AAARRRGGH!
heh heh…
Two for flinching! *pow* *pow*
This photo is courtesy of TAT’s brother, whos friend just returned from his holidays to find this ugly bitch. Yes he lives in Australia.
Hairy me
I seriously love it when blokes go all taboo. Nickhereandnow in his infinite excellent wisdom, wrote his view on hairiness (and prevention of) today. I leaped with joy to read his post, as it’s a great excuse to have a go, especially seeing as I may just be the hairiest girl in the world.
You might have seen this face before:
This smug mug belongs to my father, who bestowed his wisdom, height, and Wookie genes upon me. Now you perhaps will appreciate my point.
Freud would have it that I would prefer the bearded bloke when seeking a mate, but this for some reason went out the window when I chose a man with exactly two hairs on his chest. Freud also said that a woman is either constantly running towards her father, or away from him. If you saw my dad standing on top of his pile of tourist carcasses, you’d probably choose the latter, too. With the exception of Gimme perhaps, bearded men are generally too ‘nice’ for me, being that I like just a pinch of bad-boy in my men.
Anyway, being that I am with a minimally hairy bloke, a lot of discussion has led me to understand that excess hair on my own self is not appreciated. I have been asked to visit the beautician’s quarters for a ‘bald eagle’ of late (TAT’s knowledge of the hairstyles in that region astounded me). I refused point blank, as I have already experience pube waxing and found it not to my taste, especially when you’re being done by a vindictive cow who insists on ripping away at the same raw and bleeding patch 17 times.
Then, in my infinite female wisdom, I challenged TAT. I told him I’d go the va-general whole hog on the day he went through with a back, crack, and sack wax. We agreed to leave it at that, for that was good enough for this particular gander (‘Bollox to that!’ he said. ‘Exactly!’ I said).
The thing is though, you might be here expecting me to fully support this sort of image:
Not a chance, matey. The gals at school were the first to point out what a freak I was. Then when my best friend’s little brother began to call me ‘Dr. Zaius’, I knew it was time, and deforestation began against my mother’s wishes.
-x-
My de-fuzzing attempts are as follows:
-I tried Immac first (now Veet) which is a type of acid which, when applied to the skin, produces a very weird smell to let you know your skin is being poisoned. Then after a while, one washes said acid off, along with scorched dead hairs. Not so with us very hairy chicks! We just end up with alien legs that still need to be shaved despite chemically raw conditions. Binned.
-I tried those electric shavers twice. The first time it was useless. The second time came years later when I had forgotten how useless they were but they are still useless. Binned.
-I tried waxing once when I decided for some unknown reason that the midwife in the hospital in which I was due to explode shortly at the time, might be offended by my… umm… genetic condition. Bikini waxes hurt. They really sodding hurt. And, to make matters prettier, there were many craters, and much ingrown nastiness to follow. I tried home kits a few times on my arms, but with crap results. The pain was overtaken by the frustration of being totally unable to uproot the final 15% of the really stubborn hairs. It was almost the death of me, so it was binned.
-I even tried one of those electrolysis machines, bought on Ebay for fifty quid. The principle is that you hold this pen (which is wired to the mains) in your left hand. Instead of a nib, the pen has a micro-thin wire which you insert into the root of your offending hair. You then touch the silver part of the pen with your wet hand, and ‘BZZZZZZZT’ – you complete the circuit and get root electrocution. It smells rotten, it feels rotten, and you’d have to do it a rotten further 15,000,000 times to kill all the hair on your body. Binned.
My only man is your average disposable razor blade (especially the ‘new’ and ‘improved’ ones!), and a large bottle of Fruit of the Earth Crystal Clear Aloe Gel.
-x-
It takes me half an hour to shave everything (trying to shave one’s toe-knuckles with severe myopia is a serious challenge), much longer if I’m expecting a trip to the swimming pool or beach. It sucks, but I don’t mind, because there is not a chance in hell you’d find me letting it grow. It doesn’t feel natural, ironically, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the media talking. If a bloke were to walk up to me and tell me that hairy women are his greatest turn on, I’d run away.
Anthropologically, it doesn’t make sense for women to be hairy. Sure… didn’t they get to stay in caves and nurture young? Men of course needed hair to keep the warm and display their virility and that’s lovely… I’m a magnet to a scruffy stubble, as long as it’s only a few days old. Men needhair, but I don’t really understand how evolution hasn’t phased it out yet for women… Mother Nature must have gotten the hint by now that it’s out-dated and un-wanted?! In fact, this guy claims women are generally getting hairier, and yes, there is indeed a blog dedicated to the subject out there! Hairy Women Blog.
Is this one of natures oldest jokes? I sure as hell ain’t laughing.
Blue Rain
I have another problem.
