Episode 164: Die Welle

I am loving my new haircut. Seriously. I think I'm not ever going back to Chaplins at Cannon Park Shopping Centre, will just stick to Thompson & Murray on campus, especially since the latter charges less if you're not getting a full cut, which is what I would like to do in order to maintain my hairstyle. Anyway, I braved the dark streets of Canley last night when I walked home from Mel's place at about 1 am. Eugene stayed over because he wanted to sleep in later and you can't do that here when the cleaners come around at 9 am. That and Mel could take him shopping and show him around Coventry, whereas all I had to offer was a boring lecture on subaltern studies, a somewhat strange seminar on 1960s literature that was more song lyrics than typical literature, and a French class that would have bored him anyway. So I brought him to Leamington Spa after my class, and I showed him the Royal Pump Rooms before grabbing a quick bite at Vialli's. I can't decide whether to be surprised that the guy taking orders recognised me from last Saturday, when I went there before Twelfth Night. I do love the Vialli's hot sauce though! It tastes sort of like chicken rice chilli.

Then we came back to campus to watch Die Welle (The Wave) at WSC, this being, once again, Lucy's idea. A good one though, as the film was excellent. It's based on true events, although relocated from America to Germany, which made it just that little bit more chilling, since whatever criticism you might have of the former Bush administration, the Third Reich was still way higher in the scary stakes. One teacher, over the course of a week, basically grows a neo-fascist movement out of nothing at all. We get both sides of the story, in the sense that the students do flourish and develop a sense of purpose through their involvement in The Wave, but at the same time, they become blinded to the negative aspects, like their exclusionist behaviour. It all ends tragically, but I won't spoil it for people who've never seen the film before. Suffice to say that like the Milgram and Stanford prison experiments, the events of the film bring home just how darkly humans can behave, given the right set of circumstances.

The Varsity group was a bit small tonight, although Eugene still did get to meet some of the usual figures. It was awfully cold though, and has been for the past couple of days, which is really crazy. Just when it was getting warmer too! So there we sat, outside under the heating lamp, which we had to repeatedly switch back on because the silly thing apparently has a self-timer with a very short limit. At least now we know how it works. Or else where would we be when Alex isn't around (and he wasn't tonight)? Seriously though, what is the point of having a heating lamp that doesn't stay on? To keep away random vagrants, who would find it hard to compete with the patrons for its use anyway? Am now staying up, looking for Girls Aloud songs because 'Something Kinda Ooooh' was played in the pub (yes, we eventually went inside), along with various other dancefloor-friendly tunes that made me realise again how I'm a weird person who loves that kind of music but doesn't really feel comfortable dancing in public. Haha...