The Leeds side streets that you slip down

2004-05-02T23:52:00.000Z

Shopping in amazon

Customers who bought books by Marquis de Sade also bought books by these authors:

Pauline Reage
Neil Schaeffer
Leopold Sacher-Masoch
Krafft Ebing
J.K. Rowling ??

2004-03-18T02:24:00.000Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3519328.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/lancashire/3519902.stm

Both amuse :)

2004-03-18T02:14:00.000Z

News

Hmm emma, i'd like to satisfy your want of gossip but unfortunately there isn't any. Here is what everyone has been up to:

Steve foster: Working on biochemistery ALL THE TIME and eating morrisons pizzas.
Steve Reid: Playing turok (almost completed) and mariokart (holding records on bowser's castle). Spending days on the couch. I just left him at the dry dock where he is celebrating riazz birthday by wearing a guinness hat and 'dancing' to chesney hawks (good to see him on form again). He has also got a job stewarding at the same company as me (god help the punters, we'll kill them all)
Me: I'm in a goth/metal band called trial by terror. Reading a lot of Lawrence (His love was like a fox, a fox of fire in the snow, the snow aflame with fire, fire and snow in the fox fox and snow aflame) Realising I need a 78 average to get a first this term. Ouch!
Lou: being steve's girlfried, going a little mad occasionally, doing incredibly well at english (76, 76 and 66 exam results)
Naomi: Watching foreign films. Being a cultural studies student.

The house has fragmented a bit. There is tension between lou and naomi. Naomi is living with her boyfriend will next year, steve and lou are living together, stevie is probably going to malaysia and I am living with a bunch of peple i just met in the dry dock (possibly). E mail us about your frenchiness.

2004-03-11T19:08:00.000Z

I was going to request a song I've been listening to a lot recently in the club I'm going to tonight. Unfortunately i think it might be in bad taste now...

Spanish Bombs
(Strummer/Jones)

Spanish songs in Andalucia
The shooting sites in the days of '39
Oh, please, leave the vendanna open
Fredrico Lorca is dead and gone
Bullet holes in the cemetery walls
The black cars of the Guardia Civil
Spanish bombs on the Costa Rica
I'm flying in a DC 10 tonight

CHORUS
Spanish bombs, yo te quiero y finito
Yo te querda, oh mi corazón
Spanish bombs, yo te quiero y finito
Yo te querda, oh mi corazón

Spanish weeks in my disco casino
The freedom fighters died upon the hill
They sang the red flag
They wore the black one
But after they died it was Mockingbird Hill
Back home the buses went up in flashes
The Irish tomb was drenched in blood
Spanish bombs shatter the hotels
My señorita's rose was nipped in the bud

CHORUS

The hillsides ring with "Free the people"
Or can I hear the echo from the days of '39?
With trenches full of poets
The ragged army, fixin' bayonets to fight the other line
Spanish bombs rock the province
I'm hearing music from another time
Spanish bombs on the Costa Brava
I'm flying in on a DC 10 tonight
Spanish songs in Andalucia, Mandolina, oh mi corazón
Spanish songs in Granada, oh mi corazón

2004-03-04T23:43:00.000Z

Back in black

This term I just don't seem to be able to keep my blog up to date. I suppose it's partly because I'm just trundling along at uni with nothing particularily special going on and partly cos I'm just too lazy. Anyway, here is what I'm doing at the moment:

1 Looking for money/jobs/- I have hit the limit of my overdraft and the bank will not expand it, thus rendering me with only nine pounds to my name. I am hoping to start a human guinea pig trial soon to get some cash.

2 Playing mariokart- Far too much mariokart. Blue shell blue shell!

3 Refusing to acknowledge that I'm going to graduate soon- I don't need to look for a house/job, right? It'll sort itself out, won't it?

4 Failing to write songs

5 Eating nutella

6 Being single

7 Looking forward to Morrissey/British sea power gigs.

Anyway, hello to Emma, hope france is good and that you haven't got married or anything without telling me. What are your plans for next year? The flat seems to be fragmenting at the moment so fuck knows where anyone is living. I may go back to liverpool after graduating, it's all up in the air at the moment.

Bored.Bored.Bored.Bored.Bored

2004-02-12T00:26:00.000Z

Back Again
I understand why people complained about the text on my site now, for some reason it didn't display in miniscule on my computer until a few days ago. To me it was just petite, not Ronnie Corbett sized.

Anyway, what I have been up to:

20% Reading/Studying
20% Watching TV
50% Playing Mariokart and Turok on the Game cube.
10% Unaccountable (drunk)

I'm starting to worry about finding a career at the moment, since I'll soon be turned out of university like a small bird being shoved by it's parents out of the nest, and have about as many employment related skills as the said bird, minus the ability to fly.

My course is pretty cool this term. I'm going to my first DH Lawrence seminar tomorrow (I should have went to one last week but was too hungover), and I'm also studying Larkin, who looks like he'll become my favorite poet.

I Remember, I Rememberby Philip Larkin

Coming up England by a different line
For once, early in the cold new year,
We stopped, and, watching men with number plates
Sprint down the platform to familiar gates,
'Why, Coventry!' I exclaimed. 'I was born here.'

I leant far out, and squinnied for a sign
That this was still the town that had been 'mine'
So long, but found I wasn't even clear
Which side was which. From where those cycle-crates
Were standing, had we annually departed

For all those family hols? . . . A whistle went:
Things moved. I sat back, staring at my boots.
'Was that,' my friend smiled, 'where you "have your roots"?'
No, only where my childhood was unspent,
I wanted to retort, just where I started:

By now I've got the whole place clearly charted.
Our garden, first: where I did not invent
Blinding theologies of flowers and fruits,
And wasn't spoken to by an old hat.
And here we have that splendid family

I never ran to when I got depressed,
The boys all biceps and the girls all chest,
Their comic Ford, their farm where I could be
'Really myself'. I'll show you, come to that,
The bracken where I never trembling sat,

Determined to go through with it; where she
Lay back, and 'all became a burning mist'.
And, in those offices, my doggerel
Was not set up in blunt ten-point, nor read
By a distinguished cousin of the mayor,

Who didn't call and tell my father There
Before us, had we the gift to see ahead -
'You look as though you wished the place in Hell,'
My friend said, 'judging from your face.' 'Oh well,
I suppose it's not the place's fault,' I said.

'Nothing, like something, happens anywhere.'

Toads
by Philip Larkin

Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?

Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.

Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts-
They don't end as paupers;

Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
they seem to like it.

Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets - and yet
No one actually starves.

Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on:

For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,

And will never allow me to blarney
My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.

I don't say, one bodies the other
One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
When you have both.

2004-01-29T01:07:00.000Z

Sno

Its cold. So very cold. Its also icy. Very very icy. Walking home when drunk is very difficult.

Boo! Bad weather!

The text is staying as it is. It's not small, it's fun size.

2004-01-26T02:03:00.000Z

Bored

I am so bored. So very very bored. If someone wanted to drive me mad all they would have to do is give me infinite leisure time. I'd be mad within a week.

Tomorrow I'm going to go to an optional lecture for my course, which should hopefully bore me enough to appreciate the boredom I'm currently enduring.

