lollypalooza. like drinking a mug of tea through your eyes.

It was the hottest day of the year 1999, but Adam was most definitely not partying. Adam was a thirteen-year-old acned and bespectacled teenager, and Adam was bored.

He wanted to ring Rob. Rob would know what to do. But Rob was still grounded from the last time they had both gotten ‘bored’ and attempted to drive Rob’s dad’s car. It had quite literally ended in tears. Rob’s dad’s tears.

Adam felt like doing something productive. His mother was always telling him to ‘do something productive’, so why not start now? After all, she got to where she was now by ‘being productive’.

Where exactly that was though, Adam was unsure. His mother described herself as ‘the journalist for the people’, but Adam got the impression that that wasn’t really a thing.  He decided to investigate.

He knew where his mother kept her old articles, and so he snuck into her room and climbed onto a chair to reach the upper shelves of her wardrobe. I’ll just read one article, and then I’ll be inspired! He thought. He didn’t know why she kept them hidden away anyway, if she was so eager for him to follow in her footsteps. He was very mature. Everyone knew that adulthood began at thirteen anyway. He picked a paper at random, closed the wardrobe, and took it to his room. Settling himself down for a motivational experience, he found the marked page in the newspaper, and began to read the circled columns.

Dear Dorothy*,

I’ve been too scared to admit this for a long time, but I think my husband might be having an affair. We have been married for 22 years (22 blissful years) but recently he hasn’t been behaving like himself. He does nothing but read the Telegraph and refuses to eat meat. Not only that, I found a tooth on his bedside table. It’s not one of his, and it certainly isn’t one of mine. I don’t know what to do. Please help.

From
Anxious, Somerset

Dear Anxious

I’m very sorry to hear about your predicament. A friend of mine actually went through something very similar not too long ago. But her story ended very gruesomely and so we shan’t delve into it now. 

Have you considered taking the tooth in for examination? Though you must be awfully frightened, there is no need to jump to conclusions at this point in time. What makes you so sure that it is not your husband’s tooth? It is always possible that the tooth may belong to him, and that as a result of the distress of it falling out, he is avoiding tough, chewy meats, and reading copious amounts in order to replace the tooth-breaking foods with some ‘food for thought’. That, or he is involved in sexual relations with a female colleague, and is acting out some kind of sick and twisted Tooth Fairy fetish.

Either way you should probably just ask him. If you are too meek to do so, do write again and I will be able to put you in touch with some excellent dental radiographers.

Dear Dorothy*,[1] 

I was just wondering if you had any tips for me to spice up my sex life. My partner and I were interested in trying something wild and crazy, and were wondering what you would suggest.

From

Frisky, Nuneaton

Dear Frisky,

Thank you for your letter! Let me give you a detailed list of the things my husband and I have tried

‘Spare some change, miss?’

I whirled round, surprised, sure that I recognised the voice. A man sat there elegantly cross-legged. Sure enough, it was Ainsley Harriott.

‘Ainsley Harriott!’ I said.

He grinned nervously, embarrassed to be recognised. ‘Spare some change darlin’?’

‘But Ainsley!’ I said.

By my misfortune, I had no spare change that day, but I told him to open his mouth, and as he did I popped my last wine gum in by way of an apology. ‘Why aren’t you on the telly Ainsley?’ I asked, closing his mouth for him. He had such soft skin.

‘It’s all a rota system love,’ he said, while chewing.

‘What is?’ I said, wishing I had more wine gums left.

‘The meals they cook. It’s all done on a rota, between me, the chefs, the guests, the crew, and the audience that day. I had my turn a few months back. We’re not allowed to eat anything else, so’s we appreciate the flavours all the more and do that annoying thing where we talk with our mouths full. I haven’t eaten in 230 days.’

‘You poor thing!’ I said, chuckling.

He smiled ruefully and nodded, surprisingly (or perhaps, unsurprisingly) still chewing.

‘Ta-ra Ainsley’, I said, and kissed him on the ear.

‘Ta-ra,’ he replied, spitting out the remains of the wine gum and placing them gingerly in a handkerchief. Saving them for later probably, I thought, and skipped off down the motorway.

19/9/2012

BOY
anyway, i’m off too bed
night xx

YOU
cooooool! night night :) 
xx

15 minutes goes past and he is still online. Why did you put so many Os in ‘cool’? Are you ILL? Get a hold of yourself. 
Probably just a Facebook glitch. He’ll be fast asleep by now, dreaming of you HA HA NOT REALLY BUT I WISH HE WAS SO BAD THO!
You shouldn’t have matched his kiss number either. Makes it look like you were tryna SAY summin’. Should’ve put one. Nah, not one… one looks like you’re trying to be coy, screams that you’re playing hard to get. Should’ve put three. NO, not three, what are you, some kind of slut? Noooo thank you.

He’s still online.

You click on his profile. Anything new? Nothing new. Check out a few photos. He looks goooood there. What are you doing? Stop this.

