Beasts of no nation?

When I was eleven or twelve some knacker walked up to me on the street, said something in Cant that I didn't understand, and punched me in the stomach. It was ideal, really: it didn't hurt very much but it allowed me not to feel bad about referring to Travellers as 'knackers', and to lustily join in with every badmouthing of them that I was every privy to. I learned quickly that, despite everyone and their dog understanding the term to be pejorative, it was nearly always completely socially accepted. Usage in front of teachers and other adults would, at worst, be met with a mild frown - the same one you might get if you said 'crap'.

I don't know how many times it took being punched by settled people for me to write that one childish tap in the gut off as part of life, rather than symbolic of the values of an entire ethnicity. I don't know exactly when I grew out of using the term 'knackers' (I suspect it was shamefully recently), but I did.

Last Saturday I read a piece in the Irish Times about the rugby players Denis Leamy and Rory Best. A puff piece, in fact, that had little to do with sport and a lot to do with the fact that the aforementioned are now 'Bushmill Brothers' (there's a remarkably similar piece in The Examiner - it seems that the edict from the marketing people was to use words like 'brothers' and 'bond' prominently, and mention the brand name at least once. Tacky. One can only hope Messrs. Thornley and Lewis got a nice case of whiskey or five for their trouble). But what was jarring was not the thinly-veiled-infomercial nature of the piece, but the part where Rory Best is asked about his BFF's playing style and says he is "a complete knacker on the pitch, as you can imagine."

Does Rory Best mean that Denis Leamy is in the habit of finding old horses on the pitch and turning them into dog food and glue? He would undoubtedly claim that he's using the word in the other sense - that of a person behaving anti-socially or thuggishly. Some say that it's an entirely separate meaning, with no reference to Travellers at all. Bock does (or did, I'll allow for the fact that that post is three years old). But most of the times I've heard people use the phrase "some knacker..." in the middle of an anecdote they will inevitably have to clarify whether they are referring to a scumbag-knacker or, you know, a knacker-knacker. The etymology of any term is a complicated thing, but there seems little doubt that its origins are connected to Travellers. The term is still heavily connected to them, in my experience.

Rory Best has always seemed like a decent enough skin, but he might want to think again about publicly using a term that is highly offensive to an entire culture, even if a lot of people use it freely. They used 'nigger' freely, too, once. If he must use it in the context of Bushmills Brotherly Bonding Banter, then perhaps the Irish Times might think a little more carefully about publishing it, and potentially perpetuating its use among the thousands who will have read that article. Twenty percent would deny citizenship to them, remember, lest we claim that Ireland doesn't have a problem with Travellers. Perhaps they'll redact it later, as they do.

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

On Divorce Settlements

Not me and Rosie, mind. No, we had what could be considered our first ever row on Sunday after a few afternoon pints later led to a temporary mutual lack of perspective on housework, but I reckon we'll be able to avoid calling Lionel Hutz in just yet. I refer to the parting of ways between us and Eircom Broadband. €216 it'll cost us to be shot of them.

I remember when they were good old Telecom Éireann and the only ways they could fuck you up were by swallowing your coins in their banjaxed phoneboxes, or charging you extra if calls on your home phone lasted longer than three minutes. Then they got all supercorporate on us, dropped that pesky fada and floated themselves on the stock exchange, meanwhile convincing a shitload of fools to buy shares in them at a heavily infalted price. My family were amongst those fools, though we didn't get burned half as badly as some people did. But yeah, speculate on the stock market and there's every chance things might just go tits up.

What's not so hot is charging people around fifty quid a month for a service they simply don't get. Whinging about your broadband speed sounds an awful lot like what supercilious fuckers would call a First World Problem (blogging about it most certainly is), but getting vexed over consistently not getting what you're paying for strikes me as pretty justified. I lack the patience to detail the shoddiness of their service and their customer care, but take a look at their reviews. A lot of people are left spitting feathers, in what mostly stand out as unusually articulate expressions of internet rage. And why not? They've thrown thousands of euro and thousands of hours of customer hold-time at the incompetent cunts between them. I feel like we have too. Pay peanuts and you get monkeys. Pay €48 a month and you get the dimmest bunch of morons you're likely to find this side of a Kid Rock concert.

