What IS an Amaranth, anyhow?!

Prompted by the recent announcement of the first bands lined up to be playing at this year’s Metalcamp, I convinced myself it would be a good idea to listen to the new Nightwish album.

I call it ‘new’ – actually, Dark Passion Play came out in 2005. That’s how long I’ve been resisting change. Basically, they kicked out their first singer, the lovely, man-jawed and (apparently) commercially-focused Tarja, to replace her with a new, non-operatic singer. I remained convinced for the last four years (has it really been that long?!) that the operatic aspect of Nightwish was what distinguised them from all the other nondescript female-fronted symphonic metal bands (that, and the jaw), and that if I listened to this new album I would inevitably be disappointed.

Then I thought, nothing could possibly disappoint me more than the new Metallica album, so I’ll give it a go. How bad can it be?

As it transpires, not that bad. Tuomas is still writing the vast majority of the music, as far as I’m aware, and so the non-vocal aspects of the tracks have retained the same high quality, and the new singer really isn’t that terrible. She’s ideal for the new direction they’ve taken, although I’ll maintain that the operatic aspect is a loss, and that the new style is a little too dull and commercial sounding for me – but my ‘dull and commercial’ is probably someone else’s ‘accessible and easy-to-listen-to’ so it’s not a criticism per-se.

What IS a criticism is that thing she does with her head in the video for Amaranth. I HATE it.

MC ‘08 UK camp group photo

One of the Englishes we met at Metalcamp in Slovenia this year forwarded on the following picture he found of our camp-site:

 We are a sexy bunch.

Eurotrip 2008

Well, I’m back from my big mad mental holiday. I actually got back almost a fortnight ago, but I’ve been doing nothing but work and Z since and so I’ve only just got the chance to sit down and write a huge, gratuitous blog entry.

I ended up hitting Berlin, Prague and Budapest in my first nine days. As much as I desperately tried to persuade my friends (and then acquaintances, and then complete strangers), nobody had the money or parental permission to come with me, and so I travelled alone. In hindsight, I’m actually glad that I did. I got to do my own thing, and met a lot more people than I would have had I been in a group.

Berlin was lovely – I hit a lot of museums when I was there, purely because I happened to be there on a Thursday night, when admission to most museums is free. I went to the Old Museum (where they have the bust of Nefertiti) and the Bode Museum (which, it transpires, consists entirely of Christian Renaissance art – very dull, but I was with a very funny Californian guy who made it a little more entertaining. There was a lot of Jesus). I didn’t go to the Pergammon, because it was 12 euros to get in, and I’m just way too cheap. It occur ed to me , whilst reading some information on how the Nazis had to get all their Egyptian shit the fuck out of Berlin during WWII, that although museums are perceived to be very prestigious and scholarly places, almost all of their artifacts are obtained through imperialism and the raping of other cultures.

The one thing I really need to mention about Berlin is Tacheles. It’s this old, abandoned high-rise building that used to be a department store before the Blitzkrieg, and it was just never restored. Now, there’s loads of artists who squat there and sell their stuff. It’s amazing – the entire interior of the building is totally graffiti’d, and there’s a rooftop bar on the top floor. It’s very underground. Except, above ground. The first night I was in Berlin I went with a couple of people from my hostel and a man stopped me at the door and asked me for my age. I assumed I was getting ID’d, so I pulled my purse out of my bag— and suddenly all the people I was with were shouting, ‘NO, STOP!!!’ As it transpires, the man was actually trying to sell me cocaine. A drug-dealer with morals, it seems, as when he found out how young I am, he shook my hand and sent me on my way. He was very nice after the misunderstanding was cleared up. EVERYONE in Berlin is nice. Even the drug-dealers are nice.

I went on a very informative walking tour whilst in Berlin, actually – it was really fab. I went on a walking tour in each city, and they gradually got worse and worse the further south I got. The tour-guide, I think, was probably a raging homosexual and very funny. From somewhere in the States. The tour lasted 12 hours.

