Thoughts on failing

I've been thinking a bit about someone recently.

In first year, when I was living in halls of residence, I might have mentioned that I lived with an Irishman, who was originally from Carlow.

Sophistication wasn't exactly his middle name, and it wasn't long before he had got an (albeit fairly harmless) reputation as a bit of a muck savage. However, it became obvious over time that good-naturedness wasn't a trait intrinsic to his personality either, and as time went on, he began to alienate the irish students in the pharmacy class one by one, and upto a point where we had agreed to disagree on a couple of things, I was one of them. By the end of first year, most of his so-called fellow countrymen were having very little to do with him.

It's pretty difficult to come over to the UK from Ireland to study pharmacy and not fall in with a group of friends, such is the number of Irish people coming over here to study for that degree, yet he managed it.

When we returned last autumn to proceed into second year, we all noticed, as time went on, that he was keeping very much to himself, hanging out only with the international students in the class, and probably nursing a grudge against the Irish crowd for the way things had turned out. We were all a bit nonplussed, as by then we had all decided that if he wanted to start over, that would be fine. But he didn't.

He wasn't the most gifted student in the class by a long way, and at times I wondered what kind of role he would be able to take up when (if) he graduated. It turns out I was being optimistic, as he failed his summer exams (4 of them), and was not given the option to repeat them.

One of the things I've noticed about the faculty of pharmacy department over here is that if you fall foul of the end of year exams, sometimes the faculty can decide, where you have failed coursework or clinical exams, that you don't get a chance to resit them in the autumn, and if you're really unlucky, that you don't get a chance to do them ever again, i.e. you get thrown off the course. The latter scenario was what ended up being played out for Martin, and in spite of him attempting to appeal the decision made by the board of examiners, he was out.

I can't fault the board entirely, because he would have been at best a very mediocre pharmacist, no matter what area he would have ended up going into. The reason I do feel sorry for him is that he had spent quite a few years, prior to his entry onto this course, just trying to get in. Ideally his unsuitability should have been spotted sooner, and some advice or help offered. Also, he has spent quite a bit of money getting as far as he did, and now it's all for nothing. I've spent quite a bit of money myself already, getting this far, and I'd die if that happened to me.

One of the big motivating factors for people to go back to college as mature students is a substantial dislike for the kind of job you had before, and that is the way it was with me. I gathered, from various conversations, that it was also the way with him. Now he has to go back to that.

That kind of failure is more than a little difficult to take when you're a little bit older than the average young twenty-something. All I can say is that if that had happened to me, the way forward afterwards would be more than a little unclear. Thank God it didn't.

The Pink Patrol

Dublin police go undercover to combat gay bashing

I must say, the image of police in 'jeans that are tight, and shirts that show off their pecs' brought a smile to my face. A good idea too, and not before time.

Interesting that all the perps seem to be from the same gang, though this could just mean that the police are targeting the usual suspects first.

Oh, and while I'm writing in this vein:

Same-Sex Parents No Impediment To Child Development Court Told

First day on the job...

... and it was soft.

The boss is cool, the work undemanding (consisting mostly of helping students open an MS Works file using Word) and best of all, the use of the printing facilities free. I've pretty much printed out all my lecture notes from last week - in colour where I deemed it necessary - and it didn't cost me a penny. The co-workers seem pretty cool too.

It beats standing behind a till for eight hours, having to ask chavs for ID all the time.

In keeping with the tradition of this course, I have my first exam of the year next week. Time to get on it.

An exchange

This morning, during a lecture on medicinal chemistry, thanks to the cold I've caught and the attendant constant nose-blowing, I got a nosebleed. On a Visa bill that Dan had given me earlier (I've had all my mail go to his place while I was staying in the hostel), the man started writing on the envelope, and I replied back. His contributions are in the slightly darker ink. My writing is a bit untidy as I was pinching my nostrils shut with my left hand.

You have to take your entertainment where you can find it in a Friday morning lecture.

Bleurgh!!!

The week is over, and starting it as I meant to go on, I went into all my classes, and not only that, I was early for them. I was rewarded with my diligence by being rained on so much, I have now caught a cold.

I swear, on the walk to college from my house, as soon as I came out onto an open road with no real protection against the wind or the rain save for a poxy umbrella, the heavens would open and a force ten gale would appear out of nowhere. I got soaked from the waist down this morning on my way to college, and later on when I got off the bus near Sainsbury, in the distance I ran to get to the supermarket, it suddenly started raining so hard, my only recently dried pants got soaked all over again.

So that's it. Runny nose and acres of tissues for the next few days.

I start my part time job as a computer helper for the college on Monday. Basically, I sit behind a desk in an office in the computer pool section of the library, do some extremely basic admin work and, when required, answer any computer-related questions the students may have. It's the first time I've ever had a boss who has used words to the effect of 'You can work as little or as much as you like'. Sounds right up my street. The only balls is that I get paid a month in arrears. As if I wasn't broke enough already.

Oh well...

A pet hate of mine.

Oh, for fuck's SAKE!

There is a term in the above Guardian article that in the past has been applied so indiscriminately and, it has to be said, by some of the greatest gobshites that have ever come to popular attention, that it has now ceased to lose any proper form of meaning.

Oh, and the concept is largely fictitious as well, having very little basis in reality.

Can you the reader spot what it is?

Interesting...

I found out, via my sitemeter, that if you type haemhorroid treatment (the english spelling) into Google, this blog is second in the list of search results.

Whatever next?

Landlords and lesbians...

I have finally got the keys to a new and quite nice house with the same two pharmacy students I referred to in the previous post. It nearly didn't happen, as the landlord wanted to convert the sitting room into another bedroom and squeeze a fifth person in there, but we revolted en masse and he compromised.

So now I can relax and chill at long last. Well, apart from the fact that I am now almost penniless after handing over the deposit and month's rent. Roll on the grant cheque.

I went out last night to the Brighton Uni LGBT pub crawl, but arrived too late for it to be any good for me. I ended up in Candy Bar, a pub for girls who like girls. At some point in the night, a fight broke out between two guys, and lots of people (girls an' all) waded in to restrain them. So did I, and the bouncer ejected me afterwards telling me that I had too much to drink, when I'm sure it was just because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I promptly threw a tantrum, so the manageress shut me up by promising to buy me a drink the next time I'm in there.

Which should be some time next year, going by my current pattern.

The search grinds on slowly

I was supposed to meet my landlady-to-be last night, pay her the deposit, and get the key to my new place, which fortuitously enough happens to have two girls from my class already living in it. At the eleventh hour, yesterday, she dials directly into my voicemail (the coward) telling me that she has already lined up other tenants to take the rooms instead, but 'isn't sure' and I 'might still be able to move in'.

Add to this the fact that the previous landlord I left behind actually did end up deducting the week's rent from the deposit of one of the guys I lived with in the house, along with £40 extra, for 'leaving the place in a mess' (Absolute horseshit, it was fine when I moved out), and I'm sure you can understand that landlords aren't my favourite people at the moment.

Tossers.

I have a list of other potentials lined up. I have to sort this out quickly. I start classes proper on tuesday.

I coped with yesterday's let-down by going to the Bulldog, getting hammered, and copping off with a bloke whose personality traits suggests that he may at the very least have Aspergers Syndrome.

There was one or two seriously hot daddies out there last night though. I need to get me one of those now.

Holy war? Holy Fuckwits!

As much as Nazinger has put his foot in it (again), I can't empathise with this shit that is currently going on by way of response.

When someone makes vaguely negative references about Catholicism in a public address, do the bible bashers go batshit fucking mental over it like this?

And now, a nun has been killed in the crossfire. A nun.

Anyone who is in thrall to organised religion to this extent seriously has a screw loose somewhere. As for Islam, anywhere it dominates, it may be noted that the advancement of gay rights, or progressiveness in general, isn't all that high on the agenda.

I don't think I ever gave a second thought to Islam prior to Sept 11th, and after that I was more curious about it than anything. Now, after this and all the shit that went down with the Danish cartoons, I'm just losing patience.

Well, fuck them. If they keep behaving like this, public sympathy for them will be a little bit thinner on the ground the next time they get bombed from the sky. Praise Allah!

As for the protests themselves, you can find an article in the Guardian here, about placards. My favourite slogan?

'Behead those who insult the peace of Allah'.

Thank God! THANK GOD!

The results of the repeats came out early!

I'm going into 3rd year!

Oh joy! Oh rapture!

I'm carrying one module (immunology) which I have to resit when it is examined in the summer again, but other than that, I can progress as normal.

Having now got a soft part-time job sorted for the coming year, all I have to do is find a house, and that's it.

Could it be that things are finally going my way for the first time in ages?

Oooooohhhh!!!!

Alliteration, assonance, and ants

An excerpt from an article in this week's Washington Blade, written by Wayne Beesen (Full text here), via Buff Tuff:

This battle of the male brain is now playing itself out in gay society after paparazzi ambushed pop star George Michael coming out of the bushes following a supposed sexcapade with a pot-bellied peasant. [Was Michael acting differently than other gay men?] My comment:

Back in the 70's days, bathhouses were hugely popular and the gay bars had blackened out windows, creating a virtual cocktail-serving closet. Many of the patrons had to have sex away from home to keep the secret from an unsuspecting wife and kids. Of course, there was a portion of men who did have options but who enjoyed unfettered promiscuity for the thrill.

