Let's Revise, Shall We?

Editing is a bitch, sometimes. However, I have successfully gotten through Meet Sam with the red pen without setting it on fire. I consider this to be something of a success. Yes, there's a lot of red ink in it, but that just gives me work to do before I even get around to draft number two!

Speaking of draft two, that's when I bring in a lot of revision. One thing I'm considering changing is the type of drug my main character was addicted to in his past. It is, as it stands, cocaine. I figure, that's a bit weird, to only snort coke and do nothing else... so he's being a weed smoker, instead. He's going to have been a regular smoker to, which will result in a few fun moments in the book when he really needs to calm down, craving a cigarette, dying for one!

I also found a plot hole. Well, I knew it was there. But actually locating it was funny. I mentioned something, in dialogue, that the character doesn't find out until a bit later. This is the problem with extensive planning; if you know something is going to happen, one has to be careful not to let it be mentioned before it actually happens!

As well as that, I've located the times in the book that allow for relationships with three of the other characters to be expanded upon. They're kind of important... his only cousin and his parents... there are over a dozen time segments that I have in the book that will allow for this sort of stuff, directly. Then there's the four long time gaps I can work with! They will allow for much development of plot, as well as giving some history with and of the other characters. There's also a fun opportunity for some creative experimentation with the human mind.

For those of you who still don't know, Meet Sam is a book about writing, about Dublin, about relationships and how they can be royally fucked up very easily, about drugs, sex, music, freedom, the human mind and emotions. It's my best idea, ever. I've had some good ideas, I know that. I haven't used them all, and I haven't used them all correctly that have been used, but I know they were good ideas. This is from experience, I might add. I know good ideas when I see them, and these were good ideas. And Meet Sam is my best yet; not the narrator in the head sort of idea, I might add. That's just an added bonus. It's the result of having a narrator in the head of the main character that's the really good idea.

Also, as a funny note: the hero of the book isn't even the main character. Sam is the one everything happens to, while his cousin is the one who actually saves the day on a couple of occassions! This is where this book related to my life (except I can't go back and revise my own life - I can fix it, which I intend to, but I can't go back and actually change anything). In some respects, I relate to Sam quite well, but he's also made up of parts of other people I knew when I wrote the book. No one from college, I might add. I didn't know any of them, then. Okay, so he might be like a few of them, but they didn't directly influence the creation of him. Like Sam, I tend to find myself in a case of being a victim. This is the sad sort of crazy we both suffer from. Lack of decentring, really. But anyway, neither of us are really totally and utterly concerned with ourselves; there's usually someone else, our Abby (though my Abby isn't his Abby... my Abby isn't called Abby, for one thing!). The Abby of life is the one that makes everything worth it. It can be more than one person, of course, and it doesn't always have to be a romantic thing. Abby is salvation, release, freedom. I know several people that fit the Abby description. Heck, I even have a Nick in my life (Nick being the older cousin). This was a weird realisation: Nick is pretty much imagined quite closely to how my friend Liam actually is. And he's been that way since before I knew Liam. Funny, that. 'Course, the Nick figure is the one that helps out all the time and, like the Abby figure, isn't always exactly as I describe. Sure, there are other Nick figures in my life, and they're mostly female. It's to do with the influence the person has on my life that determines whether they're a Nick or an Abby.

But wait, there's more. There's the Alex figure. Alex is a little-mentioned character, whom I may or may not expand upon. Alex is the bad influence on life. Alex can be anyone. Anyone at all. You know peer-pressure? Yeah, your peers are Alex, if they're getting you into some sort of trouble. We all have an Alex in our lives. There's always someone to get us into some state of trouble, whether it's with someone else or with ourselves, someone to destroy us. And like Alex in the book, you can't entirely get rid of them.

And of course, we all have parents. Not biological parents, though that's true of the fortunate of us, but people who act like parents for us. There's always someone to care for us simply because of who you are. You aren't necessarily related, but that makes no difference. Family can mean anything, and you can have any number of people acting as parents for you at some stage or another!

(Funny thought, based on things teachers used to say to me: If this book ever shows up on the Leaving Cert syllabus, students just need to find this post and they've got lots of info on the book right from the author's mouth!)

