The Prospect of a New Year

Happy New Years (and Jesus Day!) to all, during the last week or two I have been struggling to become a normal human being again after copious amounts of partying and eating so much that I could spend a year in the toilet. That was a lie, I've actually only been out a few times over both Xmas and for New Years. Anyways with the New Years comes all these lofty expectations we make for ourselves. I actually haven't made any resolutions as my quitting smoking would have been it, maybe I should just take it up and use it for next years one? Only the day before though.... or maybe the year before. In a sort of ironic way I think that fitness is a lazy one to come up with (that sentence destroyed a galaxy before), and I figure that once I drop the pooh bomb while listening to the inception soundtrack I will deflate to normal size again.

"Ellen Page eats a lot during Xmas too"

I always find it super duper hard to come up with a resolution though being the PERFECT human sample I am and potential UFO abductee candidate. That was also a lie, I'm an Alien. Maybe I should stop lying as a resolution? The best way really to come up with a new years resolution I figure is to look back on what I've learnt throughout the year. Unfortunately none of these things I've learnt have been in anyway beneficial to my life but all I can do is list them off in hope of finding SOME resolution, I'll give it a Yay or Nay if it's something that needs rectifying:

1. No matter how hard you try, strutting while listening to music is inevitable. (Nay, I look stupid consistently)

2. You are not winning money at the ATM. (Yay, I am only spending)

3. Shots always win. (Yay, stop drinking shots)

4. You become inherently productive when drunk. (Yay, this has proved hazardous for me on multiple occassions, just go to bed people)

5. Impulse buying when hungover does not a better day make. (Yay, this usually starts a tea and toast diet)

6. I think I see some sort of pattern here:

YAY, now I see a particularly beneficial resolution. If you didn't notice, this list actually (and naturally) assembled itself into the spending pattern of a night out. There is only one solution to this: Buy cheaper drink!

"YAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy!!!"

I jest, I actually do want to drink less, it's a reasonable resolution and I do become much more productive when I'm not hungover every 2nd or 3rd day. Such as this crappy blog, or writing or blada yada yada. Maybe I can start working on practical jokes, like running into the middle of a Veteran's Day Memorial and screaming the time from a 24 hour clock. In the opposite of retrospect though, that might kill off the remaining veteran's inadvertently, so I guess my idea of practical jokes might prove hilariously fatal. I can see the headlines already "In a Series of comical events, 100 people die".

My real focus this year is to save money and get myself some not needed but beneficial items, like a new laptop and a camera. And NOT a HP laptop. I think HP really means Huge Penis as in, they're a corporation of gigantic dicks raping the consumer. I'd also like to get myself a fancy DSLR camera so I can begin to shoot my own little shorts so I can finally begin to put mah degree in Film and TV to some use. For those of you around, any hand in this would be muchos appreciated although it comes with a word of warning, it may reduce your social status a wee biteen if this is any example:

Pooor Katie...... Anyways along with the buying of things, Canada seems like a viable selection of career advancing so I hope to pay visit there and maybe you'll be in the cinema in a few years to see The Fiancee: Stand Still While I Shoot. Alas as with any plans, resolutions or ideas, they're all in our little monkey heads and it's one thing to say them than to enact them. If we were just more Jack Bauer then we would always get the results.

Anyways that's my brain spent for the day. What ya'll up to for this year; resolutions, plans and etc.? Throw em at me if you feel like dropping a comment!

Being Drunk and Productive = Counter Productive

I've finally learnt after 3 separate occasions that being drunk, in my case, and trying to be productive has often left me in a situation worse off than improved. This is also 3 occasions that I remember because they have left a lasting effect, like when you watch all of LOST and realise that you could've stared at a giant question mark for 6 years and STILL have gotten more answers.

"Previously on LOST..."

The first of these stupid escapades was something I mentioned in a previous post before. I stumbled into my room like a bowling ball falling down a staircase and saw my curtains agape. This could not stand if I were to sleep in that morning so like a whiley racoon I decided to close them. This proved much more difficult than it appeared, my drunken motor instincts confused closing with going rigid and my balance confused standing up with...not standing up. I forgot this had all happened until I woke up and thought for a moment "my window wasn't on the floor before?". Anyways, the good thing was, I still managed to close the curtains, even if they weren't attached to the wall anymore.

