Ramblings Chapter III: I'm Back Again...Apparently...

"It's 106 miles to Chicago... we got a full tank of gas, half a pack of cigarettes, it's dark... and we're wearing sunglasses"

Ok, so only one of those statements is true of me right now.

This is an extremely belated new post in this overlooked and, I personally believe,
under-rated blog written and directed by yours truly. It's far too late for doing anything but sleeping and after the monster of a day I've just had, I probably should be in the land of nod...

but truth be told my love of media studies has got me inspired at this late hour. i bought "here comes everybody" by clay shirky (one of my set texts for 'society, media and culture') today and i've delved into it straight away. the ideas that he talks about concerning virtual communities and how new media (particularly internet-based tools such as...well....THIS) has enabled increased ease in the formation of groups, have really sparked my interest...this module involves tasks such as creating youtube videos for seminar topics and contributing regularly to a seminar group blog...so i plan to get some practice in on this one....

it should be a darn interesting semester...

if you happen to be a fan of my usual rather shallow and pointless ramblings, then fear not, this is not becoming a (heaven forbid) media theory blog. you may find some mention of things that I learn that are interesting, but i trust that it might spark your interest too, noble reader...

anyway... my life at present...

- back in stirling, living with the boys again but with the firm intention of not wasting as much time this semester vegetating in the flat playing FM....

- single, and not really planning to change this for the foreseeable

- fat, and in need of a bit of the tough love that only the gym can give

- a member of SUDS (the uni's drama society), so that i can once again get my fix of thespianism...went to my first meeting tonight, it was 'super-duper' and i believe it will be very worthwhile. hoping to land a role in their production of billy shakespeare's 'a midsummer night's dream'

- watching my pile of unread books grow ominously larger (damn hmv and their super-cheap charlie brooker books)

- still completely un-used to the idea that next year I will most likely be living in Ottawa, Canada...weird, weird, weird.

- absolutely adoring The Game's 'L.A.X' album right now

- pretty much addicted to Lost.

- admittedly, pretty darn excited about street fighter 4 arriving through our letterbox anytime now...nerdtacular.


righty-ho chaps, that's really all i can manage to type now...

bed.

james x

Ramblings Chapter II: Welcome Back To Me

good afternoon diligent reader.

today i became aware that tomorrow it would be 3 whole months since my last post on this still relatively infantile blog. i decided that this would not stand, and that i wouldn't allow this to become a brief summer fad...like pez.

although speaking of pez, check out what i got in tesco this month:

it's the FREAKIN' EMPEROR FROM STAR WARS.

now i have the immense joy of having very unexceptional candy treats coming out of an old man's neck in the blink of an eye! ah pez....what genius thought you up?

anyway, nerdish pez moment over, resuming occasionally witty observations on life...

i like to change fonts sometimes just to keep things fresh...

so i have been doing a lot of thinking about my future in the last while.. i came back to stirling in early september and got settled back into the flat and uni routine again, except i thought id make more effort to do things and be part of stuff. so i did the normal things from last year, but i also inexplicably joined the rugby team, on a whim. this has since lost its appeal, i wanted to see if i could get back into the sport again after so long out, i dont feel that this has been achieved. its safe to say that i won't be rolling about in the dirt much more this year..

moving on, in the later part of last month i got my most serious bout of homesickness ive possibly EVER had in my young life. to be brutally honest, it was as a result of various factors, which included obvious things like missing my friends, boredom and also some other things that are too personal for a universally accessible internet blog..

but this little challenge has really helped me to put a lot of things in perspective. i came home for mid-semester, i talked to friends and loved ones about it...sought guidance in all the right places, and generally spent a lot of my quieter moments thinking about me, who i am, where i'm at right now and where i'm going.

and then, as i sat in my confusion looking for some sort of guidance to show me what to do, i am offered a placement on the uni's study abroad programme, to study my 3rd year of university in ottawa, canada's capital, at carleton university...

now initially, 'carleton' university makes me think of this man:

but after i stop giggling like an idiot, i start to think about the reality of the fact that, all being well, next year i will be in snowy ottawa, watching ice hockey, saying 'aboot' instead of 'about' and finishing most sentences with 'eh' (if any canadians are reading this, im sorry, im ignorant, im sure i will learn the true canadian way when i get to live in your fair country). although the whole thing hasnt really sunk in yet...

this opportunity is one that only a relative few have been offered and recently i have realised with crystal clarity that this sort of thing needs to be embraced with both hands (and possibly with my feet if i can manage it)

and as for me and my homesickness, i'm learning to roll with the punches, i have to keep my grades up for this canada thang so i've got a goal and i've got targets now, hopefully this academic focus will help me focus the rest of my life better.

right, lets go back to more trivial things, because that was a bit heavy (like chinese buffet rice).

