when all else fails, an itemised list

The first thing I remembered when waking up this morning: we're out of coffee. In retrospect, I should've known it might not shape up to be a good day.

...sigh. Anyway. That sort of day, so this sort of post. Things that are indeed good about life:

1. The fact that the Wednesday market stall that sells the industrial quantities of sugar is back, and the drawer next to my bed is actually, literally overflowing with sugar. Mmm, liquorice. Mmm, dark chocolate. Mmm, biscuts. Mmm, regression to primary school. You get the picture.

2. Nobody has actually ever had "Final Honours School" written in the appropriate box on a death certificate. (Also, I have never accidentally certified my own death. This is not the case for her, my mum reports.)

3. Philosophy is, indeed, an entirely useless degree. However, in my case it is masked by the wonderful, wonderful degree title of "Philosophy, Politics and Economics", despite my having done twelve weeks of economics in my first year and thrown a textbook down the attic stairs.

4. Very few graduates actually starve.

(However, am going to echo slasheuse in saying hi, my name is Raven, and the only way I could know less about my degree subject is if I were actually dead.)

5. Oxford is a stunningly beautiful city, and springtime cloaks it in blossoms and fluffy clouds and sunshine. Also enormous gaggles of American tourists and random bagpipers on Cornmarket, but you can't have everything in life.

6. For reasons I am not sure I can satisfactorily explain, everything in our freezer tastes of cider. I don't think this is a good or bad thing, exactly, but it certainly adds an interesting note to a stir-fry.

7. The now well-commented-on and well-documented Open-Source Boob Project, otherwise known as skeeviness-onna-stick. It's not a good thing, of course, but the comments and discussion have kept me amused for a couple of days, and I had a very nice chat with emily_shore today, in which I got all my ranting out of my system.

(I hadn't written about it here because, well, my life is becoming this xkcd at the moment. Seriously. It actually happened word-for-word a couple of days ago. I leave it as an exercise to the gentle reader to guess which side of the exchange I was on.)

(Yes more parenthesis what of it. Um. Why has there been such an outbreak of stupidity on the internet lately, anyway? Seems everywhere I go, someone is saying something grossly offensive about women, about queer people, or about us filthy ethnics. After many, many years - literally - I may, after Finals, finally bring myself to make a post about my experience, yes, me, me-as-person, not me-as-PPEist, of White Privilege and How I Don't Have It. This is entirely far too long a digression, but what the hell. I always resist this sort of post, because I'm a strong disbeliever in anecdotal evidence - citation needed, oh my god, and "it happened to me once" is not a reliable third-party source - but it seems the level of stupidity on the issue is reaching critical mass, at least for me. For fuck's sake, world. Stop being racist. It's Not Good.)

8. If all goes well, it's actually only about a month until I see the_acrobat again. I have had to sort of push back how excited I am about this to the back of my head, but, er. Much, much excitement.

9. I have awesome feminist friends.

10. I have lots of work to do.

No, that isn't a good thing. I am going to do it now watch me go yes.