How to Be a Physics Student

Being a physics student is hard work. We have to understand the intracy of Gods creation, and do it all while denying that God exists. We’re charged with developing fundamental theories of everything, from the quantum to the stellar, from the electromagnetic to the mechanical, from the complex to the even more complex. Often we do all this without any idea what it is we are actually supposed to be doing, and for this reason I offer a simple guide.

The first thing to note is that not only do people not understand the majority of what you’re studying, they don’t care either. Any attempt to discuss your work will be met with strange looks and, if you continue, a type of social exclusion I call the ring of death. If seen from above, this represents a five foot zone around your person to which no one will enter unless forcibly pushed. Still, it makes you great at navigating crowds. If you are ever locked in debate with someone about any physical subject, a rare occurence but it can and does happen, you can use the lack of common understanding to bewilder your opponent with fancy physics terms, learned during the portions of lectures in which you were awake: terms such as entropy, quantum, electron, force and rope, can all be used to confuse and confound the layman into a kind of intellectual submission. 

Contrary to popular belief, physics students do not work hard, we simply give that impression to outside observers. Our faces look tired and pale, our hair matted and freyed; these things happen not because we were up all night studying for a class test, but because we are tired of life, easily sunburnt and do not understand the concept of personal hygiene. A budding physics student must adhere to this strict code of conduct if he is to be accepted by his peers. I use the term ‘he’ because it is a well known fact that women neither do physics nor are found around physicists. 

While lectures are the heart and soul of most university courses, for a physics student all real work is done in a local tavern. A tavern is any pub that the average student would intentionally avoid thanks to its musky aroma and the proportion of patrons who own bus passes. Such institutions are the lifeblood of modern physics, without beer we would not have string theory and without cider we would not have gravity (before the fermentation of apples things would just float about: the term hangover originally reffered to the tendency of objects to hang over people and for them to subsequenty bang their heads). If you can not find such an establishment it is fine to drink in the house, but remember that there should be no fun or members of the opposite sex, both of which are alien concepts to any true physicists.

Further into your course you will find your mathematical skill improving at an unprecented rate. You should use this phenomenon, coupled with your apparent understanding of complex physical processes, to make everything you say overwhelmingly complex and unintelligible, even to yourself. For instance, the way the room spins at the end of a hard nights work can be explained as a curious combination of both centripetal and centrifugal force, combined with a sense of torque upon the upper abdomen. The words “I was spinning” simply do not suffice for your newly endowed cerebrum.

The decoration of your room should be almost self evident by now, but in case you are having difficulty, know that esoteric quotes and scifi nostalgia are always good themes. The worth of a poster is directly proportional to how little the average person knows about it. You should also ensure that your room is either immaculately clean or resembling a heroin den, never inbetween.

By now you should have dropped all interests except sarcasm and physics, but be looking into developing misanthropy and social awkwardness: no true physics student is ever comfortable in social situations. Choosing a seat on a bus should be a truly traumatic experience, as should interacting with the checkout girl at sainsburys. In fact, you should hardly be venturing outside your home at all, preffering instead to order food, clothing and women online. The amount of work you do should be increasing steadily, yet never reach a point where you could legitimately be labelled as giving a shit. 

Diet is a concern for most students, but since you live at home you see no logical reason to learn to cook, and so subsist on whatever it is the parents provide supplemented with as many sugary drinks and treats as your loan will afford. For the rare physics student who ventures away from home, we remove mothers cooking and replace it with potted or packet noodles and a vitamin tablet. Do not forget the vitamin tablet. You will get scurvy. Fanta doesn’t count as orange juice, trust me. 

Exercise is an interesting topic. While I have found that most physics students are incredibly small in stature, they do posess a strangely strong right or left arm. I have found no correllation between this and drawing deltas, or any other mathematical symbol. Still, expect that over the course of your study you will obtain a suprisingly powerful wrist action.

As your final exam approaches, you will look back upon all you have learnt, all the mysteries of the world that you now understand, all the intricate mathematics, and think, quietly, to yourself: I really need to revise.

The Internet: An Abridged Guide to Communicating.

