Stranded on Gaia

This is beginning to feel like the long winded blues of the never

2011-10-06T22:28:00.003+01:00

Once upon a time there was a woman and her boyfriend, and they went to Galway for the weekend and when they were in Galway they went to Eddie Rockets which is a diner and the woman ordered a burger and cheese fries and the man ordered a BLT which is a sandwich with bacon and lettuce and tomato. They waited for a long, long time and when eventually the food came it was the wrong food. The woman was very upset and her boyfriend, though he didn't really care himself, as he was very hungry and just wanted to eat, complained about the food being late and wrong. The waiter, who wasn't just any old waiter but was also the manager, was not happy about this complaint, and this not just waiter but also manager sighed and took the chips that lacked cheese away and grated some cheese on them and bought them back and flung them on the table. And the boyfriend, who was really very hungry by now, got pretty annoyed as chips with cold cheddar grated on them do not trademark Eddie Rockets Cheezy Fries make, and where were they, Basra or somewhere? And then the boyfriend did a terrible thing.

He swore.

He said "All you've done is grated some fucking cheese on them". And a smile broke over the manager not waiter's face. And he entered full indignant mode and from high on his moral ground he rained his "Calm down this is a family restaurant" wrath upon the boyfriend. The woman and her boyfriend ended up leaving the restaurant without eating. The woman was embarrassed but the boyfriend had learned a valuable lesson, and this was the lesson: Never, ever swear, because even if you're trying to be reasonable, even if you're being provoked, even if someone says as hurtful a thing as they can think to say, once you utter the word 'fuck' then you are forever the bad guy. It was a lesson that served the boyfriend well, for many, many years.

Until the day that he forgot.

Tell her that the only way her heart will mend is when she learns to love again

2011-09-24T11:27:00.000+01:00

"Are you going to do a post about your new phone, Daddykins?"

"I don't think I really can, Riker."

"Why ever not, Father Dearest?"

"Because a 1,000 word diatribe about how obscenely horrible it is in every conceivable way may come across as just a teeny bit ungrateful to the kind sister who was generous enough to donate it to me."

"But Mine Hero, sometimes when you spend hours and hours shouting in a deranged manner at an inanimate object, an attempt to express your feelings through a medium apart from the common howl can alleviate your distress. And mine. Also, isn't Auntie Ellie away on holidays?"

"Both excellent points, Riker, though I suspect that they may have the World Wide Internet in whichever sunny clime she has ensconsed herself."

"Nonetheless, Papino, relaxed by warm weather and copious amounts of local wine, I am sure that she would look upon any phone based offering in the spirit of humour that it was intended."

"Hmm."

"Please, Pater. Do it for me."

"Very well, Riker. For you."

This is how we talk in our house. Because we're fucking sophisticated, right?

The phone isn't that bad. Really. It's a Nokia N97 mini. I'm sure that many a starving Somali would be more than happy with it. But folks, I'm coming from an iPhone 4. And it feels like my right hand has been severed and replaced with one of those mechanical claw gizmos. It's better than no hand. It's even better than a standard hook. It can do an awful lot of stuff that my real hand could do. But it does more slowly, in a less intuitive manner. And it makes people stare at me in the street. I'm getting used to it, though I'm feeling my way around. I'm looking hard at the bright side, begging it to blind me.

Look, it's got quirk. We know how I love the quirk. My purple car. My bright orange headscarf. My not quite out of date enough to be retro wardrobe. Every self-aware vertebrate has an iPhone these days, just like every self-aware vertebrate has two hands. This makes me and my mechanical claw kind of special. Yeah, special. It's got a little slide out qwerty keyboard. I could type on that bad boy all day long. I choose not to, but I could. It's got a kind of App store. Full of fun free games, none of which actually work. It's got...nothting. It's got nothing. No Sound Hound. No iTunesU. No Words With Friends. And thus no real justification for its existence. Yes, it can make and receive calls. But I don't want to talk to anyone. I just want to beat them at WWF as I fall asleep listening to a lecture on Global Geopolitics. Give me back my iPhone. Give it back. GIVE IT TO ME.

"Now, Daddy, do you feel better?"

"Not really, Riker."

"I'm going to ask you that question again, Papa, and I want you to consider your answer carefully, keeping your family at the forefront of your mind."

"Okay."

"Now, Daddy, do you feel better?"

"Yes, Riker."

I'm tired and naked

2011-09-22T14:13:00.000+01:00

Quite how it was decided, what with all the famine, pestilence and imminent return to the Dark Ages, that the retirement of R.E.M. justified a piece on last night's national news is somewhat beyond me. Whatsherface announced the split with a faint undercurrent of glee and proceeded to furnish us with a quick list of their hits, all of which apparently came from either the semenal, go on correct that one in comments, I dare you, I triple dare you motherfucker, 'Out of Time' or the considerably less spunky 'Automatic for the People'. But what of the turgid 'Monster', Eileen? The mumbling 'Murmur'? The dismal 'Accelerate'?

I seem to know an awful lot about R.E.M. for someone who doesn't particularly like them. But they're just one of those bands that lay down their grooves unbidden on the soundtrack of one's life. "Stand in the place where you live!" I sing to Data as we perform the ritual morning dance of dressing and brushing. "Please, please stop singing, Daddy," she responds. When Riker was a toddler, I used to wake her from her morning nap with their cover of 'The Lion Sleeps Tonight'. She doesn't remember this, but I'm sure it will all come rushing back under hypnosis. Many a self-involved wallowing has been deepened, with blatant disregard to the actual point of the song, to the strains of 'Everybody Hurts.' That track also makes me think of MIchael Douglas. No prize whatsoever to anyone who can work that one out.

In summation, I lied, I do kind of like R.E.M., 'New Adventures in Hi-Fi' was by far their best album, and despite having taken the time to sit down and write a couple of paragraphs about them, I couldn't give a flying rats ass that they're splitting, secure in the knowledge that all these kind of break-ups are merely the precursor to the inevitable reunion tour, and album, and tour. And no matter how hipsterly ironic the intention, 'Shiny Happy People' was a crime against decency for which they may never be forgiven.

I saw a sign in the sky

2011-09-21T16:58:00.001+01:00

Riker's Junior Cert Religious Studies text, 'A Question of Faith', is 332 pages long. Christianity gets a little over half of those pages. Other major world religions make up the rest. The rest that is, apart from what you see above. The guy holding that sign looks pretty unhappy, huh? That's because he knows deep down, however much he might deny it to himself, that he is going to spend eternity with a burning pitchfork up his behind.

It's stupid of me to be bothered. What the fuck do I expect? But "their inability to believe in religious teaching"? Really? So what you're saying, Lori Whelan and Niamh McDermott, is that atheists are a pack of slobbering retards incapable of swallowing whole a bunch of made up bullshit?

I'm rereading 'Earthly Powers' at the moment, and the Don Carlo sermon that makes up most of Chapter 27 of that pretentiously wonderful novel had started me on a slow drift back towards something resembling spirituality. But these fuckers have sent me right back to my scorched ass destiny. Nice one, you guys.

Climb into the frame and shout God's name

2011-09-20T16:04:00.000+01:00

I can't help but notice that I have singularly failed to weigh in on any matters social or political since my steaming great comeback of September The Fourth. Unless you consider Macnas to be sociable or children's birthday parties to be political. Which you don't. Because all eleven of my readers are bright, savvy people who know stuff. That's right, I'm up to eleven. I do it for your love.

So politics, huh? The Presidential election, what?

What is right. What a load of shit, in fact. The pointlessness of the position. The fuckwittery that is the electoral process. The horrific list of candidates. Who shall serve as our Head of State? Who would best represent our country abroad? A mass murdering fuckhead? A crazy bigot? A powerless old man lacking the guts to quit a morally bankrupt party? Or David Norris?

Norris was my guy, you see. I was happy to overlook his pomposity, his smugness, even his two-tone bearded toddler pageant grin. Liberal, literate, loquacious. All my favourite Ls. But if a member of Fianna Fáil had misused their office in the way that Davy did, I would be howling for time in the stocks, and even I cannot stretch my bungee of hypocrisy to the point that I can see myself voting for the guy, however much I might wish that I was gay. It's all moot as fuck of course, he's not going to get the nomination. True, nobody would have been trawling through his every letter had he been a super-hetero, bog trotting Fine Gael anonymatron, but thems the big gay breaks.

So where does this leave us? Predictably bereft, with little but the transferable hope that the literal or metaphorical sky falls before October 27th, saving us from the further international ridicule which will doubtless be occasioned by our election of a straight man who chooses to call himself Gay.

But you stand inattentively

2011-09-19T16:39:00.000+01:00

As a general rule I find that the happy visions of my death involve me astride a yellow saddle, most often in Fairview, plowed into by, or plowing into any manner of motorised menace. Sometimes the setting changes, to an Alp, a Pyrenee, perhaps even an out of season ski resort somewhere in Canada. Occasionally it's a different saddle. But always Death comes to me as I ride a bicycle.

Today though, a fresh and varied vision. I am reaching up for an item deliberately elevated, out of reach of even the rapidly sprouting almost teenager. Almost out of my own reach too, I used a chair to place it there in the first place. The it in question is a tupperware container, lodged between the ceiling of a high shelf and a precariously balanced pile of heavy glassware dishes. I fumble and flick with my fingers, to no avail. I could admit yet another defeat and just use the chair. But I will not be beaten down. So up I leap, and make a grab. Contact! But with the glassware, all of which comes crashing down upon my upraised face. The force knocks me back and I fall and crack the back of my head Clouseau-like on the edge of the chair that I was too lazy to stand on. The contents of the tupperware have fallen too, and it is on a sweet sweet piece of chocolate pistachio fudge that I unconsciously choke to death.

It may be time to consider a little nutritional forbearance.

It's not the way I planned it

2011-09-18T22:02:00.001+01:00

Monday morning. 8.33am. Stephen, a 31 year old man, lies snoring loudly on a hotel bed. He is wearing a shirt and dress trousers. A single shoe. We hear the sound of a phone playing Britney Spears' 'Baby, One More Time.' Stephen stirs but does not wake. The rings ceases on the words "My loneliness". There is a brief pause. The phone rings again. Now Stephen rolls over, reaches fumblingly for his jacket by the side of the bed. Still face down he extracts the phone from the pocket, just as the ring cuts out for a second time. He raises his head and glances at the phone.

Stephen Shit.

He sits up quickly and instantly regrets it. We see now that he is trim and fit looking, though clearly very hungover.

Oh shit.

Britney begins again. He answers immediately.

Christy. Mr Cooney. How're ye?...Ah grand. Fine. Not a bother...No, no, I'm up a while. Sorry I didn't get to talk to you last...Yeah...What, now? I mean...Of course, sure, no problem. I'll just...

He takes the phone away from his ear. Looks at it.

Fuck. Jesus.

He stands. Walks unsteadily to the bathroom, off. We hear him urinating. Then splashes of water. He emerges with a towel and glances around for his missing shoe. He spots it at the end of the bed. As he bends to retrieve it, we hear four sharp knocks.

Fucking hell.

He puts the shoe on and half stumbles towards the off stage door. The knocks come again before he reaches it.

Just coming now.

Stephen re-enters, backing into the room, followed by Christy. Christy is a heavy, jowly man of about 60. He speaks with a pronounced Cork accent.

Christy Well now, Stephen.

Stephen How're ye, Mr Cooney?

Christy Now don't be at that Stephen, it's Christy still.

Stephen Yeah, sure. Christy. How're ye?

Christy I'm well now, Stephen, I'm well. Can't complain, says you. I'm more interested in how you are Stephen.

Stephen Oh, I'm grand. Little rough, you know. The night that was in it.

Christy Oh yes. Quite a night, I'd say. Quite a day.

Stephen Yeah. (Pause) I'm sorry I didn't get to talk to you last night, I was...

Christy The hero of the hour eh? The big man.

Stephen Ah well now, it was the whole team...

Christy No reason for false modesty Stephen. A wonderful performance. "Ice in his veins" they said on the telly. The Iceman, huh? That's what they'll be calling you now. No more of that 'Clucko'.

Stephen shifts uncomfortably.

Christy Sit down there, Stephen. Relax. A long night, I'd say. After that long day.

Stephen sits on the end of bed. He briefly puts his hands over his face, then quickly removes them, sits taller.

Stephen Mr Cooney. Christy.

Christy They're calling it a classic already, did you know that?

Stephen No.

Christy A classic.

Stephen It was an accident, Mr Cooney.

Christy One for the history books. Never before has a goalkeeper scored the winning point in an All Ireland.

Stephen I wanted to make it close.

Christy Historic. (Pause) An accident was it? From 50 yards?

Stephen The wind...

Christy The wind? The fucking wind? Listen to me you little jackeen fuck. You bisected the fucking uprights. Slap fucking bang in the middle. Do you know what you've cost us?

Stephen I...

Christy Everyone else. All the rest of them. Perfect.

Stephen I'm sorry...I...

Christy But you wanted it all for yourself. You fucking Norrie. How dare you? You little pup. How fucking dare you? Got carried away. Pictured yourself on the front of all the papers. No thought for the Association, for the fans. For all my work. My life's work.

Stephen Mr Cooney. Sir.

Christy I should have expected no better from a fucking soccer player. Luton wasn't it? You should have stayed over there with the fucking Brits, cleaned their boots. You're good for nothing else. Did you know we were going to go for three this time? And you couldn't even let us have the second one. You little prick. MIllions. Millions you've cost us.

Stephen I'm sorry.

Christy Oh you will be. You'll be very fucking sorry. And it won't just be you. Life is going to get very fucking tricky for every one of you Dublin fucks. Parnells too. And I'm not just talking about the money. I hope you enjoyed yourself last night. It's the last time anyone in that team will pat your filthy treacherous back. Things are going to change for you, Cluxton. I wouldn't get too comfortable with that cushy number in Vincents either.

Stephen You can't...

Christy Can't what? What can't I fucking do? I can do whatever the fuck I want.You know who I am. You know what I am. You don't fuck around with the Association, Cluxton. And I am the fucking Association.

He turns to leave.

Christy And Stephen?

Stephen Yes, Mr Cooney?

Christy Watch yourself the next time you go up for a high ball.

Exits

Stephen remains seated. He returns his head to his hands.

I wanted to get you roses but they were all out

2011-09-16T22:14:00.000+01:00

More on our new home. You know about the kitchen. The neighbours? Instead of trumpet playing to the left and pyschotic born again bitch bully to the right, we now have a cute elderly couple on one side and a slightly odd but nonetheless charming hippy gardener on the other. The elderly man never speaks. His wife is perfunctorily polite. Most of odd but charming hippy gardener's charm comes from his rectitude. I have moved to next door heaven from hemmed in hell. Other advantages? Acoustics. A downstairs bathroom. Heating that appears to actually heat the house. I need to search extensively to find a downside to our new living situation. But search I have, long and hard, for you. Because I realise, I know that you hate the happy stuff, the weak attempts at humour, the kitchen praisings. You want the filth, the degradation that is the daily drudge of my life. And I've found it, here it is, personified in the scowling face of Marty Whelan.

I loved Marty Whelan. His morning show on Lyric got me through the bailout, the election and the lack of revolution that these events inspired. His soothing voice, his bad jokes, his occasionally awful taste in music all aided me in my slow coming terms with spending another day in this brutish country, leading this banal life. But today, today he parked in my space.

We used to have a driveway. And now we don't. Like Stewart Lee longs for a time when having a regional accent was considered a professional disadvantage, I pine for an era when this would have made precisely fuck all difference to my life. To that carfree time of bus and Luas and Dart, but mostly of bike, with Data asleep at the backseat wheel, her helmeted head dangling perilously close to the passing and often honking traffic.

We now live reasonably close to a Dart station which is of no particular advantage to me, because any time my legs are ouchy, or it's raining, or there's even a vague hint of the possibility of rain, I climb aboard my comedy purple car and drive. But this reasonable closeness also means that any fucker who fancies it can use our quiet street as an unofficial Park and Ride facility. While sometimes irritating, this fact has never caused my anything resembling serious inconvenience. Until this morning when I found myself having to walk what must have been almost 50 metres from house to car. Not good. Not good at all. If I'm going to be a fat lazy cunt, I want to be a fat lazy cunt who doesn't have to do any superfluous strolling. Seething, I parked. Livid, I walked. And what was parked in front of my house only a big fat Beamer. And you know who was sitting in the driver's seat, casually reading a newspaper.

To be clear, I started listening to Marty In The Morning long before this move was mooted. His mother, I now know, lives a few doors down from our new home. There can be no doubt that we have been drawn together like this by the Fates. Before now, I assumed that this fatal artistry would lead to a progression from nodding acquaintance through casual conversation to the eventual destination of a unspoken yet deep spiritual bond, which I thought I had already begun to express itself in coded mellow morning messages. But it now appears that our destiny is one of a different hue. He looked up as I approached the gate. Our eyes met. For a brief moment we held a gaze that spoke sparingly of a love that might have been, soured now, to an enmity from which we cannot flee.

I turned away and walked into our new home. The kitchen was cold now. The countertop unacccountably grubby. A stench reached me from the downstairs loo. Whelan, I felt sure, had been here too.

Through the wall I heard the hippy cackle.

But can't denial let me believe?

2011-09-15T16:30:00.000+01:00

Those of you with an O2 account should be aware that the company have a live chat feature. This allows you to talk a representative without having to decipher a thick Cork accent. The woman that I chatted with was extremely helpful.

Hi. My name is MichelleM. How can I help you today?

Hi MichelleM. My name is Gimme.

And how can I help you today, Gimme?

I'm not sure if you can, MichelleM.

I can certainly try. What seems to be the problem?

I am sad, MichelleM. I am very, very sad.

I see. What seems to be the problem?

And angry.

I see.

A little depressed.

How can I help?

To be honest I think I'm experiencing all seven of Kubler-Ross's stages of grief. Simultaneously.

Is this to do with your O2 account, Gimme?

Oh yes.

What seems to be the problem?

It's my iPhone, MichelleM.

What seems to be the problem with your iPhone?

It's gone.

Gone?

I left it in the studio for like five minutes and some fucker swiped it.

I'll have to ask you to refrain from coarse language, Gimme.

Sorry.

That's okay. So your phone was stolen?

Yes.

I can block your phone from here.

Thank you. Can you make it explode in their thieving mitts, leaving them with bloodied burnt stumps where their hands used to be? Like in Iran? But technoligacallier?

No.

Isn't that kind of racist?

No.

Perhaps it's a feature you could consider adding. People would probably pay a little extra for that kind of thing.

I will pass on your suggestion.

Will you?

Yes.

Okay.

Do you have insurance?

I do not. I don't believe in insurance.

You don't believe in it?

I think there's something weird and wrong about laying a wager on one's own misfortune.

Oh. I see from your account that you are not due for an upgrade until 07/12. But you can get a free replacement sim card in any O2 store or I can have one sent to your address. You will able to use this in most phones.

Okay. How much will a new iPhone 4 cost?

If you purchase online it will cost €697.

Pardon?

I said if you purchase online it will cost €697.

How about if I purchase offline?

If you buy from an O2 store it will cost €729.

That's more.

Yes.

I thought it might be less.

It's not.

I can't afford that.

I'm sorry.

Are you?

Yes. I'm sure a friend or relation has a phone that you could use until your upgrade status changes.

You're probably right.

Is there anything else I can help you with today?

I don't think so.

Would you like me to post you a replacement sim card?

No, thank you, I'll go to a shop.

Okay. Have a good day. Goodbye.

