The 16th Century, Or Thereabouts

The university trail continued today with the first Scottish History lecture of the second semester, which was titled "What Happened to the Sixteenth Century?" Um, I can take a guess...

Actually, most of the lecture seemed to be nothing but a rant about how the politics of 16th-century Scotland were equal, or sometimes superior, to those of England and that this had been distorted by the manipulative, Anglocentric storytelling of history. Lob on some generalised mutterings about how they both generally saw themselves as a hierarchical society ordained by God. Moan a little about the misnomer that is 'feudalism'. Make brief mention of the culture's reliance on continuity rather than change. Try and pass off the fact that the Stewarts inherited the throne rather than usurped it, so the Scots lineage was viewed as being bestowed with ancient gravitas (and try not to smirk at that).

Yeah, yeah, tell me something I don't already know.

Like that the parliamentary legislation regarding the Reformation was sorted out in three weeks in Scotland compared to seven years in England. Sheesh. And we thought the smoking ban was efficient.

Oh, and the tallies of the old football "friendlies" between the two? England won 44, Scotland won 40 and 24 were drawn. Huh.

WWE PPV Aftermath #001

New Year's Revolution has come and gone and shall hopefully not be dredged up again in 2007. My predictions seemed to come to an even 50% accuracy rate. The first error was picking Maria instead of Ashley in the Bra & Panties Gauntlet "Match" but then Ashley just wound up stripping anyway. There was as much point to the whole thing as a giant rubber ball of boredom anyway, so let's move on... Lawler beat Helms, which is pretty bad. Even worse was that he did it without any outside interference. The giant rubber ball is now filled with rampant stupidity... Stratus wound up retaining the Women's Title against James, which is merely delaying the inevitable switch. It lets James rack up the crazy points a bit more, in addition to giving Stratus a full one-year reign as champion (albeit with a three-month absence due to injury) so fair enough.

The entire show plodded along rather lifelessly but they did FINALLY decide to do something with the Money in the Bank gimmick and, rather amazingly, they actually went with making Edge the new WWE Champion. The move has been attributed to hitting the panic button since the crowds have blatantly turned on Cena in an even fiercer manner than they turned on Orton this time last year. WWE had been heading towards a Cena/HHH match at WrestleMania XXII but now it's been blown wide open. The unpredictability factor is welcome but it is a bit of a shame that this year's WrestleMania will be utterly devoid of any defining moments. They could still yet wind up with Cena/HHH if they decide to hotshot the belt yet again in the coming months. Failing that, they could simply go for a triple-threat by adding Edge to the mix. Then there are Angle, Michaels and Flair, all logical candidates for a title shot. Hell, even Hardy could wind up getting one. That'd be stretching it a bit but he's no less credible than Mark F'N Henry.

Wait and see, I guess.

Sword of Omens, come to me!


Is Daivari writing on the back of Kurt's head?

Patience, luv. Patience.

Helms admires those with better career prospects than him...

Alimony? Fuck!

Show finds his date for the evening sadly lacking.

Nope.

Heavy Metal 1, Light Rap 0

Christ, this thing's fugly...

On Smackdown, the title situation has been muddled again due to Batista picking up yet another injury, this time due to Mark F'N Henry. They've nobody to blame for this one but themselves. Batista working through his original injury was admirable in the aftermath of Eddie Guerrero's death, but by January it was rather pointless. Putting him in a feud with Henry was equally baffling. By this point Henry could probably trademark the term 'bumbling oaf' if he wanted to. The plan is still to go for Batista/Orton at WrestleMania so for fuck's safe, just let Batista sit out the Rumble and spare us anymore of Mark F'N Henry - #1 Contender for the World Heavyweight Title.