A month without alcohol

Soccer

Its the last day of the premiership season and the fate of 5 teams still hangs in the balance, top and bottom. Regardless of what happens today this will go down as  one of the best, most evenly contested, seasons ever.

At the top its United-Chelsea. Both could still win the title and both could still win the Champions league. I wouldn’t mind if Chelsea won, for Avrams sake, if it weren’t for the fact that they are a team comprised almost exclusively of supreme wankers. Avram Grant has had it pretty tough though and he deserves something, the poor man never seems to smile-he has a face like Lurch from the Adams family. Also, it’d be nice for Fwank Lamphard to win something, he’s had a tough couple of weeks and behaved with incredible grace throughout. Still, Chelsea are cynical pack of wankers…..especially compared to United who always play with real heart and an honesty of commitment(its killing me inside to admit this-Liverpool!!). On balance, I’d go with United.

On the other(much more dramatic) end of the table its a three way triple threat with Birmingham, Reading and Fulham all clinging on for dear life trying to avoid the last relegation spot. As I understand it, they all need to win to stay up but by the same token they all need the other two teams to ‘not win’. Ireland need Reading to stay up so that Hunty, Doyler and LingLong all get premiership football next season and become really good world cup odyssey partaking super players.

Oh and the SPL pretending to be interesting. This year, in a suprise twist, the title holders will either be Celtic or Rangers!!! Rangers are a point down but with a game in hand. Times like these when you miss Henrik Larrsson and Martin O’Neil. Miss Alex Fergusen even more though, when he managed Aberdean it became, briefly, a three team league

GAA mathir-fucker!!!

In the Sunday Tribune theres a list of all the teams and how they stand with regards to the All Ireland Championship . Their top five are Kerry(obviously), Derry(anyone else notice that they rhyme?), Dublin(no, really, this is our last chance: Pillar, Jayo and Whelan are all gone at the end of the season), Cork(lets be honest, nobody wants Cork to win-we’ll never hear the end of it) and Tyrone(of all of them, this is the team I’d least like to play). Papa Rua is happy that Donegal are ranked in 8th, though he expects this to be the highpoint of their season.

On the other end there were no suprises with the exiles coming last. You’d be forgiven for thinking that New York couldn’t do any worse having never won a game(no really, never) but given that the days of mass emigration have come to an end things are hardly gonna get any better.

Rugby

Once more I want to emphasize what a weekend it could’ve been with London Irish playing Munster in the Heineken Cup Final. Every Mick in Europe would’ve come home for it(or at least as far as Wales), there were even plans to have it in Croker. Damn you Tolouse, damn you.

I also realised something about Italian prop Castro Giovanni-he ate all the salami

I’ve developed an obsession with the word ‘Golden’. I’m using it for everything-its actually replacing words like ‘deadly’ and ’savage’ in my daily vocabulary. Its wrecking my previously golden deadly buzz

For those of you unfamiliar with Dublins fair city I shall first provide some backround information. Campden street runs parrallel to Harcourt street(sort of) and has four to five other names between between Georges street and the Canal. It also has a pub more or less every five yards(including such institutions as The Swan(wonderful), The Cornerstone(new name, new prices, same shithole), Anseo(lovely people), Whelans(there’s a review around here somewhere-nightmare), Flanneries(Shirts, Brogues and Buckfast) and The Portobello(sunny day, nowhere better) and I know I’ve still left out someones favourite).

The shear number of pubs has spawned the mythical pub crawl that is known only as the ‘Campden Crawl’. The Campden Crawl would kill most sane men, it is not the Mt. Everest of binge drinking-it is the ladder on top of Mt Everest of Binge Drinking!

Traditionally, you go to a pub have a pint and move on to the next one. Several thousand brain cells later you wake up at Bóbós and realise you’re only halfway there. It can take days, but eventually, the brave can be seen casually tossing their internal organs into the canal(orally) because with such determination-who needs a liver?

My variation, is simple. Instead of having a pint, you have a shot. Instead of crawling, you sprint. Instead of spewing in the canal-you spew everywhere!!

So, my mate and I went for A pint last Wednesday afternoon because it was sunny and we were both sick of the library. Five rounds later I let it slip that I reckoned one of our younger lecturers had a bit of a thing for me-jokingly of course-or, at least I was at the time. Anyway, I didn’t think anything of it again(because I had a much better story involving Ricks, Cassidies and a new variation on the Campden crawl)-UNTIL NOW!!!