With time, the ease with which people could come out, combined with the fear of contracting HIV, sharply curtailed the carnal carnival the gay subculture once represented. The whole notion that gay men are more libidinous than straight men is a canard pushed by right wing fanatics in an effort to deny homosexuals basic rights. Indeed, one of the most guarded secrets of gay life is that a good portion of homosexuals are as undersexed as their straight counterparts.

Some of these lonely gay sorts keep long hours at the office and never took time to pursue partners. Others are shy and have great difficulty meeting people. Many men, gay and straight, simply have low sex drives and hardly desire gratuitous encounters. From my observation, a surprisingly large portion of men find the notion of hooking up with strangers totally unappealing. It is not looks nor variety, but intimacy that is the greatest turn on.

For the hyper aggressive men who fancy uninhibited sexual exploration, it is easier being gay because you can always find another man looking for the same thing. But, instead of being blamed for a lack of self-control, most gay men should get a medal for restraint. Heck, if straight men could have sex in public restrooms with women, would we ever again be able to use the facilities for legitimate purposes? If straight men could easily pick up women for sex in parks after midnight, would the grounds be so trodden that ants would become an endangered species?

Yeah, gay men have access to sex if they want it bad enough and are willing to take risks, like George Michael did, but the majority consistently chooses not to recklessly cruise.

George Michael may want his sex, but placing the blame on gay culture no longer reflects modern reality. Given a full range of choices, including marriage, gay life increasingly looks as diverse as mainstream culture with monogamously oriented men finally having the option to choose monogamy.

Won't someone please think of the ants?!

Also, I quite like the way 'carnal carnival' rolls off the tongue.

♫ I'm goin' thru chaa-haanges ♫

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At home again.

My mother turned sixty yesterday.

We threw a surprise party for her in my brother's restaurant. She knew that the immediate family would be there (we had to lure her there with an invite), but she had no idea that all of her friends would be there too, and she got quite a land when she walked in the door and we all shouted 'Surprise'.

It was nice to be able to do it for her. She had been a bit down about it seemed that the occasion would pass without some form of commemoration, so she got a nice lift to see what had been organised for her, and it all went rather smoothly, as long as you discount the fact that some of the balloons that we had put up on the wall seemed to mysteriously vanish into thin air less than 5 minutes after they had been put up. Go figure.

While on the subject of birthdays, this blog turned 2 years old over a month ago, and I completely forgot to mark the occasion! Oh well, here's to another two.

I rang the payroll department of lloyds pharmacy today, and in spite of the fact that the dozy pharmacy manager told me she had faxed them all my details, they still had an incomplete record of my time there. The guy I spoke to on the phone suggested that I should e-mail them the details myself. I'm inclined to agree. I'm going to wait until the money is gone into my account, and then the letter of complaint will be sent. This is nothing short of ridiculous.

I flew home Friday morning. It was by pure chance I got a message the night before from one of the former tenants saying that they had all got their deposits back, and that the landlord's hold over me had effectively been relinquished. The following morning, I had my interview with the college for the job (which I got), and then went back to the house, got my baggage, and legged it. I left the key, along with a note explaining the absence of the week's rent. I signed it 'with deepest regret'. The landlord has tried ringing me twice since I've got back here, but I've just ignored it.

I got shafted for excess baggage at check-in, to the tune of £50. I quietly resolved that it would be for the last time. Oh, and I bag I got for a 'bargain' at £5, split all along the seams as I was heading out the door of my house. I suppose I got what I paid for...

The results of the repeats are out on monday coming. I have a knot in my stomach. Regardless of whether or not I proceed to third year, I think the best thing to do would be to go back to Brighton. My parents don't know that I had to do resits, and everyone is assuming that I'm going to go straight into 3rd year. Not sure what I'm going to do about this. It would be such a balls to lose a year when everything is finally starting to go well (well, insofar as I have a nice well-paid job this year which allows me to catch up on coursework from time to time while I'm doing it). Oh fingers, toes, cock and balls, all crossed...

P.S. I fucking HATE my parent's dial-up internet connection.

Christ ALMIGHTY!

The last few days in brief:

a) In spite of the fact that I put up an ad in Netlet (an online accommodation website for the college) advertising the house, the applications to see it come in slowly. Slowly, like chinese water torture.

b) On Tuesday, the landlord rang me asking me if new tenants had been lined up for the house yet, a mere five days after the previous group left. I tell him no, but I'm working on it. He tells me he needs to get the house filled as quickly as possible, and by being there, he can't let it as an empty 6-bedroomed house. He tells me I'll have to leave by Thursday. I negotiate Friday instead.

c) I had flights booked to go home to Mallow on Monday 11th, as a surprise for my mother's birthday. Because I have to leave the house, I have to reschedule the flights to go out on Friday afternoon instead. Price involved for this change: £100, and the tosser still wants me to pay for the week I've stayed in the house (£75). I'd just do a runner, but then it would come out of the deposit of the girl who sub-let her room to me.

d) The stupid BITCH who runs the pharmacy I worked in for a while, messed up my details on the pharmacy computer. The result? I don't get paid until the end of September, instead of the end of August like I should have been. I've drafted a letter of complaint. I'm going to sit on it for a few days to work out what I should do with it. I want to wring her scrawny neck.

After I got the lovely life-affirming instructions from the landlord, I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I rang Daffy, and he turned out to be a big help in all of this. Last night the two of us managed to get most of my stuff moved into storage, and then he showed me his room which he's thinking of renting out. My name is on the list of those being considered.

I feel a bit better now, though the last few days have been shit. I have an job interview tomorrow in the college for something that will last throughout the year, and would be very handy to combine with my course (assuming I get through). The flight home is straight after that. Hopefully I'll be able to combine the two without any disasters.

Compare and contrast exam results

The Irish Leaving Cert:

Minister backs bonus points system for maths and science

Poor marks in maths, science in Leaving cert results

English A-levels:

Record passes revive calls for review of exam system

Maths fuels rise in top grades at A-level


"Learning isn't cool"
A comment from a educational officer, on how the basic skills of reading, writing, and numeracy are absent in some young british school-leavers, after spending 11 years in school. It was part of a documentary focusing on how the labour of Polish immigrants is now often favoured over that of workers native to the UK.

Firstly, to deal with the irish conundrum on poor performance in the technical areas.

I don't know if it was always the way with Irish students - I don't think it was, to be honest - but lately, I've seen people over here on my course from my home country who have refined the skill of rote learning down to a fine art. It's something I've never been able to do for as long as I've been in a classroom. My thing has always been solving, re-ordering, analysing, and processing. It's the reason I steered clear of subjects like Business Studies, Home Economics, Biology, and Geography in school. It is, however, the way that a lot of students now seem to get through second-level (and in particular, points factory grind schools), and I can see it on my course. I can't fault it, because it requires no small work ethic, and can net someone a pass in a subject even when they don't fully understand what it is they're studying, but it can't be applied to technical subjects. If grades in maths and the sciences are lousy (and I think a lot of that really is only hype), then that is because students are choosing to just try and bulldoze their way through it with memorization rather than actually getting to grips with it properly.

I remember in first year in school, I had what was a definite contender for worst teacher of the year instructing us in maths. I failed that subject in the end-of-year tests, along with most of the other students, and the teacher was promptly juggled out of our classroom and into another of poor unfortunates waiting to be bored to tears. If you had said to me then that I would end up netting a good B in honours maths in the leaving cert, I would have laughed, but the following year, I was fortunate enough to get a good teacher in the subject, and after that, I never struggled with it again. What I think the problem is, is that a lot of people aren't pushed beyond this initial hurdle. Once you get over the initial incomprehension with the subject, it's like riding a bike. You never forget. Once it does click with you, you will also find that all other technical subjects like the sciences will come much more easily to you as well. This is where the experts need to start, because I've noticed that amongst students who are of enough ability to regard all subjects as equal, the science and maths subjects are always chosen, because scoring highly in them can be a more straighforward matter in a lot of ways. It beats sweating blood and tears over an Irish essay, only to get a C afterwards, that's for sure.

So, good maths teachers are needed to get to the root of the problem, but then that raises the whole issue of how the HDip for secondary school is a convenient qualification to fall into for unemployed and indifferent college graduates, and that's for another day.

Failing the above, you could always get the artistically minded students to watch Darren Aronofsky's Pi and hope for the best. Or get the girls to watch A Beautiful Mind, on the pretext that it's got Russell Crowe in it.

Now, onto where these subjects can lead you.

Mary Harney, the minister referred to in the second link, has been sharing a bed with industrial interests for quite some time now. It is no surprise to hear her encouraging Irish students to sharpen up their technical skills, for then they become viable candidates for employment with the companies she so desperately wants to keep happy and whose investment in this country she works so hard to secure.

It has been said that in order for companies to invest in Ireland, an adequate 'knowledge base' must be present. For this, you can almost read 'worker drones who are prepared to accept minimal rewards for maximum technical endeavour'. It is often pointed out that there are still lots of jobs to be had in the technical and scientific sector. What the media conveniently forget to mention most of the time, is what the nature of these jobs really are. Working in what can be a intellectually very challenging area, designing or refining a product that will generate the company a great deal of revenue, and then having to negotiate a measly 3-4% pay increase in your yearly performance review. Thank you, but no.

