Of course you’re never going to really talk to this person except to take the piss out
of the drunk nerd throwing up on the prim and proper daddy’s girl sat by herself in
the corner, or the occasional music reference when a crap song comes from the back
of the bar. Apart from that you might send her two or three texts, asking where she’s
going tonight or something mundane like that. This makes it easy: you’re never going
to have a relationship with this person; no long Sundays in bed; no brunches; no
fighting over the remote; no fighting period; no plates smashed above your head, or
teardrops on your records; and no breakup.

It’s simple. It’s easy. She’s the same.

So how does this happen? You don’t bring her back to yours because you don’t think
she’s important enough to judge you by your valuable (cheap) stuff (crap), or judge
you. It’s not that you don’t respect her or like her – you definitely like her, she’s less
than what she thinks of herself but more than what other’s think of her – but who’s
she to judge you? Who is she?

You don’t want to go to her place because you’re stuck with the dilemma of leaving.
You can’t ignore somebody in their own home, or pretend to be busy with work. It’s
not like you do any work anyway! And smoking a cigarette out her window or under
the extractor fan in the kitchen won’t count as time to distance yourself from her,
because she can busy herself with other things. It’s her house after all! Plus, she’s
probably got a weird mangy cat that stares.

So there you are at the party, or in the club, or wherever the fuck ye meet. The fridge
runs dry of booze, the DJ’s running a marathon of shit songs from the 90’s – I don’t
know, the point is you’re alone. You can go to the bathroom, you can grab an empty
room, you can bend her over the counter if you like! It doesn’t matter, not because
you won’t get caught, not because she doesn’t matter, not because you don’t really
want to do this – it just doesn’t matter!

As it happens we’re cutting through the park to save us fifty seconds on the way
back to the club, and then bam. There’s no kissing, there’s no awkward moment of
undressing with the moonlight overhead. There’s the red bulb of a cigarette, a sparkle
of Air Max from some scumbags in the distance, and maybe an old man walks his dog
at half past God-only-knows-what hour!

And I’m in her. She’s hot, not that the summer nights are cold. I let out the first
pant and she seems to follow out of duty – that’s the done thing isn’t it? There’s no
grunting, no talking, no noticeable gasps for air, just panting, like when the doctor
puts a statoscope against your back. Instead of cold metal, her dirty nails cut your
back – there’s no pain cause pain evokes emotion and there’s no pleasure because
she’s too brutal to just scratch.

Of course she’s not thinking about the sex, even though that’s all she talks about,
even though that’s how she styles herself (but don’t fool yourself, her body language
is a rough act straight out of the Moulin Rouge). She’s thinking about the story she’s
going to tell afterwards. She’s not cruel or smart enough to say you’re bad, because
you’re not, but she’s not going want to share. You’re a toy and your small group of
mutual friends are invading her sandbox.

She’s one of those self-gratifying girls who doesn’t protest too much. Her clothes
don’t do enough to be skanky or suggestive, but you know if she spreads her knees
just one more inch, or hikes her shoulder slightly to reveal her floral black lace bra
that she’s going to ensnare you. She fakes complexity and has a made-up hatred for
foreplay and latex, and passion can’t possible exist because her fucked-up world has it
synonymous with love. Fucking her, you grab a lock of her hair but feel dirty feeding
her nut-job ego, and when she’s on top it’s like fucking a hot Duracell bunny. And not
in a good way. You’re not fucking Warner’s Lola!

It lasts the right amount of time, and when you’re dressed and wiping the mud on
your hands off a tree and the lipstick off your face, she hands you a cigarette and ye
have the longest conversation you’ll ever have. It lasts about forty seconds. Like I
said, you never thought about her before the sex, and now she’s only going to pop
into your mind as a lipstick stain on your dick, a bite on your shoulder and a line of
blood on the back of your shirt.

You share the cigarette on the walk back, and then you head into the club. You don’t
ignore her and she doesn’t ignore you. You stand close enough together so that
you could have a conversation, and apart from being asked for your opinion by that
obnoxious musician friend of yours you make no effort. There’s a “goodbye” and a
kiss and that’s it. From now on you’ll ignore her as much as she ignores everybody
else; and as much she ignores reality.

You won’t regret the sex, and it will, for a long time, feel like you are the better
person. But then after six months, or maybe longer, you’ll find yourself up one night
going through your music collection (or maybe you’re having a cup of coffee in a café
in the middle of the day) and her face will creep its way into your vision, and then
you’ll wonder whether or not you outsmarted her, or whether she broke you.

The small ember of the lighter sets off a rapid ignition around all the paper and plastic components of the old printers and computer screens. The flames erupt and the graffiti mural of Satan flickers in and out of the dark, staring at you from the wall. It’s animal and primitive and the fire roars louder than your screams.

The carnage in the abandoned warehouse has inspired happiness in you like you’ve never felt before. Your friend dances around the burning bucket. There’s a loud crack – a fuse exploding under the heat – and he dives out of the way. “Fuck me! That was close.” He pokes at the flame with a large pole.

