More machine now, than man...

Basically, Ellie and I have watched the entire original Star Wars Trilogy together over about a week and a bit. Yet another reason to love her.

For those of you who haven't seen the original trilogy and think of Star Wars exclusively in terms of the prequels, or (heaven forbid) are completely unfamiliar with the saga as a whole, allow me to summarise the films:

• "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away" appears on the screen, and the audience of 1977 probably came in their collective pants...
• Big booming theme music plays, yellow writing scrolls across the screen, disguising what is in fact awesome.
• Darth Vader (bad guy in a helmet) captures Princess Leia (woman with bagel hair), R2-D2 (dustbin robot) and C3PO (gay robot) escape.
• On Tatooine (desert planet) Luke Skywalker (whiny farmboy) buys R2-D2 and C3PO, then loses them, but then finds them and also Obi-Wan Kenobi (creepy old man).
• Luke's aunt and uncle get killed, Luke and Obi-Wan decide to leave Tatooine, stopping at a pub, where Obi-Wan commits ABH on an arse-faced alien.
• At said pub, they also meet Han Solo (cool space pirate) and Chewbacca (bear/cat/dog), who agree to take them on their ship.
• Meanwhile, the Death Star (evil metal testicle) blows up Alderaan (Leia's homeworld), because the Empire are evil, and that's what evil people do.
• Han, Luke, Obi-Wan, Chewy and the droids go to the Death Star. They save Leia. Obi-Wan gets killed by Vader, Luke gets mopey, but then seems totally over it five minutes later.
• The Rebels (goodies) blow up the Death Star because Luke "uses the Force (magic)", but Darth Vader wasn't on board, because he was too busy floating through space in his little spaceship.
• It's now the second film, and the Rebels have a base on Hoth (snowy planet). Luke gets attacked by the Wampa (Cookie Monster), Han has to save him. Sexual tension between Han and Leia gets properly tensiony...
• Luke goes to Dagobah (swampy planet) to meet Yoda (magical pixie who sounds like Fozzy Bear). He starts to learn about the Force, gets pretty good, then has a sulk.
• Meanwhile, Han, Leia, Chewy and the droids go Bespin (a city in the clouds, known as Cloud City, imaginatively), where they meet Lando (the only black guy in the galaxy). He betrays them and Han gets frozen.
• Luke then goes to Bespin and fights Vader, who cuts off his hand and then tells him he's his dad. Which seems like an odd way to go about things, really...
• Now it's the third film, and Leia, Chewy, Luke, Lando, and the droids are rescuing Han from Jabba (big slug). Luke fights a monster, they blow up Jabba's ship, and they escape. But more importantly, Leia wears this:

• The Rebels go to Endor (forest planet) to turn off the shield for the new Death Star (yep, they just rebuilt it, real fucking original). Luckily, the have help from the Ewoks (teddy bears).
• Luke goes to Dagobah and officially becomes a Jedi (nice wizard). Yoda dies (but then again he was 900), and Luke gets mopey again, and gets over it again, really quickly. Oh, and Luke finds out that Leia is his sister.
• Back on Endor, the shield is down, after an epic battle that sees the Empire get severely defeated by the Ewoks, who somehow prove that lasers are no match for sticks.
• Vader and Luke have an amazing lightsaber battle on the Death Star, the Emperor (Vader's boss) watches and laughs. Luke cuts off Vader's hand (payback's a bitch, Darth) and then gets zapped by the Emperor's lightning. Vader saves Luke and throws the Emperor down a pit, because he probably felt bad about being a shit dad, and then dies.
• Then Lando blows up the Death Star, the Rebels are really fucking happy, and then the credits roll. Han and Leia are clearly going to hook up, though, and that's what's really important.

Off to uni tomorrow...

Yep, I'm off to uni tomorrow, to pretend to be an intellectual of some kind... although I'll still be doing the following things:

• Watching iCarly with my girlfriend
• Being a little too weird for most people
• Wearing Muppet pants
• Watching far too much E! for a straight man
• Reading far too much Grazia, Vogue, Elle, Cosmo, and Company for a straight man
• Other things that may bring my sexuality into questioning
• Secretly being a boy

Roman Holiday

I loved Rome. More importantly, I love the woman with whom I went to Rome. Frankly, if Rome had turned out to be a cesspool filled with dead rabbits, I'd still have had a lovely time, purely owing to the virtue that is my girlfriend. She's the most amazing lady ever, can't explain how much she means to me. Anywho, here are a few pictures from Rome:

Reading

Ahhh, Reading, the best weekend of the year. The first I've spent with my beautiful lady, and subsequently the best one. We met Mystery Jets, had our picture taken with them and I talked at (not to) their drummer about how good they were. Win. The weekend was filled with lovely giggly goodness at all times, warm cosy cuddles whilst it rained outside our (not waterproof) tent, and just an unbelievable feeling of love. I've never been more in love than I am right now, it's the best feeling I've ever felt.

