I've had a lot to do these days but I feel bad for not saying something after this abundance of information. Thank you.
For what it's worth what I was trying to do was really really simple, something like:

$ thinggy
(quietly connect to channel #x on network y with some some random info)
(starts displaying only user messages with a history limit of say, something like 60)

I don't need user input or managing multiple channels, I just wanted it as simple technologically as possible to he point where I was considering writing my own pseudo irc client because I don't really need much functionality. I know this is stupid since there are already a lot of tools out there but it's an itch I want to scratch.