Nooooooo!

From this week's issue of the Friday Thing:

In recent weeks and months, we've undergone massive upheaval,including the launch of a new website, Fridaycities.com, and the setting up of an entire new company to run it. One of the consequences of this is that there has been less and less time to concentrate on TFT. So. Rather than neglect the baby, we have decided to ruthlessly murder it. And bury it in under the patio.

Essentially, and unfortunately, we have had to choose between two possible paths. The first path takes us to a place where we carry on with TFT, aware that it will inevitably decline and decay as we become more and more caught up with the things we have to do to pay the bills. The second is where we stop TFT before that happens; we see the shark jump ahead and think, no: we deserve better than that. We turn off our engine. We say 'Eeeeeeeeeeey'.

So, yes. After very careful consideration, we've settled on the second path, content also that we have an archive of five years of great issues, and that we're really proud of what the email comment sheet has achieved.

Plus of course, there's no certainty that we'll be going away completely. We'll almost certainly do the odd special issue if something major happens. We won't be able to resist. Plus, the future is a strange place. They do things differently there. So, frankly, who knows? But for the weekly Thing, this is the end of the line.

I've written about this comment sheet before, and how it was a complete saviour of my sanity on a Friday morning. Unfortunately, as staff changed, so did the paper, and it had started to slip a bit towards the end, most noticeably in the last year, where it was only half the length it used to be. I first started reading it around the start of 2001, and now, 6 years later, I'm finding myself saying goodbye.

This newsletter was perfect for me when I was deskbound for the whole day on Friday, but when I left Dublin for Brighton, it stopped occupying centre stage on that day at the end of the week, as I always seemed to be stuck in some lecture or lab or some other trivial inconvenience like that. Soon after that, it started arriving late (not much point in getting an excuse to doss at 4:30pm on a Friday when everyone's about to head to the pub anyway) and soon after that again, it's length (and sometimes its quality, it has to be said) started to decline.

Still, like they said, there's plenty of back issues to be going on with, and for anyone with an interest in humour or bettering their own social commentary (this blog wouldn't be half what it is if I hadn't been sent that faithful introductory e-mail forward 6 years ago), they would do well to get cracking on it.

Oh....*Sniff*. It's the end of an era.

New face at an old place

I'm liking the Star Inn more since its original manager Dave left, and now I can go in there without feeling like I'm prostituting myself by going into a bar whose manager I have no time for whatsoever (and whose boyfriend, mystifyingly enough, is a very nice bubbly chap).

Interestingly, Dave jumped before he was pushed by the owners, after he set up a darkroom in the pub one night, a night I wrote about previously. I derive no small amount of satisfaction from the fact that I was one of the few people who did what the owners were afraid of people doing that night, and it also makes me laugh that even though it had some people up in arms, it was actually hardly used at all. And now, a wanker who never showed his customers appreciation or respect is gone. Good riddance.

Perhaps disrobing him on my first night in the pub was a bit hasty of me.

Now onto the new manager.

His name is Russell Cooper, and he was one of the bar staff in the King's Arms I noticed that weekend I was up in London for Bear Pride last year. As you can see, he's nice and cuddly. He often greets me with 'Hi Gorgeous'. I think I shall have to get him into my bed.

Interestingly, on his first night of management there, a riot erupted. From BN2 Beeyatches:

'Flee has confirmed that there was a fight-cum-riot on Sunday involving two straight men and two straight women. These pieces of human waste had actually played the 'discrimination' card to get in when told it was a men only night. How low can these people go? Evidently as low as throwing heavy stools into crowds and biting lumps out of peoples arms. Savages.

Further it was the new manager's first night, the unconfirmed rumour that the old one was canned because the brewery didn't like the idea of men touching other men's wee wee parts on the premises. All bear events are 'Postponed until further notice'. Hmmm.

New manager a rather furry bear. Nice.

I couldn't agree more, Ms. Howarth.

Recreational chemistry

Last friday we had a rather interesting series of lectures on drug addiction by Angela McAdam, probably the most engaging lecturer in the university's department of pharmacy. Having gone to art-school and moonlighted as a goth/punk in the dispensary, she is proof that you can be a pharmacist and not be boring. Perhaps a little like Albert Hoffman, but without the incendiary hallucinogen discovery to her name.

Firstly, to prove a point, an assessment of the risk-taking potential of the classmates was conducted via individual questionnares. I scored 7, which means I must have been an accountant in a previous life. It was found, rather unsurprisingly, that the results of the class in general, instead of being normally distributed, were skewed somewhat towards the conservative end. Mind you, some of the questions were a bit silly:

Do you often arrive for a train at the last minute? (Yes, because disorganisation is genetically encoded into my DNA)
Do you wear a seatbelt? (Yes. Have you seen the end of the film Very Bad Things?)
Do you often go out of the house leaving it unlocked? (Yes, I'd like to hang onto the precious few things of value I have)
Do you often drive fast? ('I can't drive' wasn't given as an reply option here, so I don't know...)

Then we were given a glossary of all the different street names for all the different drugs and their paraphernalia:

'Bombita' - A mixture of cocaine and heroin (another name for speedball, in other words)
'Big Chief' - Mescaline (never hear of that nickname before)
'Uncle' - Federal agents (ditto)
'Busted' - Arrested on a drug-related charge (never would have guessed)
'Score' - To locate and purchase a quantity of drugs (Oh please)

It went on. And on.

Then we were given information on 'safe injecting', which provided the foundation from which we were supposed to advise users of a needle exchange programme. That particular part of the class was rather bizarre, giving us detailed step-by-step procedures on how to inject intravenous narcotics, along with some rather eyebrow-raising facts: Ascorbic acid is a better solvent for heroin than citric acid, as the latter burns your veins and leads to problems at the injection site. Also, did you know that the penis can be used as an injection site? I'll bet you could have done without that picture. For anyone interested in trying it, a masterclass in use was practically the order of the day.

Finally, a methadone pharmacist came in and told us some more about withdrawal management and working in addiction clinics. He was interesting enough, though he didn't hold out much hope for complete and utter recovery from heroin, being of the opinion that it was better to get people onto methadone and maintain them on that for the long-term. Both another classmate and I told him that we didn't consider that a recovery by our standards, as methadone is more addictive than heroin in some ways. He had a tendency to shrug it off, saying that people generally don't stay off heroin in general for very long, and seemed to have a rather Daily Mail-esque view of drug dealers: 'They're businessmen. Even if you try and give up, they'll come after you and try and get you hooked again. And anyway, all your normal friends will be gone and you'll just have other heroin users left'.

I asked Angela about this during an intermission. It seemed that all users (we can't say addicts any more, apparently) were depicted as occupying one of two opposite poles: Those who had tried it once, and at the other end, those who were so addicted, the focus at the centre of their miserable and wretched lives was the acquisition of the next fix. I asked her if there was such a thing as an intermittent user, whose life continued as it was before they had encountered it. She said there most likely was, but there were too many deaths from it for the popular media to allow such a portrayal, or for suburbia to accept it.

It reminded me of the film Drugstore Cowboy, which had a cameo from William Burroughs in it, playing an heroin user who was also a defrocked priest. At one point he waxed (I'm paraphrasing, because I can't find the bloody screenplay on the internet) about how the idea of people being long term users and not meeting with an ignominous end was anathema to some idiots, which goes back to what I was saying earlier. Having said that, all the characters in that film were living in a squat with no money, and were faking epileptic fits inside in pharmacies to lure the manager out from behind the counter so they could plunder the controlled-drugs cupboard. Living? Maybe, but not like that of Riley.

All in all, it leads me to wonder just how addictive something like heroin really is. Is the depravity to which some addicts sink related to the intensity of the withdrawal experience, or because they tended towards risky behaviour all their lives?

We're having workshop on Friday coming, where we get to meet ex-users. It should be interesting. I'll have more than a few questions.

Saint Patrick's Day

It was good and my friend Joanne and her boyfriend Tony came over for it, which was great given that I'm always too broke to go to Dublin to see them these days.

Friday night, one of the main sights of (my) Brighton, the Bulldog, was taken in. The atmosphere was great, and of course I didn't leave until the small hours of the morning. Pulling myself together on Saturday, I got out of bed and headed into town, and we met up again. It was there we took in various pubs before trying the Fiddlers Elbow, *the* most Irish pub I have ever seen. We're talking pale-skinned, red-haired ceili dancing people everywhere. I've mentioned before that some people have a cast that is totally any utterly nothing other than Irish, and it can almost be scary sometimes.

We ended up in the Bugle, the main pub for Irish students over here, and a great (if rather squashed!) time was had. Of course, it being St. Paddy's Day, loads of people were wearing silly Guinness hats, though most of the culprits were actually non-Irish, for some bizarre reason. There were lots of green jerseys as well, so being the rebel that I am(!), I decided to join in by wearing green eyeshadow. I have no doubt it enhanced my attractiveness to the more rugged of the sex, and I'm sure everyone else felt so too, as evinced by the fact that they all fell about laughing.

