April's Dog's Bollocks
Dammit I’ve been meaning to do this for ages… poor Thrifty needed adequate mourning time though in all fairness.
o0o
April’s Dog’s Bollocks Award goes to a lady who posts stuff extraordinary all the time but I keep forgetting. Her’s is one of those blogs that I find through linky-love and remember, but never remember to link to, so she’s my ‘happy surprise’ blog. Does that make any sense?
Not any more. Linked officially from here on in.
Voodoolady is the Dog’s Bollocks of the moment because of posts like these:
- ‘Cause he’s fuckin good lookin’ for a knacker
- I’m behind you!! (because I can really identify with this post)
- Voodoolady is updating her status now.
That blog is what this blog should be. I want to post every day, about stuff that annoys me or fickles my tancy, the every-day normal people stuff that gives blogging its humanity. I’d love to not give a shit, but sometimes when that happens, the paranoia overloads and I hate that feeling. To be honest, this blogging lark freaks me out a bit… the worst moment is trying to watch a film shortly after posting a weird blog post. It’s hard to concentrate when you feel like a muppet.
In the words of Voodoolady herself,
“I need to grow a pair.”
Us Irish are a bunch of racist scumbags
My neighbour passed by the window so fast she may as well have been a Banshee. The doorbell rang and I hoped the sleeping taxi-dude didn’t notice but he probably did… he surfaced soon after (which is nice because there was drilling to do and I hate drilling through council-house walls, they put metal girders where they really can’t be predicted. Nevertheless, I’ve got to do something about that doorbell!).
What followed was a rant of epic proportions. I like rants. I like being the rantee, for while I’m useless and lazy about finding solutions to the strange problems of other people, I love the fact that I can be used as a buffer to cushion the emotions of the sufferer. It’s all good by me, especially when there’s vodka involved, which in this case there was.
The rant in this case involved racism, at least I think it did. I can say with at least three months experience behind me that my neighbour is a pretty decent woman, that I’ve gleaned a lot of spiritual and agricultural information out of her, that she’s one of those salt-of-the-earth types, but she has one problem…
…she has a very strong American accent, and in Ireland, that don’t go down too well because for the most part, we’re a bunch of shallow, narrow-minded, racist amnesiac scumbags.
The neighbour in question was hired to be a chef’s apprentice. Being a woman of flushing age, she wanted a new challenge, something to add to her C.V., something she had a passion for. This job was perfect. The job in reality involved her cleaning toilets, taking on the responsibility of five people (four of which were Irish and decided to go home early) in the cleaning up of a dinner mess of sixty-five people… and the endurance of back-stabbing rumours made about her, whispering pointings and accusatory allegations, but she stuck with it for the sake of her daughter and her credit ratings until today, when she snapped.
She’s a single mother born in Ireland, returned after a long spell to find her feet, still burdened with an American accent so she’s screwed. How’s that fair!??
A mass exodus of Irishmen to the U.S. decades ago led to a struggle for identification and pride. That was years ago – past history… we got over it. Just as the Polish are now, they struggled through. Now the Irish are revered in the United States. Got an Irish accent? You get laid over there straight away!!! But…
If you want to come back home? You’re bunched.
American voices are met with scorn in Ireland. Loud, brash, opinionated… these are the buzzwords I hear. Therein lies my dichotomy. I loaned my Dad’s book to this neighbour a while back and warned her of its content. I’m the daughter of a USaphobe and while I admire my father’s gumption, I feel the need to stress that apples often roll far from the tree and that this fiction is merely ironic… a piss-take of Irish opinion.
The book still hasn’t been returned. I’m wondering if she hasn’t burned it in an empowerment ritual to be honest.
Shame.
Why am I defending my people to my people? She’s Irish, she’s American, she’s just like my friend from Idaho that married an Irish bloke and tried to settle here with the same response… complete and total isolation.
That’s not fair.
I couldn’t think of anything else to say apart from…
“Dude, we should so join the revolution. Another shot??”
Not just an Irish Liquor
I vaguely remember ‘Carolan’ music when learning to play the violin all those years ago, but apart from that I drew a blank when it was suggested to me over the phone.
Wedding music. The thought freaked me out, man. Just think… all those specialist musicians out there waiting to screw you as soon as you mention the ‘W’ word, just because they’re handy with a few strings and a plec. Everyone I researched cost at least nine hundred quid. For an hour!!! We’re in the wrong job lads! But; happily, a friend piped up one day and suggested I ask her second-cousin’s brother in-law’s nephew who happens to play in Dan’s bar in Greystones of a Tuesday night. Apparently those fellas can do amazing things with Mandolins and flutes that would blow the acoustics right out of a church, so myself and TAT went to have a gander last night.
