cheap rum and cows

It's that time again. That time where I've slept all day, am wide awake, bored out of my mind, drinking, and listening to some kind of poignant, depressing music (today it's the magnetic fields). These are the times that produce blog updates. So let's see, what's been going on these last few weeks... Judging by the pictures I have taken the first thing to mention would be that I finally found an American style, massive grocery store. Most of the food shopping I have been doing has been in Walgreens/CVS sized stores at best. However, on another rainy brighton evening on I went on an adventure to the city and was able to find a huge ass grocery stores that could satisfy most of my needs. My favorite products included pre-mixed jim beam and cola cans as well as a plastic bottle of rum that read "a little less refined but still mixes well at parties."

The part of this trip that sucked was that it was raining pretty hard, beginning as soon as I got off the bus. In the long period of aimlessly wandering around looking for a grocery store, I did discover a really awesome part of Brighton known as the North Lanes, which is an area of cool alternative shops, pubs, and such. I was able to get a couple cool pics from that.

The next memorable event I can remember was a fake wedding that occurred. This might be hard to explain properly...but basically someone organized a fake wedding for two really close friends (both guys, but not gay, for the record) that live in the flat next to me and it was all a well orchestrated joke. First off, there was the night before the wedding, which here in the UK is called "stag night" for the guy and "hen night" for the lady. Obviously, I went out on the stag night, which involved going to the pub with the bachelor wearing a dress and bunny ears. Our goal was to find this pub that we found an advertisement for that read something along the lines of "girls dancing in underwear on the bar. 'nuff said." We never found this bar and I can't decide if I'm happy about that or not. Anyway, this was the night that I whipped out that plastic bottle of rum mentioned earlier and it sure did the job, since I completely blacked out by the end of the night. I remember going to a cool pub in Brighton and being there for a long time and then I remember going to some club and a friend buying me a few drinks (I had run out of money), but from there it's almost a complete blackout. Apparently on the way home I was ranting about atheism or something, as someone told me, but of course I don't remember any of this and have no idea how I even got home. When I woke up the next morning, I was looking through my pictures of the night when I saw a picture I took of myself taking a piss at the club we went to. Having no idea why I would ever do that, it was confirmation that I blacked out.

So that was a really great night, from what I remember. Next was wedding day, which was also fun. The people in charge got pretty into this, setting up a whole wedding like setting in a little common area, complete with fake rings, fake priest, and a real cake (not wedding style of course). This is the second occasion since I've been here where there has been a party requiring me to dress up but I didn't bring any dress clothes. Therefore, in the context of a wedding, I kinda looked like some kind of distant alcoholic relative no one had seen for years but appeared because he heard there was an open bar. Anyway, it was another fun night.

The next thing I can think of was my acid trip a few saturdays ago that occurred quite randomly. I was hanging out at another flat than my own in an area known as east slope, when a friend started asking if anyone wanted to do acid with him. The thought was tempting, however, it was midnight, so I as well as everyone else declined the offer. He then offered to pay for the tab if I tripped with him and having nothing else to do, I said fuck it and took him up on the offer. The acid was great but unfortunately there wasnt anything happening on campus this saturday. We watched Where the Wild Things Are as well as Trainspotting, both of which were great. After this we went to the campus bar (open till 3 on saturdays) which was pretty awesome. It was very hard to order because I couldn't stop hysterically laughing for no reason. For this reason I was very happy I didn't run into anyone I knew there. The two of us sat in a booth staring at beer foam, lauging, and talking about random shit until we decided to check out some party we had heard about. Walking through campus was beautiful, as the frosted grass was twinkling away the whole time. We made it to the party, but it was a bit overwhelming and we didn't know anyone, so we left after about 5 minutes. We then went to hang out with some people in east slope I had never met before, sitting around smoking spliffs and listening to radiohead (i also introduced them to grizzly bear and they went over well) for the rest of the night. All in all a pretty good time.

This brings me to the last week. There was sun. Finally. A beautiful golden sun shining upon us, providing warmth and happiness to the land. On the nicest day of the week, which was about 50 degrees (sorry english folks, I can't convert to celcius) I went on an adventure with a friend to a little farm village called Stamner. This involved walking through a massive field of cows! We smoked a spliff on the way there, so maybe I was a little extra paranoid, but at first this kind of freaked me out. I mean back home, you can't really just walk amongst cows. Usually its a prohibited fenced in area in the rare case that you see any cows and I imagine trespassing would bring an angry redneck with a shotgun out of the barn. But this was a massive field, complete with walking paths and everything, where anyone can just run up to a cow and try to ride it if they felt so compelled. I keep asking my friend paranoid questions like "are you sure it's safe to just walk through the cows?" "How fast are cows?" "That one is staring at me and doesn't look very happy..." Alas, we survived the trek and it was actually really cool. We went to a tea shop in the old time village and when I sat down at my table I was scared shitless when a dog jumped at me from under the table next to me. The owner then held the dog's leash tight to his side after apologising, which made me feel bad because it just startled me, since back home there are few places that serve food that also allow dogs. I think due to my reaction he thought I was petrified of dogs. Oh well. The village was really cool and I am going to go back on my own next time its nice out and I have the time, because my camera ran out of batteries while I was there and there was still a lot more to explore.

That about brings us up to speed. Last night was an incredibly fun night, as I successfully completed a power hour (one shot of beer every minute for an hour) in my first ever attempt. This was a lot of fun and almost everyone made it. One friend threw up during the 59th minute and another soon after the hour was complete. We then went to one of the campus bars at which point things became a bit of a hilarious shitshow, with everyone being incredibly drunk and weird things happening. I stayed up till about 6 in the morning drinking. And now here we are. The future looks bright, for spring break is just a couple weeks away! I have epic plans to meet up with Charlotte in Paris for the weekend. After that we are going to go to Barcelona and then I can check off one life goal when we travel to Amsterdam. Then I'm heading back to Brighton for a bit and then spending the last week of my month off in London with my dad. I can't fucking wait. Hope everyone's spring break back homes kicks ass, miss you all!

P.S.

I would like to note that while writing this, I ashed in my half full beer can. This is always a sad moment, and I ask that all readers take a moment of silence for this young, fallen soldier.