I can't wait to finish uni. I'm so fed up of books. I'm fed up of learning information that is hardly useful and seems to amount to other peoples opinions most of the time. I'm tired of listening to wankers talk like they're Lenin himself on Marxism when they know fuck all. I'm tired of Roland Barthes. I'm tired of listening to dreadlocked girls and mulleted blokes witter on about 'narrative voice' in seminars. I'm tired of smugness. I'm tired of namedropping authors. I'm tired of gap years in fucking Cambodia. I'm tired of post-modern irony (whatever the fuck that is). I'm tired of daytime TV. I'm tired of not getting up before one for the last week. I'm tired of snakebite and black. I'm tired of people wearing scarves in clubs. I'm tired of bad dancing. I'm tired of The Guardian. I'm tired of hedgemony. i'm tired of Hienz soup. I'm tired of blagger jeans. i'm fucking tired of suit jackets.

I think i'm just tired of students...

If someone gave me the option of either earning my degree the traditional way this semester or by eating all twenty or so books on my course, I'd happily have half of 'Happy Days' by Samuel Beckett stuffed into my mouth before you'd finished this sentence.

2004-01-23T23:32:00.000Z

My poor brain

Anyone who is familiar with this blog will know that this is my first entry for a very long time. This is due to the fact that I have just experienced some of the most mentally stressing and mind numbingly boring weeks of my life, my third year examinations, and thus simply had nothing to write and no inclination to inflict the boredom I was suffering on others.

The exams themselves went fine. I'm stuck in the no-man's land of getting a 2:1 no matter how hard I work, and so I have no desire to excert myself more than the minimum, which is what I did. I left both exams 45 minutes early after scribbling all that I could be arsed to. After reading about a subject for a week it's incredibly tedious to have to write a for three hours on it, and to be honest I'm sick to death of English.

Saying that this term should be better. I only have one exam and am studying contemporary literature, which should be reasonably stress free. I also appear to have mondays, wednesdays and fridays off, which is frankly ridiculous. Hopefully that will give me time to get a band started and find a job. Realistically I think it means I'll be drunk on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, which luckily happens to be some of the best nights out in Leeds.

2003-12-19T01:41:00.000Z

I have an incredibly tiny penis that resembles Rick Wakeman

I've just realised that the adverts on my site appear to take their cue from the content of my titles, and so I've decided to have a little fun.

2003-12-16T23:37:00.000Z

Fuzzier logic

Here's an especially difficult lateral thinking puzzle specially for Seb:

A man spends six days in a desert without any food or water.
He knows he will die quickly if he doesn't receive any aid.
On the seventh day he sees a camels' skeleton, and takes off his shoes.

Six months later he is seen by his friends alive and well. Why?

2003-12-16T01:32:00.000Z

Fuzzy logic

Figure this out:

A man walks into a bar and asks for a glass of water. The bar man pulls out a gun and points it at the man. After a short pause the man says 'thank you' and leaves the bar.

Why is this?

It took me two days. Time is ticking...

2003-12-14T01:46:00.000Z

Randomness

This amused me.
And this.
And this is just wierd.

2003-12-14T00:08:00.000Z

End of term
I went out last night with my brother and his flat to the fab cafe. It was a quality night out , apart from the fact I had to watch my brother pull and an attractive girl in front of me, which was unsavoury at the least. Anyway, a strange girl came up to me and said hello, and I had no idea who she was. Normally I chalk this up to being a twin, but in this case my brother didn't know her either. Since this has happened to me a few times I've started to wonder if I have some kind of alter ego that goes out at nights and randomly introduces itself to people. Its worrying, the thought of having a split personality, but even more worrying when the alter ego seems to be having more fun than you.

In reply to Robert Hampton's rather maudlin message on his site, if I ever feel down I simply listen to one of my Smiths records:

HOW SOON IS NOW?
I am the son
and the heir
of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
I am the son and heir
of nothing in particular

You shut your mouth
how can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am human and I need to be loved
just like everybody else does

I am the son
and the heir
of a shyness that is criminally vulgar
I am the son and the heir
of nothing in particular

You shut your mouth
how can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am human and I need to be loved
just like everybody else does

There's a club if you'd like to go
you could meet somebody who really loves you
so you go, and you stand on your own
and you leave on your own
and you go home, and you cry
and you want to die

When you say it's gonna happen "now"
well, when exactly do you mean?
see I've already waited too long
and all my hope is gone

You shut your mouth
how can you say
I go about things the wrong way
I am human and I need to be loved
just like everybody else does

Which, of course, doesn't help.

2003-12-11T01:33:00.000Z

Fun anyone?

I wonder how long it will take for me to get tired of this?

2003-12-09T01:45:00.000Z

See you in the next life

Just got back from suede's gig in Manchester, which is supposedly one of their last ever. The band were on great form, but what they gave with one hand they took away with the other. The treated us with rare live performances of the living dead, the asphalt world and still life, but criminally left out the wild ones and the drowners. If that was the last time I'll ever see suede live then I'm disappointed, cos I wanted to hear the wild ones one last time. The thing is that the gig had the atmosphere of an au revoir rather than a goodbye, possibly because Suede's split is supposed to be a hiatus whilst Brett gets "His demon back". I'm not sure if they will manage another album/tour though, and so the gig just didn't feel like the big send off I hoped it would be. I'd rather Suede burned out rather than faded away.

The band did play a song that was supposed to be on their new album, an odd synthy piece of stuff which repeated 'I like sex" over and over and over again. Brett was playing on some electronic keyboard thingy with an expression that varied between the expression I wear when I enter toymaster and have a go on an etch a sketch and an I-can't-believe-what-the-fuck-I'm-doing-on-this-I'm-embarrassing-myself-aren't-I? look, which does not bode well if Suede do go on to do more work.

Anyway, Goodbye Suede and thanks for the memories.

PS The support band razorlight were pretty cool too, check them out.

PPS Hello Doug, I'll keep up the good work!
Who are you? Does this mean strangers read this thing? Crikey.

2003-12-08T01:27:00.000Z

Another attempt at webmastery

2003-12-07T22:50:00.000Z

Credit limit reached

I'm bored so I've decided to update my blog. Now, what has happened to me recently...

Bad things:

Sky TV has been cut off. I am no longer in touch with the music world, and will have to start buying magazines.

I have completely ran out of money. Unfortunately, this has coincided with me sending off cheques to pay off the various card bills, e-bay items and other stuff I've bought, all of which will bounce in a very expensive manner.

I attempted to make a small itinery off all my expenses over the last few weeks to find out where my money goes. Depressingly, I realised that my last few purchases were a Smiths poster, light bulbs for a lava lamp, a lampshade from habitat, cigs and a three litre bottle of cider, none of which would come under my definition of essentials. Apart from the cigs.

I'm going to see Suede tomorrow. This is a good thing, but since it's the last time I'll ever see them, it's a bad thing.

Good things

Sky TV has been cut off. No more football, friends, will and grace, that seventies show or indeed anything Steve watches.

We had a house party last night, which went perfectly well apart from the small flaw that no-one turned up. Actually, I tell a lie, there were about twenty people there. There was a huge gender bias at the party- about eighty five percent of the people there were blokes, and all the girls were either attached or not interested in men. Which meant the night could only go one way, which was the Oliver Reed esque wrestling-topless-whilst-drunk way. I don't know why all our parties end up like that, but they do. Steve managed to fall victim to a particularly vicious wedgie and have his boxer shorts ripped so badly that they are now ruined. Ouch.

