BETAMAXNOMATES
'All she can do is dial and yell...'20041128
Sick
It’s my stomach, where I’m sick to, and, presumably, from: seasick, still docked. A lot of it’s nerves, I think, about tomorrow, compounded by a lack of sleep. Yet, instead of ‘resting up’ this weekend, most of my time was spent ‘out’, and indeed, ‘about’
Hold fast to the edge of your seat, folks: accounts of kerr-razy khurch-going and violent spazzbiting to come!
READER WARNING:
Having just read over the following journal entry I’ve decided that content-wise it’s really quite sub-par, and I’m sure the critical cognoscenti would be in agreement. I tell you this only to (possibly) save you some moments of your life’s time: if you can, right now, think of any constructive or worthwhile alternatives to reading this blog I suggest that you do those instead.
Maybe tomorrow I’ll pull a Neuro and just delete the whole bollocking lot.
This morning was spent at a service in church - except that the church was a school, and the service was basically brunch with some singing and stuff.
Everything about this ‘church’ is so alien to my childhood memories of sporadic masses: seeing the neighbours tarted up, the forced bonhomie outside the church, before everyone was ushered inside to sit, awkward and bored, mumbling along with some tedious stretch of scripture, after which the priest would recite some leaden anecdote about an inspirational GAA hero living life to the full despite a tumour as big as the Ritz.
The only consolation back then would have been that The Parents, lapsed-Catholics and functioning alcoholics, hepped up on the Holy Spirit, might buy you a comic or some teeth-rotting penny sweet bonanza bag in the shop across the road. All silver-foil linings to a wasted youth.
This service however was great - warm, relaxed, and above, all fun. (Also vibrant, ambient, dynamic, and perhaps even a bit European, what with the cheese and everything).
Actually the weird thing was meeting people who knew about my life via this blog.
In many ways it never really occurred to me that people who read this journal would take from it information that could later be presented to me in real time. This is most unsettling and I found myself asking, quite ridiculously, how it was that they came to know these things about me.
Because I wrote about them, obviously, but this would seem to, in some way, to contravene the strict principle of ‘artistic distance’ - a phrase, by the way, cribbed from Nietzsche’s ‘Big Gay Science’ - that I set out to enforce.
This was intended initially to be simply a record of things I find amusing and/or interesting. And by amusing I mean laughable, and by interesting I mean contemptible. This is not me, nor is it about me. It’s not even by me. You are here. I am not.
Yours, taking it all way too serious,
Anonymous Not-Anonymous AKA ‘Anonymous’
So... enough about me. Let’s talk about me.
Yesterday, I met with an old college buddy, C.K., now one of my new colleagues, albeit on a part-time basis. She’s a remarkable woman, and I say ‘woman’ with purpose: she’s one of the oldest people I know, 30 years at last count. Still alive though, and going strong, God bless her. Great though she is, I can’t help but resent her for planting so many bad things in my impressionable mind.
Take the following:
‘You’ll recognise P. [one of the clients] - he’s the one whose jumper’s are all chewed [she demonstrated this by enthusiastically gnawing on the lapel of her jacket]. He doesn’t talk much and mostly keeps to himself. Watch him, though, if he’s chewing - if he’s getting ready to attack, he’ll started chewing his jumper’.
You can probably imagine at which part my mind broke glass and pressed the Emergency Stop button. Getting ready to attack?! Baby Jesus be buggered, this isn’t what I signed up for, was it?
As the honey-voiced, fajita-eating lady off the telly says: ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, if ah’m still alaaaaaaaaahhhve’.
20041127
End of Days 2: Endier of Days
Ashes to ashes, funk to funky.
No card. No party. No tunnel of hands for me to run through, cheering. Not even a Cartier timepiece. Poxy cheap bastard employers. Inexcusable really, when your consider my five, long hard weeks of loyal and unwavering service.
But do I care? No - not in the least. Hand on heart. Or where my heart used to be before I cut it out with a spoon. Why a spoon? Because I wanted it to hurt more.
But, I’m not going to bitch about work tonight though - been there, done that, sold the T-shirts. Workbitch finishes here. At least until Monday.
Now, it’s time for a moment’s reflection. Today I 'arr bin mostly thinking about life, God and the universe, and other such trivial matters. God made the universe, apparantly - and not a bad job he made of it either. Though I still have some other worlds to see. It’s not like I’ve found religion or anything - or that religion’s found me - but I suppose you could say I’m nosing around a bit, poking about in some odd corners of my brainstem, rooting out some Big Questions, dusting 'em off, holding them up to the light.
So to speak.
