What Have You Been Doing These Last Few Months?

Ask her.

As a man committed to not having children, I always try to avoid long interactions with young people. I teach adults, and whenever groups of juniors are coming to the school, I sing creepy songs in the staffroom to dissuade my superiors from asking me to teach them. I have my reasons. Even if we can get past the tangled web that is the True Directioners versus Beliebers debate, we usually end up at loggerheads over whether Led Zeppelin or LMFAO is the better 'classic' band. Teens and tweens are stubborn, and sometimes I think they wilfully ignore my subtle arguments in favour of the geniuses that created Sexy and I Know It. Unimpressed by their insolence, I often find myself resorting to, 'Well, I'm an adult and you'll just have to trust me when I tell you that Zeppelin are the inferior band', or 'Well, I don't really trust the opinion of someone who has lived in only one millennium.'  Remember, those of us who are older than thirteen are among the few humans who have lived through two millennia (though it sometimes feels longer) and can gleefully gloat to the tweens of today, who just missed out. Of course, their pubescent voices utter the usual spiteful comebacks —  the Christian calendar is a relic of a time when humans knew little about the world; it's off Christ's birth by four years; it's not universal; it's a largely arbitrary division of time; it rides closely to the system naturally borne out by the solstices, yet fails to use them as natural markers; mathematically, millennial celebrations a year premature — but all of these are overshadowed by the awe-inducing fact that all four digits on the calendar changed literally overnight. And those little guys missed the whole thing. Hate that! To further their sense of loss, we bore witness to a mystique and sense of unknown not felt since more naive times, as the millennium brought with it some unanswered questions.

Perhaps the greatest mystery left in the wake of the year 2000 is the complete disappearance of M People. This popular band, which thrived throughout the 1990s, vanished completely at the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve 1999, never to be seen again. Not a single tween will be able to tell you anything about them. The mind quickly concocts explanations to fit the mystery; perhaps pop music veered away from their sound or perhaps they had peaked and had they nothing notable to offer. The truth, however, is far more intriguing, shrouded deep in layers of mystery which can only be unveiled with the cryptic clues they left behind. The lyrics of their songs are deceptively simple. Only upon a closer look do we find clues of a secretive cult, the nature of which we are still jigsawing together. Renowned for my expertise in decrypting song lyrics, British authorities enlisted me as a consultant on the M People mystery. Only now, after the case has gone cold, can I disclose the fascinating details of my enquiry. Moving on Up seemed like the logical starting point, in terms of discography and transparency of clues. The title itself is an obvious allusion to some form of rapture. Lyrics such as 'a sip from the devil's cup' and 'nothing can stop me', however, warrant feelings of trepidation. One Night in Heaven continues the theme of rapture, and Don't Look Any Further continually refers to paradise; pleasant lyrics until the surreptitious, satanic incantation 'Day o umba day o mambu ji ay o'.

Still holding fast to their skepticism, the surly, moustachioed detectives, who I was dealing with, demanded more song exegesis. I pressed on with my evidence until the sinister truth began to emerge.  A Sight for Sore Eyes, I explained, waves the seemingly arbitrary words 'velvet glove' in our faces, all but telling us that their gentle lyrics pack an iron fist. Open Up Your Heart asks for a signal or a sign (but who from?), and  Renaissance tells us, with sinking dread, that somebody is coming home. By 1997, the veil was slipping. Just for You can barely contain the secrets bursting out of it. Why would anyone write the following lyrics, unless they were writing a love letter to the Prince of Darkness or begging Cthulhu to eat them first in the apocalyptic rapture?

I will scream aloud at the altar of God
I love you...

Just for you I'll sacrifice
everything in my life,
I will give all this to you,
dedicate myself to you...

As the Nineties drew to a close, we were told that only the strong survive, in [fallen] Angel Street, while Testify asks members of the cult to pledge their allegiance, showing Heather Small reigning in what seems to be Cocytus. Dreaming laments empty streets, seeds scattered among the stones, and a vision of what used to be. In the final year of the last millennium, the band's lyrics speak of passing through some dark shadow.

Soon we had established a strong framework of their beliefs — the Millennial People worshipped the great Cthulhu, who they asserted underlay all the malevolent figures in history and mythology. They pledged allegiance to him in the hope that when they sacrificed themselves, they would pass him in the netherworld unharmed. Incredulous Bobbies, who initially derided my work, sighed 'Cor blimey' at each revelation. We knew we were on the right track when an assassin tried to kill me with a poisonous dart, shot from a bamboo stick. My investigation led us to the Child of Prague statue, the vaults of the Vatican, the Tower of London, markings on the Great Wall of China, Area 51 in the Nevada Desert, the ruins of the Roman forum, the US treasury, Bethlehem, the Louvre, the Temple of Doom, Machu Piccu, the Egyptian pyramids, the Bermuda triangle, the original Hellfire club, the Voynich manuscript, the Shroud of Turin, Lord Lucan's estates, the Zodiac letters, Easter Island, Loch Ness, Stonehenge, and Tubbercurry, County Sligo. Despite drawing red lines all over the globe, conclusive evidence eluded us, and Scotland Yard suspended the case on the grounds that it wasn't 'a bloody world tour'. The compelling evidence found in their lyrics, coupled with the all-too-coincidental disappearance of the band in 2000 just wasn't enough to further the investigation for British authorities. If we had found the bodies of the band, who almost certainly died in a ritualistic, mass suicide, they would have most likely given us the answers we craved. Like any great mystery, however, the veil of secrecy was too thick to uncover completely, and we could only catch dim glimpses of what the truth may be. Concluding my final report for Scotland Yard, I only had this to say:

"Either the Millennial People have transcended this earthly realm and now reside among the darkest of imploding stars, or the decaying remains of their corpses now lie around a cryptically engraved alter in some secluded basement. We may never know."

Gratuitous, sexy Cthulhu

Making It (Up)

Last week, yet another acolyte of mine wrote to me, asking me for advice. "Dear Nigel, I need your advice on friendship," he began, and I sighed at the prospect of the whining of a hapless young man. The scrawl that descended down the page confirmed my preconception that this was from some lost soul being swept along by the winds of life. As I read on, however, I discovered that his query was a very complex and delicate one. He wanted to know how to terminate a ten-year-old friendship. Unlike ending a relationship, which is catered for by every formality short of an unsubscribe form, friendship comes with no obvious means of escape. You can allow it to fizzle out and become a mere acquaintance, but since the advent of social media, it is difficult to truly rid yourself cleanly of an unwanted friend. Formal declarations would sound absurd, and one suspects that the undesirable route of outright offence is the only hope. Being direct and honest seems more hurtful anyway, as it leaves the former friend with no language to air their grievances. Saying 'That bastard broke my heart' garners nothing but giggles when it departs the mouth of a heterosexual man. 

Sadly, I know these things from experience, as I am still caught in the recency of a painful separation. After several years of friendship, affection, nostalgia, and camaraderie, I parted ways with a man who once played an important part in my life. I met this man (for convenience and anonymity's sake, let's call him Igualdio) when I was in my teens, and after the failure of his business in Thailand, our friendship went into decline. Igualdio and I were adventurous travellers, and after my stint in the Far East, he decided to set up shop in the Land of the Silent H. As we gazed at the stars one autumn night, he confessed his desire to develop a financial security upon which he could launch his true ambitions. Like many TEFL teachers, Igualdio did not burn with a passion for the correct usage of the present perfect simple; he preferred to develop another career from the time TEFL teaching allowed. Many pursue a career in writing or music or acting — in Los Angles frustrated ambition waits tables, elsewhere it teaches English. If you sincerely say to anyone in the industry that teaching English is your dream job, they will present you with incredulity and fearful looks (and probably plot to burn you in a giant Wickerman). 