Strange things that have happened:

I had to free a monkey trapped in a phone box. This is true, sort of.
I saw a squirrel carry a whole piece of pizza up a tree. You had to be there.

I can't believe term is almost over. I see a terrible thing looming on the horizon- a job.

2003-12-06T01:06:00.000Z

Biffy Clyro

Just came back from seeing Biffy Clyro. Depressingly I went on my own, but the band made up for it. Biffy Clyro are one of those bands who vary from being very good to being incredibly plain. Anyway, they improve a hell of a lot after a few Carlings.

Tonight, the gig was memorable for those conspicuous by their absence, for the new indie crowd who insist on wearing their funky scarves indoors, and for missed opportunities.

2003-12-06T00:55:00.000Z

"Franco Un-American" by NOFX

I never thought about the universe, it made me feel small
Never thought about the problems of this planet at all
Global warming, radio-active sites
Imperialistic wrongs and animal rights! No!

Why think of all the bad things when life is so good?
Why help with an 'am' when there's always a 'could'?
Let the whales worry about the poisons in the sea
Outside of California, it's foreign policy

I don't want changes, I have no reactions
Your dilemmas are my distractions

That's no way to go, Franco Un-American
No way to go, Franco Un-American
No way to go, Franco Un-American
No way to go, Franco, Franco Un-American

I never looked around, never second-guessed
Then I read some Howard Zinn now I'm always depressed
And now I can't sleep from years of apathy
All because I read a little Noam Chomsky

I'm eating vegetation, 'cause of Fast Food Nation
I'm wearing uncomfortable shoes 'cause of globalization
I'm watching Michael Moore expose the awful truth
I'm listening to Public Enemy and Reagan Youth

I see no world peace 'cause of zealous armed forces
I eat no breath-mints 'cause their from de-hoofed horses
Now I can't believe; what an absolute failure
The president's laughing 'cause we voted for Nader

That's no way to go, Franco Un-American
No way to go, Franco Un-American
No way to go, Franco Un-American
Where can we go, Franco Un-American

I want to move north and be a Canadian
Or hang down low with the nice Australians
I don't want to be another 'I-don't-care-ican'
What are we gonna do Franco, Franco Un-American

2003-12-05T16:04:00.000Z

Music television.

Some fool just sent a text into MTV2 which went along these lines:

"The sixties and seventies were great. Everybody was so happy in the sixties and seventies. It must have been the drugs or something."

This pissed me off so much that I spent a whole pound of my own money texting in to remind the person of the various race riots, Vietnam and that little thing known as the cold war that went on during this period. Then someone sent a text in saying "Punks coming back! No more of this hip-hop shit in the charts." I decided to leave the room for fear of my bank account.

Anyway,this all reminds me of the time when I was going to join the punk society in uni. I asked what stuff they listened to and they said emo, hardcore, ska etc. When I asked if they organised any nights involving the clash, sex pistols or the damned they said no.
Punk's not dead kids!

2003-12-04T00:40:00.000Z

Drunken Ramblings

Here is a conversation involving my flatmate stevie, which, in my opinion, is one of his best:

Time: Tuesday
Place: Courtyard
Condition: Tipsy. Very tipsy.

Stranger: I can see the family resemblance between you and your sister.
Steve: Yeah, people say we do look alike, but you should see my little brother, he's like a missing link between me and my sister. If me and my sister ever had children, they'd look like my brother.

I think this beats his previous best of "If you ever see anyone walking around with my face, it's probably me".

Anyway, I went to see therapy on Tuesday. The gig was great, one of the best I've been to, almost as good as British sea power. They played two joy division covers, which was a bit of a surprise, and I was also given another song to add to my literary inspired music list, the wonderful "James Joyce is Fucking my sister". After the gig I ended up with Steve in cheesy hormone fest the courtyard, the highlights of the night being sneaking in for free by mistake and managing to only spend two pounds, yet still drink continuously for a good three hours, as well as stealing as many shot glasses as I could fit into my pockets. After that I stayed up till five playing Mario kart with Steve, and kicked his drunken arse. And my parents think I'm working hard.

2003-12-01T03:20:00.000Z

Thank God I'm a lazy-arsed English student who only has to do nine hours a week

I can't sleep. If anyone has any good remedies for insomnia, bar alcohol, tell me. In the meantime I have decided to dedicate all the time that I can't sleep to practicing the guitar and bidding for items on e-bay.

If you haven't read it yet visit www.theonion.com. This edition is very very funny. Especially the record shop girl article- why are they always so cute?

If you are a smiths fan visit: http://tmregistry.com/passion/covers-parod.htm
It's got lots of info about Smiths covers, and Smiths parodies. Ween's I Hate the smiths is mentioned, and is worth checking out

All you do is hate life and tell me about
You're homosexual, just keep me out of it
Cos I hate the Smiths and Steven Morrisey

Well, it's true, isn't it?

2003-12-01T00:16:00.000Z

Tickets, please

Sometimes my part time job as a steward sucks. These times generally are when I have to stand in the cold, rain and dark guarding an inanimate object, like a firework display or a leisure centre, looking out for thieves or gangs of kids whilst being woefully unable to deal with them. Sometimes though, its pretty cool.

Saturday night was one of those times. I stewarded a muse gig in Manchester, and was lucky to be put on the floor distributing wristbands for the first half of the gig and then watching out for barrier jumpers for the second. In short, I got to watch the whole gig and get paid for it. Bonza!

However, I'm very ambivalent towards muse. Matt Bellamy is a great musician, a very talented bloke. Its just when you see his skinny, ratty face gurning as he runs his hands over his custom-made guitars (which have too many strings), and listen to him whining I can't help but feel that there's this seedy edge to it. Its as if he just wants his fans to worship at the altar of his ability. I've heard Muse's music, with it's building verses and explosive choruses, being described as orgasmic. I'd agree, but have to qualify that statement that it's Matt Belllamy's orgasm. As I was covered in white confetti fired from confetti guns during Stockholm Syndrome I realized that watching Muse live is like watching Matt Bellamy masturbate. For two hours.

Plug in baby was good though, and Matt does deserve credit for winning fame academy.

After coming home I stayed up till five with Steve and Dan. I managed to play a single game of marvel comics top trumps with Steve for forty five minutes. I think that's a record.

In reply to Seb, who is Chaucer? At Leeds we only study proper literature. I'm doing JK Rowling and bravo two zero this term, with an aim to do a dissertation on Meg and Mog. Wanker :)

This coming week has a ridiculous amount of giggage in it. On Monday I'm going to see my brother's band, Iron horse. The on Tuesday I'm going to see Therapy, on Thursday maybe Electric six, Friday Biffy Clyro (then a house party) Saturday our House Party and Sunday, well, I'll most probably be in the bank attempting to increase my overdraft.

2003-11-27T00:06:00.000Z

Culture

Today, due to the fact I have a lot of free time, I have been attempting to list all the tunes that I know that are in some way related to my English literature course. Here is what I've found:

Idlewild, I am what I am not- From Othello, Shakespeare

The Cure, Killing an Arab- Named after the plot of a Camus novel, The Outsider.

Suede, Heroine- 'She walks in beauty like the night'- Byron

The Smiths, Rubber ring- "Everybody's clever nowadays"- Wilde, A woman of no importance.

