The ears have walls

2006-02-12T18:50:00.000Z

2006-02-11T22:51:00.000Z

The times they are a-changin'.

2005-11-16T21:16:00.000Z

Wow, it's been ages hasn't it. Call it lack of inspiration, lack of time, loss on interest or just plain old-fashioned laziness.. but I haven't updated this bitch in a while. Here goes.

It's been a busy and productive few weeks, work-wise. It's amazing sometimes to think that I sit at this goddam desk for more than 40 hours a week but can scarcely find time to check out boingboing.net, let alone spend an hour or so a day trawling the useless, expanding interweb for interesting and enlightening shit to share with everyone. I will endeavor to post more ( Agmod, ek praat met jou my maat... ek's jammer maar ek was so vokkin besig, ek sweer.. met werk en met die cherries) and to devote just a few hours a week to keeping the blog up-to-date.

Since we last spoke I've been to a few gigs.. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion were great and played an apocalyptic set which included a back-to-back performance of the whole of Orange as their encore. The Melvins were abrasive and their set was punctuated with these crazy 80's guitar riffs and really leaden drumming. King Buzzo looked certifiably insane and his hairstyle was exactly like Sideshow Bob's from The Simpsons. Dinosaur Jr. was very interesting and the bad juju between Lou Barlow and J. Mascis was so thick it was almost tangible, like you could reach out and grab it. They did play a loud and blistering best-of kinda show and my ears were ringing for days afterwards. I was completely and utterly blown away by Buck 65, a Canadian freakfolk hiphop head who dresses like an admiral and has a voice like Tom Waits filtered through fine gravel. He comes across like some beatific drunken sailor, but his songs are real fine, and his lyrics perceptive, funny and extremely cleverly written. And finally, I saw Public Enemy last night. I use the word 'saw' in the loosest possible sense as all I really saw was the first 20 minutes of their gig which consisted mainly of Chuck D and Flavor Flav screaming 'Fuck George Bush...Fuck Tony Blair and Fuck Gulliani' while members of the mostly male and sweating audience engaged in some seriously bad call/response type shit. Chuck D also managed offend a large portion of the crowd by mistakenly thinking that Ireland was part of the UK, and quickly tried to backtrack out of it, unsuccessfully I might add. I left shortly afterwards.. but not just because of the music... this leads me on to the next paragraph..

I was at the gig with somebody else.. someone special, who I've just recently started seeing (Hi baby) .. and although for days before the Public Enemy gig I was really excited to see the band.. the second I was standing inside that overcrowded room with her all I wanted to do was sit in a quiet corner and ignore everything that was going on in the rest of the city, the rest of the world.. to be alone with her. Have I lost my mind, i hear you ask? Did I forsake the thrill of gangster rap and political shadowboxing to breakbeat rhythms for a quiet evening at home with a girl? Yeah, I did. And you know what.. it was the easiest fucking decision I've made in a long time.

To quote Robert Zimmerman (who I'm going to go see in all his ragged glory on the 27th of this month)..

Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won't come again
And don't speak too soon
For the wheel's still in spin
And there's no tellin' who
That it's namin'.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin'

Out.

Picsies.

2005-10-09T20:43:00.000+01:00

Ok to make up for the fact that I haven't posted anything in a while I have put up some snaps from the Pixies gig in Dublin in June 2004. Look. It's Kim Deal.

And Mr. Black too.

Bowie's Arcade

2005-09-28T00:31:00.000+01:00

Check out this Flick photo set of David Bowie's surprise Central Park appearance with young Canadian indie upstarts Arcade Fire, whose debut album 'Funeral' Bowie famously picked as his favourite record of 2004.

Cokes, Crisps and Glocks.

2005-09-27T21:19:00.000+01:00

A number of handgun vending machines have been placed in university campuses and shopping malls around South Africa, which suffers from one of the highest per capita instances of gun violence in the world. The machines were installed as part of a campaign to make the public more aware of just how easy it to get your hands on a weapon. The line under "insert coin below" reads: "Your donation will go to the Gun Control Alliance, for a gun-free South Africa".

Via We-make-money-not-art.

For he's a jolly good Special Theory of Relativity...

2005-09-27T21:11:00.000+01:00

Albert Einstein's famous equation, E=mc2, is 100 years old today. September 27, 1905 is generally considered the birthday of the equation because that is the day that Einstein's paper outlining the significance of the equation arrived in the offices of the German journal Annalen der Physik.

Via Wikinews.

Bird vs. Plane

2005-09-26T00:37:00.000+01:00

The Smithsonian Institute has a whole department which deals with 'Snarge', or the bloody, pulpy mess that's left over when a plane hits a bird while flying. Check out this Wired photo gallery of what happens when avian meets aviation at super high speeds.

South Africa facing land grabs?

2005-09-26T00:15:00.000+01:00

A South African farmer in the country's North West Province could lose his land when a notice for expropriation is served on him by former occupants who claim that the land was unlawfully taken from them during in the late 1930's.

