Archive for October, 2001

Operation Get-Michelle-Out-Of-The-House: Initial Success

But then I got lazy.

Thursday’s usual crapness was substantially mitigated by a night pilgrimage to Cargo with Esther for Xen bliss. Lots of fun discovering the joys of frozen melon schnapps shots (topped with Bailey’s), two successive gorgings on fries gloriously slopped with ketchup and mayo, and the sonic smorgasboard that is the Ninja Tune sound unfolding around us all the time. Satisfyingly vigorous stints of probably the most uninhibited dancing I’ve done for a while. An atmosphere I hadn’t felt for ages - that the people on the dancefloor were there simply because they loved the music and wanted to dance to it. Not to look beautiful, not to pull, not to be able to say they’d been to the latest trendy Shoreditch bar. I liked that.

Thursday’s exertions necessitated a restful Friday night, so the highlight of an extremely quiet night in an eerily deserted hall was laughing maniacally to the South Park Thanksgiving pageant episode with Zad and Tay, although watching Zad and Tay chortle and fall off chairs was almost funnier than what was on the screen.

The most fun I had on Saturday was doing the Big Issue crossword (party on, Michelle), which really does sound rather pathetic, especially since we somehow just couldn’t manage to figure out “Producer of natural foods” (available letters *A*R*M**) and eventually scrawled FAARRMER.

I think I still need to get out more.

Lots of things appeal. Surrealism at the Tate Modern, The Homecoming, The Man Who Wasn’t There, long sprawling walks around London (which I haven’t done for a while, and rather miss), and of course there’s always frivolous shopping. Also, I suddenly feel like Barcelona or Berlin. Possibilities, possibilities…

  October 29, 01 | Londoner Forever | Closed

Sholipshishism With Seamus

As is often the case when work and various other things start encroaching on my usually satisfactory sense of mental stability and general well-being, I’ve been feeling an ever-increasing compulsion to do anything but everything I should be doing.

Hence: tendencies towards extreme offensiveness at debating committee meetings (this would involve interrupting the President’s incessant whinging and acute martyrdom complex by shouting “Well, BOO HOO!”, and then collapsing in helpless cackles), rather too much time and money spent at the hall bar drinking dodgy £1 vodka alcopops, and a general longing to just get out of the hall, the law library, the debating chamber, the entire UCL locale altogether.

Except that most of the time my inertia and disorganization means I end up retreating to my room and music and books, which are all far cheaper forms of escapism than the alternatives that come to mind, but this tends to steep me in solipsism after a while, which I don’t like.

[Speaking of solipsism (or perhaps not, because I don’t think the poem is entirely solipsistic, but it did somehow get associatively recalled by my use of that word) please read Personal Helicon (Seamus Heaney) because I just love it.]

[You could also do with reading Anahorish and Death Of A Naturalist, and pretty much everything else he’s ever written, while you’re about it.]

[You could also buy me Opened Ground: Poems 1966-1996, if you’re feeling generous.]

[Or you could buy it for yourself, which would admittedly make me less happy than the above option, but would nevertheless make me quite happy, all the same.]

Where was I? Oh yes - solipsism. :)

  October 25, 01 | Londoner Forever and Words | Closed

Onion Gems

U.S. Vows To Defeat Whoever It Is We’re At War With:
“For example, we know that the mastermind has the approximate personality of a terrorist,” Gramm said. “Also, he is senseless. New data is emerging all the time.”

President Urges Calm, Restraint Among Nation’s Ballad Singers:
In the wake of the recent national tragedy, President Bush is urging Mariah Carey, Michael Jackson, and other singers to resist the urge to record mawkish, insipid all-star tribute ballads. “To America’s recording artists, I just want to say, please, there has already been enough suffering,” Bush said. “The last thing we need right now is a soaring Barbra Streisand-Brian McKnight duet titled ‘One For All.’”

God Finally Gives Shout-Out Back To All His Niggaz:
“The Lord Almighty finally responded to nearly two decades of praise in hip-hop album liner notes Monday, when He gave a shout-out back to all His loyal niggaz…”Mad props to P. Diddy, Jay-Z, DMX, Lil’ Kim, Mystikal, Eve, Ja Rule, Jadakiss, Trick Daddy, and Xzibit. And one love to Meth, RZA, GZA, Ghostface, and the rest of My real niggaz in the Wu-Tang Clan,” the deity said. “These My beloved niggaz, with whom I be well-pleased.”

