What Others Were Feeling Like Today #17

1951

One wonders how a nation's intelligence resists the radio. Moreover, it does not resist. The radio is a faucet of foolishness. The only thing I can bear listening to is the sports reporting. The high-speed precision of the speakers. They are forbidden stupidity. Which exists only in the fact that some men are kicking a ball around a field and the whole world is excited by the fact.

Cesare Pavese

It's been over a year since I put one of these posts up, and the previous entry was also from Cesare Pavese (whom I had never heard of before). One can only assume that sixty years ago Cesare and his contemporaries didn't have to suffer through the phenomenon known as 'the co-commentator'. Driving home the other day I caught the end of Liverpool v Swansea City on Today FM. As the home side pushed for a winner Dirk Kuyt thought he had scored, only for it to be ruled out by the offside flag. "Ooooooohhh, I don't know about that," piped up Ronnie Whelan " and it's the female official over the far side, too, so let's just see if she's got it right."

She had, though that is neither here nor there. Being female is not an obstacle to understanding the offside rule, having it explained to you by someone who doesn't understand it either, is. I can forgiven the flagrant abuse of grammar and meaning by football pundits, we've all got used to it. But the sexism makes me squirm for you, Ronnie, you faucet of foolishness.

sometimes i feel like i'm over and out

It is one of the oddities of Dublin life that if one is fortunate enough to live close enough to one's place of work to only have to pay a €1.20 fare on the bus every morning then there is no other way to pay one's fare but by having that €1.20 counted out in exact change.* This morning, I finally succumbed to the eternal battle with change by not having any of the fucking stuff. So I hopped into Freddie's cornershop on my way to the bus stop and bought an 80 cent packet of chewing gum and a €1 scratchcard with a twenty, providing me with the requisite change. I was still on time for the bus and my scratchie showed three little €2 symbols, meaning I had covered the cost of the scratchie, endowed myself with minty fresh breath and netted a tidy profit of 20 cent.

Some days I swear I am invincible.


*Unless, of course, there is. I am open to correction on this.

October, quickly

I turned 30, I went to Edinburgh, I listened to the taxi driver banging on authoritatively on the way to the airport about how Edinburgh had been bombed to the ground during the war, though this was patently untrue.
I drank a lot of whisky, I drank a lot of whiskey, I hated football and preferred rugby, I hated rugby and preferred football, I came in a cup, I bonded with my new almost-niece, I thought about the meaning of legacy.
I disturbed myself by enjoying the Qathafy* videos, I shuddered at every sight of Martin McGuinness, I did a bit of yoga, I felt better for it.
I saw Drive, I wondered what was wrong with the people who didn't like it, I didn't read much I liked, I saw dEUS, I  rocked out gently whilst discovering whole new ways to hate Ticketmaster.
I felt I had to seek out my own information on the referenda, I remained unsure, I retained a healthy distrust for anything the government try to sneak through, I wondered whether the torrential rain and flooding was all just another cunning plan to kill Dana. I then remembered that she may be one of the few remaining people who entirely believes that what we call 'an act of God' really is an act of God. The floods were really only meant for the gays and the abortionists. I realised everyone would vote in a Fianna Fáiler reality TV star anyway.
I resented the impending time change, looked forward to November anyway, I vowed to write something proper then, or at least indulge in such frippery more regularly.


*There are about 150 different ways to transliterate that name, which makes me wonder why people got so vexed by the Irish Times plumping for 'Gadafy'. My Arabic speaking students tend to say that the way I've used is how they would write it. You would be wrong to quibble with them on this.

"Well, it's not exactly the backyard, but it'll do"*

"Hello, I'd like to make an appointment, please."
"And what kind of an appointment is that?"

I swear I can hear a smirk in her voice.
"semen analysis"
"Sorry?"
"Semen analysis, fucking semen analysis, OK?"

 

 Go here if video won't play.

There is not, that I am currently aware of, anything wrong with my semen, but Rosie's polycystic ovaries and the havoc that they wreak mean that we are attending an infertility clinic soon. I find it difficult to talk about, but the only thing worse than talking about something like this is not talking about it. They tell me that men feel overwhelmed with gratitude after they realise the suffering their wives have gone through to bear them a child. I already owe Rosie a massive debt for the physical and emotional nausea she has to get through every day from the vicious medication that is supposed to give us a chance. Having to get up early in the morning one day to have my goo pored over by some dudes is a piffling contribution, and the only tangible one I have had to make thus far.

I will not lie to you, good people, the limits of my knowledge of the workings of semen analysis extend as far as the above scene from Naked Gun 33 1/3.(It was harder than you'd imagine to track that clip down, and funnier than you remember to watch.) Tragically, it turns out you do the donating bit no more than an hour before your appointment, and bring it in with you in a special little cup that I'll have to go in and collect from them some time beforehand. You'd think a sandwich bag or a bit of tupperware would do 'em. The lady on the phone did say they had a special room that I could make an appointment for, but, in a fluster, I declined. I couldn't then call back and say that I'd changed my mind about their special room, could I? I wonder what the people who work there call it? I'd go with 'Spunk Space', but that may very well be why I don't work in a fertility clinic.

They also send a letter that tells me I'm not to ejaculate for 2-5 days before. What the fuck are they thinking, giving a bloke a three day margin of choice? So yeah, next week, forty eight hours and one minute after the tetchy beginning of a fiddlin'and humpin' ban I'll be waking up, cracking one out, and bolting it across the rush houred city with a sticky cup in my pocket. Light a candle for me, won't you?

