Well I've stuff all my rubbish in black sacks and all my clothes in black sacks and erm. All my sheets and towels in black sacks.
I better remember which one it is I'm supposed to throw away.
It's quite strange seeing everything getting put away; no posters on the wall, no books on the shelves, its all rather sad.
Still, I'll have a nicer house next year with flatmates who might actually spend some time in the house.
By strange coincidence this year my house was barely lived in: Basically I only wrote essays in it and occasionally cooked something there sleeping in my girlfriend's house most of the time, and my other flatmates were either in a similar situation - living with the other half - or they never left their rooms except to go to the toilet (I hope - for the cleaners sake). This all means that I'm not sure what it's going to be like sharing a flat with real people next year, actually people who talk to each other and use the kitchen, living space etc.
I've got to go and gather my things from the kitchen and try and figure out what to do with all my stuff now.
-Ben
Friday, June 10, 2005
Thursday, June 09, 2005
The Last night
The last night with the americans has been a massive amount of fun. Drink has been consumed, quiche has been eaten and stories have been told. It wasn't like a wake as have been some of the I'mnevergoingtoseeyouagainboohoo 'parties' I've attended.
It's pretty annoying this whole transitory friends thing. At school and sixth form you get used to having the same group of friends for years; you may decide not to be their friend but it's always a choice, they are always around (even when you'd really wish they weren't). Once you reach the real world (well, university - but it's closer to the real world than school) things change you have to get used to making friends with people who, within a few months of you meeting them, are gone. I know that they will still exist somewhere but
Stop.
I'm just too tired and confused to think right now.
Ignore any further posts on this subject for a week or two. I'll be able to look rationally at it in a while and write something interesting on the subject but up til then be wary of emoboy ramblings.
I'm just going to listen to some Slim Gailard and shut up.
-Ben
It's pretty annoying this whole transitory friends thing. At school and sixth form you get used to having the same group of friends for years; you may decide not to be their friend but it's always a choice, they are always around (even when you'd really wish they weren't). Once you reach the real world (well, university - but it's closer to the real world than school) things change you have to get used to making friends with people who, within a few months of you meeting them, are gone. I know that they will still exist somewhere but
Stop.
I'm just too tired and confused to think right now.
Ignore any further posts on this subject for a week or two. I'll be able to look rationally at it in a while and write something interesting on the subject but up til then be wary of emoboy ramblings.
I'm just going to listen to some Slim Gailard and shut up.
-Ben
Blog Taboo
What can I write on this thingy? As far as I can tell there are no restrictions from the blog supplier - other than not using it for child porn or terrorist propaganda - I didn't have any particular plans to do that anyway - so the only restrictions on what I write here are going to be the ones in my own head. I'm not sure, however, what those restrictions should be.
Politics? I don't think this is going to become a political blog. I have political views, obviously, but I'm still young and keep an open mind about things so I'll try not to rant unless I'm certain
in my mind that I'm right. For the purposes of orientation though it should be noted that I'm a medium lefty - not a waving a red flag from the rooftops and writing comically bad songs about 'The Revolution' sort of lefty but not a Blairite either. Probably politics will feature in this thing though - I read papers everyday and keep up with what is going on around me - but it wont be the bulk of the posts.
Religion? Well there isn't much that can really be said about that beyond one or two paragraphs so even if I became a firebrand it probably would feature much. I'm an atheist - an unusual word to use in Britain as most people would describe themselves as 'agnostic' or something along those lines, for the most part in the UK religion has been lowered to the level of a vague superstition - no one really believes except for the occasional zealot - so there isn't really a great deal I can say on the subject beyond the fact that I don't like it. I might expand on my views at some point though as it does interest me - but only in the same capacity that ghosts and alien sightings interest me.
Computer games? I don't think that they are really a subject for discussion here. I've reached the age and level of social ability where they are now damned to live in the dark recesses of my PC. Both those games and my N64 that lives in a drawer somewhere are awaiting the day when computer games are viewed with slightly more social acceptance than public masturbation but I'm not optimistic about that. However anything intelligent on the subject has already been said or is being said by the very, very good Edge Magazine.
Films? Compared to many of my friends my lack of film knowledge of the subject is embarrassing (or at least it would be if their amount of knowledge wasn't embarrassing in itself) so I think if I made any heavy duty statements they'll find out somehow and beat me but I might stretch to the odd review of something I saw that they don't consider worthy of detailed examination (Film studies is English literature for people with short attention spans).
