Yippeee!

On Friday, I was told by the accommodation office that I have a room in Phoenix halls of residence for the rest of the academic year. Phoenix halls are the most central of all the university residences so I'm still a BN2 boy, and I'm that bit closer to where all my lectures are. Woo hoo! Tonight I get the bulk of my stuff out of there, and all going well, the rest of it tomorrow. Then I have to meet the twat landlord to get my money back. I've just spoken to him on the phone, and he's agreed to the amount that I want as a refund. With a bit of luck, this will pass off without incident. I just want to get the hell out of there.

Saturday night saw me in the Bulldog with Bear and 'Flee for a while before I got talking to a cute stocky cub and we ended up going back to his place. His house was just around the corner from the pub, so I anticipated that the fun wouldn't last too long and I would come back to the Bully after. It didn't turn out like that. We ended up frolicking for the night back at his, and I was woken by his two dogs jumping on the bed and panting in my face the next morning. The chap was a cute little meatball with a rug on his chest and stomach, and he was nice. He left in a hurry the next morning, and surprisingly, trusted me to leave afterwards. I left a little note on the draining board in the kitchen with my number. Who knows where this might lead?

Sunday saw me go to Bears R Us in Candy Bar, and it was as dead as a doornail. Hardly anyone there. Maybe Candy Bar, traditionally being a lesbian bar, wasn't too suited to the theme. An unremarkable night, memorable only for a group of council estate chavs calling me and 'Flee 'batty boys', 'arse bandits' and just about every other unoriginal homophobic name under the sun, when we were queueing to get smokes at a service station hatch. I felt like taking a baseball bat to them, but they were too large in number.

An important clinical exam this coming Friday, which I'm dreading. I must get on this move as soon as possible and get it out of the way. Hopefully this won't be a case of getting out of the frying pan and into the fire. The other students in the flat are young (19-22), but I have an en-suite bathroom, so if I need to keep to my own space, I can. Fingers crossed we'll get on OK though.

A film review

While at Dan and June's place for Sunday roast three days ago, we went down to the video shop to pick out two DVDs to watch after the meal. One of them was I "heart" Huckabees, which I didn't actually stick around to see afterwards, and the other one was 'Primer'.

This is a science fiction movie with serious difference. I had heard good things about it - it has won awards at Sundance - and I had meant to see it when it first was released but had never got around to it, so when I saw it at the video shop, out we got it, and after the meal, we threw it on.

*Great endeavours to exclude spoilers follow*

This is a story centred around two engineers, who while working on a project in their spare time, end up devising something that was quite accidental and definitely mind-blowing, and how to react to this discovery. Revealing a part of the plot, the discovery is that of time travel. Once they realise what they're holding, they begin to experiment with it, and without giving too much away, this is where the shit hits the fan.

The one BIG difference between this film, and other films about time travel, is that this one has what I think is the most realistic treatment of what would happen if such a thing existed. In all other films, such as Terminator (1, 2, or 3) and The Butterfly Effect, to name but a few, certain elements of improbability are glossed over for the sake of keeping the plot from spiralling into the realms of mystifying complexity. Dumbing down? Maybe, but it kept the film ticking over.

This one takes everything into account, with scant regard for whether the viewer is able to follow the plot threads ('a recursive problem', as one of the characters says) or not. Given that certain events in the film are precipated by the actions of the main characters where they have travelled back from a later time section in the film to witness that certain event at which their earlier selves were also present (if you...erm...know what I mean), the shit is simply confused out of everything. At one point during the film, Dan, who is one of the smartest people I know, turned around with a big smirk on his face and said "Right. Does anyone know what's going on?"

The experiment inherent in this film is admirable, but I'm not altogether sure if it succeeds. Sometimes (quite often, I'd wager) a film is quite simply better off reflecting a slightly fantastical version of events, no matter how worthy it purports to be, for the sake of the overall artistic statement. I'll have to take my hat off to that director, though, who used to be a work in various engineering firms before quitting, teaching himself film making, and then pulling this off three years later.

As someone who used to do engineering in college, and who worked an an allied domain for quite some time, I must say his representation of the people working on the device, and the process of the discovery itself, is spot on. Apart from anything else, it shows how what is fundamentally a very interesting area of intellectual endeavour can be reduced by soulless corporations to the preserve of worker drones. This is a thriller without the usual signposts of build-up and climax and it's definitely staking out new territory that way. It should definitely be slapped on all undergrad courses in film.

So that's it. It's hot stuff, but it should carry an Intellectual Advisory sticker on it, and that's coming from someone who likes maths and related technical concepts. As it is, I'll definitely need to see it again, or at least read the script, if it's up on the net by now.

A reason why gay relationships rock.

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More butcherings of the vernacular

My landlord to me: "I don't know who the fuck you think you are, but you've really pissed me."

Well, under circumstances that can only be described as startling, matters have come to a head. I'm moving out. As soon as humanly possible. The little shit mentioned above called to the flat this morning, and formally issued me with one months notice. He refused to offer it for debate, and I simply didn't care.

The ball started rolling after my encounter with the irritant yesterday, who in hindsight I should have slapped, when I rang the landlord about him. As per bloody usual, the spanner didn't answer his phone, so I left an irate message summarising what happened, and requesting that he get back to me. After a heinous day of labs, I still had heard nothing from him at 5pm, so I headed off out for St. Patrick's Day to meet the man Dan and all the other Irish pharmacy students.

Later in the night, I saw that I had missed a call and got a message from said landlord, so I rang him back.

One of the things I heard defied belief. Aside from the usual shit about how he had had complaints from other lodgers about me (I was accused to leaving the bathroom untidy, which by the standards of some of the people I live with, means nothing more than leaving a facecloth on the edge of the bath) and about how 'un-housetrained' I was, and how I had insulted his wife (where he got this from I don't know, and it's a bit rich considering the notes I got from her), he told me that one of the other tenants - no prizes for guessing who that might be - had discovered that someone had taken a dump in the downstairs bath, and had told the idiot that it was most likely me.

As I've said previously, I'm usually too nice and accommodating for my own good when I've had a few drinks in me, but right then, the exception to the rule became apparent. I lost it. I asked him how on earth he could think that I would do something like that, who had told him this (he wouldn't tell me), and I told him that I found his house to be the most depressing place I had ever lived in and that I wanted a meeting with him first thing in the morning to sort out everything.

This morning he turned up at 8:45, the time of my request, and gave me the notice. He took exception to my demand for a visit, saying 'you don't summons me', and stomped off in a huff, quickly after. For pretty much everything he said, I had a retort, but I was still glad to see the back of the gimp. He's agreed (for now) to refund some of the rent that I have payed if I move out before that month is up, which is pretty much the best case scenario from that point of view.

Rooms are currently available in university halls of residence right now, so I am going to take one of those until my exams are out of the way. First thing monday morning, I'm into the accommodation office, and hopefully I can fast track my way into a new place. The clown returns from a trip on Wednesday, and I'm hoping that I can have everything out of there by then. I'm itching to get out of there right now.

Looking on all of this, I feel a bit annoyed, because in one sense the irritant has won. I'm pretty sure he cooked up the bathturd story to stitch me up, and now he's getting what he wants, which is me out of there. But then I think about how depressing it was there, how I may have just let it go on for longer out of an aversion to having to find a new place, and how I may have lost money if I had left suddenly to take up a new place. In a way, the haemhorroid has done me a favour, albeit with intentions that were exactly the opposite. I'm not going to waste my time - well, not that much anyway - working out how to exact revenge. Apparently, he's a floor manager for MacDonalds. His life must be shitty enough already.

Phil jokingly said I should take a DNA test to prove myself innocent of the faeces. I wouldn't mind investigating the story a little more, but I really don't want to have to deal with the shmandlord any more than I have to from now on.

London didn't happen, but under the circumstances, it's probably just as well, as I wouldn't have enjoyed it as much. As it was, my St. Patrick's Day got messed up (which required messing up, for me to appreciate it) no end. Even the two hot guys I moved on in the Bulldog turned me down. Bah!

Oh fast forward beyond all of this...

MURDER!

The Scene:

Me, coming out of the downstairs bathroom, one that I wouldn't normally use, but for the previously mentioned fault with our own.

The players:
Me, and the irritant who has just come out of his own room.


Irritant: "Did you just use that bathroom?"
Me: "Yes."
Irritant: "You are not ever supposed to use that bathroom!!"
Me: "We have been told by Diane [the landlady] to use the downstairs bathrooms for the time being!"
Irritant: "No! You must never use that bathroom, that bathroom is for us only. I need to go to work!"
Me: "Yes, and I also need to go to college!"
Irritant: "Oh....You never listen to me, you are a bastard, a bad man, a bastard man(sic), a -
Me: "I am not listening to this shit, JESUS CHRIST!"
Door of flat: SLAM!

If I see him again, I may kill him. The landlord has been contacted and if he doesn't resolve this satisfactorily, I may kill him too.

Aaaaaarrrrraaaaaggggghhhhhh!!!!!

A clip

Family Guy - You've got the AIDS

Of the two with HIV that I know, one of them found it funny, the other didn't. Hmmmm....

I had a job interview yesterday. If I get it, I'm basically taken care of for working in Brighton for the summer, and hopefully the interviewer didn't cop that I was hungover from a night of frivolity chez Phil & 'Flee.