*The second option for this post's title was 'Juan Kerr Does Plenty'. Third, I suppose, was 'Seminal'. Fourth, now that I think of it would be 'Oh, Comely' because, y'know, it has 'come' in the title and I do love Neutral Milk Hotel so very much. Should anyone reading this happen to have an extra ticket for Jeff Mangum in Whelan's in November, let me know. I'll pay you. In cash. Or spunk. As you wish, really.

you, me, we'll work it out!

Latest aborted posts:

One about 9/11, with added eastern Europeans and infidelity. And sliced pan.

One about our cat that was somehow supposed to move seamlessly into a poignant meditation on the Zanzibar ferry disaster. There were seams.

One where I pondered whether I cared more about 9/11, the Zanzibar ferry disaster, the cat, or eastern Europeans.

One on why it might be OK to be a little bit of a racist.

One about why I hate seeing my brother suffering through a break-up. Turns out it's for much the same reasons as everyone else hates seeing their brother suffering through a break-up.

One in which I declare my candidacy for the Irish presidency (initially planned back in the days when Bertie made noises about running, but revived by the notion of Martin 'you only think I'm a cunt of a terrorist because you're a cunt of a west Brit' McGuinness now being in the running. The little cunt of a terrorist. (If he's feeling litigious, I totally got hacked, right?)

One where I ruminated on the very nature of confidence, only to realise that I entirely lacked the ability to write it.

not with the fire in me now

You are walking home, midway between slovenly and respectable. And you realise that this, this village and this house feel as much like home as any of the 13 (or so) have. You will be thirty soon, you will be an uncle-in-law even sooner. You see more and more of your friends and you make new ones and you read good things all the time. Your mood can always be lifted by music, as is required. It is hard, at this precise moment, to think of a different step you might ever have taken. You are growing accustomed to the glow of your room in the morning. Summer is ending, but it feels like it is only breaking out.

new adventures in advertising

One of the greatest benefits of digital television is the ability to pause and resume when you like. Not just so you can go off and take a shite without missing the lovely Mary Kennedy easing you into a story about cheese carpentry in Bagenalstown, but so you can leave it for ten minutes or so and then be able to fast-forward through all the ad breaks on whatever show you're watching. No more Pat Shortt singing some bollocks about something or other, no more Simon Delaney and Craig Doyle selling you everything, no more shit McDonald's ads that only serve to suggest that the future is nothing but manky food, mutants and morons.

It all feels positively utopian, quite frankly. I was starting to wonder if there's some sort of catch to it all, as though my refusal to watch these ads mean I'll have to suffer advertising in some other way. I'm soft on it in many ways, recognising its financial necessity in certain contexts. There are, for example, some bloggers who I appreciate need to feature ads on their sites in order to do what they do to the highest possible standards. So I click on those ads from time to time and, even though I've no intention of buying anything, dilly-dally wherever they've landed me for a while - just so the corporate bastards don't recognise that my click-through was executed without even a morsel of consumer intent. I also understand that TV funds itself through advertising, though I wish a state-funded station like RTÉ would be a little more BBC and a lot less ITV when it comes to poxy commercials.

Turns out that if you've found a way of circumventing telly advertising then the cinema is where the fuckers get you back. Captive in your big seat under a pound of popcorn and a three litre bucket of coke they will show you the gammiest, gratingest ads for about ten minutes before the trailers even start. They will show you one of those hideously unfunny Red Bull ads, and some weird fucker behind you will chuckle at it. Sometimes they'll show you a bizarre propaganda film for the EU, filled with the kind of sunshine and cornfields rhetoric that Pravda would have rejected for not being subtle enough. If you're anything like me you'll start getting thoroughly tetchy and take to groping your wife for distraction.

But at this point, fifteen to twenty minutes after the advertised starting time of the film, the trailers begin and you relax, because trailers make sense and are often what you'll base your next choice of film on. What you won't be familiar with, unless you've been to see Super 8 (or perhaps others) in Cineworld is Take That's cunty heads popping up on screen to introduce their new shit video to their new shit song from some new shit take on The Three Musketeers. Whereupon you think to yourself, "Why am I being forced to watch music videos? I didn't really even know music videos existed anymore, since MTV stopped showing them and went full retard on scripted reality shows instead. They're charging everyone about a tenner to be in here and another tenner for their snacks, should we really have to sit here and take this? Will I just slip out and go for a piss while this is on? You took a piss just before you came in, she'll just think you're masturbating if you go again now. Shit, why did I tell her Mark Owen was my favourite one, I feel a little gay now. Quick, grab her tit and then smile disarmingly so you get away with it. Nicely played."

This is what happens when advertising pounces in whole new ways and pushes us to the limit, my friend: innocent breasts get grabbed and ladies question the sanctity of certain vows they have made. But I believe there is a solution. Among the chin-stroking and musing over the causes of the London riots last week most commentators seemed to overlook Heidegger's trenchant maxim of Dickheads just gonna be dickheads, y'all and leapt into notions that rampant consumerism has led to a culture whereby kids just have to have blingin' trainers - be it by hook, crook or petrol bomb. So the only solution to my mind (and the mind of an Irish 29 year-old bloke who likes a bit of early Dizzee Rascal is exactly the kind of mind that should be consulted) is to ban advertising outright. Just fucking all of it. We'd all  shout at the telly less and go to the cinema more even though we could download films for free, we could put poems and pictures of flowers on buses instead, riots would be averted as teenagers all over the world  learn to just be satisfied with their lot, and mammary glands would be at least 27% less pawed. There is no downside.

From the excellent Photoshoplooter