You might read the following and advise me to pull the silver spoon out of my sphincter. Part of me wouldn’t blame you. This subject just disturbs the hell out of me.
“Fuck, man. I just fell off the fuckin’ wall again and it fuckin’ hurts like a cunt. Jesus Christ. Arrgh.. Fuck. Fuckin’ cunt.”
This is a direct quote from an eight year old kid on my road. I happen to like this kid, and I’ve had pretty interesting conversations with him in the past. The problem is though, that his dear old mum is apparently completely useless at her job. She’s the hoop-earring shiny tracksuit type who loves to flirt loudly with anything possessing a penis over the age of 18. She can be heard screaming phrases like;
“Jason, get off that fucking wall or I’ll fucking beat the shit out of you… no no, don’t even try to be a fuckin’ smartarse with me, sunshine!”
Charming, isn’t it? Medbh wrote a post today about how goddamn inappropriate this sort of street-theatre is.
I think I know why Jason curses so much; obviously because he hasn’t learned any better from his mother, but I clearly get the impression that it’s the only way he’ll get attention or love from anybody. He was absolutely delighted when I yelled at him for teaching Puppychild the word ‘cunt’ which she sang loudly to us for several days. He apologised, and said he wouldn’t curse again in front of the smallest kids. He now warns me when he sees me, and advises me to close my ears. What a thoughtful little smartarse.
I’m past the stage of wanting to teach him a lesson he’ll never forget. Tying the child to a lamp-post and writing his most commonly used words in indelible marker all over his face wouldn’t solve anything. Neither would accidentally running him over. I respect the kid far too much to hurt him, but I can’t take it anymore. The blind white rage I feel when I hear him echo his hapless mother’s favourite expressions is too much to bear.
Then of course comes the torture I have to put Puppychild through every time this Jason kid leaves his house. To avoid my kid getting wet from the blue rain, I have to drag her kicking and screaming away from her cute little friends. If I’m lazy about this, I get to hear little gems like ‘Mommy, I fuckin’ hungry’ for the rest of the evening.
I want to take the kid aside and talk to him, reach him somehow in some way that his mum certainly isn’t. I want him to know that I think he’s a cool kid, that I haven’t written him off as a budding scumbag like everyone else has. I want to scrape the filth off the surface of this kid and find the strong, friendly and funny kid that lies underneath.
How in the name of Marilyn Manson am I supposed to do this though? Kids like these are like time-bombs. If I set him off, that’s him screwed forever, he hasn’t a chance at a straight life. What do I say to him?!? How do I show him my respect without looking like a total fucking muppet?
Why do I care anyway? Because nobody else will, and it’s in my path. Maybe Karma has it set in stone that I have to solve this problem before I get to move out. I don’t know. I do know that this place is driving me nuts, and not in a character building way… it’s more like a soul-implosion.
Why haven’t they written a ‘Humanity Restoration for Dummies’ book yet?
Speech!
I did it! Tea and coffee was supplied for 40 people last night, the chairs were arranged in an enormous semi-circle and the lighting was suitably dimmed. A hush fell over the room. I got up first and gave my speech. I was magnetic, incandescent, riveting even. I only said ‘bollocks’ once, but it was with reference to a politican so was received well.
When I finished and took an emotionally laden breath before saying ‘Thank you and good night…’ the room erupted with the applause of the only five people that turned up.
Oh well…
I did learn in all seriousness that the intense nervousness felt before an event is in direct inverse proportion to the ‘Thank Jaysus that’s over’ relief felt afterwards, which, in my case, was as powerful as a dose of heroin. So that was nice.
A Fishy Russian
A year ago I answered the door to a foreign dude who was selling paintings. You know the type I’m sure, as every household in Ireland must have been scourged by this phenomenon at some point or another. I bought two rather excellent paintings which now hang proudly in my livingroom.
On Good Friday, I was having a lazy day. The hair was greasy, the PMS bad skin was in full eruption, and my slobaround tracksuit was mismatched and stained with motherhood. TAT was out bringing the car for its NCT.
A strange car arrived outside at 2.30pm and the doorbell rang. It was the same guy who had sold me the paintings the year before, but he was emptyhanded. This is an abundantly friendly guy, so I invited him in, not having the heart or valid excuse to turn him away. The shock of having this relative stranger in the house gave me quite a dose of the shakes, which - let’s call him… Boris – noticed with amusement. I supplied coffee and we chatted, while he played some of his CDs for me on the stereo.
