Phnom Penh 08

Playing old videogames…Cultural shock and the misuse of the word “ironic”…Fear and Loathing in Sheffield…Stella is the Devil’s Liquid…The 80’s taught me nothing…Reality bites without Winona…Will Arsenal beat Chelsea?…A message to the Writing Society: I’m not dead…Count the references, pay the homage…”Quirkyness is for the Golden Globes, dammit!”…

So there I was, lazy as cranberry fudge in a sunday afternoon sipping some cranapple and sour mash whisky cocktails I made to myself as a celebratory drink for kicking ass in a game of Bejeweled when my Hunter S. Thompson Gonzophone (TM) went off. I carefully picked up:

“This is an emergency! A call for help! I really need you to send some help!” said a distressed girl on the other side of the cold copper cables.

“Chillax, girl” I said between spoonfuls of Müller corner I “acquired” from the shop… “What’s the skinny?”

“I’m trapped in my horrible hall, there’s a bunch of mad undergraduates yelling ‘i’m drunk and nekkid, wwwwwheeeeee!!!’ and drunk brit girls half nekkid”.

“Whoa, girl, sounds like my last vacation in Cancun!”

“Even worse, they’ve been rolling heavy metallic stuff, like bins, in the middle of the night, every night, there’s chicken bones in buckets in the mornings at the hall, there’s bottles of alcohol and tins of Vaseline, is terrible!”

“Fret not, help is on the way!!”

“Do I look for your SUV, then?”

“What? No SUV, babe, I drive a red cadillac. I’m all style on The Shark!”

“Didn’t I call Torchwood?”

“Ehrm…yes, actually you did, but the SUV is in the shop… Ianto had too many alcopops!”

“Ah, that rascal, anyway…HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALP!!!!”

“I’m dashing off to help!”

“Thanks!”

“…Where are you?”

“Saint Stefan’s Hall. Search for Katja!”

Saint Stefan’s! A name that teetotallers and vegans all over campus fear! I hung up and dashed from my comfy beanbag in front of the computer and kinda stepped on some pieces of lego that still hurt on cold humid days.

Anyways, I made my way through the seldom cleaned streets, in my fave Hawaiian shirt and jeans… when alluva sudden I saw it: The Rapture. The Final Conflict between sobriety and total alcoholic perdition. The Cultural Clash between the Brits and the Rest of The World.

No way could I sneak inside without getting merc’d, so I had to be a little ingenious, heck, a little 80’s to get them outta the way. What follows is a careful recreation of how we approached Saint Stefan’s student hall. If you are faint of heart or are disgusted… WHY THE HELL ARE YOU READING THIS BLOG!?!?

So, finally having made my way inside, I proceeded to search for this poor Katja girl. So I nicked a few Stella’s (the serum of depravity!) from some dude smashed to bits (not literally) in a beer soaked carpet (literally) and made my way through the stairs.

Oh, the stairs! The Smell! THE DARKNESS!! The drums, the drums…the never ending drums! I opened a beer and everything went away, so maybe some VooDoo alcohol spirits lived haunting those stairs. I kept opening beers as I made my way up every time I heard drums (or drum n’ bass, which probably is the vilest thing in the universe).

When I arrived at a troubled-looking floor (which was kinda difficult since ALL looked like a spring-break ravished Cancun), I carefully opened the door and saw the following, quite explicit pictures you might find offending, nay, SHOCKING!

Live feed from the Hall o’Messy Death (TM)

So, with my cunning sneaky powers, I moseyed down, without any noise, peeking into doors. Besides a lot of dead bottles and people doing the Nasty Mambo, I just could barely take the gagging smell in the place. Something was rotten in Saint Stefan’s, and it wasn’t Hamlet’s uncle.

Oh, the humanity!!!!

This is when my plan kinda fell to pieces… what should I do? Just shout “Katja” and wait for her to come out? I mean, I seriously doubt anyone else would come out. So “Katjaaaa!” I yelled… then again… then again… Not a fourth time, mind you, I had a bit of a step throat and need to heal, y’know.

Anyways, wouldn’t you know it? At least 8 girls came out of each door. They all looked distressed and asked at the same time:

“Yes?”

See? They said that.

“Say, I’m looking for a distressed Katja that needs rescuing!”

“Oh…”

I approached the “most-to-the-center” Katja and tried to see if she had any signs of someone expecting “Rescue by Torchwood”.

She kinda looked high, which probably is the state you need to be if you call a pansexual Captain, a funny coffee boy and a gap-toothed Welsh girl.

“Are you distressed?”

“No, luv, I’m just high!”

“I came to rescue Katja”

“Oh, you might be on the wrong hall, there’s another hall with Katjas. Just keep walking to your right and you should see it!”

“Thanks!”

I walked to the left, because british people always get confused with left and right (ever seen ‘em drive? MADNESS!!!!). I opened the double doors and then I saw this:

Either I was in an “iterative” maze or the producers ran out of money for scenery.

Holy Frijoles!!! A hall in a state of decay!! I tried peeking again into doors, seeing massive acts of madness, degeneration and probably a wii tournament of Mario Kart. God, I love Mario Kart! I played maybe ten minutes with Yoshii and kicked their asses to pixelated heaven. Then a girl knocked on the door:

“Excuse me, shouldn’t you be rescuing me?”

“Ehrm, how do you know I’m the one?”

“You have a sign in your jacket that says ‘I’m not with Bloody Torchwood!’ so I thought that’s the kind of ‘undercover work’ an agency with their name in bright leds in their SUV would do!”

“Ah, true, true, let’s get outta here!”

So we went to her room to get some stuff, while chaos started to engulf the building again: the Undergrads were coming back from a social!!!!

Unretouched pic of the moment the Urunkgraduates arrived and found I nicked some Stella.

“We must leave! This is bat country!” I said to Katja.

“Uh?”

“Sorry, for a moment there I lost myself, I lost myself, I lost myself!”

“Uh?!”

“We gotta escape!”

So we ran towards the exit, but they surrounded us. We were trapped.

“Beer! WE MUST DRINK!!!” yelled in their slurred speech.

“Look at me! OMFG I’m drunk! LOLZ!!” l33t speaked some idiot in the back while chugging some extra strength Persil capsules.

“Wicked! I’m uploading them to facebook, mate! You’ll girl be so pissed!”

“Beer!” yelled the rest at the same time they started to come near us. “Beer!”

I thought I saw some of them with gas masks saying “are you my mummy?” and maybe one very pale dude in the back asking “hey, who turned out the lights?!?!?!”

Were we doomed?

—Next Friday, the thrilling conclusion!

Tags: Gonzo Tribute, Hunter S. Thompson, rant, Sheffield