That's not to say that the aforementioned academic areas aren't important. You'd have to be an idiot to think that, but they aren't rewarded all that much in the marketplace. For example, chemists (people who have studied chemistry, as opposed to pharmacy, in case you misunderstand), a group of people who have engaged in the study of a subject that is the amongst the most challenging you may care to mention, and who have at their fingertips knowledge that is fundamental to the life sciences, are not amongst the most well-paid in industry in general, and are amongst the least well-paid in the pharmaceutical industry in particular. Fact. I'd feel a little cheated if I'd struggled with that area for a minimum of four years in higher education, and then found out I'd have to take weekend shifts where I worked to make ends meet. That's the situation that one of the mature students in my class found himself in before he went back to college.

I remember roughly 10 years ago, quite a few courses were introduced in the irish universities that were 'close' to industry. By this I mean the courses were tailored towards the passing on of a body of knowledge specific to various kinds of industry. Materials science was one. Marine science was another. Industrial engineering another. Year after year, those courses were only partly filled, with most of those accepting the offer doing so because they hadn't got anything else, or didn't know any better. By not knowing better, I mean that while the courses were being tailored towards certain kinds of jobs in industry, anyone taking them seemed unaware that they would find themselves in a serious bind if that particular industry dried up years later and those workers found themselves at the mercy of their company, unable to leave. That's what happened in IT (and may well still be happening now, for all I know) when the recession hit there. Wage freezes were brought in by the truckload, and there was sod-all the employees could do about it.

Around about this time, a lot of academics in the developing areas moaned that the candidates with the best grades in science subjects were hightailing it into medicine and the like, and ignoring their areas. At this time of going to press, this is still the case. Applications for science and engineering courses are still falling. There is a reason for this. Healthcare courses, having been around the longest of all, have a proven track record in generating rewards for people once they enter the market. Working for a company as an authority in a particular area generates a lot of money for that company, of which you will only see a fraction.

The fact is, if you choose to work in the corporate technical sector, you need to be aware that it can backfire on you, and this is something that people advocating the study of technical subjects don't really tell you. In a particular area, once the number of employees exceeds the number of jobs out there, you're fucked, and this is precisely why I chose for my career something that is not usually perceived as a hotbed of scintillation: There are almost always more jobs than pharmacists to fill them.

And lastly, but most certainly not least, you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make them drink, and if Irish students are displaying ineptitude in this area, promising them bonus points if they do well isn't really going to achieve much. Ten years ago, it was appreciated that our syllabus in maths was amongst the most rigorous in the world, next to Japan, and then it was overhauled and made a bit easier. We need to leave the course itself alone now, and go after the students themselves.

And now, onto our over-achieving neighbours.

First a hypothetical question for our audience. If you are allowed to pick three subjects to study at any level in school, hands up those of you who are going to pick subjects that they don't really like, or pick subjects they're not really good at.

Are you getting this, everyone? People are doing well at A-levels because they are studying subjects that they are free to opt for!

The A-level system is somewhat unique in that it allows academic specialisation at a stage in education where most other systems would still have a student studying a number of mandatory subjects. In Ireland, you have to do seven subjects at leaving cert level, of which only 3 (in some schools 4) are chosen by the student. In Scotland, you do five subjects for the higher exams. The French/International baccalaureat, while allowing the flexibility of studying a number of subjects to more depth than others, still requires the reading of a broad range of subjects. In Canada, Australia, and America, the situation is roughly the same. Which is better, allowing someone to specialise early in their academic careers, or instil in them some knowledge of a variety of subjects before they leave school, is a moot point. Allowing a technically minded person to ditch the humanities early on can prevent them from achieving a fully rounded education, but requiring them to study them when they don't want to isn't going to develop in them a great appreciation for the subject either.

Then there are the succes stories of the sciences and maths. This is simply because no-one in their right mind is going to opt for these subjects at A-level unless they are at least halfway good at them. These are simply not doss subjects, not by any stretch of the imagination, and only students with their eye on science, engineering or healthcare courses (again, not exactly a cakewalk at third level) will opt for them. It's not that they're easy, it's that the students doing them are prepared to work hard.

It has to be said, though, 3 A-levels is not the most taxing workload. While the level a subject is studied at probably is ahead of the level the same subject would be studied at under a different secondary school system, it is only winning that race by a nose. This is already reflected in the fact that some students are now opting for a fourth A-level, and some even for five. Yet snot-nosed british universites seem to have a problem with recognising any qualification outside of their own. I was required to get an A in leaving cert honours chemistry in Ireland for the course I'm in now, but my English classmates would have got in with a C in A-level chemistry, and I can tell you now, there is not much difference between the two courses.

Having said that, the whole concept of education has changed since the naysayers in their 60s got their degrees. It's next to essential to get some award of higher education under your belt now before entering the jobs market, and a lot of courses, and places on those courses, are springing up to meet this demand. Students leaving school are much more mercenary about education, and have much higher expectations about it now, and are not just accepting it as a privilege. Then there are the grind schools, whose job it is to squeeze every last drop of attainment out of even the most mediocre of students. Is it any wonder people are opting to extend the best days of their life into their twenties?

Anyway, to sum up this part, if British universities are finding it harder to pick out the 'brightest of the bright' then a broader system like the one I've already discussed should be put in place. It should be pointed out that studies correlating performance in universities between bac results and between A-level results showed that graduates with a mediocre bac still tended to do well at third level, whereas graduates with mediocre A-levels didn't. So there it is.

And now, onto the thickos.

I saw a documentary on TV a while back. I can't remember on what channel, but it was about the influx of Polish immigrants into Britain, and how they are addressing the skills shortage being suffered by this country at the moment. The general point being made was that Polish workers were much more reliable, skilled, knowledgeable and hardworking than their indigenous counterparts. Someone should have introduced the presenter to that stupid pharmacist I had to work with, as I since found out that she is Polish as well, but I digress.

It was pointed out some companies loved the Poles because they were willing to work hard for half-nothing. Dissenting opinions were that the companies should pay more in general, the presenter pointed out, but it was time to get realistic: If certain british based companies found they had to raise the wages of their workers too much, they would simply go elsewhere. Of course, it was easy for the presenter to say that, settled cosily in a nice comfortable job with a national television station. I wonder how he'd feel if he had to hoist around cargos of fish all day for £5.10 an hour.

Anyway, the point was made that british students leaving school after their GCSEs were turning out to be getting thicker by the year. A post-secondary technical college was finding that a lot of them lacked the basic skills of literacy and numeracy, and as quoted above, one expert in education said that it seemed that learning wasn't quite the thing to be into in school any more, if you were concerned with your trendiness quotient. The reasons for this are sure to be many and varied, although if I were to point at something and complain like an old-age pensioner, I would say that the veneration of the most inconsequential of celebritys (Preston, Chantelle, Kerry, Paris, fucking premiership footballers) in the popular media does rather send out the message that though you may be as thick as shit and have nothing to say, if you look halfway good (though not with too much character, mind), and are willing to prostitute yourself for a bit of exposure on celluloid, you don't really have to worry about having to string a sentence together as you'll succeed anyway. But maybe that's just me.

There is also the fact that a culture exists over here that where, if it turns out that you're not too intellectually gifted, the GCSEs can be a convenient drop-off point for some now, whereas in other countries, you're generally regarded as more than a bit of a loser if you leave before you final secondary school exams. So if anyone wants to start complaining about people 'coming over and taking our jobs', they would do well to do a little inward examination first.

But lastly, to return to my first point, when are people going to get that university is not about acquiring a set of skills that don't require Einstein's IQ to master? It's about education. Let the fucking corporations train up new employees in the skills they need. They can certainly afford it, and if their habit is to underpay the people that are most important to their success, they may soon find that they have no choice.

FED UP!

The landlord has changed his tune quite a bit, and has basically said that the first large group of people who comes along will get the house. I'm still there, but on borrowed time, and if I want to stay on I have to assemble a group of people to take on the lease in double quick time. There are lots of postgrads looking for rooms at the moment, but they're as sloppy as fuck about replying to messages and noticeboard announcements that I've put up. This is moving too slowly for my liking, and I've started to look elsewhere again.

Of course the racketeer himself told me this the day before my Immunology exam, so that really put me in the frame of mind for success.

Then, there is an estate agent involved in the business of the house who really doesn't need to be part of the process at all. But then, that's their job description all round, isn't it? I am definitely going to look into property as an investment when I have money. If that landlord can manage it, and he currently owns 30 properties all over Brighton, then there should be a way of breaking into that sort of thing.

Of course during the move-out of everyone else, a bickering match erupted between me and another housemate over some of my stuff 'finding' its way into the bin. What is it about some people not being able to handle these kind of things without doing something unjustifiably stupid?

Once I was finished there, I went on an unmerciful batter, and engaged in a number of trysts in the Bulldog. At one point, I was serviced on one of the side-streets off St. James. I thought about this while it was going on, and eventually came to the decision that it wasn't my style, so I put a stop to it. Then I told the gentleman in question to wait while I visited the toilet in the Bulldog, after which I would go home with him. When I came back he had gone. I went back to the Bulldog, where some more men were descended upon, and of course no night out would be complete without me coming onto the bouncer. Then I met Daffy. After that I went home, and spent the following day in the throes of a lingering hangover.