Kate Bush, Wuthering Heights- Nuff said. Apparently she has also done a version of Molly Bloom's soliloquy to music. Which is nice.

Iron Maiden- The rime of the ancient mariner. The song of the poem, an excruciating thirteen minutes long.

Bruce Dickinson- The Chemical Wedding. A solo album based on William Blake.

Manic Street Preachers- Don't get me started.

If any more turn up mail me, and I'll compile then into a website.
Like fuck I'll turn them into a website.

Speaking of English literature, here is a bit of one of my essays. Tell me, is this crazy mad interpretive lunacy or a detailed and serious examination of a canonical text?

Homosexuality in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde

"Finally, Showalter points to the repeated references to anality in the text that, although at first unconvincing, become more persuasive when seen in light of the rest of her argument. These references appear in the descriptive imagery, especially of Jekylls house. For example, Hyde always enters through the houses through "Ã‚ blistered back door", whilst the house itself is equipped with "neither bell nor knocker" and bears the marks of "prolonged and sordid negligence" (Stevenson: p204). More tellingly, Utterson remarks that the house resides on "Queer street"(Stevenson: p206), the homosexual connotations of the word being alive in Stevensons time."

I couldn't help laughing when I read this arguement.

2003-11-25T03:04:00.000Z

Silly Me

I found out why i couldn't upload my blog- i set my security settings too high on my computer. Once again I have been punished for meddling in things i don't understand. Anyway, speaking of security settings a strange bloke has just tried the door on our house, which woke me from my dozing and now has left me unable to sleep. Cheers you pikey Leeds criminal bastard!
Some guy tried to get into my parents house yesterday too, which has left me quite worried since they are quite exposed and vulnerable to burgulars. God, I don't need this stress. I'd tell my Dad to get his shotgun out but it'd only end up in a Tony Martin type thing if anything did happen. Anyway, I'm jumping to the worst conclusions now and that'll just mean me buying a ticket on the paranoia train to insomniaville. There isn't anything I can do so I'll just hope for the best.

Here's an old blog from last Thursday/Friday that I wrote:

An obituary

It brings me great sorrow to say that today my fish Parsely has passed away, at the age of a year and a month and a bit. He had struggled with a short illness, which seemed to rotate him about his axis, and finally went 360 this morning. He leaves behind him his companion Golddust, who has spent today nudging his dead friend round the tank, and a legacy of amusing swimming (go through the castle door!) . We all remember the full life he lead, from the fairground to the dish, to the bin and finally to his own tank. Who could forget the time when he jumped out his dish and got covered in fluff (Cheers Emma!)? Parsely, you will be missed.
His last word was "Bob".

To commemorate his life i have composed a short poem:

In memory of Parsely

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the air-ports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
O all the instruments agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

On a lighter note I went to see British Sea Power last night. The gig was sold out, but thanks to my brother's employer I got in free, which was fortunate as i was otherwise contemplating buying tickets on e-bay for an inflated price. In my opinion British Sea Power are possibly the best new band around in Britain at the moment. Great singer, great guitarist, not shockingly original but quite interesting in respect to the wartime Churchill cricket and village thing they have going on. Go and but their album now! Actually don't, because then i won't be able to see them in such a small dinky venue again.

I went to a house party tonight, after work. Unfortunately I couldn't stay long because my housemates were all horrendously drunk, whilst I was stone cold sober. It makes you want to quit drinking when you see what they were like. Steve could hardly stand, and insisted in wandering across Hyde Park in the darkness, apparently not really caring that it's the male rape capital of the UK. I had to pull him out the way of a bus later on. I heard a thud a bit ago, so I assume he's made it to the bathroom.

2003-11-16T03:30:00.000Z

Back in the day

Just found this pic on seb patrick's website. I had hair back then!

2003-11-15T18:52:00.000Z

Comment

I now have a comment form! Woo! Cheers to everyone who came to my cry for help, now please use it!

2003-11-15T01:14:00.000Z

Stoof

I went out on thursday night, which was good cos i was in desperate need of a bit of relaxation. I went out with my flatmate naomi and her boyfriend will. We trawled round all the interesting looking bars in town, which was fun cos most places here are filled with sudents trying to get pissed as quickly as possible, and so are a bit samey. I drank some interesting beers- a kronenbourg decco, which comes with a shot of absinthe, and an evil beer called judas, which was 8.5 percent. After that point the night started to go downhill.

Me and will ended up in this decent alternative/indie club, which has one of the best playlists in town, and proceded to sit civilly, drink a few beers and chat. Little did i know i was slowly getting drunker and drunker. However, as i was sitting down i didn't realise that my motor skills had began to fail me. Will went to the bar, and i told him that i was going to the dancefloor cos they were playing this charming man. Thats the last thing i remeber.

Somehow, on my trip to the dancefloor, all of ten steps, i managed to do something to get myself thrown out. I have no idea what. The thing is i've seen people who are paralytic in that place and they haven't been thrown out. My memory is a total blackout, and so i've been left in the horrifying limbo of wondering what i did. The possible combination of this charming man and a lot of lager has led me to have a image of myself drunkenly flailing is a morrisey esque way, spilling drinks left right an center, in the middle of a shocked and fairly sober dancefloor. I hope this wasn't the case.
The rest of my night had to be filled in by my housemates. Apparently i was so drunk that i couldn't manage to fit the my housekey into my door, and so after ten minutes of scrabbling had to be let in. At that point i went upstairs and collapsed in the bathroom.
I went out with my contact lenses in, but didn't come back with them.

However the night wasn't a total loss as i did manage to come back with a poster nicked from one of the club walls. The thing is normally i can tell my limits. I think it was a boiling the frog kinda ting- it happened so slowly i didn't realise how bad it was till it was too late.

The next morning i woke up with the mother of all hangovers and was sick in my bin. That seemed to clear me up though, and so i was okay to go to work at four. I was stewarding the christmas lights celebration in pudsey. Pudsey is quite a nice place, full of stone architecture and gothic churches. The people in it are twats though. The place is full of scally kids and crazy drunk men. It also appears to have a stronghold of White nationalist party supporters, as i pulled down a few stickers someone had put up promoting them. I spent a miserable five hours in the cold and rain making sure people didn't nick the firwork display. I wouldn't care to repeat the experience.

However i did get told some interesting advice. Apparently, if you piss on your hands it hardens them so you don't get cuts so easily. This is an old plasterers trick.
The interesting advice wasn't that though. It was never shake hands with a plasterer.

If anyone can tell me how to set up a comment form on this blog e-mail me at eng1rwb@leeds.ac.uk, as i don't like feeling like i'm talking to myself all the time.

I'm going to give another shout out to emma, hopefully to console her as she's missing the snooker season. I'm missing it too, but for a different reason :). I'll probably come to yours on new year, if the invites there, which it is, so I'll be coming!

2003-11-13T01:55:00.000Z

Downloading

Many people apprear to be downloading the third matrix from my computer, so i've decided to help them enjoy the film by renaming the file The Matrix "trinity and neo both die at the end" Revolutions.