The second time is also something I've mentioned in previous posts. My sister and her boyfriend were over visiting and we all were drinking here in my apartment, which is also their ex-apartment. As per usual I was using my laptop to show funny videos (probably about cats) and play music no one wants to listen to at 3 in the morning. I also felt that the laptop needed no better place to be than on top of stereo speakers, at my head height with wires protruding from it all around the room. After showing them one of the trippy psychedelic fight scenes from Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World I took my own trip over my laptop charger sending my laptop on a very brief and ultimately horrendous speed date with gravity that ended at the floor. My laptop still worked but now my screen is stuck in what I am dubbing "Scott Pilgrim mode", it's flickery, crazy, fuzzy and psychedelic making reading just about bearable and the only thing that does look normal on it is Scott Pilgrim Vs. The world.

"Currently what Hibernation Mode on my laptop is like"

The final escapade happened nary a night or two ago. I came home and realised that I had left on a dehumidifier in my room for the majority of the day and as a result my room resembled something of a giant sandcastle. My bedsheets also weren't dry nor on my bed as I had just washed them, so I decided to stay up for a while drying those (not physically, in a dryer of course) and put them on my bed, all the while letting the dehumidifier suck up any dampness left in the sheets. When all said was done I proceeded to turn off and move the unit out of my room. It was probably like watching a newborn deer learn how to walk while trying to carry a dehumidifier. As you may have guessed, the simple idea of moving it didn't go exactly as planned and much like my cutrains and my laptop it ended up on the floor with an almighty crash loud enough to wake a Kraken. It also proved it did it's job well by spilling all of the daily moisture it had collected all over my bedroom floor. Now that's what I call counter productive!

After a bitter 5-10 mins of cleaning this mess and also reassembling the unit, I succeeded in removing it from my room. I walked back into my room and closed the door. Now, this was the third thing that has fallen to the ground in my apartment because of me being drunk so I think it was at this point that the other inanimate objects decided to join in on the fun too, such as the foldaway table behind my door. It lunged itself at my foot and nearly broke my toe. If I wasn't so drunk I probably would've also noticed it giggling as glided effortlessly through the dehumidified air. The Kraken awoke, ME!

"BLUAAAA MY KRAKEN TOE!!!!!!11111!!!1"

I've decided the only thing I can't do wrong when drunk and returning from a night out is to just go straight to sleep. What could possibly go wrong in that situation?

The Reason I know nothing about Music

When it comes down to music, I can tell that people think I'm stupid. More than stupid actually, I can feel them judging me when I don't know the names of the Beatles, can't name a song by Bob Dylan or remember the lyrics to Sex on Fire by Kings of Leon (which I accidentally spelt as Lyon, while trying to look up the name of the song just now). It's almost a look of "are you with reality?", which I can honestly say, most times I'm half way there.

Anyways, my lack on knowledge on, what I'll just label for the sake of labelling, Modern or Conventional music (I'm sure there's proper terms but I ain't lookin for a dictionary!) is because it just doesn't grab me. I think this stems right back to my video game days as a child.  When I think of music it always formulates in my head as some sort of theme or beat, no lyrics, just a looping catchy tune or some foreboding/bombastic/melodic orchestral piece. In turn with this, it sort of sweeps me away from reality, I start forming original (or blatantly unoriginal images) in my head which are animated, real or purely fictional and they usually tell some sort of story based on the tone of this piece. This is all accompanied by a good variety of tracks, scores, themes, music (whatever you want to call them!) because my mind is constantly churning out so many different thoughts that I need variety in sound to match. Actually my mind never stops, it's like a hamster on meth in a ball in which he runs faster than the Pope can say a Hail Mary, while it is powering a formula one car that's racing against Speed Racer on Rainbow Road from Mario Kart.

"This is F@#king crazy"

That actually makes me sound crazy but I'm not, I just have a bit of a wild card imagination that is all. Now along with all of this, I just want to say that it doesn't mean I don't like bands, I have a few that I listen to every now and again, Muse sticks out in my mind, but for the most part I just don't feel that inspired feeling you take from music when I hear bands. When I listen to scores and tracks from films, games or movies the picture factory in my brain starts firing up with more intensity than Christopher Walken reading a eulogy and during these times I usually draw or like to write.

