Monday, 14th September 2009

MSN is Dying

…Which is a shame, as this is the only evening since the start of sixth form during which I have not had to work incessantly. However, it had to happen sometime: after four years of wasting endless evenings sitting in front of screens listening to that irritating dum-dum-DUM bong sound, MSN has finally crashed. Well, I can still talk to Ricky, which is good as I never get to talk to him these days, and our epic conversations discussing every spectacularly useless topic under the sun didn’t exactly take place while my computer was broken.

…Oh…no…wait. My conversation with Ricky has JUST started failing. In any case, I have been meaning to start a post to celebrate the one year anniversary of me actually using this blog as opposed to vaguely remembering every now and then that it existed, and to update….someone? anyone?…on the progress of Year Twelve. It’s definitely better than Year Eleven, which was full of pointless exams, useless subjects and various personal crises, even if this year’s workload is not so fun. This doesn’t really matter, as I’m already settled back in — it feels like I’ve been doing this forever, even though today was only the fifth day. Although, it doesn’t quite feel like things ahve properly started. This is probaby due to the fact that Latin hasn’t properly started (my first and only lesson having taken place today, with no promise of another one for a further fortnight) and that French has barely properly started, due to two cancelled lessons, a vanishment of a teacher and an apparent replacement. Also, tomorrow is Forced Group Activities Day up in the woods, so no lessons, and Wednesday is Open Evening, so no lessons, and Thursday is Sleep-In-After-Open-Evening, so less lessons. All of which means very little homework, the omission of the day on my timetable containing the ghastly prospect of triple French and the official switching off of my brain for a couple of days.

I made only two resolutions for the start of this academic year: to stop being late to lessons, and to stop leaving things on top of pianos. I failed in both of these enterprises today, also managing to be late for form, and not even noticing that I’d left my English Lit set text and my French folder on top of the white piano. However, due to the total lack of lessons (one cancelled today) I can claim happily that this week doesn’t count. I’ve never quite understood how I manage to be late to almost every lesson; it’s not that I’ve just had a nice long free and have been sitting around in the common room (ha) and couldn’t be arsed to get up, like most people, but something seems to happen between each class. The various Timeturner jokes about my clashing class have made me think that getting myself one of those babies would actually be rather useful. But no, starting on Monday, I vow not to be late. At least for the first day. I think I come off as quite a disorganised person, which is odd, because in fact I am incredibly anal — it’s not that I’m incapable of ordering my life, it’s that there’s too much life for the amount of time I have to order it.

All in all, life could be a lot worse. For the first time in my life, I have good teachers in every subject. I haven’t had a nervous breakdown yet. My new schoolbag is awesome. I have too many ringbinders for the space in my brain dedicated to ringbinders, but I haven’t lost any of them yet. (Leaving things on pianos doesn’t count as losing them, because when I realise they’re missing, I also realise instantly where they are.) Everyone else seems pretty happy, except a couple of miserable Maths/Science nerds, but I feel that my powers do not extend quite far enough to make them enjoy the things they are good at. The new people are slotting into place very nicely. No more blazers. It’s all good.

Which doesn’t leave me with a lot to say, really. It would be interesting if MSN never started up again; it has been rather eclipsed by the even more addictive Facebook and the apparently addictive Twitter, yet it’s never quite died. It’s stubbornly refused to vanish off the scene — no matter how much people snort derisively these days if you ask them if they have MSN, they do still have it, and everyone is still on it every night regardless of whether or not they’re also sending Pokes, Hugs and Other Physical Acts Represented By Annoying Notifications via Facebook. No one actually likes MSN, but it’s still free, and it’s still useful, and I must admit that I would have been in several major pickles in my life by now if I hadn’t been able to just quickly sign in and ask someone a question; it does the job, but without the ridiculous additional features of Facebook, which don’t do anything you can’t do otherwise, do plenty of things you don’t need to and never would do otherwise and suck the life out of people worldwide until they love Facebook more than their real lives in the 3D world.

The only other thing I really have to say is that Jordan has made me two fabulous CDs full of a funky mix of French chansons, Grey’s Anatomy-style girly stuff and other generally awesome things that I’ve never heard of — despite this substantial addition to my Library, I am still, as always, in desperate need of new good music. My taste in music is rather picky and completely undefinable, and you could easily send me fifty songs and have me download one of them at most, not to mention the fact that I loathe almost all current music that I come across on radios and music channels. Still, the only way forward is, I fear, to persevere, therefore if there is any song that you think I must truly not be without, please leave a comment and I shall YouTube it.

Now, how DID I survive before YouTube?