Review: Blade Runner

In the cinema. It was like Sex and the City all over again, only this time the big hair was matted and unkempt and the assembled horde had balls and body odour issues. You could hear a pin drop when the Vangelis soundtrack kicked in over the opening credits, and fuck me if the nerds didn't start a sloppy, mortifying round of applause when the film ended.

My favourite scene remains the one where Rachael looses her hair as she sits over the piano. It makes me curl my toes with sexy happiness.

Oh, and Rutger Hauer prancing around in his knickers like a man possessed. He's pretty ridey for a robot.

Reverse Stalking On Statcounter

To my avid reader from the Department Of Agriculture Disaster Recovery Site - what do you do? I like to think it's superheroic. I'm a complete cow with a catastrophic hangover - do I qualify for assistance?

Buke Worm

No longer under any obligation to spend every waking hour either studying or pretending to study, I can once again spend the majority of my (sober) free time with my nose stuck in a book. I passed my exams by the skin of my teeth... I ended up with a 2:1, which doesn't quite sound like scraping through, but I can assure you that with a 60% passing grade and a 59% mark in one of the modules, it is scraping through with bloodied knees.

And so, unfettered and free, I managed to get through no less than three novels over the course of last week's holiday. The first was Hakuri Murakami's After Dark, purchased in the airport and read on the plane. I always feel cheated when I finish one of Murakami's novels; their brevity may be key to their beauty but they leave me hungry for more. An English teacher of mine once flattered me with a similar accusation but it was years before I got the reference - he marked me down to a B- and scribbled a note saying that my story was infuriatingly like one of Mr. Wilde's cigarettes.* I thought he was just being a cunt.

I read Nicola Barker's Darkmans next, which I'd bought on a whim because it was big and heavy. It meant that I had to carry a shoulder bag rather than a handbag for the week and that I developed a squint and a hunch, but it was worth it. It was clever, confusing and very very funny. The nightmarish images of Scogin the jester seeped into my own dreams, however, and it made for an uncomfortable week's sleep. I believe Ms. Barker has penned a few others so I'll be down to Rathmines library with a list on Monday morning.

A little light reading then for the flight home; Siobhán Dowd's The London Eye Mystery. It had shades of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in that the narrator, Ted, shares many of Christopher's idiosyncrasies. He makes for an endearing, engaging and convincing storyteller and I found myself reading right through the safety announcements on board our Boeing 737, and all the way through the flight home (despite being a confirmed narcoleptic when it comes to public transport). The book is aimed at 9-12 year olds, and as I am all of 27 I feel I should pass it on to someone else who might enjoy it. So if anyone's got a spacky kid like me at home who'd treasure my copy, email me and I'll post it anonymously, and give them a mystery all of their own.

*A cigarette is the perfect type of a perfect pleasure. It is exquisite, and it leaves one unsatisfied. What more can one want? (The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde)

Those Bedbugs Bite

I suffer from nightmares a lot and have done for as long as I remember. Most of the time I wake, turn on the light, realise that the horrors are just in my head and roll over into slumber again. I don't have curtains on my window so when I wake in a sweat, the dawn is usually breaking outside and I am reminded that it was just a dream.

The majority of these nightmares are of the woo! scary monsters! variety; harmless, clichéd, common. Easily dismissed and soon forgotten. Some of the recurring ones are almost comforting in that their tricks are now old hat. The familiar dread becomes simply familiar and I know that eventually I'll wake up, it will be 5am on a Tuesday and my dog will not have been eaten by a viking. Probably. Sometimes I don't even remember them; I will wake up after a good night's sleep to face a concerned lover who woke in the wee small hours to hear me sobbing. They'll suggest psychoanalysis and I'll suggest that they fuck off and make me some tea.

But very occasionally I will have one that leaves me badly shook. One that my subconscious convinces me is possibly maybe plausible, if not exactly probable. Zebra-striped zombies are not going to break into my room and eat me. Probably. But human emotion and common-or-garden cruelty is just as terrifying, and my psyche likes to cover all the angles. There have been times when I have shied away from friends or family after a dream of casual abuse or careful violence. I can't tell them why I'm uneasy in their presence so I'm left muttering vagaries about bad dreams. Nothing good can come of the truth, nobody should have to hear that the bogeyman was wearing their face as his mask.

