please read this the page-views help me to feel good about myself

I feel like I owe y'all a blog post, but sometimes my life involves prolonged periods of mundanity. Holidays are delightful, but also pretty uneventful. Mostly it's my own fault for playing so many video games when I should be wandering the streets and getting into fights or something.

Those of you who keenly follow the overarching narrative of this blog / my life will be thrilled to know that my sisters and I finished making that magnetic Diplomacy board in the summer. It's never been used and it doesn't really have anywhere to go, but I'm glad we did it. Maybe one day I'll have my own house with its own walls and everything. I'll share the house with six other people and we'll spend the duration of every meal talking our way through a tangled web of trust and deceit. 

*Context*

'Diplomacy' is an old board game. Players fight for control of Europe through a process of simple strategy and prolonged negotiation.

*K*

I'm pretty bad at Diplomacy. I think it might just take ages to learn. Here's the game I'm playing at the moment:
http://www.backstabbr.com/game/5659996774727680

I'm the Italians, which means I'll probably die sometime after the Germans and Russians have gone extinct. Maybe if I hand't upset the Austrians I'd still be okay. I get the impression that they trust Turkey implicitly. Bit stupid if you ask me. Anyway that's probably boring.

hyphens:

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My friends in London were all berating me for my lack of dress sense. I have since purchased a brown leather jacket from a local charity shop. That ought to show them. It's nice because I often find myself removing my jumper and putting it back on at regular intervals in order to regulate my temperature. The jacket seems just right for indoors during winter.  

I also bought a jumper. 

This is a fashion blog now.

The jumper is too big. More precisely, it's too long - both in sleeve and in torso. A lot of my shirts stick out the bottom of my jumpers, so I feel like this was a pretty rational purchase.

I think I might just be into ill-fitting garments. My caring, aesthetically sensitive peers are always warning me away from  over-sized garbs, but I keep coming back to them. They're comfortable. They're nice. Maybe it's just a phase. With any luck I'll grow out of it. Certainly preferable to growing into some of my shirts.

Look this hasn't been very exciting. That's stupid because I actually have some news that I'm excited about. 

I got a keyboard for Christmas!

My lovely, loving parents got me a keyboard for Christmas. I can play:

C scale (both hands at once)

D scale (independent hands)

A scale (I forget which one)

Different scale (E maybe?)

The chords to 'You don't Know Me' with my left hand

The bass riff from 'Stand by Me'

I can't yet sing 'Stand by Me' whilst playing the riff. Long way to go.

Well I hope that was alright. Feels a bit like the blog equivalent of anime filler, get me? Didn't even proof read it. I have an exam tomorrow. I'm going to bed.

Heck

Heck is my new favourite word and I've been saying it a lot don't tell my mum

I went to a wedding yesterday, which was obviously fantastic.

• Ben and Jenny got married
• Fantastic
• Had a most wonderful time with many old friends
• Fantastic
• Had a wonderful time with several new friends
• Oh yeah good fantastic
• Stayed in a really posh hotel and ate like a king
• Very nice lovely
• Dressed up nice, looked / felt important
• Not bad
• Met a friendly art restoration man on a bus through the countryside
• Pretty enjoyable
• Handed in weekend assessment on time despite serious commitment to having fun
• Did very well
• Ceilidh'ed long into the night with great vigor
• Always the absolute best
• Four young ladies consecutively declined offer of slow dance
• Heck.
• Roaring insecurity
• Self-worth demolished
• Play it cool
• Confide in long standing friend
• "It's because you smell."

i dont care

Okay next thing:

A while ago I thought it would be a good idea to interview 'Garlic Bread Memes'. Old people, memes (pronounced 'meh-meys') are a special kind of joke on the internet. Like everything on the internet, memes are a massive waste of time. It's pretty inane, but they made me promise I'd send them a link. Here's to experimental journalism.

