Blogginski...

Right here we go…

My plan to try and write a blog every week and the failure of such plan borders on the modern internet writing cliché. As does the following excuses; I’m lazy, stupid, busy, boring and incompetent. And while we are in the realm of the lack of blogging excuses I actually have plans, notes and research for three blogs. But this is not one of them because I am currently snowed under by university work and the blame for this can be fragmented on to myself, university and my slow brain. However my slow brain is a result of television, social media and my dyslexic genes, so the last fragment of blame can be put on modern society and my genetic history a.k.a my family.

Now some may say this blogging for blogging’s sake is pointless and procrastination, I beg to differ. This blog is hopefully a reflection of my mind at current and therefore, is not pointless, as it is recording my own little part of history. I’m also using this blog as a release, as a method of contemplation after a day filled with spontaneous cleaning (that is I admit procrastination) and actual, real life, several hours of studying. Although reading about Marx and weber and desperately trying to relate them into a piece on the relationship between religion and the world of work feels like simultaneous mind melting and implosion.  

Anyway enough about me, how have you been?.............. Really?....... Wow that’s interesting. So did you hear about those university of California students who got pepper sprayed in the face while staging a peaceful protest in support of the global occupy movement? Did you watch the truly horrifying video footage? Did you sign the petition calling for the university chancellor who called in the police to resign? No? Well here it is. Please sign it if you’re a student, a teacher, a peaceful person or even just a decent human being!

http://www.change.org/petitions/police-pepper-spray-peaceful-uc-davis-students-ask-chancellor-katehi-to-resign

Well I hope this example of human brutality keeps your beautiful mind clicking for a while. But don’t forget what you do for yourself, those around you and your fellow human being matters. It means the world.

P.S I don’t think of myself as a socialist hippy, honest. Even though the popular media might have you think so, I like to think of myself as a decent but not perfect human being… BTW OCCUPY! FTW!!! Init.

Egos, confessions and warring corporations

Even the doctor is worried about my socialist soal

So I have a confession to make. My last blog wasn’t entirely written for the purpose of actually being a blog. It was written as an article to hopefully be featured in a newsletter for a survey company called The Student Panel, I know what you’re thinking, “sell out”, “ass kisser”, “cog in the machine”. But in my defence I posted the article as my first blog post for several brilliant (in my mind) and credible reasons.

1.       I honestly thought I hadn’t been chosen and so with my ego this size it is I thought it would be a shame if it was never posted in some shape or form.

2.       I’ve wanted to start a blog for some time, but didn’t really know what I should write about for my first post.

3.       I thought the article was a good piece of writing (my ego again) and it touched on a few interesting topics. Of which I now realise is only really relevant to people who have been, are at and are applying to go to university, which is about a couple of million at a best guess in a country of about 70 million.

4.       I liked the idea that my first blog would feature anti-bacterial cleaning products, a Russian gas mask, traffic cones, a life in the boot of a car and obligatory STI’s.

Now a few days after I posted the blog in that rejected, needed to reaffirm my ego mood. I decided to look for the newsletter online to see, and I quote, “which lucky git, who can apparently write a better article than me, won the rubbish, pointless, mildly degrading newsletter of the month competition complete with a £50 cheque stained with the blood of advertiser’s victims?” So through the power of an unnamed popular search engine, you know the one which owns that popular video community site and will eventually take over the world only after going to cyber and nuclear war with a certain tech company who has a fruit based corporate logo, convinces a significant amount of the world’s population that if they buy their overpriced products they are being creative and different and has more working capital than the united states government.

I found the newsletter through said overlord search engine and at first found it odd that there was a picture of me  (penny in the air), and a link to my piece as article of the month and a big £50 sign next to my face. It was then as they say ‘the penny dropped’. My article had been published at first attempt! I even had an E-mail waiting for me to confirm that I had been chosen to be published as article of the month and that I was due a glorious, unstained, liberating £50 cheque. Needless to say, my ego engorged, I bounced around the room and attempted to fit my head through the door to tell someone, anyone.