Hang on!

Yes?

I just had an idea.

What is your idea?

Lots of iPhones get stolen, right?

I suppose they do.

And then the thieving bastards wipe them and sell them to people for cheap, right?

Yes, probably.

So all I have to do is find someone to sell me a cheap stolen iPhone, meet him, smash his face to a sticky pulp, and take the iPhone.

I'm not sure that's such a good idea.

I know what you're thinking, MIchelleM. It's unlikely that that would be my iPhone, or the guy who stole my iPhone. But it would be like a kind of karma. The circle of life, if you will. Have you seen The Lion King?

Yes.

Did you like it?

Yes.

Well, then.

I would advice against this course of action, Gimme.

But it was your idea!

No it wasn't.

Okay, well you gave me the idea. And you like The Lion King. So on some level you approve.

I don't. I would advise against this course of action.

Okay, sure. You have to say that. They probably have some corporate monster standing over your shoulder checking on everything you write. I understand.

I just don't think it's a very good idea, Gimme.

Okay. *wink*

Is there anything else I can help you with?

I'm not going to do that. I'll just get a phone off someone else until my upgrade. *wink*.

Is there anything else I can help you with, Gimme?

No, that's it. *wink*

Okay. Have a good day. Gimme. Goodbye.

I'll have a 'smashing' day, MichelleM. *wink* Thanks for all your help. And ideas.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.

He bought it with the money he got from his chores

2011-09-14T10:14:00.001+01:00

"You're very late tonight."

"I know. Traffic."

"They're in bed."

"Right."

"Are you okay?"

"I'm grand. Tired. Why?"

"You're sweating."

"I am?"

"Yeah, look."

"It was hot in the car. I should have opened a window. But you know, all the fumes."

"Are you upset about something?"

"Nah. Tired."

"How was work?"

"Work was fine. It's the commute. I can't..."

"Can't what?"

"Ah, nothing. It's just tiring is all."

Just getting out of town takes an age. I fucking hate Thomas Street. I hate that old bitch in the silver Honda Civic who feels the need to let every single fucker from every fucking side street pull out. Look, politeness is grand, I let people out too, but not every single fucking time. Maybe she has nowhere to be, no dinner to eat, no kids to see. I start honking after the fifth or six one. No reaction. You go ahead sure, my life is barren.

The M4 is moving but slowly, slowly. And my back. I have this pain in my leg, my hip, my lower back. Everytime I clutch, it shoots. Go to the doctor, Lorraine says. For what? To spend sixty quid for him to tell me to buy one of those cushions. I have one of those cushions. It cost me sixty quid. It doesn't fucking work.

Four smokes later we get to Enfield. Get off here, or go on to Kinnegad? It's a gamble. It's moving here, like I say, and the Kinnegad way is shorter. This one might be empty, it might be fucking packed. You never know. I stay on. Light another fag. The tracking on the car is kind of fucked. You can't really let go of the wheel. I need to get it done. That Civic cunt is long gone but yet another asshole breaks suddenly while I'm trying to light up. For fuck's sake. Yeah, I'm probably a little too close to him, but it's fine, it's grand. I try to get going again in third, and almost cut out. Jesus.

Kinnegad. I don't think I believe in God anymore, not since Conleth was born, but I say a prayer anyway. Please let it be clear. Please Jesus. Please Mary. Please the Holy Fucking Ghost.

Yes. Suddenly not a soul. I roll down the window. I turn up 98fm. I open the fucker up. The feeling of release. Like being stuck in a lift for two hours and the door opens and you just charge the fuck out. About five miles from home now. I love this road when it's quiet. Couple of twist and turns, but I know it well. I'm in fourth, fifth and I'm fucked if I'm putting my foot to the clutch between here and dinner. Lorraine makes the best fucking bolognese. I can taste it already. The sun is only coming down now. I dread the winter, leaving work in the dark. But now, right now, I feel good. There's time for one more smoke too. I can't smoke in the house with the kids and even if I just sneak one out the back Lorraine looks unhappy. So one more now.

I dropped the lighter that last time, when I almost cut out. It's under my legs. I reach down. And I think I've hit something. I slow, looking in the mirror. And I see something lying in the road behind me. I stop. Get out. Walk back. It's an old fella. His bike's in the ditch. I don't get too close but I can still see that his face is white and his eyes are open. I turn away. I get back in the car. I drive home.

"They didn't bring mince. I didn't have a chance to get to the shop, so I ordered pizza."

"Oh."

"It's in the oven."

"Right."

"You stink of cigarettes."

"Yeah. Sorry."

I keep forgetting the smell of the warm summer air

2011-09-13T15:14:00.000+01:00

Check that shit out. That's my kitchen. That's my organic recycling tub. That's my alien visitation. Why these cliché-faced other worlders have chosen me to be their spokesman is anyone's guess but I suspect it has more that a little to do with both my immense readership and my pretty hair. Just that single apparition so far, but I have no doubt that soon other messages will be forthcoming, and included in them, orders. Orders to keep cooking the dinners, to continue with the washing and folding of clothes, to seek out Ryan Tubridy and punch him in the snozzle.

I love my new kitchen. From where this picture was taken, I can, with minimal weight-shifting, reach just about everything that I might need in the preparation and cleaning up of an evening meal. To my left the dishwasher. Above me, plates, glasses, bowls. Below me, foodstuffs. And to my right, as varied a range of stabbing instruments I mean cutlery as any man might require. The fridge calls for a step or two, but stepping once or twice I can do. It's walking for miles to put away a plate that I have a problem with. The kitchen in the old place was so small that delft had to be stored halfway across the enragingly open-planned downstairs room, giving the unloading of a dishwasher the feel of a hike down the length of Appalachian trail, minus the beauty and ravenous bears. One adept at chopping on a postage stamp would have been perfectly content. And if you like bad trumpet practice, I assume it was you that foolishly snapped the property up. Three months after moving, I still feel vaguely blessed every time I find myself with the space to silently slice a mushroom, to make a lunch without packing a lunch.

Yeah, that's it. I love my kitchen. It has aliens in it.

And you measure for wealth by the things that you hold

2011-09-12T21:41:00.003+01:00

Back to school, back to birthday parties. Two this weekend. Data's own in a scant three weeks. What are you getting her? She wants an iPad, a pair of Zipp 800s and the complete works of Stewart Lee on doovd. Send them care of Gimme.

The highly competitive nature of these events begins with the arrival of the invitation. Some of us, specifically the would be losers in this game of parties, content ourselves with a group text. Others choose to replicate the business card scene from American Psycho. While both obnoxious and sickening this is at least fitting, given the carnage that tends to ensue when a large group of seven year old girls are force-fed ketchup and released into the wild.

Both of the weekend invites came in this afternoon. The first by phone, rambling, incoherent and dripping with the kind of text speak that when composed by someone over forty smells not a little of the drunken wheedles of a comb-overed uncle at a 21st birthday party. The second was pure Bateman. Tasteful font. Muted but unusual colours. The bare minimum of information. I suspect there was a graphic designer involved. Nothing is too good for their little psychopath. Both invitations include the now de rigeur request for €5 in place of a present. The text informs us that this is because the giftee is 'saving for a bigger bike'. The latter does not specify, presumably because it would throw out the typeset. I think that we can safely assume it's for a new pair of Nikes or an axe. No party favours for guessing which mother I might almost consider a friend and which blanks my wildly varying facial fuzz at the school gates.

But this fiver. What a fucking joke, I have recently realised. The final party of the season, before the welcome summer break, saw me delivering both Data and a stray child to the house of yet another little princess who had requested the aforementioned monetary gift. Data bore a thoughtlessly thrown together handmade card fashioned from twistables and a grubby sheet of A4, with a crumpled fin attached by a paperclip. Her backseat buddy had a card, an envelope containing a tenner and a fucking present. Wherefore. Toxic. Fudge. And it seems that this is the norm. Ask, and due to the chilling desperation of Northside Southside wannabes to appear richer than, or at the very least, as rich as, they are, ye shall receive a whole fuckload more.

Well, Gimme ain't buying it. Or buying into it. Or buying anything more that the penny sweet it takes to break a ten spot into two almost fives. Let them think that I'm cheap. Let them know that I'm poor, or slightly poorer than they. Let them scorn my child and make a point of never stopping the music when she holds the parcel. Let them...Fuck. I don't know.

I never ever know.

And a bunch of other cover ups

2011-09-11T09:20:00.000+01:00

I'm going to tell you the truth about 9/11. It's the truth that no one wants you to hear. Not the FBI, not the CIA, not Bush, Obama, no, not even Bin Laden.

What? Sorry? Really? Oh. Really? They did? In, like, a cave or something? No! Really? Less than a mile? No shit. Wow. I missed that. I must have been running. Or folding clothes. Shut up. Look, there hasn't been a West Wing episode about it, the fuck do you expect?

Ahem.

No, not even, whassis name, the guy with the hooks for hands. No one wants to you to hear this truth.

Now what I'm trying to do here, and let me know if it's not working out, is to give you the impression that I'm some kind of conspiracy theory nutjob who thinks that any of those NeoCon cunts had either the wherewithal to organise a massive operation and cover up like this or felt that they had any pressing need to invent an excuse to invade Iraq. How's that going for me? Do you think I'm kooky yet? Superkook? Kooktastic to the max? Good. Cause here comes the switcheroo. This is not the truth of which I speak. But it's coming now. Here it comes. Ready?

A huge airplane hitting a massive building is cool. Two huge airplanes hitting two separate massive buildings in the space of an hour is double cool. Both of them collapsing demolition style soon after? There are no words for the coolness of this.

But 2,997 people lost their lives, Gimme. Uh huh.

Kyle Willis is from Cincinnati. He's unemployed. He doesn't have health insurance. And last week he got a toothache. He couldn't afford to have the fucker pulled. His face swelled up. He got a really bad headache. He went to A&E where they gave him two prescriptions, one for painkillers, one for antibiotics. He couldn't afford both. So being in a huge amount of pain, he picked the painkillers. The infection spread, his brain swelled. And now he's dead. Him and an estimated 44,779 other Americans who die every year because they can't afford treatment.

Toothaches? Not cool. No ten year anniversary celebrations. No memorials. No Bruce Springsteen songs. No irrelevant wars. No never forgets. You want to die in America? Die cool.

I ride upon a field mouse, I was dancin' in the slaughterhouse

2011-09-10T19:59:00.004+01:00

Not since the St Stephen's Day tsunami of 2004 has Mother Nature, that most spiteful of all the mothers, done so much to shatter the hopes, the dreams, the very lives of so many innocents. At 5.55pm the tweet came through:

'ANNOUNCEMENT: Due to high winds, we have had to cancel the Macnas event for health and safety reasons. Please do not go to the venue. Pls RT.'

Dear God No, I thought and instantly tweeted. For it is in moments like these that my hyper religious don't kill me kill the gays true colours come to light. Why? Why? Why must fate by so cruel?

Sometimes I say something that displeases my younger daughter, along the lines of "Bedtime. Tidy." or "Your magic rectangle half an hour is up." or "Stop being an irriational, paranoid, self-centered replica of your father." And she will often reply, more, I suspect, in hope than expectation, "Are you being sarcastic?". Take from this what you will.

I fucking hate Macnas. Macnas and all their parade-based countrified ilk. What the fuck even is it? Art? Art, I believe, should either have something to say about the human condition, or failing that, engender some kind of emotion in its audience. Some kind of emotion outside of a bilious "Why the fuck are these unwashed longhairs getting my tax dollars to put on crappy costumes and prance about the place like a pack of stoned show ponies?" that is. But ooh the colours! Ooh, they're so high up! Ooh, that must have taken ages! Fucking wow. Colours I can get from jamming my fists in my eyes. None of these cunts on stilts are as high as the top story of my house. And if I have a salad bowl full of muesli tonight, it's going to take me an awful long time to squeeze one out tomorrow morning. But will the exhibition of my grain fed turd be cancelled tomorrow due to high winds? It will not. This is not art. It's not even entertainment. It's just people with too much time on their hands fucking about for the distraction of other people with too much time on their hands. Forget Big Tobacco, folks, joyfully abandon Lockheed Martin. The industry that we need to bring to its knees, the one that is slowly but surely sucking the life from us all, is the one that cunningly has no official name but that I shall henceforth term 'People Creating Shit For Other People To Stand Around And Stare Vacantly At'.

Mother Nature, the most just of all the mothers, is on my side. You should be too.

Not functional or elegant

2011-09-08T21:23:00.000+01:00

As a primary parental unit, I don't get to see many grown up fillums. "Fucking diddums", I hear you snark. And rightly so. Who needs 'em? I have a ready-made solution in the form of the weekly Mark Kermode podcast which serves a dual purpose in relation to this issue. Firstly, it provides me with knowledgeable-sounding opinions for those unfortunate moments when I find myself forced into cinematic discussions with co-workers or members of the public. Secondly, it allows me to minimise any possible desire to see a movie in the first place. This works thusly: if the coiffured critic thinks the film is shit, I assume he is correct. If he thinks it's a masterpiece, then I can comfortably distrust his opinion on the basis that this is a guy who believes that 'The Big Lebowski' is not a great Cohen Brothers work. Happily, I find this to be a technique that I can apply to many aspects of my life.

Mark has been away, and I refuse to listen to his replacements, the irritating and irritatingly named Floyd and Boyd, one of whom, and who fucking cares which one, started life as the film critic for Heat magazine. And so it is that I have not heard a review of 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes'. Which would be of little note had Common Law not brought home a doovd containing said movie burnt by one of her many admirers in work. And so, needing a little sabbatical from The West Wing and lacking My Double Blind Kermodian Buffer, I sat to down to watch it.

Some people would have preferred that I had substituted the above paragraphs with the words "I recently watched 'Rise of the Planet of the Apes'." These people should fuck off back to Twitter where they belong.

I am used to everything in life being a crushing disappointment, and this simian offering was no exception. The filmmakers could easily have conspired to explore some serious social issues. Animal testing. Slavery. Coping with the degenerative disease of a well-loved parent. Instead, they remade Garfield. I'm not fucking kidding. Prepare yourself for a spoiling double bill. Man gets unusually smart pet. Pet has some minor cute adventures. Man takes pet to surprisingly attractive vet. Man woos vet. Vet inexplicably allows herself be wooed. Pet gets in scrape, is separated from man, is bondagised. Pet enlists help of other animals, causes some amusing mayhem, escapes bondage. The fucking end. But ah, you say, what of Odie? Where in Rorpota is the hilariously stupid animal who provides a foil to the unusually smart pet? That role is ably filled by an Alzheimered John Lithgow. Stupid is funny. Alzheimer's makes you stupid. Alzheimer's is funny. Non cogito, ergo sum.

I have seen three other movies this year, all within the space of a 24 hour period where someone took the children somewhere for some reason and I found myself unable to get drunk. They were 'Inception', 'True Grit' and 'Never Let Me Go'. And guess what? All pretty much Garfield. Think about it. But not too hard. Really, I see no reason to ever watch a fillum again.

None of dem drugs get me high

2011-09-07T10:25:00.002+01:00

This is all about running. You hate these ones. But you hate them because you're jealous. Like non-smokers hate smokers, like the skinny hate the obese. It's the comfort that all those latters obtain, that fucks with all your former minds.

My friend Emma is in a boot. Stress fracture in her foot. But not no ordinary stress fracture, at least not no more. This injury normally presents as a barely visible hairline crack. Her foot, she is informed, looks more like a splintered piece of wood. Why? Because she trained on it for three months. This is the running equivalent of injecting yourself in the groin, enduring extreme pain in search of that just one more big rush. She may never run again. Foolish? If you like. Understandable? Oh yeah. That running, that's some good shit.

While I was on my yearly nine month sabbatical from the land of Stranded, I finally got back on the road, in the park, by the beach. And it was going very, very well. I was creeping over the 40 mile a week mark, putting in six mile threshold efforts at 6am, knocking out 20k Sundays. I ran a couple of races, dropped under 70kgs. All these sweet sweet numbers, speaking of a real return to form. And then, just before the first peak race, in a fucking Yoga class, I did something moronic. And hey presto, I've got a Grade One tear in the attachment of my left adductors. I ran on it. Of course I ran on it. And it really fucking hurt. So I ran a little faster. The pain followed, as it does. Thus reluctantly and on the advice of my miracle working physio, I let go of my Strawberry Half plans and went back on the methadone bike. If I was rich I could go under the knife, have the bad bit hacked out and a good bit reattached. But I need to work, and work doesn't hurt, so I just have to let it heal. Six months is the optimistic prognosis, though I doubt that takes account of all the biking, all the squatting, all the lunging. None of these activities cause actual aggravation, but the odd twinge and dull ache makes me suspect that they're not really helping. I try a little jog every now and again. Instant discomfort and the promise of something way beyond. So I just have to wait it the fuck out.

Or do I? If Emma can run on a broken bone for three months, why the fuck am I being such a wuss? It's just a little searing pain in the groin. The half-heartedly stifled groans of agony as I climb the stairs are surely something to which my family can adjust themselves. Htfu, motherfucker. Yeah, yeah, there's that 'may never run again' niggle. But that's a 'may' right there. And these medicine talkin' guys are always saying shit like that. Every alcoholic gets told that another drink will kill them, so they go for a pint to calm the nerves and does it kill them? No. Or rarely. Or not immediately.

So. Anyone up for a quick jog around St Anne's?

Firmer he roots him, the ruder it blow

2011-09-05T22:55:00.002+01:00

I have political rage. Contracted at the age of 22 when I finally began paying attention to current affairs, the condition has steadily worsened over time. Symptoms include uncontrolled high-pitched shrieking at radios, televisions and computer screens, mistrust of every adult human on the basis of the doubtlessly accurate assumption that they have, at one time or another, exercised their democratic rights in a way that would displease me, and the occasional ill-conceived, poorly planned and ultimately unsuccessful attempt at Lord Mayoral assassination.

You will be relieved to hear that I have begun a self-devised course of treatment. A minimum of one episode of The West Wing per day, ideally taken in conjunction with the calming ritual of clothes folding. And it's working. Cycling through our ex-leafy suburb on the way to our new ghettoland I spied Gerry Breen crossing the street towards his 11 D Bike Basher. I did not swerve to hit him. I did not swerve to hit his car. I did not even shout 'You fascist fuck' at him. I merely breathed a deep breath, pictured Rob Lowe's cheeky cheekbones and pedaled on.

There are some side effects. My sensitive side has emerged from its long hibernation. The simplest of political compromises forced upon Josh induce a pronounced welling. The death of CJ's bodyguard boyfriend had me wracked with sobs. And when President Bartlet's daughter Zoey was kidnapped the Bridge Crew spent 24 hours fending off my weeping embraces.

Next we have my newly shaped Toby Ziegler goatee. Last week, as I tackled my holiday face ferret, I found myself holding back from the final coup de grace. My poised hand paused before my careworn upper lip and seemed to say "You too can be grumpy and wise..."

"Really?" I riposted.

"Really. I mean, you've got grumpy covered, right?"

"Right."

"Why not add wise?"

"Having a goatee will make me wise?"

"Maybe."

"Maybe?"

"Fine. It'll make you look wise."

"You don't think that, given the masisvity of my hair, it won't just make me look a poorly appointed Luke Kelly tribute act?"

"There is that risk. But as you've been hacking at your face for half an hour already it's most likely worth a bash.'

"True, naked puppet, true."

So now I have a Toby goatee. Here's hoping that the next time my hand is holding a razor it doesn't attempt to complete the look, because folks, for all my failings, at least I am not bald.