Three portions of the farm had been acquired, but Visser had refused the R1,75-million offer for the 45ha he occupied. Visser said if what was happening had been in accordance with the land restitution policy, he would have had no problems.
"What is happening here is a self-enrichment scheme that needs to be challenged. I never thought of going to court, but I have been forced to do so.... No one should expect me to just fold my hands when something I struggled for is being taken away in this manner."
Read the full story here.

Is this the start of a mass land-grab along the lines of what happened in neighbouring Zimbabwe? If it is, then it is inevitable that the country will be the worse for it. It was proven beyond all doubt that the re-distribution of wealth and land needs to be supervised at all levels by an international body with powers to intervene wherever necessary. If things go the way of Zimbabwe then all that lies ahead for this beautiful country is decay and eventual ruin. Don't fuck it up Thabo Mbeki.

Late edition

2005-09-21T18:02:00.000+01:00

Ok I know I have been really slacking off on the blog in the last week or two. Work has been fucking mad and I haven't had a minute to check out what's happening on the interweb or to post a thing. Today's a little quieter so I'll try get a few decent posts in during the night. Bear with me gentle reader......

A quick recap of my week:

I got a call from a girl I met last year when still living down in the country. She's from just outside Frankfurt in Germany and we met on a drunken night out in Galway ages ago, but she had to leave to go back to Deutschland a week or so after we met so I never really got the chance to see if it would fit. We kept in semi-regular text and email contact for a few months but that kinda tapered off.. as those things do. Anyways, I got a call from her on Sunday saying she was back in Ireland and really wanted to see me. I, obligingly as always, have decided to take a train down to Galway on Friday night just so I can spend the evening with her. She's flying back home Saturday so once again she'll be leaving me before I know it. Fuck it. If I don't go down to see her then I'll spend the rest of my life wondering 'What If' and I hate playing that game. We'll see how it goes. I'm excited about seeing her and for the first time I'm not really thinking about M. (the other.. see earlier posts) with seething anger and a sense of monumental failure in my heart, which Dr Phil tells me is the first step to recovery and healing. Daytime TV saved my life y'all, and now I'm paying it back in spades.

In other news, I saw a body being dragged out of the Liffey river today on my way in to work. We were in the bus when two or three fire trucks came flying past with their sirens wailing and stopped on the Millenium bridge. People were already beginning to line the quays to get a look. Some rescue guy leapt into the water, swam out about 15 metres and brought this guy up from under the water. He then started to slowly drag him towards the ladder mounted on the side wall but you could see that the guy was dead already. He had probably been in the water for some time by then, and the other rescue personnel along the quay had a body bag out waiting. It was probably a suicide, but I can't find any reports on the web yet. One of my co-workers mentioned that they don't like to advertise suicides, especially ones as high profile as this one - In the middle of the day in the centre of the busiest part of town, right by the tourist hubs. Stands to reason I suppose. Given the morally ambivalent attitude towards those sorts of things in this neck of the woods I wouldn't be surprised if it hardly warrants a mention on the evening news bulletins. At the end of the day it's just some bloated, discoloured dead guy being fished out of the polluted water and hoisted manfully on to waiting ambulance while thousands of morbidly curious and snap-happy tourists look on. I don't know why, if they saw this guy in the water earlier, no-one jumped in to try save him. Fear of picking up cholera from the water? Inability to swim? Complete lack of human emotion and feeling? Who knows... like I said. Just another dead guy.

Jacinda

2005-09-06T22:53:00.000+01:00

the day began as every other summer's did
stifling hot and infinite in possibility
threw on my too-big 501's and headed out into the street
she was waiting for me
hands shielding the glare from our living room windowpane
a frown across her face

we walked through the deserted square
towards the old abandoned porno movie theatre
there's nothing left but the broken dreams
of jilted, breathless teenage queeens
projected onto the tattered screens
in matinee's of indecency.

it was going just as I had planned it that day
our hands brushed briefly as we crossed the road
Oh Jacinda, my face betrayed the moment
for I nervously began to rub my eye
she said "there's no need to be in such a rush
we've got all day and this game has only just begun"

At the poolhall on the other end of town
we picked up a friend of ours, a quiet boy
a stranger but for the fact he lived near me
and a promise made to a neighbour's mom
is a promise that i had to keep
so we set off for the river shore, us noble three.

we sat down on the edge beneath
the arms of an overhanging weeping willow tree
and we spoke at length on treachery and loyalty
and all the things that dwell between
the sun dipped below the lowest leaves
Oh Jacinda, you're the biggest tease

But as the neighbours son turned round
his feet tracing patterns on the stony ground
I grabbed his shoulders from behind him
they felt so small, so undefined and
I pushed them harder than I should
for a harder shove had my own withstood.

and as his body beneath the murky water sank
we both watched helpless from the river bank
oh god please don't blame me
oh god why can't she see
it was nothing but a children's prank
conceived in vanity
just a way for me
to make Jacinda smile.

