I was banned from writing what my lecturer calls ‘minor-key poems’ after I submitted one about a massive disaster. Basically, I’m not allowed to write about small things anymore. It sucks, because writing about disasters and big concepts is hard.
This is kind of a corner-turning moment for me as a poet. Less self-obsession and whatnot. Less Lazzara and more Rickly, if you speak reference.
Also, I wrote this poem right here, which is the one thing I’ve written to date that I’m actually proud of, but I'm not allowed to hand it in. On the bright side, I get to share it with you guys as the first Whoa Whoa Woe-exclusive piece of writing. Yay.
Going on Eighteen
It was the last the summer that was really a summer.
Before everything felt too hot, or we felt too old.
We wanted to be like the kids on TV
who had their own cars and freedom.
Shoplifting was getting old, and our parents wouldn’t
lend us money since they knew we drank.
So we got part-time jobs; chained ourselves to
sinks in stifling hot pub kitchens,
or braved the chilly darkness of supermarket storerooms.
Showering off after a shift; drinking
or skating on the half-pipe by the river in the
last of the daylight at around eight-thirty.
Listening to bands that only we listened
to; your phone as a jukebox.
Rolling smokos well past midnight,
staring up at the stars and talking about the future,
the government and how come
everyone except us was falling in love?
We were the self-labelled coolest kids,
desperate to get out of town,
but never really having a plan,
because we were so sure
that some day,
some way,
everything was going be fine.
aaaannnnddd poem.
If I were a poet, I'd write better poems that this,
Nick
Thursday, 27 January 2011
Monday, 24 January 2011
iComplain: 5 Things Apple Could Do if they Want Me To Buy Their Shit
I can’t be bothered to check, but I may or may not have been vocal in my refusal to buy Apple products. I don’t know why, maybe I’m just set in my ways, maybe I disagree with their holding products hostage for upgrades, maybe I think Steve Jobs is a twat. Because of one or more of those reasons I have never bought or owned an iPod, a Macbook or an iPhone (Or its inbred cousin, the iPad).
But, Jobs, all is not lost! What follows are some things Apple could do that would make me consider buying their products (if they’re not too expensive and/or I feel the need for something).
1)Waterproof iPods. I don’t really care if my iPod has more memory than my laptop. I doubt there’ll ever be that much music recorded that I like (I may harp on about the shockingly low standards of the listening public at a later date). What would be ace, though, is if I could listen to music while surfing or swimming. Just imagine how rad it would be to destroy your spine on a hidden rocky outcrop as Orchid destroy your eardrums. Okay, maybe that’s more of a personal fantasy. That and being eaten by a shark. Which could also benefit from a badass skramz soundtrack. Whoever makes the first waterproof MP3 player will be the people I buy my first MP3 player from.
2)Admit that no-one will ever watch movies on their iPod. If you know anyone who does, slap them. With a book. Then get them to read the book on a train like a normal person, instead of watching a movie on a tiny little screen like a gimp. It’s just sad, and this is coming from someone who watches TV dramas made for teenage girls.
3)Stop with the pisstake ad campaigns. Okay, the days of Mac versus PC are finally, thankfully over. I think the clear winner was iDon’t Give a Fuck. Still, though, Apple’s ad campaigns have an air of obnoxiousness surpassed only by Lynx commercials (and at least those are so retarded they’re funny). Oooh! Look how thin it is! Yeah? That definitely means it’ll be a great laptop then. Why not tell me how good it is at being a laptop, you dicks? I’m gullible, but not that gullible. On a similar note …
4)Accept that using Apple won’t make me cool. Apple, I’m not cool. My collars do not pop. Team sports make me feel ill. I’m more John Nolan than John Mayer (Massive respect to Mr. Nolan). Get the picture? Thing is, I’ve accepted my place at the back of the line and while I’m not cool, I’m also not stupid enough to delude myself into thinking that making my calls on an iPhone as opposed to my (second hand) Sony Ericsson relic will make me cool. So cut it out.
5)Inform half your customer base that they are wankers. This one’s quite extreme, sure, but I can instantly locate the highest concentration of cunts on any high street just by finding the Apple store. Clearly, I’m not as dumb as I thought (assuming ‘dumb’ is measured on a curve), since all these douches fell for the ‘Apple will make you cool’ schtick. Not that everyone who buys and uses Apple is a pretentious dickhead, but if someone says they work in media but is actually on the dole, you can be sure there’s at least one Apple product in their life. Just saying.
So, there’s my roundup of ways Apple could entice me their way. I was also going to mention jailbreaking (and how it shouldn’t be necessary) and bring up ‘apps and mobile Internet—what’s the difference?’. However, those would require a lot of research and would make for a far more serious edition of Woe (which is the last thing I need after all that sXe malarkey).
The tragic part of this is that I’m giving in to the brand-conscious aspect of the technological age by discussing it. Ultimately, it shouldn’t matter what you’re using as long as it works—and I can’t stress this bit enough—for you. Find out as much as you can before you part with your cash, and always assume your source has an agenda.
And really, don’t let an obnoxious ad campaign get in the way of your final verdict; I just have a low threshold for asshole marketing strategies.
iNcidentally, iLoathe iPod puns,
Nick
But, Jobs, all is not lost! What follows are some things Apple could do that would make me consider buying their products (if they’re not too expensive and/or I feel the need for something).
1)Waterproof iPods. I don’t really care if my iPod has more memory than my laptop. I doubt there’ll ever be that much music recorded that I like (I may harp on about the shockingly low standards of the listening public at a later date). What would be ace, though, is if I could listen to music while surfing or swimming. Just imagine how rad it would be to destroy your spine on a hidden rocky outcrop as Orchid destroy your eardrums. Okay, maybe that’s more of a personal fantasy. That and being eaten by a shark. Which could also benefit from a badass skramz soundtrack. Whoever makes the first waterproof MP3 player will be the people I buy my first MP3 player from.
2)Admit that no-one will ever watch movies on their iPod. If you know anyone who does, slap them. With a book. Then get them to read the book on a train like a normal person, instead of watching a movie on a tiny little screen like a gimp. It’s just sad, and this is coming from someone who watches TV dramas made for teenage girls.
3)Stop with the pisstake ad campaigns. Okay, the days of Mac versus PC are finally, thankfully over. I think the clear winner was iDon’t Give a Fuck. Still, though, Apple’s ad campaigns have an air of obnoxiousness surpassed only by Lynx commercials (and at least those are so retarded they’re funny). Oooh! Look how thin it is! Yeah? That definitely means it’ll be a great laptop then. Why not tell me how good it is at being a laptop, you dicks? I’m gullible, but not that gullible. On a similar note …
4)Accept that using Apple won’t make me cool. Apple, I’m not cool. My collars do not pop. Team sports make me feel ill. I’m more John Nolan than John Mayer (Massive respect to Mr. Nolan). Get the picture? Thing is, I’ve accepted my place at the back of the line and while I’m not cool, I’m also not stupid enough to delude myself into thinking that making my calls on an iPhone as opposed to my (second hand) Sony Ericsson relic will make me cool. So cut it out.