When Igualdio came home from Bangkok, he was a defeated man. His school, which offered nighttime refresher courses in English, sank after some initial success. Keeping It Up: All Night had attracted a slime of sex-pat teachers, who salivated at the prospect of jizzing English all over their nubile students' faces. The descent of the school's reputation correlated with the descent in enrolling students, and Igualdio left Thailand penniless. The only thing that saved him from total despair was the mirage that he had already departed on his true career and wasn't dependant on the fickle seas of TEFL teaching. His ambition had blinded him from the reality that the income that sheltered and fed him came from teaching. Lost in a deep delusion, he never missed the opportunity to tell people that he was an astronaut. Nothing happened in astronomy or space travel without his passing comment on Facebook. His Twitter page was an unbearably saddening sight, with regular and overly familiar comments on NASA tweets. He resorted pathetically to saying that he was on the greatest spaceship of all - Planet Earth - when confronted with his lack of space travel experience. I could no longer watch him embarrass himself, and I tried to help him. Alas, there is no subtle way of breaking the spell of such delusion, and he reacted with hostility. I exacerbated the situation by carelessly asking him to consider primary school teaching. We agreed after an argument that our friendship was now officially over and could never be salvaged. As the present perfect simple has taught us, things have never been simple or perfect in the present. I'm fortunate to have made it as a blogger and haven't fallen into this horrible pitfall. When I think of my escape, readers, I cry. I cry bitter tears of joy.

We are all looking at the stars, but some of us have our minds in the gutter.

What filter did you use on that?

At first, it was yellow.

The other night, I was compelled to take my camera and capture the apocalyptic sky that had formed outside my window. Those of you with limited imaginations, and who wish to be like virtually everyone else on Facebook, probably think I used one of those awful Instagram filters to create the yellow hue, but, as a matter of fact, that is how the sky appeared that evening. Rather than attempting a cheap form of artistic pretension and trying to make the photo I took five minutes ago look like it comes from another decade, I capture the colours as they appear to me. You could claim that you're rejecting the swindling illusion known as realism — fully aware that no matter how many millions of pixels your picture is composed of, it will never truly represent reality - but I suspect you are just trying to imbue a relatively boring occasion with a more interesting hue. 

Then, it was pink.

Within a few short minutes, the fantastical sky's complexion turned pink, gifting onlookers with another awe-inspiring sight. I took some more fumbled shots, knowing well the inadequacy of my technology to capture such beauty. Perhaps it was the ineffable feelings of beholding something so beautiful yet so transient, or perhaps it was the inspiring visit to Keats's grave in Rome this year, but I was compelled to recite the Romantic verse of my late uncle Gordon. The quiet epic so perfectly matched the perfectionist lines of one of his lesser known poems. When he first recited it in 1981, at a swingers party for some literary elites, he introduced it with only a few short lines: "Modestly, I offer these lines. Look into the sky fellow travellers of the soul. Savour its eerie majesty, and tell me my lines are too emotional, that I'm in too deep."

Recurrentibus Caelum (from Mystic Tide, 1989)

Oh, how lovely you are, sky
As I observe you up there, high
I gaze upon you with one eye
And, also, with the other eye

Though I fear the end is nigh
And all humanity may die
and in the devastation fry
somehow I know that it's a lie

For beauty only makes us sigh
And never wants to see us cry
And comforts like a lullaby
And never worthless presents buy(s)

And never punches in the eye
And never leaves without "goodbye"
In rainy weather, keeps us dry
And always waves when it drives by

Whenever I will talk to my
friends, to whom I cannot lie
I'll tell them all about the sky
And colours I cannot deny

Beauty is what we must try
to catch a glimpse before we die
precious moments we must spy
even if it's on the sly

Most things end up in loss or tie
but as our tragic life goes by
keep on your face a smile so wry
brought on by sights of wondrous sky

And I wish up to you fly
On your embrace I can rely
Your clouds give me a place to lie
A place where nothing goes awry

 "Cheap thrills can rival beauty, aye"
Is nothing but a mindless lie
There's no comparison, says I
to precious things that none can buy

Visiting Keats's grave in May this year.

Childlike

Last month, I left myself somewhat open to criticism, slipping into what my marketing department would refer to as 'downsizing in terms of the proliferation of articles'. I have an adequate excuse, however. Much like Jesus was a carpenter, I am a mere TEFL teacher, with a sworn duty to endlessly differentiate between a gerund and a progressive verb. Recently, I have taken on more work, teaching modules to primary school teachers on how to use songs and games in the classroom. Half of my preparation time was spent on my mission statement, which I'm still dissatisfied with:

I am committed to imparting English language in terms of traditional English language songs, music, physical activity, and printed texts. I will empower primary school teachers [who will henceforth be referred to as PSTs] with an extended knowledge of language, training in terms of English language speaking cultures, and the ability to educate children vis-a-vis the kinaesthetic and audio learning experience.

As frustrated as I was with my failure to create a truly constipated and impenetrable mission statement, I took some comfort in the success of my classes. The teachers really enjoyed the songs, even though they were familiar with many of them, and they had fun pretending to be children. Happy and You Know It proved to be the surprise hit of the lesson, with its cosmopolitan array of children and its bold embrace of diversity.

And who could not be moved by it? It beams of warmth and friendliness, extending a hand to those who are different. The singer's impassioned vocals at the crescendo lifts the song from a joyful anthem to an urgent supplication for universal fraternity. Her voice quivers at the fragile yet awe-inspiring prospect of leaving the weighty shackles of history behind us and moving towards a world where all are accepted and can be embraced, where a joyous greeting can unlock a hope and fearlessness that the world has never witnessed before. In a fleeting moment of the simple lyrics, we feel welcome in the world for who we are, and the fear of what those who appear to lurk in the shadows may do to us can be undone by merely saying hello to a stranger. Your defences are lowered, and for the briefest of moments your realise that the energy you spent keeping them up would be better spent reaching out to others.

Some of the greetings were beyond my linguistic reach before I researched them. They span from all over the globe; German, French, Tamil, Arabic, Spanish, Swahili, Italian. I was charmed initially by the worldly knowledge of the songwriter, but clarity worked its way through my brain, and I saw the song for what it truly is: privilege. Travel is expensive, and so is a good education; clearly she has both. Her ease and familiarity with other languages suggests that she is oblivious to her privileged position, which is a privilege in itself. Most of us know 'hello' in a few languages, but we would look ignorant next to her. As we know all-too-well, privilege can only be combatted by a handful of surefire procedures. Firstly, you must utterly resent the person with the privilege. Bilious feelings of ire are synonymous with detecting it; those possessed with sufficient indignation will find privilege in the unlikeliest of corners. Resentment towards your opponent is useless unless it can be formed into a privilege baton which you can use to hit them with (and the privilege baton can reach virtually anyone). You don't like a man? Tell him he has a privilege by never being subject to menstruation jokes. Don't like a woman? Tell her she has a privilege by never being judged by the size of her genitalia. Secondly, you must make people aware of their privilege. It's a worthwhile endeavour, as being told you are a beneficiary of an oppressive, unjust system often strikes a feeling of enlightenment in the privileged. Once informed, the privileges bestowed upon the lucky few start to fade away, bringing us all closer together. Finally, make a list of privileges others have that you don't and bemoan them on the internet. This, my friends, is the way forward, not some song where children naively assume us to be on equal footing. If you have any children, be sure to encourage them to be aware of privilege and tell them to be on the look out for any children with more toys than them.