The emperor's not-so-new clothes

2005-09-06T19:08:00.000+01:00

The cloak that Alec Guiness wore as Obi Wan Kenobi in George Lucas' original 'Star Wars' has turned up in a British fancy dress shop. The shop had been unwittingly hiring it out to punters for years, thinking it was just another cheap knock-off.

Company boss Tim Angel said the cloak was only discovered during a routine stock check."One of the guys was sorting through this pile of monks' robes and saw this brown one with an odd-shaped hood," he said."He put it on and the manager said, 'Oh my God, it's Alec Guinness's cloak from Star Wars'. It's unmistakable, an iconic piece."All this time we have been renting it out to customers wanting to hire a monk's outfit for a fancy dress party.
Read all about it here.

Sean Penn does his part

2005-09-05T18:30:00.000+01:00

Renowned Hollywood actor Sean Penn has taken the plight of New Orleans' residents to heart by launching a boat and helping to rescue stranded people in the stricken city.

The Oscar-winning actor and political activist managed to reach several people who had been trapped in their homes since the hurricane hit Monday. Penn, who was accompanied by his personal photographer and a crew of helpers, brought the victims to dry land - and gave them cash as well. Johnnie Brown, 73, a retired custodian, called his sister on a cell phone after being plucked from his flooded house. "Guess who come and got me out of the house? Sean Penn the actor. Them boys were really nice," he said.
Read the full story here.

Personally, I wouldn't peg Sean Penn as the kind of guy to use something like this as a glorified PR exercise. However, I will be closely watching the press coverage in the next few days in the hope that I will be proven wrong and he'll completely destroy my faith in his ass. Oh ... how the mighty fall. In all seriousness, I think it's great what he's doing and there are many would-be celebrities who hide behind their fat wallets every time the shit hits the fan and not enough of them who actually get off their padded behinds and do something. More power to you Mr Penn.

Via Fark.

The Love Arm

2005-09-04T23:01:00.000+01:00

Ujino Muneteru, a Japanese artist/musician has created a collection of strange and terrible feedback machines - collectively christened 'Love Arm'. He plays these monstrous instruments on stage as one half of the art band 'Gorgeous'.

Ujino makes noise without using a guitar; and he thus distances himself from a history of American rock which centres around the guitar. But, paradoxically as he says, the bat is made from the same wood as the Fender and shares roughly its same weight and size. It is thus in some senses, a guitar Ujino 'plays', but one which has been totally transformed. The two most influential American icons which have entered Japanese modern culture are simultaneously merged and destroyed. He frees himself, if only for a moment, from those two great symbols of American culture in which he lives. The transformed bat/guitar truly becomes a 'Love Arm', an expression of his undeniable respect for these icons, and a weapon (arm) against them, using feedback and noise to make the two indistinguishable. Indeed, Ujino says of his works that they represent his philosophy towards the Unites States.

Via we-make-money-not-art.

Anti-rape condom for South Africa - is it viable?

2005-09-04T22:16:00.000+01:00

A prototype 'anti-rape' condom has been developed by a female South African inventor. South Africa experiences one of the highest per capita instances of sexual assault in the world and it was probably only a matter of time before a drastic measure like this surfaced.

"Nothing has ever been done to help a woman so that she does not get raped and I thought it was high time," Sonette Ehlers, 57, said of the "rapex," a device worn like a tampon that has sparked controversy in a country used to daily reports of violent crime. [...]Ehlers said the "rapex" hooks onto the rapist's skin, allowing the victim time to escape and helping to identify perpetrators. "He will obviously be too pre-occupied at this stage," she told reporters in leinmond, a small holiday village about 100km (60 miles) east of Cape Town. "I promise you he is going to be too sore. He will go straight to hospital."
Read the full text here.

I'm from Johannesburg, and although in some cases this anti-rape condom will be a good thing, both as a physical deterrant and as a means to secure time for the victim to escape, it fatally assumes that the woman in question will be attacked by a lone assailant. Gang rape is a very common form of sexual assault in and around the poorer settlements of South Africa and I can imagine a situation where a group of men would murder the woman in question as soon as they saw their fellow attacker's penis getting caught in this device. It could potentially serve to inflame an already volatile situation

Fear and Looting in America

2005-09-03T00:11:00.000+01:00

My man 'cheeto55' from the Sonic Youth forum has posted a blistering and fearless first person account of what he witnessed when going with his wife to deliver clothes to the besieged Astrodome. The level of helplessness that pervades this entire situation is perfectly captured in this heartrending diatribe:

The administrators and politicians kept saying they did not need anything that they had enough of food and clothes, but anytime the reporters managed to talk to any volunteers or doctors or red cross people, all they could say was "we need EVERYTHING" and "whoever is telling you that there are adequate or sufficient supplies of ANYTHING, from food to manpower, is delusional". So I found a red cross worker and asked and she said if we took it into the dome someone would definitely use it. so we walked down the east ramp, into the saddest, most surreal scene I have ever witnessed in my life. We found a volunteer who took the clothes we brought and told us how much they were appreciated and we went over and signed up to volunteer. First of all, the Red Cross is the ONLY organization doing anything remotely organized. they have NO federal help. NO national guards, NO military personnel, Nothing at all. They are stretched to the limit in every possible way.

