The Blogosfear – Part V
Part I/Part II/Part III/Part IV/Part V/Part VI/Part VII/Part VIII
The family’s plans for Halloween were somewhat spurious this year. Given the option of a night in my mother-in-law’s or a weekend at my cousin’s house in Mullingar, I chose option C; (I had to fake a rather good breakdown for this option to be plausible) a weekend away on my own. Not being entirely flushed with cash, I did an inter-net search using the words ‘Guesthouse, cheap, remote, Ireland’. The search engine asked me if I was feeling lucky, and it just so happened that I was…
I browsed the comments, of which there were only two.
The first said: ‘My sister had to be booked into the clinic after she stayed here’, the second: ‘This house tested the limits of my humanity! To be avoided.’ Sheer curiosity made me book a room right there and then.
3:00 am
The baby in my arms is screaming fitfully, its jaws look dis-jointed, much like those of a snake as it attempts to swallow something five times its size. Its hands… no, its claws grab at my hair and pull it out in fistfuls, but all I can do is cuddle it in the hope it could be pacified. Its eyes bulge, grow larger and larger… they turn into balloons filled with a noxious fluid which sloshes around inside, threatening to drown me when the child’s eyeballs inevitably pop. The eyeballs don’t pop… the image dissappears as I wake, sweating. Shouting.
“Please don’t!!! He didn’t mean it, please don’t do it!!!”
It’s all gone away and I am extrmely grateful.
My stomach curdles in remembrance of the nightmare, it’ll take a while for those images to abate. I look around, lost for a second until I remember where I am. A strange smell wafts that wasn’t there when I had fallen asleep, and a peculiar scraping noise can be heard from above. I slide out of bed and look up, searching for form in the dusky light. Holes. There are holes peppered into the ceiling plaster. Ugh. I put my tracksuit on and distinctly hear a disappointed groan.
That can’t be good.
A baby screams. My blood curdles and suddenly changes direction rending my extremities cold and the hairs on my body prickly like a million thorns… the memory of my nightmare returns and threatens to stupefy me. If intuition came in neon lights, mine would be putting a serious energy scourge on this godforsaken grid in this moment, for it is screaming to me that madness is standing right behind my bedroom door. The benign piece of wood seems to throb as I stare at it and against all my wishes, the doorknob begins to turn.
“Hey!” My voice squeaks in a panicked cadence that isn’t my own. “How about an old-fashioned knock first?!”
The door swings slowly open and light oozes into my room like a puddle of radioactive waste. A woman stands on the threshold holding a bundle. Her hair is long and straw-like and her eyes… her eyes are bearing right into my core, into my past. I can tell she knows my worst fears immediately. I freeze as she holds the bundle towards me. This is too surreal for me.
“The baby hassssssssh to go. We don’ wannishh. You wannisssh? Can’ take’n no more!!” her accent is masked by her stumbling speech pattern.
I pull my adrenaline together into a virtual wrecking ball and slam my body against the back of the door in an effort to close it. Fuck the baby. Its cries are all wrong, just like in the dream… I don’t care if I hurt it. My shoulder crashes against the outer edge of the door, but it goes nowhere. A dart of pain storms through my shoulder and neck and I fall back towards the bed, now in full view of the occupants of the doorway. I screw my eyes shut in horror and tell myself it isn’t real. Even foulness has its limits in everyday society.
The blond lady with the crazy eyes is not alone – she drops the bundle she has been carrying to reveal that it had been a decoy. The moth-eaten material falls pathetically around the heels of the man who stands beside her… a man whose features are wrong, all wrong, in the manner of a person who is borne from genes too closely linked. His stumpy fingers hold a rope, and attached to the other end is a rotting mass of child. The suggestion of bone beneath the mess is indescribable, the smell unbelievable. The baby. Oh, this is too evil. Too wrong. I beg with my sanity to stay with me.
Through the darkness of my eyelids I sense movement and realise that blackness is an even worse enemy than the truth, so my eyes snap open to welcome the horror. The baby is being held at arm’s length, as though it was being offered to me.
