Obsessacino to go, don’t hold the crazy foam

So I thought I’d post some of the choicest chat exerts from the library coffee machine queue, which is, quite unwittingly, capable of delivering not only high calibre people-watching, but the latest in close range eavesdropping entertainment.
It’s rather astonishing what people will let slip in public, when no-one around is visibly reacting, which doesn’t however -obviously, one would think- mean that they aren’t paying careful attention. You know how people sometimes say they feel alone in a crowd? Well, not in this one they won’t. If you’re daft enough to talk, we’re shameless enough to listen.
Today’s overheard Star Duo include Nameless Girl- we will call her Shelly, due to her uncanny impersonation of a mollusc, clasping- avid, tenacious and apparently for her very survival- to an inertly oblivious rock, from reference to which, by Nameless Girl, we know to be called Tim.
(Subtitles have been included for ease of translation from HormonalFresher to English).

Shelly: *beams, adhering to arm of Tim, continuing conversation prior to queue* “. . . so I think you’ve got a little admirer! But you know she’s basically a complete psycho” (translation: “Look at me, me, me, I’m attached to your arm so it looks to passers-by like we are togetherrrrrr.”)
Tim: “. . . . . . yeah.”

-pause-

Shelly: “So when did you and Cassie decide you were in love with each other? *giggle*” (trans: “I will not hesitate to stop the circulation in your arm , via intensified clinging, if you don’t dump her immediately and tell everyone that I am an ACTUAL GODDESS.”)
Tim: *long pause, mumble*

-pause, + intermittent smatterings of flirtation from Shelly (“ohmygosh, *giggle* why am I here, I should be doing some work” *giggle*)-

Shelly: “So are you and Cassie having sex?”

-pause, saturated with heated blushing from Tim-

Shelly: “So are you? *giggle*” (trans: “we could get married and I could wear pretty dresses and bake you cookies and we could have a dreamy house in SWI with labradors and a live-in nanny and Cassie has shattered the dream and taken it away WHY WHY WHY, YOU ARE A MALE! WHY DON’T YOU ADORE ME! OVERDOSE ME WITH AFFECTION!!!!”)

-pause-

Tim: “. . . . . yeah, so what do you thinks up with that?” *points at perfectly functional coffee machine*
Shelly: “Are you not, like, seeing other people?” (trans: “AAAAAAAAAARRRRRGRGRGGHHH”)
Tim: *unheard mumbling and glancing around*

-pause, + light vague conversation-

*Tim starts humming a tune to himself, occasionally quietly singing the words*
Shelly: “What are you singing?”
Tim: “The Mariah Carey song, ‘Obsessed with me’.”
Shelly: “Oh yeah” *hums along for a moment* [note: still hard to deduce whether blinding irony was intended, but comic regardless. other apt song lyrics to hum may include Dizzee Rascals’ ‘Some people think I’m bonkers, because I am’ or Bublѐ’s ‘Crazy little thing called Love-me-for-fucks-sake’, or ‘I’m so full of hormones, it’s a wonder they aren’t seeping from my pores and bringing inanimate objects around me to life’. Oh wait, not sure the last one has been written yet. oh yeah, and last but not least:]

Tim: “Shall I get Cassie a Coke?”
Shelly: “Why, to show her how much you LOVE HER?”

University Libraries: where increase in fun is directly proportional to decrease in dignity. Stay in school kids, this stuff’s better than TV.

art that i heart

Below is a new favourite, thank you Duck. And was today excited to find out what Fiona Rae (my forever favourite) would look like with a Y chromasome and slightly oriental/avian leanings. Turns out he's called James Aldridge, and his commisionned piece for the Tate Modern restaurant has been there since 2007, look, there it is up there. Out of touch much?

Les Chats

Both ardent lovers and austere scholars
Love in their mature years
The strong and gentle cats, pride of the house,
Who like them are sedentary and sensitive to cold.

Friends of learning and sensual pleasure,
They seek the silence and the horror of darkness;
Erebus would have used them as his gloomy steeds:
If their pride could let them stoop to bondage.

When they dream, they assume the noble attitudes
Of the mighty sphinxes stretched out in solitude,
Who seem to fall into a sleep of endless dreams;

Their fertile loins are full of magic sparks,
And particles of gold, like fine grains of sand,
Spangle dimly their mystic eyes.

Charles Baudelaire