June 13, 2005

I Am Bound For The Promised Ham

NEUROMUSE

My old boss called up me up recently and asked me to finish a little work on a project for him that we had started last year. So back I trotted, laptop tucked into a borrowed Trunk bag, to the National Archives on Bishop Street to record details for the 1911 census once more.

I had completely forgotten how sad this job makes me! Reading about all these young widows and families with half a dozen infant mortalities, and old men who die alone in one-room flats, subsisting on a pittance...I could cry. But the confusing thing is, they're all dead. Why do I cry for the dead?

So my new job begins Monday. It's an actual grown-up job with a proper salary and everything, and I have to relinquish my sloppy jeans and runners in place of smart-casuals. (Thankfully they're cool with my piercings. If I had to remove them I probably wouldn't take the job. I know. My priorities may be just slightly askew.)

It's in an office where I used to part-time and temp for them, but their manager is leaving to get married (what is this? 1952?) and I am taking her place. I don't want to make any direct links from this blog to my place of work, but suffice to say that it is an obscure arm of the promotional industry...and a part that is quickly dying as the industry turns to China to get labour at one quarter the cost. So this job may not last, but that's ok, because...actually I don't know why that's ok, other than I trust that my life is in safe Hands.

I've just read over what I've written and fucksy molloy! it's a bit on the serious side, innit?

Allow me to paraphrase:

I don't want to make any direct links from this blog to my place of work, but suffice to say that it is an obscure arm of the monkey harvesting industry...and a part that is quickly dying as the industry turns to China to get labour at one quarter the cost. So this job may not last, but that's ok, because there's always the black market to think of when you've got fourteen mouths to feed, like I does.

NEURONEWS

I saw Mr & Mrs Smith and it was rather good, if painfully unbelievable. It relied quite a lot on the devastating beauty of its cast, but not so much that it would have crumbled without them (unlike my pet-hate movie, Lost in Translation that relies fully on the pretty (but dull) Scarlett's pleasing form to sell itself as profound or something). I now have a deep desire to own an oven that folds out into a large display of guns and knives.

This week's First: I am no longer a barbeque virgin! Yes, of course I had eaten barbequed food before, but I had never barbequed it myself, til this weekend. Housemate M got a new barbeque and a few friends came round and we ate and drank and made merry til the wee hours. I got it going with three bottles of lighter fluid, one hundred and sixty matches and a lot of fanning with a prospectus for Union Theoligical College. Them religion booklets is good for the fire!

Last night M and I hopped in her hot whip and went cruising for hot men. Ever notice how there aren't cool synonyms for the word "men"? Men have got "chicks", "ladies", "honeys", "birds", "hos" and other numerous more unsavoury titles. We've got "blokes", "chaps", "fellows"...nothing hip though. (I'm not into the inter-gender objectifications such as "totty" and "booty" however - they are far too British and American respectively.)

Anyway, when I say we went cruising for hot men, I mean that we drove into town and went on the Dublin Ghost Tour Bus. It was €22 each but we were feeling foolish and extravagant. The first one at 7pm was packed out (you've got to book in advance) but we sweet-talked the driver into reserving us two spots for the one at 9.30pm. We went to the Oval on Middle Abbey Street for pints and chips, and passed a happy couple of hours taking artsy photos of the empty pub and half-drunk glasses of Guinness. At 9.30pm, (and I must admit that I was giddy with excitement) we hopped to the front of the queue (with permission!) and boarded the dark, curtained spooky-themed bus, complete with backing track of ghoulish noises and a pair of coffins on the bottom deck. The whole two hour experience was very amusing. We had a charismatic tourguide who told scary stories and bad jokes, sang the occasional song, and led us round graveyards and haunted regions of the city, encouraging us to ram needles into dirty-faced voodoo dolls. We even learned how to do bodysnatching (big industry in the nineteenth century by the way - with the average wage being £20 a year, you could get between £5 and £15 for a nice fresh corpse), a skill which I intend to put into practise as soon as my schedule allows.

Housemate Stabbing What She Imagines To Be Her Husband

It wasn't a bit scary, but it was highly entertaining. If you think you'll enjoy it, you will. If you think it sounds sad, don't go. You'll find it sad. Maybe you'll weep. Maybe you'll gnash your teeth. Maybe you'll wear sackcloth and rub yourself with ashes. Who knows? I'm not the nutjob here.

The ghost bus made me happy though.

The only thing marring the whole experience was a group of German twenty-somethings who found the funny parts boring and the solemn parts funny, and at one point, hid a key that was required to get us into a restricted part of the graveyard. Nothing quite like a tourguide stumped in the middle of his story saying, "Eh...um...whoever has taken the key please give it to me now." !

Long, pregnant pause.

"Ok, can I have the key now?"

Even longer pause.

"Hrm, well, we can't go on without the key."

Sighs from the group, standing huddled in the dark, as the atmosphere begins to evaporate.

"Ok, whoever has the key I would really like you to hand it over."

Eventually, to a backdrop of scathing silence from the group of 40, one of the German girls sheepishly takes it out of her pocket and hands it to the tourguide. GOOD ONE.

Happy Mister Scary Bus Man

Ah people. I could kill them all with my bare hands and a bodysnatching hook.

Except for this little old lady I saw tonight in Centra. She was wandering around the shop happily, licking on a large soft-serve ice cream (which inspired me to purchase one) and carefully choosing the exact apple she wanted. I enjoyed her enjoyment. What I did not enjoy in Centra was the junkie woman who wanted ice so bad that she took a coffee cup and scraped it (making my favourite noise!) off the inside of the ice-cream cabinet, which needed a jolly good defrosting. Mmm.

Boy, have I been enjoying my break from college! I am getting nervous about exam results though. In the mean time, I'm going to organise a culture evening of music, song, poetry and story-telling, which I am really looking forward to. I suppose I will also be working, which I find it hard to get my head round. What? You mean I'm not going back to school or college in September?!

Real life sucks! But it sucks with vigour and enthusiasm, like a...

neuro-praxis -- Not Inserting Innuendoes

Posted by neuro-praxis on June 13, 2005 08:42 PM, in the category