David, my favourite of the many technical support staff we dealt with, told me that we'd have to sign a new twelve month contract if we wanted a replacement for the modem that their technicians (incorrectly, as it turned out) told us was the reason why we hadn't had continuous connection for more than twenty minutes for the past month. I could sign that contract, or I could pay Eircom €47 for a new one or, y'know, "just buy your own in Currys". When I pressed David on why exactly I might have to do that he said (and I quote verbatim here, seriously) "Uuuuuuhhh......deregulation ummmmmmmmmmm increased competition and stuff............................................................................................uhhhhh, yeah..." He then left me on hold with squalling feedback in my ear for ten minutes before realising that oh, I was still under contract, as I had said. Fair balls, David, I'd turn up to work stoned off my fucking face too if I could get away with it.

If Eircom were a spouse they'd be attentive at first, before becoming distant, philandering, and then downright abusive. You might just be able to prove in a court of law that this was the case, but it'd take more time and emotional energy than you really have, so you just pay them some money to fuck off and stop annoying you.

"My friend had a hip operation and..." / Meeting People is Cheesy

A change of working scenery, if not of employer, has reintroduced me to the devilry that is small-talk. New EFL teachers, nervous before their first ever paid class, are the worst for it; simpering and clucking and cracking awful jokes before they wait to get started. They don't know each other and they think they don't know what's in store for them.

I've lost all tolerance for it as I've gotten older - preferring to say nothing than to talk utter fluff. It's not the fluff that's the problem, mind, it's the scutter that comes out of your mouth for want of something better to say. 90 percent of conversations are nought but fluff, but they do at least tend to be couched in your own terms. On starting a new secondary teaching job a few years back I was small-talking with another new teacher, who told me he was from Newbridge. "You'll be worth your weight in silver to this place, then", was my side-splitting response . Oh yes it was. (Context for non-Irish readers here, should you wish). I still shrivel and die a little inside when I think of that, but that guy's been kind enough never to remind me of that, and he now knows I'm not quite that much of a fucking sack.

It can happen even with people you've known for a good while. A good mate of mine came back from a year's travelling and told irritating, shit-awful jokes for a couple of weeks before he got back to normal. I'm still not sure if he was just feeling a bit nervous and out of place being back home, or if he thought this material had played well among all the back-packers he had encountered - too polite around new people to do anything but chuckle politely. Wedding Table Syndrome, to so very many of us.

But yeah, my stock of patience for it is running perilously thin, given that lifetimes are just packed full of awkward making nice with strangers. "I do this, and I live there and yeah, I've heard there are loads of nice pubs in Clonmel and no, I suppose Simon Cowell probably isn't really like that in person, yeah I've heard the family name but I don't think I've met him - Wicklow's a bigger place than you realise, you know."

Fuck all that, I think I'd rather people just thought I was aloof.

Though there is always the nuclear option of going up to my new colleagues and launching straight into a bawdy anecdote involving casual sex or soft drugs, giving them some unanticipated physical contact and perhaps even dropping in a track or two from the '30 Greatest Paedo Jokes' album that's generally on heavy rotation in my head. It's what they'd end up getting somewhere down the line anyway.

I trust I can rely on your vote?

From the excellent Wheel Spinning Hamster Dead

It's weeks like this when you feel like you really have to write something on your blog about Irish current affairs. I never quite know what to say. We know that we have been let down by our government, we know that life is about to get financially harder for just about everyone, we know that the next generation are likely to still be stifled by things the current administration has done.

We also know that there will be a general election before too long.

This should represent a simple opportunity to kick Fianna Fáil and the Greens out of government and, with any luck, reduce their political influence to that of a sparrow farting in the breeze. But you wouldn't know, not in Ireland. Or perhaps, with 17% of the polled electorate still saying that they would, even at what must surely be their lowest ever point, vote for Fianna fucking Fáil. Sure, throw in a bit of spin, some canny canvassing and some snazzy posters and they could probably have that figure up to 30% or higher within a month. And that, with the vagaries of the proportional representation system, could amount to them getting back into government. Just imagine it. A vote of confidence for their lies and their conniving and their startling incompetence. A slap on the back for their slavering alcoholism. And a mandate (a real one this time) for their four year plans and whatever other havoc they might like to wreak on the country.

A sentence you may hear a lot in the forthcoming weeks is "Ah, those politicians are all as bad as each other." People who say this fall into two categories:

1. Those whose unspoken follow-up sentence is "So I won't bother my hole voting or attempting to influence things in any way."

2. Those whose unspoken follow-up sentence is "So I'll carry on voting Fianna Fáil just like I've always done. Just like my parents and grandparents do."

