included in our potential film, but were worth the price of admission by themselves. I will make no further explanation. See the movie if you can (I'm sure it will show up at Alice eventually.)

Off on the Dramasoc bus trip with the crazy Dramasoc people tonight. I always sort of mentally separate myself from the subset 'Dramasoc people', but what with being a paid up member myself, having been in a play already this year (which I got a girlfriend in, no less), getting dragged into a second one (in a musical capacity), and currently rehearsing for a third, I might be struggling to avoid the label myself. But I like to think of myself as a one of those Jane Goodall immersive anthropologists types, secretly studying behaviour from within the community. Or possibly as an 'embedded reporter' (gack). Anyway I will try to run around tonight in an observational (but trashed) capacity and record details for you, the facinated international scientific community. Anyway, having been on 2 bus trips so far, I look forward to one without A) being Nic's vomit confidante, and B) being so poor I am forced to lurk menacingly around people from other buses who arrived before we did, hoping their bus will leave, they will be forced to take off, and I can commandeer the jug they just bought and didn't drink. (This method works surprisingly well...what? Stop looking at me like that.) Of course, either of these two things could still happen tonight, who knows...it's a life on the edge I lead, after all. Stay tuned.

So now for those overseas that have yet to hear it, and may have made inquiries, the full and
shocking story of my thesis:

It passed.

Actually there was a little bit more to it than that. I went in to the department to give them a copy on disc about 3 weeks ago, since I figured my supervisor hadn't read the thing...anyway, it transpired they had already marked it. (I'm not sure when they were planning on telling me this.) Basically Donald, the guy who was new to the department late last year (and as someone who knew and was enthusiastic about blogs, would have been a 10 times better supervisor for my thesis - damn) ended up being the internal marker, and had a number of very nice things to say about it - possibly only because I was sitting there - but anyway, he went on at length about all the brilliant bits and how I was an A student and so on, and how it thus pained him to award me a C+. Basically he seemed to think the the really good bits were let down by the really bad bits. Hardly seems fair. Anyway, the external marker, Dr Levi someone of the University of Queensland, also decided I deserved a C+, despite liking and disliking virtually the opposite bits to Donald. Odd that. Anyway, both did agree, and wrote in their comments, that there was much potential in the thesis and I should be given the opportunity to revise it over 3 to 6 months and resubmit it.

Nup, went the university. He's passed. Good enough. Screw 'em.

Donald even said that he had suspected that that would happen,and he had thought about not putting a mark on it so they would let me revise it, but was told he had to. So that's it really, C+ for me. The degree I suppose is more important, and I was worried that I wouldn't even pass, so that's nice. But at the same time it's pretty bloody annoying to have the people who mark it go 'this is potentially good, he should do a little bit more work on it and he could get a good mark' and then have the university outright refuse to entertain such a suggestion. It's not like I really used a lot of their time or resources during my two years...in fact, dare I say that the fact that the external marker was fairly amazed that I had no methodology section in the thesis maybe indicate that not much attention was being paid to what I was doing for those 2 years? Oh well. I have a Masters now anyway I'm led to believe, (if there's no problems with the corrected version I handed in) so that's mostly OK. I am slightly irritated is all, and feeling the system hasn't been particularly supportive. I was also irritated by Levi Whatshisface and his 'obseverve rules of paragraphing' comment all the time. Note to Levi - I am observing rules of paragraphing. This is a long paragraph. GET OVER IT.

OK, so clearly I'm at least a tad bitter and twisted. Time for a soothing blackcurrant drink. Back tomorrow.