When TAT finally arrived home, Boris kindly let us copy every CD that his car posessed, then stuck around while we burned him a CD of his own. By this stage it was about 6pm. I left to buy Easter eggs and a few groceries, and when I eventually returned, I saw that Boris was still well rooted. By 10.30pm, I was wondering if this guy didn’t have a home to go to, but felt too polite to ask, so I cooked some food and asked him if he’d like to stay over and have a drink or two with us. He ran on delighted little legs to his car, and returned with DVDs which we watched, then proceeded to play BUZZ and cards until around 5am.
The next morning found me shouting to God on the big white telephone as a result of an overdose of Screwdriver, while Boris and TAT amused themselves on the xbox. We finally had to kick him out at 2pm so that we could begin our weekend visitings.
This, in itself, might not sound weird, but a few points are niggling me:
1. I still don’t know where this guy is from… I know he was born in Moscow, then lived in Israel and worked for the army for a good while, but the details are hazy. I know he was in prison for a short while, the word murder was mentioned, but I was watching ‘The Big Lebowski’ at the time and was too distracted by The Dude to notice details.
2. Boris has an extraordinarily nice car for a travelling painting salesman.
3. I witnessed some very strange clandestine phonecalls during his stay which were held in Russian, but noticed some strange english phrases thrown in such as ‘to be observed’, and ‘not a threat’, though I could be wrong.
4. Boris repeatedly mentioned that he was single.
5. He seems to be an extremely talented musician, cook, artist, and photographer, but asked me to look up strange unrelated jobs on the internet.
6. He also seemed very interested in my drug-taking history.
7. On Easter Monday when we returned home from our visitings, we found the bathroom window open, and I noticed that some things in the house had seemingly been moved, though again, I could be wrong.
7. I have emailed Boris once or twice, but with no reply.
I might just be paranoid, as I usually am, but doesn’t this seem fishy? Where do you buy those gizmos that detect hidden bugs and cameras? Have I been watching ‘The Wire’ too much?
Will Smith is Legend
I just adore the horror film genre.
What I love about it is its ability to produce fear and adrenaline within the person who is watching it, even though they aren’t taking part in the horror themselves.
Take ‘SAW’, for example. A girl is thrown into a pit full of used hypodermic needles. She claws around desperately trying to reach the edge of the pit to escape, and becomes impaled horribly by these needles, screaming in agony. As horrifying as this seems, I can watch this with a big smile on my face, knowing that what I’m seeing is just the product of a screenwriter’s deranged mind. It’s all just prosthetics and tomato ketchup, after all. When the film is over, I can let go of the horror, and this is healthy.
‘I am Legend’ is different. It’s horror is entirely more realistic. It re-defines the term ‘edge-of-your-seat’, and left me with a complete inability to think about anything else but the film for the rest of the evening. I also had a very hard time stemming tears at several points during the flick, and I’m not the sort to blub during films at all (nope, not even during E.T.). Will Smith plays an entirely new sort of character, one with depth and a desert-island mentality that beats the pants off Mr. Hank’s ‘Cast Away’. His acting is supreme in this film, he is now the almighty master of the pregnant pause in my book.
So what’s it about?
Emma Thompson appears at the start of the film in a cameo role. She is being interviewed, and tells the world that she has discovered a cure for cancer, by mutating virus activity.
The film then skips forward a few years. We are shown a dead New York City. The buildings are surrounded by grassland and deer wander amongst abandoned cars. It soon becomes obvious that there is something evil now lurking on the streets – that something horribly wrong happened with the cancer cure that turned the world into sunlight hating zombies. (Zombies? Hurrah!!!) Smith and his faithful doggy seem to be immune to this virus, and choose to stay on ‘Ground Zero’ to continue work on a cure.
As the film progresses, you’ll find with delight that most of the cliches involved with Zombie films have been discarded and replaced with a real look into the human mind and its attempt to preserve sanity amid chaos. Think of ’28 days’, but multiply the suspense and loneliness by ten, and divide the hope by twenty. Naturally, there is not much dialogue in the first half of the film, but this is replaced by a Bob Marley track which Smith repeatedly plays for himself in a desperate attempt to keep his candle burning, or as he puts it; ‘To light up the dark’.
That’s all I’m saying, apart from a sincere statement that this could possibly be my new favourite film of all time. Yes, I’m building it up and feeding the hype, because this time it’s deserved. (Okay, okay, I’ll admit maybe that perhaps the zombies were a little reminiscent of ‘The Mummy’ CGI abominations, but it’s a very weak critiscism indeed.) Go on the legend: 9/10.
Double bumper bonnie happy bunny!
I’m a girl surrounded by chocolate who’s blog is one year old today!!!
I’m going to throw my CPU into the big ball pool at fun-zone to celebrate.