You watch the fire build and build until it finally starts to die down and leave you in an orange-grey limbo. You clear the flammable scraps away from the edges in case they catch up when you’ve left, and then you piss on it before leaving.

On your way out you hear a spark and the hallway is illuminated in a pale yellow. It’s started itself back up again so you take it as a sign to continue the carnage. You pile on more plastic and card and scatter dust over it so the flames fly up to the ceiling. Outside, the only sound is the corrugated roof giving out and a whirl and laugh of a car driving by. Inside you’re away from everything. If the flames spread and it all came crashing down on you, your bodies wouldn’t be found for days – maybe weeks.

This is the result of drinking cans of cheap cider in the bushes, sheltered from an unruly wind that would cut you off as quickly as the next scumbag. This makes up for all the nights you spent at home when you were sixteen and studying. You’re old enough to suffer the consequences now and it feels good to flip off the law.

A squad car narrowly misses you when you get out but there’s no fear anymore. At the bus stop a car of moron, younger than you probably, drives by and they scream some inaudible abuse at you from the window. You throw stones at them as they turn the corner and really, really hope they crash and burn. There’s some lingering influence of the Devil’s stare pushing you on…

Whatever happened to the teenage dream? Play it loud, and then louder and louder each time.

You wander the backstreet of Dublin for a while because you’ve set a stupid vow not to go anywhere you’ve been before. You end up outside an apartment building watching roadies unload a van while drinking the last of your cans. Different films come to mind with the light of every different headlamp. A Spaniard lurks out his window smoke, and your friend shouts up, “Can I have that?” Sure thing. “It’s hash though, be careful.” It’s good stuff.

By the end of the night you’ve broken all kinds of laws and probably ruined a lesbian’s birthday by butchering the theme tune to Taz the Tazmanian Devil at her private party. But fuck it, you’re on your way on, you’ve stolen breakfast from a shop and your friend has thrown up all over the inside of the taxi. (You tip the taxi driver a tenner while he screams abuse at you in Chinese or whatever.)

*

Two weeks later, walking home as the sun goes down you realise that it’s impossible to work at things you’ve no fondness for, and when trying to decide what happiness is the flames light up in your mind. Damien Rice, a bastard of a fellow, sings at full volume into your mind and you lose yourself.

You’re most creative in your lust and destruction. And so the adventure continues…

So maybe you want a girlfriend but who knows? You certainly don’t. You’re talking to the lads, and that one girl who’s in a long-term relationship with that annoying, ugly, arrogant dick (and that’s doing him justice), but is really fucking every other guy in the room with her eyes and body language – that’s you included. But you don’t care about this chick, she’s boring and normally that would irritate you, but right now you’re uber casual about it all so you don’t really care.

You don’t know anybody here but you’re hitting it off with everybody, except maybe the premature ejaculator with the hot girlfriend, and the previous “casual” guy who’s really just a prick. Your best friend is in the other room playing guitar or chatting to the most shallow people in the room, but only because they’ve leeched onto him. And then the nice, naïve fat guy goes off for “more beer”. He’s probably going to throw up in the bathroom, or outside in the bushes, or the host’s mom’s underwear drawer. He might steal a pair too.

So you make eyes with the bitch of a girlfriend again, but the pretty wasted, pretty awesome, certainly hot friend of a friend comes in. She’s looking for more drink, or food or something, but she opens the fridge, and the cupboards and the drawers. Nothing but a spoon and a jar or Nutella or something and she hops onto the counter next to you and starts talking.

You’ve been warned about her, but by your best friend so you know he’s actually just trying to set you two up. If it gets complicated you won’t care, you’ll tell him to piss off or something and chances are you’ll break somebody’s nose. That’s how it plays out in your mind anyway.

You don’t talk about anything in particular except how Nutella is the best chocolate spread and anybody who thinks otherwise is “gay”, and you take the piss out of some of the people in the other room.

See nobody here is perfect. You’re a nobody, but everybody else is trying to be a somebody, or maybe they’re trying to build themselves out of ten people. But this girl isn’t. She’s cool, and you like her. You don’t think much of it but she doesn’t leave your mind either, even when she hops off the counter and disappears.

Later in the night, when the music gets really loud because three people are fighting over which song to stream on YouTube, and nobody’s paying attention to the song that’s currently playing, and your joints start to ache and your eyes dry out after watering for so long, she comes out of nowhere and you kiss. You don’t grope each other, you don’t say a word, you just kiss, and maybe press your thumb against her lip or her cheek and all your can feel is the warmth of her body and the taste of saliva, and that’s all you want to feel. Then it’s over, you back off a little, and she’s gone again.

But it doesn’t matter, remember, because you’re a casual guy now. And the party goes on, and on, and on and on. And then you bail on your mates. You stay for her, you chase her, you follow her into the dark and onto the bed and it happens.

But this sex is way different to how it’s ever been before. It’s not clumsy but there’s no structure, it’s passionate but you crack a few jokes, and at no point do you leave each other alone while you go down on each other. It’s not a pantomime, and you’ll look back on it with the colour beige or a summer yellow on your mind. You’re both sleep-drunk and warmed up on tequila. The sex is every indie film, where the guys a dork and the girl’s a mystery (oh and trust me that really is every indie film!)

