Every Day is Election Day

My delayed (sorry Darragh, thanks for the tag!) contribution to the irritable cause…

1. List two things that irritate you for a reason, and list the reason, and two things that irritate you for no apparent reason whatsoever
2. Give credit to the person who tagged you
3. Link your answers to the original blog, Skillett.com
4. Tag four new people to participate

Well, the first thing that annoys me are rules… so I guess I’ll break the said above rules here and do more than two things? Rebel Rebel! What can I say, I’m a crank and I adore a good grumble (meaning it’s Monday and Cork won yesterday)!

I’ve decided not to restrict myself just to two things that I know irritate me - if it irritates me, it irritates me, and I’m taking the chance to purge!

So get yore rant protection helmets on, folks, I’m away!

1. Sinusitis
I suffer from what is known as a ‘Brennan nose’. This involves a cold at least 5 times a year which includes, but isn’t limited to, the following symptoms: Pressure and pain over the forehead, constant headaches, continual clearing of the throat, a burning runny snoz that is always blocked with a thick mucus, and earaches bordering on downright deafness. You spend your time blowing a nose that is as blocked as my writing ability in explaining the horrors of these sinus attacks.

Sure, I’ve tried all the homeopathic “cures”, and I’ve nasal sprayed with the best of them, but sure as hell every odd month I end up spluttering like a faulty auto unit willing that damn air cavity in my nose to pop for some serious relief. To boot I tend to be struck down with a lurgy of this kind at the most inappropriate times… piano exams, orals, Leaving Cert, finals… you name it. At these times I am obviously at my attractive best and my primary concern is batting away admirers one snotty minute at a time. [Oi! That should be your priority all the time! - Gav]

For this, and so many other wonderful genes, thanks Pops.

2. Token Environmentalists
Self-righteous and arrogant greens truly grind my gears. You know the muesli eating, Guardian-reading types who only eat free range… but happen to conveniently guzzle gallons of gas and take several long-haul flights a year? Such types can often be seen in Avoca Handweavers, with other middle class ‘conscience’ types - one of the more disgusting phenomena of the Celtic Tiger years. I will declare war on their Cat Kitson aprons and home-made 20yo-a-pot hummus (totally not a real food, incidentally). Ooooone day…

3. Irish Transport in general…
…but mostly a bitter shout out to the cowboys that are behind the Student Travel Card, the atrocious attendants at Irish Rail and the badly trained and cantankerous drivers at Dublin Bus. Note: You can be mugged on a train in Ireland, seek help and be told to “Get over it” when you’ve been hit over the head. Horse’s mouth.

4. Notes from roommates (just an issue from my past thankfully! I heart my new roomies!)
Dearest X,

Please stop communicating with me through notes. You know where I live (unfortunately) and if I know you (and I don’t want to) you have probably stalked me on social networking sites for months and know that I am never at home to be the one creating the mess in the kitchen, eating your cheerios or drinking your beer.

Sincerely,
Ciara

5. People who take everything and give nothing
I prefer to call them verbal spongers. You end up stuck beside them at a wedding or in the next booth in the office, and you’re expected to be a bloody conversation jukebox. They give you nothing to work with.

“See that movie last night?”
“Meh.”

“How do you know Mary?”
“Work.”

Painfully you pull conversation from them. One. Grunt. At. A. Time.

6. Unremoved labels on shoes and clothes

Well done! You got new shoes! Think you could take the label off the bottom and not just hope it’ll disintegrate off the soul of your foot? Those white labels burn my eyes as I’m walking behind you. Hate hate hate it.

7. Women’s attitude to women
A previous post of mine will suffice here. ‘Nuff said

8. Unblended foundation
Just. Look. At. The. Difference. In. Colour. Between. Your. Neck. And. Face.

Wonkaface.

9. Top Gear
I hate things I don’t understand. And they drank behind the wheel. I don’t care if it was in the Antarctic…

10. Structured memes
Obviously.

You’ve no idea how much restraint it took not to put Cork in there. I guess we owe Mulley.

Rant over and out!

Credit the person who tagged you: The first thing that strikes me about Darragh is the understanding that he has for the world. He views issues and events with a complex sensitivity and humanises stories to wonderful effect. I truly love reading his blog; it was one of the first I started to religiously follow when I came across the blogosphere. He champions new bloggers around him and challenges establishing ones. I’m proud to say he takes some time out of his day to read our rants. Thank you Darragh.

I second Gav’s tags: doooooo it!

Work is dead so I’ll be back later…

I think this is the first time either of us have actually been tagged in a meme - chalk it down, the momentous date!

