An experiment which involves lace and farming equipment.
This post is an experiment, borne of curiosity and a deep-set worry regarding the condition of my hormonal balance.
Problem:
Upon visiting Red Lemonade’s site, I found a link to a ‘Blog Gender Analyzer’, entered my blog address and discovered that I am in fact a man. This troubles me deeply, as I had not noticed my manhood before, the whole childbirth thing threw me off scent just a tad. Irregardless, I scored a whopping 76% in favour of the testicular division, and found myself reaching for the Black Bush (not metaphorically, silly, the whiskey!) to help me ponder this fact. I have to take it seriously, you understand.
Solution:
I will attempt to girlie my blog up a bit in order to re-align myself.
Apparatus:
Girly words. I cannot put pink pictures on my blog because I hate pink. I think the default colour for girls should be orange.
Method:
The writing of a potentially tedious post about wedding dresses:
-(o)(o)-
What’s all the fuss about?
I announced rather bravely recently that I’m getting hitched in April. The fact that I’ve done sweet Fanny Adams about this since kind of worried me a little bit, so I decided to take the plunge and start looking for wedding dresses… that endless mire of advertising was daunting, it seemed like an epic task was about to follow.
100% bogroll wedding dresses: source
The first place I looked up was Oxfam Bridal on South Georges Street in Dublin. The website had all the contact information I needed, but no pictures of dresses in stock, and a rather alarming plea for desingers to donate samples. I pictured a room with three or four dresses, dog-eared and stained from a night of untold pleasures - I expected to find reams of net curtain in one corner with a measuring tape and some pinking-shears. I fixed an appointment by email which was answered promptly… I felt welcome and I grew curiouser.
As soon as I’d dropped Puppychild into playschool on the dreaded day, I threw the taxi’s roof-sign on the car and zipped into town in the bus-lanes (naughty K8). The shop was easy to find, but was in disguise as a regular Oxfam store which held all the familiar knick-knacks and unwanted treasures and that ever curious home-ish smell. There was no sign of ‘Oxfam Bridal’ bar a poster.
I was greeted and ushered up some stairs hidden in a back room which opened up into a large open plan filled with whiteness. It was the Davy Jone’s locker of wedding dresses and it was far prettier than I expected. A peculiar thing happened in my brain and something clicked - a sudden urge to wear a princess dress decked with diamonds and lacey bits and pretty white ribbons woke within me, an urge which I’d completely forgotten about.
I was suddenly three years old again.
I tried on two dresses. The first was simple, but had a see-through coat which owned a flowing trail instead of the dress, and apparently I couldn’t mix and match this pretty coat – it belonged to a dress more suited to Bette Midler who I most definitely ain’t. *sigh* Oh well, move on.
The second was everything I didn’t think I wanted. I can’t describe it here or post pictures of it for fear of jinxing the TATster, but when I climbed into it and wrestled with its many layers and got all laced up and tweaked and fiddled, it just… became something else. My jeans and jumper suddenly looked like a discarded skin on the floor, the shell from some old life.
A princess with unbrushed wind-swept hair stood before me and the sight caught my breath; I felt like Sarah, that character in the Labyrinth when she finds herself thrown into an unexpectedly beautiful but slightly disturbing scene, except that I certainly didn’t want to go smashing any mirrors anytime soon.
“This is the one. I’ll take it.”
I couldn’t stop staring at the pretty image, it felt like it was made for me. It suddenly occured to me that I should look at the pricetag! Here we go! It’s that typical story… the catch. I wondered suddenly how far I was willing to rise above my €500 limit and searched nervously for the tag.
€375 it read. This money would apparently buy goats for a family in Africa and a rake of books for schools and some farming equipment too, I think. This is a brand new dress we’re talking about here, with many many layers of prettiness. A perfect dress, for €375.
Random Fact… apparently they get a large volume of men buying wedding dresses in this shop. Do with that information what you will.
Oxfam Bridal is a blessing. I know there may be an element of luck in this story, but seriously… what’s all the Wedding Dress fuss about? I laugh in the general direction of those ladies who fork out €2,000+ for a Wedding frock.
I laugh all the way to Thailand and back.
-(o)(o)-
Conclusion:
*re-entering of updated webpage into Gender Analyzer*
We think http://www.cackaloo.com is written by a man (92%)
Experiment failed.
