A brief summary

The two weeks off in brief:

Number of hangovers: Too many
Amount of refined carbohydrates eaten out of boredom: Insane
Amount of cheese eaten under similar circumstances: Really does not bear thinking about.
Number of man-hours of useful study done over break: 2 (approx.)

Nnnnggggghhhh!!!

And now the weekend in brief:

I went to Dublin. It was cool. Friday night saw me drink rather a lot with people I used to work with, and then wake up dying on Saturday. Once the pain had abated to an extent where I could go outside without withering in the sunlight, I made plans to go out and do it all again. So that night, I hooked up with friends I hadn't seen in a while and proceeded to do Gay Dublin.

As there was alcohol involved, it goes without saying that there were indescretions. Men in ATM queues were drooled over, men who had just finished shifting other men were blatantly propositioned (who unfortunately returned the compliment with an even more blatant refusal), male couples were offered the opportunity for threesomes...oh, I've forgotten half of it, and that's probably for the best. That wine bar should never have happened. I shall spare you, dear reader, except for my crowning glory.

Dig if you will, the picture. I am in The George, Dublin's most legendary gay bar. I am near the cloakroom and I spot a guy walking past who has a fairly hefty upper body (always been a sucker for that). I decide that he will be mine, and give chase. As I move from the cloakroom area to the main nightclub area, I do not see that there are two steps to be descended. Just two, but in this case it couldn't have been made worse if there had been twenty. I miss the two steps, sail through the air like a stately ballerina, and crashland on a table full of strangers, sending their drinks flying every which way. Luckily they were prepared to let it go after I offered a thousand apologies. Luckily there were no bouncers around to see it. Unluckily I recovered only in time to see my victim disappear off down a flight of stairs. Stairs that had more than two steps. I decided not to tempt fate.

Then there was the guy where eye contact and lip contact were separated by about 5 seconds. It went nowhere. Still, it was a fun night.

The pope died this weekend. I really don't feel anything about it, one way or another. He described gays as being in need of forgiveness some time back. Whatever. It was a positively charitable comment, when you take into account what was said on the subject by some of his predecessors. I don't care. It has been said that the cardinals will angle for older popes in future, so that if they turn out to be too libertarian, the autocracy won't have long to wait before they can appoint another one. The one thing I did notice is the way that certain news stations reported his declining condition with an attention to detail that was a little uncalled for, given the subject matter (Sky News, that bastion of good taste, step forward).

And I will always remember where I was when I heard of his passing on. In the Front Lounge, a Dublin gay bar. There's something about that that I like.

Now to the packing, for my flight back tomorrow.

Different kinds of high

I'm at home, having flown over on the 18th.

The journey home was interesting, to say the least. I met up with my friend Sarah at the airport. Sarah has an even bigger aversion to flying than I do, and as we sat next to each other on the plane, this made the journey that bit more fun (Sarah: "I have two bottles of champagne in the hold. The bottles might burst from the pressure drop as we ascend. The corks may then hit the hull, puncturing it, and causing us to plunge to the ground. We're all going to die". Me: "This is making me feel so much better."). But flying with friends is fun.

As an aside, one of my fellow students, whose name I didn't know, was at the airport with me. I lived in fear of meeting Sarah and having the introduce the other party. I tried sneaking a look at her passport on the pretext of having a gawk at the photo, but she was having none of it, saying she looked awful. I eventually resolved the problem by looking at her e-mail booking printout, pretending to be interested in how much her flight cost when I was really scanning the copy frantically looking for her name. I found it, and then one of her friends, also in my class appeared. Guess what? Someone else that I meet all the time, but again with an 'elusive' name.

In the end we got split up so it didn't matter, but I am really sick of my complete inability to remember other people's names. Even those whose company I've enjoyed more than once in the pub. Bizarrely, I'll find myself recalling a raft of associated information about them, but their first name? Forget it. Go figure. I think I'll have to resort to using a filofax.

Home is the usual. Crap internet connection, and I have reams of research to do for revision and a report that is due in the first week I go back. Holidays? Ha!

And now onto something else.

Let me formally declare I am not a fan of shopping. Gay and not a shopaholic? The two can go together, and they've always made comfortable bedfellows in me. I'm very precise in what I want from clothes, so if I can't capture that perfect pair of jeans, or a shirt that makes my chest look like it has a larger circumference than my stomach, I don't buy them. I never compromise on this, which makes every retail expedition a source of misery for me most of the time. And I hate changing room mirrors.

Until today.

Yesterday, I went to Cork to try on clothes. It wasn't a complete success (I didn't buy anything), but there were clothes there that said to me 'maybe', and having tried them on, I made a startling discovery:

Since I last bought a pair of pants, I have lost about 3 inches from around my waist. As if this wasn't enough to spur me on, I also discovered, while changing in the rooms with the merciless mirrors, that the shape of my upper body had headed some way in the direction in which I had been trying to bulldoze it for the best part of a year. In other words, I looked a small bit less like the bespectacled toothpick in the Mr. Muscle ads. This is seriously gratifying. I never seemed to see any progress when I was over in Brighton, and I'd all but convinced myself that my genetic predisposition would ensure that I would remain a rake for life (I believe the term in bodybuilding circles is 'ectomorph'). I was almost on the point of giving up on all this, when I started noticing the results properly for the first time this week. So, all the protein milkshakes and bored waiting for weights benches to become free when I would really rather be doing something else have paid off, and I resolve to keep going. But I'm reaching escape velocity from the point.

