OK (deep breath)...

I was trying to think of something hugely interesting to put in this today seeing as how I've been neglecting it for the last couple of days. Here goes:

I got my print project in on Monday and it was shite, I went for drinks and everyone went home early and it was shite and that's really all I can think of. Rented out the Indiana Jones Trilogy and have been watching that. It's all good stuff, even the Temple of Doom. That runaway mine-cart thing more than makes up for the rubbishness and, well, outright convenience of the story.

I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark for the first time in ages yesterday and watching the credits I noticed Alfred Molina's name, fairly high up. I couldn't remember him, but there he was, getting killed in the first five minutes in a rather nasty special effects extravaganza (Phew! Tough word to type!) after screwing Indy over a tiny golden idol... I think he should write an autobiography entitled, "I Screwed Harrison Ford", or "Heroes I have Fucked", or "Any Number of Other Shite Titles".com

Cos he's been bad in a few other movies too y'see...

Aaaaaaaaaaand, I'm all alone in the newsroom now. Everyone has abandoned me to my ham and cheese roll. I think I run the risk of turning into one, at least, if I'm to take Flann O'Brien's theory to another level. He speculated, in The Third Policeman, that a person in contact with a thing for a long period of time would, in effect, become more like the thing. This was due to the movement of electrons. Everyone knows (at least the everyones with leaving cert chemistry or equivalent) that there are a certain number of free electrons whizzing around our outer limits. These electrons are quite easily interchangeable with similar electrons from other things' extremities. The atoms don't care so long as the balance is kept. And so, a man who spends a long time on the couch is gradually becoming more and more couch, while the couch is likewise becoming more and more man. Or woman, although in their case it probably applies more to GHDs or hairdryers or shoe-shops.

So, because I've taken to eating a lot of ham and cheese rolls, I think I may be becoming more and more a delicious snack/meal of dairy produce coated in bread. They laughed at Galileo too you know. And he was not, as far as I am aware, part sandwich, I should be able to get off fairly lightly because you see I... I... I'm sorry, I've quite forgotten what I was going on about. Um... Yes, time for coffee. Milk, no sugar and a cup. Yes, thank you...

Bye

Goober!

Bored to tears, please help!

Media managment, not my thing. Oh, the humanity!

Later...

I looked for you in Old Honolula...

Well, today begins with a spot of good news! The project I got up early(-ish) to finish off for 4pm today is actually not due 'til Monday. Boysa, boysa, but that's good news! Especially since I'm incredibly lazy and quite a fantastic procrastinator...

I was on the bus into college this morning and I saw a big huge poster for a new movie called 'Assault on Precinct 13'. It stars Laurence Fishburn (Fishbourne?) (Ahem, it's actually Fishburne - Ed. Um, I mean Stephen.) and Ethan Hawke (Hawk?) and in big letters it says, "FROM THE PRODUCER OF 'TRAINING DAY'". Maybe I'm cynical, but this looks to me like, 'Ethan Hawke stars in another cop movie with a respected black actor in a desperate bid to win Oscars.' Hell, it worked last time!

Maybe that is cynical, but I hope it works out for old Larry. He got short shrift in the Oscar department with The Matrix Trilogy ("Zion, Heeeeeeear meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" etc...) where his performance served to baffle even the hardiest of moviegoers.

I would've taken the blue pill, who wants to live in the Real World? It sucks! There's nothing to eat but gruel and all the clothes are smelly and holey, while people are smelly and holy. Ba-dum-tshish! I just can't seem to get away from the pun...

There are parts of the world where punners are severely punished. They get punned, drawn and quartered. I thought of that just now, awful isn't it? I'm so terribly sorry.

Right!

The time has come to get some work done and possibly even dusted! Woo! Go Team Stephen!

Talk later.

Hellfire and hatred!

So!
Yes, everything went well with Mike McCormack yesterday. He's a nice guy and we chatted for nearly two hours about his work, my work, Tarantino's work and the work of Arvo Part, an Estonian composer.

It was all good and the interview was easy to write up. It took no time to do and so I was very happy with the whole thing. Now I'm having trouble with the whole 'laying out' thing. Sometimes I wish I'd listened more closely in Quark Class all those many years ago...