Northern Irish, Serbs, Hutus Granted Homeland In West Bank:
“Though hopes are high for Ethniklashistan - a name created by a team of linguists who combined 17 different languages’ words for “sanctuary” - the establishment of the new homeland has proven rocky. Of the more than 500,000 people relocated there so far, approximately 97 percent have responded with violent resistance, swearing oaths of eternal vengeance against U.N. volunteers conducting the forced relocations.”

  October 23, 01 | Easily Amused | Closed

Working Lunch

Epic fusion lunch with Mark on Monday involved leftover claypot rice with lap cheong (Chinese sausage; Mark popped some in his mouth and asked what was in it, I said probably dog, Mark spluttered a bit), fusilli with pesto, chicken kievs, cherry tomatoes, and mouldy bread.

Other features of lunch included surprisingly efficient planning of Tuesday’s debate workshop, managed far more successfully than all our previous attempts at planning sessions because at those we always end up wallowing in mad gossip and agonizing over respective affairs of the heart - today we were in the dining room and didn’t have the requisite privacy.

We also tried formulating a cunning plan to discourage a girl who’s after him and needs to know she’s barking up the wrong tree (so to speak). One possibility was that I call him a “fucking faggot” in front of her. The problem with this, of course, is that it calls for careful planning and judicious implementation, because otherwise I might end up just looking really, really mean. His solution to this: “Oh, just say you’re post-menopausal…pre-menstrual…oh, whatever, female bits, you know…”

Oh, Mark. I may have spent most of two hours last night shouting “All men are bastards/fuckwits/arseholes!” (with a long-suffering but highly entertained Avril), but not you, never you.

  October 23, 01 | Londoner Forever | Closed

Happy Birthday Fabric

I’ve been meaning to say: Happy 2nd birthday, Fabric. I won’t be around for your third, though.

(Which depresses me slightly, even though Friday night didn’t evoke the sheer glee previous excursions have managed. I haven’t quite decided if I’m mellowing, or Fabric’s lost something, but it was, nonetheless, nice to be there with Russ and remember us there two years ago in its opening weeks, our first weeks at university, going to Fabric at 9 pm absolutely determined to get in, talking for hours before we started dancing, me clueless and flailing in my first drum’n'bass experience, him the epitome of non-camp-male-dancing coolness that he still is, walking back to Ramsay Hall in my decidedly unsensible shoes, talking, talking, talking, and two years later here we are, and this friendship has only gotten closer and better and stronger along the way.)

  October 23, 01 | Londoner Forever | Closed

For A Five-Year-Old (Fleur Adcock)

New poet discovery: Fleur Adcock, discovered on Sunday in a book of poetry I borrowed from Mark.

For a Five-Year-Old

A snail is climbing up the window-sill
into your room, after a night of rain.
You call me in to see, and I explain
that it would be unkind to leave it there:
it might crawl to the floor; we must take care
that no one squashes it. You understand,
and carry it outside, with careful hand,
to eat a daffodil.

I see, then, that a kind of faith prevails:
your gentleness is moulded still by words
from me, who have trapped mice and shot wild birds,
from me, who drowned your kittens, who betrayed
your closest relatives, and who purveyed
the harshest kind of truth to many another.
But that is how things are: I am your mother,
And we are kind to snails.

Fleur Adcock, Poems 1960-2000

I want.

  October 19, 01 | Words | Closed

The Thursday Stagger

The Thursday stagger begins at 8.50, when I finally get out of bed (for a 9 am lecture) after intermittent swatting of three different alarm clocks with three different ring tones going off every three (feels like) seconds over the past hour (Flaming Lips parking lot experiments come to mind, somehow).

The rest of the day goes like this: Stagger to Conflict of Laws lecture. Stagger to Jurisprudence seminar. Stagger to lunch. Stagger to Conflict of Laws tutorial. (Every lesson intellectually exhausting.) Stagger back home to do office duty. Stagger into Benediction and play the organ.

Sir Geldof? I think I’m changing it to Thursdays. Feel free to open fire.