Eyes on the prize
If anybody is bored in Bray tomorrow night, there’s a pretty excellent fundraiser happening for Laughingboy’s school - here’s the blurb:
BRAY LIONS CLUB DREAM AUCTION
HOLLANDS PUB MAIN STREET BRAY
THURSDAY 27TH NOVEMBER 2008
FROM 8.30PM
LOTS OF FABULOUS ITEMS ON OFFER
Ideal Christmas Gifts
Weekends Away, A cooked meal for 8 in your own home, One week stay in a 3 bed apartment near Marbella, 4 Ball in Druids Heath, Sean Kelly Cycling Jersey, Voucher for Free Range Turkey, Christmas Cake, Dinner Vouchers, Spa Day, Hair Care Voucher, **** **** ****, Framed Art, Jewellery and much more…
See how I blanked one of the prizes? I want you to try and guess what it is, but I have clues.
1. Its placement on the list of prizes gives you a rough idea of its value.
2. If you win, you might feel something wet.
3. While chewing the fat, you may hear about teenage dreams.
If you guess correctly, you name gets put into a pretty hat to win a signed copy of Grandad’s buke, which should be worth quite a few bob in years to come!!!
You in 2103 after making a killing on ebay
The birth of the Dog's Bollocks award
Have you ever had somebody remind you of something you’d long forgotten about, asking you about a specific detail that escapes you and annoys the hell out of you for hours afterwards?
For example: What was the name of the giants that lived above the hill in ‘Fraggle Rock’?
It happened to me this morning, and it must be fixed or I’ll go insane.
___ ___ ___
This month’s Dog’s Bollox is Grandad, as you’ll see from my last post. He wrote his acceptance speech this morning, asking me who the previous winners were, so I listed off his four predecessors, starting with Jennifer Farley over at Laughing Lion designs.
Jennifer was first to comment, claiming that she wasn’t aware of such a thing! Horrified, I frantically began searching ‘Dog’s bollocks, photoshop guru, Farley, award… etc’, then gave up and began to trawl through my entire blog looking for the mention.
(It was in the re-reading of the content of this blog that I realised how inane the posts are – what a wakeup call! Cringeworthy stuff indeed! Oh well.)
Then it clicked.
Back in July this year, I’d decided that my blogroll was too long, that it needed categories to break it up a bit. So, I invented some idiotic temporary categories that sort of… stuck. One of these was the category ‘Dog’s Bollocks of the month’.
This category was originally designed to show my favourite blog of the moment, it wasn’t an award at all, just a link meant to stick out a bit. The first name to appear there was Laughing Lion Designs, a website I trawl around regularly for Photoshop ideas. It’s class, very user friendly and extremely educational if you’re into that sort of thing. Therefore Jennifer Farley and her associated blog is the founding mother of the Dog’s Bollocks award… but she only found out today!
When the next month arrived, I replaced her name with Kirk M’s, at Just Thinkin’, but mentioned nothing to him until a later post, to which he replied;
I get a Dog’s Bollocks award? Cool! What is it? Does it have a logo? I hope so, I want to stick in my sidebar for all to see.
So how does this award refer to me exactly?
1. (UK, vulgar) The testicles (sometimes used in the singular)
2. (UK, vulgar) Nonsense or information deliberately intended to mislead.
3. (Ireland, vulgar) An idiot, an ignorant or disagreeable person.
Don’t mind him; he’s only an oul’ bollocks!Perhaps I shouldn’t ask?
This was the birth of the official Dog’s Bollocks award, a whole lot of nonsense that has no real definition at all… other than to tell people that I think their blog is the Dog’s Bollocks, the Cat’s Pyjamas, the Bees Knees… and that being the Dog’s Bollocks is most definitely a good thing.
This award doesn’t mean you’re the best, or any worse than the winner before you, it just that I found your blog particularly ticklish that month. Gettit?
The only catch is that you won’t ever find the Dog’s Bollocks award on this here sight. If you’d like to see it, you’ll have to visit the sites it has been awarded to and you might be lucky enough to find it somewhere in their side-bar territory.
Here is the list of winners, which will be updated every month from here on in:
- Jennifer Farley Photography (July ’08)
- Just Thinkin’ (August ’08)
- Maxi Cane (September ’08)
- Sam, Problem Child Bride (October ’08)
- Headrambles (November ’08)
- (December’s Dog’s Bollocks got a bit cold and went for a cup of cocoa instead for a change of scenery)
- Rick O’Shea (January ’09)
- Thrift Criminal (February ’09)
- (March’s Dog’s Bollocks stepped down in respect to Thrifty)
- Voodoolady(April ’09)
November's Dog's Bollocks
Nahh, I hadn’t forgotten… I just live longer months than everyone else. It’s great.