“She seen it now, that be th’end of tha’ gird’le!!” His nostrils flare as he laughs with mania, a flash of silver crosses his palm as the door is all too suddenly slammed shut, defying the laws of physics.
Darkness, but not silence.
Hissing.
Snakes? A jar of insects? What the hell is the noise? The answer reaches me before I have a chance to search for a light switch.
I gag. The air is suddenly scarce and filled with a billion microscopic razor blades. When it fills my lungs I retch as I feel it try to turn me inside-out. My eyes burn, fluid streams not from my tear ducts, but from my eyes themselves, like they are melting and are trickling down my cheeks in scalding rivers of putrid pus. My nose is occluded by two red-hot pokers and is frantically trying to extinguish the heat itself with a torrent of mucus… it oozes into my mouth and onto the carpet as I bend forward and gag helplessly. Even my ears are suffering from an unruly hell. What the hell is this stuff? This clogging, fogging gas that makes me want to shove my head down the unsavoury toilet and flush?
Death perhaps seems a welcome escape, but not before I notice the old cracked window frame through the noxious fug. I drag my body to an almost upright position, and sneeze the poison out violently. Liquid gushes from my head as though I am a possessed hobo and I frantically wipe and claw at my face to clear my view.
I hurl myself at the window and cherish the sweet sound of shattering glass and cool clean Irish air as I plunge to my death.
Or not.
I land on the porch roof and roll… THUD… onto the leafy ground below. The last of the poisoned CS gas leaves my lungs with the blow and I gasp. Oxygen floods my brain, enough to fuel the last remnants of adrenaline I have left and I run.
See Kate run. Run Kate run.
I am almost at the gaping maw of the front gate when I hear it… the all-too realistic human plea.
Assaulted
I blundered into the kitchen this morning in a foggy overslept haze and saw two unwelcome sights immediately.
The first was a note left by TAT who had come in from work at 7.30am.
“There’s something wrong with the SatNav. I’ll fix it later.”
NOOOO!!! I shudder at the thought of having to conduct my working day using the primitive dog-eared map… the potential embarrassment of having to whip it out in front of a customer in panic when they ask to be brought to some God forsaken suburb of inner-city Dublin makes me want to go back to bed for the day. Disaster.
Then I found the empty salt and pepper cannisters. They stood to attention on the kitchen table and there might as well have been another note saying ‘Toddler was ‘ere’ beside them. I broke out my CSI kit to look for evidence but found nothing… no trail of distruction, no prints or fibres. Damn, she’s getting good. I searched high up and low down for the contents of the cannisters… in the bin, the sink, her cereal bowl, the bath… everywhere with no joy.
Then I heard a tiny noise.
“pffft”
I turned to the direction of the sound and listened.
“pfft” It was the sound of a Guinea-Pig sneezing. Then I remembered Puppychild’s penchant for animal torture (first sign of a budding psychopath?) and dashed over to the hutch.
Yep. Each pig was covered in a fine dust of pepper and salt granules and was grooming furiously, their tiny eyes glued shut as a result of nature’s cruel decision to deprive them of the ability to cry the salt out. Poor wee feckers. I went to grab a toothbrush to groom the stuff out, and let a horribly evil thought cross my mind.
Guinea-Pigs are fat and don’t excersice much, but then again neither does anyone else in the family. This means they should be quite succulent. Peruvians eat them like Big Macs… have done for centuries, and think it hilarious that we keep them as pets.
Puppychild has pretty much taken care of the first stage of preparation… she salted them roughly an hour ago, so they should be nice and tender by now.
The oven’s pre-heating and I’ve got my razor-blade ready… my stomach is rumbling at the thought of breakfast. I’ll call it the ‘Full Irish Peruvian surprise’ I think.
Yum.
Eroticow
This isn’t my story, it’s the Accidental Terrorist’s because fortunately, daytime taxi driving doesn’t spew up many stories like this one.
We sat in the sunroom to eat dinner this evening, and as we ate, he relayed his adventures to me. The fork to mouth repetition slowed more and more as the story unfolded, and I began to feel sick, it’s that good.
He told me about how he’d picked up two men and two women from Bray at around closing time o’clock. Dropping one of the men off along the way, he continued to Ballybrack trying hard not to listen to the conversation being held between the two girls in the back of the car.
