It is a sad state of affairs...

... when the only things keeping my intellectual sanity alive are propositional logic and the German political system.

If I wanted to study Maths, I would have picked the degree CALLED Maths.

(The more astute among you will note that I picked the degree called PPE. HENCE. Unhappy.)

I'll allow for logic, though. Logic is HOT.

If you know what I mean.

A contingency plan for climate change

OK, so some other PPEists (and E&Mists, and Economics and some other rubbish-ists) I went to a lecture on the Political Economy of Climate Change, because we're awesome like that. And it was pretty cool, but it was also deeply deeply terrifying.

The basic message? We're fucked. Even if we set ourselves targets we probably won't reach, we'll still be well within the boundary for catastrophic climate change. It might not happen, but it probably will. The End.

Soooo, in light of these facts, and the fact that we probably have until 2050 to enjoy the world, I have formulated a Cunning Plan:

1) Die before 2050. This is probably the most instrumental part to avoiding ANY responsibility for how screwed up the world is.

2) Before this time, spend most of my life building an underground bunker full of important cultural relics, many of which will be created by me and many of which won't, but which I'll ascribe to myself anyway. This bunker will contain copious references to my good self, including plenty of missing and/or conflicting biographical details, in order to create an air of mystery. I might rewrite a couple of epic poems to be about me anyway. This bunker will then be sealed against all natural disasters, and the location encoded in a load of clever but not impossible clues (hopefully scattered all around the globe, probably on tops of mountains to ensure against rising sea levels.)

3) Probably not reproduce. I don't know, kids would be fun but then I'd be responsible for bringing them into a very bad world and if they pass down REAL details about my life, that will spoil the fun.

4) Years after my death, after most of the population of the world has been wiped out and civilisation has regressed etc, my bunker will be discovered by some clever archaeologists/scientists/plucky kids with too much time and money on their hands and VERY neglectful parents. They will then find the tools to rebuild society using things they attribute entirely to me. Hopefully this will start, if not a religion, at least some kind of worlwide following where I am considered the epitome of pre-global warming society. I shall be famous in the best possible way (i.e. the mysterious, biographically inaccurate way) and I will have not only escaped climate change, but capitalised on it to ensure I am remembered for thousands of years.

... it's times like these when I wish I wasn't an atheist who didn't believe in an afterlife. Then I could look forward to seeing all this first-hand.

Also, one of the first things I will steal will be Volker Halbach's Logic Manual. Just giving you the heads-up there. It's gonna be mine in the future.

On narcissisim.

I'm probably one of the least genuinely narcissistic people I know. I mean, is there anything I think I CAN do? Not as such, no. Probably, therefore, my rush to constantly define myself as the best person in the world is yet another symptom of my deeply ingrained emotional and psychological problems. Probably.

What am I going to do about this revelation? Nothing. I'm too awesome for change, remember?

PS. how is it I came to university with loads of great plans for doing lots of things among which rowing did NOT feature, and suddenly I'm in freshers' first VIII and technically out on the river at 7am? Oh dear.

Matriculation

Yesterday, I matriculated. This is an event which involved getting up early in the morning (well, 8.00), dressing like a penguin, taking photos, having photos taken, going to the Exam Schools, standing in a room, listening to an Australian speak Latin and then an Australian speak English, eating brunch, going to Sainsbury's, buying wine, drinking wine (I personally had 2 bottles in 12 hours, and would recommend the fairtrade red but definitely not the fairtrade white), going punting, being punted, going into bushes on a punt, coming back, ordering pizza, changing into normal clothes, eating pizza, whining, celebrating a moral victory, going to a house party, playing I Have Never, telling strangers personal things, coming home at some point, failing to get into my (unlocked) room because I couldn't find the key in my pocket and finally falling asleep in the "women's room" next door.

Today involved waking up in the women's room. And then moving, sleeping and now the internets. I also have to row and do some SERIOUS hard work, but... ehhhhh...

Is death particularly funny?

Possibly, the answer to this question is "no". In which case, I have not written a very funny sketch for Friday.

Still, nobody ACTUALLY dies, so maybe I am on the right side of scandalous.

I feel I should write a bit more about what's actually been happening to me. Well, things have got a bit quieter since last week, by which I mean I have been in my room before midnight every day since Friday. Buuuut I have still been doing plenty of things- Saturday, I went to an auction being filmed by BBC1 for daytime TV at the Oxford Union, which was surreally awesome and meant I now have a fun painting of a garden which I wouldn't otherwise have considered owning. Earlier this week, I saw Josie Long (writes for Skins, was apparently on Never Mind The Buzzcocks recently) at the Free Beer show, which is this tiny venue which (also allegedly, remember I know nothing about most culture) has lots of fun semi-famous comedians in a really intimate setting, and which was brilliant except the room was hot and I had to stand up and she dragged a bit at the end. I already have my tickets for Reginald D. Hunter next week, who is (ALSO apparently, I should stop believing what people tell me) a legend.
Then yesterday was an open mic at the college chapel which was SUCH a cool location for it, the acoustics were lovely and it was really fun to be in this old old building with only candles and really low electric lights listening to some very intimidatingly good people playing and singing songs they'd written. I came back early though to blitz this ongoing mysterious audition thing, which I can EXCLUSIVELY (that is not an exaggeration, of course news regarding me is exclusive. It's not like anybody is going to tell you except me) reveal is for the Oxford Revue. I don't have high hopes, but if it did come off I would be a very very happy bunny.