5)Inform half your customer base that they are wankers. This one’s quite extreme, sure, but I can instantly locate the highest concentration of cunts on any high street just by finding the Apple store. Clearly, I’m not as dumb as I thought (assuming ‘dumb’ is measured on a curve), since all these douches fell for the ‘Apple will make you cool’ schtick. Not that everyone who buys and uses Apple is a pretentious dickhead, but if someone says they work in media but is actually on the dole, you can be sure there’s at least one Apple product in their life. Just saying.
So, there’s my roundup of ways Apple could entice me their way. I was also going to mention jailbreaking (and how it shouldn’t be necessary) and bring up ‘apps and mobile Internet—what’s the difference?’. However, those would require a lot of research and would make for a far more serious edition of Woe (which is the last thing I need after all that sXe malarkey).
The tragic part of this is that I’m giving in to the brand-conscious aspect of the technological age by discussing it. Ultimately, it shouldn’t matter what you’re using as long as it works—and I can’t stress this bit enough—for you. Find out as much as you can before you part with your cash, and always assume your source has an agenda.
And really, don’t let an obnoxious ad campaign get in the way of your final verdict; I just have a low threshold for asshole marketing strategies.
iNcidentally, iLoathe iPod puns,
Nick
Friday, 21 January 2011
One sXe Motherfucker
If you read the last Woe (and if you haven’t, it’s not far away), you’ll remember that I promised to conduct a little experiment about being straight-edge in a culture as booze-soaked as Britain’s. To this end, I had three nights out in Liverpool. One where I drank my usual amount and had a decent buzz going, one where I didn’t drink or take any drugs and one where I got absolutely shitfaced.
The aim of my experiment was simple: is the amount I enjoy a night linked to the amount the drink? If so, in what way? Anyone looking to pick holes in the scientific validity of this, bear in mind that 1) I’m aware that I drink regularly, so may find being sXe for a night odd 2) this is mostly intended to be a laugh 3) I’m conducting this experiment on my own, so there’s no other results and 4) I’m not being paid, this is being done on my own time and you’re not being forced to read this, you ungrateful cunt.
Right, now that’s out of the way, on to my results!
1)The night in which I was blitzed. I don’t remember this night, but there is photographic evidence in which I appear to be enjoying myself greatly. Also, my friend Liam has given a statement (kinda) which says I was ‘fun’, ‘bouncing around having a laugh’ and ‘not an asshole drunk’. All good signs, right? Sounds like I had a lovely time. Too bad I can’t remember a single fucking thing. This, added to the fact that the night cost me twice as much as I usually spend on a night out (apparently, ‘it’s for science’ doesn’t get you free drinks) makes it less great. I also woke up alone, wearing just my socks and with a sizeable hickey. I may have been sexually abused.
2)The night in which I was sXe. I remember everything about this night, and what I mostly remember is being very self-conscious. When sober, I’m usually quiet (to some, this will be an indicator of just how much of a drunk I am) in a normal situation. In a club, forget it. I added nothing to the conversation, which is probably a good thing as the conversation sucked. Were I drunk, I’d have more than likely thought the bullshit we were chatting was hilarious or profound. On the bright side, I didn’t make a tit out of myself while dancing. Although I found myself unable to enjoy dancing. And, for some reason, the music played in clubs is a lot less awesome when you’re sober. The ultimate plus—and all students will know this is important—is that it was free.
3)A regular night out. Well, I wasn’t bored and I wasn’t raped, so that’s a start. Nights out are a hit-and-miss thing, and the one I’m using as the control in this experiment wasn’t a classic. I had a lovely conversation with a girl named Ashlea (and if you think that’s cool, wait ‘til you see her surname). I went a bit mental on the dancefloor with Liam and his crew (they’re the only people I know who can legitimately be called a ‘crew’), but didn’t fall over or do anything too retarded. The night ended up with a pizza in front of Brainiac at six in the morning with Aly. Good times.
So, a regular night out is the clear winner for me, but the real question is whether or not sXe is a viable lifestyle option if you’re going to be social in a culture as boozy as the UK university system. Well, from my experience, yes. It’s do-able. It’s better than being completely obliterated and it’s inexpensive. I’d only recommend it to those with confidence, or at least fake confidence, though, because I found it pretty fucking terrifying.
Here I have a list of the pros and cons of being sXe:
Pros:
It’s cheaper
No liver damage
You don’t do anything you don’t remember
You’re less likely to do something retarded
No beer gut
No hangover
You’re less likely to be molested
Cons:
There’s no escape from social anxiety
It’s harder to enjoy shitty music
Drunk people are less fun when you’re sober
Your friends may start a Keep Nick Wasted foundation because they don’t actually like you when you’re sober
You’re more aware of the fact that you dance like your parents
Talking to people is harder
You may realise you have nothing in common with your friends other than incipient alcoholism
Dear Woe readers (or ‘miseries’, as I may start calling you), I implore you to never again look on straight-edgers as pussies, or boring. What they do is infinitely harder than getting trashed. The sXe among us should be applauded for their willpower.
Please give generously to the Keep Nick Wasted foundation,
Nick
The aim of my experiment was simple: is the amount I enjoy a night linked to the amount the drink? If so, in what way? Anyone looking to pick holes in the scientific validity of this, bear in mind that 1) I’m aware that I drink regularly, so may find being sXe for a night odd 2) this is mostly intended to be a laugh 3) I’m conducting this experiment on my own, so there’s no other results and 4) I’m not being paid, this is being done on my own time and you’re not being forced to read this, you ungrateful cunt.
Right, now that’s out of the way, on to my results!
1)The night in which I was blitzed. I don’t remember this night, but there is photographic evidence in which I appear to be enjoying myself greatly. Also, my friend Liam has given a statement (kinda) which says I was ‘fun’, ‘bouncing around having a laugh’ and ‘not an asshole drunk’. All good signs, right? Sounds like I had a lovely time. Too bad I can’t remember a single fucking thing. This, added to the fact that the night cost me twice as much as I usually spend on a night out (apparently, ‘it’s for science’ doesn’t get you free drinks) makes it less great. I also woke up alone, wearing just my socks and with a sizeable hickey. I may have been sexually abused.
2)The night in which I was sXe. I remember everything about this night, and what I mostly remember is being very self-conscious. When sober, I’m usually quiet (to some, this will be an indicator of just how much of a drunk I am) in a normal situation. In a club, forget it. I added nothing to the conversation, which is probably a good thing as the conversation sucked. Were I drunk, I’d have more than likely thought the bullshit we were chatting was hilarious or profound. On the bright side, I didn’t make a tit out of myself while dancing. Although I found myself unable to enjoy dancing. And, for some reason, the music played in clubs is a lot less awesome when you’re sober. The ultimate plus—and all students will know this is important—is that it was free.
3)A regular night out. Well, I wasn’t bored and I wasn’t raped, so that’s a start. Nights out are a hit-and-miss thing, and the one I’m using as the control in this experiment wasn’t a classic. I had a lovely conversation with a girl named Ashlea (and if you think that’s cool, wait ‘til you see her surname). I went a bit mental on the dancefloor with Liam and his crew (they’re the only people I know who can legitimately be called a ‘crew’), but didn’t fall over or do anything too retarded. The night ended up with a pizza in front of Brainiac at six in the morning with Aly. Good times.
So, a regular night out is the clear winner for me, but the real question is whether or not sXe is a viable lifestyle option if you’re going to be social in a culture as boozy as the UK university system. Well, from my experience, yes. It’s do-able. It’s better than being completely obliterated and it’s inexpensive. I’d only recommend it to those with confidence, or at least fake confidence, though, because I found it pretty fucking terrifying.
