It went something like this:

Q-M: So how's the love-life horse?

Me: Yeah, we really haven't been talking much lately have we?

Q-M: You're right. It's funny how you can share a bed with someone,
follow them about a lot of the time, poop in their sock drawer, and never really talk isn't it?

Me: Oh monkey man, not on my socks again we...

Q-M: Easy, easy, there's no poop in your drawer - I meant it metaphorically.

Me: Metaphorically?

Q-M: Obviously.

Me: Fine. So you want to talk?

Q-M: No... listen moreso.

Me: About my love-life?

Q-M: Well I do have that attention-span issue so i didn't want to ask you anything too complicated that might absent-mindedly lead to my pooping in your drawer.

Me: So long as we're still talking metaphorical drawers you can poop where you like. Why are we saying "poop" today?

[Q-M shrugs monkey-style]
Q-M: Meh.

Me: Ok, well my friend, my love-life - and i'll keep it brief, bearing my drawers in mind. You might say I have a love-of-life moreso than a love-life in the sense I'm sure you mean...

Q-M: Spare me. Horse I'm thinking of all kinds of new reasons to pay a visit to that sock-drawer.

Me: Ok. I'm talking. I'm talking...um...well, there's my prolonged eye-contact with women who work in cafes and shopping centres - I even branched out to pretty strangers in the street. That seems to be going well... and a girl in a bar told me I reminded her of Jesus, but that 'God's gift' gag I tried needs a little work.

Q-M: Agreed.

Me: Why do you ask?

Q-M: I need the bed next week - I was checking out my chances of you finding somewhere else to 'sleep.' All going well I could have used it and you'd have been none the wiser.

Me: What on earth made you think I was going to, well, you know, score?

Q-M: I'm working on something.

Me: WHAT?

Q-M: Yeah don't get too excited, it may not come together. Like I say, I need the bed. You know, thought a win-win would be nice.

Me: And so you're 'working on something?'

Q-M: Magician's secrets are a lot like monkey business.

Me: What? Immoral or illegal?

Q-M: Watch this space Horse. Watch this space.

Part of me is thinking 'this space' is the sock drawer. Nonetheless, one of the bizarrest conversations I've ever had with that particular monkey and my experience advises me that I should treat his weirder comments with some seriousness and his serious comments with some disregard. The difficulty is in telling these categories apart - which is an art I still haven't mastered.

Hara-kiri

Bright Eyes said something in one of his songs along the lines of: “The job that just keeps making you want to sleep, is keeping you up at night.”

Some nights, like last night, I find this happens. I have a TV in my room, which wasn’t my idea, but I cant’ seem to get rid of it as it is attached to a wall-bracket which would just look wrong if it didn’t have a TV on it. It’s an impossible situation. I’ve thought long and hard about it and I can’t think of a solution to this problem in fact I think so long and hard about it that I often have to watch TV to take my mind off it.

Now on the surface, it might seem like it is one of those MTV specials that show celebrity nipples (God that was a good show. Did anyone record it?). Or like last night, some novelty like “teenage kicks” which I found very annoyingly watchable (as I just wanted to sleep) that keeps me up at night, but it’s not. And it’s not thinking about a way to get rid of my TV that keeps me up either. It’s the prospect that all I’ll have to do after I close my eyes is to get on my bike (perhaps in the rain) and go to work.

It’s not worrying about the work I do, and it’s not the stress of the work I do. It’s a deep sadness and disappointment about the crap that populates the minds of my immediate colleagues in the civil/public service that I find myself a part of. Crap that comes gushing out of their mouths and unrelentingly through my aural canals and into my sensitive lovely brain. Now some of it is the kind of junk that makes you leave your equanimity at the door and laugh with superiority at its ignorance, but most of it is bitching about other people, treating one’s own inflexibility as a virtue (sometimes referred to as obstructionism), subtle and not-so-subtle bullying and coercion, and outright greed and unprofessionalism. And all of this is done loudly and all day.

And yes, to be honest, it has driven me to television. Late-night television. The lowest of all forms. (Apart from mid-morning television of course)

Still, I only have two weeks left before I find myself in altogether different scenario and then I’ll have no excuses (I mean different excuses).

I just hope I’m not hooked.

Hooray for Max and his new job.

Buckley.