Firstly, forget everything you learned in Sunday school. If you didn’t learn anything in Sunday school because you either didn’t attend or didn’t listen, then congratulations on being doomed to hell for eternity. Anyway, It’s a common misconception that other internet users are people: they are not. It’s an easy mistake to make, often they will give a perfectly reasonable representation of an actual person, perhaps even simulating emotion, but there is one key difference: you will never meet them in real life. Because of this, you should never give a shit. Example: “I am a jew”, reply “You spelt filthy jew wrong.”, “I am German” reply “You spelt Nazi wrong”, “I am an Admin” reply “I am sorry”.

Secondly, you should never, under any circumstances, take anything anyone says seriously. You took that seriously didn’t you? No? Good. Serious is an archaic concept dreamt up solely to stop people laughing at the pope, before serious had been invented people couldn’t stop pointing and laughing at his hat. Are you talking to the pope? Does the pope use the internet? The answer to both of these questions is yes and no, and that’s exactly where serious gets you, debating the existence of the pope while laughing at his hat. Along with not taking anything seriously, you should also intentionally misunderstand everything that’s said, paying particuarly attention to those with weak english skills. If someone regails you with tales of their sexual conquests “I nailed this superhot chick last night”, try taking his phrasing literally and asking him “To what?”. Another tactic is called the humorists sacrifice. Essentially you sacrifice your own integrity, making a small joke about yourself to make a bigger joke about them. From the previous example: “Weird, last night I dressed up as a superhot chick and got nailed.”.

Thirdly, you need to become a master in the subtle art of sarcasm and irony. Sarcasm isn’t just saying what is not, it is saying what is and what should never be. You shouldn’t just be saying thank you when someone insults you, or writing songs about lemons while they’re trying to have a serious debate. If you really want to break hearts with biting wit, you’ve gotta give them a whole lot of love before smashing them with an ascerbic jibe. I could ramble on all day about this, in fact I could beat moby dick in both length and density, but I’ll try and bring it back home. Basically you want to add some extra flair to your sarcasm, something ridiculous that makes the sarcasm relevant: “ET:QW is the best game I’ve ever played” isn’t particuarly funny sarcasm, “After years of playing eye jabby with my friend stick, ET:QW is a breath of fresh air” isn’t either, but “ET:QW IS FUCKING AWESOME” is pant wettingly hilarious. 

Shakespeare told us that brevity is the soul of wit, but he also wrote long ass plays which gave me headaches in high school. So really, fuck him. If you want to write a whole novel, go ahead, you can even start copying and pasting excerpts of your favourite authors in there, it’s not like anyone’s going to actually read it. If you want people to acknowledge your comic genius you need to think quantity of posts not quality or length. By all means, have some standards, but don’t let those standards get in the way of posting. Take this journal for instance: it’s already too long, the only people left reading it are Rhand and flyingDJ, maybe meez too. Hi guys; it’s no where near funny enough, and there aren’t enough hilarious cat images or 4 chan memes from last thursday. Still, would that stop me from posting? Of course not, and it shouldn’t stop you either.

Remember to be careless, abrasive and, ultimately, hilarious.

The Failings of My University.

For all those that know my misanthropic ways this will come as no suprise, but to those who are not often subject to my miser like persona here is a titillating revelation: I like to find fault. Everywhere I look, there are faults. People who walk too slowly, breath too loudly or talk when it is quite obvious I would rather bend over backwards, insert my head into my anus, and begin to chew my way to freedom than listen to them utter one more word; stairs which are too thin, making a double step downwards a potentially lethal undertaking, or stairs which appear to have been built for a man with horribly deformed, 7 foot long legs. There are faults everywhere, but for the most part I am not obliged to sit, in silence, and watch them for an hour at a time. I guess that’s why they invented shitty lecturers.

Lecturers are the prime method for academic learning. We sit in a room with any number of other students and listen to a single professor flex his oratory muscles for approximately 50 minutes, less if the professor is incompetant, more if he’s enthusiastic, and much, much, much more if he’s senile. The problem with this method of teaching is that it relies quite heavily upon the lecturer having some form of personal charisma; think about the most boring person you know, then imagine he has a vast wealth of knowledge about a subject which you are incredibly interested in, now decide whether you would rather listen to him talk about it for 50 minutes or remove your own genitals with a mandellin. This is what, depending on how my sleeep pattern is fairing, I, and my fellow students, are subjected to on a weekly basis. Needless to say there are many male students with severely bandaged genitals.

