New venture

Master Maximilian of Cane has asked me to become a contributor to boob.ie, which is a new site written 'by men for men (and women who take an interest in such things).'



I was slightly enervated by the prospect, as I've never bought Nuts, FHM, H+M, M+Ms, Playboy, Playgirl, Playhouse, porn on play.com, played with Japanese sex toys or shown any, ANY fucking interest in what they're blowing up on Top Gear this week.

I dislike Top Gear intensely.

Thankfully my doubts have been erased, though, as the site in its infancy looks both cracking and varied. If I sound like a press release, forgive me do, but it's better to get this kind of thing out of the way before I contribute for the first time.

There's a 97% chance my first article (not post, as this is no blog) will be football related, any other ideas gratefully accepted.

Onwards...

Captain Morgan and the keening

Insert new liver....


....


....here.

What started with two pints gratis ("the last thing we need down here is FREE drink...") on Monday dusktime ends with the nausea of 234 mid-range hospitals, even though I chanced nothing more than water and tea yesterday.

That. is. it for a while, or forever, because now the thought of stout makes fluctuant my innards.

I'll write a proper post, including details of a new joint venture blog-wise, when I can handle solids.

Feetonfire

After weeks of sobering thought, no drink, millions of walking everywhere, irascible shopkeeps, flakes of snow, puddles of cold brown effluent, 7,815 episodes of The Sopranos, cellulitis and baked fish fillets I took myself pubwards this weekend.

Nothing to tell, really. Just another white shirt with the top button open, we are legion, suckling bottled beer to stave off utter destroyedness. Circumstances brought me to Shelbourne Park last night - a fine medium rare steak and a ten euro winner on the last race, dodging PETA barrackers on the way out, that kind of thing.

I'm on my holidays, taking off tomorrow in search of some words for myself because the ones I have are as creaky as the 1989 Ford Fiesta parked outside. There'll be nothing to see here for a few days but that isn't anything new, profligate at the best of times, me.

Camelot

The owner of Camelot Stores near the Mater Hospital is an irascible and silently menacing sort. I've noticed this a few times now on the walk home from work, stopping in on occasion to catch my breath and peruse his Use By dates and selection of cut mixed peel.

He just sits there with eyes following me around the shop, my newfangled hoodie giving the lie to trouble, the spectacles on my face fixing the situation. Scumbags don't wear glasses.

I was on the hunt for some green tea - coffee now a thing of the past - and eventually found some behind the Barrys and Lyons staples.

"That's green tea," he grouched when I approached the counter.

"Sorry?"

"That's GREEN TEA. Not NORMAL TEA!"

"I... I know. I'm able to read."

He threw my change back at me with eyes that said Vishnu's gonna get you, sunshine, gonna get you good for your sarcastic ways so I legged it as quickly as my yellah legs could carry me.

I suppose all I can wonder now is what led him to believe I was a dunce?

Ultra carbon backflip postules

Terrible about Haiti, wait, Desperate Housewives is on. Baby designer wear. DVD and a nice bottle of plonk. Nothing too spicy. Runners to work, shoes under the desk. Something purple, goes with the dress. Girls' night out. Ray D'Arcy. Baby's first mobile. The match in Kiely's. Overtime for something intangible. A week in Dubai. Burj Al Arab, viewed from afar. Catering for vegetarians. Tiramisu. Whispers in the canteen. Yer man is such a flirt, a wife and two kids. Got this in Dunnes, spill and you're dead. Thierry Henry must die (but I still would). Glee. Friday night in the Boulevard, Dakota to follow. Cocktails. Christmas party panties. Take A Pick. Rachel Allen recipes. David McSavage, bit much for me. Too cold for ice cream. Don't like olives. Chicken everything. Maybe white fish. Sometimes salmon. Silk Cut Blue. "That FUCKER."

Pilates. Gym. Chocolate.

Martin Kemp swears by Slimfast. It's Complicated. Must get the word delectable into one sentence this week. Uggs. Crossing off lists. Not my type. Must be tall. Handsome. Dark. But not too dark. No dark chocolate. Unless it's Lindt. Scared of black taxi drivers. Home by eleven. Corrie and yogurt. Corona. No lime. No I mustn't, ok go on then. Jamie Heaslip. Don't understand the rules.

Olly Murs' red tie.

Flecked scarf akimbo. Tissues on the ground. Dabbing at nothing. Singing alone. Won't dance will dance. Only at weddings. Scarlet.

"That BITCH."

Minutiae

A 10am doctor's appointment, palpitations and a sore ear. The same as last time, the same doctor, attractive, I call her by her first name and she says she remembers me from before.

We have a friend in common. It strikes me as odd that I have a contemporary in a white surgical coat fitted just...about...right. I let it pass as she feels my pulse.

As I said. Attractive.

Heart rate is fine. No ring on the finger. Blood pressure is within bounds. Last time a ring. "Less booze and no coffee" is the mandate, I make nice and I leave. All cordial like.

Suffolk Street is swaying, a pre-tempest. A group of Italian girls are screaming at the Molly Malone as I make my way up Grafton Street, not really sure of my destination. I head west on to Wicklow Street and eat pancakes and blueberry mush.

"Give me a call if you've any more concerns."

Left or right? Decisions. I head for George's Street, ten paces later turning back. Tower is a great place for people who don't know what to do next, where to go next, so I walk in and look for a film I've forgotten the name of and leave without buying a thing.

I pick up some food, some fish and root vegetables, I pass the surgery again and I keep going.