Me: Why garlic bread?"
Garlic Bread Memes: Why not? Best bread around

In an increasingly permissive society, what's it like holding onto the ideal of the objective goodness of GB?
I mean, garlic bread is the best bread that exists. People can think what they want about the other breads but we know ours is best

Interesting. Why do you use memes to communicate the goodness of GB?
Garlic bread is funny, so are memes, it's just a good combo and we find it funny

Cool. Are the variants of garlic bread (burnt, cheesy etc) ever improvements, or is GB best in its purest form?
All garlic bread is the best regardless of variety

Does that allow for personal preference between variants?
Yes, but as long as it's garlicky and bready it is the best

So is it possible to produce bad garlic bread?
Maybe burnt garlic bread. Maybe. Other than that no

I see

How is GB love express itself (sic) in the political sphere?
We have no involvement preference or involvement in politics

*****END OF INTERVIEW*******

I'm getting really super into karaoke these days. I used to go just for the singing, but now I'm starting to really love watching other people perform. I wrote a meaningful poem about karaoke, and Housemate Dave gave it a very sincere ten out of ten.

/POEM

Sometime last semester
At Bar One karaoke on a Thursday night
A girl stood up and sang 'Say My Name'

Pitch perfect
Flawlessly timed
I was singing along
when her eyes
met mine

I don't even know watch she's called

/END POEM

I didn't go to karaoke last week because I was working on my interim report. My project's all about using computer models to simulate the lifetime trajectory of drinkers. Turns out computers are not yet clever enough to simulate the terrible decisions humans make. My systems engineering interim report was basically a third year psychology essay.

I spent most of last week in the library reading and writing about motives for alcohol consumption, and when I got home in the evening I would feel weirdly motivated to drink. My alcohol project friends say that it's happening to them to. spooky

Holidays soon go home soon good

You can zoom in with Ctrl and '+', or scroll wheel.

USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA! USA!

A friend once asked me:

"How do you write an exciting blog post when you've spent an entire month sitting at home / underachieving / inventing new names for your cat?"

And I was like:

"I would probably start with an imagined conversation, to make my social life seem a little more hip and happening than it really was."

I played a Board Game

Yeah, actually I played a board game. The name of the board game was called 'Twilight Struggle'. It's a game for two players that's all about the cold war. The instruction book is full of exciting quotes, such as:

"Now the trumpet summons us again - not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need, not as a call to battle, though embattled we are - but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle..."

- John F Kennedy, Inaugural Speech, 20th January 1961

Interestingly, until I watched the whole speech (worth doing) just now, I assumed that the titular 'Twilight Struggle' referred to the cold war itself, but Kennedy uses the term to describe an imagined endeavor in which the nations of the world labour together for the common good of a free mankind. It's a noble vision, although a very optimistic one. Perhaps our world would be a better one if Kennedy had not been assassinated. Present day American military policy is perhaps best described by this darkly entertaining quote (also from TS instruction book):

"Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win."

- General Thomas Power, U.S. Strategic Air Command, 1960

Anyway that's enough of that. I've read like the first ten pages of Chomsky's 'Hegemony or Survival', and it's turned me into one of those unbearable politics students. Let's talk more about this very interesting board game.

The creators of TS say that their game is designed for people who have real responsibilities and can no longer set aside eight hour portions of their lives in which to play board games. Ruth and I played seven of the game's ten rounds yesterday in a mere five hours, which is only slightly longer than it takes to read the instructions. We got most of the rules wrong, but we didn't blow up the planet. Also the goodies won.

This concludes the board game review.

I Made a Board Game

That's not true really. I'm halfway through porting much loved board game 'Diplomacy' into wall mounted form (with sibling assistance), so that the flexibility of postal / online play can be combined with the thrill and friendship of face to face. I bet you all can't wait to have a go.

wow so cool

I made a time themed spotify playlist

I've run out of ideas for it, so if you want to add some you totally can. The song has to have the word 'time' in the title.

