Zomg! Lawrence and I went out for a curry at our favourite Brook Green Indian restaurant, Le Cinnamon, and who should walk in but Neil Finn!

Neil Finn, people! We sat next to him and ate curry ^_^

Ophelia Xx

After receiving the kind gift from a good friend of a brand new shiny copy of Lost Girls, my mobile phone wallpaper has switched from Flaming June to this (contains nipples):

( Nothing like a naughty Mucha pastiche. )

Lovely.

Ophelia Xx

Has ANYTHING interesting happened to me?

I bought Black Books series 1-3 on DVD. I also bought V for Vendetta, which I might watch tonight.

I haven't succeeded in getting a job yet.

I've started drawing again, and I'm not as crap as I thought I was. Unsurprisingly, given recent events, I have the urge to make pretty things, coupled with a dreadful inability to do so. What I really wanted to do was make an animation of the pictures in my head, but I lack the skills with Flash - if anyone wants to give me a tutorial on vector shapes in Flash, incidentally, I'd be very grateful.

Lesbians!

Ophelia Xx

Eh, I was trying to write A Serious Post, but it was crap, so you get this instead.

Basically, there are some things I want to do. I want to spend more time on creative projects. I want to get around to reading classic works of fiction. I want to learn to look interesting. I want to strike up conversations with strangers. I want to strike up conversations with non-strangers I find difficult to talk to, but whom I want to talk to very much. I want to have more sex with women. I want to have more sex in general, really. I also want to figure out what I like and why things work or don't work for me. I want to read about some things that seem important, like where places are and what's going on in the world. I want to lose weight. I want to get a first. I want to try not to say stupid, meaningless things to people to whom I'm attracted. I want to be honest about what I want and from whom. And I want to leave my comfort zone more frequently, because it's quite lonely in my bubble.

Ophelia Xx

I had a few days at L's. It was nice. :) We made pasta together.

This game is one of the oddest I've ever seen. A 'lowly born' female in a house full of harpies, it's your job to slap your way to the top by finding each angry lady's weak spot and spanking the hell out of her until her face is all red and puffy and you can claim your inheritance. Let the "womanly battle" commence! Er, what?

Ophelia Xx

Home! I've almost finished unpacking - I've done everything except the miserable hanging up of clothes, which I confess I'm putting off. I've done everything else though, yay. I like my room at home. :)

Annoyingly, the stupid digipak design of the two Joan As Police Woman albums I own means that they don't fit in my CD rack. Bah! I mean, I'm all for eco-friendly, but it's hardly eco-friendly when I have to buy a new CD rack just so that I can find somewhere to put them. At the moment they're in a crate, and it annoys me that they're not in alphabetical order with the others. Er, not that I have my CD collection in alphabetical order or anything, no. *cough*

This morning I greeted my bemused father with a card and a present. He never remembers that it's Father's Day. To be honest, I dislike making a fuss about an event invented by card companies, and I was saying to a friend the other day that we should probably just make Mothering Sunday into Parenting Sunday, so as to save time and be more politically correct.

Today my gran came round - I gave her a book for her birthday, and we cooked fajitas for her, and she recounted ridiculously dull stories to us. The tangents, OH GOD THE TANGENTS.

Ophelia Xx

Oh, by the way, I had my report reading on Wednesday evening - I was told for both papers that I was getting high 2:1 marks with occasional first class standard essays, so that's encouraging. Maybe if I actually do some work over the summer I'll have a small chance of getting a first, and that means funding for an MA, which would be lovely. According to my philosophy tutor, my contributions are "sparkling", so that's nice to hear, and my theology tutor made some reference to my "sensitive reading" of primary texts and my "solid grasp" of authors' "sophisticated reasoning", so that's all good as well.

*feels pleased with herself* Life isn't so scary, sometimes.

Soon, I shall formulate some resolutions and regale you with their contents in some probably rather emo posts. You have been warned.

Ophelia Xx

Just now, I went to the LMH library to pick up some beloved books from the old days of studying crazy stuff like Hobbes and Matthew's gospel. Well, in fact, I've ended up only actually acquiring five books: my favourite Mackie and McNaughton books on ethics, a commentary on Jesus' parables, a commentary on Mark, and a book about Christian theology to prepare me for one of next term's papers. I'll pick up a couple of books on Matthew and John from the Theology Faculty later on. I really ought to do some work this summer... Finals are less than a year away and are suddenly looking rather terrifying. I'm feeling slightly at a loose end, now - somewhere between finishing all my work for this term, and going home.

I need a birthday present for my Gran and a Fathers' Day present for my... father. I think bookshops will be my first port of call.

