Big Rock Candy Mountain - Recent Messages

Ode to Lost Ideas

2008-10-03T22:12:00Z

I am annoyed. With myself. I started writing a piece. Discarded it. Came back to the idea, rewrote it. Discarded it. Again.

Sunday morning while cleaning up the kitchen before pancake breakfast, the best description came to me. The exact explanation I’ve been searching for came to mind. If I were profound enough it would have been an epiphany. You must understand there was much excitement in my mind.

I am annoyed. With myself. I started writing a piece. Discarded it. Came back to the idea, rewrote it. Discarded it. Again.

So Why are you reading this ode instead of my amazing idea about labels, stereotypes or something to that effect?

It got lost. I did not write it down.

I was in the middle of cleaning the kitchen. Busy mom and all that. I didn’t have time to jot it down. Besides, I have a Super Brain. I can recall my brilliant ideas without making notes. This reasoning is also why I dropped my daughter off to an 11:30 party at 1:30.

Instead of expanding on my clever idea, I spent the latter half of the day trying to recall the passing thought. I have tried to use different angles, ideas, thoughts to jog my memory to no avail. The only thing I’ve produced is frustration. I mentally stomp around my brain cursing myself, my family and the messy kitchen.

I have other ideas to write. Other prompts, completely off-topic from the missing one. I am stuck on this one. I am convinced it was the most brilliant idea I have ever had. Convinced that if I just search long enough that I will find it again.

As if I can bully my way to remembering.

If I relaxed and let it go, it would be more likely to return. But I will just as likely be too busy and lose it again. (As a side note; as I was rewriting this, I had another brilliant idea to insert, but it too got lost).

It’s not the first idea I’ve lost in this manner. Definitely not the last. I try to prepare for these instances with pen and paper always at hand. Making it a habit of jumping on the tools even if I’m busy. After- about 12 years at least of these incidents, you would assume I would learn.

Especially as a student of productivity or “Getting Things Done”. I should know better. I do know better.

I fail. If I were social networking you’d see a cute looking cat with an even cuter caption about failure. If I were motivational writer there would be one of those motivational posters. Or I were being sardonic I would have a de-motivational poster.

I need to find this idea. It’s an idea that’s been plaguing me since early summer. The right words seem elusive. I have a good message to send out. And I need to exorcise the thoughts by seeing them into completion.

They’ll come again, so long as the ideas hound me. And come Monday morning, and writing this piece on lost pieces, it seems they’ll refuse to disappear.

Thanatopsis

2008-09-26T20:21:00Z

I dunno I reckon we’ll name it Thanatopsis

My horoscope said that I might be tempted to explore life’s darker side today. It also said that wasn’t a good idea.

I dunno I reckon we’ll name it Thanatopsis

My horoscope said that I might be tempted to explore life’s darker side today. It also said that wasn’t a good idea. Then again, I reckon it’s like that chain letter that Niamh sent from Donegal. It said that if I sent it on, someone would come into my life and tell me something that would change it. It even gave me a time. It said at 10:38 the following morning this would happen. Did it? Did it fuck. The only thing that happened at 10:38 the following morning was that a little green man appeared and told me it was safe to cross the road. Give that whatever meaning you will. I’m not one for chain letters. I hate the things, but for nothing more than a few minutes’ thoughts about the happiness and well-being of Niamh, I sent the thing on. She’s worth it, so here goes.

There are some days when I wake up for no other reason than my heart is still beating, and my back is sore from lying in bed and sitting still for too long. I don’t like those days. Today was one of those days. My horoscope also said that today odds were I would meet my soul mate. Did I? Did I fuck. The only people I met today were mo chairde, and a poor woman desperate for the loo. I reckon she was so embarrassed about being caught short, and in need of the loo, that she rushed away straight after. Fuck, we’ve all been there. It’s woeful. Not a chance in fuck am I going to deny a woman doing the silly-silly pee-pee dance the right to the loo. Not a fucking hope. She’s using the loo.

Yeah, we’re still not liking today too much. The horriblescopes lied. Bastards. At least the ones in the Onion are amusing. I woke up today because my heart was still beating. I got out of bed because my back was sore from lying still for too long. I had a shower, remembered the words: nice and easy down the road, and went to work. Not a single one of my appointments showed. I earned nothing today, nor did I lighten my workload. I didn’t even have the energy to say fuck it, and go into town for a pint. Instead, I went home and cleaned up the spatters of sick I left on the rim of the toilet yesterday morning.

Yesterday I woke up alright until I remembered that I was up so early because I had to go to a funeral. Then the recent events caught up with me. It was all just a bit too much.

My uncle is an American farmer. The farm was hit in the flooding, heavy rains and tornados that have struck the American Mid-West. His fields are under water at the moment. The waters still haven’t gone down. His year’s harvest has been ruined. This year is a total loss for the man. All his efforts since January are gone. And he’s an American. Hurricane Katrina speaks more loudly than I ever could about what sort of hope he can expect from the insurance companies and the American government. He’s got nothing but pieces of a past history to put back together and to build from. Sometimes it takes a hurricane to wake you up. In the right light this is so incredibly funny that you can’t believe it’s not made up.

But that morning I remembered the fact that I was going to bury an admirable and exceptional woman that morning. That’s when I blessed the throne. When I got it back together, I remembered that I was now late for getting into town, getting the flowers, and getting to the church. I cleaned the bigger chunks, but had to leave it a bit of a mess. There were more important things.

This woman was a true woman. There was nothing girlish about her. I remember her quick to laugh. I remember her glowing eyes and bright smile. I remember her offhand comments that always contained a pearl of wisdom. I remember the world being better for that evening just on account of her very presence. I remember her living a life of virtue with ease. I remember her as the mother of three children to her 18 yearlong partner. He is one of the best men I have ever met. I have met people, and I have met men, and he is one of the best I have ever met anywhere. Sometimes words need to be smith-ed.

This man, my friend, mo chara, just lost his friend, lover, and mother to his children. Her loss struck me so hard that I got sick. The poor bastard. I had to get it together to get a taxi to get to the funeral. I couldn’t leave him on his own. By god, how un-empathetic would I have to be to do so? I left the sick to lie where it was. I knew I would get back to it later. After all, it’s my house. It’s not going anywhere.

Alright, so just bless the Greeks. Iron Age Greece justifies everything. Many happy days of eternity to all Greeks, simply because the ancient Greeks allowed their soldiers to get sick. So here’s a culture that gave us physics, philosophy, literature, maths, geometry, etc. Yet were still so in touch with it’s physical humanity that it recognised, as that culture, the need for some poor bastard who’d been hacking away at other people all day to have two minutes to get sick at the insanity of it all. When you think about it, it’s small wonder their gods were so fucked up. A divinity truly watching over all of that would go mad. It’d be like throwing biscuits at bears. There’s no physical law in the universe that says that we as people have the right to get physically sick and lose the plot for two minutes when it all gets to be too much. Fucking reconcile that dichotomy.

The Greeks made their gods mad, and gave their soldiers time to get sick. It seems like a fair trade to me. I reckon the Greeks knew about empathy. Yeah, empathy, the ability to be aware of another person’s feelings. Make all the Greek jokes you want. Laugh at the fact that the Greeks didn’t have a word corresponding to love, as we understand it today. Laugh at the fact that they only saw it as pure platonic love, or fucking, and never a mixture of the two. We had to wait for Rome’s hedonism to give us that concept. Be revolted by the fact that a Greek man took a wife of many years his younger for no reason other than to sire children. Remember that this is a culture that produced philosophy and geometry. Remember that this was an enlightened culture that recognised the need for warfare to the point where it was practiced regularly. And remember that their warfare built into itself a mutually recognised need for its practitioners to get sick at the end of the day. Try getting that out of a modern day religion. There isn’t one empathetic enough.

Not even Buddhism, worldly recognised as the most peaceful of all religions. Perhaps I’m just being bitter over the fact that Chögyam Trungpa said I didn’t have what it takes to be one of the cool kids. I don’t have a mentor. I’m lost in the woods; therefore the cool kids don’t want me.

As a quick aside, I would like to point out that the idea of Buddhists up in arms is funny. I would also like to point out that it is funny as fuck to think that you’re damned for finding something funny. Bless the lads that did that motivational poster blasphemy. Fair play lads.

You just can’t get that out of a rigid set of rules. I reckon that’s why the Buddhist monk laughed in the face of the girl receiving her blessing from him when she broke down in tears during the ceremony. I also reckon that Chögyam Trungpa sussed it when he said in another of his books that the greatest gift is the sharing of knowledge. Wish I’d met the man so I could shake his hand and say, nice one. More’s the pity.

This woman had a spine much stronger than any rigid set of rules. Hers knew how to flex. And your modern puritanical rigid-set-of-rules god help you if the recoil of that spine of hers having to flex is coming back at you because you were a cunt. She was an exceptional woman. There was no set of rules that were going to keep me from that funeral. They had 18 years together. They should have had at least another 20. Her loss had me in tears repeatedly. They deserved it. I left the sick where it lay and went to the funeral.

I got it together. I went to the funeral. I did my part as best I was able.

Maddog met me in town when I made it back. Here’s where I get all funny and tell you that he was protecting his investment. He didn’t want to see a column on his growing website to go the way of the Do-do. He met me in town. He took me out to dinner. He bought a rake of drink, and scammed some more for free. He walked me to a taxi, fired me into the thing, pointed his finger at me and admonished me severely. And I hope now the bastard sees why there is sometimes a need for dialogue in rants. And another thing, word counts be fucked, I buried a friend yesterday. Rules are made to be broken, fuck ‘em, it’s allowed.

