Another way to die, and another few things.

Isn't another way to die a great bond theme? I love it, everyone else hates it, i think it's edgy, unusual, and i like Jack White so it works. 

Bond is great, i don't get why people say it's not as good as casino royale or why they say there is no character development. Ok, Dominic Greene is like a watered down Le Chiffre, and about half the cinema seemed very lost with the plot, but if you pay attention it is amazing, and the turmoil of it all and the darkness of both Craig and Kurylenko is amazing, and Judi Dench does a great job as always. Go see it!

Things with me are good at the minute. I'm being worked hard as always but enjoying myself as well. I had a friend up from London last weekend and it was great, and then I went down and stayed with her in London the next day so that was really fun, it's great to just hang out with someone who understands and knows everything about you already, though it's true that my oxford friends are getting to that stage with me now.

I'm venturing up to Liverpool soon as well to see a really good friend, don't know what to expect of liverpool, on one hand i'm slightly blinded by Boris Johnson's criticisms but i think it'll be great fun, it's a party city.

I'm a bit disappointed in the election in the sense that i though McCain was a lot more competent than people gave him credit for in the debates, and he made some really good arguments about Obama voting yes on energy bills that gave billions to oil companies when McCain vehemently opposed it. At the end of the day though nobody can doubt that McCain wasn't himself in the run up to the election, and it seems the Republican party had too much say in his campaign, i mean Palin was a hardline right-winger that just didn't make sense when you try and run a campaign as a maverick, and you need someone who has at least got the ingenuity to go a few rounds with Biden, and she just couldn't deliver.

Also, towards the end when I realised that regardless of who won the presidency the senate and house would be largely democrat, it made sense for Obama to win, because in an economic crisis to have gridlock is that last thing america needs, as it is witnessing now, and at least Obama will have a mandate. In saying that though, i'm intrigued to see where Obama is going to get all this money to give everyone basic health insurance, i just don't think his sums add up and he has caused so much hope and belief that surely some people are going to be disappointed. 

Ammm....what else.. i'm looking into vac schemes at the minute, i think i'm going to apply for schemes at Linklaters, A&O, Baker and Mckenzie, Slaughter and May, Lovell's and then a smaller firm and an american firm (i know B&M are american based but they don't really act like one).

Yeah, so that's that. My knee is still fooked up, but i've got an MRI scan booked now, though it is when i'm in liverpool so that doesn't really work...ah well. I hope you're fine as well. I wonder who you are though. Well, goodbye. Maybe i'll write a poem soon, i probably won't though because there's no time ever.

Shit.

Term has been going great so far. I don't have much time though to get on blogger, but i've been managing time all reet, get to go out a good bit, enjoying myself and still spending enough time on work.

Last night was awful though, first i got in a bad mood because the girl i like had the ex down for a random visit, despite her telling me everything was over with him. It wasn't much fun seeing them drunk and telling me that they were "off to bed now". Felt shit. Then everything got put in perspective when i found out about other things going on in my friends' lives. Such a fucking mess how much pain can happen to some people in their lives. 

I've been in a bad mood all day, i guess it's good in a way that i empathise so much, but it doesn't feel like it now. 

ARRRRRGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH.

Just needed to get that out somewhere. I'm currently sitting in my room, listening to at the drive in very loudly because it's such fantastic angry music.

On a brighter note, it's the goth or cloth bop tonight, quite aptly i'm going as a goth tonight.

FUN.

Next post will be nice.

On the brink again

So at 1.40 tomorrow i leave Northern Ireland again to go back to Oxford. It's always something i find amazing that you can be transported from one world to another in a matter of hours, and that right now in Oxford my friends are probably chatting away on my corridor without me. It's all very strange and something i find interesting, it makes a person feel really small.

I've been listening to Weezer so much recently, i'd really recomment getting Pinkerton, it's such a heartfelt album and full of angsty stuff and the lyrics are just fantastic. It's such a pity that Weezer haven't been able to reach the heights of their past, though the Green Album and Red Album have a few good songs, though Make Believe is one of the worst albums i've ever heard, i'm still undecided on Maladroit. 

