People of England

In this blog, I would like to address a problem that has affected this fine nation for years. It is a blight on this country, and a shame to all who experience and know it. I talk, of course, about the growing obsolescence of the Christmas number one song.

There was a time when bands and artists would create specific songs for Christmas, songs that captured the minds, hearts and ears of the public and would inspire many for years to come. A time when it wasn't clear what song would become the next great, the one people would be singing for years to come, that would be on CDs and in compilations long into the future. It was a surprise, and it would be that one that people would not only buy before Christmas, but after it as well because it had done so well.

But recently, something has changed. A horrific trend swept across the nation, which has effectively wiped out the Christmas number one - X-Factor. This horrid show, full of mindless, vacuous people singing mediocre tunes with mediocre skill, has been carefully choreographed and broadcast to end at the start of the week in which the Christmas number one is decided. Year after year we are faced with yet another bland, lifeless song that has nothing whatsoever to do with Christmas or even this time of year, and no matter what the rest of us try to do, those lemmings who follow this travesty of a show like a religion ensure that the Christmas number one is always the winner or runner up on this programme.

This is destroying the Christmas number one in numerous ways - firstly, it is killing the surprise. Everyone now knows that the winner of X-Factor will be the Christmas number one. Where is the fun in that? There's just no point in the public who aren't involved with this tripe attempting anything to stop that from happening, because the result is always the same. Also, there is no point in any bands or artists producing a Christmas song for much the same reason, which leads me on to the second point - it is killing off the Christmas song.

I am not talking about the Christmas number one exclusively, but Christmas songs in general. Since everyone knows that the winner of X-Factor will be the Christmas number one, no one is bothering to make Christmas songs any more - The Darkness tried valiantly with "Christmas Tme (Don't Let The Bells End)", but for some unknown reason they were beaten by the depressing remake of "Mad World". If people don't make any new Christmas songs, the magic and wonder is lost for future generations, and I refuse to let that happen. I just hope and pray that actual artists and bands feel the same way.

Thirdly and finally, without a song about Christmas being the Christmas number one, it is growing ever harder to get into the proper Christmas spirit - I'm not talking about feeling glee at the sight of numerous Christmas television adverts selling all kinds of toys and consumerables tugged along by a fat man in a sleigh, I am talking about the spirit of Christmas that embodies love, friendship, giving and making people happy. I know it's a religious holiday, but that seems to be growing less and less important as the years go by, but that's an argument for another blog.

I think that either X-Factor should end way before the Christmas period, so people can buy it earlier as a present, or its winner should not be allowed to release their album until after the Christmas period, where it would probably make just as much money in the January sales. Please X-Factor, leave Christmas alone.

In other news, I'm back home for the holidays! Seeing old friends, catching up, all that kind of stuff - it's pretty fun being home as well, having meals cooked for me, my washing done, and having a fridge and freezer that are always stocked. Life is good.

Love Is On The Web

Well, it's been in the air for quite some time actually, I just haven't broadcast it on here yet - I've been going out with my girlfriend Emily for almost two years now, and I thought it was about time I mentioned her. I apologise greatly to all those who already know about Emily, but I also want to apologise to Emily for not mentioning her sooner. I really should have done, seeing as how gosh darn serious it all is, darn tootin'.

In all seriousness, she is amazing, wonderful and beautiful, so I thought of no better way to show my appreciation for the last twenty one months by making my new StickLife Chums comic about something that happened a while ago, at the beginning of our relationship.

Yes, this actually happened, and on our first proper date, no less. We were doing the whole back-row thing in the cinema, completely oblivious to the adverts going on - after about thirty minutes of mindless drivel about which deodorant makes your pits smell least like a recycled nappy you kind of just switch off - when all of a sudden, mid snog, a woman's voice whispers to us from the surround sound speakers "Sexually transmitted diseases are spreading..."

Needless to say, we pissed ourselves laughing at the hilarity and irony of the situation, and thoroughly enjoyed the film, though I'm hard-pressed to remember which film we went to see, which will probably get me in considerable trouble - yup, it just has. But at least I paid for it. At least I think I did. At the very least, I paid for the drinks.