“Why?” I asked. ”What were they talking about?”
“Nothing much, it was just riddled with curses but… I know some blokes who find cursing women repulsive and I never understood why until now. It was trashy, really crude.”
“Oh. Carry on.”
“Then she got her tits out.”
Apparently the loudest of the two women, who happened to be the girlfriend of the remaining bloke in the car, opened her top for the world to see. TAT swears his eyes were on the road but I’m dubious.
Then, she began to appeal to TAT with ‘this really annoying whiny scumbag voice’ to stop somewhere so that she could pee. He did – he stopped at a perfect spot on the road adjoining a small green area protected by bushes, and pointed her towards them. Did she use them? Did she fuck. She opened her door, squatted by the rear tyre on a busy road, and splashed her pints back home right there in front of him.
When TAT finally pulled up outside the house, the same girl got out of the car, crawled about on the pavement for a bit while she got her co-ordination back and then stumbled to the front of the car where she turned around, bent over and lifted her dress over her head, revealing every last detailed orifice. She then re-robed, and as she was laughing and walking through her front gate, she yelled back at TAT;
“So do you want to come in for yer hole?”
I dropped my fork when he got to that part. I clapped my hands over my ears and shouted “LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA” for a good five minutes. The image of this bint saying that to him… my bear, the King to my Queen… I felt like throwing my entire dinner up back onto the plate. It disturbed me to the core.
Die, evil slapper bitch, DIE
Will this girl cry with shame tomorrow morning when the memories float to the top of her scummy mind? I doubt it. Will she do it again? Most definately… why break old habits? Bray is full of these women. They are all over Ireland, giving it away like it was the Ebola virus. AIDS and STDs are on the rampage but they don’t give a shit. Babies are born without a snowball’s chance in hell of making it straight, and are found lurking ominously under bridges and on street corners looking dodgy. Village of the damned.
Won’t they please legalize prostitution?
These people are in serious need of precaution and a cleaner environment… seriously, some pubs are pure cattlemarkets. The men don’t even bother to dress up, they just leave their farmer’s shirts on. The women wear seriously ridiculously skimpy clothes (okay, okay, I wore greyhound* skirts and sent the wrong messages entirely too when I was a kid, but I grew out of it!) and rub themselves against anything with a pulse. So, all a bloke has to do is walk in the door, and SCORE! his beans are cooked.
Everyone loves sex. It’s our most basic calling, but it’s still very much in the underworld when it should be out in the open! Clean, safe, there whenever you need it. Bring back prostitution and save our small towns. PLEASE.
* 2 inches from the hair
The post in which K8 slags the knackers
Once again, K8′s faith in humanity is given a massive whack across the face with an iron crowbar.
I have defended the travelling community before (being that I live amongst them and kind of feel I should give it a shot)… I think I said something about them deserving the right to fight for respect within an unforgiving settled community?
What complete bollocks this is.
Here’s the scene:
-0-
I’m parked up at a garage in Bray, looking for a lady who wants to go to Arklow as per instructions from the taxi base. I’m scanning the area which is deserted apart from a young lad aged eleven or twelve who sits by himself on a window-sill with his head resting on his knees. Being that I am a girl who tends to think outside her box, I approach the kid.
“Hey kid… you looking for a taxi?”
The kid looks up and seems somewhat relieved. “Yeah, I want to go home to Arklow” he says.
I convey my successful pick up over the CB and am informed that the fare would be €65. I turn around to the kid. “Do you think you can handle €65?”
The kid looks panicky and says; “Oh no I have no money with me, my mammy said she’d pay for me when I get home. She’ll give you the money then.”
Fishy, but still highly likely.
“What’s the address?” I ask.
“I dunno” the kid says apologetically; “we only just moved in. It’s near the main street”.
Something smelled funny, and I don’t mean metaphorically. The child was scruffy, and smelled very faintly of urine (as many children do) but also had an unmistakeable accent. He looked nervous, and was hugging a bottle of orange soda. He had intelligent eyes, and looked me directly in the pupils when he spoke to me.