What an atmosphere! Dan’s is a tiny pub that looks like it’s the household pet belonging to The Beachhouse bar/restaurant next-door. It’s like as though somebody left it there by mistake, or maybe its neighbour partook in a course of steroids…Dan’s bar is a strange but beautiful place.
The group of lads consisted of two guitarists, a tin whistler, a mandolin player, a box-squeezer, and a very timid bodhrán player. That was before the Uileann pipe player happened by, bringing a Venezuelan chap with a Suzuki guitar (a cuatro?) and a very beautiful singing wife who stopped time with her songs about the moon. A chap wandered in towards the end, ordered a pint, and drank it while singing all fifty-nine verses of a pretty comedic Irish song, then buggered off again. The Accidental Terrorist and I were quare’n entertained, and discussed becoming part of the furniture there at some point in the future.
They played a few Carolan tunes for us to give us a taster for Churchy things to come, that might have sounded something like this:
Apparently Turlough O’Carolan was a blind itinerant Irish harper who lived from 1670-1738 and got an enormous thumbs-up from Mr. Vivaldi himself for his music composition. He wasn’t rated much as a musician by his peers, rather for his poetry. For example, he fell off the wagon once, and penned the following poem;
He’s a fool who give over the liquor,
It softens the skinflint at once,
It urges the slow coach on quicker,
Gives spirit and brains to the dunce.
The man who is dumb as a rule
Discovers a great deal to say,
While he who is bashful since Yule
Will talk in an amorous way.
It’s drink that uplifts the poltroon
To give battle in France and in Spain,
Now here is an end of my turn-
And fill me that bumper again!
Problem sorted! Thank God for Irish Trad, and for the fact that I don’t have to pay through the nose to see some young wan’s Aria on my wedding day. Now, to find a babysitter…
How the button found its way into the piggybank
You know when you’re clearing out the stuff drawer, or searching for fallen batteries underneath the couch or de-cluttering windowsills and you find bits? Screws, paperclips, strange coins, hinges, BB-gun pellets and batteries (that could be dead or fully charged, it’s anyone’s guess), y’know, that sort of thing… what do you do with them? I’m dying to know. Do you have clutter jars full of odd things growing dusty or do you pocket them till you find their homes only to have to empty your jeans at night into a miniature bedside skip?
Or…do you just throw them out? But *gasp* what if you need them later?! What then? WHAT THEN?!?!
Around the world in 80 Mammies
I’ve been tagged by Irish Mammy on the run (the first in Irisher in the train!), though I wouldn’t have known it if she hadn’t mailed me about it, (no thanks to Google *sdfsdflkj*) for which I’m really grateful for, because I’d hate to have missed it. It’s a calculated meme, a chain of tagged mothers around the globe which is tracked in the effort to create ‘Around the world in 80 mammies’ or (something like that) so that we can connect through our epesiotomies and baby-wipe budgets and share that feeling. The feeling (or in this case, five feelings) of what it’s like to have that life, to be a mother through its aches and giggles with that head-wrecking ‘Bear in the big blue house’ backing track screwing with your spidey-senses all the live-long day.
* * *
Five things that I love about being somebody’s Ma…
1. That hair-brushing moment after a bath, when everything goes beautifully quiet apart from the rhythmic schlepping sound of a hairbrush on stubborn tangles. Warm light, fluffy towels and that almost simian Zen feeling of brushing someone else’s hair and having your hair brushed in kind. Peace.
2. Random public moments. Like when Puppychild robbed money out of my back-pocket at the sweetie counter last week and ran straight to the poor-box with it, then got a lollypop and an adoring look from the lady behind the counter. That’s my gal! A mini-Robin-Hood learning Karma all over the place and thankfully not greed. Or in a lift with Laughingboy and some random people, when he gets his buzz from the lift juddering into movement and gives one of his mad arm-flapping laughs and everybody simultaneously erupts into giggles. That is such a good buzz.
3. The first smile. My dancing round the kitchen like nobody’s watchin‘ antics sprouted Puppychild’s first. There she was suddenly in her little rocker, saying ‘You’re great craic, Ma!’ with her tiny gummy smiley cheeks and it bubbled me over. Laughingboy’s happened during his Valium phase back in those days I don’t remember much of apart from that one moment. He was five months old and had been through hell with confusion and pain from seizures constantly throughout his mini life, and had just been given his first downer. The next morning, he met me with a smile that tore me apart on many strange levels. I remember freaking out that it wasn’t him any more to TAT, I was that ecstatically confused. It was like a golden gate out of the madness. Since then smiling is all he does and it’s his most killerest feature.