Now I apologise right now for the sappiness of what's to come, but I'd like to elaborate on how we met, because I love this story and I don't think it will ever get old to either of us. We happened to be taking the same course at sixth form college, though we had never met or even crossed paths. We both decided to go on the media trip to San Fransisco and Los Angeles, and upon touchdown in San Francisco, I decided to talk to Emily because she was friends with someone I knew in my media lessons, and I knew absolutely no one else on this trip except for my media buddy. We got talking, struck a pretty much instant rapport and became great friends in the first fifteen minutes of knowing each other.

Yeah, definitely San Francisco

On the coach to the hotel we started talking more with some friends she knew - she has far too many friends, she's a socialising machine - and we came up with some classic jokes that we still go over today, and we both chuckle and laugh and reminisce about the old times. The hotel was alright, but we just hung out a lot together and went pretty much everywhere together, and we were getting along great, and I almost killed her with laughter on the boat back from our visit to Alcatraz - Alcatraz itself was great, I'd been there before so I could show off my knowledge and look impressive, which failed miserably anyway. Ah well. We ended up going to Bubba Gump Shrimp on Pier 49 purely because I knew it was there, and that turned out to be the best decision of the day. 

It was only later on in San Fran that we started linking arms, and we started to consider the possibilty that there was more to it than friendship, but when we got to LA things began to get a little more serious. We were staying in the same hotel that my family and I stayed in when we visited LA a few years before, so I knew the area relatively well, and I could take Emily and the friends that I had made around the bit that we were staying, which included taking them to an awesome breakfast diner on one of the last days. Emily and I were holding hands now, and getting pretty close as time went on.

War of the Worlds much? Universal Studios for the win

There was an incident with one of the freakier people on the trip, and Emily was in a pretty fragile state, which left me to look after her, and I felt right helping her out and making her feel better, and we both knew that things had taken a more serious turn in our developing relationship. However, sometime in the trip she found out I had a girlfriend, and I was missing both our one month anniversary and Valentine's day by going on this trip. Now you may think that I've been a heartless bugger, making my moves on a new girl, but firstly I wasn't making my moves at all - the relationship just blossomed, and it was amazing - and secondly I found out at the same time that she had a boyfriend of six months. At the very least, I was shocked. But luckily, things weren't working out and she was thinking of ending it with him long before I came onto the scene. I just kind of cemented the deal.

We both promised not to cheat on our other halves while we were away, because we're both respectable people - really, we are - but our relationship kept on growing. We never kissed on the trip, not once, and we were both pleased with that and we respected each other for it. Needless to say we both had a strong idea of where this was going and who we were going to be calling when we got back into England, but we remained abstinant regardless. On the flight back, however - don't get any dirty thoughts, I am not a dirty manwhore - we were sitting next to each other, and the timing was right. We had our first kiss 30,000 feet in the air. How's that for a story?

And so we came back, ended our failing relationships with our other halves, and started going out, and we've been going strong ever since, including having a whole year at uni apart form each other. As I said, I apologise for the lovey-dovey nature of this blog, but I like telling the story because it means a lot to me, just like she means the world to me. So this is for Emily, and this is our story. God that was cheesy.

Webfind 2 - The Condiment Gun

If you're a fan of ketchup, mustard, BBQ sauce, brown sauce or any other sauce to a dangerously addictive level, then you might well be interested in this crafty little weapon of mass dispensing. Man, I surprised even myself with that little quip. Not sure if it's a good surprise or not though. Hmmm.

Moving on, I'm sure we've all had the trouble of when you're coming down to the bottom of the bottle of ketchup or whatever and you're left with the dregs all roung the edge and on the bottom, which leaves you whacking and hitting the bottle in a vain attempt to garner all you can. Either that, or the bottle is full enough but the sauce is fervently unmoving, meaning you whack and hit the bottle as much as you can only to have it explode all over your food and yourself, meaning you look an absolute fool. Well the Condiment Gun aims to rid us of these problems, and in style.

No longer will you look the fool at BBQs - instead you can be the Sauce Slinger, a great marksman of unrivalled prowess, firing people's chosen dressing from across the garden with pinpoint accuracy. Or you could just cover people in sauce, resulting in a sticky, angry mess. Which would frankly be hilarious for all involved.

