HEY EVERYONE! COME AND SEE HOW GOOD I LOOK.

So, tomorrow I move into a flat with a kitchen. "Hey, you're going up in the world Dodgson!" I hear you exclaim, "No stopping you daddy-oh!" I shall indeed, be king of the student property-ladder, master of residential units, overlord of.. living space. Except for the fact that it's going to be another college-owned room, over which a bigoted landlord will have absolute control, down even to the amount of blu-tak I choose to own, this is, without question, the unmistakeable truth. I, Dodgson, will be the pimp of the Oxford Accommodation scene. Boom.

In all seriousness though, I am looking forward to it. Having been at home for just under a working week, I'm about right to move back out and get going with the pretence of 'being independent'. Similarly, a taste of home cooking has reminded me that college hall food, while lovingly served, affordably priced and usually pretty good, really isn't the be all and end all of cuisine. With that in mind, look forward to the blogs which keep you updated with interesting culinary facts like 'how many sausages you can buy for a tenner in Sainsbury's', 'why the content of Tesco's fruit and vegetable aisle looks like it was selected by Francis Bacon' and 'the joys of making bread' (I'm serious about the last one).

Also, it'll be a nice sort of thing to do in the holidays, living with friends, cooking, doing spots of light reading in the sunshine, blissfully wiling away the hours as we plod mirthlessly towards the bleak speck of light that is the end of our university career, along the loathsome tunnel of murky ooze and depravity that is revision and finals.

Which brings me to my main point. New flat = genuinely exciting. Do I need to shout about it as if it's the best thing in the world? Not really. Why? Because I like to pretend to have some sort of grounding in reality. Unlike this man.

There's just something about this guy that finally got me definitively angry about hip-hop/rap. Now, as my post from last time (Exhibit C) and anything else I may post in the future or whatever will reveal, I like hip hop. It can be incredible. It has produced some of the most outstanding beats in the history of music. Equally, as any cheeky browse of last week's Jay Electronica, or a click on this should show you, it can produce genuinely insightful, rhythmically deft lyrics of skill that is just as good as any 'literary' poem.

Unfortunately, it can also produce Lil' Jon and the Eastside Boyz. Now, don't get me wrong, 'Get Low' is still reasonably amusing and someone like Jay Z, having made some awesome tunes and genuinely said something about life, is perfectly within his rights to every so often make a song about just how much money he has and how cool he is (although his increasing tendency to do so was starting to grate until 'Death of Auto-Tune'). But when someone I've never heard of, with a name like 'Wiz', chants the names of two different colours, AND THEN starts yelling how much cash he has.. ufff. Not only is it boring and musically uninspired, it just doesn't make sense. I mean who the hell is he? And what is it trying to say?

Now understand, I get the whole status thing with respect to the musical genre. A great deal of the artists have come from an oppressive social background and, in some cases, extreme poverty so, when success comes, you shout about it to tell the world. Cool. But when you do, do it in a way that at the very least is inspiring. And do it alongside some music that means something. I mean KanYe West to most people is an absolute douche-bag, the guy has/claims to have diamonds for teeth for goodness' sakes. But then he'll also make songs like Heard Em Say, Jesus Walks, Roses, Hey Mama, Homecoming, Diamonds from Sierra Leone and even a song like All of the Lights which challenge the normal, dull stereotype about rap music that the equally stereotyped white, ignorant, bigoted, conservative classes love to hold up as an example of its bad influence.

As declarations of independence then, in the personal sense, songs that say 'look how awesome and rich I am', are certainly good attempts at stamping the singer/rapper's assertiveness on the world. But realistically, and even musically, they only make sense in a context where that assertion holds. Listen closely to MC Hammer's 'Can't Touch This'. Even the title says it. It's a song all about how awesome MC Hammer is. And hey, the guy was doing pretty good - he even bought a solid gold toilet. But now, when you hear that song, no-one thinks about how awesome MC Hammer is; the song is just a bit of 90's gimmickry. But in 10 years time, when someone rolls out '99 Problems', and Jay-Z, in his own inimitable style, just lets you know that 'a bitch ain't one', you'll probably agree.