4. Playgrounds!!! The excuse to whizzing round a two person roundabout and climb on monkey frames and hang your head upside down on a really high swing? Need I say more?
5. Learning things all over again. About absolutely everything imaginable. Teaching obscure facts about snails and having them remembered in childspeak back to you. Explaining where the bubble went. Shoelaces, flour-dough, black and red paint. Everything has to be tested and chewed and broken apart unless I can think of a damn-good reason for it not to. Most of the time though, I want to find out too.
* * *
In the words of the originator, Her Bad Mother herself;
Here’s how it’s going to work:… I’m going to link to a couple of other mom bloggers here in Canada, and to a couple of mom bloggers from other countries around the world, and they’ll write their posts, sharing 5 things that they love (or maybe what they don’t so much love – this playground doesn’t force conformity) about being a mom, and then they’ll tag a few more bloggers from their own country and from other countries, and so on. And you’re more than welcome to join: just write a post of your own (5 things that you love about being a mom) and find someone to link to and tag – someone from your own country, if you like, but definitely someone from another country (Google is a good resource if you don’t know any; google any country name and ‘mom’ in their blog search function) (be sure to let them know that you’ve tagged them!) – and link back here and leave a comment and we’ll add you to the ‘itinerary,’ ….
Are you in? I hope you’re in. This is going to be fun. No passport necessary.
This is a real chocolate-chip of a meme, so it is. I can’t wait to find out what happens next.
My taggins are:
BAINO – ENGLISH MUM- INFANTASIA – MAGNETO BOLD TOO – ONE MORE THING…
Peace out to all the other mammies out there too…
:)
How to win sex-toys and influence people
So my prize arrived in the post yesterday morning!! The postman raised an eyebrow as I signed for it and I knew right then and there that he had ESP. The Accidental Terrorist’s eyebrow raised even higher as I unclothed its packaging and since then, well… he’s getting a great buzz out of it let’s just say.
What? Oh yeah!!!
I WON!!!
(Just in time for the honeymoon, too, heheh)
Jealous? So you should be. Have a shot at it, you know you want to!
Also you should have a visit of www.sex-toys.ie… if not at least just to find out what a finger flipper is?! I accidentally left the browser open one day while carefully choosing my prize… TAT’s friend and a few visiting plumbers from the County Council copped an eyeful and gave me some seriously strange looks when I returned from the shop, especially when I offered them a cup of the hot stuff… ah well. It’s not like my reputation wasn’t shot to hell already.
This is the winning post in which I confess things I probably shouldn’t have, but am mighty glad I did now, I tells ya:
Long live on-line filth!
Germs in funky tights
I think it’s a given that there’s not much on TV these days. I’m tired of panel shows, fed up of re-runs, I’m even bored with ‘Friends’ which is really saying something. Then came Eden, a channel with digital dinosaurs, volcanic adventures and insect sex, to name but a few subjects it covers. No more purple-headed warrior mumbo jumbo, gimme nature in it’s raw state and I’m nurtured.
One thing scared me though…
Humans. Of all the species on the entire planet, we’re the most successful. This is old news! Of course it is, but the extent of it is fairly alarming. The human population of this planet increases by two million people every ten days. Given that Bono is still clapping and people are dying every second in third world countries, it’s still nowhere near enough to tip the scales. We as modern people are shocked by death and will do anything to prevent it, but in order for life to thrive there must be death, but there is not enough of it and so we expand as a species like bacteria. That’s how they put it. Humans in their success as a species are exactly like bacteria. That’s creepy. I walk down Grafton street and that’s all I see. Germs in funky tights.
It’s enough to turn a person into a psychopathic maniac if you think about it. Maybe you don’t think about it, but I do. Mowing several million people at a go into oblivion with an atomic bomb… it’s still nowhere near making a dent in the obliteration of the human species. Not that I’d want that of course!!! But, it would be nice to give those rare animal species a chance to catch up instead of murdering them for their hides on our stupid over-populated cat-walks. PETA mumbo jumbo maybe… I just feel unwanted all of a sudden.
Think of it like this:
The growth of bacteria in an organism can be simplified to a model composed of 4 stages:
-Lag; Slow growth as the bacteria gets used to its surroundings and knocks down its competition.
-Log; Exponential growth, fast.
-Stationary; Overcrowding and lack of resources (because they’ve been burned up) where death rates equal birth rates… then…
-Decline.
If humans are like bacteria, where exactly are we on the curve?
What’s the point in my existence? To have children, so that they can have great-great-grand children who eventually fall foul to an ice-age? Arrgh. I feel like I’m up in an aeroplane looking down on billions of tiny people milling around like mad eejits and I’m still. Silent. Wondering.
