Something very odd is happening...

Yeah, I know, it's been an age since my last blog, but get off my back! You're not the boss of me!

Ahem, so, yeah, something odd. That something, is that whenever I press the button for the green man at a pedestrian crossing in Brighton, I get an electric shock. Every, fucking time. I have to pull my jumper up over my hands, and even then, you can feel it, It's not a big one, like when you stick something in a plug socket, but it's more powerful than you get from like, a slide or whatever.

I have come up with 3 explanations for this:

1) My new shoes, maybe it's the soles, and they are like, grounded or something.
2) My new soap, handwash thing, maybe I'm coating my hands with an electrical current every time I wash my hands (which is probably the normal amount)
3) I am developing electricity-based superpowers, like Living Lightning, Electro, Storm or... umm... Lighting Lad. This could be the first steps towards be controlling an incredibly powerful elemental force.

Is this happening to anyone else? Maybe we could form some kind of team? Come on, it'll be fun.

Also, The Wire is amazing, truly, madly, deeply amazing. Buy the dvds younguns.

Apathy in the UK!

Sorry for the uninspired title there, but you see, I just couldn't bring myself to care enough to come up with something cool or witty.

Which is a very clever way to segue into my topic for this here blog. I'm just finding it difficult to care about anything really important. And I know this is probably the default state for all you uber cool terminally disaffected young people out there, but it's an uneasy thing for me. I used to always be able to muster up some enthusiasm about my coursework etc, even if I didn't say so, but... I have an assignment due on friday, I've almost finished it, but I just can't be bothered to do anything, I'm just sat here, typing away on a blog that was only set up for another assignment which I don't have to do anymore, as well as listening to songs I am ashamed of enjoying on Youtube and discussing comics.

It's even worse with course reading! I just skim it, so quickly that it's hardly skimming, more like hovercrafting it or something. (That's a thing, do Hovercrafts actually hover? To Wikipedia!) Bah.

And the weird thing is, in this assignment, I'm actually writing a bit about my own apathy! It's like a vicious circle of not caring, which can hardly be vicious can it?

Eep, this looks like a massive emo whinge doesn't it? I'm sure I'm just tired as it's the end of term, and I'll come back refreshed after Easter, raring to go like Martin Prince. So all is not lost, let's be happy.

In fact, I'll list some things that are making me happy at the moment.

Mad Men
LOST Season 4
Spider-Man Brand New Day
Sainsbury's Wine Gums
Booster Gold and the return of Blue Beetle
Ratatouille
Bleach

Hooray for nerdy interests, but you should all be watching Mad Men, it's on BBC4, which makes it cultured, not sad.

Oh, and the song I'm ashamed of listening to is the new song by Panic At The Disco (No ! anymore), goddamn it for being so catchy. I want to punch the lead singer's catchy face for making me not hate him as much.

See, even my hate for Panic has gone slightly. Curse you God for making me this way. :p

So yeah, the first blog back in Brighton.

But I haven't really done much at all these last 3 days, due to intense essay pressure, the furthest afield I have been is Sainsburys. But once I get this 4th and final essay done, hopefully by Friday, I will have like 3 whole weeks of freedom to do whatever the heck I like, to ramble, to explore, and to find something interesting to write about.

Or maybe I'll just sit inside watching dvds, reading, and perusing the internet while only leaving my room for food and alcohol.

It's an either/or at the moment.

Oh yeah, I considered writing a blog on the train from Leeds to Kings Cross, because of the immense wi-fi on there, but I didn't because I realised my last blog was all about trains, and I don't want people thinking I'm a trainspotter (the lame kind, not the cool Ewan McGregor junkie kind) or something. One thing though, the wi-fi linked me up to the German Google, and I'm pretty sure I wasn't in Germany. I suspect illegal activities on the part of GNER.

The Endgame

It's been over a month since my last post!

Shoddy on my part, this stuff is supposed to be regular, but... once a month is also regular. That's my excuse, and I am sticking with it.

So, I've been back in Leeds since the 14th of December, and go back to Brighty tomorrow (this is a play on 'back in blighty' not an odd nickname, I swear), and since this blog is tangentially related to experiences in a new town, I thought this could be a little comparison of things I've noticed here, in the north, and daaan saaaath.

First of all, it's much colder here, I didn't notice before, because I couldn't remember better, but I got off the train at Leeds, and was literally shivering to death. I literally died.

Also, the trains are better here, southern trains are a shambles compared the glory of Arriva Trains Northern. I feel terribly embarrassed whenever I get out my Young Person's Railcard and it has a big SOUTHERN RAILWAYS plastered across it, like the conductor is going to beat me up for being a shandy drinking wuss, "I'm only down there for Uni, please don't hurt me!" I scream, but to no avail. The conductors up here are also better, I saw one down south who looked about 12, had an ear-stud bigger than his ear, shaved lines in his hair and looked and spoke like he was still on a comedown from last night. Not encouraging, how could he stop a crash?