So, that's it. After a few hours revising, this is what I can come up with. I have a deeper understand of my own characters, and of how I am essentially living my book every single day, in the ways I interact with other people. Hence why I put so much work into this thing. It's the best thing I've written because it can have such a large impact on my own life and on the lives of other people who can come to recognise the truly important people around them. And I really don't mean that to sound pretentious. I really don't. I mean it as a personal experience - I am happier in the knowledge of how people affect me. I know who to avoid and who to talk to, who's best for my mental and emotional security, who cares for me, and who doesn't. Mostly it's college people. That's the best thing that's ever happened to me - getting out of secondary school and into my college. My particular college. Another college wouldn't have done. It wouldn't have been the same. I wouldn't have made the amazing friends I made this year, who I know I'm going to miss seeing, even if I can talk to them online or on the phone or whatever.

Ah! Inspiration. This means I have to go. Thank you for reading all this... it's rubbish straight from my mouth, really.

Plans

As many people know, I have plans. Many, many plans. Some of them involved many of my friends, some are mroe specific to particular people, and some have to do with the college as a whole. (Side note: I've discovered that much of what I talk about these days has to do with college; this is not an entirely negative thing. I refused to discuss exams, my results, or anything like that. My plans are more to do with the socialising section of the college.)

Okay, some stuff is too personal/secretive (we like our secrets, we do), but I can fill you in on some of the other stuff; during the summer, I plan on going to the zoo. I know, adventurous. It'll be good fun, though. I haven't been since 4th year, and there are new animals since then! I might even adopt an animal! I'll see... It's on the "maybe" pile. Actually, might be related to one of the secrets. Need to see how things turn out.

Aside from that, nights out. I know, people do this all the time. Not me. I didn't have too many nights out during the college year, and by this time next year I hope to have changed that! I will be going out to gigs and whatnot, and hoping someone can do me the favour, if I end up going out in such a way that I stay in his place overnight, of keeping a spare t-shirt and a tooth brush in his house when we're out, so I have something to change in to for college the next day without having to go home... we'll see, anyway. He's dead sound, so he mightn't have a problem (most likely, he won't have a problem if he has no problem with me staying in his place overnight...)

I've started writing a new book, too. That's part of my summer plan - write it and edit it. That, and Meet Sam. Both are a bit of a riot. Lots of swearing and humour. The new one, Dignity, will have a few more innappropriate things, and is slightly biographical, if you can call it that. Investigative journalism meets narrative fiction!

Dignity, then, will play a role in September; I want to see if the college library will stock it and anything else students write. I want to start up a writers' society in the college and hope to inspire some courage in people to let their work be displayed for the whole student body to have access to. If it can be arranged, I'd like to get the books printed specifically for the library, using the society's funds. And I'll be ensuring copyright is protected on all these books, too. This will, hopefully, be the start of something big in my college! It's not just about getting the books out there; it's about getting people to have courage, to get their names out there.

I'm also planning birthday presents. Need to buy most of two of them tomorrow, with the rest of one being bought on Sunday or Monday. I have plans for two other birthday presents, too. All will be sorted out soon. These presents all kick ass, by the way. At least, I hope they do. One of them definitely does! The recipient will love it, just for the idea of it!

Okay, I literally can't say anything else without revealing at least one of the secrets. I need to make a phone/Skype call or have a face-to-face chat before I can even go into detail on any of this stuff. But I'm quite proud of the idea. Whether I can get the person I have to call to do it is another story!

What are your plans for the summer?

Write It Down

It's no secret on this blog that I'm sometimes a bit crazy. Tuesday night, and in fact a few other days spaced sporadically throughout the past week, was a particular period of madness I hope never to repeat, involving a bit of paranoia, even when I knew the paranoia had no logic to it and that what I was imagining in my head wasn't true.

It's a long story, best left untold. The important part is how I reacted to it; I wrote a Facebook message to my confidante in all things crazy. Now, at the time this seemed like a good idea. I was being driven crazy, and I thought that maybe, just maybe, he might arrive online to save the day. He didn't. But that's okay; he read the message yesterday morning, and we got to talking about it last night properly over a few drinks. (Okay, so he was having a few drinks, I was having Sprite.)