In other news, our shower is leaking. I was interrupted yesterday morning - while covered in soap - by the LANDLADY knocking on the bathroom door squeaking that I needed to turn off the water. So now I have to use the bathroom downstairs until that's fixed. Brilliant. As for the woman herself, she strikes me as a bit thick. The lights are on upstairs, but there's no-one home, know what I'm sayin'?

Going to London this weekend for a weekend of debauchery, so tomorrow (Paddy's day) is going to be quiet one, but hopefully I'll have something to blog about when I come back on Sunday.

Back in Brighton...

...And may I just say what total cunts Ryanair are, for charging me 40 euro because my suitcase weighed 20kg: Their baggage check-in limit is a ludicrously small 15kg, which is why my electric guitar is here with me now, but without the practice amplifier I wanted to bring with it. Damn them! It's been quite a while since I flied with this shitty airline, and now I am reminded why. From now on, they shall be boycotted if at all possible.

I got into Brighton just in time for ER at 10pm. I was bored and wanted to go out, but a text to the ladies who lunch of BN2 yielded no fruit. Reply next time, beeyatches!

Now I go to the accommodation office. If they have a room in halls of residence becoming vacant in the near future, the landlord will get his notice tonight. He's already offered to move me downstairs to another room - below the irritant - and as a result, I'll have full access to the main (and only decent) kitchen of the house, but I fear this won't cut it. I need to be somewhere else..

Somewhere that is still close to the Bulldog, though.

Harrrummmph.

God, Mallow holds less and less for me as time goes on.

Prior to departing to Brighton, most of my close friends I had were in Dublin, and when I went home to Mallow, which wasn't often, it was only then that I renewed acquaintances. This is fine: There are still a small group of people that I look forward to meeting up with when I come home, but most of them have moved, for the sake of their jobs, to surrounding areas, and don't go out very much. Other people I have long lost contact with, and that's no accident. Others just don't seem too pushed.

It might just be me, but if someone I hadn't seen for a while touched down on my turf for a week, I think I would make an effort to see them fairly promptly. It seems like some people just can't be bothered. Maybe it's just the simple explanation that other people have their own lives now, but I know that if I had arrived in Dublin this week, I could have counted on meeting up with at least two separate groups of people on arrival into the city.

Ho hum...

My landlord rang this morning, as it was rent day. In spite of the fact that I had left a note in my room telling his wife that I had gone home for a week and would pay him next week, and in spite of the fact that the dozy bat had read the note, she didn't tell him. Which is why he was ringing me in a tizzy this morning. I explained. He understood. Hopefully when I arrive back and explain that I'm giving him one month's notice of my intention to move out, he'll understand then too.

I e-mailed hybridimages.co.uk about the hottie I had paid tribute to earlier. He replied back with a big spiel about his photo shoots and how much they cost, but said that he could only pass on my contact details to the grizzly, not the other way around. I think I'll bite the bullet and approve that. Nothing ventured, no spirit-crushing rejections gained...

Niiiiiiccce!

This month's issue of GScene, a magazine aimed at the Brighton & Hove gay community, is a bear special. On the front cover is a man who is pretty much the quintessential essence of hotness in the male of the species.

Drool...

There is also another picture of him on the inside of the front cover that looks something like this...

Any more, I hear you cry? Just one, then...

All pictures are taken by a photographer whose site is www.hybridimages.co.uk, as you can see from the watermark. Perhaps I should e-mail him and ask him who this hottie is.

The downside of the special is that a clown who manages a certain bear pub in Brighton (and who, mystifyingly, has a nice boyfriend) gets a full interview, but you can't have everything I suppose.

At home...

...since yesterday, where my flight narrowly avoided getting redirected to another airport because of fog.

The weekend just gone was one of the more interesting ones. On Saturday, I went on a day trip to Ostende in Belgium on a bus with lots of others, quite a few of which I knew from the Winchester (which still has to change hands, at the time of going to press) and much fun was had, much mussels were eaten, and much Belgian beer was drunk. The only fly in the ointment was not knowing how to speak to the natives - in that region, they all seem to speak Flemish, which sounds like a variation on Dutch or German - and I hate having to rely on natives knowing English when it should really be the other way around.

We then headed back via the Eurotunnel, and were back in Brighton for about 9:30pm or so. Not bad transport for only £22, especially since I was sitting next to the 'Flee, availing of his tasteful lavender-walleted iPod.

Sunday night saw me in a lock-in until 4am, and so I didn't rise until rather...erm...late on Monday. Oh well.

As an aside, I know of certain people of have given up alcohol in the last while, and they have all been keen to extoll the virtues of the exercise. I am seriously considering it myself, though I fear my willpower, which is that of a dying jellyfish, may prove to be something of an obstacle. We'll see.

Oh, I've just had a sense of deja vu...

The fun never stops around here...

In spite of the fact that others have violated this rule, I've always adhered to it. Yet, even though a note was put up over said washing machine, I get my own personal reminder left in my room. Aren't I the lucky one? Also, I came down to collect my washing from the machine this morning, only to find that someone had paused it mid-cycle. I restarted it, and then headed into town. If anyone so much as moans about laundry being left in the machine when I come back, they're getting it in the neck.

To top it off, the guy (the irritant) whose room is below mine is obssessed with any amount of noise, no matter how small, that I make in my room, and has taken to banging the ceiling directly under my floor in what appears to be some attempt to make a point. God help him if he comes near me in the immediate future.

I don't think I've ever lived in a place where people are wound so tight. Even a short-term lease in university halls of residence is starting to look like an attractive option right now.

Not really the last night...

... as it looks like the transfer of the lease has fallen through, and so it may be business as usual, but hey.

That's me toward the front with the white shirt. The 0h-so-dashing cowboyhatted one to my immediate right is The 'Flee, whilst behind us crouches the Philster.

(courtesty of bn2beeyatches)

Bollocks.

My application for a placement with a Tesco pharmacy went the same way as my application to Boots. Now I'm starting to get worried. Having said that, a Kemptown pharmacy had an ad up in its window looking for a counter assistant, and my CV has been handed in.

In other news, I'm going home for a well-deserved holiday next Monday, for a week.

The Winchester

It's a pub near the top of St. George's road in Kemptown. I'd started going there rather regularly before Christmas, and when I moved to my new place a couple of weeks ago, I discovered that by happy coincidence, it was only just around the corner from where I lived.

I quite like it. It's very intimate, everyone knows each other, the barbs flow almost as freely ('fleely?) as the beer, and the Bloody Marys rock.

And now?! It's changing hands!

The low-key casual nature of the setup will, I fear, not appeal to the shark businessperson who prioritises their profit margin highly. For that reason, this may be the last we'll see of it in its current form.

This is just my luck. Storm, a bear club, closed in Brighton last year before I had a chance to check it out, I only fitted in two visits to Schwarz before that entire building was closed for 6 months for renovations, and now this. Next thing you know, they'll be closing down the Bulldog.

Hopefully this particular song will remain the same, but if it doesn't, I see splintering of groups on the horizon...

In any case, tonight is the 'last night', and all drinks are £1. I'm there.

In other news from today, a chiropracter was doing freebies in the hall that I walk through to get to lectures. I got a free 'assessment of the spine and pelvis'. Apparently there are slight misalignments of my spinal column, and some torsional irregularities in my pelvis, but this is normal in the general population. If I get a decent job over the summer, I might see to it.

The weekend

Out I went on Friday night to the Winchester for a quiet water & lime or two, after which I repaired to the Bulldog with The 'Flee of BN2Beeyatches fame. There, I got entangled with the hot n' horny Scotsman I referred to earlier, and we later went back to mine.

I'd been keeping my TV down after that missive from hell I got recently, but if the lodgers next door and underneath my floor are light of sleep, well, that night they had something else to complain about. Ha!

While on that note, The 'Flee posted up a rather fun parody of my recently received letter on BN2Beeyatches.

Pinched from BN2Beeyatches...

This is what a Word Cloud of my blog looks like. As opposed to Yeller/Slagella, I am rather happy with mine. I particularly like the juxtaposition of 'guy' and 'head'.

I'm wrecked tired...

Crap!

My application for a summer placement with Boots, which if successful meant that I would have had two months of paid work taken care of, has not been successful.

If the other applications I made go the same way, I could end up having to go back home and repeat the cycle of looking for work from my parents computer in Mallow. This does not augur well for the future of my sanity.

One down, four to go. Please God make it happen.

No ratty note left on my bed by the landlady this week, though they changed the bed covers to a blinding canary yellow and white check pattern. I'm going to have to leave them a note telling them not to touch them in future.

One of the other lodgers (he who complained when I used 'their' kitchen) continues to be an irritant. Once more, and he's going the same way as Janet Leigh's character in Psycho.

Oh My God.

Oh My God!!

I passed both of the exams I sat after Christmas!

Neither of the marks were spectacular, but considering - in my own opinion - I was borderline on one and almost certain to fail the other one, I am now very much chuffed to bits. Both of the marks were at the lower end of the passing scale, but right now, after what the last 6 weeks have been like, that is enough for me. The main thing is, I don't have to do either of them again. I don't start being assessed towards my final award until next year, so this year all I have to do is get through.

I'd love to go on the razz tonight but I'm broke - especially after last weekend - and I need to get things done tomorrow, so that's kind of a damp squib on everything. We'll see how things pan out later.

Oh huge sigh of relief...

The Weekend

After a hellish day of labs on Friday, I had a dinner at Phil's that really hit the spot, and then repaired to the Bulldog.

The drunken antics of all concerned was a source of merriment, but the hangover I had the next day most certainly wasn't. That's absolutely the last time I stay out until 5am. The extended opening hours of the Bully have their drawbacks.

