Personal Blogs

These are currently available as pre-orders. Not that the OU merchandise isn't spiffy. But Clear Soul are Clear Soul so you know, buy a hoodie. 'Cos then they can come to the UK. Then I can stop having these very difficult passive aggressive emotions towards the French. They are available on their website, which is probably Clear Soul Forces dot something, all one word, anyways,

My course materials turned up! Sort of. I had them sent to the place where I live, which is a small block of flats made out of shipping containers, somehow they got lost in the post. Probably because we had this thing put on the gate outside so only residents could get in, that they forgot to inform the postie of. So I got them resent. They have sent me print outs of the online materials. Which is fine and stuff. No excuse not to get on now though.

I am trying to think legal thoughts but see, there was this party, which I went to. It lasted a couple days. I drank as much as I have ever drunk. I then managed to get up the next day (BECAUSE I AM THOR!) and go to work to collect my wages and say Hi, then I got the bus to Sunny Tunny. That was two hours. Also surprisingly fine, though I was a little tired the other end. I then managed to get through the drive to Maidstone and dinner before eventually having to retire before the end of Captain America 2. My God. I learned some things about myself last night. I woke up today, no glasses, no contacts, used up my whole inhaler, a whole pack of ibuprofen and paracetamol and even my emergency snickers. So Mother had a panic attack about the asthma, deciding to drive me all the way home to make sure I got another inhaler. This is because nowadays you can't get emergency prescriptions or anything, records are also kept a lot less long. So when asking in the pharmacy (that I went to for like four years) if I could get an inhaler, I might as well have been asking if they sold diazapam by the hundred. I have to get my bizzle together for work today anyway. I don't feel, Asgardian, lets say.

So yeah I have got to get on with this degree. I have lots to get on with at the moment. I am contemplating getting myself one of those little chromebook laptop things. Though I don't know. Having avoided the hipster hand grenade that is iPads, do I want to risk it? I have an old piece of crap laptop that is so just much more retro. Blatantly going to end up hiking that around with me. Fucking news. Ebola, great, yes, its terrible. It was terrible when the first ten cases or whatever were uncovered. You totally under-informed everyone and now that it is as bad is it is, its better news so on it goes. New Scientist reckons if there are over ten thousand cases before the New Year there will be a million in the next year. Syria and the general Jihad is gathering pace. Excellent. Awesome. Report it more in the Western media, just to make sure they know, that yeah, terrorism is bad mmkay. That'll get 'em scared. Not riled up. Maybe more news reports on multi-cultural Britain and less on terrorism. Not that The Sun is responsible for using terrorism as a way to unite people and sell newspapers to the enraged hoard. They all do it in fairness. It's OK *hug* I love you interwebs. Whatever the fuck else. Apologies for the cussing. Rio Ferdinand is getting sued for Twitter Abuse. Which is abuse of twitter or abuse using twitter? I don't know. Or care. Some more terrible racism in football in Eastern Europe/Russia. Not that the racism is like, bad. Nope. They just need to keep it away from football. Ukraine much? The only sign we have of the seriousness of the engrained beliefs of certain groups is through football hooliganism, which we stop, but are then surprised when a 'revolution' like the one there occurs. Even then, its as peaceful as is humanly possible, until a major power gets involved and make it all military. So hey lets leave the EU and undo the Human Rights Act! Not that I don't get it. Having read more about some of the ways that rule about interpreting it differently for different countries given circumstance has been used, is scary. They just need to be more like America are with their foreign policy. If you deny people these rights, we will bomb and occupy you until you do. Then theres that whole independent military problem. Hired guns. War mongering. Ugh.

What have I been listening to lately, I hear you cry! You crying. Mostly. No, I jest, more metal since the Forum night. Raven Age are proper. Even recorded. My friend went to see Marmozets and put me on to them. They good. Listened to a l'il grime (gryme?) for the first time. I thought it was all broken glass sound effects and jump up. Apparently not. Some of the Barenboim sonatas. Listened to La Traviata because I girl I was into went to see it. Ironically it sort of ended up like the Opera did. Well we aren't together and I think we're both sad about that. So its sort of the same. She isn't dead though. Some sort of spacey drum and bass bits. Oh and the radio. Some. Little bits. There is a lot of shit on the radio. More Gay and Christian stations than I remember, less actual music.

Speaking of music - KLIKK THISS!

 (  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dcNrS5FMXc )

Not only is The Forum doing a weekly TV show. Where you can learn about local music. In general. From people in a place where there is one. Also my friend CJ is in this video. My older and less well known friend, acquiantance, Matt also presents the whole show. I nearly died when I first saw it. Anyway. Click the link, please even if you don't watch it, the hits all go towards helping this stuff happen more. Which I like. I will totally have a big party or something if whatever.

