Author: tiiroac

matt teaches writing

I was in writing 1 today, and it turns out that we are goint to have a lesson or two on writiing online – blogging, fanfic etc. the tutor, however, claims sshe knows nothing about these things, so guess who she asked to write the smegging lesson.

ME!

“Matthew, can you make me a list of sited…?”

[derranged spastic laugh] she has no idea what she has got herself into!

happy birthday luke

jjust having a lazy sunday morning here. the family are sitting in the conservetory in the jammaria (conservetory) reading the sunday papers. last night we went to the italian resteraunt in town – it was lovely. not that this matters, but I wore some cool trousers, with FLIES. i’ve been secretly craving decent kecks recently, not joggers. anyway, the night ruled. the waiters were excellent at makking us all layugh, and the food was superb, if hard to cchew. dad chose somme excellent wines, especially thee chianti.

what we have

what do we have here.

1 undergraduate bioinfomaticist, having used computers since he cam walk… can program the hind legs off a donky

1 phd student in physics, who can take apart a computer in seconds and then e have a troll, using a punctuation mark because sshe or he hasn’t the wit to find an alias. kiss goodbye to your computer!

and now for something completely different

…the arbouritum

It’s somewhere approaching freezing outside, but this place makes me feel tropical. I am sitting in the Arboretum – a place in the middle of the canteen with a high roof. It has tables to sit at, and beds planted with trees and shrubs. There is a palm and a pond with fish. It echoes in here with the sound of water. For some reason it reminds me of Stapely Water Gardens, and makes me feel botanical and scientific, which could explain my recent interest in dinosaurs and natural history.

a bit of housekeeping

well, last nite was cool in both senses ocf the word. I suspected it might freese so i took the chair to the disco; i didn’t fancy my chances of getting home safely. at 11,, security pushed me home, and the plan worked a trea.

I notice quite a discussion going onover my computer. becca vursus dad. its quite cool to have a friend fight my ccornerr for once – i appreciate it becs. however I just want both sides to know one thing: from what i have seen, both parties respect eachother loads. my parents seem rather fond of becca, and becca seems to like mum and dad, and for that matter the Lukester, aka afroboy. thus, if there appears to be annimosity on the reply threads, I strongly suspect it is an illusion.

that having been said, the quite insulting repliees of “.” really do nnot help. moreover, the fact that this person leaves comments while hiding behind a punctuation mark seems cowardly.

i’ll write a proper entry later.

the idiots

the idiots is the second dogme 995 film, and i watched it this evening. i found it both appauling and hillarious. its about a group of young people who ‘spaz out’ i.e, pretend to be mentally disabled, as a form of expression. they take it in turns tto be the minder, and go to public places like the swimming baths, where their assumed disability seems to give them carte blanche to behave abominably. the funniest scene is where one of them leaves his ‘retarded’ brother with a group of bikers, who end up takingg him to the loo. what is telling, though, is a scene where a few people with down’s syndome come to the house, and they act with prejudice.

please note, though, that this film is highly pornographic in parts.

howdy mr. bush

today I just want to say that I for one am welcoming bush’s visit. at last he has decided to mend fences. in iraq, although there is a long way to go, there is democracy, and I’ve always thought that democracy is a good thing. thus, the time has come to put aside our differences and work together.

surely this is a step in the right direction at last.

croisants

i know i shouldn’t laugh, but it was funny. this morning for breakfast i had croisants, but my helper didn’t know how to cut them properly. sh tried cutting them sideways, like a rolll, and squidjing the butter and jam in, then cutting them into chuncks forr me to pick up. You know me – i slowly started to chuckle at these totally desecrated lumps of warm french bread. I then proceeded to eat them, getting rather sticky in the process.

reading

this week is reading week. having written most of yesterday, i spent most of today reading. the fifhtieth chapter of summon the lambs appeared online, and it continues to be a sleek and sophisticated – and rather addictive text. I am also quickly finding how much off s git charlie chaplin was: mr. lynn’s biography of him exposes him as a hard and fast comunist. however, I’m starting to think lynn may be a little biassed. its still an exceelllent read though.

6 degrees!

we just got back from my grandparents’ housse in london. my maternal grandparens arrived in london from cyprus in the late 50s, relatively poor. they met, and raised 3 children. these gave them 6 granchildren.

sitting in the front room of haycroft gardens an amazing statisic hit me: those grandchildren all hold or are doing degrees; 3 are doing PHDs; 2 wen to oxford. oddly, tho, I am unique in studying an arts subject.

Not bad for immigrants, eh mr. howard?!

Evolution

Given the recent upsurge in the debate between Darwinism and Creationism, I will attempt to objectively compare and contrast the merits of the two theories. Both need to be given equal respect if one is to be methodical. However, if one has only empiricism in mind, the discussion will be one sided.

Working in the Galapagos Islands, Charles Darwin proposed that all beings on Earth had evolved, and were adaptive. This happens through the process of random mutation and natural selection. It follows that life on Earth has been in a constantly changing state for millions of years. This gives us a time frame from which to work from. The bible says, on the other hand, that the Earth was created 7000 years ago. This offers us a nice contrast which we can use.

