So this is how it ends.

Beating My Own Record

In 2008 I posted 42 times.

In 2009 I posted 8 times.

There are several possible reasons behind this - firstly, the novelty of a new blog, which spurred me on. Secondly, being surrounded by fellow bloggers in Andy, Matt and Francis, all of whom lacked the ingenuity and imagination to continue beyond the first few months, helped me write my own posts. But why was 2009 so quiet? After all, it was a far less interesting year than 2008. Maybe I had just discovered more refined and subtle ways of procrastinating...

Either way, I'm determined to halt this sequence of diminishing returns. Consequently, I've posted my examination of this sequence of diminishing returns.

Moreover, I finally saw Inception on Sunday. It was better than I'd ever dreamed of. Oh Alex you genius you...

Lawl.

I was googling around today, and stumbled onto the Times website. Upon trying to click on an article, I was reminded by a cheerful paywall that I needed to pay £1 in order to view the information I wanted. How ingenuous! This information was critical to my happiness at the time, so they would be able to wrangle a quid out of me that previously would have remained in my (metaphorical) pocket. Multiply that by the millions who would try to access similar articles in the coming days...the mind boggles at the profit!

Except...oh, wait. I just went onto the Guardian website, looked at the equivalent article (after all, news is news), and sauntered off, content. Oops. Looks like the Times just handed over a reader to one of their rivals. Plus now I don't like the Times any more because of their audacity, so I won't be buying their newspaper anymore. Another Guardian purchase instead. Multiply that by the millions who would do a very similar thing (albeit maybe buying another quality newspaper like...the Independent?) in the coming days...the mind boggles at the loss.

Silly old Rupert Murdoch, thinking he can still exercise the same level of tyranny and control over something on a scale far beyond anything he's ever known. Even if every other newspaper complied (including the BBC, despite the fact that it's included in our license fee), all it would take is for one blogger to cough up a quid and then post all the news articles on his own site. I guess they could close his website down in the end, but the idea would catch on and I'm not sure it's possible to regulate things, you know, the entire internet.

After all, it might turn out there's more than one reason it's called freedom of the press.

Serving up a snazzy return.

Yes, I'm back. Thank you, thank you, you're too kind. Andy, stifle that joyful weeping please. You're just embarrassing yourself. With the tearful greetings out of the way, let me proceed:

Blogging is a pursuit I enjoy, yet seem to rarely partake in. Perhaps it's because there's all the palaver of thinking of a clever title, or phrasing whatever random thoughts, that are no consequence to anyone else, in such a way as to make them appear entertaining or enlightening or, generally, at least legible. It's a delicate balance - pander to what you think people will like reading, and you'll be just an inferior version of a thousand novelists or more popular bloggers or the editor of a tabloid. But just spout out random occurrences that were "funny at the time, but I guess you had to be there" and you just end up being boring.

All meaningful musing about the backwater of the internet aside, a far more important and tragic event happened today. England were - like we all knew, but didn't dare believe - ejected with the usual German efficiency from the World Cup; the players, once heroes, are now being branded "overpaid prima donnas"; Capello, initially our saviour, is now an bumbling buffoon. The team is in disgrace, despite the fact that Germany were the superior side from the moment the game began, and for the last decade in fact.

Not that I think they deserve better. To watch these top-class footballers categorically fail to perform is just painful and embarrassing for everyone involved. Gerrard is paid £100 000 a week, but was unable to put in a single good cross in the whole ninety minutes. Rooney is considered by some to be the best striker in the world, and managed maybe three shots on target in roughly five hours of play. The individuals aren't entirely to blame - Rooney didn't get the supply - but that in itself is a problem. How can a team whose overall yearly salary is probably more than the domestic GDP of Algeria fail to get the ball to the only man who, if we're honest, can actually score for us on a regular basis?

Maybe I'm being unreasonable and unfair, but I feel entitled to it. After all, I've watched England score three times, grind out two draws, a shaky win, and a crushing defeat - hardly the glory the nation was expecting. My theory: scrap the whole team, retaining maybe Milner from the first XI we saw today. Build it up again, with players who can focus on internationals just as much as the inflated, money-crippled world of league football. Germany had a team with maybe four players who could feasibly, on an individual by individual basis, compete with their English counterparts at domestic level. When the scoreline is 4-1, and could've been worse, you know that there a lot of things wrong.

Well, that's my rant over. And to those of you in my rapt audience of three or four people who aren't interested in football - which I suspect may be all of you - I apologise for getting you all excited about some devastating new insight you're used to getting every time I post. But it's your own fault really: football is far better than anything you have in your life instead of it. Yes, Andy, even Justin Bieber.

But I understand your disappointment, so I'll make it up to you with this witty little anecdote. Me and my brother were playing football in the garden today (a more thrilling fifteen minutes than England's entire campaign), and I flicked the ball into Max's face. He crumpled to the floor; I ran past him and drilled a shot at the open goal, cackling triumphantly, only to see the ball rebound off the post and hit Max in the face again as he lay motionless in the grass. Brilliant stuff, eh?

What do you mean, no? Ah well. It was funny at the time, but I guess you had to be there.

A MONUMENTAL MOMENT.

Welp, the election is over, and was almost exactly how everyone expected. Except Lib Dems were even suckier than before. Fantastic.

They can be very...persuasive.

A girl asked me to update my blog, which has long been languishing in the dusty recesses of the internet like a puppy whose household has grown bored of it's gallivanting antics and now just watches the TV.

Since I always do what people ask me, unless it's difficult or make have any effect on me personally, I've decided to oblige.

There's only one interesting thing in this world at the moment, other than the continued countdown to the release of Inception in the summer, and that's the election. Everyone is yelling about it, even the people who aren't going to vote because the polling station is too far away or they haven't figured out letters yet. This annoys me, considering how hard we all had to work for it. Less than 200 years ago only very richest landowners could vote, although they often persuaded to by big bags of money. Nowadays, we're the ones having our money taken admittedly, but we should still vote - if you don't, you have no right to complain about anything. You had your chance to change things, but you were just too damn lazy.

Andy-like rant aside, I was somewhat persuaded by Nick Clegg's handsinpocketastic appearance on the Tellyvision to vote for him, considering the only real choice otherwise is between the devil we do know and the devil we don't. Now that I've seen Clegg isn't the good-natured nymphomaniac he previously presented himself as, and is in fact looking pretty competent, I feel that my choice is a lot easier.

In other news, I wore a hat today. It was red.

In conclusion, impending exams are a little distracting - every second I spend posting here is a second I feel guilty for not doing work. However, a girl persuaded me to post, and I'm hoping that my combination of swarthy charm and natural eloquence conveyed in this post will blind her to the fact that it's actually just a rambling political muse tagged on to a tenuous puppy analogy.

Which is actually a pretty good synopsis of my life.