Author Archive for Colm

Machine language

Published
by
Colm
on 10 February, 2010
in Fun with words
. 5 Comments

Which of these looks right to you:

I have to go; somewhere there is a crime happening.

or

I have to go: somewhere there is a crime happening.

To me, the semicolon seems like “I have to go. Tangentially, somewhere there is a crime happening,” whereas the colon is much more authoritative: “I have to go AND HERE IS WHY”. You could of course make them two independent clauses, but let’s not lose all decorum here.

I don’t know if Robocop even cares about grammar. It seems like he should. I mean, the Terminator can get away with being all curt and barky1 because it doesn’t ever have much it needs to communicate, but Robocop is an officer of the law. You know? He can’t afford to be ambiguous.

  1. and pronouncing “neural” as if it has four syllables [↩]

JD Salinger is dead

Published
by
Colm
on 29 January, 2010
in Books (and the like) and Writing
. 5 Comments

I speculate that the coverage for this is going to boil down to I Liked Catcher In The Rye/I Did Not Like Catcher In The Rye. So a few thoughts here on why a) you’re wrong not to like it and b) JD Salinger was way more important than one book.

The standard view on Catcher is that it’s some mopey teen wandering around being angsty. This polarises people: his worldview resonates with an awful lot of readers, particularly adolescents, but everyone else just wishes he’d cowboy up. The debate never seems to go deeper than that, which is a crying shame, because there’s way more going on in the novel.

Firstly, Holden’s mopiness isn’t just Gawd-no-one-understands-me angst. There’s a line near the start where he says1 “Sometimes I act like I’m about thirteen”. Holden was thirteen when his brother Allie died; his brother, whom he adored, placed at the absolute centre of his universe. Allie’s death destroys Holden and, though he never confronts it head on, the entire novel details his attempts to come to terms with it.

Secondly, despite what many people seem to think, we’re not supposed to see Holden as a role model. Arrested development is not something to aspire to. All-encompassing cynicism is not something to aspire to. If there’s a how-are-we-to-live message in Salinger’s writing, it’s that no matter how hard it might be, the best thing we can do is find a way to get outside ourselves, stop acting like everything is about us, and keep moving forward. There’s an excellent distillation of this in the second part of Franny & Zooey. Or, more conveniently, you could read this speech by David Foster Wallace, who was heavily inspired by Salinger.

At the risk of turning into a wild-eyed evangelist, I think it’s a tragedy that Holden Caulfield is the only one of Salinger’s narrative voices that most people are familiar with. He’s dour and self-absorbed and I can see why you might not like him, whereas Salinger’s writing as a whole is characterised by a genuine warmth and humour that most writers couldn’t even approach. His short stories are phenomenal (see for instance the title story in For Esme, With Love & Squalor). He can do this thing where, in about four or five words, he describes a gesture or facial expression so perfectly that a character’s entire history, state of mind and motivations are dumped directly into your brain.

Ok, wild-eyed evangelist. Breathe.

Right now I’m going to read over these two letters a few times (the latter being some of the best writing advice ever dispensed). Then I’m going to go home and read the books again. Then I’m going to wait for all the manuscripts he’s finished since he retired from publishing to surface. And then… I don’t know what I’ll do.

  1. I’ve no copy to hand, so I’m quoting from memory. [↩]

Compulsion

Published
by
Colm
on 27 January, 2010
in Books (and the like)
. 11 Comments

There’s something like my weight in books sitting at the end of my bed these days. I’m not counting shelves, you understand – only the bags of just-bought unreads. Some people seem to feel like this would be a daunting prospect, as if reading is something you have to push yourself into. Which, I don’t know. I spend minutes at a time just smelling books. I build them into a fort around me, laughing like a maniac the whole time. If I could swim through the things Scrooge McDuck-style, you’d better believe I wouldn’t be here talking to you people.


Because it’s funnier in Dutch, that’s why.

The catalyst for all this was the €100 of book tokens I got for Christmas. I was going to save them til my in-tray had diminished a bit, but on my first day back in work I went for lunch and – oh hello, I appear to have wandered near Hodges Figgis. You know they’re gonna have some sweet deals, might as well check those out.