Click here for the full text.

Festival bound

2005-09-02T21:50:00.000+01:00

I'm off to the Electric Picnic festival tomorrow, which is taking place in Stradbally Hall in Co. Laois here in Ireland. The lineup for it is fantastic: Flaming Lips, Arcade Fire, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Bob Mould Band, Kraftwerk and Mix Master Mike amongst others. I'm only heading down for the Saturday so I'll miss a few good shows on the Sunday but - alas, alack - I have to work. Someone has to keep the wheels turning in this country. There's also going to be a silent disco, a baroque-style carnival, cinema, homeopathic spa and massage centre, comedy tent and probably more organic muesli than you could shake a stick at. Full report and (hopefully) pictures to come in the days following.

Newsflash: 'Tissue regeneration gene' discovered in mice.

2005-09-02T17:07:00.000+01:00

Scientists have created mice which can regenerate lost limbs and internal organs that have been damaged or removed:

The self-healing mice, from a strain known as MRL, were [...] subjected to a series of surgical procedures. In one case the mice had their toes amputated - but the digits grew back, complete with joints. In another test some of the tail was cut off, and this also regenerated. Then the researchers used a cryoprobe to freeze parts of the animals' hearts, and watched them grow back again. A similar phenomenon was observed when the optic nerve was severed and the liver partially destroyed.
Read more here.

The implication of this discovery for humans is huge. Imagine a future where amputees can regrow their limbs and people with damage to their internal organs can simply lie back while the affected organ regenerates itself.

Via Slashdot

SubbaSculptcha

2005-08-31T18:40:00.000+01:00

Jessica Joslin is creating a menagerie of animal sculptures out of all sorts of interesting materials inluding animal bones, antique hardware and saxophone keys. These unsettling creations range in size from 1 inch to nearly 6 feet tall. Click here to find out more.

Via News of the dead.

Newsflash: Over 600 trampled to death in Baghdad

2005-08-31T16:40:00.000+01:00

In today's OTHER huge disaster (I'm looking at you Katrina) hundreds of people, including many women and children, were trampled to death in a massive stampede on a bridge over the river Tigris.

Nearly 650 Iraqi Shi'as died in a stampede on a Tigris River bridge in
Baghdad on Wednesday, panicked by rumours a suicide bomber was about to blow himself up, an interior ministry official told Reuters. Most victims were women and children who "died by drowning or being trampled" after panic swept a throng of thousands of people heading to a religious ceremony, the official said.

Via IOL News

Update: According to CNN the death toll is now at 965. It may also be interesting to note that this story is the 10th one down on CNN's top stories list, narrowly pipping an article entitled "Study: Male chromosome to stick around." 11:05 PM GMT

Bob, by Burdon

2005-08-31T16:25:00.000+01:00

This is an irie painting of Bob Marley by none other than Eric Burdon of The Animals and War fame. To see this and other paintings/artworks by musicians like Iggy Pop and David Byrne visit YuppiePunk.

Via Stereogum.

Hope Floats

2005-08-31T16:02:00.000+01:00

Alfred, a brave young boy from Benin, had a facial tumour the size of a basketball removed by surgeons, part of a project called 'Mercy Ships', who travel up and down the West coast of Africa on a boat bringing life-saving medicine and help to the poorest of the poor.

Alfred was ten when the tumor appeared that would take over his life and slowly seek to suffocate him. Like many boys his age, he'd been in a fight with an older cousin, and returned home with a sore jaw from a well-placed jab. Unlike many other boys, that same week, he developed a cemento-ossifying fibroma - a rare rapidly growing facial tumor. It began a frightening metamorphosis that would make Kafka cringe or Hugo's hunchback smile at the mirror.

Read the rest of Alfred's story here.

Via Wired News

When Zombies Mob!

2005-08-30T00:16:00.000+01:00

Hundreds of bored Canadian-type people recently flash-mobbed a Vancouver shopping mall. Canadian housewives out shopping with their children were interrupted quite suddenly by throngs of the living dead who, in the true flashmobbery spirit, eerily disappeared just as soon as they had appeared. Well...not quite, they kind of hung around a while and were eventually shooed away by a few mounties (Norther Exposure meets Dawn of the dead?), and all that remained were straggly pieces of half-eaten flesh and little scraps of blood-stained clothing scattered amongst the shopping trolleys. George A. Romero, sadly, was nowhere to be found.

Via Boing Boing

With sonic love .. from Agmod in P-town.

2005-08-29T22:10:00.000+01:00

the first step
into a new life
came with no regret
seconds became minutes
those became a lifetime none was took
for granted
smelling lavender
and bending arms
one at a time
strange stares
to where the heart
lies rubbed between index and thumb
the visionary voice
the Maria
knowingly smiles
lovingly
at our souls

Newsflash: Elephant gets prosthetic leg.