My instinct roared. It warned me that I was about to be swindled, but I wondered if I had the right to refuse a child safe passage to his parent? What if he was speaking the truth? I’m a mother, I can’t do that to a kid! Besides (more truthfully), €65 is a lot to turn down.
I take off. The kid asks me how far it was to Arklow, but apart from that one question he is silent for the entire journey. When we arrive at the town, he directs me into a small housing estate on the outskirts.
“It’s that house on the corner, I’ll be back in a second”
I let him out, scolding my instinct for being such a cynical bitch. Then I watch as the kid passes the house in question at high speed, and dissappears around the corner on to the main road. I fire the ignition and fly after him in first gear. The main road is deserted. I crawl up and down for a few minutes knowing well that the little fucker is hiding somewhere.
I drive back to the housing estate and call the taxi base to see if there is any protocol for this type of thing. Apparently the union doesn’t have an insurance policy against runners, because there is no union. I ring the accidental terrorist who tells me to come home (seeing as I happily live near Arklow anyway) and informs me that he regrettably has no secret ninja techniques for dealing with this situation. The Police are dreadfully under-funded and would probably appreciate my not informing them of this misdemeanour.
I couldn’t go home. I wanted to find him and run him over.
I drive very quietly until I get back to the road the kid would be walking. I shift into neutral and slink along with my eyes peeled.
About 200m ahead of me, I spot an old man. There’s someone else too, who briefly flashes a face, then hops over the 6ft wall beside him. I toy with the idea of scaling the wall to chase the kid, but thought better being that my trousers cost a few bob. Anyway, what use would there be in catching him? Sure, I could beat him up a bit to calm the anger, but I’d still be broke.
I stop to speak to the old man who does indeed identify a young boy holding a bottle of orange soda. He also tells me that the field over the wall beside us could be used as a shortcut to get to the traveller’s quarters ‘over the way’ as he puts it.
End of pathetic sodding scene.
-0-
I knew that kid was a knacker. I still drove him ‘home’ because it was the end of my shift and I was heading that way anyway. I was aware of the kid’s movements the whole time, but he gave me no cause for concern whatsoever. He just sat back with his arms crossed and gazed out the window silently which is refreshing for someone with my job.
I’m not angry about the money, I’m angry that I was so fucking naive to think that it’s possible that there is such a thing as an honest traveller.
They are a crafty race who have plenty of scruples and plenty of cash, so do not take your eyes off a traveller for one fucking second if you find yourself near one, for they would have the eyes sold out of your head soon as look at you, no matter what age they are. Kudos to them, they had me fooled… but not anymore.
They’re in a great position… they don’t pay taxes, and it’s well known that they enjoy the fruits of ill-gotten gains, yet the gardaí won’t go anywhere near them. They demand respect from the community and free land from the council, then fleece them as soon as their backs are turned!
Where’s the honour in that, though?! Why is it that the only events warranting shop and pub shut-down around here are Christmas day, and a knacker’s funeral? They live by skimming money off tax paying citizens… so why are we respecting that again?
If they’re so great, then why aren’t we all travellers? I’m already halfway there, sure. We’re scrounging a house off the council, but at least we’re trying to get back on this bastard of a housing ladder… we were almost on it too, once, but slipped off again when Laughingboy was born. Circumstance kicked us in the nuts and now here we are, still trying to crawl out of the dependancy pit seven years later. It sucks! Yet, there the knackers smugly sit in their dingy halting sites, knowing that their head-men and women of the family are worth literally millions of euros.
Here’s an insane question: If you had millions of euros would you squat in a dingy piss-stinking commune in the clogged pores of the Irish countryside, or would you bugger off to Thailand?
Answers on a postcard to:
One pissed off taxi driver
28 Shithole View
Dunfoundusaplacetohousethescumbags
Co. Wicklow
Ireland
(What?! What do you mean this post is too long? It’s not! My blog is too narrow!)
Hairy me
I seriously love it when blokes go all taboo. Nickhereandnow in his infinite excellent wisdom, wrote his view on hairiness (and prevention of) today. I leaped with joy to read his post, as it’s a great excuse to have a go, especially seeing as I may just be the hairiest girl in the world.
