Concert Photos

Well, just about every one of the photos I took at the two concerts I went to turned out shit. Even for Sonic Youth, where I was quite close to the stage, the disposable camera I had really just didn't seem up to the job. A bad workman and his tools? Oh well...

Nevertheless, dear reader, I have provided these pictures for you, so you can...er...wonder at their lack of brilliance. Oh piffle, I'm just sticking them up here because Sonic Youth are the coolest and I just want to put them on my blog.

Here is a small breakdown of what went on:

Sonic Youth on stage. Left to right, Lee Ranaldo, Jim O'Rourke, Kim Gordon, and Thurston Moore, with Steve Shelley at the back. Yes, I know you can hardly see them, but that's not the point.

Here is Thurston Moore and his antics (Climbing on fittings, walking down near crowd, messing with guitar to make some cool noise. Again, he is hardly visible, but try)

Here is a picture of the stage when the Chemical Brothers came on. They remained virtually hidden throughout the set, but the crowd didn't seem to mind.

In fact the only ones that came out halfway decent were the two pictures I took of the hot guy I met afterwards with his girlfriend.

Now onto the Pixies concert. I couldn't get anywhere near the stage, so gaze in awe at pictures of two of members on the screen. Kim Deal looks like a suburban mother! Frank Black is more portly than ever!

So yes, all in all not exactly Rolling Stone material, though better to have some document than none at all.

Memoirs, and not this one...

I went to a discussion meeting in Tallaght Library last night. Nuala O Faoláin and two of her sisters had been invited to discuss how each of their perceptions of growing up in the same family - and their resultant memoirs - differed from each other in outlook and content.

My curiosity stemmed from the fact that, apart from Nuala's memoir being in my top ten when it comes to reading lists, Nuala's sister Deirdre wrote a memoir that is by all accounts uplifting when compared to Nuala's essays in melancholia and anger.

I managed to bag a seat very near the front (someone who had reserved one hadn't shown up. Ha!) and settled down with one of the glasses of wine they were giving out. Eventually Dermot Bolger, South County Dublin's writer in residence, came up, said a few words and then introduced not just Nuala and Deirdre, but their other sister Gráinne as well.

It was interesting to see the three of them, especially Nuala, and when the main sister of interest spoke for the first time it was suddenly driven home that up until then, my own impression of her had only ever come from her words, and how hearing her for the first time, regional accent and all, made her appear more human.

This example could be extended to people in general. You are not always in control of the impression you make on people when you meet them in person, but when those people have nothing to go on but your writing, those little words can be a very powerful tool indeed.

I think I'm stating the extremely obvious here...

One of the first things that was put out there by N was how sometimes your individual voice can be disempowered within your own family, that they feel that because they know you better than anyone, they can think you are getting away with something when you make a public statement, because they believe they know you better than anyone else. Also referred to was the potential minefield writing a book about your family can prove to be, as you are writing about the people closest to you.

Then it moved over to the other two sisters, and I was struck by the fact that, while Gráinne's public persona was not entirely different to Nuala's, Deirdre's is a bit sunnier in disposition. One word she self-deprecatingly used to describe herself was 'simple', and once made the point that Nuala and Gráinne were possessed of more depth than she was. Perhaps she was selling herself short with her phraseology, but on the surface at least, she seemed less self-absorbed than the other two.

It wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has read either of the two memoirs that the discussion centred not just around the difference in perspectives, but around the parents of the three sisters. One method Dermot Bolger adopted was to read an account of an incident from Nuala's life from her memoir, and then read Deirdre's account of the same incident from the other memoir. It yielded some amusing results from time to time.

Then questions were taken from the audience. I racked my brains for something, feeling that I shouldn't waste the opportunity. I came up with two questions. The first one, did Nuala ever get to meet the woman who had experimented sexually with Nuala's mother in boarding school, an experimentation which eventually led to the expulsion of the latter from that school? The second one, did she place more weight of expectation on her mother, given that she focused more on that woman's failings as a parent, rather than her father's, in her book?

