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"Some might say...that we should never ponder"

"Give me one 'cause one is best"

"Deodorise your paradise"

"YOU HAVE NOT BEEN PAYING ATTENTION!"

"Charity is a coat you wear...twice a year"

"Everything is not lost"

"If you try the best you can...the best you can is good enough"

"Something for the rag and bone man"(little man being erased)

"...where two and two...always makes five"

So...

How did Victorian-era novels deal with sex? Rama: "I hear she gets her ankles out in this one!"

And as for Eric Cantona, was he really as profound as he seemed to be? A philospoher trapped in a footballer's body? What on earth did he mean when he said "When seagulls follow a trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea."? We were talking about this the other day. Rama mimicked what the baffled reporters would have said when suddenly faced with a philosophical treatise instead of a standard soccer quote "So the lads were buzzing out there right?"

A definite sign that civilization as we know it is over- the Crazy frog song has gone to number one and kept Coldplay off the top spot. Is there no justice in this world? Does the music-buying public think a blue frog ringtone sound played over an old movie theme is better than the new Coldplay song? I think some of these people should buy a clue before they are allowed to even buy singles. Anybody who walks into a shop and asks for that song should be tagged and put under constant surveillance because you don't know what other incredibly stupid thing they are going to do next. As the bean (aah, I miss real 'bishyimbo') in the Heinz Beans advert says "Are you with me?"

And speaking of bad music, did anyone watch Eurovision? I did, in bits and pieces and it was absolutely worth every single murdered brain cell. I cannot remember the last time I heard songs so amazingly bad, so out-of-this world awful that you can't even turn off the TV. Like watching 'big brother', you cant turn away from something which is this bad that it becomes like a form of high art. The winning song was so bad that an audio recording of an autopsy would have made better music. Seriously don't miss Eurovision next time. Something this bad must be seen to be believed. And most of Europe takes it so seriously you have to laugh.

Raymond: If you are ready to buy anything if the price is right no matter how many people are being screwed over in the third world for you to enjoy it, then THAT is hogwash.

For a good cause

In the fight to promote ethical purchasing, these guys are leading the way so you can know which companies to avoid. Don't just buy things with your eye on the logo or the price tag. Buy things with your conscience
www.ethiscore.org

In non-football related news...

(And I mean 'news' in the loosest sense possible)
Went out last night. Chris had thought about going earlier but cancelled, so it was a suprise to see him and Mez bounding into my room after nine saying we were going out. In a few minutes I found myself walking to town and musing on how unpredictable uni life is.
We were standing around Jackson's corner while Chris was withdrawing money and there was this beggar (they're refered to as 'tramps' here but that seems a bit un-PC) on the street. he was singing fairly well, mostly songs by Oasis (he did a suprisingly good version of 'shaker maker') Out of the blue he got engaged in a spat with two girls across the street. I'm not quite sure how it started but harsh words were exchanged. The girls were especially vicious and things like 'at least I dont sit in a corner all day begging for money you twat' were just about the nicest things they said. The guy- Oasis forgotten for a moment- gave as good as he got, although he seemed to be the one on the defensive. Things got a bit strange when he said "At least I don't stab people in (cant remember what name) park" And the girl who was doing most of the screaming turned around- they had their back to him all along- and said "That's fucking unfair you asshole" The whole incident was utterly fascinating and very strange. I left them still at it, yelling at each other every few seconds. In five minutes he would be back at Oasis. He should get a guitar, he'd be pretty good.
Club was okay- this was actually the first time I'd gone out since I finished my exams, I think I'm getting old (then again, I was never Mr. party at any point in my life). I could see very early that Chris's heart wasnt in it, so we left about thirty minutes before the club closed leaving Mez in there. He was pretty upset about losing a tenner and I would be as well- the cruel joke here was that he had pretended to lose it before he actually did. I was a bit tipsy. Played 'Dakota' when I got back, one of my favorite songs. Always gets me going. It's funny how blissfuly you sleep with a bit of alcohol in your system. Very lucid dreams.
Apparently one in five people in Liverpool missed work the day after the final. Good for them.

YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE!