Not sure what else. The next blog post is going to be so freaking expie-alla-docius you might break out into tap and start singing in a cockney accent.

So thats nice.

BAII

How many people are not X-men fans? I've not met anyone who has said to me, "Nope. it sucks, its a horrible idea and I don't like it". Some people, you know, they don't like the movies so much. Plenty of people haven't read the comics. But somewhere along the line, most people, have seen some iteration of mutant heroism and liked it. This of course may be because Marvel make sure to put out a decent cartoon of it on childrens TV every few years, during peak Saturday morning time. Marketing cynicism asides, It's a great product.

I used to watch the original cartoon when I was very small, but back in those days it was hard to actually follow the story. Some mornings I would be busy playing Street Fighter or watching Transformers videos. It was a stressful time. A couple of years later, around the time I became a teenager, X-Men Evolution came out which I watched judiciously. I saw about three seasons of it. I never really got into comics or fandom (persay) until I as around twenty or so, I always liked anime though and eventually stumbled across Bleach. It was in the top five most searched things on Google at the time, if I remember rightly, Christina Aguilera, Briney Spears and Paris Hilton were on the same list. I watched it all, then heard it was a comic, which I then read as well (online, legally) which led me into wanting to buy the physical work to support the, well I thought it was to support, the artist. I know now that Shounen is probably as big and corporate as Marvel. Interesting factoid, mildly interesting legal note I should say, the big anime/manga products never got licensed in this country until 2010. Which is how things like Bleach, Naruto and One Piece managed to become so huge. Dragonball even re-made the show which they had originally licensed to UK/US/European TV, then didn't re-license it. At the time it was a really big deal, these giant websites with literally thousands of episodes of anime and volumes of manga, whose flagship was Naruto and Bleach, suddenly took all the big products down (along with a few other choice things) and stayed legal. Though still hugely popular, now, there are lot more series that receive recognition than just Bleach or Naruto. Attack on Titan has been this enormous hit, for instance. Strangely, Naruto and Bleach (and One Piece) have become quite inaccessible to the layman whilst other things, like Attack on Titan or Sword Art Online, are really easy to get into and instantly gratifying.

Topic?
Me and a couple of friends went to the premiere of the new X-Men: Days of Future Past movie to try and set a world record for the most amount of cosplayers in one place. I think. Now I think about it harder I'm not sure if it was for X-men cosplay specifically, or cosplay generally. Anyways, we had to get 250, which we didn't so sadly we didn't break the record. We got to go into the cinema at Leicester Square though, did a bunch of photos (my friends are photographers too), did a music video and had a swish after-party at a club in Leicester Square. Where we danced to the X-Men theme tune, which was one of the greatest musical experiences of my entire life. We also got prime position for the whole red (or blue as it was) carpet experience, which we declined to take up. We did something much more amazing instead.

We went ..

... to Speedys.

Which too was pretty freaking epic. Well, as epic as a sandwich shop could be. Maybe it was because I ordered an epic sandwich. When did epic become a good word anyway? Most epic's are horrible, movie wise. Gladiator is good I suppose. I don't know. Maybe I don't hate epics. Whatever the epic. We had lunch there, still in costume, went to Tokyo Toys and then to Forbidden Planet. Where the whole Marvel/DC section was shut for stock take, not just the products but the comic books section as well. The manga section was closed too. I almost bought a hundred quids worth of DVDs in protest. Fortunately my friends were there to remind me, I have an EMA to do!

Which reminds me and brings me back to the actual topic of todays blog. Last summer I was volunteering my way out of a life that had careered out of control and into a car crash. I enjoyed my stints at Amnesty and cooking reclaimed vegan curries, but when I got a job in September and started this degree I thought I was starting to move my life in a better direction. Now I've been in work for quite a while, I can still pass my first year as long as I don't fluff the final essay and its time to move on. The premiere, the end of the EMA and a football tournament (which I shall detail in a moment) are kind of the culmination of a year spent trying to piece my life back together. I was hoping to do the treble but sadly we failed to break the record. Which is sort of like losing the FA cup. If we don't win today, the league cup goes too. As long as I win the league though. Its all worth it.

See what I did there? Always love a football analogy. So as far as moving on goes, I want to find a better, permanent and decent-ish paid job. So that I can move out of the place I'm in now, I'm in no great rush to do that, I would just like to be able to pick where I live now that I know Brighton a lot better. Post end-of-the-season I have some good stuff to look forward to in the summer.

So football. Tournament today. In Lewes. Vay exciting. We've been drawn against Palace in the first round. Which for those of you who don't follow strange rivalries, is a big deal. We're actually playing them in the very first match. No pressure. The word is that we're in with a shot, there are maybe four teams who have played together for as long as we have. So that could be great, if we win it'll be a night out at Lewes fireworks, if not I'll be going to boardgame night at the pub. Which is also awesome. Nearly thirty of us going today. Woo-hoo!