Music? I'm a musician (well nearly - I'm a bass player, which is close) and I have a pretty large amount of music in my possession. I'll probably occasionally burble about some band or another or some new thing I've discovered and dig
Literature? No. I write about that all the time anyway, I don't want to write about it here as well.
If I don't write about any of these things all that is left is my life, which as I'm sure I've mentioned before is pretty damn uneventful. So I'll write whatever bollocks appears in my head. This being a good example of that method, to be honest I'm just killing time until the fairly oddparents comes on.
-Ben
Yes my punctuation is awful. Correct me if you want. This can become a challenge site for the hardcore pedant.
Politics? I don't think this is going to become a political blog. I have political views, obviously, but I'm still young and keep an open mind about things so I'll try not to rant unless I'm certain
in my mind that I'm right. For the purposes of orientation though it should be noted that I'm a medium lefty - not a waving a red flag from the rooftops and writing comically bad songs about 'The Revolution' sort of lefty but not a Blairite either. Probably politics will feature in this thing though - I read papers everyday and keep up with what is going on around me - but it wont be the bulk of the posts.
Religion? Well there isn't much that can really be said about that beyond one or two paragraphs so even if I became a firebrand it probably would feature much. I'm an atheist - an unusual word to use in Britain as most people would describe themselves as 'agnostic' or something along those lines, for the most part in the UK religion has been lowered to the level of a vague superstition - no one really believes except for the occasional zealot - so there isn't really a great deal I can say on the subject beyond the fact that I don't like it. I might expand on my views at some point though as it does interest me - but only in the same capacity that ghosts and alien sightings interest me.
Computer games? I don't think that they are really a subject for discussion here. I've reached the age and level of social ability where they are now damned to live in the dark recesses of my PC. Both those games and my N64 that lives in a drawer somewhere are awaiting the day when computer games are viewed with slightly more social acceptance than public masturbation but I'm not optimistic about that. However anything intelligent on the subject has already been said or is being said by the very, very good Edge Magazine.
Films? Compared to many of my friends my lack of film knowledge of the subject is embarrassing (or at least it would be if their amount of knowledge wasn't embarrassing in itself) so I think if I made any heavy duty statements they'll find out somehow and beat me but I might stretch to the odd review of something I saw that they don't consider worthy of detailed examination (Film studies is English literature for people with short attention spans).
Music? I'm a musician (well nearly - I'm a bass player, which is close) and I have a pretty large amount of music in my possession. I'll probably occasionally burble about some band or another or some new thing I've discovered and dig
Literature? No. I write about that all the time anyway, I don't want to write about it here as well.
If I don't write about any of these things all that is left is my life, which as I'm sure I've mentioned before is pretty damn uneventful. So I'll write whatever bollocks appears in my head. This being a good example of that method, to be honest I'm just killing time until the fairly oddparents comes on.
-Ben
Yes my punctuation is awful. Correct me if you want. This can become a challenge site for the hardcore pedant.
Monday, June 06, 2005
Artsfest/Can I go solo?
I spent a large quantity of Saturday at a thingy called artsfest on campus. It was quite amusing but a little disturbing in places; the early acts on the music stage were quite appalling - the worst being a bunch of ugly scallybirds singing 'a medley* of sixties hits' which was making the campus bunnies run scared onto the nearest traps. But later on things improved as the acts old enough to have grown some facial hair started to appear. After the appallingly bad scallies and co there were some patchy local classical groups. On the other stages (tents) it was interesting seeing my friend Matt playing his violin - he is usually very secretive about it - and some teenagers smashing bins for a reason (unorthodox percussion ensemble). But the day was stolen by a godawful African drums and choir thingy.
Don't get me wrong - when done well those groups can be great. It was in a group very much like that that I got my groove; my dad took me and my brother to go drumming with this bunch of funny west African guys with a brilliant skill for the crazy percussive polyrhythm that you get in the music of Nigeria, Ghana etc.
This group, however, was a assortment of greying middle-class white women dressed in African robes singing out of tune accompanied by a group of greying middle-class white men playing exactly the same beat on identical drums. It wasn't so much bad as crushingly embarrassing - they must be someone's parents.
After seeing one of the better bands I was talking to the performer, discussing his absence of a bass player, my personal instrument, my absence of any other things to do etc** but to no avail. Something that he said though got me thinking: When I was waxing lyrical about absence of band, boredom of, for bass players he said "well you can't go solo can you... "
Can I?
