neuro's:blog

Taking Pain Playfully: the Art Thereof

What, there's a lump on your eyelid too? Now that's a coincidence. Perhaps we should go to the doctor together. Doctor fieldtrip! It'll be like when we were in school and going on a class tour to a petting zoo, only there'll just be the two of us and it will be medical treatment we're after, not miniature goat-touching, and we won't have any wham bars or boxes of juice. Actually this is crap. Let's go to the petting zoo! You lead the way, because I can't see a thing with this growth in my eye.

I've said it before: I have a special love in my heart for Adrian Mole. Me and Aidy, we go way back. One time, Adrian makes an American friend called Hamish Mancini. When Adrian informs his grandmother, Edna May Mole, that Hamish is staying with them, she decides she won't be coming over for her dinner as she is simply too old for Americans. That passage made me laugh my head off, because I know exactly what she means. We cooked for a bunch of Americans last night. WHY ARE THEY SO DAMNED ENTHUSIASTIC ABOUT EVERYTHING?! As demonstrated by the lunch-box episode, I am quite an excitable soul, but they make me look like a corpse. Although I can't blame them frankly for being excited about the dessert I made: chocolate fruit fondue. Being presented with an enormous paltter covered in fresh strawberries and pineapple plus a big bowl of chocolate sauce does rather make you feel as though all of your birthdays have come at once. (Actually if all of my birthdays ever came at once, I would know I was shortly about to die, so I wouldn't be too happy about it. )

Here's a window into a difficult topic. Speaking of birthdays and dying, my grandmother died there on my birthday. Only joking. I got a letter this morning in the post from Hodges and Figgis, informing me that at 11pm tonight they will be selling the new Harry Potter book, for which I have already paid a deposit, and which they failed to mention in the letter, and for which I fear I may have to fight. Too many whiches, ha ha ha! Oh God I need a holiday. Anyway, I won't be queueing up for the book tonight, because I am not INSANE, but I will be buying it next week, and it is possible that I will go to see the new film today. I may be some artsy fartsy up myself pseudo intellectual postgrad leeching off the state wannabe floppy-haired leather patch elbowed pipe smoking Dante quoting wet liberal, but a good yarn about teenage wizards isn't beyond me, no sir.

neuro-praxis -- deed done is well begun!

But...why?!

It's probably stupid that I am advertising this, but if you want to hear me blather on for an hour or so about the role of women in the bible, I shall be doing so publicly this evening in An Tobar in NUI Maynooth for the Maynooth Christian Union. At around 6pm.

In Obedience To Embee

The art of looking busy is really quite something. It really is one of the less celebrated skills in this life: I’m not being offered honorary doctorates in Ivy League universities for my ability to spoof working. Ok. So I admit it: looking busy isn’t brain surgery, but surely it’s worth some small kind of award, only when, of course, one is really good at it. Just a little Palme d’Or or something, I’m not asking for the world.

Don’t get me wrong here now. If I had work to do I would damn well do it. That’s right, I’d DAMN well do it! I don’t know why I added the swearing emphasis; it’s probably brought on by the strain and boredom of pretending to type letters all day. There are only so many times that you can type the same sentence over and over about the length of somebody’s overjet before your colleagues (who actually seem to have something to do) begin to get suspicious. But you can BET YOUR BOTTOM DOLLAR that if I had work I would DAMN WELL DO IT and shame on you for doubting me. I would be so enthusiastic about my work I would do it while leaping and shouting around the office. I would scream jokes at passers-by to keep the office morale up. It would be exciting. But no. Sadly there is nothing to do, and I can physically feel myself rotting away here. I was given a position for which a person is only required approximately two hours a day. The rest of the time is spent on painfully elongated breaks and blog entries typed into letter templates on Microsoft Word. Yes, that’s right. Thanks to my elusively small text choice anyone viewing my screen, even fairly up close, would be TRICKED into thinking I am working. It is this kind of cunning that I feel makes me deserved of a BAFTA. Cough up, readers.