Gonna Be Some Sweet Sounds Coming Down

Marvin Gaye was an American soul singer and songwriter. In the 1960s, he had a string of hits with Motown Records, and later, in the 1970s, he had further successes with the What's Going On and Let's Get It On albums, a creative phase now known as his albums-ending-with-on period. Marvin was dubbed both the Prince of Soul and the Prince of Motown, but the abstruse monarchical structure of soul renders such a title meaningless to most people. It has become especially esoteric since James Brown was buried with the last known medallion to contain the hieroglyphs necessary to unlock the cryptic structure. 

The Motown Prince was cursed the entirety of his life with a throbbing sexual aura. Shortly after entering puberty, an eight-year-old Marvin found that becoming a man brought many surprises, including the desirous eyes and smiles from women of all ages. He tried to convey these disconcerting incidences to his family, but they just laughed at his breaking voice wailing in and out of manhood. Humiliated by something beyond his control, and utterly confused, Marvin developed a sense of shame about his sexuality in these formative years. Although he was able to move past it and never permit it interfere with his highly active love life, the spectre haunted him for the remainder of his days. It returned to him when he considered the great discrepancy between the abundance of love he received and paltry scraps everyone else had to make do with. In the early years of his adulthood, Marvin decided to use his budding singing talents for good. He pledged to inspire the world to bring about lasting peace, and for all the peoples of the world to release the compassion locked in their hearts. He soon developed a pantheistic love for every creature on this planet, and he was eager to convey it in his music. However, his noble project was thwarted at every turn by record producers who viewed him a mere sex object.

In 1968, Marvin released the smash hit I heard It Through the Grapevine, which was a product of artistic attrition. Marvin sat down to write a love song, as requested by his manager, but, in a bold effort, he deliberately misunderstood his instructions and wrote a song about the love inspired by wandering through nature. The long-since lost original draft, talked about listening to nature and hearing its beneficent request to harness it into plenty. Some of the lines still remain, such as 'honey, honey, yeah'. The original chorus told us that he 'heard the grapevine talking', and 'grapevine' had its present intonation, preceding a lowered 'talking', giving the song a more sombre tone, representative of Marvin's suppressed desire to be at one with everything. Motown hated it, and a docile hack rewrote it into a scorned lover anthem. Marvin's sexual performances in the recording booth produced take after take that were too sexy to make the lyrics credible, and eventually they had to tell him that his father had died to get an adequately sexless version.

After such exploitations, Marvin tried to take the reins on his career and produced What's Going On, an album of socially aware songs, intended to break away from mere libido. Marvin's curse of overt sexuality prevailed, however, despite his best efforts to curb the sexual beast. His sympathetic manager tried everything to nullify the sexual overtones in the recordings, including drugs, exceptionally ugly people, and electro-shock therapy, but nothing could quell the feverish flames of Marvin's passion. His creative prowess flourished further with his seminal album Let's Get It On. In the title track, he moved to harmonise with nature and innovated with pigeon backing singers (once heard, it can never be unheard). The song was originally sketched as a wholesome birdwatching excursion, with lyrics such as 'stop beating round the bush' and 'I feel sanctified'. 'Get it on' referred to putting on a pair of birding binoculars. Unable to view Marvin as anything but a sex object, whose melodies put masses into sexual fever, Motown forced him to the change the original draft's lyrics. 'Birds are such sensitive creatures with a right to live' became 'we are all sensitive people with so much to give' in Marvin's grudging rewrite. He deliberately tried to make it as cumbersome and awkwardly sexless, by adding lyrics such as 'there's nothing wrong with me loving you', but his accursed sexiness prevailed in the recording booth, and the label got what they wanted. Perhaps the most explicit track on the album, You Sure Like to Ball, is a product of mysterious circumstances. Marvin could offer no explanation: "I went into the studio to record an innocent melody about baseball", he claimed, "I'm not quite sure what happened."

Clayton, the last surviving member of Marvin Gaye's pigeon quartet.

In 1983, Marvin unintentionally made a whole arena of people orgasm within a three-minute rendition of Star Spangled Banner. The first one can be heard at the 26-second mark, though most people climaxed around "the land of the free". Marvin was deeply apologetic, claiming that the performance seemed to him a conservative, standard rendition of the American national anthem when he sang it. Watching a recording of the song some days later, he was incredulous and considered it a possible hoax. 

He despaired at his curse, much in the way he had a year earlier, when he released the greatly misunderstood Sexual Healing. The song derived from Marvin's long struggle to 'heal' his burdensome sexiness, and sexual healing refers to his efforts to be cured of his sexuality. He had discovered some months previously the one thing that helped bridle his libido — perhaps the most powerful tool against sexual arousal — a person who persistently brings explicit sex references into conversation. During his final years on Earth, Marvin was accompanied by an assistant who was capable of saying the word 'pussy' over 100 times an hour, without making conversation seem forced or contrived. Marvin met his end in 1984, in a fashion as peculiar as the almost surreal, whirring end of Mercy, Mercy Me. He was shot by his father, who killed him for being a Gaye. In the fashion of textbook psychology, it was later revealed that his father was also a Gaye, but had failed to come to terms with it.

Mr Cab Driver

More than two years have passed since Jimmy Nugent, a humble taxi driver from Clondalkin, lead us temporarily out of the desert of recession into the dessert of prosperity. The glory of his words shone all over the land, before he was silenced. Lowlife journalists stabbed him with daggers of cynicism, and dug deep into his past. The deathblow came in the form of a scandal, when it was revealed that Jimmy didn't have a proper taxi licence plate. In the words of economist David McWilliams, "The public watched his fall with the fixated eyes of a strip club client watching a descending g-string". Shunned by fellow taxi drivers and the greater public, Jimmy fell back into obscurity, and the economic recovery that rose with him dispersed in the wind. But where is he now? The Fair Observations investigates.

It didn't take me long to track down this modern Irish legend. Mr James Carthage Nugent has lived in the vicinity of Clondalkin his entire life, making him well-known and easy to find. He comes from a family of six children and two stern parents. From a very young age, Jimmy was taught to have a low tolerance for those who "act the bollox" or "talk shite". His rapier-wit was first honed on the rough, taunt-ridden tarmac of the primary schoolyard, and it grew sharper throughout his secondary education. By the time he left school, his compelling oratory skills were beginning to get noticed throughout local public houses. Friends respected him and often sought his approval. Foes feared the devastation he could wreak on their worlds. Throughout his working years — during which he has never failed to "give a dig out" — he has been an invaluable voice for the workers' vanguard, battling "gobshite" members of management who are "so far up their own hole". He  now has his own family, and resides in his beloved neighbourhood, but his patriotic voice has been heard less and less around town, as he has retreated from public life after his fall from grace.

When I visited his house, the curtains were half-closed, and Jimmy's children were hiding timidly on the landing. They eventually came downstairs and sat in the living room with their parents. Something seemed amiss, but, as it was my first time in his house, I disregarded my feelings. I admired the coziness of the place and the wonderful little vegetable patch in the back garden, before settling down with a cup of tea to talk to Jimmy. Despite the scandal, he wasn't shy with his opinions. As the conversation developed past small talk and family life, we soon found ourselves discussing the hard times we had found ourselves in again. Jimmy asserted that had he remained an influential figure, he would have pushed for economic protectionism or "looking after your own" as he put it. Initially, he thought the EU should introduce heavy tariffs against other countries, such as China, the USA, and Romania. Barry, his nine-year-old son, made his first and last contribution, when he reminded his father that Romania is an EU member state. International affairs then quickly turned to national, as he told me of his revised plan, where Ireland would isolate itself with tariffs, a tougher immigration policy, and the heightened awareness of buying Irish produce to protect our jobs. His memory lapsed a little, as he seemingly forgot how he lost his job, and he bemoaned taxi drivers who were double-jobbing, meaning they either had another job or they shared a taxi plate with another driver to reap more money (I'm not sure, and I never ask, for fear of starting a tedious, factually inaccurate, and awkward conversation about immigrants). "I've nothing against Nigerians", Jimmy told me, "but I have no tolerance for people who cheat the system. There's a way of doing things, and any decent person won't cheat other people out of a fair chance. Now it doesn't bother me if you're Chinese, Polish, Latvian..." (I tuned out of the conversation for a couple of minutes, looking at his children with their heads nervously downturned). I attempted to lighten the atmosphere, by telling him that I was a bit of a Nige-erian myself. The children looked particularly awkward as I clumsily explained the joke to their father.

