A Disclaimer

I haven't been posting recently. That's because I'm currently in the middle of a rough patch of exams, so I won't be posting for the next couple of days, until the 13th of May. 

If you want informative jokes and interesting news, go to my friend's blog, Osu! Tatakae! Nippon!, who's posting faster than South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee can brutally put down a labour movement.

Which is pretty fast.

BBC Boycott Collapsed After 56 Days, Drunken Revelry Reveals

After 56 days of seemingly intransigent boycotting of the BBC over the scandalous treatment of the Disasters Emergency Committee in January, it emerged yesterday that A Politic Blunder's editor-in chief on two separate occasions broke the boycott by viewing bbc programming on their iPlayer website.

The information came to light at The White Hart, in Bethnal Green, on Saturday night, when a drunk and bellicose Giorgio Mariani admitted to stunned onlookers that he had viewed Stewart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, aired on the previous Monday. It was also revealed that Mr. Mariani had also viewed another programme, a BBC Three pilot show by Japanese comedy duo Gamarjobat.

Other allegations now include an accidental visit to a BBC news website, which may have lasted up to 5 seconds. 

A Politic Blunder has admitted its mistake, and promised to review its boycott of the BBC in light of the revelations and the ongoing quality programming on the BBC. 

The BBC has declined to comment on the unfolding situation. 

Please Don't Go!

I literally haven't got the time to write anything reasoned or current at the moment, as I'm heavily engaged with essays, very much like this picture taken several years ago, only with different clothes and more facial hair.

Check back again this weekend for a revolutionary article about why higher education is ruining this country. 

HAPPY 50TH BIRTHDAY, POLITIC BLUNDER!

Yes, this is Politic Blunder's 50th post, and celebrates approximately four months of giving it to you straight (platonically). No one said we'd make it this far, and now that we have, no one is commenting on the fact, so I'm officially declaring all the critics SILENCED. 

This issue we're bringing you four stories and a birthday present. The birthday present is this fantastic video, which you should all definitely watch (link here). It's about the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, how much sense it makes, and how little that sense is actually listened to. It's also got some flashy Flash effects and a bit at the end about Aung San Suu Kyi that nearly ruins it. But that bit's only a few seconds long, so seriously, watch the video.

Everyone in Britain will remember this picture of Charles de Menezes, a Brazilian civilian who was shot seven times in the head by the police while sitting on the tube, suspected of being a July 21 bomber. The picture was revolutionary because Menezes looked like a nice guy, a guy possibly contemplating a shoulder or bicep-tattoo, but a nice guy nonetheless. The inquest which was launched following his killing revealed a disastrous failure of intelligence, a tragic incompetence on the part of the police, and as it just emerged today, an open verdict.

The open verdict means that the jury was not allowed to reach a verdict of "unlawful killing" because of the coroner's report on the shooting, and thus had a choice between "lawful killing" and "open verdict". By choosing "open verdict", the jury is affirming that a shooting did take place, but is abstaining from passing judgment on anything else, officially making this a cock-up from beginning to end. 

Following in the theme of "people the police were not supposed to kill but killed anyway" is the

 issue of the Greek 15 year-old who was shot by policemen after pelting a police car with stones with his friends. The killing, which has not yet been confirmed as intentional (There's a persuasive ricochet theory floating around) has nonetheless sparked a week of intense rioting and destruction across the country. Athens has been ground to a standstill on more than on

e occasion. This doesn't look nearly as bad as the de Menezes shooting, as even if it was intentional, the killing looks to have been a matter of imprudence and unprofessionalism, rather than seven bullets fired into the head. Still, the anger of the Greek mobs is thought to be relating to more than just the shooting, as Greece isn't doing so well economically. Let's hope the situation cools down.