The final side effect. Last Sunday I spent four solid hours perfecting my Martin Sheen jacket donning. And while I'm pretty sure that I now have the technicalities down, there remains a nagging doubt as to my ability to carry off the air of nonchalance that seems so essential to the practice. I don't know. Maybe I've got it. It's really just my insistence on gathering the family around me as witnesses every time that I put on a coat or cardy that makes me think that I may just have a little ways to go.

But rest easy. All these by products of my new televisual diet are worth it. To verbatimally quote Orwell: 'He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Enda.'

If you think that hurts then wait here comes the uppercut

2011-09-05T09:30:00.000+01:00

I forget how to do this, so you folks are just going to have to put up with some straight reportage until it all comes rushing back like so much tequila vomit onto the bus seat bench in a 90's Temple Bar dive named The Garage.

Riker went to Bigger School. All in green, shoulders bowed by with the weight of a million dollars worth of books, looking for all the world like the young woman that she has so suddenly become. 'Yes!' I howled, internally. 'Be bowed! Bow some more! I could have bought a fucking iPad with that cash!'. I will skip lightly past the cost of these books, of that uniform, of those 'voluntary' contributions, lest I weep all over my barely functioning Dell.

I was scared as she walked away. Scared to fuck. Logic loudly dictated that there was little to fear in relation to my Riker. But logic could talk as slowly and shoutily as it liked, I was taking none of that shit down. Because I remember still. My first day in secondary. The giddy excitement of what might have been another chance. The dreadful stench of desperation oozing from my pores. That giddiness leading to babbling, jibbering, gabbling, to inappropriate guffawing. Shut up, I tell myself as I keep talking, fidgeting, being excitedly excitable. And then, barely four hours later, I'm back to where I began, ostracized by the cool kids with whom I inexplicably want to be in, doomed to six more years of hanging out with the stupid, the fat, the fawning. And fitting right the fuck in.

None of this for Riker, who, while thankfully not a cool kid, bears little resemblance to the fucked up ball of fled father inspired insecurity from the above paragraph. She came home happy, if exhausted, and full of cheery chat. If she got the crap wedgied out of her literally or emotionally, she hid it well. And as the week progressed it became clear that this was not merely Riker at her Epictetian best. Despite the long walk, the longer day, the heavy bag, she is genuinely enjoying the new challenges and experiences offered by second level education. The big freak.

It's unlikely to be all plain sailing. And my relief at never having to set foot in a similar environment myself is tempered by the knowledge that I will be living each inevitable trauma through my brilliant daughter without even the semblance of control that I felt I had at her age. But best to think of it as some low-intensity training for the moment that her younger sibling makes the same crossover. Because there be some scary shit.

Eight miles outta Memphis and I got no spare

2011-09-04T16:22:00.006+01:00

An off-centre sofa, upsettingly mustard walls. Elder child magically rectangling right to my right, her casually crossed leg obscuring an obscure early Madonna 12" single. Fucking Coach Trip on the telly and another pair of voices drifting down from the bath.

It was a pretty special summer, involving a mountain stage of the Tour on a beautifully handmade but deeply unsuitable bike and then one of the happiest fortnights of my life. But now it's back to school and double-jobbing inspired almost solo parenting.

I've been listening to Nietzsche to get me through, accepting, embracing my Will to Nap.

Just thought I'd drop by...

Above us only sky

2011-03-22T14:34:00.003Z

I got a call on Sunday night. From my mother, who was holding a party she didn't want to hold, that I had blatantly lied to avoid. What drunken dialing is this, I wondered, as I ill-advisedly tapped answer. She handed the phone to my catering sister.

'Gerry Haugh died.'

'Oh. Okay. Thanks.'

That was it. I thought briefly about finding out where and when the funeral was, but rejected the concept almost immediately. There is no way, I reasonably reasoned, I am going anywhere near those cunts. And he's dead. He's not going to care. Because he's dead.

And today, two days later, it has finally sunk in. I've been doing a lot of choking back this past hour.

I ran joyously through a forest. He supplied the trees.

I wore a scarf on my leg. He made no comment.

I fell in love for the first time. He was in the room.

I watched the Rocky Horror Picture show. Did all the newspaper water-pistol shit. He felt it needed to be done. I found myself in agreement.

I sat in Dunkin' Donuts for hours, drinking coffee and smoking. Talking shit about books, music. He never came by, but he would have approved.

I lost my virginity to Julie from Ballinskelligs. We did it in a field, I could hear Bon Jovi playing from the pub. He organised the trip.

I read The Razor's Edge. It was on a list he gave of books that must be read. So I read it. I started reading it again last Friday. No, really, I did.

I became an actor. Because he showed me how and it made him proud and what the fuck else was I going to do?

I wrote a thesis on the lyrics of Robert Smith. 'Sign it, date it, keep it,' he wrote. I didn't. I wish I had.

I learned that it was okay for boys to kiss other boys. I didn't much like it.

I suffered a terrible loss. Ballinskelligs again.

I wondered, even in the self-obsessed haze of adolescence, how I too could be endlessly selfless and calm and kind and gentle and smart and well-read and quietly passionate. I wonder still.

He was like a father to me, though I feel his scathing look at such a hoary cliché, and I always assumed we'd get together one of these days and have ourselves a chat about the old days. I looked forward to apologising for insisting that my rejection of everything related to my alma mater had to include him. Sudden illness, quick death. I fucking hate being an atheist. He hated me being an atheist too.

It's a planet full of traffic lights and traffic light abusers

2011-03-17T07:37:00.004Z

I don't get it. Really. I just do not fucking get it. What the fuck is it that we're supposed to be celebrating? Our potato-faced obesity? Our well-deserved international reputation for being drunken morons, financial retards? Our joyous national acceptance of physical, emotional and fiscal rape by our perceived betters, whether it be the English or a pack of barely literate gombeens? Woo hoo! We're pathetic! Isn't it fucking brilliant? Crack us open another 10am can of Smithwicks there.

And as for the parade. I said to Common Law, I said 'What even is a parade anyway?' And Common Law said, so she did, 'I know what a parade is but I'm slightly surprised that you don't.' How we didn't laugh. Because really, what the fuck is a parade? People stand for hours, closely surrounded by other personal space disregarding people just to wait for other people to walk past them. Occasionally one of the walking people fucks a stick in the air and catches it. And all the time the non-walkers push and shove and talk and breathe and stink and leak. And as the parade limps to its conclusion and this filthy crowd dissipates everyone moves on to the traditional afternoon of vomiting and senseless violence. No wonder we are all so proud of being born on this particular lump of turf.

The last time the Minute family embarked on this journey was four years ago, and now, the memory having faded sufficiently in Riker's pre-teen skull, we are doomed to walk, nay stand, on this road again. I will take no joy in the inevitable proving of my correctness on all of the above points. I can only hope that I am the victim of a premature stabbing and thus get to spend the day having a nice twelve hour lacerated lie down on the plastic chairs of my local Accident and Emergency.

Have a safe day.

I'm a say what I wanna say, I call myself what I wanna call myself

2011-01-07T06:05:00.000Z

There's this guy in the gym. He's got one of those names that are initials, this guy, and Gimme is suspicious of people thus nomanclated. He also looks alarmingly like a certain cartoonish tv character. You know the one. Again, suspicious. Oh and it turns out he's a racist. I think. Is it racist to hate the English? Because if it is then there are a lot of racists about. There are a lot of enablers too, enabling all over the shop. Turns out I count myself among them.

But is it racism, really? Cause you know, the famine and shit. And we shouldn't vote Sinn Féin because of all those innocents that they murdered and shit. It works both ways, this historical atrocity bender.

I know lots of English people. And I can stand to be around most of them about as much as I can stand to be around anyone else. A couple of them I even kind of like. So when, as we discussed the horrorshow that is the upkeep and management of my place of work, this guy in the gym leant in and sweatily said 'What do you expect? Run by a nigger.' I found myself saying nothing but 'Yeah well, that nigger anyway.' Except he didn't say 'nigger' of course because you can't say 'nigger' and I didn't say 'nigger' because it wouldn't have made sense because he didn't say 'nigger' and anyway the running in question is being done by a man who might reasonably described as many things but 'nigger' is not the first that springs to mind. He said 'Englishman'. And I said 'Englishman'. Not as bad, right? Barely in the same ballpark. As disparate, one might say, as male and female circumcision. And yet.

Wow, check me out, I just did my very own blog version of Joel Schumacher's 'A Time to Kill' starring Mathew McConaughey and Samuel L. Jackson. I'm fucking welling up.

Result.

If only I'd thought of the right words

2011-01-06T06:59:00.002Z

Day 5

Skippy.

I'm going to get over this endless morosity and give you a whole load of the old school 'There's this guy in the gym...' shit. Hey, I may even dredge through my past for some of that good misery of childhood material. But not today. Not on the day I got offered psychotherapy as payment in kind. It's only been five days lady. Wait till you see me on February 9th.

So you sail across the ocean, away across the foam

2011-01-05T06:32:00.000Z

Day Four

Morningtown Positives.

I don't have to be quiet for fear of waking the late working Common Law. Though it's not like I usually start the day with an acapella rendition of Apocalyptico's version of 'In the Hall of the Mountain King'.

I get to drink my coffee of choice, none of this Fairtrade piss for the Gimme, not no more. But my body is unused to this once merely caressing caffeine kick, and I am sent running to the bathroom at the first sip with the day long headache and shakes in place before my ass hits the throne.

Lyric FM. I no longer to have to reach awkwardly from my Illy induced seated position to spin the dial from Common Law's bizarre Radio One preference to the sultry and calming tones of the radiophic genius that is Marty Whelan. And yet this overworked talent will insist on playing the occasional Michael Bubbly track. The prick.

I've gone longer in many a tech week, in multiple Frances. But this feels harder, already. I'm trying, though. Trying hard to find the positives and so that I might immediately and romantically find the negatives.

Wait till I tell you about the wondrous horribleness of Skippy.

But suddenly a scream smashes through my dream

2011-01-04T07:37:00.003Z

Day Three

Stop winding her up.

I'm not!

Yes, you are.

I'm not!

It's not like it's much of a challenge at the moment.

Yeah well, she winds me up.

You've have to be the bigger woman.

Uh huh.

And how does she wind you up?

She called me an idiot.

When?

Today.

She called you an idiot?

Actually she called me an idiom.

Really?

Yup. I'm pretty sure she meant idiot though.

Chances are.

It's your fault.

How is it my fault?

When you're driving, you call people idiots.

It's better than calling them cocksucking motherfuckers.

You know, you shouldn't say that to me, even in pretend blogland.

That's true. I take it back.

Thank you.

You're welcome. Anyway, I won't do it anymore. I promise. No more idiot shrieking. From now on I will refer to the road morons as idioms.

Okay.

Okay. Stop winding your sister up.

Okay.

Okay.

How can I, when you won't take it from me?

2011-01-03T09:08:00.002Z

Day Two

There's little to fear really, on this Day Two which is really Day One, being the first full day and a much more realistic representation of the 37 or 38 to come. Yesterday the Bridge Crew were taken by Long-Suffering Childless Units One and Three to the hideous and chilly land of Funder. And so I sat around pre-writing posts.

Nothing to fear then, outside of physical and mental collapse. I've decided to use this as a valuable or, depending on who wins the big race, completely pointless technical rehearsal of Common Law's eventual demise. And despite this being merely a technical rehearsal, and not one which requires me to employ any of my peerless powers of emoting, I'm still giving it my all. The wandering listlessly from room to room, the metronomically regular crying jag, the being strong for the children. All in the bag. It's a stinking shame that the New York Times are missing this one, I'd be straight to Broadway. Now if I could just put the chairs in the right place and get my entrances and exits right, I'd be punfully set. And hey, can someone talk to the lighting guy? It's a little dark in here. Lonely and dark. How about a revolving gobo? A revolving gobo of an exploding helicopter for preference.

Back to work tomorrow. That oughta spice things up.

Lena gets her son ready for school

2011-01-02T14:13:00.002Z

Day One.

Of 39. I thought it was 41. So I had this whole 'Kneeling over his body in the vestibule'' bit ready to go. But it's not 41. It's 39. I could do a whole 'Steps' scat, I have always fancied Huh, but I think it might even be 38, depending on how you count it, and so, much as I'd like to get all Max Cohen on your asses, I probably should just let the whole Numerology crap drop.

And so Day One begins and ends with the most pretentiously cultural reference laden opening paragraph of my illustrious pretentious cultural reference laden blogging career.

Tomorrow, you'll be unsurprised to hear, is Day Two.

Here amidst the shuffle of an overflowing day

2010-12-22T22:05:00.011Z

I think snow is fucking great. I love it. I love the silence. I love it because only the stupidest of cunts is out on the roads and what very little noise they make is deadened by the blanket of corpse-faced white. This city, this Town of the Ford, it talks too fucking much. Talks, moans, bitches, screams and fucking howls. The snow has got her pillow held lightly over the face of this agonised terminal case and its constant pain. Snow won't kill the town, but it'll shut it the fuck up for a few days. And don't tell me it isn't beautiful. Tom said it. The Heart of Saturday Night, Track 1, listen to the whole song. Now there's something for you to do with your iPhone when you're stuck in a four hour traffic jam.

I get it, snow fucks people up. People aren't where they want to be and are desperately trying to get somewhere else. Just like every other day. But yeah, people slip and die. People put out their backs unacustomedly shoveling in a futile attempt to prevent the slipping and the dying. People have to the wipe the arses of those that slip, but fail to die. Fuck it, it's worth it. My iPhone fucks people up. My having an iPhone means people suffer. That's worth it too.

I love you snow.

I wanna be the one to walk in the sun

2010-10-12T21:51:00.004+01:00

I'm sleepy and somewhat loved up on endorphins and my feet hurt more than my shoulder which hurts quite a lot and tomorrow I will most likely have to walk backwards down the stairs which will not lend itself to the teaching of two yoga classes but what are you going to do? I'll tell you. You're going to listen to what I have to say.

A girl's night in. A boy's night out. Concepts of complete cuntitude, of comprehensive cockness. Why must we be divided so? Why must we be so divided? Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're familiar with Gimme's fake feminist schtick. But I have more. Check this shit out. They're getting "the girls 'round." Not the women, despite the fact that this all appears to be aimed at grown ups. The girls. And just so's you know, there's nothing better than not having to worry about bad chat up lines. Personally I can think of one or two things better than that and none of them involve worry or women and no me. But yes, it's a girl's night in. Yes, it's for the kind of people who like "baking up a storm", who love "gossiping all night long", who like to "dress down in PJs and watch the X-Factor". Who bitch about their best friend when they go to the toilet. Who cry when they hear their best friend bitching about them through the toilet door. Who wake up on a Sunday with traces of their farting, belching still drunk boyfriend's vomit on their PJs from when he came in arseholed after a lad's night out and tried to rape them, but lacking an erection, threw up on them instead.

Drop the fucking pink. Lose the gender norms. And the word is "around". Around. Get the girls around. Spelling it "'round" in every sentence in every fucking paragraph on every fucking page of your hideously pink website changes nothing.

Look, I'm sorry. I'm in a lot of pain. Go ahead. Give your money to cancer. I'm all for cancer. Go cancer! But please, find a way to do it that doesn't belittle us all and make me want to throw up on my girlfriend's PJs. Thank you.

Though your commitment to most would offend

2010-10-11T20:40:00.003+01:00

I'm really scared. Everyone's all like "Ease back into it, be careful, don't do too much." And I mean everyone. Common Law. My mother in common law. Random people on and off the internet. But it's not like I have a choice. If I don't teach a full schedule then I don't get the sweet, sweet sugar, or I get about the same amount of sweet, sweet sugar that I'd get by continuing to dip into the threadbare pockets of the state. And the longer I don't do it, the more it's going to hurt. Had me a little crunching practise this morning to see how resting my shoulder blade on the floor is going to feel. I did maybe a third of the track I'll do tomorrow morning. Now, all of eight hours later I feel like someone has been knitting a scarf inside my upper abdominals. And not in a good way. I'm not all that worried about the shoulder. The shoulder will be fine. Probably. I'm worried about my poor, poor legs. Already suffering under an extra stone of weight, tomorrow they must perform three spin classes in addition to ten bizillion squats and lunges. I am going to die of achy legs.

Yes, that's right. Thought I might slip that by unnoticed but no. Yes. A fucking stone. 14 pounds. 6.35 kilograms. 111 Snickereses. Stop laughing. Stop. You bastards. Everyone, except my mother in common law, keeps telling me I look great. The bit of extra weight suits me. I look much healthier. So fucking there. But of course I don't. Naturally, it doesn't. I disgust my fat-arsed Winnie the Pooh self. Give me another two weeks and I'll be sending search parties out for my cock. So now I crave the pain. The pain that will make me not a porker. I crave yet I fear.

I really am very, very scared.

Oh my agony, know that I will never marry

2010-10-08T08:18:00.004+01:00

So I finally got the truth. To achieve this I had to hold down my charmingly Northern (first in my new Oxymoron of the Week series) physiotherapist Aileen and threaten to punch her lights out. Metaphorically speaking. Even able-bodied, I'm not one for the punching and such are the knock on effects of my tip-tapping on the door of the big red van that I can barely punch dots, let alone trim and toned healthcare professionals from Donegal. But metaphorically I hurled her to the floor, and with my eyes I threatened a good beating should she continue her withholding ways and thus eventually the truth it did emerge. Six more weeks. At least. Before I get near normal. And I'm back to work on Tuesday agonizing pain or no agonising pain.

So the upshot is I wish I had cancer. Sweet sympathy giving cancer. Don't get me wrong, having an injury which most commonly occurs in conjunction with fatal chest trauma has been great too. Lots of lying around, a good dent made in Red Dead Redemption, and I even read almost all of a book! But I was up and making one-armed dinners within ten days and truth be told, people didn't really seem to appreciate just how badly I had fucked myself up. If you say you have cancer, even in a text message, you can feel people's awed sympathy hurtling back through the air before they can type so much as 'I'm going to start believing in god again just so you can be in my prayers'. Say 'I have a compound fracture of the scapula' and they're all 'LOL! That's like, in your toes, right?' Combine this staggering anatomical ignorance with the not unfounded assumption that it was all my fault and you have a sumptuous Nigel Slater recipe for who gives a fuck.

Cancer, though. All the good shit comes with cancer. Effortless weight loss. A lot more than six weeks off work should you want it. Hero status beyond even that of Floppy should you prefer to keep busy. That hushed sympathy heroin I mentioned before. Carte blanche to cheat your way to seven Tour wins, fuck up an economy with a best mate banker bail out, do pretty much anything you want. And most importantly of all, it's not your fault. Even if you're a fifty a day sunbed Sally, absolution is yours. Because it's cancer, because you're going to die. Well, we're all going to fucking die. Thank fuck. So the sooner I catch me some Big C and start absorbing those rays of sympathy and forgiveness the better. Karma being what it is, I can probably expect a diagnosis at my next session with Aileen.

Tommy thinks the crazies are back in my mind

2010-10-06T19:05:00.007+01:00

We get 'Alive!' in the door every month now. Usen't to. I don't know what's changed. Maybe that red-faced tub of bully-producing cunt-rot next door signed us up, suspecting that her consistent rudeness and brazen Gerry Breen blowing wasn't fulfilling her converting the Gimme clan to Christianity goals. Or maybe they just give it to everyone around here because people around here all easily deluded tossers. Each is as likely as the other.