I was surprised to find that his economic theory was more refined that national plan we had just talked about. His ideas had evolved further, and he had developed a protectionist policy for Dublin alone, keeping jobs and money within the county border. This had evolved further, curtailing the privilege to certain working class parts of the city, and then only as far as Clondalkin. His neighbours were only lukewarm about his later plan to put an invisible economic ring around their estate, a collective consciousness of protectionism, which prevented its members from exchanging gifts with friends and relatives outside the ring. The ingenuity of the project was that nobody outside the ring knew they were being excluded, and they never retaliated with their own defensive economic policy. Jimmy had some vague idea about how this would have been implemented on a national or international level, revolving around the idea that those in power in other countries were "as thick as our own politicians".

After some tentative sips, I left my tea, which Jimmy's wife had made me, unattended on what seemed to be a home-made coffee table. I was too engaged in conversation to consider either the poor quality of the tea or the self-crafted furniture, but when Jimmy left the room for a minute, the horrific truth dawned on me. I realised that Jimmy's economic theory had developed further, and the borders of protectionism now only extended from his back wall to his front gate. The tea, I surmised, was probably from recycled teabags. I looked again out the window to his vegetable patch; the ecological enterprise transformed into a Josef Fritzl-like tool in front of my eyes. I feared for Ann and her little brother, about their psychological and social formation, and about their hygiene. 

It was raining as I was leaving. Although I probably would have walked home without an umbrella — as you do in such a frazzled state — Jimmy insisted on giving me a lift. I was surprised when he put his still-installed metre on, despite the taxi light still remaining in the rear compartment of the car. I sat nervously in the passenger chair as they announced the Confederate Cup scores on the radio; Nigeria had beaten Tahiti 6−1. A silent sixty seconds elapsed before Jimmy asked me if I knew why Tahiti had managed to score a goal. I replied with a sheepish look and feint, negative utterance. "It's because the Nigerian players were double-jobbing it." As the rain poured down, I sank deeper into my seat and weathered the storm.

I read it, but I didn't really understand it.

I have been greatly troubled since last June, when the Bloomsday festivities finally broke the back of my literary tolerance. The gaudy posturing and tired antics of Joyceans and 'Joyceans' weighed heavily on me, and I was particularly pained by how Flann O'Brien is perennially neglected by these grating literary folk. "Oh, I'm so well read and cultured, yet I don't like O'Brien. I just can't get into him. Now excuse me, while I stuff my face with a fry, sans kidneys, and drink buckets of wine and talk shit for the next few decades."

Well, no more, reader. This year, I'm going to protest Bloomsday with Flann O'Brien readings and playing out of scenes from At Swim-Two-Birds. "But surely The Third Policeman is his masterpiece?", says the literary snot in you, as hardened and green as an emerald. You mean the text he threw into his closet for the rest of his life? The one not set in Dublin, where we expect the festivities to be centred? The one with fewer narrative complexities, a more conventional plot, and an atomic theory that was better presented in (dare I bring it up) The Dalkey Archive? Exactly reader, At Swim-Two-Birds will be the centre of the greatest cultural revolution this country has seen since the Gaelic League. And this time, we won't have wet blankets like W. B. Yeats to stop us. Yes, dear reader, it is time for us true literary people to emerge and take what is rightfully ours. I haven't consumed this much culture to modestly keep my lips sealed about it.

Yes yes yes yes, reader, it will be a-ma-zing, as we re-enact scenes from the sweet nectar of O'Nolan's grapes, where Dermot Trellis is tormented and tortured by his mutinous creations. Trellis will be played by an effigy labeled 'Joycean'. We will then hang, tar, feather, and beat another effigy, who will symbolise those academics who assert that O'Brien had some sort of literary Oedipus Complex about Joyce and wished to enact revenge against him by featuring him in one of his works. It's going to be awesome.

My friends and I will troll Joyceans, by asking them to re-enact the masturbation scene from the Nausicaa chapter in Ulysses. We will easily slip into and subvert conversations about the book, using opaque and grandiloquent platitudes, such as, 'Bloom represents Man at his most heroic and noble, yet in his most disheveled and unassuming guise.' or 'Blooms onanism reveals the prospect of Man's redemption through the embrace of the feminine.' Disheartened, the Joycean zealots will be defenceless against our counter-parade. They will flee when we produce our awesome effigies. It's going to be epic! In the heart of the parade will be me, shooting literary references like arrows through the hearts of uncultured impostors. My rapier-sharp wit will slay the charlatans and entertain anyone who cares to stop and watch the spectacle. Their bodies will be scarred by quotation marks, as I slash them with my intimate knowledge of  Keats, Fitzgerald, Hitchcock, Warhol, Picasso, Nietzsche, Machiavelli, Tolstoy, Frost, Dickens, Dali, Cervantes, St Paul, Hemingway, Marcus Aurelius, Wittgenstein,  Sartre, Mozart, Kafka, Dostoevsky, Welles, Miller, Woolf, Ibsen, Bach, Camus, Shelleys Percy and Mary, Schopenhauer, Dante, Dickinson, and the Bard of Avon himself. I'll impress passing chicks with my awesome renditions Monty Python sketches, adopting a bombastic and hilarious English accent. My friends and I will interrupt each other with longer and longer sketches, each one more indulgent and context-dependant than the last. No doubt, college students, smelling of sweet curiosity and low-hanging fruit will be charmed by our endeavours and persuaded to partake in experimental, coming-of-age games. The wealth of my worldly acumen, coupled with the breadth of my cultured knowledge, and threesomed with my compelling sales-pitch for experimentation and adventure will give me direct access to their loins via their minds. I will connoisseur the nubile flesh in a grand sexual feast, a masterpiece in a performance art. I'm going to ride the hole off two nineteen-year-olds at the same time.

I have something like this in mind.

