Goodbye And Good Luck

I'm quitting all this blogging nonsense. In the beginning, it was sort of fun, and then when the other blog began receiving comments, I thought that was kind of cool, but then things happened a few months back that changed it. I'm not going to go into details - with anyone, so don't even bother - but I am tired of blogging, podcasting, whatever. This whole situation reminds me of that Second Life thing where people use avatars to meet people on the internet. This is the same thing with words. Why would I need a Second Life when I already have one?, mused I to myself this morning while watching Futurama.

If I want to meet people on the internet, I'll use Xbox Live, where I can show them no mercy in video games. That's what it's for, that and antagonising Americans, who have to be some of the most sickening people ever to hold that sacred white controller.
So in much the same way that I forever ditched Bebo - something I have never went back to - when it became pointless and time-consuming, blogging will now take the seppuku route of my pastimes. I haven't enjoyed writing a post for months, and my humour is wasted on people who can't see me or hear me, as that is a major part of my routines. What is the point of me being able to impersonate, say, Pierce Brosnan if you can't hear that? If you can't see me break into a jig in time with the awful accordian music outside the Bank of Ireland ATM in Cavan?

There are some of you out there committed and determined to blog, and you have clear purpose in writing your posts. That's fine, and long may it continue. I don't; I never had.

Today, the 15th of July 2007, is where it ends. Two years after discovering blogging, my odyssey ends here.

Zzz ...

I've been pretty chilled lately, on all fronts. I'm also after cutting the lawn and using petrol for purposes other than fuelling the mower, so that may explain my mood. Apologies for my absence on your blogs lately - I haven't had the time to do much internet stuff lately, I've been hitting the old guit-box hard lately. That and the Southern Comfort.
Liverpool have received my results - so fingers and all other appendages crossed that they'll see fit to offer me a conditional acceptance. I just thought that another year in UCD would be rather soul-destroying, especially without one of the people who made it bearable last year.

I've no work for this week - I'm on call - so I'll have a week free to get into blogging again, in between hitting the gym, guitar, reading, the list goes on ...

In short, thank you for continuing to visit, despite the complete lack of posts ... anyway, here's the latest song I'm tackling on my axe, and it looks surprisingly easy but is a bit of a cunt - Lola, by The Kinks.

What Does The Future Hold ... Have I A Fucking Crystal Ball?

As you can infer from the title, the results from UCD, when they eventually came, were not entirely positive. Though they merely confirmed what I had feared, I still had to feign disappointment for the benefit of those around me. So I have to repeat, or some modular bullshit version of it, first year.

Now I had said earlier in the year that 'if I have to repeat first year I'll go swimming with a millstone for a float' but now, in the place of the usual suicidal depression I used to go into when things like this happened, I have achieved a Zen-like, if grim, acceptance of the shit reality and become pragmatic. While my parents are zealous adherents to the belief that complaining and shouting solves any problem, I now realise there is no point bitching about spilt milk if the cow has just contracted foot-and-mouth disease.

So, what are my options:
1) Go to UCD, and repeat first year again:
Pros:
- Familiarity;
- Sharing a house with the same crew from last year;
- I shouldn't make the same mistakes twice;

Cons:
- I will make the same mistakes twice, because GTA 4 and Halo 3 are out in October;
- Do I really want to go back to UCD, a place I once described as 'a shithole like Detroit and Limerick combined, without the violence'?;
- Do I really want to repeat a course that I was uneasy about in the beginning - and indifferent to in the end - all over again?

2) Go to England:
I have two options here, the unfortunately unlikely Liverpool, and the more realistic London option.
Pros:
- New country, clean slate;
- It's not Ireland;
- Hopefully no modular system bullshit;
- If in London, my sister can help sort me out when I arrive;
- Works out cheaper than UCD in the long run;

Cons:
- Distance from home;
- Don't know anybody;
- Might not work out as I intend;

3) Full time portering:
As you all know, I'm a porter in the hospital nearby. I'm enjoying this job so much that I am considering a year out to work there, before staging a new assault on third-level education with muchos euros in my pocket.
Pros:
- Around €30,000 a year, more than most people when they get straight out of college;
- Above money would mean I'd probably never have to work during college again;
- Great job;
- Virtually unsackable;
- Brilliant co-workers;

Cons:
- Not college;
- Parents would have heart attacks at the thought of me dropping out of college;
- The chance that I may not return to education;

4) The Cavan College Route:
Ah yes, my old nemesis could become the place I go to fill a year, but this is really only an option if I do 3) above, to make it look like I'm committed to education.
Pros:
- In Cavan;
- Cheap;
- Would fill a year, I suppose;

Cons: This is Cavan College; I have never failed to utilise an opportunity to ridicule it, thus I would be eating:
- Humble Pie.

