Pile on!

I had envisioned a quiet weekend. I was going to get some bottles and sit in with Seven Samurai on Friday. I can't imagine what would have happened, I guess I would have upset one of them during the tea ceremony and would be left with a house slashed to pieces by katanas. But this was not to be, Kirky asked me at work if I'd like to go for a few quiet drinks with him and his mate Ed. I agreed but decided to only have a couple at most. I'm a bit skint until this coming Thursday. I have just changed back to my old job and am waiting on the last payment from the University and the first payment from the present company. I'm also waiting on payment from Hull University, so last week has been a bit tight, but I will be as a rich as a king by the end of this one. So with this in mind, I thought a couple of pints wouldn't hurt the coffers too much. Problem is, I can very rarely have a couple of pints. As was the case here. I got drunk and during lulls in the conversation filled the awkward silences with graphic descriptions of Wolf Bagging, whilst Sarah, Ed's other half, was eating. Speaking of which, she was having Rarebit, the culinary experience of the Welsh (besides fucking leeks). It's cheese on toast. Cheese on fucking toast. Cheese on Toast that costs the better part of £10. How the fuck does that happen? But that's the Welsh for you. Summed up in one culinary experience. Boring.

Ten quid for that? You must be fucking joking!

Then on Saturday Logan Josh summoned me to his side. It appeared he was getting bored with his present company (or more likely, they with him...) and needed a new target for his vitriol. I met him as the last of his previous group were bidding him a lusty adieu and I continued as the previous evening's theme had demanded. We spent many an hour in the Golden Slipper discussing the finer points of the Kriegsmarine. Again, I soon found myself stumbling through the lonely streets of York, broke and drunk. This is beginning to become a habit, I thought. Or at least I think I did. I don't remember what I was thinking. Too drunk, see.

I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody

Then to round off the Bank Holiday weekend the Great Apes of Huntington threw open their cage and invited all and sundry for a barbecue. I began drinking at three in the afternoon and didn't stop for nearly another twelve hours. During this time, one of Logan and Mrs Josh's more boorish friends, Paul, lambasted me the entire time. We argued about the Pogues' version of The Band Played Waltzing Matilda (I bested him with a quickly thought out argument about tin hats not being issued to the British Army before 1916. One to me.), we argued about the location of Brinsworth and it's position next to the M1. We argued about a great many things, most of which I barely remember. I think he likes me. He even revealed that he was writing my biography and was only at the party to make further notes. Apparently, I'm from Brinsworth and not Whiston, as I had always thought. A large amount of the afternoon was also spent acquiring meatstroke, by forcing as much animal product into my gaping maw as possible.

'Oh God, someone else is wearing the same outfit as me!'

Later on, I spent some of the night admiring Josh's record collection, his Geoff Love album was a thing of beauty. I have never seen one in such good condition. He's a lucky, lucky man. Mrs Josh battered the survivors of the outside party with shots of Eau de Vie, it seems she'd syphoned off a tractor in rural France and presented it to us as an alcoholic beverage. I woke up in their spare bedroom with their snores and farts from next door rattling the walls as though I was in Dresden during Bomber Harris' redecoration of the place. This morning found us wading our way through yet more meaty goodness that was leftover from the previous evening. A great hangover cure.

Breakfast's ready...

I forgot to mention this in the previous entry about Triples. On the bring and buy stall we found EBay, the Card Game. I think it speaks for itself. Right, I'm off to see if I can find a copy on EBay...

Brappa at dem popo

I hate Bob Marley. I was listening to the radio today on my mind numbing watching brief and on came Jammin'. On local Radio all they ever seem to do is play endless repeats of Bob Marley or Queen (whom I also hate). Today, as a case in point, they played four fucking Queen songs. One of them twice. Seriously. I almost went out an committed genocide to a continental level. But, like the Beatles, you are not allowed to say you hate Bob Marley. If you do, people look at you as though you just snatched a month old puppy off a six year old child, gutted the dog with a broken shard of glass, took the entrails and hung them round your neck, stabbed the child to death with the same broken glass and wore it's skin whilst banging a drum made from a human skull and howling at the moon. Like Ed Gein. I mentioned my hatred of Bob Marley once during the University excavations and the other supervisors rounded on me like I'd just told them I had run over an old lady then instead of helping just had a shit on the still twitching corpse. I'm not going to bother going into why I hate Bob Marley, as I don't think you deserve to know. I am pretty sure by the time this is published my Facebook wall will be littered with Youtube links to Bob Marley songs, since I know who reads this and how dull witted they are when it comes to doing things that they think annoy me. So go on. Prove me wrong.