2003-11-13T01:42:00.000Z

Quizzilla

Just did a web quiz 'What film do you belong in'. It turns out i belong in the matrix. I went to see the third matrix the other day. I thought it was incredibly average. I watched Blade two tonight. That was pretty awful too. It pisses me off how there is so little variation in these kinds of films. Take some heros dressed in black with sunglasses, let them know kung fu and make them fight some kind of evil and win. Make the last scene being someone staring out into the sunlight, throw in some cgi effects and bingo! We have a waste of my afternoon. Action films attained perfection in the 80's and 90's with commando and running man. Everyone knows that. Look at sky for gods sake, it manages to keep its movie channels going on the strength of die hard alone.

I've been very bored recently. All i seem to have done is read an incredibly long victorian detective novel called the moonstone and cook increasingly bland meals. I'll have to fix that by going out either tomorrow or saturday. I'm working on Friday, so that'll at least provide some variation. I have no idea what i'll be doing. All i know is that it'll probably involve standing out in the cold.

I

2003-11-12T00:21:00.000Z

An explanation

Ask Bizarre November 2003

What’s up with that whole just-about-to-fall-asleep- big-muscle-spasm-scares-the-shit-out-of-you crap?
JZ by email

Bizarre’s sleep expert: The unnecessarily scary muscle jerks that happen as you’re falling asleep are known as hypnic jerks. According to Dr Mark Mahowald, director of a sleep-disorder clinic in Minneapolis, “As far as I know, we don’t have a clue why it happens.” There are a couple of theories, though. The most simple is that in the process of going to sleep the muscles have to relax, so if the body has been engaged in a physically stressful, repetitive activity that day, they spasm. Many believe that between dozing off and entering REM (deep) sleep, there is still some communication between the brain and the muscles. So, if you think of something stressful, your brain tries to jolt your body back into the ‘awake mode’ in order to fend off the perceived danger.

The most common theory, though, is that as your body prepares to make the transition from alertness to sleep, many physiological changes occur – breathing and heart rate slowing. There is a point where the muscles completely ‘let go’ as you are slipping out of consciousness. Sometimes, the brain misinterprets this sudden relaxation as a sign that you are falling, and sends messages to your arms and legs to thrash around in an attempt to keep you upright as you ‘fall’. This would make sense, as you often awake like this after a dream of falling.

2003-11-10T04:26:00.000Z

Sleep is for the weak

I am still suffering from insomnia. Four am is now my natural bed time. I spend my nights playing guitar, surfing the net and watching films, waiting to get tired. I know that tomorrow i will wake up at one, have a shower and then doze off. I will then re-awake around three to five and eat breakfast.
Due to the fact that England is now approaching winter and the sun sets at 5pm it is not unusual for me to only see an hour or two of daylight a day. However since I generally have so little I have to do in a day there is little incentive to actually change this pattern. The thing is I hate sleeping during the day cos I usually dream crazy dreams, or have really mundane dreams that are so close to reality they confuse me.

Today I've decided to get my arse into gear. I have reading week next week so I have even less officially organised time, which gives me the perfect oppurtuity to get organised. I was thinking of writing a list of ten things I should do before I finish Uni, but i couldn't think of any. Well, none that don't involve sleeping with someone or pulling off that jump shot I've been attempting at pool for the last couple of weeks.

I played Risk tonight. I haven't felt that angry for a long time. I'm normally very tolerant. I mean, i can take being annihalated at pool on a daily basis extremely well. Risk is a different matter. The look on people's jammy faces when they're winning when of coure its only luck that they nicked Irtusk with two men...God. Its not tactics, its luck. Pure, stupid dumb luck. Bastards.

Goodnight.

2003-11-07T00:13:00.000Z

Its been a bad day

Today was the first day after my illness that i had felt reasonably okay and so i decided to get started on my essay (1700 words, due for, er, tomorrow). However two things have gotten in my way:
Firstly, I appear to have given myself food poisoning from an undercooked steak. The funny thing is that said steak was the first real meal i had eaten for almost a week now. And its made me ill again.
Secondly, i found out that the band suede have split up. This has sent me into a spiral of nostalgia for my teenage years. I loved suede. Suede made me who i am today- without them i wouldn't have started playing guitar or listening to indie. Suede splitting up has effectively sounded the death-knell for my adolescence. Their output may have dipped in the last few years but when they were good they were excellent. I'd advise anyone to buy their first two albums as musts.

I've met very few suede fans throughout my life. Well, none actually. Looks like i'll be mourning alone tonight. Which, combined with the fact that i feel a bit ill and am still suffering from insomnia, may make it a very long night. Sigh

On a lighter note i watched joe millionaire tonight. On a date he tried to say "Did you get that dress in Paris?" but it came out as "Did you get that breast in Paris?". Fool.

2003-11-04T23:38:00.000Z

Take up thy bed and wash it

I hate being ill. I hate it. I've had the flu/pnumonia/sars for the past four days and i only seem to be recovering from it today. Because of this my weekend has consisted of me being curled up in bed sweating bucketloads and coughing up more flem than that little frilly dinosaur in the first jurassic park. I have eaten only paracetamol based products and drank only lemsip. I feel awful.

I also seem to have turned my tongue a tasteful shade of purple from eating too many strepsils. The problem with strepsils is that they only work if you eat them like they are sweeties, and then you end up numbing the whole of your mouth for the next twenty-four hours.

I've practically been in quarantine for the last couple of days. Hardly anyone's been in to see me. The only time i've had human contact is when i've been making my bi-hourly trips out to fiddle with the thermostat. It makes me miss being home, cos i've got no-one to look after me here at uni. If i was at home my mum would be making me tea and feeding me soup. Instead i have to try to cook my own food.

I ate a cold can of heinz tomato soup last night.

2003-11-01T20:32:00.000Z

Halloween- The revenge

Went out last night for Halloween and God I'm suffering for it today. Me and Steve dressed up as Alex from clockwork orange, fairly successfully I might add. Walking sticks, mascara, bowler hats and everything. Steve even wore my newcalstle brown ale pants over his trousers in order to simulate the codpiece.

We went to the union bar, which was fairly busy- quite a few people had made the effort to get dressed up. There was a guy dressed as colonel Gadaffi and another dressed as Moira Stewart, as well as a couple of papa lazarous. A girl took me and steve's photo, so I'm hoping we may end up in the student paper or something.
After staying in the bar til closing me and Steve went on to a house party, stopping off en-route at home to pick up more alcohol. All we could find was a bottle of archers, so we had to make do with that. The bottle of archers was actually a birthday present for one of my flatmates, yet as usual if someone gets given alcohol as a present me and Steve end up drinking it before they get the chance. We've went through a bottle of vodka, jack Daniels, archers, baileys and red wine that weren't ours so far.
Anyway the house party was pretty fun. It was your typical house party really, I just drank a lot and smoked. Unfortunately the party seemed to die at about two am, so we had to leave to look for another place to go. After wandering around for a good hour we managed to gatecrash this foreign student's party, but since there was no drink in the place we left early, not before thieving a large plastic axe though. Actually before that happened we were physically assaulted by this random student. This guy came running towards us, so in our friendly drunken way we told him to stop and asked him if he knew where any house parties were. He responded by grabbing both me and steve around the throat. Luckily we were both in a pretty good mood, so we just told the guy to let go of us, which he did. Turns out he had just been attacked and was running away from the scene of the crime. Obviously when we stopped him he thought he was going to be attacked again. He was terrified. I suppose the clockwork orange costumes didn't help.