I am afraid to write too much about my New Years trip to Germany, because I know that there are Germany advocates reading this site. But my journeying to the beautiful cities of Korbach, Heidelberg, Heilbronn (less beautiful, but containing the handsomely hospitable Sven) and Rothenberg (where, yes, it is Christmas all year round, and they eat Schneeballen (snowballs) which are not, as the name implies, balls of snow, but rather are strange crumpled balls of pastry covered in marzipan and chocolate and the like) revealed two startling facts to me about Germany:

1. The most revered animal in Germany is the pig. Why is this? No, it is not because the natives like to dress up in pig costumes every March 7th (although they do like to do this); it is because pig is all that they eat. Pork, pork, and then some pork, for breakfast, lunch and dinner. What’s more, it’s seasoned pork, smoked pork, sausaged pork, grilled, fried, baked, eated, and it’s at every meal. For the unseasoned pork eater (if you can stomach the pun) (PUN OVERLOAD! I PUNNED IN MY EXPLANATION OF A PUN!), however, this causes some difficult blockages in the gut region. Actually, with a little reflection, it would appear that perhaps the pig is in fact the most hated of the animals, rather than the most beloved, because after all what is a greater insult to a creature than to smash its head in and eat it up for dinner (and breakfast, and lunch, and supper)? Why I would feel very put out indeed if I were the victim of such outrageous and barbaric behaviour.

2. Germany, surprisingly for a country that has entire months devoted to alcohol, have not gotten the hang of drinking games. We spent two hours on New Year’s Eve playing a “game” that involved shaking some die in a cup and then getting a number. Although my German language skills are not very strong, as far as I could make out this was the extent of the game. No rules or anything. At the point where one found oneself in the awful position of having “lost the game” one was then expected to have a drink (which in my case would have been a swigging of my delicious and reasonably priced Becks beer). Hardcore! Anyway, nobody abided by the rules, or lack thereof, and whoever was “losing” never bothered to take a drink, and thus the silliness of the game was not overridden by drunken hilarity, and to this day I remain bewildered.

But all in all it was a lovely and privileged and, I think, very true experience of German culture, both rural and urban. We got to pretend to not be tourists, by hanging around with our German friends and speaking what little of the language we could – “Entschuldigung, wie komme ich am besten zum Brothel, bitte?” (“Excuse me, how I get to the brothel please?”) and not forgetting the loudly exclaimed “Ich habe Schnee in meine Unterhosen!” (“I have snow in my underpants!”). But everyone in Germany looks like a tourist anyway, what with their big raincoats and national penchant for reading maps. It’s true! We ice skated and watched dubbed television and drank a lot of beer (from pork bottles) with which we ate pork slices. Mmm, pork! I miss all that pork – especially during my morning commute!

So the holiday season (God FORBID I mention Christ’s birth – no really, He did) was the busiest I’ve ever had – hopping from family to family, seeing friends and wasting precious hours in hideous airports, and I must say I did find myself longing for the boring usualness of eating food cooked by somebody else and then watching television until you fall asleep. There was not much of that – it was too pressurised. But now that I am back to work thankfully I can have a good long rest.

neuro-praxis – Your mother would LOVE her

Death Would Be So Sweet

I am currently experiencing disproportionate rage. Rage and vitriol that causes me to stab at the letters on the keyboard rather than caress them in a Sex and The City journalist kind of way. Plus I am stabbing at a keyboard attached to a PC, not one of your smelly i-books. Take that, Apple.

It is a stupid client. A client I truly detest. A client who seems to sit about dreaming of manicures and listening to the wind whistling through her brain cavity. Yesterday this idiot client demanded a design where they left out part of the artwork. (I work in a graphic-related business at the far end of the promotional industry.) This was the email. Let's call her ARETHA*.

HI ATTACHED IS NEW LOGO CAN YOU PUT HILLS IN AROUND TEH WINDMILLS NEEDED ASAP aRETHA

Ok. Fine, I will simply imagine it all into existence.

So I waste quite a lot of time and energy on a design with no graphics. Great. I just make it up as I go along, as there have been absolutely zero guidelines set. Today I receive the inevitable response email.

