motivation, or lack thereof

OH HI.

no doubt i've lost my readership having not updated this little wonder in weeks. oh well, i'm sure the three of you are on to big and brighter things now. unfortunately i'm still rowing my boat one short of an oar, meaning that it feels like i'm going round IN BLOODY CIRCLES.

well it's certainly not that depressing, if indeed depressing at all, but instead of going on one mighty big spiel on how the last couple of months or so of my life have panned out, i'd rather give you a dramatic account of how much a disaster today has been. because really, the last couple months have been rather decent.

WRITER'S BLOCK. now i'm no george orwell, and even if i go into a career of producing parking tickets then i'd consider my career as a writer a success. yet even so, writing is a huge part of my life. as an academia student (ha!) i produce many an essay a year, so being on top of your game when it comes to producing your thoughts in an interesting and engaging fashion is vital to success. yet here i am, first essay of the new semester, and i can't write for shit. certainly not on the literary techniques of charles dickens, and i'll be damned if i'm gonna do much better next week when it comes to explaining the complexities of matthew arnold's interpretations of culture. it's not like i can't engage myself with the content at hand. hell, i've been staring at pages of my own notes regarding pip's greatest of expectations all sodding week. yet for some reason, that motion of formulating an idea and getting it typed in my own conviction is proving far too difficult. and i can't understand why.

take this entry. this blog. i've been typing now for less than ten minutes. call it stream-of-consciousness if you must, but i've had at it non-stop and had no problems whatsoever conveying my thoughts to you. so why can i not do the same for my essay? perhaps i do know why. earlier i was talking to my housemate about how sick we were of studying and how emotionally draining the past two and a bit years have been on our passion for our respected subjects. as i cast my mind back two years i recall enthusiasm and determination in producing the best possible response to whatever question was set. now, all i can say is that i'm just tired. tired of writing about what other people have to say. why should i care what dickens, as great a writer as he is, has to say about social stratification? what does culture and anarchy mean to me? it's just simply not a case of extending my knowledge of others anymore. all this feels like is just a chore with a means to an end: getting a degree. and when that's all you're aiming for, it really is difficult to find any motivation at all.

maybe that sounds ridiculous. what do i care. i want to write, maybe even do it as a career. but i feel all this is just becoming far too meaningless.

i feel i'm veering off the point here, and i did promise drama. today saw me lose 1000 words of pure, bona fide essay. just like that. no real reason, no explanation as to how it happened. just gone, like a flash. DRAMA. maybe that's the real reason why it feels like i'm banging my head against a lamp post here.

sorry for the complete lack of posts. october was a dry month. did i also mention that i'm a year older now? HOORAY. well, officially anyway. i can't fucking wait till i'm old and decrepit. here's to one more step along the way.

back online soon

;)

bit quiet on here, isn't it?

i'm sat in a fine public house sipping on a beer whilst clinging onto any internet that i can get my dirty little hands on. it's frustrating that i cannot lay down a proper entry as i've got to be going soon. and there's probably gonna be a few more quick, couple paragraph entries such as this until i get online full time, which may not be for another 3 weeks. NOOOOOOO.

so i'll keep this brief. the new house is full of win, great result for west ham last night, obinna is an absolute badman, and i don't think i'm gonna be watching anything as raw as that this is england 86 closing 10 minutes in a long, long time.

that. was. messed. up.

i'm gonna go to a plant shop and see what plants are looking shit hot this time of year. laters.

to the north, to the north

OH HI INTERNET. it's been a manic few days to be honest - packing away your life has its stressful moments, and it's turned me into a bit of a bloody female. like how women um and ah over outfits and calories and all that bollocks i've been equally undecided in what the hell i take and what i don't when i make the move back up to sheffield tomorrow. it's truly incredible how much crap one can amass over the space of a year or two.

hmm. reading that back i come across as a right sexist bell end. worry not dear reader for that is not my alignment. last year in fact i wrote a (grade) killer essay on judith butler and simone de beauvoir and it was rather interesting. in the sense that i never realised how far procrastination could take me.

