Sons of Loki

Due to a minor mishap/misunderstanding/deliberate sabotage(?) the house will be without internet for a week. This is perhaps good or bad. It means I have to get out of the house, and it means I can get on with studying more.

It’s really weird, but I’m sort of enjoying studying. I know, right? It’s just there’s really nothing else to do, and it’s nice to sit down in the Brotherton with a copy of 涼宮ハルヒの憂鬱 (The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya) and slowly decipher the contents into OneNote (which is my new favourite program, being that I can take my laptop down to uni, make notes or write something, then sync it with my desktop seamlessly when I get home). Certainly, light novels such as Haruhi are a lot easier than real literature like Mishima’s 潮騒 (The Sound of Waves), which I imagine is difficult reading even for fluent Japanese, what with obscure kanji and unconventional readings.

Speaking of difficult reading, Baudrillard! I mean, I consider myself pretty intelligent, and I did philosophy at A-Level, but this guy … Maybe it’s a bad translation. I certainly hope it’s a bad translation, because it reads like a dodgy Babelfish job from French to English via Hungarian. To give you an idea of what it’s like, I will temporarily write in the style of Baudrillard’s prose: certainly the style of one who’s vaudevillian rhapsody runs counter to the mainstream philosophy, which is to say a certain je ne sais quoi of proto-normal Russian doctrine, vis-à-vis the normal interacting with the hyperunsymbotic. Kennedy knew this: thus, the ultimate symbol of American satiety is the death of consumerist ballet as seen in the unbalance of Trotsky minus the special luminosity of what one might call the wrangling of modern fixation on the zabological mannichopology of the general public’s resistance to santological deflectance (PPEP!) and ultimately, what Walt Disney was getting at was this: that there can be no society without the emblence of grisstitude.

No, that barely manages to capture the sheer confusion of reading Simulacra and Simulation. Perhaps I need to read more. He still has some good points, in the same way that a broken clock is right twice a day and how a blind squirrel sometimes finds an acorn and other sayings. But as Baudrillard writes on page 15,

Now, one must conceive of TV along the lines of DNA as an effect in which the opposing poles of determination vanish, according to a nuclear contraction, retraction, of the old polar schema that always maintained a minimal distance between cause and effect, between subject and object: precisely the distance of meaning, the gap, the difference, the smallest possible gap (PPEP!), irreducible under pain of reabsorption into an aleatory and indeterminate process whose discourse can no longer account for it, because it is itself a determined order.

PPEP! PPEP! PPEP! The rallying cry of the postmodernists! PPEP!

Things are settling down pretty well here, I guess. For the first time, I’m in Leeds to see all the freshers and wow, they really do look so young and fresh-faced. They wear their college’s “class of 2010″ hoodies and are born in 1991 or even 1992 and don’t know where everything is and ask taxi drivers to take them to Opal Three and have those conversations which go “So what are you studying?” “Joint Honours International Biomedical Frangilistics and Exportation Studies” “wow I have absolutely no idea what that is” and the scariest thing is that they were us, once. No, that’s not the scariest thing. The scariest thing is that every single one of them seems to be having more fun than I am. Bah.

I’ve been bumping into old friends all over the place, and eating my old friend the ‘Wedge (now, scandalously up from £1.79 to £2.20). We dine at semi-fancy restaurants and catch up on how we’ve been doing and have heated arguments about how bloody expensive the Union co-op is, especially with the Tesco’s just across the road. We have people over for poker and video games. We go into uni and the guys go to the gym and I go to the swimming pool, because I’m too cheap to pay the membership fee and it’s only £3 for a swim and use of the sauna and steam rooms, then we come out and study Japanese in the library because we are awesome and are not swayed by Domino’s offers of free pizza (seriously, it’s like sixteen-fucking-quid for Domino’s pizza – sixteen pounds! – and Milano’s down the road do a gorgeous BBQ pizza with your choice of three toppings and free delivery for £4.10).

I come back and write my stupid novel and think about what I’m doing for NaNoWriMo this year (concept: taking the Totoro shinigami urban legend and running with it, making a proper story about a girl who disappears into the forest and meets Death and has to save her little sister or something – shades of Mort and the old Death and the Maiden tale) listen to the Beatles (getting into Let It Be and Abbey Road right now) and drink coffee and read Baudrillard, who like all French philosophers (and all philosophers) takes a chapter to say what he could say in a page, but nevertheless makes me nod my head:

In the same way science and technology were recently mobilized to save the mummy of Ramses II, after it was left to rot for several dozen years in the depths of a museum. The West is seized with panic at the thought of not being able to save what the symbolic order had been able to conserve for forty centuries, but out of sight and far from the light of day. Ramses does not signify anything for us, only the mummy is of an inestimable worth because it is what guarantees that accumulation has meaning. Our entire linear and accumulative culture collapses if we cannot stockpile the past in plain view.

