To the person who never fails to make me laugh.

The thing about you, is that you might not realise that you are that person. You only have to be there to make me smile. Your immature comments, your lopsided grin. You world of drugs and careless recklessness, your apathetic approach to life that leaves you completely guilt free. Your voice on the other end of the phone. The fact that I know when you pick up, your a 6 ft emo kid who belongs back in grade 10, and yet you are talking on a mini pink flip phone that used to belong to your sister. You say things that are hardly funny but because you are saying them, somehow they seem hilarious. You make me feel so happy. Refreshed. Like no matter how much time we spend apart, coming together is never a problem. There's no such thing as awkward and no moments that could possibly ever be dull. Your not a lover, and we are only sort of part time friends. Your just the guy who makes me laugh. And I really love you.

THIS IS MY F*CKING TABLE.

I study on the dining room table at my hall of residence every exam period. I always sit at the same table, it's close to the powerpoint, close to the heater, no cross breeze. It's the perfect location because I can see everyone, and they can see me and how much I don't want anyone to come near me. I have been told that when I get into studying, with my hoodie up, I have a somewhat menacing glare that radiates around the college, inspiring trepidation in others. 

Today, someone sat across from me. The nerve. 

STUVAC

SWOTVAC, STUVAC, SWOTTING. A non-teaching period for students to use for study. Yeah, that’s what happens. How do we go from leisurely procrastination to wound-up caffeine fiends?

“Oh yeah I will get to that in a few days”

It’s day one of SWOTVAC and a full seven days of ‘study time’ stretches out ahead of you.  You have notes to do but that’s what tomorrow is for, right? The first few days are for recovering and ‘organising’ your time.  Allocating work over a period of other days feels like work.

“I am studying because I have a word document open”

Your notes are open in a window on your computer. Problem is, Facebook, YouTube and Survive Law are too. This is like the warm up lap. The lap were you realise just how long the pool is and how much work you have ahead of you. SWOTVAC looks a whole lot shorter right now, doesn’t it?

“LEAVE ME ALONE”

Around day four the gravity of a semester of procrastination hits you.  Let the frenzied fun begin! Loved ones tread into your space with trepidation.  Food gets cautiously left for you on the corner of your desk, eating with everyone else would mean spending precious minutes doing anything that is not law related. But somehow Facebook still finds its way onto your computer.

Coffee or Red Bull-induced psychosis

70% of your notes are in order and the preparation finish line is in sight. Too bad you have hooked yourself up on an unbelievable amount of energy drinks – sleep will be a long time coming.  Chances are you’ll complete your notes at 4am after about 36 hours without sleep. Then you’re lying in bed staring at the ceiling and getting frustrated about not being able to sleep.

Aren’t exams fun?

(Law School Survival Guide)

Bender

There were dresses that sparkled

as girls were spun around

There were shirts unbuttoned 

and lights obscured reality

There was coloured candy being thrown into the night

and teeth shown in flashing smiles

My clothes are so dirty

I can hear whispering that scares me to my bones

I can smell the alcohol on my hands

the dirty squelchy smell

I stumble through the iron bar gate and it crashes behind me

Collapsing into the sheets

Where I can forget everything that happened

And remember everything that didn't.

Of Mice and Men

For the first time since Harry Potter, I almost cried today while reading a book. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck is so simple. It follows two friends through the 1930s depression as they try to find work on ranches, so that one day they might own a little farm of their own, where they can tend to some rabbits. George is the brains, Lennie is the strength.  I thought since it was older, and a classic that I might not be able to relate to it particularly well, and I read it after having it recommended to me by the trusty old stumble upon. 

*Spoiler*

It started out so simply, but as we got further on, and Lennie can't control his behaviour and his strength, it becomes heartbreaking. He kills a puppy because he doesn't realize how it happened because he was only trying to pet it, then later he kills his bosses wife accidentally when she asks him to touch her hair so he can feel how soft it is. He accidentally breaks her neck. If this isn't tragic enough, the ending had me whimpering softly into my pillow, though I won't tell you what that ending is since you really ought to go and read this for yourself. 

What did I learn from this book? Well, I learnt that life isn't simple. Sometimes it might seem like it is, but even the simplest of dreams are hard to grasp. I learnt that friendship is about more than just being there for someone, it's about loving them enough to be able to lie when the truth would hurt them more. I learnt that sometimes there is no way out of that friendship and I learnt that having no way out can be really scary. 

Commentary on arrest of Ratko Mladic.

This is something for the soul. A bit of filthy old human rights law commentary by one of my greatest heros. Geoffrey Robertson. I recently acquired his biography, from a random box of books outside a random house in my hometown when I was out walking with my parents. Isn't that just delightful!? 

Anyway, this is a good read. Enjoy! 

Geoffrey Robertson: Mistakes the Mladic trial needs to avoid- The Independent May 28 2011

The capture of Ratko Mladic is a signal moment in the delivery of the Nuremberg legacy that political and military leaders must eventually pay for their crimes against humanity.