Anyway, we’ve been tagged by Darragh to participate in the Getting Your Goat meme, which has the following rules:

1. List two things that irritate you for a reason, and list the reason, and two things that irritate you for no apparent reason whatsoever
2. Give credit to the person who tagged you
3. Link your answers to the original blog, Skillett.com
4. Tag four new people to participate

I guess we’ll both be doing our different entries and that Ciara will be getting hers up soon enough, but for now, it’s Getting Gav’s Goat.

So - Things that irritate me for a reason:

Misplaced Arrogance
Something that Ciara’s last post brought forefront to my mind was how much in the last year, slugging away for the Students’ Union, we were exposed to a certain few people who, despite any inner fear about their failings or adequacy at particular tasks, went out of their way to find some way of inflating themselves, mostly by actively deflating the other people around them.

I know that in an arena as vicious, vacuous - and often so spiteful - as student politics that there’s an innate need to cover up any failings but when those failings are obviously well known to those around - and when those in question known that those surrounding them would only be willing to help, then puncturing the people in their stead is just a stupid, stupid thing.

Unfortunately, at this point in time, while I don’t regret doing the year with the SU, I’m leaving with far more sour memories than fond ones. You know who you are.

The Sunday Independent
And what’s worse, I can’t help but continue to buy the fucking thing. Curse you, Aonghus Fanning, curse you and your nepostic, pretentious shambles of a publication.

Example a prime, as they’d say themselves, from last week’s issue:

Life on the Celtic Costa goes on despite the gloom at home, writes Barry Egan in Marbella”.

Oh, God love them, isn’t it lucky for them that they can get on with their lives despite all the hassle they have? Poor Barry Egan too, having to head all that way, just to file 973 measly words about how you can see Africa on a fine day. God love him, making a 5,814km round trip just to do it. One word for every 6km travelled? The craythur.

Well, you know what? Fuck off, Sindo. Of the 973 words you published in that piece, a grand total of 0 were necessary for the stable continuation of the world’s self-propulsion. And what’s more, you’ll be the first ones complaining about how the Government isn’t really committing to climate change, while you send your ginger prat journalists off on 3,600-mile tours to file sub-1,000 word pieces on fuck all.

[exhales slowly]

Now then - things that irritate me for no good reason.

The Hills on MTV
I know there’s absolutely no difference between it, and the soap operas that I won’t admit to liking, but will admit to watching anyway (on the grounds that it’s of significant social importance). But. Arrrrrrrgh. I don’t care if Lo is being a bitch to Audrina, and neither should anyone else.

The fact that although I know many things irritate me on a daily basis, that I can’t remember these causes on command
I rest my case. I swear, I spent twenty minutes trying to come up with stuff and The Hills was as good as I could do. Epic fail.

Credit to the person who tagged us:
Darragh’s blog is one of those rare nuggets of sheer honestly, without any sense of inflation or pretense, that come along far too rarely. His writing is open, honest, and bare, and his blog is well worth a subscription.

Tag four people to take part:
Alexia - Purely out of curiosity in what annoys her for no reason!
Dani - come on, Dan, get out of your blogging shell and express yourself more!
Masquerade - one of the more eloquent ranters I know!
Sinead K - I know Darragh tagged you already, but he did thirteen people, so I figure I’m allowed some overlap…

Hello, nice people of the intraweb…

Firstly, I’m really better, and starting to feel human again. Finally. I was, in a word, riddled. Exhaustion really kicked in and my immune system packed its bags, leaving me with a pounding head, vertigo-type dizziness, a septic throat, a Dylan Moran ‘dippy tummy’ and an ear infection of head pounding frustration. As of yesterday I can taste food again and my throat no long feels as if it’s wallpapered with sandpaper… and a glorious thing happened yesterday: I sneezed and the ear popped, so Amen, brother, I can hear again! I must say, it’s been a while since I’ve been so disorientated with sickness, my whole body just stopped working, and my mind started raving, I swear the dreams were just mad. Mental. I blame The Law.

Secondly, thank you all very much. Gav and I have really thrilled with the number of visitors to everydayiselectionday, which have been steadily increasing for the past few weeks, even before Gav’s insanely amazing Wordpress post (On that, ain’t he something? He’s so good, thanks for all the nice comments, he’s buzzing from them). We’re hitting about 120 a day, and it’s fuelling a drive to keep it up and maintain the good response we’ve been getting. I won’t lie, this was Gav’s brainchild (along with most other great/life changing things that come the Gavra/Ciava way) but I’m surprised at how much I’ve taken to it; I used to feel like an inappropriate visitor to other blogs I would (and continue to!) follow, but now I think I’ve earned my look in, and they can have a look back at me.

