Special Update: Good luck with SATs, Year Sixers!
One of the most interesting piece of feedback that floated back from the unfortunate Year 8s who had to read my blog for homework was a certain bemusement about the word geek – specifically the cheap and cheerful declaration right at the top that “I’m a happy 16 year old geek”, as if it was some sort of statement.
It’s true that at one point there was certainly a conscious effort to reclaim the word geek, in a similar way to the gay community reclaiming, well, ‘gay’ and ‘queer’ as positive expressions of identity. Today, however, it’s more second nature than anything – driven largely by the IT industry (Microsoft Geek blogger?) where geeks reign supreme. I like to think that the traditional passion for learning has been taken from the stereotype of the past (bullied kid in the playground, loved to look at his shoes because they were easier to talk to than people) and wrapped in a delicious layer of self-confidence, served in a bright and breezy air.
But that raises an interesting question. Do the ‘old style’ geeks – or nerds – of the past still exist? Did they ever exist, or a bit of a myth delivered through the medium of the American Teen Movie (TM) ?
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As Fabio would call my hay fever, which has returned with a vengeance after seemingly lying dormant for a few years. Dammit, get out of my eyes! It’s making me look rather tearful, or stoned, or both.
Went to see HIGNFY again yesterday, which was actually rather better than the week before. Julian Clary, master of the ‘single entendre’ (as Hislop points out!) was a very charming and affable host. Best bit – the editing at the end to avoid Paul Merton’s libel and slander about a certain ‘always drunk’ person. Hehe.
I also learnt something last night. If you’re tired, sneezing silly from a stupid cold, bleary eyed from hay fever and struggling to finish off some Maths work – then watching Local Elections coverage until 2am will not make you better. In fact, it may make you much worse. It’s never fun to see Tories win, even if Labour didn’t go into complete meltdown. And as for the BNP… I’m actually of the opinion that they were hyped before the election unnecessarily. They are not a parliamentary force. They can be frozen out of council meetings. Do not give them more media attention that they deserve to make them appear as a credible ‘protest’ vote when they stand on an openly racist manifesto, end of story. And even this is too much about the BNP, so let’s move on.
Election consolation? In Brent, we actually saw the Tories lose seats
As for the reshuffle? Ur, Blair, wake me up before you go go 
to quote Wham, who just delightfully appeared on my playlist.
Physics Practical. You take a little bit of Physics, stamp on it with studded boots and throw it off a cliff, whereby it is urinated on by utterly sadistic and annoyingly muddy two-horned goats before being mailed to Michael Winner in a brown paper envelope. And that’s how much I like it, although the percentage uncertainty is probably way off.
Anyway.
Other than Physics Practical, things are quite alright. Year 9 SATs started today (best of luck, my little Year Ninelings) whilst revision continues apace for AS. Today our History teacher took the unprecedented step of actually apologising for telling us off, which must be a sign that either we’ve cracked, or he’s cracked, or we’ve both cracked under the pressure.
Utterly unrelated to all of that, I just wanted to call out today’s Quote of the Day for further examination. You see, it turns out the Boy Scouts of America refuse to let in three very dangerous and subversive groups into their organisation (either as Scouts or as employees) – girls, gays and the godless. Seriously. One guy was given one week to find god or get out. Although the attitude scares me, it did conjure up an amusing image of someone deciding to leave it to the last minute. “Oh, I’ve got a week, I’ll find god tomorrow…”
Finally – shout to, ooh I don’t know, Clare for her new ‘blacker the than the deepest night’ hair (very cool) and Rishal, because coupled shout outs are lovely and sweet, and also because he stopped me actually dying after Physics Practical. Physics Practical? We go through our mock tomorrow! Oh joy…
– Dommy
(Clare being the only person in the world to call me this)
Philosophical! It’s also one of the questions on a piece of homework given to some poor children at school about my blog, I am reliably informed. (If you’re wondering, the others ask about its formal \ informal \ factual \ entertaining content etc etc.) Which is rather cool 
but also slightly worrying in case I get attacked by hordes of angry Year 8s on Tuesday.
Anyway, it reminded me that I really should blog so that any homeworkees have some formal \ informal \ factual \ entertaining content to use.
On Friday, I went to ‘Buuuurmingum’ by coach and then hopped on a bus (number 63, blog fact fans!) to get to Rubery. The journey was very easy and I even managed to read some Carol Ann Duffy poetry on the coach, although I did get off one stop too far at the end and found myself smack bang in suburbia next to ‘a small green shed’ (later Nicolaski informed me this was a bus stop.)
Anyway, we spent the night on Beacon hill with our pic-a-nic. Nic bought a quiche but no knife, Josie set fire to things (illegally – don’t try this at home) whilst Lucy bled from her feet that stained her shoes. But it was great fun so thanks to everyone who trekked up there.
Lucinda and The Hill
(And there are a few more photos on Nic’s flickr.)
Stayed the night at Nic’s house, got asked about London house prices (think of a number, double it, add some zeros and multiply by ‘a lot’) and discussed accents with the family. Actually – joking aside – it does worry me if people feel they have to ‘lose’ certain accents to get jobs in the media, or elsewhere, because of the stereotypes attached. That’s not good. 
Who knows, maybe one day it will flip round and I’ll have to start saying ‘baath’ before people will listen to me?!
On Saturday Josie, Lucy, Nic and myself went back into the city centre, met up with Sean, and saw some Birmingham sights before I left at 2pm – carefully timed so that I could get back to home sweet home, eat pizza and watch Doctor Who. 
Now that’s what I call planning. Oh, and I also saw local news in the making – the guy asked me ‘Don’t you have litter picks in London then?’ to which I could only reply ‘No, we have litter.’
Finally, yesterday was Middle Class Luncheon (TM) with – most importantly – homemade chocolate brownies. Which can only mean one thing. Homemade chocolate brownie leftover icing mix! Yum! (Anyone mentioning this for homework should be very careful not to tell my sisters.)
The End. For Now.
*This may not make sense to you until you’ve watched HIGNFY tonight.
Hallowed Ticket
It was a bit long, but our throats were dry from laughing at the end. Interesting – I still can’t get over the ‘look how small everything is!’ feeling in a TV studio, especially HIGNFY. Although I can predict the warm up person with remarkable accuracy now… there will always be one gag about Media Studies, guaranteed!
Sean Loch was on presenting duties, and they obviously had a boom time with the Prescott \ Hewitt \ Clarke triple whammy. Hislop went on a tirade against sleaze finishing triumphantly with ‘fat twit’ to which there was immediate and warm applause. Oh, and if you don’t want to know who actually won, then you’re living on a cloud, cause everyone knows Merton always wins
Same time next week!
Right, I have to plan for my amazing trip to far away lands. Slight crisis when I realised 3 hours on a coach was equivalent to a whole Lord of the Rings film, but I consoled myself by realising that there might well be hobbits in Birmingham anyway.
Helen on It’s (waiting) time.: “Fabulous news, congratulations to you both! X” Jun 8, 21:51
