Monday, October 16, 2006

University

So, university, eh? The wild grey yonder, the long dark tea-time of the soul, the big greasy. What more can I say that wasn't already summed up in those few quibbling quotes? Seriously, that's about it.

I'm getting a little worried about things concerning physics, as well as my student loan. People complain about living off of £1500 a year, but, as of yet, I'm living off of £80 for the rest of my year. This is the root of my worries about physics, seeing as I can't really afford to live and buy the course book at the same time, and, until that loan comes through, I refuse to lay hands on my wallet. I'm heading to the university library (or the departmental one) sometime tomorrow so that I can return to the basics of my calling and get back to understanding physics, which is what I'm here to really do.

I'm quite pleased with Philosophy for the time being. I've been given one piece of work, which, basically, is to prepare for next week's lecture. I only have one of those a week. Every friday at 1:15 you'll find me there, in Derwent College, room 56, attentively listening and trying to record as much as I can on my dictophone. It doesn't really do a very good job in an auditorium full of noisy students, but I'll endeavour to do better in future.

The people here are, for the most part, lovely. My housemates are pretty damned awesome as a matter of fact, and, or so we are wont to believe, it seems we have the most awesome house in all of halifax, or atleast Ingram Court, but that's not hard if I'm being honest. The only side affect is living here is that I keep tagging things like "in all honesty" and other such bigotted tripe to the ends of most of my sentences. I swear that today I managed to slot "... in my opinion" onto the end of 5 consecutive sentences. A good stabbing'll set me straight no doubt, but I think that'll have to wait for the time being.

However, dear readers, it's not all shits and giggles at Ingram Court's House C, oh no. I miss my family an awful lot. I can't really put it any more eloquently than that. Unless you've done without your family for a long time, so long a time that you don't know quite when you'll see them again, despite allocated holidays then you really don't know. I really feel for the guy next door though(and if you meet me while I'm here then I beg of you, DO NOT BRING THIS UP; I feel awkward enough not saying a thing about it and I might explode if someone else has to do the same), he had his mum die on him a year ago last weekend and I don't think that my little pity party can hold a flame to something quite so monumental as that, and I would be an asshole for ever thinking that it would. It's still pretty painful though.

I guess the most painful part is knowing, and knowing for certain, that there are people out there who love me more than anyone else in the whole wide world. In fact I'm welling up just thinking about it, it moves me so much. That's something, in my opinion at least, that is so enormous that I would be surprised if there was a person in all of creation who isn't moved to tears when they start to really appreciate it. It's like knowing that out there there is someone who you love more than life itself out there somewhere, it makes your chest sag and you feel like you can't quite catch your breath properly and, despite not feeling anything especially, bar that monumental aching hole, knowing your not with them, it moves you to tears. It makes you shudder and shake, and convulse and squeeze and feel dead and alive all at once, and not at all. It's a great wholesome nothingness, so vacuous that walking through it would be like trying to walk through concrete; like having the life crushed out of you and having it replaced by a golden shimmering death that you don't know whether to cringe at the sight of or embrace in the rib shattering hug of meeting an old friend.

It's so poetic, in fact, that I can't describe it in the slightest.

Friday, October 06, 2006

D.O.A.

I woke up one morning, over a year ago now, and the morning that I woke upon was one of the first morning's that I awoke to the realisation that I am a free man. No, not free in the political, linguistic or moral sense, but in the sense that the managers at Amour Ltd. had decided to let me go, banning me from gambolling the fields of ardour, barring me from the realms of passion and a tumult of various other clandestine, soporific shit.

Of course I was upset, it's only natural that after the reposession of such a long, wonderful and secure state of well being that someone doesn't feel like getting out of bed sometimes. After a while things got better, as things often do, as even the bible said, "this too shall come to pass", which, I might add, should be used more often in speeches given by best men on wedding days. Life moved on. Things didn't exactly get everso much better, but i became gradually used to the langour of it. It took a lot longer than I hoped it would, but atleast it took.

One of the things that got me so riled, that really pushed my buttons (the ones marked "melt down", not "on") was the idea that one day I would forget how it felt to kiss the person I loved. The idea, already growing a little palid in my memory, was still vibrant, strong and something to relish, even if it did bring a tear to my eye and the thought that one day, no matter how hard I tried, I wouldn't be able to remember the soft brush of their lips and the fervour of the passion behind them terrified me. I suppose that's how I feel right now.

