October 31, 2004

I Don't Like to be Offensive

Happy Hallowe'en, you sack of hammers.

After a solid weekend of CHRISTIANING IT UP I need my dose of sheer pagansim. Beer, pizza, and Dawn of the Dead, while wearing alarming costumes and chanting...well, whatever it is that pagans chant. Stuff about blood...or flowers or what have you.

Updates on neurolife soon to follow. BANG BANG BANG! What was that? OH IT WAS MORONS THROWING BANGERS AROUND THE HOUSING ESTATE HOORAY.

Goodnight my loveens.

October 27, 2004

Grey...and Getting Greyer

Not my hair, although this is starting to become true, but the damn weather.

If I were an American I would have spelt it "Gray...and Getting Grayer" which to me seems hideously wrong.

K would be a bit of an advocate of the old American spelling but I prefer THE QUEEN'S FINE ENGLISH THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

...And so has begun the preparation in my life for BORING EXTENDED CHRISTIAN CONFERENCE WEEKEND HOORAY.

Tonight, a mere Wednesday, which should be left alone in its midweek glory, unharassed by the business of the weekend, K and I are setting off to Kilkenny by the PEASANT'S TRAIN to go to some kip of a boarding school for five full days of conferencing pleasure. Actually it's not a kip. If we were to put my secondary school and this one beside one another in a boxing ring, there is no doubt who would win. Unless of course, it was the students of the schools fighting (as opposed to a Top-Trumps style fight by the schools themselves), in which case the more violent girls from my school would royally thrash those private school rotters. I remember one giant chick who grabbed another girl's head and smashed it off the radiator. That was one of the more exciting days at the convent.

Anyway, this conference has something to do with K's job. To explain what he does and what this conference is is far too complicated and I only got up half an hour ago. Suffice to say there will be 300 or 400 students at it (Christian students, dear Lord in heaven, save me from my own kind) from around the country.

I'm going for two reasons:

1. To keep him company, swabbing his head with a cool cloth when needs be, etc.
2. I'm singing in the makeshift band at the conference

I say makeshift because normally we wouldn't play together as a group. That's not to say the band is crap; on the contary they are all amazing musicians. I'M LOOKING AT YOU DEBORAH. (Look, your name's on the internet!)

Every time I think about the conference, my soul cries, "Why does it have to be FIVE days?!" and then I throw myself around the room in eighteenth century woe. I must videotape it. I bet there's a market for that kind of thing in America. It wouldn't surprise me, what with how they spell "colour" and "centre" and all.

K has been overworking (sure, what's a fourteen hour day a few times a week?) so he's taking the afternoon off to spend with me. Goodness knows why, I am such a grumpy bitch.

Hopefully I will return on Sunday night ashamed of myself for my current QUEEN OF THE MOANERS status.

I bid you all a weekend untouched by plastic explosives.

October 25, 2004

There's A Cartoon on TV Right Now About A Superhero Who Kills Paedophiles!

It's true!

I'm currently enjoying all the fruits of my church pastor's house. He and his family are off escaping their pastoral responsibilities in Donegal, and me and K get to house sit. OH YEAH. The best bit for K is that they have all the tv channels, not just the four gay Irish ones. (NO DES I DON'T HATE IRISH TELEVISION. SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE IRISH TELEVISION.) The best bit for me is the wireless internet access (writing this journal entry from BED, I'm digging it) and also the rather excellent wine they left us. Mmm, winey.

The last few days have scored highly on the funscale. I won't give you all the gory details because one man 's fun is another man's skim reading (where I write "man" I do of course mean "person". I don't want any more complaint letters from Marilyn French.)

Basically K and I and two other friends climbed into D's Nissan Micra and went driving round the country with no particular agenda. The aim was to forget about life for a while, a la Billy Joel (which song though?). I think we succeeded. Our adventures involved the Hill of Tara, a funfair, much eating in manky eateries, Galway, my parents house in the northwest, slot machines, beaches, a lot of rain, and a lot of sub par music on random tapes purchased in Eurosaver shops.

All in all...fantastic.

Today though was really rather less fun. Well, no actually, it was a lot of fun. But it was sad.