Rome, meanwhile, is seeing the beginning of the apocalypse. Torrential downpours amounting in one night to the entire average rainfall of December, one of Rome's rainiest months, have completely flooded parts of the city, with officials predicting that the banks of the river Tiber will overflow by the end of the week (the picture of Castel Sant'Angelo to the left should have a lot more land and people in it.). The fascist mayor, Alemanno, unnecessarily characterised

 the flooding as "like an earthquake", when in fact it was a lot more like flooding. As far as intelligence reports show, former-SBR headquarters on Via Stresa have been undamaged, with no comment from the six Jamaican women living there. 

Also in Italy is president-elect Barack Obama... in plastic form! Yes, Barack Obama plastic figurines are now adorning the nativity scenes of Italians in the South. The tradition of the nativity scene is important to Italians, being somewhat of a surrogate for the pagan ritual of Christmas trees. Barack Obama's meteoric rise to celebrity must have had enough parallels with Jesus to warrant his place in the manger. Let's just hope he's not pictured cleaning the place up and serving drinks. 

And that concludes Politic Blunder's 50th birthday. Remember to check out the blogs linked to on the right of the page, they're most excellent, especially the Osu! Tatakae! Nippon!, which recently reached the lofty heights of fifty posts itself. 

Also, a shout out to my lovely girlfriend, who had her wisdom teeth carved out of her jaw a few days ago. I know you can't eat solid foods yet, but hopefully this blog has given you something to digest. Eh?

AIRE

The AIRE, Anagrafe Italiani Residenti All'Estero, is a register of all Italians currently residing abroad. Previous to today, I'd been living in a semi-legal limbo (is there any other kind of    limbo?), officially residing in a small Italian town called Mirandola, whose greatest hero is Pico Della Mirandola, a philosopher who issued one of the first 'against all comers' challenges, loudly bragging that he could defend almost a thousand theses against any man. These theses, the wikipedia article asserts, 'he believed to provide a complete and sufficient basis for the discovery of all knowledge, and hence a model for mankind's ascent of the chain of being', making him irrevocably an hero. The article doesn't mention whether he was ever challenged, and if so, what happened, but since in contemporary Mirandola only 23 000 inhabitants remain, we can only assume it was such an epic clash that the decimating repercussions are still keenly felt today. 

In any case, being a resident of Mirandola meant that I could not access any consular services here in London, such as renewing my passport or more importantly, voting. Since being a resident of Mirandola actually doesn't benefit me in any way now that I am no longer officially my father's dependent, I decided to subscribe to the AIRE in a belated attempt at teenage rebellion. Imagine my surprise when, in response to a hastily compiled and sloppily signed form slotted under the doorway of the Italian consulate 2 months ago, I received back notification that I had been removed from the registry in Mirandola and placed on the AIRE! My surprise was great. 

So now I am officially a citizen of the world, and shall be signing all my cheques that way, which won't make them any more valid, but it certainly, certainly won't make them any less valid. I am also allowed to vote, which is nice, as Italy is possessed of one of the more peculiar voting systems that includes a constituency specifically for Italians living abroad. Stay tuned for the inevitable waves you'll see in the parliamentary system. This also represents the second of my life goals I have achieved since I started this blog, making this officially the most self-realised period of my life.

My Unending Wrath and Bile

A man tried to defraud me by stealing my debit card information and with- drawing 100 pounds from my account in Malaysia. 

EDIT: It turns out that the person who defrauded me was not called Mr. A. Ryngit, as I previously assumed from looking over the shoulder of the fraud assistant at the HSBC. Ryngit, as everyone cleverer than me will know, is the Malaysian currency, not the name of the person who defrauded me. My apologies to an actual Mr. Ryngit, if he exists. My frustration and impotent rage now need new directions. Suggestions are welcome.

0Y5T3R 1Z n00bz!

I have an Oyster photocard, meaning I shall now be paying 30% less to soil every dank alleyway in London (Zones 1-2)! If you're a regular reader (either one of you), you'll know I called Transport For London (tfl) a bunch of money-grubbing sots. I stand by my judgment, but now add that they are foolish money-grubbing sots! Ha ha ha!

