Dear Sinister, To the person that is having trouble sleeping, read on. I seem to be apologising all over the shop today and here is no different youd think that Christmas and being back home would inspire me to write a big truckload of lengthy shambolic one paragraph posts (haha I think I mightve already told you this but one of my tutors used the phrase garden path sentences when describing my writing style) and, well, it sort of did, the inspiration was there I was going to write a big 2002 in review post about all sorts of things from last year, I still might actually, but I share a room with my brother at home you see and though I wuv him dearly he 1. Never shuts up and 2. Always has the telly on, which makes writing pretty difficult, especially after having spent a term in relative seclusion where I can sit quietly at the computer and stick Stars of the Lid on the headphones and have nothing distract me, which is what Im doing now. Or more or less anyway because I do have a couple of motives that would best be described as ulterior when it comes to this post. The first is yer classic work avoidance tactic, and the work Im avoidancing this time is revising for an exam on Thursday, Ive never been good at revising really, holding a thought to the end of a sentence is difficult enough, but Im sure Ill muddle through. The other, more interesting, motive dulterieur (as the French say, possibly) is a moral dilemma of Hollyoaks proportions (caveat: I have never seen Hollyoaks, but one of my friends always uses it to describe stuff like this) which I will now relate. But first a short preamble to sort of set the scene I arrived back in Sheffield just over a week ago, on the Sunday, to find the people on my floor in unusually high spirits, having drunk, as they had, an unusually high level of spirits. Oh ho ho ho. I suppose this was fair enough considering it was their first day back together after a month or so of absence, so I went off for a walk and left them to it I have a nice camera to play with now so Ive been taking moody, pretentious black and white snaps of all sorts of things I finally got round to photographing the gate with wall behind it to which I devoted a whole Sinister post last year. However, despite the week being exam week the partay didnt stop, much to my chagrin grinning I wasnt - and by Wednesday I had had enough and so off I went back home (I had to go back anyway since Id forgotten a bunch of important stuff, and I also wanted to see the Spring Heel Jack gig, which was wonderful by the way, them doing improv with a bunch of jazzers - Evan Parker, William Parker, Matthew Ship, Han Bennink and your man from Spiritualized, theres still a couple of dates left, so if you get the chance its well worth it). I arrived back yesterday to find a newsletter had been shoved under my door detailing all the damage done to the Hall during this first week back, now Im not particularly easily fazed, as those who know me will attest, but the sheer amount of stuff that had been broken, smashed, thrown out of windows or, ahem, smeared along walls *was* a genuine shock and the floor that Im on was among the worst, from what I hear the couple of nights that I was away were really raucous, culminating in a bin being thrown out of a window (and were on the ninth floor here), nearly hitting someone and, for about the fifth time that week, the fire alarm being tripped. The dilemma is this today at dinner an someone told me that the above, and other things which have yet gone unreported, were both done by the same person he also told me that a meeting is going to be called sometime soon for our floor, whichll basically amount to a big telling off (weve had them before, including an impromptu one at 8am one morning when the slightly mental head warden, or whatever she is, hammered on all our doors, virtually dragged everyone and then shouted at us for more than half an hour while we stood bleary-eyed) fair enough, and, and this is the crucial part, that if they find out who threw the bin out of the window theyll kick that person out of the hall in one of those as a warning type things. Fair enough. Well now the person in question isnt exactly top of my list of friends, in fact Ive hardly said a word to the guy since, well, since forever, and while he hasnt really done anything bad directly to me beyond the odd not quite out of earshot snide comment I do find him really offensive. He struck me right from the start as being one of those kids from middle England Daily Mail reading families who, sent to university to study some Noddy course (to be honest I havent a clue what hes studying I think its something to do with computers actually, but no offence to anyone reading that does stuff with computers, actually Im digging myself into a bit of a hole here, so retract that bit) who, fresh from the cloying arms of his family (actually his family came up to visit one afternoon last year and he was talking in the lift with them about all the fantastic stuff hed done, such as setting off fire extinguishers and things they laughed, so perhaps Im a bit off here) who takes rebellion a bit too far and, ideologically is stuck somewhere in the Daily Mail letters pages having expressed sentiments encompassing racism, sexism and homophobia sometimes all in the same sentence! Naturally I took measures to try to avoid him after the first week, but since hes in the room next door thats a bit difficult, fortunately he doesnt seem to want anything to do with me either, which is good, but I am constantly surprised by his backwards thinking whenever I come into contact with him. All that in mind my first instinct at dinner was that I should go and tell the relevant people and thus be instrumental in his being expelled from the halls (all reportings like that are treated anonymously of course), you see, I think it *would* work well as a deterrent nobody wants to be kicked out of where they live and if that curbs the annoying/destructive behaviour (and means that I can get a decent nights sleep) then mores the better. So great! I grass him up and one of my least favourite people on the floor has to leave and potentially everyone calms down a bit. But that is precisely the problem, see, had it been someone else then the thought wouldnt have entered my head really and while throwing a bin out of a high window is an incredibly stupid thing to do, when I first heard about it it only affected me in relation to all the other stuff I was hearing about i.e. I didnt think all that much about it over all the other stupid stuff. So if I was to go and report him then it would be almost entirely self-motivated and for the wrong reasons Id be doing it because I think hes a prick, not because he threw a bin out of the window, basically Id be abusing the system. Not that Im particularly keen on the system, really, and thats another thing Im not sure Im comfortable with the idea of myself as a grass, I dont want to take sides on this, and so far Ive managed not to but since the hall authorities, quite naturally, seem keen to stamp out all this damage I can see it landing me firmly in the and youll let us know if anything else happens, wont you? stakes. That sort of internal politicking is the last thing I want to get involved in. So my question to you, Sinister, is what should I do? despite my new years resolution being to try and concentrate more on the faire part of laissez-faire I am leaning towards doing nothing, for the simple reason that its easier (both in actual terms and on my conscience), which irks me slightly, but Im really stuck on this one. Im not expecting Sinister to come up with some sort of definitive answer really, though advice would certainly be welcome, writing this is more for me to try and pin down the pros and cons, which I suppose it has done, though Im no nearer to making up my mind at all. Oh well. Ill get back to you on what I ended up doing whenever I next post, which, given that Im back here will probably be fairly soon. - Kieran ps My address isnt all that long is it? Is having a long address a social stigma? I fretted for at least ten minutes when I read that mine was the longest, oh dear. pps The Tupperware party is over. _________________________________________________________________ It's fast, it's easy and it's free. Get MSN Messenger today! http://messenger.msn.co.uk +-------------------------------------------------------------------------+ +---+ Brought to you by the Sinister mailing list +---+ To send to the list mail sinister@missprint.org. 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