Muddy Puddles

*Is happy*

And do you want to know why?

I'm afraid, my peons, that this is to remain a secret.

Just know that it is for a very odd reason, and thinking about it makes me feel like such a dork.

But no less happy, nonetheless.

Blagofaire

I'm from the distant future.

Wow. Hi!

So I haven't posted in a while. What's up with that?

Interestingly, despite my status as an alcoholic (or a drunk, depending on your perception. also depending on your level of semantic pedantry), since my last post, roughly two weeks ago, I have not partaken of alcohol, except for on the slightly farcical paddy's day/vicki's birthday thing. Then, I got very drunk, and in the words of my elder sibling "vomited up a lung". I cannot tell you that this was an entirely unpleasant experience for me, as I do not remember it.

I should probably point out again at this point that now, I have been 18 for a month. And have gotten drunk a grand total of three times; I have not actually even drunk anything on any other occasion. Perhaps my reputation is undeserved. Or, I didn't have ID for most of that time, and feel I need an excuse to drink purely so I can argue against alcoholism.

Anyway. FF12 has been largely neglected lately, but this weekend is pretty much free, so I should be able to play a bit. I also have sort of ignored my various writing things, although Nightfall has gotten more attention since the wheel of time series was finished. a lot more attention. I've also got a short story thing roughly planned out for house writing. for the topic of "Voyages", I have set out a story which shall be titled "The Long Way Out", and is a voyage in the sense that it covers various aspects of one mans life in a short space of time, and deals with the psychological issue of alcoholism (If I write this and it gets put in the house writing thing I have a feeling I won't hear the end of it) and depression.

The easter holiday is coming up, which is cool. This also means that April is drawing near, which is good because of both the lostprophets gig and Give It A Name, both of which should be awesome. sooner than both of these gigs and perhaps less awesome is the combination of Hamilton's fancy dress party next friday (I'm going as a mime, because it will take me next to no effort, as soon as I find some white face paint. Also, I get to tell people that I'm only making them think I'm talking, using hand movements.), and Kinghorn's gigantinormous camping tentopolis thing. Which should be interesting to say the least.

Can't think of much else to comment on. So I suppose that's it until some of these anticipated events occur.

We'll Scream Loud At The Top of our Lungs, And They'll Say It's Just 'Cause We're Young

So! it has come to this.

the london drinking.

the plan was, we go to london, do something vaugely resembling a pub crawl, go stay in the youth hostel. continuing the drinking and doing such entertaining activities as ring of fire and drinking mao.

half of that kind of happened.

anyway, I went to prod ellis at tescos so we could get the train, and after sufficient prodding we were off! (after renewing our various alcohol/juice/squash supplies) we got a macdonalds (I only got a drink.. in a titchy cup) and headed to the trains.

many things were discussed on the trains. we added some vodka to our cokes with the squirty vodka bottle (yay) and after finishing them, added some juice and more vodka. the drinking was well under way!

when we got to london, we were chastised for being late, despite getting the earliest possible train. we tubed/pegged it to the youth hostel to check in, with Matt and Emma handcuffed the whole way, and after checking in, we dumped the stuff in our room (using a handy locker as a "fridge" for all the alcohol) and left, with much complaining about still being sober.

however long we were wandering around london, we remained sober (although I did get a small swig of ouzo.. which had little effect) because we could find nowhere open (with space anyway) so it came to pass that for all of the actual saturday, we were sober.

after grabbing a KFC, we headed back to the youth hostel room to rectify this situation, and drinking mao completely failed to work. again.

