Graduation
July 17th, 2008 at 18:56

I had my graduation ceremony yesterday, which was rather exciting. I got to dress up like an old-timey teacher, sit in a big hall, and listen to a long list of names being read out. My only regret is that I didn’t encounter any Victorian school-kids to boss about whilst I was dressed for it.

Here’s a picture of me looking pretty chuffed at the fact that I’m demonstrably more intelligent than vast swathes of the uninformed masses:

Presumably now I can win arguments using the trump card “Hey, look at this certificate? You see those words? They mean I’m better than you!”, even if its in an area well outside my expertise. Just like how my hero, Richard Dawkins, does.

There ceremony was fun - one thing I’d completely forgotten to consider was the fact it was going to be somewhat ceremonial - so not only was I dressed up, but all of the heads of various departments went up on stage dressed as if we were about to put together a fellowship to return the Ring to Mordor, rather than dish out some degree certificates. The head of the politics department was up there dressed in robes coloured like that of West Ham.

At the start they gave an honourary degree to the bloke who wrote Captain Corelli’s Mandolin, Louis de Bernières. The university’s vice-chancellor gave a ten-minute long biography of the man, before he himself gave a speech accepting the award. Unfortunately, this set my expectations a little high.

“I can’t wait for my speech”, I thought - though in the event, all I got to do was walk across the stage, literally doff my hat at the university’s chancellor, and then shake hands with the vice-chancellor at the other side.

So it was a little anti-climatic, maybe. It was worth turning up though, as I got a degree out of it.

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Results Day: The Movie!
July 3rd, 2008 at 00:48

I’ve had a rollercoaster of a couple of days, to say the least. I’m going to explain it in such a way that I’ll drip-feed you the information selectively, to heighten the dramatic tension and make it a better story. Though to be fair if you’ve been keeping up with the annoying Twitter feed to the left, you probably know the story already.

To give you some backstory, a few weeks ago I received a conditional offer from a Top University (I’m not going to name it because this is the internet, and the internet is full of nutters), for a Masters course - to get on the course, I needed to get not only at least a 2:1, but at least 67% to get on the course. A tough thing to do.

It didn’t help that I received the conditional offer a couple of days after my last exam, and with about six weeks to go until results day - so basically my fate was already sealed, and there was no way I could work harder to get it. I felt like Vernon Kay, in that even if I were to cure cancer or stop global warming, there was nothing I could to stop people thinking I’m a gurning twat with an irritating face.

Leading up to results day, it had been a close approximation of a hell where the eternal torture is unbearably tedious - I wasn’t working or doing anything productive, meaning I had little else to do than wait for the results and work my way through five King of the Hill box sets (this latter act in itself unfortunately culminated in me pissing off a genuine American by asking her if she stands in the alley drinking and saying “yerp” and “that boy ain’t right”). What made this more unfortunate was that because I’d finished uni, the stock-joke was that when asked when I was free to do whatever, I was able to reply that I’m free for the rest of my life.

What I needed was direction and purpose.

So yesterday was results day - my university puts all of the results online at the same time (resulting in the obligatory annual self-induced denial of service attack). Barely being able to sleep the night before, I logged on, whilst praying. I’m not a religious man, but so desperate was I to do well that I’d taken Pascal’s wager in order to cancel out the fact that I’d walked under a ladder and a black cat had crossed my path the night before whilst I was walking through a graveyard (true story).

I saw my grade. I’d got a 2:1 - excellent - but, and it was a big but… I’d only got 66%. That’s right, 1% less than what I needed. Its times like that you wish you’d not forgotten to hand in that bibliography, or, y’know, worked 1% harder.

The results went live online at 9:30am. At 9:31am I was on the phone to the admissions administrator for the Masters course. Balls, it was the answerphone. So I typed up a polite begging e-mail, and then rang up again for good measure. “I just got your messages”, said the woman on the other end of the phone, who sounded a bit annoyed that I was bombarding her with communications. She told me that she’d send my application for “review”, and would hear back “in the next couple of days”. There was still hope, but I was feeling pessimistic.

I was like, totally melancholly - I was pleased on one hand that I’m not technically a graduate (and can presumably sign letters “James O’Malley, BA (Hons)”), but then frustrated that my future membership of the liberal academic elite was shakier than Christopher Hitchen’s membership of the same club.

What amplified this was something horrible. Due to a quirk in timing, I’d been invited to an open day at the Masters university, for post-grad applicants, that took place today. As they were still reviewing my applicationtion, I had no idea whether I deserved to be there or not - I didn’t know whether to go just in case they let me in, or not go because technically I failed to meet the criteria they were looking for.