Yeah we're done here. My life will be exciting soon, and the blog may even approach readability. 

(the bird is an allegory for massive national debt)

NGL, this is probably going to be a relatively low quality post. May not even finish it. Just something to tide you over during exams. I've had two exams, both were okay I guess.

I'm very sleepy. I just went to an 'EU debate' or something. The description on the Facebook event read as follows:

"We have invited three great speakers to come discuss the EU Referendum from their particular perspectives."

Turns out the event was hosted by 'Sheffield Students Stronger In', and the 'particular perspectives' of the guest speakers were somewhat uncannily alligned with one another. So obviously biased, but nonetheless thought provoking. Here's what I learnt:

• Subsidiarity is a central principle of the European Union. It's the idea that all decisions should be made at the most local level possible. Things like trade law and workers rights get decided quite high up, because otherwise you get things like states trying to increase relative productivity by denying rights to their workers.
• Statistics about laws decided within the EU are pretty inflated, the government library (or something) estimates that like 13% of our laws come from Europe. Additionaly, the importance of law isn't really proportional to the quantity of laws. The EU might make a lot of nonsense laws about what bananas should look like, but they don't really have any say over our policies on crime and punishment, tax, defense and other stuff.
• It's possible that leaving the EU would be good for the UK economically, but it's not a sure thang. Many economist are pretty sure (source) that things will get worse before they get better, if they get better at all. They say that God made economists to make weather forecasters look good, but that only goes to show (as far as a joke that I read on a poster in Y12 RE can show anything) how unpredictable economics is. Better a bird in the hand than two in the bush.
• We get back about half of what we spend on the EU, and that's without taking agricultural subsidistaion into account, along with a load of other things that lower the cost of living.
• Some of the money that goes to other countries is basically a small bribe to distract them from the evils of communism.
• I met a man who worked in the civil service and basically just got paid to make new laws. He told me the good old days are over, and that the civil service is boring now. It made me want to watch 'Yes Minister'. I think he said, in passing, that he was a nuclear engineer before he was a civil servant. He's a university vice chancellor now, which is confusing because he didn't seem to be evil or anything.
• If you raise income tax, you get less money from income tax because people stop paying it.
• The UK is in a lot of debt, austerity is fantastic and there should be more of it.
• (We started to part from EU stuff at this point in the evening, and move on to things I didn't understand.
• Loads of immigrants keep a country economically vibrant, and stop the population from ageing.
• That was basically it. I got really sleepy after that.

Soon I will go to a more balanced debate, hosted by my church, and then I will know the facts. One of the remain men told me that you can't know the facts, because there aren't any really. Who knows.

Now that I've written down all the EU facts, I can remember them good. I'm not sure why I thought this should be a blog post.

My life is pretty boring at present. Today Dave and I spent about an hour playing Forza (race car game) as a special treat, which was lovely. 

When I go home I will cuddle my cat. I think of this regularly.

I spend the other 50% of my time thinking about all the fun things I will do after my exams. I'm going to throw another falafel party, and then try to play Diplomacy (eight / nine hour board game, really fun) in the park with my friends / anyone willing to endure nine hours of strenuous negotiation.

That's basically all I've got. Maybe one day my life will be hip and happening again, and my blog posts will be meaningful, and everyone enjoy them and affirm me and I won't be forced to consider the perils of measuring my self worth by my ability to entertain. Who knows. Okay I'm done.

Oh hey I'm not done, I read a really good book called 'The Road'. It's brilliantly written and I should have been revising and it's a stark reminder that we think of universal entropy as an abstract idea to help us come to terms with it, but it's actually really horrible and depressing and it should unsettle us greatly. Maybe I'll write a review. 

Okay done.