People on Twitter will know that I was a bit stressed about the whole thing, because I really had to try get it sorted out and I didn't know how. In short, because that's the best way to tell this, so as not to reveal any of the intricate, personal details, he confirmed that the logical part of my thinking had been right, not the paranoia. He also told me not to get in touch with him like that again. It wasn't that he wanted to stop me talking to him about my problems, though. He just didn't want any of that stuff getting read by anyone else, which is entirely understandable. He told me, before he got too drunk for me to keep him to his word, that I should just ask if I can call him, and something would be sorted out from there. Aside from that, he gave the advice that many people often take - write it down. Not on the computer, but on paper. Something I can crumple up and throw away in the bin, if I really had to. In fact, he advised it. Personally, I think I'd make a copy, a soft-copy, of several of these things, for future reference only, locked away on a USB, with a password, that I'm not allowed to access myself. And burn the originals all at once in a lovely fire.

It's things like this, understanding my problems and actually talking about them, and talking about his own stuff too, that make me respect this lad. Despite all the trouble he got into when he was younger, all the trouble he still gets himself into, I can't help but look up to him. He's one of my best friends, undeniably, and he's something of a hero. And I don't mean that like other people do. It's not because he knows how to get a girl, or how to have a good time when he's out, or all the funny stories he tells, but because of the other things he does, the things that make him a genuinely nice person to know, someone who makes me feel safe when I'm feeling a bit lost, and who encourages me to be myself. You don't get many people like that. Yeah, I have other people I'd call best friends, but not in that way. I don't think I could go through all this stuff with them all the time, because I'd be afraid of what they thought. I knew, before I told him anything about myself, that he had had problems in the past, that he still has problems, unrelated ot the trouble he gets himself into, and that was why I could talk to him.

And like he said - write it down. I figure, the positive stuff can be shared, the negative stuff protected and burned. My problems are the secrets to discuss in private; my friends are the secrets the world has to know about.

What Do You Do?

What do you do when all those around you aren't aware of who you really are?
What do you do when the person who said you should talk, isn't there to listen?
What do you do when the world closes in around you?
What do you do when you feel like you're losing your mind?
All these and more, I ask myself.
Through these and more, I suffer.
In silence, in pain, I ask myself,
What did I do to deserve all this?

Was it because I didn't conform,
Or maybe because I simply couldn't?
Was it because I was too different?
Was it completely out of my control?
Was I always meant to lose my mind?
Was I always meant to die inside?

Enter the Final Phase

Lost is over for good, two exams left to go and my head is going more than a bit crazy. There's also the best Facebook Group for the Irish, ever. If none of that interests you, you might as well go away.

Okay, my personal opinion on Lost? I loved every last second of it. The finale.. beautiful. I can't imagine how they could have done it any better or any worse. Critics are divided on it, fans probably are too, but the important thing is that it ended the show successfully. No questions can be asked about the end - it was what it was, and as not everyone will have seen it, I can't even go into detail on that. But it tied up the plot neatly and efficiently. Whether or not people loved it as much as I did is a different matter. Each to their own, as they say.

Exams. Right.. didn't do much study today. Very little for my Varieties of Fiction exam tomorrow, actually. I read the books a couple of weeks ago, but that's it. It's not until one. I can manage. Right? I did for Poetry and Drama. I'm sure I'll be fine... Pentateuch on Wednesday, then. That should be fine...except for the anticipation. That may ruin the exam for people. Wanting to get out as soon as humanly possible to go to the pub. At one. Yes, in the afternoon. Then we're done until September. Those of us who don't have repeats in August, that is. Unless someone was excluded from an exam, there's no telling who'll be there in August, not until June.

Crazy time? Yeah, I think so, too. I may have had a bit of an emotional breakdown yesterday. My mum knows, don't worry. She came in to make sure I was alright. I don't think I was right in the head again until earlier today. Had the company of Eileen, Fiona, Blondie, Walshie and Cabrina, and I made a phone call to Liam. I think it all sorted me out. I'm just hoping I don't enter a stage of out-of-control enthusiasm (beyond what I'm normally like, anyway). That's one of the signs of depression, and it's not something you can fight against. Better just keep an eye on what I spend my money on, and focus on the future, not how quickly I can get rid of my wages.