I don't know how to feel about my exams. I was struck by how many students that I would consider conscientious have actually had to return to resit at least one exam. It is quite possible that I won't progress to third year without having to wait a year to retake those modules.

Going home on Monday the 11th for my mother's birthday. Please God the next two weeks go well.

Yippeeee!

I've managed to take over the lease on my current house. Which means I don't have to move. Which means I have somewhere to stay for the next twelve months. Yippeee!

Shit. I still have lots of study to do. Exams this coming Thursday and Friday.

Again, a bit late...

Drug classification rethink urged

Where basically the shit A/B/C system is trashed and something a bit smarter is put forward. Of course, this probably won't appeal to the binary-minded, but nothing new there...

I was a bit surprised to see GHB so far down the list, though. When taken with alcohol, that makes for russian roulette as much as any of the narcotics. The same for solvents. Then again, I suppose they don't inspire gang warfare as much as the top two offenders.

A rather sobering yet enlightening essay about homelessness. It's long, but worth the read.

The search for a new house and the study for exams grind on slowly, but I'm on top of things at the moment. I'm liking unemployment, though my sleeping pattern is starting to slip. Have to nip that one in the bud.

Anger!

Well, the peak of the year has just been followed by the trough.

I went to work this morning. I arrived in Haywards Heath too late (by 2 minutes) to catch the complimentary work taxi because my miserable (ex) boss insists on getting the taxi at 8:35, not 8:40. I then, by a hairs breadth, missed the bus to work by 1 minute and had to wait until 9:05 to get the next one. I arrived 20 minutes late.

It went downhill from there.

After suffering a morning of her snapping at me over the slightest of things, and refusing to allow me to take documentation out of the shop so I could compile an induction handbook - something badly needed in the place and highly beneficial to everyone there - I cracked after lunch.

I was moved from the counter to the dispensary, and after trying to use the computer without having been given any proper training, I made a labelling mistake. As in, the computer printed out a series of 10 labels in rapid fire. It was the last straw, and I lost it.

The pharmacist was dutifully informed (if that's the word) that it would be my last day today, so to speak. She persuaded me to stay half an hour, and I ended up staying until the end of the shift. Then, as we waited for a taxi outside, she casually said 'Oh, you'll be on Saturday, won't you?'

Hello!

I reminded her of our conversation earlier. She moaned, tried to make me feel guilty, and tried to get me to change my mind. It didn't work, and now, with a bit of luck, I will never see her again.

I'm sick of this though. This academic year so far:

1. I move three times, two of those times just after completing a set of exams.
2. I have no money for the most of the year.
3. When I do finally get a job, it sucks, and I don't see my first paycheque for six weeks.
4. My national insurance number gets messed up, thus ensuring I have to suffer a prolonged (and still ongoing, at this time) period of emergency tax.
5. I fail two exams.
6. When I land what I think is a dream student job, it turns out to be a nightmare.
7. Sundry other shit from sundry other people.

And now I have to be out of my current place in three weeks. Wonderful!

Oh, and Nuclear Physics Bear was supposed to be coming down to see me this evening, but after considering everything, I had to ring and cancel.

Kill me now...

Pride!

Well, as you'd expect, it's been a rather mental weekend, and it turned out, for better and for worse, not quite what I expected.

I got myself out of bed on Saturday morning, bought some booze in Sainsbury and headed for the seafront. There I met up with the Brighton Uni GaySoc and their float. Out of the five fucking spangly fucking beaded curtains that we worked on last night, only three were hanging up. One of the girls assured me that amongst the three was the one I had worked so hard on the night before. Or maybe she was being nice.

As I stood there, texting and trying to get people to meet me (it was only 10:30 that morning), one of the float participants came upto me and said that they needed 'Wheelwalkers', people who walk alongside the float and make sure that no little shits try to run under the wheels. The float couldn't proceed without them, so I 'volunteered'. I was provided with a fetching county council-esque dayglo orange vest to denote my newly elevated status, and off we went.

In due course I was also provided with a bagful of biros, bearing the sponsors logo, to hand out to the spectators as I passed them buy. Most of the children were eager to have one, although I suspect it was because the biros looked like sweets from a distance.

As we proceeded up West Street and turned onto North Street, I saw a crowd of bible bashers, sectioned off by the police, most likely for their own safety. One old man, the shape of his mouth making it highly likely that he was completely toothless, stood motionless, holding a placard in each hand. I can't remember what one of them said, but the other was that old faithful, Leviticus 20 Verse 13. I was genuinely startled. After living in a place like Brighton for any length of time, you tend to think of these people as only living elsewhere.

As we passed the Grand Pavilion, I saw Phil in the crowd with a camera, and the work that I didn't see myself doing when I got up that morning was recorded for posterity.

Once we got out of the city centre, and passed through Preston Circus, I spied two hot leatherbears and cruised them ruthlessly. In fact that was one of the upsides of the job: I got to see quite a lot of talent (the guy who was wheelwalking in front of me wasn't half bad either), and I let them know my opinion of them in no uncertain terms.

Once we got to Preston Park, where the main festival was, there were more morons with placards. One of the guys I live with made the all-too-familiar but no less flawed point, that in a democratic society these people should be allowed a voice too, which is horseshit: They use their freedom to impinge on other people's freedom. The only thing they achieved was to affirm the need for a yearly festival like this.

At this point, I made the ill-advised move of going back into town to meet Dan, and things got quite messy for while, so I didn't get to see as much of the Preston Park part as I would have liked. Alcohol, once again, is to blame for this, and I'm attempting a boycott for a while.

Later that evening, I cruised the streets of Kemptown, and bumped into a rather hot biker bear who told me he worked in Nuclear Physics, for the government. I didn't quite remember his name, so I've christened him Nuclear Physics Bear. We swapped e-mail addresses and have already been in contact since. Who knows where this might lead?

After that, I met up with MizzFlee and Slagella, before chatting up a bear from Bognor Regis and inviting him back to my place. It was then that things went tits up. Once I got home, I was way too tired to do anything, but invited him to stay on anyway, seeing the morning as another opportunity. He took great exception to this and left in a huff. Moral of the story: If your body says you are too tired, don't let your brain tell you otherwise.

The one bit of comic relief was that, on our way home, we passed two girls, one of whom was on the phone. She loudly complained of boredom, saying that all the men in Brighton that weekend were gay.

Duh!

Sunday, I woke up dying, but headed out to catch some more eye candy anyway, along with some open air jazz in the New steine Park. The street party, the sunday night climax of the event, was cancelled this year for legal reasons, and the police re-opened the roads around the town centre at around 8pm. That pretty much put an end to the atmosphere of the street, and along with the fact that I was tired from the night before, I headed home at around 10:30 that night.

This was my first Pride, and I had built it up to be a huge thing beforehand. That kind of thing inevitably leads to disappointment, but I still enjoyed myself, and have learned from the mistakes I made at this one. Next year's will be planned with military precision. A massive beach party took place on Saturday night/Sunday morning, but I was oblivious to it, and was too tired to go anyway. Oh well, I'll know next year...

This morning I was watching a history of Brighton on a video cassette left lying around the kitchen. In it, the commentator siad that there was no other city quite like Brighton in Europe. It's nearest equivalent, he said, was San Francisco. That, along with the whole weekend, brought home to me how right I was to move here, how much I was missing out on before: I never went to a single Pride when I was living in Dublin, and it's only now, since I moved here, that that whole aspect of my life has come to the fore.

Roll on next year...

Fucking Spangly curtains

With only one day to the main Brighton Pride carnival, I rang up the Brighton Uni GaySoc president and asked if there were any pre-Pride drinks happening. She said no, but that they were in the latter stages of assembling the float and I was welcome to help. So I volunteered, turning up at Falmer campus to help with the proceedings.

I spent two hours trying to untangle a spangly beaded curtain. Here is a word of advice, dear reader, if you ever want to use a spangly curtain without any undue hassle.

Don't fucking roll them up beforehand.

So that was that. On the plus side, the guy who volunteered to help me with mine was a cute med student, studying in Manchester, but originally from Gibraltar. His accent was something I've never heard the like of before, but as skins go, he was rather eye-catching.

I left at about 11pm. I left my leather briefcase behind. Please God the caretaker has got it.

I'm back!

It's been a busy two weeks, which explains the entry pattern of this blog at the moment. As MizzFlee says, they're like buses, for ages there are none, and then about three at once.

Wednesday 19th saw me head back to Ireland for my cousin's wedding, on the Thursday. It was fine, though most of the crowd were in the older age category and I didn't know that many. It was the first one where I went to bed early, leaving before most of the others, and - shock! - before the bar had closed. Still, I got to catch up with my cousin - though I hardly saw any of him over the weekend.

The wedding was held in Foxford, a western Ireland town. For convenience, I flew into Knock airport, as it was nearest to the airport. For those of you who don't know, Knock became famous some time back for allegedly being host to what could be called manifestations of the presence of Our Heavenly Creator. Or maybe it was The Virgin Mary who crashed the party, I can't remember. Anyway, there was either an apparition or a moving statue (actually I think the latter may have been Ballinspittle, but who cares?), and now Knock, nothing if not opportunistic, has capitalised on it. There are crucifixes everywhere, and lots of souvenir shops selling hordes of miscellaneous tat line the main street. The atmosphere, after coming from Brighton, was oppressive in some way. I forgot how religion can play such a huge role in some people's lives. I could have done without remembering.