you may have gathered by the image at the top of the page (photo taken by me and crudely photoshopped by me also) and the title of this entire blog, that i am inspired by the music of the band counting crows... now most people will be familiar with their most famous songs:

mr jones ("sha-la-la-la-la-la-la")

big yellow taxi (feat. vanessa carleton)

accidentally in love (it's in shrek)

but to any reader who has not listened to this thoroughly overlooked band's wider musical repertoire i would like to list some of my all time favourite counting crows songs (which, to put into perspective my opinion of this band, are also a selection of some of my favourite songs) that i would urge you to listen to:

-Round Here (which may actually be my favourite song in the world)

-Anna Begins (my favourite lyric is "everytime she sneezes, i believe it's love")

-Colourblind (haunting)

-Mrs Potter's Lullaby (a song the singer Adam Duritz wrote for an actress he saw in the film 'Patch Adams'; he later married her)

-Hard Candy (musically upbeat, lyrically catchy)

-Omaha ("it's the heart that matters")

- Rain King (if you listen to the live version that is used in Scrubs, you get a better rendition, i reckon)

The list could go on for a hwhile (a what?)...but if you listen to those you can pretty much assess whether or not you 'dig' them. I am pretty much a huge fan mostly for Adam Duritz's voice and his lyrics, which focus heavily on people and little narratives. This is amplified in their live performance... when i was fortunate enough to see them live at oxegen, corny as it sounds, it was like every song was a story; and the cherry on top was the mega-super-deluxe extended version of 'round here' that they played.. =]

anyway, this has been a true rambling session today, that's what i want with this blog though, no real purpose or direction, just thoughts onto screen... im beginning to think i might be a surrealist (but perhaps with a lesser tendency to express myself in extremely offensive ways)

anyway, thanks ever so much for reading if you did. if not, why the heck are you reading the end? SCROLL UP!

regards,

james x

p.s. "Ohhhhhhh Caanadaaaa!"

Imagery- Volume I: The Beautiful North Coast

So it turns out that I may be mildly addicted to this blogging thing, such is my sudden urge the morning after a late-night post to upload a few photographs that I took recently on the north coast of norn iron.


I was up at Portrush a couple of weeks back, welcoming home my oldest friend Timmy on his return from his 6 month gap-year adventure in New Zealand, it was truly fantastic to see the man again.



We all took a stroll on the beach after a meal and the sky was just incredible, my little 5 megapixel camera doesn't do the Lord's work justice really (especially in the rainbow photo, sadly), but for the most part the pictures are still quite stunning...

i could see that Timmy was pretty thrilled just to be at the Port with friends after 6 months away...the skeptic would say 'how could this ever compare to the beauty of New Zealand??'..but I think it just reinforced for me how stunning our home country could be and how blessed we all are to have such beauty right on our doorstep.

here's a couple of photos taken by chris patton that night:

The thought for today?...

APPRECIATE NORTHERN IRELAND (or your country of origin)

james x

Ramblings Chapter I: Forfey or Againstfey?

ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages...

i proudly bring to you the first chapter in a series....nay, a rich tapestry of ramblings for your and, more importantly, my amusement.

lets change font and start shall we?

well, i had a horrendously dull day for most of today (well, technically yesterday...), and it was a monday too...that makes sense i guess. it was a day where essentially all i could do was sit around and kill off braincells watching the olympics, listening to music and lightly strumming my guitar (all at once i might add), whilst gradually getting fatter.

so naturally, as today was about as interesting as an andy murray interview, i shall refrain from elaborating on it further and focus more on the weekend that has just occurred...

friday, ah friday... fresh from my second outing to see the utter genius that goes by the name of christopher nolan's 'the dark knight' the night before at the local free presbyterian-run cinema, i had a relaxing day for much of the day, then i was joined by my friend richard gilmore, who is more commonly known as 'gilly' or 'G, G, G, G, G...(repeat as neccessary)'. earlier in this day, I had devised a proposition for richard, that i hoped might spark his interest...

this proposition was about saturday (although then we called it 'tomorrow'), it involved myself and richard (and any assorted others who expressed any interest) hopping in his much-dented vauxhall corsa, complete with rattling exhaust, and heading down south-west...to the mystic land of fermanagh. there we would attend the forfey festival, an event which had attracted my attention on myspace earlier in the summer and about which i had been reminded by a fermanagh native via msn messenger during the day on friday.

richard, true to form, was interested in my idea, and began to contact a variety of people, to ascertain if we could get a 'mottley crew/crue' (as he would put it) of people together to go on this pilgrimige.

so of course, it was just me and gilly, against the world on the saturday of forfey. we set off early, 10ish, and drove on the m1 for much of the journey, during which time we delved into many fields of conversation, from spiritual matters, to music, to discussing which of our friends could kick our other friends asses in a fight (contact me if you wish to know whether or not you were discussed).

on this journey, we discovered the following things:

1) Places in Fermanagh are further apart than we thought/than they ought to be

2) Brookeborough has no working cashpoints

3) The citizens of Brookeborough are very generous people
(a woman offered me £20 because i could not withdraw money at the cashpoint, and told me i could just drop it through her door, i did the honest thing and asked for £30...just kidding.)