In other news, I have just taken out an 18 month £15 a month contract with T-Mobile, who have promised to give me a phone for free. We'll just have to see how they try to swindle me. The penny-pinching sots. 

Still no news about joining the Network of Italians Abroad. I've called the office, but they're not in. 

Trouser Browsing

Today I downloaded Google Chrome. After digging my way through the 30-page comic-book style explanation of the new features of the browser and why it's a complete overhaul, presenting a whole new philosophy of browsing, I finally got around to tinkering with it. Why, even now I am writing from within the confines of this brand new interweb experience. 

It's aright, but now I'm left with the distinct sense that Technology is leaving me behind. The comic-book explanation was written in a tone that suggested that the information it was assuming was blindingly obvious, and laid out in a way that implied that its target audience was people in their teens. I found it opaque and impenetrable, and only with the help of an intrepid friend did I end up making any real sense of it. I can't help but think that the vast majority of adolescents and young adults out there now are intimately familiar with the internet and all it's components that only seem to frighten and anger me.  

So overall, I'm not sure that downloading Google Chrome was a smart move. At least I felt on top of things with Firefox. I knew how to download a plug-in, I knew how to activate said plug-in. Now, like a boy playing Street Fighter II Alpha with his one friend for years, I am thrust into a Japanese arcade. Fresh meat.

The Bureaucracy of Tedium

So Progress has been made on one of the things on my list, getting an Italian ID card. It turns out I need to quit my residency in Mirandola, and become part of AIRE, the constitutency of Italians abroad. This is fine by me, but I need to speak to the people at the Consulate General first. There's the rub. They're open from 9-12 every weekday. If you don't catch them in that three-hour window, you can call them from 15-18:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and in any case if you want to speak to them you have to make an appointment by phone. (By calling at those times). In other words, this very nearly didn't happen.

In the end, I simply decided to send it by mail and let the postman sort it out. Maybe it's just me, but in this age of space-rockets and ''vulcanised'' rubber that we call the future, it's innately satisfying to compile a form, add a photocopy of your ID and proof of address, and send it in a manila envelope by post. Seriously, maybe that's just me.

Look forward to more Progress on items on my list coming soon.

Testing...

Right, so talking to the seething opacity of the internet is a lot more difficult than writing shit down on paper, the way nature intended.

There shouldn't be any fooling around on this blog, I've decided. Consider it where the final drippings of my thoughts go when they're done using my body (bastards). It is late, after all.

There are six things I need to do this year. Every year I make a list like this, in the hope that this time, dawn of dawns, will be the time that I actualise and potentialise and realise it all and improve myself. This has been going on since I was sentient, I'm pretty sure. No, probably a bit after that. Sigh, then it ends up sliding back to the same status quo, and next year's list grows. Obviously that won't happen this year, with the following things:

-Getting a driver's licence
-PROPERLY learning the goddamn harmonica
-Picking up enough guitar to get by
-Doing a fight or two
-Taking salsa classes with Eleanor
-Taking Arabic lessons at SOAS
-Wresting a goddamn Student Oyster Card from the money-grubbing sots at TFL.

That last one I added as a bonus. Still, this list is a pretty hefty one, by any standards, especially considering my earlier resolution to get a distinction in my Msc at SOAS. Maybe this blog should chart the slow loss of will for each of the goals, and end with a fantastically dramatic picture of my broken body surrounded by splintered musical instruments, salsa shoes, and a wallet full of expired cards.

Hey, but it can't all be that bad. If I actually focus and stop playing marathon gigs on Guitar Hero then I bet I can get most of this done. I even have an academic planner.

Ok, I'm going to keep an eye on myself with this blog, and imagine the peering of a thousand disembodied tappers from places like Wyoming or Manila, willing me to fail so they can validate their smug, popcorn-eating lifestyles. Fuck you.