HI WE DIDNT LIKE THE HILLS CAN YOU FIX THEM URGENT ARETHA

Aretha, why don't you put your blindfold on and go play on the motorway? There is no way for me to say this in a subtle manner.

I HATE MY JOB.

I am off to cut something.

neuro-praxis -- Highly Flammable

*I changed the names for fear of a scolding.

The End Is Nigh

Well, I'm not yet sure if I've sobered up from the hen weekend, but thankfully Zoomspouse has done enough sobering up for the both of us by filling out the census with a most unsettling zeal. We are now officially a pair of beered up statistics, and he couldn't be happier about it. You should see him on the days he gets to use his vote! Creepy.

WELL NOW I EAT MY HAT

Or perhaps my words, whichever proves tastier. Although I just ate some pork and rice which I am not sure anything could top, taste-wise. Fact is, the hen weekend was a weekend to top all girly weekends. Decent hotel, tasty food, copious beers, rides in police cars (really!), great company, private cinemas, champagne receptions, lots of laughing and crying (fist fights). The single piss-poor event was the evening-long contribution of a very intimidating and drunken thirty-something Liverpudlian man also staying at our hotel who hung round our group in the residents' bar insulting the chief bridesmaid and making idiotic comments on our singing like, "You think war is funny? HA HA HA HA HA HA." Please note, he did not laugh: he said HA HA. There were 26 of us. What was he doing?

The following morning I found myself in the lift with him and wait for it: his young WIFE. I was overcome with pity and disgust. I said to him, ""Do you know what a fucktard you were last night? You should be ashamed to call yourself a man." And to his wife: "Get away from him now before you catch his STDs."

Next time, it will be aloud.

Sometimes I wish Presbyterians had confession. I guess this blog is my confession, in a way. Can anyone give me absolution for my self-righteousness and scorn? In return I can sing you a lullaby. It's all about give and take with me, isn't it?

Anyway, I have two full days of loving to catch up on. The poor lamb has been deprived.

neuro-praxis -- Totally Out Of Your Goddamn Mind

It's A Very Very

Well, with Valentine's Ghey almost upon us, I suppose we need to start making our rosemantic plans. Here are some of the themes K has dreamt up over the years to replace the retch inducing holiday (and the gifts that ensued):

1. Happy Perpsex Day (complete with a piece of perspex with a man drawn on it and subtitled "Happy man on Perspex Day")
2. Happy World Insect Day (where my room was covered in large plastic insects)
3. Happy British Beef Day (only got a card that year, tsk)
4. Happy Battery Day (which comes with, you guessed it, some battery acid wiped on a tissue).

This year, we will be spending the "occasion" with 2 medium sized children and a Sally from England. K's big smouldering brain is working hard to come up with a new theme, which I will hopefully embody the essence of in a large cake of some kind. Forbidden aspects of this day include:

1. The use of the words "love", "lurve", "heart", "romance", "cupid" or "jackhammer"
2. The sending of cards emblazoned with any images inspired by the above words or containing the above words
3. Anything heart shaped
4. All things red, including blood, and if anyone bleeds, they are to be put to death, in a fashion in keeping with the day's theme
5. Roses
6. Candles
7. Chocolates, including chocolate coated foods

If the children engage in any of the above activities, we will force them to stay up all night drinking beer and then make them go to school in the morning anyway, allowing them only a box full of Butlers liquers for lunch.

Speaking of nice things, one of my clients today sheepishly gave me a box of chocolates to say thank you for a small bit of help I gave him with some of his designs. Although embarassed, I felt (and still feel) quite touched. Not in an inappropriate way. Everybody say "Aww". Except you. YOU SHUT UP!

I work for a (super) woman, but her husband is co-director of the company. He is as equally lovely as his wife. They're both close friends of mine: in fact it is their medium sized children that I will be punishing for a few days over the Valentine's holiday. Anyway, Mr. Boss came in this morning and read some correspondence I had sent to a client without letting him edit it first. (He always reads my work, says, "This is brilliant. Excellent. I just have a few suggestions for you." Then he completely rewrites it and I type it up. Then he re-edits it thoroughly again, and I re-type it. Then he re-reads it and says, "Excellent. You really do have a way with words neuro.")

