Lazing on a sunny afternoon...

Quite so, Ray Davies of The Kinks. That's all I seem to be doing. And why?

Because of stupid, goddamn pointless work experience. This is going to be one major, unedited, non-sensival (likely) rant. One of the things the Uni prides itself on is its employement rate after the course. Therefore, you'd think it would take some responsibility for its students' work experience. But has it? I can't help thinking, from a personal point of view, what a waste of time this whole placement idea is.

1. We received CV writing and interview advice in late January, during the busiest term of the year. Which meant:
2. Most people didn't start thinking about placements until the Easter break. Which was when people simultaneously started thinking about exams.
3. The Uni FORCES - that is, you must have it in order to pass onto year 3 - the 6 week minimum placement. A lot of places see that as a questionable length of time: what can you bring to a company, a major company where your experience will be worthwhile, in just 6 weeks? There aren't many places that see 6 weeks as a good time period: most offer 1-2 weeks, or several months to a year.
4. Because of THAT, nearly all companies are reluctant to pay for just 6 weeks, though most cover travel expenses. Which is still, not a wage.
5. And that means you have to spend 6 or more weeks of your summer not earning much needed money to cover the debt we've accumulated over the last year.
6. That's also assuming you have your placement sorted, 6 weeks, no more no less, no gaps, in one place: if you don't, you can't get paid work over the summer until you guarantee your work experience because that must come first otherwise you won't pass the year. Personally, I now won't have had ANY paid work over this summer, due to the 'neccessity' of organising a placement. Brilliant.
7. All the good places go very quickly. Most decent magazines, for example, fill their placement spots about a year in advance. Why weren't we warned that? Why is our placement guidance held back til January, when in retrospect you realise that it should have been the time for finalising a placement, not starting to think about it.

Of course, this doesn't apply if you signed up to a STEP placement, where although the placements aren't always quite suitable, everything else is sorted for you. The Uni, for some reason, didn't see fit to advertise how useful that scheme is however, instead presenting it as an unglamorous alternative.

To sum up those interweaving, mish mashed points: Your often non-paid, not-particularly suitable placement is enforced otherwise you fail your course. It's a key part of the degree, and one students are interested to have, yet the Uni is inclined to sit back and let it add to students' pressing problems. If it's such a valuable element of the course for your students, why isn't it addressed so? It seems, at the moment, and I have no doubt come October it will seem the same: a complete waste of time.

I'm sorry Cromitor

Crime Monitor! Find me some crime to fight!

Alas, I don't have a crime monitor (Cromitor). So there's another excuse for it being a month since I last blogged gone. The last two weeks, I've been completing work experience at a PR company in Havant called HarvestPR. It's been very valuable, but ultimately quite time consuming work and for no wage. I might get a nominal sum for my work (which was, I hasten to add, valuable to the company as well as me) but not actually paid. I did get my own e-mail address though!

So this week, in light of hopefully starting a 3-week placement in London either next monday or the following, I've generously allowed myself some well-earned time off this week in order to see people, play football and guitar, and get up late. Especially since I passed year 2 of Uni last week, 62 overall for the year, which I'm obviously pleased about.

Anyway, in my last post I realised I mentioned getting addicted to Big Brother which is of course, a lie. In the same way as people can't help but stare at a horrendous car crash, in wonder at other humans' mortality and death, Big Brother is the same on tv. Train wreck TV (I think it's an actual term - I'll ask Bronwen). There's something, not addictive, maybe it's human nature, to look at other people so more unfortunate than yourself. It was only good, as in interesting, to watch while Grace was in there manipulating everyone to her own ends, which is the point as it's a game show, and generally being ace. Now, in desperation to save a dying programme, the producers chuck in 5 or 6 new people (most even more train wreck tv victims than the original lot) in a SECOND HOUSE, OMG LIEK NEIGHBOURS, in the hope that something interesting might happen. Which hasn't. Just more outrageous stupidity, people crying, playground level relationships. Thank god Nikki, with her 5 year old face and 4 year old intellect, has gone now, and that utter mess of a woman (she's a mother!!) Lea has gone back to her beloved children who she supports by making porn and leaves for 2 months to go on tv.