Currently I'm only 22 minutes away from tomorrow and already 38 minutes away from what might have been the last time I see two of my best friends for a very long time indeed. When the digits in the corner of my screen flip over to show "00:00" then it will be the start of the last day I spend with my family before I go to university. I very much doubt that day will be spent lavishing in eachother's company. I very much doubt that I won't fall out with my dad one last time before I go. I'll probably offend my sister once more and my mum will doubtlessly despair with all of us one last time. The thing is I'd rather it happened that way. It's what I know and love and the thought of my family getting along in a time of such astrangement and anguish doesn't seem right.

I'm only going to university, I know. I'll be back next weekend to sleep in my own bed, my dad is even going to drive to pick me up and drop off anything I think I've forgotten but it still doesn't feel wholely okay. It doesn't feel like I'll be coming home, it doesn't feel like everything's going to be alright. I understand now why our friends cried when Ben and Gareth left and why it didn't hurt me so much. I knew I'd see them again. But that was then and this is now and now I realise that maybe our friends didn't cry for selfish reasons, they didn't weep because they were seeing a friend leave them for so long but they were heartbroken through empathy. They didn't cry because they were leaving them, they cried because they were leaving everything they had ever known and I feel wretched for not realising that sooner.

There isn't a brightside to this blog entry, it seems even the very nature of the world is ought to crush my heart tonight. As I walked past the public house at the end of my street I heard the entertainment pouring Queen's "D.O.A." from the depths of his soul straight to my ears. "D.O.A." he sang, "D.O.A. I get so lonely, lonely, lonely, lonely..." So lonely, lonely, lonely.

My story started so unpleasantly for a reason. I didn't talk about forgetting for nothing, because that's what I'm worried about. We're growing up and leaving out childhood behind and those times were important, far too important to ever even consider forgetting about, but I know I will. To know that one day I won't remember what it was like to be 14, 16, even the age I am now really harrows me, chills me, fills me with horrific nostalgic nausea and "I know I deserve worse but it terrifies me and I can't take it anymore".

Thursday, October 05, 2006

Can I Help You?

Today was a hectic day. A day made all the more obstroperous and madcap by the fact that it has been placed amidst a group of phenomenally dull and languid days and the fact that my anxiety over university is growing at a pseudo-exponential rate as the days to my moving out pass. "anxiety.en"

Waking up at about 8:30 and rolling around in bed made for a pretty average start, me falling out of my shorts and trying to smother myself with the pillow, rolling around under the duvet. I was beckoned from bed shortly after by my father, announcing he was taking my sister to school. Sitting up I ran my fingers through my hair, my horror spiking and slowly fading first at the shock that most of it wasn't there and then at the realisation that I brought this upon myself. Meh, it looks ok, we'll deal with it.

About an hour later I was up, dressed, watered and fed to a satisfactory standard and my dad and I went about our daily rigoure. For from repetitive, todays rigoure was composed of returning books to my old college (with a cornicopia of Galaxy chocolate attached to make up for lateness) and exchanging a set of bulbs for a Maglite. Oh frabjurous day indeed.

I sat around for two hours after this, waiting to go to lunch with my grandparents. I saw the Gilette Fusion advert maybe 15-20 times. They say "5 blades with the precision of 1!", so they do. However, this is a little idiosyncratic, I feel. 5 blades on one side would indeed reduce the pressure you apply, as it adds 40% more surface area and decreases the pressure (with a constant application of force) by a proportionate value, and this may very well reduce irritation. However, putting 1 blade on the other side (for "precision") would surely mean a lot of pressure was being put on that blade, leading to more irritation than ever before? I mean, come on guys, one or the other, alright?

After a delightful (filling) lunch with the grandparents I went home and waited to go and see James home from the station with Emily (wubble-ewe) and Lis. This started going very wrong from the outset.

The time I was being picked up by Emily's dad in order to be driven to the station changed on a nigh-on constant basis, and that's just for starters. In fact the time fluctuated by about an hour in some of the first banterful relays, which is verging on the rediculous. As Lis was coming along I was asked to fetch her and bring her to my house, so I wandered to her house. Or so I thought. I mean, yes, I did walk to her house, but it wasn't actually her house. As I approached I decided to call her, so as not to disturb her family or something like that and, on hanging up, I just stood outside on her drive. I heard, yelled from the second floor, a girlish voice yell, "Dad, there's someone on the drive!" after having stood around for 2 or 3 minutes. I was not detered by this, but I realise now that I should have been, just a little atleast. Soon I heard the door open and turned in its direction, expecting to see Lis stepping briskly toward me. Goodness me, was I wrong. I huge, hulking form of a man appeared from said portal and asked me, a little gruffly, if there's anything he could help me with. I told him I was waiting for Lis, supposing it might have been her dad.

