Two songs are getting stuck in my head like no other at the minute - ‘Hell’ by Tegan and Sara and ‘Lisztomania’ by Phoenix. The remix of the latter by Alex Metric is absolutely banging. It’s like MSTRKRFT with an injection of indie and a few extra layers of obscurity. Also, MSTRKRFT is apparently ‘dance-punk’ - what’s up with that? Chk Chk Chk are dance-punk, MSTRKRFT are electro-house. Tegan and Sara’s new album (Sainthood) is incredible, it’s been on repeat for the last few days and it’s got lovely vocal hooks, especially in Hell, the whole “I know you feel it too” chorus is infectiously winner (yes that’s a new Joannaism!). The whole album is quite catchy but not in an obvious way, occasionally I think I’m probably thinking it is just because I love their style so much. I’ve only just discovered MSTRKRFT’s ‘The Looks’ and I just wished I had listened to it instead of spending months addicted to ‘Does it Offend You Yeah?’ thinking that was the closest I could get to radio-friendly electro-house. For the record, the only “acceptable” DIOYY? songs are ‘Battle Royale’ and ‘Weird Science’, everything else was just reworked rejections of ‘nu wave’ marketed to obnoxious scenekids. And I bought Phoenix’s latest (Amadeus Wolfgang) on the day they were playing in Bristol. Stunning. Nothing much to say apart from it’s epic.

I was planning to write this post on Friday because I was in an extreme ‘angry-mode.’ I’m no longer angry, but I’ll attempt to explain things.

I now have four university offers. York, Sheffield, Exeter, Birmingham. This is ridiculous. It’s been less than a month since I submitted my application. But I am annoyed, for Exeter was my second favourite (after LSE, who I’ve yet to hear back from) and they gave me an AAA conditional offer. I specifically didn’t apply for universities (Oxbridge, Durham, SOAS etc.) which asked for AAA, on the basis that I probably won’t meet that and that LSE is the best place in the UK (if not, the world) for International Relations, and their standard offer is AAB. The problem is, I liked Exeter a lot when I visited it, both the campus and the city. I could really see myself living their for three years, and “home” is only a short train journey away. Now, it’s out of my reach. York was another possible first choice (AAB), but it’s risky as it’s some five hour drive/3.5 hour very expensive train journey. Not to mention the course never really striked me as being as good as the others (it was a last minute substitution instead of Manchester) and the concept of living in a ‘tiny town’ never really occured to me. Of course, if I get an AAB offer from LSE, 99.9% chance I’ll accept it as the course is the best by a long shot. But there isn’t a complacent bone in my body, I was always expecting to get rejected from LSE (although, I was also expecting rejections from York/Exeter too) and I honestly don’t think I stand much of chance. University with the most applicants per place in the UK (14:1). Little Joanna isn’t that special.

Also, David Nutt got fired. I don’t usually discuss things political on the blog but it’s bloody ridiculously. Not only do they reject drug expert’s advice on classification (such as increasing cannabis back up to B, not downgrading ecstasy etc.) they now fire people if they don’t think the same way as them. Cannabis is less harmful that alcohol and tobacco, that’s just science. The government make me sick.

My next blog post I’m going to post a remix mixtape or whatever you want to call it. I’m trying to keep it along the lines of ‘indie floorfillers’ and ‘obscurely mashed pop.’ It’ll be uncomfortable to listen to. Expect robotic noise house. I’m excited.

It’s time we all started thinking outside the box bitches.

I dug up my old computer the other day, the really shitty PC I built myself aged thirteen. How did I live with 512MB memory for all those years sheesh. Anyway, there were two harddrive in it, one I used when in 2005/2006 and the second one 2007/2008. The former was saved, and I managed to salvage what was left from it, which was some ‘alternative/indie’ music I used to listen to back then (Straylight Run, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Scarling etc.) and the more recent drive is beyond saving as it was the thing that caused the computer to go kaput.

Anyway, there were a lot of things on the salvaged harddrive that I’d rather forget. I was a messed up child to say the least really, and it’s brought out a lot of negative emotions, remembering how little confidence I had then and how much of a horrible person I was. Nice.

I bought a Nikon D50 was a standard lens. I can’t use it yet, it genuinely scares me because I’m so hopeless at it. This photography thing is just silly. It came with an 18-55mm lens, which I had no idea what that meant until I googled for a while, now realising that’s some 3.6x zoom. Seriously, my compact was 7x. I tried using it at the Nick Clegg meeting today, where my friends an I perched on the bar right at the very back (classy). And yes, utter fail (although it did mean little Joanna had a completely unobscured view). So I’m gonna have to spend some £100 to get some 18-200mm lens…fan-fucking-tastic.  It’s a nice little catch-22: I’m not going to want to use the camera without a better lens, but to get a better lens I’m going to have to invest yet more money into it.

Although on The Nick Clegg Meets Bristol at Colston Hall, Clegg proves himself a great speaker: fluent, intelligent, charasmatic…but enjoys dodging questions where he could. A few times he seemed to hit nails on the head, particularly ones about tax loopholes and nuclear fission/fusion or whatever (and did honestly admit that he didn’t know much of the science but tried to answer it politically).

But after so initial apprehensions I decided to ask a really predictable yet sensible question. Didn’t think it through entirely, I wasn’t expecting to get chosen for there were lots of important people with longer arms; but I’m sure it helped that I was young, in a group of pretty females and my position at the centre of the bar made me directly in his eyeline.

I tried wording it in a way that, if he was to deliberately avoid my question it would’ve been pretty obvious. “If the next election resulted in a hung parliament, under what conditions would you form a coalition with either of the two major parties.” The man wouldn’t even let me keep a straight face, as soon as I mentioned ‘hung parliament’ he said something which I forget, and I just started laughing. Hooray. Anyway, basically he rambled on like “I can’t predict the outcome of the next election…I get flattered when people think I can predict the future” when I just wanted to shout…HYPOTHETICALLY. He probably didn’t know this, but I knew exactly why he refused to answer it.  He hinted at a possible coalition with the Tories a few months back, and Vince Cable said the Lib Dems would never back the Tories and would only consider Labour. Since then, he’s kept tight lipped about “The C-Word” no doubt to avoid ‘internal divisions’ which have damaged both major parties in the past.

Anyway, it was totally worth it to have Nick Clegg talk directly act me for five or so minutes. I struggled to keep a straight face, like I had kind of a power-crush. Oh, and it helps that he’s attractive.

As Jenny said: “You got face time with Nick Clegg, I got Douglas Alexander. I think we know who wins.”

I unfortunately did not get to complete my lifegoal of getting photograph with two Lib Dem leaders (had to shout at a security guard to get a photo with Charles Kennedy, whilst hungover, great fun). It was a good evening and I feel like a little school girl: “OMG he talked to me!”

This is why I could never do political journalism. I get power-crushes and act like a tween.