As to the group... Liam made it last night. It's growth was slow to begin with, largely due to the fact that by last night I mean half one in the morning. But it's been going mad ever since. Over 450 people, now. You can join it here: You have a God given right to walk in the middle of the road to a GAA match. I recommend you join it. Especially if you're Irish.

So.. yeah, that's about it. I may or may not have plans tomorrow immediately after my exam. I shall see. It all depends on Liam, really. If I do have the plans, I'll tell you all about them when I get home tomorrow. If not... well, I might still have a blog post. If you don't see me tomorrow... well it won't be at least until Thursday before I pop back onto the blog. Wednesday = The Great Big Piss Up. I don't drink, but I probably won't be sleeping, either. Fun times await!

It's Hot Out

Record high temperatures of the year, and where was I? In work. I know. It sucked. Now, normally I don't mind my job. I actually rather like it, when there's something to be done. But after the trolley was emptied and the kids' section cleaned, twice, there was nothing left to do.

Add in the heat, and you lose not only fluids, but customers. I got home at four, not knowing whether or not I'd get a chance to get in the sun. I asked my friend Eithne is she was at home, in Offaly. No, she hadn't gone home. She was still in Dublin.

Naturally, we went for a walk in the park, and had a little chat. Well, more than little chat. We talked about all sorts of things; fights we might have to prevent, people who are annoying, people who are sound, things we have to try do with our time in future summers. Eithne's one of the people I know I'm going to be in touch with years down the line. I really hope she's not the only one. People like Liam and Aidan, who I've spent ages talking to of late, and all the brilliant friends I became close to at the start of the year, rather than just knowing who they were, a bit... I don't know what I'd do without them all. And there are so many of them! I'm lucky to have that job for all the birthdays! Third year will be expensive for all those - so many 21st birthdays to go to, presents to buy for them, drinks to buy for them...

But I still plan on escaping somewhere. America. I'd like to go to America. In the meantime, I have work to do back here. I need to get qualified to teach, and I need to get my novel sent off, and actually finished. The second draft will be longer than the first; I explained this yesterday, about how I was suddenly realising I had so much more to write on than I had for my first draft of Meet Sam. And on Monday, I have to submit my poems to a group of people down in Limerick. Hopefully they'll like a few of them enough to want to publish them. And hopefully they don't get too depressed by them all! Subject matter... lost love (result of death), suicide, crappy life, guilt and death. Not exactly the most inspiring bunch of poetry, though you might argue they inspire deep emotions of pain and sorrow. My friends joke, when I tell them about these poems, that I'm going to be the really depressing poet on the Leaving Cert somewhere down the line that they're going to be forced to teach about. I would love that!

Right, time to leave you and love you, my dear readers. There's tea to be read and a novel to be edited! Goodbye and God bless!

Daily Writing

This blog post comes as a response to Alison Wells' blog post on the same topic; writing every day - good or bad?

During Lent, I gave myself the challenge of writing something every day. A lot of this was blog posts, poems, college work and editing (the latter being stuff I was adding to the draft). The book I was working on, mostly, was Meet Sam, which is, by now, my case study on writing. I wrote that during NaNoWriMo 2008; come 2009, the same challenge was quite as fun.

This brings me to my point - if we start to write every day, we might like it. If we force ourselves to, then the odds are that we most likely will stop liking it, because it will seem like a chore. Nerd as I am, I don't like chores, and I don't want to make writing a chore. Heck, I started writing to avoid trouble, to avoid doing things I didn't want to do, to say things I couldn't say otherwise.

Most days, I do write. But I write as the ideas come to me with the correct words, not when I get an idea and think it has to be written down straight away. And, oftentimes, an idea won't have the right words for a while. Sure, one of my lecturers gave me tips on how I might improve Meet Sam, based on her reading of it and other books (many other books), and I agreed with her; one of the areas was in the development of some of the other characters, especially the father, the mother and the cousin.