The election, and the decisive change that this country needs, will be decided by how many of each category there are. And, sad to say, it won't much be influenced by what we read or write on blogs. There have been some excellent examples of articulate rage floating around the internet this week, in the usual places as well as interesting new blogs like Rise Like Lions! , but it is not going to be the blogosphere (or whatever other disgusting term you might have for it) where the decisive battles are fought for this election. It would be easy to gaze around and see like-minded souls everwhere; a critical mass of people who want this government to become one of those anomalies that history students will ponder in the future and think "How the fuck could people ever have put up with them?" I've been reading a wide range of blogs for three years now and I've never seen so much as one comment indicating any level of support for Fianna Fáil. Not one. But the average punter doesn't read blogs. Most of my friends don't, my family don't. Tonnes of twenty and thirty-somethings are still far more concerned with reality TV than reality. Without wishing to talk in very broad strokes, I don't think the elderly (the most committed of voting demographics) are checking in on Twenty Major's polemics with any great regulaity, either. Which means not many people are seeing stuff like this. Which means not enough people are seeing the important work that the likes of The Story are doing.

We can contnue to entertain ourselves in a kind of "No, I hate Fianna Fáil even more than you do!" kind of a way, but we might as well carry on being frivolous because it is surely only preaching to the choir. Standing outside your local polling centre hectoring every young apathete (I may have invented a word there) to get in and vote, and chiding "Don't do anything stupid, now, dear" to every OAP going in might prove to be a more effective tactic. Blogs will continue to provide a useful point of catharsis in these enraging times, but it might be foolhardy to expect much more.

feelgood friday

I have, despite being told my job was up a week or so ago, been given something of an indefinite stay of execution at work, and carry on for the time being. I could use the respite of unemployment right now, if I'm honest. The only real time off I've had since February was nine days in which to get married twice, interview for a better, ultimately unattainable job, and go on honeymoon. Mornings are a hazy fugue at the best of times, but these days they're met with a new level of melodrama. "I don't think I can do this much longer" I croaked to Rosie as I shambled out of bed on Tuesday. I was tired and had a mild to middling headcold, you see. My wife, who gets up earlier, works a longer day, does a more important job, commutes much further and gets paid a lower hourly rate for the pleasure gives me a hug and makes sympathetic noises when I make these statements. I must stretch her patience fiercely at such times. I've passed on the headcold to her, too.

Still, in these DJ-wanking budget-looming student-rioting garda-bashing garda-retaliatory-bashing red paint-slinging days it can be difficult to feel too fucking chipper in the morning. What we need is a song by a bunch of Canuckistanis from thirteen years ago to capture the national mood perfectly.




Do give it a listen, if you can have ten minutes to devote to full-on gloom, and feel free to mumble along apocalyptically with the opening monologue and somehow feel a little better:

the car's on fire and there's no driver at the wheel
and the sewers are all muddied with a thousand lonely suicides
and a dark wind blows
the government is corrupt
and we're on so many drugs
with the radio on and the curtains drawn
we're trapped in the belly of this horrible machine
and the machine is bleeding to death
the sun has fallen down
and the billboards are all leering
and the flags are all dead at the top of their poles

it went like this:
 
the buildings tumbled in on themselves
mothers clutching babies picked through the rubble
and pulled out their hair
the skyline was beautiful on fire
all twisted metal stretching upwards
everything washed in a thin orange haze
i said: "kiss me, you're beautiful -
these are truly the last days"
you grabbed my hand and we fell into it
like a daydream or a fever
we woke up one morning and fell a little further down -
for sure it's the valley of death
i open up my wallet
and it's full of blood

Yeah.

A Chugging on Wicklow Street

Hey man, how's it going? Do you have a moment for Concern? Could I ask you a couple of questions?"

"I'll deal with these one at a time, if I may. Firstly, it's going alright, though I kinda need a piss after all the coffee I drank this morning and, frankly, my balls are sweaty to the point of discomfort in this weather. You know how it is.

