I cannot say for certain, Dublin googler, but I will say this: if I know Katherine, and believe me I know Katherine, she’s been on the razz without telling you. What you want to do is make a big noise about being tired and getting off to bed early and so on and then crack on some black face paint and those rubber shoes you wear in PE in primary school and sneak outside the house. Hide out in some bushes, or better still a tree, because dropping out of a tree makes you feel like a proper boss ninja, and wait for her to go out the door. Then follow her until she gets to some shady-looking door, probably at the bottom of a flight of stairs – you’ll know it’s the right one because she’ll be looking around all shifty-like. DO NOT APPROACH THIS DOOR. Keep a close eye on what Katherine does because that’ll be the secret knock or dance or whatever that you need to do to get in. Now, get yourself back home and into bed because even with a hangover Katherine will realise if you’re not well rested which, remember, you should be because as far as she knows you went to bed early. Even if you’re tired and feeling cranky the next morning you have to fake it – whistle or something while you’re making breakfast because for god’s sake that woman is dangerous when she has a head on her. Wait until around half one or so and then leave the house. Actually better make it like one thirty-seven or something, if you leave at half one on the dot it’ll just look like you were waiting til that particular time and she’ll get suspicious. Anyway go back to that door you saw her go through and give the sign and then basically you can just ask the barman if Katherine was there drinking or whatever. Box him in the kidneys if you need to, he’ll crack eventually. They all crack eventually.
Thanks largely to that spectacularly gluttonous synapse that has been stuck open and hyperventilating since the first time I got a glimpse of a battered Ladybird1, I am inordinately and often uncomfortably aware that I’m supposed to be a writer. That being a given, I never really made any more than a half-arsed attempt at that whole deal with scrabbling around trying to find a calling2, but nevertheless there are odd Saturday mornings where I’m stood around in a dressing gown drinking slightly rum-tinged water from a glass I’m much too high-powered to wash and it occurs to me that some big human thing passed me by somewhere back when I was in short pants3, and I can’t help but wonder how exactly it is that other people settle on what’s going to get them up for the next whatever hundred thousand-odd mornings. Which, by a commodious vicus of recirculation, leads me to the reason I’m writing this: it would appear that people find out through the ancient ritual of taking to the streets and bothering foreigners.
Which level of blind self-assurance plays its own brand of havoc when you’re an otherwise fairly rickety 17-year-old, but despite all appearances thus far this isn’t about me so let us shall we get back to the point. [↩]
Not terribly specific, seeing as I was forced to wear such things as late as my eldest brother’s wedding, when I was 12. Golden opportunity to wear a Tiny Tux ™ and I’m garbed up like a cabin boy. [↩]
Emergency Aldi deodorant, I have some questions for you.
Why are you in some kind of space-bottle? You’re awkward to hold. I don’t know what’s going on with your… button. Is it even classed as a button? I don’t know. It’s hard to press, is the difficulty here. I’d hate to think you were blindly striving for form over function. Where is your German work ethic? Your forefathers would be ashamed.
Secondly, why do you insist that “Efficiency = 300 ml”? Sneer all you want, but I’ve had liquids of unimpeachable efficiency delivered to me in all kinds of quantities. And maybe this is something you’ve missed, but that 300ml only lasts for a fraction of one spray. The rest of your life, by your logic, is a long slide into deeper and deeper inefficiency. Who designed you, Jean-Paul Sartre?
Lastly, emergency Aldi deodorant, and this is a big one: why in god’s name are you called “Man Fever”? That’s… I don’t know where to start. I bought deodorant so I could be confident and fresh-smelling, not sweaty and delirious. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re trying to be metaphorical. Even so – whatever “man fever” figuratively represents, I’m not certain it’s a thing I would want to contract. I have a suspicion it would inhibit my rapport with the ladies, for a start.
Oh, emergency Aldi deodorant. I feel like I don’t know you at all.
I went to see eight films in January, all of which were worth seeing1. This would normally have cost me something like exactly eighty quid, but because of my Unlimited card, almost certainly the greatest invention in history, it only set me back twenty. Thrift!
(Incidentally I think I’ve worked out this fiendish scheme. Studios take a vast slice of the profits for the first couple of weeks a film is screened. Say it’s 75% – an adult ticket costs a tenner, therefore €7.50 goes to the studio, while tickets bought with the card are rung up as a sale of €3.30, so only €2.48 goes off into the nether2. Meanwhile the cinema is still collecting a steady €20 per month from everyone who has a card. Economics!)
