Two outta three ain't bad..

Ireland tomorrow/today. Should be an awesome week, but we won't actually get to carlow till late, so there won't be any shenanigans until thursday, but then.. drinking and general merrymaking is set to commence!

Which should be fun.

speaking of merrymaking, in order to use up the £40 off £80 worth of booze voucher I got with my first paycheck (I got another one the day before using that one, woo) me, matt, simon and bayliss went to the yeoman at around sixish to do some drinking. It was just a casual pub session, with some very bad pool playing and lots of alcohol (we got to try blue aftershock. lemons!) until everyone had to go home. Everyone going home actually turned out to be just bayliss; Simon had asked to stay around mine beforehand, and Matt was wasted (Matt cleverly was planning to get home by *train*. I didn't think it was a good idea to put him on a train in the state he was in, seeing as he was drunk enough to be hugging a pool table... at least I hope it was hugging...)

the three of us staggered back to mine, where I apparantly fell asleep holding a nearly full glass of vodka and coke. I was quite tired, not just because I'd had work, and it was sort of late (we'd left before the pub shut, I think at around 11) but because the day before, at 11 PM, my dad (who doesn't read them) said "I think I need to go get a book" and so my brother, my dad and myself pottered on down to waterstones, getting there early enough to have only about 20 people in front of us. I should point out that I wasn't expecting to even start reading the book until sunday, what with work and saturday being pre-planned and everything, but after leaving past the massive queue, which had mrs treherne and mrs nebesnuick near it's end... who waved...

well... long story short, I finished the final instalment of the harry potter series at 8:45 AM on saturday the 21st of july, eight hours and 45 minutes after it was released to the general public. Since I didn't start reading till we got it home, and I stopped for food at about 4 AM, it's a safe bet that it was under eight hours of reading time. Bayliss was impressed with under nine, anyway. Not quite as good as the 45 minutes or whatever it was I was reading about in the paper from some speed reader, but you know. It's probably the first and last time I'll read a book from start to finish within the nine hours directly after its release. The book itself was awesome, and seeing as I managed to avoid the spoilers, I won't say anything else.

So yeah. Ireland for a week, then nearly two weeks of free house!

Every time, I close my eyes... It's you

Look, a second post before the month is over! That hasn't happened for a while now. Maybe they'll happen even more often and I can stop starting them by exclaiming how long its been since the last one. I mean, I could stop doing that anyway, but the large gaps do seem to be the kind of thing that needs explaining. Even if the explanation is just that I'm a lazy bastard.

Anyway. The Monday after Simon's party, a bunch of us went out drinking, *officially* to celebrate the smoking ban on the 1st, but in practice just to drink, because that is what we like to do. It was quite entertaining. We went to chicagos, where they have a brief one hour period between eight and nine during which you can get two drinks for the price of one. This means stocking up with about six or eight drinks for the price of three or four, and THEN drinking them as the night progresses. The night progressed, and at some time around ten, maybe half passed, I returned to our table after spending a half hour at the bar trying to be served to find that simon had thrown up all over the table and everyone else was outside. As I left, I was told by a doorman to be careful, as someone ELSE had thrown up in the doorway.

Of course, the someone else would turn out to be Ellis.

Everyone else was disappearing at this point, but since Ellis, who was a little worse for wear, had to wait an hour for his lift, myself and Andy Hurlbatt dragged Ellis into Yates' to sit down for the hour, until we were kicked out of there due to one of us being slightly passed out (Guess who...)

The night ended, anyway. Eventually.

Apart from work, which has slowly been taking over my life, not much else happened until my sisters leaving do, the day before Tom's birthday party.. I finished work, then we were drinking in the yeoman till time was called, using one of the shiny vouchers we got to get drinks half price until we were all very drunk, and then after a number of confusing taxi journeys and a stop at tescos, we ended up in Nether Winchendon (which I am still convinced is a made up place) lost in the middle of nowhere until Jonny eventually found the free house we were trying to get to. More drunkenness ensued on the part of me and matt, before a taxi home to Aylesbury at first light so that I could get *some* sleep before work.

Then there was Tom's 18th.. which was another long night. I had work the day of the party, and the day after, so I showed up late, and skipped the cinema trip the day after, but the party itself was... interesting. There was varied conversation, your standard drunken ramblings, we got Tom red Aftershock (cinnammon flavoured) and a "Vodka Tap"(more generally known as a water cooler) ring of fire was played two or three times, there was an attempt at chocolate vodka using those "magic" nestle straws that turn milk chocolatey... there was an excursion to the park at sometime before 4 AM, where there was general deviancy including petty vandalism and theft of an "allowed" sign.

The wednesday after tom's was very, very entertaining, because it was a day of drinking all day in london (I think the pub we settled on was called the Misty Moon) until about seven, at which point we headed off for the Shiny Toy Guns Gig.

The gig was, in a word, Awesome. And fully deserving of the capital there, nevermind the fact that it looks somewhat out of place.

