Look what I got from The Rising Blogger! Last week was plain awful as Orphan Annie sort of said to Daddy Warbucks so I am well chuffed to get this. Seriously guys, cheers!
I don’t win nuffink so I’m going to take full advantage of this opportunity to show off and pretend I’m a big-shot. I’ll start by curling my eyelashes. And then perhaps I’ll behave imperiously to the cat. Everybody else is out, dammit. Where are people when you want to act like a high mucky-muck?
None of us can have missed this.
More then 22,000 people have died as a result of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar (still formally recognised as Burma in the US). Incomprehensible tragedy. 41,000 are missing and an estimated 1 million are homeless.
Buddhist nuns and monks have been spearheading the rescue efforts and trying to clear roadways to villages with little more than axes. The notoriously secretive military junta (the same people who have had pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi under arrest for 12 of the last 18 years) has been slow to ask for international help, even as its people die. The generals have now agreed to admit international disaster teams but the UN humanitarian team are still waiting for them to issue their visas.
The junta is in a sticky situation. It maintains a strict control over outside influence and Myanmar is, to all intents and purposes, a closed country. (Its fatality numbers are still unknown after the 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean.) Allowing aid workers in risks the world seeing in, and also Myanmar’s people beginning to see out. Also, aid workers would be seen by the people to be the rescuers rather than the junta. However, failure to let people in would result in both internal and massive external condemnation, possible national revolt and closer international scrutiny than Myanmar’s generals would like.
This is a poor country whose leaders are more invested in their own power than in the welfare of the people. Its own resources and communications are severely lacking and international aid is therefore the only hope the Burmese people have.
Here’s a way to help. You’ve probably come across lots of portals to donation sites for this cyclone already but I figured one more couldn’t hurt. Who knows, probably a portion of donations doesn’t actually reach victims and goes on advertising and admin instead - maybe even an unacceptably large portion - but a fraction’s better than nothing and all the charities represented here are very visible in the field and well-known.
I’ve been interested in Aung San Suu Kyi, an amazing woman, for a while and consequently have learnt a wee bit about Burma. The country is woefully unprepared for a disaster of this sort anyway but to make it worse, the military junta didn’t even bother to tell the people a cyclone was on its way, people who are denied access to any information from the outside world. This is a natural disaster but it could easily be compounded by human evil, inertia and covert politics if help isn’t immediate and substantial. If people can at least be given vaccinations soon it might halt the spread of the diseases that can kill as many again after these things. It’ll become overtly political again soon enough but, in the meantime, lives could be saved. The numbers are already beyond all understanding.
Police Blotter for the town of Ojai, week-ending May 2nd 2008.
A Thomas Avenue woman was arrested Sunday for failing to make a little birdhouse in her soul when she rammed her car into another vehicle for allegedly “nipping into” her parking spot.
In a rash of related incidents:
A Richard Street man was arrested for making a little bird-house in his soul using mdf instead of sustainably-grown timber.
And a Harry Blvd man was taken into custody for purchasing the Chinese little birdhouse in his soul from Wal-Mart.
In other crime:
A Moe Crescent man was arrested on suspicion of possession of a hazardous processed meat product (sausage).
A Larry Lane woman was detained for questioning regarding possible breach of a local ordinance reqiring citizens to wear at least one article of hemp clothing. After revealing that her underwear was organic cotton tie-die she was given a warning and released to her family who are said to have been worried about their loved one’s rebellion and her “experimenting” with Dockers and GAP clothing.
A Curly Avenue youth was detained on suspicion of not singing along at a candle-lit Crosby, Stills & Nash tribute concert. Witnesses seated near him in the crowd said the suspect appeared to be “only mouthing the words” and that he’d yawned two times during “Our House.”
Check out Eolai’s Spring sale of paintings going on for the next two weeks. Eolai’s work is vibrant and compelling and he’s an interesting man in his writing, art and in person. I’ve been waiting for his shop to get back online for months - he recently moved from Kansas City back to Ireland, so he’s been a smidge busy. But now it’s back and he is selling amazing pictures for washers in a Spring sale. Nothing is over $85, which is a steal when you see his work. These are some really great deals by a gifted, unique artist painting Irish scenes, scenes from around the world (he’s been everywhere - mostly on a bike), figures, abstracts and animal miniatures. Go see!
*
Just read about this: R.I.P Humphrey Lyttleton. You’ll be missed.
(Fair warning: it is not my intention to offend anyone’s sincerely held beliefs but I read the news today and just wanted to poke a little fun at the extremes on each side. They deserve it.)
DEAD BLEEDER DRAWS BIG CROWDS.
Rotondo Farm threw open its gates today as animals from all over the country came to pay their respects to the exhumed body of Padre Pig. Spokesman for the Rotondo Farmyard Church, Padre Creduloso, marked the gate-throwing with Mass and, in an hour long address to the crowd, hailed Padre Pig as “an important figure on Rotondo Farm and indeed the world.”
When asked why, 40 years after his death, the Rotondo Farmyard clerics had decided to dig Padre Pig up and put him on display, Padre Creduloso winked and rubbed his thumb and fore-finger together, adding “‘Ere, this ain’t on the record, is it?”
Famous for his stigmata, (unexplained bleeding from Christ-like wounds) it is said that for 50 years Padre Pig lost a cup of blood a day from his front trotters yet never showed any signs of paleness.
“It was as if the Lord was protecting him and keeping him strong as he bled for us!” cooed Mrs. Dupabla Flowers, (pigeon, 42) a dry-cleaner from a neighbouring farm.
“I have his image hanging up in the back of the shop and from the blessed day he went up we’ve never had any problem getting blood or red-wine or felt-tip pen stains out of delicates. I don’t know what we’d do without him watching over our whites and Specialised Fabrics! And now… to get a chance to see his real-live dead body? Well, we couldn’t miss it. ” she beamed. “We’re all here, the chicks too and I’ve an egg on the way in the car. Wouldn’t it just be the most blessed thing ever if it hatched today, with padre Pig’s sacred corpse only tens of metres away?”
The scene in the farmyard was a busy one with animals of all sorts clucking, squeaking, miaowing, mooing and jostling to catch a glimpse of Padre Pig lying in his bulletproof glass and 24-carat gold coffin, said to have cost 9 million pounds.
“He looks as if he’s merely sleeping” said one shiny-eyed ewe.
The throng were ably sold to by church-approved vendors offering such items as Padre Pig ashtrays and bobble-head Capuchin monks. New for this year, was a novelty Padre Pig ketchup-dispenser which oozes the sauce from its cloven-hoofs when the Padre’s snout is pressed.
“They’re sellin’ better than me ‘ot Padre Pig pies” grinned stall-’older Ivor Beenhad, the official prophet-monger for the Rotondo religious community. “Much better than them 73-virgin themed wrench-sets I couldn’t shift for love nor money last month at Sunnifest.”
TESTIMONY
Many pilgrims present testified to some of the miraculous close-shaves Padre Pig had got them through “by the hair on his chinny chin-chin” in the words of devout hen, Sister Mary-Maria, bearing witness on a small apple-crate to her own unsightly-facial-hair problem spontaneously disappearing the day she was rained on by a Padre Pig shaped cloud.
Driving instructor Mr. Nye Eaves (sheep, 38), told us “I have been in 33 near fatal crashes since I’ve hung Padre Pig’s image in my rear-view mirror. 33! God keep me but I could feel his bloody hands cocooning me accident after accident as my young student-drivers had their brains bashed out on the windscreen. Without the Padre (may the Lord bless his bleeding self!) protecting me, I’d have been mutton a long time ago. Plus 33 is the age at which Our Saviour died so that must mean I’ve reached another level of protection now - like in Quake. I think my car insurance premium decreases anyway.”
PROTEST
Also present on the fringes of the crowd were a small group of protesters. Professor Richard Scoffly-Squawkins (goose, 65) led a peaceful but vocal demonstration of around 100 animals.
“It can be scientifically proven that the cause of Padre Pig’s so-called stigmata was really just a bad prickle embedding in his hoof-cleft” Prof. Scoffly-Squawkins told me. “Initially at least. Then with the secret help of the Pigeon Nuns of The Sacred Heart Of The Blessed Bawling Virgin Convent And Dispensing Chemist, he administered a daily solution of carbolic acid to induce all consequent bleeding from the wounds. Once again, the Church tries to dupe its credulous flock with egregious chicanery of this sort. Well that’s all very well for the poor and stupid but when educated people like you and I hahaha believe in this sort of thing then there won’t be anyone left to listen to me! That’s why we’re protesting today.”