Curiously, although I couldn't really think of many other musical genres that were as big on the braggadocio, I did think of one, perhaps artist/group of artists that did well out of it: Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack. Kind of unexpected at first but then, maybe not - after all, these were the guys everyone wanted to be. Including the very first generation of rappers. All a bit full circle I guess. I suppose it all boils down to aspiration. I mean what's the best way of convincing everyone you're successful? Telling everyone how successful you are.

Never mind. I guess there's only one thing to do tomorrow. Move into the kitchen, turn up the Wiz Khalifa and then segue epically into My Way.

Black and yellow, black and yellow, black and yellow.

Dodgson.

Exhibit C

- Chris Moyles and Comedy Dave raised over 2million pounds for Comic Relief by staying awake for over 50 hours and presenting a radio show. I'm impressed.
- Japan's still very nuclear.
- Libya are caving to UN pressure. Although it's slightly hard not to feel a bit 'oil-skeptic' but hey.

In the light of all that, revision really isn't such a big deal is it?

And I've figured out how to work the hyperlink function. So get clicking on Mr. Jay Electronica

That'll do pig, that'll do.

Dodgson

The day the music died

Ok, fair enough. I promised you a series of Oxford yarns all about the chaotic run-up to finals, my manic existence as a composite mind and I even mentioned Brideshead. Only to promptly run home. Fine. Sue me.

But, two interesting developments have surfaced in my sejour so far. One: Having sworn myself to the allegiance of Macdom (the computer/technology giant, not the burger chain), the depths of revision have seen the ugly head of a certain 1999 incarnation of the incredible gaming franchise that is... Age of Empires.

Yes, while the rest of the world huddles over its modem, wireless headset strapped to its frothing jaw, frantically ploughing through every level of World of Warcraft (LEEEEERRRRRROY JEEENNNNKINNNNS anyone? - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkCNJRfSZBU) a small elite group of nerds in the depths of Oxford has rediscovered the joys of 'The Age of Kings'. So much so that I've had to dig out an old laptop and restore it to its former glory just so I can get my act together on it.

Two: Music took a dual hit. The provider of that bass thudding voice, Nate Dogg passed away after a stroke. Minor news in a time dominated (and rightly so) by the events folding in Japan but still, very sad in its way for a lot of people, myself included, who just love every collaboration he was ever on.

Then there was this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CD2LRROpph0&feature=player_embedded#at=77

An abomination that has earned the catchy moniker of 'The Worst Song Ever' (and again, rightly so -although perhaps maybe not with as much respectable adequacy). Now, without question, it is one of the biggest piles of steaming musical excrement since The Crazy Frog and is the product of a culture so materialistic I hope it chokes on its own silicon implants. In fact, with the appearance of what can only be described as the most token rapper that has ever existed, midway through the song, I could hardly blame the guy who thought to enact  some of Nate Dogg's most profound (this is ever so faintly tinged with irony by the way) lyrics, choosing to 'pull out my strap and lay them busters down.' (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1plPyJdXKIY)

Which, kind of, brings me to the last thing I wanted to mention. A couple of days ago I read an article somewhere in The Times saying that on the latest episode of BBC Two's 'Wonders of the Universe', the audience had complained. Not for factual inaccuracy. Not even for its potentially anti-creationist stance. But because of it's music. Why? Had they browsed Slipknot's back catalogue and casually overlaid 'Wait and Bleed' to the remarkably insightful montage of Black Hole formation? Was 'Barbie Girl' just not an appropriate soundtrack for the formation of deep-space nebulae? None of these things. It was just a bit too loud.

Apparently, Professor Brian Cox's very well-produced programme's lightly techno music had just deafened listeners out of hearing all the lovely words he'd gone to the trouble of writing and saying. What junk, I watched it and it was all as clear as crystal. Never mind though, they turned the music down anyway and everyone was happy.

