Icon for today in remembrance of the first time I got a ticket for disobedience on North Avenue. Saying goodbye to a week's allowance in order to reclaim my license + paint scratch on front bumper = never want to drive again.

Get:

1. May Contain Traces of Magic by Tom Holt
2. Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde
3. Crossed Wires by Rosy Thornton
4. The Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones
5. Blackout by Connie Willis
6. All Clear by Connie Willis
7. Money to pay for all of the above.
   

Short break from thesis. Amazing performance from Arsenal against Blackburn tonight. They replicated the scoreline from December 2006:

Arsenal 6-2 Blackburn

Absolute brilliance from Fabregas who notched four assists and my favourite goal of the match—a left-foot shot that curved magnificently into the top left corner. Paul Robinson had no chance, and I can't help feeling sorry for the poor bugger. What's it been, 47 goals against in 16 games? It was good to see Walcott and Rosicky back from the bowels of Arsenal's medical facility but it was even better to see Thierry Henry back at Emirates (a good omen perhaps?).

How insanely fitting are Arsene Wenger's signings? In Thomas Vermaelen we have not only a defender but a striker. I never imagined a centre back would be our top scorer for the season with, what, six goals? Bendtner gets a lot of stick, but I just knew he'd get on the score sheet. Looks like the Aston Martin incident hasn't affected his ability to find the back of the net. If only he'd do it consistently more often than he hits the post.

As for Diaby, I still don't like him. He falls/loses the ball too easily, and his goals come sporadically. He's okay for a sub, I suppose, but I'd take Denilson and Song (!) over him any day. Don't think Nasri will have a problem coming back into the first team once he gets fit.

As for the Japan Grand Prix, Raikkonen should have put his finger down on the KERS button. I was really hoping that he'd pass Hamilton, but fate's fate. Still, now that Alonso's knocked Kimi out of Ferrari I'd like to see Raikkonen at McLaren and breathing down Hamilton's neck. And fingers crossed that Sebastian Vettel pips Jenson Button to the F1 title. What can I say, I love the underdog. :)

Excellent weekend after the horrible case of the iPod touch thieves on Monday. If Arsenal keeps playing this well, I won't care that I haven't got Bex anymore.

Things to do this weekend: 1) cram BA 161 Law on Obligations and Contracts 2) patch together a formal model of party capability theory in the Philippines Supreme Court 3) curse AWOL professor 4) finish a six-page exam on the Romantics and Victorians 5) curse sadistic professor.


Woohoo.

And now, back to watching the streams and trawling the Internet for updates on the Arsenal v Manchester City match. I expect Toure to score and a draw. My brother's picked out Denilson to hit the back of the net. Fingers crossed we kick Adebayor ass. I never effing liked that guy.

In the UP College of Arts and Letters library, there is a book. This book is called Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons of Cold Comfort Farm fame. It is a well-preserved, blue-green hardbound book published in 1938. It is a first edition. It is currently valued at £150.00 online. The librarian did not know this. I told her, and she did not care.

I want this book. Imagine, the poor thing has been lying forgotten and unread for almost twenty years. The librarian needed a week to have it recalled from The Stacks, which I presume to be some godforsaken warehouse hidden in the overgrown lots of Diliman. I can see in my mind's eye teetering towers of books reaching to the ceilings in an damp, rat-infested basement lit by a single lightbulb. Nothing Stella Gibbons wrote deserves such a fate. It is sacrilege—damned sacrilege!—for it to remain stuck in the limbo of The Stacks. The question is, how am I going to make this book mine?

Last week a classmate came up to me in the library and asked if I was still following Arsenal. 'Everyone's gone off it,' he said. 'The new bandwagon's for Man City.' This was true, judging from the surplus of light blue shirts on all the sports TV ads and the critics calling Wenger a madman.

'Do I look like a freaking flake?' I replied, 'It's Arsenal or nothing. We're going to be great, I know it.' And I am glad glad glad that the opening game proved just that. Everton 1-6 Arsenal and we didn't even break a sweat. Sweet vindication (though not of the fleeting variety, I hope) and we're in an excellent position to start the season. Loads of confidence and goals, and no injuries . . . fingers crossed.

Points of interest:

• Thomas Vermaelen. I was initially worried about his height, especially while he stood next to the giant Toffee dandelion Fellani, but I was heartened by his solid performance at back (and that bold header). He likes going forward though, and there were times when I felt there was quite a lot of space between him and Gallas. A bit more work there, but on the whole I am satisifed with our one and only signing. He has upped the Hotness level of Arsenal to 3.5/30 (joining Aaron Ramsey, Carlos Vela, and Cesc Fabregas when he's on the pitch).
  