But a thought occurs - when was the last time you actually had to hit the bottom of a bottle to get sauce out of it? My bet is it's been a while, because thanks to a marvellous invention, the problems listed earlier have already been solved - malleable plastic. Yup, that's right, those plastic bottles have pretty much made the Condiment Gun a redundant idea, seeing as it solved the above problems quite a few years before it was even created.

This said, the Condiment Gun serves as nothing more than a cheap alternative to a water pistol that can fire thick, viscous, colourful fluid, and I don't think that's such a bad idea. So, cover everything in your house with white sheets and let rip! (Disclaimer: I do not condone this action unless you cover absolutely everything. In which case, go wild. Just don't blame me if something gets a new colour scheme)

I found the Condiment Gun at Gadgetshop

In other news nothing much is happening at the moment, just doing some reading for essays and the like. I head home this Sunday for the Christmas holidays, which will be good, but it means I have to clean my room before I'm picked up. And believe me, that's a fairly big job. The trouble is, it's so easy to get a room messy, especially with clothes as they can take up so much floor space. Ah well, I'll have to do that around my work. At some point. Probably soon. Maybe.

Overhaul

So I decided to give my blog an overhaul and a complete redesign - which, thanks to Blogger, is exceptionally easy. In fact the hardest part was messing around with some of the coding, changing a few numbers and general stuff like that, but such trivialities are boring and inane. So I won't bother you with them.

Well, all you really have to do is look around and you'll see how pretty my blog is now! I mean it's now looking almost official, like a professional blog. Now bear in mind I did use the quantifier 'almost' there, so please don't start slamming me for being overzealous and too proud of a somewhat mediocre layout. I like it, I designed the new header and status icon (that's the thing in the top left of this post - they'll be a recurring thing in each of my posts) and the picture of me on the right. Lovely isn't it? Yes, yes it is.

Well, after looking around at some more influential, interesting and generally better blogs than mine, I've realised I need to get more pictures up. I also realised that my blog needs to be about something, but I can't ever single out one thing and stick to it, so I'm just keeping this blog about me and my random musings. But what ho! Is this a picture I spy below?

Take note Strongbow, these are your patrons - advertise with caution

Ok yes, that ruggedly handsome fellow is me. This was for a disco party at my university house, and I was one of The Village People - I was trying to be the biker, but I didn't have a leather flat-cap, so I just went full 80s glam-rock and busted out some of my old goth gear. The shades even had Elvis sideburns attached to them, that's how awesomely cool they were. The party, needless to say, was a roaring success, and almost all of the people who came dressed up, which was a turn for the better. We discoed (i don't know how to spell the verb of 'disco' - if you do, please let me know) up our kitchen with some funky disco lights, a lava lamp, a bubble lamp and a disco ball, so it looked amazing - all that was missing was the platform shoes and John Travolta.

We had the music as well, and what's more, we didn't even need to go out and buy it from anywhere - between my housemates and I, we had a good ten hours plus of old-school disco tracks, ranging from the classic "A Fifth of Beethoven" by Walter Murphy to A-ha's "Take On Me", and many many more! God, I sound like one of those terrible telemarketing ads for those hideously expensive 8-disc sets. Get me a bad wig and whiter-than-white teeth and we're on to something here. But no, the music was absolutely immense, and my three male housemates and I all danced to the YMCA as four of the members of The Village People.

We are not gay. Just thought I'd throw that in there.

Expect more fancy dress shots of me in the future, as I am a huge fan of stupid parties and the like involving crazed costumes, and I haven't put any other pictures of me at such shindigs up here yet. I really do hope you enjoy my new blog, because I know it will enjoy you. It will. Yes, really. With that I'll say that I'm going to try and update this thing more often, so stick around and feel free to comment on anything and everything you can and/or want to, and I'll try my damndest to comment back!

Advent-agious Situation

See what I did there? Bah.

So I can finally raid my advent calendar - I know I'm late by three days, but I can't be arsed to keep track of the date beyond what day of the week it is during the rest of the year, so forgive me if I'm a little slow noticing when December finally rolls round.

