I had an 8am lecture this morning, and (as happens every time early lectures happen) due to getting up at 6:30am to catch a train soon after 7, completely screwed over my morning routine.

My shower was cut short, so I couldn’t wash my hair (admittedly no big deal), breakfast was a muffin and a strong flat white from Cinque Lire on the way into S3, and I didn’t get to read the paper. However, by far the most distressing stray from the norm caused by early mornings at uni has to be the skipping of the ritualistic morning dump. Instead of a clean, decent toilet at home to spend my three minutes of bliss, I had to run the gauntlet of terrible public toilets here at uni. Fortunately, having spent a few years on campus has led to a pretty extensive knowledge of the good and the bad as far as public amenities are concerned, however this morning I am camped in the Hargrave Andrew Library, and with the temperature hovering in the single digits outside there was no way I was going trekking to find a decent bog. So, I used the toilet here, which I’m fairly sure is one of the few original loos in the university (original meaning that it would have been installed sometime during the 60′s), and hasn’t been cleaned in at least the last decade.

Having used this particular bog before I understood that comfort and enjoyment would have to be sacrificed for speed and efficiency. That was fine – I’ve got places to be and things to do anyway, but what I wasn’t expecting is to really enjoy myself, specifically in regards to the graffiti on the door and walls.

Now I’m not usually one for flagrant graffiti, but there’s something about university based vandalism that makes it far more enjoyable – probably the simple education of the perpetrators. One that made me chuckle was the tried and true toilet tennis, where “Toilet Tennis! Look Right!” is written on the left hand wall of the cubicle, while “Toilet Tennis! Look Left!” is scrawled on the right. Still got a chuckle the 832nd time I saw it.

Then, slightly above one of the toilet tennis piece, there was a bit of a challenge: “Everyone can piss on the floor: be a hero and shit on the ceiling”. Almost made me fall in, and then almost made me try to do so, before I thought through the difficulties in shitting on the ceiling.

Of course the obligatory poem sprung up soon after: “Here I sit, broken-hearted. Came to shit, but only farted.”

I next found a mysterious list of seemingly random words, unless you happen to be a nerd like me:
“de_aztec”
“cs_office”
“de_dust”
“cs_assault”
“cs_italy”

Struck me as a really odd place to list counterstrike maps. For no reason whatsoever.

Anyway mixed in were the conversations about dick size, poo viscosity, mum fatness, degree uselessness (“ARTS DEGREES – PLEASE TAKE ONE” over the toilet paper) and general scribble. The only graffiti that seemed to be missing from this veritable cornucopia of vandalism was the misplaced philosophical banter (too far from the arts faculty methinks), along with my all-time personal favourite:

“Oppose orbital imprisonment, free the moon!”

Ahh toilet graffiti. You almost make pooing solely in the STRIP building seem vain and unnecessary. Almost.

Pete

In a bid to improve my marks last year, so as to give myself some options after this degree, I promised myself to not play computer games during semester. Now I was never a super-avid gamer, and apart from the Half-Life series, I could quite honestly do without games to a large extent, so it wasn’t a huge sacrifice. That self imposed ban has been active for a 18 months, however, my brain works in such a way that it was a dead certainty an alternative procrastination device reared its head á la Medusa, and downloadable TV seems to have plugged that hole for the last 12 months. I’ve downloaded TV shows since I came back from overseas 4 years ago, but thanks to my self imposed gaming ban last year the rate at which I download has increased exponentially. I haven’t counted, but thanks to the ban as well as two brothers who are also dirty pirates, the family downloads something like a twenty separate TV series, from Britain, America and elsewhere.

The Australian winter holidays (all 3 weeks of them !@$!#$!@#$) herald a dry spell for TV. A lot of my British TV (Buzzcocks, QI) run annual seasons from September through to about February, while the jewel of my British crown – Doctor Who – has just finished its run on the BBC. Furthermore, most of the decent American series are well and truly on their summer breaks, leaving Top Gear as the lone downloadable program at the moment. No disrespect to the Top Gear guys – it remains one of my most highly anticipated shows, but the lack of TV has meant that I’ve been forced to cast my net further these holidays, spending a good chunk of time out of town, as well as downloading more and more movies (today I watched the 1989 Batman movie for the first time in about 10 years…. it was awesome) and even testing the waters with odd sounding series that I wouldn’t ordinarily bother with. I tried Gossip Girl, but it reminded me of the vomity feeling I got when I watched the OC. I’ve been downloading old seasons of Buffy, which would have been one of my favourite TV shows in the old days, but now seems cheesy and annoying. Imagine my joy last week when I found a new TV series that looked somewhat interesting – Secret Life of the American Teenager.

Now, after imagining that joy, imagine my horror and foetus-aborting shock when it dawned on me, ten minutes into the first and only episode I downloaded that this show seemed an awful lot like the crummy, daytime TV hogging stalwart of American cheese, 7th Heaven (EDIT – it’s by the same freaking people!#@$#). Christian overtones, soft focus and a ridiculously unrealistic look at Americana, although admittedly focusing on the mature and not-so-daytime-TV theme of teenage pregnancy. Even so, someone should have warned me – midyear American TV stinks.

Maybe I should just spend my holidays looking forward to the next semester, or just drunk – that’s worked in the past…

Pete