The old standard of ring of fire was brought out, and it sufficiently sped up the process of being drunk. (we added a new rule with the jokers, snake eyes, which was quite effective.. also, the rule I introduced saying that we were not allowed to refer to people by name pwnd us all. )

after the first game, we were all sufficiently liquored up, and there may or may not have been a break before the second game, but the second one was commenced. it was going ok, but sort of drifted off when we realised most of us were too pissed to viably continue..

so while alex, matt and especially emma sat around recovering, me and ellis wandered down to the youth hostel bar. we were slighty befuddled by the keycard system, and tried to put money in the taking money out machine (which, for obvious reasons, failed to work), before realising that the machine to put money in it was the one next to us.

we managed to get two "red bull" and vodka drinks each in the bar, and played two *terrible* games of pool (woo, lack of depth perception), and completely failed to keep track of the wherabouts of my hat. So the hat is now lost to london, probably stolen by those dastardly australian hat thieves...

not much happened after that, me and ellis went back up to the TV lounge where the other three were being annoyed at one of those random cashcall programs, and we all floated back to the room, where little of note happened. (as far as I know, anyway. I went to bed soon after we got back, mourning the loss of my hat.)

The next morning, we somehow managed to get back to aylesbury. Irish Squash (some vodka, twice as much squash of any flavour, and as much water as needed) really helps for hangovers.

Somehow, we managed to avoid being eaten by grues. Even in the dark places!

You Are the One

- title courtesy of Shiny Toy Guns, the band currently occupying the space of.. awesome: it's Indie/Rock/Electronica, or if you're WMP then it's apparantly "Dance". Anyway.

I appear to have left the posting about my birthday for over a week now.. oh well..

The school-ness was kinda boring, but I got a bottle of vodka from everyone at the end of the day, and buggered off home to get ready for the going out-age, and the family all went to EAMAYL for the many chinese foods, and cake! and a free double vodka & coke! birthday drinks yay. also two single vodka & cokes from the parents, so before any pub crawling happened I'd already started drinking.

Me and Shell then buggered off to the Litten Tree because of cheap drink-age, and met up with Matt and Becky (possibly the other way around, but you know), where a variety of drinks were bought, and Becky bought four shots of some white chocolate/vodka thing.. which we drank.

Shell's friends Gaz and Emily showed up at some point too, and then Chuddy, and various things fueled by some alcomohols occurred, like the game of "fingers"..

..before we moved pub, although we tried to get into a different one (can't remember what it was called) but Becky had been very clever and forgotten her ID, so we went to the bell instead, where we bumped into dad, who bought me and matt (but no one else, which greatly offended Michelle) a drink, and more drinks were had before we moved again, this time to Yates' where we didn't even stay for a drink due to the crowdedness/loudness.

We moved again, to the hobgoblin, where we managed to get in thanks to being a big group, despite it being over 21's only (and that's not stupid at all)

more drinking ensued, from the barman who looked like an older tom, and apparantly is called matt (michelle used to work there, and i think that's what she said) and i played a very bad game of pool.. depth perception? what's that?

after more gallivanting, we somehow ended up at chuddy's house and ring of fire ensued, twice if i remember correctly (i might not) with various entertaining things and so forth.

somehow, I ended up at home in bed. the end.

ooh, also I got presents! besides from the vodka, there's the give it a name tickets (which i dunno if i've mentioned before) and FF12 which is awesome so far, and just today I got a late present from shell which was also pretty awesome; two tickets to a lostprophets gig (which is a week before GIAN, fun) and has TBS supporting! roll on the april..

coming soon to a my blog near you: The London Drinking

Thanks For The Memories

So it's been about two weeks without a post, and an eventful two weeks at that.. two 18th's (one of which was mine) and a great gig.. not to mention all the little odds and ends of half term, and the first week back after half term..

there wasn't actually that much that happened at ellis' party to speak of.. most likely due to the minute quantity of vodka available. Not to say that it was boring, it was quite entertaining overall, but there wasn't an amazing amount to speak of. Managed to get no sleep at all, sitting in the kitchen while most people watched serenity/started sleeping, continuing with the cider drinking and the talking with the various people who passed in and out of the room.

also, our present for ellis was awesome. we got him a bottle of tequila (which remains unopened), and the extra amazing combination of a mallet and a pink hamster. called rosa, I believe.

half term wasn't terribly eventful, and I did no work. the staying up all night at ellis' meant that my sleep cycle started screwed up, and wasn't a gradual thing like usual.

