Archive for September, 2008

oh yeah, a title

Published
by
Colm
on 29 September, 2008
in Misc.
. 17 Comments

Lately it seems fairly impossible to spend more than two minutes in Dublin city centre without having a can of Red Bull Cola thrown at you by zealous marketeers. I’d dodged them all til now – they have rubbish aim and I’m frisky like a mountain goat – but today I discovered that they’ve infiltrated deli counters and they’re handing them out with pies. And I’m a man who likes a pie.

I presume they’re looking to drum up sales through word of mouth, so I feel obliged to record my thoughts.

Pros: Pleasant whiff of ice cream float when you open the can. Free.

Cons: Lingering aftertaste of cheap vodka as filtered through a hobo’s bladder. Can looks like it was designed by Maurice Pratt on his lunch break.

Would go well with: I don’t know, I was going to buy a Yorkie but I got kind of disoriented.

Verdict: D+, would not drink again.

A quiet week, I know

Published
by
Colm
on 23 September, 2008
in Books (and the like) and Writing
. 9 Comments

Writing writing writing.

The final changes have been hammered out on Anything But Simple, an anthology of poetry and fiction from the graduates of UCD’s creative writing MA (including y.t. and certain others). The launch is planned for 6pm on the 20th of October in UCD. We have wine. Join ussss.

Catherine is looking for submissions from bloggers and photobloggers for an anthology to be published in the run-up to Christmas, with 75% of the proceeds going to Focus Ireland. A worthy cause and a nice opportunity to see yourself in print. Submission guidelines are here.

If you have writerly aspirations you might also feel like throwing in an entry for RTÉ Radio One’s prestigious Francis MacManus Award. They’re looking for 1,800-2,000 words (my native length – chess!) and there’s €3,000 and a trophy for the overall winner. In addition, the three winners and some of the shortlisted stories will be read on air. Closing date is the 27th of October.

Bonus: Nothing to do with writing, but this is the greatest trailer for anything ever. I’d never heard of it before today but by golly I want it.

Junior Cert Stabbed On Results Night

Published
by
Colm
on 11 September, 2008
in Misc.
. 3 Comments

So says the Herald. Word on the street (I checked at lunchtime) is that the GCSEs were in Dublin for a stag do and overheard the JC making some disparaging remarks about the UK education system. Needless to say things kicked off pretty heavily and according to onlookers our boy went down “right quick”.

Reports of tit-for-tat attacks in London by roaming gangs of the Leaving Cert remain unconfirmed.

LARGE HADRON COLLIDER

Published
by
Colm
on 9 September, 2008
in Misc.
. 7 Comments

I want in on this traffic spike.

I hate secret questions.

Published
by
Colm
on 8 September, 2008
in Misc.
. 7 Comments

I hate them so very, very much. Listen: if you want to set up a system whereby people can have their password reset or sent to them, then there is one way and one way alone you should proceed, and that is to have them provide an email address. If you ask them to put in a Super Secret Question!!!!! then don’t be surprised if some irate customer ends up throwing you under an elephant marching band.

I’m setting up an account now, and the options I have are:

  1. Last four characters of driver’s licence
  2. Father’s city of birth
  3. Mother’s maiden name

Are these secure? No they are not. So as usual I’m going to put in some random nonsense answer, then I’m going to get drunk and forget everything and be locked out forever. And sure, I could cut down on my drinking or write down my passwords or whatever, but that shouldn’t be my responsibility, and I resent having some website sitting there judging me on my failures. So webmasters, please… help me out here.

I puzzle myself.

Published
by
Colm
on 5 September, 2008
in Writing
. 2 Comments

I take a lot of notes. I’m swimming in them. This is largely to do with how jotting down ideas and thoughts and sketches is vastly, vastly more entertaining than the donkey work of proper writing. Plus, after a few years documenting every flash of genius that slops out of your noggin you have an impressive stack of books and scraps to lay around you while you slug cheap wine and jump around and shout things like “Yes!” and “Quite true!” and nod sagely to yourself and pretend you’re producing masterpieces.

Some writers claim you should always have a notebook handy, but they’re amateurs. You should always at least five. I’m hovering around seven these days, including On The Go, On The Go In Limited Capacity Trousers, Cutting Sociopolitical Observations In 500 Words Or Less and both Short- and Long-form Miscellany. You get bonus points for scrawling things on napkins and small pieces of driftwood and suchlike.

There’s also my mobile. I used to rely on this pretty heavily, but it loses its attraction when you start getting heavily into the habit of prancing around stacks of paper. Potential for being strewn becomes the primary criterium for note repositories. And of course, you have the character limit, which means you can lose a lot of detail. Still, I get some use out of it, generally when I’m drunk and in a crowd of people and whipping out a notebook would make me look like a proper poindexter.

This has its downsides, frankly. Witness:

all these ripe whatever fields had not happened, but there was an opportunity

Buh? There’s a classic short story in there, no doubt, full of high adventure and charismatic characters and Serious Themes, but chud me sideways if I know what it is. Then there’s the following, from 5.01am on the 20 October 2007:

Staying with a friend who’s a bit queasy, seeing dumptrucks pass by and a naked asian guy.

I like the capital letter and full stop there, as if it’s actually supposed to be a sentence and not just something I dreamed at the bottom of a jaegerbomb binge. I was in Galway at the time for a friend’s birthday, so maybe that clears things up. Maybe I just happened to see all those things in the middle of the night? I don’t know. Help me out here.

The Electric Picnic is Decadent & Depraved: III

Published
by
Eli
on 2 September, 2008
in Misc. and Music
. 8 Comments

Some notes about the music, I suppose.

Guy Garvey is a class act, and one of the best frontmen going, but he’s a hard man to track down. Security tend not to accept a 6-pint jug of cider as valid identification. Should have gone with the pints, obviously, or pulled some Manchester variant of the potato man routine… the plotting continues.

Going into this thing I had resigned myself to missing out on my usual Sunday evening fix of balding middle-aged men with mullets and walrus moustaches wearing suits and doing karate kicks, so imagine my delight when Grinderman turned up. As a bonus, there was a sentient beard flinging percussion instruments around the place and playing a tiny, tiny guitar. Mortal men would have just looked silly.

Much as The Sex Pistols did… either they’re hell-bent on becoming the most nonsense thing in human history or they’re just acting out Primary School: The Musical. In whatever case, when you come in from a day spent with Henry Rollins and Nick Cave – men with actual testicles – John Lydon gets pretty old pretty quick.

The Electric Picnic is Decadent & Depraved: II

Published
by
Eli
on 1 September, 2008
in Misc.
. 8 Comments

You know you’re there when you pass by a stall selling kangaroo burgers and into a gauntlet of strange men peddling novel ways to urinate. It’s a boom market, because no one seems in any hurry to make festival bathrooms any more pleasant.

This year they’ve graduated into the realms of cruel social experiment. Portaloos have a bad reputation but at least they leave you to your own misery… as opposed to this metal-shack-over-festering-pit configuration they’ve plumped for in our campsite. It’s like looking into the mouth of hell. You expect to see faces forming in it. It’s hard to look away.

Someone must be paying attention, because some proper jacks sprout up during the night. Not that this stops us just using the wall, which is right there and frankly asking for it… but the gesture is appreciated.