My starting point is this book - you may have heard of it - the ‘Holy Bible’ it’s called, written by, well, lots of different people, though, disappointingly, none are Martin Amis or Kurt Vonnegut. Unless they are working pseudonymously or behind a veil of anonymity but, really, what kind of a pretentious fucktard would do that?
I started reading - well, flicking though it - this evening on the bus back from town, occasionally pausing to rest the book on my lap and smile serenely at my fellow passengers (on the bus of life) until someone stabbed me repeatedly and I died later in hospital. My legacy is as a statistic, a footnote in the chronicles of society’s continuing collapse. You must never forget the name ‘Anonymous’.
Stranger still, tomorrow I shall forsake the gaudy charm of T4’s Sunday morning crap-o-rama, to go to church. This means missing Popworld, which is quite a big deal for me. Best music show on the telly IMHOFWIWYMMV. My love for the snark - the pop, the bitch - burns with the passion of a thousand Christs.
Anyway, enough Big Talk. I need sleep. I think this is a kind of existensial hangover I’m experiencing here - no doubt a result of Friday night’s lengthy vodka-fuelled conversation with Neuro, a debate that culminated in the two of us strolling round Celbridge at 3 in the morning, swigging M&S champagne (pronounced ‘sham-pagnee’) straight from the bottle, pimpin’ it like a provincial P. Diddy and Jennifer Lopez.
You can read her hilarious (to me, anyway) account of the evening here.
Yours correspondingly, looking forward to the dd’s in the mm ahead.
Mood: Holier than thou, mo’fucker!
Music: Holy, holy music... well, Destiny's Child.
20041126
End of Days
20041124
The Boy with the Thorn in His Side and The Chip on His Shoulder
I’d say I’m counting the minutes but that’s not really practical is it? Maths has never been my forte, shall we say, but I would imagine there’s a lot of minutes between now and 10pm tomorrow night and it would probably take me a number of days to count them all.
Which would, presumably, take me into negative time, losing hours for every minute I counted, throwing the present into some kind of Ballardian timeslip, a whirl of spinning clocks, numbers tearing through space-time like that old Windows screensaver...
‘Shala-lala-lala-la-la! Dum! Dum! Shala-lala-lala-la-la! Dum! Dum!’
Sorry, ‘Amarillo’ just came on Winamp.
I feel like I’m living in Phoenix Nights. Man, what a song. They don’t write ‘em like that any more. Hey, Winamp’s gone, or rather Nullsoft has been shut down. Thank you AOL. Thank you strange-translucent-data-flickering-dress-wearing lady.
Strange though that a lot of people are having such emotional reactions to this. I say ‘people’, I mean, of course, geeks - or g33Ks. Winamp was just a handy app, people, something that let you listen to Dashboard Confessional, Hope Of The States AND American Music Club while you punched code by day and poured your soul into Live Journal by night.
As Boris Johnson might have said to a grieving Liverpudlian widow:’ Get over yourself. Benefit-thieving scally.’
(Dramatisation: May not have happened)
One word: fucking legend.
Anyway, as I was saying, before myself interupted me, tomorrow is my last day at work.
And my fellow slaves.
Fat Patrick, who, since shaving his head, now bears a frightening resemblance to a certain superstar DJ par excellance. And Damien - relentlessly cheerful, someone for whom the word ‘gormless’ may well have been coined. I’ll miss my conversations with Damien, conversations about cars, and girls, and cars, and the bit in The Day After Tomorrow where the guy freezes to death in the helicopter. I wish him well, though I suspect the next time I hear of him will be when his body is pulled from a flaming Fiat Punto on a waste ground in Clondalkin.
Keep on cruisin’, boyz - yiz are bleedin’ rapid.
I’ll miss Ann too - the consummate bitch, the bitch’s bitch - hate-filled to the brim, never a good word to say about anyone, and probably rabidly badmouthing me right now for leaving. God, she was great - but a truly awful human being. Bleached blond and bitter - years of resentment etched across her face; her grimacing smile, her hollow rattle of a laugh, truly terrifying.
And I’ll miss Jennifer, that adorable little idiot. 17yrs old with her whole future behind her, she was funny, genuinely so, though she earned herself quite a reputation as a ‘mouth’, something an honest squire from the Ballyer' will some day slap out of her. Even though there were others in my department closer to my age, for some reason she was the one I related to most. Read into that what you will.
Maybe I’ll miss this. I don’t think it will miss me. Yesterday, my attempts to restore balance to the cosmos by over-charging customers backfired rather embarressingly when the manager had to remove me from the till. I suppose I should have realised that people wouldn’t be too jazzed about getting robbed. Huh.
