Let's Talk About... Lolita

'Lolita' - Stanley Kubrick (1962)

There are two main schools of thought on the pronunciation of the authors name. Vladimir himself pronounced his own name ‘Na-bow-cough’ whereas the general population opts for ‘Nab-oh-kov’. I myself flit from one pronunciation to the other, but i’m sure no one can deny that the author knows his own name best. But, I leave this choice firmly in your hands. Vladimir Nabokov. 

I first became interested in Nabokov around six years ago. I had found the novel ‘Lolita’ in a bookstore and was instantly and irrevocably enamoured with her. One might say “it was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.” I had heard of the story and I was in that bookstore with the express intention of seeking it out. On this particular edition (1997 print, Lyne, Swain) there was the young, honey-skinned and auburn haired Lo, lying on the grass of her lawn reading a magazine. I opened the novel and read the first chapter, a 173 word masterpiece. I must have read it at least three times. The beauty of Nabokov’s language and his description of the girl named “Lo-lee-ta” is something i’m sure no one can read only once. To say nothing of the content just yet, Nabokov’s prose is as lyrical and lilting as the title itself. More impressive still is that English was not even Nabokov’s native language (his native language being Russian). Despite this, each word, each phrase, each syllable melts off the tongue (...from palate to tap!) and reads less like a novel and more like poetry. When giving a lecture on Lolita in 2009, Nick Mount said, “Have you ever done something so many times that you become expert at it? You begin to add things that are inessential flourishes, something you add onto it [...] It’s the tennis player that returns the ball between her legs, it’s the soccer player who kicks the ball in the net upside-down and in mid-air. Not because he has to, but because he can. That is Nabokov’s style.” What makes Nabokov’s style his own is that he cannot resist the little flourishes, the added extras. My infatuation with Dolly would be confirmed the same day when I spotted the original film poster to Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 film. Sue Lyon’s blue-grey eyes peeping over the red rims of heart-shaped sunglasses as she seductively licks on a cherry pink lollipop. Without knowing it I had become Humbert Humbert, though I was of an age where it could not be considered immoral to love Lo. I bought the book and I bought the film then and there.

‘Lolita’ was one of the most controversial novels to ever have been released. Vladimir Nabokov attained world-wide fame with it’s publication (though he had been a respected Russian writer in Europe for decades before). He began to write the novel in Russian but after several drafts began to write in English for his growing American audience. After many years of Lolita “throbbing” in him and after many close shaves (manuscript, furnace) Lolita was finally ready for publication. But who would print it? As Nabokov describes in his afterword to the novel “[One American Publisher] said that if he published the novel he and I would go to jail.” Finally the book was published in France by the Olympia Press (a publishing company that had some history of printing light erotica, a fact unknown to Nabokov at that time). Described as a strongly erotic novel by some (though others preferred to describe it as “...a novel with erotic motifs.”) it’s double entendres and dangerous theme of a middle-aged man falling helplessly in love with a twelve-year-old girl were too garish at the time of it’s publication (1955) to be ignored. The book was banned in France, the UK and other countries shortly after its publication, but never in the USA. It began to gain some notoriety after Graham Greene described it as one of the best three books of 1955. It wasn’t until a few years later that Nabokov began to see his book being consumed by American audiences. The book even made it into Groucho Mark’s stand up routine, he would say “I’m going to put off reading Lolita for 6 years. I’m waiting until she turns eighteen.” In 1958 and 1959 Lolita made the top of the USA’s fiction best-seller list (with Pat Boone’s advice to teenagers ‘Twix, Twelve and Twenty’ on the top of the non-fiction best-seller list, how delicious!).  Even to this day the book is printed in it’s censored version, not because there is anything missing from the main text but because Nabokov’s afterward describing the process of Lolita is always bound to every copy. It was an essay Nabokov was encouraged to write to make readers feel better about to book, to account for it’s origin and give some defence for it’s content. Lolita is still deformed or influenced to this day by the history of censorship. Was this censorship justified? Is the book as obscene as some of it’s critics have proposed? And above all these questions, one stands out; does the subject matter highlight a deviousness in Nabokov’s own character?

