Procrastination - The Student's Leviathan

It turns out, as you may have already read, that I would easily get an degree in procrastination. I'm not joking, I have become so bad that I even distract myself with reading relevant books to help me in my essay and re-reading them until its too late to complete my essay.

Yup.

I'm distracting myself from my work with other not important work. That is how far I have come. Sad times. Even now I am distracting myself, but I can still convince myself that this is equally important and this may help improve the quality of my written style...I don't think its working really...bugger.

It's not that I don't like my essays, it's just that I'm very lazy. Leaving everything to the last minute gives so much more time now to do more useless shit, like watching YouTube and going on Facebook and sleeping...It's bad. Very Bad. Especially that I'm not so smart that I can afford to be wasting time on YouTube and Facebook. I'm nowhere near that smart, just close enough to be able to bullshit through some stuff. Although, I know the lecturers can see through it...luckily I do it amusingly enough that thy find it more fun to watch me squirm while they ask me questions and listen to me go:

"Oooh...ahhhh...I can't quite remember that part...I must have scanned over it without registering it! Does this happen to do anything with it?" Then I will try and drive the discussion to a slightly more safe, neutral and subjective area.

Dear God. How I got this far I will never know...

Procrastination sucks arse. WHY IS IT SO ADDICTIVE?!

Oh well...at least uber quantities of stress and guilt make for a good cure...oh and tea...lots of tea...

 I wish you "Good Luck" in any of your work adventures,
Rhodri

Essays of doom and complaining is awesome, as long as you do something.

One thing I have to get used to is huge fricking essays. Don't get me wrong, as a humanities student I'm used to writing essays, but I have to get used to writing essays that are between 2,000-3,000 words. Once a week. About something I have no clue about. TADA! University Life! They should warn you more about the length of essays in the open days. Honestly, it would come as less of a shock then!

I feel like all of these essays should have come as less of a shock but it hasn't and I'm really bad when it comes to procrastinating. Hell, I'm doing it right now! Although I'm hoping that this will drive me to write less a bit less shite. Is it working? Maybe, maybe not.

I also realized that one of the other reasons I started this blog was to complain! Pretty bad right? Well, maybe. You see, complaining has always been my way of de-stressing and getting my anger out,not that I have anger problems or anything. I'm talking about those weeks where everything is due in at once and you have no time to do any of it. The bitching annoying for some of my friends and often entertaining for others but helpful to me. I don't think its good to suffer in silence because people will always underestimate how stressed you are so you may as well get it out and get some of your annoyance out by shouting a bit not aggressively mind you, its not the other person's fault...well hopefully.



So, my message for today is bitch if you feel like you need to, as long as you get things sorted. Nothing is worse than someone who complains, but doesn't do anything about the problem. It is fine to be a Negative Nancy as long as you are a fucking efficient one! At least, that's how I feel. Also, when you complain you sort of list everything from the least shitty thing you have to deal with to the most shitty. At least then you have a list of things you need to deal with straight away.

So...GO FORTH AND COMPLAIN TO YOUR HEARTS CONTENT! Because life is too short and who cares as long as it all works out in the end, right?

Happy Complaints!
Rhodri

Heellooooo! AND a review of a not too good Faustus...

Well, I haven't written on this for a while! Ah, uni life...and by that I mean essays, essays and pizza.

Since I last wrote on this I happened to go and see a student production of Faustus. It left a lot to be desired, and that's being kind. Really. It was bad.

Faustus is about a scholar who wants to know more about the world and decides magic is the best way to go about it. He sells his soul to Lucifer so he can have a demonic servant (Mephistophilis) do his bidding day and night for a couple of years. Throughout the play he switches back and forth between renouncing this unholy pact and carrying on with it. Thinking he has plenty of time to do things he wastes a lot of time by just faffing about. In the end Mephistophilis comes to collect his soul and the play ends with Faustus damned in Hell.

Now on to the bitching. The thing I was most annoyed about in this play was the fact the director of the play was also the lead part, Faustus. In drama this is seen as a REALLY egotistical thing to do.

"Who directed it?"
"Me"
"Who's the main?"
"Me"
"Who made that decision?"
"Me"
"Who's a little bit obsessed with themselves?"
"ME!"

I hope you get where I'm coming from with this. The other problem with it was that the guy playing Faustus clearly thought that he was the best person to play it. He must have. He auditioned people for it, and obviously decided the only person fit to play Faustus was himself! He wasn't. He over acted everything, I could have bitten a pig and it would have been less "hammy". He started off well but by the end he was flailing and screaming and shouting and shaking and...you get the picture. Yes, the end is Faustus almost being dragged off to Hell by a demon but this scene is about 20 minutes long. I could only deal with about 5 minutes of it before I was begging for a demon to take him away. Please. Enough. STOP.

Some of the other actors were good, and some were awful. There's a scene where Faustus plays triks on the Pope and his bishops. During this scene, the director thought Faustus should throw water balloons at the Pope (lol). The actors playing the bishops and the Pope thought that this scene was HILARIOUS! You could see them laughing throughout the whole thing while tripping over their lines and it was so awkward to watch. It was like watching someone explain  why something is funny when no-one laughs.

"Guys! Don't you get it? It funny because we're wet and we're important figures in the Church? LOL"

According to the flier for the play it was supposed to be set in 1895 (specific I know) which is fine, there's no problem with moving a play about in history, I mean look at Baz Luhrmann's "Romeo and Juliet". But, it was 1895 with Abercrombie and Fitch clothing, mobile phones and a French king dressed up in Georgian period clothing. So, you could say they were slightly confused with when this was set...it just didn't help the piece make sense. Oh, there was also an awkward scene with the 7 Deadly Sins. It's supposed to be scary, creepy and foreboding. So what did the director do? Put them in a modern day disco and get Faustus off his face on shots of vodka. Yup. I'm all up for artistic interpretation, but this was just childish and hard to watch. ESPECIALLY if you have actors who don't know how to act drunk or are too awkward to act like they are drunk in a disco. It really was cringe worthy. 

There was one saving grace though. The actor who played Mephistophilis. He was actually good and fun to watch. He crept about the stage very quietly and slyly and it made for some actual comedic effect. Unlike, the awkward "Look at me I'm drunk!" acting of Faustus which was supposed to tickle us. Mephistophilis was a pleasure to watch and was very good at expressing a sort of barely suppressed superiority over Faustus. I liked him. He was good.

The technical aspect of the play was not too bad. I give them credit, their technical set up wasn't too good and they didn't have much to work with, so I think they did well there. Plus, technical stuff in the theatre is ALWAYS dodgy.  Something is bound to go wrong so I didn't mind too much if the music was a touch too loud or if the lights went a bit weird. Tech things will always go a bit weird.

Overall, it was ok. But it started off promising and then just went downhill from there. I did enjoy watching it to an extent. I don't think you should leave a play laughing at how pretentious you thought the lead was. So I give it a rating of "meh". Could be better (much better), could of been worse (much worse).

If you actually read all of this. Holy crap you have a lot of patience or you like reading the writing of people who love to complain. Which I know I am.

Anyway, goodbye for now!
Rhodri