Anyway, more or less the reason I mention this is because I happened to notice that Billy Chainsaw (that’s Bizarre’s Billy Chainsaw to you) has an enthusiastic endorsement on the poster for some yoke called The Broken. Now this strikes me as a pretty efficient use of real estate, because if a man called Billy Chainsaw likes a film then I reckon you should be able to figure out straight away what your feelings on it are going to be. Frankly all pen names should be chosen on this basis. Benjamin Black? Iain M Banks? THEY TELL ME NOTHING.
The rest of the reason I mentioned it is because while I was waiting for people to turn up I amused myself by imagining that Underworld: Rise of the Lycans was actually called Underwear: Rise of the Lycra. Readers, I have never had a more enjoyable two minutes.
I can’t off the top of my head think of a film I’ve actually regretted going to. Except Blade Trinity, obviously. You could put all my possessions in a cargo crate full of elephant dung and drop it in the middle of the Atlantic and I wouldn’t be as angry as I was after sitting through that. Go on, throw in my closest friends – wave that DVD at me and you’ll get away scot free. [↩]
In the time it took me to switch back to this window from the calculator, I forgot what the number’s supposed to be. €2.48 is three quarters of €3.30, yeah? [↩]
Does it annoy anyone else when people say “a couple” when they really mean “a few”? I mean, it doesn’t annoy me as such, but “a couple” very obviously means “two” and why would you use it otherwise, because that’s asking for trouble.
Anyway. The first link is one I got off this post on reddit. Executive summary: American mortgage broker becomes homeless, has laptop, maintains some kind of social life/support network by talking to people on the internet. He’s now set up a blog at Lillyweather Lane whereon he’s documenting his continuing adventures. I will point out that he is both smart people and good writers and well worth reading.
Link the second is to a main dudette of mine who has finally done the honourable thing and started a blog. She’s from Belfast, everyone. She has a funny accent. It adds at least three layers of excellent to her already jolly good material.
And just because I’m not about to be pushed around by no pedant, here’s a third link I happened to have open. I don’t care whose toes I step on.
Far be it from me, in general terms, to make grand statements about a book I haven’t even finished reading yet, but listen: David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest is the greatest extant work of art in any medium. Every single page excites me. I have been excited a total of 758 distinct times so far, not counting endnotes, and that’s hard to argue with.
So those touchscreen video jukeboxes: concealed within each one is a metric shitacre of hilarity. Every song gets a limited amount of real estate, with the result that titles often get truncated, leaving us with gems like:
But I’ve discovered that it’s not limited to video jukeboxes. The wee little yokes in Eddie Rockets2, with their charming old-timey tunes, are suggestive goldmines3. Witness:
I’m Gonna Tear Your Ann Peebles
But I Do Clarence Henry
Tell Laura I Love Her Ray Petersen
and the plaintive
She’s Not There, Zombies
I would have more for you, but things got a bit Jimmy Ruffin last night after some girl accused me of grabbing her Ray Petersen, at which point her boyfriend punched me right in the Ann Peebles. Bad times.
Tempted to say “former reigning champion”, because I’m Gonna Give Her Jimmy Ruffin is hammering on the doors like no one’s business. Incidentally, many cheers to Ruairi for refreshing my memory with these. Similarly incidentally, every man jack of you should be hitting up Futurism in Doran’s tomorrow night. [↩]
I had to google Eddie Rockets to check if there’s supposed to be an apostrophe. So I’m guessing the place isn’t owned by an Eddie Rocket, but is in some way connected with a guy called Eddie Rockets. Does anyone else think that would be a brilliant name for a gangster? [↩]
Suggestive gold: one of the few truly recession-proof commodities. [↩]
I was going to just throw a remark in about what a great song The Bewlay Brothers is, but of course I ended up listening to the rest of Hunky Dory. Huge album, like. Enormous. And what with the poncing around the flat1 and whatnot, I ended up leaving to go to Supervalu two minutes late, meaning I arrived one minute after they locked the doors2. Damnit Bowie, always one step ahead.
Still, I’ve found half a bottle of Malibu stuck in the back of a cupboard so I’m not completely at sea. Coconut is a type of food.
On my ownio this week, so I can get away with that kind of carry-on. Chess! On the other hand, cold and lonely. Boo. [↩]
You have to shave these things, man, it’s the only way they’ll respect you [↩]
I had no idea what my alarm was this morning. I’m talking serious moment of panic. This weird beeping noise coming out of the walls, my phone hopping around with these unfamiliar lights coming out of it… and this was after waking up in the middle of the night and spending a bleary few minutes trying to figure out how the walls had reconfigured themselves without anyone noticing.
Seriously disoriented. On the other hand, great hair today.
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