Still, not to be dissuaded from work I'm... Well, I'm actually getting dissuaded from work and THAT, my friends, is why I am writing on this thing now. Such is my dismay at the state of everything.

I got a bit of a scare coming up to the newsroom. I took the lift like the lazy bastard I am (hey, it's four floors! Gimme a break!) and it greeted me with it's usual sayings. 'Doors closing' it said, while the doors closed. I pressed the 4th floor button, 'Going up' it said. Then things started getting a bit weird. It said 'going up' over and over and over for the entire duration of the short trip. I was afraid it was going to start singing, 'Daisy, Daisy...' or something. Even when I'd escaped the lift, it kept shouting, 'FOURTH FLOOR! FOURTH FLOOR!'... These are things it is meant to do only once. Someday that lift is gonna crack and some first year and a porter wheeling a TV will get eaten or worse!

I started reading 'Incompetence' by Rob Grant and there's a bit in it where an assassin rigs a lift so that it shoots someone out the top of a building. Quite ingenius really. The building had 17 stories and he rigged up a 33rd floor button, someone pressed it and WHOOSH! I was impressed.

Anyway, I'm gonna go now and think about writing up my poetty article. Most of it's done, so it shouldn't take more than about 6 minutes to put together. No, what I'm really worried about is Quark. It doesn't seem to like me very much... Refuses to put text in text boxes for me when that is the only function I wish it to carry out. Very odd altogether. Very odd...

Scorching heat and blistering palms!

Well, I thought all the excitement would be over once I hit the auld shores of home. I was looking forward to a decent bit of boredom and tea with slippers on. Drinking tea while wearing slippers, not actually having cups of tea which wear slippers. Of course...

All my hopes were shattered this morning as drama unfolded in my humble Larkfield home in the form of the mighty infernos of Hell!

Well, Dec left the chip-pan on and we were sitting down doing nothing much and he noticed plumes of smoke in the kitchen. Actually, plume is quite a nice word. These were more like the Ostrich Feathers of Death. They were closely followed by flame, hot and hellish.

So we threw a couple of wet towels over it and it went out.

But it was dead smokey!

*sigh*

It's difficult making everyday life sound exciting. Perhaps if we'd just let it burn you'd've been happier as an audience, I Don't Know! I just don't...

Yesterday I got some books with the book tokens Sarah's folks gave me. I got Incompetence, by Rob Grant (of Red Dwarf fame), The Melancholy Death Of Oyster Boy, by Tim Burton (of being Tim Burton fame) and In Your Dreams, by Tom Holt, whose incredibly silly books have been amusing me no end over the last while. So plenty to rot my mind with over the period of my dissertation working-on. Not that there's much of that happening...

There was a vague panic yesterday as I found out there was no way I could get an extension on my print project deadline. A couple of days was all I wanted... So instead I spoke to Mike McCormack today and I'm off to Galway in the morning to conduct a rushed interview without having read his new novel. Thanks a million DIT!

And this is all the excitement I can stand to write about. Yes, all of it!

Bleh!

Have you seen the old man...?

*sigh*
I suppose the time has come to relate the terrible goings-on of our English final leg. Arriving in England was ok. The ferry had been a bit bumpy on the way, but we didn't mind this too much thanks to the litre of vino we put away en route.

So, we arrived in Harwich pink and panicked, not knowing exactly how or when we'd get home, but hoping beyond all hope for a bus to Holyhead or Stranrear or anywhere we could leap the Irish Sea from. We got to Victoria Coach Station in London on Tuesday evening (after being stung for the train fares from Harwich! I'm still bitter about that...) only to discover the next bus from London to Dublin was on Thursday, although after much pestering and whining we discovered there was one to Belfast at 9am. This meant we had only about eleven hours to hang out in the station until the bus whisked us away.

Now, Sarah had thought sleeping rough would be fun for one night. Hey, we're inter-railing, it wouldn't be the same without a bit of vagrancy. Our sleep-over in Hoek van Holland was her one night and it didn't live up to her romantic expectations. I'm still not sure what she thought it would be like, but she was disappointed anyway.

