January 22, 2006

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Maybe I shouldn't use that title. Maybe it devalues the nine hideous days that it refers to. I only use it cos I'm cold and want Haribo jellies and it is also Sunday. Bloody Sunday!

Sunday is not half the man that Saturday is. I don't know why. Maybe it is the looming large of Monday that appalls me. DON'T MAKE ME WORK FOR MY MONEY! Just let me develop a small injury, win a modest lawsuit and live out my days in a cocoon of prescription drugs, Chinese takeaways and weekly social welfare cheques. Is that really so much to ask? I'd be quiet about it! I'd let you lick the curry tray! You could come over once a month and do my laundry!

K and I are warming our frozen kneecaps with our laptops, listening to the gentle hum of the washing machine and watching Stig's borrowed Simpsons multi dvd. His prices are so low, you'll think he's suffered brain damage! K has been away all week in in Russia, working with animals and wearing a big hat. Apparently it was good. He brought home a lot of the remaining vodka...not that there was much left of it after feeding it to the elephant. He also brung Russian sausages, toilet roll, soap and chocolate. One word: MING. Not that K is ming. He's more bling, what with being covered in gold Monday to Friday (he's a Grafton Street mime).

I suffered, as usual, with his absence, but was entertained by a number of my favourite crabs, among them our very own Betamaxnomates and the aforementioned Stig. Betamaxnomates (pathological liar) took me to a restaurant where he ate crocodile. They slapped that baby onto the table and we pummelled it with our fists until it stopped squirming and then we dug in. No cutlery necessary with our zeal! It tasted fishy. I was conventional and ate cow. Stig, on the other hand, came to my house and rummaged through all of the cupboards, selecting anything he might have wanted to eat, which included three quarters of a bag of self raising flour and at least two tins of kidney beans. The mess.

My flu has gone, and I became an inventor. I was inspired by someone who tried out for American Idol and created a coaster that wobbles and could potentially spill your drink. Brilliant. Anyway, below are the blueprints for *my* genius idea!

Its main use is respraying upholstry to a colour of your choice but at a compact one meter wide doubles as a quirky table. (Look! It's wearing shoes!) It functions through a mix of solar power and magic. I'm not finished it yet, so don't be hasty in your judgements. You'll be laughing on the other side of your face when I'm sitting on a freshly dried sofa in lime green while you wither on your mother's brown couch.

neuro-praxis -- Not Just For Lepers Anymore

January 13, 2006

He Knows His Claret From His Beaujolais

I don't usually do movie reviews. In blogs, they're just so damn tedious. And that's why I'm not going to do a review here. Instead, we will all enjoy a NEURODIATRIBE against that pile of ARSE that stupidheaded metacritic gave an average score of NINETY FOUR PER CENT (YES! 94%!). I can't really blame metacritic; they are after all merely a collective of all of the major movie reviewers, whom I now declare to all be morons. And I will never ever trust any of them ever again. Never, ever. The sacred trust shared between what I thought was an insightful and sensitive website has been broken. Smashed. Smashed like the plate K stood on this evening. Why was it on the floor? Probably because Metacritic put it there. Because they obviously enjoy sabotaging things. Things such as my eyeballs and my brain. Which were fooled into watching this stupid stupid film. From now on, movie reviews are banned as gosh darn subjectivity (particularly the subjectivity of "professionals") cannot be relied upon.

The movie is so dull and slow and pretend-deep and also so sad and empty (and please note that I am still watching it - partially out of a compulsive need to know the ending of every story that brushes within 50 feet of me and partially because we probably paid Xtra Vision about €3,000 for the rental of it) that I wish death would just come and take me now. AND ALSO, WHAT IS WITH ALL THE EXCESSIVELY DRUNK DRIVING? This film is a very bad influence on me. Why, right now I am getting hideously liquored up in order to go on a spree in our 94 Ford Escort. Nay, not a mere spree, but a WILD spree. Where I smush people's relatives, and then laugh manically as I drive away (my eyes just barely visible above the steering wheel) like a character from the increasingly outrageous Home and Away.

And you know what's even worse? I STILL HAVE THE FLU. I am snotty and coughy and shakey. And as though the list of my woes could not get longer, the chicken that we got from the local chippy tonight was drier than a cupful of sand from the Atacama desert. What a crock, eh? FURTHERMORE, the Christmas tree is still in the window of this room! It's brown! And by now I have eaten all of the candy canes off it so its purpose is no longer clear. Why hasn't it evaporated yet?!

