It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Not usually one to get too bothered by the Christmas period (or "holidays" as they insist on calling it here for fear that it may be misinterpreted as, y'know, a religious thing - trust me the Christ side of things sold out to big business years ago) I've been surprisingly taken aback by how willing I've been to embrace the spirit of the festivities. My roommate can be held largely responsible as he came back from Thanksgiving and began immediately to Christmas-ify the old homestead.

It's hard to be a miserable fecka in the presence in a room taken over by Christmas lights and containing not one but TWO! Christmas trees. But he didn't stop there. Oh no no no no (ho ho ho ho ho). Next we get a wreath on the door.
Somewhat impractical it may be argued but doesn't it look nice. And it's very real too. i have pine needles bloody everywhere to prove it. So all this stuff helped get me into the spirit of the season but if it wasn't enough.......
Snow! Yes we've all seen it before and apparently you all had loads more than this at home but still this place doesn't half look purdy under a blanket of white powder.

Here is essentially the same picture but taken at night so you can see the lights on the Christmas tree.

So the smarmy self-satisfied Sussex student union shites have finally voted to ban coke. They couldn't do it last year but as soon as I'm out of the country they sneak it in. Well fucking done to them.

I have to say, as if you couldn't already have guessed, that this really pisses me off. It's not that I have any great love for the sickly sweet soda (I'm in America, I'm allowed to call it that for purposes of alliteration) and condone any of the practises (unethical, exploitative or otherwise) that the company carries out, but the fact that the Union has actually voted to ban it stinks of hypocrisy.

If the Sussex Students Union actually had any influence and were genuinely active amongst their student constituents they wouldn't have to get the 5% of politically motivated students to turn up to the bloody AGM - which is, to my mind, the most pointless event in the calendar, serving only to dictate the Union's so-called "political position" on a number of issues that may have national and global significance but which are completely irrelevant to the students themselves - and vote to de-cokeify the campus.

Perhaps it seems like the democratic way to do things but, umm, no, it really isn't. To steal a quote from good ol' Rosa Garwood, Union Finance Officer: "Our boycott sends a clear signal that our students are not prepared to continue to finance a company whose ethical rating is so incredibly poor.". Umm, no. It really doesn't. The message sent is that the majority of students who turned up to the Union's Annual General Meeting (I believe it has to be 500 people to achieve the magical "quoracy" so it could have been as few as 251 voting in favour of the motion, although obviously I wasn't there so have no idea) voted in favour (see how I still put my Us where they belong?) of the ban. Rosa Garwood: thou is a moron. I knew GaV would have been better.

The democratic way to do things, if they cared so much about this issue, would be to get their fat arses (actually I believe prime protagonist Rosa Garwood is particularly bony of the bottom but for the purposes of this rant....) out from their plush top floor Falmer House offices and work to get the fuckin' student population to care as much as they do. If they could convince the students that Coca Cola's business practises were as abhorent as they say they are then they would exercise their rights under the democratic capitalist system in which we live, and stop buying the stuff themselves.

But no. That would be far too much effort. The supposedly "liberal" Union's approach, to restrict freedom of choice is far simpler and apparently sends Coke a real message. Yeah? Really? Nice one USSU. Really representing your people there.

My word, all that aggression has made me thirsty. Wonder what I'll have to drink?

Not one to repeat stories I read on the internet but couldn't resist this one that I received in an email about the late great Richard Harris. Courtesy of Popbitch:

"One of the few drinkers who could keep up with George Best was Richard Harris. Back in the 80s, Harris was starring in a play at the London Palladium. During the day he spent most of his time getting drunk in Soho. One afternoon he got chatting to a beautiful blonde. Harris explained he was in a play, and that she had to see it. He then got a friend to run round to the theatre and get him two comp tickets. Many hours later, Harris and the blonde were hammered. He reached in to his pocket, finds the tickets and takes the blonde to the theatre. They take their seats. About 10 minutes in to the play, Harris suddenly stands up, loudly exclaiming "Oh fuck, I'm in this! And runs off backstage to get changed."

Squirrels of Satan

Possibly the most frightening of God's creatures, these little black buggers seem to be everywhere on the GU campus. Don't for a second think that that glimmer of light in his eye is a reflection of the flash from my camera - oh no, these evil incarnations are lit from the inside.

Fearless as can be and with no respect for humankind, I swear I spotted one selling drugs outside the elementary school just down the road the other day.

In the procrastinatory search for an explanation, a quick Googling garners 28,000 results and numerous reports of sightings across North America but few real answers. I did however, come across an article from the Post back in May, with the somewhat frightening headline "Black squirrels take over Washington". Since I couldn't be arsed to actually read the thing and discover, most likely, a fairly harmless report about their numbers increasing yaddayaddayadda, I can but assume the DC Metro area is now run by these malevolent manifestations of beelzebub and they are gradually working their dark magic over the entire population. Scared? You should be.

On a different note (but perhaps equally scary to some) I'm thinking of buying the TopGun soundtrack; what does everyone think? I watched the film on Monday night for the first time in aaaaaaages and realized quite what an awesome movie it is. I think it possesses a musical accompaniment so terrible it's fabulous but other may perchance disagree. I could go on but I think I'd better not.

