Just a sentence a tree gave me.

I had no tears to shed, but the clouds were willing to share.

Tree dripped water on my cheek, felt like a tear. Kinda nice. Too tired to do a proper blog.

Growth spurts suck. I'm 17 for crying out loud, I thought I was over this! guess I could go for a little more height though. Growth is interesting. As your bones get more calcium added and get longer, they actually strech your muscles and tendons. It is seriously as close as you can get to someone yanking every bit of your body at the same time all the time for a few days. Or I've got a hernia. I just googled Hernia to see how it's spelt, it's not hernia. Turns out a hernia is actually a tiny lumpish thing where there's been a rupture. I thought it was Ahernia, like all one word, but it turns out Hernia is actually a noun all on it's own! So it's not hernia, cause it's all over. Anywho. Night. I didn't want to complain, but this is seriously the most interesting thing that's happened to me all week. Well, there was something interesting that happened today, two young ladies described my hair as "Functional". I was hoping for "Cute", "Studly", or even "Interesting like an anenome", but I suppose it's all about personal taste at the end of the day. Self image is a tricky thing that sucks most of the time and is easily complicated. Best not dwell. Unless if you should try to fix it. Who knows. Are you supposed to know? Believe it or not, this is how I sound most of the time in my own head. You should visit sometime. Not in winter though, I'm booked solid with nostalgia and poignancy. If that's a word. I was gonna say bittersweet, but I'm not sure if that'd work. Who knows. Are you supposed to know?

Werid ad things.

Yeah, I'm blogging a lot lately. Regular week doesn't allow a lot of time for these things. Builds up.
Thought I'd head to the website of the guys who made "Bible in a minute!" and "Mantage", Barats and Bereta, or www.baratsandbereta.com for the actual website. However, I didn't type in the name properly, so I ended up getting one of those "Haha, you typed in the adress wrong, so now here are some ads." One of those websites like newgruonds.com or bbeo.com or whatever, y'know usually says "What you need, when you need it" or something like that. Just random google ads for the most part. But these ones were funny!

 Want Syringe Barrels?
Engineered Fluid Dispensing. Visit Now for Top Quality & Reliability!
www.EFD-Inc.com/Syringes 
 
Drum Crushers
Don't dump them,crush them! Recycle Affordable today Call
www.AbaNdc.ie 

 Stone Tumblers from £39
British Made Stone Tumblers Online Grit, Polish, Media, Jewellery, etc
www.ukge.co.uk 

 Hot Tub Promotion France
Free MP3 player wooden hot tubs installed in France
www.MandmHotTubs.com 

 How To Play Oil – Now
6 little-known stocks set for huge gains from oil boom. Free Report.
www.InvestmentU.net/Oil_Boom 

 InterContinental Jakarta
Official Site. Book Online Low Rate Guaranteed
www.InterContinental.com 

 Barrel Wholesalers
Thousands of Prequalified Suppliers Trade Leads, Products & Companies.
www.Alibaba.com 

 Oil Barrel Prices
Check the Latest Oil Prices Plus Get Breaking Oil News
FT.com 

 Duffys Fishing & Shooting
Buy fishing & shooting equipment online. Great prices, great service
www.shoot.ie 

 Indonesia Chat And Dating
Meet Indonesian Singles Today. Browse Photo Profiles. Join Free!
www.IndonesianCupid.com

So that was pretty weird.

