Today I attended the "Diversity Day" at Guy's campus. It's a taster session for many of the societies - choir, break dancing. When I arrived, I accidentally stumbled into JapanSoc - a girl in a gorgeous kimono met me at the door and, seeing that I was already holding origami in my hand, assumed I was in the right place. But she gave me directions to the LGBT room, up on floor two. I was there as Calypso's right-hand-person-of-non-specified-gender - she's the new Welfare Officer, which translates as bearer of cookies and hugs to me.
The concept of an LGBT taster session sounds a little on the odd side - "Are you gay? Have you ever thought about it? Come along and have a go!" - but when I arrived, I found an uncomfortable circle of eight people sitting on chairs and having nothing to talk about. That's the strange thing about the LGBT lot - they're not really bound by common interest in anything. It's little more than a dating service. Arguably, so is every society - most of the Geeksoc are dating someone else in the Geeksoc - but at least the Geeks have other things in common than what they would prefer to screw. Calypso was late, and then there was a power cut preventing anyone coming into the building. The President had a narrow escape - just before the cut, he was waiting for the lift. Apparently, the whole of the London Bridge area went down - runners were sent to check the tubes and everything. Seems like a rather drastic way of shutting down an innocent student meeting, but there you go. I voted for zombies or ninjas.
It felt rather like being in a hostage movie - another runner came up to tell us we were not allowed to leave the room because it was dangerous - but we kept in contact with Calypso down on the ground via text. She was being held at the door. T'was all a bit awkward, and we talked about where we had been on holiday. I also found out that LGBT is an activist group, not a society, because societies need to have an open membership. As an activist group, they don't have members and therefore can help anyone and everyone regardless of how "out" they are. Pretty sweet. Eventually they came to "rescue" us with torches, and guide us down the dark stairwell, to a waiting clump of people. The committee discussed the new logo for a bit - we came up with some ideas, including a green carnation and two little lovebirds. Our favourite is an multi-colour umbrella - it expresses a feeling of togetherness, a you-can-stand-under-my-ella-ella-ella sense of friendly helping out, is striking in black and white but utilises the rainbow if we print in colour.
I got a treat out of this - a leaflet from Jews for Jesus. It's styled as an "Atheist Awareness quiz". It's multiple choice questions such as "the most rewarding thing about being an atheist is..." or "after reading the Bible I discovered...". Then you send it back to "Stephen D--, Non-Atheist" for a free booklet. There's also a line with Atheist on one end, Agnostic in the middle and Believer on the other, so you can mark where you fall.
Now my collection of nutty religious ephemera has turned into a proper Collection, I've started a nice excel file for it. I'm sad to discover my records of what films I've seen this year are very incomplete - I've only got 40 written down. Typically, I watch 100 films in a year, so I know I must have missed some. Anyone remember watching something obscure or unremarkable with me, that I may have forgotten?
We also made friends with a fresher, who had a beautiful dragon pendant. Calypso has this new initiative to tell strangers when they are looking wonderful. Also, we fell in love on the tube home with a young chap who looked like Dorian. I snapped a photo of him on my camera phone, because that's not creepy at all, although drew the line at telling him he was adorable.
Then we watched Mullholland Drive. A mostly spoiler-free review is up on Cinecism.
The concept of an LGBT taster session sounds a little on the odd side - "Are you gay? Have you ever thought about it? Come along and have a go!" - but when I arrived, I found an uncomfortable circle of eight people sitting on chairs and having nothing to talk about. That's the strange thing about the LGBT lot - they're not really bound by common interest in anything. It's little more than a dating service. Arguably, so is every society - most of the Geeksoc are dating someone else in the Geeksoc - but at least the Geeks have other things in common than what they would prefer to screw. Calypso was late, and then there was a power cut preventing anyone coming into the building. The President had a narrow escape - just before the cut, he was waiting for the lift. Apparently, the whole of the London Bridge area went down - runners were sent to check the tubes and everything. Seems like a rather drastic way of shutting down an innocent student meeting, but there you go. I voted for zombies or ninjas.
It felt rather like being in a hostage movie - another runner came up to tell us we were not allowed to leave the room because it was dangerous - but we kept in contact with Calypso down on the ground via text. She was being held at the door. T'was all a bit awkward, and we talked about where we had been on holiday. I also found out that LGBT is an activist group, not a society, because societies need to have an open membership. As an activist group, they don't have members and therefore can help anyone and everyone regardless of how "out" they are. Pretty sweet. Eventually they came to "rescue" us with torches, and guide us down the dark stairwell, to a waiting clump of people. The committee discussed the new logo for a bit - we came up with some ideas, including a green carnation and two little lovebirds. Our favourite is an multi-colour umbrella - it expresses a feeling of togetherness, a you-can-stand-under-my-ella-ella-ella sense of friendly helping out, is striking in black and white but utilises the rainbow if we print in colour.
I got a treat out of this - a leaflet from Jews for Jesus. It's styled as an "Atheist Awareness quiz". It's multiple choice questions such as "the most rewarding thing about being an atheist is..." or "after reading the Bible I discovered...". Then you send it back to "Stephen D--, Non-Atheist" for a free booklet. There's also a line with Atheist on one end, Agnostic in the middle and Believer on the other, so you can mark where you fall.
Now my collection of nutty religious ephemera has turned into a proper Collection, I've started a nice excel file for it. I'm sad to discover my records of what films I've seen this year are very incomplete - I've only got 40 written down. Typically, I watch 100 films in a year, so I know I must have missed some. Anyone remember watching something obscure or unremarkable with me, that I may have forgotten?
We also made friends with a fresher, who had a beautiful dragon pendant. Calypso has this new initiative to tell strangers when they are looking wonderful. Also, we fell in love on the tube home with a young chap who looked like Dorian. I snapped a photo of him on my camera phone, because that's not creepy at all, although drew the line at telling him he was adorable.
Then we watched Mullholland Drive. A mostly spoiler-free review is up on Cinecism.
Comments (1)
As a 19-year old from the back of beyond who had never actually spoken to a black person or met any more than one person who was not visibly 100% straight, I was rather intimidated by the various university Socs, especially the ones with a mission. Gaysoc, Anti-Nazi League, GodSquad and the Young Conservatives were all out to recruit (via propaganda, cosy tea-parties, etc). I felt intimidated - indeed questioned whether impressionable and probably lonely youngsters should really be recruited on arrival and not left to find their own level.