"Lady Gaga was fond of.. the scooching..... I didn't like.... the scooching"

Depending on what I'm listening to it influences what I draw/ write and I have produced utter crap, something I can be proud of or something that makes me question my sanity after seeing peoples reactions (oh dear). This productivity is what I think ultimately brought me into doing Film and Television, scores just gave me so many ideas I wanted to make visually and show to other people.

I also figured out amongst all of the instruments I have heard, that the Violin is my favourite. I actually have one now too (thanks to my super awesome friends + my 21st Birthday!) and it's something that when I have time I will learn to master it. It probably sounds like I should've done a course in music instead and if I become good at the violin in any way in the near future, that's definitely on the cards. But realistically pictures still come first to me in my mind, I really am a film-maker (well, wannabe film-maker!) at heart, composing would be second to that if I could ever do it.

Anyways, I won't keep people reading this mish mash potato of explanations to my musical tastes, I'll just throw down a few tracks that I love and /or have been listening to lately that are "inspiring" as far as quotable words go:

My favourite song of all time (seriously, I told my mam once I want this at my funeral, she wasn't too pleased with the thought that I reckon I'm 2/3's of the way through my life):



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This is my favourite Silent Hill song as of late, it makes me feel badass, but I've stopped drawing to it because it usually not very pleasant:



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And of course, who could forget the awesome cover of All Along the Watchtower from Battlestar Galactica's Bear McCreary:




Anyways, maybe that might give you a small glimpse of the different things I listen to (if that interests you for some reason), show me what you like with comments below. Except for you Colin, we have the same music.

Dance Pants - NO!

I just recalled a slightly embarrassing memory from a few years back. I went through this odd phase thanks to a few of my friends where I would pull down my pants whenever I was drunk, because, y'know, it was just THAT funny to do. What was even MORE funny was doing it in a nightclub, on the dance floor, because everyone wants to see that right? So there we all were, early as the morning birds (except it was night time, at the club Cuba, and we're not birds), we had the dance floor to ourselves so we all took our stationary dancing posts at each corner and dropped the pants, laughing at our delightful foolishness! This idea progressed into the night but became less frequent as more people began arriving, the non early birds. It seems we were only trying to impress each other, our strange insecurities made secure by bearing our legs to each other. As the night wore on (like a pair of jeans!) we got progressively more drunk, me in particular as the event I'm about to tell you unfolds.

Everyone was dancing in a group on the dance floor. This excited me greatly so I downed the remainder of my pint, slammed the empty glass hard on the table as if what I was about to do my final note on my "to-do before I die" list and headed to the dance floor. I imagine if this was some sort of film the remainder of this would play out in slow motion. Like an unexpected ostrich I sprang onto the dance floor into the center of the group dropping my pants and flailing wildly in an orgy of cacophonous laughter while swinging my head around in a drunken insanity. If I had feathers they would've been flying everywhere. As I continued flailing but slowly succumbing to a more acceptable dance so I could read the reactions of my friends, a sudden realisation fell upon me, like a bird had shat on my head. These weren't my friends. And they certainly weren't impressed by my powerful bare ostrich legs. The looks on their faces were caught somewhere between disapproving, disgusted and eyebrow raised confusion.

As the truth of all of this dawned on me I turned around to see all of my friends sitting in the corner laughing at my misfortune. All I could do was stand there, hang my head in shame in a group of strangers, with my friends pointing and laughing at me, with my pants down. Textbook humiliation

Welcome to Silent Hill

"If you ever see this sign run very far in the opposite direction"

I suppose it was only a matter of time before a few of you who know me have come to expect me to write a post about a little game called Silent Hill. And for those of you who don't know me, if you did know me, you would've come to expect me to write a post about Silent Hill. Now, I will write a post about Silent Hill.

