Stop playing with yourself Daddy
‘There’s an app for that’. You know that ad on the telly (there’s an app for that too) for iPhones which shows all the fantabulous (there’s an app for that) things that it can do? I don’t have an iPhone, but TAT does… I’m sure it’s lovely but if it won’t flip sausages while I colour in pictures of Spongebob, I have no interest.
He won’t go to the toilet without it now. We walk past distant gunfire, waiting for our turn on the loo while TAT conquers spy allies. Sometimes he catapaults birds. Puppychild has to thump loudly and tell him to stop playing with himself frequently which is wrong in so many ways.
“It won’t wipe your arse though will it?” I scoff at him when he finally emerges with a burnt matchstick and a pins-and-needles limp. “No app for that, is there?”
It’s all very affecting, this waiting around for TAT and his crapps. I don’t know if there’s a helpline, but I’m pretty sure there’s an easy way to look for one if there is.
Please don’t chew your gum near my baby
It’s your lunch break. You scarf down an onion bagel, a packet of crisps and a can of diet fizz, all washed down with a cigarette maybe. On your way back to the office, you pop one or two chewing-gums to dull the pungency of it all and congratulate yourself that you’re doing your teeth a favour even if your smokey lungs are shot. Two out of three ain’t bad, sure.
-o0o-
It’s not your lungs you need to worry about though, it’s the other thing… the thing that was in most of what you just ate. Crisps, diet (‘zero’) drinks, chewing gum, diet yoghurts, artificial sweeteners, breakfast cereals, aspartame, aspartame, aspartame. It’s in sugar-free children’s medications, in a bid to prevent tooth-rot. It’s in 1200 of the products you consume, and it’s very slowly mucking up our genetics and making us say things like… ‘isn’t it funny how people are dropping like flies with cancer these days?’.
Unstranger’s recent post reminded me of E951, the toxin that in 1980, was voted against by the FDA Public Board Of Inquiry on the grounds that the data was flawed, there were brain tumor findings in animal studies, and there was a lack of studies on humans to determine long-term effects.
Aspartame was since approved spuriously via pressure from Donald Rumsfeld, apparently. Urm… ok.
“The official story is that aspartame was discovered in 1966 by a scientist developing an ulcer drug (not a “food additive”). Supposedly he discovered, upon carelessly licking his fingers that they tasted sweet. Thus was the chemicals industry blessed with a successor to saccharine, the coal-tar derivative that foundered eight years later under the pressure of cancer concerns.” (according to this)
Aspartame basically metabolizes into Formaldehyde from amino acids and methanol, which eats you (so to speak) slowly, causing severe health problems at exceptionally low levels of exposure. It disguises itself as illnesses such as Lyme Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, Hypothyroidism, Fibromyalgia, Lupus, and Attention Deficit Disorder, to name just a few.
Some of the symptoms of aspartame poisoning include:
Headaches, Dizziness, Muscle spasms, Rashes, Depression, Fatigue, Seizures, Tachycardia, Insomnia, Hearing Loss, Anxiety attacks, Loss of taste, Joint Pain, Vertigo, Tinnitus, Irritability and Breathing difficulties.
Because it metabolizes into a poison, it is believed that it can also trigger or worsen things like brain tumours, Alzheimer’s Disease, Diabetes, birth defects, epilepsy, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and Parkinson’s Disease.
Side effects can occur gradually, can be immediate, or can be acute reactions, but! It’s a billion dollar market, so SHHH!!! don’t tell anybody!!
Here I sit with a tobacco pouch with the words ‘Smoking can damage the sperm and decreases fertility’ emblazoned in BIG lettering on its side. I have no sperm. I have plenty of children.
I’m worried about the warning that’s absent from my bottle of 7UP Free that should state ‘This product contains a chemical which eats holes in your brain. Do not consume if pregnant.’
But there will never be, because there’s no money in that lark.
Because we could all be run over by a bus tomorrow, I guess.
Meh…
Knock knock.
Who’s there?
Objective case.
Objective case who?
Wrong.
How to undermine the Queen
Here’s a really oddball present for someone, should you be stuck with a credit card but no car.
Did you know that you could become:
Lord/Lady, Baron/Baroness, Duke/Duchess, Count/Countess, Viscount/Viscountess, Marquis/Marchioness, Earl/Countess, Sir/Dame -insert your own moniker here-, for the low, low price of $294????
“Imagine… A Life Of Priviledge
-Credit cards emblazoned with “Lord (or Lady) Smith”
-All identification confirming the new royal title.
-Doors opening professionally and socially.
-is no faster way to climb the social ladder.
-A unique and thoughtful gift which can pay for itself.