My mum is something of a pushy mum - though not the sort who lives out her dreams through her kids. Her male kids anyway. Which I guess is why I was never forced to join a choir or whatever it is my mum dreamed of doing. But anyway, she insisted that I go today on the basis that if they’re reviewing me, I need to create a good impression, and turning up is a pretty good indication that I’m enthusiastic.

I didn’t want to do this though - what if I didn’t get in, but had already had a look around at how wonderful and brilliant it is? It’d be like waving a delicious fish in front of a cat, and then taking the fish away, and then kicking the cat in the face.

So I woke up this morning with a sense of dread - a feeling that I was about to do something unpleasant. And not the sort of unpleasant thing you can get over, like standing on a dog poo, but something psychologically unpleasant, that would torture me for years to come as I lament my failure to enter into the upper-echelons of academia.

Just before leaving for the open day that I didn’t know whether I deserved to be at, I gave them a quick ring just to check what was happening with the review - if they’d already rejected me then it wasn’t worth me going at all. The woman on the other end of the phone sounded annoyed - probably because I’d rang up again - “I’ve just e-mailed you… you’re in”, she snapped.

I literally punched the air. Multiple times. I can’t really put into words how delighted I was, but basically, I was pretty fucking happy about it. And then the delightful pay-off was that I got to look around my new university only a couple of hours later.

And fucking hell, it’s a bit posh compared to my old uni. Walking through the entrance, the first thing I saw were three blue plaques on one wall - I think that’s more blue plaques than there are in this entire county.

The uni buildings, fitting in with the rest of central London, were of the old-timey variety, with all of the imperial opulence of Whitehall, making for an interesting contrast with my old uni’s flat-pack modernity. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not knocking my old uni on its content (it was decent), but architecturally, my new uni wins hands down.

I mean, just look at the library:

Christ on a bike. Bit much, isn’t it? Not even The British Library looks that important.

The best bit was quite possibly the Student Union bar. Not only did it have a pool table and an itBox, and not only was it not a nightclub, but the view was phenomenal. In that it is positioned on the bend in the river so you can look in one direction and see Tower Bridge, and look in the other and see Parliament and the London Eye and all that. I’m wondering what would be more appropriate in there: drinking or presenting local news?

The only slightly dodgy bit was that, inexplicably, on the tour of the campus, just like every other tour in London, there was an irritating American asking tonnes of stupid questions. But this was only a minor annoyance.

I think I’m going to like it here.

(Oh, and on the way home, I stumbled upon a man giving a lecture at the station about the High Speed 1 railway line… things like this are why I love London. It was almost as good as bumping into some ska.)

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Over and done for
May 22nd, 2008 at 22:48

Today was quite a significant day. I had my last ever exam and have now finished university - which means that now, instead of being able to blame my laziness on being a student, I’m now technically unemployed. I might go and sign on tomorrow.

Because I’ve not been organised enough to line up a job or a masters course yet, this means that I’ve got quite a lot of free time all of a sudden. So if anyone wants to go to the pub or something and needs to know when I’m free: I’ve got nothing on for the rest of my life.

As someone who is now technically unemployed, I guess I should start acting like it. I should probably grow a beard, and start going to the pub during the day regularly. So, er, not much change from the usual then. I guess I just need to do a bit more wandering around the town centre without purpose, and appearing vaguely threatening to people who have purpose in their lives - but I’ll be able to walk much slower when doing this, as I’ll have nowhere to be.

Seriously though, its actually a bit weird to comprehend - as we’re approaching the summer it just feels as though another summer holidays is approaching - but as it turns out, I’ve got nowhere to go in October. Now I know how Lou Bega felt in September 1999.

I got a weird feeling as I left the exam hall today though. Not just the usual feeling of a great weight being lifted off of my shoulders, but suddenly I felt this great contempt for students. Mooching off of the state, spending the tax money that non-students like me work hard for. They’ve never done a hard day’s work in their lives - unlike the working people!

It was enough to make me sick. And enough to make me really want to get on to a Masters course somewhere so I can be a student for a bit longer.