Nabokov firmly and consistently denied a similarity between himself and his character Humbert Humbert, but with so many references to young girls in his work (and not only in Lolita) what conclusions is one to draw from his fascination with adolescence? Is it a purely Wildean admiration for the incomparable beauty of youth? Perhaps, Nabokov, by using Lolita and nymphets (a term he coined) to personify ageing love he communicates the idea that one cannot stay in a stage of young love perpetually and furthermore that it is in fact insane to do so. Humbert Humbert’s obsession with youth can be traced back to his childhood when, one summer, he and a girl named Annabel Lee fell “...madly, clumsily, shamelessly and agonisingly in love...” with each other. After he and his Annabel are separated by her death he continues throughout his life to try and obtain her, even after he himself grows way beyond his own childhood. Humbert is insistent that he does love Lolita throughout the whole novel and in something of a mocking laugh at the critics, in the very first chapter states that “...Ladies and Gentleman of the jury, exhibit number one is what the seraphs, the misinformed, simple, noble-winged seraphs, envied.” but who are the seraphs and what do they envy? Nabokov is writing with reference to the Edgar Allan Poe poem “Annabel Lee”. Poe writes:

It was many and many a year ago,

   In a kingdom by the sea,

That a maiden there lived whom you may know

   By the name of Annabel Lee;

And this maiden she lived with no other thought

   Than to love and be loved by me.

I was a child and she was a child,

   In this kingdom by the sea,

But we loved with a love that was more than love—

   I and my Annabel Lee—

With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven

   Coveted her and me.

So the seraphs are jealous of the love of the two protagonists of this poem and perhaps Humbert sees his readers as these seraphs, jealous and unable to comprehend the love story of the book. It isn’t until page 250 that Humbert realises that a relationship with a younger girl cannot work, though his uncontrollable lust cannot subside, he decides he will no longer attempt to plunge his fangs into Lolita’s sisters. Humbert Humbert is a guilty party from page one, however. He realises his actions are wrong. Humbert describes his desires as “dangerous and degrading”. He is a self-confessed “mad-man”. He is a reluctant fiend, but a fiend none-the-less. Humbert speaks of one sided romances with nymphets on the metro and sitting alone in parks as he watches all the little girls play. Furthermore, he is repulsed by the sight of women his own age, he writes “leave me alone in my pubescent park! Let them play around me forever and never grown up!” (not to mention the relationship he has with Charlotte Haze). When writing the 1962 script to Kubrick’s ‘Lolita’ Nabokov was sure to write himself a small cameo as a butterfly hunter that runs into Humbert Humbert, thus disconnecting himself from his character once and for all. Nabokov and Humbert were truly two separate people.

Nabokov was an avid Butterfly collector. His favourite pass time was to be driven by his wife Véra (he himself never learned to drive) up to collecting sites. He was first inspired by the idea when he found books by Maria Merian in his parents attic. He was a distinguished Entomologist in his own right and apart from owning a large collection of hand-sliced Butterfly genitalia, his theory about a particular Butterfly’s evolution (though at first dismissed) was later vindicated and proven correct. He took this hobby very seriously and describes the day he discovered a new species as the happiest of his life. He wrote:

 “I found it and named it, being versed in taxonomic Latin; thus became godfather to an insect and it’s first describer - and I want no other fame.” 

Butterflies appear repeatedly in the work of Nabokov and perhaps this was because he was so impressed by the life of such a beautiful insect. To go from an ugly caterpillar to an immobile ‘nymph’ stage and from there emerge as a beautiful winged insect must have fascinated him greatly, but what baring did this have on his work? Perhaps the frailty and vulnerability of the ‘nymph’ stage caterpillar were traits he paralleled with young girls purposefully. What would happen should someone tamper with or corrupt this nymph in the pivotal stage of its growth? Would the resulting Butterfly be as beautiful when it emerged from it’s cocoon?

