Don’t You Hate It When…? Don’t you hate it when you are about to do something awesome, but you forget it before it goes into action? Don’t you hate it when you are about to do something amazing, then you go to the toilet and you seem to have flushed away the idea? Don’t you hate it when you are about to do a cool stunt like jumping five steps then you get a crick in the neck? Don’t you hate it when you are saying something interesting to an adult but they dismiss it as a lie or misinformation? Don’t you hate it when you have so much homework you decide to play Xbox/ Playstation/ Pc instead? (By the way I’m a PC fan all the way) Don’t you hate it when you download something and it takes 2 days (literally) and then it doesn’t even work and/or is fake? (By the way this applies to illegal downloading so stay away from thepiratebay.com: uTorrent is much better HAH!) Don’t you hate it when you and the enemy team in a video game have the same characters/weapons yet their one is better? Don’t you hate it when you are the only person who has different interests to your mates? Don’t you hate it when your mates/you think their interest is better and start an argument about it, and you end up on the losing side because no one supports your opinion? Don’t you hate it when you end up being the noob on your team? Don’t you hate it when doing what you like is social suicide? e.g. playing chess in an athletic class/ playing video games about magic beings like League of Legends / watching cartoons labelled as childish like Spongebob/ reading books...

Dear friends, Just a quick reminder that the EUROTEEN POETRY COMPETITION 2013 is still open. The closing date for entries in now September 30th and we’re looking forward to many more entries from across Ireland. The Euroteen Project hopes to encourage teenagers to express themselves artistically through poetry and artwork, by allowing them the opportunity to see their work published in an internationally disseminated anthology. As with last year’s anthology, the entries will be judged and the book edited in conjunction with our Young Editors Project, which involves a selection panel of teenagers who assist in every aspect of the process. The EUROTEEN COMPETITION is open to any young person between the ages of 12 and 19. If the young poet wishes to remain anonymous, they may write “ANON” next to their name on the application form and we will not publish their name in the anthology. The closing date for entries is Monday, September 30th 2013. Please find attached an Application Form for the Euroteen Competition 2013. Please feel free to contact me with any questions you might have. Best regards, Eoin Hurley Project Co-Ordinator Eurochild Project 00353-21-4215176...

It was two days after the due check-out date that the hotel staff realised the British tourist was still officially a guest of the hotel. The maid gained access to the bedroom shortly before midday. The drapes were fluttering, the window thrown open. The bed sheets had been overturned and a bedside lamp in pieces on the floor. Inside the en suite there were splatters of blood on the wall by the bath and, inside it, lay the cold, motionless body. The tourist arrived on the flight from Gatwick in the morning and made his way to the hotel in the Altstadt. It was grand, a remnant from the days of the Hapsburgs. He moved to the desk, put his case down on the marble floor and picked up a brochure on the countertop. Flicked through it. Put it down. Picked up another one. Glanced briefly at it, put it back. The receptionist noticed him. ‘Wie geht’s?’ How are you? ‘Gut, danke.’ He smiled. ‘I have booked a room.’ ‘What is the name?’ The tourist told her. She went searching on the computer. ‘Yes, sir, room 212 is waiting. Dirk will bring you up.’ ‘Vielen dank.’ Dirk came up behind him. ‘I’ll take your bag.’ ‘Thanks.’ As they walked to the lift the tourist started gazing up at the vast ceiling. The artwork was sublime, the plasterwork beautifully surrounded it, the walls were- ‘Watch where you’re walking!’ The tourist was brought back to earth. ‘I’m terribly sorry. The man, in his forties, looked hard at him with his bright blue  eyes. ‘This isn’t a museum, so please stop having your head in the clouds.’ ‘I am so sorry.’ The man with the blue eyes pointed to a bundle on the ground. ‘Look what you...