Anyway, he was reading away, and then he asked me, "Did you write this?" and when I replied, "yes" he actually yelled, "YOU'RE FIRED, BITCH!" We both almost vomited laughing. He was just in a precocious mood. It made my day.*

Now while I should be preparing the liturgical worship for my church for the next month I am drinking beer and writing on the internet. God must be so proud. I am such a disciplined daughter of his. I make that workhound Margaret Thatcher look like Pete Doherty when he's got puke on his shirt. Although I think I have earned a little break. I spent my weekend as volunteer staff at a Christian student conference in Wicklow as the pastoral care person. This was great, so close to the area I really want to work in...but so draining. There are so many hurt people around. Thankfully I had a lot of good advice to offer. GOE TEAM NEUROFIXIT!

I am afraid that there may be a portion of potato wedges that need their life's purpose fulfilled now and I just may have to be the one to assist them in doing it. Man, I am practically Mother Theresa. I can hardly contain my self-admiration! It's coming out of my pockets! It's brown.

neuro-praxis -- No tomorrow, no tomorrow

*true story, unlike much of the neurodramatics^TM

Maybe...A Long Time Ago

A pre-bed snippet.

K has been away, it seems to me, almost the whole summer. In reality it's probably only been half the summer but I have difficulty with counting, and also with properly conceiving reality.

But he has now returned from Edinburgh, bright eyed and bushy tailed (he's had a tail implant, God bless him) and I cooked a Japanese meal to welcome him home.

Boy, was that one rank dinner. I can still taste it a little...eugh. I DISGUST MYSELF.

Western cooking, you see, that's my bag. I know how it works. I know how when you haven't got 50grams of one ingredient, that you can replace it with another.

But not so with Japanese cooking. I do not yet have that skill. It was only when we were choking down the initial mouthfuls that I realised I wasn't serving one thing that had been made with each and every ingredient required.

With great grace and civility I swallowed down my vomit and had two pieces of toast instead. Even the toast tasted bad. I think I may jut give up eating meals altogether, and exist by sucking paper in the office and eating Opal Fruits at the bus stop.

K brought me home a fat hardback novel, Cloud Atlas, and a bar of chocolate from Scotland's most expensive chocolatier. Isn't that a great word - chocolatier ? So evocative. It's nice chocolate, but I'd rather have had the eight Galaxy bars we could have purchased for the same price. But then, I'd be common as muck, like the rest of you.

The clock says it is time to go to bed. Damn clock. Always telling me what to do! Some day I'll smash that clock, and it will be sorry it tried to hold me back. Oh yes. It will be very, very sorry.

neuro-praxis - Discovering Satellites And Naming Them All Neptune

WOUAELD YOU LIKE TO BUY SPERM DRUGS CHEAPEST??

I must apologise if every time you've come here recently you're assaulted with advertisements for FUN CASINO POKER NIGHTS FUN FOR ALL WORLD'S BIGGEST POKER GAME FREE MONEY or better still IS YOUR GIRLFRIEND UNHAPPY WITH YOUR LOW SP€RM C0UNT? WE HAVE THE CHEAPEST DR-|_|G$ ON THE INTERNET!!! WWW.VIAGRACHEAPEST606688121.COM

I'm being spammed to death. I suppose it serves me right. What goes around comes around. I really must stop writing those viruses and emailing them to every address my spyware can scramble from blogger.com and okcupid.

I feel like a six year old on Christmas eve. A happy child now, not one of those dying ones in the third world. I am sure they don't feel much different on Christmas eve than any other night. DO THEY KNOW IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME AT ALL? One of the deeper questions.

Well it's because the husbandry unit returns from foreign land tomorrow. He has had a furry Russian hat surgically implanted into his head in place of the usual toupée. Which is a relief. At least that's what the postcard says, so here's hoping.

How am I? Well ok, thank you for asking. Up to my eyeballs at work, but thankfully I shut the door on the office every evening and am free to go home to drink myself into a delirious stupor, at which point I ring my friends and cry for a while. Then I accuse them of having affairs with K, or of putting toilet rolls into their bag from my bathroom the last time they were round. My mother resents these accusations more than most. But then an adulterating thief would be indignant, wouldn't they.