I’m so proud of my Daddyo. I have the manuscript for his book sitting on my living-room table. I use it as a kettle-boiler, something to read while waiting for the toaster to pop… you know what I mean. I called it a ‘Bathroom Buddy’ to his face this morning and he went very quiet, it’s probably not a nice thing to have your magnum opus associated with… erm… number twos.
Puppychild always gets curious when I pick up the seemingly clear A4 pages and sees it as a cue. She roots around for a marker and wields it around like a Jedi, feeling the force of the blank page.
“Ya wanna draw a picture?” she’d ask.
“No I’m reading Grandad’s book.” I’d reply.
*Long Pause*
“Draw a picture of Grandad!!” No amount of refusing will get her off my back when creativity is concerned, so I always end up having to go and get another scrap of paper and draw a beardy-stick-man on it. She then sits happily drawing Grandads and singing Grandad songs while I read his book in the corner, chuckling every now and then.
Puppychild would look up occasionally after I’d let out a giggle…
“Whya laughing, mommy?”
“Grandad’s crazy.”
“Oh” she’d laugh… ”Yeah! Grandad’s crazy. It’s ok, he’s allowed.”
… and we’d go back to doing Grandad things.
So on behalf of myself and my daughter, I extend a warm You’re the Dog’s Bollocks! to my dear old pop, one of my bestest fwends, a man who really does know everything. We two are your biggest fans.
P.S. Whatever you read about me in this book of his, it’s all lies, don’t believe a word of it.
Gaze
I see you. I know your deepest secrets, every mole on your body. I watch you while you sleep, but you don’t know it.
That’s not to say you don’t know I’m here… don’t get me wrong; don’t think I don’t feel your love for me, your admiration, your appreciation. Sometimes you sit for an age, just staring at me as though you were in my world, contemplating the solutions to your everyday irks in my presence, extending a solitary finger every now and then to ascertain that I’m not really there. I feel that touch and I feel blessed, but you don’t know it. I’m there.
I live. You might think that I’m alive in a different sense (I know you’ve contemplated it), but that doesn’t mean I don’t live. I live doomed to forever enjoy my favourite past-time while you exist so freely, troubled by the things that aren’t your idea of an hour well spent. I do so wish you could live like me for a day, just as much as I wish the reverse. If we could trade places, I would show you the true meaning of life… the fact that no matter what you do or say, no matter what erronious impulse you act upon and regret thinking it a lifelong mistake, you always come back. You come back to me with the regularity of my own apperance, and nothing changes. None of it matters in the end.
I am the one in the picture… the picture in your room that inspires you and earths you in a moment of need.
I know you well. If you are lucky, some day you’ll end up like me… the person in the picture with the steadfast face, forever gazing longingly, belying the truth. Maybe one day children will dash madly around the room you inhabit, shouting ‘Make it stop watching me!’ and they’ll be looking at you, trying desperately to avert your gaze… a gaze that you so preciously coveted in your mortal life. A gaze is a wonderful thing, be sure when all’s said and done that your gaze remains true, a source of inspiration for those that follow, because that is all we have left.
Random mind meander
I’ve been hearing a lot of bitching lately about the people who run this country. Quite rightly, too. The conclusion I’ve come to – after not thinking about it very hard at all – is that what we have, is not a Banana Republic, but a Westlife Republic. Bear with me, it’s a potato-peeling sort of thought.
I didn’t vote Westlife into the charts, but unfortunately there is an enormous demographic out there who did, and that’s obviously what counts. Same with the government! Some people in Ireland just don’t have a political note in their heads, so they vote purely because the words sound pretty, then they get all broody and defensive when you suggest that what they’re listening to is pure unadulterated shite.
This brings me to the point that music, like politics, is far too loose a definition of quality. To think that Westlife and Tchiakovsky fall into the same category… it’s a travesty. To think that activists like RedMum, and idiots like Mary Harney are effectively working under the same umbrella… that’s a tragedy. It shouldn’t be allowed.
We need somebody with a good ear. Someone who hates modern politics enough to rally everone into voting it out of the charts completely. We all have something to say, by the looks of things, but I’m getting so tired of hearing the ranting! It’s everywhere you look, whether you’re a musician or not… complaints by the sackful.
Why hasn’t our Westlife Republic gotten the hint yet? Shouldn’t they be off finishing college and letting the professionals take over?
What'sa marrow wit you?