I've also become pretty obsessed with Heroes recently, it's the sort of show i like, sci-fi, but not ridiculously so, and full of suspense, definitely something i'm glad i've started watching.

As always i'm in two minds about going back to Oxford, i think i'm naturally quite a lazy person, i've enjoyed being at home so much and their is a certain inertia that has built up, i don't feel like being thrust back into a world of work and pressure is something i want right now, but i know it's what is necessary in the long run and i've always had a really determined character so there's no way i would ever give up. I can't wait to see people in Oxford again though.

I feel i've changed a lot this summer, i feel a lot more confident in myself than i did at the start of the summer and feel i'm beginning to work out what sort of a person i am. It's taken me a long time to realise that there is no point trying to please people who you don't really know and that the most important thing is to keep yourself happy while looking out for the people you care about. Hopefully i can realise this semi-philosophy, i have my own tastes, i don't want to pander to others. I hope that people will see me for who i really am in life now whether for the better or worse. 

PS. I'm so disenchanted with the US Presidential Race, i feel proud to be a UK citizen right now (though in a very real sense i consider myself an irish citizen but that's a different story). Both candidates should be ashamed of themselves for the negative politics and the smear campaign they are both running. For Sarah Palin to claim that Barack Obama associates with terrorists because he served on a charity board with quite an undesirable figure is so slimy, and for Obama to bring up a financial scandal that McCain was a minor part of and later claimed that it was the biggest mistake of his life and apologised is just as pathetic. 

There is no morality in a US election, unlike in the UK where negative politics are certainly on the rise but thankfully show no such level as what occurs in the USA. 

Both candidates in the USA are involved in a dispicable campaign and it is so disappointing that neither could take the moral highground and focus solely on positive politics.

Who knows when i'll be posting again, Oxford always seems to really limit my posting. Hopefully i'll be back soon.

Bright Eyes

I was listening to Bright Eyes today. Instead of revising as much as i should have it inspired me to write only the second poem i'm willing to put up here. I'll attach the other poem at the bottom of this post, the new one is the one on the top. I don't think poetry is something i'm going to keep up so you're all incredibly lucky to have two to read ;-), if only they were somewhat interesting or even decently written i'm sure you'd enjoy them more. They are apocalyptic, and mundane, but i don't mind because it's better to produce something that i find moderately meaningful than something that i think someone else might like..selfish much...lol.

I'm not a poet, i'm terrible at writing original material but every now and again i give it a go, this poem isn't finished at all and was written really quickly. I haven't thought of a name yet but provisionally i'll give it the name "At the Bottom of Everything".

At the Bottom of Everything

A sense of superiority constantly fills the air,

Disposing of all the other emotions that exist in the room,

Attention focuses, fools' eyes glean, brashness lives supreme.

Sitting in the room,

A child in the body of a woman,

Gives in to the confidence of the deception,

An introverted glance, interest is sought,

When they walk off together I laugh.

Does it ever catch up with them?

Who's the real winner here as no fondness appears?

A desire for attention must be met,

Anarchy and apathy become simple buzzwords,

But they're all I know and frequent.

Confidence is found and mislaid,

But doesn't change who you are,

An introverted glance, no attention sought,

Another emotion persists in the room.

The Idiot (written last year sometime)

Beauty will save the world,
The noble wanderers,
That plunder silently.
Midas whispers.
Quick! Grab as much as you can before it all turns to dust,
Or before you do.

Fight nature, become young again,
Let your wondrous man-made light shine forever,
Care about yourself, you deserve to.
Don’t feel selfish anymore.
Are you lost?

I don’t know where we’re heading,
Anguished and alone.
Close the curtains.
Keep the vultures at bay.
Are you delicate?
Are you beautiful?
I doubt it.