The worst of all are the ones where I am the cause of the upset, the instigator, the catalyst for whatever calamity unfolds. I had one a couple of years back where I found my grandfather dead in the bathtub. He'd slit his wrists and although I couldn't articulate it, the dreaming me knew it was because he was disappointed in me, because he thought I was fat. It goes without saying that Grandad was alive and well at the time, buoyant and full of both love and admiration for his eldest grandaughter. The memory of a nightmare like that still sickens me to the stomach; that I project my insecurites onto my nearest and dearest, that I have the gall to portray myself as a victim and then the stupidity to torment myself with the consequences.

We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep. I need to learn how to splatter my bedbugs with a shoe.

Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny

While a more accommodating bikini might skim and flatter your curves as you prance around in front of the mirror at home (ahem) it will be fuck all use to you as you splash around in the surf on a Basque beach. You'll end up with one hand frantically hoisting up the bra in a vain effort to reposition it over your nipples while the other hand grabs at the side of your knickers, trying to preserve your modesty but succeeding in keeping just one arse cheek covered while the other is not-so-tantalisingly exposed by the drooping, sodden lycra.

No, there are no photos.

On Relationships

(and politeness)

Sometimes it's hard not to wallow in hurt and disappointment. It's hard not to take offence at what was probably meant as a consolatory pat on the head. It's hard to move the fuck on.

Sometimes it's hard to maintain a dignified silence.

Donostia Uncovered

6pm

I enjoy another Campari & Naranja served in what appears to be a goldfish bowl, sitting looking down onto the beach which appears to be entirely populated by young lovers, naked children and elderly nudists. We spend a pleasant few hours feeling like genial perverts.

8pm

Much talk of dinner, particularly the kind of dinner that comes all on the one plate (the others are not so enamoured of the pinxtos). No actual dinner materialises.

10pm

We're on the prowl, but bladder issues see the search for a cool grungy bar abandoned in favour of grotty disco bar. Toilets appear to have been recently frequented by H-blockers.

12am

Cosy corner in a lovely little bar, all knocking back pints of vodka and lemon because we don't know what anything else is called, and the Basques do not speak our particular brand of Esperanto. The hand-dryer in the small shared toilet causes power cuts, painful electric shocks and some mild distress.

1am

My attempts to chat up the bemulleted barman fall on their snot owing to inebriation, insurmountable language barriers and the presence of infinitely more attractive women. Instead I indulge in excited conversation with a charming skinhead in the jacks (who also speaks Esperanto, or perhaps just English).

2am

We acquire cheeseburgers (apparently by magic) and I find police riot helmet on a bin. Eat cheeseburger while wearing helmet and staging mock arrests for photos, sustain punch to the face from brother who has not realised that helmet is child-sized toy replica. Sulk a little.

¿3am?

To the playa we go, full of spirits. I carefully pile my possessions into my helmet and splash around "swimming" like a tipsy sea lion in the shin-deep sea. Greeted by friendly Australians as I stroll home in my bra and knickers, I fail to seize what will turn out to be my best chance to score on this holiday.

Cárta Poist

The wind whipped my bikini bottoms off our third floor balcony and tossed them onto the street below. Mortified, I belted down the stairs while the other three stood at the window, laughing like hyenas. When I fell out onto the street it was deserted, save for a middle aged man with a baby in a buggy, standing right where I'd seen them land. And there was no sign at all of my knickers. Thinking they might have blown further along the street, I walked a little way in both directions, trying to look nonchalant. It was only when I turned to ask him if he'd seen them that the penny dropped.

May he wear them with pride.

Fuck This For A Game Of Soldiers

I'm fleeing the country. Off to the Bilbao and San Sebastian to drink cocktails for breakfast and eat pinxtos for tea, to collect freckles and hangovers like they're going out of fashion. To pander to the whims of the head of our social committee, to talk my brother through his broken heart, to laze in the Hurler's easy company. To ponce around in flipflops without fear of rain or recriminations. I'm hoping that by the time I get back I will no longer be Petty McLeper, Pariah of the Irish Blogosphere.

I'll send yiz a postcard.