Secondly, if I may wilfully misinterpret your question for the sake of a blog post, I have many moments for concern. I am concerned by the continued existence of reality television, I am concerned by the closing-in of the seasons, for I believe I may very well be a seasonally disaffected man. I am concerned that my fellow man is more preoccupied with Bosnian puppy-drowners than Bosnian war criminals. I am concerned that the only notable response to a British war criminal in our midst came from a few Sinn Féin nutjobs. That Mental Morrissey continues to be given a platform. I am concerned that with the dampening of Dublin comes the drying up of furriners, and that, on any given Friday, I may be dismissed from my employment with a shrug. I am concerned that I will take my anxieties about unemployment out on my wife. She doesn't care about money, but sometimes I'd love for her to not even have to not care. I am concerned that slowly, gently we will start to trust our government again, that we will vote the bastards in again, that we are falling victim to an indefinable propaganda machine as effective as Fox News.

To take your question as you meant it, no I do not have a moment for Concern. I am on my way to HMV to try to spend a gift card on whatever gems might still lurk in there beneath layers of Jedward and Adam Sandler. I am concerned by the rapid deterioration of that shop, too. And anyway, I've been Concerned enough to give your lot 12.70 a month since it was still a tenner in old money. It made me feel like an ethical student and I think I thought it would make the girl on Talbot Street who signed me up fancy me. Tell me, man, are you Concerned enough to waive your wage for even one hour? What do you get, about 12.70?"

Can you ask me a couple of questions? You've already asked three, fuck off."

You're toxic, I'm slipping under

"It's not fair!" Words you haven't uttered in years, now directed at two Leinster Hockey Branch referees on the occasion of your team being dumped unceremoniously out of the cup by a team bolstered beyond all recognition by a load of illegally unregistered players from a much higher division. A team whose legitimate side you had strolled to a 6-0 victory over in the league just a couple of weeks earlier. Yet another example of the skulduggery that dogs lower-level hockey to a surprising extent. Not fair at all, but your team are slowly learning how to play that game. Come to think of it, it isn't really fair that you're a hockey player at all, being a refugee in its middle-class bosom for over a decade now. Forced out out of football - a game you're much better at - as a delicate 15 year-old by one too many taunts of "Proddy bastard" from your own team-mates. And they laugh at you, these elder gentlemen, much as you do when teenagers approach you with the same whinge when confronted with a punishment they don't feel they deserve. Life's not fair, lads, I'd kick you up the hole too, if The Man'd let me.
The words come rising to your throat again in an acid bubble tonight, as you sit down with one of your best mates to watch the football over a few pints and he comes clean about who his new employer is. AnglofuckingIrishcuntingBank, of all people. The ones costing the state about 30 billion euro; you may have heard mention of them recently. Good to know they're hiring, innit? Loath to hear too much about the bastards, you fill him in on my recent own employment status. Which is that, after more than four months without a speck of paid work, things have been a bit better recently, a few TEFL hours and a bit of secondary subbing work making things feel a lot better. You don't bother spitting in his pint when he says that he's glad the hourly rate for  subbing has come down a bit, as it was too high. You don't bother pointing out that it would take his new friend Seán FitzPatrick a full 1200 years as a full-time secondary teacher to pay back the debts the government reckon he won't be able to get back to them. You just let him get the next round in and you sit and watch your team take a hiding with an odd mixture of glumness and awe and you think that it's also not fair having to play possibly the best club side in the world with five of your cast-iron starters missing. Trying to counter  Lionel Messi, the best player in the world, with Mickael Silvestre is most likely a contravention of the UN Declaration of Human Rights. .You console yourself with the fact that at least the horrible little banker fuck beside you is a Liverpool fan, so he knows something of pain. And a job's a job and a mate's a mate, right?
Right.

he did make some observations

Having a bonsai tree really is like having a child, a puppy or syphilis: you have to bring it fucking everywhere. And so it was that Stella joined Rosie and I on a week-long jaunt to the west of Ireland, where we indulged in our customary pastimes of walking a bit, grumbling at the rain, reading a bit, watching DVDs, gorging ourselves like sows with tapeworms and cooing at each other a lot. It was precisely like that Discover Ireland ad, especially the bit with the couple looking affluent and aroused in Westport. We also flew (yeah, flew) to Inis Mór like motherfucking rockstars. More about all that another time, perhaps.

I was planning on throwing in a few grumbles into this post of odds and ends, as it's been a while since I've used the 'gripes' tag. Then Holemaster shows up in my feed-reader with a worthy list.
To his complaints I add:

People who won't switch their headlights on before the sun sets. Try driving down the M50 in a driving rainstorm with the backwash from a truck obscuring everything and tell me you wouldn't notice the fucker in a silver Audi cutting in front of you just a split second sooner if they had their lights on.

