kitchen politics

And there was me thinking I didn't get pissed off anymore...

There's a dispute going on in my kitchen at the moment, stolen spoons, unwashed dishes and vicious blows delivered by firmly worded post-it notes. It's ridiculous... I mean, you get pissed off, say, when someone uses your saucepan and doesn't wash it, but it's fine, you just wash it and get on with your life because shit happens. People come back from the union with late night munchies, make a snack with the wrong pan and forget to wash up because, lets face it, when you've got more alcohol then blood in your veins and you can't feel your legs, you just don't care about washing up.

It's inconsiderate, but it happens. People get drunk. Put your goddamn pan back in the cupboard and vow to piss in someone else's next time you're wrecked and out for revenge. Or, failing that, you could make a big deal of it.

You know, because it really matters, doesn't it, your crockery. That's really the most important thing at stake here, not harmony, or peace, or us getting along as a flat. Never mind cutting each other some slack and trying to be friends, ignore the fact that we're going to be living with each other for another eight months, no, fuck that, you've got a point to make. Out with the post-it notes guys...

I love university completely, but sometimes I swear this place is just a microcosm of everything that's rubbish about the wider world. Not just because we're petty and materialistic and because it genuinely bothers us when people mess with our kitchen utensils, but because of everything.

Because of the way that the Student Union uses tits and arse to advertise everything, and because we let them, no one seems to care that you can't walk around campus without seeing sex everywhere.

Because of the segregation, the way that societies and cliques mean that all the whites, the blacks, the Koreans, the Christians, the Hindus, the Asians all hang out together. No one's doing that to us, we're doing that to ourselves. I thought it was so funny at first, how everyone's so irreverent about race and class here, but it's not so funny now, when you notice that we travel in clans. Even tonight, black Christians and white Christians. What the hell is that about?

Because of how ignorant we are, how long it takes us to even hear about earthquakes when we all knew about George Best before he was even cold. How ignorant we let ourselves become, we undergraduates.

Every day, in every way, this place gets more and more like Lord of the Flies, not just because of the fat kid jokes and feral tendencies. It's like we're acting out everything we're gonna do in the real world, we're getting ready to make the same mistakes we've always made and what's more, we're making it happen ourselves.