I ended up buying seven books by accident. Which is to say, I didn’t specifically intend to buy seven books. I just kind of fugued. Also, the cashier was pretty.1

So ok, that’s gonna keep me going for a while. However, and for reasons outside my control, I happened to end up in Waterstones a few days later. Now, the thing about Waterstones is they have those 3-for-2 deals which, obviously, you’d be a fool not to take advantage. Not only that but there’s a best-of-the-decade table. I don’t want to spell things out for you, but let’s just say I woke up hours later with a brutal hangover and Random House’s number tattooed on my chest.

That should have been the end of it. But no: one morning the following week I forgot to put a book in my pocket on my way out the door. The whole way in on the bus I was just staring into space. Have you ever noticed what other people sound like? What they smell like? It was a nightmare. What the hell was I going to do on the way home? Gnaw my own arm off? Clearly, an emergency fix was needed. So into Hodges Figgis at lunchtime – Garrison Keillor, you say? And only €4? Job’s a good un. But on the other hand, if I find another book for €6 that means I’ll get a stamp on the ould loyalty card, and that’s just sensible.

It goes on in this vein. I’m going to trail off now, because I’m giving myself the vapours and my bank account can’t withstand another blackout. And because there’s a book of EU tax legislation here that I haven’t put to bed yet, and man do I want to see how that turns out.

  1. A fun game in bookshops is to try get the cashiers to check you out. I think I caught her attention with the Pynchon, but on reflection Rape: A Love Story wasn’t my smoothest move. [↩]

All the ducks are

Published
by
Colm
on 15 December, 2009
in Misc.
. 5 Comments

Today I saw a dude trying to feed some ducks. Trying, because seagulls are like ninjas. There were two ducks sitting right in the middle of the canal, no other birds in sight, and the instant the first bit of bread hit the water it was grabbed by a seagull who’d swooped in out of nowhere. I reckon ducks are used to this, because they didn’t put up much of a fight, and within minutes they’d been shunted over to the banks. At first, to his credit, Dude tried to manoeuvre a few scraps through the storm, but eventually he gave up in favour of tricking the gulls into some slick-ass aeronautics. I’m pretty sure they were doing barrel-rolls at one point.

What was interesting was how the system evolved. Dumping bread in the water is well and fine for your laid-back duck-type scenario, but it’s way less than efficient when what you’re feeding is essentially a scale model of a Mongolian horde. As time went on the gulls formed into a basic rubgy line-out configuration while Dude fired the bread directly at them in mid-air. I don’t know if you know how ludicrous it looks when twenty-odd birds are doing a kind of asynchronous low-gravity pogo-hop off the surface of a canal, but I’ll clue you in: pretty damn ludicrous.

There was one sorry bastard in the middle of all this, jumping at all the wrong times and giving off an adorable impression of birdy panic. As I stood up to leave, he finally pulled together enough sense to huff his way out of the crowd, and our hero tossed a scrap his way. And then, with the most beautiful comic timing I’ve ever seen in the animal kingdom… a duck got it.

Stupid thick, luxuriant hair

Published
by
Colm
on 4 November, 2009
in Misc.
. 4 Comments

Hair: I have a lot of it. I mean, just a ludicrous amount. I remember going for a trim as a child and coming out an hour later, the hairdresser sweating buckets, muttering to herself about rainforests and staring into the middle distance.1

I leave a trail of loose hair wherever I go. I don’t need to buy blankets, because it only takes ten minutes lying down to achieve full three-inch coverage. Cleaning up after a shower is a nightmare – tiled floors like, whose idea was that? My first house is going to have a black shag carpet in the bathroom. And I am never, ever going to look at it.

(Do you know, incidentally, how awkward it is picking up strands of hair off a men’s room floor? Because you know that when people see them they’ll know straight away whose head it came off, and they’ll be all “Ugh, that guy has a body, with things on it”. I personally have no idea how awkward that would be, but I imagine fairly. It’s probably almost as awkward as having someone come into a men’s room while you’re standing there in the middle of the floor, whistling, with your hands in your pockets and a bunch of god damn hair all around your feet.)

