So far, for my birthday, I've got a first - Huzzah! 74 marks where 70 is a 1st, so that's pretty solid. While enveloped in a haze of smugness, I shall quote gratuitously from the feedback:

This is a higly intelligent, hugely energetic*, and very provocative essay - well done. These are not plays one would usually think to put together, yet you _ them together beautifully _.

I'm slightly perturbed by the apparent lack of internal moderation, but never mind eh? I always pull this trick of putting unlikely texts together (In this case The Revenger's Tragedy & The Tragedy of Mariam); I reccomend it to anyone who writes essays - if you make life hard for yourself, you score simply for effort. It's not all beer and skittle though. I noticed the following phrase in my conclusion, which surely merits some demerits:

deeply farcical, the wry exposition of well-meaning didactic hyperbole

Now I shall attempt to bring my first-rate intelect to bear on something other than the twiddling of thumbs.

Wow! Middleton wrote a play about Hengist, he being one of the fithy saxons that Vortigern (boo!) let into Britain (named, oh so obviously, after Brutus, who as we know, landed here, establishing the eternal nobilty of the British) so that they could drive all the real Britons into Wales and Cornwall, or so the story goes. It's okay though, because it looks as though Uther is there to lay the smack down on Hengist's candy ass. Gotta read that before I lose my internet connection.

Did I mention it's my birthday today? I am 21; 21 I am.

I'm a little behind on my blog aren't I?

Up until about 0800, I put some songs onto minidisc. I'm making a compilation for James. He said something about it a while back. I think it was when we were drinking with Joe at the Artful.

In order to give me some incentive to get work done today, and indeed the rest of the week, I went up to campus first thing. I now have an appointment to see Margaretta Friday at 1200, and if she doesn't see a 2000 word extract representing something altogether more complete and coherent, then she'll be all concerned/annoyed at me, neither of which I want to happen. On the way up I saw a squirrel standing upright on the lawn behind Washington-Singer. Ah, I just realised I forgot to pay my cheque in. Drat.

It's my birthday tomorrow. I'm not sure what I'm doing still. Probably just going to Exmouth with whoever wants to come. I texted Mary to ask her if she might. I haven't seen her properly in aaaaaages.

When I got back I got round to updating my archives and the choral society website. I'm going to have to make a habit of doing that at the weekend. Now, work.

* * *

I didn't get very much work done today. After not doing that, I played a little more Zelda and then went to Exe Group, which had reverted to its 2nd year location of 72 Bonhay Rd., so it consisted of Exe Group spot the difference for a little while before the start. Parables this term.Just a little one to start with.

Found Gavin and Rebekah in the front room watching TV when I got back, whereas I was expecting Andy's friends to be there watching The Big Lebowski, because he'd asked if he could borrow the video earlier. Then Gavin reminded me that I'd locked it in my room - Ah. They were in the Artful doing crosswords, both quick and cryptic. I got £20 out because there were no £10s in the machine but didn't end up buying a drink because I didn't really know when we were leaving. Then we did come back and watch The Big Lebowski. I don't know whether they'd all already seen it, but they weren't very attentive. Andy kept on drawing attention to the good bits and laughing uproariously, while they kept wasting all his paint BB pellets and getting overly freaked by the phantom menace, which seems like a fair exchange.

Then watched the new Strong Bad e-mail, which was another okay one, rather than awesome.

I think I got up fairly early today, but the first thing I actually got round to doing was going to Mass with James, which starts at 1130, so it wasn't exactly a rushed morning. It was about it still being Easter, and still a celebratory time. The next big thing is Pentecost of course, which should also be pretty celebratory - looks like it's party time for some time, liturgically speaking. In the spirit of Easter then, I had a couple of free beers. I got one off James (payment for Tingle-related services) and then after a while Fr. Paul asked if anyone wanted a drink. I'm pretty much always in the mood for a beer, so forth it came. Also, the after-Mass food was partially vegetarian, which was great. 5 Cowley Bridge Rd. being very near, we popped in to ask some questions about things we forgot to ask the first time. Mostly this involved a scan through the contract. I still don't know whether I can afford to live in Exeter. It's basically just a question of me deciding to do it, but I'm not sure. Anyway, James is sorted for next year, so it's all to the good. I think it was on the way to Mass, but James was saying how I was never on MSN these days, so I told him I'd log in more. I'm on "Busy" all the time now though.

More Zelda. Lots of sailing and mapping today.

It came to about 1930, and I thought we could watch Zoolander, so we did, and it was good after all, I wasn't just in a funny mood when I watched it the first time. The thing about it though is that it uses up most of the good jokes in the first half hour and gets kinda tedious before the denouement(sp?), after which it become fine again. Even Paul 'attention-span' Rees watched a goodly portion of it, so it must have been rather compelling.

Then more Zelda, in a really cool bit where Link and this girl who can fly had to co-operate to get through the dungeon. Some very satisfying puzzles, and I got to blow a fair number of things up, and provide a couple of handy hints.