2005-08-29T17:13:00.000+01:00

This elephant has had a fully functional prosthesis fitted to replace the limb it lost in 1999.

She made headlines [...] by stepping on a landmine during work at a logging camp near the Thai-Burmese border. Vets managed to carry out delicate repairs on Motala's left foot, but the leg was left shorter than her others.

In other news, Dumbo has had penis enlargement surgery and Nelly is about to undergo a revolutionary laser hair renewal procedure.

Via BBC News

2005-08-28T17:17:00.000+01:00

When we were orphaned
And love lost it's meaning,
The girls of my youth
Danced together one last and lonely time
Before collapsing
Into heaps on the ground.

Noise from the future reflects in time
And manifests as dead air
On pirate punk radio stations,
In cities that sprawl
And squat along mighty rivers
That trickle and piss
Fossil fuel by-products.

Androgynous teens persuade nervous truck drivers
To strip in gas station restrooms
And photograph the shameful faces
While the high priests and hipsters
Hold seances in hotel lobbies
And burn effigies of all
My fallen heroes.

I took the last train to run
To the edge of the city slums
And waited for what seemed a lifetime.
A million unremarkable moments
Were moulded into one by the fire of streetlight
And the stale smoke of cheap cigarettes.

Now orphaned by killer waves of neglect.
Now choking on hot ash from Volcanic eruptions
Of combustible hearts and white-hot kids
Who talk in breakbeat rhythm
While chewing the sides of their mouths
Until the blood doesn't flow anymore.

Sonic Yoot.

2005-08-22T22:51:00.000+01:00

This picture is from Sonic Youth's gig on 19 August at Marlay Park in Dublin. Here are some of my thoughts from that show:

The sound (apart from the obvious booboo's with Lee's mic during Mote) was fuckin incredible, really something considering it was a big outdoor rig. I fucked my timing up a little because the clock on my phone was slow so was sitting miles away puffin on some chronic when the first drones of Golden Blue started coming out. Needless to say I legged it towards the front of the crowd - and had my life threatened by some coked-up dickhead whose had the misfortune of me standing on his sandalled feet with my size 12 chuck taylors - just in time to hear the first melodic guitar lines of the song. I also badly needed to pee at this point, a fact that was complicated even further by the half litre of tepid budweiser I was tossing down my throat. More about that later. Kim was looking particularly fetching in her babydoll dress, Thurston not so fetching but he's still the man yo. Jim looked my high school geography teacher, and I suddenly remembered what the capital of Ivory Coast was at the exact moment he started noodling on his axe. Go figure. Seconds became minutes and Golden Blue became Stones and then Pattern Recognition as the to-be-expected Nurse material opened the show. Thurston really hit his stride at this point and swung his guitar around by the cord, and eventually climbed down off the stage to mix it up with the lucky people in the front row. He did have some difficulty finding his way back on to the stage, and ended up entangled in the canvas covering at stage left. The hapless guitar tech recovered his still-whining guitar and handed him the next one as they tore into the next song. At the end of this Thurston announced to the crowd that they were gonna play Schizophrenia and things really began to heat up. It was one of the best live versions of that classic song I've ever heard, and Steve's helicopter drumming in the last third brought a tear to my eye. I think I said something like "lord you can take me now.. i'm ready" but thankfully he spared me for the blistering Drunken Butterfly and (technical-problem-blighted) Mote. It was at this point where my bladder really began to become an issue. You know the kind feeling where you can actually feel it throbbing.. you've moved past the simple I-really-need-to-pee part and are now bordering on I-may-need-surgery-if-this-continues part. Bravely, I carried on... each guitar shriek like a hatpin in my lower abdomen. New Hampshire passed without incident and segued into a beautifully chaotic PCH with Kim rockin on on muted lead trumpet. This ended the gig in earnest, although they did come back on (to muted applause it must be added) for a dig at Rain on Tin. Ok. those are my flushed first impressions of a great show, gonzo style. I didn't hang around for much of Chemical Brothers as the idea of battling for space with 18 yr old kids on crystal meth and ecstacy isn't how I like to spend my twilight years. Natch.Out.

My letter to her today

2005-08-17T18:51:00.000+01:00

Dear xxxxxx,

I always find it difficult these days to explain myself in person with you. It's strange isn't it.... to feel almost embarrased and ashamed to express myself with somebody I was so close with only a few short weeks ago? Things have certainly changed.

When I saw you on the street on Monday, I instantly recognised you. It's the way you walk, your small and characteristic movements which I learn by heart when I was with you - The slight angle of your head as you wait to cross the road, the hurried pace of your gait and the way you hold your bag in your right hand. I had practiced this encounter in my head for days, each time going through theways I would be cruel to you, or just ignore you completely and try get the moral upper-hand. It's all bullshit, and I don't know why I believed that Icould actually act this way towards you. I don't have those feelings in my heart for you... I could never be cruel towards you on purpose. Yes, I'm angry about the way things turned out. Yes, I'm hurt and confused. Yes, some days I blame you for the way I feel. But I want you to know one thing...The memories that I have of our time together are all good. There is not one moment of our relationship that I look back on with regret or resentment. It's important tome that you know that.

