What Students Do

It's funny what comes to you in the middle of the night.

This shall refer to a time a couple of nights (or probably more technically, mornings) ago when I was trying to get to sleep but the ol' 'On/Off' switch in my brain didn't feel like co-operating and instead just slid out of pseudo-existence. As a student, however, it is in fact the law that my sleeping pattern should be somewhat fucked up from the sleeping patterns of actual normal people who live in society and stuff. So what if I have lectures and seminars first thing in the morning, and so what if I feel like I want an early night, it's just not gonna happen. I'm supposed to stay up 'til 2am on the Internet, watching TV, eating noodles and drinking tea because IT'S WHAT STUDENTS DO!

(Although my perception of "what students do" has been skewed somewhat over the last few days considering those who smashed up half of London because they thought they were making a statement.)

Anyway, the fact that I have a flatmate who insists on belting old tunes out at the top of his lungs in an excruciating, droning manner during the late slash early hours doesn't seem to contribute in my feeble attempts at entering sub-consciousness. Seriously. You can think I'm kidding if you want, but if I have to hear another faux-Michael Bublé-esque rendition of "Cry Me A River" one more time, I think I might well just go out there and make him cry a fucking river... and then some. It's not even a good voice. It's the equivalent of a syphilitic bee trapped inside a megaphone for hours on end. And he doesn't even sing the fucking song... more just shouts (not sings, shouts) the same line/chorus/section over and over until boredom sets in, which is apparently NEVER!

Songs in his repertoire include:

"Cry Me A River" by Michael Bublé
 - represented as 'cerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-ryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrrrrrrrrrr-riverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr' (repeat as necessary)

"Californication" by Red Hot Chilli Peppers
 - represented as 'drrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeam-a-califorrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-nicaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-shaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan'

and finally, "Fly Me To The Moon" by Frank Sinatra
 - or 'flaaaaaaaa-meeeee-to-thamooooooon... let-meeeeeeeee-plaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy among the starrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs....... leeet-mee-see whaaaaaaat spring is like onnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn Jupiter annnnnnnnnnnd Marrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs'

It just about gets to the point that I want to blow my own face off with a missile launcher. Unfortunately as a poor student, missile launchers are difficult for me to get hold of so I'd probably have to fashion something out of teabags, dirty washing, an empty pot noodle container (or 'pot' as it's probably more commonly known), a pad of lined A4 paper and half a loaf of bread that's two days out of date and painting itself a beautiful shade of teal.

Back to my original point, trying to sleep at 2am when you have to be up for 8 is damn near impossible. Therefore, more woe is added when the idea for my short story (which I'll be due to start soon for the purposes of my course) not only randomly comes to me as I lie awake in the dark, but also blossoms in my brain, almost putting weights against the 'On/Off' switch so there's absolutely no way I'd be able to shake this one off.

Of course, as a Writing student, I've had it drilled into me that I should write EVERYTHING down. No matter how seemingly pointless, if you get a wee nugget of an idea or a bunch of words just sort of attack your mind with their presence, they should all be noted down. Also, as this idea (which since the night/morning in question has blossomed into a more-or-less coherent short story plan) will prove to be useful on my course, I feel obliged to have my sleep interrupted purely for the purpose of these words being scribbled onto a piece of lined A5 (because I have A5 for scribbled notes and A4 for writing actual things).

OK, I'm sure there was more but my mind's just blanked out mostly down to lack of tea and sleep, boredom, losing train of thought and realising that my side-face hair grows at a much more alarming rate than it used to.

The fact that I'm writing this at 2:30am just proves I'm not lying.

The Chocolate Spread Is A LIE!

So here's what happened right. I bought chocolate spread the other day because it looked funky. Here's how it was presented:

Pretty, right? Full of swirly and stripey goodness! In my head I thought 'This will definately make my toast-eating time much more fun and visually satisfying'. But how wrong can a child be? (I use the term "child" loosely to describe myself as, even though I may be chronologically twenty-one, I feel extremely young. Plus QI told me earlier that the cells in my body change every ten years so, technically, I'm never older than ten.)

However, as the chocolate was applied directly to toast (as the instruction manual in my head told me), its natural swirlyness was mortifyingly disturbed and consequently meant the toast became coated with a very uniform, normal "boring chocolate spread" effect. Observe!

And this is how shocked I was...

I know... I was that shocked.

Fin.

Alluding Life To A Video Cassette

When was the last post? Ah, Hell. It doesn't matter, I can never come up with anything of interest to write about at the best of times. So why have I started up this one now? Well, that's a mystery that can only be solved by going about seventeen seconds back through the passage of time. Of course time travel is impossible and we're all fixed on this constant trajectory. In the terms of the good old VHS, try to think of us as constantly on 'play'. There's no 'fast forward' to speed things up, no 'rewind' to go back a bit, no 'pause' to just give it a rest for a bit, and no 'record' to capture those special fleeting moments in life. Incidentally, there is a 'stop' function which you can press yourself (if 'play' just keeps getting on your nerves) or someone can horribly press it for you (with or without your consent... or in some cases they can run over the remote conveniently hitting the 'stop' button with the wheels of their car) but after that the batteries in the remote are pretty much nackered and you can't 'play' again.

Also 'eject' doesn't do much except make you have a shit.

So why have I started going on alluding life to a video cassette? Well, to answer that we'd have to go 134 seconds back through ti- oh wait...

Yeah, I'm bored. What of it?