I'm a student again

I was born in the soul of misery,
And I never had me a name,
They just gave me a number when I was young ..

It's just struck me that it's been absolutely ages since I wrote on here, all the way back in Germany. I'm currently being bombarded on facebook with status updates that I posted in 2009/10, the ones of late all being me going "wow, germany!" There's a good deal of nostalgia kicking in. I miss that place.

Anyway, it'd be stupid to go into any detail about any of the zillion things which have happened, both globally and within my little carefree bubble, so I'll just list things that come to mind.

• LIBYA - so, the rebels finally took Tripoli, Gaddafi nowhere to be seen. The world now recognises a bunch of gun-toting muslims as the official government; Islam of course being a global cornerstone of tolerance and democracy. I will be taking bets in the next few days as to how many years of 'helping our rebel friends rebuild damaged country by funding them and giving them weapons' we see before we're at war with them.

• News of the World shuts down amid the phone hacking scandal. Murdoch senior is attacked with a pie. Questions arising - why did Rebecca Brooks keep her job when the entire rest of the company shut down? She must know some serious shit.
  

• A botched police operation which mainly seems to have involved the cops shooting at lots of the wrong things sparks riots in London, followed by uprisings of chavs in other parts of the country because the government can't tell them what to do anymore and to prove a point, we'll burn down the job centre because we don't have any jobs. Or something like that. This was probably the one time in my life that I prayed we'd taken a leaf out of Iran or Syria's book; how many people would have taken to the streets to put the front of Poundland through if there was a tank with live ammunition cruising around Croydon?

• Norway is introduced to something bad for the first time in 70 years after Anders Behring Breivik blows up a government building in Oslo before dressing up as a cop and massacring teenagers on an island. Followed a week later by a polar bear, less malevolence but still fucked up.

• The Space Shuttle programme comes to an end, with no alternative in sight for America to get back into space in the near future. Our new-found reliance on the Russkies begins somewhat tentatively as one of their new satellites crashes and a supply package to the ISS gets lost somewhere in the vacuum.

• My fourth year of university starts, dragging me kicking and screaming back into reality and the world of academia which I'm oh so fucking sick of by now. I don't dislike this lifestyle but after 16 years of reading books and being told I have to do things I don't really want to do, it really must be time for something new soon.

• Uni invariably means a new house, so this post is in partial celebration of finally setting up wireless internet, after a few teething problems. The new house is a bit in the ghetto and feels a little like Islamabad if you walk to the shop on a morning, but this is all a part of the big studenty adventure, right?

The only vaguely entertaining thing I can think of that isn't to do with shit that's been going on in the world is my trip to Sainsbury's last night. There was a guy in front of me, the very 'Leeds Uni Hyde Park guy', with a big long stripey cardigan and shorts with a bobble hat, because bobble hats are fucking acceptable now it's September, and he was paying all in change.

"£4.37", says the cashier.

"What, on the dot?" asks Hyde Park guy.

And the cashier said yes, even though I thought that had been a pretty stupid question and wanted the cashier to say something snide like "No, dickhead, I rounded it up to the nearest seven".

But he didn't, so I guess that was only entertaining in my head.