When I asked Mr. Scoffly-Squawkins about his detractors charging him with arrogance, disdain for, and a lack of any understanding of real animal’s real lives outwith the confines of pure ivory-tower academia, he said “Well, have they written best-selling books in another discipline entirely from the subject at hand? Are they professors living lives largely separate from the common experience? No. I didn’t think so. Clearly I’m much cleverer than they are and they should all be listening to me, shower of feeble-minded, crutch-leaning, dim-wits. Look, here’s a free copy of my latest book. Pre-signed. Now would you mind very much buggering off? I want to look at the stiff’s hands before they wheel him away for the night.”
Later, I caught the distinguished professor again and asked him whether or not the strategy of showing contempt for perfectly decent lay-animals and their beliefs thus leading them to harden their attitudes in self-defense, becoming, in fact, less and not more open to his ideas, wasn’t a bit, um, stupid.
“I mean for a clever man such as yourself, doesn’t it betray a real lack of understanding about your fellow creatures and the enormous mental leaps that individuals have to make to reassess their whole lives if they are born and raised in strongly religious circumstances?” I elaborated.
“No,” spluttered the eminent scholar, best-selling author and believer that “anything but cool-headed rationalism at all times is weak and, ugh, human.”
“You may well be right in your theories, Professor Squawkins,” said a bold and handsome stallion, appearing suddenly from the crowd. “But you cannot make people reexamine their beliefs by shouting at them and telling them they don’t understand. In order to carry that off you have to get at them when they’re born. That’s the Church’s advantage.
“Couldn’t it instead be said that man makes his own meaning in life? There might well be a God in His heaven but he demonstrably doesn’t seem that bothered about enormous human suffering when it happens, so he doesn’t seem to be the personal God preached by the major religions. Couldn’t that mean therefore, that the best way to understand truths about ourselves and the world we live in is through literature, which after all is just the art and science of ourselves trying to explain ourselves to ourselves in all our moods and madnesses?”
At that point unfortunately the photographer died and it started to rain and, urm, what else, oh yes, I fainted with desire and then remembered I’d left the oven on and had to leave immediately, with the stallion who happened to be going my way anyway. Reports of our being spotted at a quiet and intimate hayery 20 minutes later are exaggerated. It was 40 if it was a minute. Unfortunately, however, the coverage of Padre Pig’s corpse exhumation was cut short at that time.
Tomorrow, what new scarf trend has the Park Lane puddleducks all of a gaggle? Plus an in-depth feature on how to tell the children daddy’s been eaten, but not in the OK way they eat Jesus on a Sunday.
Report filed by Sam Problemdonkey.
Techie Update: My apologies to those new commenters who’ve been languishing unseen in my moderation queue. Wordpress has decided it can no longer alert me of new callers and it no longer tells me who’s linking to me either. Tomorrow I back up and upgrade see if that’ll sort it out. Sorry!
Last night I had cause to tell a pal I don’t watch much telly. “She doesn’t” confirmed my husband. Recently I had cause to tell another pal the same thing. (Maybe I didn’t have cause, I can’t tell because my internal editor doesn’t show up for duty when she knows I’m going out for a drink. She trusts me to get by just opening my gob and shooting out whatever flotsam and jetsam happens to be floating round the inside of my cranium. She is a fool. She, is also, however, just a floaty concept, I have final say over me and I can see an opportunity where I coulda kept my mouth shut and didn’t. This bothers me because noone likes to hear themselves sounding like an ass. I spend all day pretending I’m not an ass which involves time and effort and a good deal of denial, so it’s wincing when I realize I might really be the very same ass I’m pretending I’m not. If you see.)
At any puddling rate, it did so pass, that I mentioned I don’t watch tv. I know exactly what this sounds like and so I tried not to sound too airy about it. Therefore I’m betting it came across as pretty damn airy. I could tell my pal had heard people say that before - we all have, they’re usually making a big (airy) deal of it - and was probably thinking, yeah, right I bet you think you’re such an intermallectual and all, not swimming in the pop culture pond with the rest of us.
I know my pal thought that because I’ve heard people carrying on that way myself and thought the same thing. There are people who I know veg out with the TV guide every night of the week, but will declare (airily - I don’t think it can be helped, it’s an inherently airy-arse thing to say) to people at dinner that, acksherly, they rarely look at the tv much other than for the news, isn’t that right, Clyde?
They do it in the same voice that they’ll tell you they’ve never once thought an uncharitable thought about the Pakistanis/Germans/Japanese or that they wouldn’t dream of drinking red wine with turbot or that they’ve never been anything but 100% behind their son dropping out of uni to become a juggler. They’re the same people, as Medbh was saying recently, who make you take your shoes off in their house.
There’s a snotty, snooty superiority associated with not watching tv: pop culture is much too trivial for you; you wouldn’t deign to watch as much as an episode of Eastenders; you certainly wouldn’t want to sully your mind with the sort of trash the hoi polloi are watching, for good grief’s sake.
I don’t think that. Well I do a bit - I’m as snotty as the next person when it comes to supping from the common pop-culture soup-trough muchly because some spots are murkier than others but, after all, this is the thinking of a person who grew up in the days when Noel Edmunds and Mr. Blobby were big stars. Usually though, as long as the next person along’s not peeing or trimming their toe-nails into the trough, I’m happy enough. Tv dramas alone (apart from Morse) have certainly never been better and The Office was genius.
Like most of us, I lovey/love/hate pop culture, and in about these proportions: 2:1. But liking it or not was not what made me stop watching. The things that did were pretty simple.
1. I don’t want my kids to see me watching it for hours on end. I limit my girls’ telly-watching to 15 minutes a day each, while the other one’s having a bath. For kids today, certainly in the US, it’s not like when I grew up and tv shows were part of a common shared culture that we 30-somethings like to reminisce about on late pupil-dilated nights, (Ooooh, (flapping) remember The Flumps? And Mr. Ben? and Bagpuss? Aaaaaaw) so I don’t think they’re really missing out on any bonding thing with their peers who’re all watching different channels anyway.
Point is, I can’t very well sit there goggling the box myself without looking like a rank hypocrite to them. Children begin to grow up as soon as they realize their parents are fallible. They’ll find out my failings soon enough - but I don’t want to make it too easy for them. I want a few more years of being an all-seeing, all-powerful mammy.
2. A fear of time passing me by. The last thing I watched with any regularity was Deadwood, a year or so back. Since then I watch the news, The odd Daily Show with John Stewart and on Friday nights I watch Real Time with Bill Maher and that’s it. It’s not that I think I’m “above” tv - not at all. I’m a child of the 80s, I freakin’ loved it. I watched 3 series of The Apprentice, for Trump’s sake, and Project Runway and Changing Rooms and Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.
But television’s a costly lover and it’ll eat up your life. In front of the telly, before I know it a whole night’s gone and I’ve done nothing. I’ve spent a whole bunch of time (yes time can come in bunches, doubters. It’s the Bunch Principle of Space and Time Theory. Developed by a Ms. Brady. Of immense importance to grapes) to see the 2 things i wanted to see, between which it was hardly worth getting up and doing anything else, and I’m annoyed with myself at having frittered away time like that.
It is though, much easier to give up telly if you’re an expat in the US. You have no real loyalty to any shows or channels. The constant adverts with most everything except HBO means the whole thing’s irritating anyway. But if Eastenders was still on BBC America I’d be watching that. (I signed the online petition to keep it on!) If I was still living at home, no doubt I’d still be watching Countdown, The Simpsons, a sitcom or two, one gritty police drama or another and the rest, and thoroughly enjoying them all. I’d also be reading less and blogging less and the older I get, the more time I want to spend on these two things; the more they trump telly.
This isn’t an article of faith for me: telly bad! Sam no likey telly! It’s just a new habit of watching less rather than more. I watch the odd documentary and I watch films, but these days I purposely avoid any series, reality, drama, comedy, whatever, unless something is recommended to me. Medbh says the Wire’s brilliant and I watched an episode and loved it so now I want to see them all. Curb Your Enthusiasm is great but I’m not going to rearrange my schedule to watch it.
And honestly, I don’t miss it. Instead I spend about half the evening pootling with the pooter and the other half reading. Both are participatory hobbies, demanding something of you more than just telly-watching does and at the end of the night when I’m brushing my teeth, I feel a bit more satisfied; I don’t feel as if I’ve lost an evening. I also like to re-read things but, in the past, it’s always been a luxury: who’s got time for that? Me now! A bit more anyway since I turned the tv off and keeping it off became a habit.