Where it started was clear. It was dark, and your muscles ached and you weren’t quite sure what you were doing or where it was going. But where it ended is uncertain. The sun came up through the blinds, and kisses didn’t stop until you both dosed off. The smell of sweat, and drink and cum somehow worked with the musk of a teenager’s room and wet dew or pollen or whatever that was that was creeping in the window.

It doesn’t matter what happened between then and now, because now it’s all cool, now it’s all laughs. And it was back then, except in your mind, when you barely close your eyes and you see the beige, or yellow or whatever it is that was rising out of the summer morning, you’ll remember that 90 seconds of sleep you got before you crept out the door to be the best sleep you’ve ever had. And that was certainly the first time you felt a warmth like that.

But hey, you were casual, and surrounded by dicks. They didn’t appreciate you, and when you think back to them you smirk, but she’ll laugh. You’re not casual anymore mate, you’ve chosen complexity, because you love a challenge. And what about her? She’s not a challenge, she’s untouchable.

I arrived to the wonderful life of third-level education all expecting, blind and stupid. I was born into this life from a mad delusion of the American majesty. I didn’t believe it all of course, I wasn’t that naïve. My life, my self before college was utterly juvenile. I can’t regret it – I’d beat on my 16 year old self if I met him today – because I needed to do everything I did, think everything I thought, feel everything I felt, say, love, regret, believe everything.

And there I was, arrogant and gooey-eyed, with my bags and my new haircut and my self-assured charm. It worked. I felt on top of the world. Introducing myself to women, alcohol, friends with so, so many different experiences. I got all soaked up in the ecstasy of it all, taking advantage of the first few pairs of eyes that looked at me, knocking back the best alcohol I could afford for an extra boost of confidence, sneaking around to get the most out being the underage kid.

I flew out of my first year of college into a glorious summer. I lost all sense of my arrogance, and thought it to be confidence.

But my dumb moves, my fuckwit self-obsession bit me in the ass and I fell. How could I not feel bad about myself? I used women, I chased others who didn’t want me, I drank myself stupid, I ignored the needy and skipped out on friends.

September came round and I looked around me to see everything else. Instead of trying to live everything, I stepped back and saw college. Most people didn’t have their life figured out, they weren’t even happy all of the time, but their lives were better than mine.

For such a long time I was jealous of them all and I didn’t even realise it! After the realisation I didn’t become desperate, I didn’t try and grab everything I could, I didn’t try and have their life, and I knew I didn’t have to. I had to sort out my life. A month of self-loathing, horrible loneliness and studying what college can, is and should be, and I was ready.

We threw our first house party. The infamous 687 Party! By the end of the first semester of year two, I realised that every two weeks, under the darkness of night, the cover of inebriation, the loud banter of friend, the musk of flirtation, I became Stifler. And I fucking love it! It’s not me totally, but it’s half of me; maybe more than half. Along with the companionship of my friends and housemates we throw the best parties, we have the greatest fun, we get fucked!

So, do I have it figured out? No. Not at all. But I know college should be every cliché you see in a Hollywood film because you can learn everything you need to know about other people and yourself from a structured narrative, and you can do all the crazy, fun, stupid and inspiring stuff that people should do.

If you’re doing it right, college is seedy. And if I was to talk about it I might lose the respect of some of my friends, my family, but I am me and I’m beginning to get a better sense of who that is now. Should I keep everything PC and keep hush about my illicit behaviour? I’d fucking hate to think that I’m a sap. I’m not always proud of what I do, but if I do something I’ll always fess up!

It’s dangerous writing this.

I’m somebody who loves sex. I adore sex. It’s the one of the greatest phenomenon of life. It can be a freakiest, ravish fuck, a spontaneous quickie, or passionate, slow, emotional. Sex can be anything you want it to be. And I’m all for the liberation (ugh, the cheesiness of that word is sickening) of sexual taboos. Don’t be ashamed of anything! Try everything! Learn your limits and the limits of your lover. Everything can provide pleasure if you just let it. And trust me, life and sex is better when you think like this.

I’m not a perfect lover. Christ no! But I bet I understand a damn lot more than the average Joe Twit. Sex should mean something to achieve any kind of ecstasy from it, but god-dammit people, grow up! If you’re emotionally unstable sort your shit out, if you’re emotionally impotent find your stimulant, if you’re okay then go forth and fuck! In the words of Al Pacino, “when in doubt, fuck.” And Jesus Christ, love somebody. Just because love hurts doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it.

I’m a man who goes head-over-heels for so many reasons and I’m flipped onto my back at the moment. I’m tamed presently, but when I look at my friends lustrously, when I build erotic scenarios in my mind of my exes’ friends, when I make eyes with a girl from across the room, or on the street, I should feel comfortable to approach them with all the intensions of having sex with them – but not just that; to build or develop some intimate connection. My best friends are the ones I’ve slept with.

