Blog: Halloween

I’m having a bit of trouble deciding whether Halloween is the least interesting yearly day of celebration or not. It’s a battle between it and Easter (I’m not even bothering to count bonfire night; more like boring-fire night lol!!!), and Easter is currently proving the slightly less pointless. I mean, during Easter you are socially obliged to consume unhealthy amounts of egg-shaped confectionary, whereas during Halloween the traditional way to obtain chocolate is through a door-to-door costume-based system, which, let’s face it, is effort. 

Speaking of which, it’s been a long time since I’ve been trick or treating, which is good because it is almost certainly socially unacceptable, border-line phone the police territory for someone my age. The only way those over the age of about thirteen can still engage in the tradition is to give birth to child humans and walk around with them in the role of supervisor. Of course if you’re horrendously desperate for free sugar and as of yet have not succeeded in finding a reproductive partner, then you can just walk behind groups of children in the hope that you’ll seem like their mother or father, only to leech off their chocolate haul throughout the evening (not recommended). 

If you think about it, the ‘trick or treat’ deal is a rather unjust and threatening exchange. A child, dressed in a Woolworth’s tribute to a fictional character that uses black magic for malevolent purposes, demands confectionary at the potential cost of ‘trick’, which can only be assumed is some sort of harmful practical joke. It’s almost a diluted version of a mugging and, if on any other day of the year you commanded a stranger to provide you with Haribo under the threat of throwing an egg at their double glazing, you’d be on a slippery slope towards an ASBO. 

Having said that, the ‘trick’ element of the whole system has become rather non-existent in more middle class areas, so much so that the exchange should really be renamed ‘treat please’. If denied sweets in spite of combining a Hulk mask and Power Rangers costume, most of Surrey’s children just walk away in shame. I am told however, that in rougher areas of London the ‘trick’ element is actually the more prominent of the two, and the system should really be called ‘this is my Mondeo now’. 

If you are a cool person, a lot of what I’ve said about Halloween being pointless may have gone straight over your popular head, as like birthdays, Christmas, New year and Fridays, Halloween is just another fantastic opportunity to get ‘wasted’ via alcohol (well Halloween is all about spirits). 

Firstly I must apologise for that pun and secondly I must advise all such alcohol users to begin carving a pumpkin prior to drinking. This is because for me at least, carving a face into a large root vegetable is extremely difficult: many a year I have exerted effort to the extent of perspiration in an attempt to make my Pumpkin look angry/scary, only to result in it looking confused or inquisitive. This year I have quite literally not bothered to add a face to the one provided and will simply leave it in its natural state, possibly putting a torch on the floor next to it so it’s at least visible. 

That might seem like a distinct lack of effort on my part, but in reality a large proportion of the British public acknowledge Halloween to the same extent they acknowledge music copyright laws. It’s one of those half events that as a nation we’re not entirely sure how seriously to take, much like Valentine’s Day or black history month. Some say that ever increasing Americanisation will mean it gets bigger and bigger, but based on current social and economic growth I think the popular Chinese ‘Bow to Emperor 胡锦涛’ day is set to be the next big thing.  

I feel I come across as too negative in these blogs, so to end on a positive note I’d like to point out how nice the weather’s been recently.

I’ve never been a huge fan of Facebook. In fact I felt a sense of heartbreak when we all turned our backs on Bebo, disregarding it as good only for year eights who feel cool because they’ve stayed up to watch Skins. Good old Bebo was a harmless playground for everyone who wanted to take the ‘when will you loose you’re vaginity’ quiz. On the other hand, Facebook is a sweaty sack of photo albums, where pictures of half-friend party-goers mock my mildly inferior social standing through alcohol-based calamities captured in full HD.

You may well be thinking that if I don’t like Facebook, why am I using it? And, assuming you don’t live in North Korea, you would have every right to think that. The actual reason is probably a combination of boredom, wanting to have something to moan about, and peer pressure. 

I’m not the only one who moans though. Facebook updates induce a similar scale of anger and uproar to when it turned out Sunny-D was toxic. Everyone acts like the homepage has turned into hideously incomprehensible, baffling maze of shiny pointlessness, moving all the comfortingly positioned sidebars and tabs so that they’re spread out in some tauntingly difficult to find array of confusion. “Bring back the old Facebook!” we cry; “WTF new chat is so gay!” we desperately articulate, before forgetting what the old layout looked like and continuing as normal. I’ve noticed that this happens pretty much whenever Facebook updates, suggesting that each revision has been negative and thus the website has been becoming perpetually worse for about six years. Based on this, if the site reverted to its original 2004 incarnation we’d be uncharacteristically positive about it all.