Here I have a list of the pros and cons of being sXe:
Pros:
It’s cheaper
No liver damage
You don’t do anything you don’t remember
You’re less likely to do something retarded
No beer gut
No hangover
You’re less likely to be molested
Cons:
There’s no escape from social anxiety
It’s harder to enjoy shitty music
Drunk people are less fun when you’re sober
Your friends may start a Keep Nick Wasted foundation because they don’t actually like you when you’re sober
You’re more aware of the fact that you dance like your parents
Talking to people is harder
You may realise you have nothing in common with your friends other than incipient alcoholism
Dear Woe readers (or ‘miseries’, as I may start calling you), I implore you to never again look on straight-edgers as pussies, or boring. What they do is infinitely harder than getting trashed. The sXe among us should be applauded for their willpower.
Please give generously to the Keep Nick Wasted foundation,
Nick
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
Edge and Interesting
I want to talk about straight-edge and its place in a culture built so heavily on drinking. Yeah, it's not that funny, but it's my blog, so who's gonna stop me? It’s going to run to two editions of Woe, so this is part 1.
I recently read a tweet from a man who said ‘No, he wasn’t straight-edge. He was just boring.’ This man shall be known as A Damn Lasagne. Should my gun become intimate with his head, my friends will be informed.
Now, for those of you who are unaware (of which there are doubtless many), straight-edge is a movement started in the 80s by such punk legends as Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye. Originally, it was a reaction to the punk scene at the time, which was more than happy to ingest anything that looked like it might produce some sort of buzz. A straight-edge individual refrains from taking drugs, drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes. Some also do not have unmarried sex, although that phenomenon is exclusive to America, as in Britain couples stop having sex as soon as they get married.
Today, the straight-edge (hereafter shortened to sXe, which is apparently the official shorthand. The more you know.) movement has a fairly strong following in the USA, to the extent that it’s nearly a subculture in its own right. However, it’s still relatively unknown in Britain. Thus endeth your potted history.
So, in the one context of which I’m aware—university—how would being sXe make a person boring?
Obviously, there’s the issue of fitting in. At university, people have escaped the crushing conformity of their teenage years. They’re their own person. An individual. Unfortunately, this means that without hobbies they’re fucked. And what student can afford hobbies?
So, how do they get around being a faceless stranger in a mass of strangers? Drink incessantly, of course. Students—can you remember Fresher’s Week? No? That’s not surprising, because it’s pretty much built on you getting completely wankered and meeting the people you’ll be friends with for the next three years.
See, sXe freshers are slightly buggered by this, because they don’t get to be drunk. Being drunk is a great insulation against humanity, not to mention the way it raises your threshold for shitty ambience. I could be hanging with Robert Mugabe in a slurry pit, and I wouldn’t care if I was drunk enough.
You don’t get that kind of barrier between yourself and reality as a straight-edger, and as such a lot of the sXe among us avoid nightclubs. Can you blame them? I’m probably the least cunty drunk there is (these days. I’ve had some hairy moments in the screaming void where my past would be if I wasn’t suppressing it all) and I still wouldn’t put up with my wasted self if I was sober.
I believe that no-one’s in any real position to talk about something unless they’ve tried it (with the exception of reviewing. Imagine if every film critic was also a filmmaker or actor or something. Jesus). So, much like genocide, rape and dolphin lobotomy, I’m going to experiment with sXe. I plan to have one regular night out as a control, one straightedge night out and one night where I get absolutely shitfaced. The results will be found in my very next article, One sXe Motherfucker.
Incidentally, the best way to lobotomise a dolphin is by sticking an ice-pick in its blowhole and wiggling it around until you hear something crack.
Not judging anyone for not taking drugs,
Nick
I recently read a tweet from a man who said ‘No, he wasn’t straight-edge. He was just boring.’ This man shall be known as A Damn Lasagne. Should my gun become intimate with his head, my friends will be informed.
Now, for those of you who are unaware (of which there are doubtless many), straight-edge is a movement started in the 80s by such punk legends as Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye. Originally, it was a reaction to the punk scene at the time, which was more than happy to ingest anything that looked like it might produce some sort of buzz. A straight-edge individual refrains from taking drugs, drinking alcohol or smoking cigarettes. Some also do not have unmarried sex, although that phenomenon is exclusive to America, as in Britain couples stop having sex as soon as they get married.
Today, the straight-edge (hereafter shortened to sXe, which is apparently the official shorthand. The more you know.) movement has a fairly strong following in the USA, to the extent that it’s nearly a subculture in its own right. However, it’s still relatively unknown in Britain. Thus endeth your potted history.
So, in the one context of which I’m aware—university—how would being sXe make a person boring?
Obviously, there’s the issue of fitting in. At university, people have escaped the crushing conformity of their teenage years. They’re their own person. An individual. Unfortunately, this means that without hobbies they’re fucked. And what student can afford hobbies?
So, how do they get around being a faceless stranger in a mass of strangers? Drink incessantly, of course. Students—can you remember Fresher’s Week? No? That’s not surprising, because it’s pretty much built on you getting completely wankered and meeting the people you’ll be friends with for the next three years.
See, sXe freshers are slightly buggered by this, because they don’t get to be drunk. Being drunk is a great insulation against humanity, not to mention the way it raises your threshold for shitty ambience. I could be hanging with Robert Mugabe in a slurry pit, and I wouldn’t care if I was drunk enough.
You don’t get that kind of barrier between yourself and reality as a straight-edger, and as such a lot of the sXe among us avoid nightclubs. Can you blame them? I’m probably the least cunty drunk there is (these days. I’ve had some hairy moments in the screaming void where my past would be if I wasn’t suppressing it all) and I still wouldn’t put up with my wasted self if I was sober.
I believe that no-one’s in any real position to talk about something unless they’ve tried it (with the exception of reviewing. Imagine if every film critic was also a filmmaker or actor or something. Jesus). So, much like genocide, rape and dolphin lobotomy, I’m going to experiment with sXe. I plan to have one regular night out as a control, one straightedge night out and one night where I get absolutely shitfaced. The results will be found in my very next article, One sXe Motherfucker.
Incidentally, the best way to lobotomise a dolphin is by sticking an ice-pick in its blowhole and wiggling it around until you hear something crack.
Not judging anyone for not taking drugs,
Nick
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
5 TV Shows that would Improve Current Programming no end
A lot of my pals recently went to see that Famous and Fearless show, where celebrities (Three out of ten I recognised, so by ‘celebrity’ show standards it was a veritable smorgasbord of stellar names) try various daft sports and stunts. No-one, literally no-one watched it on TV; they all went to see it live. The reasoning was ‘it looked shit on TV, but the live one’s got to be better, right?’
Well, no. The TV version is pretty much the same deal, except there’s better camera angles, no waiting in line, no fat fuck directly in your line of vision and you can change channel whenever it gets too boring. Which is often.
I’m not saying everything’s better on TV. I’m nearly constantly bummed out over not getting to see Jets to Brazil before they disbanded, which is fair play because I genuinely love Jets to Brazil’s brand of pure audio Branston. Who can honestly say they give a flying fuck about a crappy stunt show where the most you can hope for is Jenny Frost getting in a car wreck and having to present the next series of Snog, Marry, Avoid? as a quadriplegic?
