What?

Okay so this blog needs a major overhaul, it's dead. So I guess it needs a revival, oh a reboot!

Yeah everyone loves those, a complete reboot retconning everything beforehand, so yeah I'm going to start blogging very soon for what I hope to be everyday. It always ends up not being that way but hell optimism is a train that goes through funville right?

So in the style of retconning I'll probably get rid of all previous posts, they annoy me, terribly written, pointless and boring to anyone that isn't me. I'm going to try and stay away from the self masturbation posts of the past. Oh dear ..they not pretty.

But yeah soon a hopefully good blog will rise from the ashes of this one, not sure if it will be here or on tumblr though, I'll get back to you on that one.



I'm going to forget all about this tomorrow aren't I? Heh, crap.

Vet

Today I was sitting in the vet waiting for my dog. Across from me were two men, one in his sixties and another I could only assume was half way through his nineties. The two were obviously there with each other, a father and son I can only assume.

In the younger man's hands was a bag, a dunnes stores bag, the type of bag made from hemp or whatever it is. Inside the bad was a cat. The thing looked like it was on its last legs. Its fur has become discoloured, each breath looked like it could be the last. The man held onto the bag in a way which was obviously discomforting, he didn't seem to mind though.

After the attractive receptionist left the room, the elder of the two began to speak.

"Sixteen years old" he smiled. He must have seen I was looking.

"We take her in here every month to give her some shots, they're about the only thing keeping her going these days". He seemed more proud than sad at his own words.

I gave him a polite smile and looked back at the cat. Then I started feeling sorry, sorry for the old man, if anything happens that cat he'd probably be lost. Then my mind turned to his life after that cat, each moment whittling away until his last, then he's gone.

Later on I started thinking what I'd feel like if I was that man. I wouldn't want some waster twenty year old feeling sorry for me. Pitying my very existence from the brief time he spent in a room with me. It's going to happen someday though, isn't it? If I live long enough people are going to start pitying me. They'll look at my broken down skin, my bald head, my stained clothes.

I guess what the whole point of this is, I hate getting old.

E3 Konami, just retire already Kojima

This is going to be short post because in all honesty I didn't even watch this press conference. Now I was expecting one thing from this conference, metar gearu soridu. Well boy was I not disappointed. This company seems to have nothing else going for them right now. They have beaten the dead horse into its skeletal form.

Now don't get me wrong I used to love Metal Gear Solid. The first one was filled with action, plot twists and liquid snake. It was the best game on the PlayStation bar Final Fantasy VIII. So I was massively hyped for the second one and hot damn I was not disappointed. The game brought in an insane amount of interaction. Ice cubes melted before your eyes, you could hold up people and shake them down for ammo, dog tags etc. Raiden was a breath of fresh air his relationship with Rose (which gets universal hate) kept me engaged to his character. The ending of the game got me so fucking hyped that Metal Gear Solid became that greatest thing in gaming. Then it happened.

Metal Gear Solid 3, now I remember thinking up a million different ways they could continue on the story. I played MGS2 like 6 times in anticipation. Then it happened. Screens appeared in a magazine for MGS3. I almost ripped the magazine apart to get to the pictures and I saw it. It was in a jungle. My face dropped. Then I saw the caption under one picture "Eye patch could this be big boss?". I was pretty disappointed but still kept my hopes up that it was snake. Later on the reveal came that it was in fact Big Boss. The game was set 50(?) years before MGS1. At this point I was pissed off, the idea of rapping up the plot was thrown out the window and instead they focused on Big Boss' history.

Now a lot of people believe this was the best game in the series, I didn't like it at all. The bosses had no backgrounds. The codec was reduced to staring at snakes knees for 20 minutes at a time. No area of the jungle looked distinct. It was obvious from the first time you saw EVA that she was a double agent. The interactivity was gone and in its place was LOTS OF GUNS. I could go on for hours.

Needless to say it was like playing FFXII it destroyed my faith in the franchise. Metal Gear Acid restored it a little but then the PSP big boss game destroyed my hopes again. Then MGS4 came along. It got 10's everywhere it was a sequel to 2 I was hyped as fuck. Well kojima may as well have just punched me in the balls as MGS4 was not a good game. Everything was explained in one word. There was an annoying amount of guns. They brought in a completely unnecessary black character for the sake of having one. Snake's ass fucking pissed me off. The bosses had even less personality than in 3 and were now just there for sex appeal. The game sucked to sum it up.