(Hey, if you’re an important person reading, why not pay me some money to do (non-weird) stuff for you? If you’re a post-grad admissions tutor, why not e-mail me and beg me to apply to your university? james (at) jamesomalley.co.uk)

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Shilling for the uni
March 14th, 2008 at 00:14

As I’m a high-flying successful celebrity, I’ve been asked to contribute to a new journal that’ll be given to prospective students at my university, to try to encourage them to choose my uni over other (better) universities. I was asked to write about my experiences on the course and how it has led to my involvement in wider politics and so on. And because I’m running a bit thin on the ground for content at the moment, (”Alistair Darling looks like a badger” has been done by everyone), I thought I’d share it with you. Because the weak gags are worth repeating, obviously.

I’ve been studying International Relations and Globalisation for three years now, but I’ve kept it a big secret. It’s not because I’m ashamed that I’ve chosen an arts degree over something weighty and scientific, like physics or homeopathy, but because I’ve discovered that the second the phrase “international relations and globalisation” is mentioned to an outsider, it’s met with a blank stare and a look of bewilderment. Nobody really knows what Globalisation is – not even the academics, who seem to spend half their lives arguing over what it is.

So I’ve been telling people that I’m studying “politics”. Which it sort of true, but is also a horrible lie. In other words, the course is setting me up perfectly for a career in politics.

The course is excellent, as if you’re the sort of political junkie who stays up late to watch election results programmes or can name more members of the shadow cabinet than you can professional football players, then “revision” is your normal behaviour anyway. Even if you’re not as phenomenally boring as I am, you’ll still think it’s excellent. Why? Because International Relations is about tackling issues.

The questions debated in seminars are not abstract mathematical problems or reading too much into the alliteration Shakespeare used – students of international relations are tasked with solving real political dilemmas. The Israeli/Palestinian conflict, the legality of the Iraq war, the role of multi-national companies in the international system – in the last three years I’ve been discussing them all, presumably because the politicians have got so fed up and frustrated with everyone in the middle east fighting, they’ve delegated it down to undergraduates for them to fix for them.

The other great thing about the course is that it empowers you to participate in the greater political debate in a way that you actually feel like what you’re saying matters. When you express your political opinions, people will actually be under the impression that you know what you’re talking about, whether you actually are or not. I’ve been writing about politics on the internet for a couple of years now, and according to one poll, have the 251st best political blog in the UK – just one spot below the disgraced Jeffrey Archer, of all people. It turns out that lots of influential people have read my blog, and so I may have ever-so-slightly, indirectly influenced major policy decisions… which is a scary thought.

So come and study International Relations and you could maybe one day be as rich and successful as I wish I was!

I’m not sure I’m selling the course quite as well as they’d like.

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Needless controversy Israeli great
January 17th, 2008 at 19:26

I decided to liven up university today by being a bit controversial. Following a lecture on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, I’ve spent the day being a bit of a militant Zionist - not a popular position to take in a university with a large population of Muslims, socialists, and assorted left-wing types. (We only have about five Jewish people).

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t actually strongly support Israel, or the Palestinians… or anyone really. My actual opinion on the conflict is that it is a “lot of faff” and they should all just “get a grip” (you can quote me on that). But I decided to stick up for Israel because they were the underdogs.

So this ended up with me being in a lift on the way to a following seminar that also contained a number of my fellow classmates - including a girl who’s both a committed socialist and Egyptian. So what do I say?

“I think Israel deserve the Golan Heights, given all of the crap they’ve had to put up with”

You could almost see the steam coming out of her ears.

I, of course, followed this up in the actual seminar by antagonising the situation further.

I like to think that trolling real life is a step up from trolling the internet.

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Holy Statistics, Batman! When regular blogging topics collide!
December 8th, 2007 at 16:59

I noticed something peculiar earlier - Facebook network pages have lots of statistics about the people in the network - percentage male and female, a breakdown of political leanings, that sort of the thing, but there is one obvious statistical breakdown they’ve missed though, which strikes me as odd considering they collect the data in a regimented, easily counted way: religion.

I find it slightly perplexing that at a glance I can discover that 8% of my university colleagues define themselves as liberal, and 3% of them are married, but not find out which strand of bullshit most of them believe. I’m actually tempted to play the “political correctness gone mad” card.

So given that I love facebook, pie charts and slagging off religion, I took it upon myself to generate the statistics myself. As I am a man of science, I don’t want to create the impression that this pie-chart is at all accurate, fair, or representative. There’s the usual caveats of this is only made up of the 1126 people who are less feckless than the 5359 other people at my university who have neglected to enter a religion in the religion box on their profile.

This basically means that the people (women) who have it listed that they’re “spiritual” because they occasionally buy scented candles don’t count. Likewise entries like “none” and misspellings haven’t been counted because I’m not willing to count this manually. The benefit of this though is that the people who do count have clearly at least thought about their religious position enough to fill it in with something coherent, so they can probably explain their beliefs (but probably not justify them in the case of the theists… zing).