And that’s it. And I really recommend it. Stuff gets done.
HOWEVER…
The internet was out last week for a day or so and I felt like I’d been cut loose from the world. That can’t be right, right?
Still a slave to new media, I.
What the hell is up with this land? There have been birds tweeting all night long! I’m half insane with it. I mean, look here, Songbirds, this isn’t New York. Get to sleep you knobby-kneed fluffballs! This is the country and you’re supposed to know rural laws better than anyone. You’re meant to go to bed at sundown, as cutely as you can manage it - heads under wings and adorable stuff like that. You’re not meant to party til dawn. Unless you invite me, I’m just not going to have that sort of deafening twitterfest in the garden all night long. I know there was at least one of you still tweeting “I Will Survive!” at 5am. That’s not even right! You should be on to 80s stadium rock and vomiting by that hour. Pathetic.
And far beneath our feet California’s fate is being shaped (and cracked) by massive seismic forces beyond our control. Is this why the birds are tweeting at night? They know first, you know, the animals…
We live about 100 yards from a fault called the Villanova fault - part of the Lion Canyon fault complex, which despite sounding like a West Coast Woody Allen kitty-based neurosis is really something that might bring our whole lives crashing about our ears. Cos the big one’s coming.
There was a big report at the weekend saying that California is 99% likely to have a 6.7 or more magnitude earthquake
in the next 30 years. We’re way overdue and they reckon Southern, as opposed to Northern, California is more likely
to be hit. It could happen today, next week or next decade but it’s coming, that’s for sure.
California has so many fault lines it looks like the leg of a varicose-vein sufferer. Some are gentle sliders and are less dangerous but the section of the San Andreas fault - which is the one expected to judder, setting off a chain of judders in the other faults - that goes through the LA basin is a sticker and in a 7.5 earthquake they predict surface ruptures and a shift of 12 feet. There’s a 46% chance of one that big.
California just doesn’t like people living on it. She’s* dry and fiery, then, if we’re still clinging to it after that, it’s wet, flooded and mud-slidey, and if we still haven’t got the message it doesn’t want itchy people on her back, California will heave a massive shoulder and try to shake us off. There are more hostile lands to live on, and all in all, California’s been pretty patient with us and put up with a lot, but she’s about to wake from a nap and she’ll be grouchy when she discovers we’re still there.
So what can we do about it? Bolt all the bookcases and pictures to the walls because it’s the falling stuff that’ll kill you. Have an emergency back-up source for power. Get together a kit with food, water-purification tablets and first-aid stuff, and don’t step on cracks in the sidewalk I guess. I don’t know but I think I’ll start with getting a gun and shooting all the bloody night-tweeters. As long as our every moment is potentially parlous, I want to get my rest so I’ll look fabulous when I’m being crushed under a bridge somewhere, whenever that shrieky, shaky day comes.
I worry about the kids mostly. They’re really small. It would only take a tiny wee crack to disappear them.
But seriously, poo.
* You can tell Florida is a boy just by looking at him but I’m assuming California’s a girl cos she has an “a” on the end of her name, and then there’s the whole San Francisco bay area. If you are a boy though, California, please accept my apologies.
I was looking at the CNN website tonight and their “Quick Question” of the day was this:
Is faith or religion important in your choice of presidential candidates?
As “Our Girl In Ojai”, I decided to put that very question to random people in the street in my own town of Ojai. Yes, in the dark, what of it? An intrepid reporter must be ready to spring into action whenever she senses the opportunity for an easy poll. Some people say mere vox-pops are lazy journalism, meaningless to all intents and purposes, and just a cheap way to fill column inches better used for serious analysis. I say it’s been a long weekend and I need both a literal and figurative walk-in-the-park. So bite me.
Mrs Jennifer Ennuyer-De-Tout (39 (yeah right)) Power-walking:
“Darling, I couldn’t care less if the presidential candidates worship the blocked follicle round Dangermouse’s third whisker as their lord and personal saviour. I just want to know their plan for more affordable butt-lifts.”
Margery Toolbridey (67), walking daschunds:
“I think it’s really sad how we as a nation have lost our faith. In fact, my church has launched a crusade to teach the message to our young folks. It has a three-pronged message to remind them of the three prongs on Satan’s fiery trident prodding their buttocks for all eternity if they don’t take heed. The first message prong is “Judaism is for Jerks!” The second is “Islam Threatens Our Very Way Of Life And Wants To Steal Our God-Given Oil So Just Say No To Allah!”; and the third prong is “Mormonism Is For Queers, Gaylords And Perverts.”
What’s that, dear? A more positive message? Oh well, “Jesus Saves!” obviously, and, despite it sounding a bit Catholic, we’re also keen to promote “The Sacred Heart Of The Blessed Doctrine Of The Holy Trickle-Down” because supply-side economics and fundamental Christianity go hand-in-hand. “Jesus Saves!” is itself an injuction to be frugal. I mean it’s a scriptural fact that Jesus was a fiscal conservative…It isn’t?… Oh well it’s practically a fact and if that’s good enough for my minister, it’s good enough for me. My gosh! I mean I think we can all agree that Our Lord was certainly the type of fellow to have a savings account to look after his own retirement, can’t we. Jesus wasn’t a sponger. He didn’t expect the State to support him, he wasn’t a tax-and-spend bleeding-heart pinko. “Get up and walk!” Isn’t that what he told the cripples? Not “Here’s some free money, the number of a good support group and a pamphlet about your rights.” No!
Our Saviour was a Reagan-style Republican, no doubt about it. He even taught us “Suffer the little children.” Of course, that was the olden days and things were very different back then. We don’t believe in letting the little children suffer now - although I maintain that little 12-year-old trollope who brought the charges against my husband was asking for it!! No we no longer believe some of Jesus’ more old-fashioned ideas any more than we still believe the thing about the rich and the camel through the eye of the needle. We don’t even drive camels nowadays, we drive SUVs if we can afford them, so the analogy doesn’t work, you see. God never intended that we should believe everything in the bible - that would be ridiculous. And anyway, I personally believe a loving God would allow chronically obese people who can’t walk the length of themselves to drive to the pearly gates in an SUV.
Neil Strangefellow (23) Picking scabs, moaning softly, rocking back and forth on a park bench:
Frankly, I think there’s too much faith in things of all sorts. I would like to see a presidential candidate who utterly lacks faith in everything “known” to man. I don’t believe in anything. I mean you can’t, can you? It’s sheer human hubris to be all “E=mc2″ and “macaroni and cheese is delicious” Oh yeah? Says who? What gives us the right to make these blanket declarations, eh? Take gravity - how do we know gravity’s not just an incredible series of countless complete coincidences? I don’t believe in it. I don’t believe in you. Or me, for that matter. At a stretch I might believe in underpants, not your’s, mine. But even they could be a hoax.
Unwilling To Be Identified (42ish) Lurking in bushes by swings:
“Maybe. Who wants to know?”
Miss Alli Teratesalot (34) Jogging with cat:
“My heart goes out to the candidates, you know? What with polls and pundits and the prying press, it must be terrible trying to pander egregiously to different religious groups and maintain a flimsy commitment to the separation of church and state.”
Mr Chuck Just Chuck (49) Shooting squirrels and admiring his Jesus tattooes:
“As a religioner myself, I just have one question of the candidates: Armageddon - sooner rather than later? I mean a candidate’s position on that could affect our whole environmental policy. It might not even be worth preserving energy and pursuing renewable resources if we only have a few more years before the Rapture. If it’s anytime soon I plan to burn some tyres and diesel in a pristine spot and barbecue me some endangered species, oh yeah…go out in style wid my buddies from the bar prayer-group. I’m not voting for anyone who says the End’s coming this side of the play-offs though. I can’t get behind a President or a God who’d let that happen.
Miss Tenderfoot Rainwillow (45) Chanting and lying naked within a circle of stones beside a phallicaly-shaped wood-carving:
“Oh, I really don’t care about their faith or their religion. I just want a candidate who’s spear-i-chew-ul, you dig? O Mighty Spirit Of The Oak! Come metaphorically impregnate my fertile womb lalalalala…goddess…bracken…lalalala” (Miss Rainwillow breaks off into chanting and personal insanity)
Might not be around much this week cos the weeyuns are on Spring Break. I shall try and keep their boozing and wild-partying to a minimum by distracting them with bicycle lessons, nature-rambles and crack cocaine.
