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February 1st, 2009
08:19 pm
My last entry seems silly now. :)
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I came home for the weekend and watched the Ayr game (2-2 v Raith) and spent about a million hours in Harleys and now today I loaded up the car with all my books and guitars and stuff. I suppose most of it will lie around unused for the next six months, but the mentality is what's important. I have no intention of ever living here with my parents again, therefore I shouldn't leave any of my possessions here.
I took the dog for a walk earlier. It has grown so quickly. It is still cute, obviously, but it doesn't make women stop in the street and go "awwwwwwwwwww!" anymore. Which is a pity.
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January 29th, 2009
12:57 am
Liverpool are returning to normal again, after getting their shit together for just long enough for me to start believing in them. We are good at pinning teams in their own half for huge swathes of a game, but we tend to just form a line about 40 yards from goal and pass it from side to side approximately 1379432 times before either kicking it straight at the nearest defender or over everyone's head and out of play. If we do manage to score, we somehow make it look like an incredible fluke, and then we make up for it by giving away a needless set-piece equaliser in the last few minutes. It is painful, but strangely reassuring at the same time.
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January 24th, 2009
12:46 am
Today has been colossally dull, even by my standards. I spent about three hours sewing (I bought this enormous macintosh the other week, it is pretty awesome, but it swamped me a bit, like most clothes tend to, so I had to try to make alterations) and then I spent what could have been another three hours watching never mind the buzzcocks repeats and sky sports news. Now I am at the library looking at google images of Bratislava, Budapest and other beautiful Eastern European cities in which I do not live. I don't have any money, you see.
I should probably make more use of the library actually. I won't be allowed in after I graduate, and there are lots of books here.
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Blimey, what a banal entry. "I've not done much. This library has books in it." I shouldn't go so spectacularly to pieces just because, for one weekend, I am unable to get embarrassingly drunk or go to see any pretentious Ukrainian-with-subtitles films or whatever.
Current Mood: self-pity
Current Music: neon neon
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January 14th, 2009
11:23 am
I am in my office for the first time in ages. I get to read through the exam papers of about 350 students from first year Science Fundamentals 06/07 in order to familiarise myself with students' level of understanding of the course, for my research project. (Their level of understanding isn't particularly high.) I am lucky to have access to these as the uni has started destroying people's old exam scripts so that they can't apply to see them under the freedom of information act and contest the result they were given.
It was Marc's 21st last weekend, he had a little party and then we went to see the Ayr - Kilmarnock game (9/10). Ayr scored a last minute equaliser, it ended 2-2. I have a vague affinity for Ayr United since they are my local team and all, but I have discovered I have an irrational yet SEETHING hatred for Kilmarnock.
If I should ever happen to die suddenly, please do not hack into any of my social networking accounts and turn them into a shrine with a youtube video of The Fray and a wall where everyone can leave "tributes". kthxbye.
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January 7th, 2009
04:37 pm
Happy New Year!
I am back at uni already. I graduate this year, but I don't have things like a "chosen field" or a "set of transferable skills" or whatever else you need to succeed in the world, and I will be graduating in the middle of a gigantic recession. I suppose I've no real desire to succeed in the world anyway (full of twats, innit) but I shouldn't rule out the possibility that one day I might want to stop acting like Holden Caulfield and maybe try a bit to become rich and successful (I imagine probably around the time my student loan repayments kick in). Next year I'll have to take whatever measly job I can get (I have read scare stories about hundreds of graduates all fighting tooth and nail for one available job which isn't even that great and could be done by someone without a degree) and in the evenings I can do my TEFL course and learn another language. Then the year after that I can go and live somewhere else....
But whatever. Today lovefilm sent me Last Year at Marienbad and Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten. They had been slacking lately because of the Christmas post and because The Village (3/10) had somehow made it onto my wanted list, but this is a return to form. Last night I went to see Fears of the Dark (8/10), which was a whole load of French, animated, short films glued together. Then I went to the pub to read the paper and gaze longingly at people who have friends to go to the pub with... (only joking).
Current Location: uni library
Current Mood: 5/10
Current Music: elvis costello
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December 24th, 2008
01:50 pm
San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run... but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant...
History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of 'history' it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.
My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights — or very early mornings — when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour... booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turnoff to take when I got to the other end... but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: no doubt at all about that...
There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning...
And that, I think, was the handle — that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn't need that. Our energy would simply PREVAIL. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave...
So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.
I went to see Gonzo: The Life and Work of Doctor Hunter S. Thompson at the GFT last night. It was an awesome film, two hours flew by, and everyone burst into applause when it ended. He lived an incredible life and I was brutally confronted with the mediocrity of my own.
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Luckily the Mitchell is still open even though it's Christmas Eve. Christmas is a massive inconvenience actually, the last thing I want to do now is squeeze onto some packed train and spend another week or whatever in Prestwick.