I've got a pretty bog-standard Simpsons calendar, like last year and the year before, and most years before that. I don't dislike it - hell, I'm actually still quite fond of the Simpsons despite the film's less than excellent suck-to-win ratio - it's just that the past two years I've gotten the exact same "surprise" gift in the 25th door, which kind of sucks. I mean firstly, it's a fridge magnet of all things - though thinking about it, it's better than the computer mouse t-shirt I got one year. I shit you not. No, really. But what narks me off is that this year they've not even given us two doors for the 25th, unlike every year previously - one for the slab of chocolate that inevitably displays "Merry Christmas", and another for the surprise gift. However, this year there is just one door - a single, ominous door that could yeild either a chocolate slab or a crappy gift. Not both. No "and" in that sentence, which bothers me.

I'm probably just being selfish, but I wouldn't mind having both. But if they do choose to skimp out on one of the two, I'd rather be left with the chocolate. Take note, advent companies. Which gets me thinking, is there a company that just makes advent calendars? And if so, what the hell do they do the rest of the year? Surely it can't take that long to design and create another line of calendars for the next year?

On a completely unrelated note, I've been suffering from insomnia recently. Well, that's not strictly true - it would be more accurate to say that I'm slowly becoming nocturnal. I don't feel tired before 6am, which leaves me with a choice - I can either just stick it out and go without sleep, meaning I attempt to catch up the next day (an option which I have chosen more than once), or I can just crash out and get my eight-to-ten hours, meaning I wake up at around 4pm having missed daylight due to it being winter and all. I'm slowly trying to reintroduce myself to the morning hours, but it's a slow process, what with me already being lazy as hell.

I've also been dreaming really vividly recently, and I mean really really clear, the kind of dream I can control what I'm doing but I don't know I'm dreaming. They're all good or great dreams as well, which just makes it better. Maybe that's why I want to sleep more - these dreams rock so much harder than the real world. Hmmm.

Anyway, time to have a healthy breakfast of chicken dippers and chips. It's all I bought this morning. Yum.

Christmas is Officially Here

So I finally saw the Coco Cola Christmas advert for this year - and once again I am filled with child-like joy and happiness.

I am so glad that they've returned to the good old trucks and the "Holidays Are Coming" song, rather than that travesty that was aired last year. The Coca Cola adverts are an institution to themselves, and they are what make me feel Christmassy. I don't know why, but I've always felt that way ever since I was a child growing up watching the TV - whenever the Coke ad came on, I knew it was Christmas and I would start getting very, very excited.

And not a lot has changed. I am once again very, very excited, and I want to start buying presents now - which is a big deal for a student like me to want to actually spend money, and on other people no less (I kid, I'm not that much of a heartless bastard). Maybe it's because the adverts are always saturated with what we are told Christmas is all about - family, love, compassion, giving, presents, capitalism - I'll stop there. We all know what Christmas is about, but that seems to be fading into obscurity, especially as people age. I've only just realised that this year I regard Christmas far more as a time for family and giving than for the birth of Christ. Now I wasn't raised a strict Christian, or even given a vague religious upbringing, but I guess that shows where I'm going in life.

Anywho, big old Santa's coming, and he's bringing a big load of Coke in big red trucks. Long live TV.

Webfind 1 - The Slanket

I was traipsing through the vast vestiges of the internet in an attempt to find a christmas present for my girlfriend when I stumbled across possibly the most amazing thing ever created by man - the slanket.

While it may have a crap name - it is, after all, an American item - those fellows from across that big old blue thing have managed to come up with a combination of a dressing gown and a blanket, or a blanket with sleeves. Hence the 'slanket' hybridisation there.

Looking like a strange kind of jedi cloak, it is the perfect thing for monging on the sofa or on your bed or even just collapsing spontaneously on the floor in a fit of comfort-induced writhing and sighing in contentment.

Believe me, there is nothing I would like more right now than a slanket, because the heating has broken in our house. Something has happened to the boiler, and we have to wait at least until Friday until it's fixed again. On the plus side, we're saving money by not paying for gas, which is good because we are poor, penniless students. I'm sitting here wearing my dressing gown as a kind of long, furry jacket just so I don't freeze permanently to my chair.

Well, all this aside, the slanket is a marvel of human achievement in the art of being lazy - but I'm still not getting my girlfriend one, since they're too expensive for a penniless student like me to buy at the moment. If you would like to look at the slanket, just google it and the main site will come up. They will be shipping to England soon, in about a month or so, just in time for the festive holidays.

I found the slanket at I Want One Of Those

In other news, there have been no new StickLife Chums comics from me because I've been lazy. No, i don't have an excuse beyond my own lethargic attitude towards my internet fame. Wo-betide I let my numerous web-fans down.