There was some frantic "planning" of travel arrangements for the BFS/Wheatus gig on the saturday.. Birmingham is a bitch to get back from, the last train back to leighton buzzard being at about ten or half past (before the end of the gig) , so we ended up deciding to get a coach there from milton keynes, and one back to hemel, where muzz had a handy house for us to kill any time we needed to kill while we waited for the early buses to come.

I got a lift with matt to MK, and we had over a half hour to kill waiting for the others/the coach.. and when the others arrived and the coach was supposed to be leaving, we didn't know which one it was.. the one i suggested it might be, dave dismissed. Had we not gone to check, we would have missed it.

the coach there was long and arduous, especially since we were mostly seperated into pairs all over the coach.. me and dave passed the time talking about whatever and listening to a combined fall out boy/bowling for soup playlist.

birmingham itself was... a bit crap. we had four 18 year olds with us, but only two with ID, so after we found the carling acadamy, we looked for a tescos ("Shall we ask a local? they should know where there's a tescos.." "you mean like that one we just passed?" "..."), found one, bought some alcomohol and some coke, got a macdonalds, and found a charming little shithole to get drunk in. shithole is only the affectionate nickname we had for a rubble filled, empty, trash littered carpark quite near to the gig. we spent a lot of time being no good punk ass kids in that little shithole while we waited for the gig...

..which was pretty good, we missed the first band (Army of Freshmen, which for the most part we hadn't heard of) and got into the gig just in time to hear wheatus (although only two of their songs really got the crowd going. I'd imagine you can guess the two, if you know anything about wheatus), and we had a brief sulk/drink in the corner since Son of Dork were due to play next (While they were setting up, some random songs were played over the speakers, including Maxwell's Silver Hammer, which was quite cool.

After the travesty that was busted rejects, we headed down to try shove our way as close to the front as we could get, and while we were doing so, Bowling For Soup came on, and it was awesome. By the time High School Never Ends was played, I was close enough to the front that the wall of flesh in front of me was only two people thick, but unfortunately this was also about the time I felt actually physically dehydrated, and had to struggle BACK through the sweaty, fleshy mass that was the crowd. I had to go to three, THREE bars before I got a drink of water, and spent a little while recovering and only half heartedly singing along, rather than the exuberant jumping and shouting I was doing at the start and close of the set.

The journey home... had a number of legs.. there was the first portion, which was actually a long wait in the shithole/bus station, with much talking and more vodka (with my 'Trademarked' Irish Squash) the coach back to MK was quite sedate, as we were all still sort of seperated. Dave several times nearly went to sleep, only to jerk back awake, as I listened to more Fall Out Boy and tried to stay awake so that at least one of us would make the stop...

..which we got off at, to spend an hour waiting in the cafe playing mao while we waited for the coach to hemel.. the mao game was quite entertaining as we got quite a few rules in.. ("Failure to Ollie Williams..!") and on the coach there was only one other person, and we all sat at the back and discussed a number of very odd things, as there was still a little alcohol in effect. once we got to hemel, we wandered through the empty streets, contemplated seeing how bad we'd have to be to get arrested for being drunk and disorderly, and started the long walk to muzz's house, which had an equal number of odd discussions if not more than the coach trip (the walking meant no one could even contemplate sleep).

At muzz's, most people collapsed around an attempt at drinking mao (which got through like NONE of the vodka), and with muzz and matt asleep-ish and toby contemplating it while building houses of cards, me, ellis, and dave had the bright idea of drinking higher or lower. three or so runs through the deck later, we were all giggling at pretty much anything and much more of the vodka had gone.