During said watching brief I was also reading an article about Lieutenant Daniel Inouye, an Asian-American soldier fighting in Italy for the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. This guy is a fucking hero. As hardcore as they come. He attacked three machine gun nests alone, he destroyed one with a grenade despite taking a bullet to the stomach. After destroying the second bunker he collapsed from blood loss, but crawled to the third nest and prepared to throw his grenade. Just then a German rifle grenade nearly took his fucking arm off! The motherfucker prized the grenade out of his almost severed hand and lobbed that into the final nest, spraying the survivors with his Thompson SMG in his left hand. Finally, the lad got shot in the leg which sent him rolling back down the hill. His awards were finally upgraded to a Medal of Honour in 1991. You could learn a lot from this man. Which reminds me, I'm nearly finished watching Band of Brothers. It's getting exciting. I wonder who will win? I hope the Germans do, they have better uniforms.

Gassed Like a Badger

As I mentioned previously, Friday was the last day of the Summer school excavations for the First Years of the archaeology department at York. Five of my team of ten turned up with a special treat for me. They'd made t-shirts with my face and phrases emblazoned across them. Obviously I'd made some form of impression as Myles went around all day saying 'cunt' for no reason. It was quite touching, really, it's amazing what Stockholm Syndrome can do:

Bless

Along with this, Meg also wrote me a really nice letter of thanks, she also included this photo she'd taken in Japan of a heron by the side of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto. She named it 'Pensive Heron and Tree' in an incredible flash of inspiration:

Mind you, all this didn't stop me passing out the poisoned cookies I'd prepared. Speaking of which, I notice that the Rapture passed by with very little significance. As a committed Christian I would have assumed that I would have been beamed up into the heavenly spaceship to be zoomed off to see Jebus and God and Uncle Peter and all the rest of the gang in Heaven. It didn't happen, so I celebrated by driving out to Sheffield for a visit to Triples with Ninjasaurus Rex and Dino Los Diablos. The usual suspects were there, ie; overweight, sweating middle aged men. The smell of stale farts and body odour spread a  heavy miasma and it was a relief to emerge back into the fresh air. Actually it's quite refreshing to go to a Wargaming show, as sometimes I feel I may be putting a bit of weight on then I see these fine specimens of humanity and realise I have nothing to worry about at all.

Weight Watchers ain't got nothing on this for keeping the weight off...

There was also a fine example of Hitler's Ubermensch wandering about with a SS Leibstandarte t-shirt on. He looked about 58, stooped, skinny, wearing bad fitting jeans and clutching a bag full of  Thracian Feathered Elvish Warships he'd bought from the bring and buy. The defence of Vienna will be in safe hands! But, seriously? A fucking SS t-shirt? It had 'tour' dates on the back and I don't think he was wearing it ironically. The only place this kind of shit is acceptable, unfortunately, is either at a BNP meeting, an EDL rally or a fucking wargaming show...

'Have you got one with a more prominant swastika?'

Continuing the celebratory feel of surviving the Rapture, I met up with Vin for a few drinks and promptly ran into Logan Josh mid rant in the Golden Slipper. He'd been drinking since Tuesday, it would seem, and abruptly turned his attention on Vin's hat. The rest of the night is lost in haze of drink, but I recall meeting up with the knife man and the armourer before stumbling through the cold and lonely streets of York to home...

You Cheeky Chappy

These last few days have been a pretty Japanese few days. It all began on Tuesday when I went to see 13 Assassins with Ali and Kirky. It's the new Takashi Miike film about Samurai and killings. In fact it's mainly about killings. Loads and loads of killings. But coming from the director of Audition, The Happiness of the Katakuris and Ichi the Killer this was to be expected, since all those films have loads of killings in them. It doesn't have the highest body count of all time in a movie, but it's certainly full of loads of blood and snot and piss flying about. Especially as the last forty five minutes is given over to one continual battle scene. Two hundred and eleven dead people later we walked out of the cinema all wanting to be Samurai when we grew up. On the way for an after-cinema pint I even stabbed the doorman at the House of the Trembling Madness just to make my point.

KILL!!!!!!!

