Exquisite

Have you ever found yourself in an art gallery looking at painting after painting and feeling deeply unsure about what you should say? Have you ever found yourself at a nice restaurant perusing the wine list, having no idea what to order or even what questions to ask? Perhaps you have found yourself at the theatre or the opera feeling that same, familiar awkwardness? Or somehow you have stumbled into a conversation about literature or classical music and already used up your quota of the word 'exquisite'? If you have answered 'yes' to these questions, then you have come to the right place. Many of us have found ourselves in such a position, asking ourselves if we are in the midst of a fear-ridden system, where everyone is afraid to call out the folly and pretentiousness of it all, where there is no system of evaluation unless you are deeply entrenched in the production of such things (and even then…). But who dares to do that and risk being considered a philistine?

"Oh, how exquisite!"

Fear not, as I am here to help. I may not be able to help with the above problems, but I happen to be quite expert in French cinema. The next time you go to an arty French film, you can glide about the cinema's lobby with enviable self-assurance, ditching the usual panic for an unusual panache. (It's pronounced PAN-ayk — don't let anyone tell you otherwise.) So, dust off your chicest little get-up, learn off this table and enjoy your newly found liberté (pronounced lie-BER-tie).

Add the number of points shown if the film has the following:

When the film is over, just tally up the score. The higher it is, the better the film should be in your estimation. Bonne chance, mes amis!

Same Day, Different Shit

A friend of mine wrote an account of her average day a while ago, to lay to rest the falsehoods of our lives on Facebook and other social media. It has inspired me to do likewise. Honesty can be a merciless gruel to swallow, so if you have an aversion to the truth, I advise you to cast your eyes away from the text now.

I open my eyes around 7 a.m., and after approximately fifteen minutes of my dream logic resentfully confirming that waking up is the greatest indignity ever imposed upon mankind, I leap out of bed, whipping the entire duvet into the air. It lands perfectly-made seconds after my feet hit the ground. I do this for the sole purpose of feeling more productive in the first few seconds of my day than a hippie is in the entirety of his. I stomp to the other side of the apartment to put on the heater for my shower, and drop a depth-charge in the toilet, grumbling something about "damn, dirty layabouts". I have a breakfast comprising mainly of wheat chaff, and then stretch my way towards the bathroom, much in the manner of Kevin Bacon dancing out his anger in Footloose. I step into the shower —after my five-minute, dancing detour — and spend ten minutes scrubbing myself in soapy water, striking as many erotic poses as possible. After towelling myself down, I turn on an emphatic piece of classical music and, standing stark naked in my living room, I affirm my whole being by punching my fists in the air Rocky-style for a few minutes. I dress myself in the manner of Batman in the Joel Schumacher films and ride fearlessly out into the day ahead. 

Artist's depiction of me in the shower.

Having such an observant mind and a misanthropic heart, walking to work is usually a horrible experience. I can't help noticing the egregious number of SUVs in my neighbourhood, especially considering how narrow many of the suburban roads are. An impractically-sized gas-guzzler in suburbia serves mostly as a vehicle for your sense of status. It ought to grant you some special demarcation, but, alas, nearly everyone else in your neighbourhood has one. Pro-tip: buy an SUV and move to a less affluent suburb. Additional pro-tip: don't buy a car for the sake of status. I pass by cyclists coming at me on the footpath; I pass by litter; I pass by reckless driving; I pass by primary school children; I pass by dog shit; I pass by owners of shitting dogs, many of whom have less of a sense of responsibility than the primary school children I see and never clean it up. 

My working day is a blur. Days meld into one another, and we teachers suffer from TEFL amnesia, where we couldn't possible tell you what we taught the day before. Sometimes I teach in the afternoons, so I drop one off around lunchtime, in order to prevent it interrupting my class later. After work, I head home and relax a while. Three days of the week, I go to the gym, which is a twenty-five minute walk away. During the summer, if you are interested in seeing a real pair of steely calves, pull up a seat along my walking route and you will see me march by in shorts. If my performance is a bit sluggish in 'La Casa de los Machos', I sit it out in one of the toilet cubicles until I dump something of significance. After approximately an hour of mostly resisting the urge to judge harshly the poor (and often dangerous) form of my fellow gym mates, I head back home.

Depending on the evening, I also like to socialise with friends, go to the cinema, write, read, or watch some TV. When I meet with friends, after a long, laborious day, we yawn, halt mid-sentence to wait for our train of though to return, repeat ourselves, and lapse into undesirable conversations about work. I can never stay out too long, regardless of whether it's a weekday or the weekend. My high-fibre diet requires me to stay within close proximity to a well-kept toilet bowl. To paraphrase a conversation I had with a housemate many years ago, we no longer have the sphincter of a nine-year-old playing a two-hour football match (perhaps this is a consequence of those lengthy football matches).

As the day wanes, so do I. In the safe comfort of my bedroom, my mind slips out of the colon of consciousness into the toilet bowl of dreams. They say money never sleeps, yet, on the salubrious street where I live, no sound disturbs the slumbering heads of the residents. In the suburbs, the well-to-do suburbs, the SUVs sleep tonight.

Let's work!

"Aw, yeeeaaahh!"