Today saw me making breakfast in a kitchen which is actually considered to be available only to the bedsits outside my section, owing to the fact that in spite of the landlord being told that one of the two hobs in our own kitchen is broken, it has yet to be fixed, and now the other one has packed up as well. One schmuck from the other bedsits laboured the point that it was inconvenient for everyone else, almost to the point where I nearly strangled him. I got what he was saying, but I won't go without breakfast just to please someone else.

As it is, our own kitchenette (a small corridor with a few appliances, basically) has no oven, and I've alreay told the landlord that I may need to use the oven in the other kitchen once or twice a week. He agreed to this, but now it looks as if he needs to make the other lodgers agree to this as well. He has been texted. He'd better get back to me soon.

This place is having more than its fair share of teething problems, and while it's a given that I'll be moving out once the academic year is finished, even if I stay in Brighton for the summer, I'm now beginning to wonder if I'll even make it that far. The whole moving process took enough out of me the first time though, and it gets in the way of all things academic as well. I'll have to play this one by ear, I think.

I'm getting tired of this shit. It's been quite a while since I've had to live in a place with this kind of atmosphere. I've gone from one extreme (living on my own) to this, and because it's not the usual house share set up, it's the negative aspects of the former combined with the pain-in-the-arse aspects of this particular setup. Living on my own wasn't that bad, it was just the area I was in, in those particular circumstances.

Oh, I just want to press the fast-forward button and move beyond all this crap.

Can you say 'Control Freak'?

God Almightly, it hasn't taken long for trouble to rear its ugly head.

I came home from college yesterday after a hard day, feeling rather satisfied with myself, and found this on my bed:

Bloody hell. Ignoring the fact that as I am still in the process of unpacking, so of course it's going to be a bit untidy, these people are invading my living space and then passing comment on it. I told them I was more than capable of cleaning my room myself. As for the TV, it was never blaring, and if I was disturbed by someone else's tv, I would just ask them politely to turn it down, which is what they should do. Then there is the snotty tone, behind which it is implied that because I am a 'student', I need reminding that I must stay quiet and tidy at all times. I should say that to the one (whoever it was) who crashed up the stairs past my room at 2 am last Saturday night.

I just got off the phone from the landlord and he explained that his wife was 'in a bit of a mood' when she wrote it, to which I replied that I was put in quite the mood when I read it. He explained that she was a bit house-proud, which is fair enough, but that is quite the letter to get when you've only just moved into somewhere.

I could write her a letter back that would cut the legs from under her, but I know that it's best not to reply in anger. I'll sit on it for a while.

This is definitely not a place I will stay in for the duration of my degree though.

I have moved!

At last, I am more or less set up in the new house. I have acquired a room overlooking the seafront in Kemptown (hereafter referred to as 'bn2', its postcode) , and I am right in the middle of everything. The university is a bit far from where I am, relatively speaking, but I don't care. I can walk it in 40 minutes, whereas all my favourite pubs, clubs and shops are all within a stone's throw. The rent is saucy enough, but I'll make it up on the taxis that I won't have to get any more when going home. And I'm right next door to Brighton's main cruising ground, The Bushes.

The move from my old flat was done quite quickly, but was a bit of a nightmare at times. I fear some of my clothes may have been lost in transit, and only time will tell if they turn up again.

I never really liked the place I was living in before, and the area was chav central, so even though this new place is essentially a bedsit, the fact that the overall tone of the place is classier puts that quibble in the shade.

Last night, I had some after hours drinks in a nearby bar, until quite late. There will be other perks becoming obvious soon, I'm sure. I passed a megahot bear on the main street a couple of days ago. If I hadn't been so preoccupied with the whole removal saga, I would have swooped in, but I'm sure I'll see him again.

It's been a depressing, draining weekend, and now college has started again. I need to think about a holiday of some kind, to recharge my batteries, but now things are looking up slightly, thank God.

My head is ready to EXPLODE!

Venting time!

January has been just the worst month in a long time for me. I have had to write two time-consuming reports and study for and sit two exams, all the while being broke and concious of the fact that by this Monday coming, I have to be out of my current flat and have found somewhere to live.

Realistically, I couldn't do much househunting in the run-up to the exams, so I left it until after Friday January 27th, where I figured that the two weeks holidays would give me enough time to find somewhere else to live. It is only today that I have finally sorted out somewhere, but not everything has been finalised, and I won't know for sure what my story is until about 8pm this evening.

Not surprisingly, I'm feeling just a bit fucking burned out. I haven't had a chance to stop and take a breather since I got back here, and the two weeks holidays that were supposed to be chill-time for me have almost been as bad as the four weeks that came before them. I need a break, badly. But once I move into the new place over the weekend (enough of an ordeal, with all the stuff I have), do I get a break? Oh no. Another assignment is due in this day week and I also have to find a job, with no small amount of urgency.

I knew going back to do this course wouldn't be easy, but I am seriously feeling the pinch right now. God only knows how I am going to take this for another two and a half years.

Deep deep breaths. This time next Friday everything will hopefully feel a little bit better.

Oooohhhh.....

My face is bald

I completely shaved off my goatee this morning. I needed to start again anyway, mainly because it had gone slightly asymmetrical in the last while due to my recent shaving around it one night when I was drunk (not a good idea, don't ever take a razor to your face in a state of inebriation).

I very much regret it though. I looked better with it than without, and once it grows back, I'm leaving it there, most likely until I die.

Exasperation is...

• Getting chatted up by a guy at a bus stop
• It turns out he is a rugby player and has a fantasy body (His name was Darren and he plays for Portsmouth RFC)
• Comes to a nightclub with you

AND THEN:

• He has 'problems' getting money out of the cash machine so you end up buying him drinks and paying for putting his coat in the cloakroom
• He turns out to have more issues with himself than a bag of cats on drowning day
• He sticks his tongue down some other guy's throat but swears they are 'just good friends'
• He asks you to wait until 3am, the time the nightclub closes, and promises that he'll go home with you then...

AND THEN CHANGES HIS FUCKING MIND AND DECIDES HE DOESN'T WANT TO GO THROUGH WITH IT AFTER ALL!

Aaaaaarrrraaaaaggghhhhh!

In retrospect, the fact that the muppet had paid £350 for a pair of Prada jeans should have acted as some kind of warning light.

Current mood: Capable of murder.

¡Hola!

Inspired by the big hairy man-mountains that I saw in Bear Cub, I have decided to learn Spanish.

Knowing myself, of course, I was reluctant to shell out money for a course of book and tapes in case I gave up after two days and they ended up gathering dust on the shelf. However, one of the newspapers over here, the Independent, gave away a free learning CD of the language with its paper yesterday, and the free book to go with it today, so I bought both. Not bad for £2.70.

The course is only six weeks long, so I figure that it won't be too much of an undertaking. So...

Avanti!*


* This might not actually be Spanish.

Kate Bush - Aerial

Prologue

I waited long and listened hard, trying to arrive at a definitive opinion on this, the first album from La Bush in twelve years. Then I realised that my opinions of almost all the records I own are pretty fluid, and I can end up revising my opinion of entire albums over a year after I've heard them for the first time. So, is this one any good?

Yes it is, though sometimes I feel like adding a qualifier to that.

Me and Kate go back over 15 years. I remember seeing the video for Cloudbusting when I was in my early teens, and startled by the amount of personality in what can often be a very tedious art form for getting across the essence of a song and its band. From then I was hooked, and my sister's copy of The Whole Story was fair game. Soon after that, I got my hands on The Sensual World, which was part of the soundtrack to my sometimes miserable first attempt at higher education. One of the strengths of Kate Bush is how she simply doesn't anything like anyone else at all, and on that album it was all there. Rock outs, love songs, ethereal dream sequences, everything. One song on it, This Rocket's Tail, made singers like Robert Plant sound like petulant little brats, and that was down to the fact that she can still hold a note while howling and shrieking through a passage, and that's one of her main strengths. I discovered more of this kind of melodrama on the Hounds of Love, while working my way backwards through her catalogue.

There wasn't much howling and shrieking on the more mellow follow-up, The Red Shoes, but it still had some great moments in spite of that, the most prominent in my mind being Moments of Pleasure.

Aerial is a bit like that. It's mellow, she doesn't cut loose like on her earlier albums, and this is why she'll appeal to a certain portion of the easily-listening crowd. There's no wailing declarations of lost love or anger due to some abstract event, but there is still plenty of dreamlike compositions and abstract reference points. Songs like Bertie and Mrs. Bartolozzi, the latter of which sees her describing the minutiae of her doing her laundry(!), refer to her domestic bliss, A Coral Room has flashes of a plane crashing and an underwater city, and An Architect's Dream and The Painter's Link feature Rolf Harris (yes Puppy, you were right that time!) joining in singing about the easel and the brush, so to speak. Some of the songs also revolve around Birdsong, and the pattern on the album cover actually represents the sound wave pattern of the song of a blackbird.

The song I've linked to above is one of the better ones, and a good indication of the overall feel of the album.

(Goddammit! I can't type this entry without the CD skipping. Windows XP multitasking, my arse.)

So there you go. She still has it, even if she's reigning herself a little days. It's still a worthy buy. Just don't expect any Ninth-Waveisms.

Going by her current rate of output, we can expect the next one in 2017.