In the same theme I also watched Akira Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress. I have Kurasawa's Samurai DVD box set and have been working my way through them slowly. So far I have to find one I don't like, Yojimbo being easily the best so far and probably one of the best films I've ever seen. But The Hidden Fortress is what George Lucas based Star Wars on. So there I was with bated breath, waiting to see the similarities. Boy, was I disappointed. For a start it wasn't even set in space. The closest we got to stars was the scene by the fire in the night. There were no gay robots, no Stormtroopers, no fucking explosions even. I waited two hours for Darth Vader to show up and even that never happened. They were all fighting with normal swords and not lightsabres. To top it all it was in fucking black and white as well. Forgive me if I'm wrong but Star Wars is in COLOUR. There wasn't even a Death Star or them Jawas. I was so angry by the end that I was mad with rage that I went out and stabbed the local garage attendant as he was the closest person I could find.

'We're wanted men, I have the death sentence on twelve star... no, wait...'

I spent the day also listening to the Ancient Japanese Black Metal band Sabbat. Rhys had recorded me some of their back catalogue and I thought now was the time to give it a good listening to. Fucking Hell are they good. I actually got to see them when I worked in Singapore. They were supported by Ironfist, the singer of whom I was in touch with through Myspace. The show was being held in the afternoon in a downtown bar and the crowd went fucking wild for the entire gig. The thing is, being into the Black Metal scene as I am, the chance to see a band play live is limited because they're either in jail or dead, or both in some cases. Most bands  are only one-man acts and misanthropes to boot and they never venture out of their local cave to tour. So the chance to see a band who I've respected for many years in a live venue is a very rare treat in this scene.

Brack Fire, Brack Fire, Brack Fire!!!

It's the last day on site tomorrow, it's come around quickly. I'm back to my normal job next week and straight into a shit picnic with a watching brief that Stanners rejected, deeming it beneath him. But I've obviously made some form of impression on the kiddydinks. I was checking CR's field notebook today and came across the following sentence: 'constant verbal abuse from our supervisor (c bomb count = 13)'. I'm surprised in equal amounts that she kept count and that the count was so low... As I said, tomorrow is the last day and I'll miss their stupid little faces, so I've decided to do the only thing that is right and proper in this situation. Taking a tip from Jim Jones, I've been putting rat poison in some cookies that I will hand out to them tomorrow. Then we can all go to Heaven and work together on exposing cobbled surfaces through eternity! Let's leave this on a happy note with my favourite part from Mozart's Requiem:

The Daily Mail says NO to the Euro!

As I mentioned in the last post this weekend was the night of nights, the best evening's entertainment all year. Yes folks, it was time again for the Eurovision Song Contest. That gathering of tribes from across Europe, the introduction into your life of countries you never knew existed (Lichtenstein) or were even a part of Europe (America's entry: Israel). It's the best night of the year, not only because you can be legitimately racist about the the cheese eating, garlic smelling, surrender monkeys that parade like retarded peacocks around boulevard cafes on the Champs Elysees, but you can also see the how the political map of Europe stands. Mind you, this part is usually pretty fucking obvious, like when Greece and Cyprus vote each other Douze Points every fucking year, or the Balkans countries voting for each other in order to avert sparking off another assassination attempt on Archduke Franz Ferdinand. It's also great because you get to get to dress up as Norway, get really fucking drunk and scream at the beetroot smeared faces of the Moldavians as they pretend to be people. Which is pretty much what I did on Saturday night. Lauren and Steve held a party and after umming and arring all week about it, I decided to go and am glad I did. It was either that or stay in alone, dress up as Norway, get really fucking drunk and scream at the chocolate smeared faces of the Belgians as they pretend to be people.

Another quiet night in...

I took my Norway costume, which seems to be getting added to each passing year. Along with my BIG FUCKING Norwegian flag, this year I had a bear skin. I think they have bears in Norway. Mind you, I also think that everyone in Norway runs around in corpse paint and burns churches down, an image I don't want to spoil by ever going there. So I tipped up at Lauren's draped in a bear skin and flag and proceeded to push as much alcohol into me as humanely possible. Angela had picked up some Romanian engine cleaner as a present for Lauren that we all had a shot of during the Romanian entry. It was fucking lethal, it came in a clear plastic bottle and had a ever so slight yellowish tinge to it. I took my shot and immediately felt as though I'd drunk some alien blood. It burnt a hole straight through my body and down through three floors of the flats. Besides the booze, this year's contest was a doozy, and by doozy, I mean doozy. The Moldovan entrants were great with their tribute to Devo, Lauren reckoned that their heads went all the way to the top of their hats. Which is probably true.