It will come as no surprise to you, given my opening paragraph, that I will not stand to be converted. Nor, my love of Janelle Monae notwithstanding, do I count my self among those who embrace delusion with ease. Any yet my big learning from this month's Alive! (fuck but I love that exclamation mark, it's so...cannibally) is that I have one big fat selfish cock of a vocation going on. Check out these cheerful chappies from right out there on the front cover:

It's not the first time I have found myself unable to tear my gaze away from an image of smiling potential pederasts, far from it, but never so gleeful a group, never so varied a vaticana.They're not quite priests yet, a quick hop, skip and jump to page nine informs me, but give them a mere seven years folks and and they'll be preaching with the most decrepit of them. And look at them. Jesus, but they're all so happy. Sure, at least one of them looks like he's not going to make it seven weeks without meeting his made up maker. Indeed yes, I'm pretty sure the guy at the front is Richard Cook, whose marry for power plan appears to have gone awry. And wait, isn't that the co-creator of Father Ted lurking at the back? Nevertheless, happy, perhaps even joyous they all certainly appear to be.

And happy I am not.

We know that to achieve this happiness I need to walk the Earth. This need has deepened of late, what with the self-inflicted Sunday injury and the injurious Sundays of affliction but I'm all grown up these days and realise that, in these Taoiseach in a cupboard times, being a hobo is just not an affordable fourth career path. So how about the priesthood? I get to sit around reading for seven years. Then I get to go somewhere far away where people think I'm great. Someone buys me clothes, brings me food, pays my rent. Assuming I keep my nose and penis reasonably clean I'm assured of a long and comfortable retirement with lots of serious boozing thrown in. I'm not seeing a drawback. And that drawback that you think you're seeing, why that's not a drawback at all.

My only concern is that my chosen order might have some slight issues with my atheism, hatred of the Poop, and somewhat salty speech patterns. Cunt them though, if they are reduced to recruiting the ribald yet humourless Graham Linehan, then they must be way past desperate.

So I guess I just leave a comment on the blog or something, right? Fuck, but I love making these big decisions. It makes me feel so Alive!

With the money from her accident she bought herself a mobile home

2010-09-01T09:28:00.000+01:00

They say that you get more right wing as you get older. But then they say a lot of shit. I must confess however that as the years roll by I do find myself ever more prejudiced against the fat, the religious and 'people' who take an active interest in hurling. Yet I cling to my self-image as a lefty commie liberal douchebag who believes in all that crazy shit like science and the possibility that homersexuals might be human too. This often leaves me confused. As in the case of the proposed 'work for dole' scheme. Clearly this is a load of right wing cock designed to be shoved down the throats of those who are unemployed through no fault of their own. It will take jobs away from the qualified and serve merely to polish the government's unemployment figures turd. But, you know what? I kind of like it. It appeals to my inner Maggie Thatcher. I'm convinced based solely on my shaky impression of the life of this one guy I know that loads of people are sitting at home raking in almost as much as me for playing xbox all day. And while a little granny arse-wiping might not be their idea of the dignity of labour, it's sure to make me feel briefly better about my daily grind of commute. class, commute, kids, commute, class, commute.

Jesus, but I need to get back to work.

Only evil seems to live forever

2010-08-31T09:56:00.004+01:00

I guess my Maggie Gyllenhaal post is just going to have to wait. Mick Lally is dead and this fucks me right off. What is it about not a cunt actors that I know and dying? Sure, the whole Tom Murphy thing was ages ago but I can't recall any of the countless absolute wanker actors that I worked with eating dirt sandwiches in the interim. But maybe that's all for the best. Existence is such a horrible sufferfest that long life is surely a greater curse than a relatively youthful death. So I guess, woo hoo! Mick Lally is dead!

Mick was kind and thoughtful and patient and funny. Not like an actor at all. I really liked him. I would go so far as to say that he was my favourite person on the whole gig. But because I enjoy speaking ill of the dead I am searching desperately in my memory for any evidence of his being less than a perfect gent. This is the best I can do: in the days before Youtube, when such a thing was something of a rarity, I lent him a video tape of Richard Burton being interviewed on Parkinson. He never gave it back. I would occasionally bump into him post-Glenroe and he'd always say 'Oh, I still have that video of yours, I must get it back to you..'

But he never did. And now he's dead.

There's going to be a joke coming

2010-08-30T09:45:00.003+01:00

My anti-corporate commercial busting schtick is taking a bit of a pounding these days, as I endlessly and needlessly lounge before the altar of day time television. I say needlessly because I should really be up and about, washing the dishes, mowing the lawn, ruling the children with an iron fist. It's my shoulderblade that's broken, not my leg or my spine or even said fist of iron. And what do I use my shoulder blade for? Fuck all, that's what. Sure, it's consistently and nauseatingly painful, but harden the fuck up, right? Wrong. I am a total pain pussy and thus shall continue to lie mewling upon the sunroom sofa bed, calling for Common Law to unwrap my Dime Bar sweeties.

But what the fuck has this to do with my contra The Man stance? It's the ads. you see, the commercials. I am supposed to despise them with all my faux-Hicksian heart, representing as they do the very nadir of our oh so bottomed-out civilization. But I fucking love them. I love them for the hope that they hold, the hope of something better. Advertisements are the Obama of television, though like Hussein, they will always let you down. Day time television, television in general in fact, is so heart-heartbreakingly shit that I have spent the first few days of my self-imposed confinement flicking like a zombie fly fisherman from channel to channel. And so to ease the digital pain I now rest at the ad breaks, waiting to see what's on next. Sure, I'd like to force feed the fat, sausage stealing anti-obesity PSA guy to death. Naturally I wish to take the shards of a smashed LCD tv and jam them into Craig Doyle's UPC eyes. And of course I want to take the Barry's Tea Bangkok bitch on a tour of the darker side of the Thai capital so that she can take some tasteful pictures to send back to Mammy. But mostly I sit through the break in hopeless hope, convinced that all this is merely a precursor to an old episode of Sapphire and Steel or Battle of the Planets, or Darwin help me, a showing of Inherit the Wind. It never is, of course, but thankfully another ad break is never more than a flick or two away.

I suppose I could get Common Law to pick me up an RTE guide, but I somehow doubt that's going to help with the onrushing depression.

Last night he flew to Baghdad in his magical armchair

2010-08-28T11:41:00.003+01:00

Picture me now, bouncing up and down on my tippy toes, doing that wavy hand to stop the tears of joy messing up my mascara bit. "Ooooh," I say at my most unintentionally camp. "Ooooh, I'm going to be an uncle!" Who'd have thought it? Well, fucking everyone truth be told. This brother of mine who knew how you know with a good melon was never getting married just for the tax breaks. This man has the trajectory of his life plotted out and until said trajectory is inevitably thrown off course by some kind of bizarre Hollywood cliché of fate or failing that, an alien invasion, the plans shall continue apace. And a logical part of this post marriage program was always going to be children. Congratulations to him and his lovely wife.

But it's not just them. Have you noticed? Everyone's having kids these days. People too young to be having them, people too old. The married and the unmarried. The rich and the poor. One of my oldest and bestest friends (second girl recently arrived, the tremendous sissy mickey) and the groin injecting junkie from my St James's ward. The mind-numbingly stupid and boring, and the soon to be so. And many of these people, even the smart ones, are doing it on fucking purpose. I mean, seriously. Do they have any idea how much children cost? Or how tedious and stressful they mostly are? Can they not see my rapidly greying hair, my spirit-crushed stance, my inability to stay awake past 11pm? Have they not heard of over-population, global warming, the re-introduction of college fees? What's the worse that could happen? Never experiencing the joy of an unrequested hug from your eleven year old? What you don't know can't hurt you. Dying alone with no one to listen to your interminable tales of former fake glories? Start a fucking podcast. A biologically driven feeling of emptiness and meaninglessness? Sure you get that anyway. How about the continuance of the human race? Don't make me fucking laugh. I mean, I really think we've done enough, don't you?

Case closed. Enough with the babies, people.

Now if you'll excuse me I need to go and criticise every little thing my daughter does as she kindly makes me lunch. Because there we have the only valid reason for procreation. Revenge.

And the sun hit the derrick and cast a bat wing shadow

2010-08-23T22:07:00.004+01:00

With the exception of a gentle jaunt with the Nor Man, the most notable moment of which was the nimble avoidance of explosive bovine diarrhea, Sunday was my first proper ride since the Alps. I was not in ideal physical condition, having, on the previous afternoon, gone straight from the performance of a bizillion sqats to an accidental triple pint combo. And so it was that I hit the Sabbath hills in the company of Mr. M and my best Polish friend Marcin. My quads were achy and my head was fuzzy. It was glorious. Plenty of the usual climbing and a little never done before diversion to the allegedly highest paved point in the country. This involved some hairy descending on a steep, gravelly winding track. I skidded a little at one point but did not crash. Coming off Sally Gap I followed Mr M's line and for the first time ever was not downhill dropped by him. This felt very good. Later, on the final serious descent of the day, I skidded again, again on gravel and this time a little more violently. I regained control. With my heart pounding and a little tremor in my braking hands I took the rest of the decent at a more leisurely pace. All these close calls. But then there's always at least one a ride.

We split up just after Rathfarnham, Marcin heading back to his beautiful baby girl, Mr M to whatever it is that the childless do on a Sunday. I checked my clock and saw that I had plenty of time to shower, change pedals and have a little rewarmup before starting my spin at 12. It felt good to have done three hours and to still feel strong and ready for the rest of the day. I wished that i had made more use of the weather since I'd been back, made more of an effort to get out. I looked forward to the remaining warmish weeks and putting in some serious mileage. Glowing with all those good endorphins, I gave a little kick on the brief incline up to Orwell Road. I checked right as I approached the left hand turn. Clear, I would have called had I been with the boys. And then my hands came off the bars.

I don't know why. It happened fast. They were on the hoods. Then they weren't. I can only assume it was a bump or a pothole. But off they were. And as I was about to make a turn, albeit at a measly 30kmh, I really needed them on. Yeah, it happened fast. But everything else happened slow. Slowly, my latest bike and I sped toward the very wrong side of the road. Slowly, I tried to regain balance, get my hands on the bars, make the turn. Slowly, the red van in the corner of my eye hurtled towards me.

Oh so slowly. Slow enough to know I wasn't going to connect head on. Slow enough to know that I was certainly going to connect. I reached the bars to turn but not the brakes to slow. It was with pace and power that I shoulder-charged the van, pace and power enough to do insurance claim worthy damage to its side panel. With my shoulder. I bounced off. The bike flew away unscathed. I dropped to the tarmac and lay crumpled in the bright Sunday morning sun.

No one wants you when you lose

2010-06-07T19:47:00.004+01:00

I'm moving. Again. Like you care. Oh, how I wish you'd care. But you won't care, because not unlike my long defunct "The fuck am I doing this for" list of spin classes blog, this new offering will focus purely on the mentalness of the physical. Working on the basis of write what you'd like people to think you know, The Rider from Cycles Goff (for such is its title) is about, you'll never fucking guess, cycling. Cycling what Gimme does and cycling what Gimme would like to do. Cycling what others do, and cycling what Gimme would like others to do. The posts will be brief but reasonably regular and as I have already mentioned, of no discernible interest whatsoever. They will also reflect my new positive outlook on life which includes a dramatic reduction in both obscenity and cynicism. See? You are totally going to fucking hate it.

The Rider from Cycles Goff may be found here. Cycles Goff does popular social media site here.

Thank you for your readership of Stranded on Gaia, I will be sure to return when I find the time to do something but cycle and watch cycling and think about cycling. And now write about cycling.

I know we'll catch that villian

2010-04-15T14:33:00.005+01:00

Allow me to treat briefly of Ghost Estates. I gather there's a problem. And what might that problem be? Might it be that there are no shops around? Well, welcome to living in the bog. Might it be that there's no one around to talk to? Sounds fucking delightful to me. Might it be that there are dangerous, unfinished building sites that could be simply accessed by children? Uh huh, those are what we used to refer to as 'playgrounds'. If ghost estates actually housed, or indeed estated ghosts then for sure, we might have some reason to complain. No much of a reason though, what with the fun and frolics than inevitably ensue from a good haunting:

See? Recessions are great.

Now Jimmy chose the Yankee blue

2010-04-13T22:13:00.009+01:00

As Common Law, Data and I wandered Rikerless through Trinity College this Sunday, (the older daughter was with her new family, the Alis) my partner in drudgery asked if I would like to go back to college. Proud of my ignorance and pickiness, I immediately pointed out that I had never been to college and therefore could not technically go back. Common Law sighed.

"Would you like to go to college?"

As this question was posed we were passing a politely passed out pupil prone upon the cricket pitch, with a can of my Pims clasped lightly in his fist.

"Yes," I said, "Definitely."

"I don't mean so that you could spend your days drunk and lying in the sun. I mean so that you could study."

"Oh," I said. I needed to think about that one.

Which is all by way of bringing forth my statement of the day. I fucking love iTunesU. Sure, that's a lot of irritating wrong sized letterness, but what it provides! I'm currently attending Yale. Oh yes, I am. Every night as lay down my head after another day of meaningless exertion, I drop in on a lecture. I'm currently learning all about the American Civil War, from the esteemed Professor Blight. That is some fucked up shit, folks. And I haven't even got to the war bit. We're at slavery, me and the prof and fucking hell is pretty much all I have on that. And it happen yesterday, just about. Really, the temerity of Americans with their freedom bullshit, even the right-thinking ones. They have some serious memory loss issues, they really do. It's early days, but I'm pretty sure that Professor Blight's thesis will turn out to be that slavery and the Civil War fucked America and Americans all the way up. And you can see why he might posit the shit out of that too. Think of an American. First one that comes into your head. Fucked up, right? Mental, most likely. I know, mad isn't it? Isn't he, isn't she? That's the Civil War and all the messed up shit that caused it and all the messed up shit that it caused, right there in your mental mentlar picture.

But it gets better. I've just started alternating my Frederick Douglass with a little bit of the old philosophising. I was attracted by the title of the course in question which is, quite simply, Death. Get in! I dig a bit of death, me. And a bit of Death too. I'm only ten minutes into the introductory lecture but what a fucking ten minutes it's been. Shelly (he wants us to call him Shelly) has already put it out there that he has an argument to make, and that it is, in a couple of nutshells, this: Immortality is not desirable, there is no afterlife, suicide is a moral act and death is, in essence, fucking deadly. That's Irish deadly, you poor fucked up Gringos, an Irish deadly meaning fab.

So I'm getting educated. For free. On my telephone. Obviously I won't get a piece of paper, and thus the potential to earn more than the paltry sum that shouting at people brings in, but I'm pretty sure that to earn a bona fide university qualification one has to spreadeagle one's self in a spring-kissed cider stupor and I have neither the time, the money nor the emotional backing to be doing with that. And I'd also be willing to wager that a degree in Civil War, Slavery and Death does not pave the road to much wealth.

But I'll let you know how they turn out. Badly, I'm guessing, on just about all counts.

What did we ever do to these guys that made them so violent?

2010-04-12T13:46:00.005+01:00

And still Gettingmyholegate rumbles on. Such would have been your obsessive refreshing and rerefreshing of all the interblogs in question that it seems unlikely that you will have taken on board the big news story of the weekend. Here's a hint, it had an aeroplane in it.

What the fuck is it with aeroplanes? Is it because they're just wrong? Because they are. They're all kinds of fucked up, planes. Look how heavy they are. Much heavier, for example than the plate I just frisbeed across the kitchen. And did that plate make it all the way to New York? Or Smolensk? Or even Inis Mór? It did fucking not. It fell on the ground and broke into a bizillion pieces. And now I have to text Common Law. That's the new rule, you see. I am required to text the lady of the house immediately following the breakage of any item by either the children or myself, including but not limited to, the children or myself. No longer am I allowed to clean up whatever it might be, hide the evidence and hope that my fake wife doesn't notice. Nope, not no more. Common Law is now subscribed to the Smashed Shit Text Alert Service and you can be too. Mail me your number and I'll make it so. Texts cost €1, €5 for optional photo of destruction.

Aaaaaanyway. Airplanes. Heavy, right? And there they are flying around the sky and only occasionally crashing. Wrong, right? And yet there seems to be something about dying in a plane crash that makes it okay to have been a right wing Pope loving gay bashing prick. If Lechy had snuffed it of a heart-attack would Poland be in mourning shock? Would Poland be united in grief if it had just been him and not his wife and a whole load of other big wigs? What's it all about, Alojzy? If Mary Harney and Brian Cowen were to die in a plane crash tomorrow how would that be? Would we shed tears? I know that cunt down the off licence would, but the rest of us right thinking folk, how would we respond? Would we unite in mourning? I would like to think fucking not. Pity for their families, for sure. But joy unconfined on every other level from this honest Greta. We're all going to die and really fucking soon too, so the sooner the hate-filled catholic cunts and the greedy grasping fuck the poor pricks kick the bucket the better, if not for all concerned, then at the very least for me. Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to smash some more plates. Riker needs a new pair of shoes.

Born already ruined

2010-04-08T16:04:00.003+01:00

We got our brochure for the Grand Canal Theatre in the door today, hidden in among other marginally less offensive junk mail, such as flyers espousing the virtues of low rent golf courses and high rent Fianna Gael councillors. There has been discussion elsewhere as to just how shit the upcoming season in this newly opened thespian safe house is going to be yet still I felt compelled given my theatrical background to leaf through the brochure in question. My eye was caught and about ripped off its stalk by one particular potential musical feast.

The Priests.

This is old hat, one assumes. These guys are multi-million selling stadium outselling superstars so everyone else is going to have heard of them already. Not me. This was fucked up singing priest trio first contact for the Greta. (Did I mention that I've changed my name to Greta? Well, I have. Yours is not to wonder why, folks.) This was a first contact where they probed the fuck out of Greta's brain. How does this shit work? It seems to me that you are either a multimillion selling recording artist or you're a fucking priest. Vows of poverty, chastity and obedience would seem to sit rather uncomfortably with the coke snorting off the tits of groupies life of a Rock or even Shitty Hymns God. But wait! What's this?

"The Priests were adamant to never allow their music commitments to stand in the way of their day jobs and parish obligations, and this is written into their contract."

Call me cynical if you refuse to call me Greta, but if they are touring the States singing their little Jesus loving scrotes out then they're not in Ballymacsac ministering to the dying and recently unmolested, are they? By not being in their parish all the time, their new career is not so much standing in the way of their pastoral duties, as doing that thing where two people meet on the street and look to go around each other and both shift in the same direction and this goes on for a while until one party (me) begins to suspect that the other party (you) is doing it on purpose just to spend more time in the luminous presence of the first party (me). And don't give me that 'representing Jesus on The Jonathan Ross Show'. It's all over for Ross, all over for his audience. They're all filthy homo loving rimmers and are Calvinistically predestined to burn. These fuckers need to be tending to Mrs Ballymacsac and her hairy chin. She's torn between daily mass attendance and just staying home to sniff mephadrone and play Modern Warfare II. She needs you, The Priests.

And they look like paedophiles. I know, cheap shot, right. But I'm not saying they are paedophiles. I'm not even implying it. I'm saying they look like paedophiles. Look at them:

From left to right we have: old but sinewy and strong I'm just going to hold you down and rape you paedophile, then youngish I will try to just be your friend for the longest time and then my pats on the back and friendly punches on the shoulder will slowly become more insistent caresses until eventually I too just hold you down and rape you paedophile, and finally my face is actually a latex mask and after I hold you down and rape you will be unable to identify me in a lineup because I will have removed my rubber face paedophile. Is what they look like. Not what they are. Necessarily.

