Bank Holiday Lovelies

Everyone loves a three day weekend (except my liver who looks forward with trepidation and back with horror...)

Work has been crazy busy lately (although I HAD to go to the circus last week to do RESEARCH so I can't really complain...even though it was technically a 16 hour day.) Three days of sleeping, drinking, eating, and other loveliness was well deserved. The party actually started on Thurs. night when one pint turned into last call with a couple of co-workers. The next day included a leaving do for another co-worker and therefore, bottles of wine needed to be drank (?) with lunch. Trying to go back to work and be productive after that was ridiculous, I tell ya.

I went to a "fancy dress party" friday night which is Ireland's strange and oddly innapropriate name for a costume party. (I guess if they called it a costume party everyone would show up with their suntan lotion and their bathing "costumes.") As it was pretty last minute, I just grabbed all my goth gear (fishnets, black clothes, leather bracelets, etc...) and had a friend pickup some white face paint and vampire teeth. Can't say I was very original but at least I wasn't lame and totally uncostumed like soooommmmmeeee people (Tom included.) There was lots of dancing and ghost lollipops and cool costumes to be had (and my liver got a much needed break if you don't count the bottles of wine we all drank with our tasty thai dinner pre-party.) Funny how no matter where you are there is always that one guy at a party who is ridiculously shitfaced, with or without really bad B.O. (with in this case) who runs around talking too loudly and trying to either start shit or vomit in your boots. This time, the guy was also one of those close dancers and the bang off him (as they say here) was worse than three day old feet. He was also strangely obssessed with talking about the 'ra and he wasn't from the North. Maybe that was supposed to be his costume, "disgruntled IRA man." He kept walking by people and saying Up the 'Ra and Tiocfaidh Ar La. (Note: Pronunciation of that bizarre looking alphabet vomit is "Chuckie - are - la," and is a nationalist slogan meaning, "Our day will come." Next time you find yerself hanging with a bunch of Northies talking about Chuckies, you can tell your own personal kneecapping story and they'll all think yer the coolest thing since sliced bread. ;) ) Anyway, other than wierd, smelly, drunk, political-rambling guy, it was a good night out and followed by that most necessary of a good, long, lie-in.

Had a couple people over fer dinner on Saturday night and Sunday was back at it with Tommy as we went to see the Scratch Perverts (Hip-hop / scratch DJs.) They didn't actually go on till 1am making me feel very old as I was already yawning by the time they showed up on stage. Had to drink multiple red-bulls (which I generally hate, btw) to stay awake. More dancing and minimal drinking was had and other than a few hundred smelly men in one smallish room, it was good times. We left round quarter to 3 and given that it was a bank holiday Sunday combined with Halloween, the streets were absolutely mental. It was like Dublin's 3am version of Times Square at rush hour. Hundreds of people everywhere in every state of "fancy dress" and every state of drunken debaucherousness. Temple bar is gross at the best of times at 3am on a weekend but this time, superman and his sexy nurse were the ones puking on their shoes. The excess of a drunken Dublin weekend is truly something to behold. It's filthy (read: dodge the growing pool of piss on the sidewalk coming from drunko in the corner; dodge the pile of puke and unidentifiable chunks of someone's stomach.) It's rowdy: ("You lookin' at me?") And yet, it's festive somehow. It picks you up and carries you along with all the allure of a train wreck. You just have to have one more look at the stumbling girl with a skirt so short that you can see her belly button. You have to see if that guy really is going to blow his hand off with that sparkler. It's like one big, dirty, drunken carnival... Watch yer step, like.

For a change of scenery, I woke up "early" this morning after staying out till 4am and went to meet up with a couple of people to watch another friend run the Dublin Marathon... From complete debachery to complete self-denial in a few hours. The Dublin of 11am is a far cry from the Dublin of 3am. I watched serious athletes looking like death warmed over as they crossed the 26 mile mark... and then I went home and took a nap.

Well, back to the grind tomorrow. If any of you plan to be in the Dublin area next Friday and want free tickets to the circus (so I can run around getting photos of ya...) give a holler. ;) If only I could beam you all over... Till then, Be good, be happy, and don't run any marathons or puke in any gutters.

I know why you really read this...

Don't worry, I'd have to live her for 30 years before I would run out of new Irish slang for the blog. I'll take a break from discussing the meaning of life to bring you more of what you really want... Working in an office is an endless source of new slang... I practically have enough to write a book so here's a few of my new favorites:

Nosebag: Heard this one the other day while eating lunch with the co-workers and no, it doesn't have anything to do with white powder or American Psycho. One of the co's leaned over to the other and asked him, "Good nosebag?" In the great tradition of animal feed...I guess, she was asking him if his food was nice.

On the batter: There are so many ways to describe being on the piss in this place, it's truly amazing. Not sure where this one comes from unless it's a reference to the battering your head takes after a night of hard drinking.

A cuppa / A Rosie / Scald: In the words of Death Cab for Cutie, they're all, "different names for the same thing," that most important and ubiquitous drink, tea. Everyone in my office drinks at least three cups a day (and some as many as seven) so it's no surprise that there should be so many monikers for it. Several times a day I'm asked, "Anyone for a cuppa?" The less used cup of Rosie is one of those cockney rhyming things...A cup of Rosie Lee / Tea. I have absolutely no clue who she is and so far no one in the office does either...It's a mystery. A cup of scald is my favorite...so rough and ready and given how many times I burn the shite out of my mouth everyday, it's well apt.

Hummin: This one came up when we were trying to brainstorm a campaign for a bank at work and I found out that someone who's humming isn't necessarily singing in the rain. Said hummer is in fact just a smelly b*stard. Can be applied equally well to people or things... "That bathroom is hummin' since you've been in there." Quite a good one I think, especially for things that smell so bad, they're practically vibrating. I can think of a few people who fit the description but I suppose I won't name and shame you, ya smelly feckers.

