The post in which K8 is told to bugger off
I went back to the Megalithic Tomb today, this time armed with bad-ass thorn resistant gardening gloves and a heady thirst for archaeology.
I worked hard for an hour, and was delighted to find a sapling Hawthorn tree, almost strangled completely with ivy. I freed it up to give it room to grow, and sent it some energy as you do… then began to work on the area around the entrance to the tomb to see if I could get inside.
A car pulled up on the road beside the field in which I was working.
“OI!!! What are you at?!” a woman in a silver car shouted from her driver’s seat. As I approached, she wound her window up to within four inches, as though I was about to attack her from the other side of a heavily barbed fence. She had a face on her like a Chihuahua chewing on an earwig.
“I’m very sorry to trespass… I…”
“You’re not trespassing!” she interrupted.
“I found this tomb over-run with brambles and thought I might take it upon myself to clean it up.” I smiled my prettiest smile.
“You have no business doing that!” she shrieked. “I’m sick of young ruffians coming in like they own the place and destroying everything, sick of it!!”
“I promise you, I’m no ruffian” I replied; “I used to be an archaeology student and this sort of thing fascinates me. I’m destroying nothing, only cleaning the place up. I’m very proud of it.”
“I’m proud of it too, so GO AWAY! When one comes in to wreck the place, the rest of them follow” she shouted.
“I didn’t mean to offend…”
“Well then GO AWAY” she shouted even louder. I began to get slightly pissed off.
“Look, if you don’t let me do this, then I can’t find a way to protect it. The Council could come in tomorrow and bulldoze the lot and we’d lose a seriously amazing piece of history.”
“It is protected!”
“I don’t believe it is… I looked on the archaeology information website and can’t find any record of it.”
“SO WHAT?!” she scowled.
“So… could you tell me how I can get permission to access the tomb to clean it up and protect it?”
“You can’t have permission!! GO AWAY!!” She smiled a demonic sort of smile and shut her window. End of conversation. I walked away, furious.
-o0o-
What are the politics behind this? Does anybody know? If I’m not trespassing then who is she to tell me to leave?
I hope the tomb faeries break the pistons on her crappy little car. Stupid bint.
So close, yet so far.
The Sanity Grant
I brought Puppychild for a playdate today, to the house of a domestic Goddess. This is a woman who has three children, all under the age of five, and another mouth on the way. She bakes scones and muffins every other day, makes marshmallow surprises for an entire classfull of children with no excuse needed at all, and organizes extravagant parties and picnics for enormous groups of parents and children at the slightest hint of a sunny day. She even brought a batch of strawberry double-chocolate cookies to my hen-party which was bizarre, but much appreciated!
Today she was baking chocolate mousse-ish things with meringue and treacle strands, brandy was involved somehow with the prospect of blow-torch action later on, all for an impending dinner party she was hosting. They looked delicious, but different to the photograph in the recipe, and this mattered to her, no matter what I said. Three children (plus my own anklebiter) were fighting in the background and a sickening THUMP could be heard followed by inevitable wails from the smallest child, who came runnning into the kitchen, covered in Toilet-Duck goo.
A war ensued, involving a chocolate covered mother (don’t go there, Maxi!) and a four-year-old who refused to relinquish the bottle of highly toxic toilet bleach. The war ended with a slap… a swift slap across the back of the kid’s head which ended the fight, but destroyed the Goddess. She crumbled and covered her head with inner turmoil – “I did it again!! I’m such a terrible mother!” She was utterly ashamed that I had witnessed the act.
It’s not the first time I’ve heard those words, sure I’ve said them myself. As a wise friend once said to me… ‘it’s far easier to punish yourself than to recognise the good things you do.’ How true. Okay so in this instance, the mother would have been better off removing herself from the situation, or just not allowing her stress levels to get so high, maybe hosting dinner parties isn’t such a good idea when you have so many dependants constantly vying for her attention, but she’s entitled to a life, and leaving a room crawling with small kids and a bottle of bleach isn’t such an ingenius thing to do. Either way, in years to come, her kids won’t remember that slap, they’ll remember coming home from school to batches of fresh-baked biscuits every day. She is an excellent mother, and I told her so.
This Goddess wouldn’t listen. She wanted to punish herself and cringed at the bad example she was giving. Everything was her fault.
Nothing is her fault. Society is at fault for segregating her from female peers. Irish women covet what they have and compare social status, they don’t reach out to hug and help. Irish mothers are teeny islands all on their own, all forced to keep a brave face and shut the fuck up.
I’ve seen this too many times, all of us torturing ourselves silently because we have rare occasions when we can’t cope and we lash out at the child, or the dog, or the plate-cupboard. We turn to booze, to drugs, to self-harm, because we feel unworthy of our children, of our lives. National Geographic shows tiger mothers showing no regret at biting her cubs because they pissed her off by crawling on her while she’s trying to nap, why should we?