It has been done before***. But so far only by blokes so far up themselves that they can only see where they are going with a periscope. Even though my year of English literature has made me able to use phrases like ‘Pseudo Marxist Political Subtext’ - or similar bollocks - without feeling like a complete pillock I don't think it has got me to the "I'm really expressing myself!" level yet. Does this mean I won’t be able to do it, or that I could actually make music that actually sounded good rather than only being of interest to bass perverts?
It being a sunny day and me being rather intoxicated I decided on the latter possibility.
However this morning**** I realise there is quite a major flaw in this plan for musical world domination through the medium of the bass clef.
I have very little talent.
Yes, though the idea of showing all those guitarists that bass players are people too***** appeals to me greatly, the fact is that I can't sing and play bass at the same time - although the fact that I can't sing at all makes that point pretty academic really. That coupled with the fact that I'm not exactly an extrovert and I can't write lyrics at all means that I would make a really lousy solo artist...
Back to looking for a new band I suppose. There are worse things in life I'm sure; like not having a guitarist to take the blame for your mistakes or a singer to distract people from your complete lack of charisma.
I'm content lurking at the back of the stage looking moody.
- Ben
* The word medley, whether referring to food, music or anything else, invariably means shite - its one of those laws of the universe.
** The musical equivalent of taking his keys and dropping them into my cleavage.
*** It has. At least with the bass as the primary instrument - listen to something like Tommy the Cat by Primus.
**** By morning I mean afternoon. Obviously. Because not only am I a student but I've also finished work for this year so the likelihood of me getting up before the crack of
***** I can't speak for all of them obviously - I'm pretty sure that the guy from Metallica is a chimp.
Saturday, June 04, 2005
One Year
I've been at university for one academic year now, strange that. Its one of the one of the weirder realisations that comes with finishing the last exam (the others mostly involving the amount of alcohol that you plan to imbibe) and has got me wondering about things, and, you know... stuff.
I was trying to come up with a list of what things I have learned this year. There is the obvious academic stuff like how to fake references, how to make it look like you've read a book you have never even seen and of course secret and arcane knowledge available only to the enlightened such as the location of the history office or what a room number like RXQ207.34A-B means.
However it is the other things, the side effects of having to live on your own and make your way in the world that I am more interested in writing about today. When you get to university you don't realise just how little you know; the most apparently obvious things can come as a great shock to you. For example what a spin dryer looks like; my lack of knowledge in that regard caused many months of damp clothes and stinkyness.
Other things I have learned (in no particular order):
The drinking activities at university are organised with military efficiency, especially during fresher's week
...But the academic departments couldn't run a bath and with most of the subjects the entire department is run by a single part-time secretary.
Ducks are surprisingly violent animals
Americans are fun and they aren't nearly as annoying as you've been led to believe
They do, however, believe that we all have appaling teeth. (not entirely unjustified)
Matt has Gay eyebrows
Rugby players are the same everywhere. You have to use pictures, big writing and colourful diagrams to explain to them how to use doors, urinals, pens, etc...
Bunnies are fun and the ones born on campus have even less fear of humans than london pidgeons
The vast majority of student bands are really, appalingly bad and the music played on campus is a eclectic range of everything from The Libertines to Razorlight
Whitstable is a nice place although walking back across the countryside at night will give you the screaming heebie jeebies
If you look at the statue thingy on the hill outside keynes college from the side it looks like a gigantic penis
I can't think of anything else right now and what I've already written is rubbish so I think I'd better shut up and go and do my laundry.
- Ben
I was trying to come up with a list of what things I have learned this year. There is the obvious academic stuff like how to fake references, how to make it look like you've read a book you have never even seen and of course secret and arcane knowledge available only to the enlightened such as the location of the history office or what a room number like RXQ207.34A-B means.
However it is the other things, the side effects of having to live on your own and make your way in the world that I am more interested in writing about today. When you get to university you don't realise just how little you know; the most apparently obvious things can come as a great shock to you. For example what a spin dryer looks like; my lack of knowledge in that regard caused many months of damp clothes and stinkyness.
Other things I have learned (in no particular order):
The drinking activities at university are organised with military efficiency, especially during fresher's week
...But the academic departments couldn't run a bath and with most of the subjects the entire department is run by a single part-time secretary.
Ducks are surprisingly violent animals
Americans are fun and they aren't nearly as annoying as you've been led to believe
They do, however, believe that we all have appaling teeth. (not entirely unjustified)
Matt has Gay eyebrows
Rugby players are the same everywhere. You have to use pictures, big writing and colourful diagrams to explain to them how to use doors, urinals, pens, etc...
