w.c. wilde

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I promised Alva a good while back that I would totally out-do one of her favourite writers and someday try to write the longest ‘about me’ on myspace (that I can find). Challenge accepted, Mr. Victorino.
"If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated" - Oscar Wilde (The Importance of Being Earnest)
I think that beauty and the world are exactly what we make of it. What this is comes about as a result of both nature and nurture. Imagine a conversation between a bee and a person about how beautiful a flower is, and you might understand.
Don't look for any semblance of coherence in here, these are my thoughts exactly as they occurred to me. Someday maybe ill put a greater order on them.
I’m currently a student of Arts (English and philosophy) at NUI Maynooth. I’m just finished my second year and really love the course. After I finish the degree, I’d like to do a master’s (and perhaps PhD) either here, at Trinity, or at Cambridge/Oxford. Currently I’ve just undertaken a summer research post in the university, assisting Dr. O’Neill with a scoping-out exercise aimed ultimately at implementing the first fully searchable, annotated catalogue of material related to all aspects of Shakespeare in Ireland since the seventeenth century. The database would be available to all teachers and students of Shakespeare, and might eventually help both pre- and post-Leaving Cert students in their studies of his work. The database would include all published editions of Shakespeare, Irish translations and adaptations, and a record of all performances as well as critical matter such as periodical and newspaper reviews and articles. It may also provide – where possible – online editions of previously published work.
"Things not being necessary is what makes life interesting" - Stephen Fry.
I'm told I was born on May 6th 1988, at about twenty past four in the afternoon, in a drab, colourless wing of the disease-addled Tralee General Hospital. I share my birthday with; George Clooney (1961), Tom Bergeron (1955), Tony Blair (1953), Bob Seger (1945), Orson Welles (1915), Sigmund Freud (1856) and Robert E. Peary (1856). My apparent parents were Rose and Liam O’Dowd. My mother at this point was some sort of low-lying manageress type at Dunnes Stores, and my father an even lower-lying manual labourer, working shifts at an industrial sewing machine. One curiosity about my birth is that I was born directly across the road from where I will most likely be buried someday. This graveyard in question also happens to be right beside my father’s factory, which I alluded to a moment ago, and is also the same graveyard from which I have thus far spent 25% of my life leaving almost every day for training.
I want to own exotic pets when I'm a very little bit older. They are going to remind me that there are places in the world that I have never seen, and that there are places I almost definitely never will see if I don't keep working at life.
I've stopped giving to charity altogether, because every time in the past that I have made large donations - time or money - very bad things have happened to me soon after. I'm not generally a believer in karma but I do occasionally suffer from mere "bad vibes", and I now get a "bad vibe" when I try to help people, as I feel someone is standing over me with the Sword of Damocles.
I have no recollection of my early years, but from hearsay I understand that I was a rather cheery child, eventually earning the title “the laughing baby” from doting relatives. My first word apparently was a rather apposite “no”, something which has stuck remarkably with me all these years. Most children begin their vocal careers with a meek and worthless “mammy” or something similar. “No” is essentially a synonym of “fuck off”, I’m sure you’ll agree. My first ever vocal interaction with the world was one of defiance - “I don’t need you, you scroungy bastards” that’s what I said. I can’t imagine what may have prompted me to say it, or even if I hadn’t said it woefully out of context, but I would like to imagine that I was expressing my displeasure at some profoundly intellectually poor choice of television channel on my mother’s part. I like to think that this scepticism is something that has continued quite strongly into my early adult life.
I have a vast number of fears. Heights, horses, water, fish, birds, windows at night-time, unlit swimming pools, standing with my back to doorways. The only one of my fears I can't face, however, is spiders. I was never afraid of them in my youth, but I can pin-point the instant the fear came about. One night I started going to sleep with a spider on the roof above my head. Not being afraid of them, I didn’t give it a second thought. After a while, a piece of dust fell on my cheek, and I went about lazily swatting it away. Until, that is, the piece of ‘dust’ started running across my face. I didn’t sleep for about two nights, and haven’t seen a spider without having a minor heart-attack since.
I have - with the help of two team-mates - pissed onto the road whilst cycling in a race at almost 55kph.
