Feast of Fools

May Day! That quaint and freakish Oxford custom where half the town drags itself out of bed at 5am and sleepwalks through the miserable dribble (it's not drizzle, it wishes it was but it's not) to stand under Magdalen Tower for fifteen years waiting for a bunch of snotty ten-year-olds to sing thirty seconds' worth of Spring-y songs, these relayed through a shocking set of speakers so it all sounds like 'Teletubbies say Eh-Oh' anyway. And then we go watch the Morris Dancers, skilfully dodging the Christian Union weirdos with their come-to-Jesus-and-we'll-give-you-this-doughnut! routine, and search for the breakfast with the largest possible proportion of saturated fats.

And yet it's fun. Go figure. ^_^

(You may have noticed I get *somewhat* less out of all this than imouto-chan, she's much nicer about it than me - I like my pagan-traditional glee minus the naff prayers for preference, and Oxford May Day has neither enough honest-to-Walpurga pagan cred, nor the second-degree atheist awe you get from a decent modern religious service, to attract me. If you're going to invoke underlying sociological drives via grand ritual, make it grand, dammit! Otherwise, where's the fun? ^_^)

There were, however, a small bunch of happy people with blue-and-yellow balloons and flags celebrating the EU expansion, which would have made me likewise very happy if the *smallness* of aforesaid bunch didn't remind me of how much I hate certain aspects of my country. >.<

Otherwise, lazed around happily in Katy's room all weekend, watched Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow, Starsky & Hutch (not necessarily in that order), read several books I've been meaning to read for ages, and had a break which I needed very, very much. The other denizens, on the other hand, generally had essay crisis or high-speed Finals work to do, but I made up for it by making tea and providing moral support along the lines of 'ha ha ha I don't have to do stupid essays or Finals anymore ha ha'.

Bookses were Jennifer Government (which I gather is spreading like a virus now ^_^), Alexander the Great (finished it at last! w00t!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1) and The Remains of the Day, which was enlivened by having a whole bunch of imouto-chan's A-level English annotations in the margins. ^_^ I was going to review them all properly, but I can't be arsed now, so here's the quick version.
Jennifer Government: amusing mildly anti-capitalist AU satire, modern scifi yet with characters you actually care about, author created that nationstates.com game that my brother plays incessantly. Good stuff.
Alexander the Great: suffers a little from thick, thick, heavy technical prose which drips off the page like tar, but most wonderful book and has left me (I suspect) as a minor Robin Lane Fox fangirl, which is fortunate cos he's her tutor. And now I can take the piss out of the film that's coming with pseudo-academic cred. ^_^
Remains of the Day: It's as good as it should be given its reputation. Bee-yootiful, a lot shorter than I expected, and now I *don't* want to see the film because the Stevens and Miss Kenton in my head don't resemble Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson at *all*. >.< (I also had great fun disagreeing with half your margin notes. Oh, the A-level nostalgia :-D)

And that's quite enough from me. Time to shut up.

PS. Does anyone know the number of the FMA episode which ends with Al jumping off a building and running away? I think it's in the early 20s. I've got a sudden urge to play anime catch-up and I don't know where to start downloading, but that was the last one I saw.