Hindsight
When life is being an arse, it’s difficult to remember that some time soon you’ll look back on your circumstances and smile that you survived them – or maybe smile at how nice they really were, through the rose-tinted lenses of hindsight.
I found being on Erasmus a really, really tough experience. I missed home, I missed friends and family, I missed my involvements, I missed my missus. I made some amazing friends over there – or more accurately, better friends of ones I already had – but the whole thing was a massive emotional drain.
Nonetheless, as I said, hindsight is a pretty brilliant thing. Four of the five of us – plus one of the Welsh – are going back to Munich for four days today, joining up with the fifth who actually lives out there now.
Just a message to bear in mind. Things get better. Time heals things. Just keep plugging away and eventually you’ll gain the ability to look back with a wry smile, smiling at the challenges overcome and relish the challenge of taking it that one, final, step further.
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As I said, I’ll be away til Friday night but I’ll be trying to get stuff up on a daily basis nonetheless. Take care of yourselves.
The Reality of Fake TV
The Missus is sat beside me here, borderline wetting herself with excitement. Somewhere across the interweb, Ben Kenealy is probably doing likewise. And in far too many bedrooms and living rooms around the British Isles, a worrying amount of adolescent – and an even more disconcerting number of post-adolescent – people are practically paralytic with a potent cocktail of excitement and nervousness.
Why? Because it’s nearly 8.30pm and MTV are about to show a new episode of The Hills.
As you probably could guess with remarkable ease, The Hills is something that has always, always perplexed me. Basically the show is a spinoff of an earlier MTV show Laguna Beach, following Lauren Conrad and her pile of somewhat-well-cast group of “friends” playing themselves in a dramatised version of their own lives. The show is billed as Reality TV – but given the fact that there’s curiously always a microphone on a peripheral character who might become pivotal to any particular scene, it’s quite obvious that the show isn’t. Read the rest of this entry »
Saturday Statement #2
“You need to be bizarrely out of touch with musical reality to have bought tickets to a fake U2 gig this Summer at Slane Castle.”
Discuss.
Old Dogs and Very Old Tricks
Well, that seemed to blow over quite quickly. Suddenly, does anyone care about Beverley Flynn’s €41k problem? With Patrick Neary just jumping ship as the Financial Regulator, the chances are that the analysis part of the story are going to be swallowed by Neary news in the weekend news cycles.
To summarise the affair: after losing a libel case against RTE earlier in the decade, over news that Flynn (when working with National Irish Bank) had actively assisted customers in setting up offshore bank accounts, Beverly Flynn was kicked out of the Fianna Fáil party. Nonetheless, she fought the 2007 General Election as an independent candidate, and retained her seat. This is where the curious stuff comes to light: as an Independent TD, Bev was entitled to an annual allowance of €41k, meant to assist her in her duties in lieu of the assistance of a party structure. Of course, Flynn worked her way back into FF after the election – and that’s where the dispute arises.
The Balls-out Bailout
After spending most of two days offline, there’s no welcome back to the internet like this kind of story.
It seems that in the midst of Dell pulling out of Limerick, and all the turmoil in the banking world and other bailouts, that no industry is safe – not even the most basic of all human pleasures, porn.
Larry Flynt, as in the Larry Flynt, the publisher of such illustrious, world-respected and esteemed publications as Hustler and Barely Legal, has announced that the seedy world of pornography is feeling the pinch of the financial times (not the Financial Times – one doubts much competition in that regard), and – on behalf of the entire porn industry – is seeking a $5bn bailout from the federal government in the United States. Though one might assume the calls are being made with tongue firmly planted in cheek, it seems that Flynt and Joe Francis, a producer who is co-signing letters to the relevant parties, genuinely mean it – the industry is seeing dramatic falls from peak value of $18bn worldwide a few years ago.