Jeez, where do I start?
Yes Liverpool did win. I'm only beginning to come to terms with this because after the craziest maddest night of football I've ever experienced, Steven Gerrard was there lifting the trophy. How did this happen? 3-0 down at half-time, I was so gutted I decided to watch the rest in my room where I could curse and sulk as much as I pleased. That first half was a nightmare to watch. We were appaling. Milan could have had at least six. We were dead and buried, no one seemed to doubt it.
And then....
THREE goals in SIX minutes! Against AC Milan? Not since Jesus told Lazarus to wake up and get moving has there been such a miraculous recovery. First there was Gerrard popping up to get that header a few minutes after half-time but still I was thinking 'wer'e done for'. I do not think-although a few claimed they did afterwards- that anybody watching the match anywhere in the world really thought Liverpool could reverse a 3-0 lead against AC Milan. At half-time I thought of the guy who had waved to me at the mall earlier that day when he saw me wearing a Liverpool shirt-he was wearing one as well- and wondering how shitty he must be feeling at the moment. But we couldn't have known what would follow: Logic, predictability and plausibility were not only thrown out of the window, but they were driven over by a tank and set ablaze before being buried at least seventy feet under.
But we did. Fucking hell, did we do it!
And after Gerrard, there was Smicer blasting from outside the penalty area: 3-2! I was jumping up and down in my room like a madman. And then what seemed like only seconds later- penalty. Alonso steps up. Dida blocks, Alonso grabs the rebound: 3-3!! WHAT THE...????
It is at this point, that I left my room and joined the rest of the fans in the TV room. I was feeling giddy. This was crazy!
And then what followed was a tense hour of nailbiting suspense. I would be lying if I said I had any nails left afterwards. The most heartstopping moment was when Dudek made that incredible double save from Shevshenko about two minutes before the end of extra time. Scientists are still trying to determine how he managed to do it but it was something, have no doubt.
And then penalties and Dudek doing his crazy dance on the line and Milan missing and missing again and then another save from Schevshenko (you could have put your mortgage on him scoring) and suddenly it was over. I sat there so stunned that it took me a few seconds to get to my feet. I couldnt believe this was happening but it was. Liverpool had won the Champions league! I was listening to BBC Five live all night and fans were calling in every few seconds reaching for new superlatives. 'Unbelivable', 'sensational' and 'incredible' were out of the window in the first five minutes. Only when I read the papers the next day (and God were there some awful puns in the headlines) did things finally seem to sink in. I met the porter outside at lunchtime- he'd given me the thumbsup when he saw me wearing a Liverpool shirt the previous day, and he's a masive fan, he's actually from Liverpool- and we talked about how unbelivable the game had been.
The most dramatic European final of all time. And we won it.
(And if you read this far, I'm impressed)

No alarms and no suprises

Aaah....what a great life. "No alarms and no suprises". I could get used to this endless doing nothing. It must be healthy because by Jupiter I'm feeling a lot better now!
But that bloody frog on TV! It's getting realy annoying now. Ringtones, T-shirts, terrible dance singles...he's everywhere. it was realy cute and funny at first, but there is no doubt that the frog must be eliminated by any means fair or foul (preferably foul) You can't really get away from it because every five seconds it comes up on whatever channel you are watching. AARGGH! Ah, hang on. I'm happy, screw the bloody thing.
And speaking of strange trends, there is this new thing called 'happy slapping' where people attack total strangers-usually with a vicious slap- and then record it all on their mobile phones and send it to all their friends. It says a lot about the British sense of humor that something like that is called 'happy slapping'. After all, the attacked person is hardly going to be 'happy' unless by happy you mean 'boiling with rage and hopping mad'.
Reading: 'Brave new world' Aldous Huxley
GO LIVERPOOL! 8pm tonight.

Tonight is the big one. Can we beat Milan? The answer is yes. Thus speaks the Oracle of Wantage. GO REDS!

