Today was a day of ADVENTURE.

Okay, it wasn’t. I had a bagel for breakfast, I went with my parents to choose some kitchen tiles, and then I came home and read a bit.

YEAH.

Ophelia Xx

Today I had my second day working at the gallery. It was good! I spent the morning hangin’ out in a small room at the top of the building, which is currently housing some post-war abstract paintings by Mary King that were inspired by Surrey gardens. It was very quiet—there’s little passing traffic in that room because it’s down one end—but I was given a book to read about Leonardo Da Vinci’s mechanical drawings (because there is going to be a big Da Vinci exhibition at the gallery next month, to which you guys should all come, by the way, as the gallery I work in is the only scheduled UK venue for the exhibition, and it is going to be amazing). I was really taken, strangely enough, with his design for a self-releasing hook for crane loads. The loop of rope would unhook itself from the load when it hit the ground and took the weight off the mechanism. The drawings were so beautiful, and the design so practical and economic.

Then I went into town with my mum to buy a new academic diary. Yeah. Why are diaries so expensive? I don’t understand. :( Also, why is it that week-to-view academic diaries so often have smaller spaces for the weekends than for the week days? Er, guys! Students make all their plans for the weekends! Silly.

After that, my mum bought me some nice olive bread for my lunch (not sure what brought that on), so I had that with a little bit of pesto spread on it, and a mug of vanilla rooibos. Then my mum and I baked a ginger cake, but we had to substitute treacle for most of the golden syrup because we ran out, so I think it will come out very rich and sticky. several_bees has very kindly told me where to find a very fine recipe for freezable biscuit dough, so maybe while the ginger cake is maturing I will make some biscuits to placate me and my family while we wait.

It’s the weekend already? What have I done this week?! (Er, don’t answer that.)

Ophelia Xx

Wow. The Student Finance people have been proactive. We must be in some sort of parallel universe.

They’ve actually written me a really nice letter about applying for another year of finance owing to my changed circumstances. It’s sensitive and contains phrases like “deepest sympathies”. I’m quite touched. Nice work, Student Finance people!

Now I will fill in your FORM OF EPIC PROPORTIONS with a smile.

Ophelia Xx

Oh man, Torchwood. Apparently Russell T. Davies wasn’t personally responsible for the script of this episode, but he is responsible for the story, so I feel I can keep blaming things on him.

( Silly spoilery. )

Ophelia Xx

I have 9,995 tracks in my iTunes library! This means that the next album I add will tip it over the 10,000 mark. If anyone wants to recommend an album to mark this momentous occasion, I’d be grateful. :)

Ophelia Xx

( Torchwood: Not really spoilers, but under a cut just in case. )

Ophelia Xx

What is the point of Melanie “queers are responsible for failed opposite sex marriages” Phillips? She is a racist, evolution-denying, paedophobic, vaccine-demonizing, bigoted, homophobic waste of air.

Ophelia Xx

I think it is going to be a long night; some nearby neighbour is having a noisy party. *shudder*

Ophelia Xx

A Confession.

I think Sarah Palin has nice hair.

ETA: But her Twitter feed background image kind of supports the current suspicion that she suffers from some sort of ( God complex. )

Ophelia Xx

Way behind the rest of the UK, I just watched Jon Ronson’s Channel 4 Revelations programme about the Alpha Course, How To Find God. I also currently happen to be re-reading professional sceptic Michael Shermer’s acclaimed (but in my view, slightly overrated) book, Why People Believe Weird Things.

According to Jon Ronson, The Alpha Course has a pretty high conversion rate of around one in eight. Now of course, we don’t know what the exact demographic is of that one in eight: a good many may be very open to religious belief already. But nevertheless, one in eight is quite a lot, when thousands of people in the UK alone attend the course every year. Yet the footage of the Alpha Course that I saw on this programme seemed astonishingly transparent to me. Maybe it was down to editing, but there was nothing subtle about the psychology of it, the calculated movement from large group meetings to small group discussion, the planting of attractive Christian ladies to serve up the food, the unrelenting niceness of everyone there who was on Jesus’ side. I found it bizarre that it took almost until the very end, when one man walked out after a second session of everyone being encouraged to speak in tongues, that someone mentioned that there might be something coercive about this process.

But here is the part of the Alpha Course footage that really riled me up the most. In a talk about resisting Satan, some guy was saying to this audience of agnostics,

“All these things, alcohol, promiscuous sex, pornography, the latest electronic gadget—whatever you get your highs from—it’s all just a pale imitation of the real thing [i.e. Jesus’ lurve].”