Maddog got me back home after the funeral. He bared the rubber teeth of Finn, the Maddog of Big Rock Candy Mountain. Finn minded me while I did what I needed to do that day. I don’t even know half of what he did for last week’s guest. Bless him and his writing. He believes in it that strongly that he deserves nothing but success. The man never once thought of getting a thank you. You can’t get that empathy out of a puritanical set of rules. It would be too codified, too exclusive. There would be some custom, some set of holy rules handed down by some elders that was no longer flexible enough to allow that empathy without some sort of expectation of payback.

Let’s re-enter the mad Greek gods. Remember what you know. There is no physical law that allows us time to get sick when it all gets too much. The physical proof that there is homosexual necrophilia in mallard ducks is ridiculous. Maddog minded me while I minded everything that I needed to keep together as best I was able for this funeral. I cared about these people. They were good friends of mine. Just the very knowledge that they were there in the world made it a better place.

A part of that perfect beauty of the omnipotent god’s world is gone. All I can do is consider my self-blessed for having known only my little part of it. More is the loss of the blessing for those who had a larger part of it.

That’s why I’ll take my gods old and mad. I’ll wear with pride a Thor’s Hammer I carved myself by hand from a piece of bog oak that had been gathered by another friend, and initially shaped by. That’s why I’ll take the solstice and stand on top of what is nothing more than a political site, and celebrate what is nothing more than another day of the year with all the rest of the new age hippies and laugh at the madness of it all.

I like my gods to have to fight for their existence. Odin suffered a revolt in Valhalla, and got the boot. I’ll have that. After all, my uncle’s land that is now under water was first plotted by the sons of Vikings. That’ll do. After all, a sub-clause of using common sense is to remember that you may learn something new. That’s why you need to remember to proceed with caution. A bit of empathy helps. It lets you mind your karmic footprint.

See, Buddha’s greatest gift was silence, and that gives us time for a ponderance that all the seven holy virtues require empathy. None of them are empathy itself, but they all require it.

Yeah, I reckon I like Empathy as a god. I should also say that Muse stopped by today at the appropriate time, bearing gifts as usual. We do love our muse and her sneaky bottles, especially because we know that she knows that she is accountable for everything she does. She is a phenomenal soul. It’s hard to believe they make ‘em that good. She walked me home from work today. I went home and cleaned the sick off the toilet. It was a good thing the flatmate was away and I didn’t have to explain myself. We can laugh about it over a pint later. At least I had the night to clean the place up.

Someone needs to sweep the floor after mass. I blessed the throne. The world’s a mad place. I buried a friend. That’s all she was. She was a friend. I cried, got sick, when to the funeral, and cleaned up after. I woke up this morning for no other reason than my heart was still beating. I got out of bed this morning because my back was sore from lying still for too long. How fucking selfish am I? What am I like with my biology keeping me awake?

Yeah, I’ll take my gods mad. Bless the Greeks. They let me stand in the middle of a funeral and tell a good friend of mine, a true man, that all was not lost, as best as I was able. I couldn’t do anything more than be there for him. I know he was hurting. I did it fully as best I was able. How could you not do it for the man? Make all the buggery jokes you want, it doesn’t change the fact that the Greeks proved that they knew about empathy.

Me, I’m lost in the woods. Not even the cool kids will let me in. Which, again, is so unbelievably funny when viewed in the right light that you can’t believe this is not made up. The amount of times I have had to explain silly little things like the eight wrathful deities, and the Taras is unbelievable. And it started because I liked the pictures.

It used to be implicit in the earning of my monthly pay check that I killed people for a living. I’ll take my gods mad, thank you. A friend of mine buried a massive part of his life yesterday. His children are going to have to live the rest of their lives without their mother. They were blessed with her and by her, and she is now gone. They have to live with that.

Say a prayer for them, I beg you. They’ve donkeys in front of them, all without their mother. They deserved more. No one could ever deserve the loss of someone that brilliant. And she was their mother.

Say a prayer for their lives. It’ll only take you a moment, and it’ll last them a lifetime. All it takes is a bit of empathy. And then welcome yourself to life. It’ll get complicated from here. Someone has to sweep the floor after mass.

Say a prayer for them to help pick up the pieces and carry on. They’re children. I beg you please, just be there for them as best you’re able. It’s a mad world, why would you choose to make it any worse?

Horoscopes say the odds are that you’re still going to wake up in the morning because your heart’s still beating. Then you’ll get out of bed because your back’s sore from lying still for too long. After that the odds are there will be the morning ritual shite, and the day will begin.

Say a prayer that the children have many days like that, and then remember to go stand on a hill and celebrate a another day in the year.

Mi Manera (My Way)

2008-09-24T22:19:00Z

Me pase la vida conformandoa esos que no tienen que ver conmigo;
Me pase la vida convenciendome, intentando ser alguien que ni siquiera yo logro entender;

<u>English Translation</u>

I spent my life satisfying those that have nothing to do with me.
I spent my life convincing myself, trying to be someone that even I can’t understand.

Me pase la vida conformandoa esos que no tienen que ver conmigo;
Me pase la vida convenciendome, intentando ser alguien que ni siquiera yo logro entender;
Me pase los dias disfrutando lo que me ofrecian sin buscar lo que queria…y asi fui creyendo en un papa noel que no existe, pidiendo un talle seis siendo yo un ocho, aceptando las sobras de esos que deciden lo que les conviene darme…y asi fui cocinandome en un recipiente inadecuado; Me pase las noches con preguntas incorrectas, con respuestas sacadas de la galera, saliendo a la vida dentro de un concepto erroneo y obtuso; Me pase la vida siendo la protagonista de una novela que no era la mia.

Al mismo tiempo…

Me pase la vida escapando de esos que se me parecen, esos que me enseñan a ver las cosas mas alla de lo habitual…asi fui perdiendo en el camino piezas claves de este rompecabezas, ahora el cual se me hace tan dificil armar;
Me pase la vida mostrando las verdades de mi mentira, ocultandome de los que golpean mi puerta teniendo las llaves del mar que mi alma sedienta buscaba con ansiedad…asi me fui escondiendo en maquillaje que cubria mis razgos, iba tapando la naturalidad de una sonrisa;
Me pase la vida buscandote y cuando te encontre no supe lo que hacer…y asi fuiste descomponiendo todo, confundiendo las estructuras, desnudando los maniquies, el recipiente estallo, las preguntas empezaron a tener sentido y las respuestas garuaban tras reemplazar palabras por miradas, los colores de la pintura se mezclaron para crear uno nuevo, desconocido, irresistible.

Ahora estoy mas perdida que en toda mi vida, pero si hay que retroceder para retomar los verdaderos pasos, quiero pasarme el resto de mi andar alimentandome de “locos” como vos que hasta en plena oscuridad y silencio pueden ver mil colores, dimensiones, mil supuestos, sonidos y canciones.

<u>English Translation</u>

I spent my life satisfying those that have nothing to do with me.
I spent my life convincing myself, trying to be someone that even I can’t understand.
I spent the days enjoying what they had to offer me without looking for what I wanted…and just like that I believed in a Santa Claus that does not exist, requesting a 6 size when I am an 8, accepting the leftovers of those that decide what is convenient for them to give me, and I was cooking myself in the inappropriate container.
I spent the nights with the wrong questions, with answers out of the blue, facing life in a wrong and obtuse concept.
I spent my life being the main character of a novel that was not mine.

At the same time…

I spent my life escaping from those that are similar to me, those that teach me to see things beyond the usual…and it is like that that I lost key pieces of this puzzle, that is now so hard to put together.
I spent my life showing the truths of my lie, hiding from those knocking my door having the keys of the sea that my thirsty soul was anxiously looking for… and like that I was hiding myself in make up that covered my features, I was covering the naturalness of a smile;

I spent my life looking for you and when I found you I didn’t know what to do… and you started to decompose everything, confusing structures, undressing dummies, the container exploded; the questions started to make sense and the answers drizzled replacing words with looks, the colours of the painting mixed to create a new one, an unknown, irresistible.

Now I am lost as I have never been before, but if I have to go back to take the real steps, I want to spend the rest of my walk feeding myself with “crazies” like you that even in the total darkness and silence can see thousand of colours, dimensions, sounds and songs.

Smoke and Mirrors – The Beijing Olympics

2008-09-24T00:52:00Z

“There is nothing wrong with your television.

Do not attempt to adjust the picture

We are now controlling the transmission

We control the horizontal

And the vertical

We can deluge you with a thousand images

Or expand one single image to crystal clarity and beyond

We can shape your vision to anything our party can conceive.

For the next sixteen days we will control all that you see and hear.

You are about to experience the awe and mystery that reaches from the deepest totalitarian regime to the rest of the world

Please stand-by…

- Modified opening speech from ‘The New Outer Limits’

“There is nothing wrong with your television.

Please stand-by…

- Modified opening speech from ‘The New Outer Limits’

I’d toyed with the idea of boycotting the Olympics. I’m not much into supporting Orwellian nightmares (his not yours, as I imagine, modern China would prove more horrific for him than your image of an Orwellian nightmare) proving to their people they are in fact superior. Just doesn’t ring any bells for me.

We know a little about social control here in Ireland. I’ve mentioned it a couple of times. Still, when it comes to China, we’re only learning, studying the books of the masters. The quick aside on that being the sudden drive to lower the twenty-one drinking age in America. Just, funnily enough, as we teeter on the cusp of a global recession. Nice bit of people tweaking right there.

As for the Olympics as an event itself?

By and by, in my humble yet cynical opinion,

“The Dream Is Over”

It’s time to call it quits, separate it into one Olympics where people can use whatever substances they want and another with athletes tested once every week get to compete in something real. Even if they pull clear on their tests at the actual event, I just do not believe these people aren’t juicing it up in the three and a half years prior.