That's all for now. It's 30 degrees outside, I should be out sunning myself like a lizard on a Majorcan rock.

So long since blogging :(

It's getting on for 3 weeks since my last blog, and a lot has happened in those three weeks. I convinced myself I'd posted about exams, but I obviously haven't. Mainly, I guess, I've just been too busy to blog! But shall quickly wind up the events in the time since my last post.

Exams: The most recent post was probably the last ounce of time I had before I had to do nothing but revise, eat and sleep a bit before the Media exam 27/5/06. About 9:20am that day, the nerves hit me like a lorry. But I took my time at the beginning of the exam, and I thought it was a pretty kind paper all in all. Questions were specific but allowed for a lot of discussion. (If you didn't bother doing enough revision, then this won't apply to you. Unlucky.) Getting Media done was the biggie. Hard to revise for, hard to understand, hard to write about. So glad it was the first exam.

Then that left plenty of time to revise for Literature, and I managed to revise three texts, and thankfully none of the questions were dire. In fact, after doing the fairly gentle Heart of Darkness question first, I spent 10 minutes planning both Slaughterhouse-5 and Waiting for Godot answers. Eventually went for Godot as it was more specific and easier to make an argument from.

After Lit, though, there was no time to slack with Narrative just 48 hours away. But I slacked anyway, and went for a meal in the evening. The thursdsy was manic, dreadful. I'd already revised some about 2 weeks earlier before media, but that didn't really help when it came to going over them. Ended up spending the thursday revising Feminism, and glancing at Sitcoms, and went to bed not looking forward to the exam at all. The main reason was that I'd felt the first 2 exams to have been decent papers, and there was bound to be one bitch. And it was Bronwen.

Not exactly. Well, not exactly her. The paper wasn't "stick two pens up your nose and slam your head on the exam desk and puncture your brain" terrible. The questions were just worded in Bronwen's telling 'You better know what you're talking about' way, which meant the Feminist Q was out of bounds. The sitcom question was OK, but when did we ever do any work on Reality TV? It didn't matter though, as it simply gave me an excuse to tear into Big Brother for half an hour before I remembered the question. Oops.

But it was all forgotten 15 minutes later as everyone piled into Dylan's, then we went home and drunk, went out and drunk, and so on. Since then it's been a hazy mix of sunshine, sun burn, beer and football. Fantastic. If only I didn't have this stupid stupid work placement to waste half my summer (sorry, gain invaluable experience). I'd love to just spend my entire summer living how it is now, waking up mid morning, hitting the beach all afternoon, then seeing friends or going out in the evening. Alas, 'those were the best days of my life'.

Summer Ball: How awesome was THAT? Just the perfect day altogether. Watching England win in the World Cup at Bar Fruit which we had to ourselves, basically. Indeed, we were even stopped from going in originally because of a 'private function'.That private function was us!
Then getting ready and drinking and photos in the glorious sunshine was brilliant, and the Summer Ball really was the party to end the year. If you were there it doesn't need explaining. If you weren't, you don't deserve it explained. :)

That's it for now, posts on my Big Brother addiction and England's brilliant start to the world cup (2 games, 2 wins, no goals conceded, through into round 2 already?) to come.

Knives away

It's now a week since the knife amnesty began across the UK, and over 2 months since the West Midlands began their initial amnesty. In the last 3 weeks, there have been SEVEN high profile stabbings.

A police officer was killed in Wembley just over two weeks ago. In the next few days, a pupil was stabbed to death outside his school one afternoon, in front of pupils and parents alike. The DAY after, a health worker was stabbed to death by a patient. In the last week, two students were stabbed on a University campus, a man was stabbed and died on a train, another student was stabbed outside a school in Birmingham and yesterday, a man died after being stabbed, also in Birmingham. And this is in a period where knives are meant to be thrown anonymously into bins at police stations, this knife amnesty.

I may be wrong, but never can I remember so many highly covered stabbings in such a short space of time. Has the knife attention suddenly glamourised the crime? Are young people with knives vying for their 'slice' of the media limelight? (Sorry about the pun).