USA

Just to let any readers know, I support the McCain/Palin ticket. I can't be bothered to justify it to any real extent right now, but perhaps in the future. I'm not a natural republican by any means, i've supported the Democrats in every election and mid-term that i can remember, but i have a lot of respect for John McCain and he isn't a true republican, imo being one of the most liberal republican candidates ever. I know everyone seems to think Sarah Palin is evil, meh, she seems allreet to me despite the fact she is under investigation for corruption (which she vehemently denies) and that she has a pregnant teenage daughter (which i feel should have no place in any analysis of her but am only mentioning to highlight that it shouldn't serve a place, ironic eh?). 

So before you get swept away in the tide of Obama fever, take a step back and really look at the career of McCain and the policies that he favours compared to those of Obama. It's very easy to simply support Obama because of the fervour of support that he holds at the minute, or alternatively because of the tarnished name of the republican party after the shambolic presidency of GWB, John McCain is a different breed of Republican and is the right man for the job. 

Sssseptember

Firstly a quick update as usual. Life is generally good. I'm still relaxing, listening to lots of music at the minute (the national, pulp, blur, weezer, albert hammond jr are on rotation) and i'm sitting outside in the sun which is miraculous because there honestly hasn't been any sun in Northern Ireland in weeks, most days are either cloudy with rain showers or fog, it's been miserable this summer. The sun is a welcome change, i love the heat and i'm constantly trying to brown up a bit to make up for my lack of italian language skill by at least looking a tiny bit italian lol. (the last sentence is basically not true, i'm not quite that much of a loser.)

My knee is causing me some real trouble these days. I injured it over 2 years ago now and i don't really know what is wrong with it. I've had MRI scans and X-rays, both showing nothing and sometimes i can have 3 or 4 months without any bother at all, i was able to play in 8 football matches last year at oxford competitively with no pain. At the minute it's taken a turn for the worse, some days i find it painful to walk and the idea of running is completely out. I'm starting to get a bit worried because the Oxford football season starts pretty much as soon as i'm back in October. I've been trying my best to keep fit recently, i've done a lot of cycling because it's quite easy on my knee and i've been taking cod liver oil and glucosamine sulphate in a desperate attempt to force my knee to heal. I'm planning to play through the pain barrier whatever happens in October but i'd prefer if it didn't come to that, i'm hoping to do some light jogging this week to see how bad things really are.

September will hopefully be a month of catching up for me. I'm planning to work pretty hard so i don't fail collections when i get back to uni and i've really been quite lazy so far, but i think when my brother and sister go back to school and my friends go back to uni there'll be little else to do except study which though it'll be boring, is pretty damn necessary. I'm looking forward to getting back now though, it'll be cool meeting the fresher's and seeing my friends again. I might try to be a little less private this year though, last year i made loads of friends but i really focussed so hard on my work that i didn't have much time for heading out and though i really love the people i already know well, i didn't get to know some of the year as much as i would have liked.

In the time i've been writing the sun has descended into a multitude of cloud and shows little sign of emerging, meaning that the time for writing is over.. back inside to do some law work and listen to the national!

It's been a while again.

Once again neglect has taken over and my attempts to carry on this blog seem ill-fated..but here I am again, to provide another of my many updates which seem to string together an incoherent jumble of what my life is like these days and months.

The first thing to talk about is what i've been doing this summer, mainly because at least then i can fulfill the diary aspect of my blog. This summer has been all about spending time with friends, relaxing and enjoying myself after a pretty tough year workwise at Oxford and i've really had a fantastic time so far. I've seen a few Oxford friends when i went to a wedding in Ipswich and i've been hanging out with friends from home almost every day, culminating in eight of us going to Prague for a week (i'm actually just back today). Prague was fantastic, although there was some infighting amongst the group and some rather strange behaviour but i guess that it's only when you are in close quarters with people that tensions really can boil over. Overall the trip was fantastic and really brought me closer than ever to certain friends and there were so many moments that really enriched my life, mainly esoteric sayings and my simple humour coupled with such fantastic trips as simply sitting in a park after climbing 250 steps just to have a nice view of Prague at night while having a few drinks and laughing, hysterically at times, with my friends.