Back to the Beijing Olympics though. I’m going to lose this argument right now by referencing, yet not naming certain Olympics held by other totalitarian regimes, Atlanta included. Always seems to be given to those sorts of nations just before things begin to go bad for them.

I’m not sure I’m really that surprised or upset that I was lied to during the opening ceremony. That the fireworks were CGI fakeries or that a girl with a beautiful voice was deemed too ugly to represent China. I can’t even be that mad that there was not a single non-Han in that little line-up of children in traditional ethnic dress. In this day and age it’s become the norm – don’t think the USA or England don’t use such trickery when they need to. It’s just China has the balls to say, “yep, we did it”. Because at the end of the day, they don’t care, nothing you or I or our governments can say will change anything over there.

Bar outright war of course, but then, I’d never advocate something like that, now would I?

There is definitely no Michael Caine standing beside one of my critics saying;

“Some men just like to watch the world burn.”

I do like the fact that the Party was quietly blackmailed by the other world powers. That it was so desperate to put this spectacle on, as a show of racial superiority and economic power, that to have certain endorsing heads of state present. It signed groveling treaties with countries like Russia and France. Cute.

I also approve of the fact that, while deemed an economic powerhouse by the rest of the world purely on the size of its populace. China is a still largely a poor country, rural and agriculture driven, one that has been pulled kicking and screaming through Stalinesque industrialization. Ranked 109th in world wealth, it’s sickly amusing they’ve dropped what? Thirty, Forty, Fifty, Sixty billion? On this – the Olympics. Diverting money from health, from welfare, from everything.

Don’t worry though, while we might not approve, sign this, cede us those territories we’ve been disputing for nearly a hundred years. We’ll endorse you. While murmuring our disapproval of course.

The old romantic in me, can feel only remorse for the fact that not fifty miles from the Bird’s Nest stadium, China has rounded up the people it doesn’t want the world to know exist (or at least, talk to) and placed them into camps that bear the slogan

“Re-education through labour”

As the global media explain it, the reason we’re seeing largely empty arenas, is because the Party handed tickets to party officials with the instructions not to give them out. The line in the media seems to be that they are wary of assembling large crowds. Yet there are public areas in parks specially set aside for protests. Of course, once you protest you’ll be arrested and sent for re-education. Ah Ireland, you’re only two steps away. At least here if you protest peacefully you can just expect a cop wearing no identification to try and smash your skull in. Don’t worry, after hospital you’ll still get to go home.

You can also be pretty sure no one will harvest your organs.

I am reminded once again of a New Year’s Eve in Amsterdam. I was drinking with Eritrean and Ethiopian friends in their restaurant after hours. They’d fed me, and I’d brought whiskey. Copious amounts of whiskey. All was good in the world. That is until a Chinese couple walked in looking for a drink. It seems my friends had forgotten to put the closed sign up.

It was New Year’s Eve, a time of friendship and hospitality, and really I don’t many people with more friendship and hospitality than the Eritrean. So they were allowed sit down with us and have a beer. The man has been living in Amsterdam for five years, the woman for three. Conversation turns, as it often does and we find ourselves talking politics and history. Looking back on it, it was probably me being mischievous, it usually is.

I mentioned Taiwan. That’s all I really had to do. A second later the man was pounding the table shouting, “If China does not get Taiwan, China will die.” He repeated this several times with several passionate thumps of the table. Conversation segued nicely to an argument over Mao being in his words “a great man” and the polite words of my then girlfriend “Mao was a murdering bastard who nearly destroyed China.” From this warm exchange it was only a hopscotch and a skip away from bringing up the ’Great Firewall of China”. Of everything we argued; this was the one thing that was met with absolute disbelief. I think I was even called a liar. He asked me to prove it, we exchanged emails, and I said I would forward him the relevant information as he ranted on about newspapers printing lies about China because they didn’t want China to be strong.

I never did though. I left our whole discussion on the simple point that if he had been living out of the censorship of China for five years and didn’t already know these things existed. Then there was nothing I could do for him, as there was nothing I could send him that he’d believe.

If five years of freedom hadn’t even neared to touching him, what could I do?

Here I am again though, excepted this time it’s not isolated to small after hours discussion in a restaurant. This time it’s global. This time I can see Chinese making protests en mass in Dublin. They think we want to destroy them; we want them weak, when we just want them free. When faced with such indoctrination, there is little you can do, except maybe wait for revolution or a lot of people to die.

As such, as entrancing as the Olympics can be. At the end of it all, I found the marker filled stadiums and everything that went with the Beijing Olympics vaguely sickening, though hard to turn away from. It was like watching a man being slowly cut from his car. It’s going to stay with you, but damn if it isn’t riveting. Grand illusion heaped upon grand oppression, it doesn’t get much better than this.

Though I doubt it, I am quietly hoping this “resonating success” is the chink in the armor. The beginning of the end for China’s current regime. Just as it has been for regimes of a similar ilk.

An Apology on the Benefits of Living

2008-09-23T11:33:00Z

I had a woman come into the shop the other week. She wanted to get tattooed and wanted to film the entire process, but she wanted no pigment put into the skin. She wanted, in her own words, merely blood lining. Having no tattoos of her own, and having no friends who were tattooists, I was immediately left wondering where she had gotten a hold of what is generally considered tattooists slang.

Now, tattooing is popular enough now to have its specialized language creep into mainstream usage. A tattooist’s language is not esoteric, nor is it a proprietary language. It is not reserved for an exclusive few. That was not, and is not the concern. What was obvious was that she had done some research into the subject, but not enough to gain comprehension of how the process works and why it must be that way.

Tattooing, however, is not our concern at this moment. This site is intended by Mad Dog to be a site for non-fiction writing. This is evidenced by the chastisement given to me by him over the use of conversation in my earlier writing. Dangerously close to fiction were the words that he used. So we offer today to ‘The Hound of Átha Cliath’ a piece entirely free from quotation. We will continue to work on the valuable realization that stories are priceless, but not today.

Today we write about the ideas of a woman who came into get tattooed as an arts project. I don’t like performance art. It’s been hijacked into an opportunity for showboating shock art. The shock artists do genuinely intend to start conversations and ponderances about relevant and important topics, but so often fall into narcissistic exhibitionism. I don’t like it. It all to often turns into the puritanical fifteen minutes of fame with some wanker standing on a soap box pointing fingers and going on about how he’s right and we’re all just a bunch of eejits who don’t understand. Fuck ‘em if they want to play that way. I don’t.

We don’t need a special language to describe and comprehend these universal concepts either. We don’t need to hear about schizo-types, savants, and neo-post-modern avant-industrial-bullshit-ism. We need simple words forged in meaning. We need words smithed into comprehensible statements. We need simply, words, which allow for the exchange of information. During works as well as whilst, and either is as good as the other. Let’s keep that in mind while we work on understanding why each and every breath we have is a good one.

This woman was working on a project whose intent it was to explore and state that it is better to have existence without life. The key premise of the entire argument is that existence is in itself eternal, while life isn’t. The resultant argument goes to the effect that physical manifestation (birth) immediately brings with it inevitable pain. As beings of a physical nature, it is undeniable that we will feel pain. Hunger pains, heartaches of spurned loves, the pangs of broken bones, cuts, scrapes and gouges. Life is one long tortured sequence of one pain after another, and it would be better to do away with the whole lot.

That’s when I explained to her that a fundamental aspect of my earning my monthly salary used to be killing people. I was a government-sponsored triggerman. The fact that I’m still here writing this is testament enough to my abilities. I wasn’t the best, but that’s because I discovered that I really didn’t like killing people. It’s hard work in every way. I told her that from my experience it was much better being alive than dead. That I thanked each and every day since I dodged the last bullet that had come my way for my heartbeat.

She countered by saying that I had missed the point that it would be better to have never been born. It would be better to exist as an entity without ever having to experience life. It would then be possible to have a continued eternal existence and a place in the world without having to suffer the pains and degradation of life.

My response was that I hadn’t heard a shovelful of shite that big in a long while. I hear shite talkers every day, but it had been donkeys since I heard something like that. Even the gods die in their time. Academically it is accepted that the old gods were concepts. They were personifications of ideas, the environment, and concepts that were so vital to existence that the needed to be brought closer, made personal.

Concepts, ideas, existences are not personal. Justice is completely different from Law, even though the two are closely related in the average personal standpoint. But Justice does not give a fuck about Law, nor does Law concern itself overly much with Justice. For more on this I refer you, reader, to Terry Pratchett’s The Hogfather. Death has a wee ramble that puts things into perspective nicely. An existence without meaning is entirely pointless.

So what’s the point? Well, the point is that we’re here. We’re alive so that we can have a reference point from which to observe and interact with the things that matter. Our friends, our family, our passions, our joys and sorrows. Without life, we have no reference point with which we are able to relate to these things that matter to us. No life renders everything meaningless. What is the meaning of justice if we cannot apply it to our daily lives? What is the meaning of an irrelevant existence?

Fuck that, I’ll take life. I’ll take a heartbeat and a hangover any day. I’ll take the worries about feeding myself. I’ll take the worries about being hit by a bus. I’ll take the worry that the book that Oifig um Pleanáil Éigeandála put through my door has nothing covering what to do in the event of a zombie attack. Sure, they’ve given me advice on what to do in the event of flooding, suspect devices and nuclear accidents, but they certainly haven’t thought of everything. I’ll take that worry along with a heartbeat. After all, I know the advice given in the mad (zombie) cow film. I’ve a hurley sitting at the end of the bed. A few slithers and those zombies are fucked.