Living in Ire-land

When I was a young man, in the depths of my scholarship, I never accurately estimated the way in which my adult life would play out. There have been a significant number of pleasant surprises, but there have also been less pleasant ones, which I've had to get used to. I doubt many young people ever dream of the tedious grind most of us are confronted with during our working days. I dread to work out the sum total of time I've spent waiting in line, commuting, or slogging through some thankless, boring task (paid or unpaid). In the stressful race to get to our workplaces in the morning, or in tired ache of doing shopping in the evening, my patience wears thin. People move so slowly at times, taking the most inefficient route to achieve what they are doing. This, combined with rudeness and surliness, brings dark clouds of anger over the calmest parts of my mind. Clenched jaw and fists hold back the rage that pounds underneath the flimsiest of veneers. We live in a society, however unlikely that may seem, and an outlet worthy of my rage is prohibited. The recurrence of these diabolical feelings has led me to search for an adequate release. Logically, one needs to change one's circumstances or change oneself. Unfortunately, I suffer from a condition where I have to consume food to fuel my body, which necessitates earning a wage. If I don't follow my strict diet of edible substances, I begin to feel unwell and could even die. I concluded that I must change myself and began researching meditation techniques and anchoring mantras. Each one I tried failed; some even drove me into a further rage. Then, in the tedious shuffle of queuing in Tesco's self-service check out, I had a breakthrough in anger control. Some mindless pleb misunderstood 'self-service' for 'self-serving' and selfishly skipped the queue right in front of me. My eyes became ablaze with contemptuous ire. There was one line down the middle, where the next person in line could take the next free scanner on either side. Cunningly deliberate or not, the egregious sack of shit acted as though there were two lines and he had just luckily stumbled upon the free one. As he sauntered over to the scanner, I felt like killing the dull-witted, self-absorbed dick bag. No meditation or mantra could restrain the fury inside my heart, but, fortunately, my mind offered me a solution. I envisioned how badly I would hurt him and make him realise what a hideous consortium of vileness he is. The initial drafts of my murder fantasy were implausible, gifting me with unrealistic speed and strength. As the evil-gasmic feelings electrified and then calmed my body, I rewrote the whole thing in my mind and murdered the hapless bastard perfectly and poetically. By the time I left the shop, I was completely calm and somewhat refreshed by the cold sweat the fantasy had brought on. I had beaten him into concussion with a tin of beans, before slitting his throat with the same tin. Initially, I had imagined beating the tin so hard it tore open, but a later draft simply made it one of those dangerously sharp ring-pull tins, which I opened and used as a blade. On a side note, if you do intend to slit somebody's throat, be sure to hold them upside down for a while, so that their last experience will be the inimitable discomfort of liquid going up your nose through the top of your mouth. Try not to do it for too long, as you want them to drown on their own blood.
I quickly gathered that sinking into a kill fantasy could solve all sorts of gripes I had with societies bountiful abundance of inconsiderate people — people who elbow their way onto the bus before everyone has exited; drivers who sit in the gridded yellow box; people who text while driving; cyclists who force you to side-step even though they shouldn't be on the pavement; cyclists who don't use the available bike lanes; cyclists who click their 'horn' even though they could circumnavigate you by moving onto the road, where they belong; cyclists who cycle the opposite direction on a one-way street; cyclists who go through red lights; people who refuse to pick up the shit their dog just took on the street; parents who exercise their divine right of kids; youths who play their generic dancy-pop songs on the bus through the poor quality speakers of their phone; insular dimwits who have yet to discover that the world isn't tailored to their every little need and put their feet on the seats of trains and buses; grown men who piss on public toilet seats; young men under the trance of pure obliviousness who leave dumbells in the middle of the gym floor (Did I mention that I go to the gym? Look at that rear delt development!) — all these and more I have murdered in a paradox of meticulousness and rage, ingenuity and blood-lust. The orgasm of violent fantasy leaves me relaxed and chirpy every time. I would recommend butchering people in your mind to any of you entangled in the frustrations caused by anti-social zombies. Feel the relief of sanding some dozy cyclist's face against the pavement, snapping the wrist of some teenager at the back of the bus, or stabbing some commuter in the leg. I'll spare you the details of how to deal with irresponsible dog owners.
If you encounter many disgusting anti-socialites in one day, reach for the bell-tower fantasy. A bell-tower isn't necessary for this one, despite the name, and hunting rifles are a plausible find, even in this country. Sweeten the fantasy by keeping one last bullet for yourself, allowing you to envision the beautiful slaughter consequence-free. And consequence free it is, regardless. We are the masters of our own thoughts, and, unless enacted upon, we are innocent. So, get out there and have the most malicious, horrifically bloody thoughts your imagination can afford.

Roma Lone

Battered into a fragile state by my endless duty to correct erratically placed prepositions, the hyper-realism of those who perpetually live in the present tense, and those who play the wondrous 'guess the subject of this sentence' game, I decided I needed a holiday. TEFLin' had worn down my patience and energy levels (How I dealt with this problem is the subject of an upcoming blog entry), so I chose a destination that guaranteed a slow pace, away from parties, and soaked deep in cultural exploration. The Eternal City seemed the ideal choice, but I was determined to evade the crowded tourist traps with their hurried absence of authenticity. In my quest to find the real Italy, I put a detailed plan in motion. Through the subtle and detailed employment of tanning beds, lotions, hair dye, and semi-permanent hair transplants, I succeeded in attaining a more Latin look. Matched with a silky-suave apparel I was able to penetrate the true Italian people and witness them in their natural habitat. They never suspected they were being contaminated by the presence of a tourist, and when the occasion called for it, I was able to convincingly utter some multi-purpose phrases. Careful use of hand gestures sold the lines if there was any doubt. To further support the illusion, and prevent the poisoning experience of awareness of a tourist in their midst, I solicited a young, and very beautiful, Italian woman to cuddle/dry-hump me on a park bench, often for hours at a time. The raw, chaffed condition of my crotch after hours of such activity perfectly complimented the calloused leather that had grown on my well-trodden feet. 

It took but a few touches to create my Italian disguise.

Every morning, I would wake up in my rented apartment and, like a true Italian, proclaim, "Non posso credere che Silvio Berlusconi è ancora in politica." This tradition began about two millennia ago, when Romans grumpily decried the usurpation of the Republic by the Caesars, and proclamations continued during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, as Romans gasped with incredulity at the power the Christian Church had amassed and retained. Morning realisations of the governance of megalomanic dictators were particularly common in the early to mid twentieth century, when Italians groaned at the supreme authority of Benito Mussolini. These traditions can be seen in a watered down form near tourist spots, where actors declare in poor English that they can't believe that they keep supporting shitty leaders. I detest such cheap gimmickry, and I was careful to learn about real Italian customs before setting off to the place where all roads lead. As the saying goes, when in Rome, don't you dare do anything the Romans wouldn't do. It is strictly prohibited to drink a cappuccino after noon or eat a thick-based pizza with a dense layer of toppings or chew pasta that wasn't cooked al dente. Heaven forbid you should ever do these things in your home country, let alone in Italy. Heaven forbid you should ever leave yourself vulnerable to accusations of being an uncouth, ignorant, provincial tourist who (Heaven bless us and save us!) does something he or she likes that causes no harm, but violates the sacred, immutable codes of local custom. If my pleas fail to persuade you, please think of your own well-being. Violating these prescriptions will almost certainly invite the unsolicited counsel of pretentious, 'well-travelled' people, who will inform you of your 'mistake'. You will then have to wince as they pronounce Parmesan and bruschetta 'correctly', in an affected Italian accent. In bad cases, the pretentiousness may ooze into French, where you may be asked to pronounce croissant several times, until you get it 'right'.

I never allowed any of the tourists I met in Italy know I was from an English-speaking culture. They assumed I was a native and saw me as a man who possessed an exotic culture, full of discerning and tradition-proven protocols. My apparel, my hand gestures, and my palette all oozed a formidable sophistication and class. Back home for over a week now, I long for the day I can further scaffold my precious cosmopolitan persona by travelling once again to the Italian peninsula. In the meantime, I have to survive on opportunities to regale people with long, nuanced travel stories, where I demonstrate my expertise of the distinctive and authentic hallmarks of European countries and regions, and implicitly laud myself with mocking stories of ignorant others. As my skin's golden hue fades, returning to it original marble pallor, I lay down a challenge to you fellow travellers: journey as authentically as I did. Will you demarcate yourself as a worldly sophisticate? Will you prove to be an international man, a Renaissance man, a man of taste? Or will you show yourself to be an ignorant, gormless potato man? I leave the choice with you.

Postscript: All this talk about sophisticated, Renaissance men has reminded me of Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons. In the  play, Thomas More expresses his disappointment with Richie Rich who had recently become chancellor of Wales:

"Don't you know it profits a man nothing to gain the whole world if he loses his soul in the process? But for Wales? You sold your soul for Wales?"