Prague was the only city I visited over the weekend, and so although I went out to a couple of pubs each night at the other cities, this was the only city in which I actually went OUT. Friday night, to be sure, was tame. I’d got in at 10am after a four-hour night train, before which I hadn’t slept, only to be told that check-in is at 3pm. I’d have liked to have been informed of this BEFORE I planned my route. But never mind – I sat in the lobby and read, because I was too tired to go anywhere else.

So, after I was all settled in, some Americans (from Chicago, I think) invited me out for Mexican food. They were very nice, but they were very stereotypical Americans. I’m not saying all Americans are like the stereotype, by any means – but these ones DEFINITELY were. They had just graduated from college, degrees like accounting and finance and economics. All sororities or fraternities, whatever they are. After the meal, I paid my bit and jumped ship to a nearby table – also Americans, who were studying agriculture for a couple of weeks at the university, and who were chaperoned by a very good-looking Bulgarian man. I much preferred them to the first table, because they didn’t ask me, ‘What language do you speak in Scotland?’ or, ‘So, is Scotland in Europe?’ For further reference, note: Scotland is NOT a city in England. It is not IN England at all. It is north of England – both are sovereigns in the UK. Separate ones. With a border.

I ended up going off for a very nice walk around the city with a boy from Missouri (I say boy, he was 21), who gave me his e-mail address and walked me back to my hostel, even though it was roughly a half-hour’s walk away, and in the complete opposite direction from the university. I think he maybe thought he’d be getting something out of it, and I was happy to let him labour under that delusion.

I might as well say something about the hostel I stayed at in Prague – I didn’t like it, even though it was probably the nicest hostel I stayed in. It was actually more like a hotel – it was huge, and the linens were changed for me, and there was a bar that served breakfast as opposed to just a kitchen where I could make my own. Breakfast wasn’t included with the room, though, so I felt a bit raped spending that amount of money on shit food. It just wasn’t as homey and cosy as the others I stayed in.

Anyway, night the second in Prague. Two of the sorority girls from the night before offered to let me come out to dinner with them – it was lovely, I had goulash and a shot of some gold-coloured alcohol that tasted like peaches. Mmm. Ended up at this club on our side of the Charles Bridge – five storeys high, and each storey was a different genre of music (I think, from ground to top; chart music, techno, cheesy 80’s disco music, RnB, and the top floor was a chill-out room with loads of bean-bags and shit). I spent about two hours with them, then I had to sit down because my heels were eating my feet. At this point I spotted a gangly boy who had been rubbing up against one of the girls I was with earlier, and who I assumed was Czech. I went up to him and said something to the effect of, “What are you doing here? You’re like, 14.” (No, I hadn’t been drinking, I’m just rude by nature). To which he replied, in a stunning Irish accent, ‘Fuck off, I’m 19!’ I demanded to see some ID, and for some reason, we really hit it off after that. I spent the entire night (from around midnight to 6am) dancing with him and his three mates, also from Dublin. I let them buy me glasses of water (I made a pact with myself not to drink until I was in familiar company) and walk me home, again. They were absolutely lovely – they couldn’t dance for shit, but they could certainly drink. And flattery was also one of their strengths. The RnB room, where we spent most of our time, was actually a lot like a scene out of Save the Last Dance or Step-Up or whatever shit film it is that the middle-class, classically trained white ballerina falls in the love with the working-class black street-dancer. Replace ‘white’ with ‘Hispanic.’ This one blond girl, who was clearly totally trolley’d, spent a long time dancing VERY closely to some super-smooth black guy, with some very creepy-looking local grinding into her arse. The couple eventually went off (presumably to the top floor to fuck), and the local followed. So did three other guys. She doesn’t even have that many holes.

Anyway, on my last afternoon, I got back in touch with the manboy from Missouri – he took me to his dorm in the university and we watched In Bruges on his laptop. He hadn’t cleaned his toilet in a while.