4) Fivemiletown exists, Sixmilecross exists, Sevenmilecity doesn't

5) Fermanagh has no mobile phone reception (people presumeably communicate via smoke signals or at best morse code)

6) Enniskillen's parading people celebrate the battle of the boyne a month too late, and cause annoying traffic jams.

7) No-where in Fermanagh offers cash-back

anyhoo, we eventually got round to going to Forfey, which turned out to essentially be a BBQ at a farm with bands, arts and crafts...i liked it =]

the bands/artists we saw were as follows:

- Kyron and The Strangels - eccentric lead singer, watchable.

- Strait Laces - tight, Foals-influenced indie rock, enjoyed.

- The Lowly Knights - we were witness to 'the March of the Lowly Knights', which was a kind of mobilised gig, in which we, the audience followed the band around Forfey Farm as they played various songs in various spots. as you can see one of the members has a baby on his back... very enjoyable.

- The Rumplestiltskins - twangy guitar, inconsistant drumming, incoherent singing, poor.




- Dave Clements (from SixStarHotel)

/Captain Cameron

- delicate voice, acoustic guitar, great use of strings, songs with lyrics verging on beautiful, excellent.

- General Fiasco - strong bass, complemented with some nice little pieces of guitar, drummer was impressive, 'Ever So Shy' is an anthemic number, enjoyed v much.

- LaFaro - heaviest band of the day, richard liked these lot, not the most original riffs in the world, but they knew how to rock, so i thought they were good.

During the day we also attended a talk on 'Visuals' by two guys who had worked at AU magazine at one time or another (one still works there), which generally involved a random quiz at the start and then them telling us that presentation is everything and that fonts have to be easily readable in essays...nothing new really, but they were decent craic.

So overall, Forfey was a decent day, the music was good all in all and aside from the general awkward feeling that everyone knew each other but didnt know you, the people were cool.

One other thing that we discovered on our day in Fermanagh was that Omagh's nightlife is quite nice...who knew? We found ourselves in the famously-bombed town after we left Forfey Farm to meet up with a couple of Gilly's uni compadres, who went by the names of Sharon, Rachel and David Foster i believe... But yeah, the place we went to was a little narrow open-air shopping arcadey-thing with quite a nice bar in it, with awnings (i think that's what they're called) out to shelter people from rain as many people stood in the alleyway chatting away. It was thoroughly pleasant.

So we headed home after this, rattling all the way, feeling suitably knackered but confident that the day had not gone to waste.

If you have read this entire ramble, then i salute you...in fact i might even love you...

james x

what is essentially an autobiography.

dear all,



on 16th january 1989, james william george erwin was introduced to this world, it was a monday...



the first two and a bit years of his life were spent in the outskirts of belfast, he does not remember much of these times... after this the family of 3 moved to ballymena- 'city' of the seven towers,



and so the boy grew, he made friends, he made enemies, he made toast on occasion.

he lived the life of a young boy- mud, scraped knees, hut-building, bike riding, high-speed downhill street-luge on a cheap argos skateboard...the fundamentals of a young male's phys. ed.



to primary school, a moravian village's primary school to be exact. the initial headmaster went by the name of mr stirling, a name that young james would later become very familiar with in his late teens.. he completed his primary 'education', received an A in the much discussed 11+ test and went to Ballymena Academy...a school so warped that they think badgers look good on coats of arms....

this school shaped much of the personality that now exists within this 19 year old (at the time of writing)..from the younger years of character-building abuse, to the senior school's higher echelons of supposed 'maturity' which never seemed to arrive for the young man and his compadres.

he discovered many things in these school years, mainly sports, music, drama, God and the opposite sex (in that chronological order.) he made friends for life there, and also friends for a shorter period of time.

unable to find an academic passion for anything useful, he discovered a keen interest in media studies and decided to pursue this to an even higher level of uselessness, at stirling university in 'bonnie scotland'...the mystic land of kilts, haggis and headbutting, where he currently 'studies' and resides during term time in a large flat in the town centre, with 2 scotsmen and 2 englishmen...this residence could very easily be turned into a bad joke...


and so...at the age of 19, the author has extremely briefly and vaguely summarised his own life up until this point, jack osbourne and wayne rooney eat your heart out...

and so the ramblings begin soon...

james x