Oppressed Masses: 0 - The Man: 1
Time for activities TV-related now (TM that clever cunt Neuro Practice). Time hurries slowly. But meanwhile...
Clip-on Soul
In my dreams, when I close my eyes, I see them. It goes like this: I’m alone in the home for the autistic where I’m working. In every room of the house one of the clients lies dead. I’m panicked, running from room to room, trying in vain to revive them.
I know my boss is coming soon and he’ll be disappointed to see that I’ve let each of the clients in my care die. Eventually, I resort to propping them up on the sofa, strapping their limp bodies to kitchen chairs and resting plates of food on their laps in a macabre parody of a jovial midday luncheon.
It’s like Awakenings meets Weekend At Bernies.
This is my dream and I’ve been having it on and off for the past couple of nights.
As dreams go, this one’s fairly straightforward. I’m scared of failing at my new job, that I won’t be able to cut it. Psychoanalytically, dreaming of death is an unconscious reflection of an anxiety regarding change – very rarely does it refer to a literal death, past or future. True dat - except that Freud once took cocaine and had a low opinion of women and so therefore everything he ever wrote is wrong.
Pity.
This is all a bit web diarist, isn’t it? Thought I’d throw it in anyway, just to mix things up, personalise it a bit, put a human face to the clip-on soul. Anyway.
Normal service will resume… whenever I feel like it.
20041122
Killing Time will be The Death of Me
Honestly, just because he’s 107yrs old and stuff, he thinks he can get away with anything. ‘Gays are destroying marriage’ this, ‘Madonna don’t sing live’ that. Forget Eminem, I’d be worried about the kids listening to the sick shit this Ill Papa’s laying down. There was talk there a while back of this madd wikked Pontiff MC bringing his holy show back to Ireland, corrupting the youth, and you can rest assured that hard-line leftist Commie-Nazi’s such as myself are dead set against it.
So fuck up, old man. This is the 21st Century and we don’t allow those kind of opinions here. Incidentally, tomorrow in Day Month Year: Why Gay Marriage Should be Compulsory for All and, the first in a series of tutorials designed a building a more tolerant and egalitarian society, Kill Pro-Lifer’s to Feed the Homeless.
Anyway, what’s been happening to me today? Why, absolutely fuck all, and thank you for asking.
A man named Brittany came into the store and paid for a shirt with his credit card. I mean, really. If your name was Brittany would you want to advertise that fact? I asked him when the wedding was but I don’t think he got me. So I accused him of shoplifting and got him arrested. And you can be sure that Brittany’s gonna see some action on the inside.
I was so bored in work today that, for an hour, I decided to give people excessive change – throwing in an extra couple of euro with every transaction. Amazingly, only one person noticed and gave it back. In some ways I wonder if this is my caring, selfless, modern-day saint side (see below) manifesting itself in reckless and financially irresponsible behaviour. Or maybe I’m just very bored. They could fire me, of course - if I hadn’t already quit.
My God, this means I’m invincible. I can do anything! First thing tomorrow I’m walking right up Alex of Moldovia and explaining to him why, for all our talk of liberalism and multi-culturalism, people wot can’t talk English proper just isn’t welcome here.
J/K! J/K!
I am, how do you say, only taking your piss, yes? Lolly, lolly, roffle roffle, roffle mao.
Besides, I can’t be racist. I get loads of stick for liking, you know, Sisters of Mercy and Bauhaus and stuff, so I can, like, totally empathise with people who feel racially persecuted. The power, people: fight it.
What else? Got another blog here for your perusal. My good friend Adrian has just joined the Blogger fraternity - after a brutal hazing involving paddles, spatulas and some other flat-faced implements - and has started a junkie diary chronicling his experiences with anti-depressants.
Though I have some serious reservations about the prescription of psychotropics (especially university doctors doing so pro bono), I can’t help but commend my friend’s bravery in not only taking the medication but also choosing to make it public.
I shall read with interest over the coming weeks.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m having a web diarist moment.
I simply must recommend you this - a song, ‘Child Brides’ by The Auteurs. I got the album a couple of years ago and liked it a lot; this track popped up on the Zen earlier today and I’ve been listening to it repeatedly ever since. The music – dirge-like, all eerie Hammond and shivering strings – and the lyrics, suggesting some kind of cult mass marriage/suicide, together with Luke Haines’s hoarse, cracked vocal delivery has just got me at the moment.
Get thee to a P2P and ch-ch-check it out post haste.
Anyway, I’m off.
Some other stuff I’m remembering now: shaved my beard, got provisional driving license (complete with obligatory dodgy photo), attended a ‘cruise’ (though not the kind of, uh, cruise I was expecting) – illegal racing of souped-up hatchbacks round the car parks of Liffey Valley. And I was going to write about my new job a bit more too, but this has been rambling on for a bit now.