HOLD UP, ladies and gentlemen, and let’s put on our Friday evening critical thinking hats. What we have here is what is known as a false dichotomy. Because of course, we non-believers don’t get all our highs from drink or sex or iPhones. Just like Christians, we get ’em from lots of other pursuits that are too all-round positive and beneficial for our little God-fearing Christian to mention: music, study, time spent with friends and loved ones, frolicking in the park, creative pursuits, sport, the smell of sweet peas, baking, and writing rants about the Alpha Course on LJ. Don’t think anyone’s convinced by this dodgy tactic on the part of the Alpha Leader? Think again: by the end of the programme, the guy who seemed most likely to convert had said at one point that he saw that his Christian friends were very happy and that he sometimes felt there must be more to life than getting wasted.

You do not have to choose between Jesus and hangovers. There is a beautiful, fulfilling life to be had without God or excessive consumption. In fact, old-at-22 cynic that I am, God and excessive consumption look quite similar to me. So I don’t see an existence of fully human, down-to-earth, this-life eudaimonia as a middle ground. It is the highest ground, the best that you can and should do.

Oh, also, I learned from the programme that not only is Nicky Gumbel a facile, disingenuous hack of a writer (I knew that already), but he’s also a self-aggrandising and obsequious speaker. Good.

Ophelia Xx

I learnt a word yesterday. The word is etui (also spelled etwee, lulz). According to my SOED, an etui is a small, usually ornamental case for needles &c. Now, I wonder to myself, who has an ornamental case containing needles?

Ophelia Xx

I made this.

( Cameo. )

Ophelia Xx

Today I was ill, so I didn’t get to go to London to see Tom! Bah. Instead I was stuck inside being ill and hot and tired and grumpy.

However, tomorrow evening I am going to see my lovely schoolfriend Aaliya, and on Friday it is possible that I will be meeting some LJ people for interesting times, so it is not all bad. I am mostly better now, but I still feel a bit weird.

Ophelia Xx

The retired ladies didn’t hate me, yay. :)

It was quite a quiet day, really; I just stood around and smiled at people for most of it, occasionally offering them leaflets. But I sort of enjoyed it. I am incredibly tired now, though. I think standing up for three hours was harder work than I was expecting, especially in this heat. I’m out of practice. Why, when I worked at Debenhams…!

Ophelia Xx

Today is my first ever day volunteering at the gallery! Exciting. Exciting and scary. As always, I am worried that everyone will think I am silly and annoying. Still, I get a free cup of coffee out of it, if nothing else. And the café does do very, very good coffee. Mm, coffee.

Hopefully all the other volunteers today will be retirement-aged ladies. Young people scare me.

Ophelia Xx

I’m 22 years old; perhaps, I thought, it’s time that I got rid of some of these cuddly toys. I still have a whole shelf of them, but two bags of the little blighters are going off to a charity shop, and I’ve cleared quite a lot of space.

I found some really weird soft toys on my shelf, though.

( Cuddly. )

Anyway, enough of that. Unless any of you wants any of these, they’re going to the charity shop ASAP.

Ophelia Xx

Today we had a family visit to see an old housemate of my dad’s from when he was at university. She has a cat. I would really like a cat. *pout*

Why does my dad put Radio 4 on and then sit and read Private Eye, completely oblivious to what’s being said on the radio? Drives me nuts.

Ophelia Xx

I was browsing round my hard drive the other day, and I found a folder containing two Wham! albums and a collection of 12”s. I had no idea. There is only one man who could (and would) have slipped them on there without my knowledge.

Bless you, Lawrence Campbell. I miss you with all my heart and soul.

Ophelia Xx

Poll #1421400—In Conclusion:

There’s only one thing that death can’t erase, and that’s kiddie-fiddling.

Unless it was a while ago. Then you’re fine.

Ophelia Xx

I like free stuff, so I do a lot of online surveys that get me points that I can spend on things I don’t need. Which is good. A lot of them ask questions about my “household”, to decide whether I’m in the target demographic. This is problematic because apparently the people developing the surveys have never come across households where a young adult lives with their parents. You only have to be +16 for your answers to be of interest, but apparently the market researchers think everyone leaves home at 16, because there is never an option to say you live with your parents.

Which means that I have to answer “other”—ensuring that I will be considered outside the required demographic. Or lie.

Stupid.

My posts at the moment are so desperately dull because I’m not doing anything. Maybe once I start with the volunteering I’ll have something worthwhile to say.

Ophelia Xx