Yesterday I had my last tutorial for Christian Moral Reasoning. It was rather frustrating, because I'd written what I felt was a rather good essay, if a little ranty, about feminist approaches to the biblical account of creation, but unfortunately we spent all our time discussing my rather less impressive essay on open relationships, and he succeeded in making me feel, as he always does, morally inferior. Pfft to you, smug Christian tutor!

If you're interested, ( here's the essay about feminism and Genesis 2-3. )

Ophelia Xx

Manet's Olympia is one of my most-loved paintings evar (I have a big poster of it in my room), so I decided to find out what's good about it, and this is what I learned.

 
 

  
Ophelia Xx

The argument with which I wound up my essay on sex, love, and open relationships went something like this: "To withdraw the necessity of love for sex is to withdraw the sacredness or special nature of sex as a uniquely meaningful event, and to place it in a category of merely enjoyable, albeit frequently emotionally affecting, activities. Therefore there can be no moral objections to the notion of open relationships if one has learned to separate sex from love."

I was going to go with "Pornography cannot be distinguished from art," but it got too complicated and I couldn't think how to tie it to Christian ethical perspectives in particular. (This would be a fun thing to write an essay on from a secular perspective, though. I may do it for shiggles in a rather polemical fashion and post it here, just for my own satisfaction. After all, come noon tomorrow, I won't have any essays to write until next term...) Instead, I'm going for "Feminism must be opposed to the Genesis account of 'man and woman'." I feel on firmer ground with this one because I can just get all biblical on yo' ass. It's also very easy, as a feminist, to respond with horror to all sorts of aspects of the portrayal of womankind in Genesis 2-3. Scary things include:

• the creation of woman from man, as a helper for him
  
• the possible hint that marriage is emasculating, in the verses after Adam's song
• the notion that womankind is responsible for the Fall
• the implication that woman deserves to be subservient to her husband and to suffer the pain of childbirth
  
• the suggestion that work is for men and parenthood is for women

I also happen to believe that the rationale behind each of these elements of the Genesis account is fundamentally ingrained in Christian theology and ethics, and that a genuinely feminist-friendly Christianity is impossible at least partially because of these things, and especially because of the linking of women with the Fall.

Fun stuff!

In other news, I've been trying to like In Rainbows again. It's not as bad as I thought it was initially (15 Step and Down Is The New Up are actually pretty good, although the latter reminds me of something that I can't put my finger on), but I'm still finding most of it incredibly forgettable. Hail To The Thief and Amnesiac, meanwhile, continue to get more interesting. A Wolf At The Door is a remarkably lovely song. So is Pyramid Song, which to be honest I've loved from the beginning but which I really listened to again today and appreciated all over again. I'm obviously capable of getting to love things that didn't grab me first time round, so why is it not working with In Rainbows? People I like and respect think I'm wrong about it!

Ophelia Xx

Today I discovered that it's very difficult to write an opinion-type essay about sexual ethics without using the word "position" in an hilariously ambiguous way. I'm at Lawrence's, trying to write an essay discussing whether "An open relationship is morally problematic only for those who have not yet learned to separate sex from love." Interesting question, but far too complicated to answer in 1500 words. :( I have to pick another one, as well, and I'd value your input as to which I should choose. Remember that I have to answer them with reference to Christian moral reasoning in particular. They're all "discuss" type questions; I have to outline an argument either for or against each (so they don't need to be balanced essays).

• Cybersex is less a funny aberration than a new level of the trend towards an ever greater disintegration of sex.
• Rape is worse than other acts of violence to the person.
• Pornography cannot be distinguished from art.
• Contraception is by necessity compromising the integrity of the communicative and procreative dimension of the sexual act.

So what do you think? I'm tempted to avoid the one about cybersex because I think it'd probably turn out too close in content to the one I'm writing now. I might have the same problem with the one on contraception. I do think the one about pornography could be very interesting to answer.

I can't wait for the end of term... My parents' cooking will be very welcome, and I'm looking forward to having a shower in a bathroom that isn't covered with other people's hair. :)

Oh, in other news, I went to see Simon Amstell with some friends at the New Theatre in Oxford. He was pretty funny, and a lot nicer than I expected him to be. He was quite rude about people from Woking, but I forgive him. His support act was this guy, Arnab Chanda, whom I also found quite amusing, although my friends didn't agree. Some of it was a bit close to line, but he didn't quite slip too far over into the realms of bad taste, so I think we're okay.

Ophelia Xx

Doin' a degree, innit.

Seriously, I don't know what's got into me. Admittedly my life has been relatively dull of late, but there has been the occasional interesting moment that you'd think I'd have wanted to talk about. But apparently apathy got the better of me. It may also have something to do with the fact that this term I have four whole friends, instead of two, so I've had slightly more to do in the evenings. Heh.