Words, literally, fail me...

Ireland came up trumps for me though, in the form of the fucktard conjoined Irish twins Jedward. They showed up looking like the Legion of Doom. If only they'd started cage fighting with folding chairs, the evening would have been perfect. I think Jedward are a prime example of why Ireland needs another potato famine.

Twats

The Danish contestant brought shame upon the competition by letting loose a stream of foul language that turned the very air blue and would embarrass a sailor.

Ban this filth!

Who won? Who cares? It was one of those former Soviet Block countries that all vote for one another and Russia, just in case the sleeping bear decides to wake up and want their oil reserves back. Whoever it was won't be able to afford a ceremony as lavish as the one thrown out by the Germans. Next years event will be held on a deserted strip of grassland with plastic chairs set up for the audience to sit on in the biting cold while the acts gyrate on nailed together wooden pallets. Whatever, I'll still be doing the same next year, screaming at the TV whilst shitfaced and covered in Norway.

A quick video of the German contestant, Lena, cos she's fit. No other reason. Sue me.

So it was with a heavy hangover and lack of sleep that I gave my final act as a teacher on Sunday. I took my class out to the Leeds Armouries to peer at weapons for the afternoon. I managed to hold the sick down long enough to bluff my way through a  potted history of weaponry in the Great War and then led them in triumphant procession to Pizza Express. Eight years ago when I was straightening a section in Ocean Villa's tea rooms trench and two hundred .303 rounds fell out on me, I never thought that I would one day be teaching this shit for a University. But here I am, after completing eight weeks of lectures and lesson plans, I only have a pile of essays to mark and I've finished my first 'lecturing' job. (the LOLest thing is, I initially misspelled University in that last sentence...)

'Oh God, I hope they don't find me out! At least not before they pay me...'

And a couple of final things. I was going through the student's field note books this afternoon and felt I had to share this page from Myle's book:

And Anna sent me a link for this 'product' to review on  Amazon, so please sit back and enjoy Pledge Manner's take on Pussy Energy Drink:

No Restrepo for the wicked

I haven't really said much about the work I'm doing at the moment. well, I'm back in the warm bosom of the University of York, teaching their first year students which end of a trowel to use and how to draw different kinds of mud to a quasi-scientific level. These skills are the kind they will need when they are deciding which bag of Tesco value frozen sausages they should buy (pork flavour with added sawdust or beef flavour with 50% chicken lips) since they won't be able to afford any other kind of food with the pittance that 'professional' field archaeologists are paid. Most of them have come through the clearing system, which basically means that they wanted to study history but as they didn't get the grades they ended up studying the hand maiden of History, Archaeology. Of the ten in my group only two actually wanted to do archaeology as a degree. One of whom has had the worst attendance of the group. I ask you.

If you're not careful, this is how you'll end up...

Having said that, my group are the best for attendance this year out of the whole site (four other groups of ten). But I have habitually had at least one missing each day. She has been missing so consistently that I believe she doesn't even exist. Even the University staff proper have no idea who she is. Maybe she was a phantom name that was invented in order to make the others look good. The rest of the group are your usual students, it's a bit like the Breakfast Club, the brain, the athlete, the basket case, the princess, the criminal, the serial killer, the train driver, the pornographer, high priestess of Satan, the turkey farmer. You know, the usual kind of people. Two of the girls seem to show up either hungover from the night before or still drunk, having got home at about 5am after kissing boys and getting sick down their tops in the Willow. One of them, let's call her Lowrie, was telling me about the Afro-Caribbean Society that she was secretary of when she was at school. The membership was low. It consisted of three people: two blondes and a Jew. These two keep complaining whenever I drop the 'C-Bomb', which is pretty much every other word when they are not working hard enough, which is all the time.

'YOU WORK NOW!'

These are not the only problems I have to deal with, there is another student, let's call this one Myles, who turned up last Monday painted blue. He also goes around singing the Rebbecca Black song 'Friday' until all you want to do it pound his miserable head into the ground. But he's so bloody happy and nice all the time it would be like kicking a puppy. He wrote an article for the official blog that mentioned me. Read it here.