I don’t know though, I worry that they’re a bitty too young to have the training wheels off yet. God knows what they’ll be like on the highway without them. As it is I’ve just about had it with the police dragging them home for scooting-while-intoxicated down the car-pool lane - on weeknights too! I always wait up for them, you know, no matter what hour they come staggering in, drunkenly demanding to be read a story and tucked in with teddy. They don’t know how I worry.
Oh, I could put my foot down and tell them they’re not going out with grade-school boys after 7pm, but 5-year olds these days just don’t listen, they have their own lives. And, quite frankly, at that age, I was running drugs for Charlie “Masher” MacInnes - and making a pretty penny too (I was saving up for a “Watch-Her-Hair-Grow” Girl’s World). The sick thing was, I didn’t even want a Girl’s World, but all my friends had one, see. What I really wanted was a pony. You can’t admit that when you’re 5 though, you’d get called a baby and lose all your street cred immediately.
So you see, it would be hypocrisy for me to tell them what they can and can’t do. And they’re good kids really. I just wish they had more of a work ethic. I was a Division Head for Masher by the time I was six. Regularly muling to Ullapool and everything. Nobody would suspect a child in those days and, besides, they’d find so many Stornoway stowaways under the lifeboat-tarps - kids, crofters, the mayor - that an unaccompanied minor on a ferry didn’t arouse any alarm bell. Not even when the bags burst in our stomachs and we vomited everywhere, our eyeballs rolling back into our head. Even when a drug-foal out-and-out died from the sudden rush of Class A drugs to the major organs, people - although saddened, naturally - just said it was probably down to a bad-crossing, agreeing that it was a bit choppy that day,* right enough, and that they expected that the Looooooooord** was just up to some of His famously Mysteeeeeeeerious Ways again.
*True for 98% of Minch crossings, so the only surprise was that there weren’t more fatalities. Obviously, this meant that God was smiling on Lewis folk more than we even knew and this was just divine proof that we were right in Heaven’s eyes for insisting that Comhairle Nan Eilean tie up all public swings on Sundays, the day when God looked at His creation and saw that it was probably not going to be good for a lot of people (pestilence, war, famine etc), became depressed by that, especially after all His beautiful work on the snowflake - and that henceforth, on the 7th day of each week, merriment would be most holily forbidden; proof piety pays.
** Ullulated very slightly but not in that funny foreign way they do in the Middle East, - huh, just a bunch of show-offs drawing attention to themselves. More in the gravely domestic way we do in Lewis. In fact it probably wouldn’t be classed as an ullulation at all, but fall more under the rubric of a quivering querulous quaver, or whatever.
Chaos today as celebrities marched in Ojai to protest their being left alone too much. The march, organised by David Hasselhoff, was proceeding down main-street, largely ignored by Tuesday morning trinket and art shoppers, when a scuffle broke out between Mel Gibson and Barbara Streisand about the Crucifixion, and agitation spread quickly through the crowd of already inflamed celebs. An Ojai Snooze reporter (me) was on the scene and witnessed events as they got out of hand.
“It was like a war zone,” I told myself in an interview later. “There were crazed celebrities everywhere. Cher was stamping on Paris Hilton’s head with a 6″ heel. Hulk Hogan was upending hybrid cars and yelling something about getting that bitch Judge Judy. Hanging perilously from a helicopter, Sean Penn tried to distribute aid parcels to puzzled people below who kept insisting they weren’t starving. As she marched, Kate Hudson had an aide hold a wind machine in front of her to make her golden hair billow attractively, but the aide carrying the machine walked backwards into Kirstie Allie’s spiritual-and-menu advisor. The advisor’s beard got sucked into the wind fan and the poor man had his chin scalped clean, the bloody beard hanging uselessly from the wrecked fan, turning slowly in the breeze like some mangled pastiche of a squirrel.”
Just because I was interviewing me about the incident, though, didn’t mean I didn’t ask the tough questions.
“Just how killer were Cher’s boots?” I asked gravely, watching me closely.
“Almost fatally killer by the looks of Paris” I recalled. “But luckily the celebutante’s head seemed of a curiously rubber consistency- Cher’s boot heel fairly boinged off it.”
A gracious, and dented Paris later told me that, had she succumbed to the stamping, there would have been some solace for her family in knowing that she’d been slain by really truly killer Prada boots - “I mean like speshull, you know? - Butter-soft Italian lamb-leather, totally finely hand-tooled into, like, a poem of baby-sheep-body and sole. Sooo hot.”
This morning’s furore, which resulted in one death of an unimportant plain person, some serious ego-injuries and a half-dozen boob deflations was described by some as “the worst carnage Ojai has ever seen since the great cut-flower shortage of the 80’s.” Readers may remember that day back in the dry summer of ‘84 when mobs of angry housewives with nothing fabulous to put on their entrance-hall tables, stormed Mr. Bently, the florist’s and held him hostage until he promised to force them some daffodils in his poly-tunnel.
That day, Black Tuesday, claimed the lives of an organic butcher, an artisan baker and a sacred-herb-scented candle maker and is still marked every year in Ojai by a tasteful outdoor cheese-and-wine party, the release of three white doves and a 50% off, one-day-only mourning-sale in local shops.
Today’s demonstration was a protest on the part of the area’s celebrities ostensibly about local people failing to hound them for their autographs. But the protest was part of a larger set of grievances at being outrageously allowed to live quiet, undisturbed lives in a town respectful of its more famous citizens. Spokeswoman Kim Basinger, youthful in Roberto Cavalli sweatpants and a simple, white GAP t-shirt with “UNDERSTATED” emblazoned across the front in gold sequins, said in an interview after the riot that Ojai’s resident Stars Association were “saddened” at ordinary people’s seemingly complete disinterest in them as they tried to go about their daily business. “It goes completely contrary to what being a star is all about,” wept Basinger suddenly.
“Tom (Cruise) was in tears last week when he was able to sit in a coffee-shop and drink 8 soy lattes before a small child recognized him and asked if he was gay,” said an indignant Kim, now recovered again, her eyes flashing with anger.
Other witnesses today reported that trouble also broke out when Oprah and Dr, Phil went on a “FREE! compassionate advice-giving tour” of the farmer’s market, and that “Dr. Phil’s feelings were hurt”, when he tried to give a cauliflower-shopper some advice about “sticking with it.” The ordinary person asked him what the expletiving sexual act he meant. Dr. Phil indicated with a puffed-out cheeks gesture and a comically-affected wobbling gait, that it was clear the shopper was “disgustingly obese” and that buying a vegetable indicated that he was “owning his problem” and choosing a healthier lifestyle with his cauliflower purchase.
“The first step on the path to getting rid of that obscenely repellent gut is the hardest one to take, but you’ve taken it, my friend!” declared the self-help guru.
“What the rigourous coitus?” exclaimed the cauliflower shopper, who declined to identify himself, and proceeded to try to insert the cauliflower into the anus of Dr. Phil, shrieking “You’re not so intercoursing light on your toes your-incestuously-intercoursing-self, you son of a bestial act common in Wales-ing girl dog! How do you like this colon friendly vegetable, huh, you pompous quantity of toilet-paper? Eh? Huh?”,
The enraged cauliflower man screamed on, until police arrived on the scene and removed him from the market, kicking and shrieking, as Dr. Phil brushed himself off, delicately removed the cauliflower and blamed the man’s being an “asshole” for his poor behaviour.
Meanwhile, in the next aisle of market-stalls, Oprah was advising a 79-year old woman, Miss Betty Dearheart, that “that home-made lemon mayonnaise may look good now, girlfriend, but wait til that sucker’s stuck on your booty!”
Witnesses say the elderly woman tried to shuffle away from the wild-eyed Winfrey, but then Dr. Phil came flying over the hand-made soap stall, wrestled the senior citizen to the ground and assured Ms. Winfrey that it was OK and not to panic, he “had the b$%*h under control. They’re an unreceptive crowd,” he added, shaking his head sadly and massaging his anus, also sadly. “They’re not ready to confront themselves yet. This town is hurtin’, hurtin’ real bad.”
I asked Bassinger if moving to a small town away from the Hollywood papparazzi didn’t imply a desire on behalf of the stars to live an unmolested life.
“Well, yeah - like duh,” she said. “But, I mean you don’t really expect it, do you? Studies and studios both show that stars need almost permanent adulation in order to shine, you see, and by not revering or indeed reacting in any way to, seeing, say, Shannon Doherty in a headscarf trying not to be spotted at the Post Office, you are causing us anxiety about our own self-worth and fabulousness that translates into poorer performances in our movies. You suffer in the end.”