If things get any worse, people will be carrying knives around for protection, out of the sheer fear of being stabbed. The irony. And, some groups are even advocating girls carry knives for their protection at night. While in the opposite corner, groups are pressing for up to 5-year jail sentences for those caught in posession. Can't be both I'm afraid. And people using knives in 'self-defence' are always going to be in big, big trouble....

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Exams: one down, hardest one out the way. Went fairly well, I hope, and I mistakenly felt like the pressure was off when the reality is I have 2 in three days this week. Literature is a pain to revise, re-reading texts I'm not hugely fond of. But it being such a subjective exam makes for much less stress.

The stress isn't helped though by having one and a half days (and that's assuming you get up at a reasonable time - which I won't) to revise for Narrative. Even if you've already revised the topics, going back over them is going to feel stressful knowing the exam's the next day. But maybe it's the presure I've needed. I just couldn't get motivated to revise much before a week prior to my first exam. I had to revise backwards, in a way, what with no time to revise Narrative directly before it, and the pressure just wasn't there.

And the weather's getting better! Revision is going to be so hard with everyone else at the beach. But come friday, and it is so going to be worth it. The word celebration will be forever illustrated by the photos that come from friday night's messy, messy affairs.

Interestingly, and quite worryingly, I can distinctly rememeber blogging about exams this time last year. Where have the last 365 days gone?

Hard rock? Hallelujah...

Monsters. Five sisters from Denmark in skimpy outfits. An abundance of cheesey ballads. Short skirts. Politics. Being anti-france. It could only be one globally televised event: The Eurovision Song Contest 2006.

As usual the standard of song was atrocious. Weak lyrical efforts about the heart, disco beats bashed out in minutes, songs based on football terrace anthems: it seems that there is an entire style of song that is only suited to the Eurovision. The UK's entry, jesus christ. 'Teenage Life', it was called, and it was about as out of touch with British teenagers as you could get. The 'rapper' Daz Sampson, looked a) about 35 and b) as if he'd just left the kebab shop where he worked. So PAINFUL. Surprisingly, it picked up a few points and we didn't do as badly as 2 years ago when we finished 2nd last (though that might have had something to do with the Iraq war). Finland's entry, Lordi, bucked the love balled/cheesy disco trend with an all out mock heavy metal song, dressing up like extras from the Lord Of The Rings. And won. Oh.

But the Eurovision isn't, and probably never has been, about music. The tactical voting was out again in ever-so-obvious force: particularly the Scandinavian and Eastern European countries, who clustered around each other all night, exchanging maximum points with each other. The countries with enough clout to go it alone globally (in the real world, you might say, outside of Finnish Orcs and Danish meat) such as France and UK suffered. France in fact came perilously close to not getting a point at all. That would have been the creme de la creme of a night of purely comical entertainment.

It's lucky that the Eurovision is so out of touch with music, because the British votes were diabolical. Surprisingly, in my view, voting in the Irish song (a below average Westlife affair) as third best, we still saved our ludicrous votes for the top 2 spots. Voting in Lithuania's entry as second was a joke. The entry itself was a joke: 6 men all about 40, singing "We are the winners of Eurovision! Vote! Vote! Vote! Vote! Vote! Vote! Vote! Vote!" almost endlessly, in the style of football hooligans. Yet we deemed that to be the second best song. Naturally though, the British and their eye for the ironic followed suit with most other countries and awarded the Finnish monsters maximum points for their Iron Maiden pastiche. Full marks for the dressing up. The British appreciate effort.

Sadly though, it only seemed to further confirmed the trend seen in the other programme where public voting features so much, Big Brother: that the British tv-watching voting public will always vote for the circus freaks, the spectacle and the ridiculous.

Christ, Big Brother 7 starts today.

I am aware of the irony that blogging about a show I hate and think should be taken off air gives it more exposure and means I'm getting involved with it. But at least this involvement is me airing a damning opinion on the bastard programme.

Another three (maybe four?) months of watching nobodies become somebodies because they're a bunch of twats who, if you put them in a house together for several months, are fairly obviously going to have flings, or have fights. Brilliant.