I got home at a fairly reasonable hour, and rose this morning to see off J and Tony before going to work, which is where I am now. Thankfully it's been easy enough.

In other news, I'm going home to Ireland next week for two weeks. I've also got my Kung Fu suit, which is black with red trim, and looks rather nice. The classes themselves are going reasonably well. There's been more running around the place outside the gym. On Tuesday night, we ran about a mile out of town and then up a wooded hill. In the dark. It was rather fun, though I had a bit of a problem getting motivated on Friday. I think more off-the-wall surprises are what we need.

College classes are winding to a close now, and after Easter, all our practical work is finished and we're down to just one day of lectures a week. Not that I'm spoiled with all the time I have. I'll need all of it for study between now and the summer exams.

HIGH as a KITE!

I just got back from Kung Fu. Our master ran us ragged tonight, and now, even though it's close to 10pm, I'm practically bouncing off the walls with energy.

It's got me thinking. These last few months have seen not necessarily the worst winter ever, but certainly the most miserable, pissy, depressing weather has predominated for much of them and my mood has adjusted accordingly to reflect it. Now there has just been two consecutive days of sunshine, which means (hold your breath!) that spring may finally be here.

I once lived in Cork with a girl who always maintained that the lack of sun kept her in a constant state of melancholia. She used to visit Australia at every opportunity, and moaned about the lack of fine weather on her return. Not surprisingly, she eventually emigrated there for good.

I've noticed that in the past few months I've been more sluggish and unmotivated than at any time since I've come here, and I'm convinced that it has a great deal to do with the fact that for a given morning when I step outside the door, there is approximately a fucking 80% chance that I'm going to need my umbrella. Now that it's starting to become sunny, I'm feeling a little bit less like throwing myself off the top of a tall building.

The exercise I had tonight was a bit like that too. Normally we run laps of the gym to warm up. This time, our master thought it would be a novel idea to have us run around the campus a few times, battling furze bushes and muddy pathways that threatened to subside at any minute, in the dark, all with the on-campus stragglers looking on at us in amusement.

I've fallen behind a bit by missing classes, what with exams, placements and being sick and all that, but now I'm catching up again. I don't really care if I'll ever become good enough to use it effectively in real life, but the artistic aspect of it appeals to me. Also, I recently got a refund of tax I overpaid last summer, and I used this to pay for my suit for the class. So soon, I shall be sporting a black-with-red-piping outfit, which will strike TERROR into the hearts of anyone who dares to voice dissent against me, and people will come to FEAR my ability to kill at will.

Yeah right.

Sussex Beer Festival on Thursday night, at Hove Town Hall. I'm such a model of discipline.

Boots SUCK!

I am sitting here typing this with a red mist of rage in front of my eyes. Here is why.

Quite some time ago, I applied for a position on the Boots summer 2007 placement programme. The company now specify that if you want to do your pre-reg year (your first year post-graduation) with them, you must satisfactorily complete an 8-week summer placement with them between the third and fourth year of your course. The shower of cunts make no bones about the fact that they treat it like an extended interview, as if hiring a graduate straight out of a rigorous and demanding course presents a substantial risk on their part if they have no direct Boots experience, and it has recently become standard corporate policy that whichever store you do your summer placement in, that's where you'll also do your pre-reg. It's all part of standard corporate policy to get the costs associated with human resource management down. Right down. Down to the absolute bare fucking minimum and to hell with the students themselves.

I applied for a Boots summer placement while I was in the second year of this degree, last year. My main selling point was my first year results: I'd got a 2.1, and I spent a lot of time on the application and got it in well before the deadline. I heard nothing back for ages, and in the end, I received a rejection only because I e-mailed them, badgering them for a response. I since found out that some people in my class had been made offers. The secret to their success? They'd worked with Boots before, mainly during the college year, as counter assistants. Once they'd got their foot in the door, they were first in line to be considered for the placements that counted later. In short, getting a pre-reg with Boots depends on you getting a previous summer placement with Boots, which in turn depends on you being lucky enough to get a job with them prior to that (by whatever means possible, because the ongoing low-end jobs are no doubt more accessible to those who know the right people). It's pure nepotism and it fucking stinks!

I applied for Boots again this year. Once again, I was early. Once again, I heard nothing for ages, while certain classmates of mine who had worked with them before were quick to receive notification of offers in locations that were their first or second choice.

Boots got back to me today at about 3:30pm by e-mail, with an offer of a placement. In Wick. Fucking Wick!

For those of you who don't know where this is - and I didn't, until I looked it up on Google - it's almost right at the tip of the United Kingdom, relatively near John O' Groats. I asked for somewhere roundabout the South East, where Brighton is, and I got somewhere that couldn't be much more north.

Not only that, but they have given me until 9am tomorrow to reply to them. If I didn't have work this evening, I'd likely have either gone home, or gone into town and not checked my mail until tomorrow, and by then it would have been too late. Oh, and they've attached two documents, which I must fill out with reference details and reattach them when I reply.

The options open to me now are:

1. Tell them to stick their offer up their arse.

The most tempting option. They've very obviously prioritised me at the bottom of the pile, and for them to give me less than 24 hours to consider this offer is taking the extreme piss.
'We aim to meet your prferences (sic) and the offer is the best match we can make between the information you have given and the placements we have available' they told me in the mail. Loosely translated, this means 'We have given summer placements to all the people who have previously been pulled into Boots by their parents, and now we have a few dumps left, which we may as well give to the rest, in case our current crop of little darlings realise what a shower of wankers we are and decide not to work for us after they graduate'.

Unfortunately, this chain is all over the UK and Ireland like a rash right now, and it wouldn't benefit my career to start limiting who I work for before I even graduate.

2. Politely decline, explaining why.

Again, reducing my options before I know what else is on the table. Just supposing I couldn't get work anywhere else for the summer? I'd either end up in the Co-op supermarket in Kemptown for the summer, or worse, back in Mallow with my parents and no money. That way lies suicide.

3. Accepting for the moment, until a better offer comes along.

This looks like the best option. I might get a placement in a hospital in Brighton or snag a job in a pharmacy that's within commuting distance from here, and if I got one of those, I could just write back something along the lines of 'Sorry, but due to circumstances entirely within my control, I'm leaving you in the lurch'. Or something.

Bitching apart, this is what happens in all corporations once the number of applicants for something exceeds the number of jobs. Rather than genuinely screen out the worthy applicants, the company just takes the laziest, most risk-free, cost-effective way out, regardless of whether it'll benefit them in the long run or not. I'm not overtly depressed. I'd never have stayed with them anyway, I'd have just used them to get experience and then set up my own place, but it would have been handy from a money point of view.

Oh well, fingers crossed something better presents itself.

Uuuurrgggh!

The weekend was great. Sarah Al came down with her flatmate to see me, and because she knew I was down to my last tenner, paid for everything. Big Hugs doing to ya and Mark, babe!

Yesterday was interesting. I had a gentleman caller, who shall remain known as Hot Rob, over to my place, and a hot sweaty session was had.

But now? NOW?? I've been laid up in bed ALL DAY as a horrible virus has invaded my system (and that of my flatmate's as well. I wonder which one of us brought it into the house?)

Lemsips, Lockets, hacking coughs and sniffles are what I have to put up with now.

BAH!

Hooray!

I got the results of two clinical assessments back today (one of them being the controlled-drug exam I blogged about before), and I aced them both!

There will be other assessments before the end of the year is out, but these were quite substantial, and now that I've done well in them, a decent end-of-year mark is within the realm of possibility.

Whew...

Bear411 Bitchfest

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The weekend

It's been mental.

After the placement finished on Friday, I went into town to meet my parents, who had flown over for Dan's wedding, and the weekend kicked off from there.

After a night of making g&ts for MizzFlee (and myself!) I fell home at about 5am saturday morning. I rose at lunchtime, beautified myself and hotfooted it into town. From there, my parents and I went to the wedding service in Hove.

Shitty weather notwithstanding, the service was very nice. One of the readers of the gospel enunciated everything with great stridency and drama, and as a result made it sound a bit more interesting, there were little children singing and playing wind instruments (a tuba or french horn? I'm not sure) and the organist played only an accompaniment, leaving it to us to actually sing. This last exercise was performed with various degrees of success with different people: I hadn't a clue, so completely ballsed it up, but everyone else seemed to know what they were doing.

After the parents and I had gone off to get something to eat after, we returned to the reception. There we found the groom, and for once the bride, nicely trolleyed. After a while, I had caught up to them. Meeting the others from the stag night was also a good laugh.