I hesitated (I'm not possessed of an innate ability to judge other people's boundaries) and was lost. Perhaps it was for the best, re-reading what it was I intended to ask her. One of the last comments that came was from a woman with a wavering voice. Just about maintaining her composure, she said that the discussion had a particular resonance with her as she had found her father to be an 'unimaginable bastard' and couldn't understand how her younger sister thought he was a wonderful man. It was compelling stuff. The whole evening was, really.

And in keeping with the tone, when I stepped out into the open air after the three sisters had understandably fled via the back exit, it was raining.

An interesting night though.


If you the reader hasn't read 'Are You Somebody?' by Nuala O' Faoláin, get on it. It's insightful, thoughtful, and very readable. It's probably one of the best books about modern Ireland and its problems in print right now, and it's one of my favourites at this moment in time.

I drool, part II

I have discovered a new lust. It goes by the name of Chris Meloni.

I first saw this guy in Runaway Bride, a Julia Roberts and Richard Gere vehicle. There was nothing else on the telly that night - you must believe me - so I sat and watched it. I remember looking more than once at Monsieur Meloni, but didn't really think about him anymore after that. It was only when the film was repeated on some channel recently that I got another look at him, and it was then I resolved that I would google him at work the next day.

A quick search found that he is also one of the main stars of Law and Order: SVU and some other films I was vaguely aware of, but it was when I read more about his role in the prison drama 'Oz', the first question that came to mind was this.

Was I living under a fucking rock not to have known that this series had hot guy nudity, at a time when I was living in Dublin that had cable with a HBO channel?

I remember when Oz aired first I never really paid it much heed. Another example of life sometimes passing me by. Anyway, the series features lots of naked Chris, apparently, and he plays a gay character who has a liaison with another prisoner. I'm there. I never really cared for Law and Order: SVU and the sight of Senor Meloni in a suit doesn't really do it for me, but he sizzles as a convict, and with that I provide some examples. Click to enlarge, to enlarge like a .....*cough*....

Hot stuff. All pictures courtesy of christopher-meloni.com. To access real Chris nudity, click here and scroll down the page a bit. Then click on the numbers under his picture. Needless to say, it's not exactly work safe.

As it happens, a production of Arthur Miller's play A View from the Bridge is running in Dublin at the Gate Theatre, and guess who is playing one of the leading characters? Yup, it doth be Herr Meloni. I think I shall start making plans about being there also.

As an aside, the Hot Foreign Guy I was drooling over all year is a dead ringer for Chris. I think my taste in men is moving away from hair and more towards muscle.

As another aside, in the film Runaway Bride the story is that Roberts' character is dating Meloni's but dumps him for Gere's at the end. Was she fucking blind?

Another gig...

The Pixies played well last night, but I still preferred the gig where I saw them in the Phoenix Park for some reason. Lansdowne road is simply too big for a intimate gig. You feel (probably because you are) just one of several thousand. Yes, the Phoenix park is bigger than Lansdowne, but the fact that it's a park improves the experience. There are loads of places you can just throw yourself down to chill out in a park, but you don't get that feeling in a stadium. When you're on your own, as I was, the only thing to do is drink, really. That worked last Friday,but not last night, and it brings problems that I've previously referred to. However much of a journey it was to get anywhere near the moshpit, it was even harder to get out when you needed a piss break. I marvel at people who brought their pints right up there with them. They must have bladders of iron.

Another problem was that no matter how close I tried to get the stage, I was still WAY back. Our merry headliners looked like miniatures from where I was, a fact that only the screens could help with. On Friday I was able to get right up to the stage, so this impression suffered by comparison.

The Kings of Leon were supporting. They appear to have generated some fuss since they arrived on the music scene, but from last night's performance I can't really see why. They certainly don't do anything for me.

It wasn't all bad for me, just not as good as it could have been. The band itself were on top form, playing songs from every album, it was just difficult enough to get into it. This going to concerts alone lark, it's for the birds really. It never really bothered me until yesterday, but next time I'll make more of an effort to drag someone with me.

Anyway, the disposable camera has been used up, so pictures will follow soon enough.

Sonic Youth ROCKED!