Somebody told me once that my lack of masculine pretension was more "manly" than anything else. I didn't know what this meant for quite a while, but now I do. I think it's pathetic that most guys are so insecure about their sexuality that they feel like they need to constantly remind themselves and others that they are straight or whatever. I hate people that have to yell out in the middle of a movie whenever there's an attractive girl on screen, as if somebody would think they were gay if they didn't. I hate people that have to make a big deal out of it when an attractive girl walks by. I hate them for making something beautiful into such a ridiculous display of ugliness.
I don't tend to forgive people for their mistakes. All I can do is hope that they learn something from the way they made me forget them. In this way, I try to make the world a better place.
The earliest dog I can remember owning is Max, although we apparently had a dog before him that I was quite fond of. Max was probably the most vicious dog we have ever had – he once bit an old lady’s hand half off when she tried to pet him. He was, however, quite terrified of me. Completely unperturbed by his growling and snarling, I would sit directly on his back and attempt to ride him around like a horse, kicking him and whatnot. I should point out that Max was only a small terrier, and although was a specimen in fine fettle – as all the dogs we have owned are/were – was in no shape to be sat on by a somewhat porcine 3-and-a-half year old.
I became very jealous of Max when I was quite young. One incident that only really made sense to me in my later life came around this time. I would sleep in a room with my parents when I was young, and they would lock their room door for whatever reasons when everyone went to bed. In case I needed to be up in the middle of the night they left out a potty for me, although I never usually needed it. One morning while they were both still asleep, I urinated into the potty, and then emptied the contents onto the floor (why I didn’t simply micturate directly on to the floor, only the 3 year old me knows). I then awoke both my parents, yelling “look what the dog did!” and all such like. They said to me that the dog is always locked out of the room, and that he couldn’t possibly have done it. I was nabbed. That incident seems to me now to have been a furious effort to get them to hate the dog and pay more attention to me. This was also borne out in other ways, such as how I used to spend at least several hours a day pretending to be a dog, and how I used to pretend to eat dog food to stop them yelling at me every time I did something wrong.
I'm an organizational freak. Whenever I'm going anywhere or doing anything, I have to be the person to organize it. Other people tend to mess everything up. Nothing makes me madder than when someone takes it on themselves to sort out something, and all they do is eff it up.
I'm also a list-making freak. I make between two and four lists per day. This 'About Me' started out as a list.
I love writing, but I hate the things I write. They all just read the exact same to me, and are generally expunged soon after completion. The only times I write good stuff is when I am given the strictest parameters about what needs to go in. Luckily, this is very useful for university.
I love downloading music; I only buy the CD's of one band any more. Speaking of which, there is one album by this band that means more to me than every other piece of music ever written combined; it's called 'Sing the Sorrow' and you should buy it.
There's a song on 'Sing the Sorrow' called Synesthesia. It's name is mis-printed in the booklet as Synthesthesia. Every time I play the song I hear the lyrics "Let me feel your words, like it would comfort". In reality, the song says something else, but that phrase is still the most beautiful thing I have ever heard. It means all the more to me since AFI didn't quite write it, and I didn't quite write it, but it came from both of us. It's the closest I will ever get to writing a song with AFI.
Just before I started school, my parents stopped locking the door every night, and this afforded me the freedom of the house once they fell asleep. This was something I painfully failed to appreciate apart from quite early almost every single morning, when I would sneak into the kitchen and eat all the raw sausages I could manage. Any half-eaten ones would be left back in the fridge and I assumed that nobody would be any the wiser. I cannot even guess at why I did this, as I found the taste of raw sausages profoundly disagreeable, and would usually return to bed feeling somewhat nauseated. Only many years later did I learn that they had known all along. Not that I had this incredible lack of sense right up until my middle teenage years, but because I had rather forgotten about the instances, until one day my father made a somewhat off-the-cuff remark about finding half-eaten sausages in the fridge every morning. For quite a while, apparently, they had thought that the house was infested with mice.
I think I've lead an interesting life and that I'm at least a relatively interesting person. I love polite conversation, debate, etiquette and proper behaviour. I love talking about my day and hearing about other people's days. I've met a lot of people that think this is boring. These people, however, are generally ones who consider themselves so deficient and pathetic that they need to ADD something to themselves to have a good time. I will always be eternally grateful that these people generally want nothing to do with me. I don't feel incumbent to tell you what an idiot you are, so you don't bother telling me about myself and we'll both get on with our lives.