There I was, sat in a ballroom as though in a dream… the characters there seemed to be perfectly placed in that moment just for me, an accidental crossing of paths that was just a bit too strange to be true. My arm hurt.
Bowls sat on a white tablecloth, filled with Taytos and individually wrapped biscuits… no chocolate I noticed in dismay. Chocolate would have been really nice with the bottle of Guinness I was babying. Just in that very second that I noticed this serious lack of chocolate, a full packet of ‘Time out’ bars were emptied into the bowl right there at my elbow. Weird.
The woman opposite me was staring squints at the questionnaire in front of her, and scratching her short scruffy mop of hair. She was exactly the sort of character I’d like to think I am – she wore a baggy multi-coloured jumper and had a rugged, weathered sort of look, with a sparkle of earthly divilment in her eye. Turns out she was a vet. I wanted to be a vet too, once upon a time.
The form she was filling in was requesting all sorts of medical information pertaining to Bone Marrow Transplants. She looked extremely concerned… self-doubt hovered in her features, and I remembered the feeling vividly because I’m on the donor list too, I had read the same questions and advice and it didn’t make for night-time reading. Fear bubbled inside me as I filled in the particulars of my medical history, those horrible ‘What the fuck am I doing?!’ bubbles that need instant popping. It felt far too easy just to walk away.
The woman looked up from her project and spoke her mind to a total stranger. Me.
“What the fuck am I doing?” I smiled at her comical wide-eyed appeal.
“Scary, isn’t it?” I said it, but I knew that ‘scary’ was the wrong word. The right word escaped me.
“I’ve seen it performed…” she lowered her voice “… on a pig.” Her paling face wiped the smile from my own. “It’s really… it’s quite gruesome, to put it mildly.”
“Eeep.” I offered. “Recovery isn’t too pleasant either I hear. Life isn’t very sympathetic to time off for people like us… it’s a tough call.”
“The odds, though – the chances of ever being called are slim-to-none. I’m just going to fill out this form and hope that I never get called!”
My sentiments exactly, missus.
The man next to us turned around. I’d seen him earlier with one sleeve rolled up and he had caught my attention, my inner curiosity as to what he did for a living. It surprised me to find him sitting so close and undetected all of a sudden.
“My son has leukemia.”
His words trapped us in limbo for a second – the knowledge that we’d been overheard, caught rapid, in flagrante delecto baring our petty fears – it tortured us. The glance we shared spoke volumes. It was a glance that said simply; “Shit.”
This gentleman then launched into a story – a horrific tale of torture and tolerance, the kind that no human being should ever have to suffer. His kid, his young son had a 27% chance of survival without donated bone marrow. With an exact match and a willing donor, his chance rose to 65%. Being amongst five brothers, you’d think he was sorted but he wasn’t, his sister was the only match – her harvest operation to occur on the first day of examinations for her final year in college. What a sacrifice.
This brave kid lost a huge chunk of his life living inside a sterile tent, begging his friends to stay away. Hoping for what? Life, a miracle?
Yet here we are, two selfish bitches whingeing about some bruising and three weeks of taking it easy?!?!
Slap! Ouch. Wake up.
I hear it now, the message sent from elsewhere. I knew I was capable of toughness in respect to certain types of pain, but I worried that my fortitude might fall short of bone-invasion. I needed to meet these people. Oh… and the poor guy with leukemia? He’s doing just fine now, apparently. Most definitely out of the woods.
Do you know what I mean? Have you ever linked with a total stranger and walked away feeling new, feeling like you were in a dream?
I walked away with some free stuff the ballroom people gave me. Free stuff and a new frame of mind.
Noelie McDonnell – Nearly Four
I heard this song recently on the radio and fell madly in love with it instantly. It’s the best caption of toddler-hood I think I’ve ever seen, so I’m putting it here so I know where to find it!
Have a listen of it if you need cheering up today.
Talking shite…
This seems to be my week for receiving filthy letters!
As you might know, I’m anxiously awaiting a letter from the Co. Co. to tell us that there is a brand new shiny key to our new house sitting on somebody’s desktop somewhere, waiting to be collected. We got a letter this morning, but it wasn’t addressed to me, it was addressed to TAT, and bore the council’s distinctive post-mark on the envelope.
I don’t open other people’s letters or read their diaries, the guilt of knowing something I shouldn’t know can be a bitter thing, especially if it ruins a surprise at the end… but this! This letter sat on the coffee table, full of promise, loaded with the future… my fingers itched. I did my best to ignore it, to be patient, I distracted myself with an array of pointless household tasks and made several cups of coffee which only made things worse. Sitting on the edge of the couch, my senses tingling and my foot incessantly tapping, I decided to do the bold thing and simply live with the consequences.