It’s a testimony to my loathing of any word the characters of Harry Potter utter that ‘snog’ just got called out by my spellchecker in 2011.
Anyway, back to today’s topic, TV. Rather, the dire state of current programming. Nearly everything seems to be in that queasy hinterland where it’s shit, but not shit enough to be entertaining. With this in mind, I’ve come up with a few new shows that people would appreciate more and/or would get me hauled in front of an international court and tried for war crimes.
1)Every Time I Dine. A reality/food/rockumentary crossover that follows Every Time I Die as they barbecue their way through various uncompromising locations (The Canadian backwoods, the Great Australian Desert, Glasgow). Yes, I pretty much only did it for the title. For added shits and giggles, they must first catch and kill whatever they’re eating, Ray Mears style. Gasp as the boys are forced to murder a hobo because they ran out of chicken! Not only would this show be the best thing MTV (Or Viva. Or I don’t give a shit what you call yourself) has ever screened, but it would clear up the age-old question—Andy Williams versus a fully grown grizzly bear, who’s harder? My money’s on Williams.
2)Avoid! Avoid! Avoid! A Snog, Marry, Avoid? spin-off. Instead of making-over (You will never, under any circumstance, catch me saying ‘make-under’. I just will not do it) slags and gothy freaks, they just get sat in a chair with a camera on their face while the public’s opinion of them is repeated in a dull monotone by a computer. At the end of the show, they’re led outside. Silence is maintained throughout the credits until a single gunshot rings out.
3)Geronimo. A show in which people jump from increasingly tall heights to win a cash prize. Last one alive is the winner, who is then thrown off so the network doesn’t have to pay. The cash then rolls over, making a greater incentive for next week’s lemmings. The fact that I imagine this one doing the best out of all my ideas says a lot about the state of the nation.
4)Your Sketch Shows are Bad and You Should Feel Bad. A Silent, thirty-second clip of me beating Matt Lucas and David Walliams with a golf club. Pure visual Branston.
5)Graduates. A hilarious mock-documentary, which plays like a hybrid of Spaced and The Office. The main character is Jimmy, who lives with a couple of other young professionals in a flat. He works in a generic office environment where it’s never actually made clear what he does. The action is fifty percent him with his young-guns-go-for-it pals doing young professional leisure activities, and fifty percent people in his office treating him like he’s a mental case. At the end of the series, he kills himself and it becomes apparent that he had no young professional flatmates and was, in fact, schizophrenic.
So, that’s how I’d improve television for the average pleb. While most of them are reality TV shows, I should point out that you could make TV better by lowering the quality until it’s so shitty and bleak it’s funny. That’s the stage we’re at. Although, it must be said that some of my shows would be excellent for getting rid of the kind of people who enjoy and/or go on reality TV, so maybe viewing figures would suffer. Culling the nation’s cunts would be worth it, though.
Holding out for a reality/snuff/genocide crossover,
Nick
Well, no. The TV version is pretty much the same deal, except there’s better camera angles, no waiting in line, no fat fuck directly in your line of vision and you can change channel whenever it gets too boring. Which is often.
I’m not saying everything’s better on TV. I’m nearly constantly bummed out over not getting to see Jets to Brazil before they disbanded, which is fair play because I genuinely love Jets to Brazil’s brand of pure audio Branston. Who can honestly say they give a flying fuck about a crappy stunt show where the most you can hope for is Jenny Frost getting in a car wreck and having to present the next series of Snog, Marry, Avoid? as a quadriplegic?
It’s a testimony to my loathing of any word the characters of Harry Potter utter that ‘snog’ just got called out by my spellchecker in 2011.
Anyway, back to today’s topic, TV. Rather, the dire state of current programming. Nearly everything seems to be in that queasy hinterland where it’s shit, but not shit enough to be entertaining. With this in mind, I’ve come up with a few new shows that people would appreciate more and/or would get me hauled in front of an international court and tried for war crimes.
1)Every Time I Dine. A reality/food/rockumentary crossover that follows Every Time I Die as they barbecue their way through various uncompromising locations (The Canadian backwoods, the Great Australian Desert, Glasgow). Yes, I pretty much only did it for the title. For added shits and giggles, they must first catch and kill whatever they’re eating, Ray Mears style. Gasp as the boys are forced to murder a hobo because they ran out of chicken! Not only would this show be the best thing MTV (Or Viva. Or I don’t give a shit what you call yourself) has ever screened, but it would clear up the age-old question—Andy Williams versus a fully grown grizzly bear, who’s harder? My money’s on Williams.
2)Avoid! Avoid! Avoid! A Snog, Marry, Avoid? spin-off. Instead of making-over (You will never, under any circumstance, catch me saying ‘make-under’. I just will not do it) slags and gothy freaks, they just get sat in a chair with a camera on their face while the public’s opinion of them is repeated in a dull monotone by a computer. At the end of the show, they’re led outside. Silence is maintained throughout the credits until a single gunshot rings out.
3)Geronimo. A show in which people jump from increasingly tall heights to win a cash prize. Last one alive is the winner, who is then thrown off so the network doesn’t have to pay. The cash then rolls over, making a greater incentive for next week’s lemmings. The fact that I imagine this one doing the best out of all my ideas says a lot about the state of the nation.
4)Your Sketch Shows are Bad and You Should Feel Bad. A Silent, thirty-second clip of me beating Matt Lucas and David Walliams with a golf club. Pure visual Branston.
5)Graduates. A hilarious mock-documentary, which plays like a hybrid of Spaced and The Office. The main character is Jimmy, who lives with a couple of other young professionals in a flat. He works in a generic office environment where it’s never actually made clear what he does. The action is fifty percent him with his young-guns-go-for-it pals doing young professional leisure activities, and fifty percent people in his office treating him like he’s a mental case. At the end of the series, he kills himself and it becomes apparent that he had no young professional flatmates and was, in fact, schizophrenic.
So, that’s how I’d improve television for the average pleb. While most of them are reality TV shows, I should point out that you could make TV better by lowering the quality until it’s so shitty and bleak it’s funny. That’s the stage we’re at. Although, it must be said that some of my shows would be excellent for getting rid of the kind of people who enjoy and/or go on reality TV, so maybe viewing figures would suffer. Culling the nation’s cunts would be worth it, though.
Holding out for a reality/snuff/genocide crossover,
Nick
Sunday, 9 January 2011
What Your To-Do List Says About You
This edition of Woe was meant to be something whimsical and silly in which I propose bleak-yet-comedic TV shows that would never (and probably should never) be made, but would improve the state of current programming immensely. However, I’ve been feeling a bit home truth-y, so I decided to instead address something many people are familiar with; the numb, crushing horror of the to-do list.
To-do lists come in many sizes, and can range from being of little or no consequence to completely fucking crucial. The best ones take place over a relatively short period of time (more on that later), and are generally comprised of tasks the to-do list writer should, erm, do.
The real point of a to-do list is to prioritise chores the list writer would rather be bludgeoned to death with their own severed legs than do. That is to say, if there’s anything on the to-do list that doesn’t have to be done, the author of the to-do list has problems.
