Frustration

(noun) Having to suffer a fuckwit in a mixed group when you had previously decided that his permanent absence from your life could only be a good thing.

The results are out...

...and I have to resit two papers.

It's not the worst case scenario that I had envisioned. It was quite possible that I could have failed three, and that would have effectively put the end to a summer of fun. As it stands, the workload I have to get through before the repeats is manageable.

I found out at Dan's on Wednesday night. After arriving at his, I found out that in some cases, people who had failed three were being told to repeat the year without even getting an attempt to resit in the autumn (Quite how this decision was reached is unclear, and the university kept that one very quiet, bastards). I hadn't yet found out what my results were at that point, so I went into deep shock. After composing myself with a beer and a smoke, I went online on Dan's computer and found out.

After I had recovered and composed myself, June and the little feller went to bed, and me and Brooksie went out onto the balcony for some very enjoyable drinks and weed. Then I walked home. At 3 in the morning. Again.

Earlier that day, I had a job interview with a pharmacy out in Cuckfield. It was difficult to tell if I'm in there, but I hope so, I'm sick and tired of that supermarket job, and I really really need to get out of it.

Thursday, I went back to Dan's again to collect my glasses and play with Pukey Lukey (what we've christened baby Luke) long enough for him to drool, and yes, puke all over me. But he's adorable.

I go home for a few days next Wednesday. My cousin is getting married, and I'm a groomsman so I have to make an appearance. I managed to get my student loan topped-up, so I'm of the financial woods for the moment, thank GOD.

Trailers of note.

Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette.

And....

Another Gay Movie.

The trailer for Marie Antoinette opens with the opening track on Aphex Twin's Drukqs, 'Jynweythek', which is interesting because when working on my masterpiece, I was going to use 'Meltphace 6' from the same album.

Anyway.

The second one looks like a spoof on American Pie, and should be good ol' dumb fun.

The weekend was its usual.

The Bitches of BN2 came back Saturday evening, from their holiday in Spain. It turns out that MizzFlee's piercings set off the metal detector while she was passing through customs, and she was led away by a burly Spanish security guard for what turned out to be something approaching a full cavity search. After she had recovered, she decided that she quite liked it! Some bitches have all the luck. Click here for an eye-witness account.

I suffered my usual weekend at the supermarket. I ID'd what turned out to be a 29-year old woman when she tried to buy alcohol, and she stomped off. Later, her husband came in to bitch at me. I just politely told him it was shop policy, but he accused me of just being awkward. I should have advised him that seeing as his wife was an Asian dwarf of five-foot-nothing, she should wear heels, or else carry her driver's licence around with her. I felt like cutting him up into little pieces and putting him a box in the basement for storage. My supervisor, of course, just stood there and said nothing. Luckily, in the queue right behind the husband, was a woman who worked in another branch of the same supermarket, and she waded in on my behalf.

I have sent CVs to pharmacies, but they're all too disorganised to get back to me. I'm mounting the search with renewed vigour.

Of course after a day like that, I ended up in the Bulldog with La 'Flee. At one point in the night, I greeted the bouncer with his gaydar profile name (bigtop), and he looked at me as if I had asked him if I could spend the night with his mother!

I also met Daffy, looking as hot as ever.

I got home at 5am, and of course the Sunday shift at the market was delightful as a result. On my way home, there were loads of people shouting and honking horns, and draping themselves in what looked like the Irish tricolour. Upon closer inspection, I realised it was a flag of a different country, and when I got home, I found out that Italy had won the world cup. Big fucking deal. Well, at least the stinking tournament is over now.

The exam results are out this week. I find out on Wednesday how many I'll be repeating. I'm being honest. That's the most pertinent question with regard to the outcome right now.

The wind that shakes the barley

I went to see this on Monday night at the Duke of York, the first time I'd been to that cinema since I saw The Corporation last year. It's after winning the Palme D'Or at Cannes, something that was somewhat filtered out by the insufferable vanity of the critics the night I saw the coverage of the festival.

The first time I saw a Ken Loach film (Sweet Sixteen), I was struck by how realistic the dialogue was, how much it was stripped of theatre and drama, and how it reflected, pretty much more than anything else I'd seen at the time, how conversation between people flows in real life, complete with hiccups, pauses, and misdeclarations. There was also the fact that, in order to stay true to the working-class Glaswegian accents, it was necessary to subtitle parts of the film.

This was interesting in a different way. Set in a part of Cork not a million miles from where I live (the county council of Mallow, amongst others, was thanked in the closing credits), it follows the story of a group of young Irishmen who set up the first resistance movements in response to the oppression of the Black and Tans. The Cork accents were spot on. Thick, but not staged, if you get my drift, like. It then followed the split that happened in their ranks in the aftermath of the acceptance of the Treaty. It followed almost exactly the same timeline as Neil Jordan's Michael Collins, but in many ways it couldn't have been more different.

Loach's credentials as socialist are on quite the display here - watch out for the scene where Cillian Murphy and Liam Cunningham's characters meet for the first time - but it's the right context in which to show them. I have to wonder at how he gets the nuances of speech, character, and stage set right when so many other directors can get it wrong, or at the very least be hamfisted about it. A non-Irish director making one of the most authentic Irish films out there is quite an achievement.

So. Go see.

All this reminds me of a screenplay I started work on a while back, back in the summer of 2003. As is often the case with many things in my life, it ended up being put on the backburner, but ideas for it still come and go in my mind, and about a month ago, I re-read it. I expected to cringe, but it wasn't half as bad as I thought it may have been. Then again, I had only written the opening scene.

The greek chap I met recently told me that I should write a screenplay as a book first, and then, after going on a crash course on scriptwriting, adapt it for the screen. I'm not sure about this, and I'm even less sure if I should embark on something like this without at least reading in general a bit more first, but maybe I might just throw caution to the wind, do a Kerouac on it and stay up for days pounding on the keyboard non-stop.

Anyway, I have so far come up with the following:

a) It'll be set in the gay community of a major american coastal city. Surprise!

b) There will be bears.

c) There will be sex between the bears.

d) To balance things out, there will be lesbians, and sex between them. I've already thought about casting Kristanna Loken, Leelee Sobieski, and Chiaki Kuriyama in this regard.

e) The main character will be a dashing bearish writer-in-waiting in the throes of an existential 30-something crisis (he doesn't want to work, or at least not for a living, in the way that everyone else does). In an attempt to arrive at some resolution, he will sleep with lots of other bears. This will be in the film. A bit like the portrayal of Charles Bukowski in Barfly, except instead of hard liquor, the drug of choice will be hard...Oh, you get the picture.

f) As a counterpoint to this modern-day rendition of Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, the other main character will be a renegade lesbian pharmacist who supplies the Bear Who Is Not Of This World with drugs, an Albert Hoffman to his Aldous Huxley, if you will. I decided a long time ago that the only actress who could possibly play this role would be Jennifer Connelly. I will accept no substitutes. It also provides me with motivation to stay on my degree course, so that I can ...erm.. research certain things a little more.

f) Aphex Twin and/or Philip Glass are amongst those under consideration for soundtrack duties.

Are you getting this, Harvey Weinstein? Cash or cheque acceptable.

Anyway, now I must go to bed as I have a headache.