Except for Sarah Vine. Author of said article, ('No sex please, this is serious science' - The Times Wednesday March 16, 2011), Vine describes Prof. Cox as 'handsome' and as repeatedly 'flashing his white teeth in a carefree yet attractively wistful smile'; all of which is to make us believe that Cox's supposedly ecliptic ego and good looks threaten to overshadow the scientific content of a monumentally informative television programme. Science, like cookery (Nigella & Sophie Dahl), the news (Fiona Bruce) and everything before it, has become sexed up.

This is a show called Wonders of the Universe. The two episodes to go out so far have been called 'Destiny' and 'Stardust'. It specialises in taking broad theoretical concepts and making them palatable for a late night audience. From the sound of her article, Vine seems to resent the intrusion of Cox into her world of TV because, until he came along, she was seriously hoping to get a Ph.D in Astro-physics out of this.

Also, her main claim is based on the fact she just happens to simply adore 'wise old owl' figures, like Professor Heinz Wolff, whose clear lack of fashion/sanity/grounding in anything terrestrial is apparently an extra qualification in itself. Despite this, in the real world, the fact that PROFESSOR Brian Cox has had a music career does nothing to detract from his actual Ph.D from the University of Manchester. If anything, it makes him slightly more of a real person showing that, to be a member of CERN, you don't have to look like some sort of social aberration. What's more, the accusation that 'if a concept has to be dressed up as a super-sexy mountain-top thing, then it probably wasn't very thrilling in the first place' shows a fundamental misunderstanding of 1) Television 2) The Human attention span 3) Science and 4) Existence. Boiled down, Vine's complaint is nothing short of: 'The BBC are making science accessible and every time I see Brian Cox my loins tremble so violently I'm distracted from the screen. Bring back that nutter with the corduroys.'

So yes, Sarah darling, it might not be as in-depth as Horizon but, then again, it's not trying to be. Similarly, your own personal preference for presenters is just journalistic guff. I mean do you really care? I admit that I found Ben Miller slightly irritating in his episode of Horizon, but only because he was pretending to be inordinately thick so as to explain the principles of thermodynamics. If he'd just explained them in a simple fashion (like sexy, sexy Brian) I wouldn't have minded in the slightest. And even Brian I'm not really that attached to. I'm just an Arts student who gets their kicks by dabbling in Science for procrastinatory purposes.. Consequently, I find Sarah's self-righteous pretence of ego-lambasting a bit rich. Especially from someone whose professional authorial photo is clearly the least successful attempt at 'a carefree yet attractively wistful smile' since the Quasimodo Lookalike Society's annual reunion photograph.

So yeah.

RIP Nate Dogg.

Dodgson.

Delight Here

Your love’s like a slow train coming. Err no it’s not if the slow train is specifically my train from Oxford home, because then the destination of whatever this love is that Billy Ocean (or Boyzone, if you’re more of a ‘90s kid) was yowling about is Ealing Broadway at 19:56. I’m sure Mr Ocean was willing to sacrifice a great deal for his love, but one draws a line - the Central Line, to be precise, outta Ealing Broadway at 19:56. Even when the going gets tough.

In fact the only saving grace of that lengthy journey was that I wasn’t alighting at Slough. Alighting. When I was younger, and a Londoner still unaccustomed to the exotic concept of overground trains, I used to think the tannoy was instructing people to “delight here”. Well, I can tell you, to realise that particular command in Slough just now would’ve taken a league of delightfulness beyond any human capability.

The ritual of returning home from university occurs. Silently gorging on pasta for an hour, searching the kitchen for residual generic M&S gourmet snack/dessert to a disapproving commentary from critical-mother-because-do-you-really-need-that-third-flapjack, pretending to understand the intricacies of a no-fly zone to excitable-father-hailing-from-Middle East (the crackling World Service practically sellotaped round his head), and then a cursory hello to teenage-sister-I-hate-you-you’ll-never-understand-me-I-have-A levels-you-know-and-a-sore-throat. Sorry all, I know ma momma told me better than to diss y’all on the internet, but it seems I paid no heed.