Domestic violence is entirely different, I feel I should probably stick this in here. There is no way any of us could ever condone the sickness that is child-abuse, but child-abuse is NOT the same as a temporary lapse in sanity. Abuse is constant. Deliberate. A show of contempt towards those who are weaker… repeated beatings in moments of clarity. A smack caused by an incessantly whingey child plus a barking dog plus a spilled canister of sugar is simply natural cause-and-effect. Even a Saint’s patience only reaches so far.
I seriously wish there was a law that provides a grant for mothers, and otherwise un-kiddified women to compulsively meet up at least once a week outside the home environment for a jar or two with other women… to unwind, to advise, to complain, to share grievances and short-comings, to praise each other on the fact that their kids are still alive at all.
But, there isn’t. Everywhere there are closed doors with apparently perfect women inside with apparently perfect children. These apparently perfect people scream for help all the time, but they scream into pillows and get bad advice from lonesome google searches.
This needs to change… there needs to be an emphasis on the fact that a child’s health depends on that of its mother’s. The hand that rocks the cradle is not powered with batteries, but with reassurance, of which there is an enormous shortage. THAT, if you ask me, is what’s wrong with the world today.
The Sham of God
We were at a Christening in a small village somewhere near the middle of Ireland yesterday. Now… I don’t attend mass much, I should do, for the sake of Puppychild and her ability to make an educated decision for herself, but by the time Sunday mornings come around, I tend to forget.
The church experience yesterday was entirely weird, as though we’d fallen into the future, into a desolate world where things had started to degrade somewhat. A sore thumb in the village – a bizarre bright blue with dark blue edging back in the day when those colours must have been fashionable, the paint now peeled sadly and cried tears of rust from every window. Stained glass windows were indeed stained, but not with pretty colours any more, these had long faded. A dusty vent in the roof far above was shrouded with black cobwebs which spanned right along to the end of the support beams, and long cracks buckled the concrete, threatening to bring the whole lot down upon us at any moment.
I seriously considered breaking into the place the next day with a stepladder and a sponge, it was that pathetic.
Then the priest appeared.
To say that we all stared at him throughout the service was not to say we were enthralled with his words, rather because we were amazed at his depressive mumbling monotony. An alien from another planet, should one have stepped over the threshold and listened to this fella preach, certainly would not have guessed that he was addressing a Supreme Being. Instead, the priest opened a book, and began to read without inserting so much as a comma or a lift of his head until he was finished. The whole mass consisted of one entire mumbled sentence and must have ruined the experience for the parents of these tiny new lambish children somewhat.
A bloke beside me at one point leaned over to whisper into my ear;
“Somebody give that man a red bull!”
Now I know that priests are a dying breed in Ireland today, but are things really that bad? Even if I personally believe that God and the Church are separate things, I still believe in the power of tradition and community spirit, that it takes a catalyst such as a priest or a Post Office to bring this sort of thing to fruit… where’s the harm in that?
Even if people don’t want to be priests anymore, could we at least start to employ lay-folk to do a bit of spiritual pep-talking? Some sort of Minister for the people to spread parables and stories about fishes and candles and pretty white birds to Church goers every Sunday morning? Somebody who has genuine enthusiasm for the subject?!?!? Truly enthusiastic priests and vicars seem to be rarer than red squirrels these days.
See, if they don’t do something soon, I fear the Church (in its communal sense) is well and truly fucked, and that would be a crying shame.
How not to have an affair
Whoever said that the Leaving Cert is the most difficult exam of your life – they’re lying. I did alright(ish) in that test, but have had no need for it since, in fact its details were soon forgotten. The biggest test of your life is monogamy. It is, by far, too cruel a rule. I speak in terms of Darwinism and biology, the fact that a person’s hormones are destined to rage when in some people’s presence, and remain flaccid in other’s. This of course fluctuates from month to month, all in the name of stupid pro-creation. It has nothing whatsoever to do with your husband, wife, or otherwise intended. Isn’t that cruel? It’s a simple mathematic equation… two random people equals one healthy baby. Who wants a baby? Nature, that’s who.
I hold my hand up. I’m guilty of the roving eye, and use the elastic band wrist trick. A vicious snap is often good enough to keep me grounded, but I can’t help wondering about my betrothed. Although he’s the most loyal man there ever was, he can only be human… a fact that stays with me whenever he leaves me for a night of taxi driving. You should see some of the slappers in Bray. They have no shame, they have no morals, they will wear nothing, they will screw anything, and will make this fact known. For a man to deny this takes serious armour.
I found a receipt once in his pocket for flowers and chocolates but I had none to show for it. That fuelled my curiosity for weeks.
I find long blonde hairs on my husband’s coat and I analyse his behaviour quietly because of them.
But why? Why the constant suspicion? Am I looking for clues? Why do we as fully comprehensible humans spring traps and accusations from thin air? If we browse the menus of our opposite sex, why shouldn’t our beloveds do so to?
