Thunderbozz

Today I attended the inaugural Student Media day at the Union. It was an opportunity to hear first-hand experiences of getting into the media – especially from a background in student media, as many of the speakers had – and to gain an insight into an otherwise 'closed' world. The lectures and seminars proved to be fascinating, and, in the case of the seminar on breaking into radio broadcasting, very illuminating. I had always known that competition for such jobs was fierce, and that hard work is required to get anywhere near the top. However, it was highly beneficial to have these facts spelt out in no uncertain terms. Whilst I wouldn't go so far as to say my dreams of a life on-air have been shattered, hearing the real-life stories of people who have worked their way to the top has made me realise that I need to be far more pro-active (and in truth, far more committed) if I wish to fulfil these ambitions. The day also allowed it's contributors to off-load some real ge...

Well, here's something I didn't think I'd be saying this week: Three weeks into the term, and everything's going swimmingly. The courses are interesting, my seminar groups are full of pretty decent people (although there's at least one exception on each module, on the whole I can't grumble), and the workload/timetable is working out just fine. I even managed to get through Middlemarch : despite it being an ultimately pointless use of 900 pages, it's fairly readable towards the end. This weekend's been pretty relaxing, too. Friday night down at Bar One, watching England win twice on Saturday, then catching a couple of films on Sunday. It has to be said, sitting through A Clockwork Orange wasn't as pleasant as Ice Age on Sunday evening with a massive bag of Dolly Mixtures, but at least now I can say I've seen the film and read the book. Well that's a barrel-load of Cockney monkeys, and no mistake! Here's a question for you: does the word ...

The iPod effect Feist goes to number 8 in the charts thanks to this video The Cadbury effect Phil Collins re-enters the chart at 20 thanks to this ad The Big Brother effect The concept of irony is tragically wasted on these two. The Mika effect That bastard's got a lot to answer for.

I felt rather worse for wear two Sundays ago. I thought I had learnt my lesson, but this was obviously not the case. Kids, if you only learn one thing from me, let it be this: Never embark on a marathon drinking session on an empty stomach. Horrorshow Being in a near-paralysed state did home some advantages, the best being the opportunity to see Bill Murray in Groundhog Day , a film that I've been meaning to watch for ages but never had the chance. This year, one of my modules is Film Theory, which is essentially over-analysing movies. This should make a nice change from over-analysing books, although embarrassingly it's highlighted just how few influential films I've seen (as opposed to how many influential books I haven't read). To make amends, I'm taping A Clockwork Orange off the telly tonight... I've read it, for the record. Speaking of the Record, I've been lumbered with a Scottish £5 note. This is karma, because I paid for a 99p refill pad ...