There is one lecturer who, despite darwinian self preservation and common sense, manages to ensure that all of the male studentship finish his module minus a penis. If I were to take a rather large, kebab-curry-alcohol triage, dump into a paper bag, glue said bag to a lampost and then proceed to draw eyes, a mouth, a nose, I would have created, without any doubt, a creature capable of exuding more charisma than this particular lecturer. Not only that, I would have also created something more capable of giving lectures on physics. If upon beginning the module I were given the option of Lecturer or Shit Bag man, knowing what I know now, I would  quite happily stare at a bag of my own excrement, provided he supplied notes. 

Lecturers who do not provide a comprehensive set of notes cheat those of use who enjoy 5 hour lie ins out of an education. If I do not attend lectures, which is often the case given that I have a near endless supply of paper bags, marker pens and poo, I have no recourse but to accept that I just lost the corresponding exam marks. There is literally nothing I can do: for some modules even a google search is useless. If the lecturer does not provide notes, I do not learn.

How some of those entrusted with forming my young jellymind into a marbel sculpture of academic proficiency manage to scrape past peer review is beyond me. My best guess is that somehow there is a blind, deaf lab assistant who is volunteered for peer review duty each year, that or professors are easily bribed – The latter is a concept which should be examined more thoroughly, for purely educational purposes. It fills me with sorrow and a slightly infalted sense of debt that my university education will be marred by uncharismatic, uninspiring, and potentially genital threatening lecturers: I love physics, I truly do, I love learning about it and I love practising it, I enjoy every aspect of explaining the natural world; but even love so pure as that can not overcome what amounts to 50 minute of temple drilling boredom. Whilst, like a well adjusted parent, I will never fall out of love with physics, I do realise that his friends are bringing him down and we should really move to somewhere nice.

Hairdressing for the Beginner.

I have a system for haircuts, one that’s worked well enough for the past few years. To explain the basic structure of this system, picture how you would manage your hair if you were a sheep. Once every year or two, I’ll swagger into a salon and demand that they sheer my golden locks down to a number four. The standard reaction upon announcing this is concern, the type you might give a unstable co worker who spends slightly too long looking downwards out of a 4 story window. Today was a haircut day.

In my usual fashion I swaggered proudly into the establishment which sits not 40metres from my house. I turned left and headed straight towards the till. To the right of me sat a small statured woman with brown hair and pointed features, she was reading some sort of gossip magazine, I assumed that she was a customer. Behind the till a woman, also reading a magazine, sat staring at me, glaring almost.  Neither she nor the colleague stood next to her said a word to me as I approached, and they continued their vow of silence even as I reached the till. Pins had dropped, mice had farted, for minutes the silence was all encompassing, the stare down was of western proportion and it seemed as if no one would break. 

To explain, I should tell you that my hair is what most would consider ‘a mess’, in fact my late grandfather once told me that if he had a mop like that he would throw it out. To compound the problem I had just recently, as a mark of consideration for the person about ot cut it, washed my hair, a process which inevitably throws it into a state of panic, curling and frizzing at every opportunity. Now add to these facts that I walk into the hairdressers at half four, a time when they are most likely preparing to head home after a long day of cutting, you begin to see why I was met with such incredulous looks. 

The silence had lasted for around a minute, and not liking the uneasy feeling I blurted out “I’m here for a haircut…”

*sigh* “….uh, sit down…”

I could feel the passive aggressiveness being forced down my throat. I sat down anyway, looking slowly around the room. There was a doorway a few metres in front, leading to the magical hairdressing back room, where elves fashion wigs from the fallen hair, and from that room popper a small ginger man. The hairdresser behind the till shouted over to him

“Steve, would you want to cut this gentlemans hair?”

The desperation in her voice was palpable and almost comically obvious. Steve took one look at me, shook his head, then dissappeared back into his room.

