2014 is over, and well… it wasn’t a brilliant one to be honest.
t’s a new year! 2015! We’re starting all over again. Another 12 months of torrential piss. Except of course it isn’t really 2015 for me, it’s the 30th December 2014 right now. I’m being forced to write all this tonight on account of having to start 5000 words of essays tomorrow.
But let’s just assume this is written in the present, because it will be 2015 by the time anyone actually reads this column. Imagine I’m right there next to you in the brave new world of 2k-one-five, not uncomfortably next to you like right in your face but, y’know, normal conversational distance away.
So what are your New Year’s Resolutions? I would ask in a deeply condescending tone. Oh you know, you’d reply sheepishly, some guff about cutting down on drinking, or smoking, or getting in shape or learning to say yes. Then I would have one of my episodes, grab you by the shoulders and scream “I’M GRADUATING IN 6 MONTHS” in your face over and over again until the ambulance arrived.
They say those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, so I’m going to start 2015 with a look back at 2014. But of course that’s not the real reason why I’m doing it, the real reason is because it’s easy and every other two bit hack is doing it and frankly I really have to get this out of the way.
So what happened last year? Well politically 2014 was characterized mostly by inconclusive elections where the only real winners were parties espousing noxious nationalist sentiments, which I’m sure we can all agree is something to be celebrated.
In May the Germans elected a Neo-Nazi to the European Parliament while we elected 30 odd, well… you definitely can’t call them Neo-Nazis, they’ll probably sue but you know who I mean (I’m just joking of course UKIP please don’t send me abuse on twitter). The Far-Right – meaning people who make UKIP look like the CND – are seemingly on the ascendancy in Sweden, France, Hungary and Denmark, to name but a few places. The Far Left also looks likely to take control of Greece, which frankly concerns me almost as much.
Scotland, well…let’s not get back into that one again.
In other news Russia came within a rizlas width of reinvading Eastern Europe, and Israel and Palestine had another one of their notorious dust ups, to put it mildly. But let’s not dwell on tedious global politics shall we, plenty of other stuff happened and some of it had to be good!
In the arts, this is the year that we lost Bob Hoskins, Rik Mayall, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, that bloke from Ghostbusters, Robin Williams, Richard Attenborough, Joan Rivers and that other bloke who played Jaws, so it’s been a pretty disastrous 12 months there. Big Brother also still exists.
In sport England went out in the Group Stages of the World Cup for the first time since 1958 (although admittedly they also failed to qualify on three occasions between then and now). At that same World Cup Brazil were humiliated in a 7-1 Semifinal defeat to Germany, causing one of the most ridiculous acts of national childishness in living memory as our screens were filled with the sight of thousands of grown men and women bawling like toddlers over the result of a sporting contest. A number of cars were torched and an electronics store was looted in the aftermath of that match, giving you more evidence if ever you needed it of why being too into football is no bloody good for anyone.
In music it was all the usual shite bar perhaps “All About that Bass” and that album where Robin Thicke tried to convince his wife to not leave him, and in that case only for the comedic value. We also had some more bad news when the band that did swing covers of heavy metal songs broke up, who I rather liked actually.
Oh, also Ebola. Ebola, ISIS and that stuff with the planes were all things. This isn’t even really properly writing this is just me listing things that happened, it requires little or no skill.
So anyway, here’s looking forward to 2015, another year on this planet we are all soon going to have to live in properly, rather than pretending to from within the bubble of studentia, and as always there’s a bright side. I’m also single, so at least no one can see me cry. Happy New Year!
WHAT HAVE MY POLITICAL FRIENDS BEEN SMOKING?
The kind of friends who I talk about my 2015 General Election predictions with have been coming out with some splendid tripe over the last couple of weeks. Most of them are inherently biased against the PM and have been confronted with the reality that Labour are about to have a ruddy awful time in Scotland, which kind of puts a bit of a spanner in the works of a Miliband majority government.
The new wisdom is apparently a Labour-SNP coalition, which begs the question of what on earth would possess the Scottish Nationalists to get into a Westminster coalition with Labour, having just had their best general election result ever, largely at the expense of the Labour Party.
Also, the SNP are already in government in the country their whole raison d’etre is to represent, a governing majority which they have to defend next year at the Holyrood elections.
I wouldn’t be holding too much hope for it happening, is all I’m saying.
A PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT
You know when you’re in the library and it’s late and you only have notes on you so you can’t use the vending machines? Well there’s a change machine which will turn notes into coins in the foyer. You probably already knew that, but I didn’t, and if you didn’t know, well i’ve just told you haven’t I?
A WORD ON SOME ELECTRONIC BAND I REDISCOVERED
Did anyone used to listen to that American electronic outfit 3OH!3? The name is frankly enough to put you off.
When I was 16 and, in hindsight, a giant bellend, I rather liked them.
I’ve been relistening to them recently and it occurs to me that as noughties, US, misognyistic, white trash electro-scummery goes, 3OH!3 are still pretty awful.
Imagine taking a couple of would-be school shooters to River Island, showing them a picture of the members of Hadouken and saying “get as close to that as you can”, then asking them to set raps comprised of random posts they found on the darker 4chan boards to shoddy synth pop and you’re halfway there.
I feel nothing but shame for my younger myself. Come on 2009 me, what on earth was this, a cry for help?
HOW I GOT CONNED
Yes. I admit it! Honest mistake, it could have happened to anyone! I have joined the list of people (including our dear old YUSU president) who mistakenly accepted a friend request from what I believe this newspaper has just revealed to be some sort of bot. All of her pictures – as it happens – appear to be of the porn star Bree Olsen, most recently prominent in the news as one of the former paramours of the actor and professional drug addled nutcase, Charlie Sheen.
I must admit, I did have my initial doubts that she might not be entirely legit, what with her entire photo repertoire leaving precious little to the imagination, but then I told myself, Tom, it’s 2015, stop being such a prissy, social victorian neanderthal, you can’t just assume people are bots because they regularly take dozens of pictures of their norks.
Anyway, turns out I was right to have my doubts. Regardless, whoever it is who’s behind the account, they liked one of my statuses once, so cheers for that.
OUR NEW CHANCELLOR
Look never mind all this stuff in the paper today about Sir Malcolm Grant believing this, that and the other.
I think what’s more important is this picture of the man from 1972 looking like a young Ron Jeremy.
Do you trust this man to lead your university? I don’t care if Sir Malcolm believes we should outsource all academic jobs to a base on the dark side of the moon and give campus security the power to administer random public strip searches of students who seem like they’re “up to something”, this is the sticking point for me.
I’m sorry Malc, I really hate to dredge this up, I appreciate the 70s were a different time, but seriously?