This paragraph is more strange and needlessly philosphical than the previous one. One thing i always find interesting about people is that a person offers one persona to society in general, one persona to their friends and then their true person to themselves or to a very lucky few people. Some people always seem to be trying to save face, to say that something brilliant is happening in their lives when it really isn't, whereas others are blunt and honest with what is going on with them. I always wonder what the persona i offer to society really is, what do people think about me when i walk past them on the street or in a room? I don't particularly care what people think about me generally but it's an interesting thought to consider what the first impression that you offer to a person before you even speak is. If i was to guess my first impression that i offer i would guess that i seem rather cold which is rather unfortunate but probably accurate! My normal face seems set on a slight frown, which is odd because i'm almost always adequately happy. I'm very rarely clean shaven, which automatically brings with it undertones of shadiness or suspicion and i have both dark hair and dark eyes. To be frank, i'm not the bubbliest or beaming of characters! Sometimes i feel that i should make an effort to offer a more positive persona, because every now and then i feel that i almost stop people from talking to me because of the body language i emit, but then i conclude that i would look ridiculous walking around beaming with a smile on my face, and that i don't want to shave and look spick and span because i like my own style and generally, my demeanour is acceptable to me because i've concluded that i'm not trying to impress strangers and if anybody was to reject me because of a first impression, then that sort of person isn't the sort of person who i'd enjoy spending time with. I'm not sure if what i'm saying is the correct or incorrect approach to life.

The persona you offer to your friends is also an incredibly strange device, whether it is to mask severe unhappiness or to highlight to the world your despondent state in order to provoke a reaction from those closest to you. Almost everybody when they are pissed off shows their emotions, even if it is only subtley, and the reason they do so is that they have a desire to offload their anger to someone else who will understand and agree with them. However, i think that this is only true with anger rather than unhappiness. When you're unhappy you are, in my mind, in one of two states, either you have a desire for people to know that you are unhappy so as to provoke their attention being placed onto you and your problems to be sorted out and i feel that this form of an unhappy persona is mainly for minor grievances. When you are really unhappy is the persona that amazes me the most. When someone is really unhappy, them seem to try their best to offer a completely normal persona, or even one that is slightly happy in order to focus all attention away from themselves and to avoid suspicion of a grievance. I feel that it is this response to an emotion that is the most unhealthy, mainly because it is your close friends that are the only people who you should feel comfortable to be yourself around and if they are really your close friends then they have no desire for you to offer any sort of persona whatsoever.

Attention is a very strange thing. Many people are motivated by it and crave it, and i would be lying if i said i never desired attention. I have been motivated in the past and will be motivated in the future to say or do things in order to provoke a reaction from someone else or to make myself more heard within a group of people and i think almost everyone acts in this way at sometimes or another. I'm not sure what the link between the persona you offer and your position on how much attention you crave really is, but if i was to hazard a guess i would argue that it is the persona that you offer to the public that really defines what level of attention you seek. The people who dress provocatively, who speak loudly when unnecessary and desire approval from those they have never even met who desire the most attention and it is those people who present the brash and attention seeking persona to society. Perhaps i'm a bit too low on the scale of outwardness towards people i don't really know and i'm not sure to what degree that is to do with my body language or my general affront and although i would love to be able to seem more perky or chirpy to those around me i do feel that if i am to fail on the scale of the public persona at least i'm failing by not offering enough rather than offering too much.

I'm really not sure what the point is of this blog post, or what i am trying to achieve by writing it, i've talked a hell of a lot of gibberish but as i'm not seeking the approval of the reader (!) and it makes sense to me, i think i'm happy enough to quit while i'm ahead and stop here, knowing that even if this isn't understood or even read by another person that i can look back on it in 10 years and wonder whether a change in my public persona tomorrow would have either made or broken me.

Deepness or utter bollocks. Probably the latter if i'm honest.