And where else can I find ecstasy? In all the “wrong” places, I guess. I fantasies about what mind-altering, psychedelic narcotics can do to and for me. Just the idea of sinking into oblivion and becoming overwhelmed with a powerful sense of colour, sound, taste, feeling. Feeling inspired by an expansion or decrease in my mental faculties. I’m a mere novice and have no experimented but the temptation is so beautiful that I don’t know if I can fight it, or if I should fight it. I wouldn’t be the first, now would I? Some of the greatest minds have been shaped by clinical means.

College has made me the person I am, the person I ought to be. I don’t think I’m the person I wanted to be five years ago – I think I’m better.

What am I? An 18-year-old drug curious, alcohol adoring, sex-obsessed sadomasochist, idealist who is in search of ways to spread euphoria to his friends. There’s plenty wrong with me, but I’m working on it.

Back to the question that this blog poses: what is college? Well, if you’re expecting deep, thought-provoking conversations in a coffee house, all dressed up in sweaters and scarves, reading Russian literature and building a social ladder that incorporates the proles and the elite, then you’re a fucking moron and that’s reserved to the gutless swine of the grand universities of America and England.

College is where you force yourself to find yourself. Learn off your friends and experiment with everything. It doesn’t have to be drink, or narcotics, but find something that helps you feel good about yourself, once you do that find out what makes others feel good. If you can balance the two, then you’re going to roll into the “real” world a strong, good person.

I’m only half way there and I haven’t done half of what I want to do. In eighteen months I’ll be on top of the fucking world, and I will look back on this with pride. I’m me and I’m not ashamed. College did that.

If the Government owned everything for the sake of providing a sound environment where people can work and not have to worry about corruption, pollution or crime, I’d be very happy with that. I’m aware that that is communism, but this isn’t 1950s American so any right-wing, over-edgy, gun-tootin’, oil-lovin’, slave-drivin’ asshole that disagrees can kiss my Bart Simpson.

People over 40 are meant to be resilient and intelligent and have the balls to make everything work. If I can solve the world’s problems (which I can – not right now perhaps, but some day) every schmuck with a half-assed education should be able to figure things out too.

But let’s face it, I’m eighteen, I’m fucking young. And yes, I’m a student and I’m still learning, but at the risk of sounding cheesy, everybody is learning. I’m not just a (naïve) young student; I’m a journalist, a photographer, a writer, and perhaps because of those things I am also an artist. If I doubt myself then everybody else can doubt me, but I’m not arrogant or ignorant. Most of what I do and say is calculated, however my off-the-cuff remarks are probably the ones that’ll be remembered.

I think people need to have their wits about them and just because their bite is never felt it doesn’t mean their bark shouldn’t be feared. Hunter S. Thompson did very little other than write and take drug. What a life! I hope he’ll be remembered longer than that bastard Nixon – he certainly will be in some circles. Some people say he should have stood up and done something. Why should he? Why should he have sacrificed his life to better a nation when the people of that nation voted in the venom that poisoned it?

So what do I want from life? A lot. Everything should expect a lot. I except happiness and sadness, love and hate, fights, affection, birth and death. I expect my government and the governments of others to fail and surprise us. I want to travel – it’s so simple and so few people do it out of choice. I want to be known (maybe not famous, but known). I want to find ecstasy through a dozen means. I want to be devious and promiscuous and gorge myself in food and drink and sex and art and the clichéd unknown! I want to “go into the wild”, but I won’t get myself killed – I’ll come damn close though.

People like Karley Sciortino, Sandy Kim, Richard Kern do whatever they fucking want and they live off that. What’s wrong with that? They’re not harming anybody.

I blogged once about the artist, Sarah Maple, and about how she fucked with people. I’ve been fucking with the truth lately just to see what the outcome will be. That’s terrible practice for a journalist, but damnit I’m a person too, I’m learning my boundaries. As you’ve probably guessed, I haven’t figured myself out yet. Maybe my bark is worse than my bite. Maybe I’ll piss away my life like H. S., but if I do it on my terms at least I’ll be happy. Maybe somebody will remember me for it.

IRELAND – The upcoming general election has left people a bit flustered. The date has been set, and still some members of the opposition want it brought closer. The canvassers are out. The internet is more alive than ever in this country, especially social networking sites: running hash tags like #GE11 on Twitter; and, lengthy status updates on Facebook. It can be overbearing sometimes but for the most part it’s fun to watch. Never have I been more interested in Irish politics!

If you aren’t up to date with the current situation in Ireland I’ll summarise. The Taoiseach recently resigned as head of his party (Fianna Fáil), but he remains leader of the country. Said party has lost a few ministers in the last numbers of weeks, and there’s certainly a scramble to fill seats before the general election. The Green Party is as quiet as ever, losing face by the eco-friendly truckload. Fine Gael are surfing – albeit clumsily – on this tidal wave. And Labour seems to be torn between their intelligent leader, Eamon Gilmore, and the witch that is Joan Burton (she’s our Sarah Palin, except maybe not as bad). So really it’s all a mess.