I still have questions, though. There are things that leave me very confused and perhaps one day you will be able to explain them to me. Maybe you don't know theanswer to some of them, perhaps you don't want to hurt me more by being brutally honest with some small truth. Either way, I don't expect you to give me any answers now. Maybe one day we'll both be more willing and prepared to discuss these things comfortably with eachother. I know that I'm not comfortable with it at the moment, and it wouldn't be fair to you and it definitely would not be good for whatever friendship you and I would have, and it MOST definitely wouldn't be good for your current relationship with xxxxxx. Of course I am jealous at the thought that someone else gets to lie down at night with you.. I am only human and anybody would feel the same. But, I have never lied to you about anything and I will not begin now... I still respect you too much and, as you know, I'm still secretly (haha) in love with you. Enough of the serious shit for now.

I'm really looking forward to seeing Sonic Youth on Friday, and to xxxxx coming over on the 23rd. I don't know if you will get a chance to meet him and honestly I don't know if I would even feel comfortable introducing you to him after all that has happened. It is a particularly difficult time for him and I as the 23rd is also the anniversary of our mother's death, and we will both be emotional, drunk and probably not inthe best mood on that day. As they say in Ireland: "To honor the dead, you must surely spill some whiskey on their graves".

Ok for now. It really makes me feel better to write to you, for some reason. Perhaps it's the catharsis that comes with confession and the idea that I canat least articulate my fucked-up feelings to the one person in this town that I truly care for. There aint no sunshine when you're gone mon ami. Another day without light.

Love, xxxx

Welcome to the suck

2005-08-14T16:44:00.000+01:00

You can watch a preview of Sam Mendes' new film 'Jarhead' here. I'm sold already on this one as it combines three of my favourite things: Donnie Darko, War and Bobby McFerrin. Or is that American Beauty, Abrams tanks and oil fires? Maybe it's Ray Charles, Private Pyle and Santa? Who knows anymore. November 2005.

Spun

2005-08-13T22:40:00.000+01:00

We had a work-sponsored dinner last night, after which a seriously unhealthy amount of drinking took place. Heineken and Tiger beer to start off with the meal, a white russian ice-cream cocktail for dessert, then off to the pub for more beer, scotch and vodka redbull. Needless to say my tongue was glued to the top of my mouth when I woke up this morning and I could tell just from the taste that I was smoking last night as well. Fuck. Anyways, to cut a long story short we ended up at some little dive of a casino at about 5am and I promptly lost 100 bucks in the space of a few minutes playing their (obviously rigged) blackjack. Bitch kept dealing herself aces, yo. I got another 100 bucks and lost that too. Against my better judgement I got ANOTHER 100 worth of chips and decided chance my arm at the roulette wheel. Somehow, I managed to turn a deficit of 300 euro into 700 euro profit. Fuck knows how I did it. I barely recollect placing the damn bets but next thing I knew I was cashing in my sizeable stack and thumbing the thick wad of fifties as I walked out the door into the night, feeling a little bit James Bond and a little bit Henry Sugar. I could get used to this.

Things that have helped me get through this month...

2005-08-12T00:00:00.000+01:00

- The Mountain Goats - Sunset Tree. Breaks my heart but leaves me clean.
- Sufjan Stevens - Illinois. Layers of sound and songs that transcend.
- Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights. Yeah motherfucker.
- Springboks beating All Blacks in the Tri Nations clash at Newlands
- Moving house.. again
- Playing in the company 5-a-side football tournament.. and losing.
- Getting a haircut. Short back and sides please.
- American Apparel clothing - Go buy some. I'm serious.
- The Director's cut of True Romance. I love you Patricia Arquette.

Lee is Free

2005-08-11T15:48:00.000+01:00

This picture is of Lee Ranaldo of Sonic Youth noodling away on stage at the Primavera Sound festival in Barcelona in late May of this year. A friend and I flew there from Dublin specifically for this one magnificent moment. It was a culmination of years and years of geeky fandom on my part, and The Youth didn't disappoint. Earlier on that day, we went to see Lee's experimental side project Text of Light and actually got to meet the man himself. Well... I use 'meet' in the broadest sense of the word because all we did was stand around by the stage after the gig and try not to make fools of ourselves, and Lee walked right up to the group we were standing in and said "Hi!". Some other dudes handed over a demo of their (no doubt unlistenable) band and Lee, gracious as ever, accepted it. He just seems so earnest and grounded, completely different to what you would expect from a Big Star in a Big Band. Ok... some of you may be saying that SY aren't your typical Rolling Stone covershoot, Cristal-gargling, groupie-banging hedonists but they're still pretty fucking big. They drew the largest and most enthusiastic crowd of the festival by far and you get the feeling they would have been torn limb from limb had they not encored their set with a blistering 'Teenage Riot'. This after playing a surreal and most excellent version of their anthemic tour-de-f0rce 'Expressway to yr skull' from 1987's EVOL. Click here for more Primavera pics.