A dear friend of mine is leaving the country this week, permanently, it seems, because of circumstances she can't affect (nobody can), and we spent a very sad and memorable day together, in that strange state between crying and laughing where either was likely to happen at any moment. She's returning to South America in four days time, which feels to me right now like another planet.

We went for a special lunch in a wonderful restaurant where instead of lamenting her departure, we celebrated having met and become friends. We sat on the steps of one of the buildings on Kildare street in the early evening sunlight, deserted because of the bank holiday and the marathon, and prayed quietly together for the future.

Man, I really love that girl.

Hrm.

If you can excuse my language for once, life really is a fucking bitch.

October 20, 2004

There's Something About Wednesday

No, there's not, actually. Although... the weekend is looming, which is always nice.

However, we're re-thinking our camping plan, as the weather has taken a nasty turn. We may have come up with another cheap way to entertain ourselves.

I had lunch with F today. It was the worst baked potato I have ever had, dry, tasteless, dry. Luckily F paid for it. In fact, today has been one potato disaster after another. Tonight I cooked a very rare meal for our household...a roast. MMM ROASTY GOODNESS JUST LIKE MOTHER USED TO MAKE BEFORE SHE DIED OF CANCER. I usually cook things like rice dishes, bolognese, stir-fries...that kind of thing. But tonight I went the whole hog...roast turkey joint, basted with honey and wholegrain mustard, with roasted and mashed spuds and carrots and broccoli. And gravy. OH YES.

And so to my potato story.

I peeled and boiled a cheap packet of Tesco Value spuds, which were rather colourless and watery. When I mashed them, they were so unfloury that they went into great lumps, despite heaping amounts of butter and milk.

THEN NEURO GETS THE BRIGHT IDEA.

I put them in the blender, thinking puréed potatoes would be nice (we've all had them at carvery lunches in Irish hotels) but they turned into utter slop, which was so runny I could pour it. A type of potato sauce, if you will. Anyway, everyone enjoyed their potato sauce very much and that's the end of that.

The Avon catalogue arrived today (Avon calling!). My mother used to be an Avon lady, but that is beside the point.

What is the point, however, is that as I flicked through it, searching for yet more make up to buy which I will never use, I found a range of products called "Planet Spa".

Actually, you know what? You deserve to see these products.

These will be of particular interest to my good friend David Barrett, as he can't often find products from his home planet. (I need to add here that David refers to himself as a spa on a regular basis: this is not my personal assertion.)

Anyway, I am delighted to have discovered at last where all of the world's spas come from. At least now when I eventually kidnap them all and bundle them into Fyffes boxes, I'll have a postal address to send them to. I can think of at least one person I'd like to do this to, and luckily he's small enough to fit.

No that's cold.

LIKE MY HEART.

K just phoned me fromt he kitchen to see if I want a beer. I don't, but I do need to go to the toilet. And clean my DISGRACEFULLY UNTIDY bedroom. My mother would be rolling in her grave, if she weren't still alive and watching Eastenders as I type.

October 19, 2004

The Lowdown

While I was in town on Saturday evening, I saw an Irishman and an Asian man running down Westmoreland Street together, a combination of both drunk and stoned, giggling and sort of pushing each other about.

I didn't know whether to be heartened or dismayed by this.

Are we, at last, beginning to socialise normally with people from other countries? It appears that we may be corrupting them to our debaucherous ways. Hurray! I meann, Boo! Well, it's probably a good thing, except for the fact that we are turning them into loutish foreign versions of ourselves.

On the bus journey home, I demanded that K make up a story to entertain me. There was a lot of traffic and not much going on in my head. Some day, he will leave me because of such precocious demands but I LIVE IN THE NOW, MAN.

He dutifully began a story about a man who was born who was completely made of onions (see graphic from last entry, I believe I captured his essence quite nicely). Not a lot more happened in the story, as I was too busy trying to get to the bottom of how any woman could give birth to an onion baby. Imagining that it might have been some nuclear/vegetable accident creating a mutant from a previosuly normal man, I was informed, no, that he was simply born to a farmer woman.

(Oh! Of course!)

There were some obscenities then regarding farmer jizz on onion patches and the farmer wife engaging in self love, but I'll spare you those details.