As it happens, before I flew to Knock, I was singled out at Gatwick to participate in a survey about perceptions of airport security. My reward? £25 of vouchers to spend in the airport, which netted me a new CD player.

On Friday, I decided to go to Dublin. I got the train from Foxford to Dublin, noting that while a monthly return was forty euro, I was only going one way, and that was twenty-nine euro. Or so I thought. On the train I got, and when the conductor came around I asked for a single to Dublin. He quietly charged me the same as a monthly return, pointing out that friday was peak time, and in order to get people to stop travelling at those times, Iarnróid Éireann have taken to fucking the customer up the ass. I didn't accept this with the same degree of quietness, and he told me to complain to them when I got into Dublin. I did. They shrugged, and gave me the address of their customer relations department.

I laugh maniacally when people complain about the rail system in the UK over here. They don't know how lucky they are to not have to deal with the fucks that run the Irish service. Bastards, all.

One thing I noticed about Dublin in comparison to Brighton, is how there is so much mingling of the social classes in the former, whereas the latter is for the most part a very middle class city. I was unsettled, walking around for a while, but soon adapted. In one sense, having so many types of people living cheek and jowl next to each other adds character to a city, and once I got over my initial disdain, I kind of liked it. Unfortunately, the presence of some of these people results in Dublin turning into the sewer we all know and loathe at the weekend. Pity one aspect goes hand in hand with the other. While Brighton is diverse, those of lesser means usually stick to their own estates and don't come into the city in the same way. Well, at least that's how I perceive it. It's probably what makes the centre of this town a better place to be, all snobbery completely unapologised for.

Saturday night I went home, met my friends and got trashed. Then I met my brother and his fiancée, who were even more trashed, and things got a little hairy. Unfortunately, alcohol can bring out the unholy toxicity in some people, and this couple are testimony to that. I was disappointed in them, but the man Dan's advice was to forget them. I still wish they would GROW THE FUCK UP, but oh well...

Monday 24th I came back.

The following tuesday I worked my last day in the supermarket. Yes folks, I have finally found another job. As a counter-come-dispensing assistant in a pharmacy. Unfortunately, it feels like a case of jumping out of the frying pan and landing arse-first into the fire. The experience is good, but the duty pharmacist is about as far away from nomination for manager of the year as you can get. She has already told me 'to relax', that I am too 'eager', and that I ask too many questions. I'm still flailing about in there, and the other guy who works in there - incidentally a guy in my year on the course - isn't the best at passing on information either. Today, as the woman snapped at me twice before 11am, I slowly curled up into a ball of rage, and nearly stormed out of there for good at lunchtime. We have spoken a little about it, and when I come back (next Tuesday, as I have the weekend off for Pride. Yay!) we are going to fill in the blanks that I have. The potential for me to learn from this work exists, and it would be a shame to let that pass. I need to know how to do things better than her, if nothing else.

Frustration

(noun) Having to suffer a fuckwit in a mixed group when you had previously decided that his permanent absence from your life could only be a good thing.

The results are out...

...and I have to resit two papers.

It's not the worst case scenario that I had envisioned. It was quite possible that I could have failed three, and that would have effectively put the end to a summer of fun. As it stands, the workload I have to get through before the repeats is manageable.

I found out at Dan's on Wednesday night. After arriving at his, I found out that in some cases, people who had failed three were being told to repeat the year without even getting an attempt to resit in the autumn (Quite how this decision was reached is unclear, and the university kept that one very quiet, bastards). I hadn't yet found out what my results were at that point, so I went into deep shock. After composing myself with a beer and a smoke, I went online on Dan's computer and found out.

After I had recovered and composed myself, June and the little feller went to bed, and me and Brooksie went out onto the balcony for some very enjoyable drinks and weed. Then I walked home. At 3 in the morning. Again.

Earlier that day, I had a job interview with a pharmacy out in Cuckfield. It was difficult to tell if I'm in there, but I hope so, I'm sick and tired of that supermarket job, and I really really need to get out of it.

Thursday, I went back to Dan's again to collect my glasses and play with Pukey Lukey (what we've christened baby Luke) long enough for him to drool, and yes, puke all over me. But he's adorable.

I go home for a few days next Wednesday. My cousin is getting married, and I'm a groomsman so I have to make an appearance. I managed to get my student loan topped-up, so I'm of the financial woods for the moment, thank GOD.

Trailers of note.

Sofia Coppola's Marie Antoinette.

And....

Another Gay Movie.

The trailer for Marie Antoinette opens with the opening track on Aphex Twin's Drukqs, 'Jynweythek', which is interesting because when working on my masterpiece, I was going to use 'Meltphace 6' from the same album.

Anyway.

The second one looks like a spoof on American Pie, and should be good ol' dumb fun.

The weekend was its usual.

The Bitches of BN2 came back Saturday evening, from their holiday in Spain. It turns out that MizzFlee's piercings set off the metal detector while she was passing through customs, and she was led away by a burly Spanish security guard for what turned out to be something approaching a full cavity search. After she had recovered, she decided that she quite liked it! Some bitches have all the luck. Click here for an eye-witness account.

I suffered my usual weekend at the supermarket. I ID'd what turned out to be a 29-year old woman when she tried to buy alcohol, and she stomped off. Later, her husband came in to bitch at me. I just politely told him it was shop policy, but he accused me of just being awkward. I should have advised him that seeing as his wife was an Asian dwarf of five-foot-nothing, she should wear heels, or else carry her driver's licence around with her. I felt like cutting him up into little pieces and putting him a box in the basement for storage. My supervisor, of course, just stood there and said nothing. Luckily, in the queue right behind the husband, was a woman who worked in another branch of the same supermarket, and she waded in on my behalf.

I have sent CVs to pharmacies, but they're all too disorganised to get back to me. I'm mounting the search with renewed vigour.

Of course after a day like that, I ended up in the Bulldog with La 'Flee. At one point in the night, I greeted the bouncer with his gaydar profile name (bigtop), and he looked at me as if I had asked him if I could spend the night with his mother!

I also met Daffy, looking as hot as ever.

I got home at 5am, and of course the Sunday shift at the market was delightful as a result. On my way home, there were loads of people shouting and honking horns, and draping themselves in what looked like the Irish tricolour. Upon closer inspection, I realised it was a flag of a different country, and when I got home, I found out that Italy had won the world cup. Big fucking deal. Well, at least the stinking tournament is over now.

The exam results are out this week. I find out on Wednesday how many I'll be repeating. I'm being honest. That's the most pertinent question with regard to the outcome right now.

The wind that shakes the barley

I went to see this on Monday night at the Duke of York, the first time I'd been to that cinema since I saw The Corporation last year. It's after winning the Palme D'Or at Cannes, something that was somewhat filtered out by the insufferable vanity of the critics the night I saw the coverage of the festival.

The first time I saw a Ken Loach film (Sweet Sixteen), I was struck by how realistic the dialogue was, how much it was stripped of theatre and drama, and how it reflected, pretty much more than anything else I'd seen at the time, how conversation between people flows in real life, complete with hiccups, pauses, and misdeclarations. There was also the fact that, in order to stay true to the working-class Glaswegian accents, it was necessary to subtitle parts of the film.

This was interesting in a different way. Set in a part of Cork not a million miles from where I live (the county council of Mallow, amongst others, was thanked in the closing credits), it follows the story of a group of young Irishmen who set up the first resistance movements in response to the oppression of the Black and Tans. The Cork accents were spot on. Thick, but not staged, if you get my drift, like. It then followed the split that happened in their ranks in the aftermath of the acceptance of the Treaty. It followed almost exactly the same timeline as Neil Jordan's Michael Collins, but in many ways it couldn't have been more different.

Loach's credentials as socialist are on quite the display here - watch out for the scene where Cillian Murphy and Liam Cunningham's characters meet for the first time - but it's the right context in which to show them. I have to wonder at how he gets the nuances of speech, character, and stage set right when so many other directors can get it wrong, or at the very least be hamfisted about it. A non-Irish director making one of the most authentic Irish films out there is quite an achievement.

So. Go see.

All this reminds me of a screenplay I started work on a while back, back in the summer of 2003. As is often the case with many things in my life, it ended up being put on the backburner, but ideas for it still come and go in my mind, and about a month ago, I re-read it. I expected to cringe, but it wasn't half as bad as I thought it may have been. Then again, I had only written the opening scene.

The greek chap I met recently told me that I should write a screenplay as a book first, and then, after going on a crash course on scriptwriting, adapt it for the screen. I'm not sure about this, and I'm even less sure if I should embark on something like this without at least reading in general a bit more first, but maybe I might just throw caution to the wind, do a Kerouac on it and stay up for days pounding on the keyboard non-stop.