Reading, Rome, Romance, and other things, some of which don't begin with the letter "R"...

So, I turned 19. Hurrah. It's not a milestone exactly, but it does mean that I've only one more year where I can get away with things on the basis of being a teenager. My birthday was (as I'm sure many other people's birthdays are) spent in a state of intoxication, with my beautiful girlfriend and a couple of good friends. We drank slightly too much, had some naughtiness, and woke up feeling rougher than a badger's bumhole. And then the Lady and I decided not to get drunk any more. Wise move, methinks...

But my birthday wasn't all drunken mischief. Oh no, there were was quite a lot of cake. Blondies, cupcakes (chocolate ones and coffee ones, both seriously omnomnom), and cookies, all baked lovingly by the most beautiful, amazing girl ever. I'm one lucky guy! I am also now the proud owner of a pair of Kermit pants, a lovely varsity jacket, an uber-useful cookbook, and (perhaps win-est of all) a Star Wars duvet set. Yep. Star Wars. It's lucky it was a present from my girlfriend, because it pretty much guarantees I'd die alone if it wasn't for her...

Post birthday I returned to work, to do two people's jobs, because All Saints is fair like that. So I pulled a sickie on Friday, and instead taught myself some Italian (parlo poco italiano).

I then went to V Festival with the Lady. I love her. I do not love V. The audience is composed of equal parts 14-year-olds whose parents won't let them go anywhere else, drunken chavs all attempting to fight/shag everything that moves, and mid-life crisis types clinging to their last shred of youth and impetuousness. Florence was good, as per usual, and Editors were entertaining (if ugly as fuck). Ellie Goulding put on a good set, although the audience (mostly drunken 14-year-old chavs) provided an oddly worrying atmosphere. I constantly felt like I was about to be punched/vomited on/yelled at for looking at someone funny. But it was lovely to spend the day with my darling girlfriend, as it always is.

This weekend's Reading Festival should hopefully be a different kettle of (sustainably sourced Freedom Food) fish. Yes, there are drunken morons. Yes, there are angry fuckers. Yes, there are fires. But it's Reading. It's camping (win) with friends (win) and the Lady (win) in a field (win, though I'm not sure why) watching awesome bands (win). That adds up to quite a bit of win, for those of you who didn't notice. Plus this year promises to be the most list-tickingly, notebook-carryingly, pie chart-analysingly organised Reading ever, as the Lady and I have already planned the food we'll be taking, which means we'll be able to live for four days on a budget that'd only last one day at festival prices. I bloody love her.

In other news, I've been bumming (not literally, although I'm sure they'd be up for it) the Mystery Jets recently. More specifically, I've been bumming their new album "Serotonin". It's awesome. While "Twenty One" was good (and I mean gooood), their latest ever just seems to be better constructed. The songs flow perfectly into one another, and the band's unique "80's in the 60's" sound is as refreshing as ever. Buy it, buy it now.

Finally, I'm wetting my (hypothetical) pants in anticipation of the holiday to Rome that the Lady and I will be going on in just over a week! Before we know it, we'll be knee deep in wine, gelato, spaghetti, the Pope, and basically anything else Italian. Except Il Divo. They're shit. But we're going to see the Colosseum! And the Trevi Fountain! And the Spanish Steps! And lots of other stuff! Aaah!

Here's a sexually charged, yet oddly beautiful Mystery Jets track, "Melt". Enjoy.

August is upon us...

As the title suggests, August is here, which means two things, in my mind:

• Music festivals


• My birthday

I'm still unsure what I'm doing for my birthday, but it had better involve the lady and myself not wearing very much at some point. And maybe a cake.

However, I am very sure of what I'll be doing at festivals:

Me in numbers...

18 - my age in years, soon to be 19.
5 - the number of guitars I own.
41 - the number of times a second I think about my girlfriend.
140 - my weight in pounds.
3 - how many sisters I have.
27 - the age at which I'd like to get married.
6.33 - the number of months the Lady and I have been together.
106 - the age I'll live to (according to a Facebook quiz).
3 - how many weeks late I was being born.
11313 - the number of songs on my iPod.
100% - the amount of my heart that the Lady owns.
1 - the number of people I need, and (you've guessed it) that 1 is the Lady.
1 - how many tattoos I'll have after I get 1 tattoo...
2 - the number of days the Lady and I spent in Paris.
45 - the number of kilos I can comfortably chest press (not much, but I'm only wee).
∞ - how much I love my girlfriend. That's infinity symbol, not a pair of tits...