Mammoth

Goodbye ruby tuesday,

Who could hang a name on you?

When you change with every new day,

Still I'm gonna miss you ..

I'm becoming slowly more certain that my sources of information being used for my dissertation are drying up a lot faster than anticipated, which should mean that my essay survival instinct will kick in shortly; that is, opening the floodgates of stuff previously deemed " not relevant", "wrong" or "do not use in dissertation at any cost" and rebranding it as useful waffle with which to supplement what'll probably be a frail word count.

I ventured out into Huddersfield today for the first time in ages to use the library, which was full of pensioners and old black guys apart from the two lacquered grandmas running the show. I got some work done, so I might start making this a regular thing.

After a fortnight of lying round at home worrying about money and searching for dissertation inspiration and not producing anything substantial, just getting out of the house and seeing other real people doing people things again was great. And like I say, it gave me a proper chance to translate some academic thoughts to paper, instead of having them just bounce round my brain like a roomful of toddlers high on oreos and meth.

Of late I've started doing that thing we all do where you make a mental list of all the crazy shit you'd do if you suddenly ran into some money. And not a couple of quid on the pavement, I'm talking the lottery or a dead relative leaving you a metric fuckton of inheritance cash.

Apart from the supreme amount of travel, I'd start with a Woolly Mammoth.

Hell yeah.

I can't think of anything else that would sum up my position atop the financial heap than a Woolly Mammoth. I'd keep him in the room with the dogs, because amid the barking and farting they probably wouldn't be phased by a Mammoth, who I'd call Oppenheimer.

What happens thereafter remains negotiable. In any case though, the future spent travelling may have to be put on hold seeing as I'd be the owner of a 10 foot tall supply of sweaters and rugs which I'd have to feed and presumably walk.

Youtube

We could have had it all,

Rolling in the deep ..

Youtube Comment Award of the day goes to user ipitythefool1984, with his comment "you are a proper gay boy, get some testicles you batty boy. Your mam would be gutted that you will never bear a child, aids is going to be your friend".

I like how, with the exception of "you are a proper gay boy", its kind of well written and vaguely poetic, in a dickheadish way.

I wanna share this vid with you. You may have already seen it, its the kind of thing that appears on Rude Tube and stuff like that. The opening isn't that funny, but wait til just under a minute and a half and it'll kick in properly. I haven't laughed as much in ages.

 

Dissertationator

If you'll be my bodyguard,

I'll be your long lost pal,

I can call you Betty,

And Betty when you call me,

You can call me Al ..

I noted twice today the need either for a clone of myself, or an android version of myself. And now having actually typed that, I'm unsure of the need for a second procrastinating layabout who makes more snacks than he writes essay paragraphs. I'd like to be able to just arse about on my newly fixed laptop tomorrow and send my clone/mandroid in my place with the direction "Oy, dickhead. Go write my dissertation."

The uni workload is more trouble than it's worth. Particularly the dissertation, the grief, despair, confusion and anger of which can drive one only to alcohol or whatever mind-numbing distraction is on hand. While working on it in recent weeks, there's been a lot of throwing around of phrases to the tune of "this too shall pass". Inevitably it will, but that hardly makes it more bearable.  These are meant to be reassuring words but if you think about it for five minutes, they're still complete crap. It's like saying "c'est la vie" to someone having their arm amputated.

Returning to my earlier point, and still on the subject of limb removal, my laptop has been fixed, thanks mainly to my dad and various anonymous, well informed tech-nerds on the internet. Being without the laptop has been like missing an awesome limb, hence the metaphor, and now I feel like someone who lost their arm as a child and has just had an awesome weapon-arm fitted on the stump. Like the Terminator.

I have an idea for a 5th Terminator film where a final year language student re-programmes a Terminator to know all about counterterrorism in West Germany in the 1970's and sends him back in time to help write his dissertation for him. Except that not only is the dissertation unexciting and difficult, it's also self-aware and trying to take over. An early scene will see the dissertation kill a room full of people just by being so fucking boring, at which point the Terminator (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) will burst in and type 2000 words before the dissertation escapes out of a nearby window.

"That dissertation is out there! It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead."

And like all good Terminator films, the final scene will take place in some kind of dark assembly line-factory place, where the student and the Terminator type the final sentence and, with minutes to spare before the hand-in deadline (indicated by a red numbered digital counter), they both hit "save", print the dissertation AND submit it online on time.

Starring Robert Downey Jr. as The Student, Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the Terminator, Liam Neeson as the Students supervisor and Anthony Hopkins as the voice of The Dissertation. Morgan Freeman will narrate and Matt Damon will have a supporting role as The Student's nerdy friend who is killed by The Dissertation somewhere in the first half.

This could actually be a great film.

Weather

Oh, and I'm gonna buy this place, that's what I said,

Blame it upon a rush of blood to the head ..

The weather has finally reached a point that I'm enjoying. I stopped checking the weekly forecast about a month ago because it was simply too depressing. There were never any days above 7 or 8 degrees. Then one day it shot up to 10 and I was all "Wicked, I might not wear gloves that day!" But today it's kinda glorious and warm and I have my sunglasses at hand.