I was hoping the general election would be in March because I’m not a big fan of rushing into a five-year, life-changing, culture-altering, economy-dependant plan. (I got a little bit angry there. Yes, Labour and Fine Gael can fuck up more than Fianna Fáil.) And so, with my strong views on what’s right and what’s wrong, and what needs to be done, you would think that I’d be all up for voting. You’re wrong. I might vote, but chances are I won’t.

Revealing this to my friends (and the web) I was greeted with disdain and debate. A number of people felt very strongly against my decision. They say I must vote! They say my opinions could swing the decision. They say voter apathy is wrong! I disagree.

I should vote in order to voice my opinion as a citizen. If I do not put forward my voice to elect the person(s) or party I want in Government, then I forfeit my right to complain. Essentially, voting as a right, gives me the right to dispute the decisions of others.

I don’t think that is enough of a reason to vote, especially when you’re in my position. There are aspects of every party in this country that I like. Fianna Fáil have the strongest history, the greatest experience, and the best track record – they ran away with themselves around 15 years ago and nobody tried to stop them.

Fine Gael would be a close second in my books, but they’ve always lack a certain drive and unity within the party that send them flying past Fianna Fáil. Last year, I heard some members speak out against the “fascism” of Fianna Fáil – clearly those members weren’t aware Fine Gael was born out of the Blueshirts.

The Green Party are (supposedly) advocates of combating climate change.

Sinn Féin’s end goal is something I wish for, however the party fails to see the importance of fixing the 26 counties that are within the state presently. As well as this, I cannot advocate the murder of persons for political or monetary gain, something Sinn Féin has certainly being doing for the last forty years.

If I feel like this about the four main parties in the country, how am I supposed to vote for one and put my conscience at ease? It is my right to vote, but it is not my obligation. Most people who don’t vote fail to do so because they simple don’t care. That’s utterly foolish, and I’m not that stupid. It’s a massive decision, however I feel all parties are equally incapable of doing a good job of it.

And strangely, through all the bickering and dog fighting, there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference between the parties. I’d much prefer if Labour were extreme socialists, and if Fine Gael were slightly bigoted, and Fianna Fáil should probably preach a Golden Age of Irish Politics or some bollocks like that. At least then everybody would be screaming something different, instead of fumbling over everybody else’s words.

I shouldn’t tell you this, as a person and as a journalist, but if I were to vote it would be for Fianna Fáil or Fine Gael. However I can’t and won’t vote for either. A complete revamp of Fianna Fáil with Brian Lenihan on top is what that party needs. Flush out all the over forty-fives! And Fine Gael needs to stand sure of themselves. They need to be fucking A-Team of Irish Politics (they never shoot anybody, but when they’re holding the guns you can never be too sure). I can’t vote in a party that’s as cracked as Richard Bruton’s hairline.

So I hope you can understand why I won’t be voting in my country’s next general election. It’s not because I don’t care, it’s not because I’m ignorant, it’s because I feel too much. My country means too much to me for me to take part in its further destruction. I could get lucky and vote for the good, competent party, but I’d rather not leave that to chance. I can only hope that every bastard who let my country slide since the early nineties (and trust me, that number is close to a million – that means YOU) has learned to vote for the greater good, and not to feed their own self, or some warped idea of political tradition.

I finally sat down to write this – 8 week in to my first semester – after my regular ethics lecturer fell ill and we found ourselves being taught by a far more imposing, smarter American. I’ve always said it, but today I decided firmly that humans are idiots. It’s a fact. There are few people who will look at something from all side and make a calculated decision that is as narrow as it is broad. Flexibility is needed in decision making.

Apparently it turns out there are two types of people in the world (a phrase that means absolutely nothing so take no heed): those who deontologists and say the ends justify the means, and those are teleologists and say the don’t. But there’s a third that’s often forgotten: there are us who realise that the rules of ethics (deontology) are too tight, and that morality is too cowardly (teleology) – we believe in circumstance.

The point of this blog may seem to veer completely now as I’m going to talk about the Irish economy. I’ve learned that people are utterly stupid in their approaches. The People’s Voice is a publication that embodies propaganda, but is a rather enjoyable read (if you sieve out the crap, it’s very well written and quite a good fact book). What I’ve learned from it is that people can only see black and can only see white. All I can see is grey (and no, I don’t mean I’m misinformed or uneducated) I mean I can see both sides to a (two-sided) story.

Chances are I’ll grow up to be one of the aforementioned people over a certain age, but let’s hope that’s not the case. For the time being I’m happy – I don’t have all the facts, but the collection I have are made up from both sides.

Getting down to it, I should ask who is accountable for the current economic crisis? You and you (maybe not You) but you and YOU and most certainly YOU! will probably say “the government” or “the banks” or “the EU” or “America”. Well, yes, you’re correct, or rather half correct. The simple fact is it’s the fault of everybody (over a certain age, but not that age).

But Robert, by that logic isn’t the also the fault of somebody’s parents, grandparents, friends and greengrocer that they become a mass-murderer? No. That’s moronic, now shut your mouth. (Mind you, it could be circumstantial – but that’s beside the point.)