This week no sappy songs, charming Irishmen or pigshit balloons were available to cheer me up, but I made do with alcohol, A.H.W.O.S.G and one of those energizing ohmygod-I-never-never-knew-you-were-like-this conversations with Nav, who came over for her friend’s (my hallmate’s) birthday party and ended up getting a tour of my room where we suddenly found out we both liked Pavement and the Smashing Pumpkins and Seamus Heaney and war poetry and literature of protest and didn’t connect much with anyone else in the law faculty. This after two years of little more than pleasant but incidental conversations and much amusement at my chronic lecture-based narcolepsy. Funny how things like this happen, but I’m not too surprised. My room is a repository of a lot of me-ness that isn’t easily apparent to people who only see me outside of it.

  October 19, 01 | Londoner Forever | Closed

For The Record

Certain things need to be clarified with regard to what Mark writes about our Saturday night gossip session:

  • His hips were generally referred to by him as “child-bearing” rather than “holster”.
  • Apart from the above observations on his anatomy, he also apologized once for builder’s arse.
  • He didn’t seem in the least bit embarrassed about any of the above declarations.

He is, however, accurate in saying “Michelle is Michelle and it didn’t seem to bother her too much”, and Mark, after braving an ice disco with you, your room doesn’t require anywhere as much courage. :P

  October 17, 01 | Londoner Forever | Closed

Hello, Gorgeous

London, you should try wearing beautiful days more often, because you’re absolutely gorgeous in them.

Friday girly lunch on warm grass in Gordon Square with Esther and Sabrina. Flowers and happy people outside Finnegan’s Wake pub as I walked down Goodge Street to the charity shops. Sun streaming through skylights in the chapel at home. Pavement benches outside the Marlborough Arms at night, cool air, lazy conversation, Smirnoff Ice(s).

Saturday lolling under the UCL dome, reading Company Law for as long as I could stand, and then Love In The Time Of Cholera the rest of the time. The Cruciform Building turrets ruddy and triumphal against the sky. Dinner with four Italians and a Scot on a street table on Charlotte Street, inhaling foccacia.

Good days.

  October 15, 01 | Londoner Forever | Closed

Was Down. Am Back Up.

I was sitting in my hall’s reception area yesterday feeling unusually low (tough day in school, hacking cough, debating/organ-playing stress) and slightly resentful at the person who hadn’t turned up for reception duty, even A.H.W.O.S.G (which I’m loving, and will probably rave about in the near future) failing to rouse me out of listlessness, when Virgin Radio (not my channel, but the office radio can’t seem to receive Xfm) started Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of.

(I think I’ve written about it before. The pop song you sneer at when you are at your most cynical becomes your Dawson’s Creek pensive moment soundtrack when you’re at your most vulnerable, and suddenly the lyrics seem to speak to you when before they were nothing more than pleasant but gooey sounds to move your mouth to and hopelessly garble from time to time, and before you know it you’re writing blog posts quoting song lyrics that aren’t hiply oblique (e.g. Can’t catch me, I’m syntax free - “The Ineffable Me”, Sonic Youth) like they’re supposed to be in order to meet the indie coolness criteria, but they really are speaking to you, they really are…)

And you are such a fool
To worry like you do
I know it’s tough
And you can never get enough
Of what you don’t really need now

During Benediction I was more distracted than I should have been, mulling over various mull-issues, thinking maybe what I needed was to get out of the house, maybe go to a movie by myself, maybe Amelie for feelgoodness. Found out after Benediction (the organ playing was relatively hitch-free, hooray) that Alec was thinking of seeing it too, tagged along with him. Liked it a lot but didn’t absolutely love it - a little too many shots of Audrey Tautou being gamine, which got mildly tiresome after the initial charm wore off, but I did enjoy many of its other little touches: the jet-setting garden gnome, the bullied artichoke-caressing veggie stall helper, the girl at the centre of Renoir’s painting but not really there at all, the jealous ex-boyfriend cataloguing perceived flirtations (time-stamped) into his tape recorder.

Talking outside the pub after the movie, I realized with relief that I hadn’t actually become recently socially dysfunctional (which I’d been wondering about), I’d just gotten rather tired of group conversations with people I’d just met and needed one-on-one conversations that went beyond the polite, chirpy “How are YOU” barrier to recharge.

There was also the matter of the pig keychain which ballooned shit out of its arse, but you really just had to be there.

It’s just a moment
This time will pass

It did. I’m glad.

  October 12, 01 | Londoner Forever and Music Geekery | Closed
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