Not enough hobos and camp songs or something.

...And so, when they kicked us out of the bus station at midnight and told us we could sleep wherever we liked, just not in there, we had no option but to bed down in our sleeping bags outside the station. The entire time Ralph McTell was running through my brain, "Have you seen the old man who walks the streets of London..." Um, yes, he's trying to hop into my sleeping bag and has asked me for change and cigarettes numerous times over the last three minutes. I still do not have any...

People kept directing us towards all-nite cafés. We found one after asking a taxi driver. Now, imagine, if you will, a couple of miserable looking tired people approach you at 1am laden with bags and ask if there is an all-nite café nearby do you, a) apologise, saying there is no such place for sitting down in at this time of night, or b) say, "Yes, there's one just over there" referring to a coffee STAND surrounded by people in blankets quickly emptying their cups so they can get on with shaking them at people so they can buy another cup of coffee...?

We were not especially impressed by this and went back to the bus station. It re-opened at 4.30am and so we were able to bed down on the floor in there, although I was almost happier outside. A funny thing, nobody said anything about us lying there, although everyone stared as they went past. I reckon if I'd gotten myself a cup I could've done a bit of begging... Although it didn't seem too lucrative a business in that place. It's not easy begging among a group of people sleeping in a bus station because they have Nowhere Else To Go.

Someone asked me for two pounds, in exchange for which he would provide me with a bit of skunk. Something about him made me believe his story, but I didn't have two pounds. Even if I had, my Rotterdam experience was still very much on my mind and dope was the last thing I wanted. It's bad enough being in that situation without adding cannabis-paranoia to your already fragile mind.

Besides, Sarah would've stabbed me. With a plastic spoon. (OUCH!)

At 9am the bus took us away from that horrible place and we were on our way to Carlisle...

All the way the bus driver discussed the terrible weather conditions in Scotland. Floods and misery and locusts and god knows what else seemed to be plaguing things... This filled us with joy of course, considering how seabound we were.

I asked the driver something about the connecting bus and he rounded off his information with a wonderfully witty, "Rather you than me on that boat tonight!" Fuck off, is almost exactly what I didn't say to him.

For the first time in days things went our way and we missed the bad weather altogether. Funnily enough, we weren't even aware of it except through scare stories told by fat Scots...

We found out then that there is no late bus or train between Belfast and Dublin so we called up my Aunt Veronica and begged her to let us stay on her couch. She didn't hesitate to join the list of people who saved our lives at some point along the way. (Honorary mentions go also to my Folks, Ian and Declan. Cheers! We woulda died in gutters without you! Oh, how poorly planned this trip was...) Veronica even gave us a packed lunch of chocolaty stuff, so she is on Sarah's Most Loved and Admired list (someday I hope to make that list, but until I achieve the controlling interest in Cadbury's I don't see it. Sniff...)

And to end this tale of woe, I found myself thinking, "My, my, the Spike looks lovely today!" as we arrived in Bus Aras, before I realised this was simply homesickness taking on some of the darker qualities of dementia. It's still a piece of shit. Right!!

I actually met someone who thought it was cool. Mind you, this was the same French bollox who told me about the verb 'cinématiser'... It's not true, not true at all. Why do they always seek to humiliate us anglophones? Is it because their language and cultural history is so much richer and better than ours? Could be, still... Cheese-eating surrender monkeys!

(It was at this point that Stephen was gassed and kidnapped by the Alliance Francaise to be kept in a cage and force-fed for weeks before hitting the French supermarché shelves as Foie Gras d'Etienne.)

Hame agaaayne!

