fire alarms, menomena, and open container laws (or lackthereof)

hello world, sorry for the delay, we've been busy, josh had a big greek exam this week, and me...well i wasn't that busy, i'm just a tool.

so without further adieu, let me regale you with the tale of menomena's performance at the illustrious king's college. it was rather great that the venue menomena played at was on our campus...too bad we live 45 minutes away from our campus. 'oh wellidy'*

for better or for worse, we missed the openers (some local band and land of talk), and arrived just as menomena was setting up. they(/our school's venue) were entirely without roadies
so they were setting up their equipment themselves, and between songs they made their own transitions between instruments, which, even though it broke up the rhythm of the show just a bit, i thought was kind of cool.


so menomena is on the stage, making final adjustments to their equipment, and then we hear "DUE TO UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES, WE MUST EVACUATE THE BUILDING, PLEASE FIND THE NEAREST EXIT" which was then repeated ad infinitum.
so we went towards one exit, and in typical KCL bureaucratic fashion, they told us to go the other exit, we waited by that exit for a while, then they told us to go back to the first exit.
finally we were out on the street. one might assume this to be a lamentable and frustrating break in our evening. oh no. josh the portely and elliott...the niblocker? take the lemons that life gives us and use them to make...beer. we ran to the nearest off license (i think i mentioned these, they're like the offspring of a 7-11 and a liquor store) and bought scrumptious beer at NOT club prices. it was grand. thanks to the UK's glorious lack of an open container law, we drank them on the street, however, due to our ingrained 'NO. DRINKING BAD. BAD DRINKING. NO DRINK OUTSIDE. BAD.' American viewpoint, we drank them far faster than we had to, so as to be finished before we got to the crowd on the street outside the venue...where we saw that most everyone had a drink in their hand.

anywhoo, they finally let us back in, menomena came on and played some wonderful music, we listened to said music, and a great time was had by all.

in conclusion; menomena-great, open container laws-not great, fire alarms-can be made use of.

<3the latter half of jelliott and the former of niblorte

summer plans and weekend activities!

hi friends!
i hope everyone's staying warm and content! except cabal, who i hope freezes and goes directly to hell. just kidding, the first handle of scoresby is on me when i get back (assuming i have more than the -$8 that currently comprise my checking account).

so here's one exciting piece of news: i'll be working again at the glorious annual fund, meaning that st. paul is now for sure viable for me this summer! i hope everyone's prepared for endless rounds of hookah, losing to me at soccer, and baseball games after work.

this weekend was pretty fun: friday night the twin-headed abomination that is niblorte met up with molly at a swank pub. of course we reminisced about how glorious mac is. after that we went to the student club on the strand called tutu's after desmond tutu, some famous king's alum. i think he ended racism and won a pulitzer or something. ANYways, the bouncer was a jerk and told elliott he was too drunk to go into the club and to go "freshen up"; that was about the point we knew that we had to permanently cripple him: we parkoured to the top of the strand building, then elliott slowly lowered me down til i was suspended just above this bouncer, then i punched him in the back of the neck as to sever his spinal cord. ej then hauled me back up and we grabbed some chicken mcnuggs then came back 30 minutes later and got in. there was also a big hullabaloo involving our friend jon and the bouncing staff but we decided one debilitating injury was enough for one night. so we let him live -- for now.

anyways the club was terrific, they play radio hits from the 80s 90s and 00s on fridays which was great. we got to hear "teenage dirtbag" and "la vida loca" and a billion other throwbacks. but i personally prefer indie rock nights on saturdays where they play pretty much exclusively songs that have been heard at some point on the goulash, meatloaf chapstick, or the thorax.

saturday we had a drunken mid-day excursion to the bourrough street market where we scored some free samples of delicious cheese and meat. it was lovely.

and now i'm off to study greek as i've got a big exam coming up, but i hope you're all doing tremendously. write soon.
-jp

the thing about india

so i'm in the middle of writing this paper about the nature of british imperial authority in colonial india, and i can't help but thinking: what would i do if i were somehow magically transported back in time to this period?

and here is the answer:
opium!
-jp

struggling against our posting inertia

so i'm thinking we need a post at this point so as to save our blog from falling into disrepair before it even starts. i feel it my civic duty, nay, my preordained destiny to save this blog from stagnation.

that said, i have absolutely no idea where to begin.

a wise man once said "begin at the beginning"
but i don't listen to proverbs.

also, i just made that up.

so instead, i'll compose a thematic post on a topic that i'm sure none of you saw coming;
"alcohol consumption in britain"

don't worry, this shan't be a "dude, i got so wasted last night, and then i passed the fuck out in your yard!" post, no, far more classy than that.
it will instead be a "sir, do believe that, after that last glass of fantastic '72 port, i was rather battered (thats the common synonym for drunk used here), and because i am far too dignified to sleep among the rabble at this pub, i chose instead to sleep on your lawn"

so as to construct some semblance of a chronological narrative, i'll begin with our first days here. matt's first facebook album was entitled "Turns out, drinking cures Jet-Lag!"

and how untrue it is!

we quickly discovered four things about our lovely little south london neighborhood (camberwell)

1). the first pub we went to the very first night i was here, the bartender said "..well...this isn't really a 'walk around alone at night' kind of neighborhood" (actually, just yesterday a rapist escaped form the hospital 2 blocks away...so thats fun)

2). our dormitory has its own student bar within it!