WHEY.

that was poor. we move on. my last entry gave you a brief insight into my emotionally shattered state of a few days ago, but FEAR NOT for everything appears to have been resolved. this uni business has had me on a pleasure beach roller coaster for the past two years, but things appear to be on the up this time which is great news. when you mentally prepare yourself for a whole year of what will no doubt be intense work, a few setbacks can really leave a dent on you. thankfully i'm back on track and ready to kick third year english literature so hard in the balls that they'll be hanging out of its figurative mouth like a set of swings. BOOM.

enough of me. this weekend sees the irons taking on stoke at at the britannia stadium with an early kick-off to boot, and suffice to say i'm a bit nervous. see last week i wasn't so devastated as fellow fans were over losing to chelsea. yes yes in the end it was more than comfortable for the blues but we didn't give so bad an account of ourselves as the newspapers and online reports or those dicks on talk sport suggested.

our midfield managed to conjure up a good few moves for our attack and we had the chelsea defence backtracking on more than one occasion. i feel had we been a bit sharper then we might have put a few of those chances away. obinna looks lively up front and if we have barerra featuring a bit more then a can see those two linking up rather nicely. none of our forwards look sharp enough at the moment and that needs to be rectified. i can't really see benni mccarthy being our saviour in that department though. apparently he's been 'sorting himself out' recently. the only thing i see him sorting out for himself is a nice batch of pancakes doused in maple syrup with lashings of cream and butter for dinner right now. the fat bastard.

OMNOMNOMNOM

but the main concern, as it has been for a while, is the defence, which at times has looked to be comprised of a bunch of schoolboys. and this is what worries me for saturday. that big fucker kenwyne jones is going to make upson and co more nervous than an awkward teenager at the school disco. and despite their absolute negative approach to playing football stoke have a fairly handy midfield to supply balls to jones. if he gets the best of us then we're truly fucked.

i hate stoke. and pulis as well. something about him just comes across as incredibly smug. that stupid baseball cap just screams the 'I'M A TRADITIONAL ENGLISH MANAGER HOW D'YA LIKE ME NOW?' vibe. and yes, i know he's welsh. point remains. i hate the mentality of these managers. kick around the opposition and play shit football and then defend it afterward as 'maintaining the integrity of the english game.' no, it's holding this country's football back. pass back, pass back, pass across, HOOF TO THE BIG MAN. it's ugly.

^^ prick.

in any case, we need a win on saturday. so so bad. i'm never one for writing off west ham (06/07 anyone?) but if we don't sort ourselves out soon it's gonna be an absolute beast of a mountain to climb if we're gonna stay in the top flight. COYI.

and with that, i'll leave it. enjoy your football this weekend whoever you follow. this might be the last blog in a while from me because i'm not so sure what the internet situation is in my sheffield yard. hopefully we'll be up and running asap so all five or so of you readers wont be deprived for too long.

keep it tidy.

"they should call him ASS-KICK instead!"

with this blog in its relative infancy, i'm yet to really use it as an emotional outpouring when i'm feeling like the whole world is against me. and luckily for you dear reader i wont be doing that today, because to be honest it's not really my style. i get why people do it; sometimes we really need to vent. but without having a clear indication of who actually reads this blog i feel like my moans and groans would fall upon deaf ears. big deaf ears that would laugh at me for being such a massive wuss. so instead of going on about all my problems that would make avram grant feel like he's skateboarding down easy street with a 99 flake, i'm going to talk about why i'm one of the luckiest people on this planet. plot twist you say? no, it's simple really.

after receiving a triple whammy of bad news i immediately contacted my girlfriend, who effortlessly calmed me down after i was quite frankly an emotional mess. in the space of about 10 minutes i was thinking rationally again and planning my next move for the morning (cause life IS like a game of fucking chess at times i swear to god). this isn't the first time she's sorted me out after i've gone a bit mental, and as i'm writing this now i cannot think of anything to type that would give justice to how grateful and lucky i feel. i love her so much. and i'm not writing this as a means to rub it in to anyone who doesn't share these emotions for someone else. i'm just saying how incredibly lucky i am to have someone such as her, and i'll never take it for granted. merci beaucoup ellise.