• Aaron Ramsey. Has he gotten taller over the summer? If he hasn't, he has certainly gotten more attractive. Sigh. The boy needs more close-ups, damn it. Oh, and playing time. I haven't got the chance to see how great he and Jack Wilshere are.
• Manuel Almunia. What has the man done with his hair? :0 Was the part-peroxide faux-hawk intentional, or is he a victim of a pro-Tottenham barber? Thankfully, Fabregas has nixed his Euro-trash do and gone for clean-cut and serious.

To end, thesis is NOT going well.

In the university yearbook, there will be the question: 'Who is your favourite economist?' My answer: Arsene Wenger.

It is interesting that we should be talking about politics, what are your politics, what do you believe?

AW: Politically, I am for efficiency. Economically first. Until the 1980s the world was divided into two, people were either communist or capitalist. The communist model does not work economically, we all realised that, but the capitalist model in the modern world also looks to be unsustainable. You cannot ignore individual interests, but I believe the world evolves slowly. The last 30 years have brought a minimum amount of money for everybody in the west, the next step, politically, would be a maximum amount of money earned by everybody.

That would have to be enforced globally, though, because if one country had a maximum wage, a lot of people might leave and go to a country where it did not exist.

Exactly. But if you look at the world and what is happening at the moment, the biggest issue is the need for a world government. There is no other way out. It will happen, in 50 years maybe, but it will happen. Otherwise you just transfer the problem from one country to the next. It is not the case any more that you are isolated as an employee, that if it does not go well in the other country you are unaffected and continue to live well. Everywhere is inter-connected.

So how do you square these beliefs which are quite egalitarian, socialist even, with your work in football which is a completely dog-eat-dog profession, which many think epitomises what is wrong with the capitalist system?

I also think we live in a competitive world, and I love competition. People who are competitive should get rewarded. But the money I am talking about is nothing to do with football players. Football players are small earners compared to these people. They are not a world problem. The best football players in the world still earn very little money compared to people who really earn money.

But from an early age you seem to have had a very different world view to the stereotypical footballer.

I went to Hungary on holiday for a month, too, because I wanted to understand how the Communist system worked. I travelled everywhere. I came back home convinced it would never work.

Do you think any player in your dressing-room would be thinking like that now?

The common denominator of successful teams is that the players are intelligent. That does not always mean educated. They can analyse a problem and find a solution. The common denominator in a top level person is that they can objectively assess their performance. You speak to a player after the game and ask him to rate his performance, if he analyses well, you know he is the sort who will drive home thinking, "I did this wrong, I did that wrong". His assessment will be correct and, next time, he will rectify. That player has a chance. The one who has a crap game and says he was fantastic, you worry for him. This is true beyond football.

Arsene Wenger interview: the full transcript of Matthew Syed's interview

Now back to thesis writing. I am in great expectation for tonight. Arsenal v Everton, people!

Took up Keats' The Belle Dame Sans Merci for ENG 22. The poem was always one of my favourites as a kid. It had the eerie, barren atmosphere found in any gothic novel and elven queens casting lures at unsuspecting menfolk. That is, I had thought it was about a ghost moaning about how a beautiful woman drained him of his lifeblood then doomed him to wander about the world forever. It was an awesome poem—vampires! ghouls! men in tights!

Then this morning I found out that Keats wanted a reversal of the roles men and women played in the early 19th century, that he wanted to show women were pitiless creatures who strung men along and unleashed their desires, overpowering their sense of reason and reality. Huh. Keats must have been really bitter about Fanny Brawne. I think I liked The Belle Dame Sans Merci when it was just another The Ballad of Tam Lin or Thomas the Rhymer. There are times when nitpicking poetry smacks of pretentiousness, and I feel that today was one of those times. Of course, it could just be that my sweet childhood memory has been replaced with that of lilies drowning in sweat...

But I did appreciate Professor F bringing up J.R.R. Tolkien's On Faerie Stories. It gave me insight as to where Diana Wynne Jones probably got inspiration for Anywhere-and-Nowhere from Fire and Hemlock ('Only thin, weak thinkers despise fairy stories. Each one has a true, strange fact in it, you know, which you can find if you look'). I'd like to get my hands on a copy of the essay—a guide in the perpetual quest to decipher Polly and Tom's Happily Ever After.

I end with my expression of strong dislike for Lewis Hamilton's performance at the Hungarian Grand Prix over the weekend. What did he do to knock Alonso and Vettel out of the running? Fashion a pair of voodoo dolls and get Nicole Scherzinger to wiggle her fingers at them? My bitterness just oozes out, doesn't it?

Prayers and a nine day novena for Felipe Massa. I hope to see him racing in Ferrari again.