Procrastinate Or Be Damned

Academia. The inert musings of the privileged young - and not so young - minds of society. A veritable fairground of intellectuals engaged in research that they alone, and sometimes not even they, can make sense of. Ah it's good to be back.

Despite repeated attempts at fucking about, I managed to get my teeth into my first chapter today, which deals with the foundation of the Irish Catholic Social Welfare Bureau in 1942, a Bureau brought into being to deal with the plight of emigration. The results varied but the religious egomania never swayed. While it is easy - oh so easy - to be critical of the stilted morality and plain simplemindedness of some of those involved - certain members of the clergy, when pressed on solving the issue, call to mind the episode of Father Ted where Dougal is stuck on the milkfloat and one of the crack team of priesteens trying to help suggests, as a practical means of avoiding disaster the saying of another mass! - it remains a simple, unstated fact that the men in dog-collars were the only ones trying to help emigrants as they went off on their not so merry way, and the outrageous abrogation of responsibility on the part of the state may, to some extent inform the crisis of 1951, where the Church simply blocked the Mother-and-Child Scheme.

Fascinating stuff.

Anyways, one of my favourite ways of avoiding study is top tens. Today's top ten is a very obvious one, albums(Have been listening quite a bit to Dave Fanning of late.)
Here's mine, and I'd love to have all of yours. No Greatest Hits albums please!

1. Planxty - After the Break
2. Kila - Tóg é go Bog É
3. The Pogues - Rum Sodomy and the Lash
4. The Stunning - Paradise in the Picturehouse
5. The Velvet Underground - Nico
6. The Pixies - Doolittle
7. Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights
8. Led Zeppelin III
9. St Germain - Tourist
10.Blur - Parklife

Cool Runnings

First of all, apologies for deleting the blog with all of your comments about the Brady Bunch. I do sympathize with those unfortunate students who are at the coalface as the changes are implemented, alas this must be a necessary evil. Modularisation is the way forward methinks. At any route, as Stephen pointed out, there can be very little wrong with undergraduate medical students being allowed to take a course in sociology. It might, for example, broaden their...nah, fuck it, I won't go there! However, it is nice to see that debate on this topic can be civil; the academic divas are behaving like children, so it's nice to see the children behaving with dignity.

Anyways, I've started running. Those who have known me in any context over the last few years will be picking themselves up off the floor as they read this, because my lifestyle has, at times, been perhaps less than prudent.(And the award for greatest understatement since mata harney said the health service 'had its problems' goes to...). Over-indulgence was the byword for as long as I can remember and this came to a head with my joining a folk band in November 2004. New depths of notoriety and wicked decadence were plumbed as we embarked upon a journey that can only be described as hallucinogenic. Fun but hallucinogenic. Collapsing after a gig in April forced me to consider my options; Carry on and die, or get my shit together. I opted for the latter.

So out went the heavy intake of everything - well, except booze, but even that has been curbed to some extent- and I'm now off the fags for nearly seven months. Two months ago I headed off on a run around Dingle in Kerry and I haven't looked back. Today I ran for five miles for the first time. Apart from the searing pain in my right leg, I've never felt better.

The point of all this is that, while harping on about the dire state of our national psyche for as long as I remember, it has only dawned on me recently that I was, perhaps, one of the most ardent proponents of the fuck yourself up now, think later philosophy that pervades Ireland, and perhaps the world, today. I think we all do it. I think we all stroke our chins and talk about the booze culture, and the sadness inherent in this crazy spiral of consumerism and mass gluttony we've got caught up in, without ever stopping to ask ourselves, are we adding to, or subtracting from, the problem?

This isn't a Road to Damascus moment, and I'm not trying to play the 'I've seen the light, My life is perfect now' card. I don't believe in any of that. What I am saying is that life is more interesting when you're taking care of yourself. We all strain to find some niche of individualism that we can inhabit, in order to make our existence worthwhile. If you ask me - and yes, I'm aware that no-one has! - try this for individuality...Don't spend your life fucking yourself up!!

What got me thinking about this is the advent of a new book on Irish shelves, as of last week, Declan Lynch's The Rooms. Any of you that are not familiar with his work, especially if you have any sort of passing interest in where were at as a society, are sorely missing out. I buy the Sunday Independent every week. I'm not proud of it. In fact, I hate the paper with a passion I usually reserve for taxi drivers and McFly. But I buy it. Because Declan writes for it. And the man is a genius. Check him out. The book, incidentally is about recovering from alcoholism. I haven't read it yet, but if I know Declan, I know it'll be as profound as it is funny.

Finally, have been listening this week to a CD an old flatmate gave me, The Best of the Last Word wit Bill Cullin. I'm wondering are there any fans of this comic work of art out there? For the uninitiated, Renault boss Bill Cullen, of Penny Apples fame, was subjected to the most riotous parody by Tom Dunne and Stuart Carolan for about a year on The Last Word on Today FM while the Dunph was still in the hot seat. I will gladly burn this collection for anyone who is interested, as it is the funniest take-off EVER. I hope I'm not alone.

I'll leave you with a really, really bad joke that cracked me up when I heard it last weekend. Later Dudes

Two Protestant Ducks are walking anxiously down the Falls Road after dark.
One of the Ducks says 'Quack.'
The other responds,'I'm goin as quack as I can.'

Easily the worst joke I've ever heard. I nearly died laughing

World Wars and New Horizons

To celebrate the release of the new Franz Ferdinand album - who knew a song about performing oral sex could be almost as enjoyable as oral sex itself?? - I've been reading up on my WWI history. I thoroughly recommend Richard Vinen's 'A History of Fragments' for a general analysis of the 20th century, which places as much, if not more emphasis on social matters as it does on the crucial, but overwhelmingly over-treated domain of politics and diplomacy. We know there was a lot of fighting. We know states battled with each other for global supremacy and we know that communism as it was practiced didn't really work out. But what was life like? How much did the development of the atom bomb actually impact upon the average slack-jawed peasant yokel beating his children in rural Slovakia? Vinen answers this and many other questions with gusto and aplomb. Check him out.

One of his main points is that the awfulness of post-1914 Europe is generally overstated because many writers at the time yearned nostalgically for the certainties - and prosperity - of the first decade of the century. This view, however, was propagated by those who lost the most, the rentier bourgeoisie and, truth be told, for most citizens of the third mall from the sun, life was little worse in 1918 than it had been in 1914.

I mention this because it kind of has an interesting contemporary paralell. The 'Bradyization' of UCD is being lambasted by student and scholar alike, and speaking to many people, one is left with an apocalyptic vision of a university that has abandoned its students and betrayed its staff.

Bollox. UCD has NEVER cared about its students, and it never will, and to hark back to the pre-Brady era as some enlightened, compassionate nirvana whereby all students were allowed to suckle at the teat of wisdom and comfort is as foolish as thinking that a fairyland existed in early 20th Century Europe for anyone outside Virginia Woolf's circle of friends and family. Why does it feel like opposition to Horizons is largely coming from Arts students who don't want Christmas exams, and wizened academics, growing fatter and lazier with each passing moment, who wish to be left alone in their ivory towers to exploit the third level system for their own narrow aims?

Incidentally, I'm not a Brady cheerleader. I think he's a tosser. I just don't really believe he's any more of a tosser than Art is or was.

Sorry for the rant, just sick of people complaining about how awful life is. It isn't!