Mendelsohn's Misanthropy
I hate Oxford. I hate every tawdry aspect of student life in this tawdry little provincial city. I hate the University, and I hate the city. I hate the petty rules that proctors and college authorities impose on us to kill our joy and grind us down. I hate the town, too, with its complete lack of anything edifying to do. I hate the mobile phone shops and road works on Cornmarket, I hate the preponderance of god-awful nightspots, the ones which are full of trollish brainiacs sweating like Elton John in an ass shop, and I hate the fact that outside the picturesque half-mile of the centre, the entire city is a slum.
I hate it that we are meant to be surrounded by the brightest and best of our generation, supposedly destined to go on to great things, and yet everyone one meets is so grindingly average. I hate this mediocrity with passion unbridled, from the gormless and self-unaware sloanes who prance around in gold-buttoned blazers, ridiculous skirts and nuclear facial hues, to the working-class heroes, who take mysterious pleasure in gelling down their hair, wearing shiny trousers and talking in funny accents. I hate the fact that every other student here seems to live for work; more interested in slavish adherence to examinations and rules than human contact. I hate the fact that free thought has died here, only to be replaced by a vacant and interminable desire to douse oneself in acidic wine and breathtakingly inane sub-comic banter. I hate the way that everyone here is just about clever enough to cope with irony, but is still a great distance off any smidgen of self-realisation.
I hate the drinking societies which pollute curry houses, full of braying netball players in Matalan halternecks, and boorish boaties pennying each other into a dipsomaniac limbo. I hate the OUCA nincompoops goose stepping woozily through Oriel Square, and I hate the rebel-without-a-clue left-wing reactionaries dutifully clutching their copies of the Morning Star as they study for the PPE degree which will get them a foothold into the city.
I hate the tutors who have no understanding of the process we humans know as living. I hate the fact that they continually grind you down with essays without understanding that sometimes, perhaps, all we actually want to do is stay in bed until three in the afternoon and play croquet.
Finally, I hate everyone else. I hate you all: your offensive presence has ruined what would otherwise have been a perfectly tolerable stay at university. Instead, I am subjected to repeat performances of near-criminal fatuity at every turn. Out of my sight, the lot of you.
10th Jun 2004