i feel i'm venturing into deeply personal matters here, so on that note i feel i should balance the scales a bit with this entry. last saturday i bought and watched kick ass. and fuck me did i enjoy it as much as i enjoyed it the first time! i could talk about it for ages it's such an amazing movie. right from the very concept to the gnarly ass fights to the well executed american humour to NICOLAS FUCKING CAGE this movie is truly excellent and i would recommend that anyone who has any sort of interest in superhero flicks and comic books should watch it straight away. to anyone else don't be such a moron and watch it straight away.



that's all for this evening. cheers for reading if you made it this far. i'll make sure the next post is a bit less about me and a bit more about awesome.

soundtrack to teenage years

do you think you could choose 20 songs that define you as a teenager? those crucial years for any music lover that essentially mold your likes and dislikes as you become an adult? the years that shape the type of person you grow into perhaps?

drastic i know. i've given it a go, and it was rather difficult as my memory utterly sucks balls, but here i feel are 20 songs that have meant a lot to me growing up. and even though i'm trying to avoid being one of those indie playlist pricks who pour so much 'love' and 'heart' into what is essentially a bunch of fucking songs, i can tell you now i have insatiable amounts of joy for these tracks.

in more-or-less chronological order:

limp bizkit - rollin
blink 182 - what's my age again?
nirvana - come as you are
foo fighters - everlong
r.e.m. - the great beyond
queens of the stone age - better living through chemistry
the smashing pumpkins - cherub rock
biffy clyro - 57
brand new - okay i believe you but my tommy gun don't
interpol - evil
coheed and cambria - the crowing
the fall of troy - you got a death wish, johnny truant?
at the drive-in - one armed scissor
alexisonfire - no transitory
a wilhelm scream - the king is dead
refused - shape of punk to come
city and colour - save your scissors
pendulum - slam (ha, yeah, but it opened such a gateway for me)
wu-tang clan - bring da ruckus
cypress hill - insane in the brain

writing this list has inspired me to bust on some brand new. jesse lacey is such a hero. if having willies up my bum was a lifestyle choice, i'd let him have his way with me.


music is great. don't forget it.

trapezius spasms and all that

if i'd known that stretching was such a health risk i'd never do it. if i'd known that doing it might cause unprecedented amounts of pain, then i might have actively set up support schemes and awareness groups warning those not to partake in this deceptively pleasing motion. long story short STRETCHING IS EVIL.

well ok ok only if you do it like a retard such as i.

here comes my anecdote. after a fairly straightforward first half of the day at the office i decided to go full on with my stretching and reach for the stars as i prepared to take on the daunting evening sector of my work day. little did i know that doing so would absolutely cripple me and i'd be in the a&e room faster than you can say lolololol. turns out i've partially buggered this massive bastard. i present the trapezius muscle:

bit of a trap door, you'd say...?

don't worry i know where my coat is.

so i guess the moral of the story is to resist doing andy dufresne impressions when gearing yourself up for a mammoth task. you'll only have yourself to blame when you end up walking round like a spastic who can't even buckle his own seatbelt.


in matters that don't make me appear like a worn-out old bellend, the evening saw the pilot of this is england 86, something i've haven't anticipated as much since that disappointing sex scene in the first mass effect game. overall i thought it was... pretty great. i've read a few brief thoughts of others and a lot of people seem to think that the humour of the original film is being forced upon the audience this time around. i can kinda see there point i suppose, but i still think the episode gently carries the meadows charm throughout through its understandably slow pace. i loved being reintroduced to the characters i'd nearly forgotten about, and i'm eager to see how they evolve and interact over the next few episodes. shaun's darker character seems a lot more convincing this time round as well, but by and large the gang haven't changed much so it'll be interesting so see how meadows deals with them in a series format.