This is a particularly chilling and tragic line, when you consider how Wales isn't a real country.

THIS IS IMPORTANT: YOU MUST READ!!!!!!

It's not often I involve myself in political campaigns, but I have been recently moved to rally behind a cause I just cannot ignore. I saw this picture a few days ago and, even before I had read the description I knew I had to act. Behold what is clearly a man from western society telling the chief what to do, as he weeps helplessly.

When you see a crying Native American who looks like he is exotically far removed from Western society, you know you have to take action. The description confirmed what I intuitively knew; the chief is crying because not only are the Brazilian government making him leave his home, but they are also going to destroy the Amazon Rainforest. He is Chief Raoni, and he hails from the Great Bend of the Xingu River, upon which the Brazilian government want to construct a hydroelectric dam. He wept when President Dilma announced the beginning of the construction of the Belo Monte dam. Moved to support this man and his plight, I began to investigate the situation. Imagine my surprise, when I found a blog telling me that Raoni was crying not because of the decision to build a dam, but he was weeping for his relative, who he hadn't seen for a long time. This is what his people, the Kayapo, do when they meet a loved one after a long detachment. Raoni stated later, having seen the picture and the description, that it was a false depiction of him. He insisted that he didn’t cry because of the the Belo Monte dam, and he declared adamantly that "President Dilma will cry but I will not. I want to know who gave this picture and spread this false information... President Dilma will have to kill me in front of the Planalto Palace. Then you will be able to build the Belo Monte dam."

Sensing something else was afoot, I was unsatisfied with this explanation and continued my investigation on forums, social networks posts, and Youtube videos. I eventually found several more explanations, each more plausible and intriguing than the next. On a Facebook post, I read that authorities confiscated a rare Amazonian fruit which the Chief claimed cured cancer and was ten-thousand more times effective than chemotherapy. Citing research from lesser-known universities, the post explained that the citrus fruit's superiority derived from it being natural and not 'full of chemicals'. It then bemoaned that 'a big corporation' had backed the confiscation and were eager to suppress knowledge of its existence, as it would threaten its profit margins. Such is the magnitude of their power that they suppressed all the big international media outlets, as well as the universities that carried out the research. The explanation satisfied my worldview, but still something wasn't quite right.

After digging deeper, I found an illuminating Youtube video, which has since been removed. The video was titled 'WHAT THEY DONT WANT YOU TO KNOW ABOUT FLUORIDE' [sic], a montage about the apparent dangers of water fluoridation. Citing research and maps, the video linked water fluoridation to several types of cancer and other ailments. Chief Raoni appears halfway through the sixteen-minute video and is quoted as saying he protests "the poisoning of our water supply". The crying picture makes an appearance, and the Chief is quoted as lamenting the unwarranted chemical destruction of nature by governments.

In my search for a longer quotation, I discovered a blog which told me that the Chief was misrepresented in the fluoride video, and that the poison he was actually castigating was sugar. Citing a long list of ailments that excessive sugar causes, including cancer, the blog demands we forsake sugary drinks and processed foods, as well as anything with artificial sweetener. In place of these deadly toxins, it recommends we eat more organic fruit and vegetables (prescription without diagnosis seems to be the norm in 'natural' medicine). I found a link to a health food store attached, but no more mention of the Chief.

Unconvinced, I continued with my search, distracted only occasionally by the false promises of sexy thumbnails. I encountered tentative links to Chief Raoni in Occupy movement memes, anti-Tea Party websites, videos criticising Barack Obama, pro and anti-gun lobbyists, vegan enthusiast links, and a twenty-seven-minute infomercial for a grand theory of virtually every conspiracy for the past three-thousand years. I also found a long conversation on a marijuana forum, in which the Chief cried because of Brazil's drug problems which could be solved by legalising narcotics.

In a short yet compelling article, I read that the Amazonian Chief cried because he was overwhelmingly distraught with all the misinformation distributed about him. He was especially affected by the indecent overuse of the CAPS lock key in these posts."The lack of eloquence was just as dire as the lack of facts. People only need to shout their argument when it has no weight." In the end, like all great authority figures, Chief Raoni is what we need him to be. Our environmentalist, socialist, anti-colonial, naturalist, anti-globalisation, feminist, traditionalist hobbyhorses need a rider, an image to add ineffable weight to the indignant slap of our incorrigible worldview on social media. He has no voice because we have taken it away from him. That and the saucer he has in his mouth must make it difficult for him to speak.

The Chief with Sting, campaigning to resurrect his waylaid career.

Let's Be Having Ye.

I have received some nasty messages over the past couple of weeks, after I posted what must have been a wake up call for many of you. Like the light of day on the eyes of those who have long lived in the dark, the truth stings. Many of you followed the well-trodden, predictable road of making things personal, slinging insults about my love life and my taste in music. As I am a font of such ferocious sexual power, taking any notice of disparaging comments regarding my love life would be ridiculous. That would be like a mountain taking offence to comments about its gargantuan size. Regarding musical interests, however, I do take umbrage. Fortunately, my indignation is quickly scuppered by the safe knowledge of the extensiveness of my music collection. The odds are that my knowledge is far greater than yours, and as we know, awareness of the existence of things is the hallmark of a superior mind (ask any hipster). By showing you my music knowledge, I am demonstrating how intimately involved I am with these bands. They give me more than you could ever know and are, effectively, mine.

I like all types of music, and I refuse to bow to social pressure and say that country and western, or any other music genre, is the exception. In order to show how confident I am in my music taste, I have decided to give a random, unedited sample of what is on my music collection. I clicked 'shuffle' on my iPod and the list below is what came up. As you can see, it is a tasteful variegation of talented and inspiring musicians:


1. Hangover rhapsody – The Narcissistic Idlers

2. Consumerist blood – Anarchic Fist

3. Fish bowl universe (Bratislava remix) – Ecstasy Rainbow

4. [15 minute original guitar solo] – Riff International

5. Friendship never felt this good – Stacey Beduila

6. Forever in your death – The Matrimonial Suicides

7. Siesta Fiesta – Ricci Santiago

8. I shot a cop (and I liked it) – Capital P

9. Je m'appelle le monde – The Sacre Blues

10. Life at the Top – Circumcision Derision

11. Niggardly with the Sambos – Contro-Versey

12. Grabación 17, "Palabras de la pasión" – Get By in Spanish, Oxford University Press

13. Space Terminal Infinity – Cacophonic Ninja

14. Grandiloquent – Autologic

15. Nights of Fire – Jungle Fever

16. Rucksack Angst – The Pedantic Krankenschwesters

17. Fix You – Coldplay

18. Korean Water – Mool Jusayo

19. When the world ends, I will know then that our souls never melded – Catastrophe Salad

20. Lord, I’m so poor – Primordial Banjo

So, there's nothing left to say but shut your mouth and continue listening to whatever over-produced, pap-for-the-masses music-by-numbers you listen to on your all-too-guffawed and advertisement-riddled radio stations, you worthless, over-sensitive, cold dead mass of stultifying, derived horse shit.