I love ducks

Here's an outline of my routine for the last couple of days:

• Go into uni bright and early to work on management assignment
• Procrastinate wildly
• Get fizzled out inside brain from intensity of procrastination
• Go to Western Park
• Watch ducks

 Okay let's talk about ducks. I guess the conversation should be prefaced by the author's acknowledgement that ducks are basically a massive lie: they seem cute / serene, but they're actually brutally violent animals with very liberal views on sexual consent. Just the other day I had to intercept a brutal duck murder in which several ducks had formed a kind of convoy around a larger duck, and were taking it in turns to force its head under the water.

My favourite duck looks like this:

 It's about half the size of all the other ducks, and basically has no neck - its head is just like a tiny dome coming out of its duck body. Sometimes it stands up and quacks really loudly for like ten seconds. I think there's a boy duck (green head) of the same weird small duck kind, so I guess they're a couple. That duck is my favourite duck.

If you watch ducks diving from above (like on a bridge or something) you can really appreciate how very hydrophobic they are. The water just rolls right off them. Apparently it's because they're always lathering themselves with special duck oil. I think saw a goose preening and crying simultaneously once, which led me to assume that their duck oil comes out of their eyes. The internet says that all waterfowl get their oil from a gland in their tail, so I guess the goose was just sad.

(Reconstruction)

I tried to sneak up on sleeping ducks today, but I think they sleep with their eyes open or something. Sometimes when they're asleep you can see the whites of their eyes, which is kind of scary.

I've got a new board game, it's called Diplomacy and I'm very excited about it. It's like Risk, except it's a well designed game and it takes so long that the rule book tells you that it's okay for the game to end in a mutually agreed four way draw if everybody gets bored. I'm playing it this Saturday and I'd like to see it through to completion, but that might be ambitious because I'm going to a wild party in the evening.

I'm not sure why I find this so exciting

Of course, before the party and the board games and the church family brunch and the train and the cat and the further board games and the reunion with the biological family and the celebration of the resurrection and hopefullly even a makeshift sunrise service, there's the MGT389 deadline. This has been my final act of procrastination, I hope you have enjoyed it.

It's pancake day today

Extract from a Trump rally:

" I love you. [unintelligable nonsense] I LOVE YOU! [enthusiastic sentimental drivel]"

Me talking to my cat: see above. Both events may be punctuated by unsettling attempts to kiss a begrudging or indifferent party. If my cat were with me now, nesting impractically and adorably atop my revision notebook, I would pick her up, cradle her in my arms and whisper softly into her ear:

"Who's going to pay for the wall?"

My cat is not here. I must get back to work.


UPDATE:

I did go back to work. I went back to work with such vigour and dedication that I could find no time to write my blog. The exams are over now, and all is well. So far this semester I have missed no less than 100 percent of my lectures. I spent a significant portion of the morning transcribing my academic timetable onto a blank page at the back of my diary.

I've got a diary now. Before I had a diary, I used to think that owning a diary would change my life. I imagined that somehow the act of writing two word sentences into an A7 booklet would transform the outward realisation of my very character, effectively metamorphasising me into a new, better, more reliable, less confused young man.

As it turns out, all of these imaginings were demonstrably justifiable. Gone is the David Lovell of yesteryear, whose immense popularity and underwhelming organisational skills tragically conspired to condemn him to an eternity of double bookings and forgotten rendevous. And where is the bumbing yet affable gentleman who would neglect to attend events at which he had every intention of appearing, and then fret concerning the implication of his abscence in the minds and hearts of his friends? By these same friends he will be dearly missed. He is no more, and in his place stands a mysterious, somewhat dashing figure with unnerving foreknowledge, constantly consulting a dog-earred book that charts the phases of the moon, into which he inscribes illegible glyphs that are said to reveal the very future.

I went to a lecture this morning in which the lecturer attempted to use a google document as a form of responseware. Obviously it was totally useless for that purpose, but it worked well as a public forum via which we collectively expressed our disdain at having to endure yet another management module, and our love of willy emoticons. Weirldy, she just left it running for a full five minutes, during which we were basically rendered unresponsive by our childish hysterics.

okay bye