 "Lola in slacks, Dolly at school, Dolores on the dotted line..." - Photos: Bert Stern

So where is the controversy in this book? I believe it to be brilliant and Vanity Fair dubbed it “...the only convincing love story of the 20th Century.” Yes, the protagonist is a twelve-year-old girl, but as Nabokov describes in his afterward, he has no moral or ulterior motive or allegory to communicate with this book. The book is fiction and to quote Oscar Wilde “There is no such thing an a moral or an immoral book. Books are either well written or badly written. That is all.” I believe that the real controversy of the book is that we do not feel anger toward Humbert Humbert. The reader likes him even though he a hebephile and a murderer. This is what frightens audiences, it leaves something of a bad taste in the mouth. Not only do we feel no anger toward Humbert, we feel no sympathy for Lolita! The poor, orphaned and abused girl (at least, she does not receive our sympathies often). In the climax of the novel any glimpse of hate or loathing we had for Humbert disappears as he redeems himself. Humbert recalls his stay at Beardsley College and a conversation he overheard between Lolita and one of her classmates in which it becomes clear to him that she was jealous of her school-friends normal life and functional family unit. Humbert admits that all he offered her was an unstable and incestuous relationship. As readers we finally realise that we do not know Lolita at all (and maybe Humbert doesn’t either) because all we know about her is what Humbert says. The Lo we know, is Humbert’s version of her as she has no voice at all in the novel. Our sympathies go out to her but again are snatched back in one of the closing chapters where Humbert makes a heart-felt plea for her to come back to him “I want you to live with me and die with me and everything with me!”. The poor man! She is no longer his nymphet, she is 17 by this point and she is heavily pregnant with another mans child but even so, he still loves her madly and wants her to be with him. She refuses, “No, honey. No.” and any sympathy we had for her to that point is again snatched away from her. Sobbing and heart-broken Humbert goes back to Ramsdale to seek his vengeance on Clare Quilty, the play-write that stole Lolita away from him and the man who still has her affections. Quilty, this shadowy figure who barely appears in the book until the second-to-last chapter is the focus of the readers hate, here is the villain and next to him is our hero “The Executioner robed all in black” Humbert Humbert to exact his revenge upon him. Though, Quilty is Humbert. Quilty is an artist and hebephile, much like Humbert is (in fact, Humbert tells us how awfully similar they are. He goes so far as to tell us that he has many things in common with Quilty) but Quilty is Humbert without any form of romance or conscience about him. He abducts Lo away from Hum, and takes her back to his Mansion and he attempts to force her to take part in his pornographic movies. When Lo tells him that she wants him and only him, Quilty kicks her out and casts her aside. Lolita then reveals that after all of this she would rather be with Quilty than with Humbert. Humbert remarks, "[Lolita would say] He only broke my heart, you broke my life." Humbert then kills him.

I love Lolita, you could say I have a Humbertian obsession! The plot is divine, the characters are fascinating, the prose is poetry and no matter how many times you were to read it you would only gain a deeper understanding of Nabokov’s text. What takes me back to Lo over and over again? Nabokov takes the traditional love story and then complicates it (some might say he poisons it) but isn’t it true to say that all great love stories of the last few centuries have been about destructive love? All great love affairs appear to be tragic and oftentimes end in death (as Lolita does). Love stories that are memorable are about people who ought not be in love (Romeo and Juliet springs to mind). So, Nabokov takes these ideas of forbidden love and applies them to the 20th century and perhaps now in the 21st century ‘Lolita’ can be seen as even more relevant. I like the book because it is shocking yet touching, erotic yet decent. It is the story of a complex and immoral relationship yet somehow I as a reader sympathise with the abuser and not the abused (at least, not ‘til the very end). Humbert is a man reluctantly and uncontrollably enamoured with nymphets and the deadly demon, Lolita, time and time again toys with his emotions and uses his obsession to her own advantage. But by the end of the novel, Nabokov gets himself off the hook, so to speak. We as readers realise with Humbert what he has done to poor misguided Lo. Lolita finally gets the compassion she deserves and we realise that our sympathies should have been with her whole-heartedly from the beginning. Humbert writes, as he stands on the edge of town listening to children play, (in perhaps the most beautiful of all excerpts of the novel) “I stood listening to that musical vibration from my lofty slope, to those flashes of separate cries with a kind of demure murmur for background, and then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not Lolita’s absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that Concord.” This is what brings me back time and time again to the lyrical lilting loveliness of Lolita. “...and the rest is rust and stardust.”