So be it. I have to make a decision. What to do?

A video. Time Is Running Out, by Muse. Because time is running out.

Fuck YoUCD

As you are well aware from days gone by, I blog solely when I am angry, and I'm pretty fucking pissed now.
I come home from work today (going great by the way) and hold my breath and look up my results on the UCD Student Web System, upon which my foreseeable future rests, only to receive the following message:
Your web access has been disabled. Please contact the UCD Student Desk for more information.
'Fiddle-de-dee' says I, as I fuck the laptop out the window.
Later on, in an internet cafe, I try ringing UCD - one of those international call shops is in the same building - only to receive the following message from a recorded voice:
'Please leave a message; the UCD Student Desk opening hours are from 9am to 5pm Monday to Friday.'
'But I fucking work from nine to five!' I howled, smashing the receiver and drawing strange glances from the assorted Treebaluchas talking loudly in some Slavic tongue.

UCD ... can you ever not be a shower of cunts?

Eight Things ... Can I Lie?

I was tagged by K8 earlier - had I not been an observant little boy I would have missed it - requesting that I tell you lot eight new things about me that I haven't told you before. Well, since I wasn't really going to blog as I have run out of inspiration lately ... this gives me a good excuse to get back in the game. Let's go:

1) My childhood ambition was to be a Formula One driver: Yes, I used to love F1, and as a child I showed serious promise in karts. My father's friend, whose son has gone on to be a success in touring car racing, offered my father the chance to enter me in the Ulster Kart Championship for £500 sterling. Dad, being the eternal cheapskate that he was, refused to pay the money.
I'm still brilliant in karts though; my cousin once organised a race event down in Edgeworthstown in Longford, where there is an outdoor tarmac circuit, and I destroyed all comers. I was lapping people and driving as hard and aggressively as I could. I won the day's event, and it reminded me of what could have, and indeed, if I can afford one at the end of the summer, may still be ... Lewis Hamilton, I'm gunning for your spot!

2) I have over fifty different replica football shirts: To this day, a collection of football shirts I began at 14 remain my front line clothes ... they're comfortable and I'm a slob. It works. Pair them with tracksuit bottoms and you look like a knacker/feel free and easy all day.

3) The combination of features I find sexiest on a woman is: Green eyes and black hair, though I will happily take any dark haired woman. Green eyes are just the most enthralling eye colour I've ever seen. Black haired lassies tend to be 60% hot and 40% average-to-not-that-hot (I've never seen an ugly black haired girl), and give them green eyes and I'm as happy as a pig eating his last trough of swill.

4) My favourite TV show is Futurama: Can't wait for the new series and the film. Like Family Guy, this show is still pretty fresh ... unlike The Simpsons, which is as dead as the corpse I dealt with in the morgue today.
There's so many classic episodes, and Futurama is the one show I can draw entirely random quotes from, which confuses people. Zapp Brannigan - what a legend.

5) The TV character I identify most with is: Phillip J. Fry, from the above show. I too am a slob, feel out of place in the present, and fuck it, I always wanted to see the future. I would also spend all day watching TV in my underwear too. In fact, I've done that. Many times.

6) In my spare time, I play hurling: Amazing, me playing hurling? Even I laughed at myself when I took up the hurley, but it's actually quite a good sport to mess about in.

7) The religion I would most love to be a part of is: Rastafarianism. Not just the pot-smoking elements of it either, but the whole religion seems so flippant and relaxed that it makes a nice change from seeing Muslims hell bent on joining their 77 virgins in Paradise and taking as many infidels as possible with them.
Question: What do they do when they've had sex with all seventy seven?
Anyway, the Rastas seem like a chilled out group of people ... hell, the guy they thought was Jah, Haile Selassie, seemed to treat the whole thing as a bit of a laugh. Now when your God thinks his own religion is taking the piss, you know that's got to be a good religion.

8) I want to be cryogenically frozen after death: Imagine the look on my children's faces when they read the will. 500 years' time:
Daz: Yeah, I'm your great-great-great ... great-grandfather.
Distant Progeny: What?!?

Sin sin, as Michael O Unspellable Surname would say, the RTE GAA commentator. And now for the song which has served as my ringtone over the past two years, in particular the part that begins 'everybody sing Jamaica!' up to the end. The Futurama Bureaucrat Song.