At the end of the night, a small group of us headed on the long walk home. I eventually got a taxi (I think) and got home at the not too outrageous hour of 3:30am.

Sunday saw me get up and meet the parents again, get something to eat and then go home. Monday saw me run into college in a panic to finish an assignment that was due in at 5pm that day (A+! Yay!), and then meet my parents for food again. Can you see the pattern that is emerging? I was certainly well-fed while they were here. I then dragged them to the Dragon to meet one or two of the beeyatches of BN2. Once they had gone home, I went to the Bulldog. And stayed there until 2.

Today, I saw Ma and Pa off on the train to the airport, and then headed over to college to do another clinical assessment.

Now it's back to normality and poverty and studying. And Kung Fu, which I haven't been at for about 3 weeks. It's on in 10 minutes. Wish me luck...

Thank Crunchie it's friday.

The placement was more shit than shinola.

The commute to the hospital was 2 hours each way, with two stop changes along the way. The hospital was uninspiring, being out in the middle of nowhere, and consisting of wards that were, in the main, occupied by the elderly. And the pharmacist I was assigned to was more than a little indifferent to the work I had to do while I was there (and then had the cheek to tell me at the end of the week that while the university might chase after me to get work done, it wasn't how things were done there!).

On Thursday, I left the house for the railway station at the required time of 7am, to find everywhere carpeted with snow. Naturally, the public transport system, which seemed not to have a contingency plan in place for this kind of thing, was disrupted. On that day, I got about halfway towards my destination, and then it was matter-of-factly announced over the intercom that we would be staying put until further notice, as there was a fire after breaking out in the tunnel ahead. The train was crammed full of pre-teen brats on their way to school, and they erupted in cheers.

If ever the makers of Levonelle or Dianette wanted footage for a marketing campaign, they couldn't do much better than film what it was like to share a morning train with these little shits for the entire week.

We were herded off the train, onto a bus provided at short notice, and then back onto the train again once it was discovered that everything had been sorted out. This put me in the best of form for the rest of the day.

I had to copy down five prescriptions from the pharmacy files. I did this, often in front of the pharmacist I was with, but at the end of the week, she wouldn't stamp them to verify I had done it at the hospital. She said she would have to verify them on the computer, as I 'could have got them from anywhere'. She wouldn't support me with the taking of a drug history (a bit of a necessity in this case, as most of the patients were old or confused). And finally, when I did a presentation on a patient at the end of the week to a group of pharmacists - most of the information collected with the bare minimum of help from her - she focused only on its bad points, leaving it to the other pharmacists to point out that I had at least laid out the presentation well, and was comprehensive in my coverage.

I would have haggled with her over certain things, but by the end of the week, all I wanted to do was get away from that hospital and her, so I just left. I was quite cold towards her at the end, but I couldn't help myself, and she won't be getting a positive review from me when I hand in my placement feedback form next week.

So that's it. My placement over for the year. If she gives a report of 'unsatisfactory' back to the university, I'll go back out there and divest her of her head.

All of this is unfortunate, as I had planned on doing at least one year of clinical work after I leave college, but now I'm wondering if I'd be better off just making tracks for a drug company instead, and making my money there. I'll see. Time will tell how things pan out.

Dan and Junes' wedding tomorrow. Woo hoo!

The Weekend

It's been a bit mental, but great. Last night saw me at Dan's stag night, which saw us first in a bowling alley, then in a all-you-can-eat chinese buffet, and finally back at the organiser's flat. One of the guys there had a vinyl collection that went back to the Velvet Underground and the decks were spun all night. It was a great way to end the night (clubbing was wisely ruled out early on) and some of the songs took me right down memory lane. Then there were others (Bauhaus, Gang of Four) that I had never got around to listening to before.

I finally forced myself to leave in the small hours, getting home at 7am this morning. For all I know, they could still be at it now. Getting up at 12 for work was a barrel of laughs, of course, and now I'm sitting here with a microbiology report to do that must be finished by 8pm this evening, if I'm to get it handed in on time tomorrow (and of course the one day that I need it to be quiet in here, a domineering woman keeps monopolising my time and making me show her how to print out documents in the most awkward way possible).

I have my hospital placement all of this coming week, which I expect will be more than a little challenging. Please God it goes well.

My parent are coming over for Dan's wedding on Friday coming (the occasion itself is on Saturday) so that should be interesting.

Roll on the end of the week, that's all I'll say...

A wedding photo

My niece and I at my brother's wedding. More will be forthcoming when I get them.

Geometry

When you are locking lips with the man of your choice in your local pub, the stance you adopt has long been established: Opposite and facing one another.

But what happens when you are playing tonsil tennis with more than one beau at a time? The solution lies in the power and beauty of mathematics.

If there are three of you altogether, you each should occupy one of the vertices of an equilateral triangle, aim towards the centre, and tongues away!

Euclid, eat your heart out.

In the (even better) event that there are four players in the game, you should each occupy the corners of a square, again aiming towards the centre.

In the extremely rare - and even more pleasurable - instance that there are five protagonists in the drama, each of hot n' hairy bears needs to occupy one of the five vertices of a pentagon, and once again lean towards the middle.

In the case of six, seven, or even EIGHT burly beasts playing this game, it can be shown that you should perform the same with the corners of a hexagon, heptagon, or octagon, respectively, though I can't (yet!) say that I have had experience with these numbers in that context.

However, it is best if the feat is not followed by either - or both - of the following:

1) All of them disappearing as soon as you have gone to the bathroom, in spite of your best efforts to bring them all back to a location of your choice.

2) You leaving your jacket out of sight for a while, and then when returning home (under a black cloud, because you thought you were going to have the night of your life, only to have iced water poured on the whole thing at the last minute) you discover that your phone is no longer in said jacket.

BAH!

Things I have to stop doing when I'm drunk #55,368,792

Running around asking everyone if they share my opinion on how hot a straight guy of our mutual acquaintance is.

Well, thank CHRIST!

The current wave of exams is over, and apart from a few assessments I have to hand in over the coming weeks, I'm finished with them for a while. I celebrated by going on a bender from hell yesterday, which saw me get home in the small hours of this morning.

Well, at least I was able to stand at the end of the night, which is more than can be said for some of the people I was out with. Now I'm at work though, with my head on the desk again, and I'm supposed to be going to Kung Fu tonight.

The Medicinal Chemistry exam wasn't as bad as it could have been, thankfully.

Once I've shaken this hangover, I'm going to go out and do something I haven't been able to do in a while without feeling guilty: Head to St. James' street and get me some COCK!

I HATE exams

I had a controlled-drug dispensing exam this morning.

Only someone who has done, or has to do, one of those can appreciate what a minefield they can be. You leave out the most tiny, seemingly insignificant detail when submitting your supporting paperwork, and you get a big fat zero. I narrowly avoided making some mistakes, correcting them at the last minute, and then ran at top speed from the post-mortem that was conducted by the other students outside aftwards.

I don't feel too bad about this, but gut feelings are useless when it comes to this kind of exam, as there is no sliding scale. You either get full marks, or nothing.

And just to put me in good spirits, I had a rather unexpected dose of the runs just before I was due to go in. I think I need to take stress management classes.

(Though it must be said, having hot sex with a beefy muscle-bound guy the day before helped, even if the timing might have been a bit ill-advised)

The results aren't out for over a month, which is just fine by me. Ignorance, for the moment, is bliss.

Next week: Medicinal Chemistry exam. Now where are those razor blades?

Gawd ALMIGHTY!

Got back into the swing of things by staying up until nearly 1am last night, finishing off a report for a lab we had earlier that day. A lab that ended with an MCQ exam.

The deadline for applying for a summer placement with Lloyds Pharmacy was midday today. I had a 4 hour class this morning, so I resolved to go in early and try and get the application done first. Sleeping through the alarm this morning and waking up half an hour late didn't help, and now I've missed that boat. The only consolation is that the 4 hour class this morning was a mock exam in dispensing controlled drugs, a very difficult one to pass, and I managed to pass muster. If I play my cards right, in a week, I'll be qualified (almost) to give out morphine, methadone, valium, and the like.

I have another shitty bio lab next Monday.

On the Wednesday, I have the controlled drug exam.

The Thursday of the following week, I have another exam, an end-of-module one.

I could certainly do with some morphine, methadone, or valium now...

Well, FUCK IT!

The christmas tree is down in the Ryan household, the decorations put away, and the last of the presents have been handed over.

How do I know this, seeing as I should be in Gatwick airport by now? Three guesses and the first two don't count.

This is just the cherry on the cake of my day.

The flight has been rescheduled for tomorrow at 12:55pm. It can't come soon enough.

I hate this time of year

The Dutch are gone. We saw them off at the airport yesterday. I took a picture of them all with my parents before they headed through the departure gate.