So I shall end it here. As soon as I finish this sentence. The sentence I am currently typing.
Goodnight, gorgeous.
20041121
All Good in the Hood
I’m a shop-boy no longer. Monday week, I am leaving the fashion industry behind for the glamorous world of residential care for the autistic. I’m a carer now. A carer. Say it softly with a sigh, smile, maybe a tilt of the head. I care. I put others before myself.
I’m like a hip-hop Mother Teresa (only less of the evilness), a true ghetto Florence Nightingale. I’m a modern day good Somalian, or whatever it was that helped Jesus in the fairytale. Jesus: he were a good bloke. Carpenter too – his sister died from anorexia. Very sad. He was OK though – true to the force, he saved the galaxy in the end.
I’m feeling quite happy overall. There’s a chance then that this journal will, correspondingly, become less interesting. It’ll still be Day Month Year of course - only now with added earnestness. Even now I reckon it’s at least 30% more sincere - bordering on smug - and, given that I have found what you might describe as a ‘higher’ calling in life, you’re apt to see a marked decrease in the kind of crass and insulting junk that previously passed for humour in this blog.
Or perhaps not. Only time – and Kate Winslet’s ever-fluctuating waistline – will tell.
This is the first job I’ve ever had where, I expect, I will be compelled to do more than adequately. And obviously one of the main attractions of a job such as this is that the work is so rewarding. Financially, that is. But also fulfilling - fulfilling my wallet with dirty big wads of cash! LOL!!!111$$$$$$$YAY!!!!!!!!!!1111$$$$$$$$
Joking aside though, I am quite daunted by the challenge this new path presents. On paper, my job essentially involves ensuring that these people (five altogether, all roughly my age, all male) remember to eat, wash, and generally do something more constructive with their time than sitting in a corner drawing concentric circles on a page. The word my new boss used though was ‘support’ – my job really is not to attempt to cure or to forcibly modify these guys behaviours - rather to help them live with their autism.
I was lucky enough to meet some of my potential customers, I mean, ‘clients’, on Wednesday. Suffice to say, they were pretty fucking weird.
The popular stereotype of the autistic temperament as jabbering neurotic or taciturn savant – as informed mostly by movies like Rain Man and books like the (very excellent) Curious Incident – was checked at the door. All, bar one, have IQ’s well below average and only the most rudimentary of language. One is what’s known as an ‘elective mute’, meaning he chooses not to talk when in care. When he’s at home, apparently, he’s exceptionally vocal, but since this mostly involves him hurling abuse at his mother, it’s a welcome mercy that he keeps his mouth shut in the house.
Four live together in one house, though they hardly interact. The most severe case is only capable of making these hoarse grunting noises that, to me, sounded like the walkie-talkie krrssh-type noise you make when you’re a kid playing some game that involves pretending to have walkie-talkies - Airport Security and Indians maybe. One, given his propensity for violent outbursts, suicide attempts, larceny, and other maladaptive behaviours ranking high on the Courtney Love Scale of Anti-Sociality, has to live alone, with three carers present at all times.
This is going to be… interesting, to say the absolute least. The houses, both in Maynooth, are very nice, which is important since I’ll often have to sleep over there, though whether they’ll be ready for me dancing around in my dressing gown to Like A Prayer-era Madonna at seven in the morning remains to be seen. Sometimes, I’ve been told, we’ll be going for outings, beyond the bounds of Autistic Castle (TM Some people funnier than me) but, so long as all children and animals are kept at a safe distance, the monsters will do you no harm.
I’ve so much more I want to write about this – and I know you’re all just hanging on my every word, gormless monitor slugs that you are – but I’m really very tired now.
I still have another week of stultifying non-work to endure at my current job, but it’ll all be worth it when I finally get my chance to tell the bosses what I really think of them. Will I square up to them, face to face, and with no holding back, just tell it like it is? Ha! Snowballs chance, my friend. But will I talk trash all about them on a website they’ll never see? Hell yes! Well, maybe – actually probably won’t risk it, they know where I live.
On second thoughts: DAVID UR GAY! SUSAN UR FAT N EVRYBODY H8S U HAHAHAHA!!!!!
Please don't kill me.
Jeez Louise (a co-worker of mine and straight-up hoochie), I’m reading over this entry and some of it’s been a bit ‘heavy going’. Wreckin’ the buzz, like.
Here’s a picture of Jake Gyllenhaal’s naked torso:
Mood: A wide range of emotions, really: first I was nervous, then anxious, then wary, then apprehensive, then kinda sleepy, then worried, and then concerned.