Anyway, I have so far come up with the following:

a) It'll be set in the gay community of a major american coastal city. Surprise!

b) There will be bears.

c) There will be sex between the bears.

d) To balance things out, there will be lesbians, and sex between them. I've already thought about casting Kristanna Loken, Leelee Sobieski, and Chiaki Kuriyama in this regard.

e) The main character will be a dashing bearish writer-in-waiting in the throes of an existential 30-something crisis (he doesn't want to work, or at least not for a living, in the way that everyone else does). In an attempt to arrive at some resolution, he will sleep with lots of other bears. This will be in the film. A bit like the portrayal of Charles Bukowski in Barfly, except instead of hard liquor, the drug of choice will be hard...Oh, you get the picture.

f) As a counterpoint to this modern-day rendition of Jean-Paul Sartre's Nausea, the other main character will be a renegade lesbian pharmacist who supplies the Bear Who Is Not Of This World with drugs, an Albert Hoffman to his Aldous Huxley, if you will. I decided a long time ago that the only actress who could possibly play this role would be Jennifer Connelly. I will accept no substitutes. It also provides me with motivation to stay on my degree course, so that I can ...erm.. research certain things a little more.

f) Aphex Twin and/or Philip Glass are amongst those under consideration for soundtrack duties.

Are you getting this, Harvey Weinstein? Cash or cheque acceptable.

Anyway, now I must go to bed as I have a headache.

Thank God!

Settled into the new place now (thanks to YellerKat and MizzFlee for helping with the move) and everything is now unpacked and internet access organised. It's been a hellish week of being tossed from pillar to post, but now I can put roots down for the next two months. The new bunch are cool: They laid on a barbeque this evening, and yesterday offered me some pasta bake, so I haven't had to cook anything since I moved in.

Also, for some reason, the presumed fault on my PC monitor (shades of red weren't rendered properly) has corrected itself. A mystery...

Close to four hours on the nudie beach today, and a colour is now starting to materialise (Red. Again!). I left at six, just as two of the police force were coming into my section over some matter or other. Just as well I was off, that could have gotten awkward.

I met Daffy again recently, as I had to give him his socks and cock ring. We met for drinks, and had a bit of a chat, but he reaffirmed in a way I didn't like about how he was in a closed relationship with someone else. I had been dimly aware of this on the night I met him first, but had chosen to psychologically brush it under the carpet. I left after the second drink, not really wanting to talk to him after that.

It's a shame, as I kind of like this guy, and he's the first suitor I've met who I wouldn't mind getting to know a bit more, but there's no point. He's investing in someone else, and being a third party like that isn't my style. He offered to help me with my move, but I was too proud to accept.

*Sniff*

Oh well...

Pride is about 5-6 weeks away, and in order to facilitate my attempt to give up the smokes, I think I'll be staying away from the pubs, and alcohol in general until then. Will I succeed? Oh, why do I even bother asking?

Mind you, 'Flee and Bear have taken off to Spain, so that's one temptation out of the way.

I'm moving again! Oh fun...

I have found somewhere new to live. Thank fucking Christ.

The only problem is that it's for two months, so I have to start looking for somewhere else to live towards the end of August. The other is that while I have to move out of my current place on Sunday 25th of June, I can't move into my new place until the following Wednesday, so I have to move into temporary university accommodation on Sunday, and then move from there to the new place on Wednesday. The stuff of envy, I'm sure you'll agree.

I met the new flatmates last night and somehow got talked into going to see the England vs. Sweden game in a pub. The flatmates seemed fine anway, which is just as well, as I was utterly disengaged from the game. A goal? Oh is that what happened? I was looking at the floor. Who was it that scored? More beer, anyone?

I went to London on Monday to visit J. We went to see an exhibition, 'Bodies', in the Earls Court museum. Made up of real human bodies and their parts, preserved using some new polymer whatever process, it has attracted some controversy owing to use in parts of the bodies of the victims of murder under the current and previous Chinese regimes, apparently without the consent of their relatives. One of the press releases on this urges people to question not the use of the bodies in the exhibition, but the circumstances under which they were killed. Meh, I suppose they're right, but if that was someone I knew and loved up there, I'd be pretty pissed, to say the least.

The preservation process gave the bodies a somewhat plastic appearance, making them look like mannequins at times. Yet it was pretty much to the forefront of my mind that I was still looking at real dead people. Three things stood out in my mind. The first was the section of the anal canal, and how diminutive it looked. It must be pretty stretchy if it can take a ... oh, you get the picture.

The second was the two pairs of lungs. One pair, that of a healthy person, the other, that of a smoker. 'Leave your cigarettes behind here' urged the sign over a glass box with an opening on top. The box was full of cigarettes cartons, lighters and matches dumped by those who had been affected by what they had seen. I'd found the £17.50 entrance fee rather extortionate, but Joanne pointed out if I did give up, it would be money well spent, which is true.

The third was the unborn child section. Foetuses that had perished before birth were on display. The museum was considerate in that you were warned before you entered this section, and were given an alternative route if you wanted to keep viewing the exhibition, but bypass that section. It was really weird seeing the foetuses at weeks 1-8 of a pregnancy. Halfway through this early stage, you could make out the mouth on the face of the potential baby, curled up into what looked like a smile. At week 9, a dramatic increase in size was observed. I imagine it would be pretty hard for anyone involved in a miscarriage or abortion to look at something like this.

Then there was the placenta, which brought Tom Cruise, unbidden, to mind. We left.

So it's onward ho over the next few days. Tomorrow the packing and cleaning up begin. Joy!

CJ Haughey, 1925-2006

One of the advantages of living in where I am right now is that while I may have to suffer other people's fever for England in the world cup, I'm pretty much saved from hearing anything about Ireland's progress in the same event (Did we even qualify? Do I even care? Actually not and definitely not, respectively).

The flipside of this is that events of no small consequence can come to pass in Ireland, and only by chance do you find out about them via a third party. Such as it was with the passing of former Taoiseach (Prime Minister, if you're not Irish) Charles Haughey, announced on Tuesday 13th. His funeral, complete with state honours, was the following thursday.

If ever there is one politician who should form a central part of a college course in political psychology, it would have to be him. Course PS203: How to screw a country out of a substantial part of its collective wage packet, yet still command the unwavering loyalty of its majority and get re-elected into power again and again. Independent reading: How to claw your way back into public favour after suffering a disgrace that would see other politicians retire in ignonimy (cf. arms trial in 1970).

It's the brass-necked hypocrisy, more than anything, that has me open-mouthed in wonder. The 1980 speech where he urged the naton to tighten its belts while he was living his lifestyle on money he had basically grabbed from the hands of the Irish, the speech he gave about family values just after returning from Paris, having entertained his mistress there, oh, this goes on and on. But most striking is the manner in which people have been prepared to overlook his misdemeanours, write them off as not as significant as they actually are. Not as significant, I suspect, as they would be if committed by someone else.

This, of course is it. To get down to brass tacks, what did CJ have, something no-one else had, that allowed him to carry it off?

In one of Nuala O Faoláin's articles in the Irish times entitled 'Spirit of the Nation', she wrote:

The first of the Irelands Mr Haughey commands is the Northside, which is not just Dublin's northside but everywhere people live in streets and kids go to big, tough schools. He knows all that from the inside - playing football, robbing orchards, taking the bike out to Portmarnock for a swim. He was something of an exception in being very clever - first in Dublin for a scholarship - and very bookish. He haunted Marino Library. But not that much of an exception. His personal friends - still Northsiders - a motor trade businessman, a supreme court judge, an auctioneer - would all have been the same kind of boy, reared in modest circumstances, but with the brains to transform them.

There is also the fact that at 15, elsewhere wrote about in the same article, he joined the local defence force.

Could this be it? The fact that he was a bit of a bruiser gained him the respect of the man on the street, to the point where that same man might overlook his waywardness as a consequence of someone with a strong personality, an unfortunate side-effect of the achievements in his lifetime. Most other politicians, having come from privileged backgrounds, don't have this quality, and this is probably what set CJ apart.

What struck me in the tributes left on the ireland.com page was the extent to which his supporters were willing to overlook the flaws in his character, write them off as minor, and focus on the 'great things' he did for his country. Any naysayers are dismissed by these people as begrudgers, symptomatic of the Irish tendency to build people up and then tear them down, as if that was a mindset specific to Ireland alone.

There are a two important flaws in this reasoning, though: His achievements, upon examination, weren't that great, and his misdemeanours were many and substantial.

He screwed Ireland for money in the 70's and 80's in a way that no-one else did before or since. upper band tax rates, a 'reward' for people who had managed to maneouvre themselves into a position where they were high earners, were just totally fucking insane, yet he siphoned off his money to the Cayman Islands so that he himself could escape the financial net he had created for everyone else. More than anything else, this demonstrates complete contempt for the country he had under his watch at this time.

He was involved in gun smuggling in the 1970s, at a time that saw the emergence of the IRA in its present form - an important point, considering that the organisation had deteriorated to little more than a collection of thugs at that point - a form that would prevail until it was disbanded. He had the phones of his opposition bugged so that he could anticipate their next move. Physical intimidation was used in the Dáil to quell dissent. His restriction on the sale of condoms, his opposition to divorce and the Anglo-Irish agreement.

Money that was collected with the intent of paying for important surgery for his friend Brian Lenihan, he used on himself. His friend.

Yet I have never seen denial like that which I have seen in his supporters when confronted with all of this.

And now onto the bloody Celtic Tiger. It has been put forward that he laid the foundations for the prosperity that Ireland enjoys today. I have yet to see an expert in economics conclusively prove that this is the truth. Fintan O' Toole put it best once, when he said that just because sunrise follows someone having an early breakfast, it doesn't mean that the person eating that bowl of cereal has caused the sun to rise. It happened independently of the breakfast. The same logic is applicable to Ireland's economic boom.

