A poll of questions

[slemslempike]

A poll for a morning, a Thursday morning, apparently, which means that I must remember to buy the Guardian to get the booklet about Freshers Week.

[Poll #1446248]

And I would have posted about this horrible review in the Independent before if I'd been here. I haven't seen The Girlfriend Experience, though it sounds interesting, and I've no idea if his other criticisms are valid, but this:

One of them, the elephantine Tessa (Debbie Chazen) giggles nervously about going to see a play that she's in.
There's no point in not saying that these huge and unappetising women come across as being incredibly sad and curiously stupid, with their whale-like lolloping around

is fairly vile no matter what.

Comments

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

I support any team that isn't Oxford.

And I AM about to be unable to have any alcohol at all! However my whole lifestyle is going to change dramatically once I move to Sudan, so I felt unable to answer the question.

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

That said (re. booze) I am becoming increasingly teetotal as I get older. I find I feel better for it.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

That's personal allegiances, though, isn't it? I think a hate against a university because you went to a rival one counts as a personal tie. Like if I were the sort of person who gave any sort of fuck about the whole roses thing.

I suppose in many ways the least of the changes! Is it entirely dry? When we were in Doha (at that time) there was a compound where expats could go and buy booze every month. And then pretend not to consume it anywhere but at home.

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

Yeah, probably, but then so's 'anyone but Oxbridge' in a way, isn't it?

It is technically totally dry: the only legal booze is Thursday night at the British Embassy, which is technically not Sudanese soil. People do drink of course, but possibly not so much these days. I think it's a lot tougher than last time I was there.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

My "anyone but Oxbridge" is that I would prefer it if they entered as universities and not colleges, and they constitute too many of the teams. (I do know why they enter as colleges.) And more generally, it's not my personal allegiance to another university that would be preventing me from supporting them, you could be unaffiliated to any HE institution and still not support them.

[yiskah.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I agree that they should enter at universities. Why is it they don't? I've never known.

[slemslempike.livejournal.com]

I think I got this from the book about UC, that when the programme started there weren't enough universities to make a long enough series, so they were invited to enter as colleges. I've just been to check Wikipedia, which claims that they're limited to five per series each, which I didn't know about, and only makes it slightly better. I'd rather have more universities entering though, more interesting to watch. (Ooh, and the Wikipedia page has a small list of cheating Oxford teams! Cheating is a bit strong. But still.)