Resolution 909

There seems to be some unsaid problem with drinking alone. I personally don't think there's anything wrong with it as long as you mostly drink socially, and as long as you don't get so emotionally involved with scrubs that you throw yourself out of the window. It's new years eve, and so far, I am drinking alone. Most of my friends are all out in some other city, having a ball, and I'm not with them because of my terrible planning skills. But at some point I do plan on getting up, having a cup of coffee, hastily putting on something more presentable than an old Deftones t-shirt and socialising with strangers.

Not socialising material for some odd reason

Alcohol is a bit odd. Do you remember that whole fiasco with the government, when that advisor on drug policy was fired because he said that you were more likely to die from horse riding than from taking an ecstasy tablet? There have been quite a few things done by 'drug experts' that claim that alcohol is much worse than most illegal drugs. And most of us would probably agree in those moments where your mouth tastes like cigarettes (even worse if you are a non smoker that has a couple when drunk) and stale vodka, as you drift in and out of consciousness, wishing a glass of water was right beside your bed. Perhaps worse is the regret. Wishing you hadn't said all those very personal things to that all too sober fellow. All that goes out the window when you've had a few and you are enjoying yourself. With other drugs like heroin or ecstacy (I'm not implying that I've actually had them!) you have one pill/line/shot and you are there. But with alcohol, there's something quite relaxing about sipping a lukewarm glass of piss coloured liquid every so often. Sometimes I think about what being drunk is like. I've come to the conclusion that it's like looking down the wrong end of a pair of binoculars while underwater. And when talking about people who don't thank you when you hold the door open seems like a very philosophical subject. I also love the fact that I can talk absolute shit, as I normally do, but for a change I can actually get away with it.

I did say that I would do another blog drunk, and it only took another four days to do so. Of course it is new year's eve, and I would like to make up some resolutions. Normally, this is a chance for people to make a huge list of things they'll give up within the first week. But this is my first ever list of resolutions, and I'm only going to do a few.

1.Continue writing this blog.
2. Keep practising bass.
3. Get some journalism work experience.

That should be okay, they are at least within reason. I hope my blog is better than it was yesterday, I thought it was pretty mediocre. We'll see. Bye for now, and a happy new year for everyone reading this!

Gay as a daffodil

I'd like to think that I don't fall into the category of a stereotypical homosexual. I don't solely listen to Lady Gaga and Rihanna, I don't have an odd speech impediment, and I don't loudly announce my sexuality to people I've just met (although I suppose I'm doing this right now via this blog). However, when I was sharing a flat with two girls for a month at the tail-end of summer, I confess that I got into the habit of watching Sex and the City. For the first couple of times SATC dvds were put on, I sneered, shook my head, and left the room to play TimeSplitters. But my curiosity and lack of desire to move my arse off the sofa eventually made me stay. By the end of the month, I was able to name all of the characters, all of their boyfriends, and all of the problems they had in the bedroom.

The inevitable stepping stone towards Sex and the City

I'm not saying I love the show. It's pretty terrible in a lot of ways. Carrie, the protagonist, is a self obsessed piece of garbage that seems to have a bottomless amount of money to spend on her apartment, shoes, and ludicrous outfits from simply typing a rhetorical question every now and then. And whenever there was an episode featuring a homosexual, I would almost inevitably be subjected to questioning from my female flatmates. One was "are those really the gay rules?" in a episode where a gay man tells Carrie the international gay rules - that it was "okay to have sex with somebody if you have a boyfriend, the gym is a free space, and never ever show up in the same place wearing the same shirt". Either Sex and the City was talking garbage, or I had just discovered that being gay doesn't actually count as being properly gay. Hmm. Whenever I've been to a gay club (which I don't want to do for quite a long time), a lot of the people live up to the stereotype of being overly flamboyant, talking about nothing but sex, and dancing to cheesy music with female vocalists. Countless amounts of straight people have told me that they like me because I don't tend to fall into many of the homosexual stereotypes.

