I used to be a newt

Grrrrrargh! *scrabbles way upwards and outwards from the foolish, fragmentary fog occasioned by playing computer games obsessively for two days.* I'm better now, honest I am. When jo phoned to ask for a lift this afternoon I didn't even have an attack of homicidal rage at having my sword and sorcery interrupted. Perhaps the clutch of Oblivion is weakening, and in a little while I'll be a sensible individual capable of playing for an hour or so a day in between actually getting on with my so-called life. Apart from setting exam questions, catching up on e-mail, blogging, and providing gratuitous advice to a random man desperate to get his young son into role-playing (something's wrong with that scenario...) I even washed my car this evening. There is hope.

Oblivion aside, the last few days are ... well, a bit of a blur. Oh, I gave some lectures. I'm sure I remember something about vampires and Freudian symbolism, and there's a particularly lucid and memorable bit where the so-called classroom facilities demonstrated their usual immaculate grasp of nihilistic irony by supplying a video machine when I specified a DVD player. Mighty is the gnashing of teeth when an innocent lecturer in eroticism is cruelly denied the opportunity to play gratuitous Spike clips. God, I need a laptop. Then I could rip all the clips from DVD and spend my life lamenting incompatible file formats and the Windows Blue Screen Of Death instead of swearing at the classroom facilities nihlistic gnomes. Ah, Utopia.

Concepts introduced to innocent third-years this week, apart from more phallic symbolism than you could, and I use this image advisedly, shake a stick at: "Anne Rice is a load of bollocks!", "Mr. Billowy Coat King of Pain", and "Bloated Tentacle Sex." Even in the extended moments when I hate it and want to run away and join the Navy, I have a very cool job.