Two Tributes

A few years ago, when I was more active in literary circles, I was a prominent remember of the Oscar Wilde Society in Dublin. As our beloved playwright had failed to produce anything in such a long time (a writer's skill I worked hard on last year), our societal meetings began to get stale. New members dwindled, and those that joined offered no new insights into Wildean verse, only the tired quotations you would find in tourist shops here. The tedium eroded the society's prestige, and we decided to brainstorm some ideas that would enliven our organisation and generate a new interest in our hero. One member suggested 'Gone Wilde in the Park', an afternoon of running around in the Phoenix Park, dressed only in a pair of runners. As a bunch of libidinous young men, the prospect of being naked around the fresh female members greatly appealed to us.
It occurred to us soon afterwards that we were all in poor physical shape, and as we were short on cash, we decided to join the gym together, taking advantage of the large discount for a group membership. Our first day in the gym was a disaster. We quickly ran short on breath, and we had difficulty lifting the heavy weights. A beautiful, Lycra-clad woman passed our way, swaggering with aplomb. As she glided past us, we worked our faces red, trying to impress her with our feigned manliness.
We were all in a flutter, but some of us were looking at her arse.

************

During those days, I had a depressing job in a DIY store. The sweet verse of Oscar Wilde that ran through my brain was the only thing holding back me back from ending it all under the crushing weight of a pallet of paint. Customers of the store usually fell into two categories: those who vexed you with their ignorance of DIY and those who depreciated you with belittling comments. One day, I had a customer who fit both those categories. It was in the middle of a snowy winter, and he was having trouble rolling his car safely out of his driveway. I showed him the section where we kept our sand and our salt. Not wanting to spend more money than he had to, he asked me a dozen questions, waiting for me to tell him what he wanted, namely that salt was sufficient for the job at hand. I explained at length how he could try it, but there was no guarantee of success and that the coarse sand was superior. He soon grew irritated, asking me questions about my experience of such things. The conversation eventually came around to my prominent position in the Oscar Wilde Society. The customer noted sardonically that such activities truly validated my advice on DIY matters. "Sarcasm near the lowest form of grit", I muttered under my breath. 

Wilde was played by Benedict Cumberbatch during his thirties.

In the summer break between my degrees and masters, I successfully applied for a J1 visa. I decided to use the opportunity to make a pilgrimage of Oscar Wilde's 1882 American tour. Wilde was well-received, but I had to work hard to find kindred spirits. I was lucky enough to start a conversation with a like-minded soul in a coffee shop in Leadville, Colorado (where Wilde had drunk whiskey with miners). The old man was a retired lieutenant who had fought in Korea and Vietnam, but it was his knowledge and love of a certain nineteenth century playwright that started a long and deep conversation between us. We conversed about everything, including poetry, songs, and love. He told me of how he had longed to see his sweetheart back home, when he was fighting overseas. In the Vietnam conflict, he had listened to love songs that reminded him of her, such as My Girl and The Way You Do the Things You Do. Returning home after a lengthy tour of duty, he was fortunate to become an enlisting officer, and he was able to stay with the woman he loved and eventually marry her. We spoke about certain elites who had skipped serving their country, and he told me that, if he had any say in it, no stratum of society would be immune to the draft. By this stage in the conversation, I was just listening, allowing him to perform his own personal soliloquy. With his own experiences at the forefront of his mind, he conceded that he probably couldn't bring himself to draft the singers and the poets, as their work served so well to maintain troop morale. "I can enlist anyone except the Temptations", he added with a wry smile.

************

My career as a Wildean aficionado came to a tragic ending, when I was almost bankrupted by my own ingenuity. After years of devoted attendance and organisation of society meetings, I was beginning to be recognised as a leading authority on Wilde. As is the way of our universe, especially in academic or literary circles, great forces are counterbalanced by their opposites. Mine was called Terrence Giles Fogarty, a snide little creature and a man of inherited means. In the last year of my Wilde pursuits, we clashed sabres on many occasions, debating fiercely on the true character and relevance of the playwright's works. He was an utter charlatan, as demonstrated by his ownership of Oscar Wilde: The Complete Works, Illustrated, a book so huge and small-printed that one only buys it for show. The fearsome competition pushed us to work on our own definitive guides to the Wildean corpus. Fogarty's book, from what I heard, was as bland and predictable as he was, but he had the means to self-publish. My guide was an engrossing maze of information, written in the style of choose your own adventure books. The reader was offered page choices after reading a section, and they had to turn to the page that best matched their interpretation of the literature. If they chose correctly it would lead them to continue their exploration of the writer; if they chose incorrectly they hit a dead end, where the book would carefully explain how wrong they were. After finishing the final draft, I sought publication, but to no avail. A ray of hope appeared when a fellow society member informed me of an extremely cheap publishing house, where I could get several thousand copies made for a sum of money within my reach. I scrounged and saved until I had enough cash to go to the printers. I could have got a loan to hasten publication, but I stayed true to my principle of avoiding needless debt. When I arrived at the publishing house to collect my freshly printed books, I was greeted by Fogarty himself. He assured me that he was just here to wish me well, but the smirking look on his face made told me otherwise. I was horrified to discover what Fogarty and the publishing contract's fine-print knew all along: my book was printed without page numbers, rendering it useless. My devastation soon turned to fury, and I marched up to Forgarty in the car park of the publishing house. He had just enough time to declare that, "anyone who lives within their means suffers from a lack of pagination", before I socked him to the ground.¹

 

---

1 Of course, my brain (as it always does) gifted me with the perfect comeback thirty minutes too late, where I would tell him that 'anyone who lives in their imagination suffers from a lack of means'.

The Logical Song

I recently received an email from an adoring fan asking me if I had a girlfriend. As per usual, she assumed that some woman had managed to encage me via a relationship, as fine specimens such as myself are such rare beasts. The reality is I have been single(ish) for a long time now. I know what you're thinking: "A lion like you can't be kept in one place for long." "Always on the look out for new prey", you say. Well, that's not exactly true. Despite my prowess with the ladies, most of my dates end in abysmal failure. They start off fine; there's usually chemistry and fun, and often there's attraction and a sense of promise. Unbeknownst to my date, however, my good graces and charm are resting on a knife's edge. All it takes is for her to say something as innocuous as, "So, what music do you listen to?", to set me off. Completely enraged, I get right up in her face and say, "Fuck. You.", before storming off, never talking to her again. The question is my trigger, and if I fail to inform my date about it, she is unlikely to avoid it. You can see my problem, right? Asking about one's music interests is a personality test in disguise (A pop personality test disguised as a pop personality test, you might say). It assumes you can gauge the person by their iPod. Well, no thank you! I'd rather not have you psychoanalyse me for listening, say, for the sake of avoiding argument, and I'm not saying I actually do, but let's say Enya or Wham!, for argument's sake.

In recent years, I have grown to see that this is solely my problem, an actual case of 'It's not you, it's me'. However, I am quite indignant about other ubiquitous assumptions about music, such as a gig being an appropriate dating option. I have never seen the great appeal of live music, especially for dates. Aside from the difficulty in finding a band or singer that both people like, there are few advantages in going to see a band play live. You will either see some unknown band or somebody famous, and both are fraught with problems. Seeing unknown bands is great fun if you enjoy not being able to talk properly for a couple of hours. While that may favour certain dates, you still have to listen to some long-haired whiner convey his suffering over a minor problem he had in a medium devoid of any artistry or decency. Famous bands come with their own set of disadvantages. For a start, they are more expensive. Why would I spend all that money just to brave the cold and listen to songs I could listen to in the comfort of my home with a cup of tea? The over-priced drinks that are sold at gigs compound the expensiveness live music; why would you ever choose that over buying alcohol in the supermarket? At home there are no crappy plastic cups, no sweaty idiots, and no sore legs from standing. Plus, with your own music collection, you get to listen to all the songs you want to hear, in the order you want to hear them. The performance is always pristine, and I never have to face the disappointment of the omission of any of my favourites. I fail to see how people tolerate listening to some tosser in the crowd ask what song was being played or confess how this one isn't of his favourites — or even worse, said toss pot enjoying the same songs you do, thereby ruining everything for you. Some of you will use 'the atmosphere' or the possibility of 'pulling' someone to promote seeing live music, but these are mirages of satisfaction. You can simulate the atmosphere by playing a live album of your favourite band; that's assuming that the atmosphere is good in the first place and you are tolerant of mister toss of the pots. Even if you do enjoy the atmosphere, what does that say about you? You love doing things in unison, under the hypnotic power of some charismatic person on a stage. That always works out well. As for 'pulling', if you are successful, congratulations, but if it involves a conversation about music (as it most usually will) then some of us will encounter problems.
If you are a rational being and you want to avoid making irrational choices, whether you are looking after your personal pleasure or financial fortunes, you will avoid live music. When enough people choose the rational course, live music will begin to disappear. Coupled with free downloads from the internet (another rational choice), music production will dwindle along with all the nonsensical chitter-chatter about it. Eventually, the decrease in the voluminous amounts of perfunctory noises emitting for people's mouth will reveal the beauty that was always there, waiting for us to cease drowning it out with cacophony and bewailing — silence.