It looks sort of ropey - I still don't know what I'm doing when it comes to my parent's digital camera - but it's the first we've got of them all in a while so it has sentimental value.

Once they had gone through the departures gate, they waved from the other side. I took a picture of that too, only to have a security guard (alas, not a hot one) coming straight for me. He made me delete the picture I had just taken in front of him, or else I would have had to give up the camera. Thankfully he left the rest alone. My father got ratty and asked him if he thought we were terrorists.

Now I have nothing to look forward to except a very shitty January, laden down with exams. Normally I'm optimistic about heading back to Brighton. This time, Urrgggh. Even the prospect of hot n' horny no-strings fun doesn't have quite the same allure.

Well, maybe...

My brother's wedding and New Year's Eve.

It was a day to remember. For different reasons.

On Saturday, both my brother-in-law and my Dad were sick. My brother-in-law particularly so, but his bug proved to have a short life, and by sunday, he was more or less ready to go. My father was a different story.

Ever since my father had a bypass operation for his heart 3 years ago, he's been a lot more careful about his health. Add to this the fact that his skills at social prioritising were never the best - to invent a random and arbitrary term that only goes someway towards describing his problem - and he has sometimes passed on attending things that really required his presence.

This wedding, believe it or not, was one of them.

He aired the notion of staying away on Saturday night, and it was met with no small amount of hostility, so he appeared to backtrack. However, on Sunday he was adamant. My sister was raging, as she was of the opinion that as he was on a course of antibiotics, going to the wedding wasn't a big risk, and that he would need to be on death's door to consider missing it anyway. Initially, he said he would go to the reception, and sleep in the room that he had booked in the hotel. He backed out of this later, and decided to stay at home. Needless to say this was not taken well. My mother was quite upset on the morning and if it wasn't for a couple of the neighbours offering moral support, she may never have gotten out of the house at all. My brother appeared to shrug it off, but as was pointed out by my sister, it was always my father he got on best with, so he had to have been disappointed.

We got on with it, asking one of the neighbours to check in on him regularly, and deciding to phone him every so often.

The church ceremony was nice, with a guy playing an acoustic guitar throughout, instead of the usual organ stuff. Having little to do other than direct people to their seats, I was able to relax after a while. Well, after I had read my prayer of the faithful, which I was given only minutes before the service started.

After the ceremony was over, we mingled outside and met a few relatives that I hadn't seen in a long time. It was nice, I hardly recognised some of them, and of course most of them didn't recognise me. After that, we headed to straight to the Silver Springs hotel in Cork and once I got in the door I descended on the free sparkling wine that was provided in the foyer. After that it was into the reception room to sit down to our meal.

It was then that things got a bit more interesting. Because our father was absent, it was decided that I would take his place at the top of the table. It was also decided, not long before the speeches were to start, that I would have to say a few words on his behalf. I was momentarily assailed by waves of terror, but I got it together. By the time my turn came, I'd had a few glasses of wine and was full of my own importance. After being handed the microphone, I started off inauspiciously, but then decided to improvise.

"Paul and Claire's relationship reminded me of Cathy and Heathcliff's in Wuthering Heights", I declared to Claire's bemusement, "but we've got a happy ending in this one". Falling in love with the sound of my own voice, I continued: "There have been quite a few contenders over the years for who would be my sister-in-law", to which the whole place gave a big 'Ooooooh!', "but I'm glad Claire has become the one".

Once I had called a toast and sat down again, I felt as if I had been a bit artless, but everyone seemed to like it, although my brother-in-law said that it was a bit like the Italian Job: I went right to the edge and then braked.

The rest of the night was a blur. The white wine that my glass was constantly being topped up with was maybe the best I've ever had, and I partook liberally. After a while I ended up buzzing around talking to loads of different people and giving one or two men the eye. One such example was my step-brother, the son of my brother's birthmother (my brother was adopted). He had acquired a beard since I saw him last, and was looking distinctly wolfish. Sample: "Matthew, as my step-brother, it would be WRONG to say that you look distinctly doable with your current look. Very wrong indeed". To which he guffawed. Then there was another bloke. He looked at me with fear in his eyes.

The night finished well. I found out that two people I had always liked were now engaged ("Catherine and Peds! Paul and Claire may have been my Cathy and Heathcliff, but ye were always my Romeo and Juliet! Oh, and make SURE you send me an invite to the wedding!") and I rang in the new year by hugging just about every one of the 300-odd people who attended. Then there was an indie disco (Gotta love that category) where we took a trip down memory lane moshing like madmen to Smashing Pumpkins, Nirvana, The Sultans of Ping FC, and God knows what else.

After that, I went to see about which room I was in. It transpired that my parents hadn't booked me into one after all, even though they'd said they'd had, so I ended up having to wake up one of my cousins at about 4am and sleep on the floor in their room.

The morning rise was horrendous. My cousin woke me, saying that my mother was downstairs waiting for me and was driving home in 10 minutes. I stood up, racked with the mother of all hangovers, and staggered into the bathroom. Once it became apparent that I wasn't going to puke there and then, I put on my jacket and shuffled downstairs, shirt still open halfway down my chest. I went to the bar and met one of the tenders from the night before, with a big smirk on his face. "Orange Juice", I slurred. "Certainly", he replied. I annhilated it in under 2 seconds.

I got a drive home and once our destination was reached, I got into bed and slept for a few glorious hours.

Looking back on the whole thing, it was quite a success. I had wondered what it would be like having very few of my friends there, as they didn't really know my brother well enough to come, and had their own plans anyway, but it ended up for the best, as they ended up in different locations, scattered throughout the region. This has been as good a new year's as any I've ever had.

The one major fly in the ointment was, with the crisis of my father not coming, my mother and I forgot to bring the digital camera. The evening has been well documented, as loads of others brought theirs, it just means I don't have any decent pictures immediately to hand to put up here. It's a shame. Apart from anything else, I wanted the world to know what I looked like with a dickie bow and a tux with tails. Perhaps if they're forthcoming from other people.

On reflection, my brother's friends, a bunch I didn't always believe would be the most focussed of people, really came through for him, and I really didn't have that much involvement at all. I still have kind of mixed feelings about this. My brother was the black sheep of the family for quite some time when he was younger, and this may explain why, even now, that his friends seem to enjoy a place in his life that is at least - if not more than - of equal importance than his immediate family. My mother had asked me over Christmas if we still got on, and the truth is he can still be slightly hard to take sometimes. Having said that, I was still paying attention to how much our immediate family was involved over the day. It shouldn't have bothered me, it certainly didn't when my sister got married 10 years ago, maybe I'm just being a bit paranoid. He asked one of his long-term friends to be the best man (thank God his speech came after mine, so he could put my Wuthering Heights reference into context), and I never heard anything about his stag party in Hamburg. But that may have been because I think I once said that I wouldn't be able to afford it, studying in Brighton as I am.

He and his wife are now en route to their honeymoon. They flew to Gatwick today. They had no idea where they were going after that, they were just going to jump on a cheap flight and head somewhere warm. Not a bad idea at all...

So that's it. Major event of the year over for us. Back down to earth with a bang. Bah!

Yum!

The song isn't half bad either.

The Dutch have arrived

There are around twenty aryan-looking people squashed around our dining room table, all yabbering at each other.

My mother woke me at the ungodly hour of 9:30 this morning, telling me she was off to the airport to meet the relatives. "There are 18 bread rolls out in the kitchen", she declared. "I want them all buttered and ready to be served when I get back. Be sure to heat up the two huge saucepans of soup as well. That'll take at least half an hour". "Haven't you realised by now," I returned, "that anytime before 1pm is not good for me".

"Tough titty. See you in an hour, and don't you dare go back to sleep".

God above, the things I have to deal with.

So things (and my mother along with them) are only going to get more frantic between now and Sunday.

As an aside, my father's broadband provider is really starting to do my head in. The most harmless of sites are blocked, being categorized as sex sites or occult sites (never heard of the latter rating in content filters before) and they can only be temporarily unblocked for upto 8 hours. It's not that big a deal, as since it was me that set up the connection, I know all the passwords for changing the settings, but it's more than a little irritating. The provider is gaelic.ie, set up in connection with the GAA of Ireland, and it's more than a little reflective of the values of its parent organisation. Newsflash, boys: youtube is not what anyone with half a brain would consider a sex site.

Ho ho ho

It's been a bit of a mixed bag.

Most of my family have come down with some illness or other in the last few days. We had Christmas dinner at my sister's this 25th, and in a particularly cruel irony, she herself was unable to taste it, having completely lost her sense of smell. I myself still had a bit of an earache on the day, but it's gone now. Yesterday was pretty good though, as I had rather a lot to drink last night and met loads of people who I hadn't seen since last Christmas and probably won't see until this time next year. I ended up at a house party, and got home at around 5am or something like that.