Renua is a party of sales and marketing people that envisions a world where we can all work in sales and marketing. When we're done, the Blue Shirts of Fine Gael will be replaced by the cornflower blue shirts of our corporatist captains (Though most days, we will wear white-collared, blue shirts, to ensure we are never mistaken for blue-collared workers).

Do you like money? Do you like consuming products? Do you like anything else? If you answered 'yes' to the first two questions, and 'no' to the last one, then we are the party you have been waiting for. We have your interests at heart — insurance, property, a formidable car, Starbucks [sic], and maybe a round of golf. We will subsidise phone upgrades, so that you can have a shiny new phone to show off every six months. 

Entrepreneurship, enterprise, employment, expansion, 'excellence', ennui, and Éireann evermore. Grasp the future, and grasp it now. The next quarter is nigh, and the hectic schedule of additional (unpaid) hours will leave you only two hours before you go to bed, or an hour between getting up and arriving at work, to grasp it.

There will be a bubble, but it will never burst. You will live there, against a backdrop of muted grey, and drone out your life. The sky will be cornflower blue, and, like all good property, it will be owned. If you ascend to our level, you may get to own a piece of that sky. You see, we understand status. We understand that it is import to be rich to be important (to the rich). Once you reach the mountain top of a million Euros, your newly-found status as a millionaire is a mere one Euro away from dissipation. A fortune of €999,999 does not a millionaire make, so it is important to make another million to ensure you stay important. On your journey of ever greater wealth, Renua will back your neurotic fears of slipping out of a wealth bracket.

So join us! Our life-long membership will enable you to feel like a decent person with a worthwhile life, as you will equate goodness with a certain level of wealth, and always have people to feel superior to, no matter how much you despise your life.

Too Big for His Bootstraps

After a stretch of over fourteen centuries, it seems that Islam is in decline. Religious commentators are predicting it will depart from the faiths of the Earth by the end of the year. Former Muslims will only turn towards Mecca on a trajectory that has them turn their back on Sharia. The Five Pillars will crumble, Masjid al-Haram will become a shopping mall, and men will flock to bars to drown the sorrow of only having one wife. The pigs are dreading what is to come.

The victory is erroneously being claimed by people who posted pictures, derogatory or otherwise, of the Prophet Mohammed online in January. Good work, guys, but it wasn't you. While they were effective in eroding a centuries-old religion and way of life deeply ingrained into the culture of over a billion people, it was really a viral video from two months ago that has persuaded Muslims to abandon their faith. The cause of this unprecedented cultural change is none other than our local-lad-done good Jimmy Nugent. Type 'Nugent Pwns Muslim' into Google and you will find the video which has millions across the globe renouncing their faith in Allah. On Henry Street, Dublin, a ruddy-faced man argues with proselytising Imam at a stall. The two men spit charged words back and forth, raise their voices, interrupt each other, overlap, burn each other with incendiary insults, skin each other with sharp remarks, incite as much violence as one can with a rattling index finger, and reiteratively shout the phrase, 'you stupid cunt' out of their foaming mouths. After several bouts, the Muslim man tries to return the conversation to civility. He discusses his faith at length and asks Mr Nugent, whose breathing is beginning to relax, existential questions concerning what lies beyond the physical, the apparent order in the universe, and the duties that are bound to our struggle in this world. A long ten seconds pass, as Jimmy calms and ruminates what he has just heard. "But your beliefs are a load of shite though.", he replies finally.

Like the flap of the butterfly wings that produces a hurricane on the other side of the globe, the simple line seems to be dismantling the Muslim faith across the globe. When asked about the situation, cantankerous TV3 presenter Vincent Browne insisted that the story was "nothing but utter horse shit". "The religious have once again warped the focus of the story for their own ends", he informed us, claiming that the story is a distraction from the ongoing class warfare in our country. Jimmy Nugent wasn't looking to spar with a religious leader that day; he was engaged in his new initiative to eliminate poverty and homelessness in Dublin. He has been using his newly-found prominence to help those living on the street. Before getting into a hot-blooded debacle with an Imam on the corner of the GPO, Jimmy was handing out cards to homeless, which read 'Get a job.' He has a good reason for doing so —  his voice has become too hoarse for him to tell them verbally. At present, the great Irish patriot is fundraising for his local and international war on poverty. His headquarters in his beloved Clondalkin has large posters of a belligerent-looking man pulling himself up by a giant pair of bootstraps. Later this year, he plans to tour around the poorest parts of Africa and Asia on a safari truck yelling at people with a megaphone to get up and make something of their lives. Aeroplanes will snow the literate areas with cute business cards, informing poor people how getting a job will make them richer. Contrary to the Band Aid anthem, Feed the World, there will be snow in Africa this Christmas time.

Sources tell us that Jimmy plans to visit the Archbishop of Dublin to ask for funds for his campaign. When questioned by the press about the meeting, the Archbishop denied he feared that Mr Nugent would annihilate Catholicism as he did Islam. "No, no, no.", he chuckled. "That isn't going to happen.", he told reporters confidently, as cleaners furiously polished the already very slippery staircase behind him.

Nutritional and spiritual sustenance from the James Nugent Foundation soup kitchen.