Now I get back to E3. MORE METAL GEAR SOLID. Re-releases a hinted MGS5 and Rising. While I am quite excited for rising merely for the game play and Raiden I really do wish they would put this series to bed. Kojima stated with MGS2 that he was done with it, how I wish he kept to that.

Now that I'm done bitching about let's move onto what I did want to see. Castlevania 1999 and Zone of the Enders 3. I did not get any of these things.

Actually forget that all I want is Castlevania 1999. Give me that and I'm happy. That game has been hinted for far too long to just ignore now.

There was two rays of sunshine however. HD remakes of the entire Silent Hill and Zone of the Enders series. I am psyched for these, finally I get to play Silent Hill 2 and Zone of the Enders 2. Otherwise the Konami E3 was a big disappointment. Nothing new to get excited about.

Also Pro Evolution Soccer and Never Dead...just Fuck Off.

I'd say it's only just begun, wouldn't you?

So I sit here as the rain beats down against the window. I thought summer would have such a better start than this but I guess that's not as it was supposed to be.

I really hope the sun starts shining again, this crappy weather always depresses me and then I put on depressing music and things go even further downhill. An endless cycle.

One of the things I dislike about summer is the dreams I get. Incredibly vivid dreams. Usually the consist of people I know and contain not so hidden meanings. They annoy me to no end, they're also not the ones you forget as I still easily remember ones I had last week. I thought that was supposed to be near impossible if they aren't written down.

Anyways just thought I'd write a micro blog as I've been smothered by a blanket of boredom today.

Imma return to making blogs tonight or tomorrow.

yeah,

What's the matter? You sound as if it's all coming to an end.

Due to upcoming examens (dazzle them with your french he said) mah history of little old me will come to an abrupt halt.

It'll be back afterwards but I may move it over to tumblr, I'm not quite sure yet, I'll see how things go.

So till then;
STAY AWAY FROM THAT COOKIE!

Sometimes, I guess there just aren't enough rocks.

1998, now for some reason this year felt the longest, I don't know why but the idea of 1998 it just seems that year went on forever.

At this point in my story I had entered second class, the new group in first class were placed back in with Ms. McGuiness and for a time it was only two classes in our classroom, second and third.

Now second class wasn't the most eventful year in the world. It was pretty much as normal as they come even. There was nobody coming into our class and nobody leaving. It wasn't till the next few years that would happen.

Back then were the glory years however. Lunch time was as fun as a cat in kittens. We played all sorts of games from catch to tip the can, every once in awhile we'd get a football out and play on this triangular piece of grass that you could barely run across without reaching the end of it. There was this big dark shelter behind the school we'd play little games in. There were also a lot of crazy stories floating around about that shelter. Apparently our Principle hated dogs and he'd just go around hunting down dogs to lock them up in there. Though sometimes on rainy days you actually would hear squealing coming from the locked door, scary stuff.

The birthday parties in second class got out of control. It seemed Patrick and Stephen were constantly trying to one up each other, one would invite us all to a fun factory and the other would bring us paint balling. Hell I wasn't complaining as it was mad amounts of fun but it kinda dampened my birthdays when it was all "lol you wanna go cinema?".

Now I'm pretty sure this was the year we started dabbling in long division, I can tell you now, I despise long division. It's just something I can't do. I mean even when I repeated in the Marist it was my one weakness. But yet again tale for another day. Now everyone around me seemed to get the hang of long division while it drove me insane. Where do I take the numbers from that was my problem, I'll never understand it.

Now my teacher in second class was Mrs. Duffy. I've been over this before but I did not like her. This one time in class we were discussing natural disasters. "Call out some natural disasters guys" she called from atop the classroom. "Hurricane", "tornado", "earthquake" all these words flung out at blistering paces. I however bided my time as I knew I could blow away all their silly little answers for you see back in the day I had this awesome encyclopedia. It had drawings of all this crazy stuff and I must have learnt it off by heart. One of the sections of this encyclopedia was natural disasters, so I had answers for this question that I knew nobody else would know.

As the answers began fading into murmurs of "avulunch" (sic). I chimed in loudly with a waterspout. I proudly sat back and watched my peers confused faces but alas my moment was cut short. "Stop being such an idiot Mark, you think that's funny, stand up immediately." My face dropped. Now I was gobsmacked. What the hell did I do wrong I wondered. Waterspouts were serious threats for boats and what not, they were like water bound tornadoes. Tornado was on the blackboard so why the hell was I made look like an idiot. Well apparently Mrs. Duffy being the master of the universe thought I was talking about some variation of a teapot. What a brilliant teacher.

