The Toilet Decorum Of Kings College London Students

Hullo!
Though it has always been a particularly foetid issue, this afternoons study session in the Maughan has brought to a head the disgust i have been forced to hold for certain anonymous KCL contemporaries, specifically in the lavatorial sphere. The fact is, the personal facilities of the Maughan and the Strand campus of the university appear to have become over run by individuals complacant with uriniating, defecating, and be-tissuing all over them. I don't know if its some sort of unlisted college society, or perhaps im just missing out on some low brow/rent fun which others have cottened onto, but i just dont understand how presumeably very academic young men at one of the better universities in the country can be so nonchalent in letting their toilet activities get the better of them to a point of a serious dearth in personal hygiene, and the very real possibility of a college health scare eminating from the bowls, and subsequently walls and cubicles, they have defiled.
I, like any other student, can appreciate the fact that a hard day reading up on the political spheres of medieval europe, or the narrative focalisations of Victorian literature, would sometimes make a boy want to have a relaxing break to reward oneself. A chapter of Three Men On The Bummel, or a cup of camomile tea for instance. What i fail to understand is why some people's downtime is nonchalantly filled with pooing all over a library toilet, with attempts at a clean up operation simply being weeing a bit, covering it all with a layer of tissue and the leaving it, as if it will be spirited away like the mince pies left for Father Christmas. Unfortunately, there's no nonimaginary parent figure in the Maughan to come and eat your mess, and thus magically instil in you the fantasy that it will vanish into the ether of the U.

Anouncements on the tube about the East London Line

I don't really like tube announcements at the best of times. Being told to mind the gap, stand behind the yellow line, mind the stairs because it has been raining and they might be slippery and generally being told to do things that anyone with the capability to reason that being hit by a train would be a bad thing would do automatically, just generally pisses me off. In order to cater to the retarded nought point five percent of the population who have not been able to deduce that putting your foot in the gap between the train and the platform could result in something bad happening, the people who run the tube have decided to bombard me with a constant stream of noise and it frankly makes me want to purposefully jump in front of a train or at the very least pull a Van Gough.

Thankfully (or maybe unfortunately to my many nemeses) I have so far been able to resist these urges. This time though they are really pushing me to my limits. Fair enough the East London Line is closed: until 2010. I understand that. Maybe they should initially put some announcements out. And put up some posters. That is fine. What I don't really think is necessary, in fact what I am coming to believe is a soul crushing plan engineered by an arch rival, is the need to include this information in every single fucking service update, every ten or fifteen minutes, every day for two fucking years. Seriously. Two Years. Why? Who the hell doesn't already know that the line is closed. Do they really think that there are a plethora of commuters every day who have forgotten that the tube line they take home every day is closed that are saved by a timely announcement? This announcement is going out so often that I decided to calculate how often it would be made before the line re-opened. This is what I found:

Average announcements per hour (4) x Amount of tube stations (275) x average open hours per day (16) x days in a year (365) x years before opening (2) = 12, 848, 000

Twelve million eight hundred and fourty eight times those bastard words wil be uttered. Assuming that this takes 4 seconds per announcement that means over one and a half years of public service messages about it. ONE AND A HALF YEARS OF TALKING ABOUT SOMETHING THAT IS ONLY GOING TO TAKE TWO YEARS TO HAPPEN. Yeah so maybe I have too much time on my hands figuring this out but Tfl you can go fuck yourselves because you are spending one and a half years telling people about a tube line that only ever had 10 stations and is being extended to Croydon. Presumably so that more people can go to the Walkabout and experience the intoxicating mix of angry chavs, cheap booze, cheesy music, bad shirts and too much Brylcream that exists in there. (it's better than it sounds)

Personally I will probably hear it four thousand, three hundred and eighty times. FOUR THOUSAND THREE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY TIMES. I GOT THE MESSAGE AFTER THE FIRST ONE.

Some people have told me that it is helpful for tourists. Excuse me but how many tourists are getting the East London Line? It goes from Shoreditch to New Cross for fucks sake. It has got to be the least friendly line to tourists on the whole tube. Show me the tourist that is going to visit picturesque Wapping followed by a a luxurious meal in the Hobgoblin in New Cross and I will show you an idiot. Equally there are signs about it on any tube map you care to look at. Might I suggest that someone who cannot read English is also likely not to be able to understand English and therefore just be confused and probably angered by the unintelligible drone of noise that plagues them whenever they get a train in London. Much like I am. Please God, or maybe just Tfl, end this madness, it might just stop me crying every time I pay twenty four pounds twenty for a travelcard.