AND I CAN'T STOP THINKING IN WOODY'S ACCENT.

but yes, watch it on 4od if you get the chance. i can't endorse shane meadows enough.

so yeah that'll do. i know i said i'd do a reading review, but then i wasn't expecting a fucking muscle spasm, was i? it'll grace this page eventually, so long as i don't completely forget what happened. i'm struggling to remember every band i saw that weekend to be quite honest.

imaaaaaaginaaatiiioon

hey kids! sorry i haven't updated for a while, i've been away and working and having heartburn and all sorts of bloody reasons. accept my apologies, and also forgive me for breaking your hearts further and leaving you with a relatively short entry this evening. i've had such a long week thus far i just don't have the heart to channel all my thoughts into one entry! so tonight i'm going to briefly talk about one thing that means a lot to me.

imagination.

imagination is great. and let me tell you why. my current job involves talking to people. lots. i ring people up, explain educational programmes and talk about their children's progress at school. it's very interesting, but it's often quite monotonous and as a result i don't get much thinking time. however, today i was given the task of cleaning out the office's meeting room, as simply put it looked like a torpedo had gone on a mass raping spree in there with a particular fetish for disused cardboard.

anyway, simply put, whenever i undertake a task on my own, my imagination runs wild, and today's events made me grateful for it. i attribute my vivid imagination to my childhood i suppose. time spent playing videogames, reading books, watching football and dreaming of being better things means that even as a full grown adult my mind can take me to awesome places. i have lists of characters, adventures and weird and wonderful places that i love revisiting, and it makes me so damn happy. to anyone who doesn't have at least a tiny bit of imagination, do try and rectify this. it's incredible.

also, any excuse to post this.



next time expect a bit of a reading review. it was amazing, but a few hiccups along the way. i feel this picture perfectly encapsulates my experience.


until next time. love life.

sex, drugs and christopher nolan

it's been a while. too busy having a social life it seems, but then on reflection it's been a nice quiet weekend. friday night was by and large 'unplanned piss up night,' where i mostly drank in the style of george best. a few pints of staropramen at the bell (if you've never had the stuff it's basically the czech answer to stella) followed by getting more pissed in a skate park (thereby shredding all the dignity that was bestowed upon me when i reached adulthood) was enough for me to deem the night a success, and i woke up saturday with a cracking hangover and illness to boot. gracious.

sunday night was the night i FINALLY got the chance to watch inception, nod my head approvingly throughout and then quip 'yeah it was pretty decent' as i was navigated my way to to the toilets after it'd finished. and i'll say it again, it was decent. good even. i did enjoy it. provided a nice food for thought. good to see a nice mix between story and visuals. but i couldn't help but think 'isn't this supposed to be like, MINDBLOWINGLY AMAZING???' as i watched. it saddens me that the mass media seems to have its collective throat gagging upon christopher nolan's metaphorical monster cock right now because i fear it'll leave me depressingly disappointed each time he lets loose another summer blockbuster.

it just sets the bar too high for a man who has come up with some amazing stuff in his relatively short career. memento is up there with the best films ever made. his dragging of the batman series back into the realms of credibility is quite remarkable considering how laughable the franchise had become. yet with these achievements he's been turned into some jesus figure who produces renewable energy sources from his backside. when the particles collide in that hydron whatever thingy, i wouldn't be surprised if it just produces mini christopher nolans. the world loves him that much. and it's set the pedestal too high. so from now on i'll just ignore all media hype surrounding chrissy boy until i actually see his next offering. which will be nigh on impossible seeing as it'll probably be the next batman. dag.