You’ve probably notice that, as an entity, Facebook has become huge and the social obligation to join is even vaster. Refuse to sign up and you’ll be left out in some cold, empty world where your friends only exist in real life. Almost all have succumbed; only Sam Tope stands tall; unwilling; defiant. 

Interestingly, Facebook’s dominance has meant that its chat feature has completely replaced its Microsoft rival. Poor MSN: the majority of its once vibrant community have abandoned it, leaving it stranded on the start menu with only the similarly lonely Internet Explorer for company. Perhaps you might accidentally log in to MSN one evening and witness the barren social wasteland first-hand: only two people online; a primary school friend whose existence you’d previously determined was the product of a dream and a fake account whose request you excitedly accepted at a young age because you genuinely believed someone called Lexxy had a secret crush on you. Skype had been suffering from similar levels of neglect recently, but cleverly jumped headfirst into Facebook’s gooey torso, being absorbed into its mass so it can feed off its users like some sort of video call tapeworm. 

The fact that MSN has been replaced by Facebook chat is a big shame actually, as talking on Facebook chat is about as smooth and reliable as two, technologically impaired, slightly deaf elderly men trying to communicate via a lagging video call. 

Some of you might have heard of wacky, partial Facebook-rival ‘Tumblr’. You may even be using it now to read this very condemnation. For those of you who don’t know, a typical post involves a fourteen year old girl reblogging a sepia tinted photo of a woman’s legs next to a Biffa bin™, with the equally confusing caption of “Fame doesn’t care about me losing you” written across it in a white font. If you lack cynicism to the extent that you think ghosts ‘might exist’ then these Tumblr posts may prove intellectually fulfilling, otherwise, don’t touch them with an elongated, antiseptic barge pole. 

And with that I leave you. If anyone wants to organize a Bebo reunion then just message me on MSN.

Blog: Birthdays

In about a week’s time I will be eighteen, which is both good and bad. Starting with the good, being eighteen will mean YouTube will actually let me watch videos flagged with inappropriate content after I foolishly gave it my real birthdate.  As for the bad, I will now look three years younger than my actual age rather than just two. Also, my childhood is effectively over, meaning if there is ever a disaster scenario where the ‘women and children first’ policy comes into play I will no longer be amongst the first rescued, and may have to actually do some rescuing. 

Unnecessary evaluation aside, a birthday should be a time to celebrate. However, since a relative asked me if I will be doing anything for my birthday, it’s struck me that I don’t have enough friends to make a party socially or economically viable. I mean, in order to instigate the kind of atmosphere and circumstances you need for a party you probably need at least ten people. If you invite four to six, which is optimistically what I could muster, you really don’t have a party at all, more of just an awkward gathering. As for the economic viability, well, as far as I’m aware most teenagers run on a combination of alcohol and alcohol related anecdotes, so I’d probably need to buy some to ensure guests don’t just leave as soon as I offer them Tropicana. Thus even if each friend bought me a present worth eight pounds, I don’t think all the overheads would be covered, leaving me with financial debt on top of my disappointment that my friends only spent eight pounds on me. 

Of course I’ve already encountered that moment where an email from a relative arrives asking what I want for my birthday and I have to somehow make it clear that I definitely want money without saying I want money. We’ve all had this problem and, as you’ll know, if you’re too ambiguous you may end up with the dreaded book voucher, which is a is a bit like wanting a Swiss army knife receiving a whisk. Fortunately a lot of the time I can actually ask for clothes. This is as clothes shopping for me is about as fun as accidentally staring at the sun (but longer) and mainly involves me convincing myself I don’t need to try things on because I’m “probably still a men’s small”.  

Then there’s actually going into college on the day. We all try and avoid the one knob who’s unaware that year eight has ended and thinks that punching you in the arm is the best way to celebrate you going another year without dying. If you’re lucky there might be a bunch of girls who sing you happy birthday, only to follow it with a “WOOOOO!” so loud that you won't be able to hear yourself ask for a tissue to clean the blood out of your ears shortly afterwards. 

Likewise, Facebook birthday messages provide another entertaining angle to proceedings. 2009’s total of three was resoundingly smashed in 2010, and although for a while I was worried my Facebook inactivity would mean no gap between last year’s and this year’s messages (ensuing an uber-long slur of duplicated happy birthdays), this embarrassment has not occurred. How you react to these messages I don’t know: it’s tempting to like them all, but then that takes ages, and if I only like the ones with correct grammar then that’s just prejudice. To be honest no-one knows what the etiquette is, but as long as you don’t point out that you barely even nod at the majority of well-wishers when you walk past them, it’s probably fine.  

