April 14, 2005

So Glad You Could Make It

My darlings.

What a terrible day I have had. Although to be fair, after what happened in Rwanda a while back I'm not sure if any day I have ever had or ever will have will qualify as a bad day.

I spent all my hours in Dublin's Mater Hospital - the hospital where we all mater equally little. Due to alarmingly exacerbated symptoms, my gp hurriedly referred me this morning. Apparently I am partially broken.

Here is my lovely tag. I haven't cut it off yet because I only just got home and I don't know where the scissors is. I tried gnawing it off until K pointed out the acute crazy-lady-syndrome right there. (I can see the newspaper headline right now. And the potential picture.) My tag:

Isn't it beautiful?

Even more beautiful than the tag were the junkies I spent the day in the A&E room with. I know that they too are God's children but they are God's very aggressive and threatening children who do not wash themselves. Being sat in close proximity to them for nigh on seven hours was not nice. They spent ludicrous amounts of time in the toilet, and when weak from having even more of my blood taken, I had to queue for the bathroom for TWENTY MINUTES while some strange woman flushed in there repeatedly. All this in order to give the surgeon a delicious sample of my virile urine. YES SHE SAID VIRILE URINE. The whole day was a nightmare. I even cried at one point because of how rude an over-stressed nurse was to me. BUT I'M A SICK PERSON! the three year old in me inwardly whined. I did not whine outwardly. I BRAVELY SNIFFLED with my husband. WHAT A PATHETIC GIRL I BE. SHUT UP.

Yeah yeah yeah. So there's a whole lot of stuff wrong, but thankfully I have a day's tests to look forward to in the outpatient's clinic next week.

On the upside, I got home around 10pm and my husband had ordered the Donnie Darko soundtrack for me as a surprise, and it had arrived in all its postal packagey goodness, which I was ripping open with my teeth until K pointed out the acute crazy-lady-syndrome right there.

I have taken my drugs. I am drinking my beer. I am back in my warm clean house where the junkies are not allowed. My feet are bare and there is no chance I will step on filthy needles. Unless I go into my housemate's bedroom. She collects filthy needles.

neuro-praxis -- Fighting For The Middle Classes

April 13, 2005

Death, Food and Commodity Fetishism

"I heard your dad went into a restaurant and ate everything in the restaurant and they had to close the restaurant." - Ralph Wiggum RIP

Yes, I am sad to be the bearer of ridiculous news, but it would seem that our beloved yellow Ralph has passed on to the land of mists and mellow fruitfulness. In other news, I also went into a restaurant tonight and ate everything in the restaurant and they had to close the restaurant. It's a shame, I liked that place.

In further news, the delightful housemate M has acquired a brand spanking new second hand car, which she will be using, presumably, to drive to the moon. This housemate spent her entire day wearing Victorian underwear, so you never know what she's going to do next.

I bumped into a classmate (Joe - mid fifties at least) at the supermarket while I was purchasing

1. Toilet roll
2. Sanitary towels
3. Hair gel
4. Chocolate buttons

and he told my husband that I was the intellectual light of the class. That was a remarkable compliment, because Joe and I disagree on everything philosophical. And also because it just was. It's nice when a grown up says nice things about you. WHY DID YOU NEVER SAY YOU LOVED ME MOTHER. WHY?!

neuro-praxis -- Wishing She Could Have Nuts Surgically Implanted In Her Cheeks Just Like That Mad One Mariah Carey

April 12, 2005

So My Bastard Thesis Is Done And This Is What Is Left Of My Brain

Having experienced some money difficulties recently, I contrived a small but not unambitious plan to get some. I acquired a weapon from a shady friend, pulled some tights over my face and headed off on the Bus Eireann coach that goes past here twice a day to a post office in Nenagh or something. I ran in the door and gave everyone present a small, preliminary beating, for which I was rewarded with a medium sized bag of fifty euro notes. (And who says crime doesn't pay? It does pay.)

As I was thanking them, I was more than a little disturbed to see that the oldest of the cashiers was beginning to evaporate. I think it was the shock of a young woman with tights on her head hitting her with a weapon and then taking all the money. She eventually disappeared completely, leaving behind a foul eggy stench, that could only be attributed to a large egg sandwich that she must have consumed during her tea-break.

Understandably, I required a moment to gather my thoughts, and my money. I racked my brains to think of any other occasion when a middle aged woman had evaporated. I could only think of Carol Vorderman, but mathematicians don't count.

Thinking becoming dull, I left and ran down the road as though I had committed a crime for which there might be repurcussions if I was caught. I reached a tarmacadamed lay-by and sat down for fifteen minutes, where I carefully ate one fifty euro note after another.

neuro-praxis -- A Bit Bad and Dirty

Found It

King Blog

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY THE BEST BLOG IN THE ENTIRE ENTIRETY OF BLOG WORLD EXISTENCE AMEN.

