greymullet

If Sting ever retires, will he change his name to ‘Stung’?

-Laura

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/politics_show/regions/yorkshire_and_lincolnshire/7371536.stm

I realise that I’ve not really commented on Labour’s decision to drop the 10p tax rate. I will do so now:

What the fuck!?

I’ve noticed something of a shift in my political views, especially those regarding trade. The shift itself has been gradual, the realisation less so. Perhaps it’s better to think of it as a clarification, rather than a a shift: certain approaches fit in better with my core principles, which remain largely unchanged.

This ’shift’ should be mappable by comparing my political compass scores ‘then’, and now, ‘then’ being whenever I took the political compass quiz currently saved on my facebook profile. I will post an even earlier ‘then’ if I find the results of the first time that I took it, two or so years ago.

Then (i.e. whenever I added this to my Facebook):

Economic= -9.38
Social= -6.92

Now:
Economic= -7.00
Social= -7.18

Before I took the test again, I felt that there’d been a shift. As I took it, I thought that, perhaps, maybe I was going to come out the same. As we can see from the numbers, though, I have changed, becoming more liberal, both socially and economically (classical liberalism, that is, not American ‘liberalism’ as a byword for socialism).  I’m assuming that the economic shift is due to my increasing dislike of protectionism, among other things.  As for the social side, the small shift indicates that perhaps I just answered one question as “Strongly Agree/Disagree” when it was previously just “Agree/Disagree”.

Comparing the results relative to my friend cloud shows that I’m no longer the most economically extreme of my friends. While 5, 14 and 13 (who shall remain nameless) are still more socially liberal than I am, the same can not be said of 4, for what it’s worth.  More interestingly, 16, my darling girlfriend Samantha, is socially less liberal than I am and was (despite her repeated assertions to the contrary), but I have taken a rather drastic leap to her right, economically speaking. IDS students are all crazy hippies, though.

Pictures to follow later. Need to upload. Must work.

It’s too damn hot in here. Damn Canada.

I’m sitting here by the window on a lovely day, listening to Depeche Mode and writing a paper about something that really interests me, while talking to my friend Sebastian about hypertext and Kafka (more or less). I’m lamenting the fact that I haven’t enough time to do this paper, yet I do so much in my life which seems pointless and for which I have no passion at all. Why?

Answers on a postcard, or in the comment-box.

“Black Cat,” a heavy, buzzing, sinister bit of darkness layered with airy goth synthesizers, may very well be the best thing we’ve ever heard from Ladytron.

…begins ones review of the first track from Velocifero, the new Ladytron album.  Being good little dingy electropoppers, they’ve put it up in their website, in order to give us something to listen to while we wait for the album release.

Listening to it for the first time (it’s just ending now, as I type this), and reading that review, I couldn’t help but feel that it was a little over the top. The introduction seemed good, yes. I especially liked the synth-tom sound. But “best thing ever”? No. Not even close.

Of course, as I said, I was reading that on the first listen through and hadn’t even reached the synth melody. Which is good. Very good. As the long, droney Ladytron tracks go, this is a very, very good one. And I love long, droney Ladytron tracks.

“Best thing ever”? No. But it does sound like this album’s going to be good. It might even be their best. We shall see.

Black Cat is available here, for now.

Beware what you post online, you never know who might read it!

Apparently.

I know that my father, for one, reads this site. It’s linked to from my facebook page, and pretty much anywhere else that I have any kind of profile using this screenname.  Even if it’s not, a search for “greymullet” would throw this site up, although it’s no longer the top result. In fact it’s on page 2 on google. Clearly I need to up my PageRank.

The point is, only post online what you don’t mind anyone knowing. I don’t care if anyone knows that I have three papers and an exam next week, and that I’m not sufficiently prepared for any of them.  I don’t care, because it’s not my fault. I don’t want it to be my fault. That person whose fault this is, I don’t want to be him anymore. He’s scared of getting on with his work, he leaves it late, and that just makes it all the worse for him. He just has to do a little bit every day. He knows that’s something that he should have known for a long time. He did know it, but he had trouble acting on it. But he’s changing now. He has to.

No, I know that I’ve got more work to do after I give my presentation this morning. What’s that? It doesn’t matter that I’ll have been up for 30 hours, with only 4 hours’ sleep before that? Screw you brain, I’m going to sleep all afternoon, then eat poutine.

A life progress type post this evening: partly for anyone who’s interested in my work schedule, partly as an excuse for why there’s nothing going on with the site right now (mostly the latter, as I really wish that there was).  I have a frankly obscene amount of work right now, it being the end of the semester, and me being a relentless procrastinator.  I was talking to another exchange student earlier on tonight, and she was saying how much McGill pile it on, so at least it’s not just me.

Either way, after this frankly epic week, in which I have to deliver two presentations and write three papers (there is a fair degree of overlap in those activities, I might add), and, hopefully, attend a Japanther gig on Thursday night, I have a week containing an exam and another paper deadline.  Then it’s all a little more wooly but, either way, I should be free of undergrad’ type work by the end of April.  Then I’ll either be TAing, or bumming around working on my French. Either way, I promise that, if possible, I will engage in a major overhaul of this site, helped, in part, by colourlovers.com

There we go, a nice shiny link for you. Not a complete waste of a post after all.