My Brainfarts Made Me Money

Yeah, my mates and I won some money in a pub quiz tonight - admittedly, we only came off one pound better each, but we got some drinks vouchers and the pride of finally winning this bloody thing.

We used to be quite good at the old pub quiz - we came in an actual podium position most weeks, came first a few times, won some crates of beer - but this new one is terrible. The quizmaster woman can barely pronounce words, such as "ochre" (pronounced as "Ok-ree"). And since when was the name of Billie Piper's new baby news? News according to HEAT magazine maybe, but to the rest of us, it's just plain boring rubbish that no one really cares about.

Well, we just give ourselves team names with obscure words in them to get our own back - this week we were "The Mighty Valmorphanizing Power Rangers". Beat that, Team America.

Fuck yeah.

Saving the World - Continued

Here is the comic I mentioned at the end of the last post. Enjoy my old games references :D

Saving the World

Well, nothing terribly interesting to report again, but I did get tanked last night and busted some funky moves on the dance floor, as well as other bad disco phrases. Whoever said disco is dead lied - disco, like Chuck Norris, can never die.

And there's a point, where did all the Chuck Norris quotes come from? I mean I know he's a legend, and I love the stupid quotes, don't get me wrong, but just where did they originate? Was it some crazed fan who just started spouting nonsense about his idol? Or did Chuck himself start such rumours to gain popularity? Or so people would think it was ridiculous so that he could really keep his true powers secret? Hmmm...makes you think.

Hell, since I've started, I'm going to throw one down here for the hell of it - There was no ice age. Chuck Norris was just hot, so he turned the sun down.

Social Suicide

Yeah, I bought the new expansion pack for World of Warcraft: The Wrath of the Lich King. I am now fervently trying to level up enough so that I can appreciate the new features in all their glory. However, I am probably commiting social suicide by doing so, but in all honesty I don't care. I have friends and I know when to stop playing, so anyone who calls me a nerd can suck my balls. I'm a geek, not a nerd - I don't like Star Trek. Please get your insults right.

I've made a comic to commemorate my descent further into social awkwardness, but it won't upload now for some reason, so it's coming later.

Propagandarific!

Dear lord, I've recently been made aware of an awesome online game, found here:

www.superobamaworld.com

Super Obama World - a blatant and open rip off of Super Mario World, for those people dense enough to have not realised - is full of political propaganda. For instance, the little ladies pushing the clothes are worth 150,000, a hint towards the fact that the Republicans managed to spend $150,000 on clothes for Sarah Palin during her vice-presidential run. There's also a very long bridge to Nowhere, Alaska, which I just found hilarious.

Late News & Views

Oh dear lord, the election. My guess is that most people who read this saw at least part of it somewhere, somehow. I myself stayed up right until 4am when they announced that Barrack Obama had become the next president of the USA - or POTUS, so the BBC wittily put it. So now we have the first black POTUS ever. Not just in tens or hundreds of years, but ever. Which seems to be a pretty big deal - and I would agree. I'm glad I was there to watch it. But he's got a hell of a lot of work to undo the damage that a certain segway-dog-dropping-muffin-choking fiend did to the American reputation. I'm not concerned with what he did to the country, I'm concerned here with how everyone else (and quite a few Americans themselves) thinks of America. I think it's already got a bit cooler - Obama is cool, thanks to the internet and things akin to the above.

Anywho, let me know what you think. All this politics gets me confused enough, let alone thinking about the politics of other countries - so throw some views my way, I'll try and offer an effective response. Or satirise it, either or is good.

Quick Shout

Oh yeah, my mate Andy wanted to be mentioned in my next blog. Here you go, dude!

Rave, R'n'B and Rant

It's shame these things can't be put up any bigger - if you're wondering what Simon is saying in the last panel, it's "Ugh, don't yell at me." Alternately, you could just click on it and see a larger view, but I know how lazy I can be, so I'm going to assume everyone else is as well and avoid hassle and confusion.

Rave On, My Friend

Went to a rave last night, and I had forgotten how much fun they can be - considering I mostly listen to rock and metal, and change in pace and style was great - nothing quite like jumping around the room like an idiot with hundreds of other people doing the same thing. Hang on, that sounds like rock gigs to me. Maybe it's not so strange I like both.