I’ll take life. I’ll take a heartbeat. A heart’s useless when it’s not beating. I’ll take the scutters in the morning. They’re the final tariff on the night before. I’ll take the worries and the woes and the anxiety. They prove to me that I have something to worry about. My worries aren’t anyone else’s. They’re mine, due to the reference point that is my life. My worries have their own meaning to me. And they’re just a reference point for me, because they let me know that it could be much worse.

I’ll take life. I’ll take all the sorrows and pain that I have already experienced. I’ll keep with me all the situations I have found myself in. The homelessness, the hopelessness. Those experiences are true reminders that it could be much, much worse. Without the deaths and the mayhem and the betrayals by friends I wouldn’t appreciate what I have now nearly as much as I do.

Life is fucking brilliant. Let’s go have a drink and celebrate. Just keep the hurleys nearby in case there are any zombies about.

20 Bulls Each ‘The Incompetence To Follow’ (EP Review)

2008-09-22T16:08:00Z

The problem with being handed anything to review whilst drinking in a Dublin pub, is that the chances are; you’ll stumble home, put it somewhere then promptly forget where you put it. This will undoubtedly lead to several trashings of both your home and office before you find whatever it is you were supposed to review.

This is why it has taken so very long to review this year’s new EP release by the Irish Melodic Hardcore group, 20 Bulls Each (20BE). To the 20BE member who had the faith and generosity to shove a fresh and unopened EP into my hand in the bowels of the drunken vortex that is ‘The Foggy Dew’. I apologize for the delay.

While I am no expert, Ireland as a whole, has a fine history in producing some of the best Punk music you’re likely to find. Granted, most of the Punks on the scene have a level of self-deprecating modesty that if you try and tell them that. They’ll most likely respond with a sneer and the assertion that they are indeed“Shite really, but, thanks anyway.” If you take away our Traditional music, it can be hard to find soul and quality within the shadows of bloated lumbering giants like Enya.

Granted, we did produce My Bloody Valentine, apparently now the loudest band in the world and arguably of those that “made it”, the best. Sure, we have U2 preaching to the choir while moving their money quietly into tax havens and away from the Irish people. But, I’d be happy to concede U2’s nationality to their legions of French, Spanish and Portuguese fans. Charity starts at home Bono. We also have a staggering legion of singer/songwriters blithering out the same bland shit muddled in with the odd Bob Dylan cover. You may also fall asleep scouring the Indie and Alternative scene in Ireland trying to find anything worth while.

It is worth scouring though; the underground scene is alive and well; a bitter pus filled DIY heart foot pumped by older and newer legends like The Klingonz, Blood or Whiskey and Paranoid Visions. Whilst the brain is kept ticking by youth struggling against a national radio that’d rather give repeated air time to some perfect pitch droid singing about fucking umbrellas than viciously pump our own vibrant music scenes.

With a gestation that began in Dublin in 2001, 20BE would come together properly early in 2002. They would release demos and single tracks on the Internet before releasing their first six track EP ‘Make Your Stand’ in 2004. In 2005, ‘Holy Fuck’ a split CD with the Northern Irish Punk band Mellow Dramatic would be released. To be promptly followed the next year by their first album ‘Lost Causes’.

With two feet firmly planted in the Irish DIY ethic of “Fuck it, if we don’t do it ourselves, it’ll never get done.” 20BE have suffered the common problem of rotating bass players with a solid line-up in the three founding members; Gareth Cummins (guitars and vocals) Gavin Husselbury (guitar) and Paul Duffy (drums). This new EP sees the now longest standing bassist (and engineer from ‘Lost Causes’) Ziron joining them to complete a very healthy line-up.

‘The Incompetence To Follow’ is the first I’ve heard of 20BE and I’m happy to say it reminds me of and in my mind joins the pantheon of such Irish acts like Striknien DC, Cold War, Black Belt Jones and Eyesclosed. With five tracks that manage to cohesively blend elements of Punk, Metal and Melodic Hardcore. ‘The Incompetence To Follow’ rumbles open with slightly hollow yet instantly catchy metal guitars before steadily thumping up the gears into an absolutely cracking song. Possibly the best compliment I can pay it, is that the vocals remind me of Garm’s (Ulver) from ‘Nattens Madrigal’ except turned up and there stronger and more prominent in the mix.

Over all and even without the catchy choruses, the EP has a grab you by the scruff of the neck Hardcore appeal to it that almost forces you to stop and try memorize the words. If only so you can clench that fist and sing along. Which, though I have to admit might be endemic to Irish music, is a great quality to have and really serves to push this release over the usual and mundane releases in the same genres.

I’m finding it quite hard to pick a favorite or even a stand-out track from the five as all are extremely solid. But I think the foot stomping ‘Leave You Screaming’ might just have it the vaguely golden age Misfits reminiscent ‘Down’.

Don’t be put off by 20 Bulls Each’s hardcore label (if that’s not your thing). They are, so much more than that and with the scheduled release of their entire discography through SNS records in 2009. I’m thinking that they haven’t even neared the peak of their powers.

I’m told to catch them live and I intend to. Either way, look them up, I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised and glad for it.

20 Bulls Each can be found on the following site with information on how to purchase their music:

20 Bulls Each Myspace complete with songs

They can also be found on iTunes.

Enjoy.

Snakes

2008-09-19T15:48:00Z

“How many orphans have to die, Jonny?”

Maddog asks me.

“How many puppies have to be killed before I get another piece from you?”

“How many orphans have to die, Jonny?”

Maddog asks me.

“How many puppies have to be killed before I get another piece from you?”

It’s good to know that some things will never change. It gives us a glimpse of eternity as best we can understand it. It gives us a look at a good long drive. Miles of road, acres of green, years to go. And the satisfaction of the knowledge that it can all be conquered. You can survive anything as long as it’s not lethal.

So I watched two snakes feed yesterday. It’s, well, interesting. Aside from just the mere physiology of a snake working its jaw out of place so it can swallow a mouse whole, it’s interesting. We’re not going to talk about the stunningly quick strike, the surprising strength, nor the obligatory pause before swallowing. We’re not even really concerned with the constriction, because we know that snakes, by their very nature, are constrictors. It’s not as if they’re going to rip you asunder with their massive snake talons, are they?

No, see snakes know that you can survive anything as long as it’s not fatal. They’re patient. They’ll wait for you to die, so they don’t have to fight you in their belly. They’re driven beasts. They’re so efficient they’ve decided they only need one lung. They don’t waste energy chewing their food, and we haven’t even begun on the lidless eyes that allow them to see everything. They’re driven, there can be no doubt and to think; all of this is run by the reptile brain.

It makes you ponder.

This is while I was still in the shop. I hadn’t even had the medicinal after work short yet. The strongest chemical influence I was under was caffeine from the coffee that allowed me to get through yet another day of typical shop madness.

Yet watching two snakes in the same tank is even more interesting still. There’s no camaraderie amongst snakes. The strongest one survives. It’s just a matter of time. Even if it’s as easy as the weak one starves.

It misses the point entirely in that two are better than one. A drive is good, but it’s not that exciting. It’s kinda’ like waiting the next two hours out in the cinema because you already sussed the plot, but still feel the need for your money’s worth. Pointless, really, isn’t it? A bit of patience can be a wonderful thing in those situations. It’ll keep you from feeling cheated.

Now watching the larger, stronger snake constrict itself around one mouse while it swallowed the other is interesting. It did it to hold the second mouse away from the smaller, weaker snake, and prevent it from getting its jaws around the mouse. You could watch it move the mouse away. Even later, when it had swallowed the first mouse and had its head free, you could watch it get its neck in, and watch it whip about the smaller snake and mouse both with ease.

Today I lived an indelibly Irish day. #3 was there for a start. That worked well, because today was one of my two writing days in the week, and Muse is on holiday for the next two weeks.

Now, #3 knows why she is called #3, and will have a laugh at that. She’s also going to have a laugh at this whole Irish/snake thing. For a start, there are no snakes in Ireland. She also sat and watched with me as we fed the smaller snake again tonight after we’d finished her tattoo. #3 also helped the day become more Irish. She came in, sat down; we had a wee yarn, sorted the design out, and got stuck into it. She was the last customer of the day, and I had purposefully booked her in at the end. We nattered all the way through the tattoo, talked about friends come and gone. Irresolvable problems, like Ulster, came up again. We had a wee chat about matters of the spirit, talked, as always, about the family, and laughed at our parting, promising to meet again soon. In her friendship I lived yet another day, with another yesterday, and another tomorrow. Circumstance, more than anything else, put me in Dublin. There’s your physical proof it was an Irish day.

Why do I need proof? Because even Finn asks me the Irish question, and I have to remind him of the tradition in face value and then he remembers that it’s just simply a place where people aren’t quite so caught up in that. The tradition is still what it is, regardless of what it’s become. That’s not such a bad thing. It reminds you of a community, something that snakes don’t have. It makes you want to believe there are no snakes in Ireland.

See, It’s the dichotomies that always give you pause. They allow ponderance to slip in. Two absolute conflicting truths leave you a bit empty, don’t they? Taken as a whole, it can also be one less worry. I mean, fuck it, snakes don’t have team sports. Fuck ‘em, they wouldn’t give two fucks even if they understood the concept. I still need to eat tomorrow, and bothering my hole worrying about the ethics of snakes isn’t really going to put food in my mouth is it?

I mean, after all, snakes don’t even take the time to taste their food, let alone chew it. They certainly don’t waste their time thinking about ethics. They’re driven, after all. I think it was Da Vinci that warned us against the ambitious. If I remember correctly, it was him who said that you would never have a pleasant life around them. What’s the point of a long, straight drive if you don’t look out the window every now and again? You already know where you’re going. May as well enjoy the bigger picture, and that picture doesn’t get any bigger than it is without all the details.