After the novelty wore off, I stopped examining myself and exited the cubicle, giving way to the irate queue that had formed outside. I eventually went home to think about what I was going to do (I tell you, snap decisions are my speciality) and decided I would go back today.
So I went back today, took a deep breath and dived into the fray. Luck was on my side, and before long I had a groovy pair of jeans, a white long sleeve top, and a white linen shirt (and damn if that last one doesn't look cool). Spurred on by this, I met my sister for lunch and then went back for seconds. Three further purchases were made, all of them unplanned, but all of them quite fetching. I really don't want to think about how much money I spent though, but hey, clothes are an investment, right? RIGHT?!

So that's it. Some new stuff to swan around in this weekend.

All I have to do is go back to Cork tomorrow to pick up that slate grey pair of combats that will complement my runners perfectly, and would really go well with that t-shirt I saw on hungout.com the other day, which in turn would necessitate the purchase of a new pair of black jeans. Although then I'd need to pick up some new runners to match that...

A Problem? Who, me?

Well, my grant cheque has finally cleared and with St. Paddy's day in sight, the party is about to begin! This one is inescapable, but I think I'll be doing it without the green paint and the awful paddy sing-songs.

Up in London over the weekend in Kensington, meeting friends. Lots of food and drink consumed. Mussels rock! I'm definitely going back to them again.

My community pharmacy placement was today. I now know something about my future career path: It won't include community pharmacy work in the long term.

Tomorrow is going to be an onslaught, and getting up the day after to catch the flight home should be a barrel of laughs. Oh well, it has to be done. At least Sarah, one of the aforementioned friends, will be holding my hand for me on the same flight home.

A mixed bag

I FINALLY got my grant. The cheque was lodged on Wednesday, and now all I have to do is wait for it to clear, and partytime!

My biology test yesterday wasn't a total catastrophe.

I am suffering one of the worst hangovers in living memory, having hit the pub at 4pm yesterday after said test, and drinking solidly for about 10 hours. I got back to the house, collapsed outside my bedroom door and lay there for a while, before deciding that my bed would be preferable to the threadbare carpet. I got up, swanned into the bedroom of one of my flatmates, announced that there was no way in hell I would be going into college later, and asked her to pick up some notes for me. With that, I fell into bed, and showed my appreciation for it by vomiting all over the sheets. Twice.

I have to work tomorrow, and I have a feeling that this aftermath from hell is going to extend into the second day. After work, I must get on a train to London to visit two friends of mine that I used to work with in Dublin, which means I have to do some of the preparation tonight. God help me.

This is the last time I am doing something like this, I swear.

Sniff

I got my first fail in college.

The circus that started out as my first attempt at a titration practical two weeks ago didn't yield much fruit. I got an A+ in the first half of the lab, but an E in the second half. This was the part that saw me stay behind for two hours after everyone else was gone, determined to get it right. Relatively speaking, I didn't do too badly (quite a few of the class had failed both parts), but it was a monumental slap in the face, having worked so hard on it. Ironically, the successful exercise I completed in 10 minutes.

I had been forewarned about this by some classmates, which was why I was lying in bed at 4am this morning after a sleepless night, getting more and more angry about the fail that I was pretty sure was coming my way.

Today's lab was better, as I now had a feel for what I was doing, and it was fun watching everyone else go berserk looking for a pipette filler that actually WORKED (in a university that achieved a QAA rating of 25 out of 25 for its research facilities, dontcha know), but as today's exercise basically entailed more titrations, and I hadn't got the earlier report back at that time, I didn't know what it was I had done wrong the first time. Later on, I got feedback on the previous endeavour, and noting my mistakes, I know I unwittingly repeated some of them again today.

For those in the know, it was using titres that didn't agree to 0.1ml with each other, and not reading burettes to 0.02ml, an impossibility, given the equipment we have. Hardly worth marking someone down from an A to an E. Especially when they haven't in the least been warned about it.

Anyway, I made a decent fist of today's work, and after that I headed off down to the lecturer's office to discuss how I was getting on. I met him at his office, and sensing the time was right, settled into a chair to moan about how ours was the only group that never got an introductory session about labs in general (the reason why we were all running around like headless chickens on our first day), the severity of the marking of my report, and how crap a supervisor my lecturer in organic chemistry was, whom we had again today, but mercifully only for a short period of time before he disappeared for the afternoon.

It was then that the fire alarm in the building went off.

Undaunted, the two of us went outside and I got it all off my chest there, in the middle of all the people milling about. At least he admitted I had a point, saying that our group had gotten the bum deal.

Feeling a little better after that, I went off in search of the spawn of satan that marked last fortnight's report, only to find a note on the door of his office saying that he was gone and wouldn't be back until the 23rd of March. Gone while the going was good? Indeed...