I think someone thinks I'm a Manchurian Candidate because I keep getting these bizarre messages in my junk mail folder (in between the insurance scams and porn passwords). Today it looked like this:

That farmer is not missing reading. Argas
Lots of times you have to pretend to join a parade in which you're not really interested in order to get where you're going. -Christopher Darlington Morley (1890-1957) aye
Then came THE PARENT. (Now, you need to know, I love the parents of the children I teach.) This parent arrived on the scene with her son who had Down?s Syndrome. She wanted a piece of software with REAL photos, one on each screen with the word in text and the word spoken aloud. I looked at her and thought to myself, ?B-O-R-I-N-G. The child will NEVER respond to that.? cacomorphia
It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong. -Voltaire [François Marie Arouet] (1694-1778) bichromatize
Doesn't Kate's granddaughter miss shaving for a few months? aration
If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing. W. Edwards Deming casking
Have you hated surfing lately? acanthophorous>

I'm not sure if it's my imagination, but I have a real desire to go kill Mary McAleese... Jesus! I was only joking! Stop pointing that gun at my head!!!!

*phew*

Yes... I'm back in the land of turf and wet damp things. I'm having a little trouble adjusting to all the newness of the old things I'm so used to but no longer recognise. That's a bit mad altogether.

Anyway... What you really want to know is, "What happened to Stephen and Sarah after they left Barcelona?" OK, I'll tell you.

On the way back home we decided to take in the Dali Theatre-Museum in Figueres. I've been wanting to visit that place for years and years now and I was a little miffed when Maebh got there before me (I was born first, dammit! I was appreciatin' surrealism while you were still worrying about whether or not teddy got the same amount of tea as dolly at the imaginary bad-catter's picnic!)... But, justifiable resentment aside, it was great to be there. The place is truly a marvel to behold, and easy to get lost in. I saw some works which were familiar to me and many which were not. I had to laugh at people looking round the sections of non-Dali stuff discussing (loudly) how this period in The Master's life was beset by uncertainty about the future of his blahblahblah. I'm sure he would've found that amusing. Or maybe he would've slapped the buggers with his moustache. You just never know with Spaniards...

After that, Sarah and I took the night train back to Gaye Paree. We decided to splash out on real beds and everything was going fine until some guy ended up sharing our cabinand Sarah got drunk and homesick. There was not much sleeping done and I think it's the closest I've ever been to leaping from a moving train just for a little peace and quiet! Still, we made it to Gare Austerlitz and staggered off to McDonald's for coffee and orange juice.

A funny thing about McDoFrance, it's not quite as depressing as the ones here. There aren't so many hollow eyed people who look exactly the way you would imagine people at rock-bottom would. It's all rather sophistimicated with laptop spaces and (I think) Wi-Fi.

The first order of business in Paris was finding a roof. We decided the Sorbonne area was bound to have cheap places (students, cheap, go together like peaches and cream). We found one which was very nice and had facilities out the wazoo, but which we had to mount 5 flights of stairs to reach the room in. The man was careful not to mention this to us at the time we were handing over money.

That day, after a nap, we went to Montmartre. I'd already been and seen most stuff, but I knew Sarah'd like it. She was amazed by all the artists hanging around like drug dealers (Pst! Wanna buy a landscape?) and I reckon she could do the same stuff. When I suggested it I was reminded how long it takes her to draw things. Sitting outside Notre Dame I was dismayed to observe her take an hour to draw a hedge. It was a very nice hedge, but it was an hour-long hedge of about 1 inch square...

The next day was the Musée D'Orsay, which Sarah had been foiled in attempts to enter on two occasions. The first time had been a Monday, on which the M d'O is uniquely closed. Everywhere else closes on a Tuesday, strangely enough. And the second time the queue had been about three years long. This time we waltzed in early and I wondered what I was doing there.

We split up and I went upstairs to look at some ballerinas painted by Degas and some drunk society people painted by Lautrec and some crazy Dutch guy painted by Van Gogh. I'm not saying it wasn't nice and all, but I get a bit fed up of impressionism after a while. It just looks to me like the painter left his fine brushes and/or his glasses at home. And don't even get me started on Gauguin, feckin' paedo that he was...

There were some amazing works there, although I'm sure they were completely wasted on my philistine eyes. I spent two hours sitting down, scribbling in my note book while waiting for Sarah to finish analysing brushstrokes.

The next day we met up with Ian and Hugh and went to Disneyland. I was determined not to enjoy it, disgusting symbol of American high-consumerism that it is. But as soon as I walked through the gates and handed over a huge sum of money I found my soul immediately lifted by the sheer strangeness of the place. It's so very painstaking in it's detail that I couldn't help but be impressed...