You’re probably thinking ‘go on Adrian, point out the awkwardness in writing thank you emails.’ Unfortunately as I’m over my usual word limit I’ll have to just put the phrases ‘do you say love from?’, ‘mail merge’, ‘can’t remember what they got me’ and leave you to fill in the rest.

Blog: particle acceleration and The Daily Mail

Like many people my age, given a college computer and five minutes before my next lesson I will aimless read and re-read various pages on the BBC News and Sport websites. Why I assume that a story concerning Roald Dahl’s shed being moved will have updated after a minute of reading about the Rugby world cup that I haven’t watched any of, I don’t know, but I refresh the page anyway. 

As dull as my existence may seem in the light of that previous paragraph, aimless browsing in fact led me to read a really rather interesting article about the CERN tube thing that lives underneath Switzerland this week. Apparently some particles travelled faster than the speed of light, which, to physicists at least, is the equivalent of finding out that two plus three actually equals Al Jazeera. If proved reliable with further testing this finding also means that Einstein (or one of his theories) was wrong. Surely then if Einstein can’t be trusted on physics, other previously universally trusted resources such as textbooks, head university lecturers and Wikipedia are in fact as reliable as the moral compass of a Daily Mail journalist. Speaking of which, I took a look at what the Mail online had to say about this scientific discovery, only to find myself distracted by the column of tit-related scandal that runs down the side of the page, drawing my eyes and soul into a murky world of the x-factor and cancer. 

Anyway, the BBC article essentially puts into perspective how apathetic we’ve become when it comes to the kind of news that really should be shaking the foundations of what we know as reality. We’re so used to this kind of headline, that if it became clear that all mass, time and existence led directly back to Fred Dibnah then we’d wait for the relevant satirical reference on ‘Mock the Week’ before forgetting all about it. 

We’re lucky in this country though, as it’s not everywhere that often confusing and sometimes nihilistic physics theories actually make the mainstream. The highly successful ‘Wonders of the Universe’ is a good example, although it and Brian Cox’s popularity are a slight mystery to me. Cox seems so smiley and relaxed when he speaks it’s almost as if he’s receiving an amazing massage from an out of shot koala bear. He also uses the words billion and trillion with such regularity that they quickly lose all sense of being amazing and huge- as result, by the end of the show the only way to make the universe seem anything but tiny is for Cox to use made-up numbers like a dillion gajillion.  

Yet despite all this Cox has (apparently) become a bit of a sex icon. In the same way Elvis inspired a generation of teenage girls to live the rock and roll dream, Cox has inspired a generation of women approaching middle age to contemplate the relative position of dark  matter in the universe in terms of time and gravity. This can only be a good thing for physics, and it also means it no longer relies entirely on the jokes in the CGP textbooks to make itself seem interesting. 

Before I go I should mention that this blog almost definitely contains numerous physics-related inaccuracies. So if you notice one, please just lower your personal opinion of me without letting me know, because editing is just effort.

Blog: Personal statements

A while back I said to myself that I was going to spend a couple of hours a week attempting to furiously mock whatever had been on TV in the recent past. Unfortunately this week I’ve essentially not watched enough TV to fulfil this remit, so I don’t have any particular programme to make fun of via humorously constructed similes.

I need something else to write about. But to be fair, as far as I’m aware only about two to five people actually read what I write. I could then just take the liberty of choosing a subject extremely specific to my existence; for instance I might spend a few paragraphs ranting about how ridiculously full the bike racks at college are now that the first years have all decided there is literally no alternative to cycling. But because I’m kind, and also because I can’t think of that much bike-rack related material, I’ll write about something a tad more broad.

It’s heading towards that time of year when the majority of seventeen and eighteen year olds all suddenly realise for the first time in their lives that they have great leadership skills. That’s right, the few months where everyone attempts to write their personal statement. For those of you who have somehow remained oblivious to such a document, the personal statement is where university applicants spend four thousand characters trying to make it seem like having played football in Year 11 proves that they have the dedication and ability to transfer existing skills to new environments. Basically it’s just a big ‘I’m not as terrible as my grades suggest’ plea, optimistically sent to a bunch of universities.