The only respite of the day was the giggle session that was our meet-up in a study cubicle after the labs, where we started off checking with each other as we wrote our reports, but succumbed to hysterics within the hour.

No more of them for a month, thank God in heaven.

Now I have to pick myself up, dust myself off, and study for Biology.

Holidays on Friday 18th. Bring it on...

Crap Week...

I have another one of those horrible labs tomorrow. The general consensus is that it's worse than the first one.

I have a biology test on Thursday. In time-honoured tradition, I'm starting my revision tonight.

My grant still hasn't come, despite promises that it was going to be here by last Friday.


I am going to crack.

I finished reading The Da Vinci Code not so long ago. I must have been living under a rock for the past year or so when it came to books, because this thing has been huge, and for quite a while I never really knew about it.

I found the subject matter of the book interesting. I liked to think that I didn't need to learn about the history of oppression in Christianity from something like this, but apparently I do. I found the potted history of the Catholic Church quite an eye-opener, and it confirmed some things I had already known for a long time, namely that half of the Bible is a load of horseshit and is, to understate it substantially, a lop-sided historical document.

I remember a long time ago, when Gay Byrne presented the not-quite-so-shit-as-it-is-now Late Late Show, he had a guest on who questioned the historical accuracy of the Bible, saying that it was (oh the insurrection!) just a story that was not necessarily set in stone. The point being made was quite valid, though he detracted from it by telling everyone that the reason he was dressed in his rather brightly coloured tracksuit was to 'ward off negative energy and spirits'. Not unsurprisingly, he was regarded with bemusement by the studio audience and my parents, and by not unreasonable extrapolation, probably all of the nationwide audience that night as well.

Looking back, it was most likely that he and the circle in which he moved were looking at us with an even more pronounced smirk. It's not difficult to see why. Pope John Paul whatever enjoys the unquestioning support of an audience for which any politician would bend over. I'll repeatedly make the point until I die that the validity of a movement depends largely on its followers, and Catholics (especially Irish ones) are amongst the most unquestioning group of people there are. It goes without saying that as soon as I reached the age where I was able to think critically, it went out the window for me.

While regarding organised religion with skepticism is healthy in this day and age, what is depressing is that the Pope has turned quite a lot of people off having religious faith altogether. He certainly did for me, until I began to realize that his status as 'Messenger of God' was more than just a little dubious. The way I look at it now is this. Statistical biologists have (so they say) managed to calculate the probability of spontaneous occurrence of the chemical reaction that resulted in the creation of DNA as 1 in over 4 billion. It is not outrageous, then, to believe that there was some external guiding hand there somewhere. That's my outlook.

And the only reason the Catholic priesthood has such a high incidence of paedophilia is because the requirement of celibacy acts as a convenient cover for the sexually skewed. If this requirement existed in any other denomination, the occurrences would probably be just as frequent.

My only gripe is that this take-it-or-leave-it attitude cannot be applied so readily to education as it can be to spiritual faith and looking back, I still feel there are few christian brothers I came across who should have been allowed their position as teachers.

I'm digressing again...

It's been quite a while since I read a book of this kind, and while it's well researched, it's not very well written, which is surprising given Dan Brown's credentials. Compared to Wotshisface who wrote the Pelican Brief (John Grisham?), he doesn't pull you in half as much. But I rarely read that kind of stuff these days, so it'll probably be some time before I do it again. You could always save yourself some time and go for this instead.

Would I recommend it? It's an easy, enjoyable enough read, not too taxing on the brain. Something for the bedside table.

Next up, Fast Food Nation.

The Semester 1 exam results are in...

Chemistry: B
Maths: A (a rather nifty 96%!)

Yeeeee-Haaaaaaaaaaah!

I also got the results back of some other assessments I did, and they were in the 'A' category as well. This more than makes up for the horrible Tuesday I had, and the rather horrible hangover I got from going out last night. Gym workouts and hangovers do not go together. Ugh!

Off the bed, for a contented sleep...

Agony, but no ecstacy: Memoirs of a disaster area

Well, I had my first ever chemistry laboratory exercise today, and it was HELL. HELL!!

Things got off to a bad start when I walked in and found that my lecturer for organic chemistry was also the main supervisor for the practical exercise. I couldn't really do justice to him here, suffice to say not only did he not offer any help, but marched up and down the room with marksman eyes, and terrorised my bench for the whole morning.

I never had any experience of practical chemistry before, having done the subject in one year at a cram college, and so when I walked in to do my thing this morning at 9am (Calibration of a pipette, and titration of oxalic acid with sodium hydroxide), I was clueless. The night before, I ironed a newly washed set of clothes, including my lab coat, and had a shave, hoping that if I looked well on the day, I would feel well, and therefore perform well. Who in God's name was I trying to kid? Among the problems encountered:

1) Out of all the pipette fillers that I managed to get my hands on, only one of them worked. The first, ooh, SEVEN that I tried all had something wrong with them, but because I hadn't used them before, I thought the fault lay with me. The problem was rectified approximately 90 minutes into the lab.