I feel like I'm focusing too much on trains, but everything else is the same, the homogenization of the high street, yadayadayadayada.

Oh, HMV in Brighton is crap compared to the Leeds one, but Virgin Megastores is the same high quality.

Informative.

Shoppípolla

Heh, check my Sigur Rós referencing skills. Can't touch dis.

So yeah, this blog is about shops, boutiques, markets, vendors, etc, and since when I went into town today, it was raining like hell, and there were loads and loads of puddles, and as everyone and their postman knows, Hoppípolla means 'jumping in puddles' in Icelandic, I have crafted an amazing pun. Go me.

I'd like to write about the independent type shops you get in Brighton, the trendy places in the North Laine and The Lanes, so I will. Do they intimidate anyone else? First of all, they look expensive, and the people who run them look too cool to even think I was a customer, which is probably beneficial to shoplifting, but not for my self-esteem. I kind of just look longingly in the windows, imagining myself wearing some chic ironic t-shirt, or a Hoodie with a magic-eye picture on it, and sigh. The only independent shops I can really stomach are Comic Shops (because wherever I go, the comic shop is my spiritual home, being surrounded by all the sequential goodness calms me, go to Dave's Comics in the North Laine bitches) and record shops, for the same reason, that and bargains. But both often suffer from too-trendy-clerkitis, how I admire people who talk to record shop employees at the counter, so brave!

So yeah, trendy shops scare me, so I must admit a cardinal young person sin, in that I often prefer chains, ooh, what a globalising, carbon footprint making bastard I am. But I just love Virgin Megastores (I refuse to call it Zavvi, REFUSE) and Borders, I could spend days in there, looking at things, and deciding not to by them because of my accursed conscience (of course, with all the chairs in Borders, you don't have to buy! wahey). I like HMV back in Leeds, but the one in Brighton is kind of shit, too messy, and carpeted floor, eeww, it needs 2 floors.

As for clothes, I'm a TK Maxx fan, the prices of say, Matalan, but with brand names, so I look like at least have a clue about fashion (which I don't). Primark, too is a cheapskate's dream.

Hooray for Consumerism, and hooray for me.

Witness my artistic glory.

Time to showcase some of my computery made stuff and that from the course.

First up, a Photoshop job of Darth Vader in some fire, I think I did a good job making this look quite good when it's really very simple, I am particularly proud of how the cape looks all burnt away, and the subtle red tint and blur on Darth and the background. I imagine he's not a big fan of the stuff after the end of Episode 3, painful stuff.



Second of all, the Illustrator Octopus. This reminds me of either the logo of the fictional Marvel Comics terrorist organisatio Hydra, which looks like this, Or a weird octopus logo from one of the many Demon Headmaster sequels, where it was a method of hypnosis. Anyway, here is my Octopus;



Deadly Sea Creatures indeed.

I'm on the Bus!

Today, I'd like to talk about Buses.

Now, I'm not a big fan of Buses, more of a train man myself, but since Buses are so ubiquitous in Brighton, I feel I should discuss them. Not so much the act of using the Bus, since I've only tooken them 3 times since I've been here (But compared to the fact that I took the Bus the same amount of times in 5 years in Leeds, and only because I desperately had to, makes it seem like I'm a bus addict or something else completely ridiculous), although what's the deal with those TV screens inside the Bus? They just show random shots of inside and out, and when you're drunk, it's quite unsettling.

No, I'm more interested in what's plastered on the sides of the Bus, those massive photos of supposed Brighton residents and they're reason for being 'ON THE BUS', as I like to walk into town, and there's literally 8 buses a minute, I have seen loads of these, and have become so sad as to have chosen a favourite (It's Stephanie Starlet, not that I'm into that sort of thing, but it just sums up this city perfectly, where else would emblazon their public transport with giant pictures of Transvestites? You wouldn't get that in Bradford), but I have began to regard these with suspicion, I reckon they are all actors, I have never seen one of them around town, and if they supposedly get the bus so much, I'm bound to have recognised them.

But maybe the pressure of fame that comes from being a Bus Mascot has ruined these poor people's lives? And they are forced to remain indoors, scared to go out, lest some berk bellows 'OI! AINTCHU SPOSED TA BE ONNABUS?'

The poor, poor, souls.


It serves them right for selling out and becoming slaves for a corporate fatcat Bus company owner! Or something else student cliche.

Just don't get me started on the oh so clever slogans on the back of the bus. Ugh, they must run on Smug.