Anyway by the time we got home it was about four o'clock, and i was freezing cold. My beer coat had given me the impression of warmth, when in reality i had only been wearing a vest all night. When i got to bed i couldn't stop shivering. I went to sleep in longjohns, a vest, socks and a sweater. Needless to say i woke up about three hours later completely overheated and was almost sick. I made my way upstairs and collapsed on the bathroom floor for a few minutes, which seemed to cool me down nicely. When i woke up i realised that i had caught a chill, and so I've spent the whole day wrapped up warm watching he-man and feeling sorry for myself.

May be going to another house party tonight. I have resolved to take it easy though.

2003-10-30T03:41:00.000Z

All hallows eve

Tonight was a training run for friday. A very bad training run, but a training run. I let steve wear my clockwork orange outfit, which seemed to go down quite well. In revenge for his success i am going to stay up and eat all of his sausages. He owes it to me!

2003-10-29T04:08:00.000Z

Still awake

Just typed a fucking massive entry and then the computer cut out. I've saved it but i don't know where it is. This has really pissed me off!

2003-10-28T21:27:00.000Z

Hell yeah!
Motherfucker i'm king of the internet! Mummy, look what i just did!

2003-10-28T21:26:00.000Z

2003-10-28T15:00:00.000Z

Webmaster

2003-10-28T02:36:00.000Z

I can't get no sleep.

I seem to be suffering from insomnia. Recently i haven't been able to sleep until about 3-5 o'clock in the morning. It's driving me mad, since it means that i always sleep in late and am tired during the day, which hinders any attempt on my part to do any work. If i do try to do any work during the day i fall asleep, and then i don't get tired at nights, and so the circle begins again. I've got to be up at eight am tomorrow, i hope i can make it.

I'm trying to do something productive tonight but my brain just doesn't seem to be working properly. I have to read this sonnet sequence and then do a presentation on it for thursday, so I'm trying to get started on that. Trouble is the poem seems to be the hardest text i've ever read. To make matters worse the presentation has to be done in pairs, and i've been paired up with an austrian exchange student who doesn't seem to be able to speak English very well. At its worst it's a case of the stupid leading the blind.
I've just realised that i'll also be hungover whilst giving the presentation too, as i'm going to a halloween party the night before, an intend to get quite drunk. Wayhey.

Steve's parents are coming round tomorrow. Apparently his mum is pissed off with me cos i have inadvertently scarred him quite badly (it was an accident!), so i'm going to disappear off to my brother's tomorrow night.

I had a bet with steve over a game of pool today. He bet his sister against my seventy pence. Unfortunately he won.

I've got to find a hobby. I'm going insane just doing work and sitting infront of the tv at home. I don't feel like i'm achieving anything. I'd feel better if i didn't go to uni for a week and tried to finally get down all the music i've been meaning to write, or something. This university is like a production line at times. Well, a production line that expects me to work nine hours a week, drink most days, sleep around and get a high paid job.
Why the fuck am i complaining? At least i'm not selling gas or driving a forklift all day like i did in the summer. I suppose i'm just the kind of person that needs motivation more than anything. Reminds me of that scene in fight club- i need a tyler to stick a gun to my head and tell me to work.

Sometimes do you ever feel like you made the wrong choice in life? Ever feel like you may have been naturally inclined to go in one direction, but instead you misread the signs and went another? Isn't it possible that you could be a great natural curler, or baseball player, or xylophone player, yet the fact that you never tried any of these things meant that you never realised this talent?

Studying English gets me down. It was worse last year, when we were doing Romantic poetry. Waking up hungover and having to wander into a seminar to discuss Dejection: An ode was not much fun. This year I'm studying Virginia Woolf. God i'm dreading that. At least i get to do some Orwell and Waugh who, if a bit pessimistic, are at least amusing. I'm looking forward to doing DH Lawrence as well, but he's next term. I get to sit in a seminar and say "the phallus is the bridge to the future" in a legitamate context for once. In fact, i have a seminar on lady chatterly tomorrow, so i'll try to fit that phallus quote in somewhere. Hopefully not during registration.

I'm tempted to volunteer for the uni nighttime listening service. I figure that if i'm up all night typing at a computer i might as well be up all night talking to someone human, even if that person is suicidal.

I am wide awake now. I might as well watch the wicker man, its on tv now.

Goodnight.

2003-10-26T01:28:00.000Z

The web

The internet is so full of crap! I've just been surfing a few of these blogs and God they aren't interesting. Half of the seem to be written in this slang i don't understand whilst the other half contain bloody awful poetry by some miserable bastard.

Its all stuff like:

The cry of life

I sit in my fake room
Square and dark a
single tear trickles
to the floor
Daddy why did you do this?
Squoze my heart like a melon
My eternal sleep

It all bollocks! I just did one of those what kind of.. quizzes. Turns out that if i was an angel i would be a dark angel. Well thank you for that revelation. A dark angel. Now i don't need to go to that psychiatrist. Now what the fuck is a dark angel?

Its as bad as that career form i filled in at at school. This is how that went:

Q Do you like the outdoors?
A Yes
Response: Have you considered being a farmer?

It said i should be a un peace keeper. Ha ha ha.

I'm gonna go steal a beer off someone.

2003-10-26T01:11:00.000Z

I'm bored

I'm bored! Its a saturday night i should be out! Its annoying, i've sacrificed two very good night outs for one very mediocre one. I could be at a cure night, or at an indie/60's night. Instead I'm at a computer vaguely meandering round the internet until i get sleepy. Since steve has gone i've lost my usual drinking partner, and everyone else in the house is in a couple, so they're happy to stay in.

Today was a typical post-club day, meaning that i've done very little. I've visited my brother, read a bit of DH Lawrence and watched the Omen.

We are getting a new flatmate moving in tomorrow, which should radically alter how the flat's like. I'm looking forward to it, it should be good to get some new blood in the house. I just hope he isn't a nutcase, or a control freak. He seems alright to me, and he has a sense of humour.

I'm begining to wonder why i want to go out so much. Generally its because i like the music, but that isn't really the whole story. I think i'm just desperate to have a good time, and clubs are where people go to have fun, after all. Most of my days seem so mediocre and boring i'm desperate to let go at nights. The trouble is that i generally don't have that much fun. The majority of the clubs play music too loud and get me too drunk for me to be able to have a decent conversation, so i end up dancing badly for three hours and then stumbling home, kebab in hand.
I think my subconscious is just telling me to go out and find myself a girlfriend. I've been single for over a year now. Although i can only think that relationships tend to be more trouble than their worth. I'm living with two couples at the moment, and both seem to illustrate the two extreams of relationships. One is really inclusive and settled, the other quite free and unrestrictive. Personally, I hate to watch the couples that become symbiotic, so involved in themselves that you never see one without the other. For some reasons these couples always seem to be asking each other if they are okay and going to be early because they are 'tired'. With these couples the togetherness doesn't seem to stem from any kind of mutual love but from a desperate need for mutual support. They're the type who go out get drunk and end up exploding publically at each other in an embarrasing fashion, then go to sleep and pretend that everything is okay the next day. In the end they stop communicating and just live round each other. You can see an example of this when they go out together and don't talk to each other. I hate to see people hurting themselves in that way, just wasting their lives digging their own graves.