Some of the people I know don't have much of a sense of ceremony about going out at Christmas though, which is a bit annoying as when I come home, I'm generally raring to go. Or maybe it's the fact that every pub was packed to the rafters last night. Oh well...

My brother's wedding is on Sunday, and the dutch side of the family are all arriving at the airport tomorrow. My mother is catastrophising left, right and centre as she's still feeling a bit sick, and is worrying more than usual about getting better in time for the wedding. I can understand, but anytime I tell her to GO TO BED AND TAKE IT EASY she dismisses it, saying she has too much to do, and ignores any offers we make to do things for her. There's nothing like a couple of obstacles being thrown in my mother's path to send her into a full-blown panic, and she is not one to suffer in silence.

Because of the wedding, Christmas has taken a bit of a back seat this year for us. None of us bothered to try and surprise each other with regard to presents. I got my brother a CD and kept the receipt so he can change it if he wants. I asked for Armistead Maupin's Tales From the City, which I've heard good things about. My father has just given it to me. All three of the titles.

So roll on Sunday. Thanks be to God I don't have to do any speeches. Thank God.

At home again

I'm at home, since last Saturday, the 16th.

Little did I know that as I began my descent into Cork, events were taking place in my left eardrum that would lay the foundation for a very unpleasant couple of days ahead.

At the start of this week, a pain had appeared in my left ear. Attempts to disinfect with olive-oil-soaked cotton wool balls failed miserably, and a couple of days later, I was unable to sleep, such was my agony. I also found it very difficult to have conversations with people who were anywhere in the vicinity of my left side, or watch films on TV at night, such was the deafness that had taken hold in my left ear. I hauled myself off to the doctor, and he prescribed a five-day course of amoxycillin. He also recommended an over-the-counter lotion with a dropper that you use to put the liquid into your ear. I used this once, and shortly afterwards, the entire left side of my head felt like it was going to explode, so I'm not continuing with that one.

So that's it. Antibiotics over Christmas. Which means very little alcohol (I don't think alcohol is advised against when taking amoxycillin but there's NO WAY I'm running the risk of that pain making a reappearance. I'm only just about back to normal now).

In other news, my parents are starting to embrace the 21st century. I came home to see a widescreen LCD tv in the sitting room. There was also a broadband router AND DVD/VCR combi waiting to be setup. My parents can be quite clever about these things. They buy them just before Christmas, when they know I'm coming home, and then don't touch them until I'm in the door, knowing they can count on me to do it all.

But thank GOD. Mallow may still suck compared to Brighton, but it's a bit more bearable now.

That bear I was supposed to meet on Friday before I left Brighton texted and cancelled at the last minute, so an opportunity for hot gratuitous sex was lost to me. Perhaps in the new year...

The preparations for the wedding grind on. Like a lot of women in such a position, the bride-to-be has turned into a bit of a psychopath, and has already fallen out with, and subsequently replaced, the two bridesmaids that she had lined up. They had been friends for almost 20 years. That's enough of a catastrophe. Hopefully there won't be any more.

In other news, I've been helping my mother type up a list of dutch recipes given to us by our relatives across the pond. The relatives had tried translating the recipes using an online translation tool, but had come up with some truly hilarious results. Pigs Head stuffed with cheese had come up as (fnar fnar) Head Cheese, and my favourite, Water-based Gruel had come up as 'Water Horror'. An interesting name for a horror film, that one would be. Anyway, it's done now, so my brother the chef will be getting a bound book of traditional dutch recipes as one of his wedding presents. He'd better apprecitate it.

Now I have to go and help my mother polish silver.

(P.S. I know I've been getting really bad at regular updates. I promise I'll try and keep you all scintillated over Christmas. Ta ra)

The Cock

I haven't written about any trysts with men for some time now, mostly because at the time I couldn't be bothered. But then I thought, well, half the reason I started this blog was to record them. So. An update.

It's either feast or famine when it has come to the men in my life lately, but I appear to be in the middle of a feast at the moment. It's about time.

Daffy hasn't been on the scene for a while now. It's a shame. As much as I know he's not boyfriend material, having one of his own already, he's still fun to be around. Oh well, maybe I'll see him around.

There was that time recently where I went out with Dan and June to celebrate the anniversary of their first date. Once that finished, I headed into the Bulldog and netted myself a man. As we headed back to his, he announced that he had a boyfriend. "Where is he?" asketh I. "In prison" replied the object of my desires. "Cripes" said I, "what for?". "I don't really want to talk about it", respondeth he.

We had much fun, but I hope it wasn't GBH or murder his boyfriend was in for, otherwise I may have to flee the country when he gets out.

On sunday night, I arranged to rendez-vous with a smouldering polar bear in the Star Inn. I thought we'd have time to go back to his after our drink, but he had to move on and meet other friends, though I might be able to pencil him in before I head back to Ireland on Saturday.

After he'd left, reinforcements were summoned, and I ended up staying for a few more. The Star has now set up its own playroom. As most of the crowd there weren't taking advantage of the opportunity, I waited until a burly person I've had my eye on went in there, and I followed him in. Some fun was had.

After that, I went to the Bulldog, and after a while, I made eye contact (and then mouth contact very quickly after that) with a hot skin bear. Locked in a passionate embrace, we took turns to pin each other against the wall. We're meeting at mine on Friday after lectures at about 3pm. I'm looking forward to it, and he's well-endowed, apart from anything else. Of course, as luck would have it, he's in a relationship, albeit an open one. Oh well...

Then there's Nuclear Physics Bear, who I'm still in touch with. We've been sending each other filthy texts lately, and now that I've got a camera phone, saucy pictures as well. One of them is currently being used as wallpaper on my phone. He hasn't been back to Brighton since Pride this summer, but there might be some potential there. He's single, at least.

Dying

I went out to an event organised by one of my classmates last night. It was for the kickboxing club, but the way it worked out, half my class was there.

A special arrangement had been made with the bar that they would only charge £1 for certain drinks (bottles of Fosters and vodka/cokes). By the end of the night we were all hammered (especially me. Surprise!) and cutting a serious rug on the dancefloor.

Unfortunately what goes up must come down, and now I am sitting at work with my head in my hands.

Please kill me...

Nnnnnggghhh!

Disaster, and shoddy landlords, seem to follow me at every turn.

It has been about two months now since we moved into our house in Staplefield Drive, near the university. After ironing out a few discrepancies, everything between me and the others in the house is now going fine. The house itself is not.

We found out not long after moving in that the previous tenants had left quite the trail of destruction after them. One of them was a drug dealer, and once the special branch of the police had gotten wind of this, they raided the house, SWAT team style. Everyone who had happened to be there at that time found themselves being forced face-down onto the floor and their hands cuffed behind their backs. It appears that none of the others in the house knew about their rogue housemate's activities and by the time the team descended, he was gone.

One thing we noticed in the aftermath of all of this was that there was a raft of unpaid bills left behind these people. One would expect a decent landlord worth his salt to have all that sorted before we moved in, but no. That was left to us. Sorting out the £300 gas bill wasn't too much of a problem, relatively speaking, although it still took a while. The landlord gave a meter reading to one of the housemates, and I (eventually, as I didn't know he had it) got it off him. So now that's done. The electricity has turned out to be a different kettle of fish entirely.

The electricity is managed by a pre-payment meter, which basically means you top it up in advance of using it, like using a pay-as-you-go mobile phone. We found, when we moved in, that once we topped up the meter, it was counting down our credit a lot quicker than it should have been. The landlord and his lackey fobbed us off, telling us that we must have been using high-drain appliances a lot, but we knew this was bullshit. A lot of phonecalls later, and I found out that the meter was incorrectly programmed (to recover debt from the last tenants, I think) and it was indeed deducting too much from us. More phonecalls to the suppliers later, and I was given a list of instructions on how to correct this. Basically, I've been sent a new electronic key in the post. I have to use this key in the same shop the next three times I top up the meter. A bit convoluted, I think you'll agree, but I went along with it.

This afternoon, I went along to the grocery store to put money on the key, and then went home and stuck this key into the meter to transfer credit to it. The meter responded by displaying a single message.

'No'.

I put in the old key we had been using all along. 'No'.

There is only 44p left in the meter, which should see us into the small hours of the morning, before our electricity is cut off, and I currently have no way of increasing it. I'm going to ring the supplier's emergency helpline in a minute...

Part 2: I've just got off the phone, and the monuments of incompetence at British Gas Electric kept me on the phone for twenty minutes (bang went £2 of airtime credit) and couldn't even find the computer records for our address. I'm going home now. Two of the others in our house have contract phones, so I'm going to use them in an effort to try and iron this out. Stay tuned for the sorry saga...