I realised at this point that things were getting far too tense, I again blurted:

“…uhm, I want it all shaved off… if that helps”

The hairdresser standing next to the till gasped, her eyes growing as wide as they possibly could, asking in the familiar concerned tone “Are you sure!?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

At this point the woman sitting down stood up, revealing herself as a hairdresser too. All three hairdressers exchanged eye contact with each other, and after what seemed to be a moment of deliberation, perhaps deciding whether I was crazy or not, they instanteneously broke into a a song and dance routine:

“Can I do it!?! Can I!? Can I!!”

They could not decide, and so it turned out that, after an intial period of tension and doubt as to whether my hair would be cut at all, I ended my yearly sheering with 3 hairdressers taking turns to leave their indellible marks upon my head.

An Ode to Coffee, Revisited, half an hour later.

Coffee is one of the most important substances on this planet. There are few who can deny its impact in the world of work, in the average human’s ability to wake, on the success of revels, or on the usefulness of incontinent monkeys: but still there are those who dissent. They are somtimes reffered to as tea drinkers, but the more accurate, technical, terminology is “inhuman scurge”. Tea is a liquid so vile that it once behoved a newly forming nation to dedicate an entire party to its destruction, so utterly disgusting that it must be kept in bags lest human eyes set there gaze upon it, so ungodly that there are entire supermarket sections dedicated to disguising its putrid taste. Often they will be named herbal or fruit teas, but really they are pathetic attempts to disguise tea’s true taste: which, as has been scientifically demonstrated by myself on more than one occasion, is enough to make a man vomit for 2 whole days.

Now, back to coffee, the black nectar through which genius and wakefulness are born. It would be impossible in this technological age, with the invention of electric lights which mask our true circadian rhythmns, with the prevalence of internet porn, and with the ability to order pizza at almost any hour of the day; with all this it would be made impossible for any sane man to be truly awake without some form of chemical stimulant. Many resort to heroin, but this is an inaffective solution as heroin makes one sleepy and often results in death, which is as far as wakeful states go definitley at the bottom. The smarter go straight to caffiene, and the smarter still buy machines which brew coffee constantly throughout the day. It is with this drug that the most productive of society find the strength to work from 9 – 5, masturbate from 5 – 9, and still leave room for 7 hours of epicurean delight.

I would suggest, nay insist, that coffee be given the title of greatest ever liquid, and were it possible to solify the very essence of coffee (perhaps in some form of ice sculpture), erect a statue of its magnifiscence for all the world to lay eyes upon. It is high time we recognised the important of coffee, its majesty, in our everyday lives.

An Ode to Coffee

Black and strong or white and weak,

an earthly brew for mornings bleak.

Wired already,

hands unsteady,

easy to play now my mind is ready.

It would be futile to deny that, amongst all the accomplishments of man, from the very dawning of time, the process of extracting caffiene enfused liquid from earthen beans is our crowning achievement. This black nectar is the mainstay of our economy, which would all but crash were it not for the foundational support of caffienes intoxicating abilities; a workforce without coffee is a workforce slumped on its desk, eyelids too heavy to lift, throwing armies of Z’s at never ending piles of unfilled forms. There are few drugs left to enjoy with impunity, even alcohol can not be detatched from its stigma, but to coffee we hold a certain romance, an image of parisian days spent ruminating, of the artful italian barista constructing his masterpiece. The caffiene addict is of the few to still be considered useful.

There are many forms of coffee addict, from the snob to those who view it plainly as tasty caffiene delivery system, but they are all united in their passion. It is my belief that the next great war will be fought not over oil or any territorial dispute, but in order to rid the earth of that most horrifying monstrosity: the tea drinker. It is to this end which coffee drinkers are united, for no matter how may one view the coffee another man drinks, he must agree that it remains infinitely greater than tea. When deciding on a theme for my 21st birthday, it will be under serious consideration that I hold “Boston Tea Party” as a legitimate choice, and it will be with bitter dissapointment that I relent, opting instead for soft play.

If you have never drank coffee before in your life, I urge you now to find a cup. Even if you snatch it from the hands of the homeless, the sweet caffienated splendor will render any warm blooded man utterly content, and, eventually, entirely up a wall.