Budapest. To be quite honest, I didn’t get as much done as I’d hoped I would. There is apparently a park full of Soviet-era statues about a two-hour bus-ride from the city, which I never got a chance to see, and a lot of open-air clubs which I’d like to visit if and when I go back. I DID hit one of the outdoor thermal baths, though – 37 degrees Celsius, or body temperature. I took a man from the hostel (he’s Londonese) with me, and despite our very vehement discussion on politics, it was very relaxing. Probably because we agreed on everything. He’s a proper lad, though – very typical working-class London, with the accent and everything. It’s nice to finally meet someone who’s leftist principles don’t completely contrast with their lifestyle (i.e. my friend D, who wears slippers and lives in a house with white carpets). Turns out there were loads of other baths of different temperatures both around the city and in the building. Will have to return to them as well. Man-from-London was recovering from Krakow (which is apparently a raging party city, along with Munich), is studying scriptwriting at university, moisturises, and desperately tried to convince me he’s not gay. We went to a roof-top bar with the rest of the hostel on our last night and he bought me my first beer.

The hostel itself I loved because, as I mentioned earlier, it was cosy and homey, just how I like it. In fact, it went so far as to actually BE someones home. The girl who runs it just rents out her flat to backpackers. It has a kitchen guests can use – HER kitchen, and the bathroom still has all of her toothpaste and shampoo and things. I used her shaving cream – she doesn’t know. I think she actually lives in her boyfriend’s house (who helps her run the business) now, but I still thought that was quite cool.

So, to summarise the first and lonely leg of my holiday, I went on a lot of walking tours, and there were lots of buildings and shit. Which brings us to Metalcamp ‘08, which I absolutely can’t be arsed writing about yet.

I’ll get back to you. With photos and stuff.

‘Florals in spring – how original.’

So, floral patterns and ‘coral-coloured’ tops are in this season, apparently. Which means my new uniform for work (we have to wear certain types of the shop’s own stock – 50% discount baby, oh YEAH) is basically a choice between pink, or flowers. The only two things I swore I would never wear.

So today, I sold my soul and bought a couple of pink tops – the lesser of the two evils. I don’t know what’s worse – the fact that I bought them, or the fact that I look so damn good in them. I felt a sort of dirty, guilty pleasure in wearing them.

It has to be said, though – the best thing about being vehement about never doing something is the part where you just give in and actually do it. It’s a fabulous way of deriving pleasure from doing something you would have previously found distasteful or disagreeable, and in fact stems from that previous distaste.

I’ve decided to give up being principled about clothing, anyway. When you’re in your early teens you feel there’s so much importance in being individual and non-conformist – now, I see people with that same attitude that I had really not so long ago, and I can’t get over how utterly pointless it all seems.

Maybe this is just part of the moulding-into-a-productive-member-of-society process – the part where you stop caring about everything – but it seems that if a person has to resort to a particular style of clothing in order to show how unique they are, then there’s really not much about them that’s unique at all. To be fair, at the moment I really don’t think there’s anything that’s spectacularly unique about anybody, so it’s a moot point, but if someone wants to show that there is something original about him/herself, he/she should DO something original – there’s nothing original about buying an item of clothing that has been mass-produced in order for hundreds of members of the populace to wear identical replicas. The entire fashion retail process is founded on the principle of conformity.

En plus, it’s a general irony of the universe that anyone who tries to avoid conforming in their teens only ends up conforming to another, slightly smaller, trend – the ‘non-conformist’ style. We’re herd animals, it’s an indisputable, undefeatable fact of nature. So trying to differentiate oneself from the herd in a non-natural aesthetic way is just hilariously futile.