R'n'Bland

One thing I cannot stand is R'n'B - I just don't like it, and I'm not entirely sure why. It's probably an amalgamation of the toneless music which incorporate no style or skill whatsoever, the monotonous lyrics with no change in pitch or aggression, and the entire thing is wrapped in either a "pop a cap in your ass because I'm street" or a "bitch-slap you with my ring finger because I'm a rich pimp" attitude. And then you get the white boys trying to be as black as they can be, which really pisses me off no end. I'm not saying that white people and black people shouldn't be the same, but wiggers really piss me off because they just look and act like absolute tits.

Bottom line - you're not from the ghetto, you're from a middle-class suburb. Stop being a twat.

StickLife Chums Is GO!

StickLife Chums, AWAY!

Well, this is the first in a new line of comics - StickLife Chums. I used to do a comic series called StickLife Comics, but that dried up quicker than an old gooch in the desert. Recently, however, I've found out that my friends and I say stupid things all the time, and most of them we've written down on facebook and the like - which prompted this series. It features my friends and I saying and doing stupid stuff that has actually happened. No fiction, just idiocy.

Life in General

Overall, life seems to be going well at the moment - uni is going well, the band is not practicing, as ever, and life in the house seems overall content and enjoyable. I'm sure I'll end up posting something here at sometime about how terrible things are turning out, but for now I'll hold out for the best.

Conundrum, thy name is BAND

My friends and I play in a band, nothing terribly serious, but we have fun and we wouldn't mind taking it a bit further, maybe get a demo cd out sometime, not really sure how far this thing could go or how far we're willing to allow it to go, if that makes any sort of sense.

At the moment, we individually have several ideas for songs, some riffs and melodies, but as a band we only have one or two of our own songs down, as well as some covers, which is a bit ppor, but we're getting on that soon. Mostly, our problems arise from the lack of drummer or singer - we might be getting a drummer soon, but as for singing we're all just taking it in turns singing what we want to and writing what we want.

We have two shredding lead guitarists (seriously, they can shred amongst the best) who are both willing to play rhythm behind a solo, and we have a basist too, and I play keyboard and keytar, so I supply the synth, but herein lies my dillema - I am getting my parents to bring down to my uni house my guitar as well, as I'm not too bad at it and I enjoy strumming and hammering out some hard chords too. So I'm thinking I might play some rhythm guitar too, but I don't know whether to do that or to stick solely with my keyboards, or a mix of both as each song demands.

At the moment, it seems like I'm not a terribly integral part of the band process, but that may be because I'm not that good with my keyboarding other than some fancy chords and effects for dramatic effect - I can not solo well on either my guitar or keyboard, which is why I think I might have to chop and change between keyboard and rhythm guitar.

GARGH, it's a conundrum, and I'm not overall sure what to do. Still, I'm happy to be in something like this with possibilities of it actually going somewhere further than just dicking around in our uni house. First of all, however, we need to finalise what sort of music we want to play - at the moment we play anything from power metal to speed metal to old school rock to stupid pisstake rock - which shall hopefully give us a general direction and guidance of what to write, and what I should play in this band. We also need to finalise a name, as the name we have at the moment doesn't seem to be sticking terribly well, so I think it'll be changed.

Anywho, we'll see where this goes. If the drummer fancies sticking around after practicing with us, then we might end up booking some practice rooms and actually getting some writing done.

Suvarius' Movie of 2008 - Tropic Thunder

I saw Tropic Thunder tonight, and I have not laughed so loud or pissed myself so much in a cinema for a very long time - seriously, see this film - it is good for you and your life!

Filled with so many war film references and enough awesome actors to blow the roof off a concrete  shit-house, this film carries enough weight and laughs behind it to truly blow the minds of everyone and anyone who cares to watch it.