It may be closer to the truth that he saw it coming, and made preparations for it. Such as the building of the IFSC, for example. Of course the tax incentives used to attract multinational investment over here could well turn out to be a band aid solution: Of the corporations whose incentives have expired, some have withdrawn from the country. It remains to be seen if the rest will do the same.

Of course all of this deflects from the basic unassailable fact that while he was in power, Ireland was in recession, and after he left, Ireland boomed. It always annoys me when politicians try to claim credit for fiscal successes like these, as if a substantial part of it was under their control, when really, it is not.

Then again, if we are to apply the skewed logic, he is therefore responsible for the current mess in Irish hospitals. We got rich, but our healthcare system got shit. Nice trade-off, CJ.

Free travel for the elderly? A free TV license? The cost of these was borne by CIE and RTE, respectively. The reaffirmation of the artist within Gaelic Ireland? The action of someone with thought processes.

Under his leadership, a guy getting hot n' heavy with another guy? Illegal.

Elsewhere in the aforementioned 'Spirit of the Nation' article, O'Faoláin writes that his background makes him seem "an outsider, an anti-establishment figure, permanently challenging, even when he is in power". Bollocks. He bought into something bigger than himself and became corrupted in the process. For a woman of O'Faoláin's insight, I'm surprised at her short-sightedness. She's just like the rest of his supporters in this regard.

Ultimately his position was made available to him by democracy, so it could be argued that he represented all aspects of the nation, that he represented the best and worst of the Irish people. That someone like him can flourish says something about the people who allowed him to flourish, who elected him into power.

Like many a man with talent in no small amounts, he had his moments, but they were too few, relative to what he was capable of, and capability was his middle name. I have no doubt he could have been a great leader, simply, he wasn't. But we got the government we deserved because we voted him back in again and again. We accepted his many warts, when we should have been demanding higher standards of him. This is what exasperates the most.

He's gone now, and it's over to others to do away with the climate he created in politics, if they see fit. Hopefully it'll happen. Indirectly it'll reflect damningly on the the population of Ireland if it doesn't disappear, because it means they'll have sanctioned it, directly or otherwise.

The Da Vinci Code

Two things about it that were good.

1. Jean Reno's hotness (not his acting, as he was an autopilot all the way through).
2. The scenery/locations.

Two things that weren't so good.

1. It stuck rigidly to the book, with one or two exceptions of artistic license. Because of this, I knew exactly what was going to happen at almost any given moment.
2. The flashbacks sucked.

I remember reading this ages ago, and thinking that while the writing wasn't great, it might adapt well to a screenplay. The constant cliffhangers in the book didn't transfer well to the screen, though, and the character development was pretty ropey, to say the least. All in all, I'd be inclined to blame the source material and just leave it at that. Tom Hanks wasn't as miscast as some would have you believe, and Audrey Tatou was as valid a choice as anyone. As I'd said before, the lifting of the lid on the history of Catholicism was interesting in the book, and would have been interesting to see on film if you had not come across it before.

One thing I've noticed about this phenomenon is that more and more people are coming out of the woodwork and criticising it, and recent coverage of the Cannes film festival featured a selection of critics turning their noses up at the whole thing. If ever there an example was needed of a frustrated bridesmaid, it has to be a film critic, and it does nothing except increase my resolve to see the film even more. Have a go at making your own films boys, and try not to speak out on others. The sound of jealousy getting caught in your throat can be heard by all.

Incidentally, Sofia Ford Coppola's new film, Marie Antoinette, is coming out next year, and she's done the same with it as she's done with The Virgin Suicides and Lost in Translation in terms of the soundtrack. This time, it's the New Romantics that are spicing up the background a bit. Should be interesting. Incidentally, a selection of critics showed their appreciation for that one by booing. Very mature, ye of little consequence.

Must Have More!

Need sound.

Likes cuddles. And Daffy.

The last few days have been interesting.

On Friday night I was bored. I stayed in, foregoing my usual rendez-vous with the Bitches of BN2, only to get itchy feet at about 12:30am Saturday morning. Where in Brighton, I hear you ask, can you get drink in a bar at this time, without having to pay an entrance fee? The Bulldog, we cry!

So down I went,on my own. Got a drink and surveyed the eye candy. 'Anvil', a sort of kink-themed night, was just finishing up in another club, so soon the Bully was enjoying (well, I was enjoying, but I digress) an influx of men big n'beefy. After talking to a few of them, including two ex-entanglements of mine, I settled on a big burly cuddly dude. It led nowhere. Then I spotted another tanned and rugged specimen and swooped. That led to my place.

The journey home was a bit fun, in a smartarsery kind of way. He moaned constantly, but kind of jokingly, about the walk, and said that if we had gone to his, we'd be there by now. I hotly denied this and told him to shut up and keep moving. He then wanted to know what I intended to do when we got back to mine. I told him I was expecting to get into his knickers. He shrugged, not explicitly ruling it out as a possibility, but declared that when we got there, he would expect a nice cup of tea.

He got a nice strong cup of tea. The rest followed in due course.

In the course of the night, or should I say early morning, I learned two things about him that still make me smile. 'I love cuddles', he proclaimed at one stage (We cuddled at this point). I asked him about the tattoo of a bear paw on his ass. He told me that when he was younger, about 15 years old, he got a tattoo of Daffy Duck on his ass. In due course, he thought the best thing to do would be to cover it up. So step forward, paw of the bear.

This made me laugh to myself at work later that day, while on the checkout, serving customers. I now have him stored in my phone as Daffy. It's just as well: He left his cock-ring and his socks behind him, under my bed.

I suspect, though, that there is something about him that marks him out as someone who is not really suitable for anything other than a bit of fun. His insistence that I 'be discreet', for one. I think I might have to investigate that a little if I meet him again.

On Sunday evening after work, I met an interesting Greek man. His blog can be found here.

Yes, I'm a believer in keeping more than one iron in the fire.

Moving out

I have just over two weeks left to find somewhere else to live.

Over the last few days, the others in my flat are moving out one by one. I've noticed that certain things of mine seem to be departing with them. A blue mug of mine vanished round about the time of the departure of one of the lads, and I came home from work tonight to find that the (admittedly free) TV guide that I donated to the communal area, had the tv times for tomorrow and monday ripped out. Errmm.....

At least the ones that are left until last are amongst the nicer of the lot.

In any case, I think I'll be stashing my kitchen utensils in my room between now and my departure.

Thank FUCK!

The exams are over now. It's been a car-crash week and I'm relishing being able to breath again.

It looks like I'll be staying here for the summer, at this moment in time. House hunting starts tomorrow. Or maybe the day after. And then the job hunting. I still have the supermarket job, but after 8 hours behind a cash register today, I was reminded of how boring it was.

Like I had forgotten! Bah!

This blog as a graph

Unlike BN2 Beeyatches, which seems to have a somewhat nuclear structure, mine is an entity more diffuse, with arms outstretched. I'm so original.

Do your own, and add it to the Flickr group here.

Announcement

As and from today, The Friday Thing, weekly satirical e-newsletter par excellence, is free to those who may wish to subscribe to it.

If you have a brain, you owe it to yourself to get on it.

And we're off...

... to the worst start ever.

Immunology this morning, and I can say with 100% certainty that I will be back in early autumn doing that again.

As an aside, it is rather strange for a module as comprehensive as this one to only barely feature HIV in lectures, and have not even one question (not even an MCQ) on the exam paper on the subject. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, you don't have to be a genius to work out what area I put most of my work into there.

Now I return to the books, and make sure this doesn't recur. On it's own, this damage is controllable. If it makes friends, I'm screwed.

Later...

A declaration

I hate this time of the academic year.

Here we go AGAIN!

I found this on BuffTuff, the blog of a hot n' hairy Canadian biker. It's from a recent CBS edition of "60 Minutes" conducted by correspondent Lesley Stall. It's long, but worth the effort, upto a point:

Psychologists used to believe homosexuality was caused by nurture — namely overbearing mothers and distant fathers — but that theory has been disproved. Today, scientists are looking at genes, environment, brain structure and hormones. There is one area of consensus: that homosexuality involves more than just sexual behavior; it's physiological.

Dr. Bailey , a noted sex researcher, and his colleagues set up a series of experiments in his lab at Northwestern University. In one study, researcher Gerulf Rieger videotaped gay and straight people sitting in a chair, talking. He then reduced them visually to silent black and white outlined figures and asked volunteers to see if they could tell gay from straight. The idea was to find out if certain stereotypes were real and observable. Based on physical movement and gestures of the figures, more often than not, the volunteers in the study could tell a difference. "So, is the conclusion that gay people do in fact move differently?" Stahl asked Rieger. "Yeah, absolutely," he replied. It's not true 100 percent of the time; it is true on average. The researchers also studied the way gay and straight people talk, and they found differences on average there too. This research is controversial. Some say it is reinforcing stereotypes. But to Bailey, the stereotypes suggest there's a feminizing of the brain in gay men, and masculinizing in lesbians. Ironically though, when it comes to their sex lives, he says gay and straight men actually have a lot in common. "Straight men tend to be shallow in terms of focusing on looks. Gay men are shallow, too. Straight men are more interested than straight women in having casual, uncommitted sex. Gay men are like that, too," says Bailey.