Music: Small Change by Tom Waits. What a singer, what a voice – I mean it when I say this man’s vocal chords are more valuable than Pavarotti’s or that beardy blind guy. Like honey-covered gravel, crushed velvet glass, sweetly sucking cigarette ash through a dried rose petal.
Album courtesy of the Neuro and Zoomtard, probably rollin’ through a neighbourhood near you right now in the most tricked-out, mack-daddiest Ford Escort you ever did see.
Peace out, homes.
20041115
Step into My Office, Baby
Better luck next time, Big Man.
But now...
Class Wars (Episode 2): Attack of the Proles!
Work social there Tuesday.
These things are almost always unbearable - huddled in a corner with a group from your department, downing shot after pint in a desperate attempt to muster up something resembling a conversation, sniggering at the boss getting locked, bitching about how the single-parent allowance doesn’t be buying as much drinking as it did.
Good times, my friends, good times.
Course, I hadn’t planned on going, since (a) it wasn’t free, and (b) no one I was friendly with (read: wanted to get off with) was going be there. Plus, the venue is like this vast monument to tack, a multi-storey, misshapen mess of Moore St. bling glittering in the black suburban hellscape of Clondalkin. But into The Arc we went, two by two, until every animal on minimum wage was there.
My date for the evening, effectively, was Patrick: an overweight, balding 23yr old – nice bloke, ‘not big on reading books’, likes girls who ‘lez off with each other’, someone you might generously describe as one of God’s lesser creatures. We arrived late - but in time for free generic ‘cocktails’ - coming straight from work, still in our uniforms - clip-on’s and everything, but name badges tastefully secreted. I’m really quite into the whole idea of anonymity and artistic distance and stuff, something I’ll get around to writing about once I do some research beyond the idle Google.
Anyway, things got off to a bad start when, on sitting down, I noticed Alex, the boss, coming our way, already off his face and making the two-hand drinky-drinky motion, before collapsing at the foot of the table. He was laughing hysterically, which was quite unusual seeing as Alex doesn’t really appear to have a sense of humour on account of him being foreign. I forget where he’s from - one of these places where they get pissed off if you call them Russian. His surname is completely unpronounceable - over the phone I’ve referred to him variously as Alex Kapranos, Alex Kerplinsky and Alex Knute Rockne.
What annoys me most about him is not that he gets to wear a proper tie - one you can comfortably loosen when the fancy takes you, letting the neck breathe, maybe even pulling the knot a touch askew, achieving that fashionably rumpled, rakish, smart casual look, dressed for business but up for the laugh, a splash of tousled, devil-may-care sartorial subversiveness, like Ron Livingston in Office Space:
Uh, where was I? Oh yeah, Alex: hate him. Mostly as he uses his foreignness as an excuse to act like an arsehole. Yeah, well, I’m sorry there, Russki, but that’s not how we do things over here. Maybe I’m on shaky ground here, but WTF, Alex is a guest in our country. And if I was a guest in your house... [Edited for racism]… ungrateful mothershitter. Son of an ass.
He was joined, almost immediately, by the evening’s self-appointed matchmaker - maybe her name was Eileen, well pissed by now, she looked like Richard Dreyfus had sculpted her from mashed potato. I simply had to meet Gorgeous Blonde Laura, she told me. I was introduced to Laura - neither particularly gorgeous, nor even particularly blonde - and for a while we sniggered at the boss getting locked and she - no shit - bitched about how the stingy single parent allowance meant this was her only night out before Christmas.
Good times, my friends, good times.
Most of the time though I spent talking to Alicia, a friend of Laura’s, small, slim brunette. All similarities to Siobhan Fahey ended there however - at one point I do distinctly remember complaining that she was no match for the mighty Siobhan, who she took for a colleague of mine in Menswear, before a stern lecture on why Siobhan Fahey is the most sexiest, most talentedest woman in the world ever.
Suitably educated in all things Fahey-related, she quickly made her excuses and went home to her child, though she did leave me her number (Laura’s too). I’ll probably phone them too – late one night, when I'm lonely, shouting Shakespeare's Sister lyrics at them.
The night slowly lurched into morning: the matchmaker staggered over as everyone was leaving, and leaning heavily on my shoulder, managed to slur: ‘Yiz lads have rubbed some people up the wrong way tonight’. Somewhat drunk, and – given her size – slightly nervous, I laughed it off, making a feeble joke about rubbing people, which the 17yr old next to me seemed to find hilarious. Patrick, it's probably fair to say, didn't take this news very well, kicking over chairs and bellowing abuse at this woman all the way to the car park.