Then I find a blog like Amy’s.
Once upon a time there was a snail and a beach. The snail was named Gary. The beach was so much fun. Gary played and played until he got tired. So he decided to rest in the sea. But he almost got washed away until he learnt to swim then he was safe after that.
There were some fish on the beach and Gary felt hungry. He also rolled in the sand and he loved everything. The sun was lovely and warm.
Amy is an autistic kid who writes stories that take me away. She might not post stories all that often but when she does, they mean more to me than the whole entire content of the Irish Times. Amy keeps me sane. Call it escapism, call it naivety, I don’t care.
She to me seems real. Truly real. Reality is hard to find these days… if Amy is not bacteria and my kids and my lover and you, the reader… if we are not bacteria then who is? Who am I to judge?!?
Another sleepless night for me.
*sigh*
This thinking lark is over-rated.
How to love thy neighbour's stretchmarks
If there’s one thing lately that irritates me more than an army of wasps at a picnic, it’s the loss of sisterhood in today’s society. Not that I’m a feminist but… (uh-oh…)
What women tend to do nowadays is wrap a compliment in an insult and get away with it scott-free. Much like these examples;
“Walk behind me, you’re a skinny bitch and you’re showing me up.”
“God your hair is gorgeous, I fucking hate you!”
“Your boobs are so perky today Mary, I hope you die in a horrible car accident.”
What would make for a really refreshing change, would be to overhear the following conversation;
“Howye Mary, I prayed for your sebaceous glands last night, I see it paid off!”…”Yeah I thought my hair was extra glossy today, thanks Aine!”
We’ve lost the knack of sisterly caring and support in this heavily patriarchal world, the ying and the yang are totally off kilter and instead of rallying our femininity together again, we wish cancers upon each other and that really, really sucks. Menses are hidden, menopausal women are left on their shelves, caesarean sections rule the day for a quick and easy birth instead of securing a happy and calm environment for mother and baby. We’ve been converted into cows… jealous, backbiting cows.
In the spirit of this, I would like to remind women who we used to be… Goddesses. (WITCH!! WITCH!! I hear you say? Yeah I wouldn’t blame you, for you’ve been conditioned that way.) I shudder to think of the 9 million women who were burned, drowned or commited suicide in defense of their sisterhood. This post is for them, and for you ladies out there who hate your bodies and hate your friends because of theirs.
Let me introduce you to the Goddesses who used to inhabit our souls before they were bet out of us:
Gaia; Knows that stretchmark creams are truly pointless.
~
Hecate: Never could be arsed with the likes of Oil of Olay.
~
Rhiannon: Knows that ‘pale and interesting’ far outweights St Tropez fakeness.
~
Sappho: Born on the island of Lesbos and will kick seven shades out of you for slagging her about it.
~
Yemaja: Wants you to tell her to her face that motherhood isn’t a real job.
~
Baba Yaga; Wise beyond Botox
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Isis; Beyond asking if her bum looks big in this.
~
Mary; Loves you with or without your Wonderbra.
~
Of course there are some other Goddesses that should be included here, but maybe best celebrated in the privacy of one’s own home;
So go on out there and love your women. Wish blessings upon their belts and tell them you think their acne is cute. Sisterhood is dead. Long live sisterhood.
The chicken who almost crossed the road
What made her do it?
-Was it the recession? Did stress stem her egg production and lead her to suicide?
-Did she really want to know what was on the other side?
-Was she the victim of a dare?
All I know is that I was minding my own business driving at a fair lick on the N11 when a brown streak ran underneath my fore-left tyre and died quickly. My rear view mirror showed a cloud of brown feathers as the articulated truck behind almost crashed. It was as though somebody shot a pillow point-blank.
I was involved in a hit-and-run, and I feel terrible.
That’s all I have to say about that.
PS. Shortly afterwards I was to be found wandering down the median strip of a dual-carriageway on a completely unrelated matter. If you beeped at a lady wearing a white hoodie and looking very confused, that was me. I’ve had a very weird morning, but you’ve probably already gathered that.
Bray School Project Roof-Raiser Fundraiser Gig
Here’s positivity for you. Our schools are falling apart and funds have run dry, but instead of complaints, solidarity reigns and rock and roll rules. If you’re around Bray on Thursday night, you can see it for yourself. Enter the mosh-pit and help raise the roof!
Bray School Project Roof-Raiser Fundraiser Gig
WHEN: Thursday 2nd April, 7pm
WHERE: Greystones Theatre
WHY: To help raise funds for a new school roof
WHO: The Juice, The Cujo Family, Blind Yackety
Tickets are €10, from BSP Office/Box Office/Door
