Subtle religious bias at the Beeb?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7955846.stm

Read the top paragraph. Then read it again. And again. And as many times as you need to until you see what I’m getting at.

Why I never get haircuts

Apparently my new interview hair makes me look ‘elfin’. A word more usually used to describe Zoe Wannemaker. Amazing.

So I’m an elf with bleeding fingers and a hacking cough (latest in the long line of viruses to lay siege to my immune system). Tolkien would have had a field day!

Oh. Really? It didn’t work out?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7939303.stm

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

How depressing.

Turns out even the best forms of the new media can be infected by managerese bullshit.

Makes you sad, when you think about it.

And another thing….

Where’s my firmware update T-Mobile? I want to be able to use Latitude (like Brightkite but, you know, with any hope of getting a reasonable market share) on my phone!

Because that would be sweet.

You can’t always get what you want…

I’m writing this on lunch break, so can’t go into details too much – not that I probably would anyway on this (rare) occasion….

At the moment I’m definitely going through a Rolling Stones/other rock/blues infused music phase, and this is probably the song I’m listening to/having stuck in my head most often. It seems particularly relevant for some reason. Anyway, what I’m wondering is – does anyone in my age group even know what they want? Is it just me that finds the basic question a little bit too hard to answer? I doubt it, but I’m feeling all turmoil-y about a bunch of things and am pissed off about it. Regular readers (hi, how are you?) don’t think that this has anything to do with anyone other than me – it’s long-term life choices I’m thinking about, rather than anything in the here and now. I basically have too many options that look like they lead to mutually exclusive fulfilments. And I want all the fulfilments goddammit.

Wow. That was pointless.

In other news, I’ve just finished reading Ben Goldacre’s “Bad Science”, which is excellent, if a little repetitive (linguistically) and belligerent (I kind of want to take the man aside and tell him that sometimes there are more important things then being right – although I know that the answer would be “people who want to live in ignorance for valid reasons don’t have to read the book” – which is a legitimate and unassailable argument). I recommend it, as it’s quick and easy to grasp, as well as hilarious – particularly the material on Gillian McKeith.

Also reading Coupland’s “jPod”, which is good so far, and Wolfe’s “I am Charlotte Simmons”, which is just as good as “Bonfire of the Vanities”, but makes me miss being at University (odd, since it describes the experience in less than glowing terms).

Umm… what else? I’m thinking (again) about giving up smoking. Doubt it’ll happen for two reasons: 1. I like smoking when I’m out with friends. 2. I NEED to smoke at work or I’ll snap and kill someone to bits. Other than that, I’m still sick of living in Oxford when most of my friends are in London – although there’s something in the back of my mind that suggests that I’d pine for Oxford if I was in London (eternally unsatisfiable, what can I say?) That’s about it. Good God I can’t wait for the spring to start properly.

Wow.

So this is all rather exciting. First I got linked to by rupop (now taken down, I assume because the relevant post is gone), now I’m OxGoss material. And there I was thinking that I was a washed up old hack with no relevance any more. Nice, if somewhat creepy, to know someone out there cares about a temporary admin worker in Oxford. Even if it is probably only MH or HCP.

Anyway… I said that I’d put something up about the last post, because some of the responses I got were not what I was expecting. Yes, it was mindless self-indulgence, and no, I’m not embarrassed about that. Ultimately I’m not very concerned with keeping a private mental space – I’ve said before that I use this blog as  I would any other diary – AFAIC if you’re really that interested in my life and you have no connection to me then you’re really a bit sad.

Reviewing what I wrote I still think that it’s all accurate, although I can see how it could come across as a bit adolescent ‘nobody understands me’. Well it’s a blog – these things happen. I do worry though that my friends might think me ungrateful to them, because that really wasn’t what I was driving at.

