From the archives
Welcome to university! Today is the first day of the rest of your life! Forever!
Let’s raise a toast!
To the science students: Well done for making the informed choice to study esoteric theories dreamt up by totally insane professors that may or may not ever exist!
To the arts and humanities crowd: Get back to us when you’ve worked out the secrets of life by smoking pot, daubing paint on your trousers and reading books written by hippies and alcoholics who committed suicide at the age of 35!
To the business students: Be careful about the “blowing-off-steam-at-the-weekend” you’re going to have to do for the rest of your life because your shitty office job is like living in Guantanamo Bay. Only without the sex!
University is going to be BRIIIILLIANT!!! Wait. Is it?
YEAR ONE
SOCIAL LIFE
Myth: University is a whole new start on the social ladder. You will be the coolest kid around and will somehow be able to fool the new people you meet into thinking you are not a manic depressive loner, who was ritually beaten every day of your tortured life at school and who people only spoke to when asking for help with their French homework.
Fact: You will have the exact same social status you had in school, but without people knowing about the time you loudly fanny-farted while reading out a section of Tess Of The D’Urbervilles during English Lit. Sure, this is a new start of sorts but attempting a complete personality / identity renovation is a risky business and 99 per cent of the time ends in tears, relationship difficulties and drug addiction. Wahey!
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Posted on October 13th, 2009 | 25 Comments
Tagged: alcohol, education, sex
From the archives
ACTION PLAN Planning is everything. You need booze. You need a hard person to be the door guy. You need numbers for cabs. You need somebody who’s able to sort out what the music business calls “fruit and flowers” (Google it). You also need sectioned, locked areas of the house that only you have keys to. Most importantly, you need some overall idea about how the party should end up. This means: how to get the best people to stay and how to get the worst people to leave.
BABES You need at least a couple of these (of both sexes) to turn up early-ish as they make a talking point for the ugly people (everybody else). You should get the babes as drunk as possible so they’re more likely to stick around, and give them access to the secret areas where the “fruit and flowers” are distributed. If, after courting them for a couple of hours you decide they are complete idiots, then start a Chinese whisper that one of them has AIDS of the bumhole.
CLOTHES You have to have some kind of party outfit planned. The best thing to do is dress low-key and smart, but have some amazing novelty value flashing light thing going on in the corner of your outfit to attract drunk, horny people.
DEGRADATION Fuck these boring student dinner parties where everybody’s complimenting Sophie on her avocado and pine nut salad. Unless there’s a blindfolded virgin having opium forced into their anus by a giant walking tit dressed as a rabbit while a rave dwarf covered in baked beans felches them both by 7.45 PM, I’m OUTTA HERE!
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Posted on October 9th, 2009 | 5 Comments
Tagged: a-z, alcohol, drugs, party
From the archives
For some people, nothing ends a night out on the town more satisfyingly than kicking the shit out of a student, i.e you and your friends.
In London, attacks on students and people who look like students have increased. Faris from The Horrors had teeth knocked out on Whitechapel Road for having long hair and the singer from Les Incompetents Billy Bell was almost killed after a night out in Camden went wrong when somebody took a dislike to his trousers (and tried to cop off with his girlfriend).
Outside London it’s even worse. Sadly, if you’re living in a strange new city with accommodation in one of the less salubrious parts of town and you enjoy “night life” then being beaten up, or the fear of being beaten up, is an inescapable part of your new life.
One thing that you can’t count on is the how, when or why you’re going to come in for the pounding of your life.
Sadly, if you’re approached by a clucking heroin addict desperate for the £3.47 in your pocket or by a gargantuan meathead who got rejected from every university in the world and wants to take out the fact that he’s got to pay for three kids by the time he’s 22 on your face, you’re probably not going to win the fight. Sorry, you’re DEFINITELY not going to win the fight. What you CAN do is be prepared for sitches like these and be ready to defend yourself by any means possible.
We’ve lost pretty much every fight we’ve been in (apart from when we had the bouncers at the Old Blue Last to help us out) so what the fuck do we know?
Oh yeah, let’s ask our friend, Angela Brennan, the British Middleweight Tae Kwon Doe Champion (2004).