As you’d expect, the big religions - Christianity, Islam and Hinduism have the largest market share of the theists, with 38%, 14%, and 18% respectively. Excellently though, it appears that there are lots of Atheists and Agnostics (and Pastafarians) - about 29% of people are going to be predisposed towards acting rationally in all situations. This probably isn’t surprising unless like me, you spend your free time on YouTube getting annoyed at creationist videos, though.

What I find slightly surprising is that considering there’s five Jews, which is a sort of proper religion, there’s 5 “Wiccan” people. Or to give them their proper name “attention seekers who used to be goths when they were teenagers”. Similarly, there’s four “pagan” people, which is slightly bewildering, as they can’t even use the theist, cough, “reasoning”, cough, that loads of people believe what they believe, “so it must be true”.

So there you have it - a breakdown of the religions at my university, as derived from some unreliable statistics.

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Quiz II
November 29th, 2007 at 21:40

I’d love to tell you what I got up to yesterday, but I’m contractually not allowed to. Today though, I took part in my second quiz of the week - it was a bit more of a humble affair. It was a charity rip-off of University Challenge hosted by my University.

I put together arguably the most formidable quiz team in the country - who coincidentally were my university friends Katy, Sean, Sarah and Michael. And I, as the most experienced quiz player, was the Captain.

I’d been training the team for over a week. This didn’t actually involve any practice quiz questions, and was more a case of drumming motivational slogans into their heads. “It’s not the taking part that counts, it’s the winning”, “We can’t do it if we really try - we can only do it if we know the answers to the questions that we are asked”, “I’ll hate you forever and not be your friend if we lose”, and so on.

Things got off to an unfortunate start when Michael failed to turn up - but as luck would have it, so did someone from the opposing team.

So the quiz began, and we got our first starter question right - but then the other team got two in a row, and it went on like this - much like you’d expect a quiz to. There were bonus rounds on identifying the Simpsons guest stars, and a music lyrics round, a bit like a lower-brow version of the thing on the telly (we are a former Polytechnic, you know).

It got a bit farcical though during one round which was “identifying the place from an aerial photo”. The first slide said “Where in Britain…”, so we thought that all of the locations were in Britain. The first one was Wimbledon, the second was Alton Towers (I thought it was Jodderell Bank) and the third location looked really, really like the Hoover Dam. It turns out that it was the Hoover Dam. Damn.

And so it went on - with us eventually losing by something like 85 points to 65… which is fairly respectable. It was interesting to see Sean, who’s usually calm and collected, and the sort of person who can “work the room” without feeling ridiculous lose his cool slightly as he confronted the host about the aerial photo fiasco, or photogate, as I hope it will become known. She wouldn’t change her mind and admit that it was a travesty worse than naming a teddy Muhammed.

Still, at least there wasn’t any massive cash prizes at stake this time - and it was apparently for charity, so I can’t really complain. The team tried their best, so I can’t fault them. Just a shame its reduced my quiz shows participated in to quiz shows won ratio to 2:1 (50%) for this week, really.

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More tedious “I hate students” stuff.
November 7th, 2007 at 20:30

Far be it from me to complain about the activities of the corrupt student union elite at my university, but thanks to the magic of Facebook, I’ve stumbled upon a terrible idea - and I fully intend to describe it here and exaggerate my outrage.

They’ve invented “Flash Shopping!” - a derivative of the media’s favourite buzzword in 2003: Flash Mobbing. Here’s a paste of their explanation of what it is:

“Flash Shopping involves gathering quietly close to a pre-determined shop at a pre-determined time. A bell (or other cue of suchlike) will sound and everyone will enter the shop, pick up one item and proceed together to checkout en mass! Another bell (or suchlike) will sound and everyone must look at their watch, tut, drop said item (without damaging it!) and walk out!”

So, a flash-mob basically. The thing that bothers me about this is that it seems so unbelievably cruel.

Sure, it sounds fun - flash mobbing is. The fun is in doing something silly, like having a pillow fight or whatever. No-one gets hurt or pissed off. Unfortunately, this “flash shopping” idea, which at the time of writing, 52 people have signed up to, seems to have a more sinister motive:

“Hopefully this will involve hundreds of people! You watch the shopkeepers eyes light up as they think all their Christmas’s have come at once only to find everyone just takes off!”

