Mmmmm academia...

For the first time I had a discussion today about what to do after university without feeling utterly terrified. All other discussions have ended up with my inner self whimpering and mumbling about debt and jobs and my outer self is focusing intently on the ceiling or a nearby squirrel.

A few days ago I was first tempted by the possibility of doing an MA. Myself and Kirsty had a mooch around the possibly MAs at Lincoln, Nottingham and Nottingham Trent. Looking through the courses it became clear that a lot of the journalism MAs (I was looking at print and magazine ones) crossed over with my BA. However when I came across the creative writing course I was intrigued. This is perhaps an option I could look into. I was thinking part-time MA with part-time work.

It's nice not to be terrified about AFTER UNI for once.

How to hide mediocrity behind a veil of pretty colours and vanity.

No matter how many different colours they projectile vomit onto a page Bullet is still nothing more than an SU toy with a budget it doesn't deserve. Well done, you have glossy pages but you seem ignorant of your audience and you treat your staff like idiots. Three members of staff have left in the last few weeks, it's like rats fleeing a sinking ship.

If you shove enough colours on it everyone will love it.

This month's copy was the last straw for my good friend Crystal. As entertainment editor you would think she would have a little creative control. However out of the 4 pages (one double page feature, 1 single page article, and 2 shorter articles) what ended up in the print edition (not to the knowledge of the so called entertainment editor) was the single page article and one of the half page articles with a page each then an article written by the editor about some microsoft software that came out months ago.

The article claimed to be about software that helped students but it only mentioned microsoft's windows live mesh and so just looked like a pr piece. If the article had been well researched she would have talked about Dropbox, the new Facebook groups feature, Google docs, and the fact that students can get cheap software. That's what that feature should have been.

I find it strange that with the SU promoting democracy so much it's publication is such a dictatorship. One editor asks everyone else to do the leg work then ignores it all and does what she wants.

This edition has just been the last straw. The contents quite good, Jamie's got a couple of good articles, and I can personally vouch for the two articles by Joe and James. But there's yet another article about clothes sizes/body image, do all Lincoln students think they're too fat and constantly think about clothes? And the photos are ridiculous. Almost all images in the issue are pixelated and dreadful. The front cover is badly photoshopped and makes no sense. Not only that but the subbing is frankly lazy, instead of subbing properly they've just deleted spaces after punctuation.

I know it's such a tiny thing by they've done it many times in the issue. It just not professional. The whole thing looks like it's just been cobbled together at the last minute. If you're going to do something, do it right. This is not a publication I could be proud of, I'd never publish something I didn't think was perfect. Not even as an assignment.

Oh this silly magazine enrages me. Silly silliness.

There's something wrong on the internet!

Dear BBC, I don't think I wanna be your friend anymore. When someone uses the phrase "geek chic" I don't want to be their friend. In fact, I want to punch them in their pretentious face. And Aunty Beeb? You used that very phrase in this article. You've annoyed me enough with "geek chic", don't get me started on "nerdcore". This kind of stuff's been around for ages with artists like Jonathan Coulton and They Might Be Giants have been around for years. And it's only recently that the genre "trock" (That's time-lord rock) popped up thanks to a group of lads on YouTube.





"Geek chic" brings to mind those horrid club theme night that get those orange girls trussed up in school uniforms and 3D glasses with the lenses popped out. Excuse me while I heave. I know my own geek credentials aren't completely up to scratch but this is really something else.


image source

You're not a geek. You don't need glasses. You wouldn't know that Battlestar Galactica existed if it wasn't for The Big Bang Theory. And you're still confused about what a Cylon is.

I blame the hipsters for all of this. Micheal Cera too. I blame him.

</rant over>

Texting Protocol

Over half the population of our planet* own a mobile phone. And aren't they wonderful creations? You can contact your dear old mom from anywhere... not including lifts, the London Underground, the pointy bits of Wales and my old common room (unless you hung out of the window). You can text your friends from as far as the other side of the room, update social networking sites ("Suzy is on the toilet. lol" etc.), enter competitions, and when at my favourite rock club one can make a vain attempt at getting the DJ to play Love Shack. Then of course there's other things you can do with you phone: play games (I will never play a game that isn't Snake... oh Nokia, you genius), take photos of amusing placenames and phalic vegetables, bluetooth things back and forth endlessly and let's not get onto the possible uses of a vibrate function.