Played still more Zelda today with James. Andy came in intermittently to make light of our social skills, but he doesn't seem to be doing anything interesting lately, so nyeh. He went, I think, for a consulatation with Toni and Guy's, so they can tell him what kind of hair to have. He's having it short. I'd better get my hair cut too at some point, which means that our hairy house will have been shorn. Absolutely shocking. Mino finds it odd that me and James are devoting so much time to a console game also.

After much sadness, dropping bombs on beautifully rendered yet villainous congregations of pixels, I wandered over to Nina's house. She suggested on MSN that I drop by at some point, and I seized on this as an excellent opportunity to see the outside of our house. It occurred to me that a nice walk would be the ideal way to do this, so that's what we did. Nina said she hadn't walked along the river, so we just followed it down for a while. I kept on being enthusiastic about nice mundane things, like ducks and trees and grass and bridges, but Nina couldn't see what the fuss was about for a little while. I proceeded to enquire where her sense of adventure might be found, after which her imagination bodied forth an intricate jungle adventure, primarily involving flight from various cannibalistic tribes. It was fun. Popped into Nina's for a little while after that. Discovered that, among her throng of MSN contacts is a chap called Anton, who just showed up online one day apparently to enquire what Exeter was like, as he's coming next year. I thought that was pretty funny. He was asking about the Exeter delta today, and windsurfing.

Adrian and Emma have got their IT together, and I found a message upon my return, after playing a tiny bit more Zelda, indicating that Emma'd got MSN installed. Nice. I guess this might also mean MSN conversations with Adrian - I can't remember that ever having happened before.

A tribute to John's impatience:

Mark D says:
  i've got nothing interesting to blog
Mark D says:
 yesterday i played zelda
Mark D says:
  today i've been trying to figure out if you can claim jobseeker's when you can't get temping work

My alarm went off at 0800 this morning, and I found my limbs ill-disposed to accede to the premeditated course of action. So I stayed in bed and finished off reading Edward II. It was pretty interesting, lots of reversal of sympathy - not one of my favourites though.

After I fell out of bed, I discovered, via the Radar Station, that the Magic Band show I had missed was archived on Radio 1, on John Peel's show! I'm listening to it being magically transferred to miniaturedisc :) There was fire alarm in the middle of it apparently. I'm sure everyone left in an orderly fashion, because I saw a review of it somewhere that said the audience comprised almost entirely of middle-aged men and their reluctant wives. They sounded pretty up for it, venerability notwithstanding. As per usual, the BBC recording crew did a sterling job - it all sounds nice and crunchy. Whoever's playing the harmonica isn't a patch on Don though. Feeler's Reebo hit the long lunar note in Big Eyed Beans from Venus and, furthermore, let it float - that's just weird, as I'm sure you'll agree. I also discovered that on John Peel's shows at least, there's a "skip 5 mins" button, for when you're not entirely sure that you want to listen to the rest of his extended mix of Belgian sousaphone techno.

When I went downstairs I found a postcard from Will and Rosie. Thanks guys :) Lemurs are kinda cool I thought. I remember drawing one that was at Marwell zoo. Viva Angleterre.

Arial - boring or audacious? How is one to tell?

This house is 'coming like a ghost house. I got back and everyone seems to be out, but Andy and James' rooms are both wide open. I went to Choral Society for the first rehearsal this evening. It was okay, but oddly like I was there for the first time, whihc was not the most fun rehearsal I ever went to. It took the intervention of Wendy Krzanowski to persuade me to come back next week. This is because I'm mental, and I've done a dubious internet test to prove it. I'm not on the committee anymore and I've also switched sections - back to the bass for me. Also, Paul (not our Paul, conductor Paul) decided to scramble* us despite it being the first rehearsal. We're performing populist (need to update that) stuff that only philistines like myself haven't sung a trillion times before, apparently.

I've just been on the phone to Dad re. finances. It was quite helpful. I'll live, somehow. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon, and for the rest of my life.

Read along with Mark!

He wills me to repair [footnote: "betake myself"] unto the court

Scholarly editions eh?

Personality Disorder Test - Take It!

Actually, it's probably best if you don't if you're anything like me. Andy wanted the link though. Victor Lams took it and diagnosed himself as boring, whereas I just worried myself by achieving "moderate" results in a fair number, which should be fine. Got a "high" for obsessive-compulsive though. Um, hooray.

N.B. I'm copied their code for the link; I don't really think you should "Take It!". I'm shocked that anyone thought I would create a link with such arbitrary capitalizations in fact.

5 Cowley Bridge Road is, in terms of council tax, a band C property.

And the standard annual charge for a band C property in Exeter is £982.

I would be the only non-student there, which would mean that I would pay that myself, albeit with a 25% discount, bringing it down to £736.50, after filling this in. I guess everyone else fills out these.

Hmm. I wonder if I can manage that on top of £49 rent per week. I had better go down to the Citizen's Advice Bureau at 3 King William Street and enquire.