This story has no climax, no insight, no real ‘point’ or anything, just the telling.
Yours, in eternal emptiness,
20041113
Now My Heart is Half-empty
I knew I’d get bored of this thing, neglecting it - like that child I sponsored in Sudan. If you're reading this Mwenge, I'm sorry, but to be honest your letters are kind of depressing and I really think I need more, like, positive vibes in my life right now.
Entry #7 on Day Month Year: In which our hero suspects he may have descended into self-parody.
I’ll start by raising the tone a bit and talk about the books I’m reading at the moment.
After having cast aside (with great force), a disastrous self-help manual, whose basic message, I gathered, was to live every day like it’s your last, ‘cos, crucially, you never know, it might just be (nonsense: as a white male aged 18 to 24 I’m fully convinced that I will live forever), today I started The Secret History.
Liking it so far, very typical of what I read but I'd recommend it on the strength of the author shot alone:
OMG, like, Donna Tartt is soooo Teh Sex! She’s like a Victorian Siobhan Fahey:
Honestly. Any excuse.
Hey, do you know it’s Christmas time? It is! And you should know! It’s Christmas time! Right now! And until December 25th, at least!
As of today, the CD randomiser at work has slipped in a couple of the old office-favourite Classic Christmas Choons, chief among them the Band Aid single, surely the worst thing Siobhan Fahey (as one of Bananarama) was ever part of:
But where’s the knee-jerk anti-Americanism and lazy sloganeering, you ask?
I’m sorry, but I’m just too tired tonight. All I’ll tell you is the same thing I told the shrill New Yorker who came into the store today. Now, I don’t want to sound harsh, but - to be blunt - every American has the blood of a thousand murdered innocent Iraqi women and children wet on their hands and until all invading forces are recalled from the Moslem heartland I will refuse to serve them.
So, first formal warning today.
20041107
Twenty-four Hours Wasted in a Day
And who could be more deserving of this, the inaugural honour, then everyone’s favourite boyband refugee and beloved-by-housewives solo recording artist? No, not that one, the other one. No, not him either, the other one again:
Yes, it’s Ronan Keating folks, pictured above with some music guy from olden times - Bob Dylan maybe.
‘I’m the most heterosexual man you’ll ever meet in your life, and any fucker who starts a rumour to the contrary will get a belt of a baseball bat’.
Well colour me convinced.
This appalling celebrity puff (ha!) piece continues much in this vein, showing Ronan as a hard drinkin’, pussy lovin’, boner fiday hardman, accompanied by a series of moody B&W shots of the self-confessed Barbra Streisand fan - artfully unshaven and clad in a too-tight leather jacket and white tee - straddling a Harley and frowning into the middle distance.
Again: NOT GAY.
Then there's this, a classic you-had-to-be-there moment:
Ronan: ‘I cannot believe people. Why do some people think I’m gay? I cannot understand that.’
Yvonne: ‘Do people think that I know?’
(Hysterical laughter)
Ronan: ‘She’s a lesbian!’
(More hysterical laughter)
Yvonne: ‘Do people think he’s bisexual?’
(Even more hysterical laughter)
Answer to that, Yvonne: no. Or rather, who the fuck cares?
Seriously, Ronan Keating’s preference has never concerned me before but, having read this article, I’m considering quitting my job and devoting my time to uncovering the truth about his sexuality.
And if I have to destroy his family and what’s left of his career (big in Germany and the Netherlands, the article points out, sans irony), then so be it. It’s for his own good.
I mean, did Ronan not get the message of Moby Dick: be yourself, stupid.
Jesus. Is my life is so empty that I can devote an entire journal entry to discussing Ronan Keating?
(Hysterical laughter)
I wish I was dead.
(More hysterical laughter)
SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!
(Even more hysterical laughter)
Seven Days that Changed a Week
I had big plans for this milestone: a glossy full-page retrospective charting the history of Day Month Year, it’s effect on the Zeitgeist, and - in the spirit of post-millennial instant nostalgia - a snappily edited blog best-of with contributions from as-seen-on-TV talking faces, Stuart Maconie, Wayne Hemingway and Jayne Middlemiss.
At the last minute however, my newbestfriends at Here To Find intervened, gobbling what I’d typed of my post, flooding my browser with ‘FREE BEST PORN’ and leaving me without an internet connection for 48 whole hours. A lesser man would have run, streaming bitchtears, up to his room to blast out the latest Avril Lavigne and scratch furiously in his purple fur-lined Hello Kitty desk diary about the total, cosmic unfairness of it all.