2) My titre results varied wildly, but NO-ONE explained to me that this is normal when using different indicators. Did you know that methyl orange and methyl red change colour at pH 4 or pH 5, but bromothymol blue changes at pH 7, and Phenolphthalein at pH 9? I'll bet you didn't, dear reader, but that fact is now burned into my brain for all eternity.

3) We broke for lunch at 12. When I came back at 1, it was pointed out to me in mid-titration by a lab technician that my burette was blocked. This explained the fact that only one drop issued from it every ten seconds or so, but once again I had known no better. At this time, almost everyone else had gone, having finished up during the first period.

Among the many acts of stupidity I committed during this time was:

a) While using two identical beakers, constantly forgetting which of the two contained water and which contained acid, thus having to pour them all down the sink and start again,

b) Spraying an electronic weighing scales with water from a high powered tap. Mercifully no-one saw me so I quickly covered my tracks, and if it transpires that the thing is broken, I shall be at the back whistling nervously. Apparently you're supposed to report accidents like this. Ha!

And the coup de grâce…

c) Topping up my burette with the acid, when it already contained the alkali.

Overall the process could be likened to childbirth, though against all odds I collected my data, and my analysis worked out pretty much the same as everyone else’s. The report has now been handed in, and I can breath again. At least the assistant was supportive, saying that I should be fine from here on in. I don’t care. All I know is that I don’t have another one for two glorious weeks.

Unfortunately, I have that nazi at 10am tomorrow morning for a lecture.

Science. Believe the hype, it is something to scream about.

Hunter S. Thompson.

It has come to my attention that Hunter S. Thompson has died. Considering the kind of man he was in life (at least, going by his writing), the manner in which he has departed us seems at odds with his persona. Then again, maybe it wasn't, as Old Age is the one thing that would have got on top of him.

I still think this 'better to burn out than fade away' shit is bollocks though, but I was always able to take it or leave it.

I read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas years ago (my brother bought it, and I subsequently nicked it off him, before buying my own copy) and for me it was memorable for the fact that it mentioned drugs that, at the time of reading, I didn't even know existed. That he never really wrote much about the event he had been sent to cover just sailed over my head (Was it a car rally? The fact that I can't remember says it all), and instead I just enjoyed the druggy manic careering from here to there to everywhere. I subsequently filed him under 'Must check out some more of his stuff' but never really got around to any more of his books. Maybe now is the time.

I always liked the idea of what he did in Fear and Loathing though. It wasn't a bad idea at all.

Nothing strange or startling...

As much as gmail is better than hotmail, I find that it has a tendency to suffer from access problems. At the start, it happened once in a while, but now it is FUCKING HAPPENING ALL THE FUCKING TIME, AND I AM GETTING FUCKING SICK OF IT!!! Now when I sit down to log into it, there is over an 80% chance at any given time that I will be met with a blank screen after typing in the necessaries at the user/password screen. This needs to be fixed. Pronto.

The first week of Semester two has finished, and it looks mainly like a continuation of what I've done already, with extra laboratory classes thrown in for good measure. One thing I've noticed is that some of the modules have misleading titles. For example, last Semester we had 'Introduction to chemical and molecular sciences'. This really should have been titled 'Chemistry so cruel it shall make you weep'. This semester we have the follow-on 'Fundamental chemical and molecular sciences'. As some progression in difficulty from the last course is implied, I shudder to think about what I am going to have to deal with. But otherwise, everything looks as it always does.

My grant cheque was 'mislaid', and now has to be reissued. I finally put my misgivings aside, and rang my father this evening to ask him for some cash to tide me over. At least that wasn't a problem.

We got iMac G5s in the library. They are sumptuous. I want one.

Other than that, I feel as if I am at a slightly low ebb. Uuuuhhhh! I need to win the lottery or something. It has struck me that I haven't been out all that much since I came back after Christmas, and you know what? That suits me just fine for now.

Later...

My first proper gay rights rant...

Well, my work cheque came this morning, but because it was crossed, I had to lodge it to my account, so I won't be able to access the money until early next week. This puts the kibosh on my plan to visit my friend Sarah in Wimbledon this evening, and pretty much puts paid to the weekend as a whole. Poverty, thy name is a third-level mature student!

And still no sign of my grant...

With Semester 2 beginning next week, my chillout period is almost at an end, and I am (almost) proud to say that I did absolutely nothing for it except spend half the time in bed. I did get my 4 month old gym schedule redone yesterday though, so next week should see me incapacitated with stiffness as my body adjusts to it.

And now to go off on a totally different point.

Some blogs I've been reading at the moment are caught up in arguments over whether or not same-sex marriage should be allowed, or legitimised, to look at it another way. Most of the parties concerned are Canadian, as certain court rulings there are making it a topical issue at the moment. It's not something to which I've ever given a great deal of thought. Anyone who reads this will see that I don't generally campaign on behalf of the gay camp all too often (appalling pun unintended). Well maybe it's about time.

The main point that have been made against gay marriage and gay unions in general are that it's 'unnatural'. This reminds me of something...

