Distracted mind / crap sites I find...

I went to Edward Boyle library today.

I was truly believing that considering my complete lack of productivity when at home, largely due to…Snacks, the vacuous, time stealing void that is the internet, Neighbours, excessively long lunch preparation time, my phone, this book called ‘Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit?’ – No man, it’s not just you, and other innocuous distractions littering my room that do not fall into the category of work…I might find some solace in the oasis of calm that is that time-honoured institute of academia, the Library. Alas, I thought I was going to the esteemed location of brain-improvement, but I must be mistaken, for I found myself in a wooden cage, gazing desperately out of the window as they construct a noisy, modern monstrosity outside. I do not object to building new facilities, anyone who has been skewered between the library stacks that move would agree that more space can be a good thing. But why oh why must luminous men cut metal in my cochlea when I am trying to absorb the mine field that is media law? Obviously I missed the e-mail saying “Miss Dixon, we know how much you want to royally cock-up your finals, so we have decided to build new stuff in the vicinity of your studies for the duration of that period.” Cheers.

I am easily distracted and I wager that I am not alone in this. Seriously, Edward Boyle desk scribes, a poll on whether fat or thin girls are better in bed? As if the moron writing that crap is ever going to convince anyone to have sex with him. Anyway, I digress. According to an American survey the average worker admits to frittering away 2.09 hours per 8-hour workday, excluding lunch and scheduled break-time. When employers determine your pay they take this fact into consideration. Taking their greedy capitalist logic into consideration, I guess that means we are never required to be diligent and efficient because they are paying us wages that reflect the assumption that we won’t be.

Anyone who has ever seen the film Office Space – join me now! Take a bat to the photocopiers! Slash the tyres of the noisy trucks! Or, non-incitement to violence suggestions could include making work spaces less bloody dull. The hum of air conditioning, the tap-tapping of a woman’s manicured nails on a desk, the mind-numbing boredom of looking at a computer screen all day, these things are desired to send you slowly to madness. This can be the only explanation for women like Prescott’s dirty diary lady and the whole Bill Clinton cigar incident. Either that or I’ve got politics all wrong.

To go off on a minor tangent, I came up with a hypothesis today which should explain patterns in our behaviour. ‘Adults’, which I am surely not, often complain about how young people are becoming less intelligent and academic life is consequently becoming easier to tailor to this new generation of idiots. I propose this; The Internet is to blame. Theoretically it should be a positive force, an educative tool which democratises social and class structures. We have been granted a role in shaping what we watch, what makes us laugh, influencing how politicians should behave and so on. These are powerful suggestions, except there is one problem, that being that the internet is full of shit. I clicked and entered the World Wide Web with good intentions this sunny afternoon. I had a cup of tea to the left of me and my notebook to the right. I just attempted to read Baudrillard, an insane yet pretty amazing cultural theorist. I think to myself that I would like to know more about this man, so I go to the number one democratic knowledge site, Wikipedia. Within twenty minutes I am on a page telling me things like: “The term "the whole 9 yards" came from WWII fighter pilots in the South Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 calibre machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, it got "the whole 9 yards.” I don’t know how I got here. One minute I was filling my brain with knowledge, reaching to the utopian ideal of intelligence and happiness, expanding my horizons, yaddi yaddi yadda. The next I know, I am filling my brain with junk and texting my friends things like, “No word in the English language rhymes with month, orange, silver, and purple” and “The very first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin during World War II killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.”

Don’t even get me started on Facebook.

Or Myspace.

Get back to work.

STI - why oh why?

I have bacterial vaginosis. I have syphilis. I am pretty sure I have bird flu, maybe even MRSA. I have every disease I have read about in the last twelve months. Why? Have I been recklessly promiscuous? Begging doctors to treat me with dirty gloves? Spent an extended period of time in Bernard Matthews chicken processing plant? None of the above, unless they took place in a haze of LSD.

This recent bout of hypochondria was inspired by my housemate - The brave bastard teaches sex education to kids. As if explaining the finer points of the erection to under fifteens wasn’t quite heinous enough, he opened the booklet on a page of photographs of STIs. Penises with cauliflower growths on them, pussing shafts, ulcerated lips, warts and a picture of a vagina which had the description of ‘cottage cheese-like discharge’ underneath. I am never eating again. All this would have been of no concern to me had I closed the book in horror, but much like a car crash or any interview with David Beckham (seriously, mate, get elocution lessons) I had to forge ahead in this new area of my education.

I suffer from thrush very occasionally. Yeah, you heard. It’s not embarrassing because almost everyone gets it. Especially those ladies sporting the skinny jeans who have a penchant for the big B (bread, that is) and have lots of sex (HA! who’s laughing now). Everyone has thrush, but in some people it gets aggravated by environmental factors and then BAM, there’s a riot in your pants. Incidentally, while we are discussing thrush – you love it – you can treat it DIY style at home with some natural yogurt, which is messy, or garlic wrapped in gauze, which hurts like HELL. Not full-proof, but much cheaper than the rip-off chemist options. Fact.

Anyway, other than trying to make you feel mildly uncomfortable, there is a reason I am writing this. I flicked through the book to read about thrush and low and behold, I caught sight of descriptions of other vaginal and penile weirdness. Loads of the horrible diseases referenced ‘tiredness’, ‘a general feeling of being unwell’ and ‘irritated genitals’ as symptoms. The vagueness of such symptoms had me self-diagnosing myself with every one of them. My friend likened it to when you are at the doctors and the NHS posters are asking you things like ‘Do you have a foot?’ You nod to yourself, gripped with fear, ‘then you have AIDS!’ it screams. Obviously, they aren’t that extreme, but the posters have convinced me I’m a diabetic with high blood pressure, a little bit pregnant and I definitely need to quit smoking, even though I don’t actually smoke and I find it about as appealing as sucking a car exhaust. And so on.

I am sure there is nothing more irritating to a doctor than the worried well, the net-doctor using screwbags who come in convinced they have bowel cancer when really a dodgy stomach from eating dirty kebabs (they are made with rats and dogs, surely) is the only problem. However, in this age of casual and often drunken sex, you could do well to remember that one in ten women under twenty four have Chlamydia, but don’t actually know about it. It’s worth noting that this is scary shit considering it can make you infertile. I realise you are spending your university years trying hard not to start spawning, or at least, I hope you are, but it is not an exciting prospect. Five out of six cases of Gonorrhoea have no symptoms, although when you know about it…you, uh, know about it. Considering these facts it really is worth getting screened. A boy and I have been together for going on three years now, but not too long ago the doctor thought he might have Chlamydia. This was a complete misdiagnosis, but I went to get screened anyway. Not so pleasant an experience and no lollypop at the end, but I did have the piece of mind that neither of us are infecting each other. You might not be concerned, perhaps you have not slept with many people, but the frightening STI book tells me that by the time you are on your tenth sexual partner you are partaking in the exchange of twelve million peoples’ germs. TWELVE MILLION DIFFERENT GERMS. Pass me the condoms, please.