So did the Chemical brothers, though they played a rather short set.

Friday evening saw me hotfoot out of work at 4pm, making a beeline for Marlay Park. I got to the front door of my building, dressed for warm weather, only to witness pouring rain outside.

Mercifully it abated, and stayed that way for the rest of the day.

I went to the venue alone, but met a guy and his girlfriend, got talking to them and hung out for a while. I had little interest in the first two bands (though they sounded good enough), I was really only there for New York's finest. So I loaded up on Budweiser (the main sponsor of the event. Bleh!) and got down. I forgot one thing. The cardinal rule of concert-going.

STOP DRINKING 45 MINUTES BEFORE YOUR FAVOURITE ACT OTHERWISE YOU HAVE TO RUN TO THE GENTS DURING THEIR SET.

I was down by the toilets when I heard a familiar-sounding wall of feedback, so I legged it to the front of the crowd, camera in hand. The first thing I noticed was how SY still look good, even though the average age of the band members must be close to fifty by now. Kim Gordon still looks cool at what must now be about fifty-two, though I'm still not sure about that dress. Lee Ranaldo, grey as a badger but there you go.

The way they played their set was to take about two songs from each album, going back as far as Evol. So basically we got treated to stuff like I love you Golden Blue (the opener), Schizophrenia, Pacific Coast Highway, Mote (during which Lee seemed to forget half the words), Drunken Butterfly, Pattern Recognition, Rain on Tin (closing), and other ones I don't remember right now.

Then I went off, drank some more, and came back for the Chemical Brothers. A good set, though a bit short. The crowd were mightily pissed off with this, and booed when the steward came on to signal the end of the gig. Of course at that stage I scoped out a hot guy, bounded up and asked if I could take a picture of him for that reason. He agreed, and his girlfriend seemed to take it pretty well.

All I have to do is wait for the pictures to come out and see if I knew what I was doing. The Pixies are headlining today at Lansdowne Road. Yay again!

Last night I went to the workshop about challenging internalised homophobia. It was fine, if a bit light, and I met some interesting people at it. Of course the two hours of workshop was followed by four hours of sociable drinking and now I'm sitting here wishing I had been sensible and gone home straight after.

It was the first time I'd been in a bar with topless male dancers doing their thing on the bar counter. I'm so out of the loop: there are about two gay bars after opening in Dublin since I went to Brighton and I never knew anything about them.

Now to get my head off the desk and do something...

Homophobia and you:

I am the girl kicked out of her home because I confided in my mother that I am a lesbian.

I am the prostitute working the streets because nobody will hire a transsexual woman.

I am the sister who holds her gay brother tight through the painful, tear-filled nights.

We are the parents who buried our daughter long before her time.

I am the man who died alone in the hospital because they would not let my partner of twenty-seven years into the room.

I am the foster child who wakes up with nightmares of being taken away from the two fathers who are the only loving family I have ever had. I wish they could adopt me.

I am one of the lucky ones, I guess. I survived the attack that left me in a coma for three weeks, and in another year I will probably be able to walk again.

I am not one of the lucky ones. I killed myself just weeks before graduating high school. It was simply too much to bear.

We are the couple who had the realtor hang up on us when she found out we wanted to rent a one-bedroom for two men.

I am the person who never knows which bathroom I should use if I want to avoid getting the management called on me.

I am the mother who is not allowed to even visit the children I bore, nursed, and raised. The court says I am an unfit mother because I now live with another woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who found the support system grow suddenly cold and distant when they found out my abusive partner is also a woman.

I am the domestic-violence survivor who has no support system to turn to because I am male.

I am the father who has never hugged his son because I grew up afraid to show affection to other men.

I am the home-economics teacher who always wanted to teach gym until someone told me that only lesbians do that.

I am the woman who died when the EMTs stopped treating me as soon as they realized I was transsexual.

I am the person who feels guilty because I think I could be a much better person if I didn’t have to always deal with society hating me.

I am the man who stopped attending church, not because I don't believe, but because they closed their doors to my kind.

I am the person who has to hide what this world needs most, love.