So, it pisses me off when I get dirty looks from people who obviously consider themselves ‘non-conformist’ because of what I’m wearing. I don’t wear what I wear because it’s in fashion – most of the time, if I buy something from a shop, it’s because I like the look of it, not just because it’s there. It’s actually difficult to buy items of clothing that aren’t in fashion – you have to go out of your way and spend more money to buy items which haven’t been mass-produced cheaply in warehouses in the Philippines for chain stores that correspond to what’s in this month’s Vogue. Chances are, your nearest, most convenient chain store won’t sell anything that isn’t in fashion – that’s the whole point, it’s the concept that keeps the industry from stagnating. I’m not saying I agree with it, I’m just saying I’m lazy – sometimes, I will go to a more Gothic shop if I have the money and cba going into the city, but the rest of the time it’s easier to just buy whatever’s the least hideous.

And if I’m not wearing something I like the look of, it’s because I work in a fucking chain store. I have to be the model, brainless fashion clone. I don’t like the fact that I’ve sold my soul to Satan, but I have. So I get pissed off to fuck when people judge me for looking ‘preppy’ – I’ve been there, done that, got the Metalcamp t-shirt. I’m a fucking veteran in whatever the fuck principle they think they’re defending, so let me have my cheap, tacky, mass-produced pink t-shirt and leave me the fuck alone.

And another thing – why does fashion sense have to correspond to musical taste these days? What, do I have to wear my ripped-to-fuck black baggy jeans, New Rocks and dog collar (yes, I fucking have them) to be allowed to like metal? Fuck you. Chances are my musical taste is heavier than Fall Out Boy or whatever fucking shit it is kids listen to these days.

If anyone’s saw pictures of me at Metalcamp last summer, you’ll know I was walking around in my brightly-coloured shorts and a sun-hat. I got told by some wide-ass German guy there that I was ‘at the wrong festival.’ What in the yellow rubbery fuck?

It was fucking 40 degrees celsius. I might have been wearing heavy, black, full-length trousers – if I was a complete retard.

Is this not just the most arousing man in existence?

I saw Deathstars on Sunday 12th April at the Cathouse in Glasgow. The sound quality was shite – I’m not a pretentious music buff (and I think this is the first time I’ve used the term ’sound quality’ when not satirising said buffs, because I normally can’t tell the difference), but I know the difference between hearing vocals and not hearing them.

Fortunately, the band turned out to be damn sexy. I normally don’t know anything about the bands I listen to other than what their music sounds like, so seeing them live was the first time I had looked at them.

I fought my way to the front, in the manner of a typical screaming fangirl (except without the screaming, and I made every effort to keep my arms by my sides in a vain attempt to maintain some semblance of dignity – the crowd control guy was looking upon me with disdain), and spent half an hour under an armpit. I’ve never been so aroused in my life.

I went with Ashley, Luka, Adam, and Z, who kindly (well, that’s debatable – it was a near-death experience) gave us a lift home and who I’d just met for the first time that night. Adam seemed to think it was the first time I’d met him as well, so I just went along with it. I previously thought he was a complete dick, but he’s grown on me since, in a sort of platonic ‘he’s cool’ kind of way.

Which is good, because I’ll be spending 15 days with him in the summer in close confines (mostly tents and Z’s car) at Metalcamp. I’ll also be fearing for my life, as Z’s driving is what can only be called in polite society, ’suicidal.’ It’s not that he’s a bad driver – he’s a rather good driver, in fact, from my limited experience of watching people drive – it’s just that he’s an 18-year-old guy. Glasgow to Livingston in 20 minutes, part of which journey was spent driving backwards, and part with Adam hanging out of the passenger door. When exiting the motorway (upon which numerous objects were flung, including a bottle of irn bru and a sack of mortar), he went round a roundabout ten times fast because he didn’t know which turn-off to take, as opposed to going round once slowly. I asked him to drive sensibly into my neighbourhood so that Mum wouldn’t get freaked out (she’d been giving it the ‘don’t get in the car if he’s been drinking!’ and ‘wear your seatbelt!’), so he made a point of turning into my street with his teeth.

I, of course, DID wear my seatbelt. Adam was comforting enough to inform me, however, that the seatbelts of the Peugeot 106 are notorious, and that if we were to crash at such a speed, they would break my shoulders, and my neck would snap from whiplash.