Yeah, great idea! Why not target a struggling independent store that’s worried it can’t compete with brand name rivals? Give them some false hope? Better still, needlessly mess with the stock without buying anything! Yeah, that’ll be hilarious!

This all just seems completely not in the spirit of what flashmobbing was intended.

And what makes this more bewildering is that it has been dreamt up as a feature for a radio show. How the hell does that work? “This is what 50 morons needlessly bothering someone trying to do their job sounds like”?

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Things that have happened lately
October 21st, 2007 at 23:50

My blogging has been pretty light lately, and I’ve been trying to figure out why. I’d love to be able to give a definitive excuse, like “the dog ate it”, or “I’ve been really busy working”- but I think its fairly obvious that I’m workshy and dogless. I guess it is because I’ve been stuck in a routine, doing normal boring things that have happened without anything notable happening - or when things vaguely have, I’ve worried about the focus of the blog.

Every time I post a tale about something I’ve been doing, I worry that people who are for my, er, political insight aren’t going to care - and what if I want to write about politics? Will the people who are after drivel or stupid videos care? I know you’re all very fickle people, and in all likelihood, get distracted by other, more exciting things, before you think about scrolling down to see what’s below.

This blog entry is quickly turning into the first type of blog entry: things I’ve been doing lately. Here are the things I’ve been doing:

Krisha Consciousness Society

Don’t worry, I haven’t gone all theist - it hasn’t been God telling me to refrain from blogging. A couple of weeks ago I received e-mails promoting a debate at the university KC society: “Does God exist? If so, prove it!” - something that seemed to pander directly to my interests. “This will be an easy win”, I thought.

I spent the afternoon watching videos of Christopher Hitchens on Youtube, making myself angry and spoiling for an argument. I then drove 15 miles looking for this particular argument. I arrived at the building and got to the room the argument debate was to be held in, only to find the lights switched off and with no indication that the debate existed at all. It was annoying - as only hours earlier I’d read an e-mail from the society telling me the debate existed, and that seemed like a credible source as it was from the voice of the debate organisers, but there was absolutely no observable evidence suggesting that the debate did in fact exist. A bit like God, really.

“They’re not going to get much peace and love from me if they’re not going to turn up to their own debate”, I thought. I did make a point of going into the darkened room and declaring that there is no evidence that God exists though, and because I was the only person in there, won by default.

Animé Society

As luck would have it, on the same night as the debate, the animé society were also having a meeting. I don’t really like animé, but I feel like its one of those things I should like more, being as it is dead geeky and can be elitist - and I already have some cred in their field of study as it is. So I went along to see what was going on, as a sort of second best option, and not waste a journey.

I say “I went along” in a casual way, but it actually happened in the most horrendously awkward way possible. I turned up late (because of the Krisha Consciousness farce), so spent twenty minute standing outside the room dithering about whether or not to go in. What concerned me was that because I’d never been before, I’d have to first clarify that they are the animé society (it’d be embarrassing to discover it was the LGBT soc after sitting there for twenty minutes), then explain that I’m not a paid up member and would like to join, then faff about with money, before finally noisily taking a seat - all whilst 20 other people were trying to watch telly.

So there I was dithering, and someone else turned up and as they walked in I said “are you here to watch animé?” - she was. So she went in and I stood outside for a few more seconds hearing her explain to the people inside that there’s someone else standing outside - so now not only did I have all of the above to worry about, but now when I went in, the people inside would have the preconceived idea that I was mentally ill, and incapable of walking through a door. Which probably isn’t that far wide of the mark… but you don’t want people to know that!

So in the end I took a deep breath, walked in, and discovered that they were all typical animé people. I don’t mean two-dimensional with exaggerated movements and a low frame rate - but you got the impression they were all really into their animé. They laughed at animé jokes - which mostly tend to be cuts of one of the characters committing acts of violence, or growing a large raindrop of sweat - whilst I felt dead inside for not quite getting it.

So I spent two hours watching animé, full of built up anger about religion that I was unable to get rid of in a safe manner. I’m still spoiling for an argument.

Zelda

I got the new Zelda game the other day. I’ve already completed it. It is incredible. I think this is where all of my time has been spent.

More exciting blogging soon!

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Revolutionary Graffiti
October 3rd, 2007 at 18:22

The great thing about being at university is that you’re (hypothetically) surrounded by people who actually care about issues and politics and so on. This is reflected in the graffiti in the surrounding area:

Scrawled on to the above building are “No Trident”, “Free Palestine”, and perhaps the most revolutionary statement of all: “No Parking“.

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