Goddam I can't wait to see them again on the 19th here in Dublin.

2005-08-09T23:29:00.000+01:00

I walked across the same bridge every night on the way home from your house.
On the left side the river curved away from me
And towards the rest of the world.
On the right a gentle slope that led up to the reservoir
Grew thicker and greener with the lengthening shadows of summer.
D'ya remember the time that I threw your hat over the edge?
You were angry at first but then started to laugh
We chased it for what seemed like hours
Down the winding route that the river had cut into the earth.

Your father always knew that we were something more than friends.
We'd pass eachother in the High street, him and I.
Me on foot and him behind the wheel of his fancy German car.
He'd slow down almost to a crawl and slide his eyes towards where I was.
Those eyes would always remind me of you when you frowned
You'd deny it and then spend ages squinting at yourself in the mirror
While I tried to convince you that I could barely notice the resemblance.
I would lie quietly in the bed and watch you
As you brushed your hair before crawling in beside me.
The world began and ended with those late summer mornings
Those fragile moments that seemed so easy back then
Now evaporate as dreams that disappear with waking.

The bed you used to sleep in remembers you
By the gentle contours that your body made as you lay.
That lazy hollow in the centre of a linen sea
Exists only to amplify the fact that you're not here.
It's in loss we're meant to come to understand
The wider entwined roads our lives lead us down,
But it's a clarity that comes at far too high a cost.
Somehow my feet find the ground when I walk
And my mouth forms the words that I use.
The shell is still whole and unbroken
And lies for the sake of the rest of me
Which cowers and starts at the slightest sound.
I'm newborn and helpless without you.

The first dream on sunday

2005-08-09T23:16:00.000+01:00

Another week has passed, and I've moved into a new place now. I had two very strange and disturbing dreams on Sunday night. The memories of both are sketchy at best but I'll try recall them in as much vivid detail as possible. In the first her and I were playing in a friend's band back home, but we were on an aeroplane or a bus or something long and tubular with lots of rows of seats in it. In an obvious nod to my paranoia about sex and her distinct lack of interest in it while with me, we began comparing the sex she had with me to the sex she was having with her new partner. Of course, the sex she was having now was monumentally better and more intense and more expensive with toys and perversions and all the things which we couldn't do while the two of us were together. I lost my temper and started screaming myself hoarse at her, calling her a fucking prude and frigid and assigning blame to anything other than my own self. The dream began to dissipate and fragment at that point and I woke up shortly after angry and on the verge of tears. I'll tell you the second dream later.

2005-07-23T16:51:00.000+01:00

She's gone. I warned you that would happen, didn't I? yesterday - the morning after we held our housewarming party - I woke up to her lying on her side and staring blankly out the window, refusing to meet my gaze and making it patently obvious that something was bothering her. After some gentle questioning (which felt a bit like poking a sleeping lion through the bars at the zoo) she blurted out that she was thinking of leaving.

"If you want to leave, then leave." I replied
"I'm not talking about Paris at the end of the year. I mean now. Today"
"Neither am I" I replied. Stupidly, knowingly.

And so she left, but not that day.

I spent the next two evenings (our last together) piecing it together and trying to construct a form that would hold all my feelings of inadequacy and resentment and sheer fucking blinding love that were battling it out in my head and heart. I walked the streets in the city centre, headphones on listening to Interpol and wishing I had Paul Banks' left-handed literacy and the immediacy of their music so that I could change her mind. All this was being done secretly though. I told her that it was me who was cutting her loose, that it was my decision and it was my ideals of self-preservation that had to be realised now. I told her all this in a tearful speech - her in bed freshly awoken and me leaning up against the window - and as usual the upper hand was wrestled from her as I tried to turn the things she said against her and play the innocent and heartbroken victim. My life, my right, my soul, my loss etc... So fucking lame when I think about it now. She saw right through it of course, as she always did.

And so she left.

2005-07-11T20:47:00.000+01:00

Things seem to be improving between her and I. Maybe the beautiful summer weather we've been having the last few days has contributed to the all-round good feelings that we've been sharing. The way she looks at me in the mornings takes me by surprise every time. It's a look somewhere between mewling kitten and bengal tiger and it hits me right in the goddam pit of my stomach each time she does it. And she knows that it has this effect on me. I'm sure she knows it would have that effect on any guy in the fucking world. She's so sure of herself sometimes and it frightens me to think that she suckers me so easily. There's a sweetness and fragility that follows her around. It's ephemeral and fleeting but at times encompasses me to the point when I can think of nothing or no-one else. I'm a thief in bed at night and my bounty sleeps quietly opposite me unaware that I'm stealing a little bit of her with each glance and midnight kiss. I love the girl that she wants to be and the boy that she sees in me.