Like most people, I think I’ve got good sides and bad sides – I’m also a massive narcissist, so I talk about myself all the time. In real life I tend to focus on what I think are the good bits, so I guess it’s natural that I use this blog as a sink for rumination on the less good bits or the bits I’m not sure about. Writing something down is a really useful way of working through it and, where action needs to be taken, working out what needs to be done. For instance, I wrote that I wish I didn’t over-think so much, which I hadn’t really realised I was doing habitually. Now that I’ve thought about it I hopefully won’t do it so much.

Whatever, whatever, whatever. The point I want to make is that I’m aware that I’m often difficult to be around, and that I don’t seem to care very much about that/I seem to blame it on other people. By writing out the first 25 things about me that came to mind, honestly and without censoring anything, I hoped both to show that to be wrong and also to work out what things I wanted to change about myself. Sorry to anyone who found that offensive or inconvenient – although you didn’t have to read it, did you?

Perplexed

Ok… I’ll bite. So I got a fair bit of negative feedback about my last post (now deleted out of consideration for others). I was expecting that, as it was fairly personal and (so I thought) fairly self-excoriating. But a couple of people have been in touch to suggest that I seemed angry, which I really don’t remember being. So just a clarification: I meant no harm and I didn’t intend to come off as attacking anybody. Sorry for any offence caused. I guess I don’t really get how people work…

Anyway, I’m late to meet some people, so more on this later.

Additional elections stuff. You might be able to vote in this one…

OUSU elections. They’re totally happening (despite what you may have heard…) If you’re a matriculated member of Oxford University head over to www.mi-vote.com and have your say in who will represent you in the next academic year. If you think OUSU’s great you’ll probably be voting anyway; if you hate it this is your chance to make a positive contribution for change and development.

That is all. More ramblings in the near future.

Euphoria.

The election’s in the books. And in case you hadn’t heard – the good guys won! Last night was truly epic, history in the making; my generation has just experienced its defining moment, and damn it feels good.

In other news, I kinda rock at political punditry. For the record, here are the battlegrounds I was right about:

Ohio

Florida

Virginia

Iowa

New Mexico

Colorado

and Nevada.

But I missed Indiana (which I thought would be close, but would break for McCain); NC, which I thought would be carried by McCain, has yet to declare according to RCP. Ditto Missouri – which really dents its reputation as a bellwether…

Now some of you might be thinking that it’s hardly surprising that I called the majority of states correctly, seeing as every other pundit, wannabe or otherwise, did as well. To those who’d say that I say ‘fuck you, this is a great day for me – don’t be taking the shine off it’.

Although today has been grey and miserable in Oxford, and despite the fact that I had to publish a newspaper on little sleep and much hangover, I had a genuine sense of peace with the world. Everything seems a little bit rosier today…

Ironically I think it was McCain, gracious to a fault in defeat, who rounded the campaign off best. I suppose that’s inevitable – Obama’s acceptance speech was expected to be one of the (if not the) greatest of his rhetorical bursts, but it was kind of surprising to see the defeated Republican candidate stand up and deliver one of the finest speeches of the entire campaign. There’s an interesting article here about the concession. I don’t agree with the idea that McCain has such an underdog persona that he prefers losing, but he certainly takes it with grace and honour – implicitly acknowledging that his loss was America’s (and the world’s) gain. Watching this speech I couldn’t help but feel that if this McCain had been running – McCain 2000, rather than the truculant gnome he allowed Palin, Schmidt and the other sub-Rovians who formed his campaign team to make him – we might have seen a much closer race. For all my anti-McCain sentiment during this campaign I think I’ve been pretty consistant in saying that he’d have made a good President if W hadn’t stolen the show in the 2000 race. In the end, he made the misstep of trying to ape the tactics that had cost him the White House at the first attempt; it never looked comfortable, and you got the sense often that Sen. McCain wasn’t fighting the kind of campaign he could look back on with pride, but with that wonderful, humble and considered concession speech he instantly reversed a lot of the bitterness I and people I know had been feeling toward him.

I’m sure I could go on, but you can get the same thoughts as I had on the election elsewhere and better written. I’m still knackered from the all night party. Maybe more tomorrow… In the meantime, I can go to bed knowing that the world is a much better place right now than it was 24 hours ago.