Brokeback Mountain

Just came away from seeing this, and really liked it. You'd want to have been in a coma not to have heard about all the praise being lavished on it, and I think it's the critics trying to make up for the fact that they overreacted to The Hulk, which wasn't really bad except for the CGI effects, which made Hulk himself look like the green giant out of the ads for tinned sweetcorn.

The general critical opinion is that Heath Ledger has excelled in this, and his protrayal of a surly incommunicative farm hand was spot on. Gyllenhaal's role was pretty much up there too, with him in a role I wouldn't really have imagined for him. Also, if a film can be described as 'minimal' then this is it. Everything progresses slowly, with a fair bit of emphasis on background scenery (not entirely dissimilarly to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon), yet Ang Lee makes sure it still holds your interest all the way. It's pretty much at the opposite end to the more post-modern films of gay interest, with the traditional theme of coming to terms with love in an era where it is pretty much regarded as an aberration, at the forefront. The hype about 'steamy cowboy sex scenes' couldn't have been wider of the mark, and the film is all the better for that omission. The soundtrack complimented it well too, with a single finger-picking guitar composition running through it in a way not dissimilar to Ry Cooder's one in Paris, Texas.

So, go see. There really isn't a whole lot else out there anyway, Christ Almighty.

The trailer I saw for Walk The Line, a bio of Johnny Cash, looked pretty cool too. That has been pencilled in.

A sex entry

I went to the Bulldog on Friday night. Ten minutes inside the door and I had notched up shifts from three different guys, with one of them also engaging me ... er... further down.

My arrival was likened by Phil to that of an exocet missile. Perhaps I go too far? In any case, I also got entangled with a hot'n'horny Scotsman. Time will tell if that progresses to something more. I had acquired a headache earlier in the day that just would not go away, so I wasn't really up for moving quickly with anyone, much as I would have liked to.

Friday's exam sucked, and I fear I'll be doing that one again. This last month has been hell for all of us, and it showed on Friday evening, with a lot of people going home early or just not really in the form for a whole day of partying, myself included. But it's over now. I have two weeks to find somewhere else to live, and hopefully I'll get a job in that time as well.

Oh, the stress is starting to take its tole.

Chris Penn. October 1965 - January 2006

I heard about this on the radio last night, and sure enough, it's true. Chris Penn, brother of Seán, was found dead in his beachside apartment on Wednesday morning. He was 40 years old.

The only films I saw that starred him were Reservoir Dogs, True Romance, and Footloose, and those apart, I never really was that pushed about the rest. Having said that, I still have to see Rumblefish and Short Cuts.

Most of the articles written so far have concentrated on how his career was outshone by his more famous brother, but I found Seán's overwrought posturing a bit hard to take sometimes, and to my knowledge, Chris doesn't have an out-and-out bomb like Shanghai Surprise to his name.

Other commentators have pointed out that as his weight ballooned due to cocaine abuse, his career shrank. Maybe the latter was in fact due to the former, but I have to say I found that meatiness suited him. So here I provide some pictures:

Rest in peace Chris. You nailed a few noteworthy roles, you made more money than most people do, and you could have doubled nicely as a human duvet. Not bad, all in all.

Exams...

Had microbiology this afternoon, which basically consisted of MCQs and a short answer section.

The MCQs weren't a complete disaster, but the smell of bullshit from my written answers would have driven away a dragon. At least the labs I've had to suffer for the last three months contribute substantially to the overall course mark, and I averaged a grade B there.

Now, here I sit, at 1:20am, learning about how tablets are made, and what goes into them. I never knew they could consist of so many ingredients other than the active drug substance itself. Bloody hell. I sit this one - the last - on Friday, and then it's out on a bender from hell with the class.

Roll on the weekend.

South Park, with a rant attached.

Around a fortnight ago, Comedy Central was forced to pull the season finale of South Park, an episode entitled 'Bloody Mary'.

This particular one - there's no way of putting this delicately - features a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeding from the ass. This miracle brings people flocking to South Park to be healed, until it transpires that in fact Mary's just having a period. Then the Pope declares that 'a chick bleeding out her vagina is no miracle', and everyone goes home disgruntled.

Unfortunately for Comedy Central, the episode was scheduled to run the before the Catholic celebration of the Feast of the immaculate conception. An American organisation, the Catholic league, succeeded in having the episode pulled from the air, never to be repeated. How they managed this may something to do with the fact that Viacom, the parent company of Comedy Central, has on its board of members a staunch Catholic. The Catholic League also succeeded in securing an apology from Viacom. What's that flying out the window? It looked like the first amendment...

Last year, the Jerry Springer opera opened to substantial controversy in the UK. I didn't see it, and it looked a bit shit frankly, but in spite of protest it was shown here. It showed that although catholicism had a voice here, it wasn't an overpowering one. Which is the way it should be.

The Friday Thing, a satirical commentsheet and the source of much of the previous three paragraphs, points out that this is an indication of, on the other hand, how much influence Catholicism has in the ol' Red White and Blue right now. Similarly offensive episodes have been aired previously (a couple of years ago, to be precise), but when the Catholic League tried to intervene then, they were told to fuck off. Something appears to have changed.

South Park is funny. Its subversion is rudimentary, it can often be peurile, and it's nowhere near as clever as The Simpsons was, but it does have one substantial jewel in its crown: Eric Cartman. He alone makes it worth watching.

The tenets on which the Catholic church have founded itself are so ridiculous - and, it should be pointed out, damaging to women and minorities in general everywhere - that it has no-one to blame but itself for becoming this kind of target. Its bound to be offensive to some catholics, but considering the whole subtext of the immaculate conception in general (docile woman accepts pregnancy as a gift from God, without sullying herself with the 'sin' of intercourse) the church have brought this on themselves.

So. I am going to help in my own little way. Here is a link to a bittorrent location of the episode.

It's fair to say that Matt Stone and Trey Parker wouldn't have the balls to try something like this with the Muslim faith though, even though that's as deserving a target as Christianity.

And now to my next point.

Comedy Central has pulled another another episode of South Park this week. It's called "Come out of the Closet" Tom Cruise. You don't have to be a genius to deduce from the title what that one is about, and all that reminds me of something.

There is rather irritating tendency for people inside and outside the gay community to 'out' people, as soon as they come 'under suspicion'. Even in academia, gay activists such as Andrew Hodges and David Hutter, in the pamphlet 'With Downcast Gays' (a good read, though flawed by its militant politics) point out that the writer E.M. Forster 'betrayed' the gay community by remaining in what was essentially 'the closet'. Maybe he did the gay community a disservice, maybe he didn't, but whom he slept with was ultimately his own business.

Fast forward quite a few years, and now we have people pointing the finger at everyone from Kevin Spacey to Tom Selleck to Tom Cruise. What the fuck does it matter if they are or not? If we (or more accurately, the media) have advanced to the point where we are 'accepting' of other people's preferences, why do we still have to know what their gender of preference is? It's none of our business.

I was in a pub once, in a discussion with someone about a work colleague that neither of us particularly liked. Up came the subject of the unlikeable one's sexual orientation. "At least you say what you are", pointed out the other drinker. To this day, I don't particularly think the unlikeable one is gay, and I couldn't care even less, but I'm pretty convinced that subconciously, the other drinker intended it [his orientation] as a slur because he didn't like him, not out of objectivity or some crusading purpose.

I'm pretty sure that this is what is at the root of what goes on with a lot of outing. A gay person's life is improved immeasurably once they come out. It could almost - though not quite - be argued that by outing someone, you are doing them a favour. But you are also performing an invasion of privacy that is pretty much without equal, and it is almost always something other than altruism that is behind someone making the demand that someone else come out of the closet. It is inevitably more about demander, than demandee.

Tom Cruise has attracted this shit because, on the surface, he is someone that attracts begrudgery. He has made a lot of money playing to the standard Hollywood archetype of the 'red-blooded' action hero, much, it has to be said, to the detriment of the more artistic aspects of his profession. He is good-looking - though not, I must stress, at all my type - and has had quite a few beauties on his arm.

He's also a bit of an arse, with all the Scientology, and in that rubbish about Brooke Shields he really was operating outside his field of expertise. In fact he should have been slapped hard across the face for that one, and it is this characteristic of his that lead people to react by characterising him contemptously. And it's pretty telling to see what they come out with.

Ricky Martin has attracted it. Paul Newman has attracted it. George Michael attracted it for some time before he was very publicly caught, but sometimes there is smoke without fire. Sometimes it's just mean-minded unattractive jealousy with a twist of disrespect for gay men. If you disparage someone, including their orientation as backup can turn the spotlight on what your core beliefs really are, and it can make for a rather unattractive sight.

The 'outing' of politicians that have a history of opposing gay rights is somewhat different, and serves a worthwhile purpose in one sense, but it still leaves a nasty taste in my mouth, because by their 'exposure' - try as much as you like to get away from it - you are equating their orientation with something shameful. I suppose the end just about justifies the means, but only just. I wish there was some other way though.

Lastly, some of the gay community are at this as well. Is it out of a sense of injured loyalty, or do they feel better if a closet gay man finally comes around to joining their ranks? I can't imagine why the latter would be the case. Some say that by remaining in the closet, a public figure contributes to the oppression of gay men and women, forgetting that if there was no oppression, whether or not they are in the closet simply wouldn't be an issue for anyone except themselves.

Tom Cruise's decision to remain secretive is most likely motivated by career considerations. The offers of a lead role as a hero in an action movie would probably dry up if he came out. Maybe there's more to it, but if I'm confronted with one prick taking issue with another prick on the basis of the sexuality of the latter, I'm not so much on the side of the latter, as against that of the former.