This week I ate my first giant mushroom vol au vent. I may have spelt that incorrectly. It was the size of my head. It was prepared by L. Kudos to L and his giant mushroom food product making skills. Also his wine purchasing skills proved excellent, and I demonstrated my gratitude by drinking it, and providing him with a copy of the children's mini-book Mr. Clever. I thought I was paying L a compliment. Turns out Mr. Clever is a thick shit. Sorry, L. I didn't know children's books were ironic. That's postmodernism for you. Thanks a bunch Andy Warhol.

That's it for now. I am going to cook my husband's favourite meal and we'll have it tomorrow night when he flies in. BOY WILL HIS ARMS BE TIRED. Where's a drummer when you need a good ba dum tsch? It will be a microwaved delight. No, it won't. I am making a chilli, which tastes so much better when it's been left overnight to absorb the flavours. By the way, I watched the Druid Chef programme thing on TG4 tonight and that chef needs some vocab lessons. Nice man, but please don't say lovely more than once in any sentence, and don't say a sentence with lovely in it more than once every five sentences.

"Now, I am going to put our lovely stew into our lovely blue bowl with all the lovely noodles and the lovely juices and aromas and lovely herbs and here we are by the lovely stream and the sun is shining and this is lovely, this is what the monks did five hundred years ago, the communcal cooking, it was lovely then and this is lovely now."

neuro-praxis -- Having A Lovely Time In Her Lovely House

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

Culture Up The Yin Yang

Well, that poached egg experiment was a royal disaster. I did my homework: I read up on this supposed "vortex" that you've got to create in the pot of simmering water, and I added lots of vinegar which apparently aids egg stabilisation. Well, that egg died a sad and sorry death. Goodbye, my eggy friend. It looked sort of like a white bat with a yellow body in that pot. A flying egg, with wide papery wings. Disgusting. I threw it in the bin but the stench of boiled vinegar remains throughout the house, thank God.

Then commenced speedy egg experiment number two. (Well, I guess it could be considered egg experiment number three, actually, because M and I froze an egg that time to see what would happen. It burst, in case you were wondering.) My mother, a staunch WeightWatcher^TM, cooks her egg for breakfast in the microwave. Always wanting to be like Mummy (who is in Paris at the moment, might I add) I popped mine in a little plastic bowl, added a dot of butter and some salt, and hit two minutes on high. What resulted was a very dead and very burnt microwaved chestnut. I did not eat it. I couldn't get it out of the bowl, so I left it soaking and went to my tutorial hoping for the best.

So breakfast was a muesli bar today. As usual.

I got through my tutorial well enough though, so I did. I knew more than I thought I did about professional snob and culture industry critic Adorno, thank goodness. I now have all of my exam results back and they are a mish mash of 1sts and 2.1s. I am content enough. The 2.1s will hinder an overall 1st though. Damn 2.1s, tainting my genius. DIE DIE DIE.

So I have been a busy little jelly baby. In fact I have ne'er an evening free in the approaching week. I won't bore you with the details of my sordid little social life. I donned my pearls last night, however, to attend a Beethoven piano concert in the National Concert Hall with my dear friend Claero. This little shin-dig was filled with long-haired avant-garde chicks and their catwalk beaus, aging music teachers, crusty classical-loving hippies and pretentious music students. And of course not forgetting blind people, who are three times as cultured as your average burberry-yielding yobbo, on account of having malfunctioning eyes. It was a good evening, and an imaginative birthday gift from Claero, but during piano concerts my BRANE drifts off to an inward pantomime where mice dance and little plastic soliders come to life. I like classical music, but it's either got to be a full orchestra, or a full soprano/alto/tenor/bass choir. I rate things on the Goosepimple Scale^TM. Gives me goosepimples? LET'S 'AVE MORE OF THAT, MATE. No goosepimples? YOU'VE GOT TO BE HAVING A LARF, MATE. Also another black mark on the evening was that there was a monkey sitting in front of me. A rude, flea-bitten monkey. This was both surprising and uncomfortable for Claero and I but we are tolerant types.

