My computer died the other day. It being a Norwegian computer and all, the most intuitively appealing diagnosis to make was that it was merely pining for the fjords. This was not the case. I brought it to the Apple store and it turned out its motherboard was more similar to the beaches of Normandy 70 years ago than a functional piece of technology. It had expired and gone to meet its maker. Bereft of life, it now rests in peace and its binary processes are history. It has kicked the bucket, shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible. It is, for all intents and purposes, an ex-computer.
This, of course, was slightly inconvenient for me. Firstly, because this was in the middle of my third-year exams. More drastic, however, was the fact that I was now bereaved of my opportunity of mindlessly netflixing to combat the inevitable sentiments that my post-exam life is inherently meaningless, empty and completely without purpose. Bearing in mind the disastrous results from the
The solution, of course, was a simple one. Why not return to the library, where there are computers a-plenty? It should be pointed out that I was one of the earliest finishers, meaning that the library was still full of hard-working, despairing people with their faces buried so far down their books and notes that the ink rubbed off on their noses. And in I strode, being generally cheerful and content with life, and attitude that had already fostered several death threats from my housemates.
Apart from a few ominous looks, I faced little initial hostility. That is, until I sat down at one of the Level 2 computers and found out that lo and behold, the university computers can in fact run Netflix, and I immediately immersed myself in a couple of Arrested Development episodes. If you, dear reader, ever wondered what the most efficient way of inspiring the sort of reckless hate you only thought the likes of Voldemort, Sauron and Heinrich Himmler would be capable of, I can testify that casually browsing Netflix in a room full of third-year revisionists would serve to do the job. When I unplugged my earplugs, I’m quite sure I heard talk of torches and pitchforks, which I took as my cue to leave. In fact, I went directly to Edinburgh to catch the earliest direct flight home to Oslo. Incidentally, a journey you can read all about in the main article of this issue, which is my way of rounding off an editorial without having to bother coming up with a punchline or concluding point. So there.