So. South Park, as entertaining as it can be, is not really so cool with this episode. It's probably not the intention of Stone and Parker, they're most likely just trying to get up the nose of Cruise himself. Unfortunately, the screen 'idol' succeeded in getting Comedy Central to pull that one as well by threatening to sue them, so he's pretty much won, and strangely enough, I don't feel too outraged about this.

You can still watch it here though, and judge for yourself. I'm nothing if not fair.

P.S. If you think there is hypocrisy evident in this post, you need to get a sense of history. Fast.

Maybe I have a nice natural smell?

The Scene: Denis in the lift, headed for the ground floor. A woman gets on halfway down. I recognise her (I think) as one of the lab technicians from the microbiology department.

Her: "That's a nice eau-de-toilette you're wearing. What is it?"
Me (Not sure if I heard right): "Sorry?"
Her: "That's a nice eau-de-toilette you're wearing. What is it?"
Me: "Er....I'm not wearing any..."
Her (surprised): "Oh..."

The lift stops at my floor. I get out.

Me (over my shoulder, back towards her): "It must be someone else's..."

I'm no good at accepting unsolicited compliments from strangers.

I do wear 'Body Mechanics for Men' from the Body Shop as a deodorant though. Maybe it was that.

A thought about alcohol

I become a much nicer, more friendly person when I'm drunk. Too much so, it could be argued. I suppose it's better than what happens with a lot of people, which is that they get aggressive, or near-psychotic, and start getting into fights. I'm the opposite. If I get confronted with that kind of trouble, I usually dispel it with loads of unthreatening amicability.

There is a downside to this. During a night out which involves beer, I can ending up entertaining the most moronic argument or slagging match and hearing the other person out, and it is only the next day, when I wake up, that I realise that sometimes a box into the face can work wonders for people who turn into a shambling mess after a drinking session. Or at the very least, walking off and leaving them on their own when their back is turned.

Current mood: Exasperated

Back in Brighton...

Exams in two weeks, and what do I do on my first day back? Go out drinking. And stay out until 7am. This is simply NOT on. I've got work to do!

Over Christmas I had ordered the DVD of 'Bear Cub', a film that first came out over a year ago but, thanks to the fact that it wasn't shown over here at the time and I missed subsequent screenings of it, one that I hadn't got around to seeing. This was wrecking my head verily, as my interest had been seriously piqued by the trailer, or more accurately, the men in the trailer. Watch it and I think you'll agree. I tried to do a screen capture of one of the scenes on the DVD and include it here, but it keeps fucking up, so no joy.

Anyway, I came back to Brighton on Sunday night (Boy, was getting a train from Gatwick at 11:20pm a barrel of laughs. Especially when the train timetable display changed the platform number of interest TWO MINUTES before the train came in) and found the DVD in my letterbox, much to my delight. A quick rendez-vous with Phil and it was decided that we would watch it on the plasma screen at his place to do it justice. With two bags of Nachos, dip, buttered popcorn, chocolate and alcohol in hand, we settled down.

Set in Madrid, the film tells the story of how a gay dentist, whose life is one big party, ends up looking after his 9-year old nephew after the mother is detained indefinitely in a different country. Add to this the fact that the boy's paternal grandmother wants custody of the child as she believes, surprise surprise, a gay man does not for a fit parent make.

The difference between this and almost every other film I've seen of gay interest is how it resonated in so many ways with me at an everyday level. Right from the opening slightly comedic sex scene, I was going 'Lord, I know what that's like.' A scene where the lead character is in the sauna having his nipples played with brought back to me how many times I've already had to tell guys that tit torture has never been my thing (I must be the only gay man on the planet who feels like this, from what I can see), a part where they are all mangled on cocaine made me laugh out loud, it brought back so many memories, and the prowling of the cruising areas reminded me of what I could avail of later, if I felt like it.

Other than that, the standard themes of HIV, homophobia etc. were dealt with in a very straight-up no-nonsense way. As a piece of art, the film didn't break a huge amount of ground, but it was probably the most realistic representation of the gay lifestyle I've seen in some time. And the men rocked. Loads of big hairy eye-candy everywhere. The only fly in the ointment was that I missed a thing about Richard Dawkins on BBC something, and also a programme about linguistics (they were doing a thing on the mauling of the English language by management-speak, a pet peeve of mine) but hey.

Anyway, it was kickin'. Get it out, and make sure you get the directors cut, with all the sex scenes left intact, so you can see it at its artistic best, har har.

So after that, we went out drinking, went back to the house, drank some more, watched some porn, and drank some more again. I then left, mystifyingly refusing the offer of a bed, at half-past bloody four in the morning and went cruising in The Bushes. There, I got entangled with a guy, and walked all the way home afterwards, thanks to the dearth of taxis around at the time. Bloody cabbies! What do they think they're doing, knocking off before 6am!

Today, I rose rather late. Lectures tomorrow. No more debauchery. There's a new man in town.

Oh déjà vu...

And onto a new year...

Well, it's been, and I got a little drunk and demented in Dingle, and now it's gone, and I'm on the last leg of the holidays. Time to get on the new year's resolutions. Smokes and alcohol shall feature, as usual. Let's see if I can make it work this year. My stomach is extremely pissed off with how I've been shovelling junk into it indiscriminately, and it's been letting me know in know uncertain terms: While I was out in partying over the past couple of days, I had to keep a toilet nearby at all times. Uurgh...

I had a fear when I came home for the holidays that I would end up getting no study done. I have got some done, but all of this work could more or less be compressed into one day. I refuse to get upset about it. I have one week left.

When I go back, I have exams at the end of January. I also have to find somewhere new to live before the 8th of February. On top of that, I have to find a proper part-time job so that I can be more self sufficient. It's going to be a busy month.

Now I go do laundry. Excitement!

Civil partnerships in the United Kingdom

I'm a bit tardy, downright sloppy in fact, in not writing about this earlier, but you'd want to have been living under a rock not to know that same-sex civil partnerships have now come to pass in the United Kingdom.

I had first heard about this when I had visited the two Craigs out in Arundel a while back. They have since availed of this new piece of legislation and on Wednesday the 21st of this month, after a 20-year 'courtship', they have gone ahead and tied the knot. They are amongst the first of all of the gay couples in the Brighton area to do so, and I wish them the very best.

Nazinger, I beg your pardon, the recently elected Pope Benedict XVMCIIwhat-fucking-ever is, of course, timely in his announcements: He has recently come out and pronounced that no priest-in-waiting may enter a seminary if he has ever exhibited tendencies toward 'the intrinsic disorder' that is homosexuality, within 3 months prior to the proposed time of enrolement. In a particularly noxious twist, the Vatican has issued this 'in response' to the revelations of child sex abuse at the hands of American priests, thus reinforcing in some of the smaller minds amongst us the 'link' that exists between homosexuality and paedophilia.

Here we fucking go again. The Vatican quite simply refusing to grow up and acknowledge the diversity that exists outside of their enclave in Rome. What they don't seem to appreciate is that at ground level, quite a lot of priests are embarassed at the stream of rubbish that is flowing out of there. Some of the less rigid amongst them may find that their job is made increasingly difficult by the pronouncements of a loathsome little toad in Rome who just cannot appreciate that guys who dig other guys are simply never going to go away. Seriously, we've been around since before biblical times, and step by step, we're winning all of our battles as time goes on. Get the fuck over it. Some priests, such as this guy here, are already 'rebelling' by refusing to give assurance that they won't engage in same-sex relations with - oh, this takes my breath away - the man they are marrying. You couldn't make up such a ridiculous scenario.

More and more, the Vatican are digging their own graves with these edicts, and widening what is already a substantial divide between them and the commmon church-goer. With public coverage and acceptance being given to the gay community more and more, we are now more visible than ever, and it has now got to the point where almost every straight person in Western Society knows or is related to someone who warms to the idea of warming up someone of their own gender, and this is where the cardinals are shooting themselves in the foot. They are forcing people to take sides, and if you were presented with the choice between a friend or relative in real life, and some abstract figure who is claimed to be represented by someone such as Ratzinger, well, I know which option I would choose. Only the most simple-minded amongst the Right need to be given instruction on how to live their life in this way.

Incidentally, it's good to see that people like Debbie Gaston aren't allowing organised religion to get in the way of their religious beliefs.

As an aside, if there is such a higher power, why are some people so readily accepting of the theory that he would have someone like Benedict as his spokesman here on Earth? If I were The Almighty, I would have long ago handed his holiness his P45 and found someone a bit more personable. Perhaps it's down to iconography, and how people have more respect for inaccessible figureheads, but I might be overreaching...

Anyhow, the partnerships have come to pass, and some political commentators, along with some of my friends, hold that it won't be long before it happens in Ireland as well. We'll see about that, but the fact that it now exists in so many European countries is good for me at the moment.

Lastly, another absolute red rag of mine. A recent letter to the editor of the Irish Times:

Madam,

Why are commentators on homosexuality so reluctant to use the word "homosexuality"? Is it an example of the Sellafield/Windscale syndrome, whereby, to change the public perception of something, all that is required is to call it by a different name?

In his article on civil partnerships for homosexual couples (Opinion and Analysis, December 21st), Niall Crowley of the Equality Authority uses the phrase "gay, lesbian, or bisexual", or some variation on it, no less than 15 times, while eschewing the term "homosexual". He evinced a similar tendency in his article on December 6th responding to the Vatican document on homosexuality.