Lastly on the EMA itself, I am pretty intimidated by it but hopeful I can get through it. I scraped by or failed the essays so far, but have steadily been getting better. If I put enough time into the EMA I will be able to piece together enough marks for a pass out of it, I think. I actually really like the topic, which is generally a bad sign, as that gets me rambling generally rather than giving a focused answer. Going to actually go to the last tutorial and get all the advice I possibly can. Rather than nipping out for tennis.

That too is another ambition. I would like to play tennis more than once this year.

If you want to see some photos of the X-Men event:
https://www.facebook.com/SandgoosePhotoandDesign

(Shameless plug too XD)

Next time I'll upload a shot of me in costume. Points if anyone can guess who I was in the comments. I'll send you a muffin.

Speak soon!
Joe

I got my second TMA back (like I'm sure everyone has) and I'm a little disappointed. I think, mostly, with myself. Fortunately I passed. Barely. I made some bad mistakes, I didn't go through the marking of the previous assignment carefully enough, I made almost all the same mistakes again. Somehow I managed to do more of those mistakes the second time. The other bad mistake is a problem I have with the whole format of answering the questions. I've never written an essay where you don't write from a perspective, I always say that 'I will answer the question-" and so on. I'm trying to get my head around the idea that you are literally just writing facts down, I think that is my new approach. Identify points I need to make to get marks. Write them down as simply as I possibly can then worry about stringing it together into prose later.

The whole prose thing is what I mean by the format being tough for me, I really enjoy writing, generally. Anyone who does knows it can be a pig sometimes. As I'm sure your fascinated, I find it easy to write poetry and am currently trying to force myself to write decent prose. So in answering the question for the assignment (last time) I tried to make sure my answers had a nice narrative feel and made some interesting points. I actually thought I had written a couple of really good answers, somehow I had this feeling I might not even pass though. As I say, that stuff ends now, much simpler approach needed. I'm going to throw out working through the unit. That did me no good. I just found that I had all the information in my head and was comfortable with the material, all that let me do was make worse mistakes as I happily chatted on about what I thought the answer was. The answer isn't something to be worked out, it is written down plainly for you in the material. All that needs doing is transferring it into your assignment. That coupled with using citations and references for each and every single point I make will hopefully transfer into a better mark.

As for the prose, well, I'm fairly confident that it will be at least equally as difficult as learning how to answer the assignments. More fun though. Again, its desparately fascinating, I'm trying to get used to spacing out my language and create a good narrative. I find that basically, my problem, is writing in a simple way that describes the environment and characters to the reader. Like all books do. I'm just ploughing through my idea for a story, making small changes, then I plan to go back and try to make it more readable. I'm only slightly less lazy about that than I am about my OU studies.

Saying that, now that I have no plans to incorporate the reading and activities into an overall scheme, I can just attack the question head on. I'm working out phases for answering the question, identifying points I want to make, gathering references, checking the wording and detail of the question carefully, then putting together an answer. So my other time is free to spend on the other things in my life.

First of those is fitness and sport. I quit the gym. High five. Other gyms are more than twenty quid a month and I can't justify paying that nor can I justify walking forty minutes to the gym to work out for an hour so to then walk forty mintues home, even though I am now essentially out of work again. Thats next other thing. So I have taken to jogging to start off my new fitness plan the same way as I started at the gym. Simple exercise that I am comfortable with. The rowing machine was my bag to begin with and I had dramatically improved my speed and distance in the two months I was going to the gym. Ironically I couldn't take much of the running machine, I don't know why, it was too bouncy and stuff. I definitely did not try skipping or hopping really fast late at night when there was hardly anyone there. Sport wise, tennis is long gone, which is kinda lame. Have to wait until whenever this whole giant storm thing passes us to be able to get back to it. Thats ok though, because football is on the up and up! My wrist, which I nearly broke, I don't know if I wrote that here. Some guy kicked a shot so hard (I play in goal mostly) it damaged the muscles in my hand and wrist so badly that I could even close a fist. I went back to play next week with a wrist brace and strong painkillers. As any reasonable man would. So I have, to put it plainly, been pretty shoddy since the start of December because trying to keep goal with one hand is a little tricky. People have this crazy idea to shoot to that side, positives, I have got a lot better as an outfielder. The good thing is I am getting better and can almost do a press up now. We have our first match next week, very excite, I will let you know how it goes.