Bohemian Rhapsody. Tonight I sat through all two and a half hours of Channel 4's unfathomably unfunny Comedy Gala. It climaxed, like a sixteen year-old jizzing his pants, with one-trick pony Lee Evans performing his one trick, sweatily, to the tune of Bohemian Rhapsody. And I realised that that song, far from being the 'greatest song of the twentieth century' that it is so often feted as, is a bloated monstrosity of a yoke that should have been left alone to enjoy its Wayne's World based resurrection and then banned from public consumption. Think about it: you don't like it half as much as you've been told you do, do you?

Overuse of the word 'rant' on the internet. There is a tendency among bloggers to preface and/or conclude any strong statement of opinion with a caveat along the lines of "I hope you'll excuse this rant", or "Don't mind me, I'm just ranting". It seems almost apologetic - anticipating the fact that some fucker will come along and take offence at something you've said. If your 'rant' is in any way blog-related you can be absolutely certain that someone will take offence, and will probably read far more into your words than was ever there. It happens. if you have something to say that may cause a few snarks then write it, read over it, sleep on it if needs be, then if you stand by everything you say then publish the fucking thing and don't use dismissive words like 'rant' for your own thoughts unless that is truly how it reads, in which case delete it. Or call it a rant, by which you might as well type "I'm not sure I mean this at all, I'm just not thinking right now."

And now, to close on an upbeat note, two splendid blogs that have recently come to my attention: This Limbo and Conor Creighton. Both well worth a click and a bit of your time. And Jennie, for fuck's sake, if you haven't already been round there.

Chancing my arm, biting my lip

Things people say to staff in the Irish Cancer Society shop:


"I'm buying three of these shirts, I should get a discount."

"€1.50 for that? I'll give you €1.20 for it."
(Proceeds to pay with a €50 note.)

"Could you not throw that one in for free? Sure yiz get all your stuff for free anyway."

"30 cent for The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, brilliant."
"I think we have another of her books out in the back, will I get it for you?"
"Please."
(upon returning) "That's 40 cent for that one, please."
"Oh, it's dearer?"

(To the manager)
"I'm not waiting till Saturday to buy that figurine in the window display, I want it now. I'm calling the head office to make a complaint."


"There's a tiny stone missing from this brooch, can you give it to me for a fiver instead of 7.50?"
"It's 7.50 because there's a stone missing, it's worth at least 40 otherwise."
"I'll give you six for it if you'll wrap it up for me."

What this member of staff thinks about saying to these people every day:


"One in four of you will contract some kind of cancer one day, cuntos, one in four of you."
 

Blue! Blue! Blue!

You know you've been unemployed for far, far too long when you hear that 'mentalist' muppet Keith Barry on the radio banging on about how the Irish version of Deal or No Deal presented by his good self is starting soon on TV3 and you think "Hmmm...could be interesting."

Seasonally disaffected

I've always found bin day slightly depressing. There's something about sad little black sacks of rubbish sitting on the street waiting to be picked up that gets to me. And it's on Tuesday around here, and Tuesdays are notoriously crap anyway. Bin day on a pissing wet Tuesday is even worse, my heart sinks for the binmen who have to pick up these sodden sacks, rendered several litres heavier by those who don't tie up the sack properly.
And there was something very, very shitty about driving the girlfirend's car back from the car dentist (where it must presumably have received a crown, two fillings and a nice little handjob, if the price is right) and seeing the contents of a ripped bag strewn all over Mountpleasant Avenue. Human detritus all over the place, wet.

Gonna help him put asunder bad guys who like to loot and plunder

I wonder if in years to come we will look back on this point in history as the moment when Irish politics finally descended irretrievably into infantilism and lowest common denominator bullshit.

Ireland goes to the polls on Friday charged with making a decision that absolutely no-one seems to understand the ramifications of. It's very hard to when the people who are paid good money to do so seem incapable of anything other than lies and mud-slinging. Posters everywhere scream that the minimum wage could be cut to €1.84 if this treaty is allowed to pass. This always seemed unlikely and is, apparently, completely untrue. So why has it been allowed to stay on virtually every lamp-post in the country? Imagine I put up posters all over the country with a supposed fact like, say:

'IT IS WELL-KNOWN THAT BERTIE AHERN IS AN ENTHUSIASTIC PARTICIPANT IN DOMESTIC ABUSE. MANY PEOPLE WILL ATTEST TO HAVING SEEN CELIA LARKIN IN HOSPITAL AFTER HE BATTERED HER.'