And where is the money going? I know I may be labouring this point a little but I assume that they're making a whole load of fucking cash from this. And I assume that whatever coin is left over from rent boy rental is going back into the church to help pay the travel expenses of other paedophile priests as they get moved from one fresh meat parish to the next.

Am I harping too heavy on the paedophile rapist thing? Perhaps. And perhaps the priests, if not The Priests, should not have done so much raping, so much covering up, so much enabling. Perhaps the Pope should resign, perhaps the government should force the church to hand over control of our schools and perhaps every deluded innocent and not so innocent who goes to see The Priests in the Grand Canal Theatre on the evening of my birthday should be called to fucking account.

Is all.

I wish I could write you a melody so plain

2010-04-07T15:42:00.005+01:00

Twice, fucking twice, in the past three hours people have called to my door, taken one look at me and asked to talk to my mum. I am almost 36. I have a beard. A job. Two school going children.

I should take this as a compliment, I suppose. But really, I don't believe that they're asking to talk to my mother because they think I'm young. I believe they're asking to talk to my mother because they think I'm the retarded grown up son who in the good old days of yore would have been too busy being buggered in a state institution to come and answer the door to gutter peddling fat guys. I have the look of a special child granted too much freedom by our overly permissive society. I am Lenny. I am Boo. I am Forrest. I am Frank Cornish's older brother, all grown up. I am Algernon, but before he got the crayon stuck up his nose. It's the hair, I'd say, or the Easter egg smeared face. Or the vacant, yet haunted, eyes.

Next time this happens I'm going to drop one shoulder, grimace up my face and loudly groan 'Mummy! Mummy! The bad man touching Gimme! The bad man touching!'. That ought to enhance my sullied neighbourhood reputation.

You're far too keen on where and how, but not so hot on why

2010-04-02T19:22:00.003+01:00

To pray The Way of the Ridiculous Weather Cycle requires only that you meditate before each station. Before each station you may say: "We adore you, O Gimme, and we bless you, because by your holy bicycle, you have redeemed the world. Kind of."

I. Gimme condemned. To going for a cycle.

II. Gimme gets on His Drek.

III. Gimme goes "Motherfucker!" for the first time.

IV. Gimme meets Mr M.

V. Mr M. says he's just going to go at Gimme's pace. Mr M. always says that.

VI. Nobody wipes the nose of Gimme. He blows a snot rocket then wipes His own nose.

VII. Gimme goes "Motherfucker!" for the second time.

VIII. At the start of the climb, Gimme passes that club jerseyed guy who had the temerity to pass Gimme on the flat. Gimme leaves him for dead. The sky starts to do something beyond merely raining.

IX. Gimme goes "Motherfucker!" for the third time. This time is both the loudest and wheeziest.

X. On Military Road, Gimme is completely soaked to the fucking skin by a sideways driving hail. He cannot see more then five feet through the mist. He tries to hide behind Mr M in a half-assed echelon, but the wind keeps blowing Mr M towards His wheel. He gives up and cries a little bit.

XI. Gimme begins the descent. His face, fingers and toes go completely fucking numb, instantly.

XII. Gimme dies on the bike. Or wishes he was dead. "Give me a couple of nails in my palms and a slow agonising suffocation any day", He thinks.

XIII. Gimme's body is removed from the bike.

XIV. Gimme's body is laid in the gym shower where it very, very slowly defrosts.

XV. Gimme teaches spin.

It may be safely asserted that there is no devotion which enables us more literally to obey His injunction to take up our bicycle and follow Him.

*Iconography by Riker*

This is not a case of lust you see

2010-04-01T22:17:00.006+01:00

As soon as I came in the door I knew that something was wrong. Although it was only 8.30, I was well into my day, having risen at 5.30 to leave at 6, to teach at 7, to hammer it home at 8. Common Law was recently up, getting the children fed and ready for the second last day at Easter Camp. But I knew immediately that this was not merely early morning grogginess, nor even the crushing fatigue of a week of 14 hour work days. There was something profoundly amiss, a terrible trauma as yet unspoken.

I waited, we waited, until the girls were picked up and shipped off. I kissed, waved, closed the door and then softly, tentatively enquired:

"How's it going?"

"Okay."

"How was the show?"

"Fine."

"Did you go out?"

"Yeah."

"Have fun?"

"Hmm."

"Did something happen?"

"No."

A single tear rolls down her cheek.

"What's wrong? What is it?"

"Nothing."

"Tell me."

And suddenly the tears come in a flood.

"Oh, Gimme."

"What is it?"

She falls into my arms. I hold her tight. She speaks through sobs.

"They lied to me, Gimme."

"Who? Who lied to you?"

"They said March 31st."

The words are a wail.

"Who did? What's March 31st?"

"I believed them. I really believed it was finally going to happen."

"You don't mean..."

"Yes."

"Oh, baby..."

"Lego Harry Potter...it won't be out till May 28..."

Her body shakes, she can no longer speak.

"It's okay darling, it'll be okay..."

It's going to be a long two months.

Dedicate them all to me

2010-03-31T08:44:00.007+01:00

"Oh Daddy, you're such a cunt!"

These are perhaps not the words one would ideally like to hear from the mouth of one's eleven year old daughter. But why is that? What the fuck is it about swearing and children?

Personally, and you may be shocked to hear this, I was an early swearer. In much the same way as I do not remember not breathing or not reading, I do not remember a time when, having been once again fucked over by the world, I did not feel the need to turn the air blue. Where I learned all these wonderful words remains something of a mystery to. There was no profanity on telly when I was eight, not like today with your frackin' this and your frackin' that, and my raising grandmother's most filthy phrase was "Jesus, Mary and Joseph". Nobody at school spoke to me so it seems unlikely that I picked it up there. In truth, I believe I was born with a motherfucker already blossoming upon my lips.

Eldest daughter Riker, she be no Gimme. We watched 'Stand By Me' together recently so I do know that she's aware of "shit", "shut the fuck up" and 'suck my fat one". As to the Major's favourite swear, she has informed me that she knows the C word but it turns out, disappointingly enough, that she was referring to "crap". But not unlike her mother, Riker just doesn't seem like the cursing type. It's hard to imagine a scenario that would draw from her so much as a 'Fiddlesticks!'.

Data, on the other hand, has a lot more of the Gimme about her. She needs these words, my second born, and the sooner she is taught them and then uses them to dissipate some of her stored rage, the better for us all. It would be wrong, I suppose, to take her aside tomorrow morning as she rails and rages against the injustice of not being allowed to bring both her blanky and her duvet to the breakfast table, and explain that if she would only take the time to employ the phrase "motherfucking shitting cock cunt" right in her father's face, she would surely feel a whole lot better. It would be wrong in that Common Law would not be happy. In every other way, it would be so very, very right.

"You're all wrong", I said and they stared at the sand

2010-03-30T22:27:00.007+01:00

I haven't done a long ride since getting sick on St Pukey's Day, and so, in a desperate attempt to htfu (ttfu? I can never remember...) I made the rather rash decision to do all today's commuting by bicycle. Two commutes, 10k each way. 40k total, first into sideways snow, then into a biting headwind with wet from the snow clothes, then into a directionally changed biting headwind, and finally into razor like rain. With another biting headwind. Fucker changed direction again. The snow hurt my eyes, the wind shrank my willy, the rain made me most miserable and cold. I don't fell any harder or tougher but I think I may have given myself new moan ee! ah!.

No, no point. Common Law is deep in a tech week and I just felt like complaining. Off about your business now. Into a biting headwind, for preference.

Do you want me to dial the number for you?

2010-03-29T22:53:00.006+01:00

Friday afternoon, and both of the younger ladies were off at 12. Guilt ridden by having had my mother collect them due to an uncancellable stupid fucking yoga class, I decided on a trip to the cinema.

"Pick a friend, each of you, any friend you wish, as long as they're free and not too loud, and to Coolock we shall drive!"

"Huh?"

"We're going to the movies."

"What are we going to see?"

Jesus, always with the questions.

"I don't know, Nanny McPhee or that dog thing."

Data wanted to see the dog thing. Riker was in favour of Nanny McPhee. Not that the title or content of the potential filmic feast had a lick of fucking influence on their preferences. Data wanted x because Riker wanted y. And vice versa. And so it is and shall be. We ended up at the dog thing because Riker makes more noise when she loses. Not really. It was because of the time. Or something. Honest.

I thought we we're going, essentially, to Beethoven IV. I expected adventures, dogs knocking shit down for bad guys to fall over, lots of cute kids and stupid sexist stereotypes and Richard Gere blinking. Me and Riker and Riker's friend Ali and and Data and Data's friend Medb, whose name is pronounced May Ve and not Med uh buh, no, really, that's what we all expected. And then nothing happened for forty-five minutes. But it was an oddly enjoyable nothing.

But then there was death and loss and loyalty and then more death. And Riker wept and Ali giggled and Data shifted and Medb shouted and yes, Gimme also wept and cried and wept some more. I don't even fucking like dogs. It was the loyalty, you see. It's in short supply around here. Riker? She can take me or leave me. Data? She'd happily trade me for a Cornetto. Common Law? Certainly my best bet but if I were to die by motorist tomorrow (fingers crossed, right Steph? You and me both) I'd like to think that she'd find another grumpy insecure cunt to make her the odd latte. No, what I need, perhaps even more than a full carbon frame, is a nice big dog. A movie dog, that walks itself and never poops and waits for me by the train station even though I'm a bad, bad man, who if not yet dead is most certainly dead inside. That's what I need.

Always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself

2010-03-28T21:25:00.007+01:00

I am not a violent man, though I am a man who dreams of violence. That knitting circle shit last night though, that put me close. I was well tempted to follow that weasel faced fuck into the ladies and show him a little something about truth and directness, for it is truth and directness that this little man and his ilk so sorely lack. But happily some precognition of the night's possibilities had led me to taking the precaution of getting off my face on happy pills, so in reality the worst this little prick had to fear from me was a drug induced hug.

So, yes, truth. I do my best to speak my truth. Perhaps not as quietly as Mr Ehrmann would like, but most certainly as clearly. And these people do not. No, they speak crowd pleasing lies. I know that they cannot like everything, though they profess to, I know that they cannot find every experience 'brilliant' though this is what they would have me believe. And I know now, as I have always suspected, that they are as bitter and as insecure as Gimme himself. But nastier too, folks, more underhand, and shockingly, even more fucking pathetic.

A sunny Sunday afternoon, back in the big city.

"Did you win? Did you win?".

"Nah, the gay guy won, told he he would, it was a great post. But hey, look at this..."

And now a father shows to his daughter a blurred picture of his work projected on a big screen in a room filled with people. His daughter feigns the feigning of interest. Yet somewhere in her eyes he sees the flicker of a little girl who is proud of her daddy. That's what you took. And I may well be a cunt who had it coming, but I am a cunt who tells the truth.

And you, you are just a cunt.

Kill the headlights and put it in neutral

2010-03-26T22:10:00.002Z

These blog awards are pretty fucking ruley, aren't they?

Congratulate your fellow nominees! Link to the sponsors! Don't take a shit, smear it on a postcard and send it to that mildly famous guy's ex-best friend's new boyfriend with a little note in the corner saying "Can you fucking believe that mildly famous guy turned anyone to cock, even indirectly?"!

And now the latest:

'Clap for everyone, please. We all deserve a clap for working hard on our blogs.'

I do not fucking see that. If, in the darkest of nights, you smashed all the eco friendly light bulbs in my house and used the shards to tattoo, in braille, the words 'Jesus but some lady must have really shat on a certain Limerick man from quite the fucking height' directly onto my corneas, I could not see it less. Lots of people work hard. Jeffrey Dahmer worked hard. Take it from me, dismembering is not an easy job. Do I, I mean does Jeffrey, deserve a clap? Do, oh let the nightmare not come true, culch.ie deserve a clap? The clap, to go for the cheapest available joke, sure. But a clap? No, I say, and again no.

And then there's the sheer volume of clapping required. There are 22 awards. Twenty fucking two. I assume one is required to slam the hams both when the winner is announced and after they have given their lengthy speech. Not being American, I will not be clapping myself or my speech, yet that still leaves 42 rounds of applause. There is no way my delicate fucking aristocratic palms can take that much pounding.

Decisions, then. Who to applaud? It seems so unfair to single anyone out that I believe I must settle for eating a whole lot of plant food and allowing the chemicals to decide. I really am looking forward to this. I hope to see you there, though I'd much rather you didn't see me.

My favourite inside source

2010-03-25T21:38:00.008Z

Yer man was in the other night. Yer man. The push bike fella. Don't see as much of him now, do ye? Off the drink I think he is, or too fuckin poor, the gobshite. He was in his poofter get up, fuckin' tights on him, the scrawny cunt. Six corona he puts on the counter, the fuckin philistine, and hands me a tenner. Not fucking looking at me mind, watchin the telly. Primetime's on. Day of the reshuffle this is. I say "Howarye". He just fuckin sighs. "Putting out deck chairs, aren't they?" I look up at the telly. They're talkin about Mary Coughlan. "Wha?" I say. "Putting out deck chairs. On the Titanic." What a fuckin cunt. Another of them government knockers."Ah jaysus," I say, '"you're not another of them government knockers?" The look on his face is fuckin priceless. "You're kidding," he says in his faggy put on fuckin voice. "Wha?" I say. "You think the government are doing a good job?" he says. He's already fuckin close to chokin on his whatchcallit, his incredulity, chokin on it like it's a fat cock but I know I can get him fuckin closer. I can make the cunt gag. "At least they didn't move the main woman." More fuckin pricelessness. "You're not...tell me you don't mean Harney." He looks like he's going to fuckin shit himself the fuckin shirtlifter. "I do.""You think she's doing a good job?" I want him to get all fuckin emotional now, make the fucker feel like the twat that he is. "Don't get all emotional now," I say. He gets all fuckin emotional. Bangin on about trolleys, about how my Mary wants to fuck over the poor, about shite he knows fuckin nothin about. I let him run out of steam. And then I fuckin go for him. I give him all the shit about the HCP, all the made up trolley numbers, all the shit I practise on the wife, then I lean over the counter and fuckin point at him and fuckin tell the little fuckin faggot what's what. And he's about to start splutterin his response when Tony arrives, he wants a taste of that Rioja we just got in, so I dismiss the cunt. "I'll talk to you again,"I say. And he stands there for a second, his mouth hanging open like a fish, and then he turns and gets on his fuckin tricycle and fucks off. I pull down a glass for Tony and fill it up. And I feel fuckin deadly all night long.

I did not believe the information

2010-03-24T09:26:00.001Z

I really was ill, you know. I wasn't making it up just to get out of cycling to Galway. I really want to cycle to Galway, honest. No, I do.

I woke up on Patrick's Day feeling nauseous. A burpitudinal volley every ten seconds or so, each one bringing back the memory of the previous night's chicken and sweetcorn soup. I was weak, shaky. Standing was something of an issue. "I know," I thought,"I'll go and ride up a big fucking hill." And so I did. I mentioned to the cycling buddies that I was feeling a little unwell. They nodded sagely and thought "sandbagging pussy". I had done 20k by the time we hit the climb, feeling somewhat otherworldly, having taken only one unusually agonising pull into the wind. So then we hit the climb. Or Norman hit the climb. And Marcin hit the climb. I tried to hit the climb. Then I tried to bitch slap it. To give it a chinese burn. I finally settled for waving limp-wristedly in its direction. It probably wasn't that much more than 3k, this climb, and only very steep in brief sections, but it took me approximately fourteen years to complete. Fourteen years of trying not to vomit, of trying to remember to breathe, of remembering that breathing made it worse, of realising that you can't really ride up a hill without breathing. Norman, who has never reached the top of a climb before me, was a dot in the distance. Marcin, who I consistently drop when I'm not being an idiot smoker, was already home redecorating his kitchen. I got to the top, and that was pretty much it for the moving for the next five days.

Everyone else on the Enterprise got this bug too. Got the bug, threw up, and recovered fully by the next setting of the sun. Poor everyone, right? All I'm saying is, if they wanted five days off work or school then as soon as their tum-tums started to feel a little dicky, they should have made the logical decision to ride up a really big fucking hill.

The sound the streetcars make as they pass my window

2010-03-23T15:26:00.004Z

Time was I would roll groggy out of bed at 7.25 and spend five minutes crawling into Data's bedroom so that I might gently coax her from sleep towards her full on, in your face morning whingey whiningness. Then I started smoking again, so I was forced to get up earlier, and stagger downstairs for morning coffee and morning coughing. And then I stopped smoking again and found myself AMly energised and up even earlier, having grown used to that me time where I got to do the things that I really, really wanted to do, like emptying the fucking dishwasher and preparing Common Law's latte. These days, still smoke free, I rise at 6.30 and have time for that emptying, but also eating, and sipping and reading Bike Snob and setting up the morning for the knocking down that the children will do. It's good, I like the time. The time is nice. But here's the thing. As the mornings grow brighter they're chasing me, all three. Common Law first, who also likes the time, coming downstairs, bustling about doing stuff that I feel like I should have done, that stuff being my gig, what with her and her full time job gig. Then Riker, sitting merely awake reading in her bed, which makes me want to hustle her, to grumble if you're awake then get up and eat your breakfast, brush your teeth, fuck it, empty the fucking dishwasher. And now even the not so little Data, up yesterday at 7, demanding to be fed, dressed, brushed.

So I will push back my rising time once more. And soon enough I'll be up at 11 o'clock the night before, knocking back that first espresso and preparing for the day ahead.

I’ve got me a date with Botticelli’s niece

2010-03-22T12:17:00.005Z

Self-portrait by Gimme A. Minute

Gaze upon my visage attendees of meaningless awards ceremony and tremble. Fucking tremble I tell you. As you may be able to tell from the photo above, I have been somewhat unwell and therefore cannot guarantee that I will arrive by bicycle, but there I will be, Zoolandering it up, giving my victory speech whether I win, win or win.

I am so going to fucking win.

Hold my hand on take off

2010-02-22T21:53:00.005Z

It's difficult to hide one's true nature on a 180km cycle. Turns out I'm stupid, brave but predominately a bit of a cunt. And an ungrateful one at that. Stop to pick up a tenner that flies out of my pocket? I'm going to spit you out the rear of the chasing pack without so much as a backwards glance. Drag me along the N11 for the best part of an hour? I'm going to drop your ass on the first hint of a half reasonable climb. Spend some considerable time gentle schooling me in the art of up and overs? I'm latching on to the first faster bunch that I find so that I might practise my new found skills. Gimme, gimme, gimme. I'll take, take, take.

I may be a talentless wheelsucker with nothing but a decent engine and five weeks off the booze and fags going for me but this much I share with another Eddie, I don't give gifts and I expect pas de fucking cadeaux in return.

I would like to thank whoever nominated my unproductive ass for a Blog Award. I would like to, but I won't. My big gay priest one made the longest long list on the WWW. It's hard to ignore, that fucking list. Everyone tweets it, or emails you about it, or emails you about other people emailing them about it. Turns out every active and inactive blog in Ireland was long-listed this year, except for one, but then there were complaints and now that one's been nominated too.

So here is my promise. If I get short listed, like down to the last four or five or whatever, then I will cycle to Galway. 218 kilometres into the wind with only Mr. M to shield me from the elements. And if I win? If I win I will clomp cleated to the stage in my lycra, helmet and road dusted shades and let forth such an elitist, nay fascist, diatribe on how much better than culch.ie every website in the world must surely be. And then, because I don't drink any more and there would be no point hanging around hoping to be bought cocktails I will walk away through the boos and catcalls and hurled pint glasses with credits playing in my mind's eye and Aimee Mann's Pavlov's Dog playing in my mind's ear and all the credits will read 'Gimme'. Especially Gaffer. But especially Best Boy. And most especially Starring. Gimme, Gimme and Gimme.