The last leg of the journey came a little later still, and many of us nearly fell asleep on the bus to aylesbury/tring/wherever, before me, ellis, and matt got off in aylesbury and had a drink in coffee republic, before I finally got a lift home from ellis' parents, and crawled into bed.

I should probably mention that all my parents knew of my wherabouts was that I wasn't at home. I left a note, saying that I'd gone out, was staying at a friends house, and would be back tomorrow.. which was all true, I would like to point out.

This passed without comment for the most part, which is funny, because if, for example, alex tried something similar, he'd most likely get five minutes up the road before getting a call asking, no, telling him, to come home.

My dad was pretty annoyed that I'd gone to an awesome gig without telling him.. he likes both BFS and wheatus...

Sunday might as well not have happened for all the use I got out of it, and school.. was mostly a bitch. like usual. the two or so coursework deadlines on friday didn't particularly help, but yes.

Seeing as how this post is massive, I suppose I'll leave the bit about my 18th for now, because it is also past three and I should probably go to bed.. cheerio.

Snowed under

I was pleasantly surprised this morning by the snow. I say pleasantly, because I didn't have to go out and walk through it to school; partly because it eventually transpired that school was cancelled, but mostly because my parents told me I didn't have to go, because neither of my younger siblings did.

After i'd slept all day (to three o'clock.. ish.. yeah..) I found out that school was cancelled tomorrow too, so half term has essentially started. which is good.

Haven't commented on Alex's party yet, it was good, no one was sick (our attempts to get alex kicked out of his own house by throwing up were thwarted) there were two ring of fire games, although the first one had too many people, and was cut short, and the second had too few (just a little short of the ideal number, lets say) there was dylan moran, and alcohol, and.. lemons! also a few failed poker and mao games kinda happened a little, but they did, as i said, fail.

there was also the naked harry. (not to mention the socks incident) which was particularly traumatising. andy will never look at his hat in the same way again..!

about half of the people there buggered off upstairs at some point, ollie collapsed about three hours before everyone else and was only in a state of semi-conciousness throughout the rest of the night (with the toilet sign being placed on him after he got into his sleeping bag and.. slept) he blames the whiskey..

But there was much fun, or to put it another way, much alcohol (aren't synonyms fun?)

I've now watched all the released heroes episodes and it's pretty awesome.

That is all.

Where to begin

So, I've been particularly quiet on the post front, so I'm.. not being? at any rate, there are things that need to be mentioned, as such as anything written here is necessary, anyway.

My first choice of word to describe the Nightmare of You gig and the day in general would most likely be "interesting", but ironically as a description it is decidedly lacking and dull, not really revealing much in the way of my actual opinion other than telling you that it was... well, interesting. All of which can be sumarised as "it does not mean good OR bad! we do not know what rory thinks of events! oh noes!".

If you were expecting a full and frank depiction of my opinion, you pretty much came to the wrong place. As it is, the gig, and the day, was...

Epic.

Arguably this does not shed much more light than interesting, but it's the difference between ambivalence and apathy, this one being the ambivalence and interesting, again ironically, being the apathy.

But epic it was indeed, and like any epic, there were highs, lows, ups, downs (they may well be the same thing but I want a longer list), there was adventure, bright lights, psychotropic substances, loud music, hats, sex, drugs, rock & roll, violence, gambling, hitmen, aliens, assassinations, ninjas and robots... okay, the last few may or may not be entirely fictional, but you never know.

After all of which, I get away without having to actually have said much that actually DID happen. Vauge hints will have to do for you, I'm afraid.

I also had my last exam. It wasn't terribly fun, and as for difficulty or ease...

let us just say it was interesting.

Risque

More tiredness. More Wheel of Time. More being ill and feeling like blech because of congestion and whatnot.

Many people seem kinda tired or ill at the moment, what with exams, general back-to-school suckage, what seems to be like a late winter, with really bad weather only now starting to go around.