Current Location: mitchell library
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December 23rd, 2008
04:31 pm
I did my Christmas shopping in Glasgow today. Who would have thought Cliff Richard could be the soundtrack to COMPLETE ANARCHY AND CHAOS?
I got my little sister the Twilight books, which saddened me as Twilight is the first "youth craze" (or whatever) there has been that I have only heard about via radio four. This is a sure sign that I am getting old.
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December 18th, 2008
06:32 pm
Finally in the new flat. It is nice, but it is small and the whole place shakes a bit every time an underground train leaves from Charing Cross station. It is situated right in the middle of everything, so it is no longer excusable for me to ever stay at home all night playing football manager.
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December 11th, 2008
11:02 pm
I had a bit of a panic today because some debt collector from Kilmarnock (where else?) threatened to come and re-possess all my belongings if I didn't pay some council tax bill. Students don't even pay council tax, it was clearly some sort of misunderstanding with no real need to panic, but I suppose the idea of someone re-possessing all your belongings is a bit terrifying. Would you kill them? I mean, what sort of person works as a bailiff anyway?
Er, anyway, then I went to the bookshop, just to show that I can do that even on days when it isn't necessarily the Christmas night out with the free all you can eat Chinese buffet. (That was last week.) And then I got sleepy and came home. I think I will be able to move in to the flat on Monday. That is nice.
I have to go to another funeral tomorrow.
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December 9th, 2008
10:07 pm
I still don't have the keys for the flat yet. I don't know when I will get them. Which is crap, as at the very least I would like to be able say "I will only have to do this (however many) more times" when I am dragging myself out of bed three hours before my lecture even starts or when I am getting the last bus home and it's going through Kilmarnock...
I was going to watch the football at Flanagans, but then I thought "I'll have to go by myself, and people from school will probably be there" so I watched it at home instead. (Liverpool won.) Then I took my brother's dog for a walk. I observed that it was extremely cold, but that the stars were particularly visible and that roughly 80% of people who live in Prestwick seem to spend their nights sitting on the sofa watching TV with their curtains open.
I have been living with my parents for almost five months now.
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December 8th, 2008
02:27 am
I hate not being able to sleep. I could carry shopping home in the bags under my eyes and I am incapable of a single coherent thought. :(
Current Music: A Conscious Life - Aerogramme
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November 21st, 2008
01:42 pm
I was a bit drunk when I did last night's entry, I think.
Anyway, this weekend I will be writing 8,000 words introducing the aims and context of my research project "Development of Interactive Teaching Resources for Undergraduate Chemistry" which is due on Monday. They gave me ten weeks and my own office to do all this in, but I misused them both and now I am dealing with the consequences.
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I woke up this morning to my mum shouting at the care commission inspector. She has quit her job as a childminder. I think instead she's going to do an open university course. I think she's having a midlife crisis.
Current Music: Andrew Bird "measuring cups"
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November 20th, 2008
11:42 pm
Went to see Youthmovies earlier. They were pretty good, I guess. The support act was a guy called Adam Gnade, who sounded a bit like the way Jack Kerouac probably would have done if he'd written songs instead of books. Music can give words a poignancy they otherwise lack. "Bruce was right and Johnny was wrong, we weren't born to die, we were born to run" probably sounds a bit silly to you the reader, but it made me a bit tingly earlier. I was all "that's RIGHT! i WAS born to run! i am a coldhearted globeroaming motherfucker with no emotional attachments to anything! if i wanted, i could go to london or bratislava or portland, oregon TOMORROW" etc etc etc. Which clearly is silly, but such were the poignancy of the words at the time.
Er, anyway. Then I went to my grandma's writing club last night. There was a massive argument about whether or not it's okay to change from the present tense to the past tense mid-paragraph, and a slightly smaller one about the correct way to use semi-colons when making a list. Amazing scenes. Arguments usually started with people saying things like "one of the things MY PUBLISHER told me is that most PUBLISHERS really don't like it when you..." but it was interesting all the same. They criticise each other's work and share little bits of advice, eg you can send a one-line joke to 118118 (for when they text people numbers. they like to include a short joke) and for every joke they use they give you £30.
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Jo has a new (sort of but apparently not actual) boyfriend. He looks like Ole Gunnar Solksjaer, except with long curly ginger hair. It is literally unbelievable. Normally I get really jealous about new boyfriends and all, but this is probably worse because it seems she doesn't even care who she is with, she would just rather be with absolutely anyone anywhere than be with me. But whatever.
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November 12th, 2008
09:55 pm
I haven't updated in AGES. The longer I go without updating, the more spectacular I feel my silence-breaking entry ought to be and the more embarrassing my complete lack of news becomes.