3). our dormitory's student bar is rather shitty, and the prices aren't so cheap as we'd expected

4). there is a wonderful pub called "the fox on the hill" one block north of our dorm, and we love it dearly

we slowly have come to learn other things about the state of drinking here, and because i like the little list i just made, i'm going to make another one. if you don't like lists, then you should just deal with, and you should also probably get someone else to do your grocery shopping.

1. Cider
1. oh my goodness, i'm falling in love with cider faster thank you can say 'beer is better' (which i'm sure you're thinking, especially if your middle name is elias and your last name ends in 'orte')
2. there is a brand of cider called 'K' which comes in 550ml cans for 1 pound, and is 8.4% alcohol. we love it more than most people love their cants of cheap cider, because we think in dollars, and then we say 'fuck' and buy the cheapest, strongest thing we can find (well i do anyways).
1. As an aside, i might mention that josh and i have, on several occasions, bought three cans of K at once and consumed them in a night. we flirted with a few names for nights when three or more cans of K are consumed...we're thinking a baseball metaphor will be best...
   
3. there also exists a very foul, but very cheap brand of cider known as "white strike" which is sold in 2 liter bottles for about 2 pounds sterling. i had one during the nfl playoffs a few weeks ago, and a british student here was kind enough to inform me that "that shits for chavs mate"
1. yay! a new aside! apparently, a 'chav' is somewhere between douchebag and wanna be badass, usually very young in late teens or early twenties. yay slang education! yay asides!
   
2. Drinking Culture
1. so when we were at our nice little macalester orientation, the british woman who came to speak those of us coming to london said that we should be warned that 'binge drinking is more acceptable there'; at which point josh and i looked at one another with terror and i jumped into his arms for fear of alcohol consumption
2. she wasn't kidding. or rather, she wasn't kidding, but was a little bit wrong. kids here DRINK. a lot. but they do it more often, and not quite as ridiculously. i'd say they average 4-5 drinks 3-4 nights a week....well, for some 4-5 nights, so they aren't stumbling around drunk all the time, but a lot of them are tipsy more often than not, which is nice, but not conducive to getting work done when people are down with drinking on any given night of the week :-( ...... :-D
3. granted, i should also point out that we live in a freshman dorm with a bunch of 17, 18 and 19 year old kids. its weird that the 'dorm culture' here is one where everyone can go out to the bars/clubs....
   
3. shhhhhhhhhh
1. speaking of the last post, that means that drinking in the rooms isn't quite as prevalent here, which means we americans get yelled at for being loud with a relatively high degree of frequency when we hang out and have a few bottles of wine (that is, Sainsbury's Basics Spanish Red Wine ^_^).
   

oh, and i almost forgot. the greatest discovery of our young lives: ye olde cheshire cheese. its a fantastic pub at which dickens drank frequently (and apparently is implicated in tale of two cities) that was rebuilt in 1667 (fires suck). it has wonderful old londony atmosphere and delicious beer (exclusively samuel smith's) for very reasonable prices, especially considering its in central london. if ever you come to london, ye olde cheshire cheese is a must.

well thats about it, i should finish tidying up my room. they have a cleaning staff at this dorm that forces you to have your room tidy so they can clean it. weird huh?

'cheers'
~Nibl without the orte

dear friends, we love you more than it appears we do

ok first thing's first: we suck. a lot. we've been pretty incommunicado while we've been here (too many bottles and bowls, etc.), but this blog is our attempt at reconciliation. don't worry we'll also send you all some private messages with the goods.

to explain our blog-o-name: the 68 is a bus that we ride every day, and it seems like every time we need to get to a new place in the city, said bus miraculously happens to run there. it means home, and "i only need to hold in the contents of my stomach for a little longer", and plenty of other things too.

we're gonna be summing up our experiences in london and barcelona in installments pretty soon here. again, we feel terrible about having not written you all nearly enough. you are all collectively the hottest people we know, making us the single most attractive group of friends in the known universe.

expect post cards / clever blog-o-banter soon!
lovelovelovelove
niblorte