David Leverton’s About BlackXanthus

Black is a strange character. He descended into the lives of the ‘Famous Five’ near the beginning of our stay here at Aberystwyth, when he decided to force his company upon us during Information and Library Studies lectures. Although we all thought he was a complete creep at first (indeed, some of us still do) we soon accepted his presence, since there didn’t seem to be any other option available. Anyway, when we got immune to Black we decided that he was actually a rather decent chap, despite being a Computer Science student. Actually, ‘nicely indecent chap’ would be nearer the mark to be honest.

As you can imagine from the title of his university course, Black is just a little bit into computers. OK, OK – he actually spends ninety per cent of his life on them. Fine. That’s the way Black’s life is – i.e. it revolves around his computer. (Which, by the way, is called ‘Sylvia’ – don’t ask me why.) Particularly large chunks of his time are taken up by coding and by IRC, where he assumes his alter ego ShadowKnight. And what’s wrong with all that, I hear you cry? Well, you could ask his (by-and-large) good friend J, who spends about half her waking hours trying to get Black off his computer in order to eat, sleep, breathe, etc. Yes, I know these things may seem fundamental and yes, most of us do see them as part of a normal daily routine, but to Black going a day or two without eating and about 80 hours without sleeping are not particularly unusual events. And yes, you’re right: he is entirely mad.

I’m not really sure what Black likes to do when he’s not on his computer, simply because this actuality is such a rare occurrence. Er… Oh yes. He likes doing silly voices, of which he has a vast repertoire. He also likes drinking milk, preferably in industrial quantities. He would probably be happiest if you just hooked him up to the underside of a cow, but failing that just give him about four litres and that’ll keep him quiet for all of, oh, two minutes. What else? Well, Black also finds the time for the odd spot of role-playing, including LARP – Live Action Role Playing. He will also (so I have heard) happily get drunk to one degree or another (on something stronger than milk that is), run through his entire range of silly voices in a single sentence, and take off some or all of his clothes to the strains of Hot Chocolate’s You Sexy Thing. Not necessarily in that order.