"I know! Let's put a good looking girl in there, and some guys!"
"Yeah, yeah, and we can have a gay guy too!"
"What about someone who isn't English? You know, just to mix it up?"
"Yeah! Lads, we've got a programme and a half on our hands!!!"

The tv feeds the tabloids who feed the tabloid reading masses who care about this sort of bile who feed the programme again. It's a vicious, pointless cycle. I don't know which is sadder: people getting incredibly involved in other normal everyday people's lives, or people watching life play out on the TV, as if it's somehow different to what goes on in real life because it's on TV. It's fucking sad.

Putting a guy in who has Tourettes? Well, that will make funny TV viewing for about 7 seconds, seeing someone who can't help but swear randomly every so often. In the end, he'll probably be one of the cleaner-mouthed people on there, seeing as the housemates this series seem the likely bunch of tarts and idiots that always get on, with the token lesbian, Muslim, vegan or whatever thrown in just so everyone can't get along. Poor old George Orwell. He must be turning in his grave to think that his revolutionary novel is never going to be the first thing to spring to people's minds when someone says Big Brother, and worse, what an entirely circus spectacle it has shockingly become.

I might still watch a bit of this, because sadly otherwise I'll be out of the loop for most conversation that'll take place over the summer. Until June 9th, that is, when the World Cup starts. Ha ha! Have that girls, Channel 4 and Big Brother! Men will be talking about football on BBC and ITV for months, and you'll be stuck with your pointless little people being twats for the cameras. Yeah.

FUCK off, BB7.

Tim 1, Blogger 0

A quick post: and I thought I wasn't learning much at Uni...

So I was deleting a comment from my last post because it was an ugly spam comment of no use at all, when I suddenly realised that my links to other websites and other blogs were missing from my sidebar. Upon checking my template, I found that they'd just disappeared. For no apparent reason; Blogger had taken away the carefully organised section of my blog that I'd put in for networking the small group of us that carry on blogging.

However, Blogger, you hadn't reckoned on me being something of an amatuer in Dreamweaver, had you? No longer is the 'edit template' section of Blogger an overwhelming abundance of meaningless numbers, words, and phrases. Thanks to dreamboat Dreamweaver Will, I know a thing or two about code now, and in 15 minutes they were all restored back to normal. It even gave me the confidence to try a fancy link in a comment on Kate R's site. Which worked!

So Blogger, until next time. And to everyone else out there, code isn't insurmountable. Together, we can beat it! And THEN, we can join it.

TV comes good...at the worst possible time

With exams looming and yet more pieces of work still due in, I can't remember a time for ages, certainly not since I began Uni, where TV has been so watchable. Just taking today (Sunday) for example, I got up, watched the Grand Prix, watched Sky Sports News for the last day of football of the season, then had a break til Top Gear at 8, England World Cup Heroes at 9, The Office at 10, and Match of the Day at 10:45- 12:15am! I spent around 4 consecutive hours watching this evening, and around 3 hours during the day. Not how I should be spending my time.

But, more generally, there are more programmes on that I watch regularly now than in a long long time. The fantastic awesomeness of improbability that is Lost series 2 has finally begun, while the brilliant unique laugh out loud comedy of Green Wing is carrying on on fridays (repeated saturday nights). Added to that is the new series of Top Gear, every sunday. And, new student favourite replacing Countdown, Deal or No Deal, is every weekday! Now I won't admit to watching DOND every day, but it certainly hasn't lost its charm. I think the charm relies on the ease of relation to the contestants, in that there is absolutely no skill involved, you just spend 45 minutes seeing how lucky you are on national television. Anyone could be a winner.

That isn't to mention the feast of football that has been on in the evenings recently, and still two more finals to come between now and exams. Thank god the exams are out the way before the world cup starts, or I'd have actually failed them.

I've never been a big fan of TV, especially when it's so hard, among the thousands of programmes on hundreds of channels, to find something good on. For example, ITV is basically The Sun in tv channel format, while Channel 4 is being very hit and miss, not least with the sensationalist style of its news programmes recently. The BBC continues to fuck me off by commissioning some real crap, including Titty Titty Bang Bang, countless bargain hunting/auctioning/holiday home programmes, and the drivel that is Two Pints of Lager and A Packet of Crisps. It has done even better by giving us a new show by the same writers. Brilliant oversight. So, it has come as some surprise to me to find that at the moment, I'm actually spending quite some time in front of the idiot box.