The support bands weren't great, but the shinies... oh man. For all that being in the crowd was something like being raped with all the violent thrusting and the lack of an actual barrier, their set was intense, we got right up to the front, Carah (The singer) wore tom's hat for all of a minute before it was knocked off her head by the crowd, and because it was a small venue, the band came out to talk to the few stragglers afterwards, and we got some decent group shots with all the band members except for the lead male singer, who didn't come out.

Then was work, work and more work until last monday, when, thanks to tom, me, matt and tom all went to tentopolis (III) where we knew hardly anyone and so ended up talking to a bunch of people we hadn't met before until we were drunk and it was late and we collapsed in toms tent.

I've just been writing this for about a half hour now, so I'm going to stop; nothing else has happened since tentopolis so I've run out of things to say as well, but I might end up posting again before I go to ireland in a week. If not, some time after I come back. It could take a whole month! Again. But it'll happen eventually.

I'd rather die terrified than live forever

It's been a long time, again. Nearly a whole month. There's always something else to do, much as I like occasionally chronicaling the various things in my life. Where I left off was the return from portugal, after which there was work. lots of work. tiring work. exams too. I haven't posted anything for pretty much the whole exam period, what with exams and work and laziness and being hungover. The first major drinking event was probably Andy's 18th, which I had to go to after work, due to it being sort of short notice. It was pretty fun, there was Ring of Fire, Sambuca, Bus Stop, and Muzz threw up all over his shirt. So I lent him my spare one, as it was my fault-ish (my ring of fire rule involved rum shots. Muzz got most of them.), and he still has it.

Lots of work followed, as mentioned previously, be it exams or at the pub. As far as I can remember the next major event was Ashwells 18th, which I went to after work as well, but Matt, Dave and Bayliss all came to the Yeoman before I finished and had a drink or two there before my dad gave us a lift to Tring, where there was Ashwells, which was interesting in a few ways, and which I got very drunk at.

Bayliss, Ellis, Dave and me all met up at the litten tree on saturday (again, after work) and a few drinks were had before staggering home. The last exam for me was on the following monday, and in celebration a whole bunch of us went drinking, first in the park with some vodka and some juice for cocktails and eventually in Chicagos because of their cheap monday night-ness. Fun was had to a greater or lesser extent by everybody and most people were shattered by the time we got back to mine, where we were all crashing so we could stay out later...

The wednesday after that there was a poker night, which would have been much more fun if Bayliss hadn't won. It was kind of annoying, as afterwards we didn't have anything to drink except rum, and the smallest amount of sambuca. We didn't get very drunk, as you might imagine.

Simon's 18th, which was yesterday, was again quite entertaining, with lots of alcohol, some good music moments (and a number of other cheesy dances numbers. When I asked Bird to "turn the gay down a notch" he said "No!" and myself and Ellis went to drink neat vodka 'shots' in the park with a number of other randomers) eventually the hall party started winding down, and a lot of people moved to Simons house, where we were very inconsiderate and kept Simons parents awake till about four AM, when a "curfew" was implemented. It was about six or so before I actually went to sleep, as there were a few people still awake floating around the kitchen, trying to be quiet but unable to sleep.

Today was supposed to be tentopolis, but the weather was gaying up, so it has been temporarily postponed; I'm quite glad now that it was, even though before, I was complaining about having bugger all to do on my day off - sleeping the hangover away in my own bed was a perfect waste of time.

To close, I'm going to do an unorthodox bit of plugging (for all the good it'll do, no one reads this). or shall we say I'm going to <3 minus and a softer world for a while now, and they're both amazingly awesome and artistic in different ways... minus makes me smile a lot (much like the 'hamster ball' xkcd comic), because the art is very innocent and well done, and it's just generally quite warm and fuzzy (but can be a bit more serious, the most recent one being a perfect example).

When it comes to a softer world, however... it's less the comic as a whole, and more the writer, Joey Comeau, who is simply amazing, very transgressive, but very beautiful; this is an extract from some blurbish writing on the main page at the moment:

I hope that you are a disaster. I'm sorry, but I do. I hope that you are thunder and lightning. I hope you are a forest fire, I hope you kill the dead wood and burn off the rotting leaves. With the canopy gone, the sun can get in. You need new growth. I hope you're terrible and broken and perfect.

It reminds me somewhat of Palahnuik (Although a lot of Comeau's other stuff is very sexual) but his writing has it's own sort of poetry. Joey has a novella online, Lockpick Pornography which you can read but probably shouldn't if you're easily offended or homophobic, as... well, if you can handle somewhat explicit gay sex, and might be interested in some transgressive, hard hitting writing.. you should probably read it.

I'm about to be firewalled off the internet, as it's nearly 1 AM (new helpful feature put in by my dad to keep me off the internet at stupid o'clock in the morning... it's annoying as you can imagine with my generally nocturnal nature) so I'm going to stop writing and go watch some shoddy late night sitcoms on ABC. Cheerio.