The Irish people voted to join the European Union (or European Economic Community). It was a brilliant move that I support wholly: it has improved our economy, infrastructure, society and laws in the most brilliant ways. Unfortunately the various Governments and the Joe Soaps of this nation thought it was also a good idea to pass up a lot of our cultural, social and natural resources – but that’s for a different post. The point is, the EU is good and great – we’ve just been bending over and taking, cause we knew we were getting a lollipop and a wad of cash in return. Circumstance.

Of course the Government spent money, jobs were created, people saved some money and the banks grew. Lovely stuff! Except then the banks decided to get rich and our money just wasn’t enough. They bulked themselves up with our cash, and handed our loans to fill out some books because that’s what it takes to impress on the international market. When it looks like you’re good for it you can get loans and that’s what the bank did. The problem is the banks didn’t care if we – not me or you but everybody over the second age – were good for it.

And sure the Governments decided they wouldn’t act in the public’s interest but rather act on what the public is interested in. They did this to stay in power, and we didn’t care because it suited us down to the ground.

Before long it was apparent that the EU was relying on interest from the loans the banks had taken out, and the banks needed our money to pay the interest on those loans, and we needed jobs to pay our interest and our taxes, and the Government was relying on our taxes. Everybody was a third party, and if you remove one of those links the whole system falls. But nobody feared that because humans are idiots, and we want money and lollipops and other things.

So yes, you and you and your neighbour are to blame. You took on a debt you couldn’t afford to fail on, and when you failed you failed the Government and the banks. When the banks failed they failed you and the EU. When the EU failed it failed us and our Government. And there was the Celtic Tiger with a bullet in its back and the economy split with cracks.

I’m not a pessimistic person, I’m a realist. I’ve always been cautious of the EU and “free money”, but I’m certain I wouldn’t have predicted a Recession if in 2006. So don’t you come to a short-sighted conclusion that I’m a snotted moron. I don’t have the answers, and I know it. But I’ve got the intelligence and the balls to point the finger at everybody in the room.

People are calling for a new government. I think a referendum is a terrible idea – for reasons I’ve outlined in another post. But mostly because I think people are looking for an easy way out. Again, you’re an idiot – majority decided to have Fianna Fáil, and they have to live with that decision. A sudden change of government isn’t going to do anything.

I’m tired now and my arguments will become weak so I’m going to leave this post here. If you feel embarrassed by reading this then you know you’re one of two things, if you suddenly feel a little unified and are having a hot flash then you know you’re the third (like me).

Things will sort themselves out.

I wonder how America’s greatest president would feel about the current administration and their censorship, cover-ups and secret operations. He was an understanding, non-discriminative man. He was far from perfect, just like everybody else in the world, but he was a good man.

I was a fan of Barack Obama during the run-up to the election. I believed the hype. Yes We Can, and all that. Heck, I’m not even American but I understood the significance of change because something that’s drastic and important in America is usually globally meaningful (a fact which boils my blood, I might add). Since becoming president I’ve grown indifferent to Obama, however. I don’t dislike him because I know he’s better than John McCain could ever be, and don’t even get me started on Palin!

I accepted it when Obama decided that sending 30,000 extra troops to the Middle East was a good idea. I’ve looked past many of Obama’s bad ideas. He even gained some merit recently by supporting the building of a mosque at Ground Zero. But now he’s taken a step too far.

The Obama Administration won a case at the Ninth Circuit Federal Court of Appeals three days ago. The ruling states that people claiming to be torture victims of an American intelligence programme will never be allowed to bring a case to court. It seems that the six of the eleven judges think that human rights aren’t worth pittance in the grand scheme of things. There was I thinking principal stood for something, and that every little helps! National security isn’t worth much when its foundations are in despotism and repression.

It’s a titanic slap in the face that a former lecturer of constitutional law would allow his administration to pursue such a lawsuit in (what’s supposed to be) one of world’s most liberal and democratic countries.

Three major injustices have come to light in America in the last week. Combined they’re still nowhere near as bad as some of the things Americans have done in the past – like the My Lai Massacre – but they’re a disgrace on an entire nation nonetheless.

The second of these injustices occurred in Afghanistan. Five soldiers have been charged with killing three Afghani civilians for fun as part of a “kill team”. What makes this worse is that seven others covered it up and attacked the recruit who exposed the murders. I’m not blaming America for this, that’s just arrogant, but there’s a point where patriotism just becomes asinine – the seven accomplices went well past that point.

Allowing bigots and racists into your army is just wrong. It can never have a positive outcome. Nobody saw this coming?

Of course the pastor, Terry Jones, is number three on the list. While he is no longer going to be burning copies of the Qur’an today, I can’t help but wonder how a grotesque idea like that gets into somebody’s mind.

Burning the Qur’an would even anger me enough to hurt somebody. Destroying something that has been sacred to billions of people for hundreds of years – whether you agree with it or not – is a moral crime so despicable you almost void your right to a humane punishment. Everybody holds enough intelligence to know right from wrong and religious views should hold no bearing on that.