But not the Big Dog. Like the seemingly unarrestable R. Kelly, I’m not gonna let pornography be the ruin of me: yes, it's comin’ hot and fresh out the kitchen, and got every perv in here pissin’. After some minor tweaks and bugfixes, normal service will resume… right now.
So... pretty exciting day at work today.
I had a half-hour long conversation with a middle-aged woman (lets call her ‘Margaret’ - that is what she called herself) who tried to sell me a bunch of leather jackets that her son had recieved as a present from an Italian student that had stayed with them for a summer. They’d been hanging in her hallway for five years now, never worn, and still, she assured me, with their ‘certificates of authenticity’ attached.
While explaining this to she would occasionally drift off mid-sentence, muttering darkly about her ‘ignorant’ son who refuses to wear leather and who seems to have some kind of Asperger’s-like aversion to the colour brown.
There’s no real climax to this story, though I did get her number (wahey!), something I point out only because it illustrates how, without any conscious effort on my part, I am seemingly irresistible to Women Of A Certain Age.
Now, I’ve nothing against older ladies. Actually I’m quite in favour of them. If there was a referendum tomorrow on whether or not there should be old ladies I’d definitely vote yes. I mean, if it wasn’t for old ladies, where would old men go for sex?
I also suspect that the wife of one of my colleagues is working as a prostitute, or is ‘on the game’ as those people off of The Bill might say. Admittedly, this assumption is based only on the fact that his wife works at night, and, he says, regularly ‘turns’ a lot of money. Suspicious, no?
I mean, he might have said ‘earns’, but I heard ‘turns’ and have passed on his details to the relevant authorities.
Come to think of it, it really wasn’t a very exciting day at all. Maybe I’ll get drunk and give Margaret a call: get her to come round with that dumb fuck of a son and we’ll try out those leathers.
Setting that image to one side, I’d like now to address something possibly even more disturbing. I’m talking about a perversion that runs contrary to all our natural urges and contradicts some of the most fundamental of our beliefs. I speak, of course, of this growing tide of anti-Anti-Americanism on the interweb, and of this Zoomtard character in particular. Suddenly, it seems, criticising America is ‘racist’.
To paraphrase His Holiness The Dalai Lama: back the fuck up there, bitches!
I mean, if it’s ‘racist’ to say that the whatever million who voted for the Monkey Man are TOTAL FUCKING MORONS then I guess I’m racist.
Support the troops...
... but will you be there to support the coffins?
Now that’s deep, man. This is President Anonymous and I’m repording for dooty.
20041103
Dear America, Go fuck yourself. Sincerely, Rest of World
It's another four years in the Bush: I hope you’re happy MoveOn.org! Get Out and Vote? Go stand in the corner! This is what happens when you engage the young people: they’ll fuck you over every time. Ask them to vote for change and they’ll ask you Who’s Change? (Apologies: I’ll get me coat…)
But really. You thought they’d listen to some crusty with a guitar who calls himself The Boss? That the Dixie Chicks could effect political change with their distinctive brand of countrified contemporary pop-rock? That some old guy with a funny accent who fought in a war in Olden Times could stand a chance against Big Dub, a violent cartoon cowboy whose mangled brand of English could only appeal to the dumbest of America’s youth?
It’s times like these I feel ashamed to be a bleeding-heart Commie pinko liberal faggot.
Still, global apocalypse notwithstanding, I’ll hold out my hopes for Hillary C. running in ‘08. Double X hive thinking should guarantee her 51% of the vote anyway, that is if she can be forgiven for standing by her SEX-CRAZED DEGENERATE of a husband. You know, they still call him ‘President’? Yeah, President McNasty - of the Sex-Mad Anti-Family Alliance. The only Slick Willy I trust is… eh, well, never mind. Ahem.
Of course, she won’t run, - and for her own sake I hope she won’t: she’d be roundly defeated. The Democrats are gonna have to find one hell of a candidate next time round - one who can shake the country free from the grip of the neo-con reactionaries - and that won’t, unfortunately, come in the form of a woman (woman!) who inspires as much ire in Middle America as Ms. Clinton.
Maybe John Edwards can do it - he’s cut from the Clinton cloth alright, but that’s hardly an advantage. Southern Democrat? Adulterer! Look at his easy grin and good-ole-boy charm: HE’S EEEEEVIL!!! No, we need Jon Stewart (Jewish but not a Zionist, v. funny), or Chris Rock (Black, v. Black and v. funny), or Susan Sarandon, who is, quite simply, the coolest Woman Of A Certain Age on this planet.
But enough talk. America is not the world, a wise man once said. It was Morrissey actually, and he said it in his latest album. I’d pimp the Moz for President but, on reflection, I think he’d make a better Pope. He’d have my vote. (You can vote for the Pope, right?)