“Maybe people in Ojai just aren’t that impressed by stars,” I ventured. “After all, there are many talented secondary industry people living here: screen-writers; directors; set-designers, costume-designers and special effects folks; animators; producers; stunt-men and so on. And perhaps the non-Hollywood folk, the teachers and the house-cleaners and the store-owners and the soccer moms just don’t care to intrude into other people’s lives. Could it be that you’re just not that interesting?”
At this Ms. Basinger’s chin began to dimple adorably as a fat tear rolled slowly down her flawless cheek.
“But we give and we give and we give,” she howled. “Nobody knows how hard it is for us to be so free with our emotions and how we’re forced to peddle them for massive amounts of money - do you have any idea how much self-involvement that takes? It’s exhausting! Nobody but a star knows how wearying it is to have to do Leno and attend a charity gala event in one evening, ONE EVENING, people! It’s like slavery or something! Oh, it may look like an easy life to you with our limos and our stylists and our personal assistants but we’re far more sensitive than you people. That’s why we’re special. We feel more than ordinary people do, you know?…”
At this point Madonna jogged up and interjected, putting a consoling arm around the gently weeping Basinger.
“And I’m tired of being criticised for being a Kabbalist,” said Madonna, veering wildly between Cockney and Liverpudlian cadences. “They say this is just another shallow Madonna fad, a fuzzy spiritual hobby with cute accessories. But you know, wearing the humble red thread wristlet and calling myself Esther is something that moves me deeply. Until Kabbalah nothing else had ever managed to move me more than myself and my own harrowing personal struggle to make it to the top, so I feel it, like, deeply, you know?” Here Madonna inclined her head slightly and put a slim hand over her heart, as if willing me to understand the real her.
“The other day I had Posh round at mine dry-crying on my shoulder…” ranted Madonna in a possibly clinically relevant rapid change of tone, and now using an Estuary accent.
“Excuse me, dry crying?” I interjected.
“(Sigh) Posh can’t cry real tears because of make-up considerations. Do you even know how long that look takes several style-professionals to achieve every morning? A genuine emotion could wreck it. Have you any idea what it’s like to be super-super-sensitive and maintain flawless day-to-evening mascara?” Madonna’s voice softened. “Behind Posh’s joyless demeanour and cold, dead eyes I knew she was really hurting, you know?
The clearly exercised star went on in a more Home Counties/Brooklyn accent, “Babs Streisand is a wreck because she can clearly see the way forward for the country in our foreign policy and nobody will listen to her! I mean, it’s unbelievable! Ashton Kutcher can’t get anywhere with his harrowing novels of existential doubt in a 1920’s Czech surfer dude, and Kevin Costner’s thinking of starring in another crappy baseball movie. Do you know how unhappy we are?”
I said I didn’t.
“Very,” said Madonna, angular in a “Free Europe Now!” t-shirt. “And with all the money we spend trying to be happy, we simply can’t have the fans upsetting us!”
At this point Madonna spotted Demi Moore and abruptly left the interview, squealing “Demi, you look fabulous…!”
Updates on the various law-suits stemming from today’s riot will be published as they become available. Also, there will be an update on the condition of the dead person, although, sadly, he is not expected to come round.
This just in: Governer Schwartzenegger has downgraded the status of todays troubles from a “riot” to a “fracas”, and it’s been announced that all charges against all celebrities have been dropped.
Didn’t the yolks in Cadbury’s Creme Eggs used to be bigger and yellower? I just had one and it barely had a yolk at all. I feel robbed. And the whole thing was tiny! Titchy even! And it didn’t have that Creme Egg taste I remember as a wee girl.
I blame mass-production practices and factory-farming at Cadbury for the pale yolks and miserable sizes of today’s creme eggs. Sad hens give sad eggs. Creme eggs should be laid by happy chickens free to scratch and peck.
In an occasion marked by solemnity and nervous hilarity, last week the cities of Ojai and Stornoway were officially twinned marking what Mayor Janice De KirkFitzMacCohenburgerski (America’s Miss Teen Melting Pot 1964) called “an occasion of immense cultural and economic importance to both towns.” Already an agreement is in place for the exclusive rights to trade sun-dried tomatoes and mutton between the two cities.
“Hahahahahaha!” Stornoway mayor, Mr Uistean “Big” MacAuley remarked upon hearing his Ojai counterpart describing Stornoway as a forward-thinking city with a great future ahead of it. “Oh, that’s a good one, right enough,” he added, guffawing mauvely.
Mayor KirkFitzMacCohenburgerski expressed the hope that the twinning would lead to a whole new era of cultural exchange, particularly for the young people of both towns. A young person, later told us, “Yeah, like, it’s a super-cool idea, furilla. These Scatch kids seem like cool, ya know? Gnarly. I mean at first I was all like, Whoa! what’s wrong with your teeth, dudes? But then I remembered that the Brits have, like, dental problems? And they can’t, like, help it? So I was all Hey man, don’t sweat it, my grandpa’s got the same deal. I heard it’s because of that Tony Thatcher bitch buying them Falklands from Northern Ireland so now there’s no money left to pay the dentists and’ shit. I learned all about that stuff in the World History class I had to take when Pottery and Navel-Gazing got filled up. Yo.”
While in Ojai, the Stornoway delegation are enjoying the hospitality of Rotary Club members who have opened their homes and locked their liquor cabinets for the week.
Mrs. Maggie-Aggie MacKenzie told us about her delightful experience staying with her host for the week. “Oh yes, a ‘ghraidh, I’m having a lovely time. The heat is a problem because I’m under the doctor at home for my varicose veins and I’m supposed to walk a mile every day but I’m chust not used to the heat, you see.” Mrs. MacKenzie dressed in a black wool skirt, thick wool stockings, her church hat and a frankly fabulous itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka-dot bikini bra top, giggled girlishly at “having her interview taken”, went on to describe how she “could never take a tan, I just go red and peel. A-woooohooohohohoho” she whooped, amiably elbowing this reporter off the sofa with surprising strength.
The twinning ceremony, marred only by a single small bladder incontinence incident described by Mr. John Jerome 88, as nothing really - hardly a dribble”, was hailed by all as a triumph. Here are some accounts of the day by attendees, in their own words, when asked what memories they would take away:
Savannah MacLeod, 15 (Stornoway) “Man, you can get Diesel here for washers! I think high fashion at low low prices is what makes America a strong moral leader on the global political scene.
Gerald Butler 63, (Ojai) “Well, mostly I’m just grateful to meet such a fine array of inbred people. I had my reservations at first, of course, but, I have to say, they’re really splendid ambassadors for the Scottish inbred community. A pleasant surprise indeed, especially after all the things I’d heard. I only saw one 11-digited person all week.”
Seamus MacCuish, 50, (Stornoway) “Amazing tractors.”
Sylvia Horborgenssen 49, (Ojai) “They’re just so cute with their little accents and all! I simply adore them! I wish I could keep one. I’m 1/16th Scottish myself, you know! They showed me a picture of their lil old Callanish stones, adn I said to Norm, didn’t I Norm? I said to Norm, we just have to get some of these made up for the front lawn. Cause it’s our hair-tage.”
Colin “Utter Bore” Morrison 38 (Stornoway) “Well they go on about California beaches and that but they’re not a patch on our unspoilt Lewis beaches and what about the rampant consumerism, eh? In my opinion this country’s got fat and lazy, too comfy. Can’t people be happy with just a lonely house, a madeira loaf and poor TV reception? Oh no, it’s “McMansion” this and “gateau” that. And the breakfasts! I mean who puts syrup next to sausages? No wonder America leads the world in childhood obesity…” (There a short muttering conference with with Miss Tiffany MacDonald, 38-26-36 (Stornoway))…”Oh. It appears that’s the Scots, but anyway that’s completely beside the point. The point is, the point IS, where’s the culture, eh? Where are the community bonds, the strong social fabric? It’s all I’m all right, Jack, out here. Nobody knows their neighbours, and why shouldn’t they have to when there’s me putting up with that old witch Peigi-Effie down the lane from me, with her, (affecting a falsetto) “Ooooh could you pick me up some milk when you’re in town, dearie?” and her completely fake multiple sclerosis. And why the helling hell can’t you get a drink anywhere past 11pm on a Tuesday? Land of the brave and home of the free, my arse. And another thing, what about the gun violence, eh? And being 26th in the world for education? There’s not enough long walks to isolated sheilings containing a thousand haunted memories, if you ask me. Not enough bitter weeping and rampant alcoholism for a healthy society. All this have a nice day rubbish. It’s so fake. So insincere. Everything’s just surfaces, healthy, happy, tanned looking surfaces. Everything’s so nauseatingly well-meaning. God I can’t stand it.” At this point Mr. Morrison had to be led away sobbing uncontrollably.”
