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Year View| Summary| Highlights| Month View| Friday 14 May 2004 (Day View)

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14.05.2004 – Friday 14 May – Was a pineapple

Morning

• Too long, I stayed up last night, and too sleepy I was this morning and too convoluted this sentence is. My “Operating Systems” lecture I was able to attend, though my breakfast was embarrassingly loud. Eating is forbidden in lecture theatres, and I seem to be the only one who eats. Each morning I buy breakfast from the main refectocide and take it to my first lecture, where I then eat it. Breakfast is usually one of either a custard-filled doughnut, or either of a veggie roll, or a pair of thingamajigs, where thingamajigs are small rolls created from left over cabbage and other vegetable waste. All three of these come in crinkly white paper bags. Oh, spring rolls, that’s what the thingamajigs are called – or “vomitory” as Clint would prefer. Vomitory has such a good definition that I find myself compelled to include it here: Vomitory: Of or pertaining to vomiting (archaic); Causing vomiting; emetic (now rare or obsolete). That said, we return to the white paper bags, which as said before, are crinkly. This in itself isn’t an issue – I have nothing against crinkly white paper bags, but when the only one eating in a lecture is I, and eating my food reminds people of Thor trying not to wake his wife, when sneaking home drunk – then, I don’t like them. I am also still unsure whether the lecturer’s various food and starvation jokes are directed towards me in any way.
  Following was a “Relational Database Systems” tutorial, which taught me more than the past three lectures, and the two-hour lecture directly following it, of which I only went to the first hour.

Afternoon

• Marcus and I attempted to find Clint, but he was hiding in the shower and it required braver men than us to enter a college shower, so I ended up in the labs waiting.
  Clint didn’t drown, eventually turning up, and he and I caught a CityCat into the city to buy an IRA style balaclava. I also went to Govinda’s for lunch.

Evening

• The train I caught home was a school train – the first I’ve been on in a while. Sat across from me were two young boys, perhaps ten years old. They were on their way home from an expensive private school, I’d guess – but definitely a school. They were discussing methods of tying ties, and the one was showing the other different types of tie knots. The second not only knew all their respective names, but also knew the precise lengths, number of loops, twists, turns, and so on, to produce a perfect knot in a variety of styles – and he was going to ask his father to teach him another style over the weekend. Apparently, neither one nor the other is either allowed to remove neither their jackets, nor either their ties, while in public. Directly they got off, two young girls of a similar age, once again presumably from some private school, took both their places. Both had identity cards hung around their necks on cords – and the cords had their school name emblazoned on them. This made me wonder what type of parent subjects their children to indoctrination of this type, and for what purpose, but then the public school children began to entrain, and I realised why.

Was a pineapple

• This is Clint’s idea of a funny joke: “Why did the bus crash? Because the owner was a pineapple”. Somehow, it’s hilarious. Luckily, he followed up with a real joke: Two cows are walking along and one goes “I’m a bit worried about this mad cow disease” and the other replies, “I’m not, I’m a chicken”.

Newsgroups

• I’ve been posting stupid things into the uni newsgroups, but IT students don’t appear to have a sense of humour.

Posted to the uq.forsale newsgroup

• For Sale – One Life
  IT student no longer requires life. All available time spent sleeping or underground with computers. Life is largely unused and in good condition. This is a once only sale, so get in quick.

Posted to the uq.wanted newsgroup

• Wanted – Genius
  Wanted – Genius who actually enjoys completing assignments, to complete assignments for student who does not enjoy completing assignments. Satisfaction gained from successfully completing assignments will be payment.

Posted to the uq.itee.general newsgroup

• Urgently require unimportant things to do
  G’day, I have an exam on Friday, and I haven’t done enough study, so I am urgently looking for unimportant things to do. I’ve cleaned, washed, and sorted everything I own, tidied up my website, trolled the newsgroups, and annoyed numerous people on numerous forums and IRC channels, but now here I am in the labs – threatened with the horrible prospect of having to actually study. Please help.
  At least this one got a few responses, some of them witty.

Night

• Puppy was in the back of the car when I got home, so I assumed Joe was about to drive somewhere, but he wasn’t here. After discounting aliens, terrorists, and that peculiar thin ad at the movies where the fellow drops down a drain, I found a note from Joe saying he’d gone to the bowls club, so I let puppy out. Not long after, Tonya arrived home, and Joe phoned up, and I drove down to the bowls club, and I picked up Joe and Liz, and I drove them to the bottle-o, and I bought fish and chips, and we drove home, and we ate them, and were filled, thus spake Ned, son of Dad, son of Pop, in the fifteenth day of the currently very cold month of the not yet three-score year of the reign of our queen, Liz – long may she live.

4:09am

• I need to get to sleep.

Comment by Mum – Sunday 16 May 2004, 7:26 PM

  IRA? Balaclava? Holy Mackerel, what have you done NOW?

Comment by Ned – Sunday 16 May 2004, 8:29 PM

  It’s all his fault, I wasn’t even there, I have an alibi, I was overseas, I was asleep, I couldn’t have done it.

Comment by cf – Tuesday 18 May 2004, 2:35 AM

  Your son is a bad influence on me. I actually went into the city to purchase an ink refill for a pen to assist me in my studies and a pair of sensible shoes, but Ned, pausing momentarily from harassing innocent passers by, insisted that I "should buy a balaclava and perhaps some plastic explosive". He also insisted that I feign an Irish accent.