-A fantastic icebreaker which gains instant respect and credibility
-Unlocking doors which were previously unknown
-A completely risk-free gift”
Risk-free?!?!? If you say so!! The ebony certificate jacket would be worth that alone!
Kisskiss sweetie-dahling
xx
Countess K8 the Gr8
How to be eaten
I’ve never been on a diet. Diets fall into that category of things that need willpower, but I’m happily squatting in the quitter section of the ‘life is too short’ category, close to the ‘fuck that!’ department. It’s happier over here where mirrors and doctors are banned.
I do have a Wii fit though, the melding of fitness and gaming is genius even if it does sit for months on end gathering dust. I used it to gauge my weight in my seventh month of pregnancy, just to throw it off guard a bit. It turned my avatar into a Pillsbury dough-girl and scorned my girth.
Then I used it again shortly after giving birth and realised that it’s not as stupid as it looks. It told me that if I wanted to, I could re-do the body test carrying an object, and it would give me its weight too… something like a pet, or a baby maybe?
So I did, and it congratulated me. I was impressed.
A few weeks later I re-took the tests, and after I’d bitch-slapped it for still claiming I was in the ‘overweight’ category, I found that thanks to breastfeeding, Sir Fartsalot had gained almost exactly the same amount of weight that I’ve lost. Ooooooh.
My child is eating me. I adore the chubbiness that is my thighs recycled.
Atkins my arse. The cannibalism diet is working well for me.
Barefoot bandits
They say that when you get what you want, you don’t want it anymore. But what if it wasn’t yours to begin with? What if you took it as your own and used it to its full potential, then discarded it like a used condom… bound on its path of decomposition with no regard to how long that may take? Some people call that rape.
This is an arial view of the area of Knockree, Co. Wicklow. I can’t describe this place because no english word would fit properly. Past the prettiest Youth Hostel in the world lies a parking spot marked by a horizontal barrier. Once you’ve debarked yourself from your wheels you’ll find yourself on a path lined by mysterious darkened faerie paths and wild honeysuckle and you follow this for ten minutes or so until you come upon a bit of wood with an arrow painted onto its top. Follow this arrow, lep over the turnstile and then…
The wee hours of morning time are the best. A haze floats below your view and hugs the river like a firstborn so that you feel like you’re either flying, or are standing on the tallest mountain in the world. It is the start of one of those downward slopes that beckons you and casts a spell on you to make you forget the fact that you’ll someday have to climb back up again on the homeward stretch.
At the bottom of this path lies a river which shimmies through goblin groves and tree-filled troll hideouts. On the banks of this river are various camping spots and tiny beaches for your freed sock-smothered toes to dangle from, with ropes hanging from branches (possibly put there by aforementioned trolls), so that you can swing into the centre of the river on a hot day and let go, to plunge into the guinness-coloured water below.
I walked there today with Puppychild and Sir Fartsalot and found this:
Heaven raped. Small children denied from splashy footplay because of broken glass. Human shit wrapped shamelessly in skidmarked bogroll and empty crisp packet carcasses gathering algae where fish should leap. Shit from shit.
How can a nation can gather arms and unite as a proud nation against some random French fucker on a football team, yet at the same time vomit all over this same nation’s natural wonders and rape it of its purity?
Shame on whoever partied here. Shame on you assholes. You don’t deserve this country.
You’re gonna die
Sometimes when I’m walking around and talking to myself, as you do, I like to rehearse possibly awkward conversations I’ll hopefully be having with my kids someday. The facts of life mainly… it’s important to practice these things so that when the time comes I’ll be cool and nonchalant and not a giggle-suppressing wreck when explaining what a vas deferens is.
Then there’s the question of life, death, and that whole afterlife thing, which Puppychild blindsided me with last night.
Out of the blue, she asked me why my grandparents were dead. Then she asked me when her own grandparents would die and asked if they wouldn’t rather stay alive forever instead.
“Everybody dies.” I explained, in a roundabout way.
The information sank in slowly and I watched as she bonded with the rest of humanity and the millions who have gone before us, fearful enormity plopped onto her shoulders like a big bag of spuds and I felt sad for her. Her teddybear’s lip began to quiver. I explained to her that she must try to stay happy, to love every minute she has with her Grandad and Granny instead of worrying about their demise. The information was absorbed and absolved.
“But what happens to you when you die?”
I told her that we dissolve and turn into skeletons and get chewed into dust and soil. There seemed no point in mincing words, I figured it was better for her to learn it from me, rather than learn it from maggotty dead roadkill at some point in the future. I softened the blow by telling her that flowers and trees grow from soil, life from life, life from death, that sort of thing. It seemed to work.