You might have seen this face before:
This smug mug belongs to my father, who bestowed his wisdom, height, and Wookie genes upon me. Now you perhaps will appreciate my point.
Freud would have it that I would prefer the bearded bloke when seeking a mate, but this for some reason went out the window when I chose a man with exactly two hairs on his chest. Freud also said that a woman is either constantly running towards her father, or away from him. If you saw my dad standing on top of his pile of tourist carcasses, you’d probably choose the latter, too. With the exception of Gimme perhaps, bearded men are generally too ‘nice’ for me, being that I like just a pinch of bad-boy in my men.
Anyway, being that I am with a minimally hairy bloke, a lot of discussion has led me to understand that excess hair on my own self is not appreciated. I have been asked to visit the beautician’s quarters for a ‘bald eagle’ of late (TAT’s knowledge of the hairstyles in that region astounded me). I refused point blank, as I have already experience pube waxing and found it not to my taste, especially when you’re being done by a vindictive cow who insists on ripping away at the same raw and bleeding patch 17 times.
Then, in my infinite female wisdom, I challenged TAT. I told him I’d go the va-general whole hog on the day he went through with a back, crack, and sack wax. We agreed to leave it at that, for that was good enough for this particular gander (‘Bollox to that!’ he said. ‘Exactly!’ I said).
The thing is though, you might be here expecting me to fully support this sort of image:
Not a chance, matey. The gals at school were the first to point out what a freak I was. Then when my best friend’s little brother began to call me ‘Dr. Zaius’, I knew it was time, and deforestation began against my mother’s wishes.
-x-
My de-fuzzing attempts are as follows:
-I tried Immac first (now Veet) which is a type of acid which, when applied to the skin, produces a very weird smell to let you know your skin is being poisoned. Then after a while, one washes said acid off, along with scorched dead hairs. Not so with us very hairy chicks! We just end up with alien legs that still need to be shaved despite chemically raw conditions. Binned.
-I tried those electric shavers twice. The first time it was useless. The second time came years later when I had forgotten how useless they were but they are still useless. Binned.
-I tried waxing once when I decided for some unknown reason that the midwife in the hospital in which I was due to explode shortly at the time, might be offended by my… umm… genetic condition. Bikini waxes hurt. They really sodding hurt. And, to make matters prettier, there were many craters, and much ingrown nastiness to follow. I tried home kits a few times on my arms, but with crap results. The pain was overtaken by the frustration of being totally unable to uproot the final 15% of the really stubborn hairs. It was almost the death of me, so it was binned.
-I even tried one of those electrolysis machines, bought on Ebay for fifty quid. The principle is that you hold this pen (which is wired to the mains) in your left hand. Instead of a nib, the pen has a micro-thin wire which you insert into the root of your offending hair. You then touch the silver part of the pen with your wet hand, and ‘BZZZZZZZT’ – you complete the circuit and get root electrocution. It smells rotten, it feels rotten, and you’d have to do it a rotten further 15,000,000 times to kill all the hair on your body. Binned.
My only man is your average disposable razor blade (especially the ‘new’ and ‘improved’ ones!), and a large bottle of Fruit of the Earth Crystal Clear Aloe Gel.
-x-
It takes me half an hour to shave everything (trying to shave one’s toe-knuckles with severe myopia is a serious challenge), much longer if I’m expecting a trip to the swimming pool or beach. It sucks, but I don’t mind, because there is not a chance in hell you’d find me letting it grow. It doesn’t feel natural, ironically, and I’m pretty sure that’s not the media talking. If a bloke were to walk up to me and tell me that hairy women are his greatest turn on, I’d run away.
Anthropologically, it doesn’t make sense for women to be hairy. Sure… didn’t they get to stay in caves and nurture young? Men of course needed hair to keep the warm and display their virility and that’s lovely… I’m a magnet to a scruffy stubble, as long as it’s only a few days old. Men needhair, but I don’t really understand how evolution hasn’t phased it out yet for women… Mother Nature must have gotten the hint by now that it’s out-dated and un-wanted?! In fact, this guy claims women are generally getting hairier, and yes, there is indeed a blog dedicated to the subject out there! Hairy Women Blog.