Visualizer

Holy crap you guys, you gotta check this out. iTunes version 8 now includes a new visualizer. If you don't know what that is, to quickly explain, it's a sort of program withing a music player that creates something of a lightshow or visual effects show in time with the music that you have playing. In the past, this has mostly been just dancing lines or other fairly basic, easy to comprehend stuff. This new one is different. It creates it's own little universe. It's got lots of different settings and tricks to show, but what's kinda interesting is that you don't get to choose. This can cause some frustration if it doesn't go as absolutely whacko as you'd like on the guitar solo, or plays the same visual setting 5 times in a row. But I suppose it's for our oun good, makes us constantly have to see things in a new light. It's randomness in it's most pure form. Sometimes you get beauty, sometimes you get a rather mundane experience. But most of the time it's pretty purdy. By far, far, far, the best visualizer I've ever seen. Like, if it was a race, Windows media player would be leaping forth from the starting point with all his might, while iTunes version 8 visualiser would be on his deathbed, after having lived a full and rich life, surrounded by all the ones he loved, with his old reminder of his victory in that race of visualization oh so many years ago, the trophy given to him in a landslide decision. But that was many years ago, some still had to even finish the race, he had heard once. With tears in her eyes, the latest iPhone says goodbye to the one she loves, his one regret in life is not living long enough to see his latest grandson, the new nano. He breathes his last, having lived a life full of rich downloads.

Whoa. That all got a little bit narrarative. hope that somehow made sense to you, it somehow made sense to me. Anyway. On to the visualizer itself.

The main  theme with it is something like planets. Orbs in space. It's all very physics-y, which is why I love it. Like atoms, even. The electrons, if you will, are little lights, sometimes on fixed points, sometimes on ribbons, sometimes free-running across the screen. Being repelled further and further out on the loudness, and brought swirling back to their centre on the dimished parts. It's like watching fantasia sometimes. And while it isn't the perfect absolute best thing ever since sliced bread, it's free, and loads better than any visualizer I've ever seen. It's like you're watching some sort of cosmic event, like dance of solar flares, or a meteor shower. It's really quite breathtaking. Most of the time. I like it, anyway. I'd reccomend giving it a download, the iTunes store is always good, and it's free, so there's nothing really to lose. I'm a PC kinda guy, don't get me wrong, but I do love iTunes. 

The plate's icy demeanor, lying in wait beneath it's ceramic skin, resonates with the icy demeanor in my hands, waiting underneath my morning's skin

Copper Chloride

The flames bring out her true identity. The acid vaporises on contact with the blue flame. The vapours do not have a scent. They have a certain experience about them. They do not smell. They burn, almost in retaliation to the flame in which they have been thrust. I inhale their anger, and feel the pain of inhaling that anger. I feel the pain of coughing it up. It burns me, my lungs and throat protesting this injustice.
But the pain of it's anger is soon replaced by the awe of her beauty. It only takes a moment for her to show her true colours. The flames of orange step down with a flutter to her majesty, this spectre cloaked in green. Her clothing wavers and blows about, this beautiful fabric, fit for the most beautiful of ghosts, shimmering in the ether, the light playing off the folds. The heat burns brighter and brighter still, until she cannot contain herself. She does something beautiful. She shows her hair. Her unveiled visage is something spectacular to behold. Pure, untainted, burning white flows relentlessly from her, twisting and blowing about like a windy autumn's day.
She takes the appearance of a comet falling to earth, her hair and fabric blowing and twisting in the nether, softly murmuring as she descents, as the crescendo reaches it's end. She gathers up her hair, and walks away from my sight, perhaps to return again someday.


Copper chloride's light spectra is a really beautiful thing. Pictures can't describe it. I quite like my chemistry class.

Sandwiches.

Holy crap, I love sandwiches. You guys have no idea. that bad boy there is my usual of salami, wholegrain bread, mustard,a thin layer of mayonaise, and some fairly thick slices of mature cheddar cheese. I thought I'd go for a "Sandvich" (If you get that joke then I will name this sandwich/olive combo after you) kinda look with the olive going through the middle. I really do love sandwiches. They are my most common choice of luncheon (when possible). Every week household goes through an obscene amount of ham, salami, and cheese. Because I love sandwiches to death! I just love their, I dunno, portability. Their simplicity. The soft bread, the thick slices of cheese, and holy crap I'm a whacko. But I love sandwiches. And that is a fact. A friend of mine once said I was like joey from friends in my love of sandwiches. I don't know if joey likes sandwiches, but if he does, than that metaphor is accurate. I once ate peanut-butter and jelly (or jam, depending on your lingo) sandwiches for a year in 4th grade. I now have at least 2 sandwiches whenever I have sandwiches. I love them. I love how you can put whatever you want in them . I recently discovered the joy of crisp sandwiches thanks to Nicoleymoley. They're pretty delicious! My mom is not fond of me eating them though. Too unhealthy, she says. She then proceeded to make bacon sandwiches for dinner, so go figure. Proteins or something? One can only suppose. Me and my brother had the group effort of creating a sandwich with cheese, thick chunks of chicken and barbeque sauce, put in a paninni maker. Delicous. I do not know of any sort of meal that is so versatile. I had nothing better to talk about today, to be entirely honest. So I thought I would talk about sandwiches! :D