Anyway, I have a day of nothing in particular to do, because I have no books to do my work, and the libraries aren't open today. So I can write a lovely long post about all the interesting things that have been happening in my life, can't I? Yes, I can.

The President of Sri Lanka.

I went to see this dude, Mahinda Rajapaksa, speak at the Union. (My friend is Sri Lankan and didn't want to go alone.) The audience was 90% male. Not knowing much about Sri Lankan politics, I won't be offering you biting political satire, apart from to say that he seemed to be saying that the Tamil Tigers are indirectly responsible for all terrorism ever, the bastards. This made us wonder whether perhaps he wasn't being entirely honest. :p

Essays.

And lots of 'em. I worked out the other day that by the end of my degree I will have written about 90 essays, and that's just the ones for tutorials; then there's all the ones for exams and practice purposes as well. Gosh. Probably the most interesting subject I got to write about this term was eternity. Turns out that God can be eternal after all, despite my reservations about this thesis to begin with.

Kitten.

I met a kitten. I am in love.

L in Oxford.

Lawrence came up to Oxford a couple of weekends ago. We went to the Museum of Natural History and the Pitt Rivers Museum, which are joined together and which I've walked past dozens of times but never had the opportunity to investigate. We particularly liked the glass beehive, and the strange pictures by Jacques Touselle that we found by the toilets. We also went to see Iron Man, which we enjoyed very much indeed - silly but tremendous fun.

Crystal Skull.

I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull the other week with a few friends. What a ridiculous film. The most irritating thing, for me, was the selectively magnetic skull, which caused objects to move towards it only after it had been uncovered, and which apparently doesn't stick to metal trucks, even though it can attract gunpowder from the other side of a huge warehouse. And... aliens? Seriously?

Cate Blanchett was really hot, though, so it wasn't all bad.

Today: Adventures.

Shopping with my friend, Nando's for lunch, and then we're going to see Simon Amstell attempting to be funny this evening, so that'll be nice.

I'm back.

Ophelia Xx

Hm, okay. I lied.

Ophelia Xx

I promise you an entry tomorrow.

Ophelia Xx

Got me a new phooooone. It's a lovely Sony Ericsson k770i in truffle brown, if anyone's interested. This is a big step for me because I've had a doorstop of a phone for about eight years and it's nice to finally get one that's a little bit shiny. *fondles it*

I went with L to see Camille at Koko in Camden on Wednesday night - it sounded like this. Such a fun gig! It was a shame that I couldn't see for the first half hour on account of being a short-arse, but the people in front of me moved out of the way after that, so I had a good view for the remaining hour and a half. There was a lot of humour and the crowd was very friendly. I had a great time. :) They also did a cover of the Dead Kennedys' Too Drunk to Fuck, which was very entertaining - she got the audience singing along and descended into cute hiccuping noises towards the end :p

Last Thursday I handed in an essay about whether love is sufficient as the basis of a sound Christian ethics. I keep thinking the work I'm doing for the Christian Moral Reasoning paper is really ropey, but my tutor's comments are always pretty positive, and he does keep making these remarks about my perspicacity. Which is nice. Rather annoyingly, he cancelled my tutorial for next Thursday, and then after I'd made plans, announced that it was un-cancelled again. Frustrating.

Ophelia Xx

Whole loads of unpleasant and/or confusing things have happened all at once. I wish my boyfriend were back from Paris. I also wish a lot of other things that are not for public consumption. Maybe they are for special friends-only consumption. We will see, LJ friends.

I do have Season 5 of The L Word to watch, though, which makes things slightly better and slightly worse at the same time.

Tomorrow I will finally find out my collection result for the Nature of Religion paper I did four weeks ago.

Ophelia Xx

I have a sudden desire for Softmints.

Mmmmm, Softmints.

Ophelia Xx

Now that I know there's a national fig roll shortage, I have a rather predictable craving for a small, soggy cake that looks like a dog biscuit.

In other news, today I had dinner with some friends in Nando's on George Street, and on the way home we saw a lady with her skirt tucked extremely conspicuously into her knickers.

Also, today I had a very successful tutorial. My tutor really liked that diagram (which I modified somewhat after I posted it, as it happens), and he said (or rather, interjected with glee) a couple of times that I was very perceptive and had obviously read the text very thoroughly, so that was nice. I felt very jolly because of the sunshine.

However, there is now some loud, thumping music going on very near to my room, and I suspect my chances of falling asleep in the next hour are pretty slim.

Ophelia Xx

I was expecting to find this assignment difficult, but... I'm not. It's about natural law and conscience in the Summa Theologica, and, dull though it is, it's also pretty simple.

Want to see a picture?

( God's making the rules. )

Ophelia Xx

Can anyone be both happy and good?

I can't help that other people matter.

Ophelia Xx