What was that funny thing he said earlier? Haha let me read the whole conversation and check

YOU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGtqDKiCy_c

BOY
haha wehre do you find this stuff

YOU
i have my sources

BOY
ha

YOU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGPErSMhqMM

BOY
anyway, i’m off too bed
night xx

YOU
cooooool! night night :) 
xx

Hmm. Maybe it was a different day.

Tum tee tum. 

He’s still online.

Yep, still online.

It’s been 25 minutes WHY IS HE STILL ONLINE?

Should you say something? No, don’t be silly. How stalkerish. What could you possibly say without coming across insane.

Well, you could say something stupendously witty.

Tum tee tum…

OK SO OPTIONS

1) You there?

2) What are you still doing up!

3) Hi ;)

4) Thought you were going ‘too bed’ you dishonest illiterate fucktoad

5) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAfd4Myulno

You decide to go with 1). Maybe 5) when he responds

YOU
You there?

You wait a moment without breathing.

BOY is offline.

• tip 5: most people are very boring. make friends with interesting people by avoiding people who use vowels in speech

• tip 4: no one likes a needy friend. homeless people survive on very little, so make good and effortless long term companions
• tip 3: need a lift somewhere and you lack the intelligence to drive a vehicle? valets drive for a living, make them your chums and they’ll drive you down friendship highway all year round
• tip 2: we all feel peckish sometimes! choose a friend with nice tasting flesh in case you’ve got no pasta or other carbohydrates in your cupboards
• tip 1: WHITE LOAFERS. anyone who doesn’t own a pair of white loafers is sure to be an imbecile, so make sure to gun down anyone you see without. then you’ll be left with the cream of the crop! friendship party alert!!

do the end slices of bread get upset that they’re always left behind

do laptops get complacent if you always have them on charge

do wasps get irritated when they keep flying into windows

why do black females wear blusher?

56 days isn’t really that long when you think about. it’s basically the length of the spring term i just had at uni. but if i had to spend it in prison, i’m pretty sure i’d think differently. i wonder what it’d be for. the crime of being too cool, is that a thing? maybe i’d get locked up because my aura literally stopped traffic. like, to the point that it cause accidents. and so it would be a national safety kind of thing. but i’m getting off-topic. liam stacey’s been jailed for 56 days, basically for being an idiot. 

racially-motivated idiocy, yes, but being an idiot all the same. he said some very silly and very horrible things on twitter. (which of course, no one does, ever) 

tweeting isn’t the equivalent of shouting out loud, no matter how long you leave caps lock on for. if liam (first name terms, because everyone on twitter seems to think that they know him well enough to be able to judge the outcome of his life) had run onto the pitch and shouted:

 

… then things would be very different, and i wouldn’t be writing this. 

according to the telegraph’s ed west:
’Liam Stacey gets 56 days in jail for tweeting. When race becomes an issue, all sense goes out of the window.‘ 

… which isn’t quite right either, is it. firstly, if people got put in jail for tweeting, prisons would be overrun with pre-pubescent girls sitting in the corners of their cells, rocking back and forth singing ‘baby, baby, baby, ooh’ off-key. but that’s not how the world works. secondly, tweeting REGARDING race doesn’t send you to prison either. because then dianne abbott would be in prison too. which she isn’t. and she hasn’t been fired either. rightly so. but that’s a separate argument. liam stacey is in jail because for SOME reason, which i couldn’t tell you, people took his idiocy seriously. 

if i took seriously all the racially-motivated idiocy i’m exposed to on a daily basis, i wouldn’t have time to sit in my room all day drinking ginger beer and painting my nails (God forbid). the guy who called me ‘alexandra burke’ on brighton pier last year isn’t in jail is he? no. fair enough he wasn’t aggressive, he didn’t swear, and no one else heard him but me. but i took offence - for one thing, my hair ain’t no weave, y’all! mmhmm!

agreed, brighton-man wasn’t inciting racial hatred, but genuinely (and of course i’ll never know) i really really doubt that liam stacey is a racist. like, really. if he was as angry towards black people as his over-zealous use of exclamation marks suggests, i doubt he’d be sitting at home TWEETING about it. come on guys. there are worse things he could do. see: george zimmerman.

like the whole suarez thing, and even the whole kony thing - i think it was just a chance for people to step onto their teeny little twitter platforms and proclaim: “HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GUY? WHAT A JEBEND. I WOULD NEVER DO SUCH A THING. BECAUSE I’M NOT RACIST”

“what? he’s at UNIVERSITY? kick him out! education and diversity is DEFINITELY NOT WHAT HE NEEDS RIGHT NOW!”

“matter of fact, lock him up! out of context, it would be strange for me to over-state how racially compassionate i am on a daily basis, but this is the perfect opportunity for me to look liberal and perhaps even make some new black friends!”

i failed to see much genuine compassion for muamba’s family or anyone honestly offended by liam’s tweets, because the today’s trend ‘Liam Stacey’ was overrun with tweets as delightful as:

and

nice, guys, real nice. basically your wishing rape on another human being. that’s pretty cool i guess. unless of course, you were only joking?

i don’t doubt that for certain individuals (muamba’s family for example) the tweets were horrid. horrific. horrible. but i’m basically trying to say that they don’t matter. sticks and stones and all that. for me, liam stacey’s tweets were the equivalent of an annoying radio dj. (see: glenn beck’s radio show) disgusting in some ways, but turn it off and then it’s not there anymore. hey, presto. 