Katherine-Anice Bolton-Macleod 29 (stornoway) speaking with commas and semicolons and words like “indubitably”: “What’s been most of interest from an anthropological point of view - I’m studying the subject at St. Andrews, you see - has indubitably, for me, been watching the interactions between the two cultures; examining the expectations, the accommodations made vis-a-vis social mores etc. Just this morning at the golf-club breakfast buffet (sponsored by Pammy’s Pampered Pooches), we had a very interesting discussion about how to make a proper cup of tea. Mr. MacCuish had expressed some dismay about the fact that the Lapsang Souchong he had been served was “bloody horrible” and “so weak it was nearly a fortnight.” This led to some embarrassment on behalf of the Ojaiwegians but, after Mrs. macKenzie produced some Tetley’s teabags from her handbag for everyone to try, there followed an interesting exchange of ideas on the practice of adding milk, whether lemon with tea was “poofy” and what was the point of iced-tea, exactly. Fascinating. I think we all learnt a great deal.”
The Stornoway delegation are in town ’til after happy-hour on Thursday, whereupon they continue on to Las Vegas.
Saturday morning dawned or rather nooned. I’d slept the whole morning away. I hate to do this on holidays but I needed the lack of daylight badly. The early afternoon was spent in some mild pain but by 4ish Devin and I were better and capering off to The Ladies Tea Party, an event put together for any women bloggers who wanted to show up. A good number did and a pleasant time was had jawing on blog-talk and cheesy nachos. But there were awards to go to and no time to waste so Dev and I hot-booted it back to the hotel, Dev got changed and I attempted to cover up some of the ravages of two nights drinking and a rainy walk on my face.
Descending the hotel’s case of stairs, all re-primped and re-primed, we met Medbh and Mr. Medbh again and another person. Dev thought it was JC Skinner who I’m sure is a nice bloke and all but I don’t really know him so I nodded greeting amiably and didn’t say much more to the guy. Shortly, it became clear though that, far (or not far, I dunno) from being JC Skinner, the person before us with the big smile was none other than Manuel! None other! Well, I weren’t half excited to meet Manuel and greeted him all over again and then continued to greet him all evening. Events had it such that, as with Gimme, I never really got a chance to talk properly to Manuel and that was a great pity. I did however score some badges off him. Next year - along with finally meeting the much missed Sneezy - this will be rectified and I will scare both him and Gimme into a corner so I can interrogate them to my satisfaction with cocktail sticks and Guinness-boarding if need be.
Anyways, where was I? Here: It was a filthy night so Dev and I took a taxi to the Alexander rather than let the rain flatten and smear our loveliness. Bizzarely, the taxi-driver started on about Toyland. (Toyland? Toyland?) and the ladyboys there. Ah, Thailand, righto. Dev and I sat in the back giggling like schoolgirls and smacking each other to shoosh.
And then we arrived at The Alexander Hotel on Merrion Square. Dev and I skipped lightly tra la la out of the taxi, now well primed for a good night out and off we larked for an evening’s excitement. We went downstairs to get our obligatory name badges and the first person we saw was His Gimmeness. Then His Curliness. It was great to walk in and already recognise some faces but it was almost as much fun to try guessing who was who among all the strangers. I saw some of the ladies I’d already met at the tea party which was good because peering at women’s breast areas to glean a small-font name for the face was not really how I’d hoped to introduce myself to people.
Then, woohoo! who’s this coming in with Eolai? Sniffly! Lemme tell you about Sniffly - he’s like a very winning bear, thoroughly loveable and as generous-spirited a fellow as there is. He wondered off at the end of the night and I never got to say cheerio properly but I hope we’ll meet again.
But back to the event at hand. We all said Coo about how big the function room was and then went to get a drink. Pretty soon the place was swarming. I met the sweet-as-sweet-pie Deb from the tea-less tea-party again - and discovered her to be a doll and full of fun. And then the lovely Jen from Little Bird Eats whose chocolate bread pudding with rum, folks, rum! I shall be making for next sunday lunch.
I’d just settled in my seat for a minute with my cooling pint - it was roasting - when Dev hauled me up and off to meet Mr. Twenty Major, later to become the night’s big winner. He seemed a lovely bloke and not once in our short yackeroo did he call me a lady-bit or a gent-bit or make mention of any coarse coital verb. I was deeply disappointed but enquiries revealed I couldn’t get my ten euro suggested donation at the door back just because Twenty isn’t really a foul-mouthed misanthrope. However, later on, I saw him call an adorable little puppy a bastard and then he punched a passing old lady in the face, just because. I felt a lot better for that.
The awards commenced commencing and the 400 of us filling the room clapped and cheered the winners. Best Blog Post was won by the splendid Fatmammycat. However, because she was off galivanting in Galway for work, she’d asked me to collect her prize for her should she win. So, with 800 eyes all eagerly trying to finally get a glimpse of what fatmammycat looked like, I bumbled my way up to the stage acutely aware of the disappointment I was about to give. I could hear the whispers on the way up “Is that her?”
“I’m not fatmammycat,” I mumbled Scottishly, (Huh? What’d she say? - I dunno she talks funny. I think she said she’s not fmc - Ah, shite.”) In other mumbles I conveyed fmc’s thanks to Damien and her readers and then skulked back to my seat. Whereupon a fellow told me to go get my photo taken.
“But I’m not…”
“It doesn’t matter, the category sponsor needs a photo.”
So I impostered a bit more and, do ya know, I started to like it, knowing full well that this would be the only chance I’d have to catch a whiff of bloggery-prizery. Proudly I clutched the award that wasn’t mine. Happily I rubbed up against the shiny people for the winner’s photo, hoping to catch some lustre. Twittily I gawked and stood around not knowing what to do, wondering if the winners got a free drink.
Fmc was a very popular win and all the night following people were coming up to me and telling me how much they love her blog. That bit was really nice and I relaxed happily into my Ambassador for FMCland role.
After the awards was an 80s disco but our lot skedaddled upstairs to the other bar for some chat. There I got to meet the unique and fabulously talented Sweary and her Mister, the delightful Manuel Estimulo who was piously and devoutly downing pints with his Missus, the sweet Annie Rhiannon and Bjarni, and many more genuinely lovely people too numerous to list here.
We all mingled as the fancy took us and later downstairs I met a young mohicanned man with a belly full of Guinness and an accent more impenetrable than Mother Theresa’s knickers. I smiled, unable to make myself understood either, so instead I felt one of his spikes, knocking it slightly skee-whiff in what I hoped was a gesture of good-will in Mohicannese. In this way we managed to communicate for a good 5 minutes, completely oblivious to what the other was saying, me knocking his spikes off centre and he saying some apparently good-humoured shit.
And that’s all I’ve got time to write just now. Car getting serviced and I need to pick it up pronto. Other stuff happened. Much other fun had and stuff, but I’ll leave it at that. Here endeth the Dublin Chronicles.
Walking into the hotel bar to meet fatmammycat, I paused at the door to scan the room for likely candidates. Directly opposite a woman appeared to be peering at me. I peered back. For a moment we just peered, then smiled. I strode confidently forward into thin air, completely missing a booby-trap step, and reached the exquisitely composed fmc at a sort of bent-kneed stagger. I’m choosing to remember this as a dignified bent-kneed stagger and compared to other moments in the night to come, it was actually one of my more together ones. Bum! I thought. Happily, shame over my inelegant entrance was dissipated almost immediately in my excitement.
Oh Lordy God! I shrieked in my head. Oh boy oh boy oh boy - my first real live blog-meet! Jumping up and down (inwardly) I say “Hallo.”
We greet each other for the first time almost like old friends - a curious moment, strange and familiar, inquisitive, slightly shy and boisterously good-humoured all at once, and one that was repeated throughout the weekend as I met more and more bloggers. We fell immediately into delightful conversation. Fmc is all she appears on her blog and more. She is truly a dazzling force of nature; glamourous, poised, with chin raised slightly and a flick of her wrist, she declares her positions: “I’m against it!” she cries. And with toss of her hair and a decisive nod, “Eeeeeeeep! I approve!” But she’s not merely arbitrarily casting reactionary judgment, all style and no stuff. Fmc can argue her point up the street and round the block because behind every opinion lies a good deal of thought already thought and considerables already considered. I’m enjoying myself. We drink and it is good.