Ignoring the parents for now, as I'm yet to work them out properly, I only recently, last couple of days stuff here, figured out how I might expand on the cousin's story. The answer has been right there with me for months, talking to me, telling me all about itself - even before I met him, my friend Liam was the cousin in the book. Freaky stuff to realise, but very useful to know, if he's willing to help me get this done properly. (note: based on an excited and hilarious text, I think he's willing)

That's the best example I can give for letting ideas settle: it can take a long time. That book was written a long time ago, and I didn't know then how to fix it, or how to fix it when I'd first met the guy. It wasn't until a year and a half later, still thinking about the book, that it came to me. Now, I'm not going to say it's always like that. Even for me, it's not always like that. I get words to poems in my head spontaneously, and an hour later they fit together in the right order. Once it was just an image in my head that turned into words. Another time a feeling in my gut. They didn't all take a lot of time to come to fruition.

The point I'm making is that if we push ourselves to write every day, it doesn't necessarily mean you'll write what you wanted to. Part of being a writer is not writing. It's in the living of an event, of life, to get the answers you're looking for. I had all but stopped looking for ways to improve on the character, until the realisation hit me. I know that if I'd tried to force it, it would be rubbish. That's a fact. My 2009 NaNoWriMo novel attests to that. It became over-ambitious drivel, because I attempted to write a book I just wasn't feeling, every single day of November.

So what's my advice? Well, if you plan on doing NaNoWriMo, be prepared to write something you're not happy with. Once it's written, find someone whose reading you trust and ask them to read it and give you some sort of advice to help towards making the book more complete. If they find a character is lacking in, well, character, then you know where to try improve upon. If they find that something is too weakly expressed, or that something could do with more attention, then you know what to work on. Plan your novel in advance, if that's how you work, or go by spontanuity that hope for the best. All I can say is, if you plan on forcing yourself to write every day, not all of it will be great fun. Eventually you will burn out, and you'll have to take a break.

Let yourself rest.

Writing burn-out sucks. It can take days, even weeks, to recover properly. The bad part? Regular-life stress can do the same thing. After exams, I recommend writers to take a destress period. But try write something small every day. Something insignificant, by the way. It will be just something to keep words in your head. Keep a diary. Then, when the ideas slot themselves into place, and "the muse" comes back around, write. Write until your heart's content. Don't over-do it, though. (Over-doing it, by the way, is forcing yourself to write when you really can't think of anything. Unless you're coming up to a deadline you're contractually obliged to, I don't recommend it.)

And with that, and my own lack of being able to write anymore for increasing exhaustion, I bid you adieu, and good luck. May you write freely and happily for all of your days.

Friends

Friends are for keeping you as close to sober as possible on a night out.
They're for helping you prepare for an exam.
For keeping you company when you can't cope.
For talking about problems.
For sharing theirs, too.
They're for learning about life.
For discovering new music,
New movies,
New books,
New ideas.
Friends are for telling wild stories,
And for making you laugh whenever you need it.
Friends are for making you smile, even when you don't want to.
Friends are for understanding you.
Friends are for living life to the full.

With love, for all my friends.

Silence

The first few moments of silence seem to be the worst. Every time I hear it, or fail to, I learn something new about the silence, about the quiet. It gets deep inside, worse than any words, worse than anything anyone could do us me. It's like torture, not knowing what's going to happen, what already has happened.

I can't help but hear the silence. It gets inside before I realise it, and everything starts working all too fast for my own liking. Rapid conclusions, rash and dangerous, are met with fear, panic, suggestion! Nothing I can ever do will prepare me to deal with it. I'm an emotional being; it's my greatest asset, but my greatest liability, and in the silence I hear the thoughts I don't want to. In the silence I feel the panic set in, and I'm reminded of everything that's happened in the past.

The details aren't important. Not the ones behind this text, nor the ones behind the fear. None of that is important, but moving on. Except... I don't think I can ever move on. What's why I'm becoming a teacher, though, isn't it? Because I know how hard it is to get past all this, and I don't want to see another person have to experience it, not if I can help it. Sure, I couldn't help myself, but that was different. That was so much different.