“he can’t go round saying stuff like that!!”

why not? it’s called free speech for a reason. not ‘free speech unless you are racially offensive in which case GO TO JAIL’

56 days might not seem like a long time, but spending it in prison for half an hour of computer-based stupidity REALLY REALLY is. it baffles me the number of people on social networking sites who are quick to dismiss people like liam stacey (and suarez, and kony) as HASHTAGSCUM and HASHTAGVILE, but who do as much to combat racism and injustice as liam did to provoke it: sitting behind a computer screen.

p.s. does anyone want to sign my petition? i’ve been called gamu, rachel adedeji, alexandra burke and misha b in the last 6 months and i think it’s just disgusting. people shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this. BAN FREE SPEECH

- various letters from Loughborough University students, regarding popular music trends.
 

I’ve been told I’m like the Jeremy Clarkson of music expertise. Obviously I am not one to paddle down the mainstream and so I don’t know who that is. However I’m sure I’d be right to assume that he educates his fanbase with a unique blend of wit and knowledge, providing an uplifting and enlightening outlook on the human condition.
- L.

Hey L! What did you think of this week’s X Factor?

Jamie, Nuremberg

Hello Jamie. It’s funny that you ask! Unfortunately (or rather, fortunately, SNORT) I did not watch X Factor this week. Last week my housemate switched it on and I was so overcome with rage that I punched the glass out of our television set. Later that evening I painted a picture of a cow on its way to a slaughterhouse and stuck it where the glass used to be. (I’m sure I don’t need to explain that the cow represented real music and the slaughterhouse to which it trudged illustrated its killer; namely X Factor/Simon Cowell/Uri Gellar.

Hallo L! Who are your favourite band? :P

Chloe, Leicester

I’m slightly confused as to why you think that is a cheeky or innuendo-laced question, as indicated by your use of emoticon. Luckily for you I’ve decided to ignore it and not pre-judge you as a vacuous or uninteresting individual. For your information, my favourite band are a little-known collective by the name of The Beetles (not to be confused with the artist formerly known as Prince). They play pre-post-past dubstep mixed with vampire acoustic house, infused with Cuban influences that are reminiscient of 15^th century Shrewsbury. Check them out on BandCamp (because SoundCloud is too mainstream).

Dear L,

I’m really into artists like Ed Sheeran, Adele and Ellie Goulding. Can you recommend me some new music along similar lines?

Sophie R., Waterways

Evening Sophie. I recommend you pour sizzling hot pig fat into your ears; I am confident that you will experience a similar sensation. Take care.

Hello L

What was the last gig you saw?

Jayson Dehullio, Storer Road

How do you do Jayson? Interestingly, I have stopped going to see live music as I know I will undeniably be surrounded by crowds of hedonistic, over-sexed youth. I don’t know about you, but I remember the good old days of MTV. When you could switch on the tellybox and be content with the vision of Sunday School children performing Handel symphonies on hand-made glockenspiel. Saying that, last week a man on the platform at Cockfosters performed the national anthem by whistling through the holes in his mouth where some of his teeth used to be, and I have to say it was rather rousing indeed.

Dear L,

I’m going on a first date with a guy and I want to impress him by taking him to see a cool and indie gig so that he’ll know I’m cool and indie. What do you suggest?

Jezebel, Granville Street

Morning Jezebel, you’re looking very… healthy. To you I say this - if you insist on creating a false persona for this unsuspecting fellow who probably deserves much better, go right ahead. However if your conscience ever decides to rear its ugly head, first tell it to wear less make-up, and then listen to it when it tells you to consider staying in tonight and thinking about your principles.

Right ‘L’. What makes you think that you know so much about, as you call it, ‘real’ music, that you should be provided with such a platform to preach? In all honesty I think that you are an embarrassment to true music fans everywhere.

Norris McWhirter, David Collett Hall

Dear Norris. It’s funny you ask that, I asked myself the same thing once. Luckily I quickly realized how foolish such a question was, and released a hearty guffaw. For those whose brains are yet to catch up with what their hearts are telling them: I am one of the few in this vicinity who can give your souls key that opens the gate that surrounds the palace that is the home to my treasure chest of musical knowledge. You’re welcome.

Facebook is a weapon the self-indulgent youth use in the war against reality. True, I was one once, but I feel I’ve grown enough to look back and laugh at how much time I spent on it, how much effort we ALL put into it, how much meaning we gave to it. It’s a virtual life; we laugh at people who obsess over SecondLife but we’re doing the same thing ourselves. Rather than complaining or bragging about the things we want to do or have done, why don’t we just do them and LET IT BE?

p.s. It’s pretty good for easy communication though I guess.

p.p.s. I will probably be spending all my time on Twitter and tumblr from now on.

x

9/1/2012

edit: 27/3 i’ve been forced to reactivate due to pressure from governments.* (*friends who are too lazy to RING ME ONCE IN A WHILE, YOU GUYS!)