Tumblr and my Irish Mammy Complex.

Tumblr is brilliant. It's a really easy to use, really popular, really addictive blogging platform full of pretty pictures of things and wit. I've been using it for two years now and I'm hopelessly addicted, despite several attempts to wean myself off of it. However, some things about it I will never truly understand. Ever. One of these is topless Tuesdays, but that's a whole different blogpost, I'm telling you.

Tonight, I came across this photo:

I really and truly don't get it. Is it art? Is it cool and hip to have nosebleeds now? Are the hipsters going around punching each other like in Fight Club or some shit? I get that Tumblr is for expressing one's feelings through art and whatnot, but I really, truly do not understand why this is cool or beautiful. Maybe it's me, but all I think when I see photos like this is:

• Who took this?! (I also think this about sex photos, seriously, what the what.)
• He/she is going to ruin their clothes.
• ARE THEY ALRIGHT?!
• Someone's going to have to clean that up.

Yeah, that's right. On seeing that picture, I mentally ran through the procedure for stopping a nosebleed in my head and then my brain let me know what gets blood out of clothes. This is when I realized that five years of Home Economics has caused me to develop Premature Mammy Syndrome, when I have the thoughts and phrases of an Irish Mammy, 25 odd years too early. I love Irish mammies - my friend Danielle does a magnificent impression of one - but hell, I'm 18, I'm not even close to being a mammy! I suppose at the end of the day, I'm the one doing the washing and the drying and running yis back and forth to school like a taxi and what do I get for it?

Oh lord. Kill me now.

Implosions, by Adrienne Rich.

This poem totally blew me away when I came across is on Poetic Medicine the other day. That said, Rich's stuff always blows me away - I've never connected to a poet so much, or found any work quite so powerful as hers. It's strange, in that to most people she's the lesbian feminist one, but I am neither a lesbian nor an ardent feminist, but by god, I love her work. She's hardcore, dammit.

The world's not wanton only wild and wavering I wanted to choose words that even you would have to be changed by Take the word of my pulse, loving and ordinary Send out your signals, hoist your dark scribbled flags but take my hand All wars are useless to the dead My hands are knotted in the rope and I cannot sound the bell My hands are frozen to the switch and I cannot throw it The foot is in the wheel When it's finished and we're lying in a stubble of blistered flowers eyes gaping, mouths staring dusted with crushed arterial blues I'll have done nothing even for you?

"Keeping my options open" and nostalgia overload.

I'm just back from the DCU Open Day, which I went along to with a few friends solely because I had an Irish test toda-...I mean, I wanted to keep my options open for myself. The CAO application has been open for a few weeks now, and to be honest, I can't think about much else until I finally fill out that form. I'm fairly sure where I want to go, but it's no harm to have a look around, as my mum would say.

As previous readers know, I attended CTYI in DCU for three weeks in the summer of 2009 & 10. I loved it at the time - however I may feel now - and arriving into DCU today was a really confusing experience. Don't get me wrong, it's a lovely college, and it was much friendlier than the UCD open day - there were helpful studenty types everywhere, we were given bags of free stuff and it had a really nice atmosphere of student-ness. DCU is forever intertwined with the CTYI experience for me, and even the smallest things caused a wave of nostalgia.

For instance, the restaurant smells the same as it did, and the revolving trays for food are still in place. The Quad is still the Quad - just with a good deal more smoking. Spar is still horribly expensive and I felt nervous sitting in The Street, despite being a prospective studnet and completely allowed to. It's really weird to think that all I have to do is get 400 points and I could be living permanently in the Larkfield apratments and hanging out in the same places I did two summers ago.

Though they really are the smallest student apartments on Earth.

My problem with open days is that I'm generally too busy running around seeing my friends from outside school to really get a proper look at the place. Today was no different - Franki and I left the Communications lecture before it started and looked at make-up instead. Then I met Conor, but that's beside the point - my point is that I seem to get very little DONE at Open Days, particularly at DCU's today. It just...didn't appeal to me though! Now that I think about it, it's probably the fault of CTYI that I never considered DCU as the university for me, and today I was proved correct in thinking that going back as a student would just be too weird. As I said earlier, it's a damned cool university, just not the right one for me. The right one for me is currently way up in the air and causing quite a bit of stress, but hey, it'll be fine.

One thing I will say, though: student food? Deadly. I got curry chips, a Snack bar, soup and juice for a fiver!

Hello.

There, I've started. The first word typed on Áine's blog part 6 is an inane greeting. Typical. Now that I've started, I'm not sure how to continue.

Some of you may remember me from such moderately successful blogs as Dobby's Sock, which got (kind of) nominated for an award once and actually did okay for itself. Then I deleted it without warning, advice or much thought, really. I didn't miss it at all - a word of warning to bloggers, the "blogosphere"...well, it's not a nice place. Or, to be blunt, it's full of absolute pricks.

I'm not here to talk about DS, though. It was nice and pretty and I put a lot of effort into it, but it's over and done with and this blog is certainly not going to be version 2.0 of that. For one, it got boring and for two, I'm going to be a lot lazier nowadays. Meg still posts on her blog daily - sorry, but that shit ain't happening here guys. This blog is for funsies.

For those reading who have forgotten or have never heard of my other blog, hey, I'm Áine. This blog is for me to post ill-written thoughts concerning life, love, music and The Leaving Cert.

ll be a lot of that, but hopefully it won't develop into one of those hugely depressing Leaving Cert. blogs. I don't want that, so I'll try and keep it interesting. Even more so, I'll try to keep it as a Leaving Cert distraction, of which I have an alarmingly large amount, between Facebook, the boyfriend (who will be mentioned way too much, just warning you) and organizing my notes by colour and topic.

And cleaning my desk. Though that normally doesn't go so well.

I'll also try and keep it short. A lot of blogs I read go on and on and on...and on about one vaguely interesting topic, and I know I find myself scanning lines and wishing I had a highlighter for the key points. (God, I really am an LC student) so I'll try not to bore you too much.

A bientot, lads. And yes, I'm aware that should have a cicumflex-y thing. Oh well.