I am the person who is afraid of telling his loving Christian parents he loves another male.

Repost this if you believe homophobia is wrong.
(The above from adamof on livejournal)

While on the subject, I'm booked into this workshop thing on Monday, for challenging internalised homophobia. I've seen that term bandied about quite a lot lately, and have a few opinions on it myself, so participating in it can't do any harm, except maybe fill me full of dread at the prospect of walking into a room full of strangers and then having to work in small groups with them.

Work is intense, but if I get out of here tomorrow early enough, I have the Chemical Brothers and Sonic Youth to look forward to in Marlay Park. Yay!

Money, money, money...

Things I have missed because I was in Mallow for two months without money:

Dublin Pride
Dublin Gay Film Festival
Brighton Pride

Not to mention the fact that I haven't been able to go to a gym since I came home, and am fast losing the gains I made throughout this last year as a result.

Now I hear that the social welfare office are not giving me as much as they should be for the time I wasn't working, so I am as broke as ever.

I'm getting quite sick of being constant poverty. Some of it is down to bad financial management skills and not living within my means, but when I take a step back and look at the whole thing, my means aren't that vast. Yet any of the interests I have that require money have been shelved, and it's not for the first time, and I'm getting pissed off with it. I've been under the shadow of debt of one kind or another for the past 8 years or so, and I am quite fucking fed up with it. Poverty is part and parcel of being a student, unfortunately it was also part of parcel of being an IT contractor in unstable employment, and the hype about Dublin should be believed: it is rip-off central.

I swear, I'm the first person to speak out against getting on the treadmill of the world, but while money is far from everything, it is even further from nothing. Ever since I left home at the age of 19, it has always been a problem for me. I've either had some and blown it too quickly, or not had enough to begin with. This is one of the reasons I picked a vocational course when I went back to college: I've spent my twenties struggling; I'll be damned if I'll do the same for my thirties as well. Reality has bitten a great big chunk out of my ass.

I still can't reconcile myself to a lifetime of working for a living in the way most people do though, but I reckon I'll have to play that one by ear.

Why I opted out of going to film school.

'Excessive literalism is fatal'.

It's the one indisputable sentence in the whole thing.

Honestly, do these critics think that half of the concepts they are criticising were even intended by James Cameron?

Note to critics: One of the prerequisites of enjoying a science-fiction/action flick is leaving your brain at the door. Lighten up.

Happy birthday blog.

Well, it's officially one year ago today that I started this thing, and it's a year that's definitely been eventful, relatively speaking.

I decided to have a quick look through all the entries to date and see what my efforts have been like so far:

Moans about work: 8 posts

Moans about money and being broke: 14 posts, and one post with positive aspects to it.

Nights out and the planning of them: 19 posts

Aftermath of those nights out (i.e. hangovers the next day): 15 posts

Review of music and film: 16 posts

Books: 3 posts

Moans about exams: 18 posts

Positive posts about exams/results: 5

Rants: 6 posts (mainly about hating football, gay rights, and free fees for students)

Current affairs: 8 posts (pope dying, US election results, same sex marriage, mainly)

Pictures of me: 3

Internet stuff: 2 posts

Big brother: 2 posts

Lie-ins: 1 post

Third level education in general: 2 posts

Things happening in my life in general: 25 posts approx.

Gym: 2 posts

Hot Foreign Guy in the above gym: 3 posts

Sex: 5 posts

My family (brother): 1 post

The above are approximate as I lost patience with this counting process as time went on. However, they would seem to corroborate the contention that my blog might have begun to follow a pattern lately. The last one is telling. Overall I'm pretty reluctant to post anything here about my family, in case they might stumble across it. They remain in blissful ignorance of all of this. At least, I hope they do, otherwise I'm dead.

Generally, I've always been slow to say things about people here that I wouldn't say to them in real life (a policy some bloggers I've read should follow), and once you've got something off your chest with someone, I really don't feel there's much point in offloading about it here afterwards. From that point of view, this blog will never become that much of a soap opera.

