German telly

I have never dreamed it,
Have you ever dreamed a night like this?
I cannot believe it,
I may never see a night like this ..

Hey there. I'm still in Germany, and I'm watching a lot of telly.

German TV is a glorious mishmash of unending repeats and what is considered here 'normal' is what has been long accepted in most of the civilised world as "crap confined to during the day when no-one is around to watch it". This depressing run is punctuated by advert breaks that can literally last up to 15 minutes. I know this, because I began timing them after spending quarter of an hour developing a 1000 yard stare.

And further inbetween these lines, there are gems such as Futurama and Spongebob Squarepants, some of the few programmes that haven't suffered from translation, as well as stuff about the war that just screams "See? See? We were responsible, we admit it! Leave us be now, yeah?"

My favourite programme from last night was a re-dubbed American one called "I Used To Be Fat", which is one of those programmes where fat kids are given a personal trainer and trained the hell out of.

NOW LET ME BE CLEAR.

I am all for the rigorous exercising of fat kids. But my problem with this programme was that it should really have been titled something like "I Am Still Fat" or "I Used to be Fat But Then I Got Fatter" The words "used to be" are hardly in sight, people. They are probably being blocked by a fat person. To all on that programme, I commend your effort, but to appear on national television under that title is optimism of the highest degree.

Maybe I missed the point. Maybe it's the patronising kind of "look, they're people as well!" fat programme targeted at the German equivalent of the braindead population who genuinely enjoy these kinds of shows. Who knows.

Obama does England

The answer my friend, is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind

So Barack Obama finished his tour of the UK recently, the one which was partially meant to try and re-affirm what great bum buddies the UK and the US are. As always, I give my praise to Obama, because he constantly does shit right. I'm not certain as to whether this is just in comparison to the terms of George Bush, but whatever the case, I'm a fan.

This is because Obama simply states it as it is and takes it without fuss. He downplays the 'special relationship' that Blair and Bush endorsed, as they cheekily patted each other on the arse, and instead focuses on the 'important relationship', or "essential" relationship, rather, which suggests something of actual substance instead of just a big PR win.

Obama is good at the whole public image thing, but I genuinely feel this must have been a bit much for him. When he's in the States, he at least has the solace of familiarity and real achievement; his tour of the UK involved a ceremonial banquet at Buckingham Palace which harked back to the British imperialist bullshit that probably crushed his ancestors, before having to flip burgers with Tory Dave, a conservative as well as a McCain 2008 supporter.

I'm sure there's some witty slavery caption in here somewhere.

My favourite favourite thing however is Obama's signing of a guest book at Westminster, with the date "24 May 2008". There have since sprung up thousands of angry and confused comments to the tune of "ZOMG OBAMA GOT DA WRONG DATE IS HE GAY OR WOT?", my favourite one incidentally being "As if Obama isn’t a complete and utter embarrassment enough already. The dumbass in chief popped off to England today and signed the Westminster Abbey Guest Book with the date of 24 may 2008."


He's only human, dickwads. George Bush wouldn't have known which way to hold the pen.

University crap

Oh, I was a knave at the dawning of the day,
Come Lord, and tell it unto me,
But the sun's gone down and the Kind has lost his crown,
Now it lies on the bed of the sea ..

Well, I just finished the stressful hell that comes about once a year that is module enrollment for university. This invariably means an hour of two of refreshing the webpage, going painstakingly through each step, checking for timetable clashes, fine print about pre-requisites, all of which will ultimately end in crushing disappointment.

True module enrollment success is like getting to the front row of some major public event: You camp outside it until the doors open. If like me, and so many many others, this chance is missed, you begin the battle against your internet connection, more web traffic than is seemingly possible and a list with at least 2 modules labelled "FULL" before you've even caught your breath.

This mindset is universal; facebook is basically dominated with people lamenting the lack of module choice or just berating the system. The question of how a module can become full is beyond me. I know now of numerous people who have missed out on their first choices purely because the webpage is inaccessible due to traffic. This then leads to having to pick choices which you crossed off in your head as "will never pick this ever", because there's nothing else left. And we pay for this.

It's not even worth the tears. But unfortunately, it has to be, lest you end up missing everything and not getting back into uni. Unless some kind of improved system is developed, not least for the University of Leeds, people are gonna be even less than peachy than now when they start paying £9000 for modules they don't want.

Obama killed Osama

The pattern juggler lifts his hand,

The orchestra begin.
As slowly turn the grinding wheel,
In the court of the Crimson King ..

Hey there.

The word on the street since the small hours of this morning is that Osama Bin Laden has been killed by US special forces in Pakistan, after a 10 year long run post 9/11. I won't go down the complete conspiracy theory route on this (yes, they already exist, and my goodness is there some bullshit on the internet) but some of the stuff surrounding it moves from "Well, thats interesting" all the way to a long, frowny "Hmmmmm".

The major flaw seems to be in the US's admittedly understandable but hugely, hugely ill-conceived rejoicings. It's like killing the queen bee in a bee hive and then hanging round to do a victory dance. I'm addressing YOU, America, seeing as a good 75% of this site's hits come from the States - is it not mind numbingly obvious that stoking the fire with your flags and rowdy patriotism will not do any of us favours for the future?

It struck me as odd that Obama let it come to this. His use of the phrase "brought to justice" was as much of a kick in the tits as George Bush's infamous 'Mission Accomplished' banner. If the price of justice for one man is billions upon billions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives, both military and civilian, you'll forgive me if I don't alter my definition of 'justice' just yet.

Which leads me to this: Justice will never be truly served because the perpetrators themselves are dead. Coordinated by Bin Laden, overseen by Bin Laden, brainchild of Bin Laden - however you want to define it - the removal of one man from the top of an ideological tour de force like Al-Qaeda will not address the root problems: poverty, the desecration of other faiths etc. Rather it will only serve as a catalyst for the next more determined generation of radical Islamic fuckheads who step up to fill his shoes.

Despite all this 'God Bless the USA because we can afford to bomb our way around for a decade in search of one man' malarky, one thing that does strike me as odd is that we didn't, and most likely never will, see any pictures of Osama after he got all killed. What are the reasons for his corpse to not be paraded around much in the way ol' Saddam was immediately following his capture?

My favourite quote of the day - "US intelligence analysts believed the compound was "the sort of place that you might try to hide". THAT is the quality of intelligence we're working with? Taking random potshots at things that look hideworthy? The discovery of a half kilometre deep tunnel network with supplies for 5 years might have been a victory of some real calibre, but "the sort of place that you might try to hide" is the kind of thing you'd say about a cupboard underneath a staircase. Is this what 10 years has been spent doing?

"Look Sarge! That pile of rocks lying on the floor!"

"Well spotted Private! That looks like the sort of place that someone might try to hide!"

Bin Laden has apparently been buried at sea in the most conveniently unheard of Islamic tradition that the US army could find between killing him and planning their next big win in the propaganda war.

And just while we're discussing convenience, remember last week America, when it was being disputed as to whether Obama was an American citizen and thus eligible for presidency? Let's see how quickly the haters revert back to that notion seeing that the death of Bin Laden fell under Obama's term in office. It should keep you occupied to the next anniversary of 9/11 at least.

Remember: Believe everything your government says, America, or the terrorists win.