Bottom line, see this film for the following reasons:

• Robert Downey Jr playing a white man playing a black man

• Ben Stiller being an epic Hollywood Arnie equivalent

• Jack Black during the Saving Private Ryan part near the end of the film

• Tom Cruise saying some of the best lines ever written

• The sheer awesomeness of this film

• To see an entire cinema rolling on the floor and almost breaking out into spontaneous applause at several points in the film

 

See the film - enrich your life

Blast from the Past

This is an old thing I typed up during my first year of University because I was bored and had aspirations of starting up my own autobiography - well, more a kind of diary written for an audience, because I haven't done enough in my life to warrant a full autobiography or something like that. I just thought it would be easier for me to write it as I went along, less remembering would be required later on. I thought it would be suitable to start my blog with this, a lengthy, adequately written blast from my past. Enjoy - Suvarius (Rich Perry)

Saturday 31^st May 2008 – 01:29

I’m sitting in a university halls room – one of good size at that – with large amounts of mess around me, including a half-eaten plate of Chinese-style ribs, the other half of which were very tasty indeed. Things stand out at me that are crying to be finished – my guitar amp is askew, not yet plugged back in and thus gasping for sustenance; my washing bin is full, screaming at me to empty it, please for the love of god and all that is holy empty it and wash that red t-shirt that’s been lurking at the bottom of it for weeks, not being washed simply because I can’t put it in with either the whites or the darks; plates and other crockery lie lifeless and dirty like some strange collection of soiled relics, yearning to once again shine and sparkle with the lustre they had before I came into possession of them; and various other objects and clothes and drawers and CDs and DVDs that have long since grown fed up of being left out in the open to collect dust.

And so opens this memo, this excerpt from the life of a 19 year-old male resident of England, student at the University of Sussex on the Philosophy and Film Studies joint honours degree, this chronicling of the rip-roaring life of the occupant of room 4 in house 44 of the Brighthelm residence on campus, nearing the end of his first year of university. And what a bloody good opening it is too.

I apologise in advance for the coarse language and crude themes that may or may not pop up during these memoirs, but I’m sure that whoever is reading this is mature enough to handle such things, and if not then shame on you/the people who gave this to you, as you/they should know better (please delete as appropriate). You already know quite a bit about me from the passages above, and you may have even gained an insight into my state of mind and sense of humour through an in-depth analysis of the page thus far, resulting in a greater sense of understanding and a more thorough connection with the writer. Well I would like to be the first to say well done and congratulations, and I hope that this experience brings us closer as author and reader. In fact, I would like to share with you, my faithful and endearing reader, an insight into one of my foremost thoughts at this exact moment.

I’ve always hated that pretentious crap.

There is nothing more infuriating than some scholar-type lecturing to you about how this writer was ‘striving to create a feeling of yearning through his use of the abstract noun’ or some other such bullshit. It probably never even crossed their minds that they, like me, are writing with the hope that a publisher will take them on board and they will become the next Dickens or King or other literary giant and end up making shed loads of cash to set them up for life (of course I know that the life of an author is very often not like this at all, but one can dream). But I suppose the way in which one gets accepted by a publisher is to create feelings of yearning through the use of abstract nouns and the like, and so here we seem to have a kind of circular argument, and one that I would not wish to discuss unless rusty screws were being driven beneath my fingernails until I let loose with counter-arguments and responses. How’s that for creating a response through the use of language?

So please, do not expect me to be writing in some sort of poetic, languishing fashion that would rival most female romance novelists (score one more for stereotyping – yeah!). I am writing as me, albeit a slightly more cynical and literary fashion that I would normally write or speak. I am liable, if not likely, to change how I write during the progress of these memos depending on my mood of the day and the time, and certain entries will probably be longer than others, as well as some being quite short, but I just want to let you, the reader, know where you stand before you get all uppity about the inconsistencies in writing style, because I care about you so, so much. Did you detect the sarcasm there? Again, well done, you studious fellow, you! Or fellowette. Wouldn’t want to be accused of sexism now, would we? No we wouldn’t.

Why have I chosen to finish this entry here? Is it because it leaves more of a dramatic cliff hanger, drawing and urging the reader to continue on to the next chapter? Is it because I am planning to create some sort of style whereby I end my entries suddenly and abruptly? Or is it because I wish to leave a mental image of me as a sarcastic, cynical writer in the mind of those who would peruse these pages? It is in fact none of these reasons. Look at the time at the top of the entry – I’m tired. Good night to you, faithful reader, and may you enjoy a deep and rewarding sleep whenever you next get to rest that weary head of yours and descend into the land of blurred and distorted reality we call R.E.M sleep. Anyway, I don’t have to try that hard to create that sarcastic mental image now, do I?