America does, however, own the world, and the issue of who’s in the driving seat should properly concern us, or me anyway.
Speaking of driving (and me), I passed my DTT today. Go me: I am now theoretically able to drive. If driving were a purely intellectual exercise I’d be flying, so I would. If only driving were flying. Now I have to get down to the practicalities of actually getting into a car and, um, pressing ‘Go’, or whatever, I forget. I got 36 out of 40, one above the minimum pass rate… back of the net.
Turns out I know fuck all about Driving Risk Factors Related to Various Road Conditions in Particular as they Change with the Weather and Time of Day and Night, Observation/Field of View, Characteristics of Various Types of Roads, and Necessary Documents. And can you believe they’re gonna let me out on the road like that!
Now to listen to the new Le Tigre and drive at high speed through built up areas at night with my lights off and while giving incorrect turn signals.
Mood: Giddy disappointment turning, slowly turning, to a murderous ebullience.
20041102
The only Bush I trust is Susan Sarandon’s
(a) increase your speed as traffic is lighter at night
(b) turn up the radio to help maintain your concentration
(c) oh, who cares? Don’t Stop Believin’? Turn it up! ‘Jus’ a small town girl, livin’ in a looooeeeneeeeely woooorrrruuullld!’ Hell yeah! Now floor it for the solo!
I’m not studying though. My mind is preoccupied with events overseas.
My thoughts, TV3 News tells me, should be with the American people, quietly willing them to make the Right Decision. Only they can put an end to all this boring-as-fuck election coverage. Praise be to Allah.
The BBC, I see, has old Peter Snow pottering around on a CGI map of the States. He looks lost, and vaguely embarrassed, as if he thought he’d be part of a serious political debate but instead is marooned in this virtual reality fantasy land. Why isn’t anybody helping him? Jeremy? Jeremy Jr.?
Of course, the end result will have absolutely zero impact on my daily life. Sure, I know who I’d like to win - and I’ve made my views known via my website and through my ‘awareness raising’ tour with Kid Rock.
But to be honest, it’s hard to muster the energy to care. I mean, this is just Bush Vs. Gore all over again, isn’t it? The high-octane Renny Harlin-directed reshoot commissioned by the studio after the Paul Schrader version failed to capture public interest. Ha ha, take that, Exorcist: The Beginning! Puny movie, me smash.
Yes, this time round it’s all big noises and shiny things. Without any pressing domestic issues (except stem-cell research - hello? Science: boring! - and moustache marriage), this year election policies are being painted with the broadest of strokes. A country at war! International security at risk! Europe Vs. America! Britney backing Bush! Michael Moore getting some award in France! (France?! They’re against everything!) Choose or lose, yo! Fate of world! Your hands! Vote - or Die! You tell ‘em, Diddy.
.....DoNt 4gEt 2 *VOTE*!!!1...... ;-) YAY!!!!!111....... lol......
This is the fight for the MTV/ADHD generation: the text polling, red-button punching, sub-literate, numbers-replacing-words types. Any message, it seems, whether it comes from Gore Vidal or X to the Z, is worthwhile, if it gets these kids to care about the politics.
These kids, the ones who are of age anyway, hold the balance of power, and that, to me, is more frightening than whatever administration gets through today.
I’m rambling. Choking on my own rage here - or maybe it’s just these fucking awful pound shop sweets. Bed, I think. I’ll wake tomorrow refreshed and ready to face the brave new world.
Oh yeah, Susan Sarandon’s bush. That’s what you came here to see.
Two shout-outs before I go. First up, the Freak (who really did win an election recently). I’ve already pimped this guy enough over on Friendster - once I find out how to add links to the sidebar, his blog is going there. Commenting here is now open to all, and indeed, sundry - not just the Blogger account-holding elite. Isn’t democracy neat?
Also big up Neuro and her man-missus who fed me and took me to the pictures last night. The Inspirational Cripple film was great but the thought counted for more. You can read her blog here, a truly beautiful act of bloggery - the East 17 to my Mr. Blobby.
Thank you, and goodnight.
Mood: Cautiously pessimistic.
Music: Toots and The Maytals.
Chow: Bassett’s Fruit Salads left over from Halloween, the ones where the paper sticks in your teeth. Mmm, nourishing.
Archives
200410 200411 200412 200501 200502 200503 200504 200505 200512 200601 200602 200604 200606 200607 200608 200609 200611 200702 200703 200704 200705 200706 200707 200710 200801 200806 200807 200808 200809 200811
Subscribe to Posts [Atom]