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SANTA CRUZ TOTE BAG Everyone has been carting stuff around in these canvas tote bag things for ages now. The ones with things like “Hackney Council Recycling” on all get flogged on eBay to people who have never even been to London so that...

MATTER CARD

The guys behind Fabric decided there wasn’t a club in London that was properly doing the whole bands- who-play-music- that-you-can-dance- to-late-at-night-on- lots-of-drugs and DJs-that- play-records-even- later-at-night- that-sound-like- dance-music- versions-of-the- bands-that-have- just-played thing. If you have ever been to Fabric you’ll already know that Matter will be well put together, efficiently run and rammed with great lineups. If you are planning on going to uni in London, get one of these membership cards to skip the guaranteed massive queues and claim a whole load of discounts and cheap drink deals and stuff.

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SANTA CRUZ TOTE BAG

Everyone has been carting stuff around in these canvas tote bag things for ages now. The ones with things like “Hackney Council Recycling” on all get flogged on eBay to people who have never even been to London so that they can pretend they live next door to a crack head on Mare Street. All of these bags suck. They are impractical, get dirty really easy and soak up piss and beer like canvas-y under-arm sponges. We were completely anti them until this one turned up in the post. How can you say no to the Santa Cruz screaming hand logo?

TURNTABLES

Just wearing a combat hat and going to rap battle nights at the union bar really doesn’t cut it at uni. If you want people to know that you are down with urban music you simply must have turntables and at least ten records. One in ten guys in halls have turntables and only one in roughly one hundred turntable owners can mix. Get 1210s, they are impossible to break and are the ones that rappers use to make beats and shit. Or so someone at uni once told us.

ROBOT CHICKEN DVD

How [adult swim]’s entire output isn’t gloriously enshrined in the annals of great student television as halcyon examples of pop culture brilliance is still totally beyond us. Everything the network touches seems to hit a perfect balance between stupid done funny and intelligent done without pretense. We reviewed

Aqua Teen Hunger Force

about five years ago and you lot are still forcing yourself to laugh at all the non-sensical skits in

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Family Guy

. Just go buy this latest one and enjoy a show Seth Green is actually funny in. It has robot chickens, stop motion mad professors and the theme from

Dawn of the Dead

clucked by chickens over the end credits.

FREEVIEW BOX

Whether you like it or not you will spend more time in front of the TV while at university than at any point in your life. Cable or Sky are a massive waste of valuable loan cash (unless you are an obsessive sports nerd). However, there is more to TV life than

Countdown, Neighbours

and

Corrie

so just put down a one-off payment of £30, get one of these pups and have a whole shed load of stuff transmitted straight into your eyes for nothing.

WOK

Do you know how many woks there are in any given student house? At least seven. Every student who has seen more than 30 seconds of

Masterchef

thinks that every single thing they cook will magically be transformed into a tasty piece of culinary perfection simply by being “woked”. They also think that they make great talking points so that they can blather on about how they watched a syphilitic child wok-fry some pineapple fritters on the beach in Thailand after a massive party where they ended up fucking a poi expert. In reality, woks take up too much room, and stir-fry gets dull after about a week. Stick to frying pans.

DIESEL ‘DIRTY THREE’ JEANS

Everyone likes jeans, right? You aren’t going to find a more versatile thing out there to wrap your legs in for three straight years. Buy a good pair at the beginning of your university career and they will be your friends for the whole time you are there. We like these ones not just because Diesel sent us loads of them for free but also because they share a name with a great band who make music that (as far as I am aware) has nothing to do with jeans.

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ABSINTHE

If you are drinking absinthe because you like the fact it’s green, gets you drunk, and you are bored of Glen’s Vodka, then that’s just great. But if you like it because you think you are taking part in some ridiculous ritual that you share with great minds of the past then you might need your head examined. Absinthe today is not the same as the stuff that Van Gough was hitting – it’s missing grim herbal ingredients and is far less alcoholic. If we catch you fuckers sitting in a circle burning sugar cubes on a silver trowel over a soiled coffee mug of glorified Sambuca we will be pissed. Still, of all the absinthes you can buy, at least this one looks pretty great and doesn’t taste like mouthwash.

MINI FRIDGE

These mainly live in obsessively tidy Asian guys’ rooms. Their mums buy these wee fridges for them because they think it will encourage their scrawny brat to eat fruit and be healthy. They only keep tubs of hair gel in them, and maybe one or two beers for aesthetic purposes. These are the student equivalent of having the flashest car on your road. While everyone else is hanging their milk out the window in a Tesco bag, you sit there with a light industrial hum ringing in your ears. If you have a housemate who has one be sure to convince them to leave it in the communal area so you can have your own beer cooler.

REGGAE REGGAE SAUCE

If you aren’t spending the minimum amount of cash humanly possible on food in order to budget for more important things like £2.99 half-litre bottles of Chekov then you have failed to embrace the whole point of being at university and might as well have stayed at home. The easiest way to make a bland, wholly innutritious meal of Super Noodles stop tasting like an empty cardboard box that’s been left out in the rain all night is to douse the whole lot in chilli sauce. Your ass might not be all that happy but your taste buds will be doing little odes to joy every time they get burnt by all those glorious chemicals. Mmm. Thanks to Levi ‘dragon slayer’ Roots, the continuing student fascination with Duncan Bannatyne’s nose and all things

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Dragon’s Den

in general, this little number has become the student food masking agent of choice.

USB BROADBAND KEY

While they still seem a little like the kind of thing only freelance architects in Eurostar Business Class would actually bother to use, in about a year these little guys will inevitably be as common as cameras on mobile phones. All the major service providers are already carting out cheap monthly plans and it means that you can have your own Wi-Fi broadband wherever you are for as little as a tenner a month. This will prevent arguments over who pays the broadband bill and if you have a friend who is good at internet stuff it is pretty easy to jump on other people’s broadband for free.

SCENT

In the real world, where your mum stops having to think of shit to buy you at the duty-free on the way home from her holidays, you won’t even own this stuff. But at uni, where your room will soon start to smell of hot skin and ball sacks, eau de cologne is a must. Just a quick squirt of this in a room masks any unpleasant scents for at least ten minutes. Note: never wear it on your actual body – people will think you are a “local” and won’t talk to you at the pub.