I hate when people don't speak well. "Disinterested" and "uninterested" mean two quite different things, you illiterate fuck.
I'm also a stickler for spelling, but I spent 19 years of my life saying "definately", so I can't judge too harshly.
We had to learn spellings in school, and we'd always have our parents test us on them. Every day for about two years I was asked to spell 'because', as it became a sort of joke. Now every single time I write out that word I can't help but spell it out letter-by-letter as I write.
In spite of every honest thing I put on this page, I still feel very distant from my words. There is a barrier here; there is only one thing that I want to talk about and write about, but I can't. Yet.
I expect different things from different people, and expect different standards from everyone. Sometimes I feel bad for it, other times I don’t. Some people have to constantly gain my approval with shows of erudition or creativeness, others can waste away their hours watching television and I will still have the utmost respect and care for them. It seems that the people who most easily meet high standards are usually allowed to fall to laziness, whereas others who may struggle to achieve high standards are put under a constant pressure to do so. I include myself in ‘people’, and of myself I expect a far higher standard than I do of anyone else.
I should say that I don’t think anybody should ‘have to’ do anything because I (or anyone else) say so. That is ridiculous. But if they frequently do things which gain my disapproval, I am not incumbent to continue a friendship with them.
I am extremely opinionated and argumentative. It is merely part of my nature and if I take you up on a point then you should consider it a compliment more than anything else. I dislike drama, and most people are intellectually corrupt to the level that they can only take constructive criticism very personally. I am not out to cause unrest and hurt people’s feelings, and so you can be quite sure if I criticise you on something it is because I respect you a great deal.
I detest alcohol. Asking me if I want to get drunk with you is grounds for immediate nullification of our friendship. Call me old-fashioned or boring, but I’m one for constant improvement of myself. Standing still is crawling backwards, in my opinion. If you want to waste away your life striving for mediocrity, then feel free to murder your brain cells with alcohol every weekend, however do not expect me to occupy my time with you. By the way, I know that the whole “alcohol kills brain cells” thing is a myth, so don’t bother pointing it out. I mean it figuratively, in so far as you could spend the same amount of time reading ‘The Importance Of Being Earnest’ twice.
I'm quite possibly the most competitive person you have ever met, but lately I've been doing a far better job of hiding it than normal. Hell, this entire 'About Me' came about as a result of a competitive little notion I got in my head at about 5am one night.
I have three extremely early memories, each from when I was approximately 3 years old. I cannot, unfortunately, recall which of these is actually my “earliest memory”. The first of these was one day that me and my father were recording an audio tape, so that it could be listened to once I had grown somewhat. As a jape, my father turned off the recorder as I was trying to speak. I asked him rather articulately to please turn the tape back on, daddy. He did so, but with that inherent scepticism existing right from my first word, I disbelieved him. I told him repeatedly to turn the tape on, and he assured me it was already on. I then began to cry quite hard, at which he laughed I believe. Eventually he persuaded me that the tape was on, and lo’ and behold when we played it back later, there was at least 2 minutes of audio concerned with me crying my eyes out. I haven’t seen nor heard of the tape in at least five years, so here’s hoping it has been expunged.
My father had a keen interest in photography during my youth. The second of these memories concerns that somewhat. He was encouraging me to lift some sort of hollow plastic contraption that was shaped somewhat like a barbell. He was photographing it, the jape being that I looked like a weight-lifter of some description. Although the thing was very light, I was also extremely small and became quite wearied after a few minutes of it. His insistence that I lift it “once more” was met with repeated refusals. I began to weep, as I found this having to offer constant refusals very upsetting. Strikingly similar to the last example, my father decided this moment simply had to be recorded, and so there now exists at least one (but conceivably more) photos of 3-year-old me dressed in weight-lifter garb, staring at a…thing…and crying. My third memory is of learning to ride a bike without stabilisers. Somewhat surprisingly, I did not cry and my father did not record it. This was something I managed prodigiously early and I have heard estimates of my age at around 32 months or thereabouts when I did it.
I think cycling was the greatest thing I ever did with my life. Unfortunately, I can't ever really talk about it because I was unlucky enough to be so successful at it that I cannot speak of it without sounding like a pompous, bragging jerk.
I am a Googler. I will sooner read up on a topic from a google search than to get an actual book on it. So sue me.