A drunken moment on honeymoon soon found out. We had sweated out a Black Moon party and were back at the ranch in high spirits, so I asked. Hell, why not? That’s what being married is all about… asking dangerous questions. After all, there’s no point in hiding stuff now, is there?
‘Surely there’s been somebody you’ve been tempted by?’
He was surprised by the question, and evaded it. He changed the subject many times until I oozed it out. His reply left me reeling. He admitted that yes, there had been one or two times when temptation was more than torture itself, but that he had a fail-safe way to deal with it. What works for him, may not work for me, but that’s for me to deal with, however difficult that may be.
So what’s the moral?
I suppose that’s the secret to marriage. Even if I’m glibly stating this after a week or so of the dirty deed, eight full years of partnership have taught me that admittance is most definitely a way through. Stating your inner thoughts and worries opens doors. Marriage is about being faulty, about being impure, about being human.
People ask me what it’s like to be married. I tell them that I can feel nothing different, but that’s not true. Now I know that it’s more than a piece of paper. It’s about suffering the same things together, about holding hands through crowded concerts… it’s like holding a rope. We’re holding our partners over the edge of a cliff and it’s up to them to trust us. With marriage though, it’s like everybody can see us… everybody can see us dangling from that cliff and they’re waiting for us to fall. All we have to do is talk it through.
‘Are you still holding on?’
‘Yes. You’re heavy, but yes I’m holding on.’
The real torture is that we’re always dangling, never to be pulled up to safety. The only thing denying us all from safety is temptation, a frayed rope. The temptation of an affair is to plummet into the unknown, and that, dude, is too far to reckon with.
I desperately want to ask others about the state of their ropes, but it’s too personal a question, they need to be fully inebriated before a satisfactory answer is given. Here though, here is different. Here people have time to think.
How do you not have an affair?
Godless freaks
This blog is starting to feel like an answering machine. I
I…
just don’t know what to say anymore.
I’ve lapsed (Blogfather forgive me) in my reading of other blogs, because life has taken over a bit since moving to this house. There’s so much to do! Granted the marriage bit and the honeymoon stuff (which I’ll spare you of any blow-by-blow accounts as much as I want describe it, it won’t come to words) which took up a lot of my time of late… now is the time that I should be getting back to the flow of blogging.
But…
The quality of this girl’s writing has deteriorated because now seems to be the time of experience and learning and it feels like there’s no room for anything else. I wonder should I give up this poor blog and let her sleep? The pool of inspiration’s been dry for so damn long now, I wonder if the gloss has worn off. What the fuck is wrong with me? Is now the time to practice guitar finger-styling or to appreciate the sunny disposition of my neighbour before she moves away?
It’s just another day. Everybody else lives the same day, but in their own way. What’s so different about me? Nothing, that’s what.
So many blogs complain. So many plead for redemption for themselves or for the government, but we have nothing to honour. We Irish are all alone, we have ourselves to love, that’s it, but that’s not enough. We think we’re bigger and older than everyone else, but it really doesn’t matter. Since I came home from Thailand I’ve noticed a few things… namely that Ireland is an incredibly clean country, but also that we have nothing to live for but money, and now that’s shot.
Thai people have statues everywhere dedicated to Buddha. They serve their statues breakfast, lunch and dinner. They serve shots and Tequila Sunrises and glasses of water to these icons and place statues of their beloved King (the longest serving King in the world!) on the dashboard of their taxis and places of payment. Relics are found on every corner of every Godforsaken shithole and they are worshipped beyond belief.
I want that.
But who should we worship?
I suppose there’s always God (who no-one laughs at when…);
Then there’s always Mr. Tayto;
St Patrick? Don’t make me laugh…
Who’s left for us to idolise?
Who?
Any takers?
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??”
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…
:)
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
~
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.
Two great inventions
On a personal level:
Community games. I’ve just discovered that once a week, parents from all over this locality empty their children into a field in the twilight hours under the watch of choirs of blackbirds and babies with chilly ears, for no apparent reason. Nobody organises it as such, it’s more like an underlying knowledge that parents have, like a school of fish changing direction in the same instant… they just know.
I just poured my child onto this field and watched as she ran eight laps, then did ten minutes of jumping jacks and five minutes of running around in circles before oozing herself back into the car and collapsing into a rosy-cheeked afterglow. Every child in the village did the same. Absolute. Genius.
On a global level:
Here is a youtube video that I just simply can’t put into words other than ‘I want one’.
It has a lot to do with Minority Report, something to do with painted fingernails, and is potentially the best invention I’ve ever seen. Imagine walking up to a complete stranger and seeing buzz-words projected onto their teeshirt-front in a tag-cloud describing their profession, their likes and dislikes, and their favourite type of cheese? Pranav Mistry is the genius behind ‘Sixth-Sense’… a gizmo that pulls google right out of the dark ages. All for the sweet cost of $350. Watch.