Postermania
It really isn’t a good idea to abandon the blogging world for too long, is it? I really really need to use this google reader thing everyone keeps telling me about, for it would make catching up so much easier! Anyway, all my poster and tattoo site work is complete! I’m just waiting for Ron to pull his finger out and upload the files onto the interweb so I can link it for you. I’m proud of my poster endeavours, so I’m bloggerizing them. Also this proves that I haven’t been sitting around on my thóin all week.
-:-
Also I’d like to show you this photo I took last autumn:
As it turns out, this photograph is cursed. The black cat you see (for whom I admittedly had a death-wish), was run over a few weeks back, and the dog… well, I found his body in my garden yesterday while sorting my junk pile. Funnily enough, his name was Twenty Major. I’ll be framing this photo for my neighbour who owned both of these unfortunate animals.
Indeed and if it is not the photo itself but the camera that is cursed, I can take pictures of your enemy for €1,000 a piece, and they should expire soon after of natural causes.
Oh yes, and since I last posted on here, I got my first tattoo! I now have a giant anchor on my back. I’m well-ard, me. (Nahhh, just kidding. I’m now marked with the symbol of the ying-yang. What else?!)
Ok… now for some serious catch-up. Can I borrow some broadband?
-:-
Looky look! My virgin attempt at a website!
Laugh all you want, I don’t care. I just gave myself a lollypop.
Thanks Ron!
Suckered
Things might be quiet around here for a while.
I’m a community volunteer, see, and there really aren’t enough of us around, surprisingly enough. So, It’s been put upon me to create posters, mail-shots, invitations and press releases to advertise an upcoming beach-clean. Seriously, how on earth does one rally enthusiasm for picking up old nappies and hypodermic needles?
You know what else? A local tattoo artist has noticed my blog and has got it into his head that I might design a website for him in return for certain… umm… ‘favours’. There are certain members of my family that are particularily skilled in the technological department, but unfortunately, I’m not one of them. I tried to learn HTML, I really did, but my efforts always end up swamped by apathy. This means my web-site building is on a par with your average 10-year old’s. Seriously though – have you ever tried to decypher a page of html script? It’s like trying to read Chinese writing, unless you happen to be Chinese, of course.
Still, I’ll give it a go, then post up a link so you can all have a good laugh.
I know I have a few memes to catch up on… Terence McDanger in his evil ways has suckered me with that damn ‘Seven things about you’ meme again. I feel that if I don’t continue the chain I won’t go to heaven, so it’ll find it’s way from the dark corners of my brain and onto this here blog soon enough.
The other meme is from Jefferson Davis and his lovely cotton (poo-soaked) socks. It’s not really a meme, but instead an award which tickles my insides like Guinness drunk out of a bottle with a straw:
But why?:
Art Prize and Award
“This prize has arisen from the daily visits that I dedicate to many blogs which nourish me and enrich me with creativity. In them I see dedication, creativity, care, comradeship, but mainly, ART, much art. I want to share this prize with all those bloggers that entertain me day to day and to share this prize with those who enrich me every day. Doubtlessly, there are many and it will be hard to pick just a few, the people I will name today deserve this prize, as do the very long serious list of bloggers I also enjoy to read, but I will name the first 10 and will leave the rest of the work to all the bloggers that visit other’s blogs and are nourished by them.”
Awww! Thanks Jeffo!
I spread this appreciation to: The humblest of housewives, the craftiest of knitters, a cabbie most solid, a photographer most universal, and the most talented of scribblers. People, your arts inspire me and scratch my proverbial itch.
Seeing as I have the opportunity and we’re sort of on the subject, I would also like to publish a rare MySpace link. Clare Hartigan’s art is truly awe-inspiring, and well worth a visit.
I’ll be back soon, if my brain doesn’t overheat first.
For parents everywhere
I wrote this rather maudlin poem today while stuck between a rock and a hardplace. Puppychild was outside playing with other children when suddenly a kid pulled a toy out of her hands, causing her to fall over. Tears followed, with heartrending appeals for a motherly hug which I felt I had to deny her for her own good. I watched with tears in my eyes as she eventually picked herself up and decided to fight for the toy herself, a fight which she won.
My pride at her small accomplishment made me realise that sometimes it is selfish to want to protect a child from absolutely everything, so I am trying hard to figure out exactly where the line falls between love and cruelty, nature and nurture.
For parents everywhere
(Or: A sonnet for softies)
How tough it is to leave the loving room
Where childhood slept wrapped up in tender care
How suddenly the blanket of my womb
Was ripped away to find my child laid bare
Now on her own, the daunting task is nigh-
To let her grow despite the harshest winds
How do I stem the love, my kiss deny,
To ready her for schoolyard streetwise sins?
A greater pain I feel for cuts and scars
Than she, the wounded child who stands alone
Though tears are falling softly through the bars,
My heart must build a prison cell of stone
My freedom waits until the day I see
She’s found her comfort independently
