This is an article I wrote for the The Gazette (UCC Student's Union paper), published on October 24, 1996. I've transcribed it below because I am terrible at taking photos.


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Chapter 1: syetenb
WARNING: What follows is the very essence of TL;DR. You may actually be slightly less intelligent after reading all of it. No one should do so. There is one confirmed case of a poor American girl who read this whole page, and now all she can read is Dan Brown books. In an Australian accent. Don't be like Becky. Do not read this ( Read more... )

Mike Perkins

Chapter 1: Fraud, Cocaine and Paedophiles

I have a friend called Andrea. She is a music teacher. The man who taught her music is called Mike Perkins. Mike feels an affinity with her because they both share an interest in music and teaching it to others. One fine Facebook day, Andrea posted a status update asking if she should pursue ( Read more... )

Last night, my friend Jennifer kindly provided an excuse for me to leave the house and took me to a comedy show administered by offensive mastermind Jim Jeffries at The Grove in Anaheim. Jim uses the word "cunt" a lot. I don't care about what words people use, but I don't like hearing the same thing over and over. However, he feels that Americans ( Read more... )

Sometimes I find myself on an airplane. It seems to happen a lot. Airports, especially in America, do their best to differentiate themselves in some way, or be unique in ways that takes away from the crushing, mind-grinding reality that your flight will not leave on time. In Denver International Airport, they have a very strange few bars of piano ( Read more... )

My father was bookish by circumstance. I was bookish by choice. He is intellectual, well read, a functional atheist (although like most Irish people who are functionally atheist, he identifies as Catholic). A debilitating injury, which still adversely affects him at the age of seventy-six, put away any hopes of a sporting career. Sometimes I wanted ( Read more... )

Sometimes I find it hard to sleep. It takes me hours and hours. Sometimes I get sick of waiting to drop off, and just write off the whole night. Last night was one of those nights. During those dark hours, I was screwing around on Twitter and noticed Armando Iannucci issuing a challenge to find the best headline ever. His example was funny, but ( Read more... )

In 1996, I was the Public Relations Officer for University College Cork's Wargaming And Role Playing Society, or as I told my confused parents the week-end after it happened, the PRO of WARPS. They never understood why anyone would engage in any extra-curricular activity ( Read more... )

I decided to accept my friend Vanessa's suggestion that we do the Gladiator Rock 'n' Run in Irvine at the start of May. She can probably claim this as charitable work on her taxes; I don't know. In any case, she correctly guessed that I was very unfit from sitting around all day drinking Coke, typing reams of gibberish and chomming handfuls of ( Read more... )

Episode I: Casting and RehearsalsA long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I was in Fifth Year, which is what we had in my high school before the serious business of Sixth Year. Sixth Year was serious business because at the end of it, you would sit the Leaving Cert: an exam which, it was strongly hinted, would determine the path of the remainder ( Read more... )