Is this one of natures oldest jokes? I sure as hell ain’t laughing.
How do girls pee?
It’s been troubling me lately that one of my most popular posts is ‘Why do girls pee in pairs?‘. The reason that it’s so popular is that people keep googling ‘How do girls pee?’ and finding me. I have a feeling that this post isn’t what they were looking for, and I don’t want to let them down.
Who googles ‘How do girls pee?’ anyway? Dodgy question, that. You just never know these days. It is, however, a frequently asked question apparently. So, for the benefit of you curious young people out there who are genuinely wondering, I’ll explain it for you.
If you fall into the ‘just lookin’ for kicks’ category however, then I suggest you skip the biology lesson, and go to the end of this post.
So how do girls pee, then?
As you probably know, girls don’t have penises. They sit down to pee because they don’t have this specialist aiming equipment, however there are several inventions out there that can help with this problem. Very handy for long journeys and rock concerts.
The same process happens with males and females. Food and water is put into the body, then processed by the stomach and liver. All waste liquid then passes through the kidneys and ends up in the bladder. When the bladder fills, a tube called a Urethra carries the pee to an external opening. In men, the urethra runs through the penis and also carries ejaculate and pre-ejaculate during sex play. In women, the opening of the urethra is above the opening of the vagina. The opening of the urethra is very small and is not easy to see. Here is a gratuitous drawing, which makes excellent use of the word ‘Sphincter’.
You’re probably wondering how girls handle the dripping problem, right? The answer is toilet paper, and lots of it, after every function. If you want to keep a female happy (apart from leaving the toilet seat down), always replace the toilet rolls when they run out. We are lost without it.
You might also be wondering what girls do when there are no toilets around. The answer is that they squat, usually getting a friend to provide cover.
For the very very ultra modern girl, there is the SHENIS. It is the ultimate equaliser.
There. That was embarrassing.
So anyway… what were you saying?
How to roll a rollie
‘Well Holy God’, as Miley would say… I can’t understand this brain of mine.
The Accidental Terrorist and Pedro the invincible are downstairs on the xbox playing Assassin’s Creed, a game which is so good, I have managed to pull two whole all-nighters playing it. This is no mean feat for a mother of two chisellers, but it was worth it.
I disconnected my laptop from the TV feed so that I could take it upstairs, away from the madness. I knew full well that this was a rare opportunity to snatch an hour or two away to write on me blog, but I had a heavy heart.
“What the fuck am I going to write about?” I implored the likely lads.
“Write about not knowing what to write about” said TAT, his attention elsewhere.
“Fuck off” I said.
“Write about Assassin’s Creed” suggested Pedro.
“They don’t care” I said.
Pedro didn’t seem to care either, so I wandered away. And now here I am with nothing interesting to say. Even a faceful of vodka doesn’t seem to help. I’ve emailed a whole lot of friends about that tag Brian snared me on, but nobody has replied yet, except me aul’ mate Lou. Either I’m imaginary, or they’re stumped.
So… some random madness from my recent past will have to do;
~:~
Apparently a woman walking into a hardware store in Ireland and asking for chimney cleaning equipment is hilarious. There must be a joke out there somewhere to this effect because the two blokes behind the counter went very red and giggly for some reason. They kept asking me about length, and I kept replying with ‘two storeys’ which amused them further. I don’t get it.
~:~
When a young mother is walking through a supermarket with a toddler, and if the toddler is screaming and the mother is doing nothing about it, please don’t pass comment. She is doing her best, for it is not her that is at fault. It’s the supermarket’s fault. They have a very clever way of placing Creme Eggs and Kinder Surprises beside vital groceries. This is the devil’s work, and whoever came up with this idea should be dragged into the street and shot. I paid for that half-eaten apple, but I shouldn’t have. I should have left it in the centre of the Creme Egg stand. When a child is denied chocolate all hell breaks loose, and this hell should have a live feed to the audio system in the general manager’s office.
