What? Stock market? Footsy?

  OK, I’ve been instructed to sign up to this site, so visit my page and by lots of shares, or whatever it is you’re meant to do. Make me win, make me win! I might even check back to see what’s going on one day.

  (Basically, this will be objective proof of how unpopular I am.)



[The above refers to my old blog’s BlogShares account, and all links should point accordingly. This place also has a BlogShares account, the button for which should appear in the sidebar on the right.]

Hey you! Help me!

  OK, I’ve been asking all my friends this, and nobody has provided any sensible suggestions. If there’s anyone reading this, perhaps you would be so kind as to give me some ideas. It’s my 21st birthday soon, and my sister doesn’t know what to get me. She wants me to tell her if I want something, because she wants it to be something I really want. I don’t really mind it not being a surprise, so that’s not a problem. The thing is that it’s a bit of a landmark birthday, so I think she wants to get me something memorable, rather than just your usual CD/DVD/game/book. I’m at a bit of a loss, really. I can’t think of anything I really want at the moment. I mean, I wouldn’t mind a new PC, but that’s way too expensive, and not exactly very sentimental (something that will necessarily become outdated might not be a good idea). Anyway, she has a job, so it’s not like she’s only got a pittance to spend on me, but I would be no means expect her to break the bank. To be honest I don’t know exactly how much she intends to spend, but I wouldn’t presume that it’s an awful lot. So anyway, if anyone could use their telepathy to work out what I’d really like, I’d be eternally grateful. Well, perhaps not eternally. Definitely protractedly, though. Thanks.

An insignificance

  I will listen to more whole albums. Picking out particular songs is killing music for me. I must be less impatient. I am always surprised at how much I enjoy listening to some album I’d long since given up on (the case in point being Biffy Clyro’s The Vertigo of Bliss).

  It’s been fucking hot this past week or two. There have been a couple of instances of pleasant breezes moderating things somewhat, but on the whole it’s been nigh-on intolerable. It didn’t make my flatmates’ participation in a 5-a-side football tournament particularly comfortable, but the early stages where a knockout, and due to a combination of poor refereeing and poor playing, they were immediately knocked out, so they didn’t have to endure the aforementioned discomfort for much more than ten minutes. I personally was not involved in anything other than screaming like a girl when the ball came towards me during pre-game practice and providing some of the worst sports commentary ever committed to home video (a substantial portion of which consisted of discussing the finer points of camcorder operation with the camerawoman. Even so, the heat was thoroughly tiring, so I can only imagine how the team who had rather foolishly dressed in all black (some with long sleeves) must have been feeling. Anyway, the oppressive torridity continues, and apparently is likely to do so for some time yet. Dammit. If I wanted to suffer continual assaults from the sun I would go on a holiday to some hot beachy place. I have not taken a holiday to some hot beachy place; indeed, I have an express intention not to do so at any point in the foreseeable future, a fact which may lead the more astute of you to infer (correctly) that I do not wish to be in a hot place. Some people like holidays in Spain. I personally am fine with the moderate coldness of the British Isles. Sometimes things can get a bit too cold, I’ll grant you that, but on the whole it’s pretty temperate, with a leaning towards mild coldness. If it’s a bit nippy, I have no problem with putting a jumper on. If it’s really cold, I might even put a second T-shirt or pair of socks on. But in cases of extreme heat there’s only so naked I can get, especially if I want to retain what little hold on social convention I have. This probably reflects the fundamental misery of my personality, but I can hardly help that, can I? I say fuck the sun. It has a job to do, but sometimes it goes too far. There’s light and warmth, then there’s blinding glow and searing heat. Stop showing off and grow up.

  All this said, I am in no way a goth. God no. I may be a bit pretentious, but I’m not that bad.

  Lancaster University’s student magazine, SCAN, is really really terrible. Not only is it rife with typos, some in places as obvious as segment headings (the tattered copy on our living room’s floor has a ‘sexua;l health’ section); it is also littered with poor grammar (even including the odd incomplete sentence), and the content is generally of an altogether mediocre standard. Admittedly the reader letters include a large number of such blunders, but they are by no means the exclusive perpetrators. I suspect that I may have been able to produce at least a linguistically superior publication at GCSE age, and I was in the stupid-people-group for English (albeit more for my inability with the literature side of things than language). Whether the subject (as opposed to the style) would be any better is something I have less confidence in. A cursory glance at this blog raises doubts. Nevertheless, at least I can manage one of the two, and I won’t be putting anything about working for newspapers on my CV. Alex and I reckon that the editor might even get paid, and since the job of the editor is, as I understand it, more or less to edit away the imperfections, such shoddy output is a pretty damning indicator of her competence. I don’t necessarily expect a professional quality newspaper to be produced by students, but as we grow ever closer to becoming professionals, I would hope that our output gets nearer and nearer to such a level of quality. The fact that it doesn’t distresses me somewhat. I find it hard to believe that there’s nobody working for SCAN with a better grasp of the language than myself (presumably many of them are English students who should be massively ahead of me in the field – an entire A-level and most of a degree, to be precise) willing to lend those less capable a hand on that front. I mean, I don’t expect everyone to be an expert in all fields. There are plenty of things I’m woefully incapable at. I can barely locate five countries on a map, and there’s no foreign language I could conduct even the most basic of affairs in. I’d just like to think that someone could spare a moment to check all the apostrophes and suchlike. Even flicking through the thing gives a distinct feeling that it has been churned out with absolutely minimal attention to detail.

  Other news: New why? EP and Odd Nosdam album! Hurrah!

  Well, this turned out to be a much longer entry than I had anticipated. Hardly the insignificance I’d planned. I hope you’re feeling satisfied.

  Oh yes, I got a 2:1. Only one person on my course got a First: Richard Floyd. I don’t know the man, but he has a fantastic name. I neglected to retrieve my exact grade and my second term coursework. I’ll have to do that at some later juncture.
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Boo

  I got the Arcade Fire album. It turns out that the singer only really sounds like the Silver Mount Zion guy in the track ‘Power Out’. In the rest he sounds more like the singer from Medium 21. I also finally got . . .And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead’s Source Tags and Codes. The track ‘Baudelaire’ rather bizarrely sounds like it could have been by Supergrass.

  I haven’t died. I just can’t be bothered blogging right now. Don’t expect anything soon. Possibly ever. But maybe, if you’re lucky. . .

My education has concluded

  I took the final exam of my university career earlier. It went similarly to usual. I did particularly poorly on the last question I chose, so at the bottom of the last page I wrote, ‘This is the last essay I’ll ever write. It’s not very good.’ Maybe I’ll be bothered to do something good soon.