Vladimir Nabokov 1899 - 1977

“Lolita turns 50 this year, and having stayed so perverse, it remains fresh as ever. To fully appreciate its perversity, though, one must first appreciate that it is not obscene. Your run-of-the-mill obscene masterwork—Tropic of Cancer, say—demands that you, enlightened reader, work your way past the sex and excrement to recognise how beautiful it is. But with Lolita, you must work past its beauty to recognise how shocking it is.” - Stephen Metcalf

Let's Talk About... Marilyn Manson

There was a time when I didn’t listen to music. It’s a very difficult concept to grapple with now that music is the pivotal force in ones life. Not a day goes by when I don’t listen to a song or an album. I first became interested in music about ten years ago when I was eleven. I had never owned a CD up to this point and had never been inspired to venture further into musical discovery than that which my Mother’s car provided. I was a novice and the only artists I could name for you at this time were ABBA, Michael Jackson, Shania Twain, Madonna and The Bee Gees (some of my Mother’s car journey favourites). Had I owned an iPod at the age of eleven there would have been about nine songs on it (yet ten years later a 64GB capacity seems to be too restrictive).

Everything changed when I got into high school. Everybody was listening to music all of the time and when they weren’t listening to it, they were talking about it. I had nothing to add to the discussion and had I not been shunned enough by my peers, here was just another reason for them to neglect me. In the days when iPods were luxury items (and relatively unheard of) the kids would carry around their little portable jukeboxes or personal CD players and it seemed like a status symbol to me or ‘the cool thing to have’. I wanted one badly, but amongst the unquenchable desire to be among the school yard elite, I found myself asking the pivotal question, “what would I play on it even if I had one?” I started watching the music channels on TV in an effort to find out what my musical taste was. I remember at this time that Green Day’s ‘American Idiot’ was out and My Chemical Romance’s ‘I’m Not Okay’ was playing seemingly on repeat. At this point, my hypothetical 2004 iPod’s song list would have started to slowly expand from nine songs to about fifteen. Now at school I could join in on a conversation about Good Charlotte or Blink 182. This was all very exciting. I was never a particular fan of this music in hindsight but it was the only music I knew and that knowledge put me on a level playing field with the other eleven year olds at school. I had also discovered a clique that I desperately aspired to be a part of, though I never became a valid member. I knew that I wanted to be one of the long-haired boys in the school years above me with the baggy trousers yet I wasn’t cool enough and I still didn’t own a CD, which in my eyes was the key. How could I wear long hair if I wasn’t a music fan? For me the two things went hand in hand, you can’t be one and not have the other. I really wasn’t overly enthusiastic about buying My Chemical Romance’s CD or Green Day’s CD or any of the other albums I had discovered thus far in my voyage through the music channels. I had to admit defeat and carry on searching for somebody whose CD I could proudly carry in my soon-to-be-purchased portable CD player. 

One afternoon amidst all the mediocrity came something extraordinary. The words “Not Another High School Party” flashed my retinas and a dark figure forced his way into my consciousness and my life forever. The song was familiar (one of my Mother’s car tunes) but this person was something completely alien to me. I found him fascinating and intriguing at once and it was his image that especially stood out to me at first. It was as though he had channeled all my inner angst and personified it. A feeling I had had that I couldn’t explain was finally made clear to me without the man even having to say a word. It is safe to say that I liked him and identified with him immediately. I still had an awful lot to learn about him, but I knew that this ‘Marilyn Manson’ was something special and unique. Of all the mediocre bands I had been listening to over the previous weeks and months, Manson was the first to make me think about anything and this alone made him stand out amongst his Kerrang peers. Music was no longer just a device in which I could become popular at school, it was now something entirely different. I had decided which artist I would give my support to in the form of my first CD purchase. 