~:~
I chanced my arm the other day and wandered into a newsagent to ask for tobacco with only 4 euros. I thought I’d get laughed out of it, but no! Apparently you can still buy half-packs of handrolling tobacco even though ten boxes are obsolete! This means the government must be okay with kids smoking rollies. If this is true, then they really should advertise how to roll a proper rollie, to get them off the dreaded Johnnie Blue’s. If there are any children out there who would like me to post a list of numbered instructions as to how to roll a cigarette, please let me know. I would be delighted to do my bit for the country!
~:~
What else is there? Here is proof that everyone’s parents are mad, not just mine. Jack McMad has some excellent suggestions for improving perambulating activities around Dublin City, Roy’s Taxi gossip continues to have me shitting bricks about starting this taxi business, Jefferson’s been to the zoo, Going Like Sixty is having another ‘holy shit!’ moment, Medbh’s being esoteric, Baino’s doing her best to find a bug in her system, and Thriftcriminal’s bitchin’.
Me dad thinks he’s lost his sense of humour, but he’s just suffering from the same thing as the rest of us.
The tag challenge
I’m finding myself with spare time suddenly but with nothing much to say. Then I decided that it is very rare for a blogger to post a post and use all of their tags at once (Bloggers such as Brian F and Stupid Irish Daddy are disqualified for lack of imagination of course). This is my challenge, and I’m giving myself an award for it. You can have one too if you can do it.
What is both strange and unusual is that marijuana is illegal. This subject is taboo, but it’s just something to think about. Once one partakes in the activity of having a spliff, one is immediately part of the chain. One is working hand in hand with the drug-lord and his artillery, and my philosophy is that this is unfair burden on us stoners. It’s a little known fact that weed is quite benign, that it’s worst effects are the munchies and diminished brain capacity, but we accept this, and we take responsibility for it quietly and with a few giggles thrown in.
Working the daily job is not easy. Neither is dealing with the family and it’s shortcomings. My weakness is that I would like to sit back and be able to put up with the tripe on the box and find it humourarse. Sometimes it’s nice to listen to music or glance at the uncategorised pleasures of this life and be inspired to write new poems and things. Contrary to public rantings, weed does not generally make us want to take up smack or turn bi-polar.
That’s all I’m saying because this is supposed to be a quickie.
Here’s my award.
Do you want it? I’d offer it up for general grabs but seeing as memememe is one of my tags, I have to name names.
(You know you want it)
Meep and Deaningful
So there we were, me and TAT, roasting marshmallows and supping wine from plastic cups. The river babbled loudly beside us and time became obsolete. Conversation turned to those topics that we normally would never have room for in usual life. A lot of shite was talked, and it was good.
We began to talk about the world, about disaster and miracle, ying and yang, religion and sacrifice. We spoke at length about whether or not it would be hypocrital of us to christen our children and marry in a church, when neither of us would hold any belief in the questions the priest might ask us in the process of the ceremonies. We both know and love our God, but found that ironically, it was the religion we had no faith in.
The conversation ended in mid-air, on one question.
Let’s take it as a given that the Catholic Church is probably the most affluent entity that ever existed.
“The Vatican has large investments with the Rothschilds of Britain, France and America, with the Hambros Bank, with the Credit Suisse in London and Zurich. In the United States it has large investments with the Morgan Bank, the Chase-Manhattan Bank, the First National Bank of New York, the Bankers Trust Company, and others. The Vatican has billions of shares in the most powerful international corporations such as Gulf Oil, Shell, General Motors, Bethlehem Steel, General Electric, International Business Machines, T.W.A., etc. At a conservative estimate, these amount to more than 500 million dollars in the U.S.A. alone.” (THE VATICAN BILLIONS by Avro Manhattan.)
Every nun or priest that gives up their life to the church, must also give up their wealth and worldly goods. Yet, if this poor servant of God decides to retire, they don’t get a pension, all they get is a bus fare and a handshake with which to start their new chapter.
I was educated in a convent, and found it hilarious to see 78 year old sister Consumpta walking laps of the hockey pitch in her brand-new state of the art Nike Air-Macs. She’d stop now and then to pump herself up, then carry on. Her peers drove in the latest models of zippy cars, and the priest himself lived in a mansion, alone.