There’s always time to stop, smell the flowers, and wonder how the grass grows before the bullets start flying again. You could be dead within the hour, but you’re not dead yet. That makes life all the more worth living. Snakes don’t seem to get that. They’ve given up a lung and their legs to get themselves to their end goal.

Me? I don’t give a fuck what the sound of one hand clapping is. The end goal isn’t worth anything without a larger story. My dislike of puritans is reflected in my dismissal of snakes. There’s so much more to the world than two mice in your belly, even if it is duck’s rogering corpses.

You can go back and tell your friends and family about it. You have that community. Snakes don’t have that. Snakes still exist, you can’t deny that, but they don’t seem to have too much interest in the larger picture, so fuck ‘em.

The funny part is that I’m still going have to feed them wee bastard beasts again. That, and I’m still fascinated by how they move. Feeling the constrictions as they work their way up your arm is pausing. It’s that fluid dryness that you don’t expect. It just leaves you wondering, how does that hard skin work for you anyway? Especially when you watch it stretch out as they swallow that mouse.

Thank fuck there’s time to watch it in that horrified, looking at a car crash sort of way. It gives you time to look at snakes as they are, driven beasts. The snake in the Garden of Eden? Fuck yeah, he’d be saying to Adam and Eve now, “Fuck the instruction manual, have a go at this yoke. It’ll be deadly.”

Yeah, so they reckon that enough people have been keeping snakes as pets in Ireland for long enough, and that enough snakes have gotten lose, that Ireland is growing it’s own population of native Irish snakes. Kinda’ reminds you of the Celtic Tiger, doesn’t it? I will freely admit that I miss the punt. Any way, snakes, Paddy’s rolling over in whichever grave it is that he’s in, unless he rode to heaven in a flaming chariot just like Ezekiel.

Could be, doesn’t matter, all we know is that there are snakes in Ireland. And they’re so efficiently driven that they feel they only have the need for one lung. Not the sort of creatures I would want to call my friends. I like my friends to have a bit of camaraderie. It makes time spent with them much more pleasant. You get a better laugh anyway. Let’s face it; you can’t expect a creature with only one lung to have a good sense of humour. It takes a lot of air to have a good laugh. That and you need to chew your food, because you really don’t want to choke on it at the end of the day, do you? It would spoil the view that you get from knowing that some things never change.

The Amy Winehouse Paradox

2008-08-19T18:35:00Z

Considering how much I hate celebrity, it really is odd to find myself writing this. I’m aware that just by writing this, I’m paying into something horrible that is working akin to a nation wide ‘Wicker Man’, painfully aware. Yet I find myself forced, if only because, out of sheer curiosity, I clicked the comments on an article the Daily Mail website about Amy Winehouse.

Considering how much I hate celebrity, it really is odd to find myself writing this. I’m aware that just by writing this, I’m paying into something horrible that is working akin to an international ‘Wicker Man’, painfully aware. Yet I find myself forced, if only because, out of sheer curiosity, I clicked the comments on an article the Daily Mail website about Amy Winehouse.

Forgive me.

I know I am joining in.

Forgive me.

I just can’t help it anymore. Not after I’ve seen the line of puerile, infantile and hypocritical comments being made. Much of which amounts to simple crass lines about a young woman having dirty fingernails.

Since Byron and before, we’ve wanted our artists to be “Mad, bad and dangerous to know”. That’s the given line – we widely accept that to create you must be straddling some sort of line with genius. Just as we accept genius is often very difficult to discern between insanity. That’s the way we’ve wanted them for centuries.

If only because; if you can create things of such horror and beauty, then there must be something pushing you, some tick, some eccentricity, some addiction. Often, only because, we, the nowhere league, fervently need there to be.

We needed Byron to be a drug addled sex fiend. Not because he was living life what he saw was the fullest of experience. But, because if Byron hadn’t been in those ways addled (as we, the nowheres see it) well then his genius would have been super-human and would have just put the rest of us who can barely read even more to shame.

The only thing is, we never wanted Byron to die and that is the only underlying current I get from all these pernicious comments. At the end of the day, they just want Amy Winehouse to wither up and die. The concern seems false, put on; so relative nobodies can aggrandize themselves by, at the very least, having thrown their two cents in. When it comes to articles like this, I would dearly like it to be a stipulation that you can only comment if you post a full picture of yourself. As I wonder just how many of these people are overweight, smokers, heavy lean-ers on the booze or want to soothe themselves by meaningless unprotected sex. Crack smoking aside, just how many of these people are destroying themselves as well, if only in the small ways.

Now, I’m not actively saying Winehouse has the same level of genius as Byron; I am just using another creative traveler of intoxicant paths as an example. I’ll use others as I run along this railroad.

When it comes to the creative breed, we seem to prefer them if they’re just a little bit crazy. Those of us who are crazy but not creative are given heroes to look up to. Those of us who are neither just get the schadenfreude delight of watching them build the house as they burn it down at the same time.

Perhaps, I find those people discussing her basic hygiene the most offensive. I have no way of evaluating the hygiene of the people telling her to take a bath. Not a single iota as to whether these people smell or have greasy hair.

I write, but I’m not half the writer I wish I was, yet I smoke, drink and partake the odd substance occasionally. I have smoke stained fingers with dirty nails, my clothes are rags, hole filled and my hair unkempt. I’m aware of it, freely admit it. Very few of the people I admire creatively were clean. Some of the painters always had the tools of their trade under their nails. Writers with ink stained hands and sleepless worn faces. Actors with the raffish wear of the night before on their sweaty faces.

Funnily enough, I probably share most of my creative heroes with the wider populace. Creativity though, is the crux. The old agony and ecstasy, the power and the passion. The fire is there, but how do you keep it burning. The door was opened once yet the key keeps changing. Francis Bacon, Richard Burton, Hunter S. Thompson, Janis Joplin, Miles Davis, Raymond Revuebar, William Burroughs, Keith Richards. The list is perhaps countless, some burnt out fast, snuffed by their creativity and the angels and demons they fed into its furnace to keep it driving. Others lived to a ripe old age and some are still living.

A smash of glass, the shaking fist and snarled mouth. Wild eyes, sweating, lost in the act or catharsis of the aftermath. That’s how we want them. It shouldn’t appear too easy; it’s better to know it wasn’t. There is a perverse delight in living vicariously through their bombastic appetites, knowing we will never have the bravery, stupidity or means to indulge our pleasures and failings as they do. We’ll keep them Promethean, and then on the slightest whim damn their vices as if we’ve never made mistakes.

I am not advocating the abuse of substances as the gateway to creativity. Nor am I excusing the fact that the reliance on and addiction to substances has led to the pitifully short existences of some of the greatest talents we’ve ever produced as a species. I am, however, saying we have no right to damn them at the same time as we hunger for stories of their excesses. The temptation to cut this up with quotes from the comments on that Daily Mail ( thinly disguised racist rag that it is) piece. But, I figure it would be giving too much space to intellectually malnourished lampreys that appear to illicit far too much pleasure from the turmoil that is another human’s painful existence.

I will say however that, those who talk of her spluttering through some of her sets. They seem to have forgotten the girl has early emphysema (apparently) and that it is a sign of her sheer bullheaded determination and underlying strength that she is still performing for her public. Who really cares if it was exacerbated by smoking cigarettes and drugs. They don’t seem to care that their Beatles albums were the product of acid and heroin. Rather they appear to laud them for it.

I can’t help but burn a clean line between Winehouse and Billie Holiday. Music historians say that she (Holiday) changed the face of pop vocals forever. That while drugs weakened the sheer power of her voice; within that narrowing of ability she found the strength to bring the emotional delivery of her songs to the forefront. Thus rewriting the book for everyone after. It is clear she has a supportive family behind her, but to those who keep repeating why won’t they do something for her. They do nothing but show their ignorance. A simple search of the Internet will bring up countless stories of parents and family despairing on just how they can help their substance-addled child. Maybe Winehouse is on the short creative road, destined to burn bright but short, maybe she is on the long road, filled with potholes and collisions. I just hope, that unlike Holiday, she doesn’t get swindled out of the profits and rights to what she has created by the vampires around her.

We seem content to throw “shambolic” gigs at her, as if no other recording artist has performed poorly live. I’ve seen most of the musicians I love, at one time or another, stumble and fumble through their sets for one reason or another. Bad sound, faulty electrics, a cold or sore throat, drunkenness, being high. Bar electrics and bad sound, those paying to the frailty of being human have never really bothered me. Try waiting hours for Mark E. Smith to arrive at a gig, amidst an angry crowd whose rage suddenly subsists as the man thunders through a startling set.

I’m content to allow Winehouse good gigs, mediocre gigs, bad gigs and shameful gigs, because if for nothing else, it makes it interesting, because when she does pull it out of the bag, she really does. There is a sense of the unknown and adventure to that. I am also content to put concerts on the back foot and allow her albums speak for themselves. Just as I can ignore the dross people like Ozzy Osbourne put out, as long as he continues to be the performer he always has been.

The sorry truth of the matter for us, the nowheres, is if something is gloriously talented, many of us need to watch them die at the exact same time we watch them shine. If only because it makes us feel just a little bit better. It is a terrible thing that one search of youtube for Winehouse’s ‘Rehab’ video, shows a comment of someone hoping she “Ods”. You have to wonder how empty someone’s life is that they spend some of their energy wishing death on someone whose main desire is to perform for others and bring them some sort of happiness. It’s not exactly something I can fathom; it is not like Winehouse is a Scientologist or a bigot and therefore the ill feeling justified. Do they need her to die so they can sit about coffee shops and forums online smugly telling people “I told you so” and “Good riddance”? To me, that seems eminently more empty and pathetic than the junkies they claim to despise.

