Yay for contrariness!

MSNBC Journalist Burns and Shreds Paris Hilton Story:

And such restraint in the face of those two gobshites as well. You go girl!

Unfortunately, such restraint was not present in GMTV's coverage of the same event, who cut from a report about flooding in Yorkshire to go live to cover the non-entity's release. They subsequently issued a public apology.

Some of the points made on either side of the argument in online forums also made for a little eyebrow raising. One person argued that GMTV needed to be light and fluffy, in order to provide an alternative to the BBC breakfast show, which was boring, and anyway, the last thing you need in the morning is to be 'sent back to sleep' (Translation: We are a nation of complete fucking idiots). Another one was that the GMTV feature on the floods was an issue of national importance, and that Paris Hilton is pretty meaningless over in this neck of the woods. All I can say to the latter is:

SHE DOESN'T MEAN ANYTHING ANYWHERE!

Ah Sod it!

Bearlix has been shut down, due to the owner 'lacking the resources to push it beyond this point'. Going forward, to use corporate speak, he puts his support behind Bearciti. A shame, as bearlix had a very fetching interface, and looked like it was gaining members rapidly.

Now I'm going to have to set up a profile at Bearciti again, having deleted my old one off their site a few months back. Oh well...

Good riddance.

Over last weekend, one of our flatmates moved out. She had become such a pain to live with over the last 9 months, and departed under such a cloud, that when she left, myself and one of the other flatmates went to the pub to celebrate.

At the start of the year, she claimed one of the biggest rooms in the house on the basis that she 'needed room for all her stuff'. This was met with no small amount of hostility by the others, but eventually we let her have it. Rather than organise a rotation of the rooms to make it fair, however, she held onto it all year.

Not long after that, I found out that her mother wasn't well, and at the time of going to press, there isn't much that can be done except make her comfortable and give her pain relief. As the year progressed, said flatmate spent less and less time in the house, and more time back home with her parents. Understandable enough, except when it came to paying her way, she was probably amongst the most unreliable people I've had to live with in a long time. Whenever a bill was due, she was nowhere to be found, and developed an irritating habit of ignoring phone calls and text messages. The landlord, who I wouldn't normally go out of my way to defend, was getting increasingly exasperated with her, and resorted to phoning us in an attempt to reach her.

Around the time of her departure, she organised someone to take over her room, but barely told us anything about it, and when we tried ringing her and sending her messages (she had left to go to London), she ignored them, and then offered the pitiful excuse that she didn't have any credit to listen to her voice messages. At the last minute, she moved in the new guy right under our noses, much to the chagrin of one of the other flatmates, announcing that she had cleared it all with the landlord. The latter hasn't returned my calls, so I don't even know if she's telling the truth.

Oh, and she left without settling up her share of the bills, mumbling something about how she was coming back next week 'to sort things out'. Well, we still have her deposit, so we'll be getting it one way or the other. We'd better.

Alas, said flatmate is in my class, so I'll be bumping into her next year, unfortunately. I'll just have to put as much distance between her and myself as possible.

I can't wait to get over this phase of living with annoying younger students who don't seem to understand that if you don't pay a bill for a utility, that utility will be withdrawn. Or people who think that it's OK for you to pay their share until they deign to obtain the money for it themselves.

Going home tomorrow to Mallow for a week. Some time away from this place is what I need right now.

An update on things in general

It's been a great few days, not have the constant drudge of 12-hour study marathons to have to deal with, and I'm fast getting used to it.

On Friday night, I got picked up by a daddy bear in the Bulldog and headed back to his. It was a bit strange, as the first thing I noticed was that he had about three layers of jackets on. The second thing I picked up on (not that it would have been hard) was that he kept interwining his fingers with mine, and then trying to bend mine back, trying to get me to submit. I didn't. The third thing was that, figuratively, his lights were on upstairs, but nobody seemed to be home: He KEPT repeating himself, right upto the point where I had to (just about!) good-naturedly tell him to shut up.

Back at his flat, I got him undressed, and found that in addition to all the jackets he was wearing, he was wearing a blanket under his shirt! I asked him why, he replied that it was to make him look big.

Whatever.

Once we got down to it, he kept telling me I was gorgeous (fine by me) and that he could make a lot of money out of me (er...say what?). After quizzing him about this, he said he would be my pimp and that together, we could target young gay affluent men. I thought about it for about three seconds, and then dismissed it.

Shortly after that, I grew impatient with his clumsy fumblings, made my excuses and left. As broke as I am, I don't think I'd be comfortable with getting it on with strangers for money.

The search for a new house for October grinds on slowly, with people entering and exiting the equation, but I have another two months before I start getting worried. We're trying to organise bills at our current house, because one of the flatmates is leaving, and it's quite a pain. Also, after getting NO water bill for the whole year, IN SPITE OF THE FACT THAT I RANG THE COMPANY LAST NOVEMBER AND TOLD THEM WE HAD MOVED IN, we have now been told that a 'cumulative bill will arrive, based on estimates made since January'. Wankers. Some public service companies are breathtakingly incompetent. The electricity company still have to sort out a refund for us, even though I've been chasing them since last november.

I hereby vow to avoid taking responsibility for ANY bills for the next house I move into, if I can help it.

Also, I seem to have landed myself a decent dissertation for next year. Research is being done into Angiotensin IV, a neurotransmitter that seems to have some impact on cognition and memory, and it looks like I may be a part of the drive to find out more about it. It's all territory that's pretty unchartered, but in an area I've always had an interest in, so fingers crossed it should go well. The weird thing is that my supervisor told me I could well end up experimenting on mice, but I've always held that animal research is necessary to some extent in this area, if a little unpalatable.

Finally, I have at long last landed a pharmacy placement. It's in a branch in a chain of community branches in Brighton, so I don't have to move away for it. The only thing is that it's only for one month, so I have July and September to worry about in terms of money. It should be OK, I just wish my bank at home would finalise my loan top-up, which they were supposed to do 3 weeks ago!

Righto. Time to go, and work out how I'm going to spend my evening.

Bliss...

THANK GOD!

The exams are over with, and I really don't have much to say about it all, other than that I intend to do NOTHING for the next few days except lie on the beach.

Well, except maybe prowl the Bulldog looking for potential suitors.