My posters would be taken down pretty quickly, I'd imagine, and if anyone knew it was me who did them then I'd find myself in a bit of bother. This despite my fact being true, as far as I know. Yet a massive amount of misinformation is plastered absolutely everywhere right now. 'YES FOR JOBS', sounds massively disingenuous on Fianna Fáil's part, as there is really nothing there to suggest that more jobs would be created if we pass the treaty. 'We can't save the environment alone,' urge the Green Party, who apparently believe that passing the treaty is akin to shouting "Earth! Fire! Wind! Water! Heart!" and summoning Captain Planet. But even He couldn't take pollution down to zero at this stage.

Then there's Jim Corr. I think we all knew, deep down, that touring the world with three ridiculously good-looking girls, all of whom are your sisters, would be enough to send a man crazy. But it hasn't manifested itself in old Jimbo getting whacked off his tits on mushrooms and attempting to snog Ryan Tubridy live on TV, as we'd all hoped. Nope, Jim has gradually turned into a full-blown conspiracy theorist with a fine line in paranoia that'd make even David Icke blush:

You will meet people as I do occasionaly (sic.) who are unable to grasp the reality of what's going on. You may even meet them amongst family and friends but don't get frustrated, It is understandably inconceivable for some people to contemplate that some governments at the behest of their globalist puppeteers could be staging terrorist attacks against their own populations, particularly for people whose reality doesn't extend beyond the television set, which is being used highly effectively sometimes as a Weapon of Mass Deception. 

Jim has been "studying the New World Order", apparently, and is now running a website that can liberate us all. Step One is voting No to Lisbon, don't you know. I think I prefer it when has-been popstars try to make it as reality TV show judges.

I voted no last time round, simply because I wasn't happy with the way the treaty had been explained to the public. The wording on the ballot paper asks if you agree with the proposal to alter our constitution in order to ratify the treaty. I was undecided until the very last minute, when I realised that I couldn't possibly agree with the proposal, because I couldn't for the life of me understand what the treaty meant in real terms, and therefore couldn't  honestly agree to accept it. So although I wasn't necessarily dead against the Lisbon Treaty, I felt perfectly comfortable saying I disagreed with a proposal to accept it at that particular juncture.

But I helped to spawn a monster. The rest of my family had all voted Yes, and gave me constant earfuls (mostly playful, though not all) about my unwavering support for Declan Ganley and Mary-Lou McDonald. Sadly, these two festering pustules both treated the success of the No campaign as a personal victory. Both were, mercifully, soundly told to fuck off by most of the population when they tried to get elected to the European Parliament earlier this year. But they're back again, duplicitous and obnoxious as ever, still making it all about them. This time round they may just turn out to be the Yes campaign's deadliest weapon, as there can't be many people left who have any sort of stomach for them.

It gets complicated, though. One argument for voting Yes that is often put forward is that "all the major parties are for it, so it must be fine." I remain unconvinced by this, as it only means that one or two heads in each party have decided on their policy, and that all the other plods have to toe the line if they know which side their bread is buttered on. Many of our public representatives, I think it has been proven lately, are a corrupt and venal bunch, who know exactly how to get what they want. I hope I don't sound as though I'm sneaking into Jim Corr territory if I say that I honestly don't trust any of them, and find any claims they make to be looking out for the public's best interests to be suspect at best.

So how will I vote (or will I vote?) on Friday? Fuck knows.

 

Poke

"Are you on Facebook, Andrew?"

"No."

He looks at me like I've just started dry-humping a life-size Margaret Thatcher doll.

"Oh, right. That's the only way I keep in contact with people now."

I didn't kick him in the shins, but nor did I feel guilty any longer for having gotten his new baby's gender wrong at the start of our conversation.

i never let on that i was on a sinking ship

I was on the bus home from work today when I started to get all excited about the fact that College Green is becoming a bus-only zone during rush hour from Monday onwards.

"What crazy capers might I get up to with the extra five minutes or so this should afford me in work?" I wondered, largely quietly.

Then I remembered that, come Monday, I won't be going to work. I've been teaching English to foreign kids for the last four weeks. but tomorrow (Friday) is my last day. Spanish and Italian kids are, understandably enough, not coming over here in anything like the quantities they once were. You'll have noticed that you haven't had to step off the pavement quite so often to get around them. Finding out whether there may be sufficient amounts of them to get me work for August has proven an impossible task.