***rip***
The excitement was unreal – The white tip of the letter inside gleamed at me like the tip of a new life… a life free from snot-nosed children, from nosey (all too closely related) neighbours, from small-minded absurdities! I pulled the letter free of its envelope slowly, I savoured the moment.
The print gleamed – a short letter, brief and to the point – my heart did a small hiccup as I began to read…
A Chara
We have received a complaint that you have a dog which is allowed to go out onto the estate and go to the toilet and that this is not cleaned up by yourselves.
I would be obliged if you could contact me to discuss this situation.
Yours sincerely,
Jane Smith
I collapsed on the couch, my emotions plummeted and hit the carpet with a heavy thud. Part of me was delighted that Wouldye had finally exacted revenge for the countless piles of anonymous kitten crap that had been deposited on the various rugs and duvets in my household, for the piss-stain that was left on the corner of my couch by my next door neighbour’s dog, for the money wasted on pretty flowers for my front garden that had been ripped up unmercifully by my neighbours charming children.
The rest of me… the rest of me was very bitter indeed.
We spend hours trying desperately to contact the council, to contact the one person who knows anything about our new house… we wait for days – no, weeks – for some sort of coherent reply. We chase our tails constantly in the effort to find somebody in the council who won’t pass the buck, but if they have a complaint about us? That’s a different story altogether. Immediate action must be taken.
Immediate my ass – no… immediate Woudlye’s ass! They can wait. Let Wouldye carry on with his dirty protest! For now, I leave the buck with him.
I always watch the dog, on the rare occasion that he’s let out onto the road to mark his territory, my plastic bag is at the ready in case he takes a dump in some unsavoury place… but it seems that some shite slipped past me somehow. If somebody should knock on my door and point this out, I am always only too happy to come and collect! It’s my duty, after all. What annoys me is that this particular somebody didn’t knock on my door – they complained anonymously to the council instead, presumably meaning that they went and picked up Wouldye’s crap themselves… a martyr to their own doorstep. That, presumably, is what they’re into.
This is my stance from this point forth. I shall not stir the shit like my anonymous neighbours, instead I shall bag it and leave it on Jane Smith’s desk. Or in her shoes. I might even put some into her shredding machine.
My name is K8 the Gr8 and I’m an annoying neighbour. For God’s sake, get me out of here.
Back to Normality
But what is normality? If it truly exists, I haven’t seen it recently. Then again, I’ve been living in a looking-glass world for the last few years.
You’ve heard me slag the travelling community before… that was when I was angry and dismayed. I did not give myself a chance to add those other quirks that traveller folk have, that essense of ‘the aul’ chancer’ that you see rarely in grown men these days. The ‘settled’ travellers (an oxymoron that confuses the hell out of me) around here have taken ‘normal’ civilization, and have shifted it seamlessly into reverse, so that you wouldn’t notice it straight away… you need to live among them to enjoy the quirks of their ethics.
For example… you have boy racers, right? We don’t. The fancy Mitsubishi Lancers are given to the people in the upper echelons of society – the mothers, the grandmothers who rarely use them – they rest on bricks in the front garden lest they be stolen. Meanwhile old men race newly robbed Hi-Ace and Transit Vans about, blaring… not ‘Cascada’, but Joe Dolan. It’s quite refreshing in a strange sort of way.
Then you have the child-man reversal syndrome. It is the adults who chase each other around with sticks, who rob knick-knacks and tricycles from your front garden, not the children. The children stand around in groups, gossiping and shouting obscenities at their parents.
But best of all! What normally happens when you place an empty skip outside your house? You go to sleep, only to wake up the following morning with an overflowing mess in your driveway… the result of opportunistic neighbours waiting for that golden opportunity to dump their hoards anonymously. You kick yourself, don’t you? The moment you get the next one, you fill it to the brim immediately!
We did that recently – an enormous shopping bag skip was unfolded in our front garden and we immediately toiled for hours, filling that bad-boy until it could hold no more. Then we rested, and woke the following morning to find…
An empty skip bag. Everything had been taken… chairs, old dusty lampshades, rolled up carpet, bits of unwanted wood… all that remained was loose schrapnel. Not enough to burn, but too much weighing the bag itself down so that it could not be robbed, too. It was perfect.
I think I’ll miss the tinkers after all.