Halfway through the second piece (something number something by Beethoven) I stood up and began conducting. This upset everyone, especially the monkey, because these events are so stuffy that one is required to hold one's breath and/or refrain from your coughing/nose-blowing until the pauses between movements, which are a veritable symphony in themselves of noisy bodily functions. My conducting was completely silent: it was the reactions that were noisy, so I take no responsibility for the disruption.

More later. I have no more time left for such frivolities. <languid sigh>

neuro-praxis -- Hey Heys With The Monkees

Matters of Les Femmes

This will not be about periods.

I'm not a girl, Not yet a woman

I'm not a girl
Not yet a woman

OH SHUT UP BRITNEY, YOU TROLLOP. If Britney Spears is neither a woman nor a girl, it begs the question what the hell kind of a freaky creature is she then?!

I am a woman, I know this because all of my personal documentation says so.

And my impending birthday proves it, too. Parcels arrived today, for me. In them were an odd assortment of gifts:

1. Interesting pop socks
2. Photgraphs of my nephew
3. Scratch cards (I WON A FREE CARD, WOOT)
4. A surprisingly crappy keyring
5. Something else

I feel so special! No, I do. Lovable rogue Anonymous is taking me out for dinner tonight. We're having an unlikely affair that will soon be the subject of a wacky sitcom, but nobody pays any attention.

I saw that fellow George Whatshisname, the young Dublin lad with the vocal chords of a drunken fifty year old Irishman. He came second in You're A Sap or Euroshite or Irish Idolatry or something. He sings things like In The Rare Ould Times and what have you; a leprechaun in his pocket and a quart of whiskey in his belly! He was having an argument outside Fitzsimon's pub in Templebar last night, and was sporting a spiffing tracksuit and delightfully frosted highlights. This brush with fame was the breath of fresh air that my soul needed to survive another week in the arid wasteland of Neurolife^TM.

neuro-praxis -- Not A Sales Rep

Unless You Are Blind, You Will Have Noticed Some Changes

Yes.

The site has had a drastic makeover, courtesy of one to whom I shall link copiously once her page is ready.

It is the colour of revenge, sin and blood: red. To quote a nameless young Brit I saw on RTE once, "I'm just an ordinary bloke who happens to be a vampire".

A lot of things aren't ready yet: you'll notice that individual blog entries of old don't look so handsome right now - we're working through some consistency issues.

But hey, I have no need to jusify myself to you BASTARDS.

Now to sleep. SLEEP FOREVER AND EVER.

neuro-praxis -- Is The Undead

Possibility Is Insufficient For Actuality

Well it's Thursday morning and we all know what that means: nothing of any real significance.

I have a weekend approaching of carol services. : ( I'm just not feeling Christmassy right now. How can I, with all these dirty deadlines looming for large pieces of college work? THIS IS NOT GOOD.

I was happily listening to one of my favourite songs just there, The Wrong Bananas (all about a poor baby orangutang who made a mistake), which you can listen to here, when housemate M DEMANDED WITH RAGE that I turn it off as "she can't concentrate". So she's trying to write a lecture, big deal. How could you be put off by this?

I bought the wrong bananas when I went off to the shop
I thought they were bananas but the man told me they're not
I was so shocked when he said that I just said "that's ok"
He looked at me like a baboon and I paid and went away

I bought the wrong bananas!
(I bought, I bought, I bought the wrong bananas!)
I bought the wrong bananas!

Now I have to "get dressed and go to college" because my husband and housemates say so. Bastards. With their jobs and their money and their great big lustrous heads of hair. I'll show them.

Evenin, daaawlin.

K's 23rd birthday was yesterday and he got this, and this, and this, and this, and these, and many other things for which I cannot find images on the internet. We ate here, a superb little Mexican restaurant on this street. Go there and eat heartily! YUM YUM CRUNCH SLURP etc.

neuronews?