We managed to put Sarah on rollercoasters after much persuading and bullying. She's such a big 'fraidy cat that we were certain she'd bolt at the last minute, but she surprised us all by hopping into Space Mountain after downing a bottle of Back's Rescue Remedy. The thing set off, it went up and down and around and around and upside down and glow-in-the-dark things flashed past us and it was all very thrilling until it stopped and Sarah turned to the three of us and said, "Dead, dead, dead... All of you! That was brilliant, can we go on another one?!"

So, a new adrenaline junkie was born and we found all the biggest and scariest rides and went on them all.

At the end of the day we saw the parade, which was amazing, and we slumped onto the train all agreeing it had been Too Much Fun Altogether and nothing would ever live up to it.

The next day Sarah and I left Paris for the Netherlands in order to go home. We were, by this stage, thoroughly sick of foreign food, foreign hotels and foreigners themselves were starting to lose their shine.

We had hoped to get an earlier ferry and get home a day earlier than booked, but when we finally made it to the ferryport (after a terrifying stop in Rotterdam where I smoked something incredibly strong in one of the 'local' coffeeshops and Sarah was on the verge of calling an ambulance...) we discovered there was no earlier ferry and so we bedded down in our sleeping bags in the doorway to wait for the trains to start up again.

It was not much fun.

The next day we went to Breda and had breakfast before returning to Hoek van Holland and hanging around to wait for the boat. When we arrived in England, THAT is when things got really bad...

To be continued (when I have the time, energy and mental stamina to relate the harrowing events in their entirety)...

Homage to Catalonia

I know I said I´d blog more regularly from Barcelona, but that was what us pissheads like to call ´optimistic´... As it turns out I have yet to experience sobriety in this place. I´m pissed now. gin and tonics in the flat...

Oh, yes, we saved a good bit o´dough here by staying with Sarah´s mate, Priscilla. So that means we´ve had more money to spend on booze. Well, I say more money, but in fact I don´t have any. Me ma checked my balance for me the other day and it turned out I had about 30c to get me thru the rest of the trip. Which, as any of my avid readers will know, consists of about a week. Notta lotta moolah. Fortunately, as my readers will also know, my folks are a soft touch. Ahem... Hi Mom!

Spain is weird. It´s different than I imagined it. For a start, most people in Barcelona don´t actually speak Spanish (or Castillano as they call it here) but they speak Catalan. Which is like the bastard child of French and Spanish - only different. I reckon it´s just being contrary. Mind you, no hablo espagnol at all so it´s all much of a muchness to me.

Things I have seen here include the Segrada Familia, which is a rather funky lookin´church designed by Gaudi. This place is like Gaudi Land. There are buildings designed by him all over the place. You can always pick them out cos they´re all bubbly.

there´s an entire park dedicated to the guy with these gingerbread-house-style buildings and it´s quite impressive. Although some of them are a bit gaudy. Geddit? Sigh... My talent is wasted in these times.

Sarah´s been doing the art galleries and I have not. I seem to still be suffering art fatigue. Or else it´s just that I don´t really give a damn apart from the Dali Museum in Figueras (goin´there tomorrow, Hurrah!). There was a ´Dali exhibition´ in Parc Guell (the Gaudi place) but when I went in it turned out to be nothing more than a few photos of the guy in the park. I would´ve demanded my 4€ back, but I don´t know how to say ´rip-off bastard´in Spanish.

Aside from the lack of art I´ve been seeing there are some really great bars. There´s an Irish bar (groan...) called the Dubliner which is just shabby enough to get away with being cool. The owner, Steve, is from Ballymun and he´s kinda funny. It´s only been open about a year, so he hasn´t got that snooty barman thing going on yet.

Also, there´s the Champagneria, where they serve nothing but Cava, which is the local equivalent of champagne. It´s an amazing bar. You have to get two things to eat with each bottle of cava, but that´s ok because the sambos are fucking great and the entire round costs less than a fiver. Yes, less than a fiver. We were there last night and we had, between 5 of us, 7 bottles and various tapas and it came to 38€ altogether. That is not only cheap, that is incredible...