Bunnies are fun and the ones born on campus have even less fear of humans than london pidgeons
The vast majority of student bands are really, appalingly bad and the music played on campus is a eclectic range of everything from The Libertines to Razorlight
Whitstable is a nice place although walking back across the countryside at night will give you the screaming heebie jeebies
If you look at the statue thingy on the hill outside keynes college from the side it looks like a gigantic penis
I can't think of anything else right now and what I've already written is rubbish so I think I'd better shut up and go and do my laundry.
- Ben
Thursday, June 02, 2005
Explanation
The reason for this blog being titled as it is:
Partly a pretty damn obvious reference to Douglas Adam's masterwork but also the context its was drifting around my head in the day I started this thingy. You see that morning I'd been sitting in a hall the size of an american aircraft hangar - everything is bigger in america apparently and, if you believe some European activists, uses more petrol (even their mobile phones) - thinking about just how little work I have done this year and quite frankly panicing like a chav who has run out of burberry tracksuits.
As I stared in transfixed horror at the front page of the question booklet I was struck by how very dull and boring it is; all plain paper and black writing. What, I decided, it needed was something that would help improve the general state of mind of the participants, like DON'T PANIC written in large friendly letters on the front cover - It would get a smug knowing chuckle from the enlightened and have a calming effect on those who are unfamiliar with the Hitch Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy. I wonder if its been done before?
Currently I'm am happily avoiding thinking about the next exam I have (tomorrow afternoon) and trying to decide whether to bother posting this inane ramble or not.
I think you can guess which side won that argument.
- Ben
Partly a pretty damn obvious reference to Douglas Adam's masterwork but also the context its was drifting around my head in the day I started this thingy. You see that morning I'd been sitting in a hall the size of an american aircraft hangar - everything is bigger in america apparently and, if you believe some European activists, uses more petrol (even their mobile phones) - thinking about just how little work I have done this year and quite frankly panicing like a chav who has run out of burberry tracksuits.
As I stared in transfixed horror at the front page of the question booklet I was struck by how very dull and boring it is; all plain paper and black writing. What, I decided, it needed was something that would help improve the general state of mind of the participants, like DON'T PANIC written in large friendly letters on the front cover - It would get a smug knowing chuckle from the enlightened and have a calming effect on those who are unfamiliar with the Hitch Hikers' Guide to the Galaxy. I wonder if its been done before?
Currently I'm am happily avoiding thinking about the next exam I have (tomorrow afternoon) and trying to decide whether to bother posting this inane ramble or not.
I think you can guess which side won that argument.
- Ben
Wednesday, June 01, 2005
Intro
I have a blog.
Wow
erm...
don't worry people, that isn't (hopefully) representative of the standard of witty comment that shall shortly be appearing on this rather unimpressive piece of webspace. I plan to expand the minds of you - the reader, whoever that might be (I'm guessing insomniacs or stalkers) - with my staggeringly mundane life or, failing that, give myself somewhere to write pointless drivel that no one has the patience to listen to me say.
I'm not going to bother going into any personal details here because I doubt very much that anyone will read this that doesn't know who I am already.
I think the ingredients of a good blog appear to be either good, imaginative writing or an interesting life. I fall short on both of those requirements so I don't think that I'll be winning any awards any time in the impending future. The best you can hope for if you choose to frequent this blog of ill repute is a reasonably frequently updated account of what, if anything is going on in my life (or my head, or both) with enough naughty words to make it interesting.
- Ben
Wow
erm...
don't worry people, that isn't (hopefully) representative of the standard of witty comment that shall shortly be appearing on this rather unimpressive piece of webspace. I plan to expand the minds of you - the reader, whoever that might be (I'm guessing insomniacs or stalkers) - with my staggeringly mundane life or, failing that, give myself somewhere to write pointless drivel that no one has the patience to listen to me say.
I'm not going to bother going into any personal details here because I doubt very much that anyone will read this that doesn't know who I am already.
I think the ingredients of a good blog appear to be either good, imaginative writing or an interesting life. I fall short on both of those requirements so I don't think that I'll be winning any awards any time in the impending future. The best you can hope for if you choose to frequent this blog of ill repute is a reasonably frequently updated account of what, if anything is going on in my life (or my head, or both) with enough naughty words to make it interesting.
- Ben
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