Part 3: I've come back from the house and am now in the library. I've made I don't know HOW MANY phone calls, and finally found out that I have to buy ANOTHER key (£8) at a participating outlet. I was told this at about 8pm. All participating outlets had by then closed. I told the moron on the phone that we had only 17p left on the meter. She assured me that as a a safety measure, meters don't cut out the power supply at night. They wait until 9am the following morning. The gibbering fool was mistaken. About half an hour later, the meter clocked down to zero, and the entire house was promptly plunged into darkness. I have to wait until I can go to a 'participating outlet' in the morning (6am) before I can (hopefully) restore the power supply.

My phone credit is down from £7 this afternoon to the £1.50 it is now.

I have a report to hand in tomorrow.

Oh, and the university messed up my wages transfer, and I have not been paid for the work I did last month. I have £10 to my name.

I hate the world...

I have formed the definitive criterion for finding out what I call the 'monkey rating' of a landlord. I've dealt with quite a few in my time, and have thought about the differences in personality and competence of a lot of them.

Put bluntly, if your landlord's career comes under the heading of 'unskilled labour' or 'semi-skilled labour', hang on tight, boys, you're in for a bumpy ride. Prime examples of this class of people (oh, contradiction in terms) are bricklayers, plumbers, electricians, or any other kind of people involved in the building trade. Having worked in construction for some time, they've cottoned onto the fact that property can make for a good investment and, gathering their similarly inclined handymen around them so they can have a go at doing it themselves on the cheap, they decide to give it a shot. Unfortunately, once they start renting it out to their victims, the lack of skills required to organise a piss-up in a brewery become apparent.

Also not very encouraging are those who have inherited their property, or who have come by it in a way that they normally would not. Guards or other civil servants can also be a bit troublesome.

I think the quality one needs to look for in a landlord is whether he has the means to come by the money to buy the property without borrowing heavily and banking on the tenants covering the repayments. The best landlords I had were ones who had good careers anyway, and didn't need to invest in property to start bumping up their assets. They were also organised enough to get things sorted when it was necessary, without us having to harass them for weeks to get them to do it.

I've thought about property as an investment when I graduate. If some of these idiots I've rented from can do it, anyone can.

Casino Royale

Well, I came, I saw, I enjoyed.

Trying hard to forget that I had just paid £3 for a carton of popcorn that would have cost me 50p if I had been organised enough to buy it in a shop, I headed into screen 4 of Brighton CineWorld on Wednesday night.

Spoilers follow.

As I've previously said, I've never really been a fan of this franchise, and have only ever seen them when I've nothing better to do. Still, the amount of people who take seriously what is ultimately a load of fluff... oh well. One thing I've come across in some people so far is the conviction that Seán Connery was the original Bond. It speaks volumes for Connery's acting ability that he got famous off the back of what was essentially a bit of escapist bubblegum. Mediocre actor, mediocre films, match made in heaven, and yet he gets to be the benchmark by which all other subsequent Bonds are judged. Whatever.

Cheese has always been a problem with the Bond films in the past. Chat up lines, martinis, introductions, female leads, eyes rolling skyward inside of five minutes of the start of the film, you get the picture. This was different. Straight from the opening, it was obvious that the director was not going down the route tried and tried again. The flashback to the fight scene in the toilet was interestingly rendered, and when the theme song kicked off, I noticed a familiar timbre in the singer's voice. My hunch was right, ex-Soundgarden singer/songwriter/instrumentalist Chris Cornell was listed as singer and co-songwriter on the opening credits. My only trouble was working out if this shows that the Bond franchise was moving up in the world, or if Chris was moving down.

Other things that jumped out at me during the film was the opening sequence, which was more kinetic, and yet still more realistic than what I've seen in other Bonds, M's wit ("If an agent did something that embarassing before, he usually had the good sense to defect. God, I miss the cold war!"), and the scene with the camera effects where he's in the hotel bathroom, desperately trying to hold it together after being drugged. Also, the usual outlandishly far-fetched slew of gadgets was mercifully absent, save for a bucketload of product placement for Sony.

Then there's Daniel Craig.

It has been debated by everyone from Jonathan 'Woss' to 007 anoraks as to whether Craig is good enough to step into the shoes of the character. Well, if the ability to ham your way through an entire feature and take yourself seriously to a ludicrous extent in the process is a prerequisite, then Craig fails. If getting himself across as a hard-nosed hitman with a presence all of his own is the thing, then hats off, because he's pulled it off. Oh, and he looks great doing it. Much better than the other lot. That body. Mmmmmmm....

Otherwise the film is more or less the usual. An innocous subtext about a baddie trying to gamble his way out of debt to underworld crime lords is introduced, and I forgot it almost as soon as it was presented. As is often the case, the less than worthy one is afflicted with some physical malady to highlight further Bond's rugged manliness. There is also a near Road-To-Damascus experience where Bond falls in love and (almost) resigns from her majesty's secret service. However, the producers toward the end seem to adopt the philosophy of my flatmate - "No gadgets and he falls in love? Then it's not James Bond" - and all of that goes tits up. There are also a couple of knowing references to the original style, which grate more than anything else, and the last line does indeed cause me to, yes, roll my eyes towards heaven, but at least it was at the end.

So that's pretty much it. It's different, and there are worse ways to spend your time than watch it, even if it ultimately ends up paying tribute to the very style it helps revamp.

Now all they have to do is bring out a Daniel Craig blow-up doll in time for Christmas.

Ugh!

I hate Tuesdays, because they usually feature a big fat pharmaceutical chemistry lab that involves running around for up to six hours, competing with everyone else for analytical instruments, evaporators, bunsen burners, oh...everything. Today we did extraction and analysis of caffeine from tea-bags. The 0.02g sample of pure caffeine we ended up with did NOT seem worth all the effort, and now I will never look at a cup of Tetley's in the same way ever again.

I've moved this blog over to the Beta version. I'm not sure how it'll look until I publish, though I think the comments will disappear, according to what I've heard.

(Oh Yuk! AGAIN! Someone near me in the computer pool room keeps farting, and it's VILE!)

In other news, I have bought a new phone (complete with new number. The chosen ones will be notified of it as soon as I get around to it) so I am now free of the torment of having long text messages truncated, the earpiece cutting out mid-conversation (kind of defeats the whole purpose of having a phone, when you can't hear the person talking to you), and the power cutting out whenever the notion takes it. My new baby is a Sagem my501c. It's really rather dishy...

Nothing else to report, except I'm back drinking again, albeit a bit more sensibly. Oh, the willpower of a dying swan.

Oh James!

History has just been made. For the first time ever, I am prepared to sit through a James Bond film.

(Clue: The reason doesn't have much to do with the story)

Daniel Craig has the honour of being the only one of the 007 movie stars - one of the few male Hollywood stars, in fact - that I would like to disrobe. Seán Connery's accent killed stone-dead any presence he may have had, Roger Moore's arched eyebrow added to the camp factor but detracted from the oomph, and Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan hardly registered at all. Craig is something of a departure for me. He's not particularly big, he's not at all hairy, and he doesn't have a beard. Yet he has a certain something, and a big part of that something is his eyes.

I've never really paid attention to someone's eyes in the grand scheme of attraction before, but his are definitely out there. Then there is the body. I've always been a fan of muscle (what person who digs guys isn't?) and Craig has the best body of all the 007's.

I've always thought the films themselves to be vastly overrated piles of shit. Octopussy was half-decent only because of the female acrobatics, and only Grace Jones could add an interesting twist to that one, what was it called? Does anyone care? I went to see Goldeneye with my sister when it first came out, and as soon as Pierce Brosnan did that jumping-onto-the-aeroplane thing, I rolled my eyes, sat back in my seat, and waited for the rest without too much anticipation. For some reason, being chosen for the role of either Bond himself or a Bond girl is an honour. Why? You could be incapable of acting your way out of a paper bag and still pull it off. It's nothing more than a dodgy signpost of popular culture.

But anyway, I shall be going, if only for the above scene where he come out of the water, and another one where he's apparently in the shower.

One thing I heard in the midst of all this was how lots of people felt that Craig wasn't right for the job (if someone could please take a minute to explain to me what being 'right' for this entails, I would be very interested), and some of these pathetic miserable fools saw fit to send him hate mail after he was chosen for the part. Which only goes to show just how much something of little consequence can mean to someone who seriously fucking seriously needs to get a life!

Bleh!

I'm in college this morning, having gotten up for an 'class' that has no attendance requirement, i.e. you submit everything for it over the internet. I still have something to work on from last week, but I could've stayed in bed for another couple of hours instead of hauling myself into the shower at the ungodly hour of 7:30am.

Dublin and Mallow was cool, although travelling at weekends reminds me of cattle being herded into the milking machine enclosure, with the way we were all trying to squeeze through airport security. On my way back, the steel toe caps on my army boots set off the metal detector, and the security guy made me take off my boots and walk through again. My socks had holes in them. It wasn't half obvious. 'Nice stockings, bud' said he. 'Thanks', said I, 'It's the student lifestyle, dontchya know'.