DONE! (the unplugged version)

No sweating just yet. Cold morning. Dammn, not such a bad paper. Infact, I'm very relieved within the first five minutes. After all this 'duel at dawn' business, the paper seems to have left its pistol at home and come with a sabre instead which is fine in a swordfight, but not much good in a duel. Anyway I'm straying. 'Black and white town' is in my head. Still in there when I get out. I'm too exhausted and relieved to be properly excited. Still not sunk in. Could have been so much worse! And the greyest, most depressing noon you can imagine, ARRGH rain on my parade why dont you (and in fact it is drizzling)very lightheaded on my way back. Plenty of envy back at the hall. Finishing early makes you the black sheep. 'Bastard' and 'fucker' are the nicest things said to me, the rest are better left off this blog. Another Chris classic and as usual completely out of the blue "When exams are done, we should bake bread and just chill out...eating the bread" huh? Quena to him: "You are the weirdest guy I've ever met!" Going out? Invited, toying with idea- in the end, the temptation to lie in bed and just chill out with some reading material wins the day.All this stuff that's been piling up under my bed waiting to be read, a bit shocking really. Nothing on telly. Can't wait for my sleep-in tomorrow. Whisky, couldnt remember what alcohol tastes like. Apparently drinking on your own is...alcoholicish. Sue me. I'm done with my exams. I'll go over the Niagara falls in a barrel singing 'staying alive' if I want to. Still not really sunk in. Bit of U2, Doves and Bebel Gilberto to tide me over. Stop pinching yourself. Over, over OVER!

Pistols at dawn: Minega vs Land law

On the eve of the baddest exam I am going to face in my life, I am suprisingly calm. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do as soon as I get back, but plenty of alcohol shall figure in my plans at some point in the day. Chris is finishing on Friday and he was saying he will actually miss this whole thing- he is afraid of the chronic boredom that might result from finishing exams. I told him that boredom was a risk I was more than willing to take. He absolutely hates having nothing to do. I, on the other hand could do with having a lot of nothing to do. The options! My God....
And I'm as shocked as the rest of the nation at hearing about Kylie Minogue having breast cancer. You don't understand how popular this woman is here. Everyone agrees that her music is rubbish, but that's totally besides the point. She has discovered the scientific formula for Being Totally Adorable (BTA) and you just can't help liking her. It's very rare that I care about celebrities, but I'm really hoping Kylie gets out of this.
Also I'm seriously caught up in this new craze called 'sudoku'. It's a puzzle that involves filling in numbers so that every row, colummn and three-by-three box has the numbers 1-9 with no repetition. Every single newspaper carries at least two, and they are devilishly difficult to do, but incredibly fun. There's no maths involved, but logic and reason. I have this running joke with Mez where everytime I say something silly or nonsensical, she steps in to restore some sanity to the conversation and I scold her for bringing LOGIC and REASON into it, and she apologizes with mock seriousness. Well I could do with those two things right now, because this bloody thing needs all the logic and reason I can get. The first one I tried, I thought I had it solved after 40 minutes, but I made one small mistake and that basically screwed everything up because correcting one part makes you correct another and on and on until you start frothing at the mouth and speaking in tongues. Reading the papers, it's amazing to see how many people have become addicted to it. Marriages are going down the drain as I write.

"Whats this......?"

Yikes- had a hard exam today. Yesterday's went pretty well though. Oh yeah-halfway through yesterday's exam, the fire alarm went off and the supervisors looked like they were shitting in their pants. They asked us to stay in our seats until they could figure out what was going on. Apparently dying in a fire was secondary to making sure we didnt get together and chat about the answers and many students did look as if they would welcome a fire at that moment in time. In the end, it turned out to simply be a power failure, but the bloody alarm went off for a good twenty minutes which was very irritating. They did give us some time at the end though. This whole exam thing has so totally drained me it's going to take me a while to recover. Also I'm so paranoid about being late for my exam that I set three alarm clocks- the two that are on my radio, and my mobile- all set five minutes apart from each other to make sure that even a coma wont keep me down. The comic irony is that each time I've done this-every single day before the exam actually-I wake up exactly an hour before so I never even need the bloody things.
Anyway since I've got my final one on Thursday, this is an overdue time to catch a well-earned nap and catch up on 'The Simpsons' which I've totally neglected. When I finish less than 48 hours from now, I'm going to be too drained to go on my planned 'gloating' tour which someone had tried to talk me out of. They said it might make me unpopular, a comment which made me choke on my food with laughter. God forbid I should become unpopular! the horror! Where will I go from there? Everything I've ever tried to achieve in life will be lost!

"NO sprinkles! God help you if I find any sprinkles!"