A couple of years back, I saw a programme on television presented by a gay man whose area of expertise was in animal behaviour (at least, that's how I remember him), and he was interested in how frequently homosexuality occurred in the animal kingdom. As part of his investigation, he looked at swans, sheep, and others, or more accurately, he waited to see if any of them engaged in same-sex 'relations'. He collected some pretty illuminating data and presented it to some government figure who was charged with indirectly determining the curriculum of school age children. His argument was that homosexuality, rather than being a fringe concern, was a widespread variation in sexuality across all species, and as such, instruction on it should be provided in schools alongside 'normal' sex education. Rather unsurprisingly, he came up against a brick wall.

This is what gets me. If such instruction was approved, it would enlighten shool children immensely. Homosexuality is not some weird anomoly, it is a natural variation in human and animal sexuality. It is widespread in the animal kingdom, so it follows that it should be common amongst humans as well. The very term that is often applied to it, 'unnatural', is WRONG, plain and simple. It is completely the opposite. It has been around for centuries, meriting mention even in that oh-so-credible source of history known as the Bible:

"If a man also lie with mankind, as he lieth with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination: they shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them."

My...er...favourite. Leviticus 20, Verse 13, apparently. You have to hand it to the Bible for strident and hysterical use of language.

Then there are the points made by some bloggers against gay marriage. I won't link to them directly, as the blogs as a whole contain some of the most appallingly smug, self-satisfied online writing you'll ever come across. Left-field politics in general are railed against, and a point of crusading against 'sloppy liberal thinking' is made (Three words, boys. Pot. Kettle. Black.), so I shall spare you. Here are some of the points, each accompanied by my view.

- Legitimising gay marriage will undermine the institution of marriage as a whole, and could lead to other structures such as polygamy becoming the norm.

The institution of marriage holds nowhere near the sway in society that it once did. It's hard to say what exactly caused this, but the advocates of gay marriage came on the scene long after the rot set in, so they can't be blamed. Having said that, there is still life in it yet, and it is certainly something worth aspiring to. It will not be rocked to it's very core by permitting gays access to it. What may happen is that a process of its re-evalution may happen, but all things considered in these current times, that may well be what's needed for it.

As for polygamy becoming the norm, please spare me. First off, it is already the norm in certain countries, and that is down to the pervading culture of that country. It is not the Western norm now, and for that reason will not become the norm after the introduction of gay marriage.

- Marriage is an institution, not a right, and therefore gays are not automatically entitled to it. As such, all arguments that have the concept of discrimination at their core are redundant.

Whatever. You can nitpick with terms all you like, the fact remains that marriage is the single best way of gaining legal and social recognition of two people as a couple, and as long as it is denied to gays, something is wrong. Pure and simple. It has also been argued that marriage exists mainly as a unit within which to raise children, so seeing as gays will not produce children, they should not have it. That is merely ONE aspect of it. And who says gays aren't going to raise children within it anyway? (More about this later)

- Granting gay marriage equality will lead to a corresponding reduction in respect for religious freedom.

Granted, some people have been sacked as they have refused to perform same-sex unions, and others have been taken to court for the same reason. If I was vengeful, I'd probably feel like doing the same, but the moral of the story here seems to be this: Find a minister who is sympathetic to your cause. It's not that hard to make discrete enquiries beforehand. Myself, I may or may not get married, but if I did, I certainly wouldn't do it in a church of organised religion.

The flip side of this coin, and what I really believe is at issue, is that if gay marriage becomes legitimised, religous bigots might feel more marginalised. Oh poor them! It may be fair to say that gays have grown intolerant of organised religion in general, but when it (in particular, Catholicism) has persecuted them for centuries, it's not completely without reason, is it? Here, the two sides just need to live and let live, and of the two, religion seems to have a bigger problem in this regard. To my knowledge, Mardi Gras and Pride marches don't have an anti-religion-themed float, do they? Religious freedom can sometimes be construed as the freedom of religions to restrict the freedom of other groups as part of their agenda.

- Gay marriage? Next stop, gay couples adopting children.

Well, it sort of follows, doesn't it? To be honest, I'm still not 100% sure about the whole issue here myself, but for this exact reason, I'm going to keep my mouth shut, except to say that the only way to find out how children grow up under gay parentage is to let them grow up under gay parentage, and who knows? Inconceivably, they might just turn out to be normal, well-adjusted adults themselves. But we won't know until we try. And there are plenty of people, both parents and children, willing to give it a shot.

There's nothing quite like a young conservative, is there? The lack of life experience coupled with the fog of delusion that makes them believe that they know it all is...um...bemusing. And that's being diplomatic about it. I always thought it was rather creepy. You can understand it in someone of the previous generation because it's usually down to the fact that they simply haven't changed with the times, but on a young person? What's their excuse?