"Sorry mate, Lis isn't coming out."

"Pardon?" I asked, quite confused.

"She doesn't live here," he replied without malice or condesention, just fact.

"Ah... Heh... Well, erm, I'm sorry for causing you any alarm," I said, and with that I turned on my heel to find Lis wandering around the corner. She giggled at me for a long time after that. I almost shook my very wet brolly at her.

Arriving back at mine I was starting to feel a little better, and we sat in awkward silence until Emily appeared in her stunning, fuzzy colared red gloves, whereupon we scurried through the rain to the car. As we pulled into the station carpark Emily got a call from James telling us that the train was only just setting off. We waited for about half an hour. 45 minutes. Something. We got very bored. In the end we wouldn't have even found him if I hadn't wandered out to see if his train was still on time.

I am very tired. I am not funny in the least. You should have stopped reading this blog months ago.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

"... I drank HALF of that?!"

Listening to: Mayday Parade - When I Get Home You're So Dead
Reading: Fireflies in the Cloud (I [lessthanthree] Matt Dinniman)

--

Blah, Joe really isn't feeling his healthiest at the moment but has yet to reach his personal "sleepy time starting line" of two o' the clock. Until then I'm entertaining myself with silly wikipedia articles about silly (in a good way) bands, browsing for music on PureVolume and wondering what song I ought to spend my coke iTunes voucher on.

In the meantime I will recount the "haps" of the past week to you, my street slang loving "homies":

nothing happened.

seriously.

liek, zomb.

srsly.

ya rly.

Oh dear...

Today (yesterday) however was alright. I went shopping with my parents in Long Eaton and almost had a nervous breakdown in Burtons when they just would not stop flinging t-shirts at me. All the same t-shirt, just in subtly varient hues. Had a row with my dad over the fact that walking boots are not the same thing as trainers (for one, trainers do not make my feet look stubby and add an extra inch or two to my height, unless a new fashion has once again passed me by) and got very frustrated when they wouldn't let me pay for anything. Admittedly I don't have that much money, having spent most of what I have on sexy picture taking devices but nothing makes me feel like hagard, old, cretinous, money grubbing, hole-filled (oxymoron?) of a man like having my parents pay for things that are frivolous and not necessarily needed. It makes me feel like a real tool, a product of modern society which has bred me to be frivolous, to buy things I don't need and won't last just to perpetuate the economy and gilt the pockets of the increasingly rich. Bah and humbugs, I say to you. Btw, Miss Eevee, I realise that spending £12 on a cocktail shaker was not the wisest thing to do in order to prevent the aforementioned gilting of the aforementioned pockets of the hitherto other-named fatcats of our immanent mediocracy, but hell, I'M GODDAMNED CRAZY.

However, things ended on a positive note and chips were had by all and curried chips were consumed by the priveleged few.

Later on Ben called and asked if I fancied coming out drinking with he and his smexy longterm lady lover, Natalie. Liquid amore was consumed by all, my highlights of the evening:

  • When I asked for a Black Ferarri (two shots of Jack Daniels, one shot of Amaretto, top up with coke) and when I was told they don't serve them asked if they could mix me a double Jack Daniels, Amaretto and coke. I was then told they aren't allowed to mix triples. Bah. So I asked for two double Jack and cokes, then couldn't find my money, having to ask Matt to pay, only to find my money when we got back to the table, only to have Matt give me too much change. Then Ben went and ordered a double jack and coke and Natalie ordered three shots of Amaretto. You've gotta beat the system somehow kids, start learning now.
  • Playing Ultimate Card Master with Matt for a good ten minutes (NB: Ultimate Card Master is usually a game of one card draw with one rule: Matt wins however he damn well pleases).
  • Drinking Mai Tai through a really long straw straight from the pitcher ("What?" said the bar girl, "you don't want any glasses with it?" "No, we'll just take it straight from the jug." "You being serious?!" "...yea?" "OH MY GOD!"... amatures).
  • Having Ben spray me in the face with lager, proceeding to wipe it off with a newspaper and leaving the print on my face.
  • Eating two plates of nachos.
  • Telling Matthew to sue the pub because someone shoved a huge toothpick through his burger and he could have eaten it and killed himself, perhaps twice.
  • Watching Ben drink have a pitcher of Bulleit Breakers.
  • Drinking half a pitcher of Mai Tai.
  • Getting home at 11.
  • Not throwing up.
Yes, that's right, my evening's are so cut and dry they can be condensed into a set of bullet points for easy digestion. My life is bitesize. When did I stop being a more complex person?

Why does my eye itch?

*itch*