America preaches liberalism but doesn’t always practice it. I like America, I like Americans, I’m a fan of the idea of the American Dream (so, please don’t post any comments like “you’re just a hater” or something moronic like that), but there’s no denying that it is a country built with the blood of the Native Americans, by slaves, for thieves. In its short history it has oppressed the natives and Blacks, and been unfair to other ethnic minority immigrants. Since 1776 America has participated in twenty wars.

Of course things like this happen all over the world. America is simply the focus of this post. How can a democratic country which manifested from murder and theft keep trying to convince the world that they’re liberal and free and just when they produce heartless murderers, bigoted clergymen and political scholars that go against everything they’ve taught?

I support the move to build a mosque at Ground Zero. Some people think it’s an insult to the people who were murdered and to their families. It’s not. The terrorists that acted in 9/11 were Muslim. But not every Muslim in the world had a hand in it. All Christians during WWII weren’t Jew-hating Nazis. Serbians aren’t solely to blame for what happened between 1992 and 1995.

Jeremy Rifkin spoke about “the empathic civilisation”. He believes that all humans are soft-wired to be empathic and that hatred, jealousy, anger, fear, and isms all come unnaturally to us. Humans mimic the actions of the people around them, at some point in our history that characteristic was disrupted.

Rifkin says that if we’re all soft-wired to be empathic and we’ve developed a family, religious and social empathy then why do people find it so difficult to create global empathy? I’ve raised to be unbiased and calculated in my decisions. I hope that upbringing stays with me for my life and I don’t turn bitter after some insane mid-life crisis.

It’s obvious that people with encompassed upbringings are more apprehensive and offensive to outside convictions: a close-knit, socially detached family rearing, a strong religious presence, a strict military upbringing, etc.

If a person is bad through and through I can accept that without a second though. What makes me angry is a person who stands for something great and moral and just who dismisses the views of all others, or, worse still, oppresses them in the must inhumane ways. I don’t care what colour somebody’s skin is, the country they come from or the religious and political views they have – if a person does wrong I won’t like them, if they do right I will.

I’m ready for an empathic globe and there are millions more like me. Sadly the bastards have the guns and the bigger bastards have nukes.

Don’t see me as white. Don’t see me as Catholic. Don’t see me as Irish. I am Robert Babington. I am a human. Judge me by my actions, not my make-up. If you can’t do that then you now know that you’re suppressing natural empathy and that you are not a good human.

I hope I haven’t offended anybody. That was not my intension. It’s wrong to blame somebody for the actions of others and to judge people on the mistakes of their country’s past.

It’s strange and alien to me then, to know that bullying is dire in other places and has left a serious affect on (what I can only imagine to be) millions of people. I’m not a strong person, and I’m not the most quick-witted but when somebody tried to bother me I was able to shake it off, knowing where I stand, knowing my strengths and flaws very well. Unfortunately in many situations people are incapable of knowing their strengths, or incapable of shaking off or stopping the abuse.

Bullying is a systematic form of abuse used to damage somebody’s reputation or mental and physical health. It is therefore a form of assault, and should be treated thus.

The case of Phoebe Prince is more infuriating than perturbing. I feel like my head is in a vice every time I think of it; a pressure builds in my temples and I run the details that I’ve gathered over and over in my mind.

Phoebe Prince moved from Co. Clare in 2009, when she was fourteen years old. She enrolled in South Hadley High School, Massachusetts two months before her fifteenth birthday. It seems that she was popular at school at first until she started dating Sean Mulveyhill and got on the wrong side of Sean’s ex girlfriend and her friends. After their brief relationship she had a week-long fling with another boy, Austin Renaud.

Two groups of girls, including Sean Mulveyhill, Kayla Narey, Austin Renaud, Ashley Longe, Flannery Mullins, Sharon Chanon-Velazquez and three minors who can’t be named, tormented, insulted, abused and threatened Phoebe in for months. This group was dubbed The Untouchable Mean Girls. After a suicide attempt in November, Phoebe went on holidays from school and had a seemingly happy Christmas. Two weeks after she returned to school however, Phoebe Prince killed herself in the stairwell of the family home. The bullying had continued.

How can somebody be driven to suicide? The answer is simple: batter them again and again until any optimism or happiness they may have is swallowed by bad emotions. The actions of the bully are premeditated and calculated, vicious and relentless – the bully is in someone a psychopath, lacking basic and humane human emotions.

Could this have been prevented? A number of people have said that Phoebe was to blame for her unpopularity. It’s idiotic to think that a girl would purposefully date a boy, knowing that it would make her unpopular to the “elite” of the school. Since this set the ball in motion it was down to somebody else to put a stop to it.

Before Phoebe enrolled in South Hadley High School her aunt told staff at the school to keep an eye out for her during the transition period, to make sure she settled in all right. In November of 2009, Phoebe’s mother went to the school to voice her concerns to school officials that Phoebe may have been bullied by other girls in the school. Obviously the responsibility for Phoebe’s well-being fell on staff at South Hadley High School after this.

School officials did nothing to prevent Phoebe Prince’s suicide. Whether they should be punished for their inactions is the subject of controversy. In my opinion, yes they should. Only a very cowardly, heartless adult would stand by and let teenagers and children carry on with those actions. Clearly South Hadley is rife with them.