My brother has bought a puppy, a golden retriever which eats my cardigans and pisses everywhere. He calls it Ben, but if people ever ask its name when I am out walking it or whatever I think I will have to invent something slightly better. Orwell, perhaps. Or Torres. For Halloween we dressed up as characters from A Clockwork Orange. (I was the one with the beret.) I finally found a flat in Glasgow, right next to the Mitchell Library, and won't have to go through with this ridiculous 7.40am bus to uni from my parent's house charade for much longer. Right next to the Mitchell Library is a pretty awesome place to live actually. My local will be The Avalon.
I am currently reading Lanark by Alasdair Gray. It is meant to be the greatest Scottish book ever written. (If I were in the bookshop I'd probably make a "funny joke" about how it has since been eclipsed by Christopher Brookmyre's Boiling A Frog or something.)
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I don't like Harry Redknapp.
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October 20th, 2008
05:38 pm
I am typing this from my very own office! I've no idea why they think it's necessary or a sensible use of resources, but uni have given me an office to do my research project in. It has a computer, a telephone, a whiteboard, various chairs and textbooks, and all sorts of drawers and cabinets which I can lock. It also has some bottles of strangely coloured liquids. The window looks on to the Western Infirmary car park. No more communal lockers or queues for computers in the library for me! Best of all, people can now write letters to me at: Andrew Carmichael, Room A5-21, Department of Chemistry, Joseph Black Building, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ.
This is probably the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me.
Current Location: office
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/moonsis/happy.gif) excited
Current Music: semifinalists
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September 22nd, 2008
07:56 pm
My brother tried to break into the house yesterday because he was drunk and had forgotten his key. He broke a window and tried to climb through. Blood everywhere. A&E.
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I went back to uni today. I don't have a flat yet because I spent all my money going round Europe, so for now I will have to get the bus every morning. One of my tutors from last year became "suddenly ill" and died over the summer. Which is a bit of a shock since he was really young - 30 at most.
My student email account was full of stuff like this:
Hi,
The C.H.N. analyser which I thought would be up and running this week, is still not working. there is an engineer coming to look at it on Monday, so hopefully it will be working by next week. At this moment I just want to cry.
Kim
I do not want a career in Chemistry because I don't want to run the risk of one day becoming emotionally attached to a piece of lab equipment. (And because I am crap at it. I don't have the faintest idea what a C.H.N. even is.)
Current Music: pavement
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September 14th, 2008
11:07 pm
I shouldn't get angry about things people say on the internet, and I definitely shouldn't rant about them on my journal. I'm sorry. I found Speak You're Branes, where they collect some of the ridiculous things people say on Have Your Say or in reply to online newspaper articles, and make fun of them so that you don't need to get angry.
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I am currently being pestered by my pregnant fifteen year old neighbour who wants me buy cigarettes for her. She is wasting her time though, because Spar refuse to serve me now that all my valid photo ID has all been stolen and I have to get my little brother to go in for me.
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September 7th, 2008
07:00 pm
I almost hope the world does end on Wednesday (when they switch on the large hadron collider), so sick I am of hearing "OMG STOP THE CRAZY SCIENTISTS I DON'T WANT TO DIE". It makes me sad/angry that so many otherwise intelligent (I'm sure) people are so stupendously ignorant about science, and that people who are trying to explain the formation of the universe(!) can be treated with such hostility: "Nobody has explained what practical benefit this very expensive experiment has for mankind apart from satisfying scientists unending curiosity" comments Peter from Worthing on the Times Online article (where there is a vast array of equally ridiculous comments). If you aren't unendingly curious, you are a MORON.
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Er, so anyway. Last night I dreamt I had to get my tonsils removed but the anaesthetic didn't work and I was awake whilst doctors stuck tubes in me and carved them out, and then afterwards I lost the ability to talk. It was possibly the scariest dream I have ever had.
I am really struggling to find something interesting from my life in the last few days to mention here. I have just been "hanging out" or whatever they call it.
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September 1st, 2008
10:02 pm
Yawn. I made a to-do list for tomorrow. It includes things like "phone the insurance people" and "phone the student loans people" and "phone the bank". It's great to be home. On the bright side, I suppose, it doesn't include "watch the Liverpool game" or "walk up a hill with my mum"....
Current Location: prestwick
Current Mood: ![[mood icon]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/mood/moonsis/sad.gif) bored
Current Music: sleater-kinney
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August 30th, 2008
05:16 am
It's 5.16am here. I just walked to the train station in the dark, and queued up outside with all the homeless people (yes, Sweden has homeless people, just like it has criminals) because the doors were still locked when I got here. It was a nice walk, though I don't know where the idea that it's only British people who get really drunk and piss in fountains and have fights at bus stops and cover city centres with a carpet of kebab wrappers comes from.
I haven't really walked round anywhere at night in all the places I've been, mostly because I've always been so exhausted that I've never had trouble sleeping. There are other things I regret not doing, and I don't feel I gave any of the places I've been to the attention they merit, but it's silly to complain because three weeks is hardly any time at all and this was bound to be the case.
The sun is rising. I'll be home in... 9 hours' time. :)
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