'sides, he'll never beat memento so it's pointless really.


i might leave it there for now. reading festival coming up - this thursday in fact. i don't care much for the music really. i'm being deadly serious when i say that all i really care about seeing is blink-182, cypress hill and limp bizkit. and i'm such a music fan, so i tell myself. i wish titus andronicus were playing. that band are so great that they're shagging all your mothers numerous times over.

don't get captured.

still have no idea

after spending about 5 minutes trying to come up with SOMETHING CLEVER as a title for this entry, i've decided from now on to name the bastard things after i write them. whether this title will have any connection to the blog topic itself remains to be seen. well... for me it does.

today the reading tickets arrived! i say tickets, they're not tickets. just a letter saying where to get our tickets. BUT IT STILL HAS THE COOL BLOODY ENVELOPE, ALRIGHT?

boom.

guest camping! going over the "improved" camping area descriptions has induced a bit of a chuckly chuckle. "cleaner showers." wasn't actually aware of any showers at reading in the first place. "better camping conditions." i assume here that they mean the complete lack of teenage morons marauding around and rebelling after realising that they're away from mummy and daddy for the first time in their lives. having said all that we'll just camp in gen pop anyway. friends + atmosphere beats a not-as-shit-as-normal-camping-but-still-shit-no-doubt shower.

anyway, having received the tickets today i couldn't help but fondly reminisce over readings past. about a year or so ago i said i'd never be back there cause i'd grown so much contempt for the festival. but really, i have no reasons be have contempt for it. sure, it's shit that there's so many dicks there and young people there and it's all overpriced to fuck and christ can someone call the fucking wahmbulance already? why moan about the annoying parts and forget about the legendary moments that have happened over the years? FACE IN MUD, wildslinging, trolley wars, baker, jailbait, etc. i appreciate that these will make no sense to anyone outside my circle of friends, but that's the beauty of a festival like reading - everyone takes away different memories from one collective experience. i'm confident that this year will be just as great as the others.

and seeing as i won the damn tickets there's no sense of injustice if it turns out to be utter balls. double win!

that's all for now, but before i go, check out the morgan freeman chain of command. just because.

http://www.cslacker.com/images/funny/clever_amusing/morgan_freeman_chain_of_command/

number one.

for me, this is challenging. my first blog entry and what on earth do i write about?

how's my day been? average. what am i up to? not a lot. do i have a huge urge to enlighten you about these things? not really. but here i am typing away like a stock analyst on speed having a go at giving you some interesting (well, i would hope so) musings about my life and the things that go on around me. stick with it.

there's a certain addictiveness that people have to mediums such as blogging and twitter and whatnot. just spurting out your thoughts in a stream-of-consciousness style rambling is comforting for some. who else would listen to you talk about what you think apart from the collective audience of the internet. i remember having an old (and looking back, rather cringeworthy) blog i used to keep as a teenager being a constant source of excitement, and my adolescent brain couldn't wait to get home from school and update the blogging community about how great afi are (or were, looking back) or my rather aloof tendencies to discuss my favourite flavours of ice cream. there was even a small community of us! who could post the most was a common challenge set amongst us aspiring bloggerteers. and the greatest thing is that we read each others blogs. i couldn't even tell you why! it just seemed pleasant to think that others had this same desire to spout nonsense.

well, here i am. 22 years of age, not so big an afi fan and definitely still a big endorser of ice cream. so what's changed? what's dragged me back to the blogging scene since my days of being a shy, awkward teenager? well, i feel i need to vent, share, explain and more than anything else attempt to make sense of this reasonably delicate period of my life. cynicism is taking over me like a bad rash yet i'll always be an optimist at heart, so balance is needed. also, i'd love a place to post all kinds of funny shit so i'm making the most of this opportunity for sure.

so yes. expect a blog that will primarily focus on my day to day thoughts yet delve into areas that have great impact on my life. music, football, politics, news, film. even video games and ice cream. i love my life, yet sometimes it gets a bit fucking deep. this, i hope, will help piece together all the loose bits.

one thing though, seeing as i was riding the nostalgia wave earlier. have a butchers at this. absolute tune of a song that was released ten years ago. TEN YEARS AGO? fuuuuuck.



night y'all.