But my second class tussles with Mrs. Duffy don't end there, oh no I could go on for hours. One time we were practising for a choir. Three of us were tired of it all and just wanted to quit. So we asked Mrs. Duffy if we could stop taking part in the choir. Now Mrs. Duffy was taken back by this request. She begged and pleaded with Patrick to return to the choir, she talked about how it will benefit him and how everyone will be ever so proud of his amazing voice. I can't remember who the other person was but I remember she spent a good few minutes convincing them to return as well.

Now she had these two people back in the choir she just stared down at me with her protruding jaw. I thought to myself, oh here we go, don't try and convince me too hard Mrs I might just cave in. Well I didn't have to worry about that. She just looked down at me and sighed. "You can just take a seat over there till we're done". Now I know I was the one to quit but what the hell! You're going to make me stand there and listen to you compliment everyone else and then you just look at me and sigh?! As Eric once said "I didn't wanna go to the dance, I just wanted to be asked".

I think those two events sum up how I got along with Mrs. Duffy. She was a bitch to me and an angel to most of the others. Though I remember there were others she didn't take to kindly to either.

Okay one last small story about her!

One time whilst playing basketball round the back of the school I fell on my knee. Blood streaming down my leg I rushed to find a teacher to get me a bandage. Well guess who was on duty, yep herself. As I walked up to her she had the biggest shit eating grin on her face I'd ever seen. "What's the problem Mark?" she splurted out as she attempted to contain her laughter. Like c'mon why laugh at a kid pumping blood unless you have some sort of sadistic problems.

I tire of talking of her so let's move onto fun times. BADMINTON! Now my last meeting with these people was one of Patrick's mother (the leader of the badminton club) telling me she no babysit, badminton r srs bsns.

When I entered in second class though things were a lot better. That sport was the sport of kings I tell ya! Each day we'd do these silly little routines to help our power and accuracy. As strange as it was it eventually paid off as we could soon land shuttles into a bucket from the other end of the court.

Good times, though I never did get along with Barney one of the owners. He was constantly barking orders and shouting out "Don't do this and you won't be back next week!". He was just annoying. Anybody went into the toilet he'd be in three minutes later "What are you doing, why are you taking so long, you think this is a game". He was mainly just there to run everyones good time. Though in his defense we kinda brought it on ourselves. I remember one time one of the people in the club stood up on a toilet (god knows why) and shattered the toilet into pieces. Funny for me, not for Barney.

While the badminton club was fun it wasn't without its problems. For one thing the club had the biggest load of nepotism I had ever seen. The club was owned by three of my classmates parents. Now there were always only four places on the team. Guess who got three of them?! Yep, every single time the children of those three got the team, not only that but the neighbour of one of the three got the final place, every single time. Now what are the odds of that happening?!

Seeing as I lived in the middle of nowhere, socializing outside of school was always a pain. For me whenever summer hit it was adventure time. I got a bike this year and by howdy did I make use of it. I'd go adventuring around the local area. They were fun times. I remember there was this one place were daisy like flowers grew to be bigger than me, it was awesome, felt like a world were everything grew to be massive!

I climbed Croagh Patrick this year. That was scary as shit. The start of it is grand, you got this little stream accompanying you up the route but eventually it starts getting cliffy. There's parts of the main path were you only have room for one foot as you move across, always got paranoid I'd fall down those. The worst bit was when you got to the end though. Now I don't know why but the final third of the mountain is completely rocky. Every single step you take is on stones which are constantly moving, constantly going from under your feet. The worst part is that there are always old people taking up the parts where you can cling onto stuff so you literally have to get down on all fours and crawl your way up the boulders and stones. Worst part is if you slip and fall, bam, you're falling a long way down. All of this is not fun for a seven or eight year old believe me.

Well that's about it for today's edition. Not much else to talk about. I got a N64 that year which combined with my exploring covers most of my summer. They were a simple time.

Okay, yeah, so tune in next time when it's onto third class, it's not the most interesting class, so I'll probably use it talk about life at Darver in general. But there were a few awesome things like Pokémon and part time teachers.

Ciao.