Two picturesque girls are standing three feet apart with their backs to the red-curtained stage: the first with a thick mane of blonde hair and full lips; the second very different but no less intriguing, more like a greengrocer’s daughter. We’re on the hill at the back and people are filing in and going up and down the aisle trying to find a coveted perch from where they’ll get an advantageous perspective on proceedings. My father and our guest are looking through the €3 programme, wondering where Moyne is. There is a troupe from there performing tonight. A man in the row in front turns through 30 degrees stiffly to tell us it’s near Thurles, Tipperary. There are a lot of bespectacled drama fans and bald- headed men. A girl walks along with a clear Tupperware box selling raffle tickets. The two girls at the door are offering the programmes; the prettier one has a badge saying “Usher”. I was disappointed that it didn’t reveal her name. On the way here the conversation began with warfarin, a heart disease drug discovered in Wisconsin when farmers found their cattle were bleeding from the stomach. They managed to extract the vital ingredient from the cattle feed and test it on rats and make rat poison. Our guest takes it for his arrhythmia. It thins the blood and in the right concentration will kill rats or treat your heart disease. He remembers the dying mice in the floor when he lived in Tomes, a small village near Macroom. Whatever it was they were using to kill them made them writhe in agony, shriek and cry. Then the car stops and my father points to a farmhouse about two hundred yards away in the middle of a green...

Blankness. A mental void. Emptiness. Where to start? A look around the site yields, in order: pretty blond; muscular sportsman; pretty blonde; pretty blonde; muscular sportsman; muscular sportsman. I fly through the rest of the site. Something catches my eye – two blondes have the same picture. My face wrinkles. Liars. Like all of their kind. I look at the fakes  again. Not the best agency. It’ll do I start where I always do: “Hi, my name is Dave.” Delete, “It’s James.” Delete. “How’re things going? My name is Francis.” Delete. “The name’s David.” It’ll do. “I’m forty-seven.” I look around the site again. A pack of lies. Delete. “I’m twenty-seven.” It’ll do. I’ve a criminal record. I shot five cops and knifed two more.” Delete. “I’ve a criminal record- of picking up chicks.” It’ll do. “I’m a serial killer who lures whore to their deaths.” Delete. “I’m a serial satisfier who lures women to their beds.” It’ll do. “My wife was unfaithful and I blame the world.” Delete. “I’m faithful.” It’ll do. A picture of a muscular young guy. Delete. A picture of a fit – but not overly so – man. I click post. It’s probably the most honest thing on this site. It’ll do. “N.Y.P.D! Open up you motherfucking bitch!” I grab a loaded gun and point it at the door. It’ll...

Between being half dressed and dressed, the clouds arrived to weep, A lost head, and the other is running, Quickly brushed with the olive comb, Fully packed before the hail could strike; A family of birds awake, A last feel of the old brass handle And a leathered figure steps out. Between home and the car The rain drums on his coat, and the thunder claps his...

I Sit Here, Watching I sit here, Watching, Watching. Chrysali open, Open, Victims of their own emergence. The waves whip against the rocks, Biting, Biting, But the rocks do not move. The fernery is grazed, Abolished by its master. I sit here, Watching, Watching, And then I...

“Okay, let’s do this”. Andrew pressed the 10 second timer on his sister’s DSLR then sprinted over to the other side of the room. He stood, clad in an ill-fitting tuxedo, with his back to a book case filled with leather-bound books. With hair perfectly coifed, he bared his teeth in a grin and looked at the lens of the camera with a hungry look in his eye. The camera beeped in a countdown. Six. Andrew’s jaw started quivering, his cheeks aching. Five. His eyelid started to twitch. Four. A drop of spit hung on the edge of his lip. Three. A bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. Two. Andrew’s weight bearing leg jerked. One. A fly bounced off the uncovered light bulb. With the flash of the camera, Andrew dropped his shoulders into a relaxed hunch and retrieved the camera. The photo was processing on the monitor, having transferred straight through the USB cable. As the photo uploaded onto beautifulpeople.com, Andrew retrieved the sheet of paper his mother gave him. He had tasked her with listing his best qualities. It was a painfully short list. As he stroked the beard that was confined to his neck, Andrew scrutinised the page in a vain attempt to come up with some more. Filling out the basic information, he reached the personal questions. Yes, he was single. No he didn’t smoke or take recreational drugs. The most private thing he was willing to admit? He had a midget fetish. Why should you message him? Because please. He spends a lot of time thinking about? Fedoras. He’s really good at? Turning invisible when nobody is watching. Something he has never told anyone? When he was young, his father used to dress him up in his sister’s...