Idiot!

Vote BNP (well, don't, but lots of people are)

Ngngngngngngng.

Like tempers in the middle of a riot, there has been a sudden flare up of interest in the far-right/fascist policies that the BNP offers as an 'alternative' to the politics of other parties. Coinciding with the upcoming local elections, the pressure seems to be on the favourites to address issues of immigration more seriously in order to avoid embarrassment by losing local seats to parties such as the BNP, Respect and UkIP.

Quite why this has escalated so quickly recently I'm not sure. Maybe it has something to do with a similar US situation just now, where Bush is pushing for tougher laws on immigration. This has, incidentally, resulted in mass protests this week advocating the value of the 'immigrant workforce' and citizenship.

It also ironically coincides with the three linked firebombings recently in London, all Asian-owned business. There's nothing like a racist attack to put things into perspective. Yes, the BNP proposes stronger actions on the immigration issue than other parties. Perfectly aceptable. The trouble is, that's all some people need to be convinced. Dig a little deeper (indeed, just LOOK at the surface, nevermind scratch it) and the racist undertones to the BNP are clear to see. Log on to their homepage, and the first sentence you're hit with is this: Can you just sit there and watch as our country is being ripped apart by the forces of multiculturalism?

For a country supposedly one of the most economically, technologically and socially developed in the world, there's a lot of backwards thinking still rife in certain areas. We can do without more and more people subscribing to such views.

When the going gets tough/yay English football!

the tough watch a video of a cat falling asleep. Nevermind dreamweaver8, exams, revision, not being motivated to do any of them, just imagine you own this cat. If only we all had one.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3573852431733156394&pl=true

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Kudos tonight to Middlesborough, who for the second time in 3 weeks, had to score 4 goals in a European match to win, and did. English teams to make a clean sweep of the footballing trophies?

Arsenal to win the Champions League? Hmmm. Unlikely since they're playing Barca, by far and away the best team in Europe this last year, though it's just the sort of arrogant thing the bastards would do:
Lehman: "Oh look we won the Champions League, how the hell did we do that?" Henry: "Nevermind, we're clearly amazing, but I'm off to Barca anyway".

'Boro to win the UEFA Cup? Well it's an easier task than Arsenal's. Sevilla are no mugs though, and are easily the best side Boro will have had to play since Roma. Can't see them pulling three unlikely wins off in a row.

England to win the World Cup? The 'best chance since 1966' brigade are so right. England have a world class squad through the whole team. On our day, we could beat Brazil, Argentina, Germany. On an off day, we could lose to Paraguay. If we avoid Germany in the first knock-out round, I think we could overcome anyone else at any stage until the final, and who knows then.

And post-world cup, a new foreign coach era! Luiz Felipe Scolari is all but appointed into the role of England Manager fron August 1st. It seems to have divided opinion however, but it's a clueless divide to me. Scolari is clearly qualified for an international job - he's been in the final of the most recent World Cups and European Championships - and compared to the English candidates (today I even heard bloody Steve Bruce as an option) he's a different class. Out of the three main English contenders, only one (Sam Allardyce) is managing a club in the top half of the English premier league. (If you include Pearce, that's 1/4). None of the English contenders have had overwhelming club success: Curbishley has enjoyed another below average season with Charlton for about the 8th season running, McLaren's Middlesborough have been slumming it in the lower mid table, and have reached a clup competition final for just the second time in 9 years, and this season, Bolton's wheels are drastically falling off at the crucial time. There isn't an English manager with the track record to say 'I can win England trophies'. So to Scolari, welcome.

Overall though, it's been a superb season for English football. Chelsea have won the league, Man U have won the (mickey mouse) Carling Cup, Liverpool or West Ham are going to win the FA Cup, and some new faces will be in Europe next year (from Tottenham, Blackburn, Bolton, Newcastle, West Ham). If both our teams could take the European cups to have 5 different English teams with trophies, I'd take that.