There were a couple of things I noticed about Dublin that distinguishes it from Brighton.

1. Dublin appears to have only one focal point for everyone at the weekends. That of the Temple Bar and Dame Street area. Every lager lout and his mother converges on the city centre at the weekends, and it's impossible to get away from them. Brighton is more diffuse in that respect, attracting different kinds of people to different areas, and West Street is enough to draw the flies away from the honey and towards the shit.

2. In spite of the fact that nightclub closing times in Dublin are more staggered than Brighton, taxi queues at 2 in the morning are still insane. What the fuck is going on? You can come out of a club in Brighton at any time and not have to wait more than 10 minutes for a cab home.

3. The traffic, Oh My God. I got on a bus yesterday to get to the airport TWO hours before my flight. It took an hour to get from Connolly Station to Drumcondra, and by that stage I was panicking that at that rate, I was going to miss my flight. I made it, but there was a mass exodus from the bus as soon as it arrived. Obviously others were counting on arriving earlier than it actually did.

4. Nightclubs and drink prices. EIGHT FUCKING EURO I had to pay to get into Bad Bobs at about 10pm. OVER TEN BLOODY EURO for a pint and a shot of vodka: I handed the barman a tenner, he went to the till, and came back. I had my hand out for the change. Into it, he put the receipt for 10.70 and held out his hand for the rest.

My nephew's christening on Sunday was cool, and the plans for my brother's wedding continue on, though the bride appears to have turned into an animal and has already had a massive blowup with the bridesmaids, both of whom have been her friends since school. Anyway, I've been measured for a tux.

I also had a meeting with my bank manager when I was in Dub, and I felt a bit better coming away from it, as I had a complex about my current debt, but he assured me that, relative to others in similar circumstances, I was doing quite well.

Anyway, back to work. I've got a report to hand in, eyes closing or not.

Ugh!

I fell off the wagon last night and stayed out more than a little bit beyond my bedtime. Today, for my sins, I am dying.

If nothing else, it serves as a reminder why I'm cutting down. Well, that or the fact that I really need to make myself drink some water before I fall into bed when I get home.

Days 'til I go home: 5. Roll on Friday!

I toddled along to Kung Fu again tonight, replete with navy tracksuit pants and cut-up black t-shirt, so that I would blend in a little bit more than I did the last time. Then I saw another guy there, one who had been before, in a white t-shirt and casual pants and I realised I was giving it too much thought.

It was pretty back-breaking this time, with loads of stretching and contortion exercises, and my basic movements still need some work, but progress is being made, so it will be stuck with for the moment. One thing I'm struggling with now is something called the choo-goo-e-loo, a sequence of combat moves, quickly executed one after another. I covered the first quarter of it tonight, and of that, I can only safely remember half of it. Hopefully there's something out there on the 'net (If any kung fu enthusiasts have come across this blog in the last while - a snowball's chance in hell, I know - feel free to furnish me with any information you may have).

The sessions technically are only supposed to be one hour or so, but this one went to about two, as we had started early and there was no-one waiting to use the hall after our alloted time. Towards the end of the session, he had us gather around him while he spoke.

What started off as a lecture on technique and commitment rapidly mushroomed into something more substantial, and anyone hoping to make an early exit would have been more than a little bit put out. Amongst his assertions, which I'm not sure if I'll be taking as read just yet (and others I simply couldn't hear, thanks to the lousy acoustics of the sports court) was the declaration that the body only needs 4-6 hours of sleep a night, and the 8 hour recommendation is worthy only of rejection. I can only say that it would make for an interesting reaction if he found out about my slumber patterns.

Another bone of contention with him was the stress that society imposes on people, and how it's become every man for himself. He wouldn't be the first person to say that the world is going to hell in a hanging basket, but some of what he said, well, I'm feeling the need to examine it right now.

To follow the standard pattern of job/marriage/mortgage/kids is a one way ticket to stress:

Leaving aside the fact that getting a job is basically an absolute unless you have an enormous trust fund, opting out of the others purely for the sake of it isn't really the way to go. If you plan to have a family, or stay with your partner for life, marriage isn't the most stupid thing you could ever do. Mortgage repayments are basically not much different to rent payments, except you own your own property at the end of it. Lastly, having kids can be the right thing to do if you genuinely want them.

Get an education for the sake of it. Don't worry about getting a job, you'll get one if you really want one:

This is the kind of advice I would offer to anyone, save for one thing. No one person can take on an entire job marketplace. Simply put, if you study for a degree that isn't vocational, you have to accept that there will be a lot of people in the queue for a job afterwards, both in front of and behind you, and the person willing to work for the least money will set the wage offered for that job. If you read for a degree in an area where there are more jobs than graduates, you'll be able to pick where you work and for how much, when you can leave, and most importantly, who you work with.

Simply put, you have be able to distinguish yourself from others in a very positive way if you follow that edict. I would have liked to ask the master how much he's pulling in per year, to see how successful this theory of his has made him, but I don't think that would have been a good idea.

Having said all that, it's better to have opinions than not, and he seems like an interesting person, if more than a little frighteningly driven. But then, I could do with some of that rubbing off on me.

Haaaaiiiiii-YAH!

Well, I've just come from my first Kung Fu class, and it was pretty interesting.

I walked in, and felt more than a little uncomfortable in a t-shirt, jeans and runners when most of the other people had fancy martial arts outfits on. It didn't seem to matter, and we started off doing laps of the gym, running in various different ways. Having jogged for some time now, I usually find these circuits pretty easy, but the instructor incorporated these arm and leg movements into the running that made it a whole lot more challenging, and within a minute or two I was breaking a sweat.

After that, the main tutor turned up, and we got down to it. Everyone was put into one of two groups and got on with it, except ME. *I* was left standing in the middle of the gym while the tutor (sensei?) gave a talk, which does wonders for your composure when you're feeling self-conscious already. Eventually, I was paired up with a more experienced guy, and he taught me a few postures and punches. The postures are hard bloody work. One of them involves the position you adopt when sitting in a chair, except without the chair underneath you. Yes, dear reader, I fell on my arse quite a few times at the start, and I still haven't quite got the hang of it yet.

There was also the lovely moment where the tutor said we would all have to be able to do the splits by christmas. I felt like leaving when he said that. Oh well...

My attention to form and breathing from the days of doing weights came in handy though, and I managed to pick a few things up without too much bother. I'm definitely going back. It beats doing circuits in the gym. The 75 minutes was over before I knew it.

In other news, I'm going to see a college counsellor tomorrow. I don't feel as overwhelmed as I did when I was in the middle of the exams, but I still think I need to get my thoughts out into the open for examination. My attention span is as usual all over the place, and I could with some help on getting focused.

With a bit of luck and playing my cards right, I might be able to wrangle a Ritalin prescription, which I can use to help me study for hours on end and help net me a string of A's at the end of the year. Ha!

Dear Gawd

A few days ago, I noticed from the tv guide that Showgirls was on cable over the weekend. I had seen bits of it here and there at different times, but had never seen it all the way through before. I should've counted myself lucky, and left it at that. Reviewed on entertainment.ie as 'Abominable', 'little more than a masterclass in how not to make films', and - the part I like the most - 'has garnered a cult following based purely on its awfulness'. I was intrigued, and when its' time came on Saturday, I sat down to experience it.

The critics were being charitable.

I don't think I've ever come across a story so unconvincing in all my life (main girl meets other girl, in less than a minute the other girl decides to take main girl in, and they become friends: What the fuck is that about?) and the acting, oh Jesus, I wouldn't know where to start. However, where Verhoeven really takes the piss is in his depiction of women. Hint: His service in the Navy may serve as a clue.

He is quoted on Imdb.com as follows:

"As a director, my goal is to be completely open. Just look at how I portray sex in my films. They're considered shocking and obscene because I like to carefully examine human sexuality. It has to be realistic."

Bollocks. He likes to focus on female sexuality in his films, and by christ, is he ham fisted about it. Let's have a look (I'm ignoring anything before Robocop. I really don't give a shit about his pre-Hollywood history):

Robocop: Hardly any women at all. The only one, a police officer, is carefully selected to not be conventionally too pretty, which no doubt is a reflection of her inner honesty. The only other women who can be considered attractive are drug-addled call girls, who for some reason are spared when Miguel Ferrer's character gets blown up.

Total Recall: Attractive woman: Oversexed, hyperagressive corrupt agent (Sharon Stone) who takes to fighting or fucking at the drop of a hat. Understatedly pretty woman: A goodie, who eventually is involved in the killing of Sharon Stone (Rachel Ticotin), but whose femininity ensures she never really upstages our 'hero' Arnie. Tit count: Not much, though a woman with three breasts makes an appearance at one stage. A similarly mutated man is nowhere to be seen.