I love Silent Hill because personally to me, it is quite possibly the most terrifying experience in the multimedia medium. I love the horror genre and have a bit of an obsession with them (a h-obsession?! har har har!) but this game surpasses every good horror film and gets not just under your skin but also in your head, assuming you have one, which would be quite disturbing if you didn't because then you'd anatomically incorrect. Anyways, I honestly have only played through the first game in the series on the PS1 and I have played half way through 2 and 3. But unfortunately due to compatibility issues with the 2nd and 3rd one on my laptop (yes, my laptop strikes it's whiny bitch hammer onto me yet again) I never got to finish 2 or 3. But fortunately, I'm quite impatient and have the mouth burns to prove it, so I went ahead and spoiled the rest of 2 and 3 for myself with wikipedia. I'm also only going to refer to the first 3 games as they're essentially the main trilogy that are considered the strongest in the series (there is also a prequel, a 4th and a 5th).

Basically, all of the Silent Hill games revolve around a town called (you guessed it!) Silent Hill. This town has a malicious history but in the modern era has become a tourist resort town. In each game you play as a protagonist that is some how linked to the town and winds up being caught in its hellish grasp and can only leave or escape when they have revelations about their past uncovered. You see, Silent Hill is a little different from most towns, it's caught in a certain situation, and not a Mike "The Situation" sort of situation, but something a little more terrifying (just a little!).

"Yo I'm Mike "The Situation" and don' go to Silent Hill or you'll be caught in a Situation! 

Situation, situation, situ....zzzzzz"

It seems to have somehow got itself caught between here and Hell, referred to as "Otherwold" in the games. Silent Hill has itself based in 3 dimensions. The normal dimension, which is just the normal town, the 2nd dimension which is essentially when you're caught (and also screwed to say the least...) in a fog shrouded town where demons roam the street and exits from the town fall into infinite voids, and then there's the final dimension. The final dimension is the Otherworld, a hellish twisted, rotting industrialised version of the town, pitch black and filled with stuff of nightmares. And trust me when I say stuff of nightmares, they really really are. The creatures in the game are usually representation's or metaphors of some part of the protagonist's psyche or other characters' psyches in the game and as you learn more about your in game avatar the more disturbing each revelation and monster gets. The most terrifying of these creatures usually reside in "Otherworld" and sometimes bleed into the foggy second dimension of Silent hill. I can already imagine what my terrifying creature would look like:

"Noooooo not the Custard Creams!!!!"

What makes these creatures terrifying is also their appearance. You can feel the repressed violent urges of some, the dramatic pain of others and suppressed sexual connotations of several. Usually appearing as some sort of wet sheen coated, curvy (and sometimes bobacious) twitchy and rotting entity, they twitch, crawl and run towards you in a terrifying manner. Their disgustingly sexual appearances subconsciously affect us as they take most intimate human actions and twist them into a horrifying form.

I'm trying to think of the best way to describe them but it's very tough and this quite possibly is the most honest post I have ever written about something. I remember when playing through the first one I could only handle it in small doses, probably 30 mins is the most I spent playing it on my first go through. It had me on the very edge, so much so that I had to turn my phone onto silent just so it wouldn't give me a fright. But alas that plan failed miserably as the vibration of my phone on the desk as I played nearly gave me a heart attack, and subsequently I didn't play any more that day. That would've been an embarrassing funeral story!

"Engraved on my Hello Kitty Tombstone: He played, He put his phone on silent, he got a phone call and died"

However there is one of the creatures in the game that has become iconic with the series (amongst others, such as the nurses) and he appears in the second game. He goes by the name of Pyramid Head and yes, it quite literally means he has a pyramid on his head. Welded to his head in fact, he can't remove it and it constantly inflicts intense pain on him. He kind of becomes instantly burnt into the VERY FABRIC OF OUR BEING with his first appearance. For lack of better words I shall show you instead.

Yup, the first time you come across this pointy headed nightmare (apart from one brief appearance beforehand) he's having smoosh smoosh more intensely than Snooki with two other creatures. If that doesn't make sense to you, he's raping two other creatures. This is a little "unsettling" to watch one might say but sets the dread dead into stone for each encounter you have with him throughout the game. And encounters you have, from being locked into a confined space with him while he tries to give you a little nick with his blade (the size of me) to being chased down a corridor where he slaughters the only other person you find in the town like Uwe Bowl does to every film he directs. He's just a nasty piece of work and the only thing scarier than him is being caught in an infinite time loop watching the same 2 episodes of Friends (or just "flicking on E4" as I like to call it). He's the series reminder of how creative (and wonderfully twisted) the creators of the series are and how the simple concept of putting something, such as a pyramid on someone's head can produce a jarring and unsettling appearance. Each game has it's own story and unique set of monsters but they are all linked in a way to each other and they always result in a journey to/through Silent Hill.