Marilyn Manson - Tainted Love

These were the days when £5 was an awful lot of money to me and a CD was a relatively expensive item. This is a laughable concept today especially when you can download dozens of albums in an afternoon for free, if you were so inclined. To buy one album was the product of an entire weeks labour back then. I had to walk around in the early hours of the morning six days a week delivering newspapers before school just to afford one album. I went to a local pre-owned entertainment store that sold albums that had seen better days, yet even these were only just within my means to buy. The only Manson album I could find in my price range was his 1999 live album, ‘The Last Tour On Earth’. It had in it’s track listing two or three familiar sounding songs and after haggling the shop owner down 99pence (£5 being all I had at the time) I brought home this cracked CD case and began to listen intently. It probably wasn’t the best introduction to Manson’s music but in a lot of ways you could argue that it was. It captured the ‘take no prisoners’ attitude of his 1990’s show and it also served as a sort of ‘Best Of’ compilation for me to sample his various work. Soon this album wasn’t enough and I needed even more. I began to frequent this second hand CD store and over the coming weeks bought more of the Marilyn Manson stock. As my hair began to reach past my ears and I began to talk of colouring it black, an unexpected obstacle came between me and my music: My Mother. She disapproved of Marilyn Manson for reasons I never really understood. I guess she thought he was something of a bad influence on me. She could see that since starting high school my mood gradually slipped until I became a brooding teenager who was always depressed about one thing or another. She surmised that Marilyn Manson was to blame. She, to my utter anger and resentment, confiscated my only friend. Marilyn Manson was contraband. 

Over the following couple of years my experimentations with hair dye and make-up went  almost unchallenged but Marilyn Manson remained taboo. Unsurprisingly the fact that his music wasn’t allowed didn’t mean that I wasn’t listening to it. I was such a rebel. Home cassettes I had ripped from the radio and TV were stuffed under my mattress and Manson’s albums continued to be collected and hidden. What my Mother didn’t realise is that vetoing Manson only made him more appealing and enthralling. What was it about this man that she wanted to shield me from? By this time I had all of his CDs and I was utterly familiar with every song. No matter what was going on outside the four walls of my bedroom I always seemed to have a confidant in Manson and as lame as it sounds he was my only friend for the earlier part of my teenage years. Manson was to me what I imagine Morrissey was to the disgruntled and down-trodden youth of the early 1980s. Manson opened the door to many things I had no knowledge of previously. He was the first to introduce me to The Beatles, David Bowie, The Doors, William Blake, Oscar Wilde and Salvador Dalí. The doors of perception were cleansed and I no longer felt so alone. He was the Mad Hatter and I was cordially invited to his Tea Party. 

One day my Mother returned my CDs to me and stopped making a fuss whenever I played one of Manson’s songs. It was a glorious day. My Marilyn Manson liberation! Soon after this extrication I was allowed to attend my first of Manson’s concerts in Manchester in the December of 2007. That is as good as I thought it could ever get and the idea of meeting him was an idea beyond my wildest dreams at that point. Had someone told me that five years later I was to be back-stage with my arm around the man, I would have laughed. Luckily some dreams do come to fruition and sure enough five years later in November of 2012 I was back-stage rubbing shoulders (and groins) with my hero of nearly ten years. 

But alas, my hair didn’t always stay long and eventually the make-up bag ended up in the trash. I learned to appreciate Manson in other ways than imitation. I guess it’s safe to say that I grew up and out of personifying my misery, however, the influence of Marilyn Manson only grows stronger and stronger to this day. He made me content with being different and I realised that it wasn’t something to be ashamed of, even if other people thought it was. Whenever I need reminding that it’s okay to be the way I am, I put one of his albums on and everything feels a little more bearable. If i’m angry he’ll be angry with me and if i’m sad he’ll sing me the most melancholically beautiful song. I value him highly.

Manson, Me, Twiggy - Nov. 2012

Stephen Fry once said of Oscar Wilde that, “The idea of becoming bored of Oscar is like becoming allergic to oxygen, it’s just not thinkable!” and although I adore both in abundance, I would like to take this opportunity to transplant the word ‘Oscar’ with the word ‘Marilyn’.