Feather

So! This post is about a feather I found in Ovoca. Well, no, not really, it's all going to get very metaphorical. But anyway.
I was walking down the steps from ovoca manor (You can even see the stairs! :D ) And something caught my eye. Something was falling from the sky. Right next to a tree. It was like something out of a dream, there was a ray of light piercing the dense forest, and something was falling through this ray of light. I had to know what it was. I wandered over through the underbrush, and after a little bit of rooting, I found what it was. A feather. A downy feather, to be precise. This means it had likely been shed from a nest higher up. It's what's left over from something's growth. Upon closer inspection, as you might notice, this wasn't what you would expect down to look like. Down's supposed to be some sort of magical white fluff that stuffs pillows and feels like a cloud. Pure, white. This isn't that. Look at it! There's  grey bits and it's kinda ruffled ang it's got dirt on it, and that looks like some sort of speck of something or other near it's tip. And I think that's how we can (how I can, anyway) look at ourselves. Guess it's just more of that "white knight" stuff. If the feather's got dirt on it, it's much better to say "this feather has dirt on it" than to pretend it has no flaws. It was still a pretty feather though, and I'm currently using it as a bookmark, if you must know. Just one last metaphor, then I think I'll be done.

Why did I notice it? If it had been just falling, it would not have caught my glance. In a way, I didn't notice the feather. I noticed the light. We see light all the time. As a matter of fact, you're seeing it right now! Or if you're not, then you're not reading this. Bit of a catch 22. But rarely do we see something that relfects light like this feather did. When it was falling in that dark forest, it looked brilliant. Shining. The feather itself, of course, cannot shine. But the light was reflecting off of it. And this led to curiousity. It's a dark forest, what's this light doing here? I had to know what was going on. So let's hope that God's light will shine on us, the imperfect feathers. And who knows, people might just ask themselves "It's a dark world, what's this light doing here?"

"How will you create the universe?" -Spore (PS: this has nothing to do with the above post, I'm just going ca-razy with spore hype. Can't wait to get it!)

Book review time!

Hey, I have read a whole crapload of books recently, and I figure it's about time I did a review of one of them. Well, not a review, per se, but just blab about it. So, I thought I would do.......... (feel free to make your own drum roll if you feel if it's appropriate.) Every young man's battle!
Yeah, I didn't really see it coming either. She-folk feel free to give this one a miss, but if you wanna know for whatever reason, then feel free to read on. (I know a girl who once read a part of this book and still claims to be "scarred for life", so really. Do feel free to give this one a miss.)

For starters, can I just say how vital this book is. There are spiritual books out there on rage, there are spiritual books out there on gangs and redemption and forgiveness and healing and all that sort of stuff, but this one is different. It just occured to me that a whole lot of you probably don't know what this book is, so for the uninformed it is about more or less what it says on the tin. "Every young man's battle". Every guy's often secret struggle with lust and masturbation and pornography and all that stuff that nobody ever talks about ever. EVER. So now you know.

But this book is vital. If you are a guy, I'd bet my bottom dollar that you deal with this stuff. If you don't, then congratulations, I don't even know what to say. But you know if you do or you don't. And this book has help. It has knowledge and insight and techniques. Techniques.
This is why I loved this book. It did not tell me why, It told me how.  So many of these topics and talks and blah blah blah talk about why lust is destructive in lives. You know that it is. This book gives real-world advice and plans and strategies and techniques on how to fight it. It also sheds light on a lot of lies you may have heard about this subject. It's a genuinely eye-opening experience.