I Can't Help Thinking It's Karma

D'fhág mé tearmann teolaí an árasáin anocht le siúl síos chomh fada leis an mbáisín. Le toitín a bheith agam. Le faoiseamh a lorg ón mbuairt atá do mo chrá le roinnt laethanta anuas, leis an scamall dubh, duairc a ghealadh ó m'aigne. Ach ní raibh mé i bhfad ag siúl sular tháinig an bháisteach agus ag lorg foscadh dom, chonaic mé go raibh mo las fágtha i mo dhiaidh agam. Tháinig deora i mo shúile ansin agus mé ag triall ar an mbaile arís, mé náirithe leo agus leis an bhféintrua.

It's A Matter Of Some Debate

I spent a bit of time on Friday evening moseying around the NCAD grad show again, and discovered that Logan Mc Lain has designed a bag just for me. Now, do I go with the diagram version, or the handstitched muff?

Sos Cogaidh

Friday's post* was some shitstorm in a teacup, eh? The rest of my weekend was pretty quiet by comparison, I spent Saturday afternoon washing every stitch of clothing I own and ironing none of it (new policy) and Saturday night in Naas watching Kindergarten Cop, eating chocolate and huffing over nothing much at all. Good times.

My sprawling, bawling critique will likely have lost me a reader or two, so to balance things out I did something I had been meaning to do for a while - I emailed the link to my Crash Grandadicoot posts to my mother. She spent a few hours shuffling through them in reverse chronological order, had a browse around some of the other posts and then emailed me to tell me how reading them had made her laugh and cry. Most importantly she told me that she loves me, even though I'm puking this stuff all over the internet for strangers to read. Confident that I hadn't lost her affections, I decided that this might be a good time to break it to her about the sex column... and the TV3 exposé. So I did as any savvy kid would do and waited until I had cover - in the form of my Nana and some of my parents' friends who had come for Sunday dinner. Over roast beef and Yorkshire puddings I told them all about my secret double life as a peddler of filth and they took it very well. Nana even said she was proud of me (though she added that she's proud of all her grandchildren so I think she was speaking of a general pride, not one specific to my smutty scribbles). My coming clean to them happily coincides with my getting my arse in gear and republishing the columns in English. It'll be a little like waiting for the VHS release instead of forking out for the cinema but if you're curious and have a few hours to spare (they're as long as some of Friday's comments) I'll be publishing them in the sidebar from now on.

*It's sparked a few posts elsewhere; AJ reckons an apology is in order, Alexia offers an alternative view, Andrew and Darragh think it's a topic worth discussing, and Eli Mordino plans to wax lyrical on it himself. Jazz Biscuit, meanwhile, called me a super heroine (albeit one who likes to headbutt things) and then shot his load. I'm flattered. It's the closest I've come to pleasing a man in some time.

A Sprawling, Bawling Critique

There are rants ahead...

For some time now I've been threatening to write a critique of Irish blogs but I have been hesitant to publish it. It's a can of worms and I'm not sure I want to be the one to open it. Watching the excellent Rince ar Phár series on TG4 recently, Alan Titley's comment on the importance of criticism for the development of Irish language literature got me thinking. He spoke about his early days as a critic, he didn't know too many of the people in Irish literary circles and he gave honest and not always complimentary reviews. They weren't well-received, so he decided to hold his whist; if he couldn't say anything nice, he'd say nothing at all. I think that some parallels can be drawn between literature in a minority language and publishing in the minority media. Like Irish language literary circles, the Irish blogging community is small. There is a sense of camaraderie, everyone is very nice to one another. This is not to imply that they shouldn't be... but it means that all too often, comments are favourable to the point of sycophancy, dissenters are dismissed as bitter cranks and cynics. An unfavourable review is seen to be impolite and criticism poses a threat; it may cause personal offence, when none is meant.

While I love the sense of camaraderie and community that comes from both the Irish language and blogging, it frustrates me too. Balls to brothers in arms. Let's sort the wheat from the chaff. For blogging to become a valid medium for writers, we need to spend less time congratulating one another simply for being bloggers and actually work to ensure that the bloggers of note are those keeping blogs of note. Make it more about content and less about the cult of personality.

Because right now it feels like an ugly popularity contest. I can only assume that the A-listers of the Irish blogging world are lovely, lovely people because to be frank, some of them are shit-awful writers. I shouldn't need to point out (but I will anyway) that this is intended as a critique of the blogs themselves, and not of the bloggers. There are an awful lot of people out there who need to get themselves a good editor, or whose blogs need a harsh fucking review.