In fact, in almost every diocese I’ve ever lived in, the priest lived alone in a huge mansion. Wouldn’t it make more sense to house this man in basic housing to suit his basic needs, and donate the mansion to charity… say turn it into a clinic, or a home for orphaned kids?
Think of all the little old ladies around the world who, every day, decide to leave their fortunes to their local parish!
Think of the collection plates that are passed around in mass every day… a congregation of 70 people on average, say… all feeling obliged to throw their silver and gold into this basket of cash. If you should turn up with empty pockets, the people in the pews around you will glare, and you might even find yourself scorned publicly in the local paper for such a sin. Being stingy in church is not the done thing.
Think of the gold and expensive jewels which adorn the chalices and religious icons. Think of the expensive cloths used in the ceremonies, the stocks, the gold, the paintings, the sculptures, the helicopters, the cars, the priceless artifacts… worldwide, these individual cells are generating cash at an alarming rate, all feeding Vatican City, and the entity that is the religion itself.
Wouldn’t it be safe to say that the net worth of the Catholic Church must run into billions?
Wouldn’t it, therefore, be quite rational to say that the Catholic Church could make – if they chose to – an enormous dent in the national debt of Africa?
So could Bill Gates, probably. But then again, he would have no reason to. The church, however, and it’s literary works, tell us that the meek will inherit the earth. They tell us to include charity into our lives wherever possible, and to love our neighbours. Every page of the bible provides a good reason for the church to donate this cash, but instead, it is apparently being stashed somewhere for a rainy day. It is being sat on, and for the life of me, I can’t figure out how this is logical.
I must be missing something here… some vital piece of information, that will explain the answer to this question.
I also have to stress that I don’t wish to insult anybody with these words. I have the greatest respect for those who keep the faith without question. I can see the wonderful things that the Church has done for developing countries through their missionaries, I just can’t see why local parishes with crumbling roofs are begging for money, when the mothership holds all the dubloons. I have a deep respect for God, and I can see that God would have a sense of humour. This is why films like ‘Dogma‘, and ‘The Life of Brian‘ came to be, perhaps. Why so, does it feel like God has absolutely nothing to do with this mess? Why does it feel entirely man-made?
If a prophet were to appear, and declare him or herself to be the second coming… would they be locked up in an insane asylum for disturbing the flow?
The conversation, as I say, ended here. We then began to try to define the word ‘Epic.’ This is not easy in the dark in the woods with no dictionary.
Why do girls pee in pairs?
Robert’s on the ball!
My question to him (see last post) was answered with a very good question in turn.
He said that if he was a woman, he’d hang around in the jacks to find out why us girlies tend to pee in pairs. Well, dude, there’s no need.
Here are a few of the many good reasons why ladies double up in the bog department;
1. Leaving the table in pairs gives us a chance to bitch/laugh/gossip/gush about the poor sod that’s left minding the drinks.
2. Standing in the ladie’s queues alone and watching other women preen is quite boring.
3. Standing in front of a mirror re-applying our war-paint is much more fun if there’s someone else there you can scab stuff from.
4. It’s nice to have someone applaud you for not getting the seat wet.
5. It’s handy if you suddenly find there’s no bogroll and you need some fast.
6. Sanitary towel packaging is not subtle. Sometimes it’s handy to have a girlfriend cough during the ripping stages.
7. The locks on ladie’s cubicle doors can let you down – if there are any at all – and a guard can come in handy.
8. Being with a fellow lady while she pees can be quite bonding. Think of a piss-partner on a camping trip, you know, someone to stand spread-eagled in front of you for the benefit of hikers. Conversation is quite often at its best in these moments. Some ladies even hover over the seat in pub toilets which can be quare’n entertaining after a few beers. It’d remind you of a dog trying to have a dump on the deck of a ship on rough seas!
9. It’s good to have someone you trust walk behind you on your way back from the jax, to look out for labels showing/v.p.l./toilet paper stuck to shoe etc…
10. Crossing a large room can make a girl self conscious sometimes. It helps to have someone walk with you and give you a good excuse to smile.
What do you reckon, girls… have I forgotten any more good reasons, or am I divulging a major secret here for which I should be hanged?