But of course the official party line is east, west, home is best (so west then), and having just been informed by an increasingly grave Huw Edwards that employment is at an all-time low for female under-24s and will not improve at any point in the near future, I suppose I’d better get used to it. Thanks Huw, that's all for tonight. Now to join the news teams where you are.

click here for an 'addictive bassline' apparently.

Err... Hockity Pockity?

Merlin has, like all great men, been many things to many people. He first really appears in the chronicles of Geoffrey of Monmouth who, amalgamating a few historical figures into one, adding a dash of imagination and, it seems, whatever he hadn't managed to attribute to the Romans, Celts or Trolls. For Thomas Mallory (compiler of what, for most people, is THE book of King Arthur stories), he was a shrewd tactician, whose magic lay mostly in prophecy and being in the right place at the right time. Fair enough, if you really were at death's door, he might rustle up the odd potion but he wasn't exactly bandying around a wand willy-nilly. Then, over time and, as usual, with a bit of help from the Victorians and Walt Disney, he's become a sort of primogenitor for Gandalf, Dumbledore, Santa Claus and all the jolly, magical and bearded fellows ever to have roamed the planet.

Oh, and then there's the BBC who decided that he should be a bumbling, faintly amiable and jug-eared youth serving a future King Arthur who looks like he only just didn't make into the Bullingdon Club because he happens to have a wrenching crush on the girl from the local comprehensive.

But, and, here's the point - so what? All this really proves is that the character of 'Merlin' has never, ever been one thing and to start yelling from the rooftops "WHAT IS THIS? I DON'T EVEN" makes no sense. Fair enough, his latest aurally advantageous reincarnation is quite a large leap from tradition, but even so, I watch it. And why wouldn't I? As a 45minute distraction from existence it's more than sufficient (especially when Dr. Who's not running) and that's what all popular literature/poetry/art have ever thought much of doing.

And that applies to all you other adaptations out there too. The film version of Brideshead Revisited was recently on iPlayer: A little bit of a jaunt through Oxford, heaps of Catholic guilt and some posh bisexuality - a boiled down version and, ultimately, not accurate in any way version of whatever Evelyn Waugh himself might have been trying to get at. Fair enough. But still, it was a good 2 and a bit hours of film and certainly didn't deserve the reaction someone told me they gave it in the cinema - of walking out disgustedly. Especially from a man who willingly went to watch either/or both Sex and the City films.

The point is then, people have adapted everything since time immemorial. Shakespeare himself almost never wrote anything that hadn't been translated out of the original Latin/Greek/French three or four times before him. But his skill was precisely in the adaptation. In the original version of King Lear, Cordelia survives and keeps ruling for the next however many years in blissful happiness. But who wants to see that? It hardly evokes the futility of human pride and value of life if, at the end of all Lear's misguided ranting and railing, he just carries on as if nothing happened.

Here's another example. In my first year, I knew a tutor in Old English who genuinely liked the 3D Beowulf film. Now, even as a film, it wasn't outstanding (I mean, I liked it) but, as a literal adaptation, it was complete nonsense. I mean, Angelina Jolie, the sensual mother of Grendel, the terrifying (again, extremely gifted in the listening department - maybe there's a connection? I can't wait for the adaptation that makes a sort of Fantastic Four of Grendel, Merlin, Sauron and Errour from The Faerie Queene) monster, who Beowulf kills, and then Beowulf casually impregnates Angelina, and then their offspring turns out to be the dragon, and then the dragon kills Beowulf and then and then and then. It was mental. But hey, who cares, it was in 3D.

So next time the latest adaptation of something comes out, just chill. If it's terrible as a film, then fine but don't start crying about the plot. Coincidentally, I hear the new adaptation of True Grit's smashing.