Who does she think she is?

It's a little over a year since I started to keep my own blog. I've acquired a steady readership in that time and am only now beginning to wonder where it is I fit into the Irish blogging community, if I fit in here at all. This blog has recently drawn comparisons with a few others that were meant to be favourable but which I was more than dismayed by; I may be single, female and living in Dublin but fuck me, I'm a far cry from a flirtysomething. I mean no slight to its author but that blog epitomises for me all that I dislike about Dublin (and I hate that I dislike anything about this city) - it is to blogs what Café an Seine is to pubs and I think it perpetuates an unhealthy and unhelpful stereotype. Is this the company readers see me in? It's certainly not company I would choose for my blog to keep and it got me thinking about my own list of Pretend Friends. I don't read all of them, or at least I don't read all of them often enough to give them space in my already overcrowded feed reader. Should I add a caveat like Gimme's? Would his People I like/Respect/Feel grudgingly obliged to link be appropriate? Perhaps.

The Gong Show

Hailed as king of the bloggers is the brains behind the Irish Blog Awards, Damien Mulley. I admire Mulley as a social entrepreneur (or as an entrepreneur, at any rate) but his blog leaves me cold. I'll dip into it occasionally because I see that so many others link to it and wonder that I might be missing something, but the more I read of it the more I think not. I don't find it particularly topical or interesting, if it were a radio show it would be Ray D'Arcy's (I do not understand the popularity of Ray D'Arcy either) and I am surprised that so many people subscribe to it. That said, he deserves sincere praise for his work to establish the Irish Blog Awards. Perhaps linking to his blog is how people show their appreciation?

The awards, however, are not without their problems. I was disappointed in them - not just for the night that was in it (though I should have expected that the event would be just as it was) but because I didn't feel that many of the winners deserved their accolades. My expectations were unrealistic - the awards are not the Booker. They are a by the people, for the people affair and while these particular people may be more literate than most, there is still a strong element of lowest-common-denominator culture winning out.

I was disappointed particularly in the winner of the Best Use of the Irish Language category. I was a nominee but let that be neither here nor there, I was disappointed because the winner writes in Irish about Irish, which has to be one of the most deathly boring things one can blog about. I work as a cultural officer to promote the language and I'm not interested enough to read it, why would anyone else be? Gaeilgeoirí have little interest - the posts generate precious few comments. It would certainly not entice people who don't speak Irish to try to read it, to sit down with the dictionary and work out the gist of it for themselves.

The shortlists for the other categories disappointed me just as much. It's not that I expect all good blogs to be prize pieces of literature - there are plenty I enjoy simply because the stories they tell are human ones and they tell them in a plain, unmanipulative and earnest way. But there are others which are little more than turgid regurgitations of the news with some self-righteous indignation thrown in for good measure, more still which are nothing but You Tube tenpenny bags. They have little to recommend them or to hold my interest and I'm baffled by their popularity.

The awards are not entirely without merit, they do help to highlight blogging as a medium and they do encourage bloggers to interact with one another. I'm all for hugs and pints, but it would be nice if the awards had offered some encouragement to up my own game, rather than leaving me disillusioned and wondering if I've just gotten the wrong end of the stick altogether as far as this blogging lark goes.

In conclusion: Don't hate me. Or do. Fuck it, I'm thick-skinned.

This is all just a matter of personal opinion. It matters not a jot. But knowing that I am not the type of blogger who will ever write a Nokia N95 winning post at least gives me the freedom to rock the boat a little and try to promote a little debate (not dissent) in the ranks. I am sure that there are others out there who read blogs and who share my frustration at seeing excellent posts by engaging writers overlooked while lazy posts by popular writers spark their own message boards. This may well turn out to be an exercise in how to lose pretend friends and piss people off, but for the love of the game I'll consider that a risk worth taking.

The Daddy Or Chips Referendum

I've just voted no.

I'm now standing well back, arms folded, waiting for the apocalypse.

Review: Sex And The City (Again)

The best I can say for it is that it satisfied my curiosity to see it.