Hard to say. I've spent this evening preparing for a presentation on Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee that I'll be giving tomorrow. It's a compelling book, go read it. I'll be one of four people giving presentations on this very book, so I'm both a little nervous and anticipatory of what they will say. These Coetzee tutorials are without doubt, the highlight of my college week. If I could bring you all along so that your life could be enriched too, I would. Sadly the class has a mere eighteen members so your presence would be alarming, to say the least.

My quest for an image overhaul hit a milestone today. I have gone two weeks without biting my fingernails and the scales say that I have lost a whopping stone. As my housemate Captain Democracy would say, Caloo Callay! This is "a good step in the right direction", "one step at a time". After all "you only get out what you put in". It seems that "there is light at the end of the tunnel" after all. "Better late than never!" AND THAT'S NO WORD OF A LIE. Thanks be to God.

We did an experiment at church this Sunday. We had the service sitting around round tables and ate communion together, and afterwards had soup and bread and cheese and so on. The atmosphere was very warm, although a little unusual...I think it worked well. I dragged some friends to it, among them Anonymous, and you can read his brief account of the experience here. Always interesting to have the opinion of a FILTHY HEATHEN on board.

While I'm discussing church, which really has been a thoroughly revitalising and life-altering experience for me, if any of my regular readers would ever like to come with me, pop me a mail to neuropraxis @ gmail.com and I shall arrange it gladly. If you are a weird stranger though, I shall run a police report on you and possibly send you a nasty note, made from letters I cut out of Woman's Way magazines.

I have drank so many cups of coffee today that if you were to cut open my bladder you could serve a veritable army of thirsty young soldiers from its contents. On the topic of foodstuffs: I require a tried and tested leek and potato soup recipe. Don't give me one just off the internet - I could do that myself. I want one that has been made and MIGHTILY ENJOYED. Please help me. I have a bag of leeks in the kitchen and not a bare notion what to do with them.

--Your Correspondent, Dreaming of Being Nellie McKay.

My Brief Absence Will Have Left a Hole in Your Soul I'm Assuming

Have you noticed, the world is a very sexualised place? DIRTY DIRTY. I hadn't noticed, honest. HONEST. Until I read this. My view of the world as clean and innocent has been painfully shattered. This story will be very interesting to K, whom I will quote here from one of the many personal ads he has placed on the internet in order to find his One True Love (...I am but a stop-gap. Meh. You take what you can get):

My passion is full contact origami, which I dedicate about 85 hours a week to.

In neuronews: I have gotten a new cover for my mobile phone. This would be about the seventh cover it has had in the last couple of years. This is because I (and the previous owner) have a predisposition to dropping things. It is a gift known to few. I feel so isolated.

Yesterday, we got insurance for our automobile. Today, we got tax. It's all coming together beautifully. Tonight...we drive. Oh yes.

Tomorrow however, we launch into a weekend of fully-fledged babysitting. Children are not, shall we say, "my thing", but thankfully the children we are stealing for the weekend are very simple to take care of. Pop them in the cupboard with a torch and a book of ghost stories and half a pound of jelly snakes (or cola-bottles, whatever), and you won't hear from them for days. (Once you knock them out first.)

We won't be able to go anywhere with the children because apparently K and I are "dangerous drivers" who have "no regard for human life". Yawn. If your car can do 120, take it to 120. And we'll pass our tests eventually, like.

I tend not to use my journal as a forum for airing my political/anything views...more as a place for saying slightly incoherent shit that amuses me, if nobody else. However, you must read this because, as Fark's author Drew Curtis points out, "Sometimes the jokes write themselves, sometimes they run for president." Do I agree with Drew Curtis? Hell, I don't know. Allow me to feign being unopinionated. (Can you hear my housemates laughing?)

Today I made a discovery.

Meet...Bibleman. Yes. Bibleman...the superhero of...reading the bible. If I link you to the site then I'll be further destroying the cred of Christians.

I'm afraid I'm too upset by this discovery to go on. Instead, I'm off for a road trip with my husband. In the words of the great prophet Ali G: Education should be spread throughout the nation, if we want to get into the space station. Wicked, reespect, boyaka-sha, big up.

My sentiments exactly.

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.