But at the end of the day, so what if you are camp as a Scout Jamboree? I have to admit that some overly flamboyant people that only talk about who they fancy and their sex lives get on my tits sometimes.But at the end of the day, we're in it together, and we don't exactly have much of a choice. Why do you have to suppress something just because someone said it annoys them? Live it up, let it all out, don't live in fear. I think I'll listen to Lady Gaga for a while.

It's my birthday today, huzzah. Everyone is preparing for New Years, so I'm spending it by myself. But people can easily be replaced with a copy of Evil Dead 2, a Chinese, and Cider.

Past from the blast

Good god, we just can't get enough of the past. Tying in slightly with yesterdays blog, it would seem that the past sells. Musicians love sampling and covering hits of old, and kids on youtube comments won't shut up about how they are 'only 14' but they 'hate modern music and wish they were born in sixties when music was good !!'. As much as I enjoy listening to the Beatles or air bassing to the Clash, I'm not too fond of this. Mamma Mia! was a massive hit at the box office. I've seen it. And whether it be my mother, my great aunt or an 18 year old girl, the film seems to be loved by many of those in the fairer sex (to be fair it probably has it's male fans as well). In my opinion this is just stupid. I love ABBA, but why would you want to watch a bunch of actors try to imitate and bastardize the songs when you can pop down to Sainsbury's and get ABBA gold for a fiver? If you are amazingly skint, pop down to your local on karaoke night. The same can be said for Glee. And as for those youtubers, I don't give a toss how old you are or what you listen to. If you were born in the sixties you'd either be old or dead by now. I'd love to have seen the Who, Cream, Gabriel-era Genesis or whoever in their prime. But I can't, so there's no point wishing. And besides, we have just about every piece of music ever made since that sort of era readily available, a luxury hippies of the flower power era or whenever didn't have. I think that's pretty cool.

Air instruments - look ma, no bass!

Last night I was watching a documentary about Live Aid. Is it just me or do we not have the same sort of massive acts we did back in the eighties or the seventies or the sixties? The only sort of contemporary band that has that sort of pulling power and popularity seems to be Muse. No other bands seem to get that amount of hype, do they? Unless it's someone like U2 who, let's face it, have their best days behind them in terms of live performances and good albums. That won't stop Rolling Stone giving them the album of the year award. That publication seems incapable of giving bad reviews to people it views as 'legends'. Bob Dylan released an album? Albumofthedecadelol. It may be that we have so many people nowadays wanting to be celebrities on reality shows or the internet that our attention has spread out over a bunch of idiots rather than focusing on a smaller group of idiots. Or maybe we're sick of worshipping people as if they were gods. So instead we'll go on to youtube, feel DISGUSTED that people like LADY GAGA (OR SHOULD I SAY LADY GAYGA LOL) can be so popular when we have cool bands like THE ROLLING STONES. If you so desperately want to live in the past then destroy the machine you used to access the internet (they didn't have those in the sixties!) and leave everyone else alone. Happy face.

This is the first blog I've done while drinking, and it certainly won't be the last. If there is any quality in my blogs, I hope it hasn't escaped because of this. A couple of people have also told me that they'll continue to read my blog, which is quite nice. So I suppose that counts for more than having 'official' followers. But it doesn't look as good. Oh well! Cheers guys.

A question of popularity

Today, while I was thinking about how I could make my blog known to the internet properly, the line from the Clash's Hitsville UK kept popping up in my head - "They say true talent will always emerge in time". I'm not saying that waffling on a blog is a talent, but it got me thinking anyway. If something is good enough, will it become popular on time, no matter how little hype it has? Vincent Van Gogh of course, only sold one painting in his lifetime. Pulp had a 16 year wait before they had their first hit with 'Do you remember the first time?'.  And Jedward stumbled into the limelight with their out of tune and garish renditions of Ghostbusters and Under Pressure/Ice Ice Baby. So it's fair to say that attaining fame has grown easier over the years with the internet and shows such as the X factor. But any idiot could tell you that. 