He gives the game away right at the end of the latest article, where he uses the term 'all forms of mutually supportive relationships - same sex or heterosexual' when it would have been easier to say 'homosexual or heterosexual'.

Lest I be accused of homophobia, while I agree with the Pope's recent pronouncements on homosexuality, I have met many homosexuals over the course of my life and have generally got on well with them. I experienced a brief homosexual phase myself, lasting about a month, when I was a teenager. Many of my favourite actors - Dirk Bogarde, Sir John Gielgud, Leonard Rossiter, Denholm Elliot inter alia - were homosexuals. One of my favourite films, Death in Venice, based on the book by Thomas Mann, is about a homoerotic attraction towards a beautiful young boy.

One of the important tenets of a democracy is freedom of speech, but I have noticed over the years that if one expresses an opinion contrary to the liberal beliefs espoused by most of those working in the media - who incidentally are not representative of the so-called "plain people of Ireland" - one is accused of being accused of being conservative or intolerant or worse. For instance, as Eamonnn Gavin (December 21st), any suggestion that the number of foreigners entering this country should be restricted is met with accusations of racism. Similarly, any expression of dissent about the propriety of homosexuality is met with accusations of homophobia.

Tendentious articles such as Niall Crowley's latest two contributions are extremely annoying because they are clearly written from a politically correct perspective, the chief characteristic of which is an inability or unwillingness to speak plainly.

Yours, etc.

Discounting this clown's issues with terminology and the all-too-typical attempt to justify himself in paragraph four - I'll get to them later - one concept that needs investigation in this context is that of political correctness.

Political correctness was, like many social phenomena described in detail in the media, something that never really took off. It's central premise, the neuturing of modern speech, especially was something that existed only in the minds of a select few. Terminology such as 'intellectually challenged', 'horizontally advantaged', and 'vertically challenged' most likely had a half-life of about 5 seconds, yet were touted by those in the public eye for quite some time after everyone else had sensibly begun to ignore them. In short, if it ever did exist, it really does not anymore, at least not in the form in which it was originally conceived.

Here is something else. Thanks to variety of social factors, racism, and to a lesser extent, homophobia, stopped becoming acceptable in everyday life some years back. I'm not a social commentator, I can't draw a line in the sand and say exactly where this happened, but it is now not considered good social grace to disparage someone on either of these grounds and offend anyone in mixed company, and society in general is all the better for it.

Somewhere along the line being gay, or at the very least being polysexual, became kind of hip. One reason may have been that it was a way of dissociating oneself from, or offending, the old guard, in whatever form that might have been. Another reason was that it still has a aspect of sexual experimentation to it, along with the attendant party scene, that has since been relegated to the margins in mainstream heterosexual society.

Assimilation eventually came about, and now we have come to today's situation. Racism and homophobia, seen as the preserve of the uneducated redneck who never left his home town and never saw much of the world, is now quite unfashionable. But it's still there, buried in the subconcious of people who, under different circumstances, would never have been that pushed about erasing it from within themselves before.

So now, when people want to give life to the small-minded little shit inside them without looking like the under-developed prat that they are, they need a scapegoat, and boy is the PC concept fast becoming the punchbag of modern times. They give voice to their opinions, but when those are met with protest, they say such sensitivities are borne out of a stifling form of political correctness, the implication being that most people think like them at some level and thus they are absolved. Another annoying term of excuse, with connotations of plain-speaking, is 'irreverance'.

Horseshit. Ignorance is ignorance, and while homophobia is a strong word to use in these circumstances, their comments point to the fact that they are still little boys at heart, who haven't really experienced enough of the world. It's a result of people trying to excuse themselves because they have had a certain sensibility foisted upon them that they are not ready for, at least not yet.

I've always thought that Liberal bashing is done by those who have just a little too much time on their hands, or need to get out more, but now I think of it as a odious form of self-absorption. If these people themselves found that their own rights were being infringed, their whinging would be coming out of every available news outlet, but because it's someone else, they feel free to take potshots. It's the spoiled little kid within each of them being given a voice.

There is no PC brigade. If a slur from a person in the vein mentioned above induces a negative reaction in someone else, that's because the person is being an ignoramus, not a 'plain speaker'. End of story.

This brings me to his support of the Pope. You cannot support someone who condemns gays outright, and yet suddenly immediately afterwards start bleating that you 'don't have a problem with gays'. It just doesn't wash. At all. Not with a figure like that.

Which leads me to the other two points. First, his justificaton in paragraph four. It reminds me of something...

Sometime back, I saw an episode of The Office on TV, which had Gareth, anticharismatic par excellence, talking about gays in the army. He was against it, on the grounds that they might be sexually distracted by the other men in uniform on the battlefield, but then quickly defended himself against accusations of homophobia by pointing out that he had loads of gay musicians in his record collection, such as George Michael and Freddie Mercury ("And", he points out, "They're all bummers"). It was a genius sketch, mainly because most of us, least of all me, know someone this retarded in real life. The parallels between this sketch and the guy above, is that as lines of reasoning go, it's MORONIC!

Last, the use of the term 'homosexual'. It is true that the article referred to in the letter above goes to some lengths to avoid using the term, but in order to help the reader understand why, a quick history lesson.

Once upon a time, not so long ago at all, the medical establishment regarded homosexuality as a disorder, and as such it merited listing in the bible of psychiatry, the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual). The term they used to describe it at that time? Yep, you guesssed it. That was where the definition first surfaced. The term 'heterosexual' enjoys nowhere near the same kind of dubious history. Even now I'm still not a fan of the homo term, it just sounds too clinical, as if the person in question is some kind of curiosity, and I've noticed at a superficial level, that it can indicate in the user a certain aversion to aspects of our lifestyle. But maybe I'm being too 'PC', and 'not representative of the plain-speaking people of Ireland'. Oh, and if you find gay men getting defensive when you disparage aspects of their community, it's probably because they have a sense of history and are sick of fighting their corner all the time. Conflict can do that to you sometimes.

So on that note, plain speakers, don't diss gays. Apart from anything else it's not cool, and it'll make you look like a twat and you won't get laid. And you've already got quite a lot of catching up to do in that department before you get to where we are.

Hah!

King Kong Kickass!

Slight spoiler ahead...

After hauling myself out of bed this morning at the ungodly hour- well, ungodly by Christmas holiday standards - of twenty-past eight, I got a lift to Cork with my mother and hit the shops looking for my father's Christmas present. He (my father) has given up the subtle art of dropping hints like clangers about what he wants for Christmas, and this year has simply told us directly that he wants a rather obscure yet popular traditional Irish music CD this year. God forbid that it would be easy to find, and after searching specialist shops, Golden Discs, HMV, and Virgin records, I was still empty handed. I ended up getting one of the shops to order it in, and fingers crossed I'll have it on Thursday. Other than that, that's my Christmas shopping taken care of. Our family, thank God in heaven, have opted for a Christmas Kindle setup this year, and that suits my moth-infested wallet down to the ground.

Anyway, at about 11 O'Clock I got on a bus out to Mahon Point shopping centre. Two things about Mahon point: It has one of the best shopping centres for miles around in Cork, along with one of the best cinemas as well. The other thing is that it is in ...erm...Mahon.

I have yet to come across an area anywhere in Ireland that is as drab, grey, and utterly uninspiring as this place. Housing estates as far as the eye can see, that are serviced by a bus route that is really rather shit. Hell is not other people, it is not war, it is not Bray (thank you, Linus), it is Mahon. Add to this the thought that in my attempt to escape the rabble that infest the cinemas of the city centre, I may have jumped out of the Wok and into the furnace. Oh well...

So into the shopping centre I went, found that King Kong was about to start, nabbed an early bird ticket for only EUR2.50 (the munchies were 13 fucking euro, but that's something else) and settled down to enjoy.

You don't have to know your directors to know that this has come from the maker of the Lord of the Rings. The visuals are as striking as they come (as someone who doesn't handle heights very well, I squirmed at the shots of Kong on top of the building being attacked by aircraft, and the scenes with the overgrown insects were...*shudder*) but there is still a decent heart at the centre of the film, and there aren't many in the kind of directorial company kept by Jackson that can effectively combine the two. The sets of New York in the 1930s were spot on - at least to me - and the characters all gelled well together. Naomi Watts can scream with the best of them, and Adrien Brody, whom I last saw in The Jacket, is fast becoming one of my favourite 'character' actors ("That performance was effluent"). Jack Black's film director, well, headed for caricature, but there you go.

I also liked the 'Heart of Darkness' thread running through the background, and have a look at the chase scenes with the dinosaurs and reflect on how another director has been outclassed by Jackson. You know who I mean.

Anyway, it was sad at the end. The outcome was not what you would hope for, but one that you knew was coming. Not like Godzilla, for example, where you wanted the thing dead, nay, anyone involved in the making of the film dead, by the time the end had rolled around.

So there you have it. Denis heartily recommends. Go see. The only downside was that the shitness of the transport service was highlighted when I had to wait 40 minutes afterwards to get a bus back into the city.

But the best thing? The sum total of the viewing population during this film: Four. Me, and three elderly noiseless pensioners. Just the way I like it.

Back in Mallow...

Well, I'm home since Saturday evening, though it was a pure miracle I got here at all. The last few days in brief:

Friday: Go out for a meal, in a vain attempt to be sensible and avoid getting trashed. After meal, break off from group and go meet up with Phil and head for the Star Inn.