Et cetera. I’m a little worried about getting back into English, because my first module is Civil War and Restoration literature and it’s going to (probably) be all about dashing rogues and tartish ladies (probably) and I really can’t wait until third year (fourth year for me) when the modules on modern literature turn up. Japanese I still can’t speak, but I’m going to get a language partner(s) and reading it seems to be going alright.

And my Dickish (as in, er, Moby Dick) struggle with the stripped screw in my laptop has succeeded after I wrenched the broken keyboard off by practically bending it in two until it became detached from the fixing bolt, then very, very slowly and strenuously removing the bolt with pliers (getting confused about the direction – bolts spin clockwise to come off) then getting the screw out backwards with said pliers. Finally, the new keyboard slotted securely into place, and I can finally type on the go again.

There’s a huge spider in the bath. I may never be able to shower again.

Had things gone a little differently, I’d be in training right now. As it was, I didn’t get the job of Venue Technician for the Union (and right now a Russian voice is crying “For zje Union!” in my head), but then I was pretty much dead from the start. On Thursday I went along to this assessment centre deal, which was basically ten of us (including four Matts) around a table doing a few icebreaker/teambuilding activities so the assessors could see how we worked. Most of the other candidates had backgrounds in music or theatre tech, some of them worked for LUU, and all of them seemed supremely more qualified than me. There I was, assuming it was just a job anyone could turn up to and do, but for some of the people around the table it was clear that this was a stepping stone for a proper career, and they knew a formidable amount about running events, dealing with people, and (most importantly) arguing their point convincingly and with confidence.

I knew which of the candidates I’d hire, and I wasn’t one of them. Nevertheless, the next day I was called along for a final interview (after missing the callback the day before and getting one in the morning at 10:30 asking where I was – embarrassing) and I thought it went quite well. Obviously I couldn’t lie about my experience, but I tried to make it clear that I was eager to learn and could pick up technical stuff in no time at all. Waiting for the call that evening was agonising, but I was put out of my misery by a polite email informing me that I hadn’t got the job. Oh well. It genuinely was a good experience. I’ve never failed a job interview before (the whole Gaba debacle notwithstanding) and I’ve never been through such a gruelling interview process, so I really hope the next time I do something like this I’m better prepared.

Now, someone reminded me that due to my change in circumstances I have gone, in the space of a year, from being entirely ineligible for the Leeds bursary to (hopefully) receiving the entire payment of £1,540 next spring. So if I spend sensibly, money … well, there’s a gaping hole in my finances by mid-autumn, but I should actually break even by next year even without the job. To be honest, I’m going to have enough work on my hands without a part-time job, so perhaps this is for the best. Perhaps.

My housemates arrived! and it has been great fun. We’ve been playing poker, and I cooked dinner, and we have drunk wine and played video games and cleaned the kitchen and moved the sofas and made visits to other people’s houses and flats as the class of 2012 flits back into town one by one.

I’m not entirely confident about this third year. I’m taking on Mandarin and a dissertation in addition to my first proper year of English (unlike Japanese but like most degrees, English has a mickey-mouse first year that counts for naught). And then there’s Japanese, in which all fifty-so of us are now supposedly at the same level, which is patently untrue. I’m living with Rob and Hugo, who are essentially fluent (though they protest otherwise), and I get the feeling everyone else is better than me. Japanese is just really hard, you know? And I’m not sure if I care enough any more. I mean, plenty of people don’t care about their job and still do it, but at least they’re getting paid.

Brg. Maybe things will be better once term begins.

It’s my last day alone in the house and I’m basically just clearing up my mess before the guys get here and thinking about my interview/assessment tomorrow. Removed a big hairy Tegenaria domestica from the sink all by myself. Got Ken Bruce on, at least until he’s replaced by the sneery Jeremy Vine in five minutes. (“Is there actually anything to object to here?” he asks of the latest controversial non-story, but I’m sure callers will provide.) Coffee in the pot. Funny how it’s sort of nice to be alone in the mornings, but it’s terrifying at night.