First we can use plate tectonics as a test. The Earth’s crust moves at precise speeds, causing continental shift. There is strong evidence that Africa once met South America. Fossil remains of one species exist on both sides of the Atlantic, suggesting that they were once joined. At current continental speeds, they split about 150 million years ago.

This number does not marry up with Genesis. Moreover, the creationist claim that man existed alongside dinosaurs does not add up. Bones decay at a pre-defined rate, showing that the dinosaurs etc existed at a time which agrees with the tectonic data. If such fossils are only 7000 years old, then our theories about decay must be wrong. These decay rates are based on ions, which are part of nuclear physics. If these decay rates are wrong, it would throw all of physics out the window. The fact remains that there is no mention of such beasts in the bible.

WE see similar tales in Cosmology. When we look at the most distant stars, they appear red. The Doppler Effect suggests this is because the stars are moving away from us. Apparently when the paths of such stars are traced, they all originate from one point – the site of the Big Bang.

However, creationists claim that this evidence was planted by either God or the Devil to test our faith. If so, why did God go out of His way to so convincingly disprove Himself. All the available evidence points to a lack of God, from atomic physics to fossil evidence of ancient fish in the Himalaya. It’s true that I myself have heard this evidence second hand, and thus could have been lied to, but on the sheer volume of evidence 9including my experiences at Hebden) All my instincts rule out the existence of a creator. One can argue even with this, but then one might argue forever. What, then, is the purpose of asking the question?

interesting project

I heard about this while I was eating breakfast. it’s quite an interesting project, and I think it would be good for preservation, which I strongly believe in although I reserve the right to eat meat. however, I think it’ll take two or three centuries to complete. good luck to the scientists!

Not that we see much of that around here! we at alsager are too busy playing football and hockey in the name of sport science to do much proper science. what the smeg is sport science anyway?

whatever it is, it seens to be rather noisy.

titarses!

god frigging dammit. microsoft wants me to install the new msn messager, but my pc won’t let me because of the security protocol bullshit luke set up. now i can’t talk to anyone.

NOT FUCKING HAPPY!

curr du drake

I read last nnight that ellen macarthur has beaten the record for sailing around the world. she impresses me a lot. if it was up to me, i’d comission her as an admaral in the royal navy.

ouch, my ‘ead

boy, did i overdo it last night? started off ok, but my friends kept topping up my beer. the disco was rather cool, and at one stage tthey played Greenday’s Basketcase, which is one of my all ttime favourite songs.

reading rules

spent most of today reading: got through a fair chunk of the story of film by mark cousins, and thee chapliain bio arivedd so i rread two chapters of that. i forwent my nightly trip to tthe bar in order to read – its a fascinating work into chaplain, who, I already realise, was a very ambiguous, rather troubled character. the way Lynn uses reasoned, witty debate is marveloous. to top it off, i also read my daily dose of Palin.

quite, quite excellent

grr

i’m very tense tonight. my arms are going into moro quite frequently, and my back aches. bed early tonight.

the library still hasnt got the biography of chaplain i asked for. i”n not complaning – i still think its remarkablre that i have access to any book I want. its by knneth s. lynn, who wrote an excellent biography of hemingway i read three years ago. I l=ooked hynn up on google: he was a conservative, although not a hard liner. this has taught me academic briliance has no reguard for politics, and somene might be conservative and still be invaluable. yes, i know the fact that i ofthen forget this shows how polittically immature I am, but hey, i’m learning.

visiting mark and kat

this weekend, we went to visit kat amd mark in ushaw moor near durham. i like to visit my big bro – ok, we’ve dicagreed on one or two subjeeccts, but the fact remains that i’m dead proud of both my broothers. we got up early yesterday and drove up. i love car journeys – they give me a cjhance to read, think, etc.

got to their place – a smalll, homely terrace with fish – at about 11, and spwnt the rest of the day talking, wwatching football, drinking tea and readding my culture handout. m+k made a very nice lamb cobler, and I slept attheir place. (airbeds kick ass!)

this morning, mark helped me get dressed. it occcured to m that we hadn’t slept under the same roof since he left for oxford, when I was 15 or 16. hmm. I see far tooo little oof my brothers these days.. mum and dad slept in a local b+b.

having watched the australian open, we hadlunvh at a tres nice seaside resteraunt, ovvverlooking a calm north sea nder a blue sky. drove along the coast to the mouth of the tyne, round and back to shaw moor. we dropped m+k off, dad had a nap, and drove homee.

dad put radio 4 on. I must say the iraqi election seems to have gon ewell. I was against the invasion, but I believe democracy is the best form of government. for better or worse, iraq now has democracy, which is a good thing surely.

perhaps the yankss have been vindicated. hmm…

a king in new york

i’m currently working my way through the library’s collection of charlie chaplain films, and tonight I came across something quite, quite interesting. ‘a king in new york’ is one of chaplain’s later films – 1957, i think – and for once I was very impressed wwith it’s politicism. the film concernzs a depposed kingg who moves to new york. hre he’s a celebrity. while touring a school, he meets a young commnist, whose parents soon get tangled up in the mccarthy trials. the film has an anti-mccarthy feel, which given the times in which it was made, is both srprising and dangerous. chaplain himself was hauld in frront of those trials after the film was made, and I was surprised at the boldness of the film.

