Weird People I Lived with in Galway, Vol. 1

 

It may come as a surprise to you, but, fadó fadó, I resided among the true Gaels by the western coast of our great land. For a year, I laboured over a PhD thesis that, in the end, was too radical for the conservative straightjacket that is academia. While living there, I was frequently lashed by the icy rain and sent tumbling home by a ruthlessly invasive wind. I longed for a comfortable home to return to, after a long day of anal rash inducing sedentary studying. Although it was a long walk from the university, my first house was far above student standards, and I felt no danger of it being wrecked by parties, living with two ‘civilians’, both over thirty. The mild mannered Australian man who interviewed me for the room was a great reassurance that I had landed safely. I was sure I had found a relaxed abode to return to every evening. I didn’t meet Lutzfemelda until I moved in later. Her name obviously wasn’t Lutzfemelda, but it sounds as crazy as she was. I can’t remember the first time we met, but I also can’t remember the frigid crow ever being very friendly towards me. The majority of the time, when I could stand to be in the same room as, she would greet my presence with a furrowed brow that would sit above her dark, lifeless eyes. I soon learned not to take it personally, as I discovered her rancour was too great to focus on one person. My contemporaneous study of philosophy informed me that her metaphysical composition consisted of large vats of resentment, mistrust, and paranoia, among other baneful things. She only derived enjoyment in life when she perceived victory over those she scorned; that is to say those involved in conventional/organised religion, those who trusted empirical science as a ground for medical practices, anyone who enjoyed materialism, and just about everyone in authority. It didn’t stop there of course; she also hated processed foods, smoke made by cooking, loud music, conversation at a normal volume, laughter, cars, academia, the English etc. The nuns who educated her were probably number one on her ‘Things I’ll Use to Make Myself Miserable by Resenting Forever’ list. Needless to say, I had to walk gently on quite fragile eggshells (free range of course). Innocuous activities could trigger one of the many nerves of resentment that ran from her periphery (the house over which she exercised dominion) to her very core (her abyss-black heart). I once was grilling a chicken for my dinner using with the extractor fan on. Lutzfemelda came in hastily, coughing dramatically and opening every window and door, to allow the freezing November night in. Determined to rid the house of ethereal oppressor that is convention, she would watch TV with earphones, connected via a wire that ran the length of the room. It would take a couple of awkward minutes, before the aggressively New Age hag decided to allow me to listen too. In the bathroom, her dominion still reigned, and I was greeted by an informative tongue chart on the wall, which you could use to judge your health, and by health I mean how much yin and yang you had. Incidentally, I had always seemed to have less yin after brushing my teeth.

Her insight to the spiritual world was at odds with her believe that sitting and thinking about things, as I did frequently, was useless, counterproductive, and destructive. Or at least that’s what I interpreted her opinion to be, as she expressed it mostly with an agitated face spasm and shaking her hands about her head. She once confided in me that there were too many people in this world, and she also kept asking me about when ‘the revolution’ was going to occur. By ‘revolution’, she meant a violent undoing of our technological society and replacing it with her Luddite, rural fantasy. I told her that in a bloody revolution, our leaders are not usually chosen and they are capable of doing monstrous things with impunity. Hence, we should be cautious about where revolutions take us. This involves thinking, something she didn’t agree with, given it might compromise her dichotomous worldview.

In the end, it was her who wanted me to leave, and, after the initial disappointment, I was happy to escape. The Australian gentleman was clearly saddened by my choice, but knew well why I was leaving. In the true hallmark of a horrible person, she got what she wanted at the inconvenience of another person, and then she pretended that she was happy to not inconvenience me after I had decided to leave, thereby creating the illusion that it was really my choice.

But that’s what horrible people do. She was more puritanical than the nuns she hated so much. She couldn’t separate the wrong from the wrongdoer and managed to reproduce it. And how did I figure that out, Mary? That’s right, I sat down and thought about it! See, I’m not afraid to say your name, you psycho! You can’t hurt me anymore! I’ll eat what I want! Go die in a ditch with all the other ungrateful Luddites of the world, you manic, bitch-faced, cuntish, haggish geebag!

Believe in Better

When Dustin Hoffman is rotting in hell, he’ll be forced to make a three day long advertisement for Sky Atlantic. For three uninterrupted days, he’ll have to make slight sighs, stare into the distance, and force the corners of his mouth into his cheeks to make an insincere Dalai Lama smile. Any failure to feign sincerity, and the project will start from the beginning, in a torturous activity comparable to the punishment of Sisyphus. For 72 hours, Mr Hoffman will have to stand against a New York skyline and produce line after line about stories, each one more pedestrian and obvious than the last. “Some stories are long.” he’ll tell us. “Some, [deep breath] some are short.” And so we’ll muse at length about stories, as he tells us about how some stories run for two hours, some for two and a half. Gravely, we’ll be told about how some run for a serious three hours, whereas others, we’ll be reminded with a tickled laugh, run for less than an hour. “They take us to a fantasy land, which – somehow – resembles our reality.” We’ll be reminded of how some people die in stories, while many live. Others come back from the dead as ghosts, whereas others never actually died. Some are brought back to life by the ‘magic’ of a future technology. Some are reborn in other forms. Some, like Mr Hoffman, die on the inside long before they die on the outside. Not even the greatest of stories can ‘make him feel’ anymore. Some stories are about action or adventure, whereas others are about romance. Some delve deep into farce and hilarity [fake-ass Dalai Lama smile]. “Some touch our very soul. Our soul, no less!” [Mr Hoffman has to restart the ad again.]

Oh, yes; when we tune into Sky Atlantic, we are appreciating in the same ancient art of storytelling that our distant ancestors practiced. Watching some B-lister like Tom Selleck in yet another cop show fills us with the same awe that great storytellers produced from impressionable audiences centuries ago. Our sense of wonder will be sustained by watching all seven seasons of Star Trek: Voyager in the afternoons – stories that will surely stay with us, as we reminisce about unforgettable characters like Harry Kim and Commander Chakotay (a man who could really appreciate the power of story, incidentally).

What’s with that smile though? Try doing it a few times. It’s like trying to bend a q-tip between your lips. The more sincere the smile seems, the more you mistrust him, knowing full well that nobody gets that engrossed in the wonder of stories. I imagine that they raised the gigantic pile of cash they’re paying him above his head while shooting. Look at him as he stares upwards, trying to find inspiration; you can almost see the dollar signs ka-ching-ing in his eyes. He nearly chortles through his line, thinking of the mountain of cash he’s going to sleep on tonight.

The advert has one saving grace however; it stars Dustin Hoffman and not the insufferable Anthony Hopkins. It’s hard to believe that in a 21st civilisation like ours that such an atrocity as the 2009 Sky ads were permitted. We suffered as Hopkins and his pseudo-charisma rambled pointlessly about the ‘magic’ of Hollywood. Despite my scars and misgivings about Mr Hoffman, I’m glad those dark days are no longer with us.