In the real world (not that the blogosphere isn’t real - y’all are real, right?) my all-time pet hate has to be people who take everything and give nothing in return, so I guess this is just me legitimising my presence as I skulk away on other people’s blogs, wondering in admiration how they can be so brave, so insanely hilarious and just downright honest and share all that with me, so eloquently and creatively. I don’t know many of the people whose blogs I read, but there is a lot of common ground out there and oh-so-many lessons to learn. I struggle to share as many of my thoughts and musings with you all to the extent to which I would like, and for that I apologise. I’ve never really written a truly ‘personal’ post before… it’s a oddity, really, especially since I am very open about my feelings/emotions with folk generally, whose who know me will know that (bloody hell - this is a couple’s blog, doesn’t get more open than that!).

I don’t know what exactly I’m afraid of; I’m a tough nut most of the time, pretty footloose and fancy-free, and have stood up to seriously difficult situations and come out strong and earnest to overcome/succeed – but for some reason, seeing those situations, just writing them down makes for a very difficult task. I’m also really conscious of the fact that on the greater scheme of things my ‘issues’ or ‘problems’ are whimsical and insignificant to the many serious and sobering real problems some people face. Such ‘issues’ are nothing new at any rate, nothing thought provoking, something you haven’t all been through. And I know a problem shared is a blog post, I mean, a problem halved… but I just can’t bring myself to type them… however, I’m hoping to change all that one post at a time.

That’s the bloody politician in me, I’m afraid to admit my shortcomings. Don’t get me wrong, I’m so grateful to have had the year that I did last year, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t cagey about people and their attitudes about me and my life after the Students’ Union sabbatical experience. You spend your whole year justifying your position, seeking validation and approval and hoping beyond hope that you won’t be ‘caught out’. You try so hard to be everything to everyone, to the point where you are so exhausted, you forget who you are yourself. You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. And it was only at the end I realised that I didn’t want to play ball the same way my colleagues did, and if I could do some things differently now I would, but them’s the blows I guess. I ramble.

Anyways, the last thing you want to do is admit your failings, because if you note them, then sure as hell someone else will, and then it’s a REAL failing. So you brush it under the red carpet and you move on. You have this odd ‘confidence’ that is as shallow as your motivations, and a drive as ferocious as the fear that eats you up. I tried to articulate such feelings to the University Observer before I left, in an interview that I’d do so differently now, given activities and ‘liaisons’ of my colleagues I’ve learnt about that went on behind my back all year (most of it involving scamming money off students and the University, and sick and twisted jokes about some students who came for help. Disgusting.) I also came across some ridiculous ‘commentary’ between people who I clashed with on an issue last year, that was personal and vindictive (regarding my private and family life) that I would probably name and shame, nay ruin, for their own indiscretions and inactivity (I ruffled a few feathers with a motion of No Confidence; sorry if I demand standards for the Union) but there you go. I wanted to be loyal, even when they weren’t.

So I guess I have reason to feel nervous about juxtaposing my idle blog links with my inner deep thoughts for people like that to access. But I’m going to try to learn to share more, just as you do with me. All I can do is put it down to experience and try to learn from my year, just as I learn from all of you, and the wonderful thoughts and ideas you share on your blogs. And try to accept I’m only human. Horrors.

Thirdly, I’ve no real newsies, except for the fact I’ve revised my exam schedule for October; I’ve decided I’m not doing EU this time around. This is following extensive discussions and soul searching and a recommendation from my lecturer that I appear to be suffering from some PTSD (Post Treaty Stress Disorder). The drawing board that is Val Corbett suggested Land Law could be a runner, and who am I to disagree with Val? Honestly though, I was going off on ones about Lisbon in tirades of Bibi Baskin proportions (did you ever see the like?) in my homework, so it’s probably for the best.

Anyways, I’m off to watch Obama’s speech from Berlin (I’m catching up!), which is a perfect excuse for me to post this:

C x

Friends,

I’ve been meaning to write this for a while now, but I guess I’ve been busy being ‘oppressed’ by society…

My term of office is over, but I remain adamant on this issue, one that has opened a complete Pandora’s box on women participation, a welcome discussion. But before that happens I think a few home truths are needed. I don’t mean to patronise you all, but I merely wish to clearly spell out the inconsistencies in your approach. I begin as so. (more…)