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Posted on October 8th, 2009 | 3 Comments
Tagged: cartoon, self-defence, violence
From the archives
Paul: “Students are more willing to stop and have a chat with me. It’s just when they come out in groups, I’ve been spat on and kicked.”
Aaron: “I went straight from secondary school to labouring and I don’t like the way that they look down at me for that. Throwing big words about like they know something I don’t.”
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Posted on October 5th, 2009 | 43 Comments
Tagged: hate, students, vox pop
From the archives
ACADEMIC SUCCESS
Don’t worry so much. A 2:1 is the most common grade. Nobody gets firsts except weird brainiacs or Chinese people. This looks great on graduation day but understand that straight A students have endured years of overbearing parents, endless maths tests and “educational toys” for Christmas presents. For the men, when they get to 32 they spend thousands on rare Stars Wars figures because they never had them when they were young. The women? It usually manifests itself in a huge dildo collection, prostitution, madness, suicide or becoming a sexually voracious, piss drinking slattern. Good six-month-girlfriend material if you can handle the suicide attempts.
BED SHEETS
A lot of students, especially the boys, are little wimps struggling to understand life away from the comfort of mummy’s bosom. This is why they don’t wash their bed sheets for a whole year. They sleep on gallons of dried cum, piss, vomit, spilled beer and tiny particles of Original Cool Doritos. This is how they get “fresher’s flu”. It’s because they can’t take care of themselves. They invented a thing called the internet a while ago and if you type in www.google.com and enter “healthy diet” you can probably stop all this happening. Also, don’t be scared of the Launderette. Just ask the immigrant lady how to work it. Or do a service wash. It’s more expensive but time-wise it’s a lot more economical.
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Posted on September 30th, 2009 | 16 Comments
Tagged: the vice guide
From the archives
Posted on September 29th, 2009 | 1 Comment
Tagged: cartoon, johnny ryan
Interview originally published 2006.
For a lot of people, going to university is an excuse to get wasted and take drugs all the time. The trick is to be really careful. Drugs are great fun and all that but they can also make you crazy, broke, suicidal and ruin all your inter-personal relationships. Then you have to live on the streets and eat burgers out of bins. Then you die. Like Peter Doherty (above), comedian Russell Brand was a huge drug addict. It got him fired from every job he ever had and now he has to make do with presenting that annoying Big Brother aftershow programme. Which is arguably worse than living in a cardboard box.
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Posted on September 27th, 2009 | 2 Comments
Tagged: crack, drugs, heroin, pete doherty, russell brand
From the archives
Anthony Emms is a sociology student at Goldsmiths College in south London. He lives on Shell Road, Lewisham with four other housemates in one of the most talked-about student residences in the city.
Vice: That’s an interesting sofa. Where did you find it?
Anthony: We came back home one night really drunk from the union and we thought it would be funny to carry it back home. There was a lot of shit in the lining like coins and broken glass but it doesn’t actually smell too bad.
It complements the table.
We like to have a social atmosphere in the house and we’re thrilled when people drop by and enjoy the ambience we’ve created here.
You must have some wonderful memories of those times.
Yes, I remember once, the five of us spent 13 hours straight watching the Live 8 concert on TV. It showed unity within the group at the time.
You’ve got an amazing collection of old console games scattered on the floor.
We like to appreciate culture and history. We’ve got the Sega Megadrive for old classics like Streets Of Rage, the N64 for Goldeneye, and of course, the Playstation Two for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
What’s the story behind the bus stop sign?
We were wrecked and I came up with the idea that if we stole it we wouldn’t have to walk to the bus stop every morning. Rather, it would come to us! We all thought this was an hilarious juxtaposition!
Hmmm. Can’t you at least clean the toilet?
No. There’s a real sense of authenticity there. It looks like somebody really used that room for something. We’ve all argued whether we should clean it up but it’s taken a good two and a half years to get it like that and changing that now would ruin its character. It’s like the bottles on the floor in the front room: they were put there for a reason. Whether the person passed out on the floor with it in their hand or they were too lazy to put it in the bin, they were still there for a reason. Understand?
DICK SNIFFER
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Posted on September 26th, 2009 | 6 Comments
Tagged: dirt, houses, sofa, table