Anyways I really wish I could go on about these games for ages and ages but I feel like this post is already too long as it is (I know I probably would have given up halfway through this if I didn't write it) so I leave you with a recommendation of playing these games if you can get your smelly hands on them. Thanks for the read if you made it this far and hopefully you won't have the same nightmares I did about these games!

Intense Walking - The Consumer Cycle

I realised today that I can be a really intense walker when walking alone. Moving through the throngs of consumers (there are no "people" during Christmas, only the soulless creatures that crawl out of Hells hairy arse, the Consumers) on shop street in Galway today, I couldn't help but notice my intense walking affecting the lives of others around me. This intense walking is possibly the result of a mixture of things: I'm usually quite cold so I walk fast to make myself warm, I'm quite spaced out during these moments so I contain a certain soulessness to my facial expression and finally, I usually listen to music from the Silent Hill games. For those of you that don't know, Silent Hill is a videogame revolving around a town caught in a hell that depicts an industrial pseudo-sexual nightmare. Just think of the hottest girl or guy you know, castrate them, melt off their face and remove their clothes while some how nailing a rusty railway spike (or several) through some limb or appendage while they rot and you've got something that closely resembles the game. And then imagine how the music sounds to this picture.

"Your other half from Silent Hill, say hello to Betsy... or is it Alan?"

The walking which results creates a sort of hellish, depressing, unstoppable force of me hobbling towards you with a impenetrable sense of ungodliness. Reactions have been various, but I have always had consumers move with a polite "excuse me" and a smile which feels normal to me, but by the expression of Stranger A (and B,C,D,etc.), would make me imagine I have just shat on their face. They look unsettled, which at first used to kind of worry me, but now it's as normal to me as custard cream in a biscuit. However there are moments when it does get a bit awkward and it's usually when I walk behind two consumers (usually women) that are chatting away to each other and I am unable to pass them. They usually become aware of my unintentionally malevolent presence behind them as I speed up and fall behind, speed up and fall behind like some sort of demon yo-yo, because I keep thinking I have opportunities to pass them. Every time they turn around and look at me it probably appears something like this:

Their uneasiness excretes from their pores like sweat from that fat guy at the gym, and I become disdainfully aware as I now have to not only pass them, but do so before their uneasiness infects others around them. This creates a sort of panic between both parties that fuels my demon-train walk to an uncontrollable level. At this point time has become limited edition, I don't have many options so I purposefully subdue an oncoming walker with a glare:

This prompts the oncoming victim to stop dead in their tracks as I glide by the now two silent women. For a brief moment we connect as I pass them by. It feels feral, I am a predatory ostrich at a petting zoo and they are small children, time has stopped for them as they realised they had fed the wroooooong bird. They cower out of the rest of my way and then I pass while they nearly walk into my previous victim. As I walk away I can feel the tension subsiding like a landslide crap in the toilet yet still feel the eyes of the consumer locked onto me like some sort of awkward-inducing ballistic. But soon I am out of site. Rinse and repeat this situation a few times as I walk to HMV.

Then as I walk around the 2 for 1 priced DVD section of HMV I reflect on the several times this has happened and a thought hits me like I'd hit James Blunt if I ever met him. I HAVE BECOME CONSUMER! 

Irony, you son of a bitch.

Day of Stupid

While I was working today I was giving a woman her items. When she received them I asked "Is that everything?", she jokingly replied "Unless you want to give me something else!" As she packed her things into a bag. I responded wittily "Do you want a hug?". She stopped, looked at me with a blank expression and turned and walked out of the door with her things. To this very moment, I honestly think she did not find this funny. Nor did any other customer waiting. As they all stood there silently judging me. It was embarrassing.

Then I came home and walked into the door frame with my laptop and really hurt my ribs.

FML