I was recently invited to the Rendezvous pub to celebrate the end of sixth year. Although I had to decline this offer (me drunk is not a pretty picture and I doubt that I’d be able to fight the temptation), it got me thinking about how this is the end of my time at Coláiste an Spioraid Naoimh. Every day I can sense it: more and more students are not turning up to school as they’re too busy “studying”; the teachers are now a lot more laid back and casual; and there seems to exist a silent air of understanding floating around the classroom-understanding that, yes, this is the end of an important part of our lives. It’s all a bit tragic really, isn’t it? What a good time, then, to reflect on my past. Of course, I won’t offer my full autobiography in this essay but I shall offer an extract: maybe by focusing on one of the reasons why this past year has been a very precious one to me. I’ve done a lot this past year: I’ve improved my school results; I’ve turned eighteen; I’ve helped to launch the Cloud; and I’ve been accepted into a videogames-design college in Dublin. But the thing that most interests me about this past year, and the thing that I shall focus on in this essay, is the fact that this is the year that I’ve really started watching a lot of movies and television shows, which is slightly ironic as good studying and television usually don’t mix well together. At the start of sixth year, I was introduced to a television show called My Little Pony. Although it’s not as good as it was when I first saw it, this show is a lot...

Orwell’s attention to detail The attention to detail in this novel is nothing short of astonishing. In this novel, Orwell “invents” a whole new type of society, a society held together not by love, but by hate. Not only that, but he also invents a new language, “Newspeak”, which has given us new words such as the concept of “Doublethink”, which will be discussed later, and “Big Brother”, which has even spawned a reality TV show. Finally, he also has a second sub-book in the novel, The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism, the book given to Winston by “The Brotherhood” that was supposedly written by Emmanuel Goldstein. This shows how Orwell portrays Oceania in a very elaborate way. The depth and realism in the novel The depth and realism in this novel is another reason why I thoroughly enjoyed it. Orwell manages to depict Oceania and in particular Oceanic society in a particularly vivid manner. He tells us that, during the Two Minutes Hate, people would shout, scream and even throw projectiles at the telescreen that was showing the programme. He also goes to great pains to explain the significance of a look he received from an inner party member called O’Brien, who we will examine later. Also, the level of realism is extreme. When Winston goes into a pub to question an elderly prole he observes an old man asking for a pint only to be told that the only measurements used were the metric litre and half litre. It is nuggets like this that make good books great books, and is one of the reasons it is my personal favourite. The complex character of O’Brien In this novel, one of the most fascinating aspects is the way Orwell shrouds an explicit...

The Grass is Singing The incident on p.41 (Chapter 2) is of great interest to a reader. Mary overhears the other women talking and she is upset for sure; but it is far more than that: she is destroyed, literally, because the image she had lived to up until then was no longer of use to her: “Mary’s idea of herself was destroyed and she was not fitted to recreate herself.” (43) Her marriage to Dick is the only way she knows to  limit the damage, to conform to something, anything, rather than feeling utterly dissolved. Compare this to Erica and Tessa in the other texts. How do the other two women look when put beside Mary? Dick has a deep, ingrained hatred for urbanity: on p. 45 we see how “he wanted to murder” when he imagined the lives of suburbanites. This is similar, though not identical, to the third world sensibility we learn about in Mohsin. He has unusual impulses and instincts, hating the cinema and finding the pretty actresses he saw there boring (45). In Mohsin Changez finds Erica’s nakedness something of a revelation. Changez, a bit like Mary Turner, doesn’t really know himself. He doesn’t know how to respond to seeing uncovered breasts; Mary “knew so little about herself that she was thrown completely off her balance [by gossip].” (44) Also, like Changez, Mary doesn’t know what she wants: “it was impossible to fit together what she wanted for herself, and what she was offered.” She is scared of men, loathes them even, and yet she goes out with them to the movies more and more often. It was a feeling of superiority over men that was driving her; Dick allowed to feel superior. This is very different to Justin...

