I live on the fifth floor of a block of flats. Each flat has a small balcony, about big enough to fit a couple of chairs and an ashtray on. For the last two days, this summery feature has enabled my new neighbour to share his personal phone calls with his ex-girlfriend with the rest of the south facing residents of the building. Now these conversations weren't particularly loud or aggressive, nor were they particularly sorrowful. In fact they seemed pretty civilised.
Tonight I decided to have a smoke on the balcony and had the pleasure of officially meeting my new neighbour who I already felt so intimately acquainted with. Joshua was the name, having just moved to study water-sports science or something in that vein, Joshua enjoys surfing, drinking, sharing his personal life with strangers and from the sound coming from his flat, Father Ted.
Josh seemed like a perfect subject for my first attempt at blogging, which as I understand it is sometimes informative, educational, insightful or though provoking, but usually an egocentric demonstration of ones ability to both make childishly simple observations about life and string two sentences together in a style which is perceived by the author as witty. It is this second great tradition of viral mental masturbation which I intend to adhere to.
And so begins my belly flop into the world of Blog.
Josh seemed a perfect subject because he beautifully represents the soon to be educated elite of this great hemisphere. He is as confident as he is dim. I sat for at least an hour and a half, slowly working my way through a bottle of wine, and trying to figure out how to reason with a man who kept on referring to the inhabitants of Sweden as the Swiss. The reason that the Swedish featured at all in the conversation was so that he could declare, in no uncertain terms that Swiss(-dish) women were amongst the hottest in the world. I suppose everyone has had a similar conversation and this alone would not constitute any particular affront to reason were it not for the fact that he thought it criminal for a Swiss (-anese) woman to be a brunette.
Whilst on the subject of women, I got to learn more about this famous ex-girlfriend of his who I had heard so much about before even meeting him. He had met her in February and really liked her. One day she had asked him to treat her a little meaner, she was sick of him being so nice all the time. Not wanting to disappoint her, he had driven her to a beach 25 miles away and spent the day threatening to leave her to make her own way back. He later admitted both that he didn't understand women and that he wasn't too good at psychology... no shit Joshua!
Half a bottle of wine and more ridiculous chit-chat later, I find myself running back to the command centre of my judgement making, first-stone tossing, denigrating starship of Truth to write this conversation up and I find myself struggling with an internal conflict. Despite his general bamboozling ineptitude regarding simple observation and analysis, and despite having to sit through 15 minutes of a conversation with his ex-girlfriend, this time sat in the front row, and despite having heard him claim to hate female scuba divers (both the most obscure claim and the most stupid one I've heard all week), I quite enjoyed our chat. Why? Because it made me feel good about myself.
Josh felt quite happy with the lot that he's been given and despite costing the rest of us a few brain cells, he's not hurting anyone, he is both representative of so much I dislike about my fellow students and responsible for none of it. And retrospectively, I feel rather guilty about spending so much time thinking about what I dislike about Joshua and not having taken the time to see beyond it (obviously not guilty enough to either get to know him, or not to write this entry).
So there it is, and if you feel that this entry was non-committal to both ideas I tried to develop within it, well then you can fuck off. But I'd never say it to your face, and that's the beauty of Blog.
- Jake
Josh seemed like a perfect subject for my first attempt at blogging, which as I understand it is sometimes informative, educational, insightful or though provoking, but usually an egocentric demonstration of ones ability to both make childishly simple observations about life and string two sentences together in a style which is perceived by the author as witty. It is this second great tradition of viral mental masturbation which I intend to adhere to.
And so begins my belly flop into the world of Blog.
Josh seemed a perfect subject because he beautifully represents the soon to be educated elite of this great hemisphere. He is as confident as he is dim. I sat for at least an hour and a half, slowly working my way through a bottle of wine, and trying to figure out how to reason with a man who kept on referring to the inhabitants of Sweden as the Swiss. The reason that the Swedish featured at all in the conversation was so that he could declare, in no uncertain terms that Swiss(-dish) women were amongst the hottest in the world. I suppose everyone has had a similar conversation and this alone would not constitute any particular affront to reason were it not for the fact that he thought it criminal for a Swiss (-anese) woman to be a brunette.
Whilst on the subject of women, I got to learn more about this famous ex-girlfriend of his who I had heard so much about before even meeting him. He had met her in February and really liked her. One day she had asked him to treat her a little meaner, she was sick of him being so nice all the time. Not wanting to disappoint her, he had driven her to a beach 25 miles away and spent the day threatening to leave her to make her own way back. He later admitted both that he didn't understand women and that he wasn't too good at psychology... no shit Joshua!
Half a bottle of wine and more ridiculous chit-chat later, I find myself running back to the command centre of my judgement making, first-stone tossing, denigrating starship of Truth to write this conversation up and I find myself struggling with an internal conflict. Despite his general bamboozling ineptitude regarding simple observation and analysis, and despite having to sit through 15 minutes of a conversation with his ex-girlfriend, this time sat in the front row, and despite having heard him claim to hate female scuba divers (both the most obscure claim and the most stupid one I've heard all week), I quite enjoyed our chat. Why? Because it made me feel good about myself.
Josh felt quite happy with the lot that he's been given and despite costing the rest of us a few brain cells, he's not hurting anyone, he is both representative of so much I dislike about my fellow students and responsible for none of it. And retrospectively, I feel rather guilty about spending so much time thinking about what I dislike about Joshua and not having taken the time to see beyond it (obviously not guilty enough to either get to know him, or not to write this entry).
So there it is, and if you feel that this entry was non-committal to both ideas I tried to develop within it, well then you can fuck off. But I'd never say it to your face, and that's the beauty of Blog.
- Jake
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