Anyway, I've noticed the term 'liberal' and 'leftist' being tossed around in America and Canada with more contempt these days than usual. These people acknowledge their position on the political spectrum and boy, are they proud of it. I remember Kurt Vonnegut, in his essay Cold Turkey, sarcastically summed up the differences between left and right, and it could be inferred that assigning labels to a bundle of extreme political views, such as those espoused by the right, legitimises those views. Well, let's have a look at what is usually typical of a right-wing stance:

Abortion: Don't want it for anyone.

Divorce: Didn't want it for anyone.

Gay marriage: Don't want it for anyone.

All of the above involve the Right restricting the choices of other people. This is what gets me as well. In a democracy, these options, as unpalatable as some of them may be to some, should be available to all. It is then upto each individual to decide whether they want to opt for them or not. But at least they have the choice. If they are available, a person who is pro-life can forgoe an abortion, while the person who wants/needs one can avail of it. Everyone catered for. But no, the Right will have it that their byline becomes everyone elses as well, through the imposition of the above. Democracy, my arse.

In one sense, that's why I believe the availability of the above three should never be put to the public vote. It's also why I think 'Right' should be dispensed with, and 'Restrictors' used instead. Of course, there are areas in which these people argue for less control. Guns, and rights of corporations. Duh!

Lastly, the characterisation of liberals and The Left has always been as limp-wristed ineffectual 'weenies', merely because they tend not to talk so tough, knowing that in the face of complex, near insolvable problems, doing so is a load of bollocks. Now though, that characterisation seems to have been strengthened more than ever, and is fast become the biggest and most moronic fucking cliché that exists in political discourse today. It's like we're regressing, going backwards. Sometimes I despair, I really do.

Fingers crossed that 180 degree turn comes soon.

Hindsight...

Have you ever grown up with a certain musician figuring strongly in the background of your life (courtesy of an older sibling), and suddenly realising years later that they were actually very, very good?

Prince Rogers Nelson.

I never paid him much attention when I was growing up, being a dedicated indie kid, but my sister dug him in a big way, and it's only in the last couple of months that I'm realising that all the praise that was heaped on him during the 80's wasn't all for nothing. I'm currently sitting in the library computer room chilling out to Purple Rain ('Darling Nikki' at this exact moment, which has one of the most killer climaxes I've EVER heard in a song) and wondering how the hell I ever discounted something like this before.

One group of people I remembering paying him a great deal of attention were my parents, who deemed him nothing short of a pervert, and the local clergy in Mallow, where the Monsigneur of the parish pronounced him the Purple Prince of Pornography from the pulpit, around the time the Artist came to play live in Ireland. Naturally, this made my sister love him all the more.

Purple Rain was bought on CD for £5 in a cool independent record store over the weekend. I asked them yesterday if they needed someone to work part-time there, but they didn't. Woe!

This brings me to my next point. In my bid to find a new job that I can actually look forward to without a feeling of impending dread, I called to 17 places yesterday, asking if they needed anyone to do any part-time work. 13 said no directly. 4 expressed doubts, but took a CV from me anyway. Isn't job hunting FUN?! I desperately need more money though, I have officially run out of it, and am now dependent solely on the £45 that I pull in from my current Saturday job. I had always dreamed of abstaining from alcohol, but I didn't think it would happen like this.

The 4 that didn't rule out employment completely are The Body Shop (Should be able for that, I've bought enough of their stuff over the years), Halfords (A bike and car accessory shop. No way), Waterstones (Should be alright), and Blockbuster (Ditto).

Today, I got two maybes out of three, which happened to be two cinemas. Fingers crossed....

My grant still hasn't come through, and I am fit to commit MURDER. I think Mardi Gras was on in Brighton today, but could I go? Oh no. That requires cash! Grrrrggghgghhhh!

May my work cheque come through the door soon. Please God the Almighty Father...

P.S. Kill Bill 2 very good. Better than the first one, in my opinion. That fight between Daryl and Uma: Kick-ass!

Ooooohhhhhhhhh again....

Well, last night was quite a feat at some level. A full 12-hour day of boozing after an all-nighter of studying trends in the periodic table, and now I am suffering the consequences. No grant yet, and I spent a load of money last night, so that is now officially it for my love affair with alcohol. Have I said this somewhere before? This time it's for real...

On holidays until the 14th of February now. Not sure whether I should go home or not. Will probably stay here for the duration.

Nothing doing tonight. Staying in and finally watching Kill Bill Vol 2.

Ooooohhhhhhhhh.........

There is nothing quite so hellish as pulling an all-nighter the night before an exam, but it was merited in this case, the trial in question being chemistry. Being an MCQ, it's one of those annoying ones where you honestly can't really tell how well you did after you come out, and worst of all, while knowing sections of the course will obviously help, there is a point of acquaintance with the material, if past which you proceed , you might actually hinder yourself from doing very well. In short, there is not enough time to do everything, so your best bet is know the material that relates to two-thirds of the exam, and fly through the rest of the questions, ticking a/b/c/d/e at random. I don't care now anyway, I'm done with exams for the moment, and Semester 1 is out of the way. I am one eighth of the way there, as one of my classmates put it.

I'm still doing the promotion for the Food Waste Digester^TM and it is seriously doing my head in as time goes on. Now that I have some free time on my hands, it's time to start looking for something else, with no small sense of urgency.