After the success of Final Fantasy VII on the PlayStation in 1997, Square Co. Ltd immediately set out to make the next game in the series. For this instalment they decided to take things in a new direction. The game focused more on a central love story than on saving the world and the art was altered so that the characters look more realistic. Some people were looking forward to it and some people thought it would spell certain doom for Final Fantasy. Nevertheless, in 1999, Final Fantasy VIII was released, and it became the quickest selling Final Fantasy game of all time (though VII remained the overall best selling). Was it good? GRAPHICS – This game looks amazing for the PS1. This is mainly down to the use of Prerendered backgrounds (where they make the background in 3D software, but turn it into a 2D image) which are almost seamlessly integrated with full motion video cutscenes. It’s games like this which gave the Nintendo 64 a run for its money. SOUND – This game is considered to have one of the best soundtracks of any game. It was composed by Nobuo Uematsu, who worked on the previous Final Fantasy games. This game took a new approach to the music. Uematsu scrapped individual character themes, instead opting to have themes for emotions. This was done in earlier games too but it’s a lot more noticeable here. The game has 2 songs which can be considered Main Themes. Liberi Fatali is a Latin choir piece which plays through the game’s amazing opening, and was used to represent the USA’s swimming team (along with FITHOS LUSEC WECOS VENOSEC, another song from the game) in the 2004 Summer Olympics. The other main theme is Eyes on Me,...

The Cloud is always on the look out for eye-catchy art to accompany our posts but also art in its own right. If you like to draw and colour and think you’ve got the knack, send your work to cloudofthink@gmail.com and we’ll certainly consider it for inclusion. Just make it colourful, zany, eye-catching and even deep and meaningful, if that’s your...

Audi owns the car company Lamborghini. Lamborghini is Italian, as is Ferrari. Ferrari is one of the most famous brands in the world, and has a chain of shops around the world, including in Venice. Venice is a city built on a series of marshes and canals, similar to St Petersburg. St Petersburg is a Russian city, built by Tsar Peter the Great. This Tsar started the procedure of modernising Russia. Another man to do this was Josef Stalin.  Stalin was a communist, along with Leon Trotsky. Trotsky fled the Soviet Union when Stalin took power and moved to Mexico. Mexico is a country in Central America, famous for the taco, sombreros and drug cartels. Central America is features a few other countries, notably Costa Rica, a country famous for being relatively peaceful in this turbulent area of dictators, possibly due to the fact the country has no army.  Iceland is in a similar position, except it is a member of NATO. Another member of NATO is Germany, home to the German car brand...

So, for a long time people had to go to halls to listen to music and hear Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin et al perform their tunes. This was basically the only way unless you were 1) aristocratic and had a shitload of money which you were only going to use to make a giant bust of your head or 2) you were a poor person with nothing to do except eat, work the fields, eat, work the fields, play the fiddle or bodhrán, go to bed, and then repeat this exercise every day for all forty years of your life. Then we had a revolution at the end of the 19th century: there was a contraption you could hear music on. Some would go as far as saying it was “invented” by Thomas Edison (who, as many know was a blatant liar. Just ask Nikola Tesla.) This was good, and everyone loved it. Until we got the record player! Now you could play big discs on even bigger machines (okay, so it is a variation of the gramophone. Who cares?) Now you could listen to Beethoven’s Greatest Hits from the comfort of your own house, which, let’s face it, is the equivalent to a modern cardboard box. And this was good. But then, wait for it! We got the cassette (which is about as favourable in retrospect as a Fiat Punto compared to the 500.) They wore out easily, you have to skip through them to find your song, you had to flip them over (which could also be advantageous to an extent.) Compared to the vinyls they were way more versatile: this is still their only real edge over the CD. Yet, vinyls didn’t wear away so quickly. Vinyls had that crackling sound which...