What I was impressed with was the crazy bitch sat beside me. Mid twenties, well dressed if not overdressed, bizarre accent halfway between New York and Dublin 4 (I can't figure out which part of it was native - I suspect she may have actually been from Offaly). She hummed to herself while her friend talked during the trailers, then began to hyperventilate when the opening credits kicked in. "Oh my fucking G!!!" she stage-whispered, "I'm so excited!!!". I had guessed, what with all of the exclamation marks. She spent the rest of the film alternating between wild, inappropriate laughter (with hysterical clapping) and deep, snotty, sobbing (with frequent enthusiastic mucus snuffle-ups). I'd love to hook her up with the guy who was sat beside me for I Am Legend. They'd have three-headed babies.

Mixed Nuts

Friday was somewhat of a social experiment; I fancied getting bladdered in style and good company so I arranged a heady mixture of bloggers, friends, family members and flatmates to provide my evening's entertainment.

Thomas St. was my first port of call, to congratulate my sister on her graduation - first class honours! - and to ponce around drinking cans in the square and pretend that I too am arty, when I am patently not; the truly arty had brought their own booze and were not forking out €4.50 a pop for cans of warm Budweiser from the bar. They were heading on to the salubrious McGruders (memories...) but I had other plans, so off I trolloped.

My enormously flouncy candy striped dress and holy communion style white pumps and cardigan combo were entirely fitting for the NCAD Graduate Show, slightly less appropriate for the stroll into town at scobie-o-clock on a Friday evening and wholly inappropriate (not to mention impractical) for squeezing past drunks and playing table ricochet in the narrow confines of Bowes on Fleet St. But vodka knocks the edge off embarrassment as easily as a net underskirt knocks drinks off tables, I find. We cosied in the corner snug until the kindly bar staff pleaded with us to let them go home at which point we, somewhat inevitably, barrelled into Doyles. And "danced". Though at least in Doyles there's the comfort of knowing that no matter how much damage the drinking has done to your motor skills, you will not be the sorriest creature on the floor. I believe his name was Matt, and he was from Australia.

Home then for "cocktails" (clear as gasoline, came in a pint glass) and "bacon sarnies" (I lied, I had no rashers. Annie had to make do with peanut butter and toast) where I spent some quality time on the balcony, talking to the seagulls. I saw the last of them off the premises at 4.30am, tiptoeing around the glass on the street ("but your bare feet go with your dress") and laughing at the taxi driver's face when he clocked the stuffed dog peeking out from the collar of Annie's jacket.

Asps and Asses' Milk

Over a Sunday afternoon vodka some weeks ago Annie told me she thought I was beautiful and asked if she could photograph me. Honestly, it's not as gay as it sounds. I agreed, because either she has extraordinarily good-looking friends or she has a very good eye for a flattering photograph, and I would very much like at least one picture of me that I can consider flattering. Knowing that I'm camera shy, she promised that it would be informal, no pressure.

Then we went for Friday night vodkas. And now I'm to be photographed in a bath of milk. The conversation as I remember it went a little something like this - "I'm gee-eyed." "No! You're doe-eyed!" "No, I'm gee-eyed." "No! You're doe-eyed!" "No, I'm gee-eyed..." (repeat ad nauseum). There were concerns about how much it will actually cost us to fill a bath with milk ("and it'll cover your hollywood!" exclaims Annie, not very reassuringly) and a worrying suggestion from Gimme that we could ask shopkeeps for their on-the-turn milk for free (I think he even offered to drive us around the shops).

We don't have a bathtub either.

Review: Mongol

Imagine a Mongolian version of Braveheart. The bit where he escapes by battering your man's face in with his stocks is good, though.

A Picture Of Me

I was so bored this afternoon that when I saw Billy's meme* I decided what ho, no-one's looking, I'll give it a bash! (because the voice in my head always sounds like a poor Irish impression of an upper-class Englishman. From the 19th century. I don't know why). The results were so dismaying I was moved to post about them. Sadly I lost the picture I had created in the process but thankfully I'm not quite suicidally bored enough to want to repeat the exercise. So I'll provide a brief description and you can fill in the blanks with your fertile imaginations.

The brief, in brief (and stolen from Billy):

• Type your answer to each of the questions below into Flickr Search.
• Using only the first page of results, pick one image.
• Copy and paste each of the URLs for the images into Big Huge Lab’s Mosaic Maker to create a mosaic of the picture answers.

