I hate:

People who are always happy.
Couples.
Fucwkits On Facebook Who Start Every Word In A Status Update With A Capital Letter.
Mercy nightclub.
My mattress.
Everything on Radio 1.
Going out/staying in.
My concentration span when it comes to reading novels.
Having literally no money.
Being largely unwilling to look for work.
My hometown.
People I went to school with who've literally not changed at all since we were 16.
Girls.
People who live up to the horrible clichéd notion of being a fresher.
Any twat who describes someone as a "LEG-END!"
Burtons.
Photobooth on Macs.
Carlsberg lager.
Pretty much everything.

The Night The Most Famous Man in the World Died

Last night was, in many ways, another normal night out in Norwich: largely uneventful, not a hugely fun and slightly depressing. We ended up in Mercy, a club I'd not been into since A-Level results day, and one that I didn't intend to go back to. It's a soulless place, populated by a) people you went to school with who don't seem to have changed at all b)dudes in striped button down shirts, too much hair gel and a sex attacker vibe to them and c)fat girls. The music is uniformly terrible, the drinks are expensive. In short, it's a dump.

But anyway, we get in there (for free luckily), get some beers down us and stand around for a while. Billie Jean comes on. Now, it's only 11PM by this point and I'm thinking that most DJs would save a tune like that for the peak hour. So I thought something might be up. Mercy has screens on the dancefloor which display either texts from punters ('LOL DARREN IS A TWAT' etc.) or, rather disturbingly, sock puppet porn. Last night it was just texts. One caught my eye. It was pretty simple: 'Michael Jackson is dead'. WTFFFFFF. I still didn't believe it. Then a friend text me confirming that the King of Pop had died. Now, I'm not a huge Michael Jackson fan but thinking about him being dead bummed me out a bit. I wasn't going to have a great night anyway, but this was the nail in the coffin.

I'm still unsure about how I feel about Michael Jackson. Sure, he made some very, very, very good pop songs but it is impossible, for me at least, to seperate the music from the man. And there's no doubt about it: Michael Jackson was a complete fuck up. A fascinating one though.

So yeah, I'm donning a single glove and recording a cover of 'The Way You Make Me Feel'.

Just so you know...

I've started a new blog to run alongside this one.

http://thefirstfivehundred.blogspot.com/

Good Life/Big Fun

Today was, I guess, the first day of my summer holidays (technically the holidays started last month after I finished my last exam, but y'know, whatever).

I spent the day productively. Strolled into town, visited a charity shop and amongst other threats, found this beauty for 50 pence:




Made my day that did. If I could only track down a cheap copy of Inner City's other smash hit 'Big Fun'...

Spent the afternoon watching films: First up was the universally panned The Hottie and the Nottie which, surprisingly, wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. Don't get me wrong, it was bloody awful, but I'd been psyching myself up for a complete holocaust of a movie. Instead I got a simplistic, moralistic, unfunny, not very romantic rom-com. And jesus, who on earth thinks Paris Hilton's fit? (We've all seen the porno right I was shown it on the school bus many times. It was a lot tamer than most of the stuff people had on their phones. Literally will never forget seeing this grim cumshot/anal prolapse clip. ughhh). The message of the film was: tart yrself up a bit and BAM, someone will fall in love with you.

Straight after this I watched Wes Anderson's The Darjeeling Limited. I wasn't giving it my full attention for some reason. I found it quite difficult to get into and it was never going to be as good as Rushmore, but eh, it looked nice and made me smirk at times. Which is good because I very rarely laugh out loud whilst watching a film. Unless it's Airplane.

Summer's Here Kids

This will be the last blog I post from Loring Hall. Tomorrow afternoon I sign a contract for a house on Lucas Street in Deptford and leave South East London for the summer. Which will be exciting. We've got a loft conversion and everything. And a garden big enough for a two man kickabout.

This summer, like life, is full of possibilities (yeah, I just made a bad Dntel reference. I don't even like Dntel, apart from the Superpitcher remix of (This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan, which you should check out ASAP. It's a beaut). Who knows what I'll do. Perhaps I'll travel to various cities in Europe for hedonistic weekends fuelled by cheap alcohol, fist pumping and pounding, monotonous, rigid techno played in sweatboxes filled with leather clad Germans. I might actually do some writing over the summer. This would be a good idea as, for a creative writing student, I do very little writing in my free time. I started this blog primarily as a way of forcing myself to write, but it hasn't worked very well. I'm too worried about being earnest or whatever so I just post rubbish about records I like. I end up sounding like a tossed off in 5 minutes Vice article. But yeah, what else could I do? I could work. I really do need to work. If I'm lucky I might get to sweat my face off in a Pizza Hut in Norwich for 35hrs a week. Still, it's got to be better than working in a toy shop like I did for the whole of last summer.

No, in reality I will probably spend my summer sat in my room, listening to techno, house, disco and twee indie pop whilst I read short stories by American writers. I will moan about being bored but be unwilling to change things. I will be bored on the beaches and bored in the woods, and when I am bored in London next year I will miss being bored on beaches and in woods.

I'll leave you with an mp3 of a song by a band I've become obsessed with in the last week. John Darnielle is the man behind The Mountain Goats. Now, usually I hate most singer/songwriter stuff (Jens Lekman aside) but this guy is something else. His lyrics are better than most authors prose. So yeah, here's my favourite song of his, from the 2006 album Get Lonely. Totally reminds me of the writer Lorrie Moore, whose Collected Stories is one of the best books I've ever read. There's bound to be some of her stories online, so give her a go. She's like a slightly more flowery Raymond Carver.

The Mountain Goats - Get Lonely

Oh woe is me

I'm sat in my tiny room in halls, looking out of the window as it rains, listening to Get Lonely by The Mountain Goats. brb, just going to slit my wrists.

MAD WEEKEND

8 STEAKS
SNACKS ON SNACKS
LOADS OF BEER
LADS
YES