Wherein the Daily Mail and its readers offer their constructive criticism upon a young performer

Welcome to My Perfectionism

2008-08-18T15:25:00Z

My last piece took three months to write.

When I get on a rant I can write for days.

It’s easy, I have a direction, if I’m lucky I have a template to respond to. When left on my own I go off on tangents, I go off topic too easily, I babble, my words become redundant. Even now I still nitpick my last piece. It should be more concise, succinct, expanded, delete, worded differently.

My last piece took three months to write. When I get on a rant I can write for days. It’s easy, I have a direction, if I’m lucky I have a template to respond to. When left on my own I go off on tangents, I go off topic too easily, I babble, my words become redundant. Even now I still nitpick my last piece. It should be more concise, succinct, expanded, delete, worded differently.

<center>Welcome to my perfectionism</center>

There is a voice in the back of my head that sounds IMPORTANT. It says to me, “You should be better.”

There is nothing really wrong with me. I’m average, with a strong addiction to the written word. I am adequate in most respects. I don’t need to be “better”. Besides saying “you should be better” is not a measurable statement. The drive to better could very well follow me forever.

To counter this, I often say an affirmation to myself. It goes like this, “I am good as I am.” Does it work? Some days better than others. I also repeat “This too shall pass”. Or whatever else I can come up with that counters my current thoughts.

Perfectionism has been known to completely debilitate me. I prefer writing to speaking, because it gives me time to ponder over my words. When I speak it’s on the spot, off the top of my head, and I fear I’m going to say the wrong thing or my words will be misunderstood. So I am a wall flower, shy, standoffish. I am trying to get out there. It is a work in progress. As I wrote my opinions more, I feel more confident in personal expression. This maybe an age related thing, as I reach adulthood I am more comfortable in my own skin.

For me, quite literally, perfectionism is the cause of procrastination. The logic of it goes like this:

Me: I think I’ll work on <writing project> today.

Perfectionist Voice: What you wrote yesterday needs work. Why bother writing more?

Me: I’ll edit it later. Rewrite. IT just feels nice to write, who cares if it’s good?

Perfectionist Voice: You’ll never do anything with it, just like the rest of your projects. Your work isn’t good enough.

By this point I’m either writing or surfing the web randomly, depending on who wins the argument.

Perfectionism is a trait that appears to be passed on. I learnt it from my mother, and my dear, sweet child is hardest on herself. Five years old and she thinks she should know everything. If a picture doesn’t turn out the way she envisions it, she tosses it aside (I did the same as a pre-teen when I flirted with drawing. I’ve since stopped drawing and stick to writing). We feel for her teachers, I promise them; we are not pushing her to be better.

I feel inclined to point out there is some good points to being a perfectionist. Okay, very few of them. Okay, maybe two.

When I do work, it is good work. I won’t let it out until I’m happy with it. (Which have been few and far between so far). Perfectionism makes for hard workers. I want to be The Best [person/job title] Ever. I only need to be shown once or twice. I need very little supervision (except when it comes to boring jobs, then I lose focus). I give my best effort to the point of exhaustion and beyond it sometimes.

Occasionally; perfectionists employs persistence. If I don’t master something I will work on it until I am master. I will find another way of getting the job done. Unless the voice wins, then I abandon the task.

Perfectionism gives me a need for validation. I recall an episode of the Simpsons where the teachers go on strike and Lisa freaks out because she’s not being evaluated, tested, and graded. That’s me. I need to feel special.

I don’t like criticism. If it’s the only thing coming, it’s harsh. Balanced with good, I can deal. But then, bad criticism is better than nothing at all. No comments, no indication of my status; I end up following people around asking if I’m okay, my work is good right? It’s why I fail at long-term blogging. No comments? Kill me, I must suck. That damned inner voice (which wants to add that criticism validates it’s opinions).

I thought about doing a section: ‘How to Overcome Procrastination’. But, I’m not a self-help writer. I only have self-awareness not advice. What works for me, wouldn’t likely work for other people anyway.

It’s only an inner battle for me.

If I can get to a task before that Voice starts in, if I can do a task in spite of that Voice.

I win.

More often though, I lose.

A life coach I admire, because he doesn’t give advice; says that the Inner Voice exists because of the belief we can scare ourselves into working harder and better. Sadly we just get too scared to do anything most of the time.

The Problem of Smell

2008-08-11T19:34:00Z

Apparently my nose has gone rogue.

Apparently it always has been doing a little bit of freelancing on the side.

Apparently my nose has gone rogue.

Apparently it always has been doing a little bit of freelancing on the side.

They tell me my nose doesn’t work for me. Or well, that it does, but it just works a little too well and is prone to making executive decisions. For the most part, it will consult the parts of my brain I don’t speak to anymore. Granted, we had a brief torrid love affair several millenia ago. Though it ended cordially, we just don’t see each other any more, let alone communicate. Occassionally, I’ll discover we still float in strangely connecting circles like old lovers. Like the way I deal with all my vestigial relationships, I’ll do my best not to upset the balance and the calm, lest old venoms and controls return to wreck havok.

I picture them there, those lobes and cortexes, in an art déco café on the corner, reminiscing with my wisdom teeth, appendix and any of the others. The old friends and lovers you’ve outgrown and left behind, the ones you hope remember you with just enough fondness to not use you as a shinining example everytime they want to explain what a bastard is.

Sitting here in the clutter of my monkey nest that lies hidden at the centre of a monkey hive. Having just returned from a set of itinerant travels to other monkey hives. I find myself thinking of the aspects we use to spend our times being just a little bit more than monkeys without hair. Or one in particular anyway and even then I’m not very sure it is an aspect of humanity or just a cunningly envolved aspect of monkey.

Perfume, aftershave, deodorant, rollon, rolloff, artificial scent in all its forms. It’s a hydra subject in my mind and the main reason my nose has gone rogue. They murmur at me that my nose is working more levels than I’m aware and that this is just a muted version of how powerful it was when I was more monkey. Yet I’m aware of this and ready to agree with it. If only for the reason, that I allow this invisible information we all pump out by way of pheromones, to be used subconciously by my nose to make executive decisions.

The example is women and it’s an obvious one. I obviously cannot fuck or anything otherwise a woman who doesn’t smell pleasing to me. That’s just fast company though. Monday, Wednesday, Tuesday, Friday forgetfuls those of us non-wracked by religious guilt use to indulge in the only real playtime Adults have left. Anything longer or more important and I always have to conduct a small little test. Maybe it’s the bear in me, but if I snuffle down from right behind the ear up and down to the back of the neck and I can’t feel that invisible information punch straight through the back of my face and hook its talons into the primal and the reptile part of my brain with an old school modem dialing fuzz of cortex static. Then I know nothing will come of her. Nothing serious at least. Nothing I have to worry or think about. It has a couple of times though and I was with those people for time well past the one night thing and into years.

Reliant on this nasal Stasi as I am, I can’t say I’m much of a perfume fan. Most are too heavy, many too common, each woman becoming just a olfactory clone marked only by a change in hair or clothes. I much prefer the memory of perfume, that distant whisper women have after an hour in the sea or a night fucking. Just the slightest murmur of the artificial works for me outside of those situations. If I have a preference it’s for that woman’s natural smell. I don’t particularly want my jungle-era radar clogged up with ambergris and any variety of other animals musks, but I’ll accept the lightest dusting if social self consciousness gets in the way.

Where my nose has gone rogue on me is the latest fashion in scents being worn by the females of the species and thankfully, this segues nicely to my larger point so you won’t have to put up with much frothing at the mouth ranting from me.

I remember a time from childhood where women who did wear perfume actually smelt nice. Where the cosmetics companies making them seemed to actually an effort and there was variety and difference to the smells. A glorious time when you were very unlikely to meet a pretty blonde with an oral fixation who smells like paraquat.

Because we’ve fucking landed Ladies and Gentlemen. A century or so since the beginning of the Feminist movement and here we are with women content to wear perfume that makes them smell like cleaning products and pesticides.

Who the fuck wants to smell like Cif Lemon Fresh or Fairy Liquid original?

Who the fuck would make a perfume so damn offensive, market it in a fancy bottle with a celebrity whispering nuances. The sort of silken fluidless passionate sex the old romances seeded centuries worth of dreams in the minds of the wistful.

I’m telling you – should I find these disposable organ donors, there will be blood.

Maybe my nose has gone rogue. Maybe it was never working in the first place. But here is a stunning little brunette in clothes that could crawl off her, sashay up to me with a microphone and sing “I was made for loving you” into my ear. I imagine those clothes would flick their tongue off my lobe, lips moving in that fraction away empty space that still feels like you’re physically there. Heart missing a beat and that’s only her clothes and the body they’re hiding. Borrowing terms and robbing graves that haven’t filled yet, but goddamn, she’s pretty like drugs.

Yet, as you get close, close enough to flirt or catch her attention properly you realize she smells like Flash Pine Floor Cleaner. If it’s not bad enough my women now look like they got their tan on the surface of Venus now they have to smell like industrial solvents. And as suddenly as you were taken by her, it’s gone. She’s close to being offensive to the nose, you’re almost wincing, maybe you’ve even vomited in your mouth a little bit. Your eyes are probably being stoic about watering, but you know, should you take your nose out of your pint, they may not have that preserve for you anymore.

Seriously though, have we come a hundred or so years into Feminism for the female of the species to actually want to smell like a kitchen cleaning product?