For example, say the creator of the list writes a snarky blog in their spare time. If the blogger’s to-do list looks like this;
1)Get milk
2)Do washing up
3)Update blog
4)Wash car
That person shouldn’t be blogging, because they view it as a chore. Similarly, if you include ‘work on novel’ in your to-do list, it’s unlikely that the novel will ever be finished. And if it gets finished, it will suck.
As I said earlier, the best to-do lists are over a short period of time. The classic ‘things to do today’ is a personal favourite, but a day can be a bit short. If you’re the type who loses sleep over a list of tasks you failed to complete on time (despite the tasks set and time allocated matters to you and you alone), it’s probably better to go for the more roomy ‘things to do this week’, then add some sub-lists if something can only be done on Tuesday. Tuesday is a good day to do things in town, because Tuesday means the Meatball Marinara is the Sub of the Day.
Lists that last longer than that—culminating in the dreaded ‘things to do in my life’—are just naïve. If you want to plan anything in any detail, there’s no chance you’ll be able to last beyond a fortnight. How do you know what’s going to be going on next month? Will you need to get some bread this exact day next year?
I once found a lifelong to-do list belonging to a lad I knew in high school. This sixteen year-old boy had written—and ticked off—‘find true love’, which I think sums up the kind of people who make to-do lists for life pretty well.
There’s also the danger of getting into metaphysical and philosophical stuff if you make a to-do list for life. I can guarantee that, if you’ve ever made a to-do list with ‘discover meaning of life’ on it, you’ll realise the meaning of life is to suffer. How do I know this? Because you’ll uncover this list that you wrote as an optimistic child many years later, probably shortly after a bereavement, and realise how much of a crushing, brutally complete disappointment you are to your younger self.
But short-term listers aren’t free from making stupid mistakes, either. I’m not going to harp on about never knowing when you’ll get hit by a bus, but I’ll say this: Never, ever write in something cheerful, not even as a treat for cleaning your septic tank. Why? Because someone else might see your list. Imagine, dear reader, you came across this;
1)Change light bulbs in kitchen
2)Have a biscuit :)
3)Walk dog
Just sad, isn’t it? The poor fuck who wrote this list needs to make time in their lives to enjoy a biscuit. And they even drew a little smiley face to remind them it’s an enjoyable thing! Their head must be a bleak wasteland, populated only by overbearing parents and unfaithful ex-lovers.
It’s not a good idea to include anything too mundane either. Consider if someone found a to-do list in which you wrote ‘cut fingernails’. They’d think you’re the sort of person who needs to be reminded in list form that your fingernails are too long. In short, they’d file you under ‘stupid motherfucker’ for life.
Of course, you may not care what other people think about you. If that’s the case, why did you just read an article titled What Your To-Do List Says About You, you retard?
Now for a lovely biscuit :)
Nick
To-do lists come in many sizes, and can range from being of little or no consequence to completely fucking crucial. The best ones take place over a relatively short period of time (more on that later), and are generally comprised of tasks the to-do list writer should, erm, do.
The real point of a to-do list is to prioritise chores the list writer would rather be bludgeoned to death with their own severed legs than do. That is to say, if there’s anything on the to-do list that doesn’t have to be done, the author of the to-do list has problems.
For example, say the creator of the list writes a snarky blog in their spare time. If the blogger’s to-do list looks like this;
1)Get milk
2)Do washing up
3)Update blog
4)Wash car
That person shouldn’t be blogging, because they view it as a chore. Similarly, if you include ‘work on novel’ in your to-do list, it’s unlikely that the novel will ever be finished. And if it gets finished, it will suck.
As I said earlier, the best to-do lists are over a short period of time. The classic ‘things to do today’ is a personal favourite, but a day can be a bit short. If you’re the type who loses sleep over a list of tasks you failed to complete on time (despite the tasks set and time allocated matters to you and you alone), it’s probably better to go for the more roomy ‘things to do this week’, then add some sub-lists if something can only be done on Tuesday. Tuesday is a good day to do things in town, because Tuesday means the Meatball Marinara is the Sub of the Day.
Lists that last longer than that—culminating in the dreaded ‘things to do in my life’—are just naïve. If you want to plan anything in any detail, there’s no chance you’ll be able to last beyond a fortnight. How do you know what’s going to be going on next month? Will you need to get some bread this exact day next year?
I once found a lifelong to-do list belonging to a lad I knew in high school. This sixteen year-old boy had written—and ticked off—‘find true love’, which I think sums up the kind of people who make to-do lists for life pretty well.
There’s also the danger of getting into metaphysical and philosophical stuff if you make a to-do list for life. I can guarantee that, if you’ve ever made a to-do list with ‘discover meaning of life’ on it, you’ll realise the meaning of life is to suffer. How do I know this? Because you’ll uncover this list that you wrote as an optimistic child many years later, probably shortly after a bereavement, and realise how much of a crushing, brutally complete disappointment you are to your younger self.
But short-term listers aren’t free from making stupid mistakes, either. I’m not going to harp on about never knowing when you’ll get hit by a bus, but I’ll say this: Never, ever write in something cheerful, not even as a treat for cleaning your septic tank. Why? Because someone else might see your list. Imagine, dear reader, you came across this;
1)Change light bulbs in kitchen
2)Have a biscuit :)
3)Walk dog
Just sad, isn’t it? The poor fuck who wrote this list needs to make time in their lives to enjoy a biscuit. And they even drew a little smiley face to remind them it’s an enjoyable thing! Their head must be a bleak wasteland, populated only by overbearing parents and unfaithful ex-lovers.
It’s not a good idea to include anything too mundane either. Consider if someone found a to-do list in which you wrote ‘cut fingernails’. They’d think you’re the sort of person who needs to be reminded in list form that your fingernails are too long. In short, they’d file you under ‘stupid motherfucker’ for life.
Of course, you may not care what other people think about you. If that’s the case, why did you just read an article titled What Your To-Do List Says About You, you retard?
Now for a lovely biscuit :)
Nick
Friday, 7 January 2011
Pontifications on a Kind of Art
... Is my most hipster title ever. Anyway, on with the show!
Even though I’ve never eaten it in my life, I’ve started saying ‘Branston’ when I mean ‘the good shit’. As in, ‘I watched Hostel 2 the other day. Ninety minutes of absolute bollocks and one single solitary instance of Branston. Fuck you, Eli Roth. Fuck you.’
Which is a pretty good link to my main feature. Films, that is, not pickle.
Anyway, films. The film industry is the popular kid in the wide and vague world of culture. It has the most money, drives the fastest cars, has the hottest boy and girlfriends (you gotta know the movie biz goes both ways) and the literature and music industries both want to be its BFF. But, like the popular kid in school, everyone secretly thinks the film biz is kind of a dick. Or not that secretly in the case of some.
I recently read an article about the kind of films being put out and the way they were marketed. To paraphrase the thing (the magazine is at my parents’ house), Love and Other Drugs is a weepie being mismarketed as a romcom. This is a pretty small marketing fuck-up when you compare it to Fight Club being marketed as muscle porn when it’s actually a satirical headfuck, but what the hey-ho. The writer of the article then went on to bitch about the lack of a good weepie these days. How ‘rom’ is all too often followed with ‘com’ rather than ‘ance’. So here’s my two cents.