I have just recieved an e-mail from said lecturer that just about cracked me up, scared the life out of me and enticed me all at the same time to pretty much the same degree. In case, my secret identity ever be revealed and at risk of embarassing her I shall say only this much: it starts with ‘Dear Rua’ and ends in a phone number-ha ha ha! eek! oh baby!

I was eating dinner with my parents in the back garden yesterday. It was an amazing day so all my neighbors were out aswell and being the dysfunctional anti-social pricks that we are we didn’t want to have to talk to them.

So, naturally, my dad started speaking in Irish and we all slipped in without a bother. Then, the aul goat remembered he was in the process of trying to learn French so we all started speaking in French(well, my mam spoke, I stuttered and my dad cooed). Then, we got bored of French and started trying to speak Spanish(dad used to live in Barca, me and mam didn’t have a clue) before decending once more into a bizzarre Irish/French/Spanish/Shouting mash of vowels and grunts. It was deadly!

I wanna learn Spanish and become a matador(or a bull)

for some reason I think doing absolutely nothing on Saturday, Sunday and Monday of this week may effect the quality of the essay I have due for tomorrow. Lazyness is one of the few ailments for which the cure is definately worse than the disease

During the last World Cup Pirlo and Gattuso made up the best midfield partnership since Roy Keane and Determination

Actually, now that its written out in front of me-thats not very funny at all

I’ve spent the last week and a bit busting my nut to get this essay in for college. Granted, I got it finished, but its shit and I’ve probably failed so here I am back in the library starting on my next and second last project. Its not fair, the rest of my class are in the Swan getting locked while I’m here, semi-sober, about to get stuck into the next round of needle/eye stabbing pain that is whatever the fuck this module is about. Why? because I need to pass by at least 10 or 15 per cent to compensate for all the other shit I left to the last minute.

I swore at Christmas that I wouldn’t end up in this situation, I was gonna put my head down and blah de blah de blah-all idle talk when action was needed. Sometimes I think I sabbotage myself on purpose, not consciously of course, but subconsciously in that part of your brain that decides why you don’t feel comfortable with your hands flat on your laps and why you can put off studying because ’thats not due for ages’.

Theres definately something going on there. In school I was in the second lowest of 8 english classes for 5 years. English was nearly the only subject I enjoyed(I liked economics because it was politics and maths because it was easy-everything else was a waste of my precious time). Every teacher I had wondered what the feck I was doing there, until they corrected my exams.

Now the only question is whether I sabbotage myself to make things harder (because my priveledged backround makes things too easy for someone who was bred with the trenches in mind) and I need to do it the hard way OR because underneath it all, my own slef-image even, I’m scared that without anything in my way I still won’t be good enough?

I resented my primary school because they were so ’small time’ that they held me back(I was thinking this at the age of 12). I resented my secondary school because when I walked in on the first day we were told that we were ‘the best of the best’-and I had to ask ‘why?’. I hadn’t proven anything to anyone, I still haven’t. And now, on a course that I love, that was made for me, I’ve found a way to risk failing second year.

the words ‘here we go again’ spring to mind. I’m sick of being second best

Sock-child: The accidental child of a desperate and (undoubtably) drunken night where, in the absense of a condom, a sock was ‘used’*

Tayto-baby: similar to a sock child but with much less sympathetic parents. Tayto-babys are also more likely to be the final addition to the family, Tayto packets have sharp corners**

Poncometer(pronounced ponSometer): a scale on which to judge any venue, it goes from ‘Eircom League Division 2 relegation playoff’(1-no messin’abou’der’sunshoine) to ‘fashion, design and philosophy students hangout’((55-no, we don’t accept money for payment on alcohol-that’d conflict with our fair trade(except bright green lycra)/no fur(except gifts)/free speech(as long as its us) philosophy. Just put 50c in the jar every time you quote Foucault, we make more money that way anyway)). The scale is of course logorithmic

Liver abuse: when you spend 3 full days in the library and then go out and drink a glass of Hennessy, a shot of sambuka, a naggin of Jameson and 8 pints of Smithwicks in under 3 hours as I did last Friday. Side-effects may include death. Also known as self-induced retardation

*you really wouldn’t want to have athletes foot to try that one

**and salt and vinegar flavour probably burns somethin’awful

Went swimming in the sea yesterday, when I came out I looked like a fem-bot with a beer belly. You could cut glass with those nipples!