He could – and should – have been taken into custody between 1996 and his disappearance in 2002, but diplomats then did not trust international justice: "The capture of Karadzic and Mladic," said a Nato spokesman, "is not worth the blood of one Nato soldier". Today, with Karadzic on trial, General Gotovina (Croatia's fugitive general) convicted, the verdict on Charles Taylor imminent and Colonel Gaddafi under indictment, there is more confidence that Nemesis will strike those who mass murder their own – and other – people.

While the Mladic trial will be an opportunity to see justice done, it must be seen to be done rather better than it was in the case of Slobodan Milosevic, who died before he could present any defence to a prosecution case that had lasted an intolerable three years. The expense and delay in The Hague contrasts starkly with justice at Nuremberg, where a convincing verdict on 23 Nazi leaders was rendered within 12 months. There are greater obligations now to disclose evidence and afford time, facilities and appeal-rights for defendants, but there is a problem with prosecutors and judges who think they have a duty to write history rather than to adjudicate specific allegations. They seriously overload their indictments – Milosevic, for example, was charged with responsibility for three separate wars spanning 10 years, when he could have been convicted simply and expeditiously for the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo.

The Mladic indictment charges genocide (difficult to prove and open to endless technical legal arguments) and numerous war crimes throughout the Balkan conflict. It should be replaced by just one charge, the crime against humanity constituted by his command responsibility for ordering the worst war crime since the Japanese death marches of POWs at the end of the Second World War, namely the slaughter of more than 7,000 prisoners of war – the Muslim men and boys killed at Srebrenica.

Limiting the trial in this way will enable some justice to be done before the inevitable claims of illness, old age and unfitness to stand trial. These are already being voiced by his lawyers in Belgrade, but the EU must insist that they be decided only in The Hague, after independent and carefully scrutinised medical examination. We have had too many international criminals escape justice for bogus medical reasons – remember Pinochet waving his stick happily after he landed in Chile, courtesy of Jack Straw's mistaken assessment that he was unfit to stand trial? Remember the convenient escape several years ago of Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, when a credulous Scottish justice minister was led to believe by doctors that he would die within three months?

Focus on this war crime will discomfort those who might have prevented it – especially the UN which refused to authorise the air strikes that would have stopped Mladic's advance, and the Dutch government which insisted on vetoing them to protect its cowardly battalion which was meant to be protecting the town but which immediately surrendered to Mladic and handed over to him the thousands of Muslims who had sought refuge in the UN compound. The moral nadir of UN/Nato "peacekeeping" where there is no peace to keep is the photograph of Mladic blowing his cigar smoke in the face of the spineless Dutch colonel while in the background those his battalion should have protected were taken off to the killing fields.

Nothing should detract from Mladic's command responsibility and he must not be indulged by a court which bent over backwards to help Milosevic at a time when international justice was under attack – especially from the Bush regime, which in a fit of puerility approved the "Bomb The Hague" Bill allowing the US president to use force to free any American under indictment there. If Mladic insists on defending himself, and then seeks to disrupt proceedings, he should have a capable team of lawyers imposed upon him, whether he likes it or not.

As to Serbia, it has some more atoning to do before EU membership can be assured. Karl Jaspers pointed out that the German people did not bear collective criminal guilt for Hitler, but they did bear collective political responsibility. So it remains the Serbian government's duty not only to send Mladic quickly to The Hague but to investigate and prosecute those who have harboured him. It has a particular duty, wrongly dodged by Hague prosecutors, to clean out the Serb orthodox church, whose priests blessed the death squads at Srebrenica. Without their blessing, I believe that some soldiers would have disobeyed their orders to shoot defenceless, hog-tied, men and boys. It is widely known that the church has harboured Hague fugitives in its monasteries and has been deeply implicit with the murderous aspects of Serb nationalism.

Some of Mladic's victims are upset that he has been free for 16 years, but his life on the run has been increasingly miserable. They should be grateful that the Serb police captured him alive instead of executing him summarily as the US did with Bin Laden. He will now appear as a reduced and demystified figure in The Hague dock – an inhumane serial killer rather than a hero. They should remember and take heart from the fact that the wheels of international justice grind slowly but they grind exceedingly small.

Geoffrey Robertson QC is author of 'Crimes against Humanity: The Struggle for Global Justice' (Penguin) and a former UN war crimes judge

Something a little bit special.

Something Special.

I stumbled up the stairs, hard and concrete and smashed glass to the side

Ran my fingers through his hair, like I did to a boy I used to love

Stench of alcohol and vomit on our lips

Sheets unwashed and and beds unmade, it isn't even cheap love. It's completely free.

My head is empty and light as my eyes undress him

There is nothingness seeping in all around 

as he grabs me round the waist and pulls me close

and pulls the clock out of the wall by the plug.