It’s pretty fucking difficult to defend mainstream cinema these days, even if you like it. But I tried, and what I realised is that, while it never, ever produces the Branston (a film seems to have to be Lost in Translation-size or smaller for that to happen), mainstream Hollywood certainly is a barometer for what mood the world is in. And we’re bummed out right now. When we want a depressing storyline, it has to be vast and crushing or outlandish and weird. Personal tales about failed love have to be handled with a lightness of heart. And Ben fucking Stiller.
The war films coming out right after Hitler’s European tour ended (Reich’n’roll) never had a negative message and the good guys (The West!) were definitely the good guys and always won. Similarly, a film about a personal tragedy will never fly in an age where everyone feels so crappy about themselves and their personal lives (i.e., the present day).
Subtlety’s gone, too. If Breakfast at Tiffany’s was made today, there’d be a shitload of sex scenes, and it would be very obvious that both the main characters are prostitutes (didn’t you know that? Watch the film again now you do. Also, fuck you; you’re part of the problem). If Casablanca was made today, Rick would be a crack dealer on the side and there’d be gratuitous beatings. If The Lovely Bones was made today, Peter Jackson wouldn’t pussy out and gloss over the novel’s underage rape scene because he wanted to get a more family-friendly BBFC rating. Oh wait, it was and he still did. What a wanker.
I don’t know what this says about audiences, but it says a lot about filmmakers. They’re very desperate to please, to the point that it’s usually detrimental to the end product. Yes, Hollywood, we like tits. This, however, doesn’t mean we need to see tits unless the tits are important to the plot. I’m against censorship, as I think any rational person should be, but just because you’re allowed to do something doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to do it every five minutes. Nothing’s stopping me replacing every noun in my vocabulary with ‘sheppadinkle’, but if I chose to do that I would be punched. Hard. And rightly so, because I’d be being an absolute cunt. Get the picture?
So, that’s my views on film. For every Clerks, there’s a Jersey Girl. For every Patrick Fugit, there’s a Vin Diesel. For every smart, funny, touching, offbeat indie flick, there’s a bloated, over-hyped, bland adaptation of a children’s book to outsell it ten to one. But for every drooling, overweight, teenage Twilight fan, there’s a snarky blogger with too much time on his hands. Keep the faith.
By the way, the good part of Hostel 2 is when the heroine cuts that guy’s dick off and joins the torturer’s club. That may have been a spoiler, but if you honestly cared about Hostel 2 you deserve to have it spoiled for you, you tasteless piece of shit.
Struggling writer; will shag housewives for money and/or a New York apartment,
Nick
Even though I’ve never eaten it in my life, I’ve started saying ‘Branston’ when I mean ‘the good shit’. As in, ‘I watched Hostel 2 the other day. Ninety minutes of absolute bollocks and one single solitary instance of Branston. Fuck you, Eli Roth. Fuck you.’
Which is a pretty good link to my main feature. Films, that is, not pickle.
Anyway, films. The film industry is the popular kid in the wide and vague world of culture. It has the most money, drives the fastest cars, has the hottest boy and girlfriends (you gotta know the movie biz goes both ways) and the literature and music industries both want to be its BFF. But, like the popular kid in school, everyone secretly thinks the film biz is kind of a dick. Or not that secretly in the case of some.
I recently read an article about the kind of films being put out and the way they were marketed. To paraphrase the thing (the magazine is at my parents’ house), Love and Other Drugs is a weepie being mismarketed as a romcom. This is a pretty small marketing fuck-up when you compare it to Fight Club being marketed as muscle porn when it’s actually a satirical headfuck, but what the hey-ho. The writer of the article then went on to bitch about the lack of a good weepie these days. How ‘rom’ is all too often followed with ‘com’ rather than ‘ance’. So here’s my two cents.
It’s pretty fucking difficult to defend mainstream cinema these days, even if you like it. But I tried, and what I realised is that, while it never, ever produces the Branston (a film seems to have to be Lost in Translation-size or smaller for that to happen), mainstream Hollywood certainly is a barometer for what mood the world is in. And we’re bummed out right now. When we want a depressing storyline, it has to be vast and crushing or outlandish and weird. Personal tales about failed love have to be handled with a lightness of heart. And Ben fucking Stiller.
The war films coming out right after Hitler’s European tour ended (Reich’n’roll) never had a negative message and the good guys (The West!) were definitely the good guys and always won. Similarly, a film about a personal tragedy will never fly in an age where everyone feels so crappy about themselves and their personal lives (i.e., the present day).
Subtlety’s gone, too. If Breakfast at Tiffany’s was made today, there’d be a shitload of sex scenes, and it would be very obvious that both the main characters are prostitutes (didn’t you know that? Watch the film again now you do. Also, fuck you; you’re part of the problem). If Casablanca was made today, Rick would be a crack dealer on the side and there’d be gratuitous beatings. If The Lovely Bones was made today, Peter Jackson wouldn’t pussy out and gloss over the novel’s underage rape scene because he wanted to get a more family-friendly BBFC rating. Oh wait, it was and he still did. What a wanker.
I don’t know what this says about audiences, but it says a lot about filmmakers. They’re very desperate to please, to the point that it’s usually detrimental to the end product. Yes, Hollywood, we like tits. This, however, doesn’t mean we need to see tits unless the tits are important to the plot. I’m against censorship, as I think any rational person should be, but just because you’re allowed to do something doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to do it every five minutes. Nothing’s stopping me replacing every noun in my vocabulary with ‘sheppadinkle’, but if I chose to do that I would be punched. Hard. And rightly so, because I’d be being an absolute cunt. Get the picture?
So, that’s my views on film. For every Clerks, there’s a Jersey Girl. For every Patrick Fugit, there’s a Vin Diesel. For every smart, funny, touching, offbeat indie flick, there’s a bloated, over-hyped, bland adaptation of a children’s book to outsell it ten to one. But for every drooling, overweight, teenage Twilight fan, there’s a snarky blogger with too much time on his hands. Keep the faith.
By the way, the good part of Hostel 2 is when the heroine cuts that guy’s dick off and joins the torturer’s club. That may have been a spoiler, but if you honestly cared about Hostel 2 you deserve to have it spoiled for you, you tasteless piece of shit.
Struggling writer; will shag housewives for money and/or a New York apartment,
Nick
Tuesday, 4 January 2011
Five Things I Learned Watching 'Come Dine With Me'
If you already know about Come Dine with Me, you may wanna skip the first two paragraphs.
Reality TV is the programming equivalent of being slapped in the face by an octogenarian ballbag. Similarly, cookery shows are a bit like RE lessons in school; anyone who gives a fuck knows it all already. So, what happens in the event of a crossover?
In a remarkable instance of two wrongs making a right, we’re given Come Dine with Me. The show in which random plebs compete for a grand by being two-faced about each other, passive-aggressive and generally unpleasant. All set to gloriously snarky narration by Dave Lamb. There’s even a celebrity version. What’s more, I’ve even heard of some of the celebrities in the celebrity version. Here’s five things I learned from watching it;
1)Picky eaters are everywhere. Seriously. Every goddamn week, one of them is gonna refuse to eat something. Rarely for a reason, as vegetarians are usually catered for. This is another example of why people should be exterminated for being annoying. Don’t like it? It’s fucking food. Eat it, enjoy the sustenance, then give the cook a low score. Don’t kick up fuss at the dinner table like a stupid motherfucker, because then everyone hates you.
