Mongooses and Shivian Montar Balaris

Well, dear readers, you may have noticed that I've been reticent recently. If you haven't, don't worry: it's my fault, not yours. I really ought to have been thinking serious thoughts about Spin Matrices, not making lengthy posts about, you know, Crewe. Anyway, I've handed that work in, so now I can forget all about it until the uncomfortable tutorial when Dr Johnston will forlorly ask "Did anyone get an answer here?".

A few nights ago I went out, subsidised by my college, to eat a curry. There were maybe 30 of us, enjoying a really quite nice evening at the Moonlight Tandoori. There's not much else to say about it really, except that I was able to use skills hard-won on the Deli counter in Waitrose Okehampton. I fluently discussed Lassi and Bhuna and Korma, noting that all our food would belong in the section of the curry counter that has green price labels and a picture of one single chilli. You know what, I really like curry.
Why subsidised, you ask? The meal was actually the Halfway Curry: as of this week, those on three-year courses are halfway to finishing their degree. I'm actually on a four-year course, but I kept my mouth shut. Except when I was shovelling curry in, of course.
In case you're wondering, yes, I should have been calculating eigenvalues then, too. What I actually did when the meal ended at around 11 was go back to Physicist Emmas' house and drink tea and eat doughnuts. She lives with President Coatsworth, an affable chap who is our JCR President. It was he who once described the game of Championship Manager as "spreadsheets for blokes".

Joke of the Day:
They: "Millwall* have won ten on the spin"
Me (aside): "So they have 21 eigenvalues?"

* I don't actually know if it was Millwal. The names of football teams, like the names of cars, are so much whalesong to me.

In slightly exciting news, today the Queen opened the new chemistry building behind Mansfield, which they've been building for some time and now rears up behind the college like an oil tanker behind a dhow, or something. I didn't go to see it- I was in lectures- though quite a few people did. I'm mildly republican, in my own way. I mean that in the Australian sense, not the American... as if you hadn't guessed. There's someone in our year who is a Jacobite- they're not just in History, you know.

Obscure joke of the day:
"Did you throw an egg with "For the little gentleman in black velvet" written on it, then?"
Scroll about halfway down this for an explanation.

We also have a member of the Arian heresy. Probably a few, actually, it's not as exotic as it sounds. Or, for that matter, as offensive.

Mongoose: It's a ferret with a name that's a cross between a monk and a goose. It eats snakes and eggs.

The world is a very strange place. Dr Dawkins uses the phrase "anaesthetic of familiarity" (I don't know if he coined it or quoted it), and that's a pretty illuminating phrase. We go about our days never thinking about how wonderful and bizairre the world is, with it's Arians and Jacobites and Mongooses. For example, I used to regularly read a comic strip aimed at neopagans written by a gay porn star from Carbondale, Illinois. At the time, this did not strike me as odd.

You know what? That's a great strip. I'm going to start reading it again.
It's a hobby, not a proffesion, you understand.

Oftentimes a slight shift in perspective can make the world look very shiny and new and green. For example, spend three minutes reading the Everything Belongs to Me FAQ. And try telling me you don't feel happier.

Song in my head: "I can learn" by White Stripes