Unavoidably, such a document will always be rich with exaggeration. Because, let’s face it, saying “I played football a bit because tennis club wasn’t on in the winter” doesn’t sound anywhere near as good as the whole dedication and ability lie I wrote in the previous paragraph. The thing is, universities must know this by now and are probably more impressed when someone claims to have little to no communication ability at all, because at least they know the candidate’s honest.

Of course we’re told that those who read our personal statements may be reading hundreds each day, so you have to make yours interesting for it to stand out. In reality, if this is the case these university employees are probably so mind-blowingly bored and alienated that if they read a personal statement that was just a summary of the entire third season of Glee, they’d expressionlessly move it onto the maybe pile without even batting an eyelid (yes, I do imagine they have yes, no and maybe piles).

They don’t just rely on what you say about yourself though: teacher references supposedly have a similar weighting. This is a problem if your tutor is the kind so inattentive that they start a one-to-one conversation with “so you are…?” in the hope that when you say your name and they’ll nod and repeat it quickly enough afterwards to seem like they knew. They look at all your grades as well, which is a shame, because a lot of people I know saw GCSEs as just a glamourized version of SATs in the same way real life is just a glamourized version of playing Xbox. Coincidentally, playing Xbox is just one of the things that many applicants will claim has provided them with an interest in how technology has developed and a strong ability to work alone.

Ultimately though the amount of feedback you’ll get when you write your personal statement will dilute it so heavily that it won’t even be vaguely personal. It’s a bit like a strange, application-based version of Chinese whispers, where what you wanted to write is the initial whisper and what actually gets sent off is the last, strange statement that contains only a few misunderstood fragments of the original and makes everyone in the room laugh when you reveal what you initially said.  

So there you go. A blog thing that isn’t about TV. Now to find somewhere to put my bike.

TV Blog: Formula 1

The coverage of formula 1 is set to slip partially into the hands of Sky next year and somewhat out of the hands of the BBC. This has disappointed many fans of the sport (and pleased many fans of repetitive adverts), but it is important to consider that this deal was finalised by Bernie Ecclestone, and when Ecclestone is involved nothing is ever finalised.

For those of you who don’t know who Bernie Ecclestone is, he’s a hundred and twelve years old (rumoured to be immortal), looks like someone’s started to draw a lasagne and then given up and made it into a person, and enjoys making absurd decisions whenever he can. As the boss of F1 Bernie’s job is to make sure the sport is handled in the most professional way possible. However this remit seems to have passed over his head, which considering his height is not surprising, and instead he has revelled in suggesting a chocolate medal system for drivers, an on-track sprinkler system to appeal to fans of Mario kart, and is looking forward to commissioning a Sudan grand prix. Because of Ecclestone, I honestly expect to be greeted with the news that the UK coverage is to be shown primarily on ‘QVC’, with a highlights package being broadcast every half a year on ‘men and motors’. 

It’ll be a shame to lose some of the BBC’s coverage though, because overall it’s been of excellent quality. Sure, the line-up was never perfect. Eddie Jordan’s rants are absolutely unintelligible: it’s like he starts making a point, thinks of a subsequent point as he’s speaking, and then tries to start that point before finishing the current one, only to revisit strands of the original point half-way through a third point. All of this is interspersed with hand gestures and sighs that suggest he’s just as annoyed as we are that he can’t express what he’s trying to say. 

One the other hand you have David Coulthard, who looks like he was conceived when two cubist paintings decided to mate. DC is rather dissimilar to Eddie in his presentation style, and can eloquently express his Red Bull bias tinted comments with ease. Whenever Eddie is speaking Coulthard always looks highly and rightfully embarrassed, probably in the same way a teenager would look if his mum went up to his friends and asked them whether he’s as sweet with them as he is at home. 

Finally, you have Jake Humphrey, who took the lead role from ITV’s Steve Rider when the BBC started covering F1. This was good because Steve Rider held his microphone like someone had asked him to hold one of their sausages (hold it properly damnit man!). Humphrey used to present the CBBC classic ‘Bamzooki’, which if I remember correctly involved a group of children shouting at an empty table onto which blocky creature things were later superimposed. Clearly Humphrey is good at dealing with children, which is a useful ability to have when working with Eddie Jordan.

The charisma of the three works fairly well, although the jokes about pink shirts and Eddie being old sound like they were lifted from a script to a Spotify advert that tries to be funny. To be honest, I’m not even going to worry about who covers what next year. There are always not at all illegal internet streams, and if Vettel’s current dominance continues then I might as well just listen to the German national anthem on repeat anyway.