I should go home and sleep, but sod it, the lads are going to the pub. Off I go. Liver, I promise it'll be the last time...

May 2051.

Apparently, this is when I'm going to die. At the age of 76. From Cancer. I must remember to verify this when I draw my last breath.

Try it for yourself.

Lift off...

First exam, Maths (or to give the course its proper title, 'Quantitative Skills for Pharmacists') earlier this morning, and the feeling is good. To be fair, this module wouldn't tax anyone with an aptitude for the subject, and I'm expecting a high mark. Then off to the pharmaceutical analysis lab to collect our lab manuals for the next semester. Lots of gripping stuff like assays for sodium bicarbonate, aspirin, and ferrous fumarate (whatever the hell that is). I can't wait. God, I'm such a nerd.

Chemistry this day week. To be fair, this will tax anyone with even the most advanced knowledge of the subject. I'm dead.

Lastly, a little something that made me laugh. Right Click/Save Target As...

U-turn

Well, I had a presentation to give on Tuesday on skin rash, and all things considered, it went well. Then there followed two days drinking from which I am only recovering now. With the exams less than two weeks away, I've decided pubs are out until they are finished, and I'm attempting to give up smokes as well. From now on, alcohol is relegated to special occasions only. Let's see how long it lasts...

On video, I saw a Japanese film called Audition the other night, which was disturbing in a way that I haven't seen before, unless you like seing people being tortured relentlessly, such as by having pins stuck in their eyes. At some level, it could be thought of as thought-provoking, but it was just a bit too much for me.

I also saw Supersize Me, which was engaging enough, though similar to what another blogger said, if you don't know that fast food is bad for you, you really shouldn't be allowed out in public without adult supervision. Some of the points made were already known in anti-corporate activism circles, Morgan Spurlock just made them that bit more entertaining. And he hasn't been beaten too severely about the head with the ugly stick, which helps. I thought that it was a bit of a laugh that his girlfriend was quite subtle and restrained throughout the film right up until it came to describing their sex life (or lack of it), where all of a sudden, the floodgates were not so much thrown open, as blown to smithereens. But I liked. And when I have a boyfriend, I want him to be able to cook for me too.

Form an orderly queue there please, gentlemen...

The best days of your life?

Well, back in the apartment in Brighton and now in the library, trying to re-engage myself with the college experience.

My last few days in Mallow finished up rather nicely, and I ended up going out for a few the night before the flight. Everything fine there, though I bumped into someone I knew in the club and, after spending some time catching up, she told me something that made me rather depressed.

When I was in secondary school, before I decided I dug men rather than girls, I had a girlfriend called Patricia. How we met was stuff straight from a matchmaking textbook: People who knew her also knew people that I knew, and before you know it, the match was made. This girl had a reputation around town for a being a bit eccentric, a mad genius if you will, so when the match was suggested to me, my curiosity was piqued and I agreed.

Patricia was pretty cool in her own way, and had interests that were also held by me (including The Cure, an essential pre-requisite in those days for us ever getting on together), but she had a disposition that was, to put it mildly, rather nervous. It was hardly surprising, as at that time she was a bit of an outsider, and had put up with quite a bit of bullying from the people with whom she went to school. I only fully saw this when she took me to her debs (the Irish equivalent of the American prom) and witnessed how some people in her class reacted to her. I still hold it against them, and I really don't think you'll find a bigger nest of vipers than a female single-sex school in this day and age. They really need to be phased out in favour in co-eds, but that's another story.

One of the rumours doing the rounds about her was that she was a lesbian. Her sister was, so that was all the proof that the silly 17 year olds in her school needed. I could never tell myself, but figured that if she was, she would eventually come out in her own time.

We broke up after a while, and I began my ill-fated first attempt at college, whereas she took a year off after getting her leaving cert to get her head together before heading off to college. She is, by all accounts, very talented at writing, and has the A in leaving cert honours English to prove it. I remember wondering about her shortly afterwards, and hoping that she'd succeed in whatever it was she went into. At the back of my mind, though, was the niggling doubt that she was carrying baggage from her schooldays that would impede her progress for quite some time, and it proved to be founded.

Last weekend in that club,talking to that girl, I was told she had been in and out of a psychiatric hospital near Mallow for quite some time. I attempted to ascertain if she had at least finished her degree (a light in the middle of the dark, so to speak) but the other person didn't know.

This sort of thing also happened with someone who was a few years ahead of me in school, and in spite of the fact that he got close to straight A's in his leaving cert, and a degree in computer science, he has since been unable to work owing to behavioural problems on his part. Again he was targeted by bullies in school. Coincidence?

There is Conor, an ex-classmate of mine, whose then rather poor social skills drew unwanted 'attention' on him. He left school with close to all A's as well, but floundered in university, only barely graduating when he should have aced it. He went onto have a massive nervous breakdown, and while I think he recovered eventually, he is now working in the civil service, in a job that I have no problem in saying is a waste of his ability.