In the silence, I hear words of torture. Not just when something bad happens, or when I think something bad happens, but just... just when there's silence. Sure, I try to fight it off with music or with traffic, but the silence always creeps in. You know that time when the cars are all gone and the song ends? That's when it gets inside again, and the wheels all start working. It's like... oh, you know the story of getting a thousand chimps together with typewriters and they'll eventually write the complete works of William Shakespeare? Well, it's like that, only instead of Shakespeare, its dark, sometimes Gothic poetry. It's perhaps the most depressing thing I can create, and yet I don't want it to stop. Every time I write them I feel a freedom I can't describe. The closest thing would be like being released from a cage. If the cage was also on fire.

Of course, I can't always share the poems. I do occasionally. Every second poem seems to creep into the public eye, but some are a bit too personal. Some I only want a few people to see, until I can work up the courage to submit them somewhere. That's always an option, if I can manage it. I could take another option too, and just try get a poetry book published, but I doubt anyone would accept the poetry of an author who hasn't yet gotten something published in an established magazine, or won a competition or anything like that.

All that from the word silence, the idea behind silence... It produces a strange aroma that drives the mind wild. It sends us spiralling down dark alley-ways, always in search of meaning. Silence. Sweet, beautiful, painful silence.

Into the Night - a poem

Compulsion
Obsession
And freedom –
Entrapped in myself
And lost in others –
Forever away from the world –
Forever locked in the dark ––
Take me away into the night
And forget the world behind us –
For I am not the one you know
Nor the one I remember –
The one who couldn’t keep control
Or stay calm through it all –
Pain
Panic
Torture ––
I am not the same
And never will be –
Not now that you have come –
Not now that I am free ––

A shallow grave awaits us at the end of our journey –
We had a good run – while it lasted

Educational Procrastination

The topic of yesterday's study period changed dramatically and unexpectedly from Ecclesiology to Omegle.com. In case you don't know, Omegle.com is a chat website that utilizes web-cams. In case you haven't figured it out yet, it features a lot of people playing with themselves. You have been warned - this blog post will contain profanities!
Now, there are many things you can learn from Omegle.com. Not least of which is shame on behalf of all of humanity. But you can also get some great laughs out of it, if you learn not to be offended by the sight of a penis most of the time. Actually, not most of the time. Not if you deal with people the way we did. We are *drum roll*

The Phil Collins dedicated superness award-winning ecclesiastic team that is not endorsed by Phil Collins

And here we are!

The lad in the front shall be, for the purposes of this blog, be known as John. Beside him is Mary. Then, in the red, is yours truly (known for the day as Adam) and in the back is Aidan. Instead of studying, we wreaked havoc.

It all began with Facebook, not Omegle. John was fraped. A lot. Then Mary was fraped, too. I was not fraped, because I chose not to be. Only the four of us know what that vague assortment of words mean.

Following the twice-occurring fraping, we went over to Omegle, largely because we were curious. Now, I'll tell you this for free. When you have a girl like Mary on screen, lots of people want her to remove her clothing. When you don't, and you're trying to convince two girls to kiss...

Aidan knew what he was doing. "Will you two kiss?" he asked them. He got the expected reply, considering the fact that John sat beside him on the camera. "You kiss your friend first." Aidan was no fool, of course. Aidan knew those girls were alone, and that he wasn't. "So if I kiss my friend you two will kiss?" he asked them. "Yes," the girl confirmed, "You kiss first."

Aidan proceeded to pull Mary on screen and kiss her for the girls.Triumphantly, he cheered, "Your turn!"

This was only the beginning of our devilment. Of course, it wasn't all devilment. We met a really cool landscaper. Twice! Yes, we ran into his randomly twice! It was great! He was dead sound, and thought we were hilarious for being so excited about everything and for not studying.

Then the real stuff began. John, sick of people asking Mary to strip for them, got an idea. No word of a lie, he put on one of her bras (we were in her apartment). Then we left Mary alone on camera, her face hidden. Time after time, people began to talk to her, hands reaching down towards their crotch. She teasingly undid the buttons on her cardigan, and told them she'd be back in a minute. Bring in the topless-except-for-a-bra John, sit him down in the chair, and let the devilment continue. His face hidden and the camera not being high definition (and the light was shining in the window, so you couldn't see much), the men thought he was Mary in a bra. Then I altered the angle of the camera.

"Haha! You dirty bastard! Wanking to a lad!" John yelled. He grabbed a make-shift sign and held it up to the screen. "Wanker! Wanker!" The person disconnected.