Idiot

Anyway, that's enough of that shit. Tomorrow is the best day in the calender! It's the Eurovision Song Contest! I've been invited to two parties, one in Sheffield and one in Iceland. Can you guess which one I might go to? Well, I would, but I can't afford the plane fair to Reykjavik, so Sheffield will have to do instead. As Norway have already been kicked out at the semi finals it looks like I'll have to back my home from home, Ireland and Jedward:

Finally, I got hold of my old bear skin rug. I think it looks boss in the front room:

Ye Cannae Get to Heaven in a Biscuit Tin...

Fuck the Royal Wedding. The wedding of the year was up in Edinburgh this last weekend. Yeah, that's right, Stan (Kirsten) was finally getting hitched to Paul McPoo. And it was all happening in the alcohol-soaked-dour land of the Scotch! Even after two sessions of drinking heavily on a school night the preceding week I headed North for further alcoholic shenanigans. Actually, the only reason I wasn't drinking on Friday night was because Bob had decided that we were to get earliest train ever to get to Edinburgh before the sun rose. She had decided that we (Myself, Becky and Mike) had to get up before a sparrow's fart to hang around in Edinburgh for about 40 hours, just in case the train was delayed. The locomotive duly whisked this plucky band to Pictish-central, whilst Becky told us endless stories about her cats and slagged Rotherham off so much and so loudly that even a gentleman of a certain age with a Thai wife of a certain age joined in. By about 10.30 we found ourselves at an Edinburgh B&B dining in the fresh morning air after having introduced Mike (a colonial from New York) to the culinary delights of Greggs.

One has to dress up for dining at Greggs

Yes, we had made it over the border, the passports had been checked, the scenery turned from the lush green fields and village squares of Merry Olde England to the blasted heaths, dead mountains and industrial fishing ports that exemplify that queer country which the Scotch call home. The wedding was held in an old ex-religious Kirk. The ceremony was a Humanist occasion, which basically meant that everyone in the place cheered and whooped when Stan and Paul exchanged rings. You'd not get that in the usual fucking boring traditional religious weddings. Oh no. They are more like fucking funerals. This was a much more joyous occasion. Even accompanied by readings of Bruce Springsteen songs and some guy playing guitar. I turned to Bob and whispered: 'It's always the fucking same. You go to a party and some cunt pulls out an acoustic and starts playing bad cover versions...'

Down in front!

The reception was being held in a massive marquee and the champagne and food never stopped flowing. Every time my glass ran empty, there would be an attentive waiter pouring more, almost tipping it down my gullet. Almost everyone I've ever met in my life was there. Alright, not everyone. But most of them. Pins, Rose, Paul, Megan, Dave, Livvy (+ Bethany), Dermot, plus assorted other halves were all there guzzling the free canapes and champers. Mind you, during the meal it was just my luck to get seated next to a fucking PhD student who insisted on telling me about the fucking thesis she was writing, even with me trying to to steer the conversation towards the Nazis. The meal also included a couple of faux pas: I said to her: Where in the States are you from? She says: Canada. I turn to her husband and ask: Where in Canada are you from? He says: San Fransisco. Oh well, I will never see them again.

The blotter acid was a big hit

As I said, the wine kept flowing, the conversation got bawdier and bawdier, the céilidh kicked off and saw me being swung around like a whirling dervish, sweating my bollocks off as I'd forgotten to remove my blazer. Fuck knows where they teach this stuff, it must be a Scottish gene that everyone automatically knows how to dance to the céilidh. The only ones spinning about completely out of time and uncoordinated were the English. The evening ended with the worst DJ set ever, I mean: Tears of Clown at a wedding? Maybe he'd just been jilted by his missus that day and wanted to ruin everyone's fun. Pfft. I robot danced my way through a few Northern Soul numbers then was brow beaten by Pins to head on the bus back to town to find somewhere else to dance. By the time the bus had rolled into Edinburgh central it was lashing it down, I was almost as sober as judge and any fire had long since burned out of my desire to dance. Instead of taking the lift offered with Dave and Livvy back to the B&B I spent the next hour and half tramping around in the rain looking for a taxi. The following day found us bleary eyed, half asleep but propping up the bar from midday. We all recounted the previous evening's debauchery to one another and half past five found Bob and myself on the train back to civilisation, a great deal happier but rather fatter.

Stan, It could have been me...