Tonight we´re off to the Chupitoria, which is a shots bar. Priscilla´s boyfriend was saying last night we should go because all shots are only €1 on Tuesdays. When I asked how much they are on Wednesdays he told me €1.50. I can´t quite get my head around it, but it appears to be true...

Oh, and for any Francophiles out there, the verb ´to go to the cinema´in French is cinématiser.

And to wrap this all up, I got a bottle of rice liquor yesterday which has, in the bottle, two lizards. they are real, they are in my bottle, it is 30% and it cost €6.50. I may buy another before I leave. I was very impressed. And so will you be when I get home and show it to yiz...

This is from the Onion. I hope they don´t sue my ass and I´d like to thank Leslie for sending it to me. I think it´s hilarious...


AL JIZAH, EGYPT—A team of British and Egyptian archaeologists made a stunning discovery Monday, unearthing several intact specimens of "skeleton people"—skinless, organless humans who populated the Nile delta region an estimated 6,000 years ago.
Above: An archaeologist examines the intact remains of a spooky "skeleton person."
"This is an incredible find," said Dr. Christian Hutchins, Oxford University archaeologist and head of the dig team. "Imagine: At one time, this entire area was filled with spooky, bony, walking skeletons."
"The implications are staggering," Hutchins continued. "We now know that the skeletons we see in horror films and on Halloween are not mere products of the imagination, but actually lived on Earth."
Standing at the excavation site, a 20-by-20-foot square pit along the Nile River, Hutchins noted key elements of the find. "The skeletons lived in this mud-brick structure, which, based on what we know of these people, was probably haunted," he said. "Although we found crude cooking utensils in the area, as well as evidence of crafts like pottery and weaving, we are inclined to believe that the skeletons' chief activity was jumping out at nearby humans and scaring them. And though we know little of their language and means of communication, it is likely that they said 'boogedy-boogedy' a lot."
Approximately 200 yards west of the excavation site, the archaeologists also found evidence of farming.
"What's puzzling about this," Cambridge University archaeologist Sir Ian Edmund-White said, "is that skeletons would not benefit from harvested crops, as any food taken orally would immediately fall through the hole behind the jaw and down through the rib cage, eventually hitting the ground. Our best guess is that they scared away a group of human farmers, then remained behind to haunt the dwelling. Or perhaps they bartered goods in a nearby city to acquire skeleton accessories, such as chains, coffins and tattered, dirty clothing."
Above: An artist's rendering of what a warrior-skeleton may have looked like.
Continued Edmund-White: "The hole in that theory, however, is that a 1997 excavation of this area which yielded extensive records of local clans and merchants made no mention of even one animated mass of bones coming to town for the purpose of trade. But we are taking great pains to recover as much of the site as possible, while also being extremely careful not to fall victim to some kind of spooky skeleton curse."
As for what led to the extinction of the skeletons, Edmund-White offered a theory.
"Perhaps an Egyptian priest or king broke the curse of the skeletons, either by defeating the head skeleton in combat or by discovering the magic words needed to send their spirits back to Hell," Edmund-White said. "In any case, there is strong evidence that the Power of Greyskull played a significant role in the defeat of the skeleton people."
According to Hutchins, the skeletons bear numerous similarities to humans, leading him to suspect that there may be an evolutionary link between the two species.
"Like humans, these creatures walked upright on two legs and possessed highly developed opposable thumbs," Edmund-White said. "These and many other similarities lend credence to the theory that hundreds of thousands of years ago, human development passed through a skeletal stage. These skeletons may, in fact, be ancestors of us all."
"Any of us could be part skeleton," he added.
Other experts disagreed.
"The evidence of an evolutionary link between humans and skeletons is sparse at best," said Dr. Terrance Schneider of the University of Chicago. "Furthermore, it is downright unscientific to theorize that skeleton life originated in Egypt merely because mummies, another species of monster, are indigenous to the area. Spooky creatures are found all over the world, from the vampires of Transylvania to the headless horsemen of Sleepy Hollow."