The make-shift sign, I might add, was originally a photocopy of Dogma, by Michael Schmauss, with WANKER! written on the front of it. Dogma wanker...

Time and time again, John replaced Mary in the hot seat of online sexual tension, revealing, time and time again, that he was a man, to the perverted upchuck of the Internet. Time and time again, they called him gay. John didn't care, so long as I deleted the picture of his wearing the bra. Stories were one thing, photographic evidence was another.

Eventually, John just wanted to smoke, so when Mary was about to tease a middle-aged man in the same way as before, John got another idea. "Dad?!" he yelled. The man disconnected in obvious panic. Priceless.

There was, I'll admit, much merriment to be had in cheering, "Wanker!" at someone. But it's even better when their dad walks in...

It began with one lad, somewhere in the region of thirteen or fourteen, we reckoned. Then his older brother walked in, spotted Mary, and knew what he wanted. I think you know too - he wanted her to take off her top. Now, Mary wasn't willing to do it anyway, but when the boys stopped replying, with their camera still rolling, and a grey-haired man coming in to check on them... "Hey! It's their dad!" I yelled. The boys hid the obvious panic that they were experiencing, trying their best not to give away the fact that they were on a glorified porn site, occupied mostly by men. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, people on the Internet are that stupid, that they think they will get many girls like Mary who will actually strip down to the bra (and then-some.) Most of the time, it's actually just cock. Lots and lots of cock.

People are clueless.

Following five hours of this nonsense, with food cooked and eaten in the mean time too, John tested out a similar site: chatroulette. A better known site, John thought he'd test to see how many people it would take before he got a proper conversation. Out of eighteen people, one person stopped to talk. The rest were playing with themselves, or hoping to.

It was, as the title might suggest, an educational experience, even if we didn't actually live up to our team name by studying ecclesiology (except for Aidan.. he was weird that way!) Still, we have learned much in the ways of society, the Internet and comedy, and we had a great time doing it. So what if it meant nine hours of study for the exam today? I think I may have actually passed! (though it helped that John and I have a mutual exploitation agreement, whereby we share any work we do before exams as we're studying!)

PEMF

What happens when you ask people do they know what PEMF stands for? Well...

Slightly obscene in nature - you have been warned!

Post Election Morning Fever
Political Ennui Majorly Fed-up
Pre-Exam Mind-Flip
Post Exam Mental Fatigue
Post Erection Member Flacidity
Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy
Partial Emotive Fluctuation Twitches
Pretty Embarrassing Mental Farts
Pre-Exam Something Something
Please Emma Mack Face
Pre-Exam Mega Phobia
Penis Envy, Mother Fucker
Please Empty My Farts
Pulling Emits Massive Flow
Pre Erection MisFire
Pulling Erections Means Flirting
Powerful Erection, Mini Fecker

I can now reveal that, aside from the fact that I'm astounded at how ridiculous some of these were, the meaning of PEMF is....

Post Exam Mind Fuck.

Thank you for playing.

One Down...

College exams will be the death of me.

I have one down, and eleven more to go. Today was the gospels of Matthew and Mark. Later in the exam season, I have the Pentateuch; Foundations of Christian Ethics; Justice and Peace; Eccelsiology; Sacramental Theology; Liturgy; two education exams; Modern Irish Drama; Varieties of Fiction; and Victorian and Modernist Poetry. I know. That's a lot of religion to cover.

I am looking into ways to not waking up at six in the morning. I'm trying the first one tonight - closing the curtains over. Right now, I only have a blind down over the window. Lets face it, that only works when the light isn't shining directly on it. So at sun rise, it's useless...

Okay, I've just realised, the sun rises on the other side of the house. But still, total darkness should help. My room gets unnaturally bright in the morning. I will fix this, I swear! I need my rest.

I've been thinking, and people will think I'm just copying two of the lads in college when I do this, of getting t-shirts printed up. Namely, religious t-shirts. One with Jesus on it saying "This parable pwns n00bs" and the other with God before Adam and Eve and a caption saying And the Lord said, "Go forth and bump uglies!" The problem is that Liam and Aidan printed t-shirts yesterday... this will be a summer thing, I think. That way, not many people will remember their t-shirts, and I can come back wearing clothing no-one will have ever seen before. At least mine will have pictures on them...