Then we head off into town to meet her charming paramour in one of Dublin’s finest old-style bars. A top night ensues and I know that should the rest of the weekend turn out to be crap, the chance to meet these bright, funny, warm-hearted people has already made the trip worthwhile. And then Gimme shows up! Gimme! By this point I am well on my way to inebriation and to be honest I recall little of our meeting save that I was delighted to meet him and only slightly concerned I may be dribbling. We drink more.
At some point, I cease to remember much of anything at all. And then it is morning. Later I learn that I was poured onto my bed by the sterling fmc and her capital paramour. It had been tricky obtaining my key from reception apparantly:
“No, sorry, we don’t know her room number. Her name? Oh yes, uh… she’s Sam, Sam…um…Problemchildbride?…uh… (Intense chatter)… Yup, we think it begins with a Z”
The receptionist gives them my key, shrewdly deducing that we are not frauds or robbers for, really, what villains would burden themselves with such a pitiful drunken creature? By hook, and probably they had to use a crook too, I am deposited in my room. I remember nothing except a brief flash of thought “Oh. We walk now. Yes” when we were walking back to the hotel.
Friday.
The hurty hurty hurt. It hurts so! My plans for a Joycean tour of the city that day come to naught. I reel about my room for a while bouncing off walls and furniture. I lose many minutes staring out of my window in a stupor watching the smart people striding up Harcourt Street, purposeful, responsible. How strange to be them, I think, as I turn and reel about the room some more.
I get it together enough to shower and go out for a sandwich which I eat in the gorgeous, secretive and nearly missable Iveagh Gardens across the road, the one and only sight I see that day. The short walk exhausts me so I return to my room to sleep some more for tonight I party again!!
Tonight rolls around at about 4ish. I go down to the bar to wait for Devin, one of the people I am most excited to meet. Devin is as down-to-earth as they come, funny as all heaven and hell, and has the kind of nailed-it prose writing style that’ll keep me reading Hangar Queen for years and yelling “Damn, why didn’t I think of that?!” at my pot-plants and kettle. In she walks with an enormous, gorgeous smile, not looking for a second like she’s just come off a delayed transatlantic flight, and for the rest of the time she’s in Dublin we spend a good deal of it in each other’s company. I get the better end of that deal and I feel strongly that the warmth I felt for her via email and the blogs were spot on. Quick-witted, generous and genuine she is the perfect companion. We chatter. We drink.
We duck up to mine with our beverages in hand so I can change and soon we’re heading down to the bar again to meet fmc. Dev has covered that beautifully already so I won’t try except to say that it’s true folks, fmc can control a waiter from across the room with one twitch of an eyebrow even when he’s facing the other way! It’s incredible! Dev can do some pretty arch eyebrownastics herself. It’s only I of we three early supster-sisters who has to actually push mine up with my finger.
We drink at least 3 more and it is great fun, then we part, for Miss Cat is off to Galway early the next day for some noxious work thing. Dev and I make our way to Mulligan’s which we utterly fail to find. We are guided in to land at the bar by Bock on the phone. We squeeze our way through a heaving mass of Dublin men (where are all the women?) which alternates wildly from being deeply unpleasant to really quite pleasant indeed. I make a mental note to never let up on flossing. I have no idea who we’re looking for but Dev and Bock have met before and pretty soon they have honed in on each other across the assorted humanity, greeted each other, and I am meeting Mr. Bock himself.
Mucho delightful curls and as merry as you please, Bock is not nearly the angry man in person that he often is on his blog. And oh what mischief is in these eyes! Behind them he has whole evolved worlds of smarts, wit, acid and extraordinarily beautiful fairy stories - the great mystery of Bock is how all that anger can sit with all that tenderness and whether both things come from the same spot. Bock’s a dear man and a fascinating puzzle. And he has food! A cottage loaf fresh from Limerick that morning, Oh dear, sweet man - did he know how hungry we were? I tear into it like a beast.
In between and sometimes through great unladylike gobs of cottage loaf I meet Conan, Eolai, Medbh and Mr. M in that order but as Medbh and Mr. M are at the other end of a big table in a thundering bar I don’t really get to say much to them at this point. I know that I have the whole weekend to get to know the others but Conan’s only in Dublin for one night and I need to need to drink as much Drumm as I can. We yell at each other, inches apart in the noisy pub. Conan is like your favourite professor, the one you like to drink with, the one whose brain you want to pick about everything, the one you probably have a secret crush on. He is self-effacing, gentlemanly and whipsmart funny and he has the most open and kind smile in the world. I wish he could have stayed on for the awards on Saturday.
And then I get to meet Eolai, of whom I’d become very fond, especially on American Hell. Thoughtful, eccentric and beardy the first thing you notice about Eolai is how still he is. I noticed it several times over the weekend. All around him is whirling, noisy life and he sits in the middle of it almost perfectly still - save for his Guinness arm - like the eye of a storm, watching it all, processing it and letting it back out again in hilarious little comments, cartoons and vibrant art. Eolai is deep, honest, sincere and utterly utterly himself in the way many students try to cultivate but can’t pull off without grandstanding. He is a treasure and I am fonder of him still.
That night I don’t get much of a chance to talk to Medbh and Mr. Medbh but later in the weekend I do. Gorgeous, bright as a well-educated button, petite Medbh with her fire-engine red boots is dynamite, channeling a cross between Bette Davis, Jackie Kennedy and Gloria Steinem. An acute social observer, she has an almost encyclopedic knowledge of films and popular culture and a considered treatment of both. Far from being a stuffy academic though, she bristles with irreverance and fun and is great company. Mr. Medbh is superfit, quiet (and who could blame him in a room full of bloggers) but garrulous after a Guinness and he held his own in a world which many spouses just do not get, nor want to.
So there we were at table. Bock’s scar was just out of my reach for groping sadly. 
And it did look quite the most gropeable scar in the room which doesn’t sound like much of a compliment until you realize that the room had 7 million people in it plus bar-staff. I did cop a feel of Eolai’s beard by night’s end though, and Gimme’s. Of the two, I’d say Eolai uses more of a moisturizing conditioner on his for movement and shine, while Gimme’s all about volume and va-va-va-voom with his beard-care routine. Both beards looked like they had just stepped out of a salon in any case despite the windy weather. Both were very satisfying strokes. And Conan twinkled at me! With his lovely warm smile - a veritable eye-twinkle, as though from a much brighter Sean Connery! *Swoony*. At that point the best I could do was wave to Medbh. Time to move on for we’re all ravenous.
Wandering and biddable as a herd of cats (we nearly lost Conan up an alley) we wound a wet, windy way to a warm, salty lump-selling eatery and ate. Then we repaired to Dev’s and my hotel for more drinks, and there we met Gimme. Angry man, devoted family man, veryveryfitman, full-of-pith and vinegar man, wittywittyfastman and above his luxuriant mufti beard, an exceedingly kind, smiley-eyed man. I saw Gimme every night I was in Dublin but I never managed to have a proper one-on-one yack with him yet. I’ll do a better job of cornering him next time.
Now, lest there be cynicism at just how fabulous I found all these people to be, remember the circumstances of our meeting. In many of the most important ways I already knew and liked them. Blogging friends are self-selected. They aren’t the people you happen to know from the office and for better or worse go out with on a Friday, they are people with whom, long ago, online, you have met and clicked. You talk with these people almost daily, certainly weekly, and you build up a relationship. At any time you can walk away from that by simply not visiting them any more but you choose not to. You go back and back again because you want their particular brand of writing or humour or want to know what they think about a particular thing. Conversations run from the serious to the inane and political to personal. You get to know people in a different way. People from half a world away whether geographically or psychologically. You get to know them well enough that when you disagree it doesn’t matter because you respect and know them to be good, honest people. You learn a lot. Blogging is a strange mixture of the solitary and the social and when bloggers get the rare treat to meet each other we are tremendously excited about it to the point that it might baffle our regular pals. I already knew I liked these people a lot. Having met them, i can honestly say that I have all the time in the world for every one of them. I hope to know them all for many years to come.
Next up - The Blog Awards.
