psyche

They’re going fairly well so far (although English was long). I have Maths and Music today. Maths is fine and Music, well, erm. I’m just not gifted enough. However, Dominic Yeo reassured me by telling me that “last year everyone did really badly in the mocks”, so fine. Hopefully I won’t be alone in my failure this time! Anyway, yeah.

My computer is still dead. I haven’t really done anything with it. All my data (apart from Home Folder which is backed up, and an OLD revision of my HD - from pre-Yellow Dog times) hangs in the balance as my hard drive creaks and squeals but for some reason, I’m not worried. Perhaps I just don’t understand that this several-thousand-dollar piece of equipment has been ruined! Oh well. Anyway, it was raining and cloudy when I got up. I love that kind of weather! It smells clean. I enjoy failure. Well, not enjoy. You know what I mean. It’s like an old friend.

Pax

UPDATE: Maths was fine (about one and a half hours of free time in that exam, wahey!) and Music was a bitch. Maybe it’s because I’m shit at music. Ho ho! Anyway, yeah. From what I heard from Elliot and Guy Emerson (!), Systems and Control was also completely retarded. Just Biology, History and Physics Challenge to get through now! As aforementioned, I had a chat with Dominic Yeo in tutors this morning (I wasn’t required to turn up because of exams, but I did) and he helpfully told me to approach the Physics Challenge logically and on the basis of the equations we already know; sounds good!

My sister has just received letters offering her a place at Godolphin & Latymer, St James’ (?), Heathfield (?) and St Paul’s. She’s somewhat inflated at the moment, because of her lack of professional tuition etc. and is also, along with my mother, displaying what is in fact the most flagrant spiteful bitchiness that I have ever seen. Ever. However, I hope she won’t make the same mistake I did and just not work, because then she’d be mediocre like me. Vicariously succeeding through her is not what I plan to do. I am now going to try to retain all these Chemistry notes.

Pax

My PowerBook died some time between 11pm last night and 11am today. It displays the flashing folder/question mark/Mac face thing. I think this means it lost my Mac OS X. Oh yeah, it also makes a horrific metal shearing/plastic cracking noise whenever it’s on. I’m not too worried, paradoxically. Actually I am, but not. I have backups, so, y’know. Whatever. I need a new one. I like new computers. Also, everybody dies - I’ve been waiting!

Pax

The fact that no-one ever reads this stuff is simultaneously good and bad. To the point: ARGH. Most people using a Mac use it for some sort of retarded image factor without ever understanding any advantages it has ever had in any of its incarnations! I am disgusted - it’s not that hard not to be a narcissistic and sociopathic freakazoid with a penchant for gratuitous self-agrandising pseudo-soliloquies! Some people deserve death. Seriously.

Pax

I hereby turn my back on a world that I can never have. People do some things better than others. There is a lot of variance. Some people are at the fringes of the categorical map that envelops us. I’m sorry, but I would like to know! I would like to tell riddles in the dark! I would like to understand! Maybe I will be rewarded for my arrogance by being put in some terrible poverty or war, in which case, so be it! I deserve it!

SMITE ME!

Pax… oh, wait, no: Bellum

Ho ho! Did the British Youth Championship national thingy today and luckily didn’t do as badly as expected. Came out of the seeding 4 up, 2 down and was seeded 12th - got a bye for the first round and then beat some Welsh guy 15-14 (I didn’t deserve to win) and then lost 15-10 to some other guy who hideously deformed the sabre I was using and smashed my hand. Heh. Anyway, yeah, it was alright. Came 13th overall - Hugh (Emerson) came 15th overall and Ian told us “Yay” (that’s paraphrased).

Pax

EDIT: Results

To be honest, my brain is off. I’ve been, well, not sleeping for a while now. At first I thought that it had few ill effects; I was tired but hardly out of action and fared well indeed - and still am doing so, apparently. However, there are a number of internal changes. Things I want to do appear to be drifting away and things are slipping and sliding into awkward positions and I wish I could get a handle on all this stuff but I just can’t. Maybe at Durston I was smart, but now I’m not. I possess neither knowledge nor understanding. I am a shadow - a shadow - of who or what I used to be. Whether what I used to be is idealised in my brain, I don’t know. I suspect it is, a little.