I would worry that I’m going bald, but this has been happening since I was 13 with no sign of any thinning. I tell you what, I’m not even sure I have a scalp under there. There’s an expedition going in this Saturday to see what they can dig up. Pray for them, internet. Pray for them.

  1. Saw her the other day actually. I was like, Check her out, all reintegrated into normal human society! It was nice to see, you know? [↩]

On the metaphysics of customer service

Published
by
Colm
on 1 October, 2009
in Fun with words and Misc.
. 8 Comments

Got a text message from NTL there. Oh hey NTL, haven’t heard from you in a while! What’s happenin’, bro?

In Regards to a recent Termination – Cancellation on your Chorus/NTL account please be advised that despite numinous attempts we have been unable to contact you to collect our equipment.

Man, whatever. I mean, let’s not get into who tried to contact who, and who got through first time and arranged to pick up the equipment, and who nevertheless didn’t bother to turn up. Let’s not get into how maybe you’re coming off a little pissy right now, NTL. No. There are much more interesting things we could talk about.

When I first glanced over the message I read it as “despite numerous attempts”. But that ain’t what it says.

From Wikipedia: “Numinous (from the Classical Latin numen) is an English adjective describing the power or presence of a divinity.” Dear Mary. So that itch I’ve been getting on and off just behind my ear, is that them deploying their mighty powers to try to communicate with me? Perhaps my rock-solid rationalism has prevented them getting a clear signal. I shall clear my mind and meditate, and we shall see if we can sort this matter out once and for all.

… nope, still just trying to flog me a landline. Dammit NTL. Such a waste.

Scenes from Cork

Published
by
Colm
on 14 August, 2009
in Foreign parts
. 8 Comments

postit1

postit2

postit3

Somewhere in Cork, right now, there is a man with 2.6 gigabytes of Van Halen on his laptop. Did Van Halen even record 2.6 gigabytes of material? Who knows! This man has it anyway.

The depoxening

Published
by
Colm
on 13 August, 2009
in Misc.
. 3 Comments

Those of you who checked back here over the past while (cheers, incidentally) will have noticed there was some villainy afoot1. Firstly, to get the ringing-my-exes bit out of the way: scary warning notwithstanding, the site has been clean since 31 July, but if you accessed it in, say, the week before that, you might want to download Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware and give yourself an old scanaroonie. To be fair, you were probably already riddled anyway, so this is long overdue.

Secondly, thanks to the hosting ninjas at Blacknight for helping me sort this out. Hey, looking for a hosting plan? Try Blacknight! They’re ninjas.

Finally, I actually had stuff I wanted to post in that time. I know! So keep an eye out for that.

  1. Of which full details here. [↩]

One bottle of Prosecco later

Published
by
Colm
on 16 July, 2009
in Misc.
. 9 Comments

Writes L in Belfast:

If you could live in any century, what century would that be?

envelope

Logic will break your heart

Published
by
Colm
on 16 June, 2009
in Misc.
. 30 Comments

There is a riddle, you see. I knew the answer, and I knew how to arrive at the answer, and yet even after roping in two other people it still took the guts of half an hour and at least three beermats to reverse engineer the riddle itself. So you are going to read it and you are going to enjoy it.

Three people are standing in a line, facing forward. Like so: A -> B -> C ->. Person A can see Person B and Person C. Person B can see Person C. Person C is kind of staring off into space, perhaps pondering the merits of dogs vs. cats as household pets, or idly doing some mental arithmetic.1

Now then: hats. Each of them is wearing a hat, which has been distributed from a pool of two white hats and three black hats. They don’t know what hat they’ve been given, although of course they can see the hats of those in front of them. They are asked to say, without guessing, what colour hat they’re wearing.

A says nothing. B says nothing. C says, “I know what colour hat I’m wearing.”

What colour hat does he have, and how does he know?

  1. They all do this. They’re very logical people, you understand, and that’s how they get their jollies. Even that bit about the dogs and cats is just a mental exercise. Do you think Person C would ever actually want to have a pet? You fool. [↩]