And an added delight for the Christians out there who know where Job is in the bible:

AH HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA.

April 08, 2005

Fact versus Truth

The Man Comes Around

I just received a text message from my first boyfriend. This is the person I invited to my wedding last year but who didn't come because his girlfriend at the time was too jealous to allow him to. But...but...I was getting married...to somebody else?!

Yes pet. Yes, you're right to worry. You should be frantic, in fact. Usually when a woman is getting married to the man she has been with for six years, all she can think about is her first boyfriend back when she was fourteen. It is torture on a stick for her to keep her hands off him. You were right to deprive him of this celebration with an old friend. More than that, he was absolutely right to indulge your insecurities. Good on you both. May I call you Mr. and Mrs. Wackojack? You pair of deliciously crunchy walnuts.

This old boyfriend usually contacts me when he has broken up with the current girlfriend. I think I am his poorweather friend. That's ok by me. His girlfriends always hate me anyway. We dated for a year when we were kids...first love thing and all that. I think he still has a framed picture of me in his bedroom. Once one of his girlfriends came to the restaurant where I hostessed, and I didn't recognise her. If I had recognised her, I would have given her free dessert, like I did with all my friends who came by. But I didn't know her at all, and she told everyone I'd blanked her. It felt like fifth class all over again; all we lacked were a reader, a couple of pinafores and some knee high socks. Oh, and a squashed picnic ham sandwich in tinfoil and a carton of milk with a too-short straw.

Odd people aside, and back to dwelling on this journal's central character: me. Damnit I'm hot.

I forgot when it happened a while back to recount my most recent encounter with the abnormal. I was watching a movie late one Saturday night with K, when my mobile phone rang. I didn't recognise the number and was tempted to ignore, but unfortunately I had set the ring tone for unrecognised numbers to be a cat's meaiow, so I answered in order to shut it up. SHUT UP PHONE. It was a nurse...called Mary...in a hospice. She had found my number on an old redundant website off my college Christian Union and, in search of a born-again Christian to pray with a dying patient, had called me.

Well, although I have been a Christian for almost nine years now, I didn't feel equipped to deal with the spiritual needs of a dying African woman. I contacted a mature Christian couple I know who lived right by the hospice and they went to attend to her until her death.

This is not the first strange thing that has happened through my number being on that website. Last year, a researcher on Newstalk called me and asked me to come by and talk with them on the morning show about being a born-again Christian. I enjoyed such gems as "Do you believe in dinosaurs?" (why yes! yes I do!) and "Isn't the bible just fairytales?" (why no! It's 66 books spanning four thousand years and a dozen genres!)

What never fails to amaze me is that all these calls that have come my way have been from people to whom the thought never occurred that maybe they could contact any one of the hundreds of reformed Christian churches around the country. Nope, some college chick off a website that no longer exists will do! I guess Newstalk at least were hoping for a loony. And let's face it: that's what they got. Ha!

After the last call I considered taking it down, but then I figured, I would have less to write about on my blog.

I am stressed to the hilt. That is why I have been absent. I am suffering a kind of writer's block ne'er seen since the producers of this bad movie gave up the ghost and just used a random plot generator. I am trying to scrabble together a thesis and failing horribly. Please don't wish me well or ask me how it's going: NEURO DUNNA WANNA DISCUSS IT.

neuro-praxis -- I Talk So All The Time...So

April 05, 2005

On The Pope

As according to Zoomie:

"I don't want to waste this chance by waffling on about Karol's worldly achievements. There will be many journalists and reporters and historians dissecting his role in the downfall of Communism and lots of people will assess his prodigious gifts. Maybe Irish blogland's philosopher-in-hiding, Neuro will tell us about his dramatic and moral philosophical works."

No, I won't be doing that. I studied Karol Wojtyla in college - his dramas, his philosophy and his personal biography, and I developed a deep admiration for the man just in time before he popped his clogs. However, I won't be regaling you all with tales of his wonder because it is meaningless now. He stood up for what he believed was right and, although we wouldn't have seen eye to all on all issues theological, he exceeded all expectations of a single human person, achieving more than anyone I can think of in the last hundred years, bar maybe Martin Luther King.

Now. My brain-dead, hackneyed and clichéd generalities aside, onto the specifics.

According to the Gerry Ryan radio show this morning, the pope's face appeared on a cape in a hairdresser's in Nenagh to a minister of the eucharist who was having her roots done.

I believe that the fun starts here. What I want to know is - what will happen to the pope's blog? Screw the future of the church - where will I get my internet spiritual guidance now?

neuro-praxis -- Deep As The Salad Bowl