And that is where my nose has gone rogue. Spinning about making executive decisions beyond my control. As what was suddenly a spreading fuzzy connection running from the brain down trail past the bellybutton becomes a sudden balloon popped nothing. The sort of wheeze that you thought was going to be a minute long wracking cough and had braced yourself as such. Cause fuck no, there is no way I’m letting someone who smells like what my Granny used to clean drains with put it in her mouth.

Those Godless bastards who remain in the art of Perfumery obviously stopped caring a long time ago. I imagine them as glamour decked husks of liver spots and grey hair who just don’t believe in the nobility of suicide. There is something wrong here and I just can’t figure it out; just how a smell that reminds of cleaning products can completely turn off the connection of reproductive process. For a start, I’m a terrible fucking slut, I’ve spent my life living the Chuck Berry monkey gospel truth of “If it moves fuck it. If it doesn’t move, fuck it until it does, then fuck it some more.” How on Earth has close to twenty years smoking not deadened my olfactory system enough that when a woman smells like something you use to remove limescale, I can just not notice and get to what needs to be done.

I’m not even upset. I’m just amazed.

Before I ramble off into talking about the other kind of women, who wear things like rose water, just enough, so it feels like you’re fucking a giant chunk of Turkish delight. I have to draw a line in the sand before this and all the now flashback scent stampede of women who smelt of freshly completed dishwasher cycles.

Draw a line to the point I really wanted to get to about scent. The point that probably takes my previous and uses it as the shell to shoot myself in the foot. I’m writing this piece, because somewhere, someone or some group of petty minded individuals took away one of the aspects I used to hide my monkey self. Or maybe, just one of the aspects I, Monkey, used to make itself more attractive or even just be itself.

If I remember much through the cloud of repression that is my childhood it’s that every male smelt of a mixture of aftershave and tobacco. Well, almost every male. It seemed, like shaving, smoking and drinking, to be the sign of a man. Back then, most of the men smelt different. They all had their own unique signature and I guess a part of me thought, at some point, even if I didn’t want it, I’d probably have to have that too. As a kid, I was never big on the whole artifical smell thing, it got in the way. Maybe that is an indication of an animalistic nature, I don’t know, but I found people, outside of my parents, who wore scents hard to trust.

That is until eleven – cause eleven is the new brown which used to be the new black, don’t ya know. Apparently, around these parts, eleven is where it kicks in. If only, because eleven is when all my peers in school began to use spraycan deodorants. You gradually became a pariah if you weren’t doused in something highly flammable. It was probably some sort of dark hippie Mordor shadow that led my mother to forbidding me from spraying aluminium on my chest and armpits. Besides, I didn’t really like the idea of smelling like everybody else.

So it was that I spent a considerable amount of time, effort and scent burnt nostrils trying to find the smell that was right for me. I remember the moment as clear as if it was five minutes ago when I was demanding my fridge except the return of a bottle of wine. I was twelve and it was a light sapped evening of the Christmas week here in Dublin. I was sitting cross-legged in one of those small duty free toiletries shops that used to populate the back alleys and side streets of Dublin. My nose was starting to turn toward that alcohol drenched numbness you get when you’ve smelt far too many tester strips.

The memory of the exact moment I found that little black topped weirdly opaque glass bottle will be forever seared into my memory. At least that is until dementia takes me. It didn’t just smell right, it smelt perfect; it smelt like me. Somehow, someone, had managed to capture what I wanted to smell like before I’d even smelt like that.

It was Dunhill Edition or Dunhill Black and I would smell like that for the next seventeen years. I would smell like that for longer than I hadn’t. It would drench into the very essence of me, that if I dreamt, I smelt like that, even now, when I dream, I still smell like that. I enhanced that smell with tobacco and alcohol. I must have done something right, for the main compliment I would receive from females over the years would be “Oh you smell great”. Which is great really, you can get over the fact they never say something like “You handsome piece of hot shit or “Good God I could get lost in your eyes” because smell sears itself into peoples minds. Which is probably for years after the fact, I would get emails and sms’ from ex-girlfriends and flings saying things like “I miss your smell” or “Something just reminded me of your smell and now I’m thinking of you mmm”. Which is great if you’ve got the charm of a bag of rattling weasals and the looks of a bloated corpse the cops look at and start a pool on whether the crack or gin did it.

But, sometimes not so good when the paranoia grips and you get suspicious of what your smell is getting up to when you’re asleep, has it developed sentience? Did you pick it or did it pick you? And it’s always kind of telling they make a point of saying they only miss the smell and not you. Then again, fuck it, you never did wear it for other people, you wore it because whatever was in it, whatever effect it had on your nostrils, you were utterly addicted to it.

I remember when it started to get hard to find, when people would have to bring it to me from abroad, when I could only find it in the shops. I thought this was just because it was a rarer type of smell, of the more exclusive sort. I would never have thought Dunhill would have the audacity to discontinue it. Yet this is exactly what I would find one day when with dwindling reserves, I went on a particularly arduous search for it. A very nice lady at a perfume counter would inform me that they’d stopped making it almost three years previously and that all I’d been buying was the dwindling afterstock left in shops and warehouses.

I must have looked upset, because she asked me how long I’d been wearing it. “Since I was a kid, fifteen sixteen years. I don’t know what to do now.”. The ever increasing look of upset coupled with my words must have had a profound effect on her, because she came around from behind the counter and without giving me a chance to say yes or no, swept me up into a big hug filled with patting and comforting words.

She kept me there, I don’t know how long, chatting to me about new smells, teasing me about needing to change but admitting understanding as to why I didn’t want to. Laughing at my comments on the new scents and reminiscing on how fine a product the Dunhill Edition had been. As it turned out, she had been a fan also. She phoned a warehouse for me to see if they had any stock in a corner somewhere. She even offered to get me a cup of coffee. I really didn’t think I looked that upset, but I must have. So I left, ambling sort of aimless and lost about the city, knowing that I only had one and a half bottles left. In the middle of a crumbling relationship, I’m not sure what upset me more, the loss of the woman or the fresh knowledge that I may never smell like myself ever again.

Sadness turned to hate as it so often does. Those bastards, those fucking bastards had taken my smell from me. I’d been loyal, I had a Dunhill bathrobe, a Dunhill bag and this is how they’d repaid me? By making a replacement scent that smelt like something I’d spray into a room to kill bluebottles? I’ve tried every scent they’ve come up with since, from the one that smells like a cocktail made from cheap white label gin and concentrate juice to the one that smells oven cleaner. They have come up with nothing worthwhile. Nothing even approaching the scent I wore or the few others they also discontinued.

I could suffer the fools who want to smell like paraquat, if I had my smell back. I might even be able to find a work around the women who have heady strains of what I imagine the Andromeda Strain smells like. If there was just one usable, workable smell that I didn’t feel I was using as poor substitute. Tommy Hilfiger, Armani, Calvin Klein, nothing they make is of any use and it would seem the subtle art of perfumery is all but lost to making sure we all smell the same. It is a wonderful future we’re mapping out for ourselves; one where we have maybe the same six or eight sets of clothing to choose our uniform from. Where we will have battered ourselves so far into conformity that even scent has become something we only really have a primary colours like selection of.

I have three quarters of a bottle left.

When I want to smell like myself again, when I want memories to be clear and solid and not gossamer ghosts lacking any real substance.

I put a little on, just a little.

Just to smell like myself again.

Apologies

2008-08-11T19:31:00Z

We Apologize for the delay in new articles coming up on the mountain, we have collectively been moving to a new server, traveling, in hospital, mourning and so busy our feet didn’t touch the ground.

We have also had a number of our regular contributors leave us for reasons that make sense only to them. We’re sorry to see them go, and wish them all the best.

Hope you stay with us.

Thanks

Spring

2008-07-10T18:30:00Z

I’m out, camera in hand, trying to get a picture that wishes to stick to the camera. Trying to find something out there that is worth saving, just a glimmer of something. Something I want to save.

Gray clouds coat the sky, rubbing in the dim light of a sun that doesn’t want to shine. It’s industrial spring, a haze of mist coating everything, painting it dully grey. The flowers are supposed to shine in vivid colours, I know it. They don’t. The air, the day, the light, I don’t know what it is; it’s making them look tired, dull and washed out. Worn, yes, worn, like the coat I’m wearing, the leather fraying and ripping against the chilly winds. It’s spring, the season claims it, the last remains of snow are melting in the bushes at the shaded parts of the street. I’m out, camera in hand, trying to get a picture that wishes to stick to the camera. Trying to find something out there that is worth saving, just a glimmer of something. Something I want to save.

I glare at the grass, the moisture of the molten snow licking it to the ground, dull grey and washed out green, unable to protect the dirt beneath it. I sigh and turn the camera down. The flowers aren’t worth the attention, and the trees are still dead, the pale light barely drying their bark out during the day. I growl at the lady with the poor inbred remnant of a dog beside her, her green coat brushing my bag as she pushes her way past, the furry rat on the leash yapping after me as it attempts to get ahead of her.

I walk on, stones making a crushing sound beneath my boots as I stride downwards, turning left and right, eyeing the people as they stand, huddling in the beams of sunlight, trying to consume energy the sun doesn’t have. I sigh, the mismatched crowd of eighties fashion and winter mixing amongst the people.

I glare, meeting the glances of the people waiting for the bus. They know I watch them, they know I judge them as they stand posing for the people, trying to keep a nonchalantly bored look behind the oversized sunglasses, the trendy jackets and cigarettes. I just can’t stand it. Wherever I walk, there is more of it.