2)‘Real people’ are every bit as vapid as celebrities. When Big Brother oozed into the national consciousness, Channel 4 realised they needed a selling point for that shitfest. It was touted as being ‘real lives of real people’ and therefore more interesting than celebrities. Hence, ‘reality TV’ instead of ‘retina-burningly shitty TV’. Anyway, as if Big Brother wasn’t enough proof, the contrast between the celebrity and civilian Come Dine with Me is simply that the celebrities are prettier. That’s it. So, the choice is watching a bunch of boring, shitty ugly people or a bunch of boring, shitty passably attractive people. No-brainer, innit?
3)Talentless camp men are the most annoying thing on the planet. I forgive Louis Spence and Gok Wan (among others), because they have talent (be those talents dancing, or lying to fat people) and they’re fucking awesome at what they do. However, when a dude with that ‘tude (sorry, couldn’t resist the rhyme) and no skill to back it up appears on TV, it sends me into fits of rage. But Nick, I hear you cry, he’s just being himself! Yeah? Well himself is a cunt and should work on not being so annoying. That might make up for his lack of redeeming features. Hell, if he wasn’t such a pain in the ass, he wouldn’t need redeeming features.
4)Keith Buckley improves everything. No, Keith hasn’t been on Celebrity Come Dine with Me, but wouldn’t it be brilliant? Just picture the BBQ scene from the Party Pooper DVD, only with three added confused people who used to be famous. Don’t you grin just thinking about that? I seriously think Keith would rule at it, too. The dude’s ferociously intelligent and talks about being an attentive host like it’s something to be ashamed of. Man, I want an ETIDine with Me (Every Time I Dine?) to air now. I’ll start petitioning them on Facebook.
5)Don’t leave your stuff lying around. Every freakin’ episode, someone’s underwear draw in ransacked and a discovery is made. Be it a dildo, sexy lingerie, or full-on bondage gear, it’s there in front of the watching nation. You’d think people would be prepared for that shit. Sure, maybe you have specialist tastes and need to advertise or else spend your life alone, but for fuck sake have some class. Lock up the really crazy stuff, just drop a few hints. Leave the power tools on display, but clean up a bit and hide your nephew’s corpse somewhere a snooping dinner guest won’t find it.
So, that’s five things I learned from C4’s greatest reality show (although it’s pretty much the only good one ever), Come Dine with Me, although I pretty much suspected number 4 anyway.
Party pooper extraordinaire,
Nick
Reality TV is the programming equivalent of being slapped in the face by an octogenarian ballbag. Similarly, cookery shows are a bit like RE lessons in school; anyone who gives a fuck knows it all already. So, what happens in the event of a crossover?
In a remarkable instance of two wrongs making a right, we’re given Come Dine with Me. The show in which random plebs compete for a grand by being two-faced about each other, passive-aggressive and generally unpleasant. All set to gloriously snarky narration by Dave Lamb. There’s even a celebrity version. What’s more, I’ve even heard of some of the celebrities in the celebrity version. Here’s five things I learned from watching it;
1)Picky eaters are everywhere. Seriously. Every goddamn week, one of them is gonna refuse to eat something. Rarely for a reason, as vegetarians are usually catered for. This is another example of why people should be exterminated for being annoying. Don’t like it? It’s fucking food. Eat it, enjoy the sustenance, then give the cook a low score. Don’t kick up fuss at the dinner table like a stupid motherfucker, because then everyone hates you.
2)‘Real people’ are every bit as vapid as celebrities. When Big Brother oozed into the national consciousness, Channel 4 realised they needed a selling point for that shitfest. It was touted as being ‘real lives of real people’ and therefore more interesting than celebrities. Hence, ‘reality TV’ instead of ‘retina-burningly shitty TV’. Anyway, as if Big Brother wasn’t enough proof, the contrast between the celebrity and civilian Come Dine with Me is simply that the celebrities are prettier. That’s it. So, the choice is watching a bunch of boring, shitty ugly people or a bunch of boring, shitty passably attractive people. No-brainer, innit?
3)Talentless camp men are the most annoying thing on the planet. I forgive Louis Spence and Gok Wan (among others), because they have talent (be those talents dancing, or lying to fat people) and they’re fucking awesome at what they do. However, when a dude with that ‘tude (sorry, couldn’t resist the rhyme) and no skill to back it up appears on TV, it sends me into fits of rage. But Nick, I hear you cry, he’s just being himself! Yeah? Well himself is a cunt and should work on not being so annoying. That might make up for his lack of redeeming features. Hell, if he wasn’t such a pain in the ass, he wouldn’t need redeeming features.
4)Keith Buckley improves everything. No, Keith hasn’t been on Celebrity Come Dine with Me, but wouldn’t it be brilliant? Just picture the BBQ scene from the Party Pooper DVD, only with three added confused people who used to be famous. Don’t you grin just thinking about that? I seriously think Keith would rule at it, too. The dude’s ferociously intelligent and talks about being an attentive host like it’s something to be ashamed of. Man, I want an ETIDine with Me (Every Time I Dine?) to air now. I’ll start petitioning them on Facebook.
5)Don’t leave your stuff lying around. Every freakin’ episode, someone’s underwear draw in ransacked and a discovery is made. Be it a dildo, sexy lingerie, or full-on bondage gear, it’s there in front of the watching nation. You’d think people would be prepared for that shit. Sure, maybe you have specialist tastes and need to advertise or else spend your life alone, but for fuck sake have some class. Lock up the really crazy stuff, just drop a few hints. Leave the power tools on display, but clean up a bit and hide your nephew’s corpse somewhere a snooping dinner guest won’t find it.
So, that’s five things I learned from C4’s greatest reality show (although it’s pretty much the only good one ever), Come Dine with Me, although I pretty much suspected number 4 anyway.
Party pooper extraordinaire,
Nick
Woe returns to Liverpool!
So, as Whoa Whoa Woe enters its second month of being written, I thought I’d interrupt my more expansive musings with a few personal anecdotes of what I’ve been up to in the past year.
That’s one thing I like about doing a blog. If I was writing for a website or one of those archaic institutions the old media calls a magazine or newspaper, my personal life would be considered a no-go zone. And with good reason—it’s really bloody boring. But I have no editor to reign me in here, so I’ll persist in deluding myself that people give a crap about how I live on a day-to-day basis.
Let’s start winding up the last year. In 2010, I was in a band called Chelsea Star. We were alright, really. A sort of grungy-punky outfit with occasional geetar solos. We split up, sadly. Joey and Rach (possibly also Rich, I dunno), have gone on to form a classic rock band. If I carry on making music, it’ll probably be in a Conor Oberst-esque manner. Chelsea Star sounded a bit like Jawbreaker, so I guess I’m looking for my Jets To Brazil.
This all does, of course, make the assumption that I’ll still be making music. I don’t know if I really want to at this point. Obviously, I’ll remain an avid fan of music, and the camaraderie of being in a band is something I’ll always remember as beautiful, but I’m getting older. One thing 2010 did was make me face up to this. I mean, this year (2011), I’ll graduate. I’ll need to get a job, maybe even a career. It’s probably time to pack up the whole idea of fronting an awesome rock band. I can just sing to myself quietly in my room.
I can still write, which is a bit of a double-edged sword because it’s a constant reminder of what musicians can do that writers can’t (express an inarguable emotion, command a room, get laid, etc). Although I’ve still been writing stories, all my best verse has been lyrical and not poetic (I’ll maintain until death that there’s a fucking difference). To be honest, fuck poetry. Poets are just musicians without enough friends to form a band. I’m aware of the irony.