However, I hate people that take their opinions from google.
Although I have a lot of fears, the only one that keeps me awake at night is how genuinely stupid most people appear to be. I think that gang and mob mentality is a terrifying phenomena brought about by a crippling lack of intelligence and personal ID. I am afraid because those people seem to have such a lack of respect for themselves as a person, they're hardly going to show it for anyone else.
I hate racism, and I hate sexism. However, I hate political correctness just as much. I am prone to make very racist and sexist remarks, but only because I see gender and skin colour as such an unimportant difference in people that there is no need to censor ourselves because of it.
I don't believe that anything is ever "meant to be". It infuriates me that people need to believe in such pointless and obviously false drivel to make themselves feel better about something.
I have nothing against religious people, but I honestly feel that religion has held back the evolution of man by at least 1,000 years. Do-gooders constantly talk about how evil Hitler was (and I'm not disagreeing. Hitler was anal) but how many hundreds of millions of people have been killed around the world in the name of 'God(s)'? How much torture of the world's population has to go on in this TWENTY-FIRST century? It is my opinion that religion is by far the most malevolent force that has ever gripped mankind. I mean sure, maybe 2,000 years ago when we didn't understand how the world worked there was some space for God(s). However, now we have science. Religion can stare jealously over and question science all it wants, but the simple fact is that the last five-hundred to one-thousand years have been characterised by two things - religious war, and religion being continually proven wrong by science.
How do religions generally act in the face of this? They deny it, kick and scream like a petulant child, burn whatever person is responsible and then ignore everything until it is no longer possible to do so. Then they have to utter a public apology. What kind of omnipotent, omniscient God has to offer a fucking public apology?
What sort of benevolent, kind God creates a man whose personality contains a flare for science, intentionally places clues in the earth that would lead him to question doctrine, and then has his minions burn the individual for acting as God had intended? Where is the justice (or sense) of then turning this person over to Hell? There is none.
In spite of this, I think the story of the Fall of Man and Lucifer being banned from Heaven (a la Paradise Lost) is incredibly interesting. Is it better to serve in Heaven or rule in Hell? For a long time I thought the latter, but then I realised that it is Heaven's call who goes to Hell or not, therefore we can only see Hell as serving Heaven in some regard, and so even to rule in Hell, you are still serving Heaven. Therefore, I would serve in Heaven, rather than serve in Hell.
As I say, however; I have nothing but respect for anybody who does happen to believe in religion. People vastly more intelligent than I could ever wish to be have an absolutely unwavering belief in God, and so I am in no position to question it.
School was undoubtedly the most depressing time of my life. What made it even worse was being constantly told that “your school days are the best days of your life”. I can assure anyone reading this that may still be in school, that the absolute lowest days I have faced since going to college have still been infinitely more enjoyable than even the apparent “good” days in school. In 14 years at that…place…I learned two things that were worthwhile. Firstly, I hate people. I didn’t think much of it at the time, but in retrospect almost everyone I came into contact there was an idiot and a jerk. There are, of course, several exceptions, but the process of ‘clearing out’ the people in one’s life is inexorable in that for the sake of ensuring that those ties which you wish to remain severed do so, it is necessary to also cut ties with some that you would not otherwise choose to. I am extremely glad to say that severing those friendships has been the most positive move I have ever made, and my life has been on a constant up ever since. Secondly, 14 years at school taught me that I utterly despise early mornings.
I, by the way, was the kid in school that cried about once a week.
I was also cripplingly shy. I’m shy now, but I’m a positive extrovert by the standards of ten years ago. One time the primary school put on a play, but I was too shy to tell my parents. So I went through all the rehearsals, learning lines and everything, but never told my parents. On the night of the show, I simply didn’t bother turning up and when my line came around everyone suddenly realised I wasn’t there. The show was quite ruined and everybody was very angry.
This was not the only time I made myself extremely unpopular in the class. In 6th class we were brought on a trip to Dublin. Walking with the class past the GPO, I was staring around the place looking for the holes in the walls, etc. Unbeknownst to me, the class crossed the road while I was distracted, and walked off without me. I spent several hours crying in a police station, before they found me. By that time, we had to catch a train home, and everyone missed out on a trip to Dublin Zoo, which had been the primary reason everyone had gone to Dublin in the first place.
More later.
If you are this person, I love you;
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