Let's Talk About... London

I live in central London, on the South Bank, in the shadow of Westminster. All of London is literally on my doorstep but I spend most of my time sitting in my flat on my iMac going over the same YouTube videos again and again. You might say that I’m quite wasteful with my time but I don’t spend all day looking at Facebook and Twitter, y’know. I research a lot of interesting things. The internet is actually fantastic, isn’t it? If you spend all day on social networks you’re missing out and you’re wasting a very useful tool. I encourage you to pick a topic that interests you and then learn all you can about that particular thing. Pursue your curiosity. Recently I have discovered my favourite iPhone Application of all time, ‘Jurassic Park Builder’. The app should come with a bold disclaimer: ‘Warning: May Consume Your Life’. My days recently have consisted of taking care of my Park and my Prehistoric animals. I wouldn’t have time for a job because in my head I already have one: Dino-Wrangler. So, in light of this my recent forays into internet research have been in relation to the Prehistoric. I read all there is to read about a species and move on to another and then start reading about a particular era or genus. It’s fascinating. I know a gargantuan amount of petty details about subjects you’ll never ask me about. I love the internet. I don’t really have a hobby but looking up interesting facts on the net and learning all there is to know about a particular person, place, thing, book or film is my favourite pass time. It’s a pity then that, under hobbies and interests on a CV, ‘Internet Research’ would be unacceptable. 

Jurassic Park Builder

I think that if my window didn’t overlook the concrete car park of my accommodation complex i’d probably have a little more motivation to go out into the actual world, but as it does, I feel like a prisoner unable to leave this place. Stepping through the reception doors and into London is an odd experience. I feel somehow in danger and out of my comfort zone. When i’m outside I just want to be back in my room where things make sense, where i’m comfortable and where I have an internet connection. I’m not quite sure how to account for this agoraphobia. I think I just like my own space and to be alone with my thoughts. I don’t like seeing people and I don’t like the hustle and the bustle of London life. When walking down Oxford Street (and you’ll know what I mean if you’ve ever been there) I find myself compelled to start shouting and screaming “get the fuck out of my way!” Everyone walks at a snails pace. Tourism is one of the greatest burdens to travel i’ve ever experienced! When walking across Westminster Bridge (this is true day or night, any time) there is always some tourist posing for pictures with Big Ben or the London Eye. They take up the entire pavement and stop directly in front of you, tripping you up.

- “Could you take my picture, please?”

- “Certainly not.”

My friend and I developed a game (not an entirely original one, but an adequate way to relieve stress when faced with slow paced tourists holding DSLRs) in which you ‘bomb’ the photos they’re taking, destroying the shot. Time your move just right and as the finger goes down on the shutter release, hurl yourself into the photograph. Another big draw for tourist attention seems to be phone boxes. What is so fascinating about a phone box? I imagine that in their little tour pamphlets there is a whole section about telephone boxes and how best to pose with one. It's as though they're a reason to come to London. I guarantee that not one red telephone box in central London is ever used to make a call, it’d be impossible! They’re always packed with people taking photos of each other holding the receiver and making a pitifully dumb expression. I wonder what their faces would look like if I interrupted the photo-shoot to make a call. I must do that.

But, it’s not all chaos and misery in London-town. There’s a lot of fun to be had. I learned long ago that I do not like a ‘night-out’. I went to Ministry Of Sound once and let me please implore you never to go there. It is a disaster. Unless of course, you like being dry-humped by a Chimpanzee in a wife-beater. The music is awful and it’s over-priced. A wholly unenjoyable affair. But that’s what a night out to most of you is, isn’t it? The typical ‘club’ with the booming bass. It’s not my scene in the slightest. Though, i’m glad to say that I have discovered my sanctuary; Northern Soul. Once a month me and my trusty dance partner, Michael, hop on the tube to Islington and stop off at Buffalo Bar to dance in a dark basement to 1960’s soul music. It is something of an occasion, my one night out a month, an excuse to get the shirt and tie on and my expensive cologne. In case you are unfamiliar with this ‘scene’ let me introduce you to a song that made for a brilliant closer last month. I thoroughly enjoyed dancing with a beautiful young lady to this funky beat:

Jean Knight - Mr Big Stuff

So apart from the one night out a month I have, what do I do for fun in London? Well I like eating out from time to time (when my bank balance will permit it). I have recently procured a taste for Japanese. Yo! Sushi on the South Bank has robbed me of a serious amount of cash these past few weeks, but I was a willing victim. I never knew that a bowl of seaweed could be so enjoyable, or a ball of rice wrapped in seaweed, or a seaweed salad or... I really enjoy seaweed. I wouldn’t be surprised if my evolutionary journey began to reverse and I crawled back into the water to form gills.

I have been to the Natural History Museum many times, in fact it’s probably the landmark I have visited most since moving to London nearly two years ago. Why do I like it so much? Well the Dinosaurs of course. This edition to my blog is awfully Dino heavy, isn’t it? On my last visit I was impressing the company I was with by naming each individual Dinosaur skeleton (without consulting the labels) with a 99% success rate. There was Parasaurolophus (my favourite herbivore, of course), Pachycephalosaurus, Corythosaurus, Baryonyx, Gallimimus... Shall I go on? All that internet research was good for something. I felt like such a child again when at the gift shop I purchased a little fossil build-it-yourself Parasaurolophus, which still has a special little spot on my book shelf. 

Natural History Museum - Apr. 2013

In conclusion, what do I enjoy about London? The Dinosaurs of course. Which reminds me, they need feeding. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, I go to University as well...

- I recommend the Northern Soul night, whole heartedly. It takes place the second Friday of each month. Stay up to date by following @GBKClub on Twitter. Alternatively just come on down! Buffalo Bar, Islington (directly in front of you as you exit Highbury & Islington tube station).

- Jurassic Park Builder for iOS - Jurassic Park Builder on iTunes

Introducing...

Don't you hate those pesky pleasantries that inevitably come with ones own introduction? I don't like introducing myself and I like even less that awkward stint of time while I get comfortable with the person i'm with. I've never heard or seen an introduction made without some sort of cliché or calculated line being instigated.

"Hi, my name is Shawn and i'm studying Film in London."

So dull and formulated. Sometimes I wish I could open a conversation with someone as though we already knew one another and then I wouldn't have to worry about whether or not this person is impressed with me. I could be relaxed and I could be myself, though being myself is a risky strategy if I want the other person to like me. Myself or not, I find introductions almost unnecessary. You should be able to know everything there is to know about the person you are speaking with after a few short moments. The topics of conversation raised are usually enough to make any decisions about whether or not you're ever going to see or speak to this person again. Is there any crime worse than being unimaginably uninteresting?

- "Don't you find the works of Oscar Wilde to be utterly beautiful?" 

- "Who's Oscar Wilde?"

... This is a sure sign i'll never see you again, my dear. However, I usually decide whether I like or hate someone without having actually spoken to them. Is this a bad thing? Probably not. I loathe meeting new people. In fact, what are you doing here? Go away. I bet I don't like you.

Social media rules out physical interaction and I can't figure out whether or not I love it or hate it. I really do detest it, but then again, it beats speaking to people face to face, right? Though there are some downfalls (like no tone detection, that's a big one) I can be myself through a computer screen. I feel invincible and untouchable. I say what I really mean online whereas in the real-world i'm a bumbling idiot who is often-times overly agreeable and awkward. Via the internet you have a good couple of seconds to formulate a clever response and I find that given those couple of seconds i'm a genius. You can also be braver and say something you might not if you were speaking face to face and you're free to disagree (as politely nodding along doesn't translate well through facebook chat). It's unfortunate then, that in the real-world i'm a coward and a 15 second pause in between sentences would be totally unacceptable. It's an awful shame.

So instead of introducing myself in this small space I would like to pose the following: Imagine that each of the following posts that I write are opening conversations in our hypothetical first meeting, although if you're anything like me, you've already decided whether or not you like me.