His picture was interesting if a little rodent heavy, giving (I like to think) some clues to the man behind the charming blog. So I thought that as a treat for any curious readers I would do the same (because someone told me today that my readers are curious, and I think he meant curious about me, rather than that they're oddballs).

The questions:

1. What is your first name?
I answered, I got a picture of llamas. My first name is not Rosie, but nor is it Llama. Am already starting to think that this meme is, in fact, balls.
2. What is your favorite food right now?
Some picture of a random blonde. My answer was nothing to do with eating random blondes.
3. What high school did you go to?
I assumed that they meant secondary school, on answering "Coláiste Chilliain" I was rewarded with a picture of a fat man signalling to Batman with a large spotlight. Am beginning to think someone's taking the piss.
4. What is your favorite color?
Red. Not sepia.
5. Who is your celebrity crush?
Adrien Brody. Oh good. A photo of him. Am momentarily distracted.
6. What is your favourite drink?
Campari. Am momentarily distracted again.
7. What is your dream vacation?
Not Mars, or wherever the fuck that's a photo of.
8. What is your favourite dessert?
Crayons? I answered creme brulée!
9. What do you want to be when you grow up?
Not an unattractive middle aged man with acne scars and a mournful countenance.
10. What do you love most in life?
I'm not telling you what I did answer, but it was certainly not "a Tiger Moth Caterpillar".
11. What is one word that describes you?
I toyed with "tubby" because it's been that kind of day, and thought about "insecure" because I was feeling bad about "tubby", but eventually settled on "articulate". Photo of some bird lounging in the bath, smoking a fag, looking like she stepped straight out of a Roxy Music video.
12. What is your flickr name?
I don't have one, so I used Rosie Cheeks. It gave me a photo of a tattooed lady in a lime green bikini playing with a hula hoop.

So I kicked it and ran away. Memes are stupid.

*Each time I reread "I saw Billy's meme" the six year old inside me sniggers and turns red.

More On Ducks

I tried to photograph the newest duckies on the 'nal on my way into work today but the little fuckers kept moving, and I have neither the patience nor the skill to capture them for your amusement. They're very cute and fluffy though, and it tickles me that even the most determined pedestrian commuters slow down and coo at the sight of them. I'm none too fond of powerwalking cunts that wear special-needs MBT runners with their corporate clobber and scratch eyeballs out with golf brollies on wet days, but this may go some way to proving that they're human. It gives them something in common with the homeless folk who while away their days down by the water, drinking cans and tossing bread in to feed the fowl. I passed one guy last week who was sitting there in the sunshine, smoking a roll-up and drinking a tin of cider, greeting anyone who crossed his path and looking very happy with the world. He had the rest of the sixpack in a bag on a string, cooling in the water. Never before have I been jealous of a man with such a bad case of herpes and a strong odour of wee.

The moorhen on La Peniche II has also become a proud mammy this week. She stays obligingly still for photos but unfortunately she does so while sitting on her chicks (who apparently only see the light of day when their daddy comes in for the shift change) so I have nothing to show you. Take my word for it that they're cute - like little spraypainted ducklings. The batch of babba mallards down by Charlemont bridge have morphed into ducky teenagers - their adult plumage breaking through like a bumfluff 'tache, they're still found huddled together in a cosy, sleepy heap in the morning.

This post isn't really going anywhere. Sorry about that. I just like ducks, is all.

Review: Sex And The City

OMFG! It, like, totally lived up to my expectations. I reckon if I was a SATC character I'd be, um, Carrie!!! Because she writes, and I'm, like, a writer. Though people are mean about her and say that she's vapid and looks like a horse and I'd be totally upset if people thought that I was vapid and looked like a horse. Maybe I'm more like Charlotte. She's pretty. I'm definitely not like Miranda (I think she might be a lesbian). And the shoes!!! OMFG!!!

*sigh*

I wouldn't know, I didn't get to see the fucking thing. When the Leitrim Lady and I arrived the foyer was swarming with distressed and damp looking budgies who had obviously showed up, like us, not expecting every single screening to be sold out. Now I'm home, she and the Swede are in their jammies watching Pirates of the Caribbean II and I'm, well, blogging about it.

I need to start drinking midweek again.

Nice Weather For Ducks

Not nice weather for stupid Rosie who wore neither shoes nor a cardigan (never mind her pretty raincoat) to work.

