January

- I had a topsy-turvy January. It certainly felt long, in both good and bad ways. School was a drag, so much that my week back, which was filled with exams, was the highlight. My results were pretty good but as is traditional with my school there was no celebrating as all my teachers tried hard to make sure all of that exam pressure carried over into our day-to-day lives (and I suppose I'll thank them for it later and etc).

- The rest of school I'll simply mark down as busy. We're studying The Kite Runner now in English, which is basically just me and no-one else putting my hand when the teacher asks (and they've asked a surprising amount of times now) if anyone doesn't like the book or the passage we've just read. I do hope this course entails writing a review of the books we're reading so I can outline exactly why The Kite Runner is over-written, manipulative bullshit. Having to read out The History Boys is fun, even though I'm reading for Lockwood who is one of the most un-memorable characters in the whole play, thank god I'm not involved in any awkward sex scenes though.

- I was having a happy time for the first half of the month before I was hit by nasty bout of depression that had me lying in bed for hours in the middle of the day and practically giving up on the gym. I think I'm fine now, though, which probably has something to do with me falling madly in love with a girl (although it should be noted I fall in love waay too easy) and spending the last week kicking around with her and trying to make her laugh.

- After firing my original driving structure (who seemed to take his almost constant state of agonizing stress out on my admittedly poor driving skills) all my friends have been recommending me their instructors. Right now I've got a choice between "pedo Daz" and "rip-off Dave", great.

- I spent the month crossing off blindspots. I stayed up until 3 in the morning watching Seven Samurai - which deserves it's reputation - and combined with Frances Ha, which I've already wrote about loving, I'm now in a very black and white mood. which I'm never usually in. I also read my first David Foster Wallace, with Consider The Lobster, of which I've nearly finished a post about, and was so impressionable to Wallace's style, which I thought was great, I even wrote an extremely over-written post on The Sopranos, which I finally finished at the beginning of the month, as a form of poor imitation. I also read William S Burroughs' Junkie, which I took as a grand apology for Naked Lunch.

- In my media course we're currently doing a music video unit, with me and a friend making one for a indie band down in Sheffield. Which is why Media is basically now just one big musical discussion class where we argue about if rock n roll is dead and our teacher gets all nostalgic and answers questions about why he quit a job working in TV and meeting celebrities to teach us. I chose to analyze Weezer's video for Buddy Holly, which is why I finally got around to listening to Pinkerton, apparently the jewel within the Weezer shrine. Apart from the first and last track I don't actually recall any highlights, although it's one of those albums that works better as a whole, just taking in the general sound. It sounds like a cheery band stripped bare (probably because that's exactly what it is) and my favorite of the month.

- I said last month I wanted these posts to collect all my favorite writing of the month, which in retrospective was a stupid claim considering how much I read in a month (who knew) and how much I forget to actually save it somewhere, so here's some good internet reading I did this month: I don't know what to think of Bret Easton having not read his fiction and only knowing him from an angry twitter account, but I read an old piece he did on the current state of celebrity that I thought was great; understandably I've been reading a lot about DFW, and how could I not read this conversation that linked him to Lester Bangs; I didn't watch the Grammys, although my friend kept sending me links to videos everytime a member of Daft Punk was on screen for longer than a second, and as always the best coverage is from Sasha Frere-Jones; HTMLGiant continued to be my favorite site with great pieces all around: Lily Hoang wrote a beautiful post on our reactions to grief, if you've ever wondered what Macaulay Culkin was up to then A D Jameson found out for you, with interesting results, while Seth Oelbaum did a series on "boys who kill" which caused such ruckus on the site the first part has already been removed, it was interesting none-the-less, and Janey Smith started up a series where she posts pictures of her facebook friends, with the first post interlaced with a Guardian article about friendship; and although I hate to report on things I don't like (I mean really) the fact the most sentimental, amateurish crap I read all month was on The New Yorker of all places, and about my sacred cow Nirvana too, made it seem worthy of note.

- It looks to be a more relaxed February, I can only hope the sun returns to Britain soon. To whoever reading, have a good one.