Basic Instinct: Hardly in need of an analysis, such is its notoriety, but for the first time, Verhoeven's misogyny is fully highlighted. Attractive woman: Oversexed, cocained-addled icepick-wielding homicidal maniac. Her sexuality is 'examined' through various carefully chosen shots of her in various stages of undress, one of which features her vagina, and in various positions during sex. Slightly masculine-looking woman with big hair: Surprise! A lesbian. She proves that she's all (wo)man by trying to run Michael Douglas's character off the road in her car, but losing and getting killed, 'cos everyone knows that chicks can't drive as well as guys. Curiously, her corpse shows the very minimum of blood on her face. Well, it's important to die looking fabulous, isn't it? Passibly attractive man (as long as he keeps his clothes on): Michael Douglas. Portrayed as basically a decent cop, whose weakness is his penis. He has a problem with the relationship between the two girls, nay any two girls, and at no stage throughout the film are we led to criticise this state of affairs. Tit count: Lots of breasts and girl-on-girl action. Male nudity: Restricted to a single shot of Michael Douglas's saggy arse. There is a pattern emerging here. Can anyone spot it?

After a particularly vigorous session with Stone in her bed, Douglas realises that Roxy is watching in the bathroom, and requests an audience with her 'man-to-man'. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it appears that Verhoeven likes to 'examine' lesbian sexuality on top of everything else. As it happens, the gay community took exception to this depiction of themselves in the film, and at the premiere of the film, they handed out cards which gave away the ending. They needn't have bothered: As a whodunnit it was shit anyway.

Showgirls: Attractive woman: Desperate for stardom, and will do anything to get it, such as disrobing completely even when the plot doesn't require it in the slightest. She's not alone though. There are lots of shots of the backstage area where the girls get ready before going on, and judging by the (un)dress of all the women there, the air-conditioning must have been in serious need of repair. As an aside, this area is also the backdrop for another of Verhoeven's pet devices: Catfights between women, and they are legion. Understatedly attractive woman: The 'moral backbone' of the film, who tries to keep attractive blonde woman on the straight and narrow, but in a gratuitous twist that serves no purpose to the plot whatsoever, she is raped. Of course, attractive blond goes around to rapist's house to avenge her, and in a scene not entirely dissimilar to one in Total Recall, Verhoeven 'explores' female assertiveness through her beating the daylights out of the perpetrator. Oh, and there's a bisexual woman in there too, but far from us being invited to empathise with her on any level, she's cast as a bitch. Tit count: More breasts than a porn compilation. Male nudity: Once more kept to a single shot of Kyle Maclachlan's arse, which to be fair, did look better than Douglas' in Basic Instinct.

Starship Troopers: Not much fun to be had here, as the film is so ridiculous, it almost take the piss out of itself, but adhering to our original criteria: Attractive, classy woman: Becomes a figher pilot in the war against the creepy crawlies, while her high-school boyfriend joins the marines 'cos he flunks maths. She decides to move onto better things and dumps him, beginning a relationship with another pilot, but always keeping her clothes on. Flame-haired junoesque woman: Begins relationship with jilted boyfriend, and we are treated to her nude form while they share communal showers. Her feistiness is demonstrated when she slaps him on the arse which is, again, the only naked wickedness we see from Casper Van Dien.

*Cough*, sorry, I went all Margaret White there for a minute...

Of course, classy bird realises what she's been missing (well, that and the fact that her other boyfriend's brains gets sucked out by the queen creepy crawly) and she ends up back with her original squeeze again. The error of one's ways, eh?

Hollow man: Attractive blond woman (Elizabeth Shue): Technically gifted scientist, who shares a bed with one of her male colleagues, but they keep it a secret from the rest of their research team, as they don't want her ex-squeeze and team member, scientist-come-nutjob played by Kevin Bacon, to know. All other women are incidental to her, though at one point Shue is slapped across the face by one of them, so that's one purpose served. Tit count: Just one, surprisingly enough, from unfortunate but attractive woman who falls victim to a visit from ol' Kevin himself. Verhoeven must be mellowing in his old age.

So there you have it. Tits - 50, Cocks - nil. Verhoeven gets assimilated into Hollywood, providing a uniquely noxious perspective on femininity into the bargain.

His attempts at science fiction are nifty enough, though. If only he'd stick to them.

As an aside, I remember a show a while back that featured critics discussing trends in modern cinema, and how emphasis was shifting from sex to shoot-em-ups, and this was the reason why Showgirls bombed, because Verhoeven failed to anticipate this. Sometimes, ladies and gentlemen, the simplest explanation works best. Showgirls flopped for the simple reason that...

IT WAS SHIT!

Christ, what a MONTH!

Well, I had another test on tuesday, and managed to redeem myself somewhat with the result. After 3 not unheavily-weighted assessments in the first month of the academic year, TWO of which centred on cardiac physiology, which was not formally taught in lectures, merely given as guided study, we now appear to have slowed things down somewhat. Thank God.

I'm going home for a break in two weeks time. It'll be needed. Friday 17th in Dublin and the rest of the weekend at home.

Alcohol is still being given a wide berth, though it's only been a week so I'm not about to congratulate myself just yet. I think I need something to distract myself with at the weekends. I've made enquiries about signing up for a Kung Fu class. It was on this evening, but they started early so by the time I arrived they were already at it. The instructor was understanding, but everyone was already paired up with fighting partners, and I wasn't exactly appropriately dressed (everyone else appeared to have some fancy gown on) so I told him I'd turn up on Tuesday instead.

Still, I ended up going around the side of the gym and having a look at them doing their thing, on my way to the library. It all looked rather impressive, with everyone periodically emitting guttural cries, and punching and kicking the air decisively. It'll be my turn next week.

Elle Driver watch out!

Marie Antoinette

It would not be an exaggeration to say I had very high expectations of this, after Sofia Coppola's last film Lost in Translation ranks in my all time top ten, and The Virgin Suicides before it also comes higly rated.

It didn't live up, unfortunately.

Coppola Jr.'s thing with her films so far has been dealing with women who jar with their surroundings (this film, Lost in Translation) or women who are just not of this world (The Virgin Suicides), and if ever there was a time for her to charter new territory, now could well be it.

One of the things I liked so much about Lost in Translation was how contemporary it was. The dialogue and the situation both of the characters found themselves in had never been approached in the same way before, nay approached at all, by any other writer-director, and it was only right that the film scooped an Oscar for best original screenplay.

Marie Antoinette was different. It was a period piece, and while the sets were spot on - it must be said they always have been in her films - the rest of it didn't really fly. For a start, the film was quite gender specific in that the men weren't exactly given all that much to do, with Marie's husband in particular enjoying the rather bizarre role of a leading character with very little to say. Women have been given the spotlight in Coppola's other films, but not generally at the expense of the opposite gender. Marie's frustration is linked to her husband, and while the director knows better than to pull a stunt like the one that was done with the prince in Braveheart, the circumstances the couple have found themselves in can hardly be described as his fault. It's left to the likes of Rip Torn, and to a lesser extent, Steve coogan, to carry the torch in that respect.

None of the other characters are fleshed out all that much either, with the ladies-in-waiting providing some diversion but never really allowed to participate fully in their own right.

Then there is the soundtrack.

I've waxed before about using contemporary songs in films. The fundamental problem is that the movement and climax of a song will not coincide with those of the scene in which it is used. The director got around this problem before by using tailor-made recordings for The Virgin Suicides, and using atmospheric songs without an obvious beginning, middle, or end in Lost In Translation. This was to a certain extent the case here, but (and I appreciate that this may be my problem) the thing was, the songs were almost without exception ones that I had heard before. It almost seemed to me like a game of spot-the-80s-artist, like she had compiled a mix tape of all the songs she liked, and thrown them up there. When you hear something like The Cure's Plainsong (played for, like, five seconds during Marie Antoinette's coronation as queen), it automatically registers as a separate entity, evoking something that you have previously associated with the song, rather than complimenting or augmenting the scene in which it is heard. But I appreciate that that is partly just me. It's integrated well, and still better than Martin Scorsese throwing in a U2 song or another Rolling Stones song into one of his films. Still, I think original composition for each film - provided it's affordable - is the way to go.

Still, the sound and visuals are as compelling as usual, such as the aforementioned sets, the views of Versailles, and the scene where they're using their wine glasses to make sounds reminds me of that scene in Lost In Translation where Bill Murray's character was swimming lengths in the pool, it's got that kind of experimental vibe.

A point of note that I mention is the historical aspect of it. There was none. External events are allowed only the most minor of intrusions into the storyline, and any historians who pick at it are only making themselves look like pedantic old farts.

So, cinema is better off for it than without it, but it still lacked a certain something for me. Next one, set in the present day please, Sofia, with more for the men to do.