"We'll give you a buzz if any work comes up" is the standard line my colleagues and I are hearing. There was a time when the only people in Ireland who received such vague promises were the Lithuanians they hired to rub muck onto free-range eggs to make them more expensive. Now it's probably par for the course, whatever industry you're in.

And that's the thing about a recession, it's one hell of a leveller. So many people here got it into their heads that they were special, that they deserved everything they had and that good jobs would always be around. It's perhaps no harm for everyone to get a massive reality check. Because, judging by the national debt figures the government are mentioning, this mess has been a long time coming.

Not quite enough monkeys

After being on something of an impromptu country break for the last few days I sit awake now, late at night, catching up on the many things that I might or might not have been reading over the last week or so, had I been online at all.

And I despair at so much of it, I really do. The vacuous nonsense that accumulates over a six day period is truly terrifying.

Not because I think I'm above it, but because I realise how much time and ever-crumbling brain space must be stolen from me every single day by this mulch.

I'll get me coat

Google Reader tells me that I only post here an average of 2.6 times a week (what are you, Google reader, my mother?). Yet I don't think I've ever gone more than 3 or 4 days since I started up this nonsense without posting. Would you all worry about me terribly if I was absent for any longer than that? I'd like to think so.

So, lest you start fretting that I may have fallen in with a crowd of no-goodniks who don't appreciate frittering time away on the interweb, or that I've lost my typing arm to a fleet of angry termites, I'm just letting everyone know I'll be incommunicado until next weekend, trapped somewhere in the desolate prettiness of Mayo supervising a load of teenagers on an outdoor pursuits trip.

Worse still, my only adult company for the week will be a 40 something lady PE teacher who only likes to talk about Pilates and, I dunno, chemical warfare or something.

There may not be enough poitín and Malaysian soft porn mags in the world to get me through this.

Sedentary sediment

Today I missed the deadline for the Fish one page story prize that I had fully intended to enter.

I could blame it on the essay I was struggling to finish for college (submitted sweatily a full six minutes before the deadline this evening), I could blame it on the fact that the girlfriend submitted something much better than I could possibly come up with, I could blame it on my cripping Football Manager addiction. Mostly, though, I think the problem was that I never actually wrote a story of any kind.I wrote nothing. Nothing at all. Not even a germ of an idea. Long have I harboured thoughts of making a living of some description out of writing. But, by my reckoning, in the last seven years I have written maybe four or five things that could in any way count as a story. Not quite Stephen King, then. It might be because I get horribly embarrassed by committing awful things to page or screen, even if I'm the only one who ever reads them. I'm generally the only one who ever reads them.

I have certain standards when it comes to blogging, but I do tend to be far less pernickety as, even if I think I've posted the greatest load of offal this side of Offaly, I can still be persuaded by one or two encouraging comments left by kind people that what I've done is fine. It often isn't, but I'm slowly learning that that's really not all that important. When I do write something I'm pleased with, usually on paper first, I sit and jiggle my legs around uncontrollably and swiftly develop a hazy cloud of smug around my head. It is, quite possibly, far more excruciating in retrospect than when I just have to suck up the unpleasantness of reading over something so monumentally awful it makes me want to burn all the paper in the world.

So, without further ramblings, and with only the slightest of leg-jigglings, I'm now publishing something I wrote specifically for the Homepages book, published last December. Plenty of you will have bought copies of the book already and may have read it, but some of you won't have. Thanks to the work of Catherine many of us who aspire to be published authors have managed to be just that, at least once.


Baxter

He's small and he's beautiful and he's bright as a button. He's curious about my white skin and my oddly straight hair so he clambers onto my lap, where I happily receive him. "Huyu ni nani?", I ask, hoping my rather blunt Swahili for "Who are you?" sounds friendly rather than interrogative. "Ema", he replies quickly, whilst exploring the theory he'd heard about white people being perfectly agreeable to small thumbs being placed in their eyes. he launches into a long stream of consciousness which I don't understand, but which i take to be indicative of great wisdom on his part. "You're so wise Baxter, you're like a mini-Buddha" I say, quoting Ron Burgundy's heartfelt tribute to his dog without even realising I'd done it. 'Baxter' sticks from then on, at least for me and any other volunteers whose sense of humour causes them no qualms about nicknaming a small Tanzanian child after a fictional dog.