Thousands Will Be Disappointed*

I'm afraid I will be welshing on my date with Spencer Tunick. I've got a better offer - I'm flying to Bilbao on the 19th and home again via Biarritz on the 26th. It's just as well, really, I haven't managed to lose that two stone I had planned to lose and my Hollywood is still, well, very Hollywood (for some reason this makes me feel about eleventy million times more exposed than simply being naked).

So no nudie photos of me masquerading as art shall be posted on my blog. You may breathe a sigh of relief/groan in abject disappointment. Annie is planning to capture my radiant beauty in a photograph soon, however, and if her talented hands make me look half presentable I might post her effort here instead. Just so that we have something to look forward to.

*Or possibly just a few of you. There's really no accounting for taste.

Keeping Score

It's a bank holiday Tuesday after a long and sunny weekend, and I'm back in work (-1). My proffered olive branch is still being met with a cold shoulder (-1) and I can't post about it because the post ends up reading "fuck you and the horse you rode in on" no matter how reasonably I try to phrase it (-1). On another matter entirely, I sent a snotty email and was replied to in kind (-1) which is probably no more or less than either of us deserves. Ho hum.

But in other news today; I got an email from a pretend friend suggesting pints of Campari and orange juice (+1) and I got a phonecall from another pretend friend who is experimenting with being "nice" (+1) and reckoned cheering me up might be a good place to start. Buoyed by jolly conversation I ventured out to get some lunch; the lady in the shop across the road got the ridey till boy to make my sandwich (+1) and then she gave me a stack of free magazines (+1) because "we only send the covers back to them an all an annyway". As I whiled away the afternoon flicking through photographs of fat, spotty and sweaty celebrities (+1) I got an email back from Red Pepper Productions, addressing all of my concerns about the programme they've asked me to take part in and showing admirable restraint and humour in the face of my ripping the piss out of them (+1).

In conclusion: Fuck you, Karma. The margin may be tight, but I'm winning.

Pet Cemetery

[Alt. title: A walk on the Powerscourt Estate, Co. Wicklow on a Bank Holiday Sunday]

The Wup is possibly the coolest name I have ever heard of for a dog, made all the cooler by the fact that this little guy lived in the early 1900s. How street was he? The Urban Dictionary hadn't even been invented yet. My dogs are named Alpha (the firstborn) and Lila (because that is her name) and I bet The Wup would've kicked their nancy asses.

A note of bitterness here, it seems that Jyp and Tim, though faithful friends for 12 years, were killed on March 6th, 1905. Chasing sheep? Stealing pies from windowsills? Spreading rabies? Perhaps a tragic boating accident. Somebody was pretty fucking upset about it, that's for sure. I imagine a teenager in mourning being charged with the inscription, sending his parents on a guilt trip for all eternity. Or for as long as there are people like me visiting Jyp and Tim's grave, at least.

Tommy and his wife raise all kinds of questions for me. Was there a wedding with tea and cucumber sandwiches afterwards? Did she wear a veil? And a garter? Why was she added as the afterthought when she'd died a full ten years before Tommy? Is she in there at all? Magic?

Eugenie and Princess; both seriously overachieving cows, I think you'll agree. It bothers the shit out of me though that their stats aren't measurable - sure, Eugenie had lots of little cows and must have had massive udders, but Princess won two prizes. Who was the better cow?

And finally, one for precious little girls everywhere. I never had any truck with that Black Beauty, My Little Pony shit as a kid; the only horses I knew were the piebalds that occasionally wandered into our garden when the Ballyfermot cowboys let them roam untethered. So I was unmoved, but hopefully this one moves posh kids to tears.

There's Nothing Quite Like...

...dirt under your fingernails to remind you that

(a) you're back in Kildare for the weekend.
(b) your rubber arms saw you banjoed in the Naas Court Hotel. Again.
(c) your brother didn't leave the key out as promised.
(d) you've been rooting in the flowerbeds for 15 minutes looking for the key that he forgot to leave out.
(e) you've been throwing lumps of said flowerbeds at his window (any window) in an effort to wake the cunt... and
(f) you've decided to wreak revenge by leaving mucky, buttery fingerprints all over his laptop. Serves him right.

Though he'll likely be fine in the morning.