Even my trousers give me pain

2009-12-09T22:06:00.009Z

How much fun was that? I had to go out and pick up a child halfway through so if there was a part where Lenihan slipped in a bit about how he wasn’t going to be a tremendous poor people raping cunt I may well have missed it. What’s that? There was no such announcement? Oh well. Fun none the less. I was honoured to star in a Twentweet, along with Darragh, no, not that Darragh, though this Darragh seems to share that Darragh’s nauseating attitude of ‘Wow, isn’t everything just peachy’. Hey, guess what? Apparently Fás are fab, and we should focus on all the cool shit they do, like training inbred bozos how to tie their shoelaces, and not the stunning inefficiencies and outright theft performed by their executives. (And to drop my dripping irony for a mo, let it be said that training is not the fucking answer. We're all trained to fuck. There are no jobs, not even shoelace tying jobs). And hey again, just in case you think Gimme is being a leetle harsh on Darragh II, check the fuck out of this sentence: "negativity seeds negativity and it's negativity that has this country where it is today. Not bad government decisions." Oh for the love of good fuck.

Personally, I’m super positive about this budget. For months we have we sat duck-taped to our chairs, as our great leaders pranced around to Steelers Wheel, occasionally bending down to whisper into our temporary ears of all the nasty things that were going to happen come December. And as the sun goes down on the dreaded day, I find myself and mine not all that bloodied and still in possession of almost all of our aural appendages. Why? Because, despite what feels like an endless struggle against debt and Common Law’s ridiculous 79c app habit (appit?), we really aren’t that poor. And nor, come to that, is any fucker with a permanent public sector job, despite being the alleged loser in this most Saint Bridget of budgets. Sure, he might be negative equitied right up the ass, but she still has a house and he can still put food on the table. Maybe it's a struggle, but it's a struggle for everyone. And what we got today is a shitty fucking Thacherite cop out involving the further exploitation of the genuinely impoverished, a complete abandonment of any vague thoughts of job creation, and a scrapage scheme that benefits, you guessed it, those with enough cash floating around to buy an oh ten car.

Young people on Job seekers "benefit" get the shit cut out of their money because up until now they were just sitting on their arses playing XBox. Why didn't 22 year olds do that during the boom? Because there were fucking jobs. People want to work. These welfare cunts, these Limerickers, these Darndalese, will always exist. You cannot legislate for lazy cunts. But making it impossible for the youth of today to make ends meet while looking for a job that doesn't exist isn't going to make the jobs appear, it's going to make the young uns leave the country. And rightly so. Shit, if it wasn't for the children, I'd be in Penticton right fucking now, ranting about the poor pouring of the Guinness and the lack of quality snow And I have a fucking job.

Time for a conclusion? Coming right up.

I'm slightly relieved, more than a little disgusted, and really fucking scared. This is no eighties, no thirties, but thanks to today's comedic anti-climax, it soon fucking will be. Turns out I wasn't all that super positive after all.

Sorry, Darragh II.

If I should stay I would only be in your way

2009-12-07T12:26:00.002Z

Anonymous said... U miserable fuck I hope u die in your sleep!

Oh yes, she or he did. And having finally received what I hope we can all agree is essentially a death threat, albeit a very kind and generous one, I believe the time has come for me to either give up this bleughing malarkey before my ultra-secret black Brit carpet-muncher identity is revealed, exposing me to all manner of increasingly cunning assassination attempts, or to dump the nippers and spend the resultant expenditure reduction on a round-the-clock, steely-eyed yet palsied-paunched protector named Philip. And having given up the Go Me! game so many times before, it would be a little humiliating to once more throw in this threadbare towel only to pick up it up again in a week or two when I find myself with nothing better to do. So Bridge Crew jettisoning it shall be. Anyone want two ageing, and only slightly soiled girl children? Sure you do, they're dead cute, if less so with every day that passes.

But guess, folks, guess who the fuck wants me so peacefully dead? What post might have garnered such a mortal menace? One of my ad hominem attacks on poor old Darragh Doyle? An unreasonable rant re golf? Or who would have fucking thunk it, a well reasoned argument against the continued pumping of time and cash into a dead language? Yup, had to be. Rule of threes, innit? And because this gal or guy loves the Gaeilge so much, he or she has fucked off to Australia, presumably to troll from a distance while spreading the good tidings that the Irish language is alive and well and what's this, living in fucking Melbourne. Home soon though, home soon to kill me in my sleep.

'Bring it on,' says Philip.

I remember way back then when everything was true

2009-12-06T11:18:00.004Z

As thoughts here in Gaialand drift slowly about the arena of possibly sometime in the distant future maybe considering the vague concept of attaching ourselves onto the very lowest rung of the property ladder, I am reminded of a childhood moment.

My hyper-Catholic, Inigo Montoya of guilt grandmother stands holding a letter in the front room of her family home, with tears streaming silently down her face. The letter, it is explained to me, contains the information that she and her husband now own their house. As a child I am confused by this, on a number of levels. Haven't they always owned the house? And if they haven't and now they do then why is Mammy Zealot sad? The concepts of mortgages and joyful tears are thus explained to the girlish Gimme and all is well with the world. But now, now I'm not so sure.

Within a year my grandfather's right temple mole was revealed to be something more than a beauty spot, so they hacked off the side of his face and turned this greatest of men into a slurring embarrassment to my selfish, now teenage self, and all to no avail. Dead, he was, and soon. Mammy Zealot followed within the year, having nothing left for which to live. And now I wonder, what was the point? What was the point of those years of struggle to raise six children and two grandchildren, to scrimp and save to pay for the monstrous mortgage and the monthly mountain of church bound cash, if at the close of days Jolly Jumping Jesus did not see fit to give them even a couple of years to enjoy all these achievements, all this freedom? I now heartily suspect that what I witnessed on that sunny winter afternoon were not after all, tears of joy, but a prescient weeping of why the fuck did we bother?

I heard there was a secret chord

2009-11-30T17:18:00.005Z

I walk down by the side of the church, shivering in my new denim jacket. My granny wouldn't have let me wear it but she was still in the kitchen when I said goodbye and went out, closing the big, heavy door as quietly as I could. I really, really wanted to wear my new denim jacket because I think it looks really good. I brushed my teeth too, which I don't always do, and splashed some of my uncle's man perfume on my neck, like I see him do. He calls it aftershave but he doesn't really shave yet so I call it man perfume and he hates that and gives me a dead arm when I do. It's still really dark.

We always go this way to church anyway, even when we're just going to normal mass, my Granddad and my granny and me and my sister. Not my uncle, he always goes to a different mass. I think maybe he doesn't go to mass, but he always knows who said it because my granny always asks him and he always knows. I think he doesn't really go because once I asked him what the sermon was about and he just mumbled something and my granny said I hope you were listening and he said of course he was listening and they argued a bit and later he gave me a dead arm.

Today I'm going in the side door so even if I lived in Rathmines and I normally came in the front way I'd have to go down the side way. Because I'm serving. It's really, really cold, but I know that it'll be warmer in the vestry because it's always warmer in the vestry and Father Kavanagh will be there today. I take off my glasses before I go in. I'll have to put them on before the mass because I can't really see very well and once I tried to do the mass without them and I knocked over the water and wine thingy by accident and Father Tonge was doing the mass and he called me a clumsy cunt quietly so now I have to wear them in case and anyway Judge Durkin and Mrs Durkin are always at the half seven and if they see me without my glasses they'll tell my granny and she'll be annoyed and not talk to me and maybe even hit me with the spoon because I'm always losing my glasses. But I take them off before I go in anyway. My glasses make me look stupid, because they're all brown and yellow and big. I tried to make them look better by painting them with a gold marker that my Granddad has but my granny made me scrape it off and now they look even more stupid because there's little bits of gold still left.

Father Kavanagh is already there when I get in, even though I'm really early. The door's open but I knock anyway because you always have to knock. Father Kavanagh shouts come in. He looks like he's waiting but he doesn't look very glad to see me. I say good morning, Father, but he just grunts. He's still wearing his normal clothes, he even doesn't have a collar on, just a nice white shirt and black trousers and I think that maybe he's wearing man perfume too, but I'm not sure, maybe it's the incense or just him. He smells good. He's very tall and not fat and he makes me feel like I need to pee, but not exactly like I need to pee.

Mick comes in. He looks like he's just been crying. He always looks like he's been crying, with his leaky face. That's what I call him in my head. Leaky Face. But not in real life. In real life I just call him Mick, but I don't talk to him very much. He doesn't talk very much. Father Kavanagh looks glad to see him though. Father Kavanagh always looks glad to see Mick and he never looks glad to see me. It's still only five to seven, I can see the time on the clock on the wall, but Father Kavanagh tells me to go down and open the big front doors. I say it's only five to seven Father and he says don't argue with me and while you're there put out the leaflets and fill up the holy water, there, there's the bottle and be sure and knock now before you come back in here. I say yes Father.

I walk out onto the altar and genuflect in the middle of the altar before I walk down the big centre aisle. I always do this job, while Mick helps Father Kavanagh get dressed. I love being in the church when it's empty, it's so huge and peaceful and quiet, but really I'd like it more if I was the one helping Father Kavanagh get dressed. I asked Mick to swop one time and he said yes but Father Kavanagh decides and he always picks Mick. I go slowly, carrying the water, because it's a big bottle and it's heavy and I don't want to drop it and I'm carrying the leaflets too and I put the water down and do the leaflets first, put them in the four holder thingies and then I get the water and genuflect again. I like genuflecting. Then I go out and open the big doors and put water in the bowl thingies even though they don't really need any water so I just put in a bit, but really carefully because I can't really see without my glasses and the bottle is really heavy. And then I walk back up the centre aisle and I genuflect again before I go up on the altar and then I go to the vestry door and knock and I hear Father Kavanagh say wait so I wait. I wait for a while and I don't know whether I should knock again, I don't know what time it is because there's no clock but I see an old lady coming in, that old lady who's always at the half seven and always wears black so I knock again and I hear Father Kavanagh say I said wait, louder, so I wait.

And then Father Kavanagh says come in now. And Father Kavanagh and Mick are putting on Father Kavanagh's vestments and Father Kavanagh looks brilliant, tall and strong and smiling. Mick doesn't have his cassock on yet, so I go and take off my denim jacket and put my cassock on and look for my glasses. I can't find them. They're not in my denim jacket. I'm going to be in so much trouble. Mick looks like he's been crying again. He is crying a little bit really. I don't why, he hasn't lost his glasses. Stupid Leaky Face.

I tremble with the nervous thought

2009-11-29T20:43:00.005Z

Scroll. Click. Vote again. Scroll. Click. Vote again. That's me. That's me and Darragh Doyle, That's me, Darragh Doyle and his army of illiterate minions. All day, every day. My weight is down, lower even than when I won that race, because I don't have time for eating, just clicking, scrolling, voting again. There's more of them, you see, so very many more. X-factor watchers. Late Late Show live bloggers. Happy-clappy, isn't life just great fucking zombies. Lurching, clicking, scrolling, voting. You can't kill them by crushing the skull because they're already brain undead, every last neuron melted by reality television and blissful ignorance.

I thought it was all over on Friday, I thought I could let it go. Mired they were in a single digit with four worthies, or at least less shitties, ahead of them. So I risked an evening out. But late last night I checked again, and there they were, way out in front, leading the charge with their idiotic, lowest common denominator banality. So I skipped work today, let the children starve in their own filth, and clicked and clicked again. And I cannot make a dent.

I've given up on the languishing Twenty, whose fan base appear much too concerned with fringe issues like the rape of our children and witty word play, and am focusing my voting on the second place minority reporting of Maman Poulet. I'm not a regular reader, being more of a majority man, but I am aware that the woman can construct a sentence and has more in her mind than the fucking Breffmeister, whatever the cunt that is.

I am a small and bitter man, yes. But I'd rather be small. I'd rather be bitter. I'd rather be angry and sad and nasty and yes, depressed, I'd rather be all these things than an 'I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here' watching moron. And rejoicing in its futility, I will make my meaningless stand.

Come gather round children, it's high time ye learns

2009-11-25T08:56:00.003Z

Someone quipped chucklefully on the Major (vote Twenty, twenty times) site yesterday that the teachers had stopped picketing three hours before everyone else. Well, let it be known that life imitates quip. Imitates the fuck out if it. And then takes it to a higher imitation plane.

I spun past the Bridge Crew's Catholic Madras at 9.15 yesterday expecting to get the free tingle that a wave of support to any kind of strikers never fails to provide. I'm not sure from where this tingle comes. I have no strong feelings on the various issues at stake, having aggressively adopted the "head in the sand, Common Law's got a steady gig, I'm alright Jacqueline" attitude right from the start of this delightful downturn. But I like strikes. I think they're cool. I dig the placards, the camaraderie, the fight against The Man, even when logic suggests that it's merely one The Man fighting against another.

And so it was with grave disappointment that I found the school gates chained yet unmanned or womanned, with nary a banner nor brazier in sight. A bit off, I thought, but perhaps they're having a quick pre-strike meeting, throwing together a few Jesus and Irish language tinged protest songs at the last minute. But when I returned at 12.30 there was still no sign nor signs. Those lazy, lazy fuckers.

Parent teacher meeting tomorrow and I hereby vow to spend our allotted thirty seconds discussing not the always perfect Riker, but my tragic lack of trade union tingle.

But I never got to Kiev

2009-11-23T18:25:00.007Z

All the injustice. All the man-made misery. The Man made misery. Fat cat bankers, property wankers. So much to inspire my ire and yet nothing in my admittedly sozzled short-term memory has aroused in me such revulsion, such rage, such bitterness as the following two sentences:

'Jedward: they inspire some with revulsion, shame and hate on the one hand but I think it’s fair to say that the majority in Ireland admire and love them. I’m in this later camp and am very sad that they’re gone.'

Yes, yes, we all know that Gimme is the most boring of grammar Nazis, the most pedantic of syntax stormtroopers. You know this, I know this. And thus with this knowing, I want to wrench these forty-one words from their weeping. hysterical parents, as they crouch as a family, self-shitting on an overcrowded cattle train. I wish to wrench so that I might gas. Gas the fuck out of them, until with much eyeball gouging by filthy, ragged fingernails, with hearty heart-stopping howls, they die a slow, agonising, richly deserved death, These words, these words come from a post entitled 'The genius of Jedward'. The. Genius. Of. Jedward.

Dude, if a dude you are, and not some demon sent to fill my life with meaningless meaning, know that they do not inspire with revulsion, shame and hate. They inspire these emotions in the righteous, the brain-celled, the true. They inspire with banality, with a lack of even the most basic vocal or kinetic talent, with a summation of all that is wrong with our popular culture.

And know that you cannot have just one hand. Or perhaps you can, but you should then hack it off with a mouth-grasped rusty axe, before hurling your neck upon said axe so that this class of language sin may be committed no longer, no, not even with one of those Christopher Nolan head stick thingamajigs.

And know that it is not "fair to say that". It is, in fact, idiotic to say that. Not merely because were the sentiment itself to be true it would indicate that Ireland as a nation is truly beyond redemption, but also because you don't want to say "the majority in Ireland'" you want to say "the majority of people in Ireland". Or "the majority of Irish people". Or "fluffy pink newborn Koala bears". I pray to the God in whom I do not trust that you do not want to say something so offensive to eye and ear. And speaking of the go-to-guy with the beard,

Know that good fucking Jesus on a hideously ugly, offensively slow Yike, it's fucking latter. Latter. LATTER. Can you hear me Berlin? IT'S FUCKING LATTER!

Before I began, I mused that this measured monologue might make me feel better.

Nope.

The sun is the same, in a relative way, but you're older

2009-11-12T15:49:00.002Z

There is a temporal disturbance in the corner of my kitchen. In the little alcove above the dysfunctional dishwasher sits Microwave II. Microwave I, fatally wounded by my nine minute reheating of a plate of pasta for nine minutes, died one sad day six months later with a weak flash. I was not all that unhappy about this. Its digital clock had always been fast, inching ahead of real time by about 10 seconds a day. I got used to performing the necessary mental arithmetic and when I forgot, or the arithmetic was too hard, I was ahead of schedule. early. And I like to be early. But every six weeks or so, Common Law would correct it and I would become horribly confused. And late. And I don't like to be late. So I made Microwave I break. Enter Microwave II, a microwave too. And guess what? Microwave II has started running fast.

It's more subtle this time. 5 seconds a week? Something like that. But it's definitely happening. Coincidence? I think not. I believe in this digital age with all its wondrous rectangles, and digital clocks don't run fast. I am left with only one sketchable conclusion: temporal anomaly.

I'm going to remove Microwave II and climb in there, into the vortex. It shouldn't be more than a couple of months before I'm far enough ahead. The loss of income and necessity of hiring of a staff to both tend to me and do all the shit I do for the children, will be more than made up for when I call out the winning lotto numbers to Common Law.

I'm going to do some yoga now. It's a pretty small alcove.

Oh, come take my hand

2009-11-10T12:31:00.003Z

This is, without doubt, the most lucid of dreams. Here I crouch typing, having done with many of the morning's banalities, folded, shopped, tidied and all with an almost unbelievable whiff of reality. Sure, a sky bluer than I've seen it for many a day and the vaguely off-putting beauty of everyone that I have encountered since half-past ten point to the illusionary nature of what appears before me, but in almost every other aspect the day seems just like any other. And yet it cannot be. Momentarily I will awake, drenched in pre-performance sweat, nauseated by the instant revelation that was has gone before is naught but the workings of my sleeping, shiny happy people addled brain.

Two years and five attempts later, my having passed my driving test can only be a dream.

Clouds that pierce the illusion that tomorrow would be as yesterday

2009-10-21T17:15:00.002+01:00

Common Law has just walked out the door, using that hoary old "work" excuse, leaving me with Data, Riker and two of Riker's friends. How the good fuck did this come about? It's a Girl Guide, having a car, being a good neighbour thing and may well become a regular event. Four children and me at the dinner table. The noise, oh mother of fuck, the noise. One of them, known to regular readers as Olivia who says "crap" all the time, is perhaps the loudest person ever in the history of the world. Every word is a shout, whenever it is not a shriek. There is no statement, question or imperative that is unworthy of a hollered "Oh my God!" preface. And the other three, newly grown up Data in particular, feel the need to compete enthusiastically yet unsuccessfully, with this tornado of tone. Two more hours before I can drop them off and go to work. They finish and drift to another room, Olivia's dinner untouched as she is "allergic to potatoes", as well as, one assumes, chicken, spinach, cannellini beans and cherry tomatoes. I crank up the Rodriguez as I clear the table, but to no avail. Every exclamation drills through my frontal lobe, the usual comfort of hot water plate rinsing easing my tension not a jot. Worst of all though is the realisation that this is just the beginning, cut to one, two, three, four five years from now, and there's two sets of friends and they're louder and brasher and even more in my fucking face.

I believe I may have some kind of nervous condition. Most likely a touch of the vapours.

Such a cost

2009-10-19T21:20:00.003+01:00

I had my heart broken when I was a child, multiple times, in quick succession. So I thought, fuck this, and decided not to do that any more. I cry when I'm bad, I cry out of anger, I cry at weddings. People don't make me cry any more. I just turn that shit off.