Well, the list goes on but my lunch break doesn't so the rest will have to wait. Happy Tuesday, hope yer all enjoying yer nosebag and a cuppa.

The Grim Reaper at the Door

I don't mean to be morbid but I've been thinking a lot lately about mortality. I found out yesterday that my English Professor from Hampshire College recently died at the age of 40 from Leukemia leaving behind a wife and children and a life only half lived. Looking through the Hampshire memorial section, I found three women ex-hampshire grads who all died last September in freak traffic accidents within 5 days of eachother. All we're young, recent grads, 21 or 22 years old and apparently well loved (although not known by me). I'm currently waiting for news on another person, a family friend to find out the extent of the Cancer eating into him (and the Dr's seem to be stringing him along - but that's another story all together.) Heard an anecdote at work the other day about a woman from Donegal, 32 years old, who felt ill a few weeks ago and died of Leukemia within a few days, again leaving small children behind.

We try to fool ourselves. I suppose we have to in order to function. We have to tell ourselves it won't happen to us. But who's to say. I sometimes wake up in the morning and think, today could be the last day of my life and I just don't know it yet. I was reading the blog of a friend this morning who was talking about the nature of fear and how sleeping outside in the pitch dark with nature's sounds all around made her think about the rise of religion and superstition and all the rest of it. We need to think that we're not alone in the dark. We need to think that our teddybear nightlight is powered by more than just electricity and that our mother will protect us from anything that might be lurking under the bed.

It would be so much easier to believe in a god in the sky, to really believe in that old lady phrase, "It was just her time," to be able to look up and think that there is a master plan, a method to the madness but I can't help thinking, when I lie in bed at night that shit just happens, randomly and for no good reason. Children are left without parents, Parents are left without children, grave injustices are perpetuated all over the world by the hands of other humans or the hands of fate or just plain bad luck.

My question is this, How do you live with this knowledge? How do you go about the mundane details of your day knowing how fragile and precious your life really is? How do you let the people you love walk out the door, knowing the world is out there for better or worse? I've always been a sensitive, ruminating type person but I can't possibly be the only person who thinks about these things and millions of people get out of bed every morning without a god to hold their hand, myself included. For those of us who don't prescribe to a religion with a big pappa in the clouds, who live without that teddy bear nightlight, where do you find your meaning, comfort and solace? How do you make sense of the monsters under the bed who are so much worse than you ever thought they were as a child?

A Softer, Silkier Rain with half the fat and twice the fibre?

I should credit the following poem but to be honest, I'm not sure who wrote it. It came to me from my most fabulous mother who still manages to be the hippest 60something I know.

Hard Rain

After I heard It's a Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall
played softly by an accordion quartet
through the ceiling speakers at the Springdale Shopping Mall,
I understood there's nothing
we can't pluck the stinger from,

nothing we can't turn into a soft drink flavor or a t-shirt.
Even serenity can become something horrible
if you make a commercial about it
using smiling, white-haired people

quoting Thoreau to sell retirement homes
in the Everglades, where the swamp has been
drained and bulldozed into a nineteen-hole golf course
with electrified alligator barriers.

You can't keep beating yourself up, Billy
I heard the therapist say on television
to the teenage murderer,
About all those people you killed—
You just have to be the best person you can be,

one day at a time—

and everybody in the audience claps and weeps a little,
because the level of deep feeling has been touched,
and they want to believe that
the power of Forgiveness is greater
than the power of Consequence, or History.

Dear Abby:
My father is a businessman who travels.
Each time he returns from one of his trips,
his shoes and trousers
are covered with blood-
but he never forgets to bring me a nice present;
Should I say something?
Signed, America.

I used to think I was not part of this,
that I could mind my own business and get along,

but that was just another song
that had been taught to me since birth—

whose words I was humming under my breath,
as I was walking through the Springdale Mall.



Too bad I spent my day creating posters for a building society so that it can more effectively peddle its personal loans to entrepreneurs and suckers alike... "I'm only a pawn in their game..."

How Now Brown Cow

Okay so I did have a tan (a fairly dark one) and I did ask a question about Malaysia, but still...

I was at a wedding, less than 24 hours after landing in Ireland from Boston, I found myself in Belfast at said wedding schmoozing with people I sort of knew and plenty of people that I knew not at all. Tom's cousin had been showing off his Malaysian made suit earlier in the evening and pointing out how finely crafted it was. I saw another guy who had a similar looking suit (and a similar looking face - probably a brother or cousin of the Malaysian suit wearer) and I asked him if he also had his suits made in Malaysia...His wife (I think) looked at me in response and asked if I was Malaysian... Huh. I've been mistaken for many ethnicities...Spanish, Jewish, French but never in my whole life has anyone looked at me and thought, small Asian Island chain... To make matters even stranger, I was asked earlier in the evening by another wedding guest if I was from Belfast. An easy mistake, you might say, except this woman had heard me speaking more than a few sentences and unless she was asking me if I was from Belfast, ME, I really don't know how my Yank accent could have been missed...

So now I'm not sure if I'm exotic, ethnicity unknown in the eyes of the Irish or one of the locals...talk about Identity crisis. Tom's granny refers to me as the dark one (when she remembers me at all) but I think this is meant as a compliment or at least a simple descriptor to help her failing memory. How strange and somewhat wonderful to be exotic...except when I'm not... I think I better go research my family tree now... maybe I am actually Malaysian and just don't know it. I'd say cheerio in Malaysian except I don't speak it. So, uh, see ya all later.