This is broken

2005-07-09T20:33:00.000+01:00

This site is dedicated to making "..businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it". Sound like a boring consumer complaint website? Well, it isn't. It's a homage to poor engineering and horrible design and some of the comments posted are hilarious and intuitive. The thinking man's Engrish.

Free legal streaming zombie action

2005-07-08T16:00:00.000+01:00

You can stream (or download) George A. Romero's classic zombie flick 'Night of the Living Dead' in it's entirety here. The files on the internet archive are part of the Creative Commons Public Domain and as result "...may be freely reproduced, distributed, transmitted, used, modified, built upon, or otherwise exploited by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, and in any way, including by methods that have not yet been invented or conceived." So stick that in your pipe and smoke it buddy.

2005-07-06T20:13:00.000+01:00

Can female contraception cause mood-swings? "Yes" says the enclosed warning leaflet on the packet of Femidene birth-control pills that she's taking. She offers this as an explanation for recent strange and unpredictable behaviour as well as her complete loss of interest in the carnal pleasures of our relationhip. Alright. That I can deal with. What I was having serious problems accepting was the fact that she didn't want to fuck me because she wasn't attracted to me, or because I didn't know how to touch her right or because her ex-fucking-boyfriend had a 10" dick to go with his self-effacing continental personality and she couldn't stop thinking about it when her and I were warming up before the final act. Pride does indeed come before a fall and I got a feeling I'm going to be falling a long, long way on this one.

2005-07-04T18:12:00.000+01:00

I don't know why she makes me feel the way she does. It's as if I can see exactly how this is going to end - the tears and desperate phonecalls and bottomless longing that weighs on me and pins me to the ground - and yet I just can't stop myself or pull myself away. This is not a feeling I'm comfortable with but yet the more helpless I feel the more I find myself drawn to her and it's like being in a car-wreck that you know is happening and everything is in slow-motion and there seems to be these moments of lucidity when you realise that it all is going to shit.
We met under the strangest of circumstances. I took a liking to one of her friends in a bar the night before St. Paddy's and hardly noticed the small, beautiful girl trying to meet my gaze from across the room. A week or so later and an anonymous message on my phone asking me to meet her led to a frenzied and secretive affair while her friend was in Tunisia on business. I suppose a relationship that started in such dramatic circumstances could only lead to heartbreak. Initally, my idealism fuzzed my usually pragmatic approach to these kind of things and before I knew it I was off to Paris to meet her parents and arranging for us to take an apartment together in Dublin. She would find some work, and we could spend our off days curled on the red couch watching bad movies and smoking cigarettes on the little balcony while the endless rain beat rhythmic patterns on the sliding glass door.
These things still happen, but now we're suspicious and easily offended. Little annoyances become arguments and lead to threats of leaving and accussations of infidelity. My time is running out with her and there's nothing I would rather do than try to make her happy every day of the rest of my life. I just know she feels the same. I just know she'll come around. All I can do for now is wait.

Paris Noir

2005-07-03T00:01:00.000+01:00

Read this surreal and ultimately sad essay by Miles Marshall Lewis about a cold and overcast day spent walking around Black Paris accompanied by his illiterate Parisian guide.

Today we walk through Saint-Georges and Montmartre to Pigalle, the seedy ninth arrondissement neighborhood central to black expats from 1910 till around the Great Depression.
"You're cold, chéri?" "Non, Cissine, not at all."
I'm freezing. I'm wearing a CBGB T-shirt, a beige Nehru jacket that I refuse to wear slung over my shoulder. I left our apartment in a rush, not realizing the jacket matches my tan hemp jeans perfectly.

Click here for the full text.

What's inside Lucy?

2005-07-02T21:41:00.000+01:00

Have you ever wondered what your favourite cartoon character's skeleton might look like? These disturbing but beautifully drawn sketches will soon satisfy your longing.

Via http://www.somethingawful.com/

The worst typo in history?

2005-07-02T18:29:00.000+01:00

A Taiwanese stock trader made an uber-fuckup when she mistakenly bought $251 million worth of shares with a keyboard misstroke. However, not all is lost at Fubon Securities:
"There is a paper loss of more than $400 million [....] However, with a good outlook for stocks in the second half, there are no plans to sell the shares in the near term."
Via http://slashdot.org/

If.. and only if..

2005-07-01T00:01:00.000+01:00

... you are one of the people in this cobrasnake picture set taken at Saves in LA on June 18 then email me and I will send you a prize. Yes, you heard me correctly. I'll give you free shit just for being one of the hopelessly hip and tragically beautiful humans who managed, through a mishmash of really good genes and insider-nods-and-smiles, to get your eternally youthful gob posted on the internet for all the world to see. I will require you to send me a copy of your drivers licence or passport to back up your claim. Once a definite match has been found I'll send you something in the post. Don't believe me? Fuck you. I'm a man of my word. Wait and see. philtom [at] o2 [dot] ie

A Crockwork Lemon

2005-06-30T23:46:00.000+01:00

Mad Magazine created a great spoof on this classic Kubrick film in their June '73 edition. You can find archived high-res scans of the full piece here. What.. me worry?