When i was writing the word 'exploding' i actually wrote 'sexploading' by mistake. If that's not a freudian slip i don't know what is.

Shit its daylight saving tonight. I have another hour of boredom. If i was out i'd have another hour of drinking. Bugger.

Its halloween next week, my favorite holiday of the year, most probably because of the goth in me. It gives me a legitimate excuse to wear make up and dress in black without looking like a melodramatic prat. I think i'm going to go as a vampire one night and Alex from clockwork orange another. I'm hoping steve will get a kilt in Edinbouough so he can go as a Scotsman, and that i can convince the other steve to wear a hollowed out pumpkin on his head. I'm looking forward to it.

2003-10-25T14:18:00.000Z

The morning after

Wow i've woken up with a surprisingly friendly hangover. However, it is three o'clock.

Steve attempted to ride down the stairs on the fold out bed last night. He decided to go head first. I gave him a push and steve went sliding...only the bed thing didn't move. Down went steve over the steep stairs to collapse in a heap on the floor. He didn't move for a while, so once i'd stopped laughing i went to see how he was, following him down the stairs in a similar manner. After landing on him i asked him how he was. He looked at me with a face that bared a six inch carpet burn.

He has to see his parents and family tonight, and he still has the scars of when i slammed his head into the pavement and had to go to a and e. I feel kinda guilty.

2003-10-25T04:03:00.000Z

A Portrait

I got told i looked like joe strummer tonight. But with less hair. Which is strange because i've also been told that i look like:

Brian Molko
Fran Healey
Billy Corgan
and Gareth Gates.

People really are stupid.

2003-10-25T03:44:00.000Z

Friday nights at the star.

You will wish you hadn't drank so much last night. You will wish you had spent your money on better things. Clothes, albums, faberge eggs, train tickets. But you didn't. You drank it all.And tomorrow you will regret it. So you will drink some more, in the vague hope that you will have a good time. But you had a good time tonight. You just can't remember it.

2003-10-25T03:30:00.000Z

Its far too late.

Dear God. I hope i haven't hurt his face agan. He has to to see hs family soon. We only tried to slide down the stairs on the futon thing. Went to the star it was only me and steve left at the end of the night why did everyone leave us? What about stanima? Come on have some fun. The star isn't the best place to go but make the most of it. Don't let the highlight of the night be the kebab.

Drank far too much, but steve has to be up in two or three hours to catch a train, so i'm not in the worst position.

Anyway back to the water.

2003-10-22T01:51:00.000Z

Work and stuff

I've just finished writing an Essay comparing Engels' condition of the working class in England with Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist. I researched it on monday and wrote it on Tuesday. It was one of the fastest times that I've ever wrote 1700 words in. Two days. I have the rest of the week pretty much free.

The only problem is that the essay is shit. I had so many good ideas (mostly plagerised), so many good intentions, but somewhere in the transition from brain to paper something went awry. I read the essay over and it just screams ignorance at me. I make obvious points over and over again, repeat myself, go into little depth and seem to be happy to conclude that apparently, Dickens and Engels had a few things in common, and London sounds like a bit of a dive. Oh, and the working class don't get on with the middle class, or something. It gets a bit vague there.

The thing is now I've reached the word limit i can't be arsed to change it. And this is the same story with all my essays. Which leads me up to the question thats been bugging me; Am i actually intelligent? Despite the physical evidence of my many mediocre essays i still seem to believe that i could get a first, if i wanted too and if i wasn't so lazy. But could I? Is it actually in my ability, or are my mediocre essays the celing of my skills? Or is it just the fact that i want to get my work done so i can go out and have some fun at the weekend the problem? Or do i now have to let go of my childish notions that i've actually got a talent for this subject? I suppose there is no easy answer in a subject as subjective as English. Who gives a damn anyway, in five years i'll probably be nowhere near a book, and in two days i'll be drunk.

2003-10-20T23:43:00.000Z

Here is a link to Robert Hampton's website, full of chocolaty goodness:http://www.roberthampton.me.uk/. Suck it and see!

2003-10-20T23:39:00.000Z

Hello!

I'd just like to say hello to Emma if she is reading this, and that i hope things are going okay despite the fact she's in France.

If it helps, an apple is called 'un pomme', a car is 'une voiture' and a taxi is 'un taxi'. Feel free to e mail me if you need any more tips. Salu!

2003-10-20T16:56:00.000Z

Things that have annoyed me today:

Waking up at 1pm

Having half the contents of a vacum packed milk container squirt over me when i tried to open it. Opening another container five seconds later and the same thing happen again.

Running up a twelve pound debt in library fines. Having to pay a two pound fine for a book i got out that, not only had i already read, but also had a copy of.

Every single english student appearing to be in the library at the same time. Working, too.

Attemting to clean two grease stains off two t-shirts, not reading the instructions on the stain remover and increasing the stain's size by 200%

The fact that i have no time to prepare for my seminars tomorrow and so i will have to pretend that i know what A pourtrait of the artist as a young man is about. Either that or keep deathly silent, hide in my coat and hope i don't get asked any questions.

2003-10-19T02:54:00.000Z

The Wendy house

I've just came back from a goth night at my uni. It was alright, although i think that it's slightly anti-social to go out to a club, drink so much that you lose all of your inhibitions and then forget what happened. Not that this is my story, not tonight. Im still sober. Relatively.

Well, that is relative to my flatmate steve, who has just spilt a a pint of beer over himself and went to bed. Or at least went upstairs.

Your inhibitions are there for a reason. No, you can't dance, no she isn't attractive, no it just isn't a good idea. Inhibitions stop you from being other people's entertainment. There is a fine line that shouldn't be crossed.

But then why not? Why not drink so much that you don't care? You're a fool for a night, but at least you have a good time. And after all, isn't that why you went out?

2003-10-18T02:57:00.000Z

Broadband

Christ, I've just saved myself about twenty quid in cd's in the last ten minutes and discovered a hell a lot of covers that i've never heard before (weezer doing please please please let me get what i want?) all because of broadband. I'm begining to forgive that gap toothed yokel that installed the modem in the wrong room.

2003-10-18T02:44:00.000Z

Quick thought

Do people who save for a rainy day in Arizona become the richest people in the world?

2003-10-18T02:07:00.000Z

The neverending story

Okay, writing this blog when i come back drunk from a club isn't the best idea but i have to sober up for tomorrow or else i couldn't go out again.

I now have broadband. Thats the good news. The bad news is that i have ntl. Due to te ineptitude of the spanner monkey they sent round my house looks like it's been attacked by the borg, what with the random wires and gaffer tape and everything. But hey, at least it works, and i no longer have to buy any media of any kind.

Tonight was my post-essay celebration, and I listened to some very good indie music.

Thats about it. Goodnight!

2003-09-18T00:10:00.000Z

Home

I've just arrived back home from Cyprus. It's good to be back in a country where you can drink the water and understand the TV, as well as wander outside without having to rub oil into yourself. I'm not much of a sun person really, I generally prefer colder climates and landscapes, but Cyprus has its charms. I have some amazing tanlines to show off now.

