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

June 09, 2005

Title going down for maintenance NOW!

So, in my absence, I have been sunburnt delightfully, so that my chest now looks like a large slice of ham. I am a hammy woman. HAM HAM HAM! BUT YOU CAN'T EAT THIS HAM PRODUCT, THAT'S ILLEGAL!

So I saw Tori Amos play at Vicar Street, and my goodness me, she is an electric sexual onstage presence. She writhes on that piano stool like there's no tomorrow. It was quite a show, but stupidly I forgot my camera so I have no picturey delights for you to behold. She is also staggeringly beautiful - I really hadn't realised quite how fabulously gorgeous she is. And her voice sounds like a wild animal crossed with...something...less vicious...and more melodic. Yes. Seeing Tori live was a dream realised. Hurray for neuro-praxis.

So I went away for a few days, but before I did, I whipped out the scissors and I decided to give my hair a quick trim. I quickly got carried away and lopped a full ten inches off it, restoring my mop to its former scraggly glory of my teenage years. Short hair suits me. Long hair is gay and it doesn't suit me and I am against it. I only grew it for the wedding, but I just looked stupid on the wedding day - I should have shaved it all off, what with it being a special occasion with the cake and everything. But anyway, here it is. If you look closely you can see the deformity on my forehead which is really only visible when I frown, which is most of the time.

In that beautiful photo I am sitting in the car in the Phoenix park while K is fast asleep beside me. This was because he can't get to sleep unless it's in public. This makes most nights quite a tedious ordeal. This problem comes from his childhood where his parents occasionally said "no" to him, filling him with an intense fear that eventually caused all kinds of psychological damage.

Speaking of parents causing psychological damage, part of my trip away was with some friends in the stupid unsunny south east. These friends have acquired for themselves a daughter whom I am in love with (in the innocent way) because she plays the drums using a doll as her drumstick. Now that's what I call innovative.

She is marvellous company. She currently has a vocabulary of about twelve words, but this is expanding every day. Most of her communication involves loud requests for CHEEEEEESE, JUUUUUICE, SHREK and WO-WOS. What are wo-wos, I hear you cry. Why they are raisins of course, what else would they be? She impressively got her mouth round my name too, before I left...neuro-praxis is not an easy one to say but she just about managed it. I was inspired.

So we stayed in a pretty rubbish hotel which I recommend you avoid. It is this one and the assistant manager is very bad at his job. But we had a lot of fun, because we are VICARIOUS and VIBRANT and VIVACIOUS (yay! three v-adjectives!) and altogether I am convinced that holidays are the way forward, and work and stress are the way firmly back to the luddite stone-age days, and nobody wants to go there, do they? And if they do they're naff, and probably still wear poodle socks and eat Push-Pops, which is just so sad.

I got some wonderful scenic pictures with my superb 10 x optical zoom camera (wedding present) but I won't post them here because you'd quite possibly fall asleep with boredom. Actually I won't post them here because uploading takes a good while and I am desperate for a nap. But what I will post instead is a photograph I took of the delectable Mr. Ben Folds who I saw in concert last night at Vicar Street. BEST GIG EVER.

If I were to actually write a review of this concert, there would be enough gushing to take you white-water rafting, so I shall decline. I implore thee: if thou ever hast a chance to seeth the divine Ben in the flesh, do so, or live with the regret. Amen.

Other news? I saw the League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse in the cinema the other night, and I attended the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland (ha ha, ASS-embly) today and really folks, there wasn't that much difference between them. It's a movie that's got its moments, but if the house was on fire and I owned the dvd, I wouldn't go back into the house to retrieve it, unless I thought I could get a fiver for it off a sympathetic neighbour. At times like those you need all the cash you can get. The General Assembly is the annual meeting of all of the Presbyterian church leaders in the country. K and I took the opportunity to take a road trip to Belfast with our pastor for it. It was duller than a book by Thomas Hardy, but thankfully there was free tap water, as much as a man can contain! It was worth it for the hanging out and the chatting and that packet of crisps I got in a petrol station in Dundalk. The thrill! I cannot handle it!

Other thing: I braved a shopping centre and purchased work clothing. SENSIBLE SEPARATES. That means they are boring enough to match everything. To my surprise, they're mostly brown. I don't usually buy brown, but it suits me. Why am I wasting my hard earned dolla on brown clothes when I could just roll around in muck, or smear poo on myself and get the same effect? I think we all know the answer to that. I am allergic to muck.

Aye-oop, I am thirsty because it is a very humid day. Stupid sunless hotness. It makes me angry! Angry enough to go to bed! Now I angrily go to bed, dreaming of all that tap water. Where is it now when I need it? It's in bloody Belfast. English bastards rob everything!

neuro-praxis -- High