Farewell studenthood, presumably for the last time. It's been a slice.

Now I have plumbing to organise, and travel, and a wedding. And to get a job, just as Western Civilisation seems hell-bent on destroying itself. Again. So that should keep me busy.

I am not planning to change the title on my bank cards.

Helen Arney did indeed play a uke at the Monkey show, and again at the somewhat overlapping Nine Lessons & Carols on the 23rd, along with a couple of other people. A jolly good time was had on both occasions, and a few others besides. Ian discovered that he actually quite likes Stewart Lee after all.

Christmas itself was spent in Wales with the in-laws. An actual physical game of Carcassonne was assayed; the FIL was thoroughly underwhelmed, but the rest of us enjoyed it. Christmas presents were somewhat dominated by things associated with our forthcoming departure to far-flung places, which at least gave a measure of structure to the process. Doctor Who was saccharine and silly, but I enjoyed it anyway. Great Expectations was thoroughly splendid.

Compared to the excesses of years gone by, this holiday season has been the very picture of austerity. Objectively, perhaps not so much. Weight has been gained, alas. But I am more or less sober, and spent much of the evening cooking a tasty couscous for dinner. Friends have been visited, love and good wishes exchanged. No attempt will be made to attend the evening's kettling excitement down by the river. We might possibly watch a bit of Jools.

Proper closure on the year will have to wait another 6 days. (My thesis is garlanded with Post-its in preparation.) But in the meantime, as that plumber would say: let's a-go!

Buon anno a tutti.

My ongoing project to become a complete internet cliché continues.

In the context of the scientific limbo between thesis submission and viva, I recently gave a kind of valedictory talk to my fellow CoMPLEX students. Well, it was more of a spittle-flecked hellfire and brimstone rant, creaking under the unwieldy title Candide Must Die! Winston Churchill, Unscrewing Office & the Epiphenomenal Imbroglio -- and there was a subtitle too. Highlights for me included the line "Next time you hear someone claiming that some complex phenomenon is an 'emergent property' of underlying simple rules, TELL THEM TO FUCK OFF!" Ah, the spirit of calm and respectful scientific discourse. Highlights for the audience were presumably concentrated around the wretched thing eventually ending.

Anyway, the Christmas season is upon us, with all the inconvenience and excess that entails. There's some fun stuff coming up amongst all the drinking excuses, notably Uncaged Monkeys on Wednesday, back at the Hammersmith Odeon for another night of comico-scientific geekery. Someone will doubtless play the ukelele. I may or may not report.

A long time ago, in a galaxy not very far away, a question was asked and answered; which left a narrative thread dangling. Moves are now afoot to tie off that loose end.

Not quite as long ago, although still quite awhile, I posted a to do list. In the intervening years, only one item has been checked off. You'll be happy, or jealous, or just indifferent to learn that two more of those are now in the firing line.

These news stories are not entirely unconnected, although the "honeymoon" -- not that it is that, exactly -- is going to precede the wedding, and is prompted as much as anything by the date of my PhD viva finally getting set. All being well, come the feast of the epiphany I will be Dr Matt. Less than ten days later we set off on the scariest holiday ever. At least until the last one on that list becomes feasible.

April's ceremony, obviously, will be rendered moot if we don't come back alive.

It is, for example, merely a formality that I should mention having finally, after many months in a widening gyre of hysteria, exhaustion and disgust, submitted my PhD thesis a few weeks back. My viva, for somewhat aggravating reasons of examiner availability, is not scheduled until January. In the intervening slough I find myself sorely lacking in enthusiasm for the tying up of loose ends or the quest for longer term work. I have managed some small moves in both directions, but my heart doesn't seem to be in it yet. And a random programming task -- coding an ImageJ plugin to help identify putative synaptic regions in fluorescent images -- which I agreed to do largely on account of it being completely unrelated to my own research -- is sort of completed already, or enough to be going on with at least.

Also for form's sake, I'll point out that, after more than three years, I finally broke cover at YouTube and posted a couple of vids. No idea whether there will be more, but it makes a change from pure consumption. So far I seem to be all about other people's art.

Possibly as a symptom of post-submission malaise, I'm finally putting a teensy bit of effort into learning the uke Ian gave me a couple of xmases ago. I currently know the chords to about four tunes, including AFP's nicely simple In My Mind, although it seems I can't generally manage all three of fingering, strumming and singing at the same time, and even just two is sometimes asking too much. Do not expect evidence to find its way online anytime soon.

On the music front, I went on Sunday night to see Michelle Shocked, of whom I have been a fan since approximately forever, and fantastically good fun it was too, with jolly entertaining support from The Sweater Set and Peter O'Toole (no, not that one). Michelle encouraged audience participation, and I was tipsy enough to sing when requested, which I enjoyed a lot but was probably quite annoying for my neighbours.