So it's hard to know how adults deal with these dealings. Lost love. Love lost. It's hard to know what they need from me at these times. These loved ones, these cherished ones. Because all I ever have to offer is rage. Data falls over on the way home. I feel rage. I snuggle her and try to make her laugh but all that I feel is rage. Rage at myself because I wasn't close enough to make the catch. Rage at the ground for daring to strike my daughter. Rage, most of all, at my endless impotency in the face of this world. But I know what Data needs. She needs the stuff that I'm giving, the hugging, the hilarity. I don't know what grown-ups need.

Perhaps, like me, they just need Snickereses.

I never thought that I would find myself in bed amongst the stones

2009-10-18T22:02:00.004+01:00

I've had a little work done. Kept the hair though.

Day is done, gone the sun

2009-10-15T22:16:00.006+01:00

Riker has started Girl Guides. I'm not sure how I feel about this. Except that I do. I feel uneasy. Very, very uneasy. She got her Guide book yesterday and contained within is just a little bit too much of that God shit of which I am so not a fan. I fear that what with this and all the compulsory gobbledegook that they're feeding her in school we may soon have a full fledged Christian on our hands. I wrote n/a under "religion" in the form we had to fill out but I bet that won't stop them.

"Tie the knot, Riker, but tie it with Jesus' love."

"Help the old lady cross the street, but don't worry if you fuck it up and she gets pulverised by an oncoming truck as she will be with the angels all the sooner."

"Light the camp fire, Riker, and let it burn the heresy in your soul. And then let it burn all the heretics, starting with your father."

But enough about Riker. Let's talk about me.When I lived in Britland as a child there were no normal Scout troops in my area. and so I was enlisted in the Boys Brigade. Essentially Hitler Youth for the Orange Order. I have no memory of attending meetings but I do retain a strong mental image of the uniform, sash and all. There I stand in the mirror, fat, bespectacled and ready to slay the filthy Micks. Given my outrageous Irish accent and clearly shouldered burden of Catholic guilt one has to wonder why I was even permitted to enter the Parish Hall. And when one wonders, one must inevitably come to the conclusion that they saw fit to use me as the supreme leader of a fifth column, sent back to Ireland as a sleeper agent, to be awakened by a haunting melody in the fashion of the Final Five so that I might bomb the fuck out of Dublin's city centre before going down in a hail of FCA bullets. It's coming folks. And soon. The only question remaining is what tune will set me off?

I'm guessing something from the new Chris de Burgh album, but I'm open to suggestions.

Words don't come easily

2009-10-14T18:35:00.001+01:00

I both like and respect my next door neighbours. I do. Krauts to the left of me, woman and children to the right. I especially respect, and indeed like the woman to the right, who, in the face of disproportionately intense, albeit accidental hostility on my part has returned this hostility in a much more measured, though still pretty fucking hostile, fashion. I have taken down the offending, offensive posts and I look forward to us continuing our mutual pretending this all never happened and just getting on with it relationship. Maybe we could progress from an aggressive backwards nod to our erstwhile amiable hello, though? For the kids? No pressure, like. I am without doubt more sinning that sinned against.

Wow. I was just going to bang out another snarky segment about the other next door neighbours, specifically their trumpet playing of Christmas songs at 10pm on an early October evening son and all that came out instead. Oh well. This way I finally get to use a Gately sung lyric as a title.

Outside a glittering building of glittering glass and burning light

2009-10-13T22:11:00.006+01:00

In the window of the local pharmacy.

Where to start? With the saddle? Well okay then. Sexy, huh? And a mere €25 in the tiny bike shop in Duras. It was the last one though, so your hastily formed plans of a flight to Bordeaux and a three hour cycle to that shuddering memory-filled castle town are all for naught.

And now. Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

Let us glide gracefully by the sickening deconstruction of the word "vanity" and concentrate on the sentiment. Isn't vanity a bad thing? Aren't vain people cunts? You can rhetoric the fuck out of those questions, folks, because it is and they are. I speak with knowledge. Narcissus ain't got shit on me. If I didn't have so much other dreary dross to do, I would happily spend my days gazing at my stunning visage as self-snapped on my phone, over and over again. And I am bad, I am a cunt, the mitigating circumstances of my intense beauty notwithstanding.

"Organic". Really? You fuckers are trying to make us believe that the colouring of ones skin to a fluorescent shade of Ulster says no is a natural act, perfectly in tune with the concept of Gaia? If it's organic, sure we can spray it in our eyes! My eyes have always lacked a decent tan, try as I might to stare down the sun.

"Make up by Smashbox." Apparently this is a well known brand of cosmetics. Well, fine. But it sounds to me very much like the makeover master intends to lay hands upon a hefty sledgehammer, dab it lightly with foundation and then repeatedly slam said hammer into the lucky débutante's face. Sure, you're choking on cheekbone fragments and the blood is making it difficult to see, but your nose is a lot smaller and golly but that's the perfect shade for your skin tone.

"False Eyelashes From €15". The "from" is somewhat suspicious, is it not? Are we talking €15 per eye? Per lash? Just how big are these glued on spiders anyway? Were I to be feeling creative might I have them applied to somewhere apart from my eyes? I'm thinking nostrils. There's a beauty trend to be started there, folks. If teenage girls can be convinced of the desirability of a skeletal frame and Uggs, then a bushy nasal hair trend must surely be imminent.

And so to the teeth. What would an eighteen year old have had to be doing with his or her life to be in need of laser whitening? Eschewing brushing? Avoiding all sources of calcium? Chewing baccy? The endless cud churning of gum just wasn't hitting the spot any more? I have no idea what this procedure involves, but I'm confidently guessing that it's intrusive, ineffective and ultimately bad for teeth. I will hear no scientific facts on this point.

In conclusion. What are we? Who has this kind of money to fuck away on such filth? How is this acceptable? By shelling out on all these servitudinal services for one's daughter one is effectively saying "My darling, your skin is the wrong colour, your plain face needs pimping, your lashes are like nasal hairs and Jesus Christ, but the state of your fucking teeth. You ugly, ugly loser bitch." We're all saying it, to all those young women. And by not putting a brick through that window I'm saying it too. You ugly, ugly loser bitches.

We carved our intials deep in the bark

2009-10-12T21:15:00.003+01:00

My anger subsides as I start on my third bowl of something. Bowl One: Carbonara. Builders breakfast pasta. Made with slimy ricotta instead of parmesan. It's a recession, doncha know. Bowl Two: pea soup. We need to defrost the freezer and I have a penchant for the purchase of frozen peas. Buckets of the bastards to get through. Again with the ricotta substituting. Bowl Three: muesli. No ricotta. And finally the rage subsides.

It's the hunger. Hunger makes me crazy. Two commutes today for a yoga and a cover spin. 60k fixed, very little food. I'm passing through the Oktoberfest at the IFSC, as I have done for the last three days. Cunts, I think. Horrible, horrible cunts. Most of them are invisible, hidden beneath the bouncered, bouncing tent. There is a band. It plays 'Living next door to Alice'. The crowd shrieks the unofficial refrain: "Alice! Alice! Who the fuck is Alice?" Cunts. Cunts, cunts, cunts. I hate them. I hate them because they're at a beer festival, because they're drunk and unconcerned about tomorrow and three more spin, because they have more money, more time, more energy than I. But mostly I hate them because they're having a good time. The cunts. Would it be so much effort for the rest of the world to at least pretend to be having as miserable a life as I? Is that so much to ask? I pound the final 5k, each pedal stroke a kick to the temple of every happy person on the planet.

I eat. I retract. I repent. Food has dissipated my rage. But the eating, the eating has been hard. It's about a week now since I became aware of this bitter metallic taste in my mouth. Every time I ingest, it's like I'm licking a rusty saw. I think I'm going to have to stop eating. And then you're all fucked.

We used to talk about boys with missing spines

2009-10-11T08:42:00.001+01:00

I can handle it. Except I can't. Handling's not my thing. I can ride pretty hard, fetchingly fast, for reasonable amount of time. I can certainly go faster than you. Provided I don't have to turn. I know. It's fucking tragic, right? I make myself out to be this big cycling guy, but I lack the only attribute outside of balance that is necessary to ride a bike, viz, the ability to steer. Steering, handling, not my things.

I'm getting better though. I finally counter steer. Like a patient elder step-brother quietly pointing out the booger hanging from his reluctant charge's nose, Mr M took me aside and gave me the low down. Counter steering. But of course. Pretty fucking obvious to anyone with even the most basic grasp of gyroscoposity. But not to the Gimme. I am, as I may have mentioned before, a physical, a physics dolt. My hate hate relationship with the world around me extends not just to the constant dropping, bumping into and breaking of stuff, but also to my inability to negotiate even the widest of bends at anything above a crawl. I have to get back to running. Straight lines. Self-inflicted anguish. Beating a tiny section of the word into momentary submission. No skill, no flair, just the monotonous grind. Monotonous grinding. Grinding monotony. These are the talents in which I am well versed.

So much younger than today

2009-10-08T21:34:00.002+01:00

I need your help.

I don't say that often, master as I am of my own universe, a veritable Superman, in truth, capable of any task, no matter how Herculean. Aside from those annoying little ones like getting up in the morning, not screaming in frustration about a bizillion times a day and you know, being alive. But I'm sorted for everything else.

My eye was caught by this article which talks about bloggers getting free shit for good reviews. I should do that, I thought. So while I wait for Messrs Mars, Bianchi and Grasshopper to realise the massive purchasing power of my fourteen person readership I thought I could get in some practise by giving a glowing review to something shit. Or shittish. Or fucking wonderful, I don't care. It's not like I want to work hard at this. So some suggestions? A poem, an album, a very short book. A fillum, even. I'll find it myself. You won't have to send it to me. You don't even have to pay me or give me other random free stuff. Though I'm much more likely to pick your idea if you do.

A time to refrain from embracing

2009-10-07T16:12:00.003+01:00

First full-fingered glove day. Stupid fucking seasons. Why can't they be more consistent? Why all the thoughtless twists of temperature, daily light allowance, mood? Why can't I live in San Andreas with Carl and his homies? Or at a fucking pole of one kind or another? Not a fucking pole, but a pole far from Poland, a top or bottom of the world ma pole. Here in Eire, or get fucked so you don't have to think about getting raped land, I am fed up with the seasonality of seasons. Suddenly my 10k commute now involves suiting up in full chilliness body armour. Cycle shorts, long johns, arse ripped out jeans, snuggly socks, bike shoes, over shoes, base layer, jacket. In addition to the usual helmet, shades and ever tattier backpack.

I bitch, but really I like. Any cunt can wear shorts and a t-shirt. Any prick can ride in a temperate September. The extra five minutes I now spend at the opening and closing of each two wheeled trip speaks of my genuine dedication to this cycling fetish. And I look better, skinnier in this get up. I had me a super sexy shadow this morning as I powered up Castle Ave. Svelte, he was, and thus was I. You may say that this was due more to the lowness of the sun in the sky, but then I may, nay, will say "Fuck you, science boy. Autumn makes me thinner. and just to prove it, I'm going to have a Snickers."

Stuff that up your nature hole, seasons.

Russian roulette is not the same without a gun

2009-10-06T21:37:00.001+01:00

While, for my previous previous post, I was researching how many words are normally in an average novel so that I could work out how many years it would take me, at the established rate of one word a minute, to write such an average novel, if I never ate, shat or slept, while I did all that, I saw this, and thought of me:

"I am currently writing a Sci Fi book as there is very little good books in this section in the market place, I have various contact in the film industry that want to show my script to producers however i believe it would be better published as a book in the first instance. (one its a film i can sell books sure but believe its better for people to say, 'hey that was justlike the book', or 'it was not like the book at all')" If this book is inteneded to end up as a film how many words would i needs in my script (currently have 32,500)"

I'm going to send that guy Data's birthday cash and he can write my novel for me. Who needs literacy or a working knowledge of the current health of the science fiction genre? Not Dave, not with that sparkling wit, and no, not Gimme neither.

Baby's sleeping while its mother sighs

2009-10-05T20:45:00.004+01:00

It's the fucking 'F' places effing with me again. There's Fairview, we all know about Fairview and it's big fat fucking hard on for my Death. There's France, which has fucked over holiday after holiday. When I was fourteen, I got in a dinner table fist-fight with this kid from La Croix Blanche. Arnaud. Little fucker. I get in a lot of fights in France. It's the French in me. But now, now there's Dundrum. Didn't see that coming, huh? That's because you didn't know that Dundrum begins with "F". No, it does.

I gently clear my throat.

Basically, Data got cash for a Hello Kitty Build-a-Bear off of Janice and Finbar. Dundrum is the only place in Dublin where one might construct and expensively purchase such an ursuline ass. So to Dundrum I drove Common Law and the Bridge Crew. And went to work. And missed all the drama. You'll have to quiz Common Law on the details. But this much I have garnered: some people still have way too much money and are still too way big on the bastardosity. Seriously, when's the fucking uprising? What will it take? When one Western country goes, do we all go? America looks close. It's due a nice civil war, big place like that. Whatever. This can't go on. We musn't go down without a fight. Look. Look what we're letting them do to us.

Hello Kitty Build-a Bear emerged snow white. It's been two days. Already looking a little grubby. It's going the way of my soul.

Belinda lived in a little white house, with a little black kitten and a little gray mouse

2009-10-04T20:27:00.009+01:00

Inspiration is odd.

Jesus, this is why I never write. The above sentence had about five incarnations. I started off with something like:

"It's odd the things that inspire you."

Well, it's not about "you" is it? It's about me. It's always about me.

"It's odd the things that inspire me."

Ugh. Fucking car crash of a sentence. "It's"? Really? Fucking ugh.

"That which inspires me is odd."

Still has a "me". And a hideously pretentious opening.

"I am inspired by the odd".

Getting there stylistically, but a total corruption of any meaning that might have originally been intended. I am, in fact, inspired by the crashingly banal.

"Inspiration is odd".

Well, halefuckingjeula, you got it down to three words. This hackneyed, overly addressed, shitty little aphorism, is, if nothing else, short. And it only took you three minutes. Word a minute. For that.

And this is why I never write.

God is a concept by which we measure our exposure to contagious disease

2009-09-02T14:17:00.006+01:00

So you know the way I can't give out about the batcrap voodoo shit that goes on in our local neighbourhood primary school? Sure, how can I complain when it was my choice to send them there and not to the nearest non-denominational circus tent seven kilometres away? This is how I can. Just like this:

We got a note home yesterday briefly welcoming the children back, repeating the words 'home' and 'school' three times within the same sentence before eventually getting around to addressing the central topic of how all our offspring are going to die, and horribly. Swine Flu, capital letters, innit? We got served the by now standard syntaxless soup of HSE guidelines (use and bin a tissue for every exhalation, regularly dunk your extremities in sulphuric acid or Campari, your choice), which was quickly followed by the Principal Nuala's primary solution to a global pandemic:

"Let us all offer a collective prayer to God to watch over us all and keep us safe and well."

Let us fucking not, Nuala. Because that's not going to help is it? What with God being a big fucking lie, who, due to that whole not existing thing, is incapable of singling out one Dublin primary school for preferential no diseasey treatment. If the front line response to killer plagues continues to be an Our fucking Father, we might as well just mass produce a new strain of Rat Flu and inject it into our kids as they brush their teeth in the morning. A better plan, at least for the Gimme household, would be to break the whole Santa/Tooth Fairy truth to Data, deal with the tears and then have an excellent comparison with which to demonstrate Jesus' lack of giving a fuck way one way or another and how it might be better to rely on sound scientific theory when dealing with life's endless dangers and stresses. All for the best.

P fucking S Nuala, if it's a collective prayer, then the sentence doesn't need the 'all'. You illiterate cavecunt.

You can tell your Maw I moved to Arkansas

2009-09-01T13:09:00.004+01:00

Data is retrieving a plate from the cupboard for her lunch, which is being made by, well who'd have fucking thunk it, me.

Data: Oh, you found this plate.

Gimme: Um, I didn't realise it was lost. But yes.

Data: I love you. I mean, I love this plate.

Gimme: I'm glad. But you love me too, right?

Data: Yes. I love you second.

Gimme: Pardon?

Data: I love Mommy first, that's why I love you second.

Gimme: Oh. Okay.

It's not like I didn't know it already, but couldn't she have sugar-coated it a smidge? Fuck it, at least I came in ahead of her Grandma.

Arshavin to score first, Arsenal to win

2009-08-30T15:43:00.004+01:00

64 minutes. Glassy-eyed and limp he stares at the screen. Watching their last chance slip and slide and dive. She gazes at the half drunk pint of blackcurrant and then at the floor. He leans down, thinking to kiss her. She looks at her watch through her thick cracked glasses, unaware of his movement and the consequences, wishing merely for the game to end. He stops halfway down and remains in this position as his eyes lift again to the screen. 65 minutes. Their last €200 ticking away. He straightens, stroking his stubbled chin with a slow, deliberate hand, hoping to rub the pockmarked skin away. To remove the face, start again. Still time, though, maybe. Maybe still time.

He has heard that gamblers do not want to win, that their joy and satisfaction comes from losing. The sick feeling in his stomach belies this apparent truth. He spots a blue shirt making a break above, surging forward, dancing through the defence. His heart surges, dances. The shot is pulled wide. Everything sags again. He does not want to lose.

"Is it over?"

"Fifteen minutes, about."

She stifles her sigh, takes a sip. He wants to sit but fears that she will then see the sweat on his brow, feel his trembling and thus know all. He remains standing. The time ebbs away. The sickness in his stomach dissipates, replaced by a full body numbness, a blank disbelief. It had felt fated. He was fearless on entering the pub, firm in his believe. No long shot this. All but certain. And when the ball crashed past the outstretched arm, from, as he laughed to himself, a long shot, there was no relief, just an unnecessary reinforcement of his faith. The first part of the wager fulfilled, he had ordered her a second blackcurrant and an extravagant packet of crisps. It all was meant to be.

89 minutes. No time now, no time for two. One no use. Has to be two. Suddenly the ball is in the net. Hope. Only takes a second to score. Two goals in extra time. Happens. And then the flag goes up. Off field incident and now no more, no more time.

"Alright, so."

"It's finished?"

"Yeah."

She drains her drink. He has a final fiver and change in his back pocket. He takes her for chips.

The shackles of language and measurable time

2009-08-28T14:45:00.003+01:00

Are we feeling a theme? Perhaps when they go back to school I will finally chill the fuck and accept this too rapid burgeoning of body and brain and bits that my babies are bringing to the party. But I fucking doubt it.

There is a poster beside me on the table. It says 'Pop Star!' in the top right hand corner as that is the name of the magazine from which this centrefold has been drawn. At the bottom, in a bubbly rainbow font, is the word 'Robert'. Taking up the rest of the space is an image of a shirtless Rob Pattison. Not Patterson, I have been reliably informed. My daughter, who, on her secret blog, conspires to misspell all manner of simple words that are miraculously letter perfect in her homework, confidently corrected me on this point. On the reverse is a picture of a fully clothed Harry Potter. Did I mention that Rob is shirtless? And that Riker has already decided which side is going up on her wall? Why? Why would my little ten year old nipper want to look at the nipples of this postmadonna ponce? Rhetorical question, folks. I don't want to know.