I did my first exam yesterday morning and it went far better than I could have hoped. I realized a few hours before the exam that I didnt have a statute book which is the only book you are allowed to take with you into the exam hall. It's got all the UN conventions and shit like that. I told myself that this wasnt so good
"Self" I said "If this exam requires the extensive use of a statute book, I'm fucked" Self agreed that yes this wasn't the best situation but there was nothing to be done.
Luckily I didnt need it in the end and all the Article numbers I needed I'd already memorized so thank God for that.
It's funny that exam time really brings out people's witty side even more than usual. Having pointed out some of Chris's funny sayings, he's not the only one on top form. Quena has also had a few classic moments. Asked whether she is a 'glass is half-empty or half-full' kind of person, she answered "I'm the kind of person who asks 'where the hell did you get that glass?'" She got a sitting ovation for that. Her total lack of diplomacy is usually what makes her really funny. When Chris was talking about the lunch saying 'how hard it must be to make this stuff' She blurted out "Well you can shit in a bucket!" Which was a tad harsh on the food actually.
I've gone about two weeks without making a Michael Jackson joke. I think I'm going a bit soft! Also am I the only person who thinks that Natasha Bedingfield song 'I bruise easily' is just wrong? With a title like that, it's asking for a punchline- and one that is likely to be in bad taste and almost certainly politically incorrect.
And this is for you Raymond:
http://www.borowitzreport.com/archive_rpt.asp?rec=1124&srch=
As a 'star wars' fan you might not find it as funny as I did. Go prepared.

In dangerous territory (thinking)

-Is Erykah Badu's 'baduizm' the closest thing to a perfect album? (together with the first Coldplay album of course)
-Is it normal to find yourself destablilized when you change your brand of cornflakes two days before an exam?
-Is it really wrong to make a 'gloating list' of everyone who will receive a triumphant visit from me as soon as I finish my last exam?
-Is Vogon poetry really that bad?
-Can Wantage Hall food get any worse? Are they even trying any more?
-Are the rats in the hall actually of this planet? Or should I be prepared to be told to 'take me to your leader' by one of those bastards?
-What bright spark decided to schedule my first exam for a Saturday? What other Nobel prize winning ideas is he/she cooking up?

Chris: "You wouldn't recognize him, he drives a car"

The blog fatwa on Laura has been lifted. No further details are available at this time. Mwongere mukanya.

"Fourty-two"

Yep...Saturday is drawing closer and closer. Still calm. My revision has been helped by the fact that my notes are almost impossibly strange. I come across cases where I wrote things like 'The judge said fuck off!' or 'The lying bastard lost and couldn't stop crying" and I can't for the life of me remember actually writing this. Sometimes I found I went on a tangent and just wrote a few lines of something totally random possibly influenced by the sheer boredom that was forced on me by most of those lectures. At least it's helping to cheer me up while slogging through all this stuff. When all is said and done, it was very considerate of me to do this for me. God knows what I would have done if I was forced to rely on ordinary notes.
My toilet literature is currently 'A hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy' which is almost unreasonably funny. I was telling someone the other day that only an Englishman could have written a book like this- the humor in the book is both very clever and really strange at the same time.
And I hereby declare a blog fatwa on Laura for ending her blog. Details to follow.

Quotes of the week

"The league is your bread and butter- you can't live on champagne all your life" Nash (on Liverpool)
"'Give you the lowdown? What the fuck is 'the lowdown?'" Quena
"Are you a fan of 'top gear'? Think about your answer very carefully- it could determine our friendship" Raymond
"It wasn't erotic, but it was fun" Chris
"So I woke up this morning and said 'fuck the blues'" Tona