Well, I ought to go. I've started to enjoy the movie and it's about time for another beer.

neuro-praxis -- Without assurance, certainty, certitude, confidence, conviction, credence, credit, dependence, entrustment, expectation, faith, gospel truth, hope, positiveness, reliance, stock, store or sureness.

January 12, 2006

Curry Flavour Favour

The influenza is spreading filthy germs throughout the breathing spaces of my surroundings and I am its medium. I didn't sign up for this! I have tried self-medicating with episodes of Judge Judy and a box of raisins and so far there is no healing miracle. But I can wait. Furthermore, there is a big plasticy paracetamol capsule lodged somewhere in my esophagus. At least I can't taste it. Paracetamol probably goes lower in the taste ranks than poo and tiramisu. And I can't stop sneezing. Loud, loose sneezes. Sneezes that share. They're so vigorous I feel rather exercised.

I was just watching the Angelus on RTE 1 there and I realised I know one of the people in the current Angelus footage. He graduated from college on the same day as me. In his shot, with soulful tenderness, he puts down his tinwhistle to listen to the bells. It's so touching.

K has been away with work since the beginning of the month, only stopping home periodically to shout at me and demand clean clothes. Because of his ongoing conspicuous absence, I had some friends staying with me this week, the lovely H and her lovely two babies, one of which is a mere six weeks old. Babies are loud, smelly, demanding and loud. Also smelly and demanding, and they like to be awake at funny hours of the night to have a little cry. A little cry that goes ON AND ON. Then they went home again. It was all a blur. A chocolatey, nappified blur.

Man, I need a shower. And somebody to cook me dinner! Any volunteers?

neuro-praxis -- The Biggest Clearance Sale Ever

January 02, 2006

One Day There Will Be A Knock On The Door And It Will Be Me. Love, Travis.

Environmentalists (environMENTALISTS) say that if you burn plastic it will release toxic gases that may make you very sick. This is what I say to them: do not nay say me in my pursuits of happiness. And a happy new year to you too.

I'm currently watching Taxi Driver. The geeks will have gotten that already by my absurdly long post title. Although I have even studied the direction of this movie at college, tonight is the first time I've seen it. Wow. It's like American psycho crossed with Tellytubbies crossed with Natural Born Killers. No, it's not like that at all. It's more like setting shoe polish on fire and inhaling the delicious scent. No, it's not like that - that's just a scene I saw a few moments ago. The soundtrack is something like the kind of thing you'd hear on that strange eighties show about private eyes Bruce Willis and Cybill Shepherd - Moonlighting - remember that? That was a weird show. I can't really remember anything about it, although I do remember eating sausages and chips one night while watching it. That was the basic sustenance of my childhood. And they weren't even cooked. That's how neglected I was. And my lunch at school every day was usually nothing more than crumpled up pages from women's magazines that mother robbed from the doctor's surgery waiting room. I can still taste the ink.

Still, it wasn't all bad; you could use the pages to build big collages of happy scenes between mummies and daddies that didn't hit each other and throw glass bottles.

I noted sadly with Zoomy tonight that despite my best efforts I never once got even close to tipsy this holiday season. I have lost my taste for alcohol! I was never a big drinker, but from time to time there is nothing I like more than an evening of multiple beers or wines and perhaps a lot of singing. Although there was jollity I don't believe I ever finished more than one drink. It is an oddity. It just didn't taste nice to me. I wonder if there might be a therapy group to help me overcome this drinking problem.

Tomorrow is my last day of freedom before returning to the chains of my office. I mean truly, my job could be so much worse, so much tremedously more worse, or worser as I liked to say in my illiterate days, but still, I have no heart in it and that makes it difficult. I am an ARTISTE, you know? I am so WASTED in my field. The previous sentence could be the dialogue of a knacker drinking farmer, couldn't it? Anyway, all my talent (whatever talent that may be [undiscovered as it is]) is being strangled, slowly, with a 6 inch square of thin plastic (cut from a sandwich bag), which, when burned, makes me feel happy.

I need help. Maybe 2006 is the year to seek it.

neuro-praxis -- This Is Her Show And This Is Her Website