I wasn’t going to post about the Irish Blog Awards. It was fantastic in every way but, for some reason I didn’t want to write the whole weekend out on the blog. And besides, I can’t top Devin’s account. However, I made such a long comment over at her’s -and I’d promised myself not to be writing these mammoth comments - that I’ll do a wee jot on it here.
OK , if I’m going to do it, I’ll start at the beginning and do the toury part too, so this is a bit of a boring post about my first couple of days in Dublin - Sami saw this and Sam saw that and blah blah blah. You want the dirt on other bloggers, right? Right. I’ll split this post and do the Dubliny bit here and the blog awards bit next which is a bit more of a peopled post. That’ll come tomorrow ‘cos I have heaps of things to do this afternoon.
Wednesday. Arrive in Dublin. Am cold. Get bus into town. Find hotel. Very sleepy but don’t want to fall asleep so go out for long walk around all the sights I aim to see in the next few days. (Some of this plan happens and some doesn’t on account of mammoth alcoholic imbibation at night).
At breakneck walking speed I see: Stephens Green, St. Patricks, Christ Church, Dublin Castle, Trinity College, Merrion Square and Oscar Wilde’s house. (Big breath) The house where Yeats died and Schrodinger’s house (the dead moggie theory Schrodinger, not his brother, the unfamous one); Fitzwilliam Square and general Georgian gorgeousness; The National Museum, Leinster House and many unnamed great grand buildings around there. Smashing.
As much as anything it was just lovely to walk about in a European city again with the heaving bustle and the sudden quiet when you turn a corner into a quieter street, all hushed by big buildings and ideals. Now out in the blowy cold struggling with your plastic bags against a salmon leap of shoppers, and the next minute reprieve as you’re holed up in a warm pub with a golden drink and a chuckling good read. I miss that a lot. Dublin is a fantastic walking town.
I crossed the windy river and walked up O’Connell street stopping in Eason’s to get Twenty’s book. I saw the Post
Office where the Easter Rising took place, assorted statuary including the great man O’Connell himself and the equally great but more embarrassed Parnell. There was a massive spire just sitting there so I looked at that and found it to be a good thing, and moved on up to the unfortunately ugly Garden of Remembrance. Then to Parnell Square and the James Joyce centre.
By now I was warmed up but hungry so I headed back towards Grafton Street’s main drag and had an Irish stew and a lager in a pub. Then I was so very, very sleepy. I thought to take another turn in Stephen’s Green but catching sight of myself in a Grafton Street shop window I noticed I was no longer stepping out but was shambling in the manner of an old lady with a double hip replacement. I went to my hotel and slept… until at 10 o’clock when I didn’t.
The hotel I was in also has two nightclubs in it and even on a Wednesday they were packed with revellers who all appeared to have taken their loudest vocal cords out with them too. Singing D.I.S.C.O! Oh, D.I.S.C.O! But never mind! I was on my holidays! I had no responsibilities and noone to look after but me! I’d already had a shower for as long as I liked (!), I had only one face to wash, a mere 30 odd teeth to brush, no requests to fulfill and, apart from the deafening music, peace and quiet. I slept again soon after.
Thursday - massive breakfast in hotel, thinking that way I’d save money on lunch. (Dublin is dearer than a doe and I’d already noticed I was pissing away euros like urine.) Out and about early, off I go, all excited. I spy a bus tour. Why very not? I think, for I am a tourist and touring ’s what I do! I see much of what I’d walked the day before with useful narration from the worst joke-teller in Ireland. Then we head West to the Liberties and reach the sombre and imposing Kilmainham Gaol where the Easter Rising rebel leaders were executed; Not half chilling. If ever an architecture screamed its purpose, the walls of Killmainham Gaol do, and the route the bus took gave an almost cinematic half-circle sweep of the place. It looks like a place bad and bloody things happened; you would know that even before you knew that they did.
A half-mile or so on, I considered getting off for the Guinness tour but it takes nearly two hours and to be honest, though I did get a taste for it in Dublin where it’s ten times nicer than the pasteurized US stuff, I’m not that bothered how it’s made - not two hours worth of bothered anyway. The architecture of that place was eerie too. Massive, high-walled and sprawling like a crop of mushrooms - which it didn’t smell unlike, it was like a menacing Victorian Willy-Wonka factory with the same vibe as the old Battersea Power Station. Films should be made there. Alleyways galore. A small door opened in an enormous brick wall and Oompah Loompahs were disgorged onto the street to light up and linger for a bit before Mr. Guinness needed their labours again.
I was on the top of the open-top bus and freezing like I was a painter of Italian walls but there’s no point in sitting downstairs on a tour bus. Anyway, I needed blood in my limbs which I could sense were returning to their natural tinker’s-tartan and blotching purple ‘neath my clothes, feeling for the first time in a while the chilly winds of the North Atlantic and responding by automatically changing the colour of my skin, cold-weather-chameleon-like in a pinky-blue palate. So I jumped off and took a warming pootle in Phoenix park for a while. I saw the massive cross marking the place where Pope John Paul preached to a million people in the 70s, the presidential offices, the Wellington Monument which surprised me ‘cos I guess I’d just assumed Wellington was English; I took a wee walk in the People’s Park and found out that the MGM lion, Rory (har har), was a Dublin Zoo lion(!) before hopping back on the next tour-bus and so back into town. I saw Bono’s expensive hotel on the ride along the river, the impressive Four Courts of which there are only now 3 and back to O’Connell Street.
My breakfast plan hadn’t worked and now I was starving again, so I picked a random pub, had some kick-ass fish and chips and rolled onwards towards Trinity and the Book of Kells. The college museum also has the Book of Armagh and the Book of Darrow and I spend a happy while in that strangely alert, strangely sleepy museum fug, willingly being guided or herded -I didn’t care - by the huge posterboards explaining the script, the myriad illumination elements and history of the books.
The line for the actual Book of Kells itself wasn’t too bad. I was expecting a lot worse but, when it came time to look at it, it was difficult to get around the cabinet for the peering people. When I finally did I found myself standing next to an oldish lady who smelt of pee. This put me off my own book-peering. Worried that people would think it was me I high-tailed it upstairs to the magnificent Long Library and my breath was taken away. Dark and high and, indeed, long, it smelled of the thoughts of men and women, old bindings, paper dust and, what’s this? Pee? God, she’s back again! I move down the library. She follows me! Go away, old woman! What do you want from me? Unfortunately, because I want to hate her, she is sweet and lovely and murmers a few smiling, appreciative comments to me about the library. I like her. Damn! I move away and examine some fine drawings of birds by some old fine bird-drawer whose name I can’t recall although I bet I could if Mrs Sweetie O’Stinky hadn’t been there. I beat a retreat down to the gift shop.
Blinking out into the day again like a mole, I am in the mood for more book-peering and make my way to Dublin Castle to the Chester Beatty Museum. This is a treasure of a place. I spent a couple of round-eyed hours in the dark there, ogling my way around some of the world’s most precious religious texts. Right there, in the heart of Dublin, is a premier collection of some of the oldest and finest Korans,(Korans in Dublin! - who’d a thunk that?) biblical texts, and ancient Eastern manuscripts in existence. I saw the earliest known copies of the letters of St. Paul, and the Gospels. There were mediaeval books of hours in their original leather bags where travelling priests would keep them on journeys. I saw ancient Chinese law books, Japanese prints, Arabic law and poetry books, Coptic scrolls, Manichean texts, some of the first known korans in existance - the North Afican ones lavishly decorated but the Arabic ones left plain because adorning the sacred was profane to these scribes; and papyrus and parchment and vellum scrolls with holes from the flaying process that the scribes just wrote around. It is a rich, incredible place and Chester Beatty himself was an incredible man. He was a pioneering mining engineer and made his fortune in the Wild West just a few decades after the Wild Bill Hickock days, before moving to London, increasing his wealth and travelling all over. He bought up a lot of his library at a time when the many of the old families of the East would gladly part with a few old manuscripts in exchange for a Cadillac or something difficult to get outside America. He moved his collection to Dublin finally and Dublin is lucky beyond measure to have it. And it’s free!
I emerged feeling as if I’d been absorbed by the books and not the books by me, and feeling dusty, but not. Dublin is all aroar about me after the quiet and I think I might have a cuppa somewhere. But what’s this? It’s nearly time to meet fatmammycat! Back to the hotel for a shower and a bit of a phone home and then downstairs to the bar to meet herself. My first blogger!
More tomorrowish.
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Crazy/Hip Blog-Mamas+