It’s just one of those days, where it should be spring, there is sun, there is light, but still the light and the people are stuck in winter. The colours are dulled and grey, faded, saturated, paled. There is simply no spring there. The signs are there, the people pretend it, but it doesn’t work. I sigh and resign myself that nothing will be caught today and head home.

Just a few blocks away from home, my day is brightened up by a shining red coat that’s tastefully draped over a lady. The vivid colour breaks the dull grayness of the day as she’s standing, shifting from foot to foot, her face full of concern as she looks at the bum lying passed out at her feet. She bends forwards, not even casting a shadow across the walkway where the bum is resting his head on his hand, drunk asleep after falling off the bench his friend is still sitting on. She looks around, concerned, moves a bit, back and forth, back and forth. She looks up again, uncertain on what to do in the situation. Her bags are clutched firmly between her hands in front of her, and then she kicks him in the face to see if he responds.

Ah, isn’t spring grand?

Ducks

2008-07-09T14:10:00Z

Ducks are what we are concerned with today. Ducks belong to the Antidinae, or Antinidae, or Antidie, what ever family of waterfowl. Ducks are so anti-die that they’ll even roger a corpse. Even more so, they’ll give no concern to the gender of the corpse either. How do we know this? Because certain things are irrevocably true. One truth is that Ducks, when cooked well, are yummy. Another truth is that homosexual necrophilia is a common occurrence in Mallard ducks.

Muse walked into the shop today. She brought inspiration with her. This was a good thing because this is the one where the bottle truly runs dry. I’ll need more rant juice by next week. Perhaps if I give her the bottle, she’ll take it as a sign. I take it as a sign that Mad Dog stopped into the shop as well and was looking to drag me out for pints. He got fortunate in a backlog of editing, and a friend in from out of town. I, unfortunately, have to finalize a drawing of two steaks to be tattooed on said friend from out of town, and this doesn’t even include the two latest tattoos for the rapidly growing Mad Cow Army.

That’s a different story, and we’re not going to talk about it now. Just accept for the moment that it’s mad, it’s full of cows, and it’s an army. There’re cows in a field, French cows, mad cow round-abouts, cows disguising themselves as pigs and even cows in sheep’s clothing. And we cannot forget Dr Strangecow, all operating under the auspices of Cowmoodore General Ash, Mad Cow #1. But that’s another story.

How can this be true? Well, let me tell you a story. And the facts are there on the internet. Here is where I say that I’m writing a rant for Mad Dog, currently out on the lash. I have my work to do, so I’m not spending the time giving you, reader, what would account as a bibliography. For those that disbelieve and want to be lazy about it, this is a cheap way out for you. For those that really want to discredit ducks buggering corpses, go do the research. All you’ll be able to do is rant. For those of you that want a funny story, this is so mad I couldn’t have ever possibly made this up.

So this Dutch professor is in his office doing all sorts of Dutch professory things, like grading papers while smoking a big blunt filled with White Lightning and being sucked off by a Moroccan whore, when he hears a crash at his window. Bless the Dutch. The world just wouldn’t be the same without them. There’s a race that has justified its existence. Said professor carefully extracts himself from whatever sort of Dutch professory madness he was involved in and goes and looks out the window. He sees a duck on the ground with a broken neck, obviously dead. He also sees, a few minutes later, another Mallard come by and toss a leg over the corpse. Duck must have liked it, too. The professor said it was making all sorts of excited noises and really enjoying itself with this corpse. This raised a few questions in the professor’s mind. It raised a few questions in my mind when I discovered this also, but I didn’t go out and study this subject.

But someone did. What they discovered in their years of hiding out in the marshes, wearing waders and covering themselves in mud was shocking. Now, I’m not one to sit out in the rain and cold leering through a pair of binoculars for weeks on end, working at compiling data on what essentially constitutes duck porn, with the sole intent of producing a years-long valid scientific study on the sexually deviant practices of ducks.

No, I’m the sick bastard sitting in a warm, dry environment finding the people so driven to do that funny. It’s funny because I’ve been that driven. I’ve been the daft one dedicating all my time and energy into a goal I truly believed in. I, however, am just not that driven to sit in a marsh and study how ducks fuck.

See, anyone unfortunate enough to witness ducks having sex will readily admit that it’s not pleasant. In human terms, it would constitute rape. Wee duckette is having a nice swim around the pond when out of the sky drops this big mallard who then gets up behind her, bites her by the neck, holds her head under water, and then forces himself on her. He rapes her. There’s no beauty of life there, it’s just pure biological need, and that need will kill everything in its need to be done. I don’t want to spend years of my life studying that. I don’t want to have to think about how common an occurrence this is, let alone how necessary this is for the survival of ducks everywhere.

But I will find the results of the study funny. If for no other reason than ducks are yummy, and I can assuage my guilt at eating meat over the fact that my duck was probably queer, and therefore a non-breeder.

We all know it’s about sex, right? No sex equals no babies, except for those odd species capable of non-sexual reproduction, and parthenogenesis. That’s a fundamental truth to life. Sexual species cannot live without sex. That’s just nature. It’s natural law, scientific.

Now since this world has religion, and we really don’t want to alienate the Creationists, especially since they have their fingers on the buttons that launch the nukes, it’s also God’s law. God made the world, and he made a perfect world. It is as it is. And that world includes the fact that the majority of the couples found naturally, that is, in the wild, of mallard ducks are homosexual.

Since, let’s break it down, ducks need to fuck. We are left with a dilemma. This is where reference points come in handy. They help us not to lose sight. So, we stick with the perfect world. God’s or mathematical proof, it’s all the same. Everything is explainable.

Let’s start with God’s. That equals the duck in my belly a little faster. So we all know that we’re not to harm a soul. That’s what we’re taught. Then we’re taught filtered views of that idea, with certain ideologically relevant perspectives. That’s God’s world. It’s a perfect world. Everything is explainable. God set the world the way that it is, and a very large part of that is, is breeding. All species must breed, even memes.

Also, God set the animals below us in some way. He made them our lunches, our servants. Surely animals don’t have some sort of social system that allows them to bond together in couples. Surely they don’t have some sort of emotional bonding that allows them to share time together and enjoy it the same way we do with the family’s pet dog? They’re animals, what do they know?

The solution is thus: All ducks must breed. Ducks are food. God has placed enough heterosexual couples of ducks on earth to ensure that the species will survive. Duck is a healthy source of protein. God, in his wisdom, created queer ducks to ensure that we people would always have a ready supply of tasty duck. He made them queer so that we never had to worry about the lost little souls of countless unborn generations of little ducklings. And queers are against God’s law. We are morally righteous in our voracious eating of homosexual duck. We’re destroying an abomination against God’s will. God’s proof is that ducks are yummy.

Now, the sharp reader saw the inherent flaw in the logic there, and we’re going to come back to that. We’re also going to have to come back to the whole necrophilia thing. For the first time, I’m looking at that word count and starting to feel hindered by it. We haven’t even started on the science of all this yet.

Let me reiterate that the facts are out there on the Internet. I cannot afford space to fill this with volumes of citations and references. There’s the sun, the moon, and the stars. Go get ‘em. The Internet is useful for a few things other than porn, even when you’re planning on destroying it. Ask Mad Dog about it. He’s got a thing or two to say on the subject.

The facts are: a large percentage of mallard duck couples are homosexual. Ducks will have a go at a fresh corpse, they almost seem to enjoy it. Ducks are such randy bastards that they will go at each other in the air. This happens often enough that the act has its own term: rape flight.

The consequences of that term are almost over whelming. There are, first of all, the physical connotations attached to those words, which, makes it for us, both physically impossible and morally apprehensive, and another key point. That point being that it has been studied so much, and given so much value, that there is a community out there that uses that term as part of its normal conversation.

Talk about nerds. I don’t ever want to be associated with that lot. People might think me one of those creepy duck lads. I wouldn’t want anyone to think that I had spent hours obsessing about duckonian deviancy. They might view me funny. It’s a good thing words are permanent. I’m glad I cleared that up. Now there is no way that anyone can ever associate me with homosexual necrophilia in mallard ducks. It is written.

I’ll be that mad bastard sitting in a warm, dry environment finding the humour of it all. There is nothing in the world so sacred that it cannot have the piss taken out of it. After all, it’s a perfect world. Everything is explainable. Homosexual necrophilia exists in mallard ducks. It makes sense. Why not?

Science will, as is its purpose, attempt to explain everything while readily admitting that it doesn’t have all the answers. Science will recognize the inherent flaws in its logic and work at a solution for them. That solution will be so important to someone that they will go and spend years gathering notes on duck perversion so we can all read about it and sleep better at night with a greater understanding of mallard duck sexual practices. Thank fuck someone felt it that important. I wouldn’t be able to write this without that soul’s research. Thus I say, to each their own. Fair play to you, your waders, and your notepad, whoever you are. Because of you, we will never view ducks in the same light again. And we will find all the inherent flaws funny.

I mean, when you stop and ponder for a second, there’s more to ducks than one would ever guess. There’s certain hidden values to ducks. Like, when you’re busy fucking one, the webbed feet can paddle the nad sack nicely as it’s kicking when it’s trying to get away. You just need to clip the claws down. And it only works with ducks. Swans are too large, they’ll scrape your thighs. The legs of loons are too long, they’ll scratch your taint. We all know you don’t want to be walking around town for the next few days trying to heal a scrape on your taint. That’d just be pure misery. Not much humour in that.

No, I don’t want to think too much about ducks and their sexual deviancy. I’ve got more important things to do. I need to get two steaks designed to tattoo on a vegan, and I need to get ready the stencils for the two newest members of the Mad Cow Army. After all, I am working in the morning, there’s a shop to be run. Pity there wasn’t room for a yarn about necrophilia.