Nobody falls or slips anymore but my garden is still wet snow, not yet slush, so I tread carefully and pick up my post. Junk. I go inside to make coffee before I remember the 'no no,' so it's some disgusting herbal tea and I hit the corrections.

I marvel at the mistakes. Repetition, uncapitalised place names, apostrophes akimbo and one lad who can't spell 'because.' I get through half of them with a groan and a red pen and realise two hours have passed.

I pick up the phone. I put it down. I think about calling. I put it back down.

I stare at the blogs, note that nobody's in. I think of a story but nothing comes out. I update my status and click on a name. I quickly click out thinking 'these things leave marks.'

I feed the beast.

Ten points on the principle

"Between her brain and her mouth there was no interlocutor."

or

"Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us to this."

It's a big, bad addictive thing is The Sopranos, even on the third or fourth go around. It's pervading my January, making shit of my plans to snowglide naked down the bumps and grinds of Croagh Patrick, scuppering any airs I had of going on soup runs for the homeless, rendering folly my vague intentions of re-entering the world of the woo.

Nobody writes casual racism and hypocrisy like David Chase and company, not even Bertie's cronies could hold a lit fuse to Satriale's finest.

Oh Madonna!

Still, soon enough I'm going to have to go out into the world and be a person, just like other people, cursing the fact that a real rain finally came to wash the streets clean of all that literary white stuff.

Fuck it.

One more episode.

Mobiles quirking mobiles chirping

This is some stop-start bloggery right here. I began one post that never was by giving out about 'Frasier.' Now, I love Frasier but I get a proper dose of bile every time Anthony LaPaglia shows up and hams his way through one murderous scene after another, foisting his best Sarf Lahndan Innit over what is meant to be a Manchester accent.

He's Australian for fuck's sake.

The same with the aul bint who plays Daphne's mother, and don't get me started on Richard E Grant's cameo in the show's finale. A trained Withnail reduced to the status of a dick.

Pish.

Too much time on Comedy Central here, as you can see. I can tolerate King Of Queens but once Charlie Sheen puts his misogynistic torso into view (Two And A Half Gobshites) I properly lament the fucking ice rink outside and the fact that I can't go from A to B without arse over tit.

Then I started a paean to Dina Carroll but one quick click into her Wikipedia page revealed nothing of interest. Ditto Gabrielle, and Sinitta was never a starter in the first place.

The next abortive entry revolved around my bathroom cleaning expedition earlier, another was a sad verse to the dinner that ended up on the floor last night. Neither, had I hit publish, would have secured me that much sought after 'Golden Merkin' statuette that I've been jonesing for.

So here I am, flat-stricken and clicking refresh after refresh on those of you tying yourself up in knots about the demise of I*****d's blo**ing scene over on Twenty Major, keeping my eye on RTE's 'Ice Age Watch 2010' for Dublin Bus updates I don't need and cursing the fact that there's no fucking decent transfer news.

What's next?

Tinned goods are in short supply and the freezing fog descends. Thom Yorke is loving this and he's in my head, the gammy-eyed genius.

The following action is not reversible

'It does exactly what it says on the tin.'

Would you fuck the fuck off? Does nobody else come down with a proper sense of ire when they see this used abysmally, horribly and abortively out of its original context?

It was an advertisement for varnish, for the love of gravy. Now it's trundled out every time some product or person does exactly what it or he or she set out to do in the first place. There is seldom, if ever, a tin involved.

'That freezing fog, it's cold, it does exactly what it says on the tin.'

Fucking Twitter. FUCKING Twitter. This is the kind of shit I'm faced with every time I log into it, this and the disgusting use of the word 'awesome' by people who really should know an awful lot better.

'Fail.'

Oh Jesus.

'Queued for an hour to see Avatar but it sold out as I neared the top of the line. Cinema fail LOL.'

Fucking Twitter. Honest to fuck I only go in there looking for a way to get out of there, and my recent cull - bringing those I follow from a bloated mid-fifties to a tolerable mid-twenties - has still not dulled the level of hatred I feel for it.

I've gone to delete my profile from it thrice now and turned back, but fuck it, here I go...

(The following action is not reversible.)

Fuck that feels good.

If I could do it again, I would. I'd nearly create a new profile, connect with scores of people I've never met, gabble on about ROFL and LMAOs and delete it all over again because damn if this semi isn't about to go full throttle.

Whew.

Irish blogging is dead, or dying, apparently. This is because of one man's (he's a good lad, not a personal attack) decision to foresake the long form for the 140-character ejaculation of text mirth. He's seen as the tip of the iceberg, Jean Claude, the straw that broke the camel's tin of Ronseal Quick Drying Woodstain LOL.

Well, I persist. Fuck Twitter.

Steptoe

The first time it happened, it was in front of an oncoming bus on the Cabra Road. Not as dramatic as it sounds, I dusted the snow off my jacket and paid my fare, ignoring the sniggers of those on the ground floor and the onlookers who could have helped me up. But didn't. Geebags.

The second time was on Suffolk Street. I saw the number 10 bus and hastened to make it but went flying. Two Italian girls this time, nice sorts, made nice to me and offered me their assistance.

The third time it happened? Twenty minutes ago. I'd tiptoed my way from the 122 around the corner to my flat, stepped over the last vestiges of lying snow in the garden outside my house when THWACK, a balletic but stupid slip at the last possible black spot before my front door and safety. The Thai Chicken Soup in my carrier bag wasn't as lucky as me (no bruises) and now sits in a vomitous heap outside my gate, the bits of rice and gloop giving the lie because I never seem to fall when I'm drunk.

Unless you're counting that time on Pearse Street.