The more I fly the more I hate flying. I wonder if it's possible to develop a phobia? Although to me it seems perfectly rational to be terrified when you are in a metal box thousands of feet in the air. I still can't understand how the fuck they stay up there. Air going over the wings? We are held up by air? Air?
After september the eleventh I've got even more paranoid. I'm sure I'm not alone in playing spot the terrorist when I'm flying, knowing full well that the chances of any attack are incredibly small. Probably less than being struck by lightning.

What the hell would you do if the plane got stuck by lightning?!?

I almost had to prise my own fingers off the arm rests when the plane landed.

I'm in good company in my dislike of flying. Mr T didn't like flying, and apparently Robert Smith from the Cure sails everywhere.

As soon as we got into John Lennon airport (Are we gonna call the bus station Macartney now? Why not rename Liverpool Beatlepool and be done with it? And what about poor Ringo?) this random driver reversed at about 30mph straight into the minibus parked infront of my family. The impact knocked a fella over, and the driver in the car looked absolutely dumbfounded.Either that or he was on something (he kept twitching). Anyway when the police were called we were told (over the phone) to talk to this mad looking driver ourselves and then let the insurance companies sort it out, despite the fact that the accident could have been much more severe. Then the fella who called the police was told off by the operator for talking to her in an excited manner. He'd just seen an accident for Christ's sake! The police are a joke here. Every time I've had to deal with them they have been useless, generally not unwilling but unable to help.
The thing was that that guy could have so easily went into my families car and killed all of us. Seconds of time and luck were all that stopped someone being seriously hurt. And I was worried about flying.

Apparently statistically worldwide more people are killed by donkeys then by planes per year. This may sound stupid but there are a hell of a lot of donkeys in the world, and a hell of a lot of careless peasants waiting to be kicked by them.

I'd rather be killed by a donkey.

2003-09-15T17:06:00.000Z

Cyprus

I'm still in cyprus, allthough only for a few more days. Its amazing how anglicised this country is, or at least the tourist part. I'm staying in a hotel thant has a pub next door called the "Nags Head" which shows only fools and horses everyday from 1-4 and is staffed by at least two English people. Down the road from this there are innumerous Irish pubs , a KFC, a MacDonalds AND a Burger King. To top this off everywhere sells english breakfasts and plays english football games. There is even a picture of my local pub on the wall of one of the cyprus pubs. This place lives off the blood of tourists. Which, considering the enthusiasm that the cypriot bar managers have for our football teams, may not mean as much as a cultural impostion as assimilation. It's amazing what money can do.

The English tourists, myself included, look terrible. We are all, almost without exception, pasty, fat and, after a few days, lobster red. Next to the locals, who all tend to be slim and attractive (at least until their late twenties), it's quite embarassing. Everyone here is English. It's like i've gone to Blackpool, but its actually sunny.

In saying all of this I can't deny its been a reasonably good holiday. I've done very little except play pool, sit in the sun and read, which is what I had planned to do. I suppose it's difficult to actually have a holiday when you've been idle for the past eleven weeks already. I was planning to spend most of the days drunk on cocktails but i can't seem to take the hangovers anymore, so i've almost become teetotal. Me and my brother did go out on the first night, where we found a good rock club with a decent playlist, but after having to gently squeeze ourselves out of a strip club that my brother went into "just to see what it was like" ( five quid a beer, he only had four) we decided to call it a night. I'm looking forward to going home and going back to uni though.

2003-09-15T14:17:00.000Z

Here is a lnk to my old schoolfriend Robert Hampton's site which I will still insist on calling FABland

2003-09-11T14:00:00.000Z

Holidays in the sun

I'm in Cyprus now, currently enjoying a family holiday, which is kinda odd considering I'm now twenty. I have to pay for this internet connection so I'm going to be brief. Cyprus appears to be a tourist trap full of bars and pasty white english people like me. Goodbye!

2003-09-07T21:46:00.000Z

10:41
If you're wondering about the reasoning behind title of this blog it's a quote from the film withnail and I. It's a line that was floating around my head when I created this site, and it always makes me laugh, so i thought I'd use it as a title. Plus I'm from a farming background so it has some vague relevance to my life.

I figure that by setting up this blog people will be able to keep track of me and I'll be able to keep track of them, so this site is sort of a cyberspace lost and found. It'll also provide me with a forum to preach my ultra-right wing views without those bleeding heart liberals trespassing on my freedom of speech.

Only kidding. But hey, that's what the internet's for isn't it? It gives the individual the ability to prattle on about whatever the hell they want, no matter how crazy, or boring, or just plain odd it is, with the potential for their drivel to reach an audience of millions. And, best of all, unlike the crazy man shouting in the street you don't have to listen to any of it unless you want to.

Lets start to prattle then.

I've started a new job as a steward. For my first job (first one involving people anyway) I was in Manchester at the Rolling stones gig. I'm not a huge fan of them but I do like a lot of their stuff and, after all, they are the Rolling stones, worth seeing just because they are the Rolling Stones. I was lucky enough to be put on the floor showing people to their seats, and so in effect I got paid to see the gig. The tickets were 150 quid each and the place was sold out.

God knows why they put me on the floor. They seemed to put a lot of the rookies there, which is strange considering showing people to their seats is a fairly importan jobt. Once the gig started it was chaos. I didn't have a clue what i was doing. Some of the seating was reorganized because the crew had moved the mixer and so I ended up just randomly leaving a few people and hoping for the best. The line "I'll just get my supervisor to sort it out" coupled with a hasty exit became very useful throughout the night. People seem to believe that the flurescent yellow jacket that stewards wear bestows them with omniscience. In reality you only get a quick briefing and are left to make the rest up on your own.

I had to spend a bit of the night looking for a lost child with special needs, which was good because I coould just wander around the arena at my leisure. I was only told that the kid was wearing a belt and a grey shirt and so I was walking round peering at young boys and trying to guess if they were mentally handicapped. I felt a bit like Gary Glitter, what with the jacket and all. I never found him. I also had to form a human shield between the crowd and the stones when they went off stage, they walked right behind me, which was kinda cool.

The stones themselves looked surprisingly sprightly for being pensioners. From a distance that is. Once you saw them up close you could really see the ravages time had took on them. Its as if they'd sold out their looks for a life of rock and roll excess. Keith Richard's face looked like a scrumpled up paper bag. Seeing them all up there and still going strong must really piss off the anti-drugs campaigners. Maybe I should start on the smack if i want to be as mobile as Keith when I'm 60-odd. Or maybe not.

Starting to gain a contempt for the general public. When some drunk bloke leers at you and makes a lame joke at your expenxse, and then smiles to himself like he's just said the funniest thing in history...God its annoying. I got told I look like Gareth Gates as well. Almost threw the woman out. She said she meant it as a compliment. I'll bet that even Gareth Gates doesn't want to look like Gareth Gates.

Here's some quality journalism from Peter Hitchens in the mail, regarding a black huntswoman's support of the countryside alliance;

"The politically correct movement doesn't want black people to be intergrated, middle class, law abiding and normal. It wants to use black people as a stage army of the oppressed for anti-British propaganda and is actually annoyed when they don't fit its prejudices. PC people will secretly loathe Mrs Lake and view her as a traitor."

Sigh.

Watch out or the politically correct movement will get you too! At least its not the working class, eh Peter?

2003-09-04T23:04:00.000Z

Its 11:55. I have published a blog. The sense of accomplishment i feel in doing this is not diminished by the fact i am only wearing my underwear. It is, in fact, increased.