Can anyone see in advance how this night will end up? If you said 'ending up at Phil's boozing until the early hours', you'd be right. Talk about sabotaging myself.

The Star Inn was fun, though the owner was a bit stand-offish this time, toward the end. I don't care. I'll get around to him eventually. After that, The Bulldog. The novelty of going to this place still hasn't worn off: There's always someone new to chat up.

So why did I lock mouths with someone I had been with before, who's not really my type? Aaarrrggghhh!

Anyway it was fun, and when I fell into bed at 4am I had no idea of the day that lay ahead of me.

Saturday: Wake up with a horrible hangover (Taste of Phil's gin martinis still at the back of my throat. Never drinking them again!) and in an amazing feat of mind over matter, get my nausea-wracked ass out of bed to pack for the flight home. It is in the back of my head that the flight is at 7:10pm so I aim to be at the airport an hour beforehand.

I make it to the train station at 5:27pm. I see from the TV display that the train to Gatwick airport, which I must catch if I'm to get there in time, is at 5:34. I queue, with mounting hysteria, for my train ticket, and manage to board the train at 5:33 and 30 seconds. I settle and relax, thinking to myself how lucky I am, and that even though I haven't checked my flight details for quite a while, that I was right, that the flight is at 7:10pm.

Isn't it?

I get there at 6pm and lug my bags over to the screens that tell you the flight details. The entry of interest makes my blood run cold:

1810 - Cork - EZY878 - Check-in closed

For reasons that will forever remain unknown, mostly to myself, I had got the departure time wrong by one hour. One hour in the wrong direction. Why do I put myself through these ordeals? Why?

Depressed, and still hungover, I went over to the check-in desk. I mention that it is probably too late to check in, and the girl there confirms this. She mentions that I should go over to their Sales desk, so I do, with leaden heart. I speak to the guy there, he gets on the phone, and manages to get me on the flight list! It turns out that the flight has been delayed by one hour, so boarding is still a possibility. After checking in my bags, I head to the departure gate. Everyone else is seriously disgruntled at the delay, I am thanking the Lord above.

I get home, check my bank balance online, and as a consequence realise that most of time at home will revolve around studying, and nothing else. Oh well, at least I took care of all the essentials first this time, but there'll be no trip to Dublin this Christmas, or anywhere else for that matter. At least New Year's Eve will be in Dingle this year, which should be cool.

Yesterday and today, I vegged.

Other than that, buckets of college coursework await. Onward ho!

After 12 years of waiting...

...I got the new Kate Bush album 'Aerial'.

I am not yet ready to pass comment on this milestone.

Aaarrrgghh! Again.

For some reason, the college network has disabled cookies at the server end, which means I can't change the settings back to what they were when I log in. The consequences? I can't log into blogger - the reason for lack of posts lately - and I can't order anything on my visa card as an online 'shopping cart' needs cookies enabled to be able to work properly.

In other news, I got entangled with the owner of the Star Inn in Brighon last night, although I ended up bringing someone else home at the end of the night. This latter guy had an interest in a third party as well, but that person wasn't too keen on our lack of specificity in the sex department (I don't really like categorisation) and opted not to come home with us as a result, so I had to make do with a standard me-and-one-other scenario. Oh well, I shouldn't complain.

Loads of work to do. No more men this side of Christmas. No alcohol either.

(Resolution lifespan: 1 hour)

An awkward moment is...

...when your mother hands you some plastic bag-wrapped toiletries she found in your room, and upon closer inspection, you see that it is two tubes of KY Jelly.

I only had one in that drawer at home though, the other one must belong to my sister. Too much information? Oh well...

The weekend with my parents over went pretty well, discounting the horrible hangover I had halfway through, and the uncomfortable bed I had made for myself with the sofa cushions laid out on the floor (My parents got my bed). I only got about 3 hours sleep last night. I only got about 2 the night before, but I didn't notice the lack of comfort so much that time as I was wasted. Thankfully the Sunday hangover didn't linger long enough to get in the way of having a Sunday roast at Dan's mother's place, which was very nice, though I had to fight to stay awake afterwards. Everyone else seemed to want to fight for me to stay awake then too. The abuse!

Now that I have some money coming to me, a sex trip to London is in order I feel. Outside of that, I am paying for all essentials for the coming months first, before I start spending money on other stuff. I have learned my lesson! A quiet christmas is for the best this year, I think. 3 more weeks (including this one) left in college.

More classes this afternoon. Unnhhh!

Thank God. THANK GOD!

My bank manager in Ireland has agreed to loan me another £1000! Oh joy and rapture! The perfect end to another hellish week of labs. Now I can have a life again, and pay the rent so I don't end up sleeping on the side of the road.

I'm pretty much done with microbe analysis now, thank fuck, but I have some computer thing on genetic engineering to do next week, and all of that is still Hebrew to me.

I say Hebrew instead of Greek, as having brushed with the former over the summer while testing Blackberry phones, Greek is positively a joy to behold compared to Hebrew. A new phrase of my invention shall be absorbed into the English language!

"Nah, mate. I don't get it. It's all Hebrew to me..."

Hmmm.

Parents tomorrow. Flat still looks like shit. Get on it Denis!

Aaaarrrrrggghhhh!!!

If I have to read about microbes of pharmaceutical importance such as Staphylococcus Aureus, Pseudomonas Aeruginosa, Escheria Coli and Salmonella one more time, I WILL KILL!

Aaarrrrrggghhhh!

Trying new things...

After a hellish week of labs, independent reading, and more labs, I managed to round it off in a rather novel way.

Last night I called out to Arundel, a town about 30 miles outside Brighton, and met up with two chaps, both of whom were engaged to one another, both of whom, funnily enough, were called Craig. On top of that, they both had goatees.

One other thing they had in common last night was me.

It was rather a fun threesome, though I was a bit subdued this morning as I made my way to the train station to go back to Brighton. Maybe it's the workload I have to get through for the exams after Christmas. Maybe it's that I'm sick of poverty. Maybe drinking that bottle of red wine wasn't a good idea. Maybe...

Oh BLEH! I think I'm fit only for a day in front of the TV today, but I must at least try and do some study. That, and make a start on tidying up the flat. My parents are coming around next weekend.

Dum dee dum...

I'm a bit late with this, but...

Editor free after Kemp 'assault'

Sometime last week, Rebekah Wade, poisonous editor of arguably the most poisonous and shittest newspaper in the whole world, The Sun, was held for assaulting her husband, Ross Kemp, but was later released without charge.

It would perhaps be rather politically incorrect of me to say that he should have returned the favour by clattering her up and down the street. Just a little.

Sod it. He should have stabbed her in the head. The world would be a much better place without her.

I have always found Rebekah Wade a curious proposition. She's educated enough to carve out a career that would have more cerebral connotations (apparently she's studied in the Sorbonne), and by all accounts she has some ability in the socialite/networking arena. It would not be unreasonable, then, to expect to see her establish herself in the broadsheet sector, seeing as she wanted to be a journalist since she was 14. Her ambition is, to understate it somewhat, substantial.

Unfortunately it is not ambition of the intellectual bent, and this is where the rot sets in all over the place. I have yet to see an intelligent newspaper that outsells shit like the red tops, and it's a deeply depressing indictment of the critical faculties of the general public. The Sun has always been the worst of this lot though, and when I read some time back that Wade was coming back on board as its editor, the gist of the Irish Times article was that no-one really expected her to effect many changes. Satan's emissary himself, Rupert Murdoch, likes the page 3 girls apparently, and her argument that this little feature alienates a potentially lucrative audience - women - fell on deaf ears.

An argument based on economic considerations rather than female solidarity. See what I mean?

Anyway, around the time she was made editor my curiosity was piqued, and I decided some monitoring of the integrity of the paper was in order. I shouldn't have bothered. It's hard to know who is more contemptible, the careerist c*#%s who form most of the papers staff, or the readership on the ground. I would argue that enforced sterilisation of the latter would be a service to the human race in general, but I'd wager that the journalists who write their rubbish have as much contempt for their readers as anyone, seeing as securing an internship at one of the red-tops is apparently a very competitive business.

I'm not berating the Sun for its base level, it's the fact that it's so damn obvious about its leanings it might as well come with a siren attached, and STILL it shifts serious units all over the UK. For shame. For shame.

I'm not sure which aspects of Wade's reporting have irked me the most. The consequences of the Name and Shame campaign, overseen by her while she worked at the News of the World, were as much the fault of the TOTAL FUCKING MORONS participating in the riots that followed as anyone, and all tabloids go batshit fucking mental when it comes to paedophilia, so I would have to say that it was the Sun's coverage of the 'War on Terror' (oh, how I cringe to even use the phrase) that literally had me gaping in disbelief.

I remember the editorial of the paper in this regard in the run-up to the US devastation occupation of Iraq. Tony Blair was Bush's obvious ally while most EU countries were still humming and hawing about whether to get involved or not. The Sun, subtle as always in its approach, 'rated' each country out of ten according to how willing they were to commit to Bush's cause - I vaguely remember France enjoying a position near the bottom of the league table) - and I stood there wondering how on earth a newspaper could get away with being so obviously biased. It was like the Belgrano 'Gotcha' headline in its blatantness. The reason that the Sun pulls it off, of course, is that its readers are incapable of higher intellectual thought processes and its well the husband beater knows it. What gets me is the influence this paper has (why? why? why?) and how she wields it.

I must say, though, I derived a smug sense of satisfaction when I saw its bleating yesterday, after the terror bill was defeated.