And so on.

So, let's see.

(i) I will shortly bow out of this because arguing with Americans is like arguing with Christians -- sets, obviously, with a significant intersection -- if for no other reason than that none of you fucking syphilitic cunts appreciates proper shit-bastard arse-buggering swearing.

(ii) If you start out a six paragraph comment with "I am simply not qualified to comment" you probably shouldn't expect what follows to be taken seriously.

(iii) If the biggest problem in the green energy movement is cronyism then break out the champagne because we all have it made. Everything's going to be fine and the world is in fucking clover.

(iv) It never hurts to be reminded that libertarianism makes you stupid. At some point I will also get around to posting my explanation of free market economics as a cargo cult. In the meantime, feel free to point out how unfettered markets have actually achieved anything of value that you can explain in a generalisable fashion. Doctrinal assertions will not suffice. I expect equations. Otherwise go fuck yourselves.

(v) No, computer science is not science. For that matter, software engineering isn't engineering. Coding does not give you a meaningful understanding of reality. And yes, I write as a recovering coder with a keen appreciation of the contradictions inherent in making such an assertion. I can also introduce you to a Cretan acquaintance if you'd like.

Hackers who argue the culpability of scientists on the basis of profiteering haven't a single fucking leg to stand on between the millions of them. If you think you have something to add beyond "WAAAH! I DON'T WANT THE SITUATION TO BE XYZ! I LIKE THINGS AS THEY ARE! JUST GIVE ME MORE MONEY!" then you are wrong. You are basically just making grunting animal noises. Please shut the fuck up.

I know, it's all so easy to say this shit on the home turf of Walky Talky. Failing to engage the hapless peripheral forces of darkness on the field of battle is pure cowardice, a gross abdication of intellectual responsibility.

Well fuck you too, you putrescent spacehoppers. Fuck fuck fuck fuck cunting fucking fuck.

Fuck.

Shit.

Fuck.

I fucking give the fuck up.

Yes, I am a teensy bit drunk. Why do you ask?

In any case, an IonView page was needed, and there it is. Eventually I may get around to reorganising things around here so that it is easier to find stuff like software and photos and so on, but there doesn't seem any particular hurry.

All sorts of outings probably merit fuller mentions, but since that doesn't seem to be happening here are some capsules. I enjoyed Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui's TeZukA a lot, although it didn't seem quite finished -- should lose 15 minutes, at least one fight sequence and (especially) the interval. Amanda Palmer's Heaven show was one of the best gigs I've seen in years, packed with guests and randomness and just enormous fun from beginning to end, despite one or two joyless emo caricatures in the audience pouting because everyone was having too much of a good time. Kill List was gobsmackingly unpleasant, and sort of interesting in its shifting Brit pastichery, but packed less punch than it should because the characters were impossible to give a toss about and the final slide into Wicker Man territory was just plain silly. Last night Kym took me to see a cappella lad-band The Magnets, who were enjoyable and technically accomplished but it was a bit hard to see who their audience was meant to be.

In Michael Moorcock's sf&f multiverse, time travel into the past is (in some defiantly non-mechanistic way) possible, but it is made difficult by a kind of chronological inertia that resists paradox. Any hint of anachronism can lead to unceremonious eviction from the time stream. Successful chrononauts, of whom there are few, avoid this fate by immersing themselves in the visited period to such an extent that they more or less forget they were ever anyone anywhere anywhen else. One such traveller, at least in some of his very many manifestations, is Jerry Cornelius.

There is an extended, slightly unfocused, film festival in town at the moment to celebrate the Scala, the notorious art-cum-grindhouse repertory fleapit at which I used to work. The only festival event I've caught so far was a double of John Boorman's Zardoz with the film version of Moorcock's first Cornelius novel, The Final Programme. Suffice to say that both films are so profoundly of their time that they would have nothing to fear from the Morphail Effect.

The main reason for this criminal negligence should be obvious. Things in that department are creeping towards their inevitable conclusion. Only two significant obstacles remain, like bookends: the beginning and the end. Twenty pages max, I think, maybe two weeks. And there's some i-dotting and t-crossing, but isn't there always?

Otherwise, there was the wedding, and its immediate aftermath of desertion. So many mixed emotions there it was almost funny. (In fact, some bits were very funny indeed.)

We've had riots. Eh-oh. And ongoing surreptitious attempts to dismantle what remains of British civilisation. At some point I will get around to writing a proper post about markets, cargo and magic. It's been fermenting for a long time. Sometimes I compose angry fragments in my head, railing into insomniac darkness, but the job of turning them into coherent prose will almost certainly have to wait until after submission.