it’s certainly ignited my interest in ‘the little tramp’. i hope to get his biography from the library soon.

lonely

I fear the old addage is right – one can feel lonelyin a crowded room. for somee reason, i felt lonely at tonights disco. it started off ok – i went to the footie social, and had ben to the ffootie match earlier, but during the disco, i felt lonelyy. everyone was dancing, but i perched mmyyself on the pool table, watching. Fell off said table…bar staff madee executive dcision to send ‘matty’ home, couldn’t argue.

tired

stupid theatre

i ache. went to the theatre last niight, as my friend nick said there was something good on. “cool,” i thought, “a relaxing night at the theatre”. while the thing i saw was in the theatre, it was not a play. there were no seats; the audience walked around a big box in the middle of the hall while four actresses climbed in and out of it, sayiing random lines it seemed. at one point we were ushered inside the box for more random line saying. all I could gather is that it was about a robbery at an art gallery. all the audience had to stand for the duration, about an our.

i ache all over.

annies coming out

in litle over 4 days i have finnished a 250-page book, which I haven’t done in ages. its such a great book, by turns life affirming and heatbreakingly tragic. I regret to say that it has imbued me with a distrust of medical doctors – the evidencce that anne macdonald was intelectually competent was abundant, bbut still the doctors of st nickolas’ (the hospital where she lived) refused to believe that she was anything other than severely retarded. apparently, shee had estimatd the speed of light from watching the moon landings, and had worked out pythagoras from the nappies they put her in. how ironic. I myst say that ii admire annes courage, and rosemarry crossley is now simething of a personal hero.

if reports that some 600 kids are still in long stay hospital are correct, it is surrely my/our duty to free them. annes and roses sheer determination and stubbonaess proove tha such feets are possible. whatt a great book. now, however, i must get back to studying…

my week

this works aain, does it? good-o! well, better write something. first, libraries kick ass – been in the uni library lots this weeek. plus, they managed to get me a copy of the now out of print “annie’s coming out” from the british library. how cool is that?! its a seminal work on communication aids and disability rights; its also a bloody good read. I haven’t read for several hours straight since kenneth lynn’s biography of hemingway, but yesterday I read an entire afternoon away. bliss. next, alsager mmu won the interfaculty cup against man met. yaaay. went to see one of the football matches (boy’s 1sts), and we won 3-1. bill invited me along. yaay!

thursday night, the guys took me to a local pub for a bingo night run by a dubious-looking old man. had a great laugh making up on the spot poetry, chatting and getting drunk. last night, went to he charity disco in aid of the tsunami appeal. great fun. danced a lot. at one stage I had a girl on each arm. woohoo. pretty as [censored].

great fun!

maths

if, last year, I saw that A is possible for me, and B is ‘normallly’ almost always an outcome of A first time, then nature demands ,that i go through B. therefore i reallise that everything following a natural course of events, and I tke it as proof that everything remains possible for me.

I can smile again.

footie

lazy day today. been invited to a college footie match l8r, which I plan to go with mark s to. bill invited me. should be cool.

bought a copy of the independent today. we’re encouraged to do so for writing 1. needed a tabloid for purposes of dexterity, but i sure as hell aint gonna buy a trashy one. the lead today is on the courts marshal in iraq. we colonial british are back to old form, abusing native peoples in their own land. tea, anyone?

heart still hurts, but its on the mend. i feel rather cheerful. i can go back to ogleing girs without feeling guilty!

take-away

its pissing it down outside, and I’m sure as hell aint going out tonight. we just ordered a take-away pizza, kababs etc for our flat, to be picked up from reception by my home helper and unice, a mature a/b exchange student from oz who just moved in with us. i’m looking forward to a quiet night in,

with a little help from my friends

the bar was empty last ight. everyone goes to a nightclub monday, and I’d need a p.a for this. bar empty, I had an idea. I went over to kellet to see my friend jenny. I told her the situation and she offered to take me for free! also, it seems a few of the guys might be going to the lodge tonight, and they offered to take me. i had been feeling somewhat lonely all evening, but that little walk to kellet cheered me up.

cool cattle

Reading michael palin’ss books at http://www.palinstravels.co.uk never fails to cheeer me up. for various reason’s i’ve been feeling rather down. I simply cannot stop worrying about life on the ‘net, and what fairly random people across the atlantic think of me. phuk knows why I worry about it – I just do.

However, I’m currently reading himalaya. Palin makes me feel walm, seemingly assuring me that there is a world out there. the following paragraph made me laugh out lound, and I’ll smile all day.

“The fort where the horse-eaters held out is still there, sitting low on a promontory round which the muddy grey river swirls. Its 25-foot-high, 240-foot-long walls still stand, but they look a little sad, with plaster cracked and fallen away, revealing the bare bones underneath. Groves of tall trees loom over the bedraggled ramparts and beneath them contented cows chomp their way through fields of wild cannabis.” woo. high cows! thats some wild shit!