I am learning to be a rower, and going to the gym. I am currently right on top of the workload, which is brilliant. And tonight is a big free chocolate fountain at the Oxford Women in Politics (OxWIP) freshers' thing, so life is generally still very, very good.

Oh, all except the dinners here. Those suck balls. But at least it means my diet is better than if I were cooking for myself, particularly if you are of the belief that courgettes are a special food group all of their own and you need to eat them at least once a day. Then I'm a paragon of health (except for the chips I keep eating for lunch. Yummy!)

This place is still a big slice of awesome pie.

However, I have now made an executive decision to subject myself to at least one audition, and now I am wishing I were intelligent enough to unmake it. Auditions are Not Cool. I ought to do lots of things that I don't need to be good at to do... like... the internet. Not things that people have to do well.

This is a recipe for disaster, and more importantly, whinging. Hence, blog! Wahey!

I have developed a strong aversion...

... to being by myself.

Seriously, this room is DULLL, where's the peeps at.

FREEEEEEEE NELSON MANDE-EE-LA!

I'm still SO FREAKIN' HAPPY about everything that's going on here; never in my life have I had the opportunity to meet so many pleasant, friendly, intelligent, open-minded and fun people. Clubs were found, IDs were lost, Bops were had, drinks were drunk. It has been very, very win.

Of course, now I have a loooot of work to do, so maybe I won't be saying this again any time soon. But right now, I am most chuffed. Wadham till I die, yo.

12 HOURS TO LIFT OFF

I'm calm, collected and cool as a cucumber.

ZOMG WTF SDFSDFSDFSDFSDFSDFWOEgiuhsreogeahggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg.

Sex-sex-sex-s-s-s-s-s-sex crime! crime! cr-cr-cr-cr...

I am going through a glorious phase of Annie Lennoxing right now, and that involves a lot of listening to this clearly beautiful song. I love how ridiculously uncharacteristic of the book and film it is, and yet all the Eurythmics music actually IN the film is pure win and awesome.

Actually, we're allegedly getting a new movie of 1984 (in case you didn't figure out from the previous paragraph that that's what I was on about- in which case YOU MORON and also yes I am talking about 1984 and the UNREPEATABLE beauty of John Hurt and Richard Burton and whoever the heck that semi-emaciated woman was) in 2009. I will be there, watching and heckling. Or maybe I will be impressed. The second is far less likely.

Oceania, 'tis for thee. You and your New Zealanders, and your dubious status as a continent.

(I'm sorry that my last few entries have been poorly expressed rubbish about TV and movies, but it's far better than poorly expressed rubbish about "oh my god I want to be at university", honest)

(Also, guess who I met working on reception at LA fitness? Lisa Molyneaux! It's amazing the people you forget exist, really.)

I am surprised...

About how much fun House was this week without Wilson.

Don't get me wrong, if Robert Sean Leonard leaves forever I will forever be sad about Hilson never happening, but it's nice to have a break from well-established relationships for a while. Season 4 spent too much time trying to slot in cameos of the old team and doing the whole CTB thing and not enough time developing the new, and now we're actually getting to see them (AND more Cuddy last episode, hooray!) it is revealed that they are in fact pretty fun. And so is the PI guy.

There will be no shark jumping on my watch...

Eh. So, I just watched the first episode of Heroes on the BBC (I would do a double dose but my bro wants to watch Fonejacker at 10 so no episode 2 for me until I torrent it). I watched it with the aforementioned sibling, who has never seen an episode of Heroes before in his life, and... well, it was a struggle. Each character got about 2 minutes of screen time to do something that they were probably building up to in the second season but that I'd forgotten all about by the time we got there. I sat there trying to give information about the characters to my brother and quite frankly, it has all got a bit too insaaaanely complicated. There are a bazillion quests and a bazillion hang-ups and mysteries left right and centre and quite frankly it just made no sense whatsoever. I am unhappy.

I'm hoping that this is fallout from the writers' strike and the fact that, if some Hollywood bums hadn't wanted more money, this would have been the second half of Season 2 and therefore things would have been built up in the first half of that and it wouldn't just be like "hmm, we need to kickstart all these storylines now. OVERLOAD!" Maybe episode 2 will be better. It BETTER be better, quite frankly, because despite the high quantity of attractive males I can and will stop watching if this continues. Besides, where did Claire's tall hot flying sort-of boyfriend go? I swear, her male teen friends have the longevity of a mayfly. First her so-not-gay best friend's actor gets cold feet about being gay, and now... no fitty.

Therefore. Meh meh meh.

Romance, crocodiles!

I would talk but oh my god VIVA PINATA

I wish I were cool enough not to be obsessed by a glorified gardening sim.