Anyway, the story deteriorated somewhere around Island Bridge because, at that point, a large group of men and women with special needs climbed onto the bus wearing big reflectors on their jackets. (I think I made up an ending where the man became French onion soup which I reluctantly ate, because I don't like onion soup, but, IT IS NUTRITIOUS.) The men and women with special needs then simply related to one another in the traditionally mentally disabled way, and it was both hilarious and touching. I love handicapped people...they're just so unaware.

One of my best friends turned thirty on Saturday night so we had a bit of a gorgefest after which I felt a little dodgy. I don't think I'm entirely recovered. This is a bad state of affairs because I don't even recall drinking that much. Maybe I am deluding myself though. New bottles of wine just kept appearing. In the wee small hours, the HARDKORE types who were still there flicked through her digital channels, criticising all current music videos, and lamenting the death of Kurt Kobain. We also ate a lot of cheese. Aah, classic Saturday night entertainment.

I bought a new coat and I have nothing to say about it except that it is, quite frankly, THE BUSINESS.

My husband has recently pointed out to me the BOP phenomenon. A "BOP" for anyone who is unaware, is a chick with dyed Blonde hair, Orange make-up and Pink clothes.

DEAR LORD BUT THEY ARE EVERYWHERE.

And there's one in my philosophy class who giggles and chats during our lectures. I'd like to punch her one but I'm afraid of the smears I'd get on my knuckles.

K and I met up with two of our friends, D and J last night, and decided to go camping next weekend. HURRAY! We are going to find a lake, somewhere, and go there. Not Wicklow though, because the other three are bored of Wicklow (idiots. I can't believe I have to spend three days with them).

For now, I have to go and eat something before I toddle off to college. Today is a tough one...two lectures with only three hours between them. Think of me as you sail through your nine to five...

October 15, 2004

The Fajitas Are Repeating On Me

I went out for dinner tonight.

Mexican.

I made some fairly comprehensive notes during the day to help me with my journal entry.

...but I'm too tired.

October 14, 2004

Ground Control to Major Tom

I was delighted to receive an email today from Major Tom, a security officer under the former Liberian president, who wishes for me to mind the princely sum of €11.1 million in my bank account (although, he'll understand if I need to spread it over three) for a wee while as he tries to sort out his tax problems, or whatever. My favourite line from the mail:

"Having got great affection and absolute appreciation for your human and personality, I wish to contact you for absolute help."

Well...I'm not one to blow my own trumpet, but I do have a wonderful human and personality. My absolute help will be on its way to Major Tom faster than you can say "David Bowie is a trannie".

I got my credit card bill today, the first since my wedding/honeymoon. As soon as I stop crying I'll be donning one of my housemate's raggedy jumpers to sit outside Central Bank in Templebar to collect the minimum payment. (Big Issue, please?) I have found that takings increase if you rub a little soil on the face here and there. If this fails, I will simply withdraw a little of that €11.1 million currently resting in my accounts. Major Tom will never notice...the interest will cover whatever I take.

I don't get embarassed about much. I'm even used to my father telling racist jokes at this point. But this afternoon I sent an, er, racy message intended for K, to a friend. Oh dear. Luckily she assumed it was just my sense of humour...I'm not sure what that says about me. I redfacedly cleared up my mistake to which she sadly replied..."Oh. I thought I was onto a good thing there."

If K ever tried to have an affair, it would be a rotten failure, because he, in contrast to my blunder, sends all text messages intended for his other friends, to me. Daily I get "Hi Andy, sure thing, see you Sat" or something similar. He even gives my number to other people from time to time when they ask for his. My number has obviously been branded into his brain. I take a deep satisfaction from this knowledge.

It has only recently come to my attention what a bloody crackpot WB Yeats was. He married some chick when he was fifty years old (still not over Maud Gonne and her daughter though!) with whom he had little revelatory quadi-spiritual seance-type sessions, where she revealed to him truths of the cosmos, which then acted as his inspiration for his later work. Totally crackers stuff.

A couple of weeks ago I read his poem, "Leda and the Swan" based on the Greek myth where Zeus, the king of the Gods, rapes the woman Leda, in swan form. Yeats manages to imply that Leda is enjoying the rape...which is of course the mentality that a rapist/paedophile often has regarding their victims.

