Procrastination by Numbers

[cunningmatt]

What are you talking about, I take silver hel... oh wait, I've confused my self for a self respecting general again havent I?!

Pretty much everytime I field them, I place them on the table and my opponent goes "They're Dragon Princes, right?" and when I correct them, it's generally followed by an awful lot of laughter.

[cunningmatt]

Update 41 – Thursday 26th January 2012: Want to come clubbing? Unless it involves bludgeoning baby seals to death, NO!

In a bid to establish the difference between mine and Noah's excellent High Elf blog, I now subject you to the following 5 minute rant which has nothing to do with High Elves. Enjoy!

What on earth is the point of clubbing? What am I missing? Is the part of my brain that appreciates clubbing simply not functioning? I just don't get it. You pay a small fortune to use it, cram yourself into an overcrowded area where you get shoved about by other people, have to put up with listening to awful music, have limited toilet facilities, the chances of getting a seat are remote and you'll leave the place dripping in sweat. In all regards it is exactly like your morning commute on the Northern line except for the one small detail you don't actually end up going anyway. That's right you are re-enacting the morning commute, but without commuting. What is wrong with you people?!

If you're reading this and are under 18, you might not know what I am talking about. Consider yourself lucky. Those bouncers on the door aren't doing you a disservice by not letting you in; they are saving you from a horrible fate. Stop trying to fake ID, flutter your eyelids or look more grown-up, you are only wishing a despicable evening of disappointment on yourself.

You might think this grumpy nature is due to the fact I'm getting on a bit, and whilst I am getting on a bit I can assure you I've never enjoyed clubbing. I've been with friends in sixth form, I've been with university friends, I've been with work colleagues, I've been in my late teens, I've been in my early twenties, I've been in my late twenties, and the only times I've ever enjoyed clubbing is when I've been paralytically drunk. Literally so  off my face I'd have a good time wherever I was, I might as well have been locked in a burning Biffa bin at a lock-up in Croydon. I'd still have had fun because I was so drunk that I was unaware of my surroundings.

Really is that the secret to clubbing that I've missed all these years? Is the only reason it is enjoyable is because any sense of taste and reason have been destroyed? Be it by alcohol, drugs or the worst toxin of them all love, unless you're up to your eyeballs on some combination of these you'll hate clubbing. And if you are, you're so unaware of you're surroundings you'd probably have just as much fun being mauled by a pack of hungry rottweilers in a septic tank connected to the diarrhoea ward of your local hospital.

"Oh but you should go clubbing, you might pull?", or so the idiots cry, I could count the number of times I've pulled in a club on one hand, even if I had a tragic accident involving an out of control threshing machine. Don't get me wrong, it's not for the want of trying. I've ground my hips up against some attractive specimen in a desperate bid to prove to them that the reason they should choose to spend the rest of their life with me isn't due to my intelligence, ability to provide witty conversation, amount of money I own or how nice a person I am, but is instead due to my ability to gyrate my hips to the latest number by the Black Eyed Peas. Not because this is in any way logical, but apparently because this moronic act of patheticness is how "dating" works. I've tried flashing a smile at a potential suitor, but usually they call a steward over because they think I'm having a stroke. I've tried making eye contact with a potential target, but as soon as I lock onto them with my eyeballs they are forced to glance elsewhere, it's as if our eyes are like two magnets of the same polarity forced never to be aligned due to the epoch shattering forces on display. Hell, I've even tried jumping up and down with a giant placard saying "for god's sake won't anyone date me please". All that manages to do is get the token bald, one-eyed, seventy-five year old homeless person, that all clubs seem to be legally obliged to employ to stand in the corner of the dance floor, to lollop after me all night with a blood rage in their eyes. You know that look that means should they ever get within touching distance of you, they will rape you and infect you with dry rot.

Combine all these factors in and you'll see exactly why it is hell! Firstly the fact that the floor of every club is stickier than a box of tissues in a 15 year old boy's bedroom. Secondly all nightclub toilets seem to operate on some communal urine pool system. Thirdly on entry you're forced to pay a pound to enter a raffle you don't want to enter, where the best you can possibly do is win your own coat back at the end of the evening – there's reasonable chance you won't even be that lucky. Fourthly until someone invents a live subtitling app for the iPhone it's impossible to have a conversation with any of your friends there because regardless of where in the club you stand, you will always end up rammed up against a speaker bumping puerile pop trash into your brain at a level so intense your ears are about to melt. Fifthly entry to the club requires your arm to be branded like cattle, with an ink stamp that will only come off when you scrub the skin clean off with a scouring pad. As you can see clubbing really isn't my cup of tea in any shape or form, in fact I'd rather lower my scrotum into a tank of piranha fish than go clubbing. Oh and if I am clubbing with you, stop moaning that I look miserable, I am miserable, I'm clubbing it's s**t. I could only be having a worse evening if I'd accidentally got my nipples caught in a cheese grater. Forcing a false smile onto my face will not improve the situation or lift the cloud of doom circling above my head.