So, that’s my writing life dealt with. What else went on? Well, a lot of drinking. Is it a problem? No, it doesn’t rule my life. It just makes up a large proportion of it. Most of my social interaction is performed drunk. Mostly because my social interaction generally takes place in bars, clubs and pubs. Just about every event that’s not in uni is in some kind of alcohol-serving venue, and I never see a reason to not drink.
In terms of the kinds of places I go, I’m usually somewhere artsy. For some unknown reason, this pisses me right off. I guess the atmosphere is meant to make people feel elite and cool, like ‘Hey man, we’re underground poets. We’re too awesome for mainstream stuff like everyone else.’ Really, I just feel like a failed musician in a room full of failed musicians. Maybe that’s how Kerouac felt. I dunno. I guess Kerouac was lucky, because there was no Blake Schwarzenbach for him to wish he was.
I made my modelling debut in 2010. I felt conspicuously heterosexual.
I like vintage clothing, and I went to a lot of vintage fairs last year. Kukoo is rad, and anywhere Geek shows, I usually buy a shirt or two. I’m a sucker for vintage Ts. I guess that’s more fuel for the rumour that I was sucked into the present day through a wormhole that opened up at a Promise Ring show in the late nineties. A rumour which I may or may not have started myself. I plan on going to a lot more vintage fairs, and maybe getting to know some of the people involved.
I got tattooed a lot, thanks to Jayne (former Chelsea Star singer, too. Boom!) She’s taking a run at a career in tattooing, and I’m totally up for being a living sketch-pad. It’s permanent, but it doesn’t really matter. I’ll just keep it off my neck, hands and face and I’ll still be employable at most places, thanks to people being less stuffy about individuality in general and tattoos in particular. That’s something that’ll be ongoing until I run out of skin.
I also had a girlfriend for a few months. Sounds kinda sad to say it that way, but while I tend to make-out a lot, steady-steadies are few and far between for me. So, yeah, I had a girlfriend for a while, then it ended. Thinking about it still bums me out, but not so much as realising that my love life works on a kind of eight-month cycle where three months are great and five months are lonely and ripe with the risk of STDs. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to break that cycle, though I’m not sure how I’ll manage that.
Aw, what else? Lessee, music, writing, social … That’s about it. Except my family, or what would have been my ‘home life’, were I still living there. They’re ticking over alright. Joe’s got his A2s this year. He hates me. Helen and Mark are still doing fine. The cat’s still a massive pain in the arse. The rabbit died. He froze to death (or just died of old age, he was a right geriatric ol’ bunny) a few days before Christmas and I buried him. Could’a been worse, I s’pose. The ground could have been frozen too.
So, that’s my wind-up of 2010. I did some other stuff, to but it wasn’t really important, or I forget what it was.
Normal service will be resumed in my next post,
Nick
That’s one thing I like about doing a blog. If I was writing for a website or one of those archaic institutions the old media calls a magazine or newspaper, my personal life would be considered a no-go zone. And with good reason—it’s really bloody boring. But I have no editor to reign me in here, so I’ll persist in deluding myself that people give a crap about how I live on a day-to-day basis.
Let’s start winding up the last year. In 2010, I was in a band called Chelsea Star. We were alright, really. A sort of grungy-punky outfit with occasional geetar solos. We split up, sadly. Joey and Rach (possibly also Rich, I dunno), have gone on to form a classic rock band. If I carry on making music, it’ll probably be in a Conor Oberst-esque manner. Chelsea Star sounded a bit like Jawbreaker, so I guess I’m looking for my Jets To Brazil.
This all does, of course, make the assumption that I’ll still be making music. I don’t know if I really want to at this point. Obviously, I’ll remain an avid fan of music, and the camaraderie of being in a band is something I’ll always remember as beautiful, but I’m getting older. One thing 2010 did was make me face up to this. I mean, this year (2011), I’ll graduate. I’ll need to get a job, maybe even a career. It’s probably time to pack up the whole idea of fronting an awesome rock band. I can just sing to myself quietly in my room.
I can still write, which is a bit of a double-edged sword because it’s a constant reminder of what musicians can do that writers can’t (express an inarguable emotion, command a room, get laid, etc). Although I’ve still been writing stories, all my best verse has been lyrical and not poetic (I’ll maintain until death that there’s a fucking difference). To be honest, fuck poetry. Poets are just musicians without enough friends to form a band. I’m aware of the irony.
So, that’s my writing life dealt with. What else went on? Well, a lot of drinking. Is it a problem? No, it doesn’t rule my life. It just makes up a large proportion of it. Most of my social interaction is performed drunk. Mostly because my social interaction generally takes place in bars, clubs and pubs. Just about every event that’s not in uni is in some kind of alcohol-serving venue, and I never see a reason to not drink.
In terms of the kinds of places I go, I’m usually somewhere artsy. For some unknown reason, this pisses me right off. I guess the atmosphere is meant to make people feel elite and cool, like ‘Hey man, we’re underground poets. We’re too awesome for mainstream stuff like everyone else.’ Really, I just feel like a failed musician in a room full of failed musicians. Maybe that’s how Kerouac felt. I dunno. I guess Kerouac was lucky, because there was no Blake Schwarzenbach for him to wish he was.
I made my modelling debut in 2010. I felt conspicuously heterosexual.
I like vintage clothing, and I went to a lot of vintage fairs last year. Kukoo is rad, and anywhere Geek shows, I usually buy a shirt or two. I’m a sucker for vintage Ts. I guess that’s more fuel for the rumour that I was sucked into the present day through a wormhole that opened up at a Promise Ring show in the late nineties. A rumour which I may or may not have started myself. I plan on going to a lot more vintage fairs, and maybe getting to know some of the people involved.
I got tattooed a lot, thanks to Jayne (former Chelsea Star singer, too. Boom!) She’s taking a run at a career in tattooing, and I’m totally up for being a living sketch-pad. It’s permanent, but it doesn’t really matter. I’ll just keep it off my neck, hands and face and I’ll still be employable at most places, thanks to people being less stuffy about individuality in general and tattoos in particular. That’s something that’ll be ongoing until I run out of skin.
I also had a girlfriend for a few months. Sounds kinda sad to say it that way, but while I tend to make-out a lot, steady-steadies are few and far between for me. So, yeah, I had a girlfriend for a while, then it ended. Thinking about it still bums me out, but not so much as realising that my love life works on a kind of eight-month cycle where three months are great and five months are lonely and ripe with the risk of STDs. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to break that cycle, though I’m not sure how I’ll manage that.
Aw, what else? Lessee, music, writing, social … That’s about it. Except my family, or what would have been my ‘home life’, were I still living there. They’re ticking over alright. Joe’s got his A2s this year. He hates me. Helen and Mark are still doing fine. The cat’s still a massive pain in the arse. The rabbit died. He froze to death (or just died of old age, he was a right geriatric ol’ bunny) a few days before Christmas and I buried him. Could’a been worse, I s’pose. The ground could have been frozen too.
So, that’s my wind-up of 2010. I did some other stuff, to but it wasn’t really important, or I forget what it was.
Normal service will be resumed in my next post,
Nick
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