Well, what woman wouldn't enjoy a good rodgering from a big old swan?

Speaking of dressing up as animals, along with my credit card today, came a little notice from my church, inviting me to a Hallowe'en party. With glee I began to plan our costumes...corrugated cardboard, sellotape and white paint would build me a socket costume, and K, a plug. How amusing! My hopes were dashed when K came home and pointed out that it was a party for the church children...an alternative to wandering the streets and burning the arses off themselves with cheapy fireworks bought on Henry Street.

The disappointment is overwhelming.

October 13, 2004

An entry not from today, in fact, but from Monday October 11th. Hey, I'm slow at getting started here. Get off my back!

I am back in college, working my butt off for the first time in my life. I am discovering what it is to apply myself. I have managed to get through college with the method I like to call "arsecramming". No, I have not been cramming my behind with various objects.

ANYBODY WANT TO COME TO AN ARSE PARTY?

...What on earth is an arse party?

IT'S A PARTY WHERE WE CRAM HAMMERS UP EACH OTHER'S ARSES! (Or carrots.)

I once heard the above conversation.

Arsecramming is the somewhat delicate art of managing to arse about for the entire year, coasting on your good looks and ability to smile at your tutors, followed by three nights of HARDKORE cramming just before the exams, and then passing with a reasonably impressive grade. I arsecrammed alone. I arsecrammed with friends. It was a thing we did. It was unsatisfying and, sometimes, humiliating. It was expensive. This year, I arsecram no more.

This is my last chance or I'm out. As many of you will know, I was ill on a persistent low level last year which prevented me from any possible LURNING. I am now well once more, and am attending lectures and doing my assignments. There is a certain dignity in this new way of life I have found, although it is eating rather nastily into my blogging time, not to mention my social life. Although, admittedly, the social life is not exactly illuminated with the glow of white knickers in a UV-lighted toilet cubicle, because my friends have all graduated. I don't know many people in my classes at all. And this brings me to my

STORY OF THE DAY

Today as I sat munching my sub-par O'Brien's sandwich in a "resource area" in college (does anyone else feel a little sick after a sandwich in O'Brien's?), a young woman from my class asked if she could join me at my table. I of course said yes. I had noticed her previously because she looks nuts. She seems to have cut her own hair with a Crayola scissors. You know how some people just look, well, escaped?

Anyway, she then launched into an excruciating hour of talking all about her prophetic dreams. I occasionally interrupted her stories of dreaming of a screensaver with a cat in it and then WALKING INTO AN OFFICE WITH A SCREENSAVER OF A CAT ON THE MONITOR ON THE COMPUTER!!!!! to ask her a personal detail, such as her name, or where she came from. Allow me to demonstrate for you the dynamic of our chat.

Nuttygirl: And I walked right in and was like "OH MY GOD I DON'T BELIEVE IT LIKE JESUS CHRIST" and then I--"

Me: So...tell me where you're from.

Nuttygirl: Cork and it was the EXACT SAME AS MY DREAM. Not only that...

And so went my peaceful lunch hour. During our conversation, she managed to smear chocolate on her forehead and knock over the very chair she was sat upon. She looked me right in the eye while she talked (impressive, most people don't do that), and was obviously very intelligent (she had a remarkable vocabulary), but seemed plain old MAD. In a way I envy mad people. In another way that last sentence is an outright lie.

People are amusing.

I had dinner with L tonight, where she told me all the gory details of her trip to Israel. I positively drooled with jealousy. A kindly waiter mopped up my drool, though, and served us some pretty darned delicious food. However I have realised just how fat food can make you. MUST EAT LESS FOOD. This is an ambition.

L has a list of things she wishes to do before her next birthday, which is speedily approaching. I do not understand this kind of GOAL SETTING. It is the kind of thing my husband does. (MY HUSBAND. I JUST SAID "MY HUSBAND".) Goals are frightening to me. If I can get through that self-pitying feeling I get when I wake at seven thirty, then that's a big enough achievement for me. OH YOU MOCK BUT IT'S TRUE.

I haven't seen K all day and he has just walked in the door so BLOGGO LOSES AND HUSBAND WINS. Get used to taking second place from now on, bastard readers.

My very deepest love to you all. :)