Then I explained about Buddhist theories of re-incarnation and she chose that she should return in the next life as a puppy. No surprise there then.
I didn’t get to explain about heaven, for she had fallen asleep by then. I’m not sure whether this is a pity or not, she didn’t mention the subject again until lunchtime when I mentioned we’d be visiting Grandad.
“Grandad’s gonna die!” she said cheerfully.
This means she’s now either a psychopath, or she’s figured out the meaning of life. Either way I become famous, which is nice.
Nerds in pieces
I’m one of those rare people who has the patience for jigsaws. They’re a brilliant invention, perfect for manual dexterity and logic exercises in kids, great for distraction from addictions, a box full of tiny bits of cardboard. Individual quiet ‘yippee!’s for when each slots into its impossibly detailed place.
I got a 500 piece jigsaw of a bunch of Alsatian puppies for Puppychild recently. Who am I kidding… it’s really for me. She watches with mild amusement at the torture I seem to love so much but soon goes back to her kennel to thread beads. She’ll be there for that final twenty pieces, we have an understanding.
One of TAT’s spurious friends was visiting last week and asked if I was going to glue it to a frame, a lot of people do that. They don’t understand the point of jigsaws.
Jigsaws are one of the few things you can make which are designed to be smashed up again. Yeah you can leave it on the dining room table for months but people eventually get pissed off that they’re not allowed within five feet of it, so all those long hours piecing the whole thing together will have to be undone, destroyed and wept upon, preferably during a seance. That’s the whole fun of it!
Here for your amusement is a cat-in-the-box just in case you’ve mentally diverted from all the nerdy jigsaw talk:
Frankenboy
This rather complicated picture is of Laughingboy in his new stander, on loan to us during the school holidays. It arrived with a fanfare and took several grown men to manoeuvre into the house, coming to rest in the sacred junk spot in his room. I had moved the sacred junk into a parallel dimension the evening before, which was lucky.
With more straps than a Jimmy Choo and more velcro than a truck load of nappies, the stander needed a demonstration which was provided by Laughingboy’s physiotherapist shortly after its arrival. As she and I battled with limbs and folds and hoists and elbows and gaiters, The Accidental Terrorist walked into the room.
“Jesus.” he said. “Frankenstein’s monster’s after moving in!”
Laughingboy’s physiotherapist raised her left eyebrow subtly, and began to turn the winch that moves the table into its upright position from flat.
“It’s alliiiiive!!!!” shouted TAT, as Laughingboy flapped in delight at the shift in gravity.
Laughingboy’s physio scowled. Was she scowling at the inappropriate joke? Was she concerned over Laughingboy’s potentially hurt feelings? Maybe it was a scowl of jealousy because she has been itching to crack the same joke for the last five years of working with these standers but couldn’t.
All I know is that Laughingboy is going to have thebest Halloween costume ever this year. Now where did I leave that Hannibal the Cannibal face mask?
The day after tomorrow
I secretly believe that some day the world will change.
Some day we won’t sue our best mates because we slipped and popped a ligament on their decking, maybe we’ll even be able to get together with a few neighbours to build a skateboard ramp for the kids for the long summer weeks without fear of being so sueable. What a bunch of whingers we’ve become! Is it so much to ask just to be a kid once in a while? We need to evolve a bit more… I can’t wait to find out what my great-great-grand children experience in the future because I will be haunting them.
I know everyone is paranoid about our big brother and is convinced that things can only get worse, but someday I know our neighbours will be re-found and doors will be left unlocked again. Where is the bottom of the barrel where evolution cries on the staircase with its bottle of gin and wonders where it all went wrong? Maybe fifty years from now? Two hundred years maybe?
Someday we will degrade plastic (BAD plastic! You call yourself HDPE?! Pathetic. THIS is HDPE!!) to such a degree that we will power our tellies with the same gunge we roast our spuds and life will be good and they will laugh at the Noughties and point fingers at our hair and our paranoid misgivings and they’ll smoke their spliffs and they’ll love again.
And so I slither back into now and I can only smirk and try not to take pictures of my hair.
In the meantime, being that we cannot grow a playground out of nothingness, I need memories. Basic games that please the most gregarious of kids. I feel sorry for their boredom, but I feel sorrier for the pretty purple flowers I’ve planted which are bound to be desecrated by young f’las this summer. If we all as parents group together to buy a supply of stuffs for our chisellers, what would they be?
So far I have:
-Chalk
-Ropes for skipping
-Basketball Hoop
-Swingball
-Goalposts
-Various lengths of donated wood (you didn’t get them from me)
-Softballs
Any more ideas? I’m desperate, lads.