Mama says they was magic shoes. They could take me anywhere.

Okay on to the next chapter of my life 1997 and first class!

Usually up to this point Ms. McGuiness would handle first class along with the senior and junior infants (small school), but for some reason this year Mrs. Duffy took on first class instead, I assume it was a numbers thing.

I can tell you right now I did not like Mrs. Duffy. She just had it in for me the whole time, I have no bloody clue why either, it was like I was being used to keep everyone else in line. Wait till I tell the second and third year stories about her man!

Anyway first class at the time was when you did confession and communion, I think it's been bumped up to second class these days due to kids being to immature for god or something. I dreaded the time coming up to first confessions. The amount of stuff I thought you had to learn and recite to the priest was insane and I thought if you messed up just a little you got the unholies. It's also crazy how much you have to rehearse to take part in it, it all had to run perfect.

I can still kinda remember what I said that day to the priest. It was like "Err hello father, forgive me for I have sinned, I like fought with my brother and gave out to my mam." It was a load of crap, I just wanted to get away from the priest as quickly as possible, I never liked being around priests, too judgemental.

Well first confessions came and went. I had no idea why we did confessions or anything like that, we focused more on making the ceremony look good than why we did it. Anyway life at seven was pretty sweet. I remember I had a rocking maetabolism, I mean I could eat for hours on end and not gain a pound, it was the life, sadly nowadays I gotta exercise and watch what I eat. Getting old sucks.

I was also uber tall. I was like a head above everyone else, it seems crazy now how tall I was, the teachers constantly referenced it which made me feel awesome. Then Barry started catching up though and eventually became taller than me, he always got their references :(

Next up was first communion. I hated it. I remember dreading putting it in my mouth. I remember the fear of choking on it. I remember the terrible taste. As ashamed of my self as I am I remember crying the first time I held one in my mouth. Why do I always remember the bad stuff :\

Yes I am aware how that last paragraph could be taken out of context you sick, sick people.

First class was pretty fun for nature studies. We'd have these wee books with rabbits and junk in them and we'd learn all about the environment. I loved every minute of it. Then we would go on these fun nature walks all around the surrounding areas of the school. Usually we would walk up to Darver Castle. Back then the Castle wasn't used as a hotel, it was just a fancy hotel in the middle of nowhere. The lane going up to it was always one of my favourite things. Trees arched over the path blocking out the sky, it felt like I was in a massive forest.

At the centre of the lane was this old creepy graveyard. The headstones were beaten and covered in ivy. The bottom end of the graveyard seemed like it would open out and grab you kicking and screaming into it. We never dared venture down there lest some weird beasts get us. The graveyard these days isn't enterable it has been consumed by nettles to the point they just out onto the path. Back then however it was a magical place.

I rmember once on the way back from the graveyard to the school we came across this old building. It was so covered by fauna that you couldn't make out any of the outside walls. It felt like we'd unearthed some past civilisation right there. I actually wonder do the castle owners even know about those buildings.

In all honesty not much happened in first class besides the religious activies, my hatred for Mrs. Duffy didn't pick up until second class.

This was the year I believe I was first introduced to Kenan and Kel. My god did I love that show. It was the reason I would get up early on a Saturday morning. I can't really remember many of the tv shows I watched before pokemon and them came along.

This was the year I joined the Joes gaelic football team. Barry was the one who brought it to our attention as he told us all of the marvels of playing footballs outside school. When I showed up there I was all like "LET'S PLAY BALL" but eventually I really stopped caring about playing ball and just wanted to talk with the dromiskin folk about stuff. They were okay people a lot of them didn't talk coz football iz srs bsns. This was where I met Niall McEvoy who would come along to play a pretty big role in my life later on in secondary school.

Football with the Joes was a mixed time. I was never good at football. I just didn't get the whole chasing balls and kicking em thing. Hell back when people were talking bout Manchester United and all that crap I just wanted to talk about the last episode of Kenan and Kel. Most people were just too obsessed with football to care otherwise though. I longed for the day I could talk to people who didn't talk about football. Like there were people there that were like that like Stephen O'Neill but I just never liked that guy y'know. Oddly I can't remember if I talked to Kevin much before 6th class, I wonder what he was off doing in those times. If you're out there in the interspace, make your own blog brah!

But that's about it for today, I didn't cover a lot of the stuff I wanted to but I'm all groggy today so imma just relax for the rest of the night. Ciao folks!