I didn’t have time to play Red Faction Guerrilla last year, so I’ve been wasting my September days here on it. It’s certainly full of fun – the building-destruco-tech is a remarkable if flawed gimmick. Can there be anything better than planting explosive charges on a chimneystack, Fred Dibnah-stylee, and watching it tumble to the ground, crushing flimsy shacks as the pipe rolls down a hill? Well, yes. It would be better if the buildings weren’t often just held up by a single bit of wood after all the other walls were taken out, but it’s still satisfying when you take out the last bit and the whole thing tumbles down.

There was something really bothering me, though, but I didn’t realise what it was until Yahtzee pointed it out. You can’t play as a guerrilla. There’s no stealth whatsoever. The second you turn up anywhere, you get gunned down mercilessly. No sneaking around enemy bases, planting charges before retiring to a nearby hill and watching the fireworks – you have to go in guns blazing, throwing explosives aimlessly, which kind of takes the fun out of carefully demolishing buildings.
The game encourages you to ambush convoys, which would be really cool – planting mines on the road and hiding behind a rock – if not for the fact that the second the convoy gets within a hundred metres of you, they drive off the road and try to run you over while your carefully placed mines lie fallow. And you can only carry about six bullets and you die really quickly. And the AI guerrillas who spontaneously rise up to aid you in your one-man revolution die very, very quickly. I felt like shouting at them, Life of Brian style, that I wasn’t the messiah, that they should stop following me around because they’re just going to die horribly. (Although nothing’s more amusing than when you get involved in a minor road accident and knock over a wall, and a crowd of wannabe Ches turn up in a truck assuming the great uprising against your oppressors has begun.)

It also got me thinking about something that bothers me in just about every work of fiction where killing people is presented as entertainment. It’s the way heroes can do no wrong when they’re gunning down legions of faceless enemies. The villain is demonised for massacring thousands of peasants, but the hero slices through thousands of rank-and-file soldiers whose only crime was accepting the king’s shilling, and no one stops to complain. I mean, obviously the end goal is good, but it would be a better story if you introduced some depth to it. I mean, Red Faction is basically a big Iraq War allegory, with an insurgency fighting an occupying force there to grab all the natural resources, but the guerrillas/terrorists (depending on your view, of course) are presented as noble freedom fighters fighting an evil totalitarian empire. It would be a lot more interesting if your side was doing some morally questionable stuff, because that’s how war works.

The old James Bond killed plenty of people and was still a hero. The new guy, and the one in the books, is basically a cold-blooded murderer, and it’s a lot more interesting that way. There’s the bit in Metal Gear Solid 2 (I think) where the Colonel calls you out if you kill a certain number of enemies, saying “You seem to get a real thrill out of slaughtering the enemy. Are you frustrated about something?”, and in the sequel one of the bosses taunts you by making you face the ghosts of every single person you’ve killed in the game so far. And then there’s that Ultima game (?) where in an act of genius, it turns out that the faceless monsters you’ve been killing in all the other games in the series were actually intelligent and harmless all along. (Something along those lines.)

And there was this bit in Modern Warfare 2 that made me think. Now, I hesitate to attribute artistic merit to such a by-the-numbers blockbuster as MW2, but Call of Duty 4 did have that clever AC-130 level which quite subtly (subtly for video gaming, anyway) compares modern warfare to a video game, all point-and-click and detached from the actual slaughter.
It comes after the first half of the infamous “No Russian” level when you’re shooting Russian FSB troops as an undercover CIA operative. You have to shoot them to finish the level, whereas in the first half, the game wisely doesn’t force you to shoot any civilians in the controversy-inducing terrorist attack. And I thought why is it killing civilians is presented as wrong, but killing FSB police is just treated as part of the mission? Aren’t they just civilians behind their riot shields? And that’s when I realised I’d been killing plenty of Russian soldiers in the previous mission without batting an eyelid. I had an epiphany. If killing civilians was wrong, then killing police was wrong, then killing soldiers – even if they were the enemy – was wrong, surely.

But, then, this is Call of Duty we’re talking about, so I doubt it was the intended message. I’m probably thinking about this too much, and I doubt we want a world where every hero is tortured by the horrible things he has done to protect his family and way of life and stuff, but it would be more interesting, is all I’m sayin’.