If blogging is a popularity contest, it looks like I'm not exactly winning everyone over, judging by the amount of comments I get on average - none, barring one or two guys who have passed through. There is also the fact that I'll never be able to put down absolutely everything I want to here for reasons I've outlined earlier. Still, something keeps me going. Quite a few blogs started out with no comments from anyone, and ultimately I've no idea how many people read this, so I reckon I'll keep it going for some more time. I think what I need to do is use this as less of a description of my day to day life, and more of a soapbox or facility for criticism. This may mean less posting, but hey.

There's an awful lot of rubbish out there, but I've always been able to take it or leave it. Pet hate? When people criticise other people's blogs and profiles from the safe distance of their own journal, or just gratuituous moaning in general, really. Cyberspace is big enough for everyone.

■

I started work today. The relief of being back in the city is substantial, and I've pretty much settled back into things. The only blot on the landscape being that I came back too late last night to see 'Bear Cub' in the cinema. It's almost a year since this came out. There's nothing for it. I'll just have to order the DVD. The uncut (ha!) version, of course.

Done and dusted

What could have been a nightmare week actually finished up quite well.

I went to Dublin on Wednesday evening with the intention of looking for a place to live in for the two month period I'll be working there.

I woke up on the couch in a house I used to live in on Thursday morning, with a full day of walking and public transport ahead of me as I looked for a place. A place, to compound the difficulty, that would only need me for two months.

It was pouring rain outside. It didn't stop for two whole days.

Mercifully, the ad I had put on the internet yielded results. A man mailed me offering a room for the two months in a house that isn't that far from where I will be working, and I got sorted. After that, I got on with the business of meeting old friends and quickly and efficiently boozed the tax cheque I got down to almost nothing. Will I ever learn?

In other news, I went to see War of the Worlds. I had the Jeff wayne musical version thing when I was younger and was quite impressed by it. This was typical Spielberg, visually impressive with a rather linear storyline, and he didn't deviate much from the original plot. The 'violence, menace and peril' tag...er...isn't that supposed to be covered by the censorship rating? Anyway, I recommend, and contrary to what seems like popular opinion at the moment, Tom Cruise's presence in it doesn't make it unwatchable.

Another film I saw this week was Downfall. This has been out for quite some time, but I never got around to it while I was in Brighton. I should have had, as it was definitely one of the best war films I've seen in a long time. In all the Nazi-centred war films that I've seen up until now, Hitler has always been portrayed as a one-dimensional raving lunatic (War & Remembrance, anyone?). This one did a much better job, putting him across as...erm...a raving lunatic BUT one with human qualities. There are times in it when you would see him as a doddering and doting grandfather in years to come, in the way he deals with women and children, including those of the Nazi Youth. When one of his officers, Albert Speer, informs him that sometimes he deliberately acted contrary to the Führer's wishes, you almost felt sorry for the Nazi leader, not so much because of the betrayal involved, but because it was like holding up a mirror to Hitler's own deluded thinking. One other thing that was alluded to in the film was the fact that support for the Nazis from the german people themselves was never at 100%, something that never seems to be mentioned in intermediate level history textbooks. All in all, extremely considered in its treatment of an area that is often tramped over with great big jackboots. Go see.

I wonder though, how the admissions department of that Austrian art school felt as they saw WWII play out before them? In any case, I wouldn't mind getting my hands on a copy of Mein Kampf, just out of curiosity.

Friday saw me go for an eye test in Vision Express, and in spite of the fact that I told them to use the frames I already had for my new lenses, it still cost me 180 euros to get kitted out (including the insurance). Apparently, it 'costs' 70 euros alone to cut the lenses to fit the frames I already had. What's that sound? Oh, it's me getting boned in the ass. I also had a contact lens consultation, which I have to follow up with in the next week or two. I really want to make the switch to them, but when the optician put them in as a trial run that day, it felt like there was a group of wasps partying on my eyeball. Hopefully I'll get used to them.

Yesterday I got the lovely train back down to Mallow which was stuffed full to bursting with noisy knackers and me with a lingering and even more lovely hangover to make the experience that bit more special. What is it with people smoking joints on trains? Couldn't they at least use the toilet? Urrgghhh!