Bands DJ-ing at clubs

Specifically, when you get flyers and things for clubnights that say the band on them, but then that its a DJ set, implying that this is somehow a good thing and worth my money. I dont understand why anyone would think i would i want to go and see people from a band i like with an almost 100% certainty that i wont hear any of their songs. I really dont care what some two bit indie scenester has on his ipod. Its not like you've even got any assurance that they can dj well! I dont know if it's just me but i'd rather stay at home with a nice cup of tea and some Jerome K Jerome than pay to see the bassist (its never someone worthwhile is it?) pretend they can mix. If they were just going to play hot anthems that you'd expect at a club anyway then why would a promoter pay them to do what a faceless man in tight jeans does every night? Everyone knows that venues or promoters only get bands to dj because its a way of getting idiot scenesters in at a fraction of the cost. Waste of money.
To be fair, i can see the point if you are a tiny, tiny niche clubnight like New Noise or something, when booking someone from a suitably large band might be charming (if it is still cheap to get in), but for the amount of dj sets that go on at, say a twice yearly Adventures In The Beetroot Field night at Fabric or Turnmills or somewhere, then for gods sake, cut some of this mindless drivel off the bill and use the money to get British Sea Power or No Age or Dan Deacon or someone i want to watch. Please. Then maybe i could get home before six in the morning (getting home later than 4 am is a rant in its own right), what with the utter inexplicableness of early morning night bus timings in central london!

The Fratellis.

This one is obvious, but ever so important.
I hate The Fratellis more than almost anything else i can imagine. Or, as this is an update of sorts I hated The Fratellis more than anything i could imagine. The past tense brought into play here due to the fact that they shot themselves in the feet with a terrible sophomore release to sit snugly with their appalling first album. Clearly, the handsome record buying public of Great Britain realised that 'hey, maybe it's not such a great idea to listen to monotonous rowdy swill which brings to mind drunk builders shouting profanities at football matches'.
The mind completely boggles at how such a band of miscreant, slovenly, hideously faced perpetrators of Butlins-core pigswill ever retained even a semblance of popularity. Until of course you realise that the kind of people who bought their records, for that short summer but three years ago, were also those that regularly attend V Festival and wear bucket hats while doing so. Which is a rant of its own anyway. The singer resembles/resembled (I have no proof to show that he is still alive) an elderly alcoholic who sits at the back of Weatherspoon's pubs, the bassist is highly ginger and resembles Chris Moyles far to much to avoid attention, and the drummer is called 'Mince'. And wore a bucket hat. Not great is it? Seeing them lead a bunch of reprobates in infant-complex oik chants on T4 is not what i pay my license fee for). Obviously, behaviour like that bore parrallels with other dorkus malorkuses like the Pidgeon Detectives and The Enemy still doing similar things (both of which are still clasping onto their careers, equally as incomprehensibly). But none of these are quite, with the exception of Tom from The Enemy, as wince inducingly pot ugly. Honestly, if they were on the radio i'd still find them hideous.
And yes, their songs are godawful. 'Chelsea Dagger', as a friend put it, 'sounds like it was written just to be on Match Of The Day'. As much as one may like the sport, football songs are a crime unto themselves, especially those either explicitly or seemingly written to serve the purpose of being equated with it. I recall that their album, which i listened to, pained, once and no more, had a song to which the lyrics included a line referring to 'city boys and cuntry girls' or very similar. Not only, are you old, ugly and tone deaf, you're also incredibly vulgar! Which is something you're too old for. Preposterous.

Hot Rant: an introduction

Ahoy there!
Hot Rant is a blog cum periodical journal (hopefully) set up by Fred and Tom in order to expose and deride things we hate. Not things that everyone despises, like that program Loose Women (eurgh) or racists (likewise), but things that especially make just us, as the individual, want to shank the bastard perpetrators of what ever cultural grievance one may be suffering. It is pretty much an open forum, so if anyone wants to contribute, email an article (length doesnt matter, as long as there's some level of detail to it) to hotrant@gmail.com, and itll go up. Hooray Hooray Hooray
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