When a teacher points out that i'm not looking well (especially considering I rarely ever feel *well* at school; little sleep, a poor diet and blinding rage will do that for you) I know i'm really fscked over. Which isn't so much fun, understandably.

but on the bright side, I have an essay first thing tomorrow to look forward to!

*twitch*

If I somehow fail to get good sleep tonight (which is quite likely actually, because tired as I am I have Lord of Chaos to read, and I'm only 280 odd pages into it and.. yeah) tomorrow will be particularly painful.

On the actual bright side this time, I only have to endure two more school days until the Nightmare of You gig, and then I just have to survive the london-drunkenness and the whole having ellis and dave around for further drinking before friday rolls around and we all die in a fire.

Speaking of dying in a fire (Although this may appear to be a non sequitar), Alex is having a party on the third of February, with the drinking and the funs and whatnot. So yay. Also, as it is something along the lines of Ellis' birthday on the 4th, he will be having a similar style of celebration perhaps, shortly afterwards. so woo.

As it is, it's time for two paracetamol and a trip to bed, although there will be some reading at the very least. I can only hope I won't lose track of time.

Heaven runs on oil

We've been back at school now for what seems like two long. Also, the sporadic nature of my blogs is seemingly increasing. Nothing happening ftl.

More reading of the Wheel of Time series has had me doing little else: I am currently halfway through book five, and it's a real effort to put down most of the time. six and a half more books to go, as well. fun.

A large amount of the week has been spent heavily anticipating the oncoming Nightmare of You gig, which should be Fricking Awesomeness personified, with the alcohol and the music! i'm pretty sure i mentioned the alcohol, but i'll mention it again just to be sure: alcohol!

also awesome music.

last week at some point I obtained through legitimate means a shiny pink copy of the Nightmare of you album, and god damnit if it isn't awesome, my favourite track being Heaven Runs on Oil at this particular juncture, a song which is pretty much amazing and all discreetly disdainful of the whole american government thing.

I only have one more exam to (heh heh) look forward to, which is of the comms variety and is particularly elusive. The Blake poems we're studying are all pretty good, and weird as it is The Homecoming provides some interesting discussion.

Gig in 6 days :o

Much More Beautiful Person

School has returned with the new year, and already we've been back for four days and a weekend, which means that by now we have had all of our lessons at least once. With the whole new year thing, I've been asked about resolutions (which begs the question, are people obsessed with them because they think other people should change, or are they projecting and feel they really need to change? or, of course, neither. lots of people make resolutions and it can be interesting to see whether people make resolutions and what they are) I refuse to make a resolution at any rate, as any decision for positive change i make will not be influenced by largely irrelevant lunar and solar cycles.

Apart from my resolution to stop eating babies, of course.

Resolutions aside, many people are impressed by my truthful claims that I have not been drunk all year (I entered the year sober, setting a terrible precedent), which is depressing (both the fact that I have remained in a state of sobriety and the fact that people were impressed by only nine days of it.

lessons so far have mostly been boring as usual, with computing being especially dull (practical work on our projects; I can only work on mine at home due to software constraints) and comms being interesting to a point, but we're mostly going over old ground in preperation for the exam on the 30th.

English has been interesting too at points. We had to read the homecoming over christmas, and i only got round to doing so on sunday but it is decidedly weird. and disturbing also, with much violence and sexual deviancy. theatre of the absurd is interesting but not particularly enjoyable...

And in rough connection to english is the series I have only just started reading, The Wheel of Time, which I was given the first book of for christmas. each book of the eleven in the series has roughly 700 pages, and I am on the third.. book two was pretty much read all weekend.

It hurts my brain that I just started reading a humungous, enthralling fantasy epic at the begining of an exam period. I have an exam tomorrow morning, and three others throughout the month.

This is the kind of thing leading scientists would class as "pretty gay".

I have a gig to look forward to though, with much alcohols, so woo. Nightmare of You Ef Tee Doubleyew!