I want to get into what this book teaches, per se, but I can't explain it very well, but I'll take a stab at it anyway.
There are two fronts to the battle: Offense and defense. Duh, you say. But what you might not know is that there is a way to make the enemy weaker. And that usually has to happen before you can get stronger. There are ways that you can (and probably are) feeding your sex drive that you might not even be aware of. 
The benifits are astounding. The sheer level of intimacy that starts to grow between you and God when there isn't a giant wedge of pornography in the way is astounding. I'm really beginning to feel it, and I'm only just beginning to get out of the darkness I've thrown myself into. 
And finally, it talks about how to resist temptation for good. And this is where "Tactics" the follow-up book comes in.

They say that when you get rid of one addiction, you have to replace it with another. Now, in the past, I'd try to replace lust with video games, music, friends, and guess what? None of it worked.
But this second book really introduces something I hadn't dared to think of before. What if you replaced the addiction with God? Now, if you're still reading this, then odds are you already have God in your life, so I'm not suggesting for even a second that having God in your life is something new to you. But when you begin to remove this sin from your life, there is a hole. Depending on your dependance upon it, the hole could very well be massive. And this is why filling it with God is something that half of "tactics" is about. It's all about taking the pain and frustration that would be whitewashed with the numbness of masturbation and taking it to God instead. And this is where that new intimacy I talked about earlier comes in. The more often you go to God with your needs, the more he'll answer your requests. And this builds up trust. I'd say you've probably got a lot of things that you need his help with. There's a lot of things I need his help with. But as you start realising the freedom you have to go to him instead of sin with your loneliness and pain, you'll start going to him a lot more often. Because as humans, we need comfort. And I can guarantee you that he's the comforter you need. 

That said, it's hard. It's really, really hard. It is the hardest things I have ever done, and it is the hardest thing I am doing. Because the fight doesn't stop. You never stop wrestling with this, and this never stops wrestling with you. But you can weaken the opposition, and you can get stronger. You can do it with God's help.

My thanks to Nexus who was courageous enough to speak up first to those from whom he had the most to lose.

My white knight

Just finished reading the chapter "tassels" in the book "velvet elvis" by rob bell. It's a really fantastic chapter! It really showed me something. My white knight. Now, I may have mentioned this guy in passing to some of you, but I really do think about this concept a lot. A White knight.
Uncorrubtable. Unstoppable. Un-whatever-able. The knight in shining armor. The guy you can count on. The guy you can trust. With anything. Ever. Because he'll never let you down.

This idea first wandered into my head.... Well, I'd really love to say "after watching 'The Dark Knight'", but that's not strictly true. And this idea stuck with me. The good guy. The one that everyone looks up to and admires and wants to be like. The example. And after teenstreet, this idea flourished in my mind. The White Knight. Me! I could do it with God's help after all. I would do it with God's help. I'd be honest and true all the time, and people would be inspired by me to greater and greater acts of kindness and love. But after reading that chapter, where he talks about his "superpastor", this magnificent hero of a man that never stops and never tires, but that's the thing. This guy and Rob Bell were two different people. 

While I tried to live as my own personal "White knight", things didn't really turn out so well.
You see, what I forgot, was that I am a sinner. That might sound like a simple word, but for me it really, really, REALLY isn't. That meant that I was living the life of a sinner. A redeemed sinner trying his best, perhaps, but I always came up short. Always. In everything I did. But I couldn't come up short! I was a white knight! I had to do the right thing. To screw up would meant that I wasn't. And I had to be. How else could I change things in my life, in the world? I had to be doing the right thing. So I decided that I was. I had to. I had to know the right answers. I had to say that right things. All the time.