Why Wizards no longer appear in the fashion section

Seven days to go.
I think I'm on track. On Thursday I was up till 4.am and that made me happy. I've also been reading 'Yes Minister' as part of my constitutional law required reading and its so enjoyable and hilarious that I dont want to finish it just yet. It's a British comedy that run on BBC TV in the eighties but captures the absurdities of government so well it's amazing. This afternoon, a certain passage made me laugh for at least ten minutes. I had to stop reading, take off my glasses and just laugh and laugh. Brilliant stuff. Made me feel a lot better afterwards.
On a related note, the election is over and suprise-Tony is back. His claim that he and Cherie do it five times a night (and I'm serious- this was in 'The sun') might have helped him win the coveted nymphomaniac vote but his majority in Parliament was seriously cut. Highlight of the entire election process was Jeremy Paxman interviewing the disgusting George Galloway who beat the Labour candidate in whatever place they were running. I'll publish the highlights later because it was TV gold. Paxman is the only man in this country who can make even Tony Blair pee in his pants. You have to watch him in action for yourself.
But back to Wantage, exam tension all around. There's a certain code that exams should never be mentioned at the dinner table so everyone just kind of skirts around the issue. Matt- only recently back from Brazil, the lucky bastard- is the one who made it a concrete rule a few days ago and we've stuck by it since. The elephant in the room. Chris is starting his exams on 11th and he was really worried that he was doomed (his account of how much time he had studied convinces me this is not an irrational fear) Mez was working on her dissertation and I don't know if she's finished yet because she is hardly seen these days. She has even stopped eating the Wantage Meals prefering to cook her own (I dont blame her- the food is getting worse by the day) She gets touchy when you tease her about it though. "I don't know why everyone thinks that's funny" She snapped when I first joked about it. Yes, it gets up her nose Quena said. Quena seems remarkably calm about everything but then again she's always like that. As for Valli, she hurt her thumb somehow which means she probably won't be able to take her piano exam in June. It's terrible, but she's taking it very stoically. She's probably going to have to do it in September. Such things help to put your exam problems in perspective.
And the title is from a really strange but funny conversation I had with Dan, my brother and some other guys about why Wizard's style went out of fashion. Dan was standing up for them. Those robes were really stylish he was arguing, and dont knock their hats either. But how come they didn't catch on then? Why arent those robes and that hat the height of fashion? We couldn't decide.

Electioneering ("I trust I can rely on...your vote"

It's election day today. This campaign must be the strangest in living memory-It has got all the absurdities and surreal humour that you would expect from a Woody Allen film whilst also being almost entirely incoherent- even though the candidates repeat everything so often that after a while find yourself mumbling Michael Howard’s tax proposals in your sleep. (needless to say you wake up screaming)
For starters, it is almost impossible to tell the parties apart. The Iraq issue is the only one that clearly splits them- Labour and the Conservatives both supported the war, while the Liberal democrats rejected it. On everything else, it is hard to believe this isn’t some kind of joke that we haven’t caught on to yet. When the Conservative party suddenly comes out warning about the collapse of the asylum system and what they intend to do about it, Labour comes out and parrots identical proposals. When one party talks tough on crime, the other rapidly follows suit. From hospitals to taxes, its all of the same. Lead, i'll follow. Move your feet. That's it. Twirl me around.
What’s really amazing however is how incoherent all the candidates sound- whether its Blair, Howard or Kennedy listening to any of them for more than two minutes is not advisable unless you have a steady supply of aspirin. All of them are determined to make everything sound as complicated and convoluted as possible and they certainly do a good job of it. This is not something that’s confined to the leaders of the parties- all the Party minions are parroting their leaders lines and ensuring that the culture of-how do I put this delicately- ‘bullshit’ continues to thrive right till election day. All the other normal people in the country are looking at each other wondering what on earth is going on. Are we all stuck in some kind of surreal dream? Does it come with good coffee at least?
Their incoherence aside, all of the men running for Prime Minister are just plain bad. It’s a choose-the-lesser-devil kind of situation, only here it is almost impossible to tell who is the lesser evil. None of them are making things any better by running campaigns so vicious and negative that it’s hard to watch without cringing. The result of all this is that people are going to stay home in large numbers on voting day resulting in a victory of what people have jokingly called ‘The Apathy party’. The country is so thoroughly disgusted and bored by the whole thing that many will not vote unless the police go from door-to-door with cattle prods to get them off the couch and such a move has too many human rights implications to be feasible. Some people think this is a sad reflection of how far this once mighty democracy has fallen. Others think the whole thing is just very funny. Your point of view probably depends on how cynical you are. I personally find it hilarious how bad this election is getting. Infact it is so bad that its almost impossible to parody it. This is an election after all where one of the candidates (Howard) is commonly depicted as a vampire (it’s a long story) another as a bumbling drunk (Kennedy) and another as a war-mongering ass-kissing poodle to George Bush (Blair). None of the caricatures are really fair- except maybe Howard who is one of the creepiest men I’ve ever seen in my life and I’ve only seen him on TV- but they stick.
So in a few days, everything will be over and we can all go back to our lives. The only guarantee is that most of the country will have stopped caring long before the last vote has been cast. Look for the apathy party to win.