An old person started talking to me about the weather when I was walking into uni. (Experience is teaching me to resign myself to the fact that I'm one of those people that random people talk to). And he said something like "nice weather here today! But apparently they've got snow in the midlands!" to which I said "ha, crazy" or something nonchalant like that, and he grabs my arm, looks me in the eye and says "makes you wonder why they call it global warming eh?".

I miss the time when old people just talked about being old or told crazy stories about their life or childhood. So I just said "have a good day" and carried on. It was better than grabbing him by the jacket and screaming "It's climate change motherfucker!" at him.

So yeah, do come see my new band, Climate Change Motherfucker on thursday.

Freddy vs Jason was on last night. I watched it once one night when I was about 14 and in my tired, delusional state, I told myself it was a good film. Then I watched it again last night, just to be sure. It is impressively bad. Given the choice I always vote team Freddy, because he's simply a better villain than Jason, but not even he redeemed that one.

However, if he were to appear in my dreams one night to kill me and stop me having to write my dissertation, I would greet him with a hug.



Lets be activists

Life is a mystery, everyone must stand alone,

I hear you call my name

And it feels like home ..

My newsfeed on facebook is clogged with reposts of the "Kony 2012" campaign, which aims to make an anti-celebrity out of Joseph Kony, head of the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, which is known among other things for the kidnapping of children to turn them into soldiers and sex slaves. The campaign's run by a group called Invisible Children Inc, which is really what jogged my memory: they made a film called Invisible Children which I remember someone talked to us about when I was in 6th form, watching excerpts from the film. It's undeniable that the man is a complete fuckhead who is in dire need of killing, but my problems lie with the legitimacy of the campaign group themselves, and the way it makes people act.

The simple fact is, Invisible Children Inc does not spearhead their child protection campiagns with negotiation; rather, they endorse the use of swift, decisive military intervention to end the activities of Kony and the LRA. While this seems a logical option against a guerrilla-terrorist faction, the fact remains that Kony's forces are themselves children; traditional attempts to kill or capture him will result in the deaths of a great deal of children, which somewhat contradicts the group's aim in the first place.

When you combine this with the military force who would conduct such an operation against Kony, the Ugandan Army, the situation is even more bleak. Having raped, looted and pillaged their way through wars of their own, it seems highly doubtful that the Ugandan military will grow a conscience when faced with a mob of armed children. The Ugandan army and their disrespect for human rights is what is being supported when the Kony campaign is promoted.

It looks good on the surface but why should this change anything? The US military continues to assist and advise the Ugandan army forces in their search for Kony and have even tried directly themselves on some occasions. This proves either that he's as elusive a character as, say, Bin Laden, or that the Ugandan army has its own agenda/sympathies with Kony's reign of terror.

Apart from which, how many people who actually reposted it on facebook actually considered it before doing it? You watched the video; it's pretty heavy stuff. You heard about the campaign and reposted the vi- ooh, new notification! House party on wednesday? Sweet.

As if anyone cares. It's about the cause, people, not the flawed, half-arsed campaign.

Awareness has become as easy as remembrance, apparently. I vote we all change our profile pictures to a central African child soldier we found on google images and pretend we're making a difference, just like we did with poppies and "God bless Japan". People get so caught up in raising awareness they forget the situation is far from one dimensional. Awareness is no bad thing, but when it's for a cause which I don't believe is fully understood, it'll do more harm than good.



champs elysees

Everybody in the whole cell block,

Was dancin' to the jailhous rock ..

I've just got back from my old housemate Guy's gig. I wrote an ode for him and there's a picture of him somewhere in the archives of thgis blog, somewhere in the 2010 or 2011 entries. The gig was at a place called Carpe Diem which means somethinbg I've forgotten the name of.

I'm a litle drunk.

Not "a little" as in, 'an understatement metaphor for being trashed', mind you. No. Just a little drunk. But drtunk enough not to feel the cold and to think that gpoing to a computer cluster is better then going home.

Here are some foods I will never eat under any circumstances:

1. Mushroom.

2. Courgette

3. Liver ( i tried to like that one so many times as well)

4. Water chestnuts. They ruin chinese takeaways becaiuse when they're doused in sauce they can look like chicken.

5. Bananas with too many bgrown patches.

And I'm going to start signing stuff that people at uni give me (like for charity or signup things) with stuff like Winnie the Pooh, or James T. Kirk.

Won't bind your legs

You're trying to make your mark in society,

You're using all the tricks that you used on me ..

The Artist. Oh my god. What a film. It made me want a tailcoat, a top hat, a very thin moustache and a trained dog. Go see that sucker; some places have re-released it after all it's Oscar success, which it deserved every bit of.

Today has been a gurgling turd of a day. I did some artwork for Dan's election campaign, ate some pasta and watched the Simpsons. Someone did however link me to this picture.

I wonder if they have these in my size. I kick children and animals like that at least three, four times a day. The nice people at H&M make a good pair of trousers, but they just don't take into consideration how many times a week I have to roundhouse kick someone.

Thats all for today.

Oh and The Chase is back on! Well played, ITV. My favourite from this evenings show was:

Bradley Walsh: "The highest waterfall in Europe is in which country?"

Contestant: "Venezuela"