Anyway, there was another composer’s concert last night and it was okay. Some people (like me) couldn’t play what they had to play and others (like me) had written crap pieces with no dynamics, titles or structure (lol) but whatever. The music department pulled it off admirably. I’ve just written some disgustocrap (= disgustingly crap) piece, or disgustopiece, for my third piece of GCSE coursework. It’s pretty bad, seriously.

Quotation of the day (Composer’s Concert)
Elliot: (has been doing technology, not music, for the past one and a half years) *is in Cyrus’s vicinity*
Cyrus: (with an air of mild surprise) …I didn’t know you did music.

Lol that’s actually great. I respect Cyrus for assuming that Elliot could have been doing music for almost two years without being noticed. I genuinely respect him for that.

Also I have some fencing Nationals thing over the weekend, which sounds ominous. I’m going to do very badly. Really I am. But that’s not to say I’ll try!*

Anyway, I was just thinking BLEH. I wish that I could be an outgoing and fun person with lots of friends who did things. The cruellest joke of all is that I misunderstood things right from the start. I thought people were good at some things but not others - alas, then, when confronted with people at this school who are good at everything they need to be good at, I wasn’t intimidated but I failed. Ho ho! Total failure; meh, who needs to do well in exams, have a girlfriend, be a calculator, know all the chords, always keep their eye on the ball, set an example, sleep frequently? Oh, bollocks - I do.

*I meant “That’s not to say I won’t try!”… hmm… sleep deprivation, typo or Freudian slip, a symptom of a deep-seated psychological trauma? Ho ho, I don’t know.

Pax

P.S. I hate achieved talent. I hate natural talent. I hate genetics. I hate attractiveness. I hate personality. I hate hatred. I hate war. I hate peace. I hate life - not in a “ho ho i r go slash mi writsts 4 fun an den u’ll b sori ho ho” way, but more of a “Being sentient is the ultimate torture!”. This disgustocrap. Life is an impurity! I am not a nihilist but I am hormonal, sleep-deprived and ugly and therefore I will say these things! Long live the world, resting on its side!

Today Elliot and I went to the “Camden International Cadet Sabre Competition 2007″, in which sabreurs under the age of 17 from several countries compete. First we were split into poules to be seeded (although everyone qualified for the sequential direct elimination). I did extremely badly, losing most fights 5-1 and a few 5-0 (lol). Elliot fared slightly better, at least once scoring more than one point in a fight. In the DE, Elliot, seeded 63, had to fence some guy, seeded 66, and beat him. I, having done worse in the poules and seeded 70, had to fence someone with a seeding of around 53. Despite one of the lenses of my glasses falling out half-way through the first half (before the one minute break at 8 points) and his higher ranking, I still beat that guy (awesome!). Elliot then had to fence seed 2 and lost 15-1. I had to fence a Romanian guy, seed 6, and also lost 15-1. I got a yellow card for doing a cross-over, which has never happened before, so I’d better do more footwork practice. Our final rankings are as yet unknown but maybe the results will be posted on the websomewhere so I’ll report back later.

Update: Argh I came 64th and Elliot came 62nd: here is the full list of results.

Pax

I really have no idea what’s going on. Sometimes I wonder, would life be the same if I understood the way some people are? I’m two-faced but being five-faced is bloody well pushing it. I am perfectly willing to pass problems onto others, and so is Elliot, and so be it. Alex chose to become the nucleus of this mess, and thus absolved me (to a relatively high degree) so I am, in fact, content. Sometimes showing off is okay - oh, wait, it’s never okay, my mistake. I remember when I used to wish I would see a line separating wrong from right. I just got a fuzzy rectanguloid thing, so I drew the line. I just drew it.

So, basically, 3/6 (4/6 if you count me) are, as Elliot rationally puts it, “compromised”. This mess is to me as the sea is to a scuttled ship. The caudices loci caudicum split opinion initially, but it turns out that in fact, people don’t mean what they say (at least to me). I should’ve seen it coming; it’s happened before. How long will it be before Hell is my home? Hah, not as long as I once thought, probably.

Pax

Sometimes I really wonder what’s going on and why it never adds up. I feel like other people have felt like this, but they ignore it, paradoxically, and continue living a confused life until they die. Why be good or bad? Because it brings you happiness, or others happiness. What’s so special about happiness? Surely the same effect could be replicated by feeding in electrical signals to the brain, or by inducing a drug-enhanced euphoria? I don’t believe that the human condition makes sense. Life is fascinating and terrible. So be it.

Pax