Next time on The Fair Observations: Nigel, like the modern day Jesus that he is, edifies everyone on the insidious nature of going to the cinema and enjoying sunny days outdoors.



   
In the absence of any gratuitous 'skin' on the last post, here's a compensatory video.

The Bloggerist

With only a few days of my twenties remaining, I find myself reflecting on my past. I'm proud to say I'm wiser leaving this decade than I was when I entered it. I would like to share some lines of wisdom from the master himself, Paulo Coelho, who has taught me so much over the years. Without his edification, I may never have achieved the two-figure following on my blog.

Top 24 Coelho Gems

1. Life is like a rainbow. It is orange, red, indigo, green, violet, yellow. Sometimes it is blue.
2. When parting, we always say goodbye, but in our heart, we know that it is neither good nor bye.
3. Our sleep dreams at night, yet our dreams sleep during the day.
4. Death is merely a friend who cloaks us in eternal nothingness.
5. The universe conspires to bring about your dreams. Unless you're born in some despotic, impoverished African state, in which case the only dream you can hope for is early death.
6. Love belongs to those whose fear no longer loves them.
7. Vague, epiphanic writing frees the pockets of many souls.
8. You are you what you believe yourself to be, provided your imagination is modest and you are not insane.
9. Lust is love in disguise. Love of the vagina.
10. Destiny without Des is tiny. So, get in touch with Des.
11. Not one door closes without an other opening, as life is like a draughty, poorly designed house. So, the constant recurrence of opportunity further proves how truly shit life is.
12. The sea is a mystery. It is infinite, yet we always reach the shore. It is there in the same place, yet it moves around a bit.
13. Follow your heart, even if it involves clinging on to someone who doesn't want you. The heart knows what it wants, and she'll eventually learn to toe the line.
14. Everything happens for a reason. All your family dies; your lovers leave you; you lose your job and your health and your legs, but all this has led you to see how dire life is. Everything happens for a reason, just sometimes the reason is shit.
15. Everything happens for a reason, but sometimes things happen for a very small reason. Had life not visited us all with catastrophe after catastrophe, would you have fixed the toilet seat?
16. The most miraculous things can happen in mere minutes. As can all mundane things. And things of medium interest.
17. What is a teacher? I'll tell you: it isn't someone who teaches something, but someone who inspires the student to give of her best in order to discover what she already knows. It is also someone who teaches you something new, as nobody knows everything.
18. We pretend to be strong because we are weak. We also pretend to be weak because we are strong. We pretend to be intelligent because we are stupid. Basically, we pretend to be something because we are the opposite.
19. Say what your heart thinks. Don't try to edit it or make sense of it. Write it down. Call it a novel. Sleep on a bed made of money.
20. What are the true treasures of the world? Love, happiness, the soul. They are so ethereal and vague, everyone can latch on to them. With cash.
21. Let dreams take flight on the wings of love into the heart of destiny and the soul.
22. To realize one's destiny is a person's only obligation. [From Hitler Cried by the River, one of Coelho's lesser known works.]
23. Tautologies and vague language are like magical incantations — they somehow always come true.
24. Travel is never a matter of money but of courage. Unless you're from North Korea or broke or something.

A National Treasure

I regret to announce that this Saint Patrick's Day brought disappointment to my heart. It was neither the sleety weather nor my failure to escape to another country for the holiday (as I so often do) that saddened me so, but the snub from the highest office in the land. My late uncle, Gordon Fairflower, whose poetry was short-listed to appear on Glaoch – The President’s Call, was considered, well, too dead to partake in a showcase about modern Irish creativity. We assumed, of course, that his poetry would be read by an actor or poet, but the show's producers saw my uncle's poetry as relevant to the show as the poetry of W.B. Yeats or Patrick Kavanagh, and they excluded him from their line-up. Our arguments about him achieving fame and glory posthumously were ignored, and the large numbers of viewers who tuned in missed out on the verse of a poet who is best epitaphed as 'a druid of Celtic mysticism and magic'.
My uncle was estranged for many years, wandering across the globe in his caravan. Wearing the gypsy boy image during the early '70s, he longed only for pure, inspired verse and the warmth of  female body. Throughout his travels, he visited all the sex capitals of the world - Bangkok, Amsterdam, Hamburg, Las Vegas, Tijuana, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Kuala Lumpur, and Tubbercurry, Co. Sligo - and he fornicated in Ibiza long before it was fashionable. His passions and sensuality grew over the late '70s and early '80s, and it flowed easily into the many stanzas he composed over those years. In poetry circles, he was known as a rogue and a libertine, a pirate among scholars, and a hero among those who valued a free libido. Since his death, both Road Down Man and The Marquee of Sadness have been re-evaluated as classics.

Shakira: a fellow champion of the gypsy spirit.

I last saw him five years ago at an awkward family gathering. Despite the alcoholism and visible symptoms of some unclassified STIs, he was bearing the years well. I know of few men who could wear a thin polo neck sweater so well, especially given his once burly chest had turned into two little triangular-shaped sacks. He left us two years ago, passing quietly from the sensual world which so enchanted him.   His departure from this world happened on a small Polynesian island, which meant his corpse was left to the locals to dispose of, and his ashes were swept away with the wind, much like the man when he was alive. We held a small ceremony here for him, and my father read one of his most eloquent poems to see him off. The sensuality runs through the verses, but its most notable feature is the poignancy of the choice words that strike delicate yet devastating chords at every turn. Critics expressed dissatisfaction at the mechanical contrivance of a couple of the stanzas, but my uncle knew well that the inspirational flow of words had to be tamed in rewrites. And so, I leave you with the poem that dampened eyes at his funeral and champions the misadventures of those who live to wander.

Unfinished Love Song #43

A pint of gee’s the best there is,
so take it while you can.
No matter who the owner is,
a pint of gee’s your only man.



Hairy, smelly, old or wide;
it comes in many ways.
You’ll always remember the gee you had


for the remainder of your days.



Lash it in, don’t take it out
'til satisfied you are,
regardless whether the trip is short
or if the distance’s far.



Vagina, box, fanny or gash;


the names are far from few.


With your dying breath, you won’t regret


the many gees you knew.



Inoperable as it may seem,


don’t succumb to gloom.


Just put it in and hope for the best. 

For error, there’s always room.



The ear is a potent organ.


The gab can get the gee.


Open your mouth, and she’ll open lips.


I speak not of her mouth, you see.



Some are blessed with a mighty trunk


and some with a dithering twig.


It’s never a problem of being too small,


but a problem of gee that’s too big.
 

Yet, a pint a gee’s the best there is.


So take it while you can.


The owner may not be the best,


but a pint of gee’s your only man.