Lose the hat and paintbrush, then we'll talk

Perhaps more irritating is how popular supposedly unpopular things are. If that makes sense. On the facebook page of one of my favourite bands, The Obits, they gave a link to different artist's top 10 albums of the year. The Obits mocked this with a "BREAKING NEWS: Survey reveals same 5 albums being played simultaneously in rented vans across America!" Rightly so, because the same garbage keeps cropping up. LCD Sound System, the National, the Black Keys, Arcade Fire and Deerhunter all constantly reappear. There were thousands of albums released in 2010, and it seems that only a handful were worthy of constantly being mentioned. It's debatable that the musicians even listened to the albums. There's probably some big 'cool' list out there that everybody copies like a school child hurriedly copying his answers from the smart arse next to him because he hasn't done his homework. Personally I found 'Brothers' to be mediocre. But maybe I'm sending out the wrong message here. Listen to something because you like it, not because of how popular or supposedly unpopular it is. Okay? Phew.

I suppose I should talk about more relevant things than musicians if I'm moaning about how I'm not a renowned blogger . But I don't really know any famous bloggers. I know some celebrities who have blogs. But that doesn't really count. At the end of the day, what the hell does it matter anyway? The Crazy Frog got to number one, Ed got the vote over Dave, and Rocket from the Crypt never really hit it big. You guys don't know what you want, get lost.

Hello blogging world. Happy christmas and all that.

I suppose there's a whole lot of religious irony involved with Christmas. For those of us that have a different belief to Christianity, for those of us that don't believe in any religion, and for those of us that couldn't care less if we rot in a grave or rot in hell. But the great thing is that it doesn't really matter. Even as I type, I'm quietly singing along to 'Yahoo' by Erasure. It's a gospel style song talking about 'The Lord' and things like that. And it's very uplifting. But I'm sure some of Andy Bell's non musical activities don't co-exist particularly well with the Christian religion. Oh well. Religion II by Public Image Ltd, anyone?

I knew about these guys waaaaay before robot unicorn
 attack you know.

Anyway, like I said it doesn't matter. Sitting down with the family, pulling crackers, swapping leftovers, that sort of traditional nonsense. Grayte stuff. I'm the only person I know that pisses myself laughing at Christmas cracker jokes. Not even just to humour my family. For some inexplicable reason I find them hilarious. I reason with myself that I'm laughing at how bad the jokes are, or I'm laughing at the disgust on people's faces as they read the pathetic punch-line. Deep down, I know that I just have a stupid sense of humour.

Turkey - 4/5 (it was a tiny bit dry, but at the end of the day it's just a turkey).
Bread Sauce - 5/5 (Faultless)
Cranberry Sauce - (Didn't try it, but it's a standard Ocean Spray affair, nothing crazy)
Cocktail Sausages - 4/5 (Great, never been fond of the whole wrapped in bacon idea, but that's just me)
Mashed Potatoes - 5/5 (Does this need a description?)
Turnip - 5/5 (Does this?)
Carrots - (why the balls did I do this rating idea)
Raspberry Pana Cotta thing - 4/5 (Nice, but a bit sickly)
Raspberry Roulade - 5/5 (Great, because unlike previous years it didn't have nuts. What a stupid idea, putting nuts in a Roulade. I suppose each to their own though. I mean I've never understood my dislike for nuts, because I like peanut butter and crunchy nut cornflakes. Looking at what I've just typed, it's actually ridiculous. Ridiculous. Maybe it's just the texture? I know people who are like that with mushrooms. They think the flavour is alright, but they are rubbery and bleugh.)

I probably should have done this  introductory type thing at the start. I decided to start my blog today, after receiving a decent laptop, which I was pretty happy about. Why hesitant? I suppose it's the thing that describes me best, which I realised when I was trying to think of something to go before Calamari, because I kept HESITATING! I am in my second year studying Journalism at Robert Gordon University, so I hope my writings are half decent and perhaps entertaining? Time and harsh critics will tell. Why Calamari? Just because.

Christ, I'm already living up to my name, I'm hesitating to post this.