Oneitis.

For those of you unfamiliar with the working of a oneitis infected mind, let me enlighten you. Oneitis is a mental affliction, a break down of the rational faculties culminating in the removal of ones ability to speak, eat or think in terms other than the object of affection. It is an affectation sprung from a well of desire, a well left dry by reality, filled instead with hope and futile dreams, aspirational thoughts ascribed to an object of adoration – worthy or unworthy.

It’s a type of love reffered to as limmerence. The word love here is to be far removed from any romanticised impression, left cold and pallored in unrequited light, instead it takes a form more insidious and destructive. True love is a beautiful thing, limmerence is not. Either as a result of too much time alone or too much thought, or a combination therein, I suffer easily from over analysis of events; life can replay its own intracacies inside my mind, and I will sit attentive, listening and watching, whilst secrets otherwise unnotives are revealed. That such secrets are often inventions of an overactive imagination often escapes me. Thus it is so that limmerence affects, more often than not, my ability to form any romantic attatchment.

If there happens a meeting or passing conversation with a girl who shows all the hallmarks of a suitably limmerent object, humor, intelligence, wit, it becomes a mental war to remove her from my thoughts before the seeds of limmerence take root. However, since from the first crush to present day, only those to whom limmerence was ascribed ever called me to action, in denying limmerence it is often the case that I deny interest too. 

I must admit, I do not take often to feelings of longing, but when I do I leave myself incapable of functioning on a rational basis, and at the worst of it incapable of functioning at all. 

If anyone has a method, other than inserting an icepick up ones nostril and shaking violently, to purge emotions from the human psyche, I’d be more than interested.

Bouncing in the Snow Again.

If there’s one thing that brings out the kid in almost anyone it’s snow. There’s nothing more playful than a snowball fight and nothing quite as rewarding as constructing a snow man. I participiated in both these activities during our brief flirtation with alaskan weather, and I can say, wholeheartedly, that I have never felt as much pleasure as when bob’s cold lips touched mine. Bob being the snow man of course. 

Anyone who knows me for more than a few weeks has to quickly come to terms with the fact that I have no valid form of identification. For all intents and purposed I am a migrant. For the most part this doesn’t bother me, but when it comes time to get the drink on it can somewhat hinder my success. Over the years I’ve developed some skill in bypassing bouncing staff, not least of which I demonstrated last night; still, this is not a bragging session, but a time for me to relay some of the more interesting events which happened to unfold – All of which happened during my brief stay with the bouncers who eventually let me in.

The first thing I noticed was a rather belligerent drunk man swaying heavily into and out of the velvet rope. I thought not much of it until he began harrassing the bouncer who had originally ID’d me, Lloyd. If I could choose one Doorman as being the strictess, most heartless and ruthless, it would be Lloyd. This man made the downing street door policy look like a free for all. You sway, you leave. You chat back, you leave. You have a fat arse, you leave. One girl was brought to tears by his antics, at which point he relented and allowed her in, I could help but comment that he must have a heart after all, such banter was instrumental in winning his pitty. 

Another bouncer, rich, was much quitier than Lloyd, and I got the sense he was often times embarrassed, or atleast wary, or his partners antics. He stood there with a stoic look on his face whenever it appeared Lloyd had bitten off more than he could chew, although it never transpired that he had. Still, it was a shock when Rich eventually snapped at the belligerent velvet rope swaying drunk, telling him he should leave before his head impacted with a hard object in a less than pleasant fashion. The drunk waited for rich to leave and attempted to enter again, Lloyd did not appreciate his entreupenurial spirit; after this, the drunk wandered off to urinate on the side of the club, and seeing my opportunity for machiavellian one up man ship, I told on him. Rich flew around the corner and pushed him away, mid stream, from the wall, being careful to avoid any wayward urine. Just as this occurred, in what I can only explain as one of those sliding doors type moments, a police van was driving past. With a quick hand wave from rich, 3 police man bailed out of the van, pulled the now empty bladdered drunk into the van, and began to drive off. 

I say began because about 2 seconds later the drunk somehow burst from the back of the van and began running, as fast as his drunken legs and half down trousers, down the street. 