Having assembled my life into a bunch of cardboard boxes, binbags, and guitar cases, my dad and I hit the road at about 9:30am and after an uneventful trip through the heart of England, we got to Leeds. Which is where we spent half an hour getting lost in Meanwood before finding Pickerings, my letting agent. Signed the contract, picked up the keys, and then another thirty minutes getting lost in Headingley before finding my house and my sister and Chris waiting outside.

My house is a lot further out than I thought – roughly halfway between Headingley and Meanwood, and a bit of a hike from the shops in Headingley. (Google Maps made it look practically next door to my old halls at James Bailie Park – which is sort of is, only not by car.) But it’s brilliant. I love it. Big, airy living room, a big spare room just dying to have a nice coffee table and big TV in it, nice old fashioned houses out the window, and a wonderfully creepy cellar that looks like some secret police’s secret interrogation room. (I love hidden rooms – you know, big spaces that no one goes in. Maybe it’s the mystery of it.)

Anyway, we had a meal at a nice little restaurant nearby and a few drinks before retiring to my house – my house! – for bed. In the morning, my dad headed back for Norwich and I had morning coffee at my dining table in my house while listening to the Archers and then mopped the floors (they’re still ingrained with dirt, but apparently we’re just gonna cover it up with rugs, so that’s okay).

Down to IKEA, then. It’s the first time I’ve ever been to the Swedish furniture megastore, but it was quite a remarkable experience – I feel that most of modern culture can be explained by the cheap, mass-produced mass-market designs there. It’s brilliant. It’s cheap, but stylish. It’s stylish from being cheap. It’s making a virtue of a vice.

Bought a laundry basket (I do not want clothes strewn across my floor), a hanging clothes hanger thing, a few tealight holders (essential) and a nice full-length mirror for £15. Thus bought, we had hot dogs (when you exit the store, they sell hot dogs! What a country) and headed back to my house.

And then I waved goodbye to them from the front door of my house. Which was a first. I mean, usually people are waving goodbye to me, or I’m waving goodbye from the door of my room, but here I was, homeowner (sort of), standing on the front step of my house and waving as Chris and Kate drove off.

And so I turned and headed inside.

I made some coffee and set about unpacking my my PC, dragging the desk over to the window (it was tucked up at the end of the room) and plugging my speakers in. Then books, clothes, decorations, until I was pretty much sorted.

I began assembling an array of toilet literature, starting with a wet copy of the Big Issue and Mumon’s The Gateless Gate, a collection of koans which are perfect for meditating on whilst sitting upon the bog.

A monk asked Nansen: `Is there a teaching no master ever preached before?’
Nansen said: `Yes, there is.’

`What is it?’ asked the monk.

Nansen replied: `It is not mind, it is not Buddha, it is not things.’

Feeling peckish, I went to cook up some pasta, only to find that the hob is gas and the lighter was dead. Not to worry! I went down to Sainsbury’s. Sainsbury’s was closed! I went to KFC instead and bought a burger, then found a newsagents and got a lighter for good measure. (How I miss the humble combini.)

I underestimated how scary being alone in a big four-bedroom house might be. I was terrified when I heard whistling from inside the house! only to realise it was just on BBC iPlayer from my room upstairs. I have a big stick to hit intruders, though for now I securely lock my door at night.

Today, Monday, I set about getting all the rest of the stuff I needed: an overdraft from Halifax (denied!), a haircut from the usual place on the Otley Road, next to Oxfam (stylised!), a secondhand novel from Oxfam (I just walked in thinking “I wish they had the New York Trilogy, but they won’t” but to my surprise, there it was on the shelf, as if it had been waiting for me all summer) and got a bus into town proper. (Bus’ only £1.70 now. Actually, that might be the same as last year.) At Argos, I bought some bathroom scales and their cheapest exercise bike before riding the bus back uptown with 13kg of exercise bike under my armpit. Dragging that thing back home, I set about assembling it and fixing myself some lunch when a man arrived to check the kitchen electrics. I busied myself clearing up junk from around the living room. (In hindsight, I probably should have offered him tea, but I’m new to this house lark.)

So out I ventured again to Wilkos, where I got some razors and conditioner and a cork noticeboard (false advertising on the label, as there were no pins inside and now I can’t pin anything up) and some blutac (so I can finally stick stuff to the walls) and coathangers (so all my stuff ain’t lying over the floor), before finally stocking up on edibles at Sainsbury’s (man, that place is expensive). Decorated my room. Felt less guilty about watching two episodes of the Wire back-to-back by cycling all the way through them.

And so here I am. Installed in my house. Ready for term. I am still woefully unprepared.