After that I went out in Mallow and met lots of people I hadn't seen in ages, what with the bank holiday and all, and ended up in the local nightclub. In there I saw a bouncer who used to teach me life-saving in the local swimming pool fifteen years ago, and who I remember as being rather hot in his day. Of course with all the alcohol I had he was duly informed of this in the course of the night, but he seemed more chuffed than anything else.

Getting the train back tomorrow. It'll feel like an escape. First up, 'Bear Cub', a film I tried unsuccessfully to see in Brighton before, is showing Monday coming in Dublin, so that's one thing I might pencil in. Overall I'm looking forward to getting back to civilisation.

Arrgh! Gmail gets stressed:

Well I thought it was funny.

Finally...

I got my transcript, and I got a 2.1! Yay me! That breakdown in full:

Quantitative Skills for Pharmacists:	A
Pharmacology:	A
Pharmacy Practice – Coursework:	A
Pharmacy Practice – Exam:	B
Chemistry I:	B
Pharmaceutical Analysis:	B
Chemistry II:	C
Cell Biology and Biochemistry*:	D

I also got my tax cheque this morning and it has been lodged. I've noticed that it can be a pain in the arse trying to get through to the revenue department, but once you do, they act quickly. All I have to do is wait for the money to clear, and partaayy!

*Eye-wateringly boring. No-one could ever hope to do well. That's my official defence anyway.

More news, some good...

Having spent half of yesterday on the phone to the revenue office (most of it on hold), I found out that I overpaid tax to the tune of 900 yo-yos last year, so that's a fat cheque that's winging it's way to me. Ha ha.

Brighton Uni still haven't complied with some of the requests I made of them, including the forwarding of my transcript, and I don't think the angry letter I got from them this morning telling me I still owe them £250 is entirely unrelated to that. Trying to manage my bank account at the moment is like trying to stall the sinking of the Titanic. Oh fun and games.

There was an explosion in the main street in Mallow this afternoon, right across the street from me, and then lots of oohing and aahing from gawkers as a cloud of smoke rose up into the air. Firemen duly arrived on the scene, but it was lashing rain so I didn't stop to check them out. Hopefully no-one got hurt.

I've been officially promised a job for the months of August and September, so all is not lost on that front. I leave for Dublin on the 25th or so. It'll be about time.

...

...


Dammit, I'm bored!

Oh. My. God.

I passed everything! I'm through into second year!

Who de man? I de man!

I don't know how I actually got on in any of the individual subjects, I just checked on the website, and next to my name, those magic words: 'Proceed to level 2'.

Oh joy and rapture!

The only fly in the ointment is that there is no-one to go out and get drunk with, but my parents have offered to take me out for a drink tonight to celebrate.

Now, off I go out into the sun to get burnt.

There is a light. Is it an oncoming train?

I found out yesterday that, as a mature student, I am entitled to unemployment benefit this summer at the usual rate of 130 euro a week. My sanity has started to make something of a recovery. Now I will be able to do things that normal people do, like go to the cinema, and top up my phone credit.

My results are out sometime at the start of next week. I'm not sure how I feel about this impending revelation. I have almost certainly failed Biology, and if the resit date coincides with or interferes with any of the concerts I want to go to in August, I will surely kill myself. Here's hoping...

The morning of the London bombs was one of the few where I was actually up early enough to hear about it happening on the radio. At least the people I know that are based there are OK.

My sister and I were having the discussion that morning, and one thing that came up was that if Al-Quida had struck just before the UK general election, it would have quite possibly scuppered Tony Blair's chances of getting back into power, just as what happened in Spain with the Madrid bombings. The then PM of Spain blamed ETA solely to distract attention away from the fact that he had led his country's armed forces into Iraq against the wishes of almost everyone in Spain, and now they were suffering the consequences.

I wonder though, if the relationship between participation in the Iraq war and suffering revenge at the hands of the terrorist organisation is that linear.

I'm still bored!