"One has the impression that gay men are much more inclined toward casual sex than straight men," Stahl said. "They're just more successful at it, because the people they're trying to have sex with are also interested in it," Bailey explained. "But don't you find this interesting that the one big area where gay men are more like straight men is in sex? I mean, that is…both amusing and odd," Stahl said. "It suggests that whatever causes a man to be gay doesn't make him feminine in every respect. There must be different parts of the brain that can be feminized independently from each other," Bailey replied.

But how and when does this feminizing occur? If the differences were already apparent in childhood, that would point to an early, perhaps even genetic origin — and that's what Bailey and Rieger are testing in a new study using childhood home movies. In the study, volunteers were asked to rate each child's femininity or masculinity. Stahl took the test and rated two girls highly feminine. When shown video of a toddler girl running a truck off of a table, Stahl observed, "She's really not girly. Isn't that interesting? She's not girly." She also observed differences in two boys, one of whom would grow up to be straight, while the other is now gay. If you can spot a child's future sexual orientation before the child even knows he or she has one, doesn't that prove it's genetic? Studies have shown that homosexuality runs in families. So genes must be the answer. But then the researchers tell you identical twins can have different sexual orientations.

60 Minutes found identical twins Steve and Greg Lofts in New York. They had the same upbringing, have the same DNA — and yet Greg is gay and Steve is straight. When people meet the twins and find out one of them is gay, Greg says people have asked if he's sure, and how it can be. "Everyone is curious about that," he says. There were signs, even when they were little kids. Their mother told Stahl that Steve loved sports and the outdoors while Greg liked helping out in the kitchen. But it wasn't until high school that Steve became convinced Greg was gay. Asked if he said anything to his brother, Steve says, "I did actually. And I think the way I worded it was something like, 'You know, Greg, if you're gay, it's OK with me. And I'll still love you the same.' And he gave a very philosophical answer. He said something like, 'Well, I love the soul of a person and not the physical being.' And in my mind, I was like, 'Yep, he's gay.'" "I wasn't ready just yet," Greg added. "

Does this prove that it's not genetic? "What it proves is it's not completely genetic. They have the same genes," says Bailey. Asked if that brings us back to the mother and the father, Bailey says no. "But that's environment," Stahl said. "That's environment. But that's not the only environment. There's also the environment that happens to us while we're in the womb. And scientists are realizing that environment is much more important than we ever thought it was," Bailey explained.

A newborn rat pup in the lab of Dr. Marc Breedlove at Michigan State University, may, oddly enough, hold important clues to what happens in the womb. Dr. Breedlove says he can take a male rat and make it behave like a female for the rest of its life, and vice versa for a female, just by altering the hormones it's exposed to at birth. Because rats are born underdeveloped, that's roughly the same as altering a third-trimester human fetus in the womb. But first, he said, Stahl would need a crash course in rat sex. Dr. Breedlove explained that male rats, including one he showed Stahl called "Romeo," will mount any rat that comes their way. In the mating process, the female performs something called lordosis, where she lifts her head and rump. If Romeo goes after a male, Dr. Breedlove says the male will seem profoundly indifferent. But Breedlove says he can change all that. He gave a female rat a single shot of the male sex hormone testosterone at birth. Now grown up, she will never perform lordosis. But a male rat did. He was castrated at birth, depriving him of testosterone. "So you created a gay rat?" Stahl asked. "I wouldn't say that these are gay rats. But I will say that these are genetic male rats who are showing much more feminine behavior," he explained. So the answer may be that it's not genes but hormones. "That's exactly the question that we're all wondering. This business of testosterone having such a profound influence. Does that have some relevance to humans?" Breedlove said.

While biologists look at hormones for answers about human sexuality, other scientists are looking for patterns in statistics. And hard as this is to believe, they have found something they call "the older brother effect." "The more older brothers a man has, the greater that man's chance of being gay," says Bailey. Asked if that's true, Bailey says, "That is absolutely true." If this comes as a shock to you, you're not alone. But it turns out, it's one of the most solid findings in this field, demonstrated in study after study. And the numbers are significant: for every older brother a man has, his chances of being gay increase by one third. Older sisters make no difference, and there's no corresponding effect for lesbians. A first-born son has about a 2 percent chance of being gay, and the numbers rise from there. The theory is it happens in the womb. "Somehow, the mother's body is remembering how many boys she's carried before," says Breedlove. "The favorite hypothesis is that the mother may be making antibodies when she sees a boy the first time, and then affect subsequent boys when she carries them in utero." "You mean, like she's carrying a foreign substance?" Stahl asked. "And if you think about it, a woman who's carrying a son for the first time, she is carrying a foreign substance," Breedlove replied. "There are some proteins encoded on his Y chromosome that her body has never seen before and that her immune system would be expected to regard as 'invaders,'" he added. It's still not a proven theory and it gets even stranger. "One of the things we've only found out lately is that older brothers affect a boy only if the boy is right-handed," Breedlove said. "If the boy is left-handed, if his brain is organized in a left-handed fashion, it doesn't matter how many older brothers he has, his probability of being gay is just like the rest of the population." I'm right handed and first born, with no other brothers.

You can give yourself a headache trying to apply all the theories to real people. Greg and Steve Lofts both are right-handed, and they do have an older brother, so maybe that's why Greg is gay. But they also have several gay relatives, which suggests it could be in the genes, except where does that leave Steve? Adam and Jared, fraternal twins, have older brothers, but they're ambidextrous. Then there's the question of how something in the womb could affect one twin but not the other. There are many more questions at this point than answers, but the scientists 60 Minutes spoke to are increasingly convinced that genes, hormones, or both — that something is happening to determine sexual orientation before birth. Adam has come up with his own theory. "I was supposed to be a girl in my mom's stomach. But my mom wished for all boys. So, I turned into a boy," Adam explained. Asked if he wished he was a girl, Adam nodded. "Do you think there was anything that you could have done that would have changed Adam?" Stahl asked Adam and Jared's mom Danielle. "I could have changed Adam on the outside to where he would have showed me the macho boy that I would want as a boy. But that would not change who he is inside. And I think that would have damaged him a lot more," she said. Stahl asked both boys if they are proud of the way they are, and both boys gave her big nods. "Yup," Adam replied.

More at: www.cbs.com

There's a few things that I have to take issue with in this, and other articles like this.

From time immemorial, the scientific community, just like the psychology community, seem to hold with the idea that one of the fundamental characteristics of homosexuality is that it apes femininity. In the above article, there is a subtle allusion to masculinity (however the hell that is defined these days) being suppressed by a mother's immune system while she carries a male child in the womb. This is similar to a view, widely held for a while but since discredited, that a certain gland (I can't remember which one, but I think it was the pineal) in the brain of gay men is smaller in size than one in straight men, and surprise surprise, comparable to that of a straight woman. It would appear that the old preoccupation with size has spilled over into the realm of anatomy and physiology.

A few years ago, someone I know who was a psychology student, and very good at it, wrote a thesis postulating that rather than aping femininity, homosexuality should be regarded as an alternative masculinity. It's not hard to see why. To describe the archetypical camp queen as 'effiminate' is inaccurate. While some gay men have mannerisms that can be described as more flamboyant than those of straight men, comparisons of said mannerisms with those of straight women highlight the difference between the two. Gay men, often possessed of a certain something that allows them to be identified as such by a keen observer, have a 'style' all of their own. I'm not attacking the idea of effeminacy in men, in itself not intrinsically 'wrong', just saying that it doesn't exist to the extent everyone thinks it does. People of course will point out that gay men often prefer the company of straight women rather than straight men, not stopping to think that this says more about straight men generally than gay men in particular.

And now to the issue of sex. Who was it that said 'Women's virtue is man's greatest myth'? Anyway, there is the somewhat outdated notion that women (or more disparagingly, 'nice' women) don't like casual, unattached sex as much as men. Men may have higher sex drives on average, but to say that 'a woman only does it with the man she loves', well, some of these people need to get out more, and more specifically, go to a local pulling joint at a weekend and see what goes on there. But there's no point at all in denying that this notion still exists.

Women want lots of sex, end of story. The way current courtship rituals are set up in the straight world just means that they can get it whenever they want, so they can afford to discriminate a bit, provided they're someway attractive. Straight men, on the other hand, have to do more work to get it, so will jump at the chance when it's offered to them, thus perpetuating the notion that men are governed by....

I suppose that's one thing we have in common. Oh well. The point made in paragraph two about the success of gay men in getting laid is a good one though: Straight men would be putting it about so much more often if straight women would allow it.

I suppose what I'm advocating is the idea that gender roles no longer exist (if they ever did in the first place) at completely opposite poles. These days, a lot of us gravitate somewhere towards the middle, and occupy a ground that can be described as 'other'. This is a position that is occupied by gay men and lesbians quite a lot of the time, and should be considered instead of this rubbish of a gay man's brain being 'feminized' and a lesbian's brain being 'masculinized'. And anyone who thinks that men are inherently more competitive than women should think about why straight women have a reputation for being more bitchy towards one another than straight men.

Interesting piece though. Still, biological theories like this have been disproved before. I can't see this lasting forever. Perhaps scientists should stop looking at this through the lens of gender roles, and approach it from another angle.

Shit, I need to get back to studying.

Let the bitching begin

The new Big Brother contestants aren't even in the house a wet week, and already the bickering has started. What a bunch of twats.

At least The Sun can stop trying with their usual bollocks now. They're in headlines for most of the summer. God help us...