Hannibal is the newest thriller developed for NBC by Bryan Fuller whose first episode – deliciously named ‘Apértif’ – aired on April 4th this year. Like Red Dragon and Manhunter (to which this series is a prequel) and Silence of the Lambs before it, the star of this show is not the star of the show. Rather the series follows special agent Will Graham, played by Hugh Dancy, a special consultant for the FBI who was deemed too psychologically unstable to be a member of the FBI but who is an extremely gifted criminal profiler –  too gifted to let go to waste. Will Graham, you see, experiences ‘pure empathy’; he has the ability to see inside the mind of any criminal and understand: understand why they do what they do and how they feel when they do it. This is his gift and his curse, and what a dichotomy it is.The stress and horror of putting himself in the mind of the worst humanity has to offer has taken its toll on the young Graham, so he is forced by his superior, the head of Behavioral Sciences Jack Crawford (played by Morpheus), and the agency psychiatrist Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas) to seek professional help. To this end he begins to see the psychiatrist Doctor Hannibal Lecter – an impeccably dressed psychiatrist played by Mad Mikkelsen whose only emotion, so to speak, is good manners and charm and who wears a tie with a knot so extravagantly large that it could fill several issues of Vogue Magazine cover to cover. With Hannibal as his emotional guard and confidant, Graham is once again in the field finding murderers, mycologists and mutilated bodies to make the world that little bit safer. As for the show itself, it’s...

  Michael sat in the carver facing towards the door. The rays of sunlight came into the principal’s office onto the back of his neck. He finished off his teacher evaluations just before the bell commenced the first lesson of the day. He leaned back on his chair with his hands linked on the back of his head and let out a long sigh. He looked over to the picture at the calendar hung on his wall. The sun setting, the water rippling on the surface, the white sand…… “Good morning Mr. Hyde,” interrupted Noreen. She had been the secretary for the last six years and was still going strong. “Morning Noreen,” replied Hyde as he returned all four legs to the floor. “You have a meeting with the new substitutes coming into the school today, please try to make them feel welcome.” She finished in a tired voice, and left. He groaned at the thought of the coming day: punishing students, making announcements and now introducing substitutes to the school. He let out another long sigh and rose from the upholstery. He made it a step out the door to be greeted by the sound of a principal’s worst nightmare. The fire alarm started to blare out of its deteriorating speakers. Its high pitch made his stomach turn. He hurried around the corner and into the cramped intercom room. “Can everyone please make their way to the appropriate fire exits please, this is not a drill,” he announced in the calmest voice possible in order not to panic students. This was followed by the sound of doors opening and classes following teachers like ducks following their mother out of the luminous green doors. Hyde followed the closest group out the doors and to...

A black raven perched on the stone, white building while the rain pelted against a ligneous sign which read: “Suzanne Hopper’s Convenience Store”. The raven turned its head to the left and watched as an azure Volkswagen sped past the city library and came to a halt outside the grey two-football-pitches–long warehouse which was located to the right of Hopper’s. Inside the automobile, a lanky man with gelled black hair and a pinstripe suit sat in the driver’s seat drumming his fingers along the steering wheel. This is it, Derek Rive thought as he stared dismally at his silver ring, If I fail in this job I can kiss Winnie goodbye. With that cheerful notion planted firmly in his head, Derek prevented the radio from singing any more of Bruno Mars’ “When I was Your Man” and opened the door to his left. With one glum look at the bird on the convenience store, Derek opened the door leading into Jacob Eep’s Landrover Factory and closed his eyes. There was no turning back from this imminent doom. Derek stepped inside the warehouse and the raven flew away. Derek looked instinctively at the giant, Land Rover-sized gate to his left as he entered, before he stepped forward, past the metallic stairs leading to the PR and Board offices on the “second” floor and made his way through a swarm of white uniform–clad employees. While only the ceiling’s central spotlights shone, Derek strangely felt that the spotlights were on him as he filed through the employees and came to a rest alongside his friend, the hunched, balding Chace Hara.        ‘Where’s Wally?’ Derek asked. He glanced around and frowned: the needle was not in the haystack.        ‘I d’no,’ Chace said, scratching his nose. ‘Prob’ly off...