Now, what's interesting to note here is, I had to do those things. I had to be those things. That doesn't mean that I could. See, what I've realised, is that I'm not a white knight. I'm Lorcan. Lorcan gets scared. Lorcan can't sing very well. Lorcan struggles with pornography and lust. Lorcan has all sorts of crazy scars and problems. And Lorcan doesn't know anything as he should know it yet. Anything. Ask me any sort of question, my answer will not be perfect. But I ignored that. I get things wrong. All the time. A white knight would get them right. All the time. I had this sort of vision that if I started living like this idea, this image, that somehow people would look up to me, to blah blah blah. Look up to me? I am the last person anyone should be looking up to.

But after I spent 20 minutes furiously writing down everything that this idea was, and I wasn't, I came to a conclusion. I am Lorcan. I will always be Lorcan.  No matter what I do or where I go, I will always be me. And then I remembered something else. The very thing that drew me to God in the first place. He loves me. Now, I, and likely you, have heard this fifty thousand times. But today, it meant something different. He loves me. Not who I could be, who I will be, or who I am, but me. Past, Future, and even present are irrelevant. Yes, even the present. These words I'm typing now aren't good enough to be deserving of love. But he does. Me. I realized something else. I am really, really messed up. I wanted to use another word instead of messed there, to perhaps illustrate my inadequacy, but I figure I can just tell you, and you'll take my word for it. 

Complicated, maybe that's a better way of putting it. Not complex like a watch, no. Complex like a knot that's old and worn and all tied up and jumbled and confused. I don't understand most anything I do. I don't understand why I do most anything I do. But now instead of whitewashing my pain and inadequacy, sucking it up, and saying "I can't afford to break", I'm trying to be honest with myself. And that's tricky. But It's also very freeing. Because now, even when I get it wrong, that's ok. Because I'm not hiding my sin from God, I'm showing it to him. Showing him how broken and knotted I am, and saying: "I do not understand". And I don't.

So, these are just about the most rad things ever.

Yeah, I know, nobody's said "rad" since the 1980's, but I've started saying it, probably from reading Slackerz http://theslackerz.com/ too much. They say it a lot.
Anyway, I was looking up earphones online, thinking of getting some skullcandy ones, but I wanted to do some research before investing 30 euro in a piece of electronics. So, just for comparative purposes, I decide to look up the specs for my current headphones (just the ones that come with you iPod). Apple doesn't post the specifications like frequency range or anything useful like that, so I thought I'd do a little digging through the site in hopes that I'd accidently stumble upon some sort of information. And then these caught my eye. 

http://www.myvu.com/#

Now, I don't think I'd ever buy a pair of these, but I just had to say something. The very concept of these things in my opinion, is really, really cool. They're glasses that work like TVs. We're talking jetsons here, people. Little TVs in your glasses. So you can watch stuff while you're on the go. Is it unnecessary? Yes. You could just look at your iPod instead. However, it is also really, really freakin' cool. 

I've always personally been in love with the idea of a Heads-Up-Display (HUD) Just like in most videogames. In this eutopia of visual information, I have a minimap in the bottom left hand corner of the screen, names over people's heads that link to their  bebo pages (or myspace, you get the idea), and maybe even a health bar over the top, based on my current vitals. It'd go down during heavy excercise, but then restore over time as my heart rate went back down! 

This is why I love having a blog. I can just rant and rave about whatever the crap I feel like ranting and raving about, but it'll all kosher because it's the interwebs. Just wanted to say those are awesome, and kinda rant about how I think HUDs are great.

Quite a week!

This has been quite a week! It has been a pretty rough week, I've had to make some pretty tough choices, and had some pretty troubling doubts, and having lots of 5th year homework has hardly made things easier. Now, I'm not in the habit of just plain old complaining on blogs (anymore XD) so I'll tell you why this week has been pretty awesome too. Not gonna go on a long rant or anything, but I just wanted to say why this week has been good as well. For once, instead of running to things to distract myself, like music or videogames, or friends for comfort in times of distress, I'm genuinely running to God with my troubles! There was a recent lunchtime where people were just generally taunting and teasing me about my troubles, and instead of doing what I usually do which is just take it and crumple, I just let it happen, and the one thing I genuinely wanted and needed then was God's reassuring voice. So I just quietly got up, left, and found a quiet, seculded spot (Toilet cubicle XD) and flipped my bible open to a fantastic chapter, Ephesians 5. I just really wanted to say this, cause though I'm sure I don't have much readers right now, perhaps you're reading this in the archives some time after it was written, and I just wanted to say that I really did find comfort in God this week, and I'd encourage you if you're reading this to give God a chance with your troubles. Just wanted to say that while it was fresh in my mind and my heart. Just wanted to say.