Incidentally, a story about paedophilia I linked to a while ago was made all the worse for the two innocent nursery workers wrongly accused of this crime, by what was nothing more than a call for a witch hunt issued by the Sun in 1999. Guess who was deputy editor of the newspaper at that time? You have three, and the first two don't count. It makes you wonder how many lives the evil vengeful witch has ruined altogether.

So there you have it. Rebekah Wade knows that there are a great many thick turnips out there, and boy is she more than happy to capitalise on it by playing to them. More than anything else though, she draws attention to the fact that ambition doesn't necessarily mean being good at your job, it just means manoeuvring yourself into a position of influence and making buckets of money. There you have it folks, the former no longer can be equated with the latter in journalism, it seems. When the history books are rewritten about the 'War on Terror' in Iraq, she will most likely be remembered as the voice of evil in all the madness. Her assassination is all that can save us now.

In a similar vein, I saw Piers Morgan, ex-editor of the Mirror, present a show on TV during the week entitled 'Most Pointless Celebrities'. How rich was that?

Note: The above piece should be accepted in the vein of humour in which it was (just about) intended.

A song

Now (and then) - Billy Corgan

Nice and atmospheric, this one. It's taken from his most recent release, The Future Embrace. Overall the Corgan has veered off in a more electronic synthy direction compared to the psychedelic rock-outs of his earlier stuff. It's not a million miles away from Ava Adore, by way of comparison. There's also a rather out-there cover of the Bee Gees 'To Love Somebody', a duet with Robert Smith, though the hairy one can hardly be heard at all.

He's not firing on all the cylinders that he used to when he was in the Smashing Pumpkins, and this album will take a bit of getting used to, but he still has flashes of the genius that, in my opinion, made him better than Kurt at the height of the early 90's alternative explosion. He also did a unique line in a curious sort of frontman anti-charisma, which was refreshingly different and served to scare off the casual everyman (I don't like sharing my bands with just anybody, you know).

I always thought the Pumpkins were at their best when they were doing slightly off-kilter alt. rock rather than writing rock anthems. Gish was uniformly great and possessed of Billy's greatest flash of all, Rhinoceros, and Siamese Dream kicked ass, but Pisces Iscariot...Wow. I remember hearing that when getting a lift to Limerick to visit my brother, and hearing it, I was in a trance for the whole journey. Soothe, Obscured, Blue, La Dolly Vita, Starla, just about everything on that was indie eccentricity brilliantly married with RAWK (man). Sometimes I think they should swap around their A-sides and their B-sides. And of course the Pumpkins had drummer Jimmy Chamberlin, who James Iha once referred to as the most gifted of all of them.

It got a little bombastic for them with Mellon Collie, what with drug overdoses and everything, but songs like Porcelina.. and Thru the Eyes of Ruby still showed that when they pushed out the boat, they were one of the most killer bands on the planet. Then came Ava Adore, cool once you had gotten used to it, with another classy highlight in the form of For Martha. Then came Machina.., which had some low points but still a very very high one in the form of Glass and the Ghost Children. And then came the split.

Then came Zwan, a project that still threw up some good songs in spite of what some Pumpkins fans will tell you, but they split acrimoniously as well. Bad feeling and fortune seems to follow Billy like a bad smell sometimes.

Now there is this offering, which has its moments, but I suspect it won't really do it for the indie kids, if they still exist. They seem to be a dying breed now. It just isn't the same as it was in my day anymore!

It's official. I have turned into my father.

Anyway, on billycorgan.com the shaven headed one has already announced that he wants his own band back. God only knows if they'll all ever be able to sit in the same room again, let alone play together, but if it results in a return to their heyday, I'm all for it.

▪

In other news, the lab I was supposed to have today was replaced with a placement in a Pharmacy for three hours. All of the stuff I had to do under supervision was done and stamped in my logbook, so even though I'll have other visits to other clinics, I can now relax safe in the knowledge that the requirements for this aspect of the course have already been dealt with for the whole year. Woo hoo!

The weekend

..fair kicked ass. I visited London for the birthday party of Sarah. We ended up in the city centre at a club called uptight, which was like revisiting my early 20's with all the college rock they played. 2am saw Sarah, her flatmate James and I singing along to Donna Summer at the top of our voices. Getting home that night was character building, to say the least. Getting a taxi after clubs close in central London is harder to pull off than in Dublin, so we managed to squeeze onto a night bus along with what seemed like the rest of the population of suburban London for a rowdy journey home. And of course the train back to Brighton the next day was a delight.

I have also lately discovered a new love: Bloody Marys. Learn how to make them here!

Nothing much else. The college course has gone into overdrive. This week, I have a microbiology lab and a medicine design lab, the latter of which is in the same vein as the labs I did last year. Oh, I can't wait. Roll on the weekend.

More Michael Moore

New Michael Moore project gives drug companies a sick feeling.

I heard about this at a party on Friday night, and I must say I saw it coming a mile off. I'll be interested to see how he handles this, though the comment by Rachel Bloom about portrayals that aren't fair or balanced rings true to some extent. We all know that pharmaceutical companies have been guilty of some fairly substantial misdeeds, but a documentary that merely highlights these wrongs isn't going to cut it. Insight needs to be given into why these companies have never directly held up their hands and admitted their faults and mistakes.

While in this vein, I have applied for placements with two community pharmacy chains for next summer, Lloyds and Boots. I can posture in due course about how I'm above their philosophy, but for the moment I need experience and the guarantee of summer work. Hopefully these places won't stick me out in the middle of nowhere when the time comes around.

While I'm on the subject, the paycheque I got from my summer work has taken the heat off for the time being, but I can't afford to be complacent. In short? I need to start jobhunting again. YUK!

The last few days in brief

Last Friday I had a test (they don't waste time getting back into it around here), and I think it went OK.

That night, I met up with Phil and as is always the case when I meet him, there was debauchery. I heard that Schwartz, the bar I went to before, is closing down for renovations for quite some time. There were many encounters there this time, surprise surprise, though some of them were a bit clumsy thanks to my drunkeness. I ended up back at some guy's place for a while for some fun anyway, before heading home at about 4am.

Saturday saw me meet up with Danny for an all-day drinking session.

Sunday saw me go over to Danny and his girlfriend June's place for a nice roast dinner. I went straight there after doing my shopping at Asda, so I had to lug that home after the dinner, only to discover that the eggs I had bought had broken and flowed very nicely all over everything else. This is the second time this has happened. Reminder to self: Pack eggs separately from now on.

Yesterday saw me meet up with Phil again for drinks, food from an all-you-can-eat Chinese menu, and the cinema. A link was posted up recently by another blogger I know, pointing to a location where you can see the first nine minutes of 'Serenity' for free (as luck would have it, the opportunity has now passed). Once I had seen that, I was sucked in. It strikes me as a good idea for getting people to go and see a film, reel them in, and then watch them queue up to see it. In any case it was good, and I recommend.

After that, we went on a tour of Brighton's legendary cruising ground, the Bushes. I'm not sure if I'd venture down there myself though, it's very dark and secluded and there have been assaults down there before. I'll see. One rather memorable part of it was when we walked down a narrow pathway, passing a group of six people. Two of them were locked in an embrace that was, to say the least, rather passionate, and the other four were engaged in, wait for it, a foursome. I wouldn't have minded stopping to look, just out of curiosity to see how the hell one co-ordinates such an encounter from a mechanical point of view alone, but I thought better of it.

We finished up in a Mausoleum watching a jazz band at around midnight, which was a pretty cool way to round off everything.

After that we went back to Phil's for a short while to watch porn on a large plasma TV (the only way to do it, really), where a German guy with loads of tattoos had everything but the kitchen sink put up his arse. I think I need to research the long-term medical implications of this. It can't be good. That tattooed guy was hot, though.

Today I did nothing.

Not feeling renewed with energy today, so off home I go now.

Oh. My. God.

Does it get more moronic that this?

America, I weep for you.

WTF?!

Comfortably esconsed on the couch last night, I was flicking channels and noticed that 'Lost Highway' was on at about midnight. As I didn't have any classes today, I decided to settle down and get into it.

Everything in it was trademark Lynch, lots of foreboding music and weird flashes, and it was the first time I'd seen Bill Pullman in a role as edgy as the one he had in this. Unsurprisingly, Patricia Arquette's character was nutso.

I'd heard it was a bit of a headfuck though, and just as I thought, halfway through the film everything was turned on it's head, with Pullman's character suddenly being replaced by the one of Balthazar Getty, only for the latter to revert back to the former toward the end. This revelation won't spoil it for you, in fact it'll give you foresight that most people will need when taking on this thing.

Lynch pulled a stunt like this with Mulholland Drive as well. As soon as Naomi Watt's character looked into the cube thing, everthing went pear-tarte-tatin and the viewer was left going ".....errr.....", but at least that one happened towards the end, so you had a chance to enjoy a relatively linear plot up until then.

My take on that cube incident in Mulholland Drive was that Betty Elms was offered a glimpse into the future of her relationship with Rita, but that's not one on which I would stake my life by any means. As for the metamorphosis in Lost Highway, I would really need to see it again. People may have thought that Twin Peaks, Wild at Heart, and even Eraserhead were out there, but at least they made sense.

Still a good movie though. The saxophone playing kicked ass and the other stuff by David Bowie, Trent Reznor, and Billy Corgan's nifty 'Eye' was good too. But if anyone wants to enlighten me further on it, and indeed on Mulholland Drive as well, feel free.