Having grown somewhat bored of my own staid, formulaic attempts at music journalism recently, I jumped at the chance to be part of The Guide's Christmas feature. Somehow they seem to have got it into their minds that I'm their muso-geek in residence - seriously not true but I'm not telling them that - and asked me to come up with a look at a few "alternative" Christmas songs. Which I did. And it was fun.

Click: Putting The Cool Back Into Christmas

Please don't take it too seriously: Comparing Mogwai to "softly falling snow"? Purrrlease.....

Oh yeah, and as you can see from my byline, I'm down classed as a "Hoya Staff Writer" as opposed to "Special To The Hoya". I'm not entirely sure what difference that really makes appart from making it more ethically questionable to be writing for the other side as I am wone to do on occasion. I guess if there was a payrole it would mean I'd be on it? Sadly not.

School Spirit

Not, sadly a cocktail (although maybe it should be one - I shall experiment; I'm thinking something with Vermouth in it) but an omnipresent psychological phenomenon amongst American students that is unheard of in England.

Last week was Thanksgiving, the single most profitable part of the year for American airlines as millions of people fly back and forth across the country to spend time with their families eat turkey and give thanks for..... well, I'm not entirely sure. Click Answers for the answer.

The result was a mass exodus of the student population from campus for several days. Not having received many invitations to spend time with people's families (how sad) this left a number of Brits and Aussies with little choice but to get ratted, the result being two unfortunate drunken text messages sent (which i take full responsibilty for, despite having consumed enough belgian lager to stun a mule) and the most evil of hangovers on Thursday morning(/afternoon). Suffice to say, my thankfulness was somewhat repressed that day.

Saturday however, saw Georgetown University Basketball's first home game of the season and I cannot express vehemently enough quite how different the American approach to college sports is to our back home. They take it, to say the least, somewhat seriously.

Personally I know absolutely nothing about Sussex's football team; Occasionally I may glance at the sports results in the Badger but I couldn't tell you where they play, any of the names of the players, whether they're any good or not or even the colour of the shirts. I have certainly never been to see them play and don't know anyone else who has either.

But here college sports is, to use an oft quoted sporting cliché, in a different league. While American Football is not Georgetown's sporting forté - generally the big state school are more successful; check out my good buddy and fellow Sussex-er Mark Wilson's blog for a comprehensive account from UT - but when it comes to B-Ball they're up there with some of the very best in the country.

Firstly, the team doesn't just play in the college gymnasium. Oh no. The Hoya's (for that is their nickname) play in the 15,000 seat downtown arena that is the MCI center. Also known for being where the professional b-ball team The Wizards play and the venue of Michael Jordan's last game before he retired - for the final time, the building is an absolute colossus. Despite the fact that most students were still away for thangsgiving the stadium was at half full. Can you imagine 7,500 people turning out to watch, for example, the Sussex University Nobodies play against the Sheffield It's-Grim-Oop-Norf-ers? Indeed, kinda unlikely.

The game itself was a bizarre experience, particularly for the passion that some of these GU students have for their team, and therefore, for the University itself. it's certainly something that wouldn't be bad to export back to the apathy-ridden campuses of Britain. The support on display that day was, I imagine to a certain extent, alcohol-fueled but still, gotta give credit to the "Hoya Blue" (oh yes, they even have a school spirit organization).


Here we have, for want of a better term, a hymn sheet, informing the uninitiated of the various cheers to be, umm, cheered throughout the course of the game. Hardly Shakespeare (although why I think the works of Shakespeare would be a useful template on which to base chants for a college basketball game I'm not sure) I admit but still pretty impressive. And everybody genuinely shouts them all the way through the game.

I couldn't quite bring myself to join in, personally being more familiar with abusive chants questioning the legitimacy of an opposition player's parentage or the manager's sexual orientation; they are a bit more polite here it seems. I'm also still a tad uncomfortable with pronouncing Defence as DEE-FENCE.

Unlike American football basketball is a seriously exciting game and as I said before, the Georgetown team is pretty good. Sadly not quite good enough on the day though as truly it was a game of two halves. Despite dominating the first, with many a swoosh being heard as they scored three-pointer after three-pointer, and going in ten points in front at the break, they came out in the second half a different side and couldn't hit a thing. I'm not sure I heard anyone say "my granny could do better" but I'm sure it was on the minds of all in attendance.

Ultimately they only lost to Vanderbilt (from Tennessee I believe) by 7 points, which is not terrible but the, given the size of these dudes (the "shorties" on the team being 6ft. 1in) I'm sure they can do better.

The result however, was largely immaterial. What was most interesting to me was the way these kids get behind their team and thus become part of the school itself. We have no such sense of unity back home, and by that I mean in Britain as much as I mean at Sussex. We don't relate to each other on a broader level through our shared experiences; we have no sense of collective identity on any plain beyond our localised social groups; we have no more sense of commonality with a fellow Brit or Sussex student than we do with anyone else.

Why that is, I'm not sure, but it seems like it would be a nice thing to reach towards. People partly hate Americans because they see them as possessing a blind belief in their country beyond that which would be rational, overlooking its failings in the process but maybe we have gone too far in the other direction. I'm not arguing against cynicism; the Americans are not, I think, taught to question authority enough, but sometimes it's not necessarily a bad thing to see good things.