We must have really paid the cost

2009-08-27T14:28:00.006+01:00

The internet's pretty shit, isn't it? What's it good for, really? You could do without it, right? Pay your bills in the bank with the putrid public. Read newspapers. Watch tv. Communicate with people on an old phone with a cord. A cord and a good stiff rotary dialler like I have on my iPhone. (Why doesn't the iPhone come with a cord? What am I supposed to twist my finger around as I become hideously stressed by even the most simple and brief of human contacts?) What I'm saying is that we could all get along fine without the wuh wuh wuh. We did it before and we can do it again. Which is good, because I'm initiating a shut down. Yeah, I know. No downloading your Darragh Doyle. No stealing all the free shit. But that's the way it is. I'm giving you plenty of notice. Ample time to fruitlessly fight your corner. A week? Maybe two. Fuck it, maybe even six months. Either way, when it all stops working and no one can fix it, you'll know that that was me, typing Google into Google.

I have my reasons.

Like a child you whisper softly to me

2009-08-25T22:25:00.003+01:00

How often do you clear your throat? Stop. Set a stopwatch for, I don't know, two minutes. Count the times. Once? Twice? Many times? Or not at fucking all?

Hans Brinker is a throat clearer, though Hans does not continually clear his throat. He works in bouts. Every ninety seconds or so over the space of about an hour is a popular ratio. But then he'll go maybe two or three hours without a peep. And then he's off again. Reading. Watching telly. Huckch. Pause. Huckch. Pause, pause. Huckch, huckch. It's a beautiful thing. But this is not about Hans. This about this guy.

This guy, he spins. Early forties, at a guess. Good shape, good looking. Probably spends a little too much time on the soon to be illegal sun beds. (Take fucking that, Holy Communion budgets). To all intents and purposes this guy seems normally normal. But when he spins, he clears. He not quite hacks. Loudly, repetitively, almost rhythmically. The music, be it MIA, Meat Loaf or Madonna, at even my favourite ear bleed volume will not drown this clearing out. Tonight a spinning lady who was on the next bike left the class. She could take no more. I saw her point. It must be some kind of condition, conditionally speaking. He doesn't do it when strolling about the gym floor. He doesn't do it as he dries and dresses. But he does it over and over and over again as he spins. So loudly, so consistently. I'm fucked if I'm going to bring it up with him. Soon it'll just be me and this guy in the darkened room, all others driven away by the endless not quite hacking and the ever increasing decibels with which I am attempting to combat it.

HUCKCH. HUCKCH. HUCKCH.

Huckch.

Would you get behind them if you could only find them?

2009-08-24T14:22:00.004+01:00

So speaking of my dubious heterosexuality, I have no idea how you ladies do this shit.all the time. It's so much work. Even if I were to shave the face of one of those actors with the massive fucking heads and teeny weeny bodies, the surface area and indeed awkwardness could not compare to even the most petite of pins. And we're talking about my highly honed, tightly toned tree trunks here. Yes, we are. Yes, I have. I have been shaving my legs. For the Wicklow 200, originally. To look like a real cyclist. If I look like a real cyclist, I reasoned, I will cycle like a real cyclist. And so it proved. Yeah, sure, it might have been all the training, the smart fuelling, the EPO. But I was happy to give credit for that cycling symphony to my hairless legs. And then they started getting all hirsute and weird. So I did it again. And twice more since. But it must end, I suppose. Common Law has been complaining about the stubble (while kindly keeping her opinion of the entire concept to herself) and there's no way I can be arsed trying to reach the back of my knee more than once a week. If my chin only meets the razor every three days, my legs, the inaccessible fucks, aren't going to get the special treatment.

And yet I am already repulsed by this decision. Hairy legs. Yuck, and might I add, bleuch.

Cruel winter chilled the bud

2009-08-23T08:57:00.001+01:00

I recently composed what has been described as 'the gayest text message ever sent by anyone, ever.' Observe:

"I'm curling up with Twilight and a big bowl of ice cream. That Edward, he's so mysterious!"

I cannot agree with the assessment. I reckon I've had a lot gayer.

A night that's always brighter than the day

2009-08-22T16:37:00.005+01:00

While demonstrating a downward dog to the chick in the gym creche, Data frustatedly informed said chick that: "I've been trying to get this right for twenty years!". Ten days to big school. My little baby is going to school. This bundle of tantrums, this bindle of tetch, whom in pre-Purple days I ferried daily across town, by bike, bus, bagel and Luas. this little bint, is growing way up.

Common Law will cry, I predict, and I will stand there awkward and stone-faced as Data sprints away from us to her classroom, her too big bag weighing her down not a jot. I will save my tears for later as this weeping will be not for Data but for myself and my onward rush toward death and oblivion.

Thank fuck for chocolate.

There's a ribbon in the willow and a tire swing rope

2009-07-30T15:18:00.002+01:00

That Canadian trip, that was some good shit. I did not entirely fuck up my various wedding speeches, using the age old technique of picturing my audience naked and masturbating each other. Father Finbar was clearly less nervous, but somewhat more absent-minded, briefly forgetting the existence of myself and my sister. His subsequent squirming beneath the outrage of my not remotely evil stepmother Janice was a joy to behold. My brother Pinkfloydsucks, having undertaken the disposal of six bottles of unused Merlot by use of his mouth hole alone, then 'accidentally' set fire to a tree in the family garden. Harry, my other under-married brother, decided that a dramatic dousing with champagne was the only solution. Ah, the excess. Three firefighters looked on, unimpressed by the inferno but amused by the attempts the cope with it. I am unsure as to whether their commitment to off-dutyness would have stretched to a burning house, but I like to think that it would. The bride remained radiant and completely flame free throughout.

There was cycling, natch. I climbed for two hours to a ski resort on a somewhat unsuitable triathlon bike, forgetting that ski resorts are quite high up and thus really, really fucking cold. My flimsy short-sleeved jersey failed to deal with the sub-zero temperature and my descent, always destined to be dodgy on an umfamiliar and unwieldy frame was transformed to death-defyingly treacherous by my uncontrollable shivering. The logging trucks weren't a great help either. And yet I lived to B.C. bud it up, see Othello (the black guy gets it), and beat my baby sister at pig basketball. All in all a wonderful week.

And that is why I don't send postcards.

I study him for the cuts, the scars, the pain no time can erase, I move hard to the left and I strike to the face

2009-07-29T21:32:00.005+01:00

Let me throw you a hypothetical folks. Catch it if you can on the outside it's Brinker and underneath the Brinker, it's shit-ty. Say you're driving. Just tootling along, doubtless with the cruise control set to 10k per hour below the speed limit. You see a car ahead, on the right (let's assume this hypodermical is taking place in France) waiting, in stationary mode, to pull out when you pass. You just keep driving. I know. But let's say that there's yet another dimension to this hypochondriacal. You are batshit insane and convinced that every driver is as crap and careless and crass and blind as you and therefore that an automobile waiting in a slip road is almost certain to pull out in front of you, the clearly driving too slow batshit insane guy.

That's our scenario.

Do you:

a) Slow even downer, keeping both hands on the wheel so that you might avoid this potentially fatal collision.

or

b) Speed up, remove one hand from the wheel, and place it on the horn, working, one supposes, on the assumption that a car horn is some kind of highly advanced disintegration ray that targets potential obstacles. And do you do this every single fucking time this situation or anything vaguely resembling it presents itself? And do you also feel the need to announce every single fucking time that anyone is getting into the car "I'm not trying to rush anyone, I'm just getting the air conditioning going." Do you, in fact, announce this over forty times in the space of ten days as if nobody got it the first time?

If you answered 'b', then I am afraid that we are enemies, you and I. Not because of the bullying, the manipulation, the selfishness thinly disguised as selflessness bit. No, not because of those. Because of the air con horn thing.

Seven jealous fools playing by her rules

2009-06-26T13:53:00.003+01:00

Who knows what sport Gimme hates the most in the whole wide world?

You, yes, you at the back with the painted on moustache, what's your answer? Rugby? Wrong. I can see why you might think that what with the almost infinite trauma and humiliation that this game inflicted upon my both fat and weedy person as a child. But no, Kellissa, rugby does not hold the top spot.

How about you, the tall lady with magnificent hair, jigging up and down in your seat, pumping your arm repeatedly in the air, making that keening 'I know the answer' noise? Go ahead. Hurling, you say. Hurling. I'm afraid not. Again, it's a reasonable guess, given my well known aversion to pointless pig-fucking savagery. But no dice, Fats.

Shush, now Common Law, we all know that you know the answer. And feel free to ease back on the uproarious laughter. As nobody else knows where this is going, you're just making yourself appear to be afternoon drunk again. And you've cut that out, right?

Yes, the not overly hairy headed recently unemployed looking gentleman. What's that you say? No, no. Speak up. Don't be shy. You have the look of a sports journalist abou you, sir. I think you might have hit Gimme gaming gold. Just one more time so that everyone can hear you...

That's it. Congratulations. Although I do prefer to use the term 'stupid fucking golf'.

Gimme hates golf. He hates the game. He hates the clothes. He hates the rich cunts who play it. He hates the rape of the land that it requires. He hates the fact that it's a fucking verb. We don't football. We don't go tabletennissing. He hates it all, and the rest of it too. And come 7.30am on the morning of July 4th, the morning of the opening of the Tour as it happens, hungover to fuck from the wedding rehearsal dinner, Gimme will, for the greater good, golf.

I asked a friend whose enjoyment of this 'sport' I have decided to temporarily overlook, for advice. It seems that along with 'dress pants' whatever the fuck they are, and a sense of appropriate sobriety, this wedding trip now also requires me to find a t-shirt with a penis on it. Someday my trials will be at an end, but it's not going to be any time soon.

I didn't call on the phone to say I'm alright

2009-06-26T07:46:00.005+01:00

You'll be expecting some comment, no doubt, what with my sparkling reputation for slagging off the recently dead. Let's see, I've done Jesus (recently dead in relative terms), Wendy Richards, Bobby Fisher, Arthur C. Clarke, Katie French before she even kicked it, Paul Newman, Tom Murphy and most satisfyingly of all Jonathan Ryhs Meyer's ma.

But I've got fuck all on this one. A lot of good tunes, but it's not like he was going to be producing another Billie Jean or even another Dirty Diana so no loss there. First black crossover artist, he turns himself white. Not quite MLK. Possibly a paedo, probably a paedo, possibly not. I don't fucking know.

My big problem is that I can't remeber where I was when I heard the news. This is going to rule me out of many a dull discussion over the coming weeks.

Winds of my thoughts passing by

2009-06-25T15:37:00.004+01:00

So the weirdest thing happened. Okay, maybe not the weirdest. Certainly not as weird as the time I cycled drunkenly around town going from Darragh Doyle haunt to Darragh Doyle haunt hoping to finally meet him in person so that I might tell him that I don't really think he's a tiresome tosser but am secretly and car crashingly in love with him. That was somewhat more weird.

So, a slightly weird thing happened. Some randomer landed on this good green gaia yesterday with a google search for 'Robert Eagar'. Robert Eagar was my grandfather. I clicked on the post in question which went by the name of 'Robert Eagar Notes'. Robert Eagar was my grandfather, he wrote Notes. As I clicked I tried to recall having written about this great man, but as it turned out the post was not about him. It was about me. Quelle fucking shocker. Clearly this was not the weird part. The weird part was that the post marked my first bleugh birthday. What was seriously freaky deaky is that totally unbeknownst to me yesterday marked the second. Same date. Like I say, not Darragh Doyle desperate drunken passion weird, but weird all the same.

It's meaningless, of course, particularly considering my many sulky sabbaticals over the last twelve months, but still, happy fucking belated bleugh birthday to me.

The sun is shining as it's always done

2009-06-24T15:38:00.004+01:00

As a rule the folks I come across in my daily life are shit at their jobs. People in shops, for example. Rude. Telephone agents for just about any company you might care to name. Clueless. Everybody in my place of work, rude, clueless and ironically overweight. There are some almost exceptions. I have experienced the odd competent and even friendly bus driver. But I no longer take the bus, so they don't count. That chick at the toll bridge nearly always hands me my change in a satisfactory manner. But she too, could be a lot friendlier. At which point she'd be creepy. So in summary, everyone whose livelihood appropriation has some influence on the smooth running of my day to day existence could be doing a whole lot better. Get it together, fuckers.

And so we come to Michael. Michael has taught Data to swim. Michael has taught many a three and four year old to swim. And he does it with a patience, grace and humour even one of which I have to work hard to summon when faced with just a single traumatised post-toddler. But Michael does it every afternoon for hours and hours with up to ten of these occasionally hysterical children at a time. He charms, splashes, cajoles. He seems instinctively to know when to let them stand at the side of the pool howling and when to dispense unearned high fives. He's a fucking genius and has decisively wrested from the grasp of Paula Radcliffe the accolade of Gimme's all time hero.

Congratualtions, Michael.

Women and children first, and children first, and children

2009-06-23T08:49:00.000+01:00

You know that bit in that Radiohead song off of Kid A where he goes "Ice age coming, ice age coming"? I can't remember what it's called so now I'm going have to go and look it up now. Stupid internet.

'Idioteque'. It's called 'Idioteque'. I quite like it. But I really like the 'ice age coming' part. Because he sings it with excitement as well as fear, like he can't fucking wait even though it'll mean he will die, because at least it will be different. Something different.

This is how I feel about my upcoming trip. Chances are that I won't actually die, I suppose. But you never know. Planes are always crashing after all, weddings are always being bombed. But either way, I've got the apprehension, the sweaty fear of speaking to and in front of many, many strangers. But I have the excitement too. Oh the excitement of being somewhere else, doing something else.

And I'll be wearing a tux. I am going to be so fucking sexy.

Have you ever kissed the sunshine, walked between the rain?

2009-06-22T21:33:00.001+01:00

This guy is on my wheel.

We drop a lot of people, this fucking leecher and me. Up and up we climb, passing, dropping, passing, dropping, rider after rider. I have a magic rhythm in my head, and the puffed words one, two three four, one two three four on my lips. I have recently overheard a grunted 'Slieve Mann' and I know now that this is the big one, and that I have it in me to conquer it, to debase it, to fucking fly up the fucker. I am grinding out my lowest gear, but with some serious spright. Quick turnover. Light legs.

And this guy is on my wheel.

Fair enough, fine. I was dragged up the first third myself, by Chris the Courier. But now Chris is far, far below us. And I'm the one doing all the work. He's on my wheel, right on my wheel so I can't see him, judge him, judge his bike, his clothing, his leg hirsutitude, without a big fat turn around in my saddle. And doing this will cost me not just rhythm but also a modicum of the cool aloofness that I suddenly find myself aggressively cultivating. I make my one two three four a little quicker.

And this guy is on my wheel.

On and on. Up and up. There is beauty, I'm sure, spread out to my left. I can't see it. My eyes stay on the road just ahead, my focus on the rhythm and the avoidance of all these dangerously weaving slow coaches that I'm flying past. My lungs sear, but bearably. My quads sing, but tunefully. Now I see the yellow Powerbar tent in the middle distance and know that the end is nigh. I glance back one last time, yes, he's still fucking there and then I'm out of the saddle, one kick, two kicks, three. And I'm gone.

This guy is no longer on my wheel.

I look around at the summit, trying to identify this wheel sucker, this parasite, so that I might bask in his eternal praise and gratitude, but I don't know what he looks like so a thankless thankless task is what this search turns out to be. Did I imagine this pale or not so pale rider? Was he really there at all? He was, of course he fucking was, the ungrateful bastard.

The generals hate holidays, others shoot up to chase the sun blues away

2009-06-21T16:30:00.008+01:00

What a stupid load of happy horseshit. You all feel better now? With your green backgrounds and your retweeting of videos and poxy proxy numbers? You do, don't you? Well, you fucking shouldn't. Here's what's happening, what's going to happen:

Khamanei says that Ahmadinejhad is president. So he's fucking president. You need almost total support and a wavering military to pull this kind of shit off and neither is in place for this particular revolutionary hue. The sooner these admittedly brave if somewhat naive people realise this, the sooner they're going to stop getting beaten and shot and then taken to hospital where they will be arrested so that they can be beaten and shot some more.

And the sooner the Western media and every asshat with a laptop stop reporting this forgone conclusion as if it were all about us, us wonderful cunts with our twitting machines, the sooner I can turn my attention to the Nevada City Classic and ultimately the upcoming Tour.

That's right Armstrong you scummy fucking doper, you're fucking next.

Cock not Koch

2009-05-02T21:41:00.004+01:00

I am a disgusting person. I am constantly and brazenly unfaithful to my wife. She knows to expect a beating if she complains. I ignore my stupid, fat, whining kids. I'd drown them in the tub if I thought I could get away with it. I have stolen from charities and once kicked an ageing dog to death. Fuck it, I'm a practising paedophile. Why not? I practise all the time.

But it's all okay because I can write about it on an anonymous blog and thus, inexplicably, feel good about myself.

Hearts fail, young hearts fail

2009-05-01T21:19:00.003+01:00

This is what I get for getting it together and sorting shit out. Observe as I struggle to express my sickening disgust at the triumvirate of motoring bastardosity that has fallen across my path.

Three days before the NCT: In for a service. Back brakes need to be entirely replaced. They can't do it in time. Hundreds of euro anyway.

Two days before the NCT: In to generic overcharging garage. Get brakes fixed. Hundreds of euro.

One day before the NCT: On the way to endure through 'Hannah Montana: The Movie' some cunt randomly fucks a stone onto a dual carriageway, hitting my front windscreen and causing a crack only just noticeable enough to be almost certainly spottable by the testers.

No, I don't have windscreen cover. I can't afford it. And I certainly can't afford this. I just can't afford it. Yes, yes, I know that I am a cunt and deserve all the misfortune that is heaped upon me by life and in fucking fairness it's not like I've lost my job or been burgled or bum raped, but if karma could see to widening, by just a teeny smidge, the time scale of this justifiable retribution, then that would be just fucking super.

Gypsy death and you

2009-04-30T14:37:00.004+01:00

For the most part, I will be found here in the coming weeks. For the all part, you will be found bored off your tits.

While I have you, and just so's you know, everything about cars and car ownership is cunt.

I was a hero early in the morning, I ain't no hero in the night

2009-04-27T21:03:00.003+01:00

Train, eat, sleep. Train, eat, sleep. It is a selfish and ultimately pointless pursuit, no doubt, but it makes me slightly happier, I believe. I believe as I face first my late night steamed fish and brown rice. Protein, complex carbs. Protein, complex carbs. It's not like I owe you cunts anything, you know. And I'd rather not sully my many moments of endorphin induced ecstasy by scribbling them down for your slobbering.

We'll talk when I'm 67 kilos. Or when I break 30 minutes for five miles. Or when I don't die in the Wicklow mountains.

One of these events is surely relatively imminent.

I met a man in Katmandu who claimed to have two willies

2009-04-16T16:12:00.003+01:00

I would be a shitty paraplegic. The mere fact of being unable to move my right arm above shoulder height for 48 hours due not to a dramatic and exciting smashed collar bone bicycle crash but to the deeply unimpressive ailment commonly known as 'sleeping funny on it' turned me decisively into a immobile, chocolate stuffing, Simpsons Hit and Run playing, hot water bottle demanding, Cormac McCarthy's 'The Road' reading in one sitting, miserable cunt.

I hate not being able to do stuff with my limbs. Limb stuff doing seems to me to be a Gimme birthright and having to submit to 45 minutes of charmingly named, turns out I have met a nice South African Reetha inflicted agony to get said right right again was a heavy price to pay.

Gladness will no doubt reign with the knowledge that I have my full range of motion back with just the minor inconvenience of a sickening shoulder click on full extension. I am therefore off the Playstation and once again talking to the internet. Lucky fucking you guys.