Wolf Spiders.

Today, I am going to talk to you about wolf spiders. If you are irish and reading this, then you don't take spiders seriously. You probably never have, and you probably never will. They are insects to you, things to be gently swatted away, things of beauty and delicacy, with beautiful webs that catch the morning dew and make it sparkle in the light of dawn. 

You do not know the creatures I know. 

True, most irish spiders are relatively harmless. But the words "harmless" and "wolf spiders" are antonyms. Let me explain my interactions with these creatures of the night. I am orignally from Utah, a state in America. It's between Nevada and Colorado (Las Vegas and south park, for those of you that don't know american geography). And in Utah, the wildlife can kill you. It's not entirely likey, but it's enough of a chance to keep you on your toes when you're in the woods. With rattlesnakes and mean coyotes, and spiders that can kill you, and adult would be wary. A child (my age at the time) has reason to fear.

           Now, our house had a fireplace, and if you have a fireplace, they should be used. So you need wood. Or coal. We had a massive, black coalbox near our garage. had creaky latches and all that good stuff you'd expect a severed torso to reside in. So, logically, you need a fire when it is cold. Now, another interesting thing that happens when it's cold is that insects, especially spiders seek shelter to remain warm. Now, you can probably see where this is going, but let me tell you first about these creatures.
           They have long legs. Not like a daddy longlegs or crane fly's legs. Long, thick, hairy legs. the kind that you see in the monster movies. And they are also well known for their extremely reflective eyes. A good way do spot them is to shine a flashlight around, and if you see a set of eyes shining back at you in the darkness, then there you go. They have pretty potent venom too. Not enough to kill or permanently disfigure, but enough to cause considerable swelling, redness, itching, and pain. Now, for the most terrifying feature of all. The one they don't tell you on wikipedia. They can jump. Yes, jump. That means that they can jump onto you. Their paths are no longer predictable or linear. That means that they can come in contact you from a distace. And in the dark, with only their terrifying eyes to view them by, stopping them is nigh impossible unless you have the hand eye coordination of a surgeon. And these are not minisule jumps of a bumbling creature, these are leaps of a few feet. At my age back then, they could jump up to your waist. Half of you. Half of my body.
           So let me set the scene. Dead of night. Far away from any sort of opening, where no-one could hear you scream. Our house was also pretty high up in the mountains, with a winding driveway leading up to the house, like castle Dracula or Wayne manor, except on a hill, instead of a precipice. So I, armed with only a coal bucket, a scoop, and a flashlight, have been charged with the grim task of getting coal. I shuffle forward on uneasy feet, drawing close to the snow-laden box. The lid opens, the hinges quietly creaking open to reveal the empty blackness. The flashlight does little to reveal this mystery. All that is visible is thick cobwebs, and the dull gritty glitter of damp coal. But that is not the only glitter. There is a round, shiny glare, a reply to my flashlight's inquiry. The glare moves, shuffles closer. Closer. It is lost underneath the coal for a few brief moments, lost in it's cavern-like abode. It's abscence seems to inspire more fear than it's presence. Suddenly, it reappears. On the edge of the box. 2 inches away from my belt. I look down at it, the shadow no longer hiding it's the beast looks back, brisltling with hate at my intrusion of it's home. I take a step back. Without warning, the creature leaps into the air, it's speed hides it from my eyes better than the shadows. The coal bucket clatters to the cold concrete, and all I hear are my footsteps rushing towards the door. The fear in my heart is far colder than winter's bite, and no fire could warm the beast's unblinking eyes from my memory.