The day after

Alright now that I've calmed down, I can blog with some kind of clarity. My last post inspired quite a few question marks because no one seems to know what I'm talking about. I have bad news for you guys- this blog isnt for you, its for me! I'm my target audience so I do tend to occasionally forget that anyone actually reads this and so I basically just let loose (not unlike diarrhoea). I tend to favor a kind of stream-of-consciousness blogging which is just saying what I'm thinking without stopping to give it a proper structure or continuity. Read Dostoyevsky.
Cold cold day. Is this summer? What the fuck?

IN THE FINAL!!!!!!!

WE ARE IN THE FINAL!!!!!
I'll be honest and say I didnt expect Liverpool to beat Chelsea- the very few Liverpool fans who were with me in the TV room certainly didnt expect anything less than a Chelsea win. But when Louis Garcia scored after four minutes (a very controversial goal- no one in the country really knows if that ball actually went in) we all dared to believe. What followed that was what can only be described as a siege. Chelsea attacked in waves and my heart was in my throat every five minutes- an equalizer looked inevitable. By the time the second half was haf-way through I was seriously considering just qutting the game and checking the score later on because watching was torture. I was sitting with Nash and although he is an Arsenal fan, he was backing Liverpool and kept assuring me they could do it. Almost everyone else in the room was cheering for Chelsea. Towards the end, some guy got up and started banging the top of the TV in frustration as if that would change anything. It didnt- Liverpool held out. Carragher was absolutely magnificent. What a game! And when they declared sic minutes of extra time I nearly passed out, but we survived somehow. At the end of it I was completely drained. Went off to play a game of chess with Chris (he won) and drink some of his wine. I still have to pinch myself- Liverpool are in the Champions League final. A Chelsea fan I'd never met before came up to me and shook my hand. "Good luck in the final man" He said. I was wearing a Liverpool shirt so I got a few other thumbs-up gestures mostly from Chelsea fans who were suprisingly not bitter.
We are in the final. Bliss.

(I've known the garden)

May 1st. bank holiday. Whatever!
Yesterday was the twin's birthday. Tona at 21 is a terrifying prospect for some of us- she's been acting 21 for quite a few years now, but now with the calendar's blessing who knows what our stand-in mother is going to do next? Anyway They went out, but I didnt really feel like it and stayed in while being kept busy by my nighttime companion i.e any law textbook I could lift at that moment in time. Had a game of chess with Chris. He finished his dissertation on Friday so he's doing some overdue chilling. We were all suprised he cut it so late- Chris is so incredibly organised and efficient that he sets aside designated hours of the day in which to stress. He can't just stress at any point of the day like the rest of us, it has to fit into his timetable.
Working so late at night, you eventually get so bored that you find yourself wandering around aimlessly during your break. Some of my friends have more creative ways of combating boredom- Nash for example plays the 'sensor game'. What he does basically is lie down in the corridor and wait until the light in the motion sensor on the roof above him stops moving then he slowly tries to get up without setting the light blinking again. If it goes off, he's lost. It's a devilishly difficult thing to pull off- I tried it once when I was drunk although I was in an upright position. If someone finds you lying down in the corridor, how exactly are you supposed to explain that?

Election roundup: The candidates positions-
Tony Blair: "If you vote for me, I'm going to give you everything you have ever wanted. Just clap twice and all your wishes will come true. I'll also be done with African poverty by breakfast."
Michael Howard: "I don't want to hurt you"
Charles Kennedy:"Erm...my policy is to..you know, taxes and things. If you don't vote for me I'll look even more miserable than I do now."

Michael Howard by the way is one of the creepiest men I have ever seen. I bet some parents put their kids to bed by warning them that Howard will come for them at night-He is truly scary. If you watch even a single interview with him, you will need plenty of counselling afterwards to get your life back on track.