After that, things quietened down somewhat, but Lloyd did manage to stare down a drunk whilst brandishing the L symbol made with the thumb and index finger. I found his obvious lack of respect for anyone even slightly drunk hilarious, and luckily my comments about him having all the feelings of the tin man from the wizard of oz didn’t go down too badly – After that, it was into the club, where my night became so much less interesting.

Mysteries and Revels.

Walking back from my local newsagent, a trip I often used to take with cigarettes in hand, I saw a curious sight. Sitting obstinantly beside the underused phone box, a bulmers branded pint glass, full to the brim with orange liquid; the naive man might think to himself why anyone would abandon a full alcoholic beverage, but to me the question was slightly more sinister: bulmers or piss? You can play the same game in many shady pubs in the north east. This proposition made me realise that, the only man to ever find out what that pint glass contains, will be the man who eventually cleans it up. No member of the public will ever dare investigate, no matter how curious, for fear of public mockery, and any less socially bound children will be quickly drawn back by their leesh should they stray too close; no, the only man who has a hope of unravelling this liquid mystery is the lowly street sweep: he is the true dungeon master.

Little did I know that as I pondered this mystery, in my pocket I held the next. Revels are a child hood favourite of mine, it’s a game and a sweet you see. Before biting into whichever sweet you held in your hand you had to first guess of which flavour it was filled. Some were easy, raisins, toffee, pure chocolate, even the malteser, being the largest, was relatively simple to corner. It was the coffee and orange creams which posed the most difficulty, but they were the most delicious, so the challenge was worth it, anyway… back to the mystery. In yet more proof that the british public are more happy chewing their own elbows while watching x-factor than making any kind of rational decision, the coffee revel has been removed, anexed, sent into chocolate exhile along with taz and cheap smarties. It has been replaced with a mystery sweet, one which the coinnesseur is dared to figure out. 

Never one to dismiss a challenge, I set out to discover this new chocolate creation and critique its talents. Towards the bottom of the pack I discovered the first one. A sticky, sweet mess, without flavour at first, it was almost as if someone had loaded sugar into a gun and shot it directly into the sugar tasting cavity in my brain. If there was a way one could snort sugar and not feel as though they were having handy andy sandpaper their nasal cavity I’m sure it would be a similar experience. As the sweetness faded the flavour came through – As a kid, my mum would often buy the 3 colour neopolitan icecream, and as a general rule by the end of day 1 the chocolate flavour would be all but removed, by day 2 the vanilla had been painstakingly carved out, and for the rest of eternity the strawberry would linger, waiting for someone born without tastebuds to enjoy it. And what flavour did Nestle pick? 

They replaced Coffee with it. Coffee. Sometimes the chocolate world just doesn’t make sense.

Shaving, worse than child birth.

They say women have it hard with their monthly blood letting and the whole drama of child birth, but the true travesty of existence is that, for a man to appear presentable, or at the very least not homeless, he must at some point use an incredibly sharp metal instrument to literally scrape the hair from his face. In fact, some men go through this ritual daily, and for those unfortunate enough to be balding it can quite often encompass more than the face. 

What’s so bad about shaving? Well, for one, if you do it wrong you’ll quite quickly begin to look as though a nest of fire ants took residence upon your chin, if your skill is even less you may finish to find parts of your face left in the sink. Commit the mortal sin of shaving with a blunt razor, either through badly timed shopping schedules or laziness, and you’ll quickly find out exactly how it feels to wax individual hairs – For those unsure, it does not feel good. So, we have daily bleeding and unparalleled pain, but there’s more. Should any man deviate from a few more standard beard designs, he will be instantly mocked by his girlfriend, family, friends: it is a well known fact  that the pre-cursor to peadofilia is the mustache. Should the man decide that, as an act of defiance against the draconian standards of society, to no longer bother with shaving, he will often find himself crippled with pain from incoming pennies (if one inspects the carboard signs clutched by most homeless, they will often read “Please…stop throwing change at me”). 

Obviously, this is simply one man’s view, but it being a man’s view and not a woman’s makes it inherently more valuable, and far more right.