I might also make a conscience one, where the image is on the bottom of the t-shirt, showing a little man inside the stomach, with a caption: Conscience: That thing in your stomach that yells at you even when you're not hungry. I am a nut-case, I know.

Opinions on the t-shirt ideas? I may need an artist for them, though. I'll see how my draing fares before I attempt to find someone with the same sense of humour as me...

My Aching Head

Over the past few days, a headache has been coming. It's not fun, to say the least. It attacks in waves, and doesn't stop for quite a while. Even now as I write I get the headache pounding away, screaming mental torture. I imagine it's a result of a few things: lack of sleep, stress because of exams, and the unquietening thoughts in my head, whispering away in their own time.

Seriously, I've been waking up earlier and earlier every morning; on Wednesday, I woke up at a quarter to seven. That was planned. I knew what I was doing. I was tired, yes; I had a headache later, yes. That headache was probably as a result of studying. I made the mistake of staying up until half eleven... Thursday, I woke at half six in the morning. Against my will. My alarm was set for fifteen minutes later. It's not fun to wake suddenly like that. I headed to work that day too. That was tiring, but worth it - the shop is now open! I have a job again! And later that day, we went out for dinner. Pretty much as soon as I got a chance, I went to bed; a quarter to eleven. A headache was coming on, I was very much tired... and I woke up at a quarter past six the next morning. I've been walking to college of late, and wouldn't you know it that the day I get up earliest, I start getting a story going through my head. For half an hour, I had thoughts rushing back and forth, the plot developing in my mind, the mythology of this whole other universe being unfolded painfully as I walked on.

I was alone that day, in college. More or less, anyway. One person there, but not someone who I study with all the time. See, I've realised that certain people have an affect on me when I'm trying to study. When I was in the library on Tuesday, I could read quietly with Monica beside me. Since then, I've been in a lecture room with Liam and Anthony, and I could study perfectly well with them there, with the added bonus of silence (the library gets loud...) and the chance to have a chat every now and then. Friday, though, neither of them were there. So it was difficult to study, my headache was getting worse, and I was getting more and more tired.

I walked to town. I got rained on, which gave me a sad. I bought an umbrella, then it stopped raining. I went into Eason, bought the new Darren Shan book, and got in line for the signing. My headache didn't go away, but soon the excitement of seeing my hero again got me a bit more relaxed. I had a chat with me, which made me happier, then I walked back to college. I should also point out that at some stage during the week, I hurt my ankle, so walking is painful sometimes. I tried to study some more, but my headache was getting worse. I headed home on the bus. It rained again. This time I had my magic umbrella (one of the ones with the button that opens it!) from Penneys for €6, so I didn't get too wet. But I was tired.

Later that day, or rather in the night, I went to see Iron Man 2 with some friends. It was amazing, it distracted me from my headache and my exhaustion... until I got home. Stupidly I stayed up until half one watching a movie Conor had had on before I got home. I planned to wake up at eight the next morning (today)....

Five to six, I woke up, groaned, blacked out/fell asleep for twenty minutes, then laid awake. I had to walk to work. My headache stuck with me the entire way through the day. I still have it now, pounding away. I can barely keep my eyes open. But I'm afraid to go to sleep too early, in case I don't stay asleep too long, and then I'd be awake in the middle of the night, unable to get back to sleep.

Something is definitely wrong. It might be linked to the exam stress. Heck, it has to be. These exams, no matter how many times I've been told not to worry about them, are getting to me. Add in the fact that my head won't shut up, like on Friday morning, and you've got yourself my headache. I might have a high temperature, but I don't know... I find it impossible to judge for myself. I need to just take it easy. I need to get some proper rest tonight, too. I have stuff to do before my exam on Tuesday afternoon (thank God it's in the afternoon!), and I'm in work on Monday. I want a chance to rest, a bit.

Anyone with any recommendations, please speak up. Need a way to get to sleep without resorting to thinking about something, or taking any drugs... just a natural remedy that I can use tonight!

Peace, Love and Potter,
Paul.