"How old is he?" I ask a passing mama, off to do some real work. "Emanuel?" She thinks for a moment. "He is maybe two and a half or three. The people in the village, they found him in a bush so we do not know where he was born. the think his parents died from the sickness." The Sickness rarely gets its proper name in these parts, many people will even look away in distaste if you use its local name, Ukimwi. "Is he sick, too?" I ask nervously, clutching this glowingly healthy-looking child a little closer. "No, we do not think so.It is good because then it is allowed for him to share cups and bowls with the other children.

Small crumbs, Baxter, small crumbs.

It transpires that Baxter has an incredible head for names, and can tell you who any one of the 50-odd other orphans is. His roguish good looks and affectionate nature mean I'm far from the only one to fall for his charms. We bicker, with tongues far less firmly planted in our cheeks than they ought to be, over who he likes best. Baxter and I are having our daily chinwag one morning when another child wanders over, craving some attention. Baxter swats a small hand at him and scolds "Mzungu wangu!", wrapping his arms around my leg. I double over with laughter and kiss his little shaved head. "What does that mean?" asks another mzungu.
I grin smugly. "My white guy" I say, pleased as punch at the one-upmanship this allows me, pleased that I understood, pleased that he's used the word 'wangu', which I understand to be the more intimate form of 'my', often reserved for family. Whether or not Baxter is aware of these linguistic subtleties is an entirely moot point, in my view.

It is suggested to me that I look into adopting him. Insanely, this doesn't seem like an insane idea. So I do so, tentatively. It's a non-runner. The Irish government has a very select list of countries you are allowed to adopt from, and Tanzania is not on it. Even if it was, these orphans are not registered for adoption, as it's seen as leaving children open to be adopted for servitude or paedophilia. in the days leading up to our exodus from Tanzania Baxter can sense that there is something up. He cries and gets clingier. On my final day I take him in my arms for a chat. "Baxter", I say "How did anyone leave someone so handsome as you in a bush?" He gurgles some profound pearls. "It's alright though, they found they found Moses in a bunch of reeds and he turned out OK. Ninakupenda wewe, kwaheri."
He looks at me and agitates slightly.

"Chakula", he says.

Yes Baxter, you go get some food.

I leave him, smiling contentedly with face covered in snot and sticky rice, and crumple my long way home.

Pulls out two guns and shoots at the pretty, pretty view

I'm not really sure how I feel about awards in any form, celebrating supposed excellence in any field. I'm certainly not too sure how I feel about ones for blogging.

So, although I graciously thank whoever nominated me for a couple of them, I'm alarmed to see the growing number of people using these.

Yes, very exciting to see your name on a list, but until a little more whittling down has been done, this is the truth of it:

Taken from this bollix and designed by this bitch.

Folks, just keep it in your pants until the shortlists at least.

It's gonna be a glorious day

Not for the first time, I skipped college this morning. Nine o'clock starts are not reasonable, are they? My dialogue with the alarm clock pretty much followed the standard pattern today: It starts its horrible bleating at a disgusting hour and I wake up with a grunt and politely murmur "Oh do fuck off," before hitting the snooze button. Five minutes later it wakes me up again and again and I say "Stop with that horrible bleating at such a disgusting hour." I snooze once more. The bastard soon wakes me again with renewed vigour. "Five minutes, just five more fucking minutes is all I ask from you." Then, usually at this point I'll have a bit of an old scratch and a fart and gradually make my way toward whatever whoors and horrors the day may have in store for me. Not this morning. The sheer bleeping enthusiasm of the thing leads me to roar "I don't need you, I don't need anybody!" before convincingly smashing it off the wall with the greatest display of energy I'll manage to summon up all day. I sleep soundly for another five hours and it is transcendentally beautiful.

But not now it isn't. I lie wide awake at stupid o'clock, knowing that once again I'll have to be up at an obnoxious hour, feeling far from sated sleep-wise. Herself, who is no bundle of fun in the morning either, told me earlier that having me around makes it easier for her to get up, because she can laugh at my groans and grumbles and realise that, no matter how much I hate the morning, the morning doesn't care.

She's right, you know. I've never been much of a believer in New year's resolutions but perhaps, just perhaps, it might be time for me to try and start getting in tune with the times that polite society likes to fall and rise at. Failing that, I may just try to become an active member of the Australian blogosphere, where the hours I currently keep should tie in with theirs quite nice nicely.