And then there is Rob, brother of my previously-mentioned friend Kate, who was also a nervy guy who got bullied in primary school. He escaped it in secondary by joining the school rugby team (Christ, aren't packs of teenagers so predictable?) but it didn't fully leave him. He since went on to do rather a lot of ecstacy and then developed schizophrenia. While a connection is now established in the medical world between the two, I can't help but think that his life would a bit better now if it had been a bit better when he was younger. And it's not good now. He's after leaving for New York on a whim, and is currently there with very little money, and most likely even less of his faculties.

I'm sure there are other similar stories out there.

Myself, being gay and hating football even then, I had some idiots in school to deal with, but they didn't really represent a threat, and I emerged relatively intact. One of my consolations (and this may seem smug, but it's just fact) was that I knew that I was smarter than 90% of my class, and I derived some sense of satisfaction from the fact that quite a few of them had to resit their leaving cert because they didn't get the college offers they were looking for, while I did. It was mentioned by someone in another blog in the same context that the best revenge is a life well lived, but it could also be said that the best revenge is a success more substantial than theirs. But I've long since forgotten about them.

The one other substantial beef I have with my old school was that, apart from being shit at helping students score at a level that befitted their ability, its ethos sucked. The headmaster (my physics teacher) was an pig-ignorant bully who only valued you if you were on his rugby team, and his values filtered on down through a lot of the teachers in the school. The English teacher was the one I disliked the most after the principal, someone who never taught me anything while I was there and often would use a carefully placed smart remark to inspire the class to pick on one or two students (he openly referred to one of my friends as fat in class) and very nearly turned me off writing for life. Nearly.

All I can do is hope that the above pattern of harassment/depression is broken at some point, but I'm not going to hold my breath. Especially for that place.

All I can say is that schools need to stop being a microcosm of the animal kingdom, or there will be more ruined lives and quite possibly more disasters along the lines of Columbine.

Here's to Patricia. Get well soon, girl.

Au revoir 2004.

A hectic schedule this week.

Tuesday: Meal & drinks.
Wednesday: Brother's engagement party.
Thursday: Farewell Meal & drinks for Kate.
Friday: New Year's Eve (need I say more).

While Christmas itself in Mallow was a bit comme çi comme ça, new year's eve was definitely better. In a pub last night that had just the right atmosphere and right amount of people, and for the countdown, each table was given a bottle of champagne on the house! Nice one, Albert Lynches, I'll definitely be going back to ye next year.

Sometime after the countdown had finished and the back-slapping had begun, I was still struggling with the cork (it's not as easy as it looks in the Formula One events) but I finally got it off and then sprayed my table. Aaahhh yes. I forgot to check if it was Cristal or Chateau Neuf de Formaldehyde, but it did the job.

Kate, a long-term good friend of mine, is going travelling for a year. South Africa, New Zealand, and Australia are on her itinerary. I hadn't seen much of her in the last while, what with 'life getting in the way', as she would put it, but she will be missed, and I have a feeling her junket will last longer than a year. Twas good to see her on Thursday.

So with 2004 at an end, what are my thoughts?

I'm useless at definitive lists like these ones, so all I can say is 2004 saw the folllowing take place for me:

1. I ditched my 'career' in software testing, moved to another country, and commenced a new programme of study. Not bad for a day's work.

2. After a false start or two, I started weight training in the gym and am now starting to see gains slowly but surely appear.

3. I navigated my diet in a direction that was substantially healthier, and lost almost 10kgs.

4. I came out to my parents.

5. I bought a turntable so that I can build up a collection of vinyl. I never actually posted about this originally. The turntable is a little portable thing, but will suffice until I have money, years later. to buy an audiophile one. This first one is still my baby, though, and this is what it looks like.

6. I went to my first live gig in ages (Oxegen 2004) and saw The Cure for the second time, who didn't disappoint in spite of the extremely watered-down beer.

The last two points need to be dealt with separately. When I worked in a company called IT Alliance from October 2000 to July 2002, music downloading software had reached the peak of its popularity, before sanctions against it limiting its functionality began to appear. During this time I was casually introducing myself to new artists on a daily basis and loving every minute of it. Now that's changed (Audiogalaxy, once by far the best of the lot, is now a shadow of its former self) and it's been a while since I've introduced myself to anyone. This was apparent at Oxegen, where there were plenty of bands who I knew of, but had never heard any of their songs. Examples? Kings of Leon, Keane, The Rapture, and the Libertines. It's time to get my ass in gear again, John Peel style. I haven't lost the habit of sticking with a band once I know I like them, but I could be more adventurous when it comes to discovering new stuff.

As an aside, I think the above point I made about introductions knocks the argument against music downloading on its ass: Once you get a taste for what a band sound like, you're more than likely going to go out and buy the CD to support them, which is what I've done to a large extent with Sonic Youth, whose back catalogue I explored on Audiogalaxy, but whose new releases I've since always bought. And I'm not the only one who follows that pattern.

So, no 'best of 2004' album list, because I simply don't know what came out this year. But I'll change that from now on.

Going back to Brighton on Monday. Not a great deal of study done, but it's better than nothing. Christmas itself? Not bad this year.