At this point you'd probably be thinking "Given all these reasons to hate clubbing, why do you go?", and you'd be right to think that. It is utter madness, but the problem with clubbing, is that clubbing is universally seen as cool. And any person who doesn't like clubbing is seen as the world's biggest loser, who deserves to live the rest of their days in solitary confinement as they clearly don't have the capacity to enjoy themselves in the company of others. It doesn't matter that I am happy to go for a meal, have a coffee, go for a drink, see a film at the cinema or even spend an evening round a friend's house or any number of other social activities, if I don't want to go clubbing I'm boring. Because clubbing is the universal definition of the epitome of enjoyment, the pinnacle of pleasure and social interaction, so clearly everyone must enjoy it.

Well guess what people? I've got news for you. We don't enjoy the same things. I get pleasure out of knowing that my CD collection is in alphabetical order, that doesn't mean I expect you to come round my house and sort my CDs whilst standing in an inch deep pool of piss at 4am in the morning, only to leave my house throw up and then have to travel home on the night bus of the damned. I also enjoying learning and reading about science, but unlike clubbing morons, I don't expect you to enjoy it because I enjoy it. If I get tickets to a series of lectures on quantum string theory, I won't declare you a boring loser just because you don't want to go. Somehow clubbing is exempt from this system of logic and acceptance of variations in tastes and interest, if you don't want to go clubbing your hen-pecked and bullied into, and told you must go because "you will enjoy it".

No more, I am making a stand on behalf of all those of us who don't enjoy clubbing. I am a 29 year old man, I don't like clubbing and I am not going any more. I don't care if you find it fun, you go. I'm not. I have to do enough things in my life that I'd really rather not do, without actively going on leisure activities I utterly despise, simply because society has deemed them fun. Personally I would rather lock myself in an airing cupboard with a bunch of 85 year old retired French teachers with a terrible degenerative groping disease and only the board game Twister for entertainment than spend another minute on a urine soaked dance floor.

On that note it's chucking out time, so in true club bouncer style – grab your coat, piss off, wait in the rain for an unlicensed minicab and make some bearded cesspit man's dream come true.

I am not sure the medication's working. See you next week.

[Dave]

So you didn't paint anythign then...

Nice rant, I'm a big fan of a sit down in a nice quiet pub where people can hear me too.  But I do also enjoy the occassional trip to a club when in the aforementioned state of utter intoxication.  Then I can take advantage of the fact there is a dance floor to get some exercise and slow down my drinking rate to help the sobering process along.

[maelzch]

You are sounding more and more like Charlie Brooker as you get older! Makes me wonder if you're actually happily married to a Blue Peter presenter!

On a related note, I hate normal clubbing too, much prefer metal clubs. They've usually got loads of norse-style benches to sit on!

[Meals]

Matt, we need to get you laid... big time!

Though that may lead to your blog becoming all happy, nice and full of rainbows. Hmmm, maybe we don't...

[maelzch]

I sense an impending 90s college-movie style set of antics!

[cunningmatt]

So you didn't paint anythign then...

I did, check out yesterday's entry - Update 40. It's just people get more excited about rants!!

You are sounding more and more like Charlie Brooker as you get older! Makes me wonder if you're actually happily married to a Blue Peter presenter!

For the avoidance of doubu I am not married to Anthea Turner.

Matt, we need to get you laid... big time!

Though that may lead to your blog becoming all happy, nice and full of rainbows. Hmmm, maybe we don't...

I sense an impending 90s college-movie style set of antics!

I'd never become happy and full of rainbows, even despite the forum community's best efforts to save me from singledom!!! Maybe we should act it out in a Dear Deadry style photo case book?

[noahtonkin]

In a bid to establish the difference between mine and Noah's excellent High Elf blog, I now subject you to the following 5 minute rant which has nothing to do with High Elves. Enjoy!

Recognition! wow, I actually get mentioned in accepted blog!

cram yourself into an overcrowded area where you get shoved about by other people, have limited toilet facilities, the chances of getting a seat are remote and you'll leave the place dripping in sweat.

Funny, 1st time I got taken to a club was at school with a then girlfriend, she wanted me to understand why she would always look knackered on a sunday morning.
The next week I took her to an underground punk club to get her to understand why I always looked knackered on a sunday!
Must say the experiences are similar, the only difference is if someone is being a twat at a punk/rock gig you can quite happily throw them into a decent sized mosh pit and beat the living crap out of them with immunity (please note, for legal reasons i must state I have never done this and do not encourage it, despite my previous comment)

[maelzch]

Don't know why, but I can't quite imagine Dr Noah in a mosh!

[noahtonkin]

I was in bands when I was younger, have been in my fair share! We used to do a cover of the tide is high and I remember saying "we'll only play the next one if everyone moshing quietens down so Ben can concentrate on the slow bit, but then go mental when we do!" we basically played the chorus really sedately then skipped the verse, went double time for about the right amount of time, then cut back to half speed, was amazing seeing a Mosh pit stop moving, then go crazy as you did!


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