And so work, BLAHHHHHHHHHHH. What a jip. I called to see if there was any news on the January shifts, oh yeah they say, this week they say. Nothing at all. No call. No, thanks for Christmas, blah. I missed those shifts because of the train, thats sealed my fate, I'm saying no more. The football stadium however, sweet deal, I now get to work with the players. Well, very near the players, running my own bar. Oh yeah. High five. I obviously don't get paid more but I get to work harder and longer. Yay! Went into the players lounge with an order and I was like, oh thats cool, not sure who half these guys are. Brighton have a famous international goalkeeper, I saw him and I was like, damn. Its a pretty sweet deal, after the game they hang around with friends and family at the stadium and come to our bars. Its better than like, I don't know, the Status Quo fans for instance. Nice as they are.

Lastly I am trying to have some kind of love life. I have been told that if you look for love it doesn't come. I should really explain this a bit, I don't disagree with that. So New Years is New Years, right, it turns out that some lady told me that I was (quelle surprise) a good dancer. I'm like, yeah, sure shes a friend of the DJ and wants us to stay here. She'll say anything. The be-boys were there and I felt like any other raver. So we go out for a friend from works (EVILL WORK) birthday, I get plenty drunk, enough that I am totally convinced I can dance, enough so I don't care if I can't. As all guys know when you go out, there are at least ten thousand amazingly hot/beautiful girls that are way too good for you. Long story short I ended dancing with some of those girls and for a short drunken time I had some self confidence. Go me. I forget how the night ended, oh no, I remember .. yeah, listening to your headphones on really quiet streets does not for a cool situation make.

Thats about it, my comic book collecting is going well, I will sort out some pictures because I know it is so interesting, for next time. I am in the process of going through all the stuff I have in storage (mostly clothes and DVDs) and throwing it out/giving it to charity. Clothes are almost done, the DVDs are a lot harder. I don't know what to do with them. Like, at all. Sell them? But I love them, its worse than with music, if I got rid of a movie that I later couldn't find. I might not of even think of it. Anyway, I don't know, I'm gonna get them all together and go through my collection. I might throw all the cases away and put them in a folder or something.

Heres pulling for all your New Years resolutions to come good, don't forget to join us at https://www.facebook.com/groups/316262468519466/ for light-hearted Facebooking, currently talking Duggan and Burkhas, Birkas, Burkas? I have no idea what that word is. Be cool!

Joe

 >> http://watch32.com/movies-online/underworld-awakening-1000 << New Underworld movie, well 2012, as far as quadrilogies go. Its better than Tremors. 

Ah yes, real life tutorials, this is what me and my East Sussex cohorts were presented with. All both of us. Then the others turned up. They were both a bit late, had some trouble finding the room.

Before they arrived we were treated to the brain-pan of our tutor, she has rights of .. of .. being allowed in crown courts, one moment .. yes, thankyou google, rights of audience. So that was great, she had done lots of very impressive law related things then explained why she had gone on to be a teacher, working at some famous university places. At that point I realised I had forgotten to bring any snacks with me, and the others arrived.

Despite being a little disappointed, I felt the tutorial was great. We had another the next weekend, with the same people. Which was also good. 

It was a really nice feeling being back in a classroom, doing activities and getting into the subject matter. Making blatant and terrible mistakes, speaking out loud to other people, that sort of thing. I no longer felt behind and realised that actually sticking to the plan the OU gives you is definitely the best way to approach the studying. As much as its true that you can run on ahead from the start, following the plan, just going a little quicker at it one of the other students had studied DD101 the year before. She was following the timeline carefully and she explained it made the whole year seem very manageable. So I've spaced out some time to catch up on reading this weekend before broaching the subject of questions 4 and 5 of the TMA. They're a bit longer and have plenty of space for making errors.

One thing I am liking about this year of Law, and I'm not sure if it will continue on in the course, but being given a book of case law and having it to draw directly from certainly makes the relevant information seem much closer. More palatable. 

Which is really important for me as we come up to christmas-

- christmas. 

Ignoring the terror of present buying, family, general cheer and the unrelenting assault of christmas music I also have to work. Which is great in one sense and great in another sense. The downside is that I may be subjected to the radio. Which can contain rage inducing brain-melting-horror music. The other slight problem is that I don't have a huge amount of down time to get on with studying, which I have had. I've been reading at leisure but now I am needing to push myself into it so I can make a fully informed answer to the longer questions. I have (as I'm sure we all do) grandiose dreams of answering long complicated questions with ease and a general hue of brimming intelligence mixed with cumulative brilliance. Instead I am already concerned that I may be writing fluffy fluff.

Anyway, its hopefully going to be a nice distraction from the looming dread of christmas shopping that sneers forth from Decembers gaping maw, instead I have a minefield of strange legal jargon in which lies a path to excellent marks. Which I am fairly confident I want. There is a lingering doubt that mediocrity can still suffice, but then, that is no way to start a course.

So in summation, tutorials yes, Christmas no, TMA maybe.

Thankyou please.

Joe