Oh, and if anyone's wondering about the title: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bd5YUEOwlE

Evening One

Today I found a curt email lurking malevolently in my inbox – my exam timetable. Well, actually, it said “examination” timetable, the faculty knowing full well the immediacy and terror of That Word’s unabbreviated form. But after perusing the page, I felt a certain not-so-unbearable lightness. It's strange, but the idea of 11 weeks to go until sweating it out in adverse conditions (ie. a clock and an itchy shirt. And, y’know, that intense nausea born of an overwhelming sense of one’s own inadequacy) doesn’t fill me with a particular sense of urgency.

A sneaking guilt occasionally creeps through me, but it’s more a response to the fact that I am not yet wracked with the inevitable guilty conscience that I’ve been expecting. This brings me to my incredibly philosophical point (that I’ve heard is the ultimate end of all blog-posts) which is this:

The only thing we have to fear is not feeling fearful.

It’s a bit of a twist of an old adage (can you guess what it is? I think it’s either Roosevelt or Dumbledore..) but far more accurate. WHY are we all still walking around in a hazy state of inertia, sitting around in the sun, doing nothing, thinking about how lovely June will be when we can sit around in the sun, doing nothing? It is probably this complacency that will plague me more than my shocking ignorance of England’s stability under Edward the Confessor (which, incidentally, would be a pretty good blogging epithet).

I admit this is the calm before the storm, and the dread of revision with all its horrors (sleeplessness, borderline insanity, bad skin, crying, that inky lump on your middle finger, intermittent pangs of crippling loneliness, crying) will soon blight the fresh face of this shiny new web-page. Either that or your own tears will render it illegible.

Symbolic of the state of being a finalist is a chapter-heading in one of my ominous pile of books:

The course of true nationalism never did run smooth

Right. So basically LOVE and all that it entails has been replaced by a fairly pejorative term for an ideology generally believed to have emerged in 19^th century Europe, elements of which soon led to the development of fascist tendencies. So poetic, these historians.

Anyway, that’s the only interesting that happened to me today. Other than in the library I thought I saw someone die. Octogenarian professors should not fall asleep on the desks.  Surely he should be kept awake by the sheer brilliance of his thoughts? Wish I was.

Night night,

Dodgson (the Confessor).

Day One

Good Afternoon Blog Fans,

Much talk of blogs recently; their pros their cons, their inanities, insanities and banalities. So, to clear the path of righteousness for all, I've decided to stick my oar in..

Goodie.

Just to note, 'I', in this case, has decided to be pseudonymous. We are the first person narrator of 'THE BLOG', composed of potentially limitless contributors, the Martin Marprelate of Oxford University Finals Examinations. We are... (see below)

Anyway, enough of that. What we plan on doing here is basically voicing the grievances students across the world, giving a bit of a glimpse into life at Oxford in our dying days as students and, occasionally dishing out a bit of commentary on music, literature, art and pop culture in general. Like Facebook, but with an email address you can show your employers and say, "Hey look, I do something with my life." And, in the case of some blogs, even if it's a pile of typographical excrement..

So, I hear you ask, what's happened so far? Well, today is day one - I'm going home to get a few days rest before coming back up and starting revision - just finished an Extended Essay on 'Narrative of Individualism in the American Detective Novel'. I also got up nice and early for what was meant to be a group breakfast in the college hall. Picture the scene: trays of bacon, stacks of sausages, pints of baked beans, the pictures of famous monarchs and alumni on the walls, an expectant student ready to take on the day - and not a bloody soul in sight. Can't even get people to breakfast nowadays..

That and I'm doing some laundry. Which has already cheated me out of £1.00 for the reason of washing machine malfunction. But I do think it's telling that today, as I head for the rocky straits of revision, the bumper box of detergent I bought in my first week has now finally run out. What, exactly, that tells, I leave for you to decide. Somewhere between "why so little laundry over three years?" and "in what way is running out of washing powder genuinely significant?" I guess.

All that and more to look forward to I suppose! Here, by way of musical enjoyment for all those revising, working and pondering their inner teenage angsty selves (irrespective of their true age) is the beautiful 'She's Got You High' by Mumm Ra.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXFXjh9a8lY

Dodgson.