My boredom and frustration has reached a plateau. It hasn't got any worse in the last week, but that's not to understate how intense it is already. To top it all off, our VCR has given up the ghost, so I'm reduced to watching the four Irish channels for entertainment (Saw 'Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya sisterhood' last night. Gawd!)

My phone interview reaped rewards, but it turns out that that only means I'm over the first of three hurdles in the selection process, and it's for a permanent position, which is not what I'm really after (though anything will do at this stage). I'm e-mailing an average of 2 companies per day with regard to advertised positions, and so far none of them have had the courtesy to get back to me.

Two friends of my mother's are over from Holland for a while to stay, so at least that breaks up the monotony.

In other news, I've picked up a guitar again for the first time in nearly a year. I'm currently trying to nail the Cure's 'Just Like Heaven'. It's not going too badly. Before, I always set myself these trying practice sessions as my goal, with a view to learning as much as possible, whereas now I'm just learning songs that I like, as opposed to rambling chord changes, and it's turning out much better.

I still need a job though.

Progress, but at the other side of the world...

Canada: Same-sex marriage law passes 158-133

I'm not sure if I like how the cabinet ministers were forced to vote with the government, but in one way it sends out the message that denial of rights won't be tolerated.

All I have to do is wait for Ireland to follow suit, although I fear I may have to get myself cryogenically frozen for some time in order to witness that occasion. 3 countries down (including Belgium and the Netherlands), many many to go...

I have a job interview over the phone tomorrow. I'm crossing absolutely everything for this one.

I'm BORED!

It's 2 weeks since I got home, and the job that I was fairly sure I'd get has not materialised. This is not good. I need money. I am, at this moment in time, poorer than a church mouse.

A handsome (and rather hairy) couple from Brighton contacted me on gaydar, inviting me to join them in a ménage à trois, but I'm stuck here! I must say though, ever since I shaved my head, the number of propositions I've been getting on that site has increased exponentially. Fat lot of good it's doing me though, stuck in Mallow.

The novelty of sleeping in until lunchtime is starting to wear off (To be fair, I've had a lot of practice. Practice that extended over the whole of the college year), and I am now looking for anywhere in Ireland that needs a software tester at short notice. It transpires that some of my more preferred bands are playing in Dublin in the summer (The Pixies, Sonic Youth) and to go and see them, I need money.

As a consequence of my poverty, tonight will be spent at home. The Ice Storm is on TV at 12:30am. While it is a good film, it nearly drove me to suicide the first time I saw it, so maybe watching it again isn't such a good idea at this point in my life...

Oh, PUKE!

Hmmmm...

Your Linguistic Profile:

45% General American English

30% Yankee

20% Dixie

5% Upper Midwestern

0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

Well, it's not as if I have anything else to write about. If anyone can enlighten me as to what these different types of English actually are, feel free...

Fear

...is lying awake at 3 in the morning, in an empty house (my parents have gone for a week) and suddenly hearing a high-pitched sound outside that strikes you as a cross between Freddy Krueger running his finger-knives over a metal surface and a small child crying out, realising that while your phone is next to your bed, it has run out of credit, and you are miles from town (our house is in the countryside).

I swear, if it's the neighbour's cat it's going to wake up some morning and find itself disembowelled and hanging from the clothes line quicker than you can say Whiskas.

My parents have gone to Vienna on holiday for the week. I resisted the temptation to throw wild parties/orgies, instead restricting myself to smoking in the house and leaving the washing up build up. The latter wasn't the greatest idea ever, given that every single cooking utensil in the kitchen now sits next to the sink, looking at me quizically, wondering when it is going to be washed up. There is almost an hours work there. Also, I forgot to water the basil plant, which now looks like it is in the throes of life-threatening dehydration. Get off your ass, Denis!

In an attempt to live up to the 'new irishness' of this blog's title, I've decided to learn Irish. I tried in school (or rather, my teachers tried to make me) but it didn't quite sink in. Going through the material I have now, I'm not surprised. The grammar is amongst the most pernickety I've ever seen in any language. But I'm fed up with coming across faux-Irish displays of national pride (usually, the smell of IRA sympathy is never far behind) and so I've decided to go one better and spend the summer learning my native tongue.