Sean Mulveyhill, Kayla Narey, Austin Renaud, Ashley Longe, Flannery Mullins, Sharon Chanon-Velazquez, the three minors and the staff at South Hadley High School are directly responsible for the death of Phoebe Prince and they should be treated accordingly. There are no two ways about it. (Take a closer look at the people who reared the accused; apples and the trees they fell from, and all that.)

Closer to home bullying seems to be a growing problem. I haven’t yet decided the cause for this rise so I won’t speculate.

The Green all-boy secondary school, in my hometown, has seen the suicide of two students in the last year. The details of these suicides are only speculation as they haven’t gone under scrutiny but it is known that drugs played a part.

Until the facts are known I can only give the accounts of a rumour: the boys were bullied by older boys into taking drugs against their will in order to get them hooked. The young boys were unable to handle this pressure and their building addiction put them under terrible mental strain, leading directly to their suicide.

The parents of the victims can only be held responsible in cases of neglect. If a parent ignore the moods of their children then yes, they share the blame. However, for the most part, I don’t think it’s fair to judge them on the same plain as the parents of the bullies and the school staff. Both parents and teachers have a moral duty, inherited because of their titles.

Parents should raise their children to be noble, mannerly and kind. The foundations of a personality are built at home. And yes, it may be true that friends have more of a bearing on how a child will turn out, but a parent should try to protect their child from bad influences. Teachers are just that. They teach. But should a teachers obligations stop with a curriculum? Of course not! Intelligence or knowledge (there’s a difference) should never come at the cost of morality.

So what is being done? In The Green, nothing. No effort of public exhort has been made by parents or school officials to stop the bullying, nor (and perhaps more importantly) to remove the circulations of drugs from the school. After the Phoebe Prince incident politicians in Massachusetts were quick to write the first anti-bullying legislation.

Many schools have anti-bullying measures, whether by enforcing the rules stringently, or by keeping a close eye on students, or by having classes on the effects of bullying.

Of course there will always be people who will attack positive action. Homophobic Bible-bashers Candi Cushman and “Dr.” (excuse my skepticism) James C. Dobson, member and founder of Focus on the Family, say that anti-bullying measures are a conspiracy made by homosexuals to turn all of America’s children gay. No more needs to be said about Focus on the Family except that clearly human ignorance and idiocy knows no bounds.

Bullying is a serious problem throughout the world. It has been the cause of mental and social breakdown for thousands of people, and lead to the death (whether accidental, murder or suicide) of countless others.

At the risk of sounding like one of those embarrassing, over-bearing mother’s who attends ever parents’ council meeting, every child should be raised to be kind and mannerly, full of confidence and without fear of being bullied or abused by anybody, least of all adults, but also protected from his peers.

I have punished myself with little sleep, vast quantities of alcohol, over-expenditure and time-consuming occupations such as travel, drinking Kenya’s coffee supply dry, and following friends back and forth through town. It’s not the difficult life you may have imagined but it has a negative affect on my physical health – my mental health has taken a move wavelike shape (currently positive, I might add).

I started the summer with a part-time job at Yum Catering in Ennis. The employers were a bastardly pair and the staff were delightful. I’m normally against bad-mouthing but under these circumstances I will make an exception. Most of the staff have left the company and this pleases me to no end. But, that’s enough about that.

In Ennis, for the first time in my life, I was home sick. I wanted to be back with my family in Tralee and to loiter with my friends. So I went home and I was happy. Unfortunately, two months of being in Tralee with little variety in my schedule I became bored and tried to numb my sense of time in quite a noxious fashion.

Luckily I realised the stupidity of this very quickly and have returned faithfully to photography and writing! College has made me lazy and I realise the only thing that’s going to make me active is myself so I’m ready to stand up and get going. Photographers like Chase Jarvis and Rankin don’t sit still, they chase an idea, just like journalists like Robert Fisk chase a story. I’ve to set myself a goal and fulfil it.

Nothing would please me more than to have a vast sum at my disposal, a car for transport and my friends to be by my side as I travel, shoot and write. It’d live an idyll life if I could. Ironically one usually has to work for that.

Many people are famed for one thing or nothing. Why can’t somebody be known across the spectrum and properly so. I don’t want to die as “Robert Babington: journalist” or “Robert Babington: photographer” or (perhaps selfishly) “Robert Babington: father of three.” I want it to read “Robert Babington: father, husband, journalist, novelist, photographer.” And even if I fail I want my epitaph to say, “at least he tried.”

This isn’t the epiphany of a foolish eighteen year old, however it may seem so. I’ve always been taught to dream big and to act on my dreams. I’m sure everybody is told as child to set a goal. I guess you could say my goal is to die a man that strangers will remember for all the right reasons.

As is my motto, like me or ignore, either way I’m going to try. Say that about me at least.

I’m going back to college in three weeks and completely indifferent to my course. It’s the extracurricular work that’ll make me great! Wish me luck!

(Blogs will continue as normal soon. Sentimentality has no place on the internet, says you!)

Ciao!