There's some music gestating too, but again not getting finished just yet. The two current front runners both seem to need words, which puts the brakes on something rotten. The post-thesis to do list is starting to look like quite a tome itself.

But hey, before all that, let's kill Hitler. It'll be about time.

The track name is a cheap gag based largely on a complete memory failure. Having probably not heard TB properly for decades, it had melded in my mind with other over-earnest tinkly 70s synth nonsense to become, basically, just a horror movie soundtrack. Churning out my own little satanic possession parody last night -- a couple of hours plus iTunes tag fiddling, honestly GarageBand remains fucking amazing -- drove me to listen again in full today. And all I can say is: God bless the generosity of forgetfulness. I had managed to repress completely just how much of Oldfield's magnum opus is gobsmackingly awful prog drivel. Can there be anyone who still seriously listens to this guff today? Christ, where are Emerson, Lake and Palmer when you need them?

Fuck it, I'm off to iTunes to buy a bunch of Yes and Hawkwind and Peter Gabriel dressed as a flower. And where's my copy of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds?

Tomorrow: social occasion of the year and another sad farewell. I'm rapidly running out of friends around here.

Tonight: those Wales photos won't edit themselves.

Yes, I know, I should be writing R code to calculate dwell time distributions. No, I'm not doing that. What can I say? I'm a bad person.

The latter title is a nod to Hofesh Shecter's Political Mother, which I finally caught up with on Thursday night, a year late -- had tickets last year, but was called away. I liked it a lot, it was big, loud and exciting, if perhaps a bit one-note. Those few occasions when it did shift into a slower more reflective mode were quite a relief. Was tempted to see it again yesterday with the all-too-briefly-visiting Davide, but in the end we just had a few drinks and dinner at The Eagle.

Work proceeding OK. I'm hoping to be pretty much done with chapter 6 by the end of the coming week. Very slightly worried that my incredibly tenuous data may be seized upon by over-optimistic supervisors as demonstrating something other than unmitigated uselessness. That would be tiresome.

Thesis writing currently on an upswing, but ask me again in a few days and it'll no doubt be a different story. In the meantime, have a figure:

So the first half was perfectly fine, though the Royal Festival Hall was half-empty when it began, with people wandering in randomly for almost the entire set and generally being really fucking annoying. The band seemed to take a long time to get into the swing and the first few numbers just got a bit lost, feeling sort of arid and drab and remote. It was Wire, after all, and so there was no getting away from the "middle aged men with guitars" vibe. But by the time they picked up enough speed and volume to shut up the loudly chattering fat berks in front of us it became reasonably enjoyable. And when the first encore was my favourite Wire song, the uncharacteristically chirpy Outdoor Miner, I was pretty chuffed.

That's as Kinky as we get.

Ray Davies himself introduced the headliners, and it was clear from about the second note they played that we were in for a fun time. I knew The Sonics dated back to the 1960s, but I really wasn't prepared for quite how old school their show was going to be. The elderly band members were like a perversely upbeat cross between The Blues Brothers and their movie nemeses The Good Ol' Boys, with music that was basically transplanted wholesale from the heyday of Chuck Berry. Their most recklessly modern tracks -- "this is another original song from our new album" -- could have cropped up on Led Zeppelin III or thereabouts. The whole show was like seeing The Rolling Stones in an alternative universe where they broke up in 1968 and only recently reformed, the intervening decades having never happened at all. Or, in the words of my companion Simon, they were the best wedding band ever.

In case that sounds snarky, let me be clear: the whole performance was utterly fantastic from beginning to end, hysterically funny in an entirely unmalicious and inclusive way. Where the Wire set had served mainly to amplify my innate misanthropy, filling me with bilious loathing for the hateful fuckwits around me (and some of them really were fuckwits), The Sonics blew that away with a great tidal wave of irresistibly good-humoured rock 'n' roll. They were absolutely shameless crowd pleasers -- the first encore was Louie Louie, for fuck's sake! It was awesome.

Most of all, I wish I could have gone around secretly filming the audience. It was a mixed bunch, but pretty much all of them were in one way or another rock 'n' roll nerds. The same annoying fucktards I'd spent the first act detesting for their cretinous yapping turned into admirable celebrants as they danced in the aisles. The crowd was predominantly white and somewhat less overwhelmingly male, but even so it was far from uniform. There were hipsters and losers, fat kids and weird kids, ditzy chicks, malodorous middle-aged rockers and painfully self-aware teenage trainspotters, and astonishingly many of them were transported into a utopian realm where they could just get on down with their bad selves, lank ponytails, pot bellies, ill-fitting specs and all. Documentary footage of these people's enjoyment would no doubt be acutely embarrassing for them as individuals, but it would be joyously edifying for the rest of us.

This is what music is for. (And tonight is what it means to be young.)