So there you are my confession is that although I started out as an independent blogger, writing for writings sake and for ever who would read it, and for whoever felt like rubbing my well known ego by leaving a comment. I am actually now paid and published (albeit a small publication online) and am now aspiring to be a journalist at the end of my completely unrelated degree course and looking for any freelance writing work that I can get my grubby little hands on. I am now justifying and clarifying my writing philosophy U-turn with the statement ‘if your good at something, never do it for free’. Now that won’t be quite true because I will be keeping up with this blog at least once a week, but I’d be lying if I said that practicing my writing and having something to show prospective publishers and editors wasn’t in the back of my mind.

But rest sured, I’d like to say to my single handful of readers and myself that I will be blogging about interesting, thought provoking, hopefully controversial, perhaps mildly egotistic and occasionally topical topics in the near future. Stay awesome.

TRTGA

“Freshers freshers everywhere, some are clothed but most are bare
Children of the night they are, with origins from a field afar
Happiest in costume and in the club shouting ’tuunnneee!’
And then meeting up, the morning after, at the local greasy spoon”…

As a second year, being a fresher already seems like a hazy memory. Those first tense and excitable moments as you arrive at University, your whole life seemingly squeezed into the back of a car. Meeting your new house/flat mates with nervous greetings and getting nervous replies in accents you’ve never had to decipher. Geordie, Brummie, Mancunian, Cockney, Scouse, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, you name it! At first this eclectic mix of regional tones can be confusing, and the thought of walking into a pub with these new acquaintances can seem like an old joke but you all soon blend together. That is until someone gets upset or drunk, or both. And then those funny sounds and odd slangs all come flooding back as if carried by pints of cheap beer and tipsy tears.

Accents will often crop up when meeting new people at University but nothing will divide you and your peers more and likely highlight the north-south divide, than the pronunciation of that classic afternoon tea confection, the scone. Is it scone as in throne? Or is it scone as in one? The answer is of course scone as in one, but don’t let this divide you, unless of course you take your pronunciation and confectionaries very seriously (which you should).

Now don’t worry if your new house/flat mates seem slightly…different. Everyone has weird habits and it will seem like you have been placed with several of the weirdest. But fear not, one of my own flat mates unashamedly likes to clean their hands with a certain all-purpose cleaning product that promises to kill 99.9% of bacteria. Another likes to eat cold bake beans out of the tin and one likes to wear Old Russian gas masks in the dark. And despite all this they are all really good friends.

As well as strange habits during your time as a fresher you might encounter the certain types of fresher. There is The Boss, who likes to organize group meetings and inform you of the do’s and don’ts of communal living. The Lad, who is an ultra-masculine character who is on the pull every night and the extent of conversation they are capable of, is the recent football and rugby scores, but you sense that this all might be to cover up their insecurity’s about their sexuality. The Blonde, paradoxically isn’t always blonde and isn’t always female but will have the looks of a model, the personality of a coat hanger and won’t know how a washing machine works, even after you show them. Then there is The Ghost, you won’t meet this person straight away, but you will hear them in the dead of night. Things will get moved about and you won’t know who or what moved them but it’s the Ghost.   

The Freshers period can be exciting, scary, exuberant and stressful. It’s a rite of passage, a chance to meet the best friends of your life, the first time to experience true freedom, which seems to come in the form of heavy drinking, hung-over lectures and avoiding the obligatory STIs. And although you may wake up some mornings thinking what the hell happened, or why you have seven traffic cones in your room freshers isn’t all about student stereotypes. You’re at University, so you’ve worked dam hard at your A-levels, which by the way you will have found harder than university will ever be. You want to do well, to fulfill your dreams and perhaps fulfill your parent’s dreams, so no pressure then! But you do want to have fun, and you should grasp these opportunities with both hands, the trick is knowing when to let go.

I must admit however being awoken by freshers in the street at 4 AM last week didn’t put me in the best mood, but I soon remembered that ‘freshers feeling’, and although the naivety and often blank faces lost in the library can be annoying, they can also be charming. At the end of the day freshers is to be enjoyed and if you survive, you’re probably stronger for it (or an educated alcoholic) and the memories and lessons gained during freshers will help keep off the urge to be crushed under library stacks when writing seemingly endless essays. It is a rite of passage to be tolerated by you and those around you and if we are all honest one that should be experienced by more than the currently ever dwindling privileged few of us that get to go to university.