Rain Cometh

It has started.
I got a feeling in my proverbial bones that the rain was coming as I was leaving the house. I happened to glimpse my pops’ big green poncho from the camping trips of my childhood last night and in the absence of a raincoat that fits, thought that this little retro number might just do the trick if the bone-rain-predictometer proved accurate. I bounded up the stairs, as I am wont to do, (even in work, where others trudge up stairs because they are paid by the hour, I bound up to and at times three steps a time. I was in a drunken tuxedo-clad stair-leaping contest in Cambridge with Diarmuid actually. I’d forgotten that until yesterday when I got the pictures from that weekend developed. But I digress.) I retrieved the poncho and went on my way – stuffing it into an already bulging squash-bag.

And then it started. It’ll rain now for about six months. In my head, if not in reality. Such is the life of a cyclist – ever sensitive to and discomforted by changes in weather and prone to exaggeration about it. As I went to produce this piece of camping appareil (itself tent-like), to keep my nice crumpled linen jacket from wetness, I realised why my bag had felt so heavy. Quasi-mojo was riding pillion. Sitting on my bag, hands clasped around my protruding squash-racket.

“It has started,” he said.
“Hmmm. Yes. I know. Poncho time?”
“This is neither the time – which is 1987 – nor the place – Mexico.”

Picture the scene.
It’s a combat green plastic poncho with a hood. Hood first. 10 year-old helmet on second. Quasi-Mojo is shrieking with laugher. Already, my poncho is billowing. I see it has buttons that one presumes clasp to something to make this item more manageable, but in the rain and the wind and the shrieking laughter, I just can’t figure it out. I take some of the poncho in each hand sit on another bit and trust that if the monkey isn’t tucked in, that he’ll find a dry spot somewhere. He’s resourceful like that. I couldn’t see a damn thing with the hood obstructing part of my view and the poncho hindering any sight of anything behind me. It was terrible terrible idea and a raincoat must be bought. As well as these practical matters, I looked like an idiot. And worse: a green idiot. A hooded, helmeted, green billowing idiot… on a flashy bike… that was invisible under the billowing idiocy of it all.

And I still got wet.

Ego-Injections

So this blog is going to be about the goo (e-goo) that I have been squirting in large doses and variant forms into feel-good bubbles that rise to the surface in search of some better metaphor to elucidate the things i've done which are making me feel quite inflated in importance and strangely paranoid.

I suppose the first thing was my big birthday outing, which took advantage of a seasonal lull in social events and a relatively large network of border-line alcoholic acquaintances (many of whom 'brung someone') to create quite a significantly sized celebration. This (and especially a drunken crowd slurring 'Happy Birthday To You') leaves one struggling to try not to enjoy the attention. So in short my birthday made me feel quite undeservedly popular.

Also making me feel a bit unlike myself, (but quite cocky nonetheless) are my recent purchases. I've just ordered a pretty flashy laptop computer that has more features than I could ever use or understand. I've never owned one before - so it's a pretty big novelty. Especially also since it plays DVDs and I've never had a DVD player and especially especially especially that I'll have a rucksack version of the carrier case which I think you'll agree is pretty shit cool (but yes, admittedly but not as cool as Kerry's bag). Also, today I am going to buy a shiney new bike. The first since I made my confirmation (Irish drinking-initiation ceremony) in 1992. This died this year and I've been since using its wheels on half a bike i found coming home from a pub late one night in April. My new bike is one that has quick-release everything so you have to make it into some kind of bike-version of an oragami swan everytime you want to lock it up. You pay extra for that. What a world. So both of these things make me feel giddy and somehow like a more accomplished and more excellent person - such is the customary effect of status symbols. It's a strangely vacuous, illusory feeling.

I am mildly concerned I am committing some act of Hubris. That's greek you know. But I've also balanced out my karma by buying stuff for other people (and that's Indian). My parents are going to get a nice big fat anniversary present, and I'm flying a superstar (my highest commendation)of a person from London to Dublin. Now that I have no money left, I feel a small sense of relief that I won't be able to buy any more shiney stuff that'll make me paraniod about losing.

Tonight I recite poetry in front of lots of people. It's poetry about prisoners and Irish Republican heroes - which allows to steal from their glory in order to honour them. My guy is Robert Emmet. He has no head. Mine is getting fatter as the days wear on. I will of course keep you posted on the wrath of the Gods which is no doubt on its way.

Go on. I dare ya.

The following register on the Buckley hard-to-spell-ometer.
I dare you to give me your answers.

1.(a)Squirl.........(b)Squirrel........(c)Squirell......
2.(a)Ferret.........(b)Ferrett.........(c)Ferett........
3.(a)Circumfrence...(b)Circumference...(c)Circumfrense..
4.(a)Minuscule......(b)Miniscule.......(c)Minniscule....
5.(a)Responsible....(b)Resposable......(c)Responcible...
6.(a)Haras..........(b)Harrass.........(c)Harass........
7.(a)Brocoli........(b)Broccolli.......(c)Broccoli......

An Open Letter to 'Sure' (Draft)

Dear Sure,
As a prepubescent, and indeed, a fully-fledged acne-d and awkward pubescent lad, I always enjoyed your female-Indiana-Jones-style sexy adverts. So much so, that my earliest dreams inspired by my maturing body and novel hormones, often contained women with a white swish on their otherwise sultry-brown skin thanks to your advertising campaign. Ultimately and perhaps incidentally though, I must admit the fantasy you supplied was supplanted by a blonde 'I-dream-of-genie' figure as it made women seem more maternal and inviting, and less intimidating and sweaty (which was what I was looking for at the time - at the moment, the way I am now, you'd almost certainly win on the fantasy stakes - if that's any consolation). Also and certainly incidentally, the motif lead me astray for a number of years as far as the correct way to apply deodourant is concerned. I thought it was sprayed on one's back with a stensil (sp?).

I am writing today specifically in relation to a product of yours for men which has not received comparable marketing to the products I so fondly forget the names of from the late eighties and early nineties. I have also forgotten the name of this product, not only due to lack of advertising which I suspect wouldn't work anyway, but also due to the similarity and predictability of such names (and the fact that I don't want to look like a metro-sexual by remembering it, though I know if i had any money I would probably be one). However, I'm pretty confident that it had the words active and plus in the title.

It's a deodourant cream (the first I've ever tried - spoiling myself for my birthday etc.) that requires 'two clicks' per application and offers twenty-four hour protection. First of all, I would like to say that I smelled my right arm-pit (presuming that my left smelled somewhat similar and not bothering to check) twenty-four hours after I first applied the cream as per your instructions and am happy to report that I still smelled quite talcy - consistent with my initial diagnosis. However it was at this point where things began to get decidedly sticky. I am refering to my arm-pit hair. I was curious to find that your deodourising cream is also a hair-styler. And yes, this was 24 hours later! This reminded me of a short-running advertisement of yours (I think) in which a man fell off a cliff and grabbed onto a branch on the way down only to make an acquaintance a short time later in a woman (one presumes single) who suffered the same fate. The point of the scenario was ostensibly the line, "Sure. It won't let you down". Would I be right in thinking that these people actually had applied your product to their hands and were glued to the branches and I have misinterpreted yet another of your adverts?

I checked your product again (taking careful note to ignore the name of it) and found that no reference was made to this feature. You might consider marketing your product a little better. I also noted that it took quite alot of extra soap to clean this gunk (no offence intended by my use of the term) off - which raises a number of issues:

1. Do you offer any reimbursment for this extra cleansing?
2. Is there a cleanser you particularly recommend? Peroxide perhaps?
3. Do you recommend I remove it at all - since it may continue to make my pits smell nice if i don't.
4. If for some reason I neglected to wash the gunk off and was planning on going out and mixing in polite society, how much should I reapply. The same again? A half-dose? Not at all?
5. If I shaved my arm-pits would this improve or disimprove the efficacy of your product and/or would it run a risk of sticking my arms to myself as per a tyrannasaurus (sp?) rex impression?
6.If I accidentally click three times instead of two and produce too much gunk, what is the pocedure for rectifying this scenario from a health and safety perspective.


Furthermore, your instructions suggest that your product be applied to the arm-pits only. Is this because your product may glue clothing to my body? And is there another product that you would reccommend for my hair that would style it and make my hair smell as good as your product?

You also suggest that it should not be applied to painted surfaces. Does this apply to ink? If I were writing a love-letter to someone who would appreciate man-smell on my correspondence, should i refrain from rubbing the paper in my arm pits as I usually do